Part 22
He does not want to sleep. He does not want to leave consciousness, for fear that when he wakes, all this will prove to be a figment of his imagination. He does not want to leave her again, even if only in slumber. She needs him. She has been strong long enough. He must be her strength now. He must stay awake.
But exhaustion eventually wins out over will, and the soft sound of Liz's breathing finally lulls him to sleep close to dawn.
"Max."
He is back on the bridge, looking over the ledge at the water below. It is calm and he knows that Liz will still be there when he wakes up.
He turns his head, taking in Isabel, who is standing next to him. She smiles at him, her joy obvious. "She found you," she says, obviously relieved. She reaches out and hugs him, and he knows that this is truly his sister, that she has dreamwalked him, and that, for the first time in five years, he has let her. There is no more need to save them by staying away - at least not on the dream plain.
Thanks to Zan, the danger from which he has been protecting them is no longer a threat. Pierce is dead - Max knows this from the connection he established with his duplicate as he died; he knows that Zan did not leave this world alone and, so, finally, they will all be safe.
And, yet, he knows that he and Liz must still keep their distance, at least until the baby is born, just to be sure. They cannot risk coming out into the open anytime soon, in case the Special Unit is keeping an eye open for any strange goings on. They think Max is dead, but they will still watch his family to be sure. But it does not mean that their friends and family can not come to them eventually, when Pierce's minions finally give up. He is excited at the prospect, but he is also glad to have this time alone with Liz. In the meantime, though, it is good to see Izzy.
He hugs his sister tightly, then steps back and looks at her. She is still as lovely as ever, but her eyes reflect the strain the last few years have caused. She has grieved for him, and knowing he is alive has not quite yet registered.
"It's good to see you, Iz," he tells her.
"Where are you?" Isabel asks. "We're worried, Max."
He grimaces. "I better not tell you just yet. There are things you don't know. We need to make sure that you won't be followed. And you can't all come at once."
"We understand that," Isabel replies. "It's just hard, that's all."
"I know."
"I'm sorry, Max," Isabel says, tears filling her dark eyes. "I'm sorry I gave up on you."
"It's what I wanted you to do, Iz," Max says. "There was no way for you to help me. It was best that you stayed safe."
"We would have found you if you'd just let us, Max," Isabel argues. "It wasn't right, what you did."
"I know that now," Max replies. "But you have to understand..." He trails off, not wanting to hurt her more by revealing the more selfish reason he stayed with Pierce. He was thinking of them, but he is forced to acknowledge that it was not the only reason he did not let them find him.
"You thought Liz was dead," Isabel says. "We do understand, Max. We get it. But I hope you get that it wasn't your fault."
He doesn't respond, but says, "I am sorry, Isabel. I know you suffered."
"Not like you did," she replies. She hugs him again. "I'm just glad that you're back."
"Me too."
And he is. He is glad to be back among the living. He is glad that he has a purpose, at last. He will live to love Liz and he will be a father to the child she carries. He will protect them and he will love them and he will thank whatever God there might be for giving him a second chance at both.
"Not that they belong to you. He died for them. You weren't even brave enough to do that."
Max whirls. The dream shifts and he feels Isabel lose control of it. She slips away, disappearing as abruptly as she came.
Because this no longer a dream. It has become a nightmare.
It is Pierce and he is walking towards Max, a smirk on his face. "I can see that you're as verbose as ever, Max. Thought I was dead, did you?"
"You are dead," Max replies, his heart thundering in his chest. He knows, even in a nightmare, that this is true.
But this knowledge does not stop Nightmare Pierce from moving forward. "As long as you remember me, I will live," Pierce replies. "And I won't ever let you forget. Oh, no."
"You're dead!" Max exclaims, more firmly, determined that he will not let the monster win in this way. He will not haunt him from beyond the grave.
"I will never be dead, Max. Never." Pierce replies. He reaches out and places gentle hands on Max's shoulders. "You will never leave this bridge. This bridge will forever bind us together." He leans forward and whispers into Max's ear, as he has done so many times before. "And, when you finally jump...when you just can't take it anymore...then I will come for your child."
Max stares at him in horror. The next thing he knows, he is falling through the air, towards the calm water below. He sees Pierce staring down at him from the bridge as he hits the water, which closes instantly over his head.
