His panic grew with each passing second, afraid that the next one would silence his connection with Liz, just as Alex had been silenced.
But he could still feel her.
Ten minutes later, Michael swerved off the road.
His whole face had gone white, his jaw tightening in spasms.
"Michael?" Max said in a low voice, fearing the worst.
Michael slammed his hands on the steering wheel with bone crushing force once, twice and then a third time.
"Michael," Isabel said tearfully.
Michael's face contorted into an ugly grimace of rage as he slammed the gas pedal to the floor, kicking up dust as the truck fishtailed back onto the road, the tires chirping against the pavement.
Max knew not to say another word. If he did, Michael might lose it, and he couldn't afford that right now, not when he could still feel Liz.
When they reached the cabin, smoke was pouring out of the shattered glass still hanging in the windowpane. But he could still feel her. She was alive.
The smoke stung Max's eyes as he kicked open the door, and the gray darkness enveloped them.
Kyle's body was the first thing he saw. He fought back tears seeing the crimson pool beneath his body, his eyes staring lifelessly at the ceiling. He barely registered Isabel's quiet sobs as she discovered Alex slumped against the wall in the corner, his neck twisted at an unnatural angle.
This was his fault. His fault!
"Liz!" he shouted, using his energy to blow the smoke out the window. He spotted a pale foot poking out from under the table.
"Maria," he breathed, and Michael dropped to his knees, pulling her lifeless body out from under the ancient wooden table.
"Liz!" he shouted again. "Seeraynah!"
He could still feel her. He could feel the pain and desolation, so powerful that he fell to his knees.
“Where are you?” he whispered through their connection, and he felt the pull.
Max ran out the door, following the call of her soul.
He found her three miles away, deep in the wood, wrapped in Seeraynah’s arms as she sobbed uncontrollably.
It was from Seeraynah that he heard what had happened.
Tess had come with at least twenty guards. Seeraynah had fought viciously against them, her imperative to protect the King’s mate second only to protecting the location of the Granolith, hidden a short distance away in the mountains. But there were too many of them. While she fought them, Tess had massacred Maria and Alex. Kyle had used his power to try to keep her from Liz, but a powerful blast from Tess’s hand had taken him down.
Seeraynah had felled the last guard and fired back at Tess, grabbing Liz and dragging her into the woods, using a mindwarp to protect their location from Tess.
They'd had to move to another camp. It wasn't safe to stay at the cabin any longer.
They buried their friends in the woods near the cabin, marking their graves with wooden stakes. Isabel took Alex's wedding band, slipping it on her index finger, tears in her eyes. Michael remained stoic as Seeraynah recited an Antarian prayer over the graves. Max held Liz tightly in his arms, trying to offer her strength while trying to maintain control over his own grief.
When they'd packed up the truck, Michael disappeared back into the woods for a few moments. When he came back, he didn't say a word, his eyes red-rimmed. Liz pulled herself from Max's embrace to put her arms around him, and he shut his eyes tightly fighting back the tears that threatened to spill from them once again.
He pulled away roughly and got into the driver's seat of the pickup, staring out into the night. Isabel climbed into the front seat with Seeraynah, and Max and Liz climbed into the bed of the truck, covered with a makeshift tarp to protect their supplies.
Liz curled into Max's embrace and Michael put the car in gear.
"I can't believe I'm never going to see them again," she said, her tears dropping onto Max's shirt.
He kissed her forehead, brushing his cheek against her hair.
"I'm sorry," he whispered.
"You couldn't have known Max," she said, sniffling.
"I should have," he said bitterly.
"Don't do this," she said quietly.
"We all made our decisions. No one forced us to. We knew this could happen, it's just..." she broke off as her breath hitched in a sob.
"It hurts," Max finished for her, tightening his arms around her, his face grim.
******
Liz and Isabel were inconsolable for days over the deaths of their friends and Isabel's mate. Michael buried his grief in finding Khivar.
Max couldn't help but remember the night Tess had left town. It was all so clear to him now.
The Four Square. It wasn’t that they needed Tess to complete it. They had needed Tess on their side.
In the days that followed, Max became obsessed with his error in judgment. If he had only tried harder to be nice to her, to make her feel as if she fit in, then they might have had a chance. Maybe she wouldn't have turned to Khivar. Maybe together, they could have defeated him. But Tess knew too much about them. He should have seen this coming.
Michael and Isabel were bound and determined to avenge the deaths of Maria and Alex. Together, they used every source they had to pinpoint Khivar’s location.
It was personal now.
One night soon after, they left Seeraynah, Max and Liz in the dead of night with a small group of humans headed for Khivar’s camp.
Michael made it out, but Isabel hadn't been that forutnate.
Michael had been knocked unconscious by one of the guards, but one of the humans dragged him into the safety of the woods.
Isabel had been captured by sentries and taken to Khivar. She’d not survived two minutes after trying to use her powers against him.
Michael returned to camp alone, beaten, but alive. Liz could see the tautness of Max's face as Michael told him that Isabel was gone. At first he was angry with Michael, but that soon faded in grief for his sister. There would be no funeral for her, no place to lay her to rest.
It was then that they all realized that they weren’t going to win. Khivar would find them, and would use their weaknesses against them, unless they could stop it.
While Max stayed with Michael in his tent, Liz sat outside with Seeraynah.
“With all the power the Granolith is supposed to have, this shouldn’t have happened,” Liz said bitterly, tears forming in her eyes.
“I don’t know why it doesn’t respond to Max as it should. For awhile, its shielding ability should have been enough...” Seeraynah said, choking back her emotion.
“It wasn’t,” Liz said harshly. “What good is it?”
“Liz, sometimes there is a greater plan for us, one that we don’t understand...” Seeraynah said.
“Well its plan sucks!” Liz retorted.
“This...this is what it had planned for all of us?” she asked, motioning to the devastated landscape.
“I don’t know,” Seeraynah admitted, shaking her head. “It all seems wrong.”
“It is wrong!” Liz spat. “Max is obsessed with the could haves and should haves with Tess. Everyone is dead, and we’ll be dead soon too. You know that.”
‘Not if we go back and change it,” Max said quietly from behind them.
Liz swung to face him, seeing the tears floating in his eyes.
“What?” she asked.
“Max,” Seeraynah said in a warning tone, “ you can’t just go and start messing with the fabric of time.”
“Do you mean it’s actually possible?” Liz asked, turning to face Seeraynah before turning her attention back to Max. She saw the look that passed between the two.
“No,” Seeraynah said firmly.
“Don’t lie to her Seeraynah,” Max said, glancing at Liz. “It is possible. It’s all a matter of whether she's willing to help me.”
“Max no!” Seeraynah said exasperated. “I can’t be party to...”
“To what? Changing what you know is wrong? You know this is wrong!” he fired back at her.
“Max, there are consequences, a reaction to every action...” Seeraynah argued.
“I’ll take my chances,” Max muttered.
“What are you two talking about?” Liz asked.
“We can go back,” Max said, staring out into the night. “We can fix everything....”
******
After a long argument, Seeraynah finally agreed to help Max alter the Granolith. There was no guarantee of success. But they had to try. Max knew that Khivar was coming and that he and Tess would destroy Liz. It was only a matter of time.
"There has to be a way to make Tess stay," Liz said. "You just have to convince her...me of that," Liz said, correcting herself as she sat beside Max.
"Max you know that I would have done anything for you back then. She'll listen to you if she knows how important it is to make Tess stay. She'll find a way to do it. She'll convince you to try harder, to make sure everyone makes her feel wanted. It's the only chance we have," she said.
"I know," he said in a low voice, slowly withdrawing his connection with her.
He had to close himself off from Liz. He had to. Feeling her was too painful, too bittersweet, and it weakened his will to leave her.
What's wrong?" she asked, sensing his withdrawal.
"Nothing," he said. "I'm just...I'm trying to get myself used to being without you. This is hard Liz. I know I'm doing the right thing, but I'll never see you again, not this exact version of you anyway. If we change the future, we'll be different."
"Hopefully for the better," she said, her fingertips brushing his cheek tenderly.
He smiled sadly at her.
"Yeah," he said. "Hopefully."
But that wasn’t the whole truth. He knew what he was about to do would be for the better, but at the same time it would break his heart. Over the past few years he had watched Liz lose everyone that she loved, and he knew that she too would die if he didn’t stop it. She had lost everything because of him, because she loved him.
He would go back, but it would be to convince her to make the past version of himself fall out of love with her. If she did that, she would have a normal life.
If she did that, the end of the world would not come. He knew that it would still come down to a choice. He would have to choose either Tess or Liz, and he knew what his decision would be. He made it once, already. He felt the same way now that he felt then. He would always choose Liz. Only now, he was choosing her life and her safety.
He would gladly sacrifice himself to Tess and Khivar if it meant she would be safe, even if it broke her heart. One world, Antar, was already suffering. There was no reason for Earth to suffer as well.
He knew that if he told her now, she would never go along with it, trying to find some other way, but there was no other way, and there wasn't any time left.
He had one thing left to do. He had to tell Michael. He knew he owed it to him to tell him what he planned. What he planned to do would affect him as well.
"I'll be back," he said, brushing his lips over hers in a lingering kiss. "I need to check on Michael."
She nodded as he stood.
"We're doing the right thing Max," she said softly, and he smiled at her.
*******
He entered the darkened tent, expecting an argument when he told Michael what he planned to do, and that he would be going back alone, but was shocked when Michael didn't protest.
"Do what you have to do Maxwell," he said quietly. "Everything I ever wanted is gone. You all are my family, because I never had one. Maria was...she was everything to me. If you can go back and make it so she's safe, then I say do it. We have nothing to lose here. Khivar will find us, and soon enough we'll all be dead. Do it Max, for all of us."
******
Seeraynah had a difficult time converting the crystal through Max, and she still wasn’t sure that she was successful, but there was no time left. The final preparations on the crystal had just been finished when Khivar's men struck their camp. They fled into the woods, desperate to reach the Granolith before it was too late.
They sent Liz ahead of them to the chamber while they fought the guards off.
The entire area lit up with alien energy as Seeraynah threw her power toward the guards.
In the end, Michael had saved Max's life, his instinctive warrior skills putting him in the line of the guards' fire to protect his King.
Max raged as he saw Michael go down, unleashing destructive power he didn't know he had within him, setting the trees alight as he vaporized the guards.
He dropped to his knees beside his best friend, the man who he had thought of as a brother his whole life.
He tried to lift Michael, and Michael cried out in agony.
"Don’t Max, it's too late," he gasped, closing his eyes and leaning his head back against his friend's chest.
Seeraynah stood a short distance away with tears in her eyes, knowing the truth in what Max wouldn't accept.
"It's not too late," Max said furiously. "You have to get up!"
"Just go and finish this," Michael said, drawing in a pained breath.
"I'm not leaving you here alone Michael," Max answered in a trembling voice.
"I'm already gone," Michael whispered, and his eyes snapped open wide as he tried to draw a breath, blood spurting from his mouth in a violent shower.
Michael died in quietly in Max’s arms a few moments later.
Seeraynah had to drag Max away to the chamber, where it was safe. His hardest take was yet to come. More guards were already scouring the woods, and in the distance they saw the approaching lights of an Antarian war cruiser. There wasn't much time left.
Liz was waiting in the chamber, and Seeraynah sealed the door behind them, leaving Max and Liz to say their goodbye, for if it worked as they planned, Max would not be returning.
*******
The very walls seemed to rumble with the force of the approaching ship. The destruction of Earth as they knew it was at hand, and there was nothing that could be done to stop it.
This was their last stand, their last chance to change their fate and the fate of the people they loved. Max almost lost his courage, almost decided to stay and spend their last moments together, for if he was successful, he would never know what it was to be loved by Liz Parker, and that thought ripped his heart into pieces.
"I won't leave you," Max said in desperation.
"No, no, no. Max, you have to," Liz pleaded.
She looked into his eyes as he pulled her close and saw the torment that waged a battle in his heart at leaving her behind.
"If I'm successful, if I can do this, you and I won't exist. Not as we do now," he said.
She knew that everything rode on her convincing him that he had no choice.
"Max, if you don't do this, we're gonna die. Everyone will. Max, you have to do this. You have to try it," she said with conviction she hoped rang in her voice.
"I'll never see you again," he said in an anguished voice.
They were still for a moment, realizing the enormity of what they were about to do.
"Thank you," he said quietly.
"For what?" she asked.
"For every kiss, every smile," answered, willing her to see the love that had carried him through some of the worst times he could remember.
"Max, I don't have any regrets," she said.
Max activated the Granolith, inserting a crystal into the base of it.
A flash of light bathed the room, and he reappeared within the walls of the Granolith.
Liz stared up at his wavering form, praying for the strength she would need to face her last moments alone.
He put his hand out to touch the skin of the Granolith, and she raised her hand toward it.
The whirring of the Granolith grew brighter, and Max's form was washed out by the myriad of color bursting from it's interior.
The force of its power knocked Liz to the ground.
In that split second, their connection flared and Liz saw the truth in what he meant to do.
"Max!" she cried n anguish, looking around the chamber.
*****
Be back on Wednesday
Serendipity(Every Path Leads..) (AU, ML / Mature) (Complete)
Moderators: Itzstacie, Forum Moderators
Part 31C
This is a little more of a re-run, so to speak, with extras. This part, the last timeline, follows the show's timeline after EOTW, but goes beyond the gang leaving in the van.
After this part, we're back in the present, and Liz will have to deal with everything she's seen and will have to decide what she has to do.
This part is quite lengthy and will be posted in four parts. I didn't want to break this section up, so sorry for the length.
Don't - Jewel
Don't walk too close
Don't breathe so soft
Don't talk so sweet
Don't sing
Don't lay oh so near
Please, don't let me fall in love with you again
Please let me forget
all those sweet smiles
all of the passion
all of the peace, the heat, the pain
all those blue skies
where your words were my freedom
Please, don't let me fall in love with you again
Too many times
I've cared too much
I stood on the edge
and saw that you held my hand
and knowing too well
I couldn't hide from those eyes
Please, don't let me fall in love with you again
Season 2 (Post – EOTW) -Season 3 (Canon Timeline)
Part Thirty-One C
Liz was left trembling as the images of the timeline she’d just experienced through the crystal faded.
Images of love so powerful, they’d risked everything to hold onto it.
Images of togetherness, of camaraderie, of the closeness they’d all had.
Images of their destruction and the senseless destruction of their planet, their families, the very earth they walked on.
And for what? What was so wrong in loving each other?
But she knew in her heart that what happened in that world had nothing to do with love, and everything to do with power.
Power over an icon, power Max had never wanted to yield. But in the end he did, with Seeraynah’s help, in order to save all of them.
She witnessed his hopelessness, the heart-crushing desperation which made him feel that he had no other choice than to go back in time, to make another Liz fall out of love with another version of himself, so that he could keep the girl he loved and those closest to his heart, safe.
