Her eyes were large and rung with tears, soft and as gentle as the curls that formed against her cheeks, as the arms loose at her sides, as the look of sheer understanding that prickled his skin.

He looked up. "Do you believe in fate?"

"No," she said, deep, soulful eyes, listening eyes that didn't dare speak of something ruptured, untouched beneath her. She was waiting. "Do you?"

Her fingers touched his lips, slowly, carefully, a nail on the light membrane acting as promise of a kiss, the promise of something more. She was close to him, dark, strange, utterly consuming. Here he was spell bound by her short inadequacies, by the perfection of her hand as it reached to brush a curl from her artist's fashioned eye, rimmed liquid iris pouring into his. Rich and textured and gem-like, shining darkness surrounding her, cut jet black like marble in a sea of changing sand.

Constant.

Do you?

He didn't know. He wanted to touch her. He wanted to take her mouth with his. He wanted to press his fingers into her smooth, natural skin. Soul mate, soul match, other half that he'd seen in his dreams, before he even knew fantasy was so close to reality that the line blurred, smudged, darkened and lightened like a chalk and charcoal sketch on rice paper. He wanted to be able to look at her and tell her, in the damnable transparent and pathetic desire in his eyes that he wanted her and that he needed her.

He didn't want to own her. He didn't even want to know her, put rings on her fingers, harmony in her shrouded soul. He wanted to run his fingers down her evening black ringlets, he wanted to whisper words of nothing but glorious wonder and prophetic optimism into her hair. He didn't want her life, her death, he wanted her touch, her skin, the sweet, almost masochistic surrender of her lips against his.

"No."

He wanted her.

Maybe he even loved her. But there was so little time, time he'd like to spend touching her, telling her the true wonder of her eyes, the sweet smell of her skin, the way a look, a flick of hair, a quirk of her lips made him adore her. He wanted to tell her that he needed her. But there would never be time.

"Do you want to?" she pressed. "Believe in fate, I mean. Somewhere, out there, are we being controlled?"

"I want to believe in a lot of things. I want to believe..."

By what? Who knew? It was a dark time, a time of whispers through the small room, of lights half dimmed. Maybe nothing would ever be finished, maybe this was their game, endlessly played.

But he was tired of waiting. That was no 'maybe.' No, 'next week,' in the paradox of their self-spinning universe. He needed her, and his hands would shake and the world, what little of it he understood, would become nothing but shadow, and imprint and long forgotten memory of a time before realisation, before need. A time when loneliness became a spectre, a force of destruction - a need for him to reach to her, touch the perfection she flaunted with an innocence he wanted to taste on his lips.

His hand was on her skin again and pushing the hair from her face. She watched his eyes as something as ridiculous, controlling as need, was spilling from his cracked plaster defences. Was he begging her? Or was he merely asking her? And did it matter that he needed her, that when he touched her he wasn't sure if he even wanted to live anymore. Did that frighten her? It terrified him.

"I want to believe too..." she said distantly, in a way that she'd developed to intoxicate him. The simple, even plain, lines of her fingers that were cut with joints so that they may bend, so, in function, they could touch and move, and grasp, and rip his very soul from his body. "I want to believe that this'll end, that we'll survive. That this isn't the end for us... "

He'd given up on the end a long time ago. Given up thinking, given up comprehending one baited moment after the next. Decided to start breathing, decided to run his hand over her carved face, conceived and delicately placed by some Mischief God to make him fall so completely, to make him need the touch of those functional hands and feel the softly breathed words that spoke of her despair.

When he closed his eyes, he wondered if she'd haunt him.

He knew he'd haunt her, because that's what this was. This was maddening, and desperate and maybe even someone searching for comfort - but it wasn't rational, and it didn't even try to make any kind of discernible, viewable, watchable sense. He just wanted to touch her, control her, if not own her, just keep her safe, warm, stupid things - help her, hope for her, show her fire and ice and light and keep away the dark. Show her, in the moulding of his workman hands and the shine in his idealistic eyes, that they would live forever. That if he reached out and touched her lips with his own that they would dance, and dance, until the stars burnt out and the darkness consumed them both. She was wine to him, spirit, alcohol, the feeling of utter loss and utter victory in a package cut like precious stone on the shore.

Sharp. Deadly. Magnificent.

She was magnificent to him.

"We can be anything," it was unsure who said it.

His hands found her hips, found her eyes, found the curve of the cheekbone that strengthened her face and tightened her resolve.

"Do you want this?" breathed, touch breathed, calm breathed, on an air that was so still it held the words.

"I want you." The words were sad.

She wanted him. Maybe. She was this mystery, this beautiful puzzle game of comets and giants, of goblins of deceit and despair - she would wait for him, in his mind's eye, wait until his love for her had died into something manageable, malleable, until his frantic eyes could be silenced with a touch, a kiss to a palm, a word to an ear and a name in a book of memory and solace.

They didn't want to fall like this, he knew. But it was more than that now. This was about time, and fate, and about needing a person until your tears ran dry and your blood dripped cold. But they wanted to love each other, wanted to hold each other so platonically as if the world would never end for them, fate still there to watch their backs. As if they could do things properly. As if their love had the luxury of time.

He could die tomorrow. He wanted to touch her hair. And something about that moment, made her let him. Maybe she loved him too, but she couldn't tell. Maybe she was as taken, as drunk on the sight of him, as taken by the quirk to his tight lipped silent-smile, not betraying the hundred insecurities, inequalities that threatened to flay him alive, take him in their merciless flame.