He jerks awake. He can feel Liz's breath on his ear, as she whispers, "It's all right. You're safe. Max, wake up." And, as simply as that, he feels another shift. She becomes his protector, his strength.
"What happened?" he asks, reaching up and rubbing at his eyes. He can feel his heart thundering in his chest, but he does not remember why.
"I think you were having a nightmare," Liz explains. "You were shaking in your sleep and it woke me up." They are facing each other on the pillows and her hand reaches out and gently pushes his hair away from his eyes so that he cannot hide from her.
He meets her gaze. He feels embarrassed that he has so quickly shown weakness. "Sorry. I'm sure it was nothing." So much for being the strong one, he reflects, annoyed at himself. He is aware that he is psychologically screwed up beyond even his own comprehension, thanks to Pierce, but he does not want Liz to know. She has enough grief to cope with. He knows that he will eventually recover anyway. After all, being with Liz is the only cure he needs.
"You don't have to apologize," Liz replies. He watches her bite her lip and he knows that she is wondering how far she should pursue this. "You didn't yell," she finally says abruptly. It is a strange thing to say, so he does not respond. He waits for her to continue. "Most people, when they're living nightmares, they cry out."
He closes his eyes, finding the gentle probing in her expression. He knows that she is not talking about the present nightmare from which she just woke him. She is talking about his entire time with Pierce.
Because, she is right. After Pierce captured him the second time, through it all, he never cried out. Not once. It was the one control he had over the situation in which he found himself and he also refused to give Pierce the satisfaction. He would not let Pierce in, even that much. Pierce would never truly own him, would never know him. Max refused to allow it and vocalizing the effectiveness of the agent's torture would have started Max down the path where it might have become a reality.
But Pierce was not the only reason he did not cry out. There was only one person whose presence might have saved him an ounce of torture anyway and, while he was with Pierce, he had thought her dead. There was no Liz to turn to, to call for, and so there had been no point in yelling out at all.
Now she is here and he is aware that she wants to know something of what he lived through. But he does not think that he can tell her. He cannot put it into words. It is too near still, too fresh. The fact that she is really able to listen is still almost incomprehensible. He still has not completely grasped that she is alive. And if he reveals exactly how much Pierce's insanity messed him up, he will be admitting that he let the bastard get to him.
Her hands are tracing his face now, and he opens his eyes again. She leans into him and kisses him gently on the lips. "You don't have to tell me," she says. "I already know, Max. Just like you know about me, I know about you." Much to his chagrin, tears fill her dark eyes. "I'm so sorry."
Everything shifts again and she is the one who needs comforting. Max understands suddenly that this is how it will be. They will heal each other in stages, taking turns, slowly repairing the damage that the past five years have wrought. It is how it should be. They will be the stronger for it.
He does not always have to be the strong one. They will be strong together.
"For what?" Max demands. He cups her face with his hands, brushing her tears away with his thumbs. "Liz, there's nothing to be sorry about. I'm just so glad that you're alive. I don't care what happened while I was gone. I mean, I care that you had to go through so much alone, but I'm glad that it wasn't always that way."
"That's not what I mean," Liz replies. She moves so that her face is pressed to his shoulder. "It was my fault," she whispers. "It was my job to get you away from there and I didn't. And that's why everything that happened after that happened. I forgot you because I couldn't deal with it. I left Roswell and I left you in the hands of that psychopath. But that's not even the worst part. It all happened to you because of me. If you hadn't healed me that day in the Crashdown, Pierce never would have even known that you existed."
Her tears are cold against his neck and a shiver descends his spine. He can feel the weight of her guilt through their connection. He knows that she needs absolution, but he also knows that she is aware that he does not blame her for anything. The words he will tell her will not be enough. Not if she is not ready to forgive herself.
But he tries anyway.
"It's not true," Max says firmly. "You know it's not true, Liz. There was nothing you could have done about it. You couldn't stop me from healing you, any more than you could stop what Pierce did to me. He was the evil one, not you. He is the only one to blame." He pulls back, making her look at him. "Don't you get it? It was because of you that I survived it. And I'm not just talking about Pierce. I'm talking about being who I am. Knowing that you loved me, which never could have happened without the shooting...It was the only thing that made me glad to be who I am. I would never change any of it. Ever. What happened with Pierce...If it was the price I had to pay to be with you, then I would gladly pay it ten times over."