As she watched the events in the previous timeline come to a heart-crushing conclusion, Liz was torn first being angry with that Max for making a decision that should have been made by both of them from her. But then she was left in wonder that he loved her so much that he was willing to break his own heart and hers in another lifetime, all to make sure that she lived a life he was convinced she deserved. A life free from the danger he had brought into it, a life without him. And to him, it was worth it, because she was everything to him....
********
Where the first timeline allowed them years of happiness together, free of that deception, Khivar had eventually came to Earth and destroyed them one by one, and it all started with a visit from her Max, only it was a Max from the future.
She had gone to the fortune-teller with Maria on a lark. But the things the woman had told her had breathed new life into her aching heart, and she couldn't help but embrace the future the woman foretold. For it was a future with Max, she was sure of it. The descriptions of the man, of their love, and his responsibilities were too accurate to deny, science be damned.
She went home that night with happiness and hope filling her heart for the first time in so long, day-dreaming in front of the mirror with a lace mantilla that one day she would be Mrs. Max Evans.
It was in that moment a bright flash of light exploded outside her window, and she turned to see a pair of worn and dirty boots and leather-clad legs. She didn't know what to expect, but when the figure bent to look at her, the air rushed out of her lungs.
For the man looked so much like Max. Max with long hair graying at the temples. Max with the beginnings of a beard dusting his face. Max with eyes darkened with some unknown horror.
She protested that he couldn't be who he said he was, but in her heart she already knew the truth. His prediction that the younger version of himself would show up in the alley below within seconds only cemented that.
He told her that she had to help him, because the end of the world was coming.
In a few nights time, she and Max would make love, and their relationship would forever be cemented,. Tess would leave, and that would set the course for the end of everything fourteen years later. They needed Tess, or else all was lost.
She didn't believe that she would make love to Max in a few days time, when she wasn't even speaking to him now. Besides Max wasn't like that...
But this Max told her he had protection in his wallet.
Liz was stunned and in denial for the moment.
But Max was sure of it. He told her that her Max came to her with concert tickets to see Gomez, and that same night, they made love.
She had to make the younger version of himself fall out of love with her.
Her heart cried out at the thought. Just when she'd been given hope, it was being ripped cruelly away from her, technically by the person upon which that hope rested.
She told him to go to the younger version of himself, but that was an impossibility. Two of the same beings could not occupy the same space, or they would cancel each other out.
What about Tess, she said, grasping at everything.
His answer, one she already knew in her heart, was that he didn't trust her. He trusted Liz.
*******
Neither of their hearts was the same after a devastating pivotal moment when Liz effectively crushed Max's heart. The loss of innocence would forever change them, and things were never to be quite the same.
It wasn't as if she hadn't tried every other avenue. She even went so far as to go to Tess, telling her that she needed Max to move on, so that she could.
Unbeknownst to Tess, with Future Max's help, she set a scene, hoping that Max would take the cue. She chose the props carefully, a top for Tess to wear that accentuated her assets, a book by Steinbeck, who she knew was one of Max's favorite authors.
She and Future Max watched from Whitaker's office across the street from the café, Liz's heart torn; on one hand hoping that her plan worked, and on the other, hoping Max would see through the ploy.
As she looked through the window, she studied the version of Max standing next to her, so mature, so...beautiful in a different way than her Max was. His body was scarred, as was his heart, his unspoken pain adding new dimension and depth to his eyes. Yet on some level, she hated him for making her do what she was doing to her Max. He was taking everything from her, because the world depended on it.
It was so unfair.
When older Max appeared to be excited that she got Max to sit down with Tess, Liz couldn't resist a sarcastic retort.
"Rah-rah," she said glumly, and caught him staring at her.
"What?" she asked.
"Nothing. It's just...seeing you at 17 again is making it all come flooding back to me. How my stomach used to rumble every time I saw you.
She felt the sudden urge to scream at the injustice of what she was being asked to do, and she needed some answers, needed to know what it was that she would be destroying.
"So, um...did we get married?" she asked.
"Liz, you know I can't," he started.
"You...I know, you can't talk about it. I'm sorry. I know," she said, looking at the ground.
"We eloped. We were 19," Max said quietly.
"We were 19? Wow, that is so young. That is too young," she said, shaking her head.
"That's what I said, but you said that Romeo and Juliet were even younger than us, so we drove to Vegas. Got married at the Elvis chapel. Congratulations, kids," he said with a wry expression.
"So we didn't have a real wedding," she said, disappointed.
"Oh, we had a great wedding. You called Maria, Michael, Isabel, and Alex, and had them meet us halfway. We spent the whole night singing and dancing in some dive outside Phoenix, and at the end of the night, "I Shall Believe" came on the radio," he said, his eyes taking on a far-off look.
"I love that song," Liz said.
"I know. Everyone else was exhausted, but not us. Oh, we danced...just the two of us. And ever since then, it's been our song," he said, looking away.
"If this works...I'm not gonna have that day," Liz murmured.
"No, you won't," Max said, his heart twisting.
"Then what happens to you if we succeed? I...I mean you. The future version of you?" she asked.
"If we succeed in changing history, a different version of the future will take place. All the events that led to who I am 14 years from now will be different. The man I am now will cease to exist," he answered.
******
Max had thought it odd that Tess was sitting out on the sidewalk by herself, but then so many things had been...off lately.
He tried to apologize for the way he'd treated Tess, because he knew it wasn't her fault. It was what she was raised to believe, that he was her mate. But when she started to talk about being there things changed, he smelled a rat.
What do you mean "if Liz isn't interested?" he asked suspiciously. "You were talking to Liz about this?"
"N...Not exactly," Tess stammered.
It was then that Max looked across the street and saw a shadowy figure peeking out of the blinds in Whitaker's office.
******
Liz's eyes widened in panic as she watched him start across the street. She told older Max to get out of sight.
He'd barely hidden when Max stepped into the office.
"Max," she said nervously.
"Were you watching?" he asked, almost angrily.
Liz didn't know what to say.
"So, it was all a setup," Max snapped.
"Yeah," Liz answered lamely.
"You tried to get Tess and me together?" he asked, almost in disbelief.
"Look, I know that you must hate me right now. I, um-" Liz never got to finish what she was saying as Max grabbed her and his lips crashed against hers.
Every kiss, every wonderful moment she and Max had had together flashed through her mind.
The older version of Max stayed hidden, knowing himself, even the younger version of himself, and should have known that this would never work. This would only make young Max try harder.
The older version heard his younger self speak fiercely and knew that back then the words were exactly what he would have said.
"I felt that...and I know you did, too, and I know you think that...that I need to let you go...for the sake of Michael, and Isabel, and my race...so you went to Tess. But she can't be you. Tess can never be you," he said, his voice filled with conviction trying to make Liz realize that what he said was true.
And it was true. Older Max knew that. He knew that it didn't matter. Nothing would ever compare to what he had once had with Liz.
"Max, we have to stop this. We have to. I am telling you that we have to," she said, angrily.
"Go out with me on Friday. There's a Gomez concert in Santa Fe. I have tickets," he said, pointedly ignoring what she said.
"No. No, Max. I can't go out with you ever again. Please stop doing this," she pleaded.
"I can't," Max whispered.
**********
"You're supposed to be breaking up with him, not kissing him!" he said, angry at the world, angry at himself that he was doing this to her.
"You...you kissed me. I mean...you know, he kissed me," Liz sputtered.
"You're only making me love you more," he retorted.
"I just said no to Gomez!" Liz said, indignant.
"You said no the last time, too. I didn't take no for an answer," he said darkly.
"So we went to the concert," Liz mused.
"No. The night of Gomez I came to your room. That's the night that things between us were...cemented," he said.
"Cemented. So when you say cemented, you-" she started.
"We made love," Max said in a quiet voice.
"No, no, we...we didn't," Liz said, shaking her head. That couldn't possibly be.
"Liz," he said.
"No, I have no intention of making love to you or...or anyone else at this particular stage of my life," she said angrily.
"I beg to differ," Max returned dryly.
"No. Making love to you is the farthest thing from my mind. I...I don't even have protection," she reasoned.
" I did," Max said quietly.
"Oh, that's great. There you are, Max the Saint, just walking around with a condom in his back pocket. I...I...I don't even care what happened in your reality. I am not making love to you or anyone until I am ready, and I am just not ready," she said.
"Liz, I am telling you what happened, and we have to change that. We have to. And so far, we've failed. Liz, it's not just Max that's the problem here. You are. You are not letting yourself change. Now you have to do something...before it's too late!" he said fiercely.
*******
Max was right. She wasn't letting herself change, because truth be told, she really didn't want to. But she knew that she had no choice and time was running short.
She resented the older Max for making her do this to her Max. Why did the responsibility of the entire world have to fall upon her shoulders?
As she walked up to Max's bedroom window, she steeled herself for what she was about to do, for it was going to rip her heart into pieces.
She peered in the window, seeing Max sans shirt, doing pull-ups in his doorway. His finely muscled back was turned toward her, and she felt a pang of longing, of need so powerful that it took her breath away.
Maybe that older Max hadn't been so far off base after all. Maybe she would have made love to Max.
She shook her head, clearing that thought out immediately.
She was wasting time.
Before she had time to change her mind, she knocked on the window.
He turned toward the window, his eyes warming when he saw her outside the glass.
He walked over to the window, with fluid grace, his toned skin exposed from the waist up making her heart race. He opened the window.
"Well, this is a surprise," he said, with a teasing smile.
"It isn't what you think" she said, shaking her head.
He went to take her arm as she started to climb in.
"No, I can do it," she protested a little too harshly.
She saw the hurt flash across his eyes as she climbed in.
She concentrated her eyes to the floor, not so much to make sure that she didn't slip, but to avoid looking upon the bare expanse of skin before her.
This wasn't going to work.
"Can you...um, put a shirt on, please?" she asked, averting her eyes.
Max crossed his arms over his chest in a self-conscious gesture and reached for his t-shirt, pulling it over his head.
"Thank you," Liz said, hoping her voice sounded steady, because her whole body was trembling.
"Liz..." Max started, and she stepped back, knowing this was the moment she'd dreaded. If he started to talk, it would all be over and she wouldn't have the will to do what she knew she must.
"Don't say anything, ok? Um, because I...I came in here with this whole speech, and once you start talking, my speech doesn't apply, and everything gets changed, and I just want to make sure that I say everything to you, so just don't say anything. Just don't say anything,," she said, taking a deep breath.
She could feel his warm eyes on her, and it was unnerving. He looked at her expectantly, with just a touch of humor, much like he had the day she'd come to him with her list of alien-related questions so long ago. But this was going to be different.
"Ok, I...I just re-read "Romeo and Juliet", and you know, the first thing that I realized is that isn't even the title. It's called "The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet". They die. You know, she's this young girl, she...she's younger than me, and she dies," she said.
"Look, I think the reason why people think that it's such a romantic play is they don't know what it's like to be put in that position...but when your life and...and other people's lives are...are put at risk, there isn't anything romantic about it," she continued.
His eyes grew serious, and she could see that he was putting the pieces of her allegory together. But the worst was still to come. But this, this...thing she was about to say, this next lie she was going to tell was going to break her heart, and his.
"Max, you can't stop what's happening to you. I mean, your life will always be dangerous, but my life, it doesn't have to be. My life is only in danger if I am with you. I...I want to be in love with boys...normal boys. I...I want to see my 21st birthday. I...I want to have a wedding day. I...I...I want to have children...and I want my children to be safe. You know, Max, if...if you truly love me, you'll let me go. I may love you, but I...I don't want to die for you," she said, shaking her head.
Her heart screamed at the injustice of it all, that she had to give up the one person she would love for a lifetime. It cried out for the complete and utter lie that fell from her lips, the lie that she would give anything not to speak, the lie that caused his eyes to fill with unshed tears as he stared at her, not wanting to believe what she was telling him.
It took every ounce of will, of courage not to run to him, to throw her arms around him, to tell him that none of it was true, that she would give up anything to be with him, to have his love, that she would die for him a thousand times over.
Instead she turned from him and walked to the window, the steadiness of her gait miraculously not betraying the turmoil in her heart.
She didn't look back. She couldn't. If she had, everything she'd done would be for nothing.
******
As Max sat with Maria in the Crashdown that night, he'd asked her what he should do.
Maria was still stinging from what she perceived to be Michael's betrayal with Courtney, the new waitress. Earlier she had caught Michael at Courtney's apartment. When Courtney emerged from the bathroom in a towel, she fled.
"You just want me to tell you that it's all gonna work out, right?" she asked Max.
"No. I want to hear what you have to say," he said firmly.
" Ok. Here's what I think...give Liz up. Leave her alone. All this is leading nowhere. None of us belong with any of you. And I'm really sick of how much it's screwing us up. I mean, look at us. We're pathetic," she sighed.
******
Liz sat across from older Max, crying for all she'd lost, for the hurtful things she'd said to her Max. Even knowing that it would save all of them didn't take any of the paralyzing pain away.
Older Max reached over to grab a tissue, and his hand seemed to become insubstantial, slipping through the box.
Liz watched it happen.
“What...what's happening?” she asked.
“This must be it. What you did must have worked. I'm leaving,” he said.
“What, so you're just...you're going back to where you came from?” she asked.
“No. There's nowhere to go back to,” he said, ruefully.
************
Maria stared at Max with a mixture of resignation and compassion.
“You're not there, are you?” she asked.
Max shrugged sadly.
“I can't help it. I love her. What can I say?” he asked.
“You're hopeless,” Maria sighed.
**********
Liz watched him pause, and then his hand shot out to grab the box again. This time, he was able to pick it up.
“It didn't work. We have to do something else,” he said, angry that he was still whole, angry that he had to push Liz even further than he already had. He should have known it wouldn’t have been this easy to make himself turn away from her. After all, it was Liz.
“No, I...I can't,” Liz said, almost frantic, shaking her head.
“You have to,” Max answered fiercely.
And then Liz got angry. Hot tears streamed down her face as she spoke.
“Do you know how hard it was for me to tell him that I didn't want to die for him? He's the only reason that I'm alive right now. You...you've...you gotta come up with another plan. Please go to someone else. I...I just...I can't do this anymore!” she said.
He hadn’t wanted to tell her, but now he knew he had no choice.
“Just 25 minutes before I came here, I held Michael in my arms...dead. Isabel died 2 weeks before that. Now you have to do this. You have to find a way. All of our lives depend on it,” he said.
“How? What can I do that's gonna make you turn away from me?” she asked, feeling helpless.
“I don't know,” he said.
***********
When Liz saw Maria, the idea popped into her head. It would work. It had to. It was the only thing that would turn Max from her.
She went to Kyle to ask him to help her. She could give no explanations, but being who he was, he said yes without question.
He waited outside the door in her bedroom while she got ready.
“I don't think this is a good plan,” he said, standing behind her.
He had asked her to find a way, but this...this would be too much to bear.
“What are you talking about?” she asked, irritated as she stared at his reflection in the mirror.
“You really think this is gonna work? I would never be jealous of Kyle,” he said, trying to convince himself just as much as he was trying to convince her, and failing at it.
“Can you turn around?” she asked, and he hesitated and complied as she started to undress.
