Disclaimer: I don't own neither Roswell, nor Dark Angel.
Category: Roswell/Dark Angel XO
Rating: ADULT
Pairings: Liz/Alec, Max/Raed, Maria/Zack, Krit/Syl
Summary: Takes place after series finale of DA and Departure on Roswell- except Max, Isabel, Michael, and Tess all left for Antar; set in DA timeline. When White and his agents get a trace on Liz they come after her and everyone she knows. Kyle is killed along with her parents and the Sheriff. Fleeing for their lives, Liz takes Maria to the one place she has heard of rebellion, where her sister is the leader of 'their' kind. Nothing is certain, but for a supersolid and her Ordinary friend- loyalty is their only protection.
Chapter Ten
Looking at them watching her was unnerving. For three days they had been in this room- three days they had kept her secret. They had leverage, they had blackmail, but they kept their silence. Tactically, keeping information to use against the enemy was smart, but not using it against one of your captors was not.
Liz could see the shadows of her past reflected in their eyes. She knew what it took to look that soulless, to be void of human compassion- and it hurt her to think this was what her brothers had been put through for their whole lives. Like a knife twisting in her back, Liz fought down the rise of emotion empathy. Being a soldier was not an easy life, but it was theirs- choice or not.
“What is your designation?” Start easy.
“X5-568,” Ethan proclaimed.
“X5-690,” Raed announced.
“What is your mission here?” Liz watched their eyes. Both were well trained- the brief flicker that passed through their eyes almost escaped her…almost.
Taking a different tact, Liz placed both hands palm flat down on the table in front of them, “Do you know who I am?”
Again that same flicker.
“I’m your sister. I am X5-581,” Liz said, leaning down to eyelevel. They stared back at her, but not with blank eyes; they were fully aware who she was. “What has Lydecker told you about me?”
“X5-581: traitor, dangerous, unpredictable. Weakness: to be determined,” Raed’s voice rang clear. It was a start.
“What about X5-452?” Liz asked, directing it at Ethan.
“X5-452: ‘09 traitor, dangerous. Weakness: emotions,” Ethan rattled off what was probably a standard response.
“Do you remember your childhood?” Liz questioned. They were unresponsive. “Do you remember our unit? How close we were? Do you remember when you would hold me at night when I couldn’t sleep- Ethan? Or trying to outrun me on the course- Raed?”
Both stared at her, expressions blank. He had really done it. Lydecker had really wiped out their recollections of their childhood- their unit. Growing up all they had was each other, and even though Liz was young when she was detached from her unit, she remembered them. A transgenic has a long member…having it stolen was like stripping them of their last shred of dignity.
“Why haven’t you told them about me? About what you saw?” Liz asked.
For the first time, both men turned their heads to look at one another and communicate silently. They turned in unison to stare back at Liz and a creeping chill tingled her spine. They didn’t respond.
“I need to understand you,” Liz told them, biting her lip, showing a breakdown in her usual contained demeanor. “I won’t let him take your memories.”
Going around the table, Liz jerked back Ethan’s chair and then Raed’s. They continued to stare and that was all Liz needed. Turning to Raed, Liz placed
her flat hands on either side of his head and stared into his eyes, seeing a flicker of fear.
“I’m not going to hurt you.”
Breathing deeply, Liz forced the connection, ripping open the psychic link between her and Raed. Connecting with someone else was not like Max Evans had made it seem. It wasn’t a simple connection of two people. Psychic strands existed on a telepathic level between every being in the known universe- a link to one another that everyone could tap, but most don’t know it is even there. When a mother knows what her newborn needs it is the use of that psychic connection at work. When a person feels the passing of a relative on the other side of the world it is that connection. The mind is a terrible thing to waste- unfortunately, most people do.
A surge of neural energy blacked her vision and in the next moment, Liz was swimming through the oppressed confines of Raed’s mind. Convoluted, feral, and battered; the visions of his past assaulted her in pounding severity. At first it was fragmented, pieces unconnected and others jammed in where they shouldn’t be; but like a web being restrung, Liz’s presence forced the pathways to clear and reconnect. Images of herself as a child, of Max, and Tinga, and the others flitted across her mind’s eye and played out in sequential order.
