The silence that had descended between them was not of the oppressively uncomfortable sort, it was merely a testament to their mutual exhaustion. He allowed himself to relish in this quiet moment, and to simply take in every feature of the woman at his side. Her short hair was matted and tousled as it spread around her head on the pillow, and her skin was glistening with sweat much like his own. As she stared up at the ceiling with a distant and thoughtful look on her face, even in the dim light of his room the lilac color of her eyes was striking.

He would have liked to spend the rest of their numbered days doing nothing but counting the freckles on her skin, tracing that perfectly straight slope of her nose with his fingertips, caressing the curves and edges of her body, kissing any hint of a frown from her lips. But right now, he didn't dare to touch her. He wondered if he had gone too far, and what she was thinking about, while staring off into the distance like that.

Suddenly, she turned to look at him, and to his surprise and delight huddled back into his arms. He forgot his doubts in a heartbeat and embraced her gladly, squeezing her tightly as she nestled against his chest with a quiet sigh.

"What are you thinking about?"

"Me?" He was startled when she spelled out the question on his own mind.

"I was just wondering," he answered hesitantly, „if I have made a mistake."

"You regret sleeping with me?"

She asked so bluntly, so impassively, that the meaning of her words didn't sink in right away.

"Wha- No, of course not. Not at all." He pulled her closer, and she let it happen, melding against his body as if they were two halves of a whole.

"I was asking myself if I have perhaps taken advantage of you in a situation where you needed a friend, and not-"

"I needed you. I still do." She cut him off and brought her hands up behind the nape of his neck, softly curling her fingers into his hair and looking up to meet his gaze. A weight fell from his heart at her words, even if it wasn't enough to lift the full shadow of his doubt. And yet, the way she looked at him now, with her cheeks flushed and her eyes fixed on his, that look in them told him that she, at least, seemed to believe that.

"I came back for you, you know," she said. "I wanted to know what you were trying to tell me, before the jump..."

"I already told you."

"Ah, I figured." She grinned at him playfully.

"Would you like to hear it again?"

"I certainly wouldn't mind."

"I love you, Alyssa."

Her grin melted into a bittersweet smile that made his heart ache. He didn't mind that she couldn't say it back. The way she slipped her hands to his back and pressed her body against his in an embrace that seemed almost desperate was enough for him. He held her tightly in return, and for a moment, they both seemed to just reassure each other that they wouldn't be going anywhere right now.

"What about you?" He whispered his question against her hair. "What were you thinking about right now?"

"About what comes next... I don't know what to do now, Leon. I guess I just always wanted to give my life for something... meaningful. I don't want to sit here and just wait for the end."

He suppressed a comment on what he would very gladly spend all of his time on while waiting for the end with her, as he noticed the gravity in her voice.

"I don't want to die for nothing," she whispered.

"Most people do," he said, softly stroking her tousled hair. "And that's perfectly fine. In my opinion, the important question isn't what you're willing to die for. It's what you want to live for."

"Hm."

She seemed to ponder his words for a while, then she shifted in his arms and looked up at him through narrowed eyes.

"That sounds awfully smart, Doctor Bellamy. Seems like I'm in the right timeline after all."

His lips curled in a crooked grin. If nothing else, his words seemed to have lightened her mood. He could feel her smile as she nestled back into his embrace and rested her face against his chest once more.

He still wasn't quite sure if he had done the right thing. Morally, ethically, interpersonally. But as Ally allowed her body to meld against his once more with a quiet sigh, and he got to watch her breathing become slow and shallow, until she eventually drifted off into a peaceful sleep, he was inclined to think that he was very much willing to bear that guilt.

~ ~ ~

When Alyssa woke up the next morning she felt strange. It wasn't the confusion of finding herself in an unfamiliar room, or regret over what had happened last night between her and Leon. On the contrary. Sitting up on the bed she watched him prepare breakfast at the kitchen counter at the other end of the room, and the sight of his naked upper body made her wish he'd stop what he was doing and come back to bed.

What would they have to eat for, anyway? They'd all suffocate in a few weeks when the air ran out, and until then, she could think of many things she could go without doing, to free up more time for other, pleasant things.

It was then that she realized that what she felt was a faint tickling of something she had almost forgotten existed: happiness. Not just the hope of future happiness, but the pure, unadulterated bliss of a moment that was so perfect that it effortlessly chased away the shadows that would otherwise cloud her mind at the prospect of dying.

Everybody dies, she thought, and if this is as good as it gets before that... it's actually pretty good.