“ So that's like meditation, right? Incense, that sort of thing?” she called to Kyle.
“It's really about approaching life through a spiritual place and becoming in tune with different planes of existence,” he answered, his voice muffled through the closed door.
“What a line of crap,” Max snorted.
“Am I taking my boxers off?” Kyle asked.
“No. Undergarments stay on,” Liz said, almost a little too emphatically.
“Right,” Kyle said.
“If he tries anything...” Max said, as Liz turned to him.
“I've got it under control. Please stay out of earshot,” she said.
As she and Kyle lay in bed together, ironically talking about Max, he climbed up her balcony with Gomez tickets in hand.
As Liz looked out the window in shock, he drops the tickets and backs away.
She had broken his heart, and nothing would ever be the same again.
*******
“I've fought a thousand battles...but watching you do that was the hardest thing I've ever had to do,” Older Max said to her as she cried quietly next to him.
“The look on his face...on your face,” she faltered, unable to put into words the way to describe the betrayal written across his face. It would haunt her for the rest of her days.
“Maybe it's for the best. For you, too,” Max said.
“What are you talking about?” she asked.
It pained him more than anything he had ever done, but he had to say it, he had to put the seed in her mind before he disappeared altogether. Maybe then she would have a normal life.
“I saw you with Kyle. He's turning out to be a...a great guy. Maybe it would be better for you to be with a human,” he reasoned, hating himself for saying it.
Liz looked at him with a sad smile.
“Don't you realize what you are to me...and you're always gonna be? You're the love of my life. Everyone else is gonna be second best. There'll never be another you,” she said softly, and her words soothed his tattered heart. He should have known that she would say something like that. But there was nothing to be done now. The future was changed. Maybe Tess would stay this time, even if at some point in the future this Liz and her Max found their way back to each other. He couldn’t say that it would be a mistake, because that would be saying that Liz didn’t mean everything to him, and she did. She always had.
“So Max and...Tess are going to be together now,” she asked dully.
“I don't know. I don't know anything now. This is a different world,” he said.
“I'm gonna be alone,” Liz mused.
“Maybe. Maybe not. From now on, the future is to be determined. It's what I've always said to you, Liz. We create our own destiny,” he whispered.
Liz looked up at him with a sad smile.
“Could you dance with me?” she asked.
He was momentarily stunned.
“What?” he asked.
“I wanna have my wedding dance,” she said.
He took her hand and she stood, and as he pulled her closer, he knew that this would be the last time he would ever touch her, ever hold her, ever smell her sweet scent.
For a moment, they danced, and then he was just...gone.
After this part, we're back in the present, and Liz will have to deal with everything she's seen and will have to decide what she has to do.
This part is quite lengthy and will be posted in four parts. I didn't want to break this section up, so sorry for the length.
Don't - Jewel
Don't walk too close
Don't breathe so soft
Don't talk so sweet
Don't sing
Don't lay oh so near
Please, don't let me fall in love with you again
Please let me forget
all those sweet smiles
all of the passion
all of the peace, the heat, the pain
all those blue skies
where your words were my freedom
Please, don't let me fall in love with you again
Too many times
I've cared too much
I stood on the edge
and saw that you held my hand
and knowing too well
I couldn't hide from those eyes
Please, don't let me fall in love with you again
Season 2 (Post – EOTW) -Season 3 (Canon Timeline)
Part Thirty-One C
Liz was left trembling as the images of the timeline she’d just experienced through the crystal faded.
Images of love so powerful, they’d risked everything to hold onto it.
Images of togetherness, of camaraderie, of the closeness they’d all had.
Images of their destruction and the senseless destruction of their planet, their families, the very earth they walked on.
And for what? What was so wrong in loving each other?
But she knew in her heart that what happened in that world had nothing to do with love, and everything to do with power.
Power over an icon, power Max had never wanted to yield. But in the end he did, with Seeraynah’s help, in order to save all of them.
She witnessed his hopelessness, the heart-crushing desperation which made him feel that he had no other choice than to go back in time, to make another Liz fall out of love with another version of himself, so that he could keep the girl he loved and those closest to his heart, safe.
As she watched the events in the previous timeline come to a heart-crushing conclusion, Liz was torn first being angry with that Max for making a decision that should have been made by both of them from her. But then she was left in wonder that he loved her so much that he was willing to break his own heart and hers in another lifetime, all to make sure that she lived a life he was convinced she deserved. A life free from the danger he had brought into it, a life without him. And to him, it was worth it, because she was everything to him....
********
Where the first timeline allowed them years of happiness together, free of that deception, Khivar had eventually came to Earth and destroyed them one by one, and it all started with a visit from her Max, only it was a Max from the future.
She had gone to the fortune-teller with Maria on a lark. But the things the woman had told her had breathed new life into her aching heart, and she couldn't help but embrace the future the woman foretold. For it was a future with Max, she was sure of it. The descriptions of the man, of their love, and his responsibilities were too accurate to deny, science be damned.
She went home that night with happiness and hope filling her heart for the first time in so long, day-dreaming in front of the mirror with a lace mantilla that one day she would be Mrs. Max Evans.
It was in that moment a bright flash of light exploded outside her window, and she turned to see a pair of worn and dirty boots and leather-clad legs. She didn't know what to expect, but when the figure bent to look at her, the air rushed out of her lungs.
For the man looked so much like Max. Max with long hair graying at the temples. Max with the beginnings of a beard dusting his face. Max with eyes darkened with some unknown horror.
She protested that he couldn't be who he said he was, but in her heart she already knew the truth. His prediction that the younger version of himself would show up in the alley below within seconds only cemented that.
He told her that she had to help him, because the end of the world was coming.
In a few nights time, she and Max would make love, and their relationship would forever be cemented,. Tess would leave, and that would set the course for the end of everything fourteen years later. They needed Tess, or else all was lost.
She didn't believe that she would make love to Max in a few days time, when she wasn't even speaking to him now. Besides Max wasn't like that...
But this Max told her he had protection in his wallet.
Liz was stunned and in denial for the moment.
But Max was sure of it. He told her that her Max came to her with concert tickets to see Gomez, and that same night, they made love.
She had to make the younger version of himself fall out of love with her.
Her heart cried out at the thought. Just when she'd been given hope, it was being ripped cruelly away from her, technically by the person upon which that hope rested.
She told him to go to the younger version of himself, but that was an impossibility. Two of the same beings could not occupy the same space, or they would cancel each other out.
What about Tess, she said, grasping at everything.
His answer, one she already knew in her heart, was that he didn't trust her. He trusted Liz.
*******
Neither of their hearts was the same after a devastating pivotal moment when Liz effectively crushed Max's heart. The loss of innocence would forever change them, and things were never to be quite the same.
It wasn't as if she hadn't tried every other avenue. She even went so far as to go to Tess, telling her that she needed Max to move on, so that she could.
Unbeknownst to Tess, with Future Max's help, she set a scene, hoping that Max would take the cue. She chose the props carefully, a top for Tess to wear that accentuated her assets, a book by Steinbeck, who she knew was one of Max's favorite authors.
She and Future Max watched from Whitaker's office across the street from the café, Liz's heart torn; on one hand hoping that her plan worked, and on the other, hoping Max would see through the ploy.
As she looked through the window, she studied the version of Max standing next to her, so mature, so...beautiful in a different way than her Max was. His body was scarred, as was his heart, his unspoken pain adding new dimension and depth to his eyes. Yet on some level, she hated him for making her do what she was doing to her Max. He was taking everything from her, because the world depended on it.
It was so unfair.
When older Max appeared to be excited that she got Max to sit down with Tess, Liz couldn't resist a sarcastic retort.
"Rah-rah," she said glumly, and caught him staring at her.
"What?" she asked.
"Nothing. It's just...seeing you at 17 again is making it all come flooding back to me. How my stomach used to rumble every time I saw you.
She felt the sudden urge to scream at the injustice of what she was being asked to do, and she needed some answers, needed to know what it was that she would be destroying.
"So, um...did we get married?" she asked.
"Liz, you know I can't," he started.
"You...I know, you can't talk about it. I'm sorry. I know," she said, looking at the ground.
"We eloped. We were 19," Max said quietly.
"We were 19? Wow, that is so young. That is too young," she said, shaking her head.
"That's what I said, but you said that Romeo and Juliet were even younger than us, so we drove to Vegas. Got married at the Elvis chapel. Congratulations, kids," he said with a wry expression.
"So we didn't have a real wedding," she said, disappointed.
"Oh, we had a great wedding. You called Maria, Michael, Isabel, and Alex, and had them meet us halfway. We spent the whole night singing and dancing in some dive outside Phoenix, and at the end of the night, "I Shall Believe" came on the radio," he said, his eyes taking on a far-off look.
"I love that song," Liz said.
"I know. Everyone else was exhausted, but not us. Oh, we danced...just the two of us. And ever since then, it's been our song," he said, looking away.
"If this works...I'm not gonna have that day," Liz murmured.
"No, you won't," Max said, his heart twisting.
"Then what happens to you if we succeed? I...I mean you. The future version of you?" she asked.
"If we succeed in changing history, a different version of the future will take place. All the events that led to who I am 14 years from now will be different. The man I am now will cease to exist," he answered.
******
Max had thought it odd that Tess was sitting out on the sidewalk by herself, but then so many things had been...off lately.
He tried to apologize for the way he'd treated Tess, because he knew it wasn't her fault. It was what she was raised to believe, that he was her mate. But when she started to talk about being there things changed, he smelled a rat.
What do you mean "if Liz isn't interested?" he asked suspiciously. "You were talking to Liz about this?"
"N...Not exactly," Tess stammered.
It was then that Max looked across the street and saw a shadowy figure peeking out of the blinds in Whitaker's office.
******
Liz's eyes widened in panic as she watched him start across the street. She told older Max to get out of sight.
He'd barely hidden when Max stepped into the office.
"Max," she said nervously.
"Were you watching?" he asked, almost angrily.
Liz didn't know what to say.
"So, it was all a setup," Max snapped.
"Yeah," Liz answered lamely.
"You tried to get Tess and me together?" he asked, almost in disbelief.
"Look, I know that you must hate me right now. I, um-" Liz never got to finish what she was saying as Max grabbed her and his lips crashed against hers.
Every kiss, every wonderful moment she and Max had had together flashed through her mind.
The older version of Max stayed hidden, knowing himself, even the younger version of himself, and should have known that this would never work. This would only make young Max try harder.
The older version heard his younger self speak fiercely and knew that back then the words were exactly what he would have said.
"I felt that...and I know you did, too, and I know you think that...that I need to let you go...for the sake of Michael, and Isabel, and my race...so you went to Tess. But she can't be you. Tess can never be you," he said, his voice filled with conviction trying to make Liz realize that what he said was true.
And it was true. Older Max knew that. He knew that it didn't matter. Nothing would ever compare to what he had once had with Liz.
"Max, we have to stop this. We have to. I am telling you that we have to," she said, angrily.
"Go out with me on Friday. There's a Gomez concert in Santa Fe. I have tickets," he said, pointedly ignoring what she said.
"No. No, Max. I can't go out with you ever again. Please stop doing this," she pleaded.
"I can't," Max whispered.
**********
"You're supposed to be breaking up with him, not kissing him!" he said, angry at the world, angry at himself that he was doing this to her.
"You...you kissed me. I mean...you know, he kissed me," Liz sputtered.
"You're only making me love you more," he retorted.
"I just said no to Gomez!" Liz said, indignant.
"You said no the last time, too. I didn't take no for an answer," he said darkly.
"So we went to the concert," Liz mused.
"No. The night of Gomez I came to your room. That's the night that things between us were...cemented," he said.
"Cemented. So when you say cemented, you-" she started.
"We made love," Max said in a quiet voice.
"No, no, we...we didn't," Liz said, shaking her head. That couldn't possibly be.
"Liz," he said.
"No, I have no intention of making love to you or...or anyone else at this particular stage of my life," she said angrily.
"I beg to differ," Max returned dryly.
"No. Making love to you is the farthest thing from my mind. I...I don't even have protection," she reasoned.
" I did," Max said quietly.
"Oh, that's great. There you are, Max the Saint, just walking around with a condom in his back pocket. I...I...I don't even care what happened in your reality. I am not making love to you or anyone until I am ready, and I am just not ready," she said.
"Liz, I am telling you what happened, and we have to change that. We have to. And so far, we've failed. Liz, it's not just Max that's the problem here. You are. You are not letting yourself change. Now you have to do something...before it's too late!" he said fiercely.
*******
Max was right. She wasn't letting herself change, because truth be told, she really didn't want to. But she knew that she had no choice and time was running short.
She resented the older Max for making her do this to her Max. Why did the responsibility of the entire world have to fall upon her shoulders?
As she walked up to Max's bedroom window, she steeled herself for what she was about to do, for it was going to rip her heart into pieces.
She peered in the window, seeing Max sans shirt, doing pull-ups in his doorway. His finely muscled back was turned toward her, and she felt a pang of longing, of need so powerful that it took her breath away.
Maybe that older Max hadn't been so far off base after all. Maybe she would have made love to Max.
She shook her head, clearing that thought out immediately.
She was wasting time.
Before she had time to change her mind, she knocked on the window.
He turned toward the window, his eyes warming when he saw her outside the glass.
He walked over to the window, with fluid grace, his toned skin exposed from the waist up making her heart race. He opened the window.
"Well, this is a surprise," he said, with a teasing smile.
"It isn't what you think" she said, shaking her head.
He went to take her arm as she started to climb in.
"No, I can do it," she protested a little too harshly.
She saw the hurt flash across his eyes as she climbed in.
She concentrated her eyes to the floor, not so much to make sure that she didn't slip, but to avoid looking upon the bare expanse of skin before her.
This wasn't going to work.
"Can you...um, put a shirt on, please?" she asked, averting her eyes.
Max crossed his arms over his chest in a self-conscious gesture and reached for his t-shirt, pulling it over his head.
"Thank you," Liz said, hoping her voice sounded steady, because her whole body was trembling.
"Liz..." Max started, and she stepped back, knowing this was the moment she'd dreaded. If he started to talk, it would all be over and she wouldn't have the will to do what she knew she must.
"Don't say anything, ok? Um, because I...I came in here with this whole speech, and once you start talking, my speech doesn't apply, and everything gets changed, and I just want to make sure that I say everything to you, so just don't say anything. Just don't say anything,," she said, taking a deep breath.
She could feel his warm eyes on her, and it was unnerving. He looked at her expectantly, with just a touch of humor, much like he had the day she'd come to him with her list of alien-related questions so long ago. But this was going to be different.
"Ok, I...I just re-read "Romeo and Juliet", and you know, the first thing that I realized is that isn't even the title. It's called "The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet". They die. You know, she's this young girl, she...she's younger than me, and she dies," she said.
"Look, I think the reason why people think that it's such a romantic play is they don't know what it's like to be put in that position...but when your life and...and other people's lives are...are put at risk, there isn't anything romantic about it," she continued.
