Author's Note: New update, finally! Bless you, my devoted readers. Hope you had a wonderful Easter. :)

Now in pitch-blackness, Khan felt Marla's hands at his knees as her fingers dug into the fabric, clumsily using him to pull herself up. Her nails dragged over the slice in his leg, but he merely grabbed her and yanked her upright, ignoring the burning sting.

"You landed on my leg!" Marla cried in outraged pain.

Khan ignored that too. Hands tight on her upper arms, he guided her carefully farther back into the darkness, feeling the sand pile higher against his boots. There was no telling how far the sand would rise, or how deep into the cave it would travel. Khan could only hope there was no end to the tunnel, or at least not one that the sand could reach.

Of course, it would also be helpful if they were not buried alive and that there was some other way out of the cave. However, at least he and Marla were spared the painful death of being physically crushed by the flooded layers of the desert. He would accept each bit of good fortune as it came, not lament over things that had not yet happened.

It seemed to go on forever…the sand kept hissing at a level that threatened to deafen them, continually forcing them to move away. They kept taking careful, sparing steps backwards and still they met no end to the tunnel. Khan reached up with his hand. He could barely feel the roof above their heads, but he knew it was getting smaller. Which meant they were getting closer to a dead end…or where the cave became a hole that could lead to who knew where and was probably too small for them anyway.

And then, suddenly, it stopped. With a gigantic sigh, like a dying giant, the invisible flow ceased. Khan exhaled slowly, silently, closing his eyes tight as he pinched the bridge of his nose. He was relieved, to put it lightly.

Marla's relief was much more palpable. As if the absence of imminent danger had caused her body to finally release all the adrenalin and tension that had been swelling in her small body, she collapsed against him.

He shook her gently. "We are alive. We are fine." What he really wanted to say was, pull yourself together woman, you are an embarrassment. But when he thought about it, that really wasn't fair. Marla had saved both their lives. She had performed admirably. He could allow her a moment of weakness. Especially since they were alone.

He lowered her to the ground, then dropped to a seat beside her. For a while, the only sound was their panting and the last rustling of tiny trickles of sand that sent quiet, whispering echoes through the cave. Khan wiped a thin paste of sweat and dust from his forehead.

The monstrous wall of sand a few feet in front of them acted like an oven, filling whatever space they had left with shimmering waves of heat. Marla's voice broke the quiet. "That was fun," it had a slightly hysterical note to it, but Khan was grateful that she was apparently keeping it in check.

"Hardly," he felt for his leg, which was now beginning to complain a little. All he could do was brush the tiny, aggravating grains of sand out of the cut. "It is certainly lucky for us that you spotted this cave."

"I'm not going to insult you by thanking you for not dropping me," Marla scooted close to him suddenly until their sides were pressed together. Khan could almost see her wicked smile in the dark, "unless of course you just didn't want to lose a prized possession."

"That is exactly it," he retorted, "until I find a way of cloning, dividing, and preserving each and every exquisite part of you, I cannot risk any damage."

Marla snorted. "You're disgusting."

"I am Khan."

She squealed aloud at that self-important statement. After his initial surprise, Khan allowed a small smile of satisfaction to creep up his face. He found it hard to make her laugh. It was an art he had never really mastered, since she seemed to abhor his customary style, the kind of jests that made fat governors laugh and prideful queens simper, all the while staring watchfully at him from across the table. When he made Marla really, truly laugh, it was usually by accident.

She suddenly shifted away from him. He heard her boots scrape dully against the rocky floor as she got onto her knees and began to crawl farther backwards. He half turned, as if he could watch over her in this darkness when he couldn't even see her. He was quiet, conserving oxygen. He knew she would tell him if she found anything.

Which she did. "Khan…it's cooler back here…there's a feeling in the air…it's moving. I think it's a draft."

He shifted to his own knees and began to crawl after her. His invisible face was grim. "Do not get your hopes up. It could easily be a whistling crack, a fissure leading to the center of Ceti Alpha."

