Marc found a ladder and climbed up out of complete oblivion, disappointed to learn he could. Then he trudged up the ladder further toward rational self-inquiry.

When he reached that level he paused to rest. He assessed his body, noting it's injuries. His self-healing genes were in overdrive but at the moment still overwhelmed by the damage.  He could then sense Skin around him and a tentative probe from Kalket.

He got on that ladder again heading toward external consciousness slogging up another several levels before exhaustion forced him to pause again. There he could begin to sense external things. The touch of cool air on his hot forehead. Sheets touching his skin. The bed he lay on. Tabitha's scent. So, she was still hanging around, was she? He sensed a mental touch from her that felt amused that he'd think otherwise.

By the time he managed to make it all the way up the ladder to total consciousness, Tabitha had left. Kalket let Marc know he was in the next room, close by if needed. Expecting to be alone, Marc finally dared to open his eyes.  He'd thought, at one point, when he was mostly hallucinating, that Dinah had reached out to his mind.  It must have been wishes because...

But there she was. Deeply asleep on a comfortable chair someone kindly had brought her, her hand was near to his on the side of the bed. She must have been holding it until the depth of her sleep had separated them.

So, it hadn't been a dream?  Did he dare to believe she... His mind shied away from making any assumptions. Perhaps in his need he'd misunderstood her only natural worry for anyone she knew.

Such were his thoughts when she opened her eyes to see him regarding her through eyes cleared of confusion or pain.

She smiled and found his hand with hers.  "Hi."

The connection he'd thought he'd imagined was there once again. A sort of background sound, a sense of caring and even love. He examined that and saw her mind open to his.  He reached out ever so tentatively back.

"I thought... I'm sorry for hurting you, Dinah."

Her eyes grew luminous.  "It's stopped hurting, now."

"I'm glad. I still hurt. What... How did you get here?"

"I don't actually know for sure.  The consensus is that you did it because of something Doni did while you were trying to die on her.  All I know is I was asleep and then I was here."

"I... Okay.. Well, however you got here, I'm glad you are here. Irisa?  And Stephen. He wasn't hurt was he? Anyone else?"

She brushed the hair back from his forehead, saying "Irisa was shot, pretty badly but she'll be okay.  Cassidy, incidentally, hasn't left her side.  Stephen had a minor wound from what would seem to be a second attack.  That shooter's dead and some guy named Foyle's a hero.  Paul got the first guy.  Otherwise no one was hurt."

"And you?" he asked, meeting her eyes, worry there. "You don't mind that I might have brought you here?"

She shook her head.  "I'd have wanted to be if you hadn't.  It says something that you did.  I can live with the rest, after that."

"It wasn't ... Never mind. It isn't important." He lifted her hand to his lips. "Dinah..."

She laid the palm of her hand against his cheek, caressing it.  "What?"

"I don't deserve you."

Her smile grew brilliant.  "No?  Does it matter?"

"Apparently not, since my subconscious seems to have a mind of its own. Who am I to argue.'

"So maybe there's hope for you yet," she teased, leaning towards him.  "Still, I'm sure I'll never run out of reasons to call you a jack-ass."  She was still smiling as she kissed him.

She could feel his lips smiling as she said it and planted that kiss. He surprised her by deepening it and then when his tongue entered her mouth. She met him, reveling in it, suddenly half on the bed with him.  But when he let her draw breath she pulled back a bit, a question on her face.

His hand finding its way to her panties was his answer.

Later she'd wonder where he got the stamina.  But that was later.  For now she just cooperated, and helped as it occurred to her...in view of his still healing wounds it seemed better than fighting him off.

Afterwards he wondered what the hell had gotten into his brain. But during it, he wasn't thinking. He was reaching for life and that's what he needed just then. Connecting, needing, and it was there for him.

He realized she was trying hard not to hurt him when he lay panting and she was spent. "I'm fine." He kissed the top of her head, which was all he could reach the way he was limited in movement. "Sorry."  He mind smiled at her. "Not my best effort."

"Next time, when I've had a chance to rest up in preparation."  she said, kissing his chest.  Then a thought occurred to her.  "If this had been a hospital, imagine the alarms you'd have set off," she got out as she started laughing.  "Thank God for polite healers."

He grinned. "I think Doni and Stephen succeeded in training them quite well."  He looked around. "I need to get out of here."

"Tabitha said a week at least this morning." she shared.  "Where do you wanna escape to and for how long?"