His eyes grew serious, and she could see that he was putting the pieces of her allegory together. But the worst was still to come. But this, this...thing she was about to say, this next lie she was going to tell was going to break her heart, and his.
"Max, you can't stop what's happening to you. I mean, your life will always be dangerous, but my life, it doesn't have to be. My life is only in danger if I am with you. I...I want to be in love with boys...normal boys. I...I want to see my 21st birthday. I...I want to have a wedding day. I...I...I want to have children...and I want my children to be safe. You know, Max, if...if you truly love me, you'll let me go. I may love you, but I...I don't want to die for you," she said, shaking her head.
Her heart screamed at the injustice of it all, that she had to give up the one person she would love for a lifetime. It cried out for the complete and utter lie that fell from her lips, the lie that she would give anything not to speak, the lie that caused his eyes to fill with unshed tears as he stared at her, not wanting to believe what she was telling him.
It took every ounce of will, of courage not to run to him, to throw her arms around him, to tell him that none of it was true, that she would give up anything to be with him, to have his love, that she would die for him a thousand times over.
Instead she turned from him and walked to the window, the steadiness of her gait miraculously not betraying the turmoil in her heart.
She didn't look back. She couldn't. If she had, everything she'd done would be for nothing.
******
As Max sat with Maria in the Crashdown that night, he'd asked her what he should do.
Maria was still stinging from what she perceived to be Michael's betrayal with Courtney, the new waitress. Earlier she had caught Michael at Courtney's apartment. When Courtney emerged from the bathroom in a towel, she fled.
"You just want me to tell you that it's all gonna work out, right?" she asked Max.
"No. I want to hear what you have to say," he said firmly.
" Ok. Here's what I think...give Liz up. Leave her alone. All this is leading nowhere. None of us belong with any of you. And I'm really sick of how much it's screwing us up. I mean, look at us. We're pathetic," she sighed.
******
Liz sat across from older Max, crying for all she'd lost, for the hurtful things she'd said to her Max. Even knowing that it would save all of them didn't take any of the paralyzing pain away.
Older Max reached over to grab a tissue, and his hand seemed to become insubstantial, slipping through the box.
Liz watched it happen.
“What...what's happening?” she asked.
“This must be it. What you did must have worked. I'm leaving,” he said.
“What, so you're just...you're going back to where you came from?” she asked.
“No. There's nowhere to go back to,” he said, ruefully.
************
Maria stared at Max with a mixture of resignation and compassion.
“You're not there, are you?” she asked.
Max shrugged sadly.
“I can't help it. I love her. What can I say?” he asked.
“You're hopeless,” Maria sighed.
**********
Liz watched him pause, and then his hand shot out to grab the box again. This time, he was able to pick it up.
“It didn't work. We have to do something else,” he said, angry that he was still whole, angry that he had to push Liz even further than he already had. He should have known it wouldn’t have been this easy to make himself turn away from her. After all, it was Liz.
“No, I...I can't,” Liz said, almost frantic, shaking her head.
“You have to,” Max answered fiercely.
And then Liz got angry. Hot tears streamed down her face as she spoke.
“Do you know how hard it was for me to tell him that I didn't want to die for him? He's the only reason that I'm alive right now. You...you've...you gotta come up with another plan. Please go to someone else. I...I just...I can't do this anymore!” she said.
He hadn’t wanted to tell her, but now he knew he had no choice.
“Just 25 minutes before I came here, I held Michael in my arms...dead. Isabel died 2 weeks before that. Now you have to do this. You have to find a way. All of our lives depend on it,” he said.
“How? What can I do that's gonna make you turn away from me?” she asked, feeling helpless.
“I don't know,” he said.
***********
When Liz saw Maria, the idea popped into her head. It would work. It had to. It was the only thing that would turn Max from her.
She went to Kyle to ask him to help her. She could give no explanations, but being who he was, he said yes without question.
He waited outside the door in her bedroom while she got ready.
“I don't think this is a good plan,” he said, standing behind her.
He had asked her to find a way, but this...this would be too much to bear.
“What are you talking about?” she asked, irritated as she stared at his reflection in the mirror.
“You really think this is gonna work? I would never be jealous of Kyle,” he said, trying to convince himself just as much as he was trying to convince her, and failing at it.
“Can you turn around?” she asked, and he hesitated and complied as she started to undress.
“ So that's like meditation, right? Incense, that sort of thing?” she called to Kyle.
“It's really about approaching life through a spiritual place and becoming in tune with different planes of existence,” he answered, his voice muffled through the closed door.
“What a line of crap,” Max snorted.
“Am I taking my boxers off?” Kyle asked.
“No. Undergarments stay on,” Liz said, almost a little too emphatically.
“Right,” Kyle said.
“If he tries anything...” Max said, as Liz turned to him.
“I've got it under control. Please stay out of earshot,” she said.
As she and Kyle lay in bed together, ironically talking about Max, he climbed up her balcony with Gomez tickets in hand.
As Liz looked out the window in shock, he drops the tickets and backs away.
She had broken his heart, and nothing would ever be the same again.
*******
“I've fought a thousand battles...but watching you do that was the hardest thing I've ever had to do,” Older Max said to her as she cried quietly next to him.
“The look on his face...on your face,” she faltered, unable to put into words the way to describe the betrayal written across his face. It would haunt her for the rest of her days.
“Maybe it's for the best. For you, too,” Max said.
“What are you talking about?” she asked.
It pained him more than anything he had ever done, but he had to say it, he had to put the seed in her mind before he disappeared altogether. Maybe then she would have a normal life.
“I saw you with Kyle. He's turning out to be a...a great guy. Maybe it would be better for you to be with a human,” he reasoned, hating himself for saying it.
Liz looked at him with a sad smile.
“Don't you realize what you are to me...and you're always gonna be? You're the love of my life. Everyone else is gonna be second best. There'll never be another you,” she said softly, and her words soothed his tattered heart. He should have known that she would say something like that. But there was nothing to be done now. The future was changed. Maybe Tess would stay this time, even if at some point in the future this Liz and her Max found their way back to each other. He couldn’t say that it would be a mistake, because that would be saying that Liz didn’t mean everything to him, and she did. She always had.
“So Max and...Tess are going to be together now,” she asked dully.
“I don't know. I don't know anything now. This is a different world,” he said.
“I'm gonna be alone,” Liz mused.
“Maybe. Maybe not. From now on, the future is to be determined. It's what I've always said to you, Liz. We create our own destiny,” he whispered.
Liz looked up at him with a sad smile.
“Could you dance with me?” she asked.
He was momentarily stunned.
“What?” he asked.
“I wanna have my wedding dance,” she said.
He took her hand and she stood, and as he pulled her closer, he knew that this would be the last time he would ever touch her, ever hold her, ever smell her sweet scent.
For a moment, they danced, and then he was just...gone.
Part 31C (con'td)
After that night, Max became closer to Tess.
On the surface, she was sympathetic to what had happened to him, but underneath it all, she was satisfied that everything was going to plan.
She listened and she comforted him, all the while lying in wait to put her plan into action.
After that night, Liz and Max had grown apart, Max unable to trust Liz, and Liz unable to tell him the truth about what had really happened between she and Kyle.
Maria had endured the lustful looks Courtney had been throwing Michael’s way, and she’d had enough. She confronted Michael, and he swore he was just trying to find out what she was really about, but then Maria caught him in her apartment. Michael knew Courtney was a Skin, and he tried to explain, but Courtney came out of the shower in a towel, and Maria had finally had enough.
Liz accompanied them to Copper Summit for Whitaker’s funeral, even as she endured Max’s accusing eyes. She knew he didn’t believe her, until that one night out on the street when she broke her own heart and told him that she had slept with Kyle. He finally believed it.
Isabel had felt a vague recognition of the Congresswoman’s brother Nicholas. She was right, and came to find out that he was Khivar’s left hand man.
Maria and Michael confronted Courtney, and she told him that she was a Skin loyal to Michael. It was she that went to Copper Summit with them, and they all destroyed the husks of the Skins.
But the Skins came to Roswell, placing the town in stasis, everyone but the aliens disappearing. Liz and Maria, Kyle and the Sheriff came into town right afterward and found everyone gone. They started to disappear, the Sheriff first. Kyle, Maria and Liz headed out of town to find the green crystal Kyle had recognized as out of place.
The Skins had captured the aliens, after Nicholas killed Courtney.
On the drive out of town, Liz realized that they might not make it. She had to tell Max that she still loved him. But she disappeared a moment later. Kyle and Maria made it to the billboard, and Kyle vanished, leaving Maria to disable the crystal with battery cables.
In the school Nicholas was taunting the aliens, now tied up. He started to mind-rape Max for the location of the Granolith, and Tess knew that Max would never do what they needed to. Not yet. Nicholas was getting impatient, and had put all of his chips on using Max and the Granolith now to do what Khivar wanted. He was impulsive, rash. She knew that Zan was not cooperating, and that Lonnie and Rath were going to kill him. Max was their last chance, and they had to play their cards right. He had to feel completely isolated from everyone in order for the plan to work.
She mindwarped Max, Isabel and Michael into thinking she’d destroyed the Skins. She told Nicholas to go to NY, to wait for her there. Lonnie, Rath and Ava would be in Roswell within days, and they would bring Max to NY.
Nicholas didn’t like it, but he took his men and left.
Max’s vulnerability gave Tess the power she needed to take hold of his mind, and she took advantage of it, playing on his insecurities.
Their duplicates, Lonnie, Ava and Rath came to Roswell upon Tess' word, and Lonnie revealed that Isabel betrayed Max in her other life.
Unable to deal with the fact that she could have done something like that, Isabel pulled away from Max. Max felt Michael and Isabel pulling away, and could not get over the fact that Liz had slept with Kyle.
Max decided to leave Roswell with Tess, Lonnie and Rath, to go to the Summit. He told Liz that he couldn’t be friends with her any longer and gave her back the pocketknife she’d given him the Christmas before. When she told him to be careful with the Granolith, he asked her how she knew about it, and she told him she couldn’t tell him, but that he had to trust her, but the problem was, he couldn’t.
He left with the others, bound for New York City, and a summit of the five planets, the outcome of which depended on him. But there was much he did not know.
The summit failed, and unbeknownst to him, Tess killed Lonnie and Rath that last night in NYC. Her plans had nothing to do with the humans she hated. Everything depended on bringing Max back to Antar, and she was going to do anything she could to make that happen. But first, she needed the book translated. It had instructions to operate the Granolith, but that had become secondary to making Max believe that he belonged with her, and that they needed to return to Antar. Khivar was getting impatient.
Against his will, she forced the human named Alex to do it, destroying his mind in the process. As she worked on Alex, she also worked with Max, showing him embellished memories of the lives they'd had on Antar.
But Max was not cooperating, still caught up in his feelings for Liz.
Liz had been seeing Maria’s cousin off and on, kindling Max’s jealousy, making it harder for Tess to control him.
But Max had gone to the prom with her, forcing Tess to accompany Kyle. But her grip on his mind was powerful, and in the end he came to her, telling her it was over between he and Liz.
But it was Alex's death that had broken the group, an unexpected coup for her. It drove a wedge between the humans and the three aliens. After Alex's death, it was easy to manipulate Max, because he was all too willing to accept the suicide excuse that had been brought forth. That excuse absolved the aliens from any part in it. But Liz would not believe it. She knew there was something more to it, and she wouldn't let it go until she had found out the truth about what really happened to her friend. It caused a rift between her and Maria.
At the same time, Max was at odds with Isabel and Michael, throwing his weight around to prevent the group from completely falling apart. Isabel wanted to leave Roswell. Max would have none of it. The final straw was Liz. He grew adamant with her, ordering her to drop her search for what happened the night Alex died. She had suspected that Alex had started to act strangely around the time he had gone to Sweden, and found a photo of him with a blond girl. She had decided that she was going to go to Sweden to talk to the family. Max tried to stop her, threatening her with the end of their friendship. Liz decided to go anyway.
That night, after Max had felt as if he had lost everyone, Tess made her move, breaking the last vestiges of Max's will, now weakened by the betrayals he perceived had been committed against him. For the truth of it was, he couldn't and wouldn't face the idea that Alex's death was alien-related, and he had just lost Liz because of it.
That night, he gave up, feeling completely abandoned. He was numb. Tess convinced him that she would stand by him when everyone else walked away.
It was a selfish act, one he committed out of hopelessness.
That night left Tess with child.
That night changed all of their lives forever. Tess had mind-warped Max into believing that their baby could not survive in the Earth’s atmosphere. Liz and Maria went to Las Cruces to try to piece together what had happened to Alex, and instead found the translation to the book.
Max had fallen apart. Everyone was against him, his son was dying, and now he had to leave Earth to save a his child, when his heart still cried out for Liz. He thought the murderer was still out there, and had to find them within twenty four hours.
He went with Liz to Las Cruces, almost killing an innocent girl in the process. He’d become desperate, careless.
He’d had no choice but to tell Liz that he was leaving, and why. He was shocked at her violent reaction until she slipped and said that she’d saved herself for him, and he began to suspect that his worst nightmare was real. She hadn’t slept with Kyle. She confirmed it when he said goodbye to her in the jeep in front of the Crashdown. As he kissed her one last time, his misery was complete.
Liz went to Sean in a moment of blind despair, intending on erasing the memories of Max with Sean, but being with him only reinforced how much she still loved Max.
Michael was torn as whether he wanted to leave Earth. After everything, he knew he loved Maria, and he didn’t know how he was going to let her go. They spent one last night together, one that he never imagined he would have with her.
In the end, almost too late, they realized that Tess had manipulated all of them. They rushed to the Granolith chamber.
Michael had decided he wasn’t going to go with Max, and was leaving the chamber when he spotted them outside.
They all moved into the chamber and exposed Tess for the traitor she was. Max let her go, because she was carrying his child, and spent the next six months searching for him, slowly driving a wedge between himself and the only girl he’d ever loved.
Max had a lot of time to think about the way he had acted, and he hated himself for it. For Tess had manipulated him into a corner, had convinced him that everyone was against him. He threw himself into finding his child to avoid facing what he'd done to Liz, but nothing could erase what he'd done. Though he and Liz both acted like they could and would move past it, it festered between them.
During the summer, Isabel had met Jesse Ramirez and began an affair that would end in their marriage. Max had gone on a search for his son after feeling him crying out to him, and Liz decided to help him in any way she could.
Together, Max and Liz researched and planned and discovered that something was hidden under a convenience store in Utah. They’d planned a fake robbery to check it out, and they’d been caught. Max was let off, but Liz was going to be brought to trial because it was she that held the clerk at gunpoint. A hearing ensued, but Max’s father had found legal loophole, and the case was dropped. Max's parents, especially his father, were concerned about this behavior and the secrets he was obviously keeping, and told Max that unless he came clean, he couldn't come home. Max wound up leaving, rather than to tell them the truth.
The Parkers refused to let Liz see Max any longer, feeling he was a bad influence on her, and had been all summer. This latest incident only seemed to confirm their impression.
He and Liz had to see each other in secret, stolen moments here and there, but never enough.
