By April

Email: got2fly_aaa@hotmail.com

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine. You know it. I know it. America knows it.

Summary: Max POV set after "Graduation".

Rating: R

Author’s Note: I’ve challenged myself to write a series of VERY short POV fics, each with the title of a song by Evanescence off of their AWESOME CD Fallen.

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I lie awake at night on the complete opposite side of the bed as you and ask myself, How could you have been so blind?

I thought she was the one for me. I told myself that from the moment I laid eyes on her wearing that little cupcake dress in whatever the hell grade it was. I told myself that we belonged together, but now I see that we really didn’t, that we never did. I love Liz Parker in the way that you love a friend, a deeply trusted ally, but I could never love her the way I loved . . . Tess.

Liz is a human, or at least she was at one time. I wanted her so badly because she was so real and so pure and so normal, the complete opposite of me and my life. I reached out to her because she was human, and I needed human in my life. But then when I met Tess, I realized that nothing would ever be the same again. She awakened my primal side, she made me figure out who I used to be, who I would always be. Zan, the king, the leader, the husband.

I’m a husband now, too. A husband to a wife I don’t really love. I need Tess . . . Ava, my queen, except . . . she is dead. She sacrificed herself for me. And I let her, because I kept telling myself over and over again that I wanted Liz, that Liz was meant for me.

I lied to myself, I fooled myself, and now it’s too late for Tess and too late for me.

I was driving one day, and it occurred to me that if I tried very hard, I might learn to love Liz the way I tell everyone I do, but I knew with every part of my being that I couldn’t and never would be able to.

I dream of Tess at night. I dream of her silky skin and tender lips. I dream of her hands and her eyes and her voice, calling out to me, beckoning to me. I dream of destiny.

I felt so desperate for some kind of interaction with somebody, anybody, one night, that I tried to get Liz to make love to me, telling myself that I would imagine it was Tess the whole time, even though Liz Parker’s body doesn’t stand a chance in comparison to Tess Harding’s. She pushed me away gently and told me that she wasn’t in the mood, that she didn’t want to make love to me because she was so tired.

That night, I disappeared into the bathroom and pleasured myself, wishing it was Tess handling me instead. I bit my lip as I came, wishing that I had released myself inside of her instead of on my own hand.

I know it’s pathetic, but I do this every night now, and Liz isn’t even aware of it. If I try hard enough, I almost start believing that Tess is real, that she is really there, her delicate lips wrapped around my large cock.

Liz gets up to go to the bathroom one night and stumbles upon the odd scene in the bathroom.

"Max," she whispers. "What’re you . . ." She trails off and gives me a confused look.

"I just . . . I needed . . . something . . ." My words come out in ragged pants due to my recent activities.

"I didn’t know you wanted it so badly, Max," Liz continues. "I would’ve given it to you if I’d known."

"It’s okay," I reassure her, even though it’s not. A wife is supposed to serve her husband. When he wanted to make love, she made love whether she was in the mood or not. That’s how it always was on Antar with Tess, or rather Ava, and Ava was always in the mood.

Slowly, Liz lowers her pajama bottoms enough for me to glimpse her clit. She sticks a finger inside of herself and moans, a sure sign that she, too wants me.

I attack her, throwing her down on the bed and pinning her body beneath mine. I plunge inside of her at once, and she seems almost taken about with my ferocious behavior.

I thrust and thrash about wildly until I release my seed inside of her, screaming a name, but not her name.

"TESS!"

I feel her body stiffen beneath mine as I come. "What?" she shrieks. "Get off of me! Get out of me!" She pushes me away and runs into the bathroom crying.

Later, when she comes out, I tell her that it was nothing. She seems to accept my apology for now, and she goes to sleep for the remainder of the night, though I have my doubts that she is really sleeping.

That night, I came to the conclusion that I could make anybody believe anything. I made everyone believe that I loved Liz, and I made Liz believe that she was loved by me. Hell, I even fooled myself for awhile. Now, it was time to keep up this facade known as Max Evans and let myself be who I really am, who I really should be. I let myself become a long-lost king when Tess visits me late at night.

I let myself become Zan.

THE END