He sat down on the bed next to her and handed her a bowl with some sort of porridge. She was used to eating the thin, flavorless gruel in the canteen, although over the past two months she had spent money on getting marginally higher quality food in preparation for her mission. But none of it compared even remotely to what he had come up with. She couldn't even remember when she had last tasted cinnamon, but she was convinced that it had never tasted as heavenly as in this moment. It was bliss.

"I'd like to go back to the lab and check on Baker and Rosie, if you don't mind me leaving you alone for a while?" he asked after breakfast. "It won't be long, I promise. Or you could come with me, if you prefer?"

"I don't mind," she said, even if it wasn't entirely true. But she had plans of her own. "I'd like to go back to my old place and see what's left of it."

"Alright. In that case, I'd like you to have this... if you want."

He reached for the bedside table and rummaged in a drawer, and then produced a silver ball chain, like one would use for a dog tag, with a key dangling from it. It was old fashioned, missing the tell-tale black dots of fitting into a magnetic lock.

"Is that..."

"Spare key," he explained, and fastened the chain around her neck.

"To your heart?" she asked with a smirk.

"You don't need the spare key for that," he replied, and kissed the tip of her nose. "No, it's for the room. So you can come back whenever you're done and don't have to wait for me."

Her hand moved up to the piece of metal resting against her chest and she could feel herself blush. He kept giving her these small but incredibly meaningful gifts, and it made her wish she was able to give him something in return. Instead, she hadn't even really told him how she felt about him yet, because she was bad with words, and bad with little romantic gestures, and bad with expressing emotions in general.

But she had one idea, and that was what led her back to her old room a while later.

After moving underground with just a few of her possessions, she had gotten used to wearing mostly ill-fitting clothes. Leon had given her some of his to wear, so she could move through the bunker city without attracting too much attention in her black combat suit. Walking through the corridors leading away from the secret research station, she found herself quite liking wearing his clothes. His pants sat low on her hips, and he had given her the smallest T-shirt he could find. Both fit surprisingly comfortably.

Outside the stretch of unventilated corridor that separated the research station from the bunker city, she hid the oxygen mask behind a loose wall panel where she could retrieve it later. This time, she made double sure that no looter was around, watching her. She relied on that thing if she wanted to go back there safely.

Minutes later, she stood before the door to her apartment. The door was unlocked, the small magnetic key was still sticking in the port that controlled the door's mechanism, the control light next to it blinking faintly. With her hand already on the handle, she paused hesitantly.

She was less worried about what was missing, and rather wondered what she might find in this place, now that it was no longer hers. Squaring her shoulders and feeling her muscles tense in anticipation of something bad, she pushed the door open.

Her apartment was surprisingly undisturbed. She spotted just a few signs that somebody had been here and taken some things. From her tiny kitchen, all the food was missing, as well as some utensils. Her blanket and pillow had disappeared, as well as most of the clothes. She found a pair of pants and quickly changed into them. She decided to keep Leon's shirt.

To her dismay, the one thing she had come for was missing as well. The wall behind her cot was empty, the poster of the mountainside gone. She had intended to bring it back to Leon's place and put it over the broken screen that was probably once a virtual window. At least the man seemed to have done as she had asked and had taken it for his daughter.

Unsure what to do now, she picked up random pictures from the walls and looked at them for a moment, before putting them back again. The mementos seemed meaningless now. When she had been a child and her mother had died, her guardian had told her that the dead weren't really gone as long as they were not forgotten. That was why she had kept them. But in a few weeks, when the air ran out, nobody would be around to remember anyone any longer.

There was no sense in idling here. She left the rest of the room as it was, bringing nothing with her in the end except for the pants she had changed into, and stepped outside again. She cast one last look back at the room she had spent the past two years in, and sighed.

"Excuse me, Miss?"

Alyssa froze and then slowly turned around. The question had been asked in a quiet, squeaky voice, but it still took her a moment of staring blankly into the empty space in front of her, until she lowered her gaze and discovered a little girl, about five or six years old.

There weren't many children in the bunker city, and those few that lived here were usually fiercely protected by their parents and rarely seen outside of their homes. The girl had a shock of unruly, reddish-brown hair and stared up at her with wide, blue eyes that seemed oddly familiar to her. Her face was streaked with dirt, and on her cheek Alyssa saw the faint traces of an old wound that had just healed, leaving behind a pink gash on her pale skin.

