Of Journals & Journeys (AU M/L, YTEEN) Ch. 62 Pg 22 - 12 / 29 [COMPLETE]

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keepsmiling7
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Re: Of Journals & Journeys (AU M/L, YTEEN) Ch. 48 Pg 11 - 6 / 27

Post by keepsmiling7 »

Couldn't believe my eyes..........Misha........she's back!
Looking forward to more and the completion of this story.
Thanks for coming back,
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Re: Of Journals & Journeys (AU M/L, YTEEN) Ch. 48 Pg 11 - 6 / 27

Post by dreamon »

Glad to have you back!

The part was great,m and I can't wait to read more!!!
I have a few dreamer challenges in mind if you are looking for ideas so pm me!
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Re: Of Journals & Journeys (AU M/L, YTEEN) Ch. 48 Pg 11 - 6 / 27

Post by Misha »

Thanks for the welcome back! It's so exciting to be back in Roswell land, even if this is an AU and all :lol:

In case anyone missed it, I posted a new chapter starting on page 11 :)



September 2nd, 2011 – Day 1784 and counting

Being awake can be so overrated.


Chapter Forty-nine
Connections



Max's brain was overwhelmed. He had no idea where he was, why he was there, or what was he supposed to do now. At the back of his mind, he had the terrible feeling that he'd done something monumentally wrong, but as he walked through unfamiliar halls and descended to an unknown basement, he couldn't master his ability to walk straight, let alone remember what he'd been doing five minutes ago.

His stomach cramped. His heartbeat was in his ears, and his head felt as if it were three times larger and ten times lighter.

What the hell is happening to me?

Blindly, he followed whoever was guiding him, and for moments he realized it was Parker, and then he would get confused and thought he was somewhere at the base. He blinked several times, the world spinning too fast.

"Here Max… Sit down, okay?"

He sat down somewhere and the next thing he knew was that he was on his back, though he had no idea how.

Was this Parker's apartment?

Light shone in his eyes, startling him. He shut them, white little spots following him into the darkness.

He opened his eyes and found Frank staring down at him. The disorientation threw him off, and nausea rose in his throat.

"Max? Max, are you okay?" Parker asked, adding to the confusion. What the hell is going on?

"How did you know where to find us?" an older woman asked. An older woman who wasn't Maggs.

Wait, didn't Maggs said something about meeting her outside? The memory was blurry, but the need to find her became so great, he actually managed to sit up—and then fell back to bed. He was so cold he started trembling, alternative looking at Parker and Frank, as if they were in some sort of revolving door, each one taking turns.

"When did he start with withdrawals?"

"About four hours ago? I—I'm not sure. They drugged him with something, and he escaped. I found him hiding in the woods, disoriented."

"What are we dealing with here, then? Multiple drugs and withdrawal symptoms?"

He turned on his side and retched, halting all conversation around him. Shutting his eyes tight, he heard Frank's voice, "What happened with Summers?"

Where was he? At the base, with Frank and Maggs and Summers? Or was he with Parker, at her apartment or her lab or somewhere?

"I don't really—really know," he heard his voice answering, but it wasn't him. He was trying so hard to not throw up he was certain his mouth was shut.

Seconds went by, reality playing too many tricks on him.

"What's happening to me?" he whispered, something cold refreshing his neck.

"You're running a fever," Parker answered. "You missed your dose, and we're trying to come up with something. It—it might take a while. Just hold on, okay, Max? You're not going to die."

That explained why he felt so sick, but it didn't explain Frank.

"Is Frank here?" he managed to ask, refusing to take the glass of water Parker was offering.

"No. No, we're at John's house. He changed places—Max?"

Parker's voice vanished, and he was back at Frank's lab, concerned eyes and a grave face letting him know something was wrong.

"Summers's dead, Max. And you're the only one who can tell us why."

Joy and dread collided in Max's heart. He'd killed dozens of people by this point, but he'd never killed someone he'd known—worse, he didn't even remember doing it. And although he would never miss that bastard, death was hardly the right punishment. He'd wanted Summers out of his life, but never like this.