Max went to LA after he had been questioned and was under suspicion for the murder of a man who had threatened Michael while Max was in Utah. The man had been murdered in Los Angeles, burned to dust
He met Kal Langley the first time when Kal tried to kill him in the Paramount Studios vault. Kal was making a living as a movie producer. Max paid a visit to a party he was hosting at his house. He soon discovered that Kal was his protector, that Kal had to do whatever Max said, and Max ordered him to find and navigate the space ship that he and Liz had discovered underneath the convenience in Utah. It had disappeared when he’d gone back the second time.
Kal didn’t want anything to do with it, but he was unable to disobey the command of his King. Max insisted, and the ship failed to work. He left Los Angeles, realizing what he had done to everyone in his quest, knowing that Kal would hate him forever.
The first person he went to was Liz. He knew how he’d treated her, and he vowed never to do it again. She was everything to him, and he’d almost lost her. His son was lost to him now forever.
Isabel had wanted Jesse to know what she was, but the Michael and Max wouldn’t let her tell him. She decided to marry Jesse in spite of it. But she started to get visions of Khivar that frightened her. Her attraction to him frightened her.
He made an appearance at her wedding and then at the hotel she and Jesse were staying in for their honeymoon. Max and Michael followed them out there. Her attraction to Khivar was almost irresistible. It was only her love for the others that gave her the strength to push him through the wormhole he’d treated to take them both back to Antar.
************
As hard as Liz tried, she couldn’t help the resentment she tried to keep hidden. But it eventually manifested itself in alien energy that had been dormant in her body since Max had healed her in the Crashdown.
When Max tried to heal her, it only made things worse. She confronted him, asking him why he’d slept with Tess.
He couldn’t answer.
She said he always wound up hurting her. She decided she wanted to go to boarding school in Vermont, to get away from him, from everything.
Soon after she left Roswell, Michael’s friend at Meta-Chem, the plant he was working security at, was shot. They started to check around, and realized that they were being watched.
They moved to break in, and Max was captured. They’d been looking for “the healer” to heal Clayton Wheeler, the frail, ailing owner of the plant. Max told them he couldn’t stop what was already happening, but they ordered him to do it.
He tried to heal the man, and was drawn into his body in the process, his own body turning to dust. For a while, he ceased to exist, but memories of Liz brought him to consciousness. The older man took on Max’s physical appearance. Clayton decided that in order to be free, he needed to get rid of Liz, and set out to the boarding school.
Liz had felt Max die. She felt the absence of him. When Clayton showed up at the school she’d been drunk and freaked out. She kissed him, and for a split second, Max was with him, and then he buried him again.
Clayton killed his wife and decided he had to kill Liz too. He came after her, and they fought in the attic of her dorm. Max surfaced briefly and told her to kill him. It was the only way. But she couldn’t do it. Then Clayton reemerged and they fell out of the window. Max fought for control, and used his shield to protect her fall. But he couldn’t protect his own. He died on the ground, only Liz’s energy bringing him back.
**********
Tess made it safely back to Antar, but Khivar soon saw that the baby didn’t carry the seal. Why hadn't the child been given the seal?
Tess was imprisoned and Seeraynah, who had been positioned as a spy in Khivar's compound, made her move. She offered to help Tess escape if she gave Seeraynah Max’s whereabouts on Earth. Tess had nowhere to go. She came back with Seeraynah, intending to use the boy as a bargaining chip. They took the Granolith and escaped Antar by ship.
But the ship had been shot down by the military. When the ship crashed, Seeraynah was badly burned. Tess destroyed the scientists in the lab, but Seeraynah had not regained consciousness in time to go with her. Tess left her there to find Max.
Seeraynah awoke shortly after, weakened, in great pain and disoriented. Her first thought was for the Granolith. Using her mind to warp the soldiers, while floating the Granolith on a pad of energy, she temporarily holed herself up in an abandoned warehouse deep below the compound buildings, knowing that she needed to build her strength to attempt to get the Granolith out.
Tess headed straight for the Evans house. None of them were glad to see her, and the military was hot on her tail. Max and Isabel were forced to reveal what they were to their parents.
They tried to escape with the baby, but Tess knew it was fruitless. They’d all had a vote on whether to kill her, and she was shocked when Liz said no. Tess knew there was no way out of this for herself, but some part of her would live on to rule in her son, and would forever be the wedge between Max and Liz. She enlisted Liz’s help to drive her out to the military base, and she destroyed the entire upper structures, killing herself in the process.
Max knew that they were still being watched, and he feared for his son’s life, and so he felt he had no choice but to give him up to a normal human family in the hope that he would be safe.
His father arranged for an adoption and one morning soon after, Max stood heartbroken as they prepared to take him away.
Liz felt the same heartbreak her alternate self felt when Max said goodbye to his son. She was conflicted. As much as the child was a living reminder of how wrong things had gone in this timeline, it wasn’t the child’s fault. The boy was Max’s, and she knew that although he knew it was best that the baby were taken far away from him and the danger he lived with, it still somehow felt as if he were abandoning him. If he had asked her to, she would have raised the child with him, because she loved him that much. But she wouldn’t have been honest if she said it would have been easy for her, because it wouldn’t have.
Before his parents took the child, Max implanted a memory with his son, that he was loved.
After his parents drove away, Max cried in her arms. Together, they got into the car, and she drove him deep into the desert, where they could be alone. Long into the night she held him, trying to will him some comfort in the decision he’d made. She knew he had done the right thing. With the FBI breathing down their necks, it was enough to try to keep out of their sights. She knew that she felt as Max did, and would have never been able to live with herself if an innocent child, Max’s child, was taken by the government and put through unimaginable horrors just because of what he was. She still had those images in her memory of what had happened to Max when he’d been captured.
When dawn broke over the barren sand, Max reached for her and tenderly kissed her, thanking her for being there with him. There was no one else he’d wanted there when he said goodbye to Zan, and he knew how much it had taken for her to be there. He promised a new start for all of them.
Max never spoke of the baby again, and Liz never pushed him to. She knew it hurt him too much, and truthfully, just knowing that the child existed was a small knife in her heart. She still loved Max with all of her heart, but the birth of the child had changed things between them forever. Their innocence was gone.
The end of senior year was upon them, and Liz started to get premonitions.
She got her first one working a shift at the Crashdown. She saw a woman being mugged.
Everything had been semi-normal, as normal as things could be in her situation.
Max asked her whether she’d heard from Northwestern. She’d applied there a month before.
She told him she hadn’t.
When he suggested that he might come with her, she stiffened.
Max had made so many promises to her. So many promises he hadn’t kept, and as much as she loved him, she knew that in the past just being what he was made him unable to keep promises, as much as he might have wanted to. She wanted to believe him, but so much had happened, and the hurt was still so fresh. She knew it would fade, but it would never go away completely. Still, she loved him too much to just let go of what they had together.
He looked crestfallen when she spoke.
She told him that if it were something that he seriously thought he could or would do, then fine, they’d talk about it. But otherwise she asked him not to put her through the emotional roller coaster.
She walked away from him to help a female customer, and received her first premonition. The woman was going to be attacked outside the Crashdown. She and Max followed her outside and prevented her from being hurt.
Later, she received another flash when she and Max were alone in her room. All of the people that she loved would be killed by the FBI.
They had no choice but to tell the others when Liz recognized the face of a science fiction writer that was to appear at the UFO convention in two weeks.
They all met at outside of the pod chamber and it was decided that those in danger, Isabel, Max, Michael and Liz would leave Roswell separately right after graduation.
Jesse had been offered a job in Boston, and wasn’t sure whether he should take it. Isabel decided that she would go with him, and told him to take it.
Maria was torn, having wanted out of the alien chaos for the past year, and now that she was about to get her wish, she wasn’t sure she wanted it anymore. Michael came to her that night to say goodbye to her.
He told her that he didn’t regret one moment with her, and that he loved her, and then sped away on his motorcycle, leaving her to deal with what he’d just said.
The night before graduation, Max seemed distracted. He spread a blanket on the floor as she lit candles around the area, waiting for him to tell her what he was thinking, not wanting to push him.
“Liz, I've been thinking about what happened before. ...We saved that woman's life,” Max said.
She smiled at him from across the balcony.
“I know,” she said.
“I just... I have this weird feeling about it,” Max said.
Suddenly Liz was afraid of what he was going to say next.
“Oh? ...well, what do you mean?” she asked.
She started to walk over to him, but he moved away, crossing the balcony to the grill, facing away from her.
“I...I've just been feeling like I have no path, you know? Nowhere to go. Maybe... maybe that's why I've been put here, to help people. Maybe that's what I should do with my life after I leave Roswell,” he said.
Liz felt fear tightening her heart. He was going to leave, and it sounded like he was going without her.
“Like Tom Joad in Grapes of Wrath, doing good deeds and avoiding the law,” she said, not knowing what else to say.
Max turned and smiled at her.
“The thing is... I can't do that without you,” he said.
Her heart leapt in her chest, and she stepped closer to him.
“I would do anything if it means being with you,” she said.
Max smiled at her again. She’d always loved his smile, the one that he reserved especially for her.
He turned back to take the lid off grill.
“A trick I learned from Superman,” he said. “Let's see if it really works.”
Liz smiled as she watched him, remembering the magical things he did the night of her blind date with Doug Shellow. He’d gotten drunk with Kyle and lost all of his inhibitions, turning car alarms into whimsical music, streetlights into disco balls, and caused the street meters to erupt in sparks.
It seemed like a lifetime ago, and maybe it was. They weren’t the same people.
He picked up a piece of charcoal out of the grill and folded it into his hand, concentrating. He squeezed it, frowning in his effort, and a bright light emanated from his closed fist. A moment later, he opened his hand and wiped the object on the bottom of his shirt.
He turned to face her, walking to stand before her. His eyes met hers, never leaving them as he sank down on one knee, and opened his hand, revealing a diamond where the charcoal had once laid in his hand.
She felt the world spin dizzily for a moment. She’d dreamt of it for the past three years, but so much had happened...
“Oh my g...” she faltered.
He looked up at her and she could see love mixed with vulnerability, the fear that she might reject him
“Liz, they're taking our home from us. They want to kill us, and they might. But when I look in your eyes, I... I don't feel angry or deprived. I feel like the luckiest half-human on the planet,” he said.
Liz smiled at him.
“You're pure, you're... you're true, and you're real. And right now that seems like the only thing that's important. I want to be with you Liz, forever,” he said.
It was crazy, she knew. They were all in great danger, and no one knew what would happen. But whatever it was, she wanted to face it with him.
“Forever may only be twelve days,” she said.
“Then we'll take those twelve days,” he said, placing the diamond in Liz's palm and closing her hand around it, “and we'll live twelve life times.”
“Liz Parker, will you marry me?” he asked.
Liz slowly knelt in front of him and smiled.
“Yes,” she said.
Max beamed and couldn’t stop the laugh of joy from slipping from his lips, and then the smile faded as he pulled her close, brushing her lips with his in a tender kiss.
He pulled away to look at her.
“After graduation,” he promised.
“Okay,” she said, with a tender smile, and their lips met again, filled with sweet promise. But there was still one thing she had to say to him, one thing he had to know.
Max threaded his hands through her hair, caressing her neck with feather light kisses.
“Max,” she whispered, pulling away slightly.
“What is it?” he said, cupping her cheek.
“If we do this...if we make this promise to each other.....” she said, trailing off.
She looked into his eyes.
“You’ve made so many promises, and I...I can’t take you breaking another one. Before, when you said that I’m real and I’m true, and right now that’s the only thing that’s important...well I need this to be important for more than this moment. I need forever. I need to know that this...this means something,” she said.
“Liz,” he said, his eyes filling with tears. “I know that I’ve messed things up badly. I wish that I could take them back. I wish that more than anything. But if you give me the chance, I’ll spend the rest of my life proving to you that you are the most important person in my life. I can’t imagine being without you. I did it once, and I was nothing. I was nothing without you. The mistakes I made only made me realize that I need you more than I ever thought I would need anyone. You...you’re everything to me, and I swear to you, if you’ll let me, I’ll make sure that you never regret a minute with me.”
“Okay,” she said, her eyes filling with tears.
“Okay,” he whispered, pulling her into his arms, pouring every ounce of love he felt for her into his kiss.
*********
Liz’s premonition almost came to pass at their graduation.
She knew the moment she’d feared had arrived sooner than expected when she saw the science fiction writer walk onto the stage. She knew she’d been wrong. They’d all been so wrong.
Max jumped onto the stage and pushed the man out of the way, speaking to let the others get out of the auditorium. As he spoke, the room filled with Secret Service agents.
They barely escaped with their lives. Michael drove into the auditorium on his bike, picking Max up from the stage.
Isabel pressed her rings into Jesse’s hand, telling him she loved him. The lights went out, and when they came back on, the six were gone.
The aliens had to leave with Liz. There was no choice for any of them. But the humans had a choice.
They all struggled with the decision, knowing that once they left, it was likely that they could never come back.
Kyle and Maria had decided to go with them.
Jesse followed them out to the desert and gave them a van.
He wanted to come with them, but Isabel wouldn’t let him. He didn’t have to be involved in any of it.
The Sheriff came and escorted them to the state line.
Isabel left Jesse behind.
From that moment on, they lived a life on the run from the FBI, always moving, never staying in one town for too long. It wasn’t safe.
Two months later, she and Max were married in a small church in Texas, with only their friends to witness their happiness. It was a bittersweet day, both of them wanting so badly to share it with their parents, but knowing that it wasn’t possible.
Maria cried as Liz came out of the small room in her dress.
“God, you look beautiful Liz,” she said with a sob.
And she was beautiful, wearing a hip-hugging white embroidered skirt and a beautiful matching off-the-shoulder long-sleeved peasant blouse that allowed a glimpse of her stomach. Isabel had used her powers to convert an old blouse and skirt they’d bought at a consignment store. She had sat with Liz for hours, changing it until it was just what Liz wanted.
Maria had woven flowers into her hair, curling it so that it fell down her back in a cascade of shimmering waves.
Isabel looked on with tears in her eyes as well. Her brother was getting married, and the day also brought back memories of her own marriage to Jesse.
Liz had asked Kyle to give her away, and he’d agreed readily.
She would never forget the look of awe in Max’s eyes as she appeared at the end of the short aisle, her arm linked with Kyle’s.
These past weeks had been hard. She wanted to be able to put what had happened between Max and Tess aside. She wanted to make peace with it, but it was always there in the back of her mind, along with the lies she had told that had set that course in motion.
But standing with Max at the altar, she momentarily forgot her misgivings about Tess and the baby, and truly felt beautiful and treasured. She wanted to freeze those seconds, so that she would always remember them, for this was the most important day of her life. She desperately wanted to leave the past behind, the hurts and the fears. She wanted this to be a day when she and Max would take a step toward their future, together.
He was devastating in his tuxedo. She’d only seen him in one twice, and neither of them had been particularly good memories. First at Isabel’s wedding, when she’d had to deal with her father’s coldness toward Max, and the second on prom night, which had turned out to be a disaster.