"Pessimist, it's a river!" Marla cried back, her voice echoing slightly.

Still pushing forward, Khan's searching hand suddenly felt her dry boot, which moved slightly under his touch. He came up beside her and flinched slightly as he felt the spray of a strangely silent channel of water. He stuck his hand in, unable to keep himself from impulsively enjoying a luxury all too rare…running water. Running swift and hard in one direction, entering on one side of the channel and exiting the other without any sort of obstruction.

He licked his lips; although the stones and the water were cold, the tomb of sand behind them was making the air stifling hot. The air was getting thinner. What little oxygen the water carried would never be enough to sustain them for a reasonable amount of time. He stood up suddenly. "Wait here," was his sharp order.

Marla saluted him mockingly in the dark, and then began to cup some of the cool water in the palm of her hands to drink. Khan didn't hear the rippling laughter of the precious element as it spilled from between her fingers and back into the arms of the stream, or he would have cautioned her to take only a little and test it first.

He strode back to the sand, gritting his teeth as it began crunching under his boots like broken glass, getting deeper and deeper as he got closer. He reached up with both hands and felt for the roof, pushing hard as he struggled to climb the sandy pile, slipping and stumbling as the floor started spilling out from under him.

He began to walk, using his body like a mill; he shoveled sand back with his feet, always walking. Sand spilled farther behind him, rustling over the stones as the monstrous pile eagerly accepted his invitation to come inside.

His arms and legs began to ache with the strain. He wasn't a machine. The sand was just growing, without any sunlight peeking through the top of the cave's mouth. Besides, it took several long minutes before he realized the heavy pounding in his chest and his now ragged panting was a result of oxygen starvation, not just exhaustion. He stopped abruptly, falling into the sand like the limp body of a dead snake.

Get up. He told himself, get up! The greatest assassins of the age could not kill you…you are not going to let the shifting remains of a dead planet do what they could not!

Fists clenching in the sand, he breathed out a hissing moan as overtaxed muscles strained to work again, pulling his legs and arms. He stood up and stumbled back into the depths of the cave again, towards the coolness, the water, Marla…

His boot dragged over a soft form that gave slightly. It was Marla. Lying face first on the ground. He instantly dropped down beside her, gathering her small, limp body into his arms as easily as a child's. She was still breathing; his heart gave a jump as she suddenly chuckled, her hand pawing at his shoulder. "It's easier t' breathe down there…"

"Easier to die!" He snapped. He reared to a stand, hauling her up in his arms. But the lack of air seemed to affect gravity itself, as if Khan had really been transported to another alien planet, one whose atmosphere had been stripped away. He swayed, trying to shake the drunken feeling out of his head, which had also started pounding. It was getting so hard to breathe…

"If I die…will I see you there?"

Khan's hands tightened their grip so suddenly that Marla squealed a little, startled by the pain.

Joachim merely laughed. "When death is the only future to look forward to, you begin to wonder more about it. About the afterlife that follows, and whether you are worthy to embrace that afterlife. Whether your friends and loved ones will meet you there."

Joachim had spoken like this; spoken of the afterlife, of meeting loved ones there…

Joachim had died.

"Silence!" his reply was drawn out, like the painful, tight hiss of a snake with the life being squeezed out of it. She was quiet.

When they reached the stream again, Khan knelt down, gently letting Marla sit up on the ground. He shook her a little, trying to wake her up. "Marla? Marla!" He brushed his long, strong fingers through her hair fondly. She seemed to react to the touch like a flower to sunlight. "Hmm? What?"

"We are going for a long swim."

Now she was wide-awake. "What? My head hurts…"

"The air is getting thin, I know. And it will only get thinner. There is a chance, a small chance I grant you," he waved a finger at her, "but it may be that this stream passes out into another cave, perhaps a bigger one, one with a passage to the surface."

