Title: Once and Always
Genre: Romance
Rating: K+
Pairing: Klaatu x Helen Benson
Spoilers: N/A
Summary: I would rather have one breath of her hair, one kiss of her mouth, one touch of her hand, than an eternity without it.
Word Count: 725
Warnings: Drabble

Disclaimer: The Day the Earth Stood Still is not mine. Summary is from City of Angels, also not mine.

A/N: I really wanted the movie to end like this.

He was supposed to leave. That was the plan, had always been the plan. It was something that had been done across many different worlds, throughout many different galaxies. The plan was entirely foolproof: collect samples of DNA of native plants and animals, those that were viable to be saved and could be trusted not to destroy the planet during its second chance. And then leave, let the invasive species crumble, before returned and repopulating it with the species deemed worthy.

But everything here had turned out… different. He had not expected this species to be so vastly different amongst themselves. Yes, there are humans who are evil, corrupt, greedy, and immoral, people who do not deserve the wonder of their planet, a vibrant marble in the vastness of space. But there are humans, too, who are good, loving, kind. Humans who are grace and beauty and who are every inch the personification of what he might be attempting to save if this was a different world.

Here, though, it means destroying people like Helen Benson, a woman who was discovering intelligent life outside of her own species for the first time, but who was still so valiantly trying to be kind to him and to others, trying to save her planet, trying to protect her son. She is a beacon of light on a planet that is pouring pollution into its seas and skies, a bright star among people who are decimating forests and killing animals to the point of mass extinction. In her he sees…

… hope.

It is silly, really, to be so surprised by a very simple emotion. He always hopes. Hopes that worlds will be better, hopes that the second time around will go better, hopes that species will prove him wrong or not sow chaos in the first place. But Helen is the first who makes him think a species can change now. That there might not have to be a second time, that they can repair the damage the damage they have caused and that they themselves can be better.

A part of it is selfish, which he knows is wrong, and a part is petty, which is even worse.

There might have been a way, had he tried, to deactivate the swarm before the mass extermination of all electrical impulses on planet Earth, but it was a way to teach these people that there will no other option than to do better. Now, without their factories spewing smoke and their computers spewing radio waves, not they must do better. It was petty, yes, but he was sure in Helen's faith that her comrades would create a better world.

And what was selfish was this.

It was Helen's soft lips under his, pliant and real as she tilts her face upwards towards his. It is the soft curve of a smile he can almost taste there, her happiness bleeding into his mouth like water pouring from a fall. It was the thick fists of her hair in his hands, the soft pads of her fingertips tracing imaginary symbols down the ridges of his spine. In all his life there had never been this… closeness… with another. It is magic, in the purest sense of the word.

While it is true, yes, that his human shell is not his original body, that it was created for this mission from a pinprick of DNA collected almost a century ago, it is his. There are still moments when he is surprised by a feeling or a movement or a thought, but they are all magic to him now, because they all bring him closer to Helen.

Helen, who he would leave his own people for. Helen, who he would give up everything for, for just one more kiss, one more set of intertwining hands, one more night. Helen, who was all his.

Just as he was all hers.