Standing up at the altar with love shining in his eyes only for her, she wanted to believe that none of it mattered anymore.
Despite everything, they’d made it. They’d found their way back to each other, and now they were bonding themselves together with a commitment that would last the rest of their lives.
She barely remembered the short ceremony, so caught up in Max, as he was enthralled with her.
Soon, they left the church as man and wife.
They both had decided to wait until they were married to make love. Things had been so hectic, and they’d all been together almost every moment of the day, first for protection in numbers, and then because meager incomes necessitated it.
Though they never voiced it, it was an unspoken understanding between them that they do things the right way this time.
A few days before the wedding, without Liz’s knowledge, and with the encouragement of the others, Max broke the rule they’d all agreed on, and used his powers to change the meager salary that he’d made that week. Michael went to the hotel disguised as a messenger and used his own on the hotel’s computer and reserved a room at Tremont House in Galveston with a non-existent credit card.
Liz was shocked when the others dropped them off for the night. The hotel was a beautiful Victorian style building. He grabbed their small suitcase, and they bid their friends farewell for the evening.
Liz was finally Mrs. Max Evans, but she couldn’t help feeling a little bit nervous about what was to come.
“Max,” she gasped as they walked into the lobby, “we can’t afford this.”
He leaned down to press his lips against hers, and smiled.
“This is a special day, and I only want you to have the best,” he said simply. “Starting today, I am making good on my promise. I am going to do everything in my power to make sure that you never regret staying with me.”
“Oh Max,” she said, a tear sliding down her cheek. He wiped the tear away with a tender brush of his thumb.
“I love you,” he whispered.
“I love you too,” she breathed, a tremble in her voice. And she did. She knew she loved him, but something inside of her was still questioning if that would be enough.
“Wait here,” he said, stepping away from her to check them in.
*************
On the surface, she was sympathetic to what had happened to him, but underneath it all, she was satisfied that everything was going to plan.
She listened and she comforted him, all the while lying in wait to put her plan into action.
After that night, Liz and Max had grown apart, Max unable to trust Liz, and Liz unable to tell him the truth about what had really happened between she and Kyle.
Maria had endured the lustful looks Courtney had been throwing Michael’s way, and she’d had enough. She confronted Michael, and he swore he was just trying to find out what she was really about, but then Maria caught him in her apartment. Michael knew Courtney was a Skin, and he tried to explain, but Courtney came out of the shower in a towel, and Maria had finally had enough.
Liz accompanied them to Copper Summit for Whitaker’s funeral, even as she endured Max’s accusing eyes. She knew he didn’t believe her, until that one night out on the street when she broke her own heart and told him that she had slept with Kyle. He finally believed it.
Isabel had felt a vague recognition of the Congresswoman’s brother Nicholas. She was right, and came to find out that he was Khivar’s left hand man.
Maria and Michael confronted Courtney, and she told him that she was a Skin loyal to Michael. It was she that went to Copper Summit with them, and they all destroyed the husks of the Skins.
But the Skins came to Roswell, placing the town in stasis, everyone but the aliens disappearing. Liz and Maria, Kyle and the Sheriff came into town right afterward and found everyone gone. They started to disappear, the Sheriff first. Kyle, Maria and Liz headed out of town to find the green crystal Kyle had recognized as out of place.
The Skins had captured the aliens, after Nicholas killed Courtney.
On the drive out of town, Liz realized that they might not make it. She had to tell Max that she still loved him. But she disappeared a moment later. Kyle and Maria made it to the billboard, and Kyle vanished, leaving Maria to disable the crystal with battery cables.
In the school Nicholas was taunting the aliens, now tied up. He started to mind-rape Max for the location of the Granolith, and Tess knew that Max would never do what they needed to. Not yet. Nicholas was getting impatient, and had put all of his chips on using Max and the Granolith now to do what Khivar wanted. He was impulsive, rash. She knew that Zan was not cooperating, and that Lonnie and Rath were going to kill him. Max was their last chance, and they had to play their cards right. He had to feel completely isolated from everyone in order for the plan to work.
She mindwarped Max, Isabel and Michael into thinking she’d destroyed the Skins. She told Nicholas to go to NY, to wait for her there. Lonnie, Rath and Ava would be in Roswell within days, and they would bring Max to NY.
Nicholas didn’t like it, but he took his men and left.
Max’s vulnerability gave Tess the power she needed to take hold of his mind, and she took advantage of it, playing on his insecurities.
Their duplicates, Lonnie, Ava and Rath came to Roswell upon Tess' word, and Lonnie revealed that Isabel betrayed Max in her other life.
Unable to deal with the fact that she could have done something like that, Isabel pulled away from Max. Max felt Michael and Isabel pulling away, and could not get over the fact that Liz had slept with Kyle.
Max decided to leave Roswell with Tess, Lonnie and Rath, to go to the Summit. He told Liz that he couldn’t be friends with her any longer and gave her back the pocketknife she’d given him the Christmas before. When she told him to be careful with the Granolith, he asked her how she knew about it, and she told him she couldn’t tell him, but that he had to trust her, but the problem was, he couldn’t.
He left with the others, bound for New York City, and a summit of the five planets, the outcome of which depended on him. But there was much he did not know.
The summit failed, and unbeknownst to him, Tess killed Lonnie and Rath that last night in NYC. Her plans had nothing to do with the humans she hated. Everything depended on bringing Max back to Antar, and she was going to do anything she could to make that happen. But first, she needed the book translated. It had instructions to operate the Granolith, but that had become secondary to making Max believe that he belonged with her, and that they needed to return to Antar. Khivar was getting impatient.
Against his will, she forced the human named Alex to do it, destroying his mind in the process. As she worked on Alex, she also worked with Max, showing him embellished memories of the lives they'd had on Antar.
But Max was not cooperating, still caught up in his feelings for Liz.
Liz had been seeing Maria’s cousin off and on, kindling Max’s jealousy, making it harder for Tess to control him.
But Max had gone to the prom with her, forcing Tess to accompany Kyle. But her grip on his mind was powerful, and in the end he came to her, telling her it was over between he and Liz.
But it was Alex's death that had broken the group, an unexpected coup for her. It drove a wedge between the humans and the three aliens. After Alex's death, it was easy to manipulate Max, because he was all too willing to accept the suicide excuse that had been brought forth. That excuse absolved the aliens from any part in it. But Liz would not believe it. She knew there was something more to it, and she wouldn't let it go until she had found out the truth about what really happened to her friend. It caused a rift between her and Maria.
At the same time, Max was at odds with Isabel and Michael, throwing his weight around to prevent the group from completely falling apart. Isabel wanted to leave Roswell. Max would have none of it. The final straw was Liz. He grew adamant with her, ordering her to drop her search for what happened the night Alex died. She had suspected that Alex had started to act strangely around the time he had gone to Sweden, and found a photo of him with a blond girl. She had decided that she was going to go to Sweden to talk to the family. Max tried to stop her, threatening her with the end of their friendship. Liz decided to go anyway.
That night, after Max had felt as if he had lost everyone, Tess made her move, breaking the last vestiges of Max's will, now weakened by the betrayals he perceived had been committed against him. For the truth of it was, he couldn't and wouldn't face the idea that Alex's death was alien-related, and he had just lost Liz because of it.
That night, he gave up, feeling completely abandoned. He was numb. Tess convinced him that she would stand by him when everyone else walked away.
It was a selfish act, one he committed out of hopelessness.
That night left Tess with child.
That night changed all of their lives forever. Tess had mind-warped Max into believing that their baby could not survive in the Earth’s atmosphere. Liz and Maria went to Las Cruces to try to piece together what had happened to Alex, and instead found the translation to the book.
Max had fallen apart. Everyone was against him, his son was dying, and now he had to leave Earth to save a his child, when his heart still cried out for Liz. He thought the murderer was still out there, and had to find them within twenty four hours.
He went with Liz to Las Cruces, almost killing an innocent girl in the process. He’d become desperate, careless.
He’d had no choice but to tell Liz that he was leaving, and why. He was shocked at her violent reaction until she slipped and said that she’d saved herself for him, and he began to suspect that his worst nightmare was real. She hadn’t slept with Kyle. She confirmed it when he said goodbye to her in the jeep in front of the Crashdown. As he kissed her one last time, his misery was complete.
Liz went to Sean in a moment of blind despair, intending on erasing the memories of Max with Sean, but being with him only reinforced how much she still loved Max.
Michael was torn as whether he wanted to leave Earth. After everything, he knew he loved Maria, and he didn’t know how he was going to let her go. They spent one last night together, one that he never imagined he would have with her.
In the end, almost too late, they realized that Tess had manipulated all of them. They rushed to the Granolith chamber.
Michael had decided he wasn’t going to go with Max, and was leaving the chamber when he spotted them outside.
They all moved into the chamber and exposed Tess for the traitor she was. Max let her go, because she was carrying his child, and spent the next six months searching for him, slowly driving a wedge between himself and the only girl he’d ever loved.
Max had a lot of time to think about the way he had acted, and he hated himself for it. For Tess had manipulated him into a corner, had convinced him that everyone was against him. He threw himself into finding his child to avoid facing what he'd done to Liz, but nothing could erase what he'd done. Though he and Liz both acted like they could and would move past it, it festered between them.
During the summer, Isabel had met Jesse Ramirez and began an affair that would end in their marriage. Max had gone on a search for his son after feeling him crying out to him, and Liz decided to help him in any way she could.
Together, Max and Liz researched and planned and discovered that something was hidden under a convenience store in Utah. They’d planned a fake robbery to check it out, and they’d been caught. Max was let off, but Liz was going to be brought to trial because it was she that held the clerk at gunpoint. A hearing ensued, but Max’s father had found legal loophole, and the case was dropped. Max's parents, especially his father, were concerned about this behavior and the secrets he was obviously keeping, and told Max that unless he came clean, he couldn't come home. Max wound up leaving, rather than to tell them the truth.
The Parkers refused to let Liz see Max any longer, feeling he was a bad influence on her, and had been all summer. This latest incident only seemed to confirm their impression.
He and Liz had to see each other in secret, stolen moments here and there, but never enough.
Max went to LA after he had been questioned and was under suspicion for the murder of a man who had threatened Michael while Max was in Utah. The man had been murdered in Los Angeles, burned to dust
He met Kal Langley the first time when Kal tried to kill him in the Paramount Studios vault. Kal was making a living as a movie producer. Max paid a visit to a party he was hosting at his house. He soon discovered that Kal was his protector, that Kal had to do whatever Max said, and Max ordered him to find and navigate the space ship that he and Liz had discovered underneath the convenience in Utah. It had disappeared when he’d gone back the second time.
Kal didn’t want anything to do with it, but he was unable to disobey the command of his King. Max insisted, and the ship failed to work. He left Los Angeles, realizing what he had done to everyone in his quest, knowing that Kal would hate him forever.
The first person he went to was Liz. He knew how he’d treated her, and he vowed never to do it again. She was everything to him, and he’d almost lost her. His son was lost to him now forever.
Isabel had wanted Jesse to know what she was, but the Michael and Max wouldn’t let her tell him. She decided to marry Jesse in spite of it. But she started to get visions of Khivar that frightened her. Her attraction to him frightened her.
He made an appearance at her wedding and then at the hotel she and Jesse were staying in for their honeymoon. Max and Michael followed them out there. Her attraction to Khivar was almost irresistible. It was only her love for the others that gave her the strength to push him through the wormhole he’d treated to take them both back to Antar.
************
As hard as Liz tried, she couldn’t help the resentment she tried to keep hidden. But it eventually manifested itself in alien energy that had been dormant in her body since Max had healed her in the Crashdown.
When Max tried to heal her, it only made things worse. She confronted him, asking him why he’d slept with Tess.
He couldn’t answer.
She said he always wound up hurting her. She decided she wanted to go to boarding school in Vermont, to get away from him, from everything.
Soon after she left Roswell, Michael’s friend at Meta-Chem, the plant he was working security at, was shot. They started to check around, and realized that they were being watched.
They moved to break in, and Max was captured. They’d been looking for “the healer” to heal Clayton Wheeler, the frail, ailing owner of the plant. Max told them he couldn’t stop what was already happening, but they ordered him to do it.
He tried to heal the man, and was drawn into his body in the process, his own body turning to dust. For a while, he ceased to exist, but memories of Liz brought him to consciousness. The older man took on Max’s physical appearance. Clayton decided that in order to be free, he needed to get rid of Liz, and set out to the boarding school.
Liz had felt Max die. She felt the absence of him. When Clayton showed up at the school she’d been drunk and freaked out. She kissed him, and for a split second, Max was with him, and then he buried him again.
Clayton killed his wife and decided he had to kill Liz too. He came after her, and they fought in the attic of her dorm. Max surfaced briefly and told her to kill him. It was the only way. But she couldn’t do it. Then Clayton reemerged and they fell out of the window. Max fought for control, and used his shield to protect her fall. But he couldn’t protect his own. He died on the ground, only Liz’s energy bringing him back.
**********
Tess made it safely back to Antar, but Khivar soon saw that the baby didn’t carry the seal. Why hadn't the child been given the seal?
Tess was imprisoned and Seeraynah, who had been positioned as a spy in Khivar's compound, made her move. She offered to help Tess escape if she gave Seeraynah Max’s whereabouts on Earth. Tess had nowhere to go. She came back with Seeraynah, intending to use the boy as a bargaining chip. They took the Granolith and escaped Antar by ship.
But the ship had been shot down by the military. When the ship crashed, Seeraynah was badly burned. Tess destroyed the scientists in the lab, but Seeraynah had not regained consciousness in time to go with her. Tess left her there to find Max.
Seeraynah awoke shortly after, weakened, in great pain and disoriented. Her first thought was for the Granolith. Using her mind to warp the soldiers, while floating the Granolith on a pad of energy, she temporarily holed herself up in an abandoned warehouse deep below the compound buildings, knowing that she needed to build her strength to attempt to get the Granolith out.
Tess headed straight for the Evans house. None of them were glad to see her, and the military was hot on her tail. Max and Isabel were forced to reveal what they were to their parents.
They tried to escape with the baby, but Tess knew it was fruitless. They’d all had a vote on whether to kill her, and she was shocked when Liz said no. Tess knew there was no way out of this for herself, but some part of her would live on to rule in her son, and would forever be the wedge between Max and Liz. She enlisted Liz’s help to drive her out to the military base, and she destroyed the entire upper structures, killing herself in the process.
Max knew that they were still being watched, and he feared for his son’s life, and so he felt he had no choice but to give him up to a normal human family in the hope that he would be safe.
His father arranged for an adoption and one morning soon after, Max stood heartbroken as they prepared to take him away.
Liz felt the same heartbreak her alternate self felt when Max said goodbye to his son. She was conflicted. As much as the child was a living reminder of how wrong things had gone in this timeline, it wasn’t the child’s fault. The boy was Max’s, and she knew that although he knew it was best that the baby were taken far away from him and the danger he lived with, it still somehow felt as if he were abandoning him. If he had asked her to, she would have raised the child with him, because she loved him that much. But she wouldn’t have been honest if she said it would have been easy for her, because it wouldn’t have.