"So we either suffocate here or take a chance on drowning?" Marla asked him. The calm in her voice surprised him.

"Yes."

"Ok." Was her simple answer. Amused and amazed, he shook his head, a smile pulling at his lips. "It is too bad we are in complete darkness…I would see your face one more time, should our almost impossible chance at survival prove to be too impossible."

He felt slender fingers touch and wrap around his chin in the dark. "That's a very sweet thought, your Excellency. Will this be enough?"

He felt her breath on his face, and the smile grew, stretching over both his cheeks. "For now."

"For now."

They kissed briefly, wanting to conserve oxygen. Then, Khan quickly lowered himself into the stream. While standing, it went up to his waist. He could already feel how strong the current was; pulling him a few steps along before he dug his feet in.

Marla slipped in behind him. She lost her footing completely and only saved herself by grabbing at him wildly, like a tree in a flood that she clung to for dear life. He didn't both helping her stay upright, but quickly moved her in front of him. He knew that he was bigger and, should he get stuck, he would be like a cork in a bottle, trapping both of them.

Marla was tense under his grip, but she was ready. Khan wasted one precious moment smelling the back of her hair, closing his eyes as he imagined that perfect red tinge, wishing he and she were safe together under a sunset that would paint it golden, like burnished copper.

Then, without a word, they dropped face first.

The water was cold. It roared in Khan's ears, it pushed against his skin with a constant, cold pressure that seemed to rise as he rushed forward. His hands, shoulders, knees, elbows, head…anything that dared to stick out was knocked against the rocky surface of the tunnel, harder and harder as he gained speed. Tiny aches flared through his bones.

He practiced relaxing his muscles, calming down…decreasing the amount of oxygen his body would use up in these last few seconds. He cursed his own afterthought as he realized he should have taught Marla the technique before they entered the underground stream.

He cracked his eyes open, fighting against the powerful urge to blink as the current slammed into them…it was dark, but there was a tiny, tiny grey light ahead. His hands clenched in readiness…this was going to hurt. And he must time it perfectly. Failure could mean death.

The grey light grew larger, and he began to see white in it. That was a good sign. It might be a sunlit cave, an opening to the surface. Blood vessels began pounding under his skin, throbbing as cramped lungs began to panic like starving children. His body shot into the light like a leaping minnow. He reached out, felt cold air lick his hand as it broke surface. Fingers crashed into hard, slippery rock, grasped tight…

He shot forward like a bullet until his arm brought him up short with a jolt that nearly tore his shoulder. Marla slammed into him a moment later, pushing out what little stagnant air remained in his chest. She was not limp, but she was struggling frantically …it meant she was suffocating. Instead of pausing to improve his hold on her, he heaved her above surface, kicking with his own feet. Their heads pushed above the water, choking on the water as it streamed down their faces in a mad rush back to the stream, gulping in raging, cold breaths of air.

But as Marla rose up, she shifted. Her ragged clothes ripped and slipped from between his brown fingers…his hand pounced through the water, trying to grab her again. Without a sound, she was sucked under. She slammed against his leg and it buckled as she disappeared down the black hole.

Khan instantly, without thought, let go and followed, with barely the presence of mind to make certain he was pulled in headfirst. Again, his head, his entire body, was entombed by water.

Khan felt like a blind man in a roller coaster. After scarcely eight seconds, however, he found her again. His hands touched a hand…she was traveling feet first. She returned the grip, feebly. The relief almost made something inside him lose control. Instead, he swallowed words it was impossible to say.

All this took so little time, but already he could feel suffocation threading its poisonous roots through his lungs again. Panic, that frail thing he had beaten into submission, began to roar even over the water in his ears.

Then, suddenly, his shoulder slammed into a rock with all the force of a gunshot. Marla tipped sharply downwards and pulled him along. Black spots swam inside his eyelids. He couldn't take this much longer, even if he wanted to.

