Another tense silence spread across the cave before Kyle's cell phone rang again. "Yeah, what's up Liz?" he asked without looking at the screen.

"Actually, it's me," a male voice answered. Max. "How are you guys doing?"

"Fine, under the circumstances. How are you and Liz holding up?"

"We're doing okay, considering the rain," Max muttered. "Tess is there with you?"

Kyle searched the cavern with his flashlight before he answered. "She's sitting twenty yards away."

"I just tried her number a minute ago."

"Hmm - she must have switched her phone off," Kyle decided. "Do you want me to...?"

"Just hand me over," Max snapped, so Kyle walked over to Tess and offered her the phone.

"Hello, who is this?" She remained seated as Max started the conversation over again. "Okay, okay, slow down. Just what do you want me to do?" She waited as Max talked for longer. "And just how am I expected to do that?" There was only a short pause this time. "If you must." Tess put the phone down for a moment, and got to her feet. "Hi, Liz. What's the plan?"

Tess listened as Liz made her own explanations, then turned, searched with her own miniature light, and set off across the cavern. Kyle trailed her quietly. "Alright, I'll tell you when I'm there," Tess said into the phone. "Does the kind of shoes I'm wearing make any difference to the length of my pace?"

Kyle was really curious about the topic of conversation now, but stayed well back just in case, noticing the white shoes that Tess was wearing, and the two-inch heels on them. "Yeah, and you're in flat sneakers, right?"

Kyle realized that Tess was standing where they had both entered the Gandarium nest, facing away from the blue crystal that barred the exit, and started to get a vague notion of what Liz was up to. Tess was still listening to Liz's instructions. "Yeah." After a second, Tess started to walk back into the center of the cavern with a self-assured and measured stride, counting each step. "One, two, three..." After counting eleven, she brought her trailing foot up to meet the lead foot. "Yeah, I'm holding at eleven... Okay, just a moment. Don't continue until I let you know." She slipped the phone down the front of her shirt, and waved her hands in the air. "Kyle, come and stand to my left."

He hurried around and came up on that side of her. "Like here?"

Tess only turned her head slightly. "No, not quite. There." She spread both arms straight out to her sides, and took a moment to orient them just right, as if she were trying to balance herself on a tightrope. Kyle was feeling annoyed and wanted to give her a hard time, but decided not to, as he could guess what she needed. Silently he oriented himself so that Tess' left hand was pointing as nearly at the center of his chest as he could be sure of. "Okay, you're good to turn."

She did, twisting smartly in place until she was facing him dead on. "Okay, thank you very much. Get out of the way."

"Uhh - why?"

"Well, because I need to walk that way, and not by following you. I need to walk as straight as I can - you can't walk straight if you're going backwards, and if you're in my path I'm going to automatically follow you instead of going straight ahead myself."

Kyle thought of one question as he moved aside. "And why do you need to walk straight ahead, instead of me?"

"Two reasons. One is that I'm already in the right spot. And I have nearly the same stride as Liz. You don't have the same stride as anybody who's up there."

Kyle had to admit that was true. He was a bit on the short side for a guy - not nearly as short as Liz, who was short for a girl, or as tall as Max, who was around six foot. So that would mean that neither of them could match him step for step, which must be the point. Liz was trying to lead Tess to some other point that she had found on the surface - they had gone back to the only common landmark - the hole by which Kyle and Tess had entered this dim tomb, and then Liz had started to make her way to point B, giving Tess instructions for shadowing her. Had she gone through the same routine to make her turn as precisely as possible, to make sure that they weren't heading off in different directions? Maybe Liz was using a compass - did either of them bring a compass down into the cave?

Tess cleared her throat, and quickly Kyle hurried out of the way. Tess fished the phone back out of her cleavage and counted off steps again, with Kyle following. Eventually she ended up near the side of the cavern. "No, I can't do ten; I'd be walking straight into a wall of blue crystal. Yeah, okay." Kyle's curiosity grew as she listened to detailed instructions from someone on the phone - the voice changed, and Kyle wondered if Max had taken his phone back, or if Liz were growing hoarse.