"Max, I know you mean it, but you don't understand..." She trails off, sighing. "God, how do I tell you this? I don't know how to tell you."
"Liz, you can tell me anything."
"I know I can." She smiles sadly. "And I know you're going to say that you don't care about any of it. That's not the problem."
"Then what is it?" He runs his hands down her arms in reassurance. He can feel that she needs to unburden herself, and that she needs to do it orally. He will know soon enough, through the connection, but she wants to tell him herself.
She needs it, just as he needs not to tell her what happened to him in the White Room. He is not ready. Not yet, anyway.
"The worst part of everything," Liz whispers, "is that, before I went to sleep, I realized that I thought it was all worth it. That losing my memory, losing you, even Zan's death...It was all worth it."
"Because of the baby?" he asks carefully. He knows that they are treading on very fragile ground here - that any misstep on his part might result in her never being able to accept that it was all worth it. Because he realizes that he believes it was too.
He also believes that it was, quite simply, meant to be.
He remembers once upon a time, when Tess told him about his destiny. That he was meant to be with her. He knows now that he was right to reject that idea. He knew he was fated to be with Liz. He still knows it. He didn't believe in destiny then, and he still doesn't believe that your path can be completely decided for you. But he does now understand that destiny and fate are forever entwined. Fate shapes destiny. He sees now that he was destined to have a child on this planet. He was given a second chance at life to do so. It was decreed in the book Tess showed him, but fate has made it all come out a little bit different.
The child will not be with Tess. It will be Liz's child, which is all he could have ever hoped for.
The child will be his, but also not, because he is not its real father. In his heart, and in its DNA, he is, but he was not part of the creation. He knows that, because of Pierce, he never could have been. Because Pierce was his fate, just as much as Liz was. To be with Liz, he had to endure Pierce, and it was worth it.
But Pierce also meant that he would never father a child. And, so, destiny stepped in again.
The fact that Zan found Liz - that in spite of the great odds against it, he found her and he was the only one to whom she ever opened up during her five lost years - is proof enough that destiny can not be denied. This child is meant to be, at any cost, and it was always fated to be Liz's, because he chose her on the day he healed her in the Crashdown. After that day, this child never could have been anyone else's.
But because he chose Liz, Pierce found him, and he could not be the real father. And, yet, he knows that they are meant to raise the baby together.
Until Liz understands this, she will never be able to get beyond her guilt. He can not feel guilty any longer. He felt Zan die, but before that, he felt Zan's love for this child. He felt that Zan knew that he, Max, would protect Liz, but also the baby, raising it as his own. He felt Zan give him his blessing to do so. Because Zan understood destiny too. He could have been angry about it, but he was not. In those few instants before his life was snuffed out to protect his child - after he had rid the world of the greatest threat to them all - Max felt Zan's acceptance of the role he had to play.
For Zan, it was worth it. Because for three years he had known joy with Liz. It had been more than he had ever been fated to know. Because fate had made Liz, Max's and Max, Liz's. Fate had caused the shooting in the Crashdown that day, but destiny still wanted a part of it.
Max is tired of running. He will accept his destiny, just as Zan did, and he will be grateful that fate has been kind enough to mold destiny in a way that he can be happy to live his life.
Fate brought him Liz. Destiny brought him this child. He cannot feel guilty about any of it. Not anymore.
But Liz can. And she does not deserve it. Zan would not have wanted it. And, although she knows this intellectually, until she understands the great magnitude of how this child came to be, she will never truly be able to accept it.
She is crying softly against his chest. He knows that he must find the words to make her understand that some things cannot be controlled. The irony of the fact that he now understands this, after all the years he tried to control everything by staying with Pierce, is not lost on him.
"Liz, I told you I connected with Zan."
She stiffens against him. He strokes her back soothingly.
"He knew about the baby," Max says quietly. "He chose to do what he did to save his child. Our child."
There is a long silence. Liz finally says, "I know. Lonnie told me he knew."
Max sighs helplessly. He was sure that knowing that Zan had died to protect his child would make her see that she could not have stopped him. That Zan had been a hero because he had actually made his own destiny. And, because he had done so, he had allowed Max and Liz to live out the love they were fated to share.
"Max."
He looks at her, barely able to mask his frustration. He cannot bear to live with the thought that she is going to carry this guilt forever.