What happened? He asked this other Max, and he got a flashback, of Summers holding a needle—and threatening to get all his secrets out.

"Parker!" he yelled, his heart accelerating at the prospect of someone finding out about his plan, his doctor, his friends. "Parker! Parker! PARKER!"

"I'm right here! Max! Max! Come on! I'm right here!"

She held his face, willing him to look at her and nothing else. "I'm here, I'm not going anywhere. Do you understand, Max?"

"I see—I see Frank," he told her, confused at his dual realities.

"Shh… You need to rest."

He shook his head, haunted by the idea of Parker being taken away. "Summers wanted you. He didn't know about you but he was going to find out. Frank—he wants to know, too, even if he doesn't know."

"You're not making sense. Here, take a sip, we need to get some fluids into you."

"I don't want to answer him, Parker. He wants to know what happened… Is he here? I see him."

"You mean—you mean you literally see him?"

He nodded, apprehensively, holding his stomach as another wave of nausea hit him. "He's telling me Summers's dead, and I'm the only one who knows what happened…"

"De—dead?" she whispered back, clearly as confused as he felt.

"Parker? Who's real?"

"What else do you see?" she asked instead. Max shook his head, he didn't want to keep jumping between here and there. What if there was reality and this was a dream?

"What's going on?" the older woman's voice was back. NotMaggs sounded as practical and straightforward as the RealMaggs, though.

"I think he's remembering what happened to him when he was drugged yesterday."

"You said John sent you here, but where is he? I keep calling his cell phone, but he's not answering."

"I—I’m so sorry to have to tell you this, but—" Parker's voice was full of worry, and through the touch of her hands, Max saw himself telling her to go to his house. No. Not me. John told her to come here.

John, who'd told Parker he was going to take his place. It clicked then, somehow, somewhere in his brain, and Frank finally made sense: He was looking through John's eyes.

"He's at the base," he told Parker, who was looking at someone else.

"He's where?" NotMaggs asked, her voice too high for Max's liking.

"Max, are you seeing John? Do you know if he's safe?" Parker asked, nodding slightly as if encouraging him to say yes.

"I don't know… What if you're not real and Frank is? What am I supposed to answer? I don't remember Summers. I don't remember—I don't want to be there."

Honestly speaking, he didn't want to feel like crap, either, but he would go wherever Parker went.

"Don't tell me he found a way back." NotMaggs was angry, that much was clear. "Where's John? What did you do to him?"

"He changed places with Max," Parker answered, standing up and going away. He wanted to follow, he wanted to get up and make sure they were safe. He wanted so many goddamned things it wasn't even funny.

"He called me here," John said, dragging Max back to Frank's lab. "He—he told me he was going to give me my fix…" John said, trailing off just enough for Max to shudder. That was true, he remembered Summers's eyes, hungry for answers, eager for Max to fall prey of the truth serum.

"He attacked me, Frank. He wanted something, I don't know what, and he said—he said he was going to give me my dose."

"But he didn't," Frank finished, patting him on the shoulder. "Summers played with fire and got thoroughly burned to a crisp. There's going to be an investigation, kid. A lot of people will be questioning you, the project, this entire fiasco. We need you to remember what happened as best as you can, do you understand, Max?"

Kid. Frank hadn't called him that in ten years, if not more.

"Take me to Summers's lab," John requested. "Maybe that will clear my memory."

Max recoiled at the idea, and thankfully, got out of there and came back to Parker's hideout. No, wait… John's house. It was hard to keep facts straight.

"Parker?" he whispered.

No one answered. Maybe he'd been in more than two realities? He shivered and hugged himself. Fragments of ideas danced in front of his eyes: John with Frank. Parker with John's wife.

Summers's surprised eyes as Max threw him against the wall.