Suddenly, like earth pouring out of a sluice gate, Marla was ripped from his grasp. The ground fell away and he shot out into the air, frigid wind wiping its way over his face and he gasped, eyes snapping open and shut, casting droplets out of them as he tried to see where he was…

And fell face first into water again. But this time, his face hit rock a split second afterwards, his body grinding forward a few feet before it stopped like a lazy boat, gently drifting up.

It was shallow. Without a current.

His arms and legs strained as he sat up with a roar, spitting out water, sucking in air…his head broke surface, and he was sitting. He was breathing. He was alive.

He barely paused to see where they were as Marla splashed towards him on all fours. She was pale with exhaustion, her mouth open as she alternately coughed and gasped. She struggled towards Khan and collapsed against his side, holding onto him as a baby holds onto a floater. For several long minutes they just sat there, breathing.

Marla's red hair was limp, hanging down straight but tangled around her head. Her breathing was rapid but shallow. Suddenly, she stirred, as if life had returned to her. She gave a breathless giggle that was weak and trailed off into silence. "And I'm always complaining…about being thirsty."

Khan was quiet; he was conserving energy, letting his body recuperate.

"That…was scary. Not something…I'd want…to do again."

"I doubt you shall have to," Khan replied this time, fighting manfully to keep his voice steady and strong even though he was still panting.

Marla chuckled again. Then she pressed her cheek against the wet, ragged material that served him for a shirt. "Where are we?"

The very second he tried to find the answer to that question; Khan suddenly realized where they were. The fourth watering pool, in the caves. They were near the camp…and they were defiling the water source.

He painfully straightened, lifting Marla gently by her arms and guiding her to the shore. Once there, they collapsed again, sitting together on the sandy, rocky floor. He blinked tiredly as sunlight from the setting sun filtered in. Less than half an hour since the sand flood first hit him…probably less than three minutes total for their underwater adventure. It was ironic how what felt like hours to him, so life threatening, sensually depriving, suffocating…was but a few minutes in reality. Long ago, he had learned that close brushes with death aged a man a little every time.

Which reminded him that he should communicate with the Augments, notify them of their survival, get them started on purifying the water pool…and probably a hundred other tasks he would remember as his gaze fell on the camp again. They did have to move more supplies into the summer caves…

"Come," he started to stand up, even though every muscle trembled and screamed in protest, the pains caused by all his exertion earlier that day finally catching up with him. Marla grabbed his shirt and pulled him back down.

"The others…"

"Lie down."

"I need to…"

"Not now." she interrupted him, cupping his cheek and gently, irresistibly pulling him down to the floor, where the sand and stones, hard as they were, seemed positively inviting, warmed by the sun, as still and dependable and predictable as the water had not been…safe, like their own bed. "We nearly died. Nearly drowned. I'm too tired. Think you are too…too tired to kill yourself by rushing right back to work. Let's just rest. Let's just celebrate being alive, just this once."

He was sleepy. His eyelids, treacherous things, got heavier. Almost against his will, he felt his body settle into the warm floor. Marla scooted next to him. The air was cold as it licked the water on his bare skin. But she was warm. The floor was warm. She tucked her arms around his left one, cuddling it like a little girl cuddling a teddy bear.

Instinctively, his right hand crossed his chest and took her hand in his, wrapping around it safely. In less than a minute, they were fast asleep together.

Marla grimaced, digging her nails into the silver paper of her nutro-bar, fighting to pull it off without inadvertently leaving small silver shreds embedded in the sticky food. It was thick, brown, and smeary like chocolate, but the taste wasn't at all sweet. It tasted like crackers; old, stale crackers that had sat in a ventilation shaft for decades. The nasty stuff stuck between her teeth and left a horrible taste. It only got worse as it got older.

She crossed her legs self consciously as a huge shadow dwarfed her. With a heavy ease that spoke of tired but powerful muscles that hadn't been fully exhausted yet, Khan sat down next to her, leaning back against the wall of the cargo bay as he began to disassemble his own midday lunch.