"Yeah, I'll do my bit." Tess hung up the phone, handed it back to Kyle, and backed off a little, to the side, but training her eyes forward. After a moment, she set her flashlight down, propping it up carefully in a crevice of the cavern floor so that it lit the patch of wall that Liz had wanted her to walk to. Then she turned to Kyle. "First, you should turn that phone off, and I'll turn mine on. To save battery power. Liz will think of that."

"Umm, okay," Kyle muttered, holding down the 'End' button, though he wasn't sure why making the switch just then was important. "What next?"

"Help me find some good rocks - fist sized or so will be fine if we can find two dozen of them. not Gandarium."

"Uh, okay," Kyle muttered. He didn't ask for an explanation, through the few minutes that it took to gather up the pile of stones that Tess wanted, about ten feet away from 'the Blue Wall,' as Kyle now thought of it. She warned him to stay back at least that far from the wall until she said so, then got out her phone, and placed a call. "Hey, Max, I'm ready to go. Open fire in five - four, three, two, one..."

"Wait a second - open fire?" Kyle said, but nobody was really listening to him. Tess was completely focused on what she was doing - which had something to do with the fact that one by one the rocks were flying from the pile, to smack into the Blue Wall with blinding speed. Listening, Kyle realized that there were at least twice as many impacts as Tess' rocks could account for, and jumped to the conclusion that Max was doing the same from the outside somehow.

Tess' pile of 'ammunition' was down to a few rocks when the wall of Gandarium fractured and collapsed into a pile of little blue stones. Immediately everything blue in the entire nest went crazy - other blue patches seemed to melt off the wall and move like living things, blind, but searching for a target to vent inhuman malice on. Smaller lumps were flying across the room like Tess' stones had, and one impacted Kyle in the side - it bounced off, but he was sure that he'd have a purple mark later.

"Quick!" Tess called. "We run for it!"

"No!" Tess took Kyle's hand and stepped toward the new exit, but he held her back. "We scout it out, carefully." Letting Tess drag him slowly towards the heap of fractured Gandarium, he played his flashlight over the area. Those little alien critters were active too - and most of their activity seemed to involve changing their shape, from round balls to long skinny spikes that pointed away from the surface of the 'heap.' "There's no way that we can get through there without being impaled. The ceiling is low enough that we'd have to be on hands and knees..." Kyle's fingertips and palms were already itching as he imagined them getting stabbed, over and over again.

"It's our only chance!" Tess implored, as Kyle dug in his heels and refused to let Tess get closer. "Once we get to Max, he can heal us, save our lives again if he needs to. But he can't do that if we die inside the nest!"

"I can't take that chance with you!" Kyle yelled back. "You guys can't move these Gandarium with your powers - what if Max can't heal the wounds that they leave? What happens if some of those little blue cells stay inside your body, and nothing can get them out, until they eat you from the inside?"

That stopped Tess short for a moment. Then they both noticed a change in the heap's behaviour - it was piling itself higher, drawing its base into a narrower foundation. "This is our last second to reconsider," Tess said. "They're trying to reform the wall."

"I'm not going to risk it," Kyle said. "What if they become a solid wall again, with you or me halfway through? You can try it if you absolutely must, but..." He didn't let go of Tess' hand until he thought that she'd absorbed that idea, and by that point it looked like they were too late.

So Tess just watched as the outside world was sealed off from them a second time. A few seconds later, her phone rang.

"Max?" She sighed. "No, Kyle - well, we made the call. The Gandarium reacted faster than we thought they would. It was too dangerous to break through that way. Thanks for trying it, anyway. We'll figure some other way out."

After a moment for Max to say goodbye, Tess hung up and turned to Kyle. "Any ideas?"

The implication was clear - since he'd kept her from taking that way out of the nest, Tess felt it was up to him to figure out their next strategy for survival. To Kyle's surprise, he actually had a notion. "You talked to Michael earlier - did you happen to mention that little experiment with the Gandarium in the water bottle?"

"Well, no, I didn't think it was..." Tess trailed off as the point occurred to her. "We know that the Gandarium queen will go to Tucson, to bring Laurie back here - or possibly her aunt or uncle, if they've got the gene that she inherited from Grandpa Dupree. Larek told us that if the Queen dies, so do the rest of the hive. And we know that Gandarium can be killed by oxygen starvation. So Michael needs to know that that's a strategy, when he meets the Queen - trap it in a small space and keep it there long enough. Maybe suck out the air, if he can, to make the process quicker. And when the Queen suffocates..."