Yanking herself back, pulling away from the vortex of the human mind, Liz found herself back in her own mind, seeing with her eyes into Raed’s.
“Adia?” he asked, searching her eyes.
“I have to help Ethan,” Liz told him, pulling away before the connection could pull her back in.
Doing as she had with Raed, Liz felt the sensations, battled her way into Ethan’s mind, and felt his mind revolting. He wasn’t accepting her, he was rebuking her attempts to reach him in a severe backlash that assaulted her like shrapnel in the confines of the connection. It was a push and pull for several moments and Liz thought she would be lost even to herself before she hit something- a strand of sanity among the ravages of his brain. Snares dug at her while she penetrated the thick miasma of Manticore training. The sights she saw, the pain she felt, the hopeless, unrelenting numbness that came with reaching your breaking point. The restoration was searing and slow, but Liz wouldn’t leave her brother there.
When she finally pulled back out of it, her world was irrevocably altered with the images she had seen, and the emotions that had wracked her. The eyes that welcomed her when she came back into herself were aware, and awed.
Everything hurt. Her skin was a livewire of heat and ache; her eyes felt too bright; the lancing sensation of hearing was numbing, and every breath was labored. Liz’s thoughts were too fast to discern actual meaning, but they wouldn’t stop coming. She registered the feel of cool floor, and the sound of a bang before she faded into everything.
Throbbing. She was throbbing. Breathing. She was breathing. She was throbbing and breathing. Both felt unnatural as she awoke. Her eyes came open immediately as her body tensed in the unfamiliar setting. Pulling up, Liz set for an attack. It pained her to use her senses, but she relaxed when her nose picked up the familiar scent of TC.
“How you feeling?” asked a voice behind her.
Turning, Liz masked her pain, and nodded her head. It was a medic she had met once or twice. She was in the infirmary.
“Liz?” It was Maria.
“Yes,” Liz answered, trying to recall why she was there. She then remembered helping Ethan and Raed. It had obviously gone downhill from there.
“Are you okay?” Maria asked.
“I’m fine. Where is everyone?” Liz returned.
“Max is with Ethan and Raed,” Zack responded; he stood between hers and Maria’s beds.
“And Alec?” Liz couldn’t curb that question.
“He carried you in, set you down, and then stormed out,” Maria informed her- she looked very pleased with this turn of events.
“I don’t see what it matters where he is,” Zack inserted.
“You wouldn’t.” Maria told him, crossing her arms and rolling her eyes.
“What do you mean by that?”
“Just that your completely absorbed with being a soldier and can’t see what’s right in front of you. But that just means you are a typical male,” Maria
sniped. Maria never failed to amuse Liz even as she blushed at Maria’s implication about her and Alec.
“I am anything, but typical. I was genetically designed to be the way I am.” Zack argued, frowning in a rare display of confusion.
“All I’m saying is that you are just like any other guy when it comes to emotions. If they did any tinkering in that department you wouldn’t be quite so oblivious, or insensitive,” Maria made several emphatic gestures while talking.
“Maria, stop.” Liz jumped in. Zack was building a head of steam and between the two of them her head was starting to throb harder.
“Just tell Captain Oblivious I’m right, and I’ll be fine.”
“I was trained in Special Ops Analysis for intensive training, a term of which lasted six months. I am highly observant,” Zack told her- refusing to back
down.
“Well maybe they skipped a chapter, or two,” sniped Maria.
“Are you children?” Max asked from behind them; she had quietly strolled up to them while Maria and Zack bickered.
Neither answered, but both stared at each other, daring the other to say something; Liz fought the urge to laugh at the blatant attraction between them, and mental made a note to herself about Maria’s preference for emotional-challenged soldiers with too much attitude.
“How you feeling?” Max asked.
Repetitively, Liz answered, “Fine.”
“What did you do?” Liz knew what she was talking about, but she really didn’t know what to say in response.
“I helped them.” Silently, Liz pleaded with Max to let it go. And she did.
“How is she?” Max demanded of the medic closest to them.
“X5-581 suffered a minor aneurism. Several minute blood vessels ruptured; but remarkably the tissue reformed. No long term damaged seems to have taken place,” the medic was the same as last time that Liz had been hospitalized, but she could careless to find out what his name was, or any fact about him. Her thoughts were only for what he was saying.
