A/N: Ok, these a/n's are getting kinda repetitive. Once more huge thanks to my reviewers. I love reviews. I can't get enough reviews. I'm now addicted to them. So help feed my addiction :^) Um, nothing else to say except I hope this brings a tear to your eyes.

Chapter 20

His heart was motionless as his chest laid flat...still, unmoving. Only the whites of his eyes could be seen through the small slits that were made by his half closed eyelids. The convulsions had left his body along with his tortured soul.

"NO!!!" The android yelled, as very human tears poured from her artificial tear ducts. 'Damn it Harper, why did you have to build me so human,' she cursed the corpse that laid before her.

She forced her wild stare off of the lifeless body of Harper and rushed out to get the med-kit that was lying in wait just outside the hatch. Roughly, she wiped away the tears so she could see where she was going.

"No, can't be happening, no," she desperately tried to make herself believe that this true reality was in fact fake.

Running back to Harper's body, she grabbed the defibrillator paddles from the kit. "Damn it, Harper, live!" she yelled as the applied the paddles to his dead chest.

A bust of energy surged through his lifeless heart.

"Come on." Her added begging brought on no new heartbeats.

Again she shocked him.

"You can't leave me!" A torrent of tears escaped her eyes as his heart still didn't respond.

Once more, she applied the paddles and once more Harper ignored her.

"Seamus Zealanzy Harper! You listen good. We still need you. I know, it's selfish and you want to go, but we need you. We love you! Damn it Harper, COME BACK!!" She forced out past the waves of sobs that wracked her artificial body.

Again, she placed the paddles on his chest. "Please...don't leave me," she begged one last time and she sent a larger charge through his body.

Then she heard it. The most wonderful sound she had ever heard in the universe. A small, very weak contraction of his heart.

The defending sound was followed by a long pause of silence. Rommie's tears began to double as the partner of that sound refused to show up. She placed the paddles on his chest again but before she could use them the second most wonderful sound in the universe filled the conduit. The Dub to the Lub finally showed up to the dance.

Gradually, more and more Lubs and Dubs filled the dance floor

Then she felt it, under the paddles she still had resting against his small chest...movement, small, slow movement. He was breathing. Rommie joined him in sucking in the stale air of the cramped space as her long held breath final broke. She had her Harper was back.

To her great surprise, the blue of his eyes slowly rolled back down as his lids fluttered open to reveal the hazed over eyes fighting to focus. 'Must be the Buzz,' she thought, 'he should be unconscious after that.'

A harsh cough fought to escape his chest, blood rose up from that battle. "R-R-Rommie...why?.." He struggled to get out each letter.

"Harper?" Rommie asked with her concerned-laced voice as she gently lifted his head up into her lap. "Why what?"

He was having trouble focusing on her and licked his dry, bloody lips as he waited for his strength to return enough to speak. "W-Why...save...m-me...want to...d-die." The words battled fiercely to escape the pull of gravity from his body.

"Don't say that, you don't mean it," Rommie pleaded with him as she gently caressed his filthy stubbly face.

"Yes...please, go away....leave me...d-deserve this," he closed his eyes hoping despratly to fall back into that sweet darkness Rommie had pulled him so violently from.

Rommie gently, but yet forcefully, adjusted Harper's face so he would have to look into her waterier eyes. "Listen to me, my genius engineer. We had a deal, remember? You fix me, I fix you. Well I'm doing my bit now, ok? You DO NOT, do you hear me, DO NOT, deserve this. In words you would say, what you deserve is a freakn' hero's welcome style parade. I will not let you die like this, from your stupid, self-imposed death sentence. Do you understand me Seamus? Do you?!"

His only response was a small tear that fell from his bloodshot, clouded over eyes, followed by a mumble of "Go away."

Rommie was growing frustrated and it showed in her blazing eyes. A deep growl could be heard rising up from her throat. She hastily reached over to the med-kit and pulled out the syringe that held Harper's salvation. She held it up before his empty eyes. "Do you see this? This is why you are not going to die today. It's a Buzz antidote. See what perks come from living on the most powerful computer in the universe."

