She went searching for Logan, they had five minutes left, five minutes left to touch, how had this happened? How had they spent the night being trapped in a nasty old car and with Alec of all people? She found him sitting in an old convertible, his expression blank. She climbed noiselessly into the backseat with him, she wanted to curl up into his arms for these final minutes, but she was afraid to touch him.

"How much time?" he asked

She looked down "Two minutes"

He just continued to look ahead "I keep thinking about the night we took down Manticore...when I thought I'd lost you. I came home and sat on my sofa and I didn't get up again for days. The sun came up...the sun went down...I just sat there. It was like I couldn't move. It hurt too much to move. That's how I feel right now."

Max wanted to cry, she wasn't just hurting for herself, she was hurting for him, he could have fallen in love with any other woman in the world and he would have been happy, but he had gone and fallen in love with her, the only one who would continuously cause him pain, even though she wasn't at fault for any of it, "I knew this would happen. We shouldn't have taken the chance."

He seemed so defeated just looking out into the morning, she hated that he couldn't look at her, he hated it too, he hated what this was doing to him, he was supposed to be stronger, but here he was causing her even more pain. "We had to. You know we did. We can't keep going through this, though."

"I know." Max agreed with him as much as she didn't want to, she didn't think she was going to survive this this time, let alone another time. They'd had just an hour of perfection and it was. It wasn't the kissing, it wasn't making love, it was just being near him, feeling him breath, feeling the texture of his skin, knowing that he safe, knowing she couldn't hurt him. That was gone now.

He turned to her and it took every ounce of her strength and her Manticore training to not break down completely, "That year we wasted, dancing around each other, afraid of actually admitting how we felt...If I had that time back, I would do that so differently."

Her beeper went off, they both looked down.

"Well, I guess that's it." Was all Logan could say, he went to move and realized he couldn't, he just needed one more kiss, one more kiss to keep him warm every night, one more kiss to make him remember he'd had this great love and that he'd lost it.

One more kiss for him to keep with him until the day he died. One more kiss for him to remember when his time to remember finally came.

He kissed her, he crushed their lips together and then he hopped out of the car, needing to get away as quickly as possible because he knew he wouldn't have the strength to do it otherwise.

He started to walk away and then turned, one more time to say the words, one final goodbye, "I love you, Max." He walked away quickly, he had to, otherwise he was going to jump into that backseat with her and just hold her until the virus took over and finally ended this pain.

"I love you, too." she whispered as she heard his footsteps fall away and just looked at onto the dawn and cried. They had finally taken away everything and she couldn't do anything about it, not if she wanted to keep him safe.