"My place, for good. Can you get us there?"

"Yeah.  But I'm not sure I should."  She was serious.  "What if something happened?"

He sent out a mental call for Tabitha. Now.  "Uhm, you better get dressed."

"Oh."  she said, as she hunted for her panties.  By the time Tabitha arrived she was decent, but just barely.

Tabitha ignored her as she finished with her buttons and eyed her patient.  "Yes?"

"I'm going to my place, now. I'll be fine." He met Tabitha's eyes stubbornly.  Yes, he was a terrible patient.

She made him wait while she checked him out.  "You'll take Kalket or you stay here," she said when she was satisfied, something in her tone conveying that, not only had she expected this, she was also hoping he'd put her to the test.  Or maybe it was her twitching lips as Dinah finished dressing.

"All right, I accept." He figured he could get rid of Kalket easily enough, certainly easier than Tabitha.

Tabitha nodded once.  "I'll know if he leaves," she said, by way of conversation as she headed for the door.  "You wouldn't like the result."

"I'll risk it."  Kalket was laughing in his mind and querying Dinah's at the same time.

Dinah just shook her head and zapped all three of them to Marc's bedroom.

Kalket's mental laughter became a rather booming vocal laughter. "I'll leave you two alone, shall I?  Dinah, call me if I need to subdue him. And I'll find something to eat for us. I think Reno has something ready.'

"Yes, yes, fine, get out." Marc sounded a bit crotchety.

He sank down onto the bed and pulled Dinah down beside him. "Ah, that's better. Will you stay? For awhile at least?"

"As long as you'd like.  As nice as the Cote d'Azure is I prefer it here."  She smiled then.  "Would it help if I took them off again?"

His wicked smile was her answer.

Hers became just as wicked as she lifted a brow at him.  "All of them or just some?  All at once or one at a time?"

"Silly woman to even ask."

She stripped in a flash.

Much later she'd left Kalket to sit with him while she took care of retrieving her clothes and telling Jolie what had happened.  It had been a difficult conversation.  Telling Mabel where she'd be had been hard as well, but for different reasons.  Jules had just smirked at her and hummed the Glow Worm song.

She set her things in a spare bedroom in marc's aerie and went to check on him.

Kalket was reading when she walked in. The book looked tiny in his huge hands. His smile was friendly. Marc was asleep.  "You are settled?" he asked.

She nodded.  "Didn't give you any trouble then, while I was gone?"  She came all the way into the room as she spoke; taking a chair that faced both him and the bed.

"He is more hurt than he wants to admit. I, uhm, shoved him into sleep. But do not regret the sex. He needs to be reminded of the wonders of life."

She blushed scarlet.  "I uhm, don't, actually.  But ah, it sounds like you ah, know him well?"

He grinned at her blush. "Do not feel uncomfortable. My people are very lusty. As for knowing Marc well.... I have known him for a very long time.'

"Your people?  I mean it's obvious you're not, as they say, from around here.  And you're also not from where the only other not from around here type I've known was from...if I'm not prying...." she said, filing the other away for later.

He laid his book aside and stretched out his very long legs and sat back more comfortably. "You may ask what you like, Dinah. No need for discomfort between us. I see what he means to you, and you to him.  His own secrets he will have to share but you are welcome to mine.'

Dinah, who had a Ph.D in direct with post doc work in blunt looked relieved, though a bit surprised. Then she laughed.  "His secrets.  They'll go to the grave with him if he has a choice.  But you...How do you know him?  From where?"

"From here. Well, Earth. A very long time ago. My people were escaping religious persecution, or so they called it. Our ship brought us here. He was the only one of the humans then who gave my people a shock. He killed some of us, quite effectively, and we then erased him from our genetic memories, because we didn't like to admit puny humans could beat us. Many years later he befriended some of us, my parents among them."

Dinah absorbed what he said.  "How long ago?"

Kalket's smile grew wide. "Over a million years ago."

Dinah blinked, thinking rapidly.  She said, hesitantly, "The not from around here type I knew, he told me once, that he was human, but that had been...as he put it...a million years ago.  He said that what he was now was something else, something beyond my ken."

Kalket considered that for a time, a thoughtful look on his handsome face. "He did not sit on Earth for all that time. He travelled to other places, my home world among them. What he did to do that I do not understand fully. But certainly he is not the same man he once was. If only in his mind. As to his physical state, you would know better than I if he were fully human."

