Endless Spiral CC, Mature, Part 13 02/25/2016

This is the place to post all your General Roswell fanfiction. Any Canon fics, which pick up directly from any episode of the show and that focus on Max/Liz, Michael/Maria, Isabel/Alex or Isabel/Jesse, Kyle/Tess, or all the couples together! Rule of Thumb: If Max healed Liz in the Crashdown in September 1999, then your fic belongs here. If it picks up from the show in any way, it belongs here.

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saori_1902
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Re: Endless Spiral CC, Mature, Part 6 06/20/13

Post by saori_1902 »

Thanks for the new chapter! Poor Alex, and our entire group of humans. I just hope that our favorite aliens also have passed the same hell like them. :shock:
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keepsmiling7
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Re: Endless Spiral CC, Mature, Part 6 06/20/13

Post by keepsmiling7 »

Well, well......this is a nice twist.......Alex.....but not Alex!
Now I can't wait to see what happens next,
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Re: Endless Spiral CC, Mature, Part 6 06/20/13

Post by Comet »

7. All That Matters

Fall 2001-6 months after The Departure

Nancy Parker sat at the table in the break room of the CrashDown, seemingly absorbed in the newspaper before her. It was mid-October, but the beverage beside her paper didn’t steam with heat, or infuse the air with the smell of coffee beans. Rather, liquid sweated down the sides of the tall glass of lemonade she was enjoying, and she absently drummed her fingers on the table as she continued to read, pausing every so often to glance up at the clock.


3:05pm.


Any minute now.


She did not have to wait long. In the next few moments the back door that led to the alley swung open, and sweaty, flushed and slightly out of breath, her only child spilled into the room. Liz hadn't noticed her yet, and Nancy took the chance to observe her oblivious daughter, who was focused on the heart monitor on her wrist, and muttering something to herself under her breath.


With the trained eye of a mother who has watched her child grow up, she observed various things. One, the teen was gaining back some of the weight she had lost over the last year. This was a good thing, as Liz, already petite, had been bordering on almost waif-like proportions during the difficult time of the summer past. Two, Liz’s hair was getting a touch too long again, as even thrown up into a ponytail, the ends reached almost to the middle of her back. She would need to make an appointment at the hairdresser’s pretty soon to get that taken care of. Three, her daughter was sporting a pretty vicious bruise on her right upper arm. She had no explanation for that, and would of course be rectifying that situation immediately.


“ Good run, honey?”


Her gentle question had Liz snapping to attention immediately, and something in Nancy whispered concern and alarm at that look in her daughter’s eyes. Why would Liz need to look that panicked, that wary, over a simple, unexpected greeting? It vanished before she could comment however, disappearing behind that wall her daughter had never had before. Inwardly, Nancy sighed, remembering a time when Liz was an open book to her. She dragged herself back to the present however, because while Liz certainly wasn’t putting all her cards out on the table, she at least seemed open to conversation today, and Nancy would take what she could get.


“ Mom! Sorry, I didn’t see you there.”


Quick footsteps brought the girl to the table, and she sat as Nancy poured her a glass. She drank first, humming in pleasure, before smiling at her mother and nodding.


“ It was good. I think I beat my personal best,”


Nancy smiled her congrats and eased into the conversation slowly. It wasn’t her style. Of the two, Jeff favored the slow, measured approach while she was all for quick, direct conversation, but recent events had led her to believe an inquisition of a more gentle nature might be better.


“ You’ve been running a lot, lately,”


Liz, in the middle of taking another sip, paused and eyed her carefully. Nancy shifted in her seat, wondering why it suddenly felt like their positions were reversed: Liz, the knowing parent who understood what she really wanted to ask, and she, the guilty child, trying to dodge the issue every which way. Her daughter set the glass down before she answered, making sure to keep her tone of voice light and non-confrontational.