"Since when does his Excellency deign to eat with peasants?" Marla spoke through a mouthful of sticky, gritty goo. She had nothing better to do…she was already tired and the heat was making her lazy and a little bit zany.

Khan didn't even look at her; he was used to his wife's antics by now. "Since the peasants have taken the only shade for several yards, I will not scorn their position."

"This stuff is horrible," Marla chewed slowly, dutifully…almost painfully. It was a chore to eat.

"Agreed." Again, Khan didn't look at her. When he next spoke, however, his words were slightly surprising. "I suppose you had better fare during your days on Earth?"

"Well, the service was better. And they had air conditioning."

She was rewarded by the slight turning up of his lips in amusement. He shifted sideways slightly until their shoulders were touching comfortably. "So thin-skinned."

Marla sighed, her eyes rolling up as deep and vibrant memories drifted across her vision. "Food. Not just purified water, but juice, carbonated drinks, wine, Champaign, Troika, milk…"

Khan's fondly irritated voice spoke volumes. Woman, woman, "Not an appropriate topic for a meal in the desert, Marla," he reminded her warningly.

Marla barreled on, eyes dreamy, "And there was salad, with dressing, carrots, fruit, apples…toffee salad, Iceberg pudding…"

"Salad and pudding?!" Khan scoffed suddenly, finally turning to her with a disbelieving yet incredibly superior look, "No wonder you humans are so small still, if your diet has devolved thus! I trust the great Federation is not made up of vegetarian milksops?"

Marla huffed defensively, "Well, excuse me. I forgot to mention our more carnivorous menu…" she began to grin, her eyes sparking mischievously, "Mouthwatering smell, dressed with the finest herbs, fresh from the fire…a sizzling haunch of pork with glazed, burnt brown skin that tears into spicy bits of goodness when you bite, steaming, succulent meat that gives way before your teeth and melts on your tongue. Savory and deliciously raw at the center…and of course a gamey bit of venison…"

Khan had been visibly been growing more and more uncomfortable as she went on. She suddenly grabbed Khan's food away from his limp hands, taking advantage of his concentration. "Here, this shameful mess is unworthy of a good slice of boar. I'll just relieve you of it."

Khan snatched it back easily, a slight fury in his eyes. "What are you trying to do, woman…wife? Drive me mad?"

"Oh, I don't know…you're doing a good enough job of that without my poor help. I just want you to be happy," she purred mockingly.

She almost shrieked with surprise as Khan's brown hand pounced on her own nutro-bar and yanked it away. Something suspiciously similar to her own mischievous glint was shimmering in his eyes. "So do I. Therefore, I shall fetch you some sweet moss from the caves. That will doubtless satisfy your equine appetite."

Marla paused for a second, mouth open in astonished outrage as her mind searched for the definition to the word he had just used. "Are you calling me a horse?!"

"Why no, of course not!" Now, Khan's voice was the one smooth with mockery, "…but now that I think of it, the resemblance is somewhat striking…"

Marla gave a female roar of playful rage as she scrambled to her knees. "Give me that, tyrant!" Determined to win back her food, she grabbed at the bar. Khan retaliated by swinging it further out of reach. Unfortunately, his great strength caused him to pull Marla along with it. She tried to move with the force but only ended up stumbling over his legs and falling onto the other side. As she fell, because she was still holding on to the bar, her body twisted over and she fell flat on her back on the sand, ripping the silver paper.

Khan raised his eyebrows and, with an amused smile, used both arms to pick her up and sit her down on the sand like a big doll. While he was doing this, a little girl…her blonde hair falling in a strangely attractive mess over her hazel eyes and cheekbones that were far too sharp for an eight year old child…darted around the corner of the cargo bay, floundering through the sand swiftly but silently. She snatched up Khan's nutro bar from where it had fallen to the sand, turned, and fled.