"Then the hive dies, and there won't be anything to keep us here," Kyle finished. "It looks like the dead Gandarium don't stick together, but if they do, we can use the alien artillery trick again to pulverize their bodies, knowing that they won't be able to fight back anymore."

"Okay," Tess said. "I'll call Michael. You turn on your phone and try Alex - he needs to know about this too." She considered. "How long ago did Isabel get taken prisoner? It's a long drive from Roswell to Tucson, if she's with the Queen."

"I think that it's been a while." Kyle checked the time display on his phone; it read 11:32pm. "It was early afternoon when Alex and Isabel went after the diamond saw, wasn't it?"

"I don't even know." Tess looked up from her own phone for a moment. "After we've finished doing the phone tree, how about dinner together?"

"I'm up for that," Kyle said. "Though the menu may leave something to be desired."

"Yeah. If we'd thought about it, Max and Liz could have tossed in supplies when we opened up the hole."

"We could always try it again," Kyle said. "I don't think that they're going to kill us if we don't try to escape - they could have done that earlier."

"No, I'm not going to do anything else that might piss the hive now. Not until we're ready to take them down."

And then she was on the line with Michael, explaining about the water bottle. So Kyle dialled for Alex.

It rang half a dozen times, and once again, he heard an unexpected. "Alex's phone."

"Isabel?" Kyle repeated. "You're with Alex? Did he rescue you?"

"Umm..." Isabel paused for a few seconds with those questions. "Sort of. Grant let me out on the side of the road and drove on. Alex picked me up."

Kyle considered this. "So it was Grant who abducted you, not the Gandarium queen?"

"No - the Queen who took me, but Grant's fighting it. It's hard for him, he's losing himself. I'm afraid that by the time they get to Tucson, there won't be anything of Grant left."

"Oh... so the Queen is using Grant to walk around?"

"Yeah." Isabel sighed. "It was the one who kidnapped Laurie, and buried her, and shot at us in the woods that night. Grant had confused memories of all that."

"Okay, hang on just a second," Kyle said, and took the phone away from his face. "Tess, are you still on with Michael?"

"Maria, why?" Tess answered.

"Isabel got a positive ID on the Gandarium Queen's host."

"Yeah, they know - Sorenson."

"Okay." Kyle went back to Isabel. "Sorry, I just wanted to make sure the word was relayed. Guess you guys already thought of that."

"Yeah, it's alright," Isabel said. "Alex was dead tired from driving when he picked me up, so I took the wheel for a while, and we just switched back. We're past the Arizona line now."

"Okay, well, we've got a tip of our own," Kyle said. "A way to kill the Gandarium - hopefully it should work on the Queen too. Suffocate the thing - oxygen starvation."

The implications hit him a second before Isabel said them out loud. "That'll kill Grant too, won't it?"

"Yeah - um, sorry. I didn't think about it being somebody that any of us know. But - well, not to get too melodramatic about it, but it seems to be the Queen or us. There's no way that Tess or I can get safely out of the hive while it's alive." He considered. "Maybe there's a way to drive the Queen out of Grant without killing him."

"I wish I could believe that," Isabel muttered. "Okay, we'll do what we can. But I don't know how far ahead of us Grant is. We've lost him, Alex is just heading for the Dupree house in Tucson as quickly as he can."

"Okay. Keep safe, and tell Alex I said the same for him."

"Thanks, you too. Bye?"

"Bye." Kyle hung up the phone. Tess had finished talking with Michael by this point, and was looking at him, holding out a granola bar.

"Thanks." He took it and settled into a sitting position. "Any news from Michael?"

"He didn't want to talk too much. They're close to Laurie; staying at the family house, thanks to Maria's gambit with the deed to the house." Tess settled down across from Kyle.

"Okay, good for her," Michael said. "So are they ready for the Queen to arrive? She seems to know where she's got to go."

"It knows," Tess said. "Just because it's a queen doesn't make it a she. And yeah, Michael was preparing a trap already. I think he's working on how to fit in the asphyxiation angle now."