She hoped he would be happy to have a cure. She hoped her jocular comment would be greeted by a sparkle in his eyes or even by a minuscule upturn of his lips, but instead that cold gaze stayed eerily constant.

She brought the cure closer to his body.

"No," he grunted as he swatted away her hand. "D-Don't want it."

"Harper, I don't care. You're getting it. Ship's orders." Once more she brought the syringe towards his prone body, but then Harper suddenly came back to life.

With more strength than either thought he had, he jumped up off the floor and pushed Rommie and her evil cure away.

"I said no! Leave me! NOW!" He yelled at the top of his aching lungs. 'She's trying to poison me, drug me maybe, to do her bidding, it has to be. Why would she want me around like this. Why would she want to save a monster?' paranoid thought after paranoid thought flew through Harper's hazy mind.

Rommie hunched over in the low clearance of the conduit, syringe griped tightly in one hand and an angry, frustrated fist was forming in the other. "I WILL NOT LEAVE YOU!! So, save us both time and energy and get your scrawny ass over here and take this shot!!!"

Harper too was hunched over but he was trembling like a palm tree during a hurricane. Sweet was pouring off his face as he was constantly struggling to keep his attacker in focus. "D-Don't you get it R-Rommie? H-Harper is dead, lost in that massacre, lost in the torture." He paused to take a gasping breath. "A-A-All that's left is this monster and he deserves to die. He HAS to die." Another deeper breath. "SO LEAVE ME ALONE!"

Rommie's determined eyes locked onto the cowering, screaming form. "No." She said calmly as she stepped toward the trembling creature.

"G-Go a-away... p-please...for-forget...m-m..." Yet another seizer overtook him as he crashed to the ground. Blood was gurgling out of his mouth as more darker, blood was flowing freely from his nose.

"HARPER!!" Rommie's blood curdling scream could be heard miles down the conduit. She raced over to the violently convulsing body and immediately injected him with the life-saving drug he had fought so hard to avoid. She then cradled his head in her hands as she waited for the seizer to pass, all the while, making sure his airway was clear.

"Don't do this to me Seamus," she ordered to the convulsing human. Fits of bloody coughs were jerked up from his chest and his eyelids were unable to make up their minds as to what to do. "I need you Harper, I love you....Fight, Seamus, fight."

Slowly the drug worked it's way into his bloodstream. First, the convulsions died down till not even a tremor was left. Then, the coughing gave way to shallow gasping breaths as his heart beat slowed to a sluggish beat. But his eyes were still fighting with themselves. To open or to close, that was the question.

He forced his gaze on the lovely head that hovered above him as he struggled once more to find his voice. "W-Wh-Why?"

Rommie looked him right in his heavy eyes, "Because we love you."

A slightly confused look crossed Harper's face for a second right before the sedative in the drug finally overtook the Buzz stimulant. His lead-lined eyelids gently closed and covered up those anguished filled orbs.

For the first time in over ten day, Seamus Harper was at rest. Like all the others, his lines of pain and worry were lifted from his face, but unlike the others, they left behind faint shadows of themselves. With time and help, they might leave his young face.

Rommie gazed down at her sleeping, troubled soul. She bent over and placed her lips on his bloody forehead. "It's gonna be ok Harper. We will get you through this. We will all get through this...together."

She then maneuvered to gingerly pick up the feather-light body. 'He's too light,' Rommie worried, 'maybe only seventy pounds, max.'

With all the care of a mother carrying a newborn, she brought him out of the darkness and confined of the conduits and into the light and openness of the corridors. She carried him all the way to medical, whispering gentle reassurances to him the whole way.

Once there, she rested his ravaged body on the soft mattress of the awaiting med-bed, brushed away a few rebellious strands of his filthy hair off of his face, and stepped back. She gazed longingly at her reunited crew. Tyr, Trance, Beka, Dylan and now Harper were all sleeping peacefully, all in the same room, all finally back together.

"It's gonna be ok," Rommie whispered to herself knowing full well of the grueling battle that still laid ahead of them.

TBC.....