"Hey, HEY!" She had barely taken two steps when a terrifyingly powerful hand snatched her rags from behind and yanked her back. With a cry, her bum crashed hard into the sand as she flew back against Khan's legs, her head almost snapping back far enough for her to look up and see his face.

He took the bar from her clenched fist as easily as one would pick a violet; the girl shied away from him, scrambling to safety even as she turned to stare into the flashing brown eyes of Khan Noonien Singh; a phantom to the children, who were told that he would come at night and tear them limb from limb if they broke the rules. She was petrified, her dirty hands clenched in the sand, her tanned, bare legs shaking.

His roar of outrage didn't help. "Is one of my Augments, my people…a THIEF?!"

Marla hurriedly pulled the hair from her eyes, flinching at the noise even as she recognized the child, racking her brain for a way to defuse the situation before it escalated, "Ermengild." Her voice was quietly reproachful, a stark contrast to Khan's.

The girl's pupils dilated as she glanced at her…something in Marla's face reassured her, comforted her, promised a defense before this merciless leader of her people, the one who stalked the desert with a face like granite and eyes like black fire.

Without looking away from Ermengild, Marla leaned into Khan to remind him of her presence, to keep him from acting rashly. "You know what to do."

Ermengild finally blinked. Somehow, her eyes seemed to shrink to a more manageable size. "S-sorry, your Excellency."

Her tone was pitiful, almost a whisper. Khan raised an eyebrow and grabbed the girl by the wrist. He was careful to keep it gentle, and as he did, he felt how thin and brittle the child's bones were. Even for an Augment, it was bad. She might be a thief, but she was one of his Augments, one of his people. She deserved his care and concern. His spoke quietly, his eyes narrowing thoughtfully at her. "Are you that hungry, little one?"

She blinked at this tone, which did not seem to match her leader's reputation. Nevertheless, she didn't dare to lie to him. She blinked, nodding once before she remembered to answer respectfully, "yes, sir."

Khan's eyelids fluttered as her stomach growled aloud. He glanced at it; it looked too small for her huge limbs, powerful yet bony.

Then, he relented. "You had only to ask," he said scoldingly, "here." He held out the packet. "A growing child, perhaps, needs more than a man."

Ermengild grabbed the bar, not trusting herself to look into his face without bursting into shameful tears. Powerful fingers took her chin and forced her to look up. "However," his face was grim, his brown eyes glowering with unspoken threat, "I never want you to steal again, no matter how much you need it. If you do…I will make sure you regret it."

He released her face; the girl fled out of sight.

Marla took a deep, slow breath through parted lips. She watched her husband's face in the sunlight; he was staring down thoughtfully at the sand. All of a sudden, she felt like a somber cloud had been pulled over her mood and then pierced by a ray of sunlight too bright to look at.

She swallowed the thick lump in her throat, grabbed her bar from the sand, and then broke it in half. Impulsively, without really thinking about it, she offered him a piece. "Here."

"No!" Khan brushed her offering away rudely. "If the Augments are desperate for food, do you think I will take any from my own wife, a mere human?!"

That hurt. It was silly, he had said things like that so many times; yet it still affected her. Angry at both herself and him, she rebelliously dropped the half-bar in the sand beside her, sitting back against the wall with a thump.

Determined to be utterly silent and withdraw inside her own mind, she nevertheless glanced at him. She couldn't help but notice that he was still staring at the exact same spot, his bare, scarred arms loose on his slightly raised knees, his black hair, tangled, sitting limply on his shoulders, squeezing tiny drops of sweat out of the brown skin of his neck…and with all that discomfort, he still stared.

And then she realized; he was thinking about a starving child, about all the starving children, all the hungry, tired, depressed men and women who were his responsibility and trust…he was thinking about how he had utterly and inexcusably failed them.