"Okay. I can't think of anything else we need to do but wait and eat."

"I could suggest a few." Tess took a deep breath. "Like talk - about us, and my big confession that left you speechless."

Kyle smiled slightly. "I guess I'm not speechless anymore. That was a really shitty trick to pull on Liz. Just imagine for a moment, if she had the means and motivation to do the same thing to you - to force you to choose between - between the person you loved and everything else you believed in, by tricking you?" Kyle's eyes fell. "I'm trying to understand where you were coming from, that you felt like you had to do this, but I'm not sure I'm in a spot where I can be okay with it. And I wasn't even the one you wronged. You need to tell Max and Liz, as soon as possible... well, as soon as we get out of this. Maybe you should figure out a way to make sure that they'll know, just in case we don't get out."

"You don't think this is the sort of thing that I get to confess over a cell phone?" Tess asked.

"I don't think you should distract them in the middle of a crisis like this. Or give them any reason why they might not want to save your life."

"Alright, I... I'll do it, as soon as we crawl out of here. I know it won't be easy, but I'm going to live up to that promise." Tess smiled. "And thank you - for caring, for doing everything that you've done to make sure that I live through this."

"I couldn't do any less," Kyle admitted.

"And - even if you're not entirely okay with my sordid past, could you find a way to tolerate me showing you just how much I care about you?"

Kyle snickered and scarfed down the last of his granola bar. "Hell, yeah!" Tess only just had time to take one last bite and swallow before Kyle was next to her, kissing the side of her face.

Things progressed quickly, both of them feeling a passion burning deep inside. As Kyle's fingers worked at the zipper of Tess' jeans, she moaned, deeply conflicted. "My darling, my love, I won't say no to you if this is really what you want, but - are you sure?"

"Why the hell not?" Kyle muttered. "This might be our last night on Earth, or any planet - reincarnation aside."

"No arguments." Tess was panting with her own excitement. "But if it's not - truly being with each other will change things for us. Especially considering my heritage."

Kyle realized that Tess was telling him about something serious. But no matter what darkness she had in her past, he couldn't back away because he wasn't certain what it would be like to tie his life to hers forever. He wasn't responsible for Tess' choices or happiness, but he didn't want to put her through an abandonment crisis again.

Plus, she looked so hot like this, shirt hanging from one arm, blonde curls falling over her eyes, half-shadowed in the reflected flashlights.

He backed away, but only far enough to tug her jeans away, an inch at a time.

#

It was hard to tell which brought him out of happy oblivion first, the phone ringing or the coughing.

He heard Tess coughing mostly, though his own throat was acting up a little. Confused and dazed by all that he'd been through, it took a while before he was able to reach into his pocket and bring out the phone. There wasn't much light - where was the bedside table? No, he wasn't in his room, or any room - what about flashlights? There was a glint of light, somewhere on the cave floor.

He answered the phone, coughed, and growled, "Who is it this time?"

"Your father."

A number of reactions ran through Kyle's head. Even though he'd made love to a girl when they were both trapped in a deadly alien cave, his father had managed to catch him in the aftermath - sort of. Then... "Damn it, I knew there was somebody I forgot to call, Dad. Sorry - I'm in a... a bit of trouble here." And he couldn't keep from coughing at that point.

"I know. Max called me just when I was starting to wonder when you'd be getting home. I'm out here with him and Liz, just above the hive."

"Okay." Kyle coughed, and realized that Tess didn't seem to be able to go without making a similar sound for more than a few seconds. The implications of that were starting to get through his brain. "It's worse than Max and Liz know. Something's just gone wrong with the air in here. Could be the alien rocks emitting a gas that we can't breathe."

"I'll talk to Liz. But no matter what, hang on as long as you can. We're waiting on news from Michael in Tucson."

"Give me a minute, there are a few things I need to take care of, but stay on the line, right?"

"Sure, Kyle, I'm here for both of you. If Tess wants to say something, just put her on."

Kyle smiled slightly as he stowed the phone, taking care not to hang up by accident, and checked on Tess. She seemed to be doing okay, except for the coughing, and she wasn't quite as awake as Kyle was. She did seem to have figured out that something was wrong with the air.