"You can't fix everything, you know."
He blinks. "What?"
"I know you want to fix this - that you don't want me to feel any of this. But you can't stop it. It's what is." She looks down, then says quietly, "I won't ever stop feeling it, but it doesn't mean I can't live with it."
"Liz, I want you to be happy," Max tells her.
"I am happy," Liz replies. "Just being with you makes me happy. But it doesn't erase everything. We have to stop running away. And I'm not talking about physically. I mean inside. We have to start accepting that regret and sadness will always be a part of living. Nothing is ever perfect." She lays her cheek against his chest, sighing. "But being with you is so close, it will sometimes make it really hard for us to remember it. Which has to be enough."
They lie there quietly for a long time, each absorbing the truth that they will never quite escape the guilt of all that has happened. Max realizes that Liz is right, though. It is wrong to try and run from it. Doing so defiles all the suffering that has come before. It does not mean that it was not worth it, but it also does not mean that they should not remember how high a price they paid - that Zan paid - to bring them to the point where they have a chance to live a happy life.
"We have to be able to talk about it," Liz finally whispers. "If we hide from it, pretending that everything's okay, then it will eat us up from the inside." She moves so that she is looking at him directly again. "We have to be able to talk about it, Max."
He knows that she is no longer talking about her guilt and pain. He looks away for a moment, then lets out a long breath. He feels the wall that surrounds Pierce come tumbling down, knowing that she is right.
It is in that moment that he remembers his nightmare. He remembers losing Isabel again, and he remembers Pierce taking over the dream, threatening his child - threatening his future happiness.
He will not let Pierce win.
And, so, he tells her. He tells her everything. Slowly, at first, but gradually picking up speed until the words are tumbling out. He relives every horrible moment of those five years, and it takes much longer than he ever imagined it would. They were long, those years, but the physical torture was nothing compared to the horror that he had been responsible for Liz's death.
He tells her this too and she weeps. He does not cry through any of it. It is only in the stillness after he finishes that he feels a lump enter his throat. Her gentle hands stroke his hair and it brings the final wall down.
It is then, after it is all out in the open, that he cries.
He does not want to sleep. He does not want to leave consciousness, for fear that when he wakes, all this will prove to be a figment of his imagination. He does not want to leave her again, even if only in slumber. She needs him. She has been strong long enough. He must be her strength now. He must stay awake.
But exhaustion eventually wins out over will, and the soft sound of Liz's breathing finally lulls him to sleep close to dawn.
"Max."
He is back on the bridge, looking over the ledge at the water below. It is calm and he knows that Liz will still be there when he wakes up.
He turns his head, taking in Isabel, who is standing next to him. She smiles at him, her joy obvious. "She found you," she says, obviously relieved. She reaches out and hugs him, and he knows that this is truly his sister, that she has dreamwalked him, and that, for the first time in five years, he has let her. There is no more need to save them by staying away - at least not on the dream plain.
Thanks to Zan, the danger from which he has been protecting them is no longer a threat. Pierce is dead - Max knows this from the connection he established with his duplicate as he died; he knows that Zan did not leave this world alone and, so, finally, they will all be safe.
And, yet, he knows that he and Liz must still keep their distance, at least until the baby is born, just to be sure. They cannot risk coming out into the open anytime soon, in case the Special Unit is keeping an eye open for any strange goings on. They think Max is dead, but they will still watch his family to be sure. But it does not mean that their friends and family can not come to them eventually, when Pierce's minions finally give up. He is excited at the prospect, but he is also glad to have this time alone with Liz. In the meantime, though, it is good to see Izzy.
He hugs his sister tightly, then steps back and looks at her. She is still as lovely as ever, but her eyes reflect the strain the last few years have caused. She has grieved for him, and knowing he is alive has not quite yet registered.
"It's good to see you, Iz," he tells her.
"Where are you?" Isabel asks. "We're worried, Max."
He grimaces. "I better not tell you just yet. There are things you don't know. We need to make sure that you won't be followed. And you can't all come at once."
"We understand that," Isabel replies. "It's just hard, that's all."
"I know."
"I'm sorry, Max," Isabel says, tears filling her dark eyes. "I'm sorry I gave up on you."
"It's what I wanted you to do, Iz," Max says. "There was no way for you to help me. It was best that you stayed safe."
