She could ask, and he would stay. He would risk everything for more than these moments they've gathered.

He would stay and yet, as much as her heart screams for him to do so each time they meet she knows she never will.

The part of her that loves him this way is the same part that loves his selfless nature, the sacrifices he makes, and she would never be able to cheapen it in that way.

They need him more than she can lay claim.

She knows that.

So she asks for one more moment. One last time, one more kiss, one more...

Eventually she will run out of excuses and as always her bed will be cold on the side he favors. Perhaps it more over the side she does not. It's not the kind of thing she can remember any longer. The times that came before that side was his, before these moments that they stole.

They steal them from the hunters, whom she imitates. They steal them from the victims, whom he intends to save.

Covert thieves that steal time from the shadowed clocks, steal caresses beneath silk, steal breaths from one another.

She knows that one day this will all come crashing around them. It is only a matter of when. That has always been the way, at least that she has seen. The other shoe will drop and she's not sure she'll survive this time.

He asks her to hope for more, and she tries though she knows much better. She will always know better.

But when he laces a fingertip across her skin and asks only for her hope in return, she almost gives it to him. She's given him everything else.

But she knows she can't keep him.

They need him so much more. He doesn't belong to her. Though she's long stopped pretending that she does not belong to him.

For now it will be enough that if it weren't the way it was. If the world hadn't, if the Centre hadn't, if...

If the choice could be his, if his heart were to have any deed or title, it would bear her name.

Not the unfortunate innocents of the twentieth damned century.

No, she can't keep him.

He isn't hers.

She can't keep him...

But she intends to borrow him for a while.