He'd wanted Max's secrets, and he would have stopped at nothing to find Parker. Fear cursed through Max's veins once more. He was nothing but poison to Parker's life. He and his addiction and—

I'm an addict, his words echoed in his mind, the clearest of all the fragments that taunted him. I'll do anything—anything, to get my dose.

He saw—he felt—everything he'd done to Parker at that motel: how he threatened so she would call the base and get him back. He hadn't been drugged then, he'd been craving his drug, craving it beyond Parker's friendship—craving it beyond Parker's life.

What have I done?

"Parker?" he whispered again, afraid that she'd left. But why wouldn't she? "Parker?" It didn't matter, he kept repeating her name, making it his mantra. If he was going to die, he wanted to at least have a friend in his mind.
"There's addiction, and there's Roswell!"
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Re: Of Journals & Journeys (AU M/L, YTEEN) Ch. 49 Pg 12 - 6 / 28

Post by keepsmiling7 »

I really need to go back and start from the first......but I'm so glad you are back!
Thanks,

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Re: Of Journals & Journeys (AU M/L, YTEEN) Ch. 49 Pg 12 - 6 / 28

Post by dreamon »

Thanks for another awesome part! I don't know how you are planning on finishing this soon. There's still a lot of story to tell in my opinion. :!: Will there be a sequel. Cause I would LOVE to read how max adjusts to civilian life and how he and Liz fall in love and have their happily ever after.
I have a few dreamer challenges in mind if you are looking for ideas so pm me!
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Re: Of Journals & Journeys (AU M/L, YTEEN) Ch. 49 Pg 12 - 6 / 28

Post by Misha »

Tell you what, dreamon, if I can't wrap it up nice and happy, I'll write a short sequel to cover that :mrgreen:




Journal entry #24, still September 2nd, 2011

Rationality has officially left my life, ladies and gentlemen. I should call Maria, she'd be thrilled to know I'm rescuing some guy who looks like a model and can melt anything in his hands.

Including my heart.


Chapter Fifty
The Other Half


Anne Herschel was not a happy woman.

The basement was actually a very well equipped lab, where the basics where more than covered. There was only one computer, and it was easy for Liz to imagine Anne working late here, while John brought a cup of coffee or a sandwich or both. He was the kind of guy who would quietly read besides his working wife, and then teasingly tell her it was too late and please come back to bed.

"I can't—I can't believe it! After all this time, he still thinks about that place?!"

"I—I don't know what to say..."

"Oh, but I do. Start at the beginning. Where did you meet my husband? Where did you even find Max? Do you have any idea how long John has been looking for that place?"

She fired questions at the same rate Liz's heart beat. On the other corner, Max shivered and moaned, going through a hell of his own. She wanted to go back to him, but not while their host's hospitability was in jeopardy.

"I met Max back in January. He was looking for a doctor—a biochemist who could solve the puzzle—"

"They drugged him, too," Anne said, for the first time looking up at Max's tortured form with something other than dismay.

"Yes. John—I have no idea how John found about me. He bought the lab where I work, and then he knew. Just like that, he knew I had seen Max because I recognized him but then I didn't."

"He's been buying small companies for six years now, wondering if Max would catch up. Oh, he has other interests, of course, and I agree with what he does, but I never thought... He just stumbled onto him?"

"Maybe. Yeah, maybe that's how he did it. Maybe they share a connection beyond what we can understand. Ms. Herschel, John has been helping Max out for the past two months. He changed places with Max about a month ago, went to the base, met his handler, or however you call those men."

"He didn't. Oh, tell me he just didn't!"

"I'm sorry," Liz whispered, as Anne looked at the ceiling, clearly torn between wanting to strangle her husband and worried sick about his safety.

"He's been looking for a way in for ages, you know," she confided, turning her computer on.

"Looking for a way in where?" Liz asked, confused.

"The base. Sure, he's worried about Max, he feels guilty for essentially abandoning his younger self to an even harsher environment. But that has never been his end goal. He wants to go back. He's always wanted that, from the day he left."