Without saying anything, Kyle checked on the flashlights and Tess began to dress. One flash had burnt out entirely, and the other had been knocked aside in their lovemaking. Kyle wondered if there had actually been sparks and other electric discharges - he didn't remember that detail, but somehow it would fit into what he had been aware of.

Once Tess was decent, (still showing some traces of their recent activity,) she reached out a hand, and Kyle passed her the flashlight so he could take two hands to pull on his own pants. "Where to?" she asked amidst coughs then, checking through her bag to see if anything with long-term value had been left astray.

"Back to where we started," Kyle muttered. "If we get a chance, that's probably the best way to get out safely - better than the new hole that Max and Liz dug." He coughed. "Now that they're actively trying to kill us, if Max wants to try to break down the walls again, I won't object to taking chances."

As they hurried towards that blocked opening, Kyle realized that Tess wasn't the person he needed to tell that to, and pulled out the cell phone again. "Dad, can I talk to Max for a minute?"

"He'll be back in a minute," Jim Valenti said. "Had to go and collect some rocks, just in case."

"Alright, let me know when he thinks he's got a pile big enough to try with. I'm not sure that Tess will be much help - she has to concentrate to do her thing, right? That'll be hard, coughing every two seconds."

"It's that bad, for her?" Jim asked, and Kyle grunted an affirmative. "Okay, well, stay back from the area. I'll try adding my pistol to Max's rocks."

"Of course, great idea." As they approached the vicinity of the cave opening, the air suddenly got a lot worse, foul-smelling and nauseous. Kyle realized that the two of them absolutely had to get out of this cavern in a matter of seconds, not minutes, or they'd die that quickly. But as Tess waved the flashlight around, trying to figure out what the new threat was, Kyle thought that they had one chance.

"Hold your fire!" he yelled into the phone. "Both of you!" And Kyle was charging through the blue matter that had sealed them both into the cavern, pulling Tess along with him. It was no longer solid, but a thickly clinging blue goo. Oh no, a small voice went in his head. This wasn't what he'd been counting on. He charged blindly on, but could feel the alien ooze covering him from head to toe, sealing him in - he couldn't breathe through it, couldn't open his eyes without the Gandarium blinding him, and that meant...

"Oooh, gross." As Kyle collapsed, somebody's hands gently rubbed the worst of the ooze off his face, as his own badly tainted fingers wouldn't have been able to do. That wasn't enough, but a little bit at a time water was applied to wash the residue away from his eyes, and Kyle looked up at Liz Parker, his saviour.

"Tess?" he croaked, got something slimy inside his mouth, and gagged. He tried to spit, but couldn't as long as his head was pointing up, so he turned over, and immediately felt goo oozing onto his forehead. His flesh crawled anew. But a steady rain was pouring over his whole body, and if he had enough time, that would wash away all trace of the Gandarium. "Tess?" he yelled again, carefully, after hocking out the contents of his mouth.

"She's over here, and she seems to be breathing okay," Jim called from behind him, and he spun around. "She may have just fainted - it's obviously been a trying day for both of you."

"Max, you have to do something for her," Kyle blurted out. He didn't feel any jealousy or frustration about Max Evans crouching next to the body of the girl he loved - he just needed somebody to make Tess better. But even if he was right that Tess still needed saving, what could Max do? His healing powers didn't work unless he could form a connection eye to eye, so Tess had to open her eyes...

Kyle crouched next to where Tess lay, and was suddenly struck by the sensation that he was playing Prince Charming to her Snow White. If this were really a fairy tale, he could wake her with a kiss, but there were still traces of blue slime on her lips, and even if they were scrubbed clean, Kyle wasn't sure he could overcome his revulsion of the Gandarium enough to lay one on her right there and then.

But, driven by some deep urge to connect with her again, Kyle reached out and rubbed her cheek with his thumb, wiping away another bit of Gandarium slime that had stuck there, cleaning off his thumb on the grass and then caressing her. And his breath caught as he spotted Tess blinking her eyes open and trying to prop herself up on her elbows.

"Tess, honey, are you alright?"

"Yeah, umm, yeah, I'm fine. Liz? Are Max and Liz here? I have something to tell them."