She was an utter freak. As if growing up in Manticore hadn’t been a big enough anomaly in her life, now she was a something completely different. Liz rolled her neck and popped it several times before swinging her legs off the edge of the bed, and standing.
Several protests immediate rose, but Liz shrugged them off, and took off before anyone could do anything. Speed felt amazing. Moving cleared her mind, forcing her to exert her muscles which, so soon after her mental injuries, took all of her concentration. Blurring was nothing to her- it was a release, an outright relaxant. The ground beneath her feet was a phantom sensation that thudded in and out with each running step.
Liz ran for several miles in the confines of Terminal City. As she came around the corner of a narrow block her foot caught on something unseen, and she threw herself into a forward flip- praying as gravity took hold, and landed harshly on her bent legs- skidding with her legs folded under her, knees out in front of her. She stopped a few feet later, sitting on her legs, heels digging into her ass. Her eyes were closed and she was gritting her teeth against the pain of broken glass, asphalt, and debris.
“Do you know how not to hurt yourself?” questioned a voice in the shadows. Alec approached her quickly, and Liz battle the natural reaction to grimace in the face of talking to him when she had been purposefully avoiding him for so long.
“Do you know how not be an asshole for two point five seconds?” Liz deterred, not accepting his hand as she got to her feet, and stood. Her fatigues were torn and blood and skin were meshed, and baldly noticeable.
“What is your problem with me?” Alec burst angrily. It was the first time she had heard anything but jest or ease in his voice.
“Maybe you’re coming on to strong Casanova. I’m not interested and maybe if you weren’t so full of yourself you would see that,” Liz said venomously.
“Not interested?” It was clearly a foreign concept.
“That’s right.” The wounds were already healing over, bits of glass and debris coming out of their own accord.
“Bullshit. You know you come here; you act like a badass; you pretend you don’t care about anything; and you refuse to let anyone in. I get it- you were hurt. Guess what? Everyone here has been too. I don’t know what your damage is, but I can tell you that whatever it is, you need to deal with it, and stop letting it affect who you are now,” Alec informed her, crossing his arms over his chest and staring at her.
Liz could feel everything roiling inside like a boiling pot of water about to bubble and explode. He thought he knew her. He thought he had an iota of a idea how she felt. He was wrong.
“You think you know even the remotest thing about me? You are probably just like everyone else here. You think I had it easy. You think I went traitor and took off- I couldn’t hack it, right? Let me tell you how it really is. I started out with a unit just like you, and I trained, just like you. I went through the routine day after day- my family all that I had that was mine. Then I was shot, and they took that away from me.
“Lydecker had his scientists tinker around with my inside, adjusting my DNA until he got exactly what he wanted. Then I trained harder, went through days of torture, frequent Psy Ops evaluations, and experienced a deadness you know nothing about. They sent me on missions and I killed people. I was slowly becoming numb, and I had to do something. I got out. I clawed my way out of that Hell tooth-and-nail.
“I ran, I hid, I escaped. I trusted no one and nothing. Life was the mission and my goal was to survive. Eventually I landed with a couple of Ordinaries who took me in; but the vicious killer inside was still there- waiting. I went through my paces as a “normal” child. I embodied my new cover- Liz Parker, small town girl. I trained every morning before the town woke and every night long after everyone else was tucked away in their beds. I was prepared for escape every second of every day should I be found.
“I was shot while working. And you want to know what? I wanted to die. When I saw the gun I could have stopped it from happening, or moved at the least, but everything went into slow motion and I realized it could all end. The constant fear of discovery, the non-stop memories of the living nightmares I had experience- it could all be over. But as the Blue Lady would have it, I was touched by an alien. A boy- seeming normal- dissolved the bullet in my body and healed the wound. He changed me that day, and I became even more of a freak than I had already been.
“Then my life became all about protecting his secret and those who were like him. I ended up running from the FBI and a whole new mess of government conspiracy. I entrusted my heart with him because I felt as if we had a true connection- that I had finally found someone as different as me, but I should have known that wasn’t true. My best friend died, the other became pregnant, and then HE and his unit left.
“I heard all about Max and what was going on up here. And then I was found. White came for me. Him and his men dug into my past, ripped away the mask Liz Parker had been, and they brutally murder two of the closest people to me. So I ran. I grabbed Maria, and I ran. We went through Hell to get here.