"We would have found you if you'd just let us, Max," Isabel argues. "It wasn't right, what you did."
"I know that now," Max replies. "But you have to understand..." He trails off, not wanting to hurt her more by revealing the more selfish reason he stayed with Pierce. He was thinking of them, but he is forced to acknowledge that it was not the only reason he did not let them find him.
"You thought Liz was dead," Isabel says. "We do understand, Max. We get it. But I hope you get that it wasn't your fault."
He doesn't respond, but says, "I am sorry, Isabel. I know you suffered."
"Not like you did," she replies. She hugs him again. "I'm just glad that you're back."
"Me too."
And he is. He is glad to be back among the living. He is glad that he has a purpose, at last. He will live to love Liz and he will be a father to the child she carries. He will protect them and he will love them and he will thank whatever God there might be for giving him a second chance at both.
"Not that they belong to you. He died for them. You weren't even brave enough to do that."
Max whirls. The dream shifts and he feels Isabel lose control of it. She slips away, disappearing as abruptly as she came.
Because this no longer a dream. It has become a nightmare.
It is Pierce and he is walking towards Max, a smirk on his face. "I can see that you're as verbose as ever, Max. Thought I was dead, did you?"
"You are dead," Max replies, his heart thundering in his chest. He knows, even in a nightmare, that this is true.
But this knowledge does not stop Nightmare Pierce from moving forward. "As long as you remember me, I will live," Pierce replies. "And I won't ever let you forget. Oh, no."
"You're dead!" Max exclaims, more firmly, determined that he will not let the monster win in this way. He will not haunt him from beyond the grave.
"I will never be dead, Max. Never." Pierce replies. He reaches out and places gentle hands on Max's shoulders. "You will never leave this bridge. This bridge will forever bind us together." He leans forward and whispers into Max's ear, as he has done so many times before. "And, when you finally jump...when you just can't take it anymore...then I will come for your child."
Max stares at him in horror. The next thing he knows, he is falling through the air, towards the calm water below. He sees Pierce staring down at him from the bridge as he hits the water, which closes instantly over his head.
He jerks awake. He can feel Liz's breath on his ear, as she whispers, "It's all right. You're safe. Max, wake up." And, as simply as that, he feels another shift. She becomes his protector, his strength.
"What happened?" he asks, reaching up and rubbing at his eyes. He can feel his heart thundering in his chest, but he does not remember why.
"I think you were having a nightmare," Liz explains. "You were shaking in your sleep and it woke me up." They are facing each other on the pillows and her hand reaches out and gently pushes his hair away from his eyes so that he cannot hide from her.
He meets her gaze. He feels embarrassed that he has so quickly shown weakness. "Sorry. I'm sure it was nothing." So much for being the strong one, he reflects, annoyed at himself. He is aware that he is psychologically screwed up beyond even his own comprehension, thanks to Pierce, but he does not want Liz to know. She has enough grief to cope with. He knows that he will eventually recover anyway. After all, being with Liz is the only cure he needs.
"You don't have to apologize," Liz replies. He watches her bite her lip and he knows that she is wondering how far she should pursue this. "You didn't yell," she finally says abruptly. It is a strange thing to say, so he does not respond. He waits for her to continue. "Most people, when they're living nightmares, they cry out."
He closes his eyes, finding the gentle probing in her expression. He knows that she is not talking about the present nightmare from which she just woke him. She is talking about his entire time with Pierce.
Because, she is right. After Pierce captured him the second time, through it all, he never cried out. Not once. It was the one control he had over the situation in which he found himself and he also refused to give Pierce the satisfaction. He would not let Pierce in, even that much. Pierce would never truly own him, would never know him. Max refused to allow it and vocalizing the effectiveness of the agent's torture would have started Max down the path where it might have become a reality.
But Pierce was not the only reason he did not cry out. There was only one person whose presence might have saved him an ounce of torture anyway and, while he was with Pierce, he had thought her dead. There was no Liz to turn to, to call for, and so there had been no point in yelling out at all.
Now she is here and he is aware that she wants to know something of what he lived through. But he does not think that he can tell her. He cannot put it into words. It is too near still, too fresh. The fact that she is really able to listen is still almost incomprehensible. He still has not completely grasped that she is alive. And if he reveals exactly how much Pierce's insanity messed him up, he will be admitting that he let the bastard get to him.