For God’s sake, what kind of trauma makes one want to go back to one's jailers?

"Why would he do that?” Liz asked, bewildered. “I mean, the way he talks about you, and this life, and getting Max out..." Liz trailed off, unsure if she was threading on thin ice. “I mean… he looks so happy.”

"That's exactly why he wants to go back. To protect that life. Did he ever tell you about the ship?"

"You mean the space ship?"

“The one and only. Well, I certainly hope the only.”

"Yeah. He said—he said he'd been obsessed with it when he was a teen?"

"They couldn't take him away from it for days on end. And they were happy, because if someone had a shot at cracking that thing, that was my John. And he did crack it, right around the time they started drugging him."

"Wait—he cracked it? What exactly did he crack? How to fly it?"

"How to communicate. Or more exactly: he cracked the logs of the ship. He just didn't tell anyone."

"What did it say?"

"Nonsense."

On the computer, Anne was opening file after file, already paying more attention to what she was doing than what she was telling Liz. "I keep John's formula just in case."

"They changed the drug."

"I bet. But they wouldn't change it too much. After all, they only had Max left as a guinea pig. They already knew John's drug worked pretty well, and trust me, they don't have the easiest of metabolism to be able to find something to make them addicts."

Don't say that word! Liz wanted to shout. Her eyes went to Max, and she searched for something to get him more comfortable.

"Max asked me to produce a counterdrug," Liz said instead. "I worked on a formula, and it might work. I just never got the results from the first trial." Anne raised a disapproval eyebrow. "It's complicated, okay?" Liz said, anxiously fidgeting with her blouse. It was almost 4:00 a.m. and she was starting to feel exhausted.

"With alien beings, it always is." Anne called her notes, and then nodded to herself. "I have everything I need in here to reproduce John's drug. Do you have the formula so I can produce Max's drug? Or his counterdrug?"

"I have my notes in the car."

"Well, then, go! I'll prepare the equipment... Maybe make sure Max doesn't die on us while we try to save his life."

By the time Liz came back, Anne was sitting by Max's side, murmuring encouraging words. Liz had never seen an addict go through withdrawal symptoms before, and it scared her how small he looked, how vulnerable. Keep in mind, Liz, he can do anything to get his next dose. He's not out of the woods yet, and neither are you.

The warning came in Alex's voice—or maybe her father's voice. Someone with authority and love, she guessed, someone who didn't know she already didn't give a damn whatever Max needed or asked of her, she would do it gladly.

"Here. I have more detailed notes at my lab, but I keep the most important facts here."

She handed her agenda and was relieved to see there was a thick comforter on Max. His eyes were closed, but his breathing was agitated.

"A journal?" Anne asked curiously as she started shifting through the pages.

"It might have some stray thoughts..." Liz said under her breath, taking the journal out of Anne's hands and searching for the right date. With five exclamation points, she'd written beside the formula: Freedom.

"Here. This is what Max is getting. This is what I did to counter it."

Anne took the journal back and hungrily went through them.

"Hmm… Let me work at this problem. He needs someone to distract him, and I doubt he wants a stranger holding his head when he starts throwing up."

Max… Liz's heart broke at the idea of what was Max going through. A man who never got sick, facing his worst fear.

Life is so unfair.

"Do you think—I mean, based on what John went through, that Max is going to be all right?"

"I can tell you they're not idiots who would let their prize possession randomly die because he missed a dose, but Max here has gone through multiple drugs in the past few hours. I'll get him his drug, it's the only safe way to go, but it's going to take me a few hours to put it together."

"Do you need any help?"

"Not more than your friend does, Ms. Parker. I'm going to be right there, young lady. Call me if you need help."

It was weird to be dismissed like that, especially when it was her formula and her work what was going to save Max. But Anne had a point: she was the only one Max knew.

"Hey… We really should get some water into you," she said, touching his feverish forehead.

"You keep a journal?" he asked instead, his voice barely above a whisper.

"What?"