Maybe she just needed him.

He ran his hands to her back, pulling the useless material from her skin, her snow white skin, conditioned by airless vacuum and the cold rigours of a space free of confine, free of control. She was free in her own snow bound, glass house; hot house prison.

She pressed her lips to his and it was urgent, maybe even pleading. And maybe there were tears in his eyes and maybe there were tears in hers. And maybe it wasn't meant to be this way, maybe he was meant to touch her softly, meant to whisper his love for her.

Maybe he wasn't meant to need her as badly as he did.

And all he needed, which in the same short breath he didn't think was much, was to hold her. To be inside of her, to release himself and his fears and his fucking constant darkness and to tell the great cosmos that seemed to want him dead, and the worlds around him that killed and maimed and hurt - that they hadn't got John Crichton.

Because before him, his saviour with her deep pooled eyes was letting him touch her. And she needed him, and he needed her and here was his place in the universe. Fuck-you fate and fuck-you space - he had his prize, his reason, his need and if he didn't love her, and she didn't love him who cared? There was need, two halves, one whole.

And his universe went on.

Her tunic came from her back and she was revealed to him. Pert breasts and the thin form of her frame, ribs that protected a bruised and cornered heart, lungs that breathed air that threatened to still, blood that knew, running on high, running through hormone and cell that this was them, this was it. This was how it would be, and she knew, he thought, as she threw her head back in some wordless adoration, some honour towards his touch, that she understood.

He needed her. They would live. She would remove his top from his back and run her fingers over his broken skin, his cracked skin, his skin beaten by the men, the darkness, the loneliness around them...skin, salt to her kiss, salt to her feminine touch, her jet-black stone touch.

His lips trailed kisses around her breasts, circling them, adoring them in a way he thought he should, that stolen kisses deserved to be planted. But the need drove him on, soundtrack to his messed seduction, his romance poetry that boiled down to survival and touch and mere sensation as she reached for his trousers and pulled them away. Her eyes aflame with the indignity of showing the world, the world that held them and beat them down, that they could still love.

Her caress, more like the tooled sculpt of his body, was rough and deep. She moaned, bit back tears and hate and wonder as his fingers roamed her body, stroked the nipples of her breasts, the nape of her neck and the delicacies there. He favoured the sensation of her as they discarded the cynical realisation that they would die before any understanding of their need had been forged. But it was too late. There was no time.

She felt tears burn at her lids as he pushed her against the wall, and the feel of his fingers on her skin, knowing why, knowing who and still wanting, submitting, desiring. Begging now, throwing away aloof cool and dark silences for the steady and rhythmic pant of his body against hers. Every breath, cool against her sweat-broke, fevered skin was singular, blessed beauty as the fresh wave alerted her to his eyes, deep, beautiful eyes that told her they would be safe, even as his fingers cupped her hips and the darkness watched.

The material of her trousers was ripped from her body, falling easily to the floor and dispelling their need for reliance on anything, real or imagined. They had each other, and they had each other's mouths and fingers and needs - and they would fight on, and they would revel in their discord for the hate around them.

She needed him.

He entered her, no pretence, no words but the line to his lips pressed against her skin and the feel, sensation. Her, tight around him, as he pushed and pushed again and she took breath, breathed, and felt quite beyond where she was. It was need, pure need, the first time, the last time.

Time didn't exist for her, mind a blur of colours, images, the darkness of the shadow that told her things would never be all right. The darkness told him that home was where he made it, and that wind carried travellers and traveller's dreams like insignificant leaves, never reaching the clouds they yearned for.

They knew they belonged to each other. That fate wouldn't catch them this time. That pleasure was in the moments they took with each other, as he thrust into her again and she threw her head back and screamed, silent worship, that this was life, this was life and living it. Her breathing, so inconsequential, suddenly becoming important, vital.

Maybe fate had forged a decent path, maybe this was their time. Maybe a sharp, darkly feral need to drive out the pain was all they required, all they needed.

He thrust again and she smiled, misshapen but broad. Her hands found his face and he wondered, as he looked up at her, and his eyes watered, whether this was perfection, rushed, incoherent and exquisite as he held her. She told him, wordlessly, of her desire to be freed, as those lustrous curls danced, insolent dance, without music, or melody, regardless of the forces that crept around them.

They dared silent passion and the world did not protest. Somehow, it had allowed simplicity now, together, shared.

He released and she was thrown back into the world, screaming his name as he exhausted himself against her. As he gave himself, and she gave herself and something deep, and unforgivable was extinguished, to burn but brighter.

Maybe he did love her, maybe she loved him. Maybe this, frantic, rushed, coming-together was sad in the scheme of things. Would they never find peace? Was this the real deep pool that filtered their dreams? Was this despair?

It didn't matter and they clutched at each other, sliding to a punctuated stop at the bottom of the wall. For a time, they almost couldn't let go. His fingers entwined in her hair, her brushing of the light shining slow on his arm.

They liked the silence. But mostly silence wasn't enough, they could both die tomorrow and their love would be melancholy, maudlin, tainted with the black ink of an unheard fate's will and testament. They had shown the universe acceptance of its cruelties and the universe would ask for pay back, levels, money in its pocket and a slap of reassurance on its back. It was better to feel greatly, burn quickly than to fade away.

So the words were pointless, but warm, confirming, absolving and adhering. It was magic, moments of time, footprints in the sand.

It was all they wanted. Music at their funerals.

"I need you."

"I know."

Complete.

They could both die tomorrow.

They didn't care.