A/N: This was an idea I'd had in my mind for a while, I just had never been sure how to write it. Then, one night, the bunny for "Home" hopped over and I wrote it in about five minutes. :)

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Home

Home. It was a word that seemed almost foreign to Max's ears.

She'd never had a home, not really.

Manticore had been a prison, a place of pain and torment that she'd hated with every fiber of her being.

Terminal City...well, Terminal City was as close to a home as she'd ever had, and she loved it there.

But still, it wasn't what she'd imagined a home to be.

They were trapped, surrounded, and out-numbered, fighting for their very right to exist.

She wasn't sure that could be called a home.

No...home, she'd imagined, was somewhere she belonged, somewhere she didn't have to hide who she was...what she was.

Home was a place she could call her own, a place where she was accepted totally and completely, the good, along with the bad.

Home was no longer having to be afraid, a sanctuary where the world fell away, and time lost its meaning.

That was the home she'd searched for all her life.

But for all her searching, she had never found it.

For a time, she'd even thought that maybe her idea of home, was just that: an idea. Maybe it was something unreachable, something her kind could never have.

Then, she'd found Alec.

She'd fought against it, trying for so long to deny the possibilities she'd known existed there.

But now, she marveled at what her stubbornness and pride had nearly cost her.

Because here, laying in her husband's arms, listening to his heart beat in perfect time with her own...she was home.

Fin

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I hope you enjoyed it, and please let me know what you think! :)

-Laughter