Her fingers white and hard where they clung to the edge of the thick metal door, Marla peered from between slit eyes at the dull, blackish clouds. They looked like they had been dragged across the sky and bit by bit, piled there, lumpy and wet like fish entrails on the deck of a boat. Except the water pouring down from the sky was anything but friendly sea spray. It was acidic. Thousands of drops, cold and hard, they bit away the sand, the rocks, the cargo bays…falling heavily only to die on the metal surfaces, leaving streaks of red rust as if they were tiny bodies that had exploded in fountains of blood.

The only kind of rain they ever got was deadly. It stung bare skin. It was icy cold to the touch, but you could feel it piercing your cells, burning them, turning them white...any exposed cut would be filled with liquid agony. She shuddered at the thought, drawing her fingers farther back inside.

As if in answer, a warm figure pressed against her back, a chin pushed just above her ear as her tall, tall husband peered over her shoulder at the darkness outside, at the deceptive moisture pouring from the sky. "What do you find so fascinating?" He asked.

She leaned back into him. "Rain is always a miracle. Even if it kills."

"Poetical, with the foolish optimism so common to you humans," his voice was gentle enough. Marla had lived with him so long that his habit of referring to himself as a separate race no longer disturbed her as it had.

She grew nostalgic with the constant pitter-patter above her head, like hundreds of hard little fingers tapping on the roof. It was a comforting sound, as if the world around them was really alive, not dead. Her thoughts weaved back to another world, another life, where you could touch the rain and even let it run into your eyes without being blinded.

"When I was a young woman…a girl, really, still in my early Academy days…a friend of mine suggested that this other boy was attracted to me."

"Ah. Why am I not surprised?" he smirked. She didn't even need to look to see that he was doing it. It was in his tone of voice.

"I suppose…I lived in a society where women and men were almost…the same. They all held the same jobs, they all ruled, they all served…"

Khan's hands snaked around her waist and turned her around. She followed willingly, slinging her arms around his neck, looking up at his strong, brown face, chiseled now by the wind, tanned by the sun and sand…but she still saw the eyes of a king, so full of brown fire, brimmed by thick lashes. A mouth, strong and wide, breathtaking when he smirked, mesmerizing when he laughed….but so, so beautiful when he really, really smiled.

She could tell he was barely listening to her, but she plowed on. "In my travels through the galaxies, I've seen matriarchal societies, patriarchal, oligarchial, dictatorial ones. I saw gender blurred, and I hated it. I hated the soft looking boys who kept fawning after me."

She reached up suddenly and traced the side of his face. Intrigued, not sure why she was doing it but willing to let her amuse herself, Khan raised an eyebrow. They were swaying together now, subconsciously using the pitter-patter of the rain as a sort of primitive music, as ancient and relentless as the beatings of their own hearts.

"I was tired of men being timid, apologizing before they'd even done something wrong…backing away from fights, trying to talk their way out of problems, crawling on their bellies to impress me…" her eyelids fluttered. Khan's smirk was long faded. His face was thoughtful now…he was actually listening to her.

Marla clasped her hands behind his neck again and stood on tiptoe, whispering, "I wanted a man who would kick the door in and carry me away."

"Oh, I could do that very easily," Khan grinned. She could tell from the tightening in his arms that he was getting ready to swoop her up and kiss her, that he was only waiting for her to stop talking.

Oh, she shouldn't say it. But her mouth spoke before her brain could stop it. "But where would you carry me to?"

The grin froze. Then, slowly, it dropped off, piece by piece. They stopped rocking. The pitter patter above their heads seemed to morph into something hostile, besieging…like the laughter of all the ghosts that floated eternally in the air outside, under the dead sky, under the sea of sand.

Suddenly, he folded her into his arms in a fierce, protective embrace and looked over her shoulder, his face emotionless, his eyes staring out at the hostile world beyond the opened door, the dark and the acid rain and the luminous glow of death that shimmered over the sand dunes at dusk. And when he finally spoke, it was a whisper.

Where would he carry her to, if the only hopeless wish that ever consumed his life were to come true…if his fantasy could become reality?

Where would he take her? "Away from here."