"I - I didn't really mean this soon, when I said that you needed to confess to them as soon as we were safe."

"Yes, come on, let's get somewhere safe," Jim said. "Unless there's something else we need to do out here."

"No, it's all been done," Max said. "The Gandarium nest is dead now. And it's a good thing that you were able to get out of the corpse."

"Then come back to our place," Tess said. "If that's okay, Valentis. Did you bring the truck, Jim? I think it might be better if Kyle and I rode in the flatbed, until we can clean ourselves off."

"Actually, I think if I go home now, I can keep my parents from realizing I was out all hours of the night," Liz said. "And catch some sleep. We'll talk later - after you two lovebirds have showered together."

"Liz!" Max exclaimed, sounding scandalized.

"What?" Liz giggled. "I was just thinking about what I'd want to do if it was you and I who got slimed, honey."

#

They gathered for a late lunch around the Valenti's table. Thankfully, there were enough chairs for five.

"After Max and I said goodnight," Tess was saying, in a quiet voice, "I went back to the Crashdown, climbed up the fire escape, and hid at the corner of it where I could just see onto your balcony, Liz, without being easy to spot myself. I waved a signal to Zan, that he'd been waiting for, to start telling you how the future was changed and he couldn't stay here in our time anymore. That was when you asked him to dance, right, Liz?" Liz nodded slightly. "I didn't want to mess up the timing that we'd agreed on, because that might give away that he wasn't the person you thought he was, so I had to make him disappear before the dance was over. I could keep you from seeing him, hearing his footsteps, or even realizing that you were touching him, but you'd realize that something weird was going on if you bumped into him. Luckily Zan was on the ball enough to stay clear once he'd slipped out of your arms. He said goodbye, wished me luck, and drove off, back to New York. I think that he died a few days after he made it back." She took a deep breath. "So - how much trouble am I in, guys?"

"Wow." Max took a deep breath. "I - well, I'm surprised, and upset that you could do something like this, Tess, but..." He let out a long sigh and looked at Liz. "You were interfering in my life, for your own selfish reasons - you do realize that now, right? As much as you might have tried to convince yourself at the time that your agenda was best for me, best for the four of us, all of that was rationalizing."

"Yeah, I know that now," Tess told him. "And that even if I did have selfless motives, that wouldn't have excused the means that I used."

"No, it wouldn't," Max agreed. "But I guess that I don't consider myself the primary wronged party here. It was Liz that you deceived, and Liz's feeling that you toyed with, so - I'm willing to follow her lead."

"Great, put it all on me, huh?" Liz teased, and took a long swallow from her glass of punch. "Well, like Max - I'm mad to think that you could possibly have done something like this, no matter how you felt about Max or about me. But on the other hand - it seems somehow silly to really censure you about something from back in October. You and I, we started over on Valentine's Day, and I do think that we're in a good place now. Would you agree?"

"Yeah, I guess, I mean - you might not be one of my favourite people on the planet... then again..." Tess shrugged. "But I'd never do something like that to you now, and not just because I've accepted that you're Max's girlfriend, and that you're one of Kyle's best friends. And the same goes for you too, Max. I've sworn off playing my own game, ever since Kyle - showed me just how wrong I'd been about so many things."

"That's it," Max said, nodding. "You've turned over a new leaf, because of Kyle. So - if there's any karmic debt for what you did wrong before, I think it's Kyle you need to repay it to, not to Liz or me." He looked over at Liz. "I think that I want to talk with Liz in private about that, before I give you your final sentence. But there's one thing I want to say now. Deceit can be a tough habit to break - just the fact that you kept this from us all for so long tells me you have a problem with telling your friends the truth."

"In fairness, it's one thing to actively lie, and another to not come clean about a guilty secret," Liz allowed.

"Yes, but still, I was thinking of something like a probation," Max said. "There's too many things that we all have to lie about to outsiders, but when it's just us, Tess, the people who are in on the big secret - do you think that you could vow to speak only the truth? For - I don't know, for two months?"

"Wow, that's a tall order for anybody, Max," Tess muttered. Max just nodded slightly. "I - I'll do my best, seriously. And - and if I backslide, then as soon as I can I'll go back and set the record straight."