“You think you know me? You only know what you want to see,” Liz finished. Her whole body was shaking with the effort of holding herself together. She wanted to fly into a million pieces as each scene flitted through her mind, and every emotion she had bottled up ate at her.
“Aliens?” Alec sounded incredulous.
“Aliens.” Liz confirmed, and then turned to leave. Strong hands stopped her, and Liz flew into a rage. She flipped him over her shoulder and got on top of him, proceeding to pummel his face in repetitious hits until he grabbed her hands and shoved her backward off of him.
They both slammed into the brick side of the alleyway. Grunts and groans filled the air as they wrestled for control, neither willing to submit. Liz flexed her muscles and felt his flexing too. It was a ridiculous contest of action, and Liz knew if she wanted she could kill him- she felt the center of power she struggled to control in extreme circumstances, but part of her wanted to give in. To let him hold her. So she did.
Giving in, Liz stopped fighting him and turned into his chest as his arms came around her. She rest her head against his chest submissively and tears poured heavily down her cheeks. Her body wracked against his as his hands massaged her and he laid a cheek against the top of her head- kissing it periodically. Their hold was instinctual, and Liz allowed herself to let go. She had cried in the past, but this was a purging long in the making.
Licking her lips, Liz nuzzled her head against him, and felt his gripping response. He murmured huskily into her hair, nothing intelligible, but comforting. The husk his body was giving off calmed her frayed nerves, and Liz clutched him more tightly in response. How he knew her body she didn’t know. Nor did she understand why they fit so well together, but she did understand how he made her feel.
Hiccups broke up her crying, and Liz pulled back. They stared at each other for several long moments, and Liz could feel a connection forming. Her natural reaction was to fight it, to pull away, but she let it happen.
The maelstrom that accompanied their joining was twice as powerful than the norm, but Liz embraced it. It flew through her and she found him. His essence- who Alec was. His weaknesses, his missions, his memories- they laid out before her, and she was in awe. Coming out of it, Liz’s body was zinging with energy, her body translucent, her veins shinning, and her power ultimate- a primitive element had touched her when she had touched him, and it was not like anything she had touched before.
“What was that?” Alec asked, he was equally roused, his feral male urges caused him to tower over her.
“I can connect with people,” Liz told him. She ran a hand up his arm to his bicep and held it while peering up at him.
“Is that what you did to Raed and Ethan?” Alec asked, tugging her around the waist to grind their lower halves together.
“Yes,” Liz growled, and then used her free hand to pull him down to meet her in a fierce kiss. Mashing their lips together, Liz gave in to lust. She opened her mouth and shoved her tongue into his mouth, not pausing in her veracious hunger. In response, Liz was pushed back against the wall, and hoisted up to wrap her legs around his waist.
Higher and hotter they grew. The air crackled and sizzled around them, and they became a mass of gyrating sin. Noise, smell, color- it faded into nothingness. And then it was over in a moment as they heard felt the presence of another.
Panting, Liz turned to see Mole and Joshua averting their eyes and looking elsewhere while mumbling nonsense.
“Not a good time,” Alec growled, furiously tense as he held Liz against the wall.
“Little Fella sent us,” Joshua said, bashfully playing with a strand of hair.
“Max? It figures,” Alec huffed, but didn’t move.
“What’s going on?” Liz questioned Mole.
“There’s a problem,” he responded.
“What kind of problem?” Liz pushed.
“White is here, and he’s not alone. It seems like Deck isn’t as reformed as we thought- and he and White are new found friends.”
“I wanted to get fucked today, but this wasn’t what I had in mind,” Alec said crudely, gritting his teeth as Liz punched him harshly and shoved him
away. He had only been speaking in half truth, but Liz was irritated by his comment.
“Let’s go,” Liz ordered. She didn’t know what this all meant for her and Alec; but she couldn’t think of a better way to take out her frustration than on
the sons of bitches that started it all.
Author's Note: Hey guys thanks so much for your patience and support. I loved the feedback and it really helped me get better faster. My sprained wrist is okay, and my Strep is no longer contagious or painful. I'm up on my feet- and as you can see, writing. Thanks again. Hope you enjoyed the update. Let me know what you think. EK!