"The woman—she said—is it a journal?"

She blushed. "You heard that…"

"I don't want to be in John’s mind. Not right now… Is it a journal?"

His fixation with her personal writings aside, he sounded like Max. Not drugged, not addicted, just a very sick Max who wanted someone to distract his mind.

"I—I'm not really—I mean…there are some personal thoughts but—"

"I keep a journal," he confided, looking at her with those wide honey eyes of his that led her straight into his soul. A soul that was scared to the bone. "I mean…in my head. I can't risk writing it, but every day…I wake up, and I have these thoughts…"

"A journal," she said with a smile. "Then mine is a journal, too."

He smiled shyly, the first actual smile he'd given her since she'd found him in the woods hours ago.

"What do you write in it?" he asked, holding the comforter closer as he shivered.

"Well, lately…it seems to include a lot of stuff—a lot of stuff about you, actually."

"Mine, too."

She bit her lip at the unexpected confession. "You're going to be all right, Max," she whispered, sitting next to him.

"Would you keep writing about me—if I'm not all right at the end of this?"

"Don't say that," she chided him, the giddy feeling replaced by cold uncertainty.

"Would you?” Max pressed, now serious. “I don’t want to be remembered as nothing more than an experiment—I’m more than that, right? Parker, would you write about me?"

Desperation bled into his words, and his hand found hers.

"Tell you what, Max. When you make it through this, I'll let you read my journal. I’ll let you see how much more you are. How much more you are to me."

She didn't get an answer. He started coughing instead, and all hell broke loose.
"There's addiction, and there's Roswell!"
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Re: Of Journals & Journeys (AU M/L, YTEEN) Ch. 50 Pg 12 - 6 / 29

Post by keepsmiling7 »

wow......the mystery continues...and hell does break loose.
Hope Liz is able to produce the solution for Max.
Thanks,
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Re: Of Journals & Journeys (AU M/L, YTEEN) Ch. 50 Pg 12 - 6 / 29

Post by clueless »

Great part! But what a place to end it. So please come back and post more!
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Re: Of Journals & Journeys (AU M/L, YTEEN) Ch. 50 Pg 12 - 6 / 29

Post by Misha »

Is this fast enough? :mrgreen:



Forever and a day – I'm never going to leave this life

I've never claimed to be a hero—not after so many missions, not after ruining so many lives. So it's only fitting that this villain doesn’t get a happy ending, isn’t it?


Chapter Fifty-One
Escape Route


Glass shattered all around them. As Max coughed, he sent wave after wave of psychic energy, bending metal, cracking counters, boiling liquids. Someone shouted, maybe screamed, but the more he tried to contain it, the worse it got with his powers.

He had a reasonable idea that he was down in a lab, and a lab meant someone was working on getting him help. Or he wanted to believe that, anyway. The problem was that if he kept thrashing the world around him, there was not going to be a lab to work in. He was certain he’d already physically pushed Parker away—that or she’d been smart enough to move away from him.

For the first time in his life, he wanted someone to sedate him.

His throat was in flames, and he couldn’t stop coughing. He needed water, he needed cold. He needed air. The world spun when he opened his eyes, searching for the water Parker had been talking about a few minutes ago. He tried to walk and found himself on the floor instead. Chaos extended around him, and he saw Parker arguing with an older woman, as they both pointed out at him. He was destroying this room and they were still there, trying to help him.

I have to stop this, he desperately thought, convulsively swallowing in a vain attempt to get a respite from his body. In a moment of absurd clarity, he realized that if he couldn’t walk out of there, his mind certainly could. And without his mind, his body had to stop wreaking havoc.

He searched for John’s mind and fled into his clone’s reality, hoping he wasn’t leaving a sinkhole behind him.

John didn’t fight him, but Max had the feeling he wasn’t welcomed—
not exactly.

“Max, this is serious,” Frank said, looking ten years older. “Samuel took down the cameras, so we have no way to prove this wasn’t a violent and deadly outburst on your part. Or that it won’t repeat itself.”

