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At some point in the night, they had woken up long enough to get dressed, and then fallen asleep again. At least, Major had. When he woke in the morning to bright light streaming in through the windows, Liv was out of bed, pulling on a jacket. He wondered how much she had slept.

"Liv."

She turned around, and they smiled at one another. So many things to say, but so many had already been said, and the most important ones were understood. They always had been.

Before either of them could give voice to any of that, a knock came from the hall.

"Come in," Liv said. Major sat up, scooching to the middle of the bed, as Ravi opened the door.

He stopped in the doorway, looking from Major to Liv and back again. Gesturing toward the hallway, he said, "I can come back."

"It's okay," Liv told him softly.

'Okay' might have been putting it a little strongly, but … what was the point in putting things off any further? Of prolonging a goodbye Major had never wanted to say in the first place?

"How's our patient?" Ravi asked.

"Keepin' it together." It was about as far as Major was willing to go. He lifted up the side of his shirt to show the knife wounds.

Ravi sat down on the bed, frowning intently as he studied the wounds. At last he nodded. "You are healing enough to survive, even as a relatively fragile human."

Liv climbed onto the bed next to Major, her familiar presence equal parts comfort and torture under the circumstances. All too soon, he was going to forget just what it felt like to sit next to Liv, to hold her hand or kiss her or hear her laugh. But she was here now, and he could still remember how much he loved her, so he would take it for as long as he could.

He looked at Ravi, nodding in agreement with his friend's assessment. He didn't exactly look forward to being a human with thirty-plus healing knife wounds in his side, but he didn't look forward to being a zombie who couldn't breathe, either. "It's time."

"The memory loss won't be instant. It'll feel like a slow fade. With Blaine, it took a couple of days." Ravi still couldn't say Blaine's name without it sounding slippery and unpleasant.

"Got it." As much as Major dreaded this moment, as much as he wanted to put it off, he also kind of wanted to get it over with. Except that he didn't.

Ravi looked at the two of them, and he smiled. "You know, I had this whole speech planned. It was funny and heartfelt—profound. But it feels like a waste if you're just going to forget it anyway." Major smiled back. He was going to miss this strange, funny, dedicated, British man. Well, he wasn't, but he would. Somehow he would know he was missing something, he was sure of it. "Let's just agree it was brilliant," Ravi finished.

"Yeah."

"Is there anything you want to add, Liv?"

She looked at Major. "It's already been said."

It had. Last night was a memory he would have kept all his life, under other circumstances. Major fought back the tears that were stinging at the back of his eyes. "I'm going to miss you guys."

Ravi nodded agreement, looking like he was holding back some waterworks of his own, but Liv reached for Major's hand, looking him in the eye. "We're not going anywhere."

Of course they weren't. Whatever mistakes Major Lilywhite had made over the course of his life, he had made some damn good friends. If anyone could see him into a better future, it was these two. He would have to trust them to do so. With that thought, he stretched his arm out toward Ravi, making a fist.

Ravi uncapped the dose of cure, readying the injection. Liv squeezed Major's other hand, trying to reassure him.

It took Ravi a moment to be sure he had the vein ready. Major had never seen him so nervous where medicine was concerned. He supposed that was flattering, really. And then the needle poked into his skin, and Ravi pushed the plunger, releasing the cure into his bloodstream.

It was amazing how quickly it changed. The heightened feeling in his skin as the blood in his veins warmed; the sudden sharpening of his sense of taste and smell so that the aroma of Liv's perfume filled his head rather than just teased at the edge of his mind—and the comparative dulling of his sight and hearing to go along with it, as the preternatural sharpness of those zombie senses faded. He was aware of being hungry for real food, a reassuringly familiar feeling still.

Ravi and Liv were watching him closely, concerned looks on their faces, and Major mustered up a smile for them. "I don't suppose there's decent coffee in the kitchen? I could really go for some right about now."

Liv got up off the bed as if she was eager to have something to do. "I'll make some."

He grimaced. "Your coffee? That hardly counts as the real thing."

"Barely human for ten seconds and he's already insulting my coffee. What a guy." Liv grinned at him, disappearing through the door. As a zombie, he would have heard her footsteps in the hall on her way to the bathroom, but as a human, he couldn't hear a thing.

Ravi patted him on the arm. "I'll leave you to get your bearings."

Major nodded. Before his roommate could leave, he called to him. "Ravi? Thank you."

"My pleasure, Major. Really. I only wish—"

"You did your best. I believe you'll get there. I have faith in you."

"Hold on to that thought."

"I think you're going to have to hold on to it for me."

"Right. It's a promise."

And he was gone, leaving Major alone in his room, singing the ABCs under his breath just to see if he still remembered them.