"Cae... Caelis!" Voice soft but insistant, lips brushing her cheek so that she felt rather than heard the words. She reached out blindly, instinctively, fingers entwining in something warm and blessedly real that drew her from the clutches of the dream. She opened her eyes slowly, fighting sleep, and looked up into Sannoen's concerned brown eyes.

"You're ice cold, Cae," he observed quietly. Unspoken but understood: What's wrong?

"I'm fine," she insisted, shaking her head, but her voice lacked conviction, and she shivered despite herself, icy sweat chilling her skin. He raised a brow, half-smiling, and she added, in an attempt to justify herself, "Only a dream."

He gave her that penetrating look once again, and she looked down through her lashes, wondering whether to feign sleep. A sudden weight beside her startled her from that idea, and she turned unresistingly into his arms, burrowing into his side. His skin was so warm... warm though he'd surely been out for hours. There was rain in his hair.

"You don't have to go back?" she murmured drowsily, willing to chance sleep again if he was beside her. Surely then she'd be free...

"No," he agreed, fingers in her hair. "I told Kethren that I wasn't pulling another all-nighter. I hate never being here - and the police force can manage well enough without me."

A part of her wanted to argue that - loyal, steadfast Sannoen became the backbone of whatever group he joined. She'd wished often that she clicked as well, had Sano's seemingly natural gift of accepting whatever life the world chose for him. Their technology-obsessed society didn't seem to bother him, and again she envied him that - she couldn't understand the people who retreated into a virtual life so absorbing that they never returned to reality, those who refused life, who refused learning. And she knew he'd seen horrible things, the evils that lurked just beneath the veneer of civilization, but he spoke of none of it to her... Very little fazed Sano.

So different, so very different they were... Why hadn't he chosen someone who would fit as he did, who would make him proud?

Because he preferred the one he could love.

She didn't know where the answer had come from, but it rang with the clarity of truth. Sano wasn't quite so easily fitted into stereotypes - not when the perfect product of their society was one who would never flirt with the dangers of love.

And, oh god, she loved him, she needed him...

A sudden wave of panic rose within her and she clung bone-breakingly tightly to him as the memory of just what she'd dreamed crashed over her. "Don't ever leave, Sano," she entreated, throat tight, and he raised himself up to look at her. Her eyes were bright with tears.

"Never," he promised, cupping her chin in his hands and forcing her to meet his eyes. "But Cae-love, what's wrong? You know I wouldn't leave you." Brows drew together beneath dark bangs, puzzled and worried and not at all sure what was wrong. Oh, god, and he expected her to know?

How do you tell the one you love most that you've dreamed every night of their death, that you'll wake to find them gone and never returning...

"Nothing," she whispered chokingly, shaking her head, sending tears trailing across her cheeks, and buried her head in her pillow so he wouldn't see her crying.