Her hands are tracing his face now, and he opens his eyes again. She leans into him and kisses him gently on the lips. "You don't have to tell me," she says. "I already know, Max. Just like you know about me, I know about you." Much to his chagrin, tears fill her dark eyes. "I'm so sorry."
Everything shifts again and she is the one who needs comforting. Max understands suddenly that this is how it will be. They will heal each other in stages, taking turns, slowly repairing the damage that the past five years have wrought. It is how it should be. They will be the stronger for it.
He does not always have to be the strong one. They will be strong together.
"For what?" Max demands. He cups her face with his hands, brushing her tears away with his thumbs. "Liz, there's nothing to be sorry about. I'm just so glad that you're alive. I don't care what happened while I was gone. I mean, I care that you had to go through so much alone, but I'm glad that it wasn't always that way."
"That's not what I mean," Liz replies. She moves so that her face is pressed to his shoulder. "It was my fault," she whispers. "It was my job to get you away from there and I didn't. And that's why everything that happened after that happened. I forgot you because I couldn't deal with it. I left Roswell and I left you in the hands of that psychopath. But that's not even the worst part. It all happened to you because of me. If you hadn't healed me that day in the Crashdown, Pierce never would have even known that you existed."
Her tears are cold against his neck and a shiver descends his spine. He can feel the weight of her guilt through their connection. He knows that she needs absolution, but he also knows that she is aware that he does not blame her for anything. The words he will tell her will not be enough. Not if she is not ready to forgive herself.
But he tries anyway.
"It's not true," Max says firmly. "You know it's not true, Liz. There was nothing you could have done about it. You couldn't stop me from healing you, any more than you could stop what Pierce did to me. He was the evil one, not you. He is the only one to blame." He pulls back, making her look at him. "Don't you get it? It was because of you that I survived it. And I'm not just talking about Pierce. I'm talking about being who I am. Knowing that you loved me, which never could have happened without the shooting...It was the only thing that made me glad to be who I am. I would never change any of it. Ever. What happened with Pierce...If it was the price I had to pay to be with you, then I would gladly pay it ten times over."
"Max, I know you mean it, but you don't understand..." She trails off, sighing. "God, how do I tell you this? I don't know how to tell you."
"Liz, you can tell me anything."
"I know I can." She smiles sadly. "And I know you're going to say that you don't care about any of it. That's not the problem."
"Then what is it?" He runs his hands down her arms in reassurance. He can feel that she needs to unburden herself, and that she needs to do it orally. He will know soon enough, through the connection, but she wants to tell him herself.
She needs it, just as he needs not to tell her what happened to him in the White Room. He is not ready. Not yet, anyway.
"The worst part of everything," Liz whispers, "is that, before I went to sleep, I realized that I thought it was all worth it. That losing my memory, losing you, even Zan's death...It was all worth it."
"Because of the baby?" he asks carefully. He knows that they are treading on very fragile ground here - that any misstep on his part might result in her never being able to accept that it was all worth it. Because he realizes that he believes it was too.
He also believes that it was, quite simply, meant to be.
He remembers once upon a time, when Tess told him about his destiny. That he was meant to be with her. He knows now that he was right to reject that idea. He knew he was fated to be with Liz. He still knows it. He didn't believe in destiny then, and he still doesn't believe that your path can be completely decided for you. But he does now understand that destiny and fate are forever entwined. Fate shapes destiny. He sees now that he was destined to have a child on this planet. He was given a second chance at life to do so. It was decreed in the book Tess showed him, but fate has made it all come out a little bit different.
The child will not be with Tess. It will be Liz's child, which is all he could have ever hoped for.
The child will be his, but also not, because he is not its real father. In his heart, and in its DNA, he is, but he was not part of the creation. He knows that, because of Pierce, he never could have been. Because Pierce was his fate, just as much as Liz was. To be with Liz, he had to endure Pierce, and it was worth it.
But Pierce also meant that he would never father a child. And, so, destiny stepped in again.
The fact that Zan found Liz - that in spite of the great odds against it, he found her and he was the only one to whom she ever opened up during her five lost years - is proof enough that destiny can not be denied. This child is meant to be, at any cost, and it was always fated to be Liz's, because he chose her on the day he healed her in the Crashdown. After that day, this child never could have been anyone else's.