“I have,” She agreed. “I’m getting all my schoolwork done too though. Tests, homework…I’ve got a lot of work to do to get my GPA back to where it was, but things are looking great.” A light blush colored her cheeks now, and Nancy felt more like the parent again, knowing her daughter was embarrassed about how she’d let her grades slip. It had been a point of contention between the two, but it was a non-issue at the moment. Nancy smiled reassuringly.


“I know you are, Liz. I wasn’t implying that you were neglecting anything,” Liz’s eyebrow rose in question and Nancy continued to what she really wanted to know. “I’m just curious-all this running, are you thinking about track?”


An immediate headshake in the negative was her answer. “No. I don’t have the time. It’s…it’s more like an exercise thing, you know? It’s important to be in shape.”


Nancy frowned, because what she did know was that while her daughter had never abhorred PE, she had never actively sought out sports either. But she took a sip of lemonade and then smiled a little at Liz.


“I see. And you’re absolutely right. It’s just…you’re out there almost every day now. I didn’t think it mattered to you that much. It didn’t seem to before,”


It hadn't been Nancy’s intention to remind her daughter of unpleasant things, but if the flinch Liz had tried to suppress was any indication, she just had. 'Before' referred to a multitude of things, after all, and each seemed more painful than the last. Before that shooting in the diner. Before she had gotten in trouble for sneaking around with Max. Before the break up that had sent her running to Florida for the summer. Before Max had started dating Tess. Before he and Alex had died.


"Before?" Liz's voice sounded small, and her gaze was unfocused, as if seeing times long past. Her expression took on a pained quality and when she met her mother's eyes, the wells of regret and sadness had Nancy's fingers itching to reach out and hug her daughter to her. Unconsciously, Liz seemed to read her intentions, for the girl swallowed and leaned back in her chair, a silent request for space. “Before Max, you mean,” She stated dully. Before Nancy could respond, Liz sighed and her gaze flickered up and then away, guilt mixing in with the other emotions she was trying so hard to hide. "I guess that's how it looked, didn't it? Like nothing else mattered except him?"


Nancy was at a loss. She couldn't deny it, because it was true, that WAS how it had looked, and another reason the relationship had given her many sleepless nights. Liz and Max Evans had always seemed to have something far more serious than a teenage relationship had any right to be, and it hadn't stopped even when they had broken up. In fact, Nancy was certain that the frequency with which she'd heard her daughter cry herself softly to sleep had only increased after her summer in Florida. Jeff had advocated more time, claiming that confronting Liz about it would only drive their daughter further away from them, but Nancy promised herself that the minute Liz's grades started to suffer, she would confront her, consequences be damned.


And then Alex had had his accident.


And then Max had died shortly after.


Suddenly the free falling of Liz's grades seemed trivial in comparison to making sure she didn't fall apart.


So now, the last thing Nancy wanted to do was speak ill of the boy who had meant so much to her daughter. When she responded, she hoped her tone was heavy with comfort and understanding.


" It was your first serious relationship." She began gently." You were in love. He was your first love. It happens,"


It was enough for Liz to glance up sharply at her, and Nancy saw that the girl clearly wanted to protest, because this wasn't true. She hadn't JUST been in love, just like Max hadn't simply been her FIRST love. The ending of first loves didn't leave this kind of devastation, this kind of pain, behind, after all. The protective mother wanted to simultaneously rage that her child had been hurt this much, and weep, because where was she, and what had she been doing, to be oblivious to the fact that her little Lizzie bear had been left so desolate? She held her breath and waited for Liz to correct her, to prove just how blind she'd been.


When the response came, it was with a mixture of guilt and relief that she realized Liz was giving the topic the widest berth available.


" Still. You and Dad always mattered to me too, Mom. Even if I didn't say it as often as I should have, even if it didn't look that way,"


Even if Max Evans had mattered more.


It went unsaid, but Nancy knew that it was true, and now, they would have to deal with the fall out. So she smiled gratefully, resolved to take what she could get and steered them to safer waters. When she reached out to cover Liz's hand, this time, her daughter didn't move away, and returned her gesture.