Her malnourished figure was concealed by an oversized T-Shirt that looked more like a dress on her. Her arms stuck out from the sleeves like matchsticks, so precariously thin that they looked about to break upon the slightest touch. Whoever had hurt that child and given her that wound must have had a particularly mean streak. Unfortunately, Alyssa knew a couple of people in Security who fit that description.

"Are you Miss Alyssa Caine?" the girl asked, ripping her out of her thoughts.

"Yes?"

"Travis told me to give you this," the girl said, and handed her a crumpled envelope. "Before he..."

"Who is Travis?" Alyssa asked, as she ripped it open.

The girl just shrugged, but as Alyssa skimmed over the message within, she had a hunch.

On March 16th, find your way to room 57 on Level Two, Sector One-Gamma before 2pm, if you want to learn the truth.
~T

Level Two was where the authorities had their headquarters. She had served up there for a while, during her time with Security, and she knew that sector like the back of her hand. Room 57 was a meeting room. And the only other person she knew - albeit 'knowing' was perhaps an exaggeration already - who had occasionally been around that sector, and wasn't a member of Security was Computer Guy.

"Travis is dead now," the girl said quietly. "But he left this message, he said it's important that you get it, and it had to be today. He said he could trust you. And he could trust me to get it to you."

"How did you know Travis?" Alyssa asked the girl.

"He is - he was my friend," the girl replied, and her face lit up with a heart-breaking bittersweet smile. "He played with me sometimes. And sometimes he brought us food. But I liked him because he was funny, not because of the food."

"Travis worked for the authorities, didn't he?"

The girl nodded. "Sometimes, yeah. Computer stuff, I think."

Of course it was him. The guards she knew were loyal to a fault. And from her time with Security she doubted very many of them actually knew how to read and write.

"Alright." Alyssa folded the paper and put it in the pocket of her pants. "Thank you for delivering his message. I am sure he would be proud of you."

At her words, the girl's cheeks reddened but her smile widened.

Alyssa hesitated for a moment. The message from Travis the Computer Guy was time sensitive, but she didn't quite know how to go about the matter yet. As she looked down at the girl once more, she saw that the cut on her skin would leave a deep scar. Already now the red trace of the wound could be seen cutting into her cheek as it rounded up with her smile. Alyssa got down on one knee before the girl and looked at her intently.

"Tell me, what happened to you?" she asked and pointed at her cheek. "Did somebody at home do that to you?"

"Oh?" Her hand flew up to her face, and she averted her gaze, shaking her head. "No. It was a man. He came to our home, he was angry with my dad. I don't know what it was about."

They didn't hurt the man, only the child, to get him to comply, Alyssa realized.

Her attention was drawn by the girl's shirt. It had once been black, but was now so washed out that it appeared a blotchy mess of greys. It had a little logo printed, where an adult's chest would have been: an eight-pronged star within a circle, and a barely legible inscription around it. Countless washes had caused the print to fade, but Alyssa knew what it said.

Dum spiro spero ut melior cras sit. As long as I breathe I hope that tomorrow may be better.

It was the motto of the governmental organization that had, in a way, adopted her after her mother's death, and later trained her, before the war. And she finally realized why the girl looked so strangely familiar. She had met her father before, and he had the same eyes. It felt like a lifetime ago, but it had been barely twenty-four hours since she had given her key to the man, and given him permission to take her belongings.

"I see... I am sorry this happened to you."

"I'll just have to grow up to be big and strong so I can protect my dad better," the girl shrugged, as if it was the most normal thing in the world.

Alyssa smiled, but inside she felt her heart break. The child didn't know that she wouldn't get to live to the day when she could protect her father. She was glad that her friend Travis had apparently spared the child from knowing that.

"You're absolutely right," Alyssa said, forcing herself to sound cheerful. She ruffled the girl's hair and got back up on her feet. "And now go home, before your dad gets worried."

The girl nodded, turned on her heels and set off along the corridor towards the next sector. Alyssa followed her with her gaze for a while, until her shock of reddish hair disappeared around a corner.

Once she was gone, Alyssa took the note out of her pocket again, and read it once more. She had one hour to get there. Part of her longed to go back to Leon and simply ignore whatever it was that Computer Guy had wanted to show her. But she knew that she would be eternally restless if she did that. She decided to try and sneak up to Level Two, and go back to Leon's place afterwards.

With newfound determination, she put the letter away again, cast one last look at the room behind her, and then she shut the door and set off to Level Two.

____
A.N.
"ut melior cras" or "ut melior cras sit"? or something else entirely? I tried to wrap my head  around that Latin but it's been a while... if anybody got a better suggestion I'm happy to take it.

Word Count: 3040
Total: 23576