"Are you sure that the rest of us are up for this, Max?" Liz asked with a smile. "Hearing the absolute truth according to Tess for two months?"

"If it gets too annoying, I might cut it short," Max said. "And I that's enough talking about past crimes and misdemeanours."

"Okay," Jim agreed, and there was a short pause. "So, when are the other four getting back from Tucson?"

"Alex, Isabel, and Maria should be back by tomorrow afternoon," Liz said. "Michael needs to stay a few days more, to take care of Laurie and make sure that her family can't take advantage of her again. He really does feel like she's part of his family."

"I'm just glad that he was able to get the Queen into that bomb shelter," Tess muttered. "It's sad about Grant, but - well, I don't think there was any way we could have saved him, no matter what."

"Probably not," Max agreed. "Isabel's going to be hit worse than any of us - she might try to deny it, but she really liked Grant."

#

Tess turned to Kyle once they were alone. "So - where do things stand between the two of us?"

Kyle reached out and cupped the side of her head with his hand. "I - I understand what you meant about things changing between us now - it's nothing like anything I've ever felt with anybody else. I'm not sure I'm ready for it, but I can't say I'm sorry about what we did, back there in the nest."

"Yeah, I think I feel the same way about it," Tess said, smiling that little, sweet smile that he only saw on her face when they were alone.

"I'm not sure that we're going to be able to live according to my Dad's ground rules anymore."

"Really?" Tess lifted her eyebrows in surprise. "Remember, he said he wasn't going to stop us from making love in his house, just didn't want us sleeping in the same bed all night."

"Yeah, but after being with you, it's going to be way too hard to leave your loving arms and get to sleep on that lonely couch," Kyle complained.

Tess grinned and kissed him hard.

Neither of them knew when the envelope had been slipped into the Valenti's mailbox. The mailman never even used the box anymore, insisting on squeezing everything under the door.

This message was written in Max's neat, bold handwriting, addressed to Tess Harding, and marked 'official Judiciary document.'

"Tess,

"In addition to the integrity stipulation that you have already agreed to, We sentence you to mandatory community rehabilitation sessions during your probation. These will be held in the format of 'Girl's night/afternoon/day' events, to be attended by Liz Parker, Maria DeLuca, Isabel Evans, and possibly other invitees yet to be named. Ms Parker will contact you regarding scheduling.

"The following acts of contrition and restitution shall also be required of you. Since it is the determination of this court that entering into a relationship with a Mister Kyle Valenti has been key to the progress of your rehabilitation thus far, restitution is being redirected from the wronged party of your confessed misdeed to Mister Valenti.

"Perform three foot rubs, three back rubs, and two full-body massages, (each 30 minutes in duration at minimum,) for Mister Valenti at a time convenient for you both.

"Prepare and serve him breakfast in bed twice.

"Allow him the activity of his choice for date night three times.

"Allow him his choice of television program to watch together five times.

"Treat him to dinner at his choice of restaurant, once.

"Allow him the option for a 'night out with the boys' four times.

"Arrange a weekend getaway, (costs to be shared evenly,) with an itinerary of his choice.

"Arrange two 'hot night in' evenings, with home-cooked dinner and movies to his choice.

"Wash his car three times.

"Indulge an intimate fantasy of his choice.

"Follow his every command for one hour, at a time of his choice, in a non-crisis situation.

"Submit as his love slave for one night.

"Play two games of strip poker with him.

"We hope that you will be able to complete the terms of this probation within three months, however, if an extension is required, petition can be filed with the court when one week remains in that period."

The paper was signed with 'Liz Parker, victim' and 'Zan, posthumous King of the planet Antar.' Tess was laughing out loud by the time she got to that point.

"You - you don't mind?" he asked, tracing down some of the last items on the list.

"Max and Liz actually had me worried," she admitted. "These penances will be fun. And I can see that somebody put thought into selecting things that would help jolt me out of my old selfish habits, and remind me that doing nice things for somebody else can be its own reward."

"Oh," Kyle said, and Tess planted a kiss onto his lips.

"So, is there anything on this list that you'd like to start with, right now?" she asked him, a big grin on her face.