But because he chose Liz, Pierce found him, and he could not be the real father. And, yet, he knows that they are meant to raise the baby together.
Until Liz understands this, she will never be able to get beyond her guilt. He can not feel guilty any longer. He felt Zan die, but before that, he felt Zan's love for this child. He felt that Zan knew that he, Max, would protect Liz, but also the baby, raising it as his own. He felt Zan give him his blessing to do so. Because Zan understood destiny too. He could have been angry about it, but he was not. In those few instants before his life was snuffed out to protect his child - after he had rid the world of the greatest threat to them all - Max felt Zan's acceptance of the role he had to play.
For Zan, it was worth it. Because for three years he had known joy with Liz. It had been more than he had ever been fated to know. Because fate had made Liz, Max's and Max, Liz's. Fate had caused the shooting in the Crashdown that day, but destiny still wanted a part of it.
Max is tired of running. He will accept his destiny, just as Zan did, and he will be grateful that fate has been kind enough to mold destiny in a way that he can be happy to live his life.
Fate brought him Liz. Destiny brought him this child. He cannot feel guilty about any of it. Not anymore.
But Liz can. And she does not deserve it. Zan would not have wanted it. And, although she knows this intellectually, until she understands the great magnitude of how this child came to be, she will never truly be able to accept it.
She is crying softly against his chest. He knows that he must find the words to make her understand that some things cannot be controlled. The irony of the fact that he now understands this, after all the years he tried to control everything by staying with Pierce, is not lost on him.
"Liz, I told you I connected with Zan."
She stiffens against him. He strokes her back soothingly.
"He knew about the baby," Max says quietly. "He chose to do what he did to save his child. Our child."
There is a long silence. Liz finally says, "I know. Lonnie told me he knew."
Max sighs helplessly. He was sure that knowing that Zan had died to protect his child would make her see that she could not have stopped him. That Zan had been a hero because he had actually made his own destiny. And, because he had done so, he had allowed Max and Liz to live out the love they were fated to share.
"Max."
He looks at her, barely able to mask his frustration. He cannot bear to live with the thought that she is going to carry this guilt forever.
"You can't fix everything, you know."
He blinks. "What?"
"I know you want to fix this - that you don't want me to feel any of this. But you can't stop it. It's what is." She looks down, then says quietly, "I won't ever stop feeling it, but it doesn't mean I can't live with it."
"Liz, I want you to be happy," Max tells her.
"I am happy," Liz replies. "Just being with you makes me happy. But it doesn't erase everything. We have to stop running away. And I'm not talking about physically. I mean inside. We have to start accepting that regret and sadness will always be a part of living. Nothing is ever perfect." She lays her cheek against his chest, sighing. "But being with you is so close, it will sometimes make it really hard for us to remember it. Which has to be enough."
They lie there quietly for a long time, each absorbing the truth that they will never quite escape the guilt of all that has happened. Max realizes that Liz is right, though. It is wrong to try and run from it. Doing so defiles all the suffering that has come before. It does not mean that it was not worth it, but it also does not mean that they should not remember how high a price they paid - that Zan paid - to bring them to the point where they have a chance to live a happy life.
"We have to be able to talk about it," Liz finally whispers. "If we hide from it, pretending that everything's okay, then it will eat us up from the inside." She moves so that she is looking at him directly again. "We have to be able to talk about it, Max."
He knows that she is no longer talking about her guilt and pain. He looks away for a moment, then lets out a long breath. He feels the wall that surrounds Pierce come tumbling down, knowing that she is right.
It is in that moment that he remembers his nightmare. He remembers losing Isabel again, and he remembers Pierce taking over the dream, threatening his child - threatening his future happiness.
He will not let Pierce win.
And, so, he tells her. He tells her everything. Slowly, at first, but gradually picking up speed until the words are tumbling out. He relives every horrible moment of those five years, and it takes much longer than he ever imagined it would. They were long, those years, but the physical torture was nothing compared to the horror that he had been responsible for Liz's death.
He tells her this too and she weeps. He does not cry through any of it. It is only in the stillness after he finishes that he feels a lump enter his throat. Her gentle hands stroke his hair and it brings the final wall down.
It is then, after it is all out in the open, that he cries.