Before his parents took the child, Max implanted a memory with his son, that he was loved.
After his parents drove away, Max cried in her arms. Together, they got into the car, and she drove him deep into the desert, where they could be alone. Long into the night she held him, trying to will him some comfort in the decision he’d made. She knew he had done the right thing. With the FBI breathing down their necks, it was enough to try to keep out of their sights. She knew that she felt as Max did, and would have never been able to live with herself if an innocent child, Max’s child, was taken by the government and put through unimaginable horrors just because of what he was. She still had those images in her memory of what had happened to Max when he’d been captured.
When dawn broke over the barren sand, Max reached for her and tenderly kissed her, thanking her for being there with him. There was no one else he’d wanted there when he said goodbye to Zan, and he knew how much it had taken for her to be there. He promised a new start for all of them.
Max never spoke of the baby again, and Liz never pushed him to. She knew it hurt him too much, and truthfully, just knowing that the child existed was a small knife in her heart. She still loved Max with all of her heart, but the birth of the child had changed things between them forever. Their innocence was gone.
The end of senior year was upon them, and Liz started to get premonitions.
She got her first one working a shift at the Crashdown. She saw a woman being mugged.
Everything had been semi-normal, as normal as things could be in her situation.
Max asked her whether she’d heard from Northwestern. She’d applied there a month before.
She told him she hadn’t.
When he suggested that he might come with her, she stiffened.
Max had made so many promises to her. So many promises he hadn’t kept, and as much as she loved him, she knew that in the past just being what he was made him unable to keep promises, as much as he might have wanted to. She wanted to believe him, but so much had happened, and the hurt was still so fresh. She knew it would fade, but it would never go away completely. Still, she loved him too much to just let go of what they had together.
He looked crestfallen when she spoke.
She told him that if it were something that he seriously thought he could or would do, then fine, they’d talk about it. But otherwise she asked him not to put her through the emotional roller coaster.
She walked away from him to help a female customer, and received her first premonition. The woman was going to be attacked outside the Crashdown. She and Max followed her outside and prevented her from being hurt.
Later, she received another flash when she and Max were alone in her room. All of the people that she loved would be killed by the FBI.
They had no choice but to tell the others when Liz recognized the face of a science fiction writer that was to appear at the UFO convention in two weeks.
They all met at outside of the pod chamber and it was decided that those in danger, Isabel, Max, Michael and Liz would leave Roswell separately right after graduation.
Jesse had been offered a job in Boston, and wasn’t sure whether he should take it. Isabel decided that she would go with him, and told him to take it.
Maria was torn, having wanted out of the alien chaos for the past year, and now that she was about to get her wish, she wasn’t sure she wanted it anymore. Michael came to her that night to say goodbye to her.
He told her that he didn’t regret one moment with her, and that he loved her, and then sped away on his motorcycle, leaving her to deal with what he’d just said.
The night before graduation, Max seemed distracted. He spread a blanket on the floor as she lit candles around the area, waiting for him to tell her what he was thinking, not wanting to push him.
“Liz, I've been thinking about what happened before. ...We saved that woman's life,” Max said.
She smiled at him from across the balcony.
“I know,” she said.
“I just... I have this weird feeling about it,” Max said.
Suddenly Liz was afraid of what he was going to say next.
“Oh? ...well, what do you mean?” she asked.
She started to walk over to him, but he moved away, crossing the balcony to the grill, facing away from her.
“I...I've just been feeling like I have no path, you know? Nowhere to go. Maybe... maybe that's why I've been put here, to help people. Maybe that's what I should do with my life after I leave Roswell,” he said.
Liz felt fear tightening her heart. He was going to leave, and it sounded like he was going without her.
“Like Tom Joad in Grapes of Wrath, doing good deeds and avoiding the law,” she said, not knowing what else to say.
Max turned and smiled at her.
“The thing is... I can't do that without you,” he said.
Her heart leapt in her chest, and she stepped closer to him.
“I would do anything if it means being with you,” she said.
Max smiled at her again. She’d always loved his smile, the one that he reserved especially for her.
He turned back to take the lid off grill.
“A trick I learned from Superman,” he said. “Let's see if it really works.”
Liz smiled as she watched him, remembering the magical things he did the night of her blind date with Doug Shellow. He’d gotten drunk with Kyle and lost all of his inhibitions, turning car alarms into whimsical music, streetlights into disco balls, and caused the street meters to erupt in sparks.
It seemed like a lifetime ago, and maybe it was. They weren’t the same people.
He picked up a piece of charcoal out of the grill and folded it into his hand, concentrating. He squeezed it, frowning in his effort, and a bright light emanated from his closed fist. A moment later, he opened his hand and wiped the object on the bottom of his shirt.
He turned to face her, walking to stand before her. His eyes met hers, never leaving them as he sank down on one knee, and opened his hand, revealing a diamond where the charcoal had once laid in his hand.
She felt the world spin dizzily for a moment. She’d dreamt of it for the past three years, but so much had happened...
“Oh my g...” she faltered.
He looked up at her and she could see love mixed with vulnerability, the fear that she might reject him
“Liz, they're taking our home from us. They want to kill us, and they might. But when I look in your eyes, I... I don't feel angry or deprived. I feel like the luckiest half-human on the planet,” he said.
Liz smiled at him.
“You're pure, you're... you're true, and you're real. And right now that seems like the only thing that's important. I want to be with you Liz, forever,” he said.
It was crazy, she knew. They were all in great danger, and no one knew what would happen. But whatever it was, she wanted to face it with him.
“Forever may only be twelve days,” she said.
“Then we'll take those twelve days,” he said, placing the diamond in Liz's palm and closing her hand around it, “and we'll live twelve life times.”
“Liz Parker, will you marry me?” he asked.
Liz slowly knelt in front of him and smiled.
“Yes,” she said.
Max beamed and couldn’t stop the laugh of joy from slipping from his lips, and then the smile faded as he pulled her close, brushing her lips with his in a tender kiss.
He pulled away to look at her.
“After graduation,” he promised.
“Okay,” she said, with a tender smile, and their lips met again, filled with sweet promise. But there was still one thing she had to say to him, one thing he had to know.
Max threaded his hands through her hair, caressing her neck with feather light kisses.
“Max,” she whispered, pulling away slightly.
“What is it?” he said, cupping her cheek.
“If we do this...if we make this promise to each other.....” she said, trailing off.
She looked into his eyes.
“You’ve made so many promises, and I...I can’t take you breaking another one. Before, when you said that I’m real and I’m true, and right now that’s the only thing that’s important...well I need this to be important for more than this moment. I need forever. I need to know that this...this means something,” she said.
“Liz,” he said, his eyes filling with tears. “I know that I’ve messed things up badly. I wish that I could take them back. I wish that more than anything. But if you give me the chance, I’ll spend the rest of my life proving to you that you are the most important person in my life. I can’t imagine being without you. I did it once, and I was nothing. I was nothing without you. The mistakes I made only made me realize that I need you more than I ever thought I would need anyone. You...you’re everything to me, and I swear to you, if you’ll let me, I’ll make sure that you never regret a minute with me.”
“Okay,” she said, her eyes filling with tears.
“Okay,” he whispered, pulling her into his arms, pouring every ounce of love he felt for her into his kiss.
*********
Liz’s premonition almost came to pass at their graduation.
She knew the moment she’d feared had arrived sooner than expected when she saw the science fiction writer walk onto the stage. She knew she’d been wrong. They’d all been so wrong.
Max jumped onto the stage and pushed the man out of the way, speaking to let the others get out of the auditorium. As he spoke, the room filled with Secret Service agents.
They barely escaped with their lives. Michael drove into the auditorium on his bike, picking Max up from the stage.
Isabel pressed her rings into Jesse’s hand, telling him she loved him. The lights went out, and when they came back on, the six were gone.
The aliens had to leave with Liz. There was no choice for any of them. But the humans had a choice.
They all struggled with the decision, knowing that once they left, it was likely that they could never come back.
Kyle and Maria had decided to go with them.
Jesse followed them out to the desert and gave them a van.
He wanted to come with them, but Isabel wouldn’t let him. He didn’t have to be involved in any of it.
The Sheriff came and escorted them to the state line.
Isabel left Jesse behind.
From that moment on, they lived a life on the run from the FBI, always moving, never staying in one town for too long. It wasn’t safe.
Two months later, she and Max were married in a small church in Texas, with only their friends to witness their happiness. It was a bittersweet day, both of them wanting so badly to share it with their parents, but knowing that it wasn’t possible.
Maria cried as Liz came out of the small room in her dress.
“God, you look beautiful Liz,” she said with a sob.
And she was beautiful, wearing a hip-hugging white embroidered skirt and a beautiful matching off-the-shoulder long-sleeved peasant blouse that allowed a glimpse of her stomach. Isabel had used her powers to convert an old blouse and skirt they’d bought at a consignment store. She had sat with Liz for hours, changing it until it was just what Liz wanted.
Maria had woven flowers into her hair, curling it so that it fell down her back in a cascade of shimmering waves.
Isabel looked on with tears in her eyes as well. Her brother was getting married, and the day also brought back memories of her own marriage to Jesse.
Liz had asked Kyle to give her away, and he’d agreed readily.
She would never forget the look of awe in Max’s eyes as she appeared at the end of the short aisle, her arm linked with Kyle’s.
These past weeks had been hard. She wanted to be able to put what had happened between Max and Tess aside. She wanted to make peace with it, but it was always there in the back of her mind, along with the lies she had told that had set that course in motion.
But standing with Max at the altar, she momentarily forgot her misgivings about Tess and the baby, and truly felt beautiful and treasured. She wanted to freeze those seconds, so that she would always remember them, for this was the most important day of her life. She desperately wanted to leave the past behind, the hurts and the fears. She wanted this to be a day when she and Max would take a step toward their future, together.
He was devastating in his tuxedo. She’d only seen him in one twice, and neither of them had been particularly good memories. First at Isabel’s wedding, when she’d had to deal with her father’s coldness toward Max, and the second on prom night, which had turned out to be a disaster.
Standing up at the altar with love shining in his eyes only for her, she wanted to believe that none of it mattered anymore.
Despite everything, they’d made it. They’d found their way back to each other, and now they were bonding themselves together with a commitment that would last the rest of their lives.
She barely remembered the short ceremony, so caught up in Max, as he was enthralled with her.
Soon, they left the church as man and wife.
They both had decided to wait until they were married to make love. Things had been so hectic, and they’d all been together almost every moment of the day, first for protection in numbers, and then because meager incomes necessitated it.
Though they never voiced it, it was an unspoken understanding between them that they do things the right way this time.
A few days before the wedding, without Liz’s knowledge, and with the encouragement of the others, Max broke the rule they’d all agreed on, and used his powers to change the meager salary that he’d made that week. Michael went to the hotel disguised as a messenger and used his own on the hotel’s computer and reserved a room at Tremont House in Galveston with a non-existent credit card.
Liz was shocked when the others dropped them off for the night. The hotel was a beautiful Victorian style building. He grabbed their small suitcase, and they bid their friends farewell for the evening.
Liz was finally Mrs. Max Evans, but she couldn’t help feeling a little bit nervous about what was to come.
“Max,” she gasped as they walked into the lobby, “we can’t afford this.”
He leaned down to press his lips against hers, and smiled.
“This is a special day, and I only want you to have the best,” he said simply. “Starting today, I am making good on my promise. I am going to do everything in my power to make sure that you never regret staying with me.”
“Oh Max,” she said, a tear sliding down her cheek. He wiped the tear away with a tender brush of his thumb.
“I love you,” he whispered.
“I love you too,” she breathed, a tremble in her voice. And she did. She knew she loved him, but something inside of her was still questioning if that would be enough.
“Wait here,” he said, stepping away from her to check them in.
*************
Last edited by Majesty on Thu Dec 18, 2003 10:33 pm, edited 3 times in total.
Part 31C (Cont'd)
*************
She took in the beautiful design of the lobby, and before she knew it, Max was back with the key to their room.
He took her hand and led her to the elevator, his hand resting at the small of her back, his fingers radiating reassuring warmth against her bare skin.
She felt her heart begin to race as the elevator ascended. She had thought she was ready for this, but now that the moment had come, she felt nervous.
Maria had told her that making love with Michael had been beautiful and mind-shattering, but Liz wondered if it would be the same with her and Max.
It wasn’t as if she and Max weren’t intimate at all. But they’d come nowhere near what was going to happen tonight.
What if he was disappointed? What if she wasn’t what he expected?
What if it wasn’t what she expected?
She couldn’t help the nagging thought that surfaced in her mind. What if she didn’t compare to Tess? It was logical for her to feel this way. After all, Max had been with her.
Through their connection, Max sensed her apprehension, and pulled her into his arms.
“Liz...” he said, cupping her cheek, at a loss as to what to say to her to make her understand that this night, what they were about to do, was everything he’d ever dreamed of.
How could he explain to her that Tess was something he’d wished that he could take back? That it felt somehow alien to him? That he knew with every fiber of his being that there was something off about it, something inherently wrong and primitive, something not at all human?
How could he explain to her that that night, and the weeks that followed, had been one of the darkest periods he’d ever known? That summer into late fall, he chased his son’s ghost, trying to make the one thing he knew he could, right. He knew that he had deeply damaged Liz’s faith in him, and he focused on finding Zan, trying to undo at least one wrong. But it had all been in vain, and it only widened the chasm growing between he and the only girl he’d ever loved. He’d come so close to losing her, and he’d be damned if Tess or any of the alien mess would ever come between them again. He’d die trying to prove it if he had to.
Liz saw the torment in his eyes and told herself that she would let nothing would ruin tonight. Nothing.
She smiled at him and took his hand as the elevator doors slid open.
“It’s going to be all right,” she said in a soft voice, leaning up to press a gentle kiss against his lips.
She tugged his hand pulling him out of the elevator, and the doors slid closed behind them.
The hallway was empty and hushed.
They found their room, and before Liz knew what was happening, he had lifted her into his arms, cradling her head against his neck.
“What are you doing?” she asked, with an amused laugh.
“I’m doing things the proper way,” he said, balancing her as he fit the key into the lock.
He pushed the door open and flipped the light switch on, bathing the room in a soft glow.
“Oh Max, it’s beautiful!” she breathed as she looked around the room.
Set near the window was a brass four poster bed, covered in a white spread. A table nearby held a large vase filled with white roses. The walls were papered in a blue and white striped motif, complimenting the navy carpeting beneath Max’s feet. It was romantic and inviting.
“I’m glad you like it,” he said in a soft voice, turning his head to capture her lips in a kiss filled with the promise of what was to come.
He broke the kiss, struggling to maintain his racing heart.
“I had almost not dared to hope this would come true,” he said, closing his eyes. “I mean, what I saw, I wanted to believe it, but after Alex...I thought I’d ruined everything.”
“What you saw?” Liz asked in confusion.