“Maggs saw me. She told me to go.”

She did? Max had absolutely no recollection about it, but now that John had brought her into the conversation, where was she?

“That’s the other thing. How did you manage to run all the way to Oregon?”

John didn’t answer as Frank opened the door to Summers’ office. The furniture was disarrayed, sure, but not much seemed to have happened here. No grand fight. No destroyed debris that told of a dramatic encounter and unleashed energy. The truth was Summers would have never been a match for Max’s powers. No one really was.

Frank closed the door behind them and they both looked down at the floor, where papers and office supplies laid undisturbed. On the other side of the spacious office, the chair were Max had sat was upturned.

Frank sighed. “I found the syringe he used on you. A large dose of sodium pentothal. He was counting on your metabolism to burn through it fast, so he was rather liberal with the dose.”

“All I wanted was my fix,” John whispered, touching the chair as if he were having a flash, but John already knew all of this, didn’t he? He’d touched Max in that motel, eager to get the truth of what had happened. “Summers must have withheld it from me.”

“He should have known better than to stand between a man and his addiction.” Frank turned to look at the door, “We can spin it that way,” he said, more to himself than for Max.

Frank looked at the cameras, and Max noticed that the red light was off. Nothing was recording this room. “I had my suspicions, but Samuel must have taken it to the next level. Truth serum… did he really think he could get your secrets that way?”

“What are you talking about?” John asked, narrowing his eyes. Of all the people to fool into believing he was Max, Frank had always been the hardest.

“I know Max. I know that you’re not happy here. Hell, I know you’re miserable. But I told myself, ‘there’s nothing better for him than staying here with us.’ And as twisted as that sounds, you have no idea how much worse this can get.”

“Am I being selfish for wanting more?” John asked, with a dark kind of chuckle that sounded so much like Max that at that moment, they were absolutely the same.

“I thought you’ll try a few things and then realize how—how inescapable this life is. But then… then things started changing. First Starbucks, then your late arrivals at the base. Then you were unfocused on your missions, and last but not least, you hid the fact you were developing flashes. I’m not blind Max. By this point, I’m certain you’ll either escape or die trying.”

“With that sort of choice, I’ll rather not die,” John said, with his characteristic charm, one that decidedly was not Max’s. Frank didn’t miss it.

He looked at John, serious as ever. “What happened to Summers is not going to go away any time soon. They want to have you under observation at all times. Run extensive tests. Review the drug composition once more. In less than six hours, you’re going to be a prisoner here, do you understand?”

Something in the way Frank said it implied he was not talking about the burdens of bureaucracy and paranoia.

“You don’t want me around for when that happens,” John said, his mind deciphering Frank’s words faster than Max could.

“Max—John? Whoever you are, you’re running out of time.”

John nodded once, and swiftly got out of the room. But instead of running to the closest exit as Max would’ve done, he turned around and walked on the opposite direction.

What are you doing? Max asked, bewildered.

Ever wondered what our true purpose here was? John answered, as he overrode security locks to go deeper into the base. Doors would never stop neither of them.

What?

Guards looked at him suspiciously, but John materialized a clearance pass, and with a smile and a nod, he went into an elevator. This was a part of the base Max had never been to—but John had. He’d been here plenty of times when he’d been a teenager.

I know why we were sent here. And I’m not going to allow some misguided plan to retrieve their royalty to end my life here on Earth.

What are you talking about? What royalty?


The elevator doors opened to a sublevel full of equipment and computers, and a dozen people in white hazmat suits. In the middle of it all, a black, round spaceship was the center of all the attention.

Well, Max. You know how they told you we were special? They had no idea how.
"There's addiction, and there's Roswell!"
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Re: Of Journals & Journeys (AU M/L, YTEEN) Ch. 51 Pg 12 - 6 / 30

Post by clueless »

Well that was great timing! Loving all of the new tad bits of info that we are getting. As always I'm looking forward to more!
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