"How so, his mind I mean?  His physical state I can vouch for absolutely." she asked, fascinated.

"You've been in his mind, have you not?  Does it seem human to you?"

She considered that.  "I have seen some it, most he guards very carefully.  What I have seen seems both human and more than that, though I hadn't looked at it that way until now."

"Ah, that explains it then."  Kalket was silent for a time until he said, "I have only heard the stories, you understand. Of his life before my existence. He was very feared. Even more by his own people than by mine. We understand death, you see. He knew they all saw him as a monster, so he was very guarded, except with perhaps Adrianna. With us, with some of us, he needn't be quite so on guard."

"He has been, is still I think, afraid I may see him as a monster as well.  It's funny, but I've never been afraid him and once in a while there's a flash almost that he thinks I might be or that I ought to be."  It was clear she'd been thinking out loud, as much for Kalket as for herself to hear.  "He is who he is."

"Hah! This is what I tell him. But he wants to change what he did. It is a religious thing with him, I think. Religion is much easier for us. We fight and die and let the Goddess worry about the rest."

"He's a man.  A lot of men have trouble with those sorts of abstract concepts," she said dryly.  "Mac was the same damn way and he wasn't even human anymore, according to him."

"You loved this Mac?" Kalket asked. At her look he replied, "Something in your voice and your face."

"Yes, a long time ago.  He died for the cause."

"Ah. Lucky man then. The Goddess will have taken him to her breast."

"You think so?  I hope she thrashed him for stupidity," Dinah said firmly.  Then she sighed.  "Well, perhaps not.  He died doing what he wanted.  It wasn't his fault I didn't agree with his reasoning."

"Slonshal to your Mac!" Kalket saluted Mac in absentia.  "You see? It is much simpler this way."

"Oh I see exactly what you mean.  I just don't see simplicity as the mother lode of virtues.  And, though I hesitate to point this out so early in our acquaintance, simpler for whom?  Him or those he left behind in his rush to give his all?"  She shook her head.  "It took a long time but I reached a place where I could let him make his own choices and understand that they didn't imply the things I thought they did.

"I saw his world and what he was fighting against.  He knew he'd lose.  He knew if he went back he'd die and accomplish nothing.  He was okay with that.  But he left the bill on the table when he did.  I don't see that as simple."

"But is that not the goal of all beings? To fight for what they believe in? We shall get drunk together and sing the song for Mac."

A groan came from the bed then.

Kalket laughed. "I knew you were awake and listening."

Marc groaned again. "Ow." he muttered.

"You are such a baby," Kalket commented. "I shall get you food and make you eat it. Or perhaps Dinah will."  Kalket stood, bowed to Dinah and smiling withdrew.

"He's hopeless," Marc commented. "Death for a cause, or a belief, or a Goddess, is the greatest gift according to Kalket."

Dinah sat on the bed next to him.  "He's not alone in that belief."

"Ah. I wouldn't have thought it of you," Marc said, reaching out to grasp her hand in his.

She laughed.  "I suppose I, like everyone, have things I'd die for.  I just like to think I'm more sensible than most men are about what they are and will consider other options first."

"Hmmm. I envy him, though. No doubts, no wondering what to do. It is simple. Although I do tend to tease him about being a Healer for a Race who will only go out and then try to get themselves killed again." Before she could answer he added, "I'm sorry about your Mac."

She thought about that for a while, letting the minutes slide past while she played with his fingers.  Finally she said, "There's no response to that but what you heard and what I said before, except that I'd rather you were glad instead.  It's a dangerous thing to say to a man but if I'd never known him I'd never have known to love you.  You'd have liked him, though.  Someday I'll introduce you to his friends.  They drop in once in a while, in between flare ups in the fray."

"I am very glad for Mac then. And look forward to meeting his cousins."

She kissed him before saying, "Make sure you're armed.  They don't always some alone."

"For a small unassuming family hotel in a resort area, you do end up with the bloodiest minded guests.  Kalket would feel quite at home there."

Kalket came into the room then and interrupted what might have been another round of love-making.  "Food first. Then make love."  Kalket picked Marc up as if he were a baby and carried him out to the patio where a table was set, totally ignoring Marc's vocal protests.

Marc got set down in a comfortable chair, and then Kalket held a chair for Dinah.

"If you tire of her, do let me know," the alien said with a grin. "She must have Tanu genes in her."

"Don't hold your breath," Marc replied with a raised eyebrow.