"Thank you for saying that, Liz." She withdrew, and nodded for the teen to drink some more while she stood and brought over a platter of cookies that had been cooling. "So where do you run? And with who?"


Liz shrugged, and because the questions had nothing to do with anything serious, was able to answer normally. She reported that her usual routes took her through Roswell, and sometimes to the reservoir and back. She also shared that her running partners were almost always Kyle and Maria. Nancy nodded in approval at this, thinking that if there was one good thing that had come from all the tragedy, it was that Liz's close knit group became even closer. What was surprising however, was that Maria was taking part too. If Liz had been ambivalent towards exercise, Maria actively resisted it. When she mentioned this, Liz simply laughed.


"That's true. So we made a deal. That's where this bruise came from," Liz's smile was knowing, as she had obviously noticed the many concerned looks Nancy had sent its way. "She runs, in exchange for my going to self defense classes with her. Maria's got a pretty mean back kick. And don't worry. They're Sheriff Valenti approved. Kyle's in the class too,"


Nancy nodded, thought about bringing up the challenges all these new extracurricular activities would be to her schoolwork, but then she held her tongue. They were productive, healthy pursuits, and there was nothing wrong with that.


As she nodded along and laughed at Liz's new stories of how Maria complained endlessly on the runs, and how Kyle was surprisingly bad at the self defense class, she spied the sadness still lingering in her daughter's eyes. Hopefully one day, Liz would realize that she had enough room in her heart for everything she cared about- even if some things, some one, would always matter more.


FIN.
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Natalie36
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Re: Endless Spiral CC, Mature, Part 7 07/06/13

Post by Natalie36 »

great part
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saori_1902
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Re: Endless Spiral CC, Mature, Part 7 07/06/13

Post by saori_1902 »

Great part indeed & as always .. poor Liz!
I can't help asking, Max and Liz have a chance to meet again? :(
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Re: Endless Spiral CC, Mature, Part 7 07/06/13

Post by saori_1902 »

sorry .. double post :oops:
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Re: Endless Spiral CC, Mature, Part 7 07/06/13

Post by begonia9508 »

Wow! one more time your story proves that parents are always oblivious of what their kids do, when they don't communicate.. : :wink:

Liz is training with the excuse of fitness reasons for her mother and it's better her mother doesn't know what will maybe happen to Earth... or not...

Loved it and thanks! EVE :mrgreen:
- Les jouissances de l'esprit sont faites pour calmer les orages du coeur!
- On reconnaît le bonheur au bruit qu'il fait quand il s'en va!
- L'amour vous rend aveugle et le mariage vous redonne la vue!
keepsmiling7
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Re: Endless Spiral CC, Mature, Part 7 07/06/13

Post by keepsmiling7 »

Interesting inter-action between Liz and her mom......
Can't wait for more,
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Re: Endless Spiral CC, Mature, Part 7 07/06/13

Post by sonia62 »

I miss your story, please come back!
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Re: Endless Spiral CC, Mature, Part 8 08/10/13

Post by Comet »

Author's note: Thanks for the love, guys, sorry for the delay. I've been working on my other story, and hopefully should have an update for that one too! Enjoy!

8. Calling

Thanksgiving 2003- Two years after The Departure

All in all, the surprise visit had been a resounding success.


The madcap rush to get through finals, the frenzied packing and then enduring two airports and two flights, complete with a handsy seatmate and lost luggage…it had all been worth it. Amy DeLuca-Valenti’s beaming smile, and her excited babble upon seeing her daughter on the porch had banished any discomforts. Sheriff Valenti’s hug had been no less fierce, and to make up for the fact that she would be the only kid they had to spoil this break, for Kyle had a game he absolutely had to stay in Texas for, Maria regaled them with the juiciest of her stories from NYU, cleansed for parental ears of course.