“I saw us like this in Las Vegas, last year,” he said. “When I was leaving. I walked out to get a cab, and I got a flash of the two of us outside a hotel, just like this. You wore a different dress, but it was you and I. That’s why I came back that night. I thought after everything....”
“Oh....” Liz said, feeling her heart twist in a painful reminder, and everything she’d tried to push away came flooding back to her. He had gotten a flash of the future, of what should have been.
She looked up into his eyes and saw the pain in his eyes, the knowledge of what he’d done soon after that had threatened to drive them apart forever.
“Liz, I know that things can never be the same as they were before Alex died. I know there’s nothing that I can do to take it back, or to change it, but I need you to believe that I will never, ever do anything to hurt you again. I promise you, with all that I am,” he said.
“I want to believe you, Max,” she said softly.
“We need to make a new start,” she said. “It can’t be a clean slate. Too much has happened. But we can move on from here. From this moment on, we make our own destiny.”
He smiled at her and carried her to the bed, lying her down on it in a gentle motion before moving to lie beside her. His fingers caressed her cheek, pushing her hair behind her ear in an unconscious gesture that had always seemed so endearing to her.
“How did I ever get so lucky?” he asked in a soft voice, his eyes shining as they roamed her face.
“Because you were brave,” she answered. “You saved me that day when I should have died at the Crashdown. Not many people would have done that.”
“But not many girls would have accepted me, what I am,” he said, the vulnerability evident in his voice. “You didn’t turn me in. You weren’t afraid...”
“It was a little bit of a shock,” she said. “But Max, you showed me you that night when you came to the Crashdown. Do you have any idea how beautiful you were to me that night? How beautiful you made me feel, knowing you felt that way about me?”
He laid his head in the crook of her neck.
“I was terrified to do that,” he said. “Terrified to show you.”
“Why?” she asked, reaching up to stroke his hair, and turning her head to kiss his forehead in a soothing gesture.
“Because, I knew I was different. I’d always known. I was afraid you’d be disgusted, or scared that someone like me had those kind of feelings about you,” he said. “But you weren’t....”
“Max, I fell in love with you that night. I’d always noticed you, even before the shooting. I knew there was something special about you, but I never dreamed that you could feel the way that you did about me. I mean, every girl I knew wanted to be with you. You were smart, and gorgeous, and mysterious...”
“And an alien,” he finished quietly.
“After that night in the Crashdown, it didn’t matter to me,” she said. “I saw you, not Max Evans the alien, but Max Evans, the boy who thought I was beautiful. The boy who had risked everything to save my life.”
“I knew that letting you see what I was, was going to put you in danger. But I had no choice. I was afraid that you’d go to the police,” he said.
“I wouldn’t have done that,” she said. “You saved my life.”
“And I put you in danger,” he added quietly. “Sometimes I think I should have just stayed away from you. It would have been better for you. I didn’t deserve you, but I was selfish. Look what happened because all of you got involved with us. Alex is dead, and now we have to run. We’ll always have to be looking over our shoulders. It’s not fair to any of you. But I couldn’t let you go, Liz, even after what I Thought I saw happened between you with Kyle. When you walked away from me after Alex died, I thought that I was right. I didn’t deserve you. I never did. I treated you so horribly, and I’d driven you away. I know that I don’t deserve you, but I couldn’t let you go. I can’t. I love you too much.”
Liz tightened her arm around him.
“Is that why you acted the way you did? Because you thought you didn’t deserve me?” she asked.
“I thought I was doing the right thing, trying to force you to face your destiny. But I never stopped loving you,” she said.
He shook his head.
“I pushed you too far. I thought I could convince you that we needed to be together. I never meant to back you into a corner, for you to feel like you had to do something that drastic with Kyle,” he said. “I know now that you didn’t do what I thought you did, but....”
“We both made mistakes. We both thought we were doing the right thing,” she said.
“Liz, after everything we found our way back to each other. We have to hold onto that,” she said. “Because if we don’t, everything we’ve been through, everything and everyone we’ve lost will all have been for nothing.”
“I know,” she said, pulling back to look into his eyes. “I know.”
“I love you,” he whispered.
“I love you too,” she answered softly, running her fingers across his cheek.
He reached up and captured them with his own, leaning closer to capture her lips in a searing kiss. She opened up to him, his tongue gently tracing her lower lip before capturing it between his own.
His heart was strong and steady against her chest as he pulled her to him, needing her to be close.
He opened himself to her, letting her feel every thought, every whispered prayer of longing, every beautiful image he’d had of her over the years. The loneliness he’d felt all of his life had been chased away with the shy glances she’d given him right after he’d healed her, and the unwavering support she’d given him even when her own life was in danger because of it.
She was beautiful, fiercely loyal, unquestioning in her faith in him. After that day in the Crashdown, for the first time he’d felt as if he belonged. The touch of her fingers, the caress of her lips, the feel of her slender body in his arms signaled that he’d finally found his home, a place where he felt safe and not judged, because she knew everything about him, and she wasn’t afraid. She felt his wonder and the hope for the future he had finally dared to dream of.
His pain at the betrayal he thought he saw her commit with Kyle was almost suffocating. He’d lived with that pain until the night he was supposed to leave Earth with Tess. It was then that she told him that what he believed wasn’t true, and that pain doubled in its intensity.
He’d treated her so badly after that, pulling away from her to search for his son. Neither of them had really confronted what had happened between he and Tess, until it got so bad that the changes he’d began in her started to manifest themselves. When he tried to heal her, she said what had remained festering between them for almost a year.
She confronted him with his betrayal. She couldn’t be around him. She left for Vermont and boarding school the next day. He’d saved her life there later, but he knew even that couldn’t erase what he’d done.
He would never forgive himself for that.
But Liz...Liz somehow found it in her heart to love him.
He didn’t have to be alone, not anymore. He didn’t care about being a King. He didn’t care about any of it. All he’d ever wanted was she, and he would spend the rest of his life proving it to her.
It was fate that he was in the Crashdown that day to save her. He believed that.
Something was happening, something she’d never experienced with him before. She felt him, more strongly than ever, a tugging on her very soul, beckoning to her.
“Max,” she whispered, feeling his arousal pressing against her belly.
“Yeah,” he said, breathing heavily.
“What is this?” she asked, as another wave of desire washed over her.
“I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head, trembling.
“I feel like I felt when we found the orb, like, magnified a thousand times,” she gasped.
She felt his heart calling out to hers, needing her to open her herself to him. Her own consciousness resisted.
His hand trailed to her waist, touching her bare skin, and she felt a jolt of painful energy race through her. Her body arched off the bed with its intensity.
“Liz?” he said, in concern. “Liz, are you ok?”
She nodded, letting out a long ragged breath.
It was too much. She thought that she could handle it, but fear momentarily paralyzed her as she received a premonition of the two of them, torn apart by the truth.
She remembered the same fear the day that they had all used the healing stones to try to heal Michael. She had had doubts then too, and had feared for him. Only now she feared for her own heart too.
It was the fear that was causing the pain, and it echoed along their connection, jolting Max’s body as well as her own with an agonizing jolt.
She heard him cry out as he pulled away from her.
She felt tears filling her eyes, for she knew what was supposed to happen between them, and she couldn’t let it. For if she did, he would know everything, and if he knew everything it would destroy the both of them.
She knew that he believed that he would never hurt her, and looking into his eyes, she saw without a doubt that he did believe it.
How can a person love someone so much, and at the same time fear that both their hearts would be broken irreparably?
She knew that it would tear Max apart to know that it was he, a future version that had made her push him away. They couldn’t have known what Tess was. That was exactly why they couldn’t chance it again. There were too many unknowns. She knew that they couldn’t risk going back and changing everything again for something like this. Who knew what might happen? It could make things worse, even if she knew how to initiate it.
She didn’t know it would be this intense. She didn’t know that their marriage was only the start of the bond that was supposed to be sealed between them when they made love. She saw it happen in her premonition, and the horror on Max’s face as the truth was revealed to him in her memories, and there would be nothing she could do to stop it.
It would destroy him, just as it destroyed her that night when Future Max his in her bathroom as she lay in bed with Kyle, spotting Max in the window.
No. No, the two of them had been hurt enough in a year and a half to last a lifetime.
Liz felt his harsh breathing, the only sound in the room, and looked up at him.
“Liz, what if this isn’t safe?” he asked, his worried eyes trained on her. “I know that Michael and Maria, and Isabel and Jesse...that they didn’t have anything really weird happen, but what if it’s different with you and me? Maria and Jesse weren’t changed. They don’t have any powers, but you....”
“It’s just...it’s intense,” she said, trying to reign in her crushed heart.
“I understand if you don’t want to do this,” he said in a low voice. “If you’re scared....”
“I’m not scared Max, but I can’t....” she said, tears forming in her eyes.
Liz sat up, looking down at the face she’d grown to love more than anything. She wished that she could just let go, but she had learned from personal experience that sometimes a person just couldn't do what the heart wanted.
He turned his head away from her.
She reached out with the tips of her fingers, turning his head to face her again.
“I thought I could Max, but so much has happened, and....my heart hurts,” she said. “I love you...God I love you, but I’m afraid.”
He nodded, and she felt the pull of his soul relinquish its hold on her.
“I know,” he whispered, his voice trembling.
“I’m so sorry, for everything,” he said, stroking her cheek.
“So am I,” she whispered.
“I want to let all of it go, but I can’t. I tried,” she sobbed.
“It’s ok,” he said, pulling her into his arms.
“I want you to make love to me, Max,” she said, pulling him closer. “I’m just not ready for what was about to happen.”
He kissed her tenderly and nodded.
“Can you still love me?” she asked.
She was almost afraid to hear his answer.
“How can you even ask that? Liz, I love you so much,” he said, trailing off, at a loss for words.
She lay down beside him again.
“Then show me,” she whispered, as her lips captured his in desperation, but her heart was closed this time.
This time, there was no jolt of pain. This time, instead of the painful crash of their souls attempting to entwine, there was only tender touches, and heady desire.
His hands on her body made her nerves sing, a balm to her battered heart. As their flesh became one, she felt the gentle brush of his essence against her own, and she knew that even if they might never truly be completely bonded, she would make sure that he always knew that she loved him, just as she knew that he loved her.
***********
After their wedding night, Liz had sent her journal to her father, hoping to help him understand what had happened.
She tried to explain why they were in danger from the FBI.
But it wasn’t the FBI that finally took them down. It was Khivar.
Khivar had been greatly wounded by the power of the wormhole that Isabel had launched him through in La Jolla. Its strength was meant to carry two, he and Isabel, and its power wreaked damage on his body.
He arrived back on Antar unconscious. He remained that way for almost six human years while his body repaired the tremendous damage wrought on it.
It was another two years after he awoke before his body could withstand the wormhole, two years of building a hatred of the brat King and his defective counterparts.
Seeraynah could not shape-shift into human form, and was forced to leave the Granolith in the abandoned underground warehouse until she had the strength to take it a long distance. She holed herself in a desert cave, while her body repaired itself, coming out at night to watch the search and recovery units at the base, praying that the Granolith wasn't found. She needed to find her King, but it was too dangerous to go anywhere near the town looking as she did.
So she watched, and waited. When the Unit uncovered the warehouse, she used her growing strength to make the Granolith invisible to human eyes.
The Granolith remained untouched.
Using most of the energy she had stored, she loosened the rock walls around the underground storage room, and sealed the Granolith. The area around it was deemed unsafe, and the recovery, what little of it there was, ended three weeks after it began, the area posted as hazardous and unsafe.
She once again retreated to the coolness of the cave, satisfied that the Granolith was safe, and concentrated on repairing her damaged body. She emerged two weeks later in human form to find out that the King and his group had disappeared.
It took her two years to find the group, constantly on the run, and another two years to gain Max's trust fully. But from the moment Liz had seen her and she'd spoken her name, she'd looked at her with knowing eyes, as if she held some secret, as if she knew her. It unnerved Seeraynah.
But it was not Liz's trust she needed to gain. Where Liz was kind, Max was guarded and remained distant. It was imperative that she convinced Max that she was on his side. Michael didn't make it any easier. Distrustful by nature, he immediately suspected the worst.
Liz told her to be patient, that Max was distrustful of most people, and the fact that she was of alien origin only magnified his distrust. Liz told her that she would talk to Max, but it would take time. Seeraynah didn't know why Liz had such an implicit trust in her, but she wasn't going to question it.
For Max, the first indication that he could trust her, was the revelation that the Granolith still existed and was still on Earth, hidden in plain sight from the government. Tess and Seeraynah had escaped Antar with it, and Seeraynah had used the last of her strength to secret it from the damaged ship to a hidden warehouse below the Eagle Rock Compound. It hadn't been used in over fifty years, and after creating another blast with the last of her energy. Collasping half of the large room, she sealed it in, making sure that no human hand could get to it. It was unlikely they would even want to.
Liz was furious that Tess had not told her that it still existed before she’d destroyed herself.
Max knew that all Tess had wanted was her son’s protection. She would not have given him or Liz the power of the Granolith, because she still hated all of them. But she counted on Max’s human nature to protect his child.
Max told Seeraynah of Kal.
Max refused to contact Kal, so Seeraynah did it herself. From him, she found out that Khivar had sent an army to Earth via ship to await his command, a week after he awakened.
Seeraynah now believed what Max had told her. Kal hated Max with an intensity she’d never beheld.
He’d told her that he should have just let his son go. He should have just lived a normal human life. He wanted nothing to do with Max.
Seeraynah returned to Max and the others with the information she had.
She was starting to wonder if Kal hadn’t been right after all, that they shouldn’t have pursued their alien heritage, and instead lived a normal human life.
In the months that followed, she developed a fondness for Max's companion Liz. It was Liz that had welcomed her into their little fold.
She admired the friendship she had with the girl Maria, and learned that the two had grown up together in Roswell. Piece by piece, she learned the complete story of Tess's deception, and her seduction of Max.
She marveled at Liz, who was loyal to Max even after all that had happened, even after his betrayal and the murder of her best friend Alex. But she noticed sadness in her as well.
The girl had developed abilities that no other normal human being had on Earth. She ascertained that they'd come from Max healing her after she'd been shot, but there had to be more to it, because the human man Kyle never developed them. Either he didn't possess them, or they remained latent.
Liz told her of her ability to see small flashes of the future. Many times, this was the reason they moved on after settling temporarily. Liz couldn't stand by and watch when she saw something that wasn't meant to happen. Sometimes people were meant to be hurt or to die, but there were other times when Liz sensed with absolute certainty that it was not meant for it to happen.
She did whatever was in her power to intervene. Max never argued with her, trusting her judgment. Even Michael deferred to her, which she found highly unusual. She'd seen him argue with Max and Maria regularly, but when it came to Liz's visions, he never objected. It was agreed that they would do what they could to prevent what was to happen, and when they'd done so, they moved on to another town. They couldn't afford to wait around for the FBI to find them.
Seeraynah watched without comment for a long time, until one week, Liz grew increasingly quiet.
She knew why they were moving on again. Liz's latest vision involved a woman in Ohio. They'd