There really was no need for them to know how during one of Liz’s rare visits to the Big Apple, they had almost managed to burn one of the dorms down when her best friend’s glitchy alien powers decided to snap-crackle-and-pop the microwave into oblivion. There was also no need to add that Maria’s attempts to smother the flames with a throw blanket had backfired when the damned thing had burst into flames. She would of course, discreetly mention the incident to the Sheriff, because he got mad when they forgot to update him on things not of this earth, but he didn’t really need all the gory details. Those, she would reserve for Kyle’s ears.


Mind wandering back to her best friend, Maria felt a pang of disappointment that Liz, too, wasn’t home for break. Roswell seemed to aggravate her spells, so she came home even less often than before, and with the Parker’s worry for their daughter’s health, they had made the trek to spend Thanksgiving in Chicago instead. Privately, Maria thought this was insanity. There was nothing more miserable than Chicago in October, unless you considered Chicago in February. That was truly the stuff nightmares were made of, a polar opposite to her current situation.


She was cozily swaddled in her bed, stuffed full of Thanksgiving dinner, her room still smelling sweet from her favorite incense sticks, the quiet of the New Mexico desert seeping into her room through her open window. No blaring horns, no police sirens, just peaceful tranquility- all of which should have knocked her out the minute she’d gotten into bed.


So why couldn’t she sleep?


Maria huffed, and turned to her side, hoping the shift would let help in her efforts, but all it did was point out the reason she was still awake.


It was innocent enough, a simple picture frame, trapping the image of two teenagers in one of those god-awful prom poses beneath the clear glass. She remembered it so clearly, the way she had had to cajole, plead and threaten him before he had rolled his eyes and dragged her to the photo station, as if it had been his idea all along. The picture was far away, but Maria could see it clearly in her mind, her soft smile, the flower garland in her hair, in contrast to Michael’s blank expression and the carefully ordered hair that was the anti-thesis of its natural state.


Thoughts of sleep were chased away as thoughts of an entirely different nature, ones that involved lost lovers and friends and musings on survival, occupied her mind instead. When she next glanced at the clock and she saw that a whole hour and half had passed, and she was still no closer to answering the questions she, Liz and Kyle didn’t dare discuss out loud, at least, not while they were sober. Frustrated now, she sat up, grabbing the robe carelessly tossed over the end of her bed and shrugging it on. Tea was the solution, she decided, recalling her mother wax poetic about this new blend she had acquired. And if that didn’t work, she knew where Kyle’s stash of sleeping pills where.


Making her way through the darkened rooms, Maria smiled at the little changes she could see, things that marked the house as the DeLuca-Valenti home. Purchased in the middle of their senior year at WRH, the three-bedroom ranch style home was at the edge of town, close to the desert. Amy’s eccentric tastes, in the form of interesting Native American pieces and abstract modern art were mixed in with the Sheriff’s collection of old school rock and roll records and antique weapons. Kyle’s various sports trophies and newspaper clippings were proudly displayed, along with photographs of Maria and the Whits at various shows.


There were other pictures too, childhood photos of Kyle, pictures of Maria and Liz from age six onwards, and then the girls with a skinny, dark haired boy who was all elbows and knees once they were a little older. Maria touched Alex’s face lightly, breathing through the pain that never seemed to go away. The photos with Alex stopped in their junior year of high school, and photos of Kyle, Maria and Liz took up more room. The last picture on the wall before the kitchen was from their high school graduation, and though they were all smiling, Maria noticed that their grins were mere shadows of the ones their younger versions sported. And there was something else wrong with it too, she decided.

The picture frame was far too empty.

There should be a tall, lanky boy with a mile wide smile standing behind her and Liz, with a beautiful blonde girl by his side. It was also missing a serious, dark haired boy with a shy smile, looking at Liz Parker like she was the only one on earth that mattered. And it was missing Michael, who should be by her side, scowling as always, but secretly pleased to be surrounded by everyone else, finally part of a family. Heart heavy, she turned away from the photo and made for the kitchen, even though somehow, she didn’t think tea would help anymore.

***********


“ I have officially gone insane,”


The words were uttered in a mournful tone, and when no one refuted her statement, Maria snorted softly. She wasn’t sure what she expected; it wasn’t as if anyone else was in the car with her after all. In fact, the headlights of her faithful Jetta, left behind with her mother while she went to school, were the only bright points in the darkness of the desert, highlighting the fact that she was completely alone.


It was her fourth sleepless night in a row, complete with tossing and turning in bed, tormented by memories and endless questions. While insomnia had hardly been a rarity in New York, Roswell didn’t have constant car horns and city noises to distract her. Unlike New York, Roswell had the capacity to drive her mad, for she had underestimated the power that being back home, alone, without Kyle and Liz to silently commiserate and bear the burden of the past with her, would have. Maria hadn’t even known she was driving into the desert until she was on the road that would take her out there. She wasn’t sure where exactly she was going, but whatever bizarre compulsion had taken over her seemed perfectly content that she remain on this road. She noted the Vasquez rocks jutting out into the sky, and with a sinking feeling, realized that if she continued on her present route, she would come to the place where they had buried everything that their friends had left behind.


She drove on.


The next hour was a blur. She had hiked out to where the alien artifacts had been buried with hardly a thought for dangerous animals, people or aliens alike, with nothing but her snow shovel in tow. Recognizing the rock formation they assigned as a marker, she didn’t stop to question herself as she started to dig, didn’t stop to take a rest when the plastic shovel broke, when she resorted to using her hands, when her fingernails tore off and bled. She didn’t stop until she was holding the burlap sack in her hands, and the strange metallic book Alex had died to translate was in her lap. It was with a sort of quiet detachment that she flipped the pages, her filthy hands leaving marks on the silvery material. When she got to the page that held the etchings of the Royal Four, she traced Michael’s face, as tenderly as he had hers the night before he left.


There was no way to tell how long she stared at his face, no way to gauge how much time had passed as she wished in vain that the metal under her fingertips would become warm flesh. The first tear that splashed onto the strange metal seemed innocent enough, but then they didn’t stop. Suddenly, she was bawling, great, heaving, sobs of the likes she hadn’t allowed herself to succumb to in years wracking her body, until she was spent, leaning against the boulder behind her with nothing to show for her efforts except a headache, and torn and ragged fingers.


With a sniffle, and shaking her head at the dramatic breakdown, her sensible side, the one that sounded a lot like Liz, piped up and suggested that staying out in the desert all night, surrounded by alien artifacts no less, was not a very wise thing to do. Slowly, and wincing at the injury she’d done to herself, Maria wiped off the book and placed it back in the sack first. The small, rough-hewn rocks they had used to heal Michael went in next, and then lastly, only the orb was left. What happened next was over so quickly, that hours later, when she had cleaned herself up and was laying in bed once more, she was still debating over whether it had actually occurred.


There had been blood on her hand, a souvenir from her frantic effort to unearth the buried items, and it had made contact with the grooved cuts that made up the design on the orb. It could have been a trick of the light, a flash from a shooting star as it burnt its way through space, but she could have sworn that the design on the thing flashed, and that she could see it glow through her hand. She had dropped it into the sack a moment later, and when she fished it out again, it looked perfectly normal. Her hand, apart from her bloodied fingernails, was the same. Still, she stared at it for hours, wondering if she was going insane, and thinking that perhaps it was her turn to take an extended absence from Roswell. The town was making her hallucinate, clearly, and the memories around every corner were stifling.


Maria fell into fitful sleep shortly after deciding she would be moving up her return date. The hand she’d been so carefully scrutinizing hung off the edge of her bed, perfectly intact and whole, normal, save for the symbol from the orb pulsing steadily from her palm.


That night, she dreamed Alex Whitman was alive.

FIN.
Last edited by Comet on Thu Sep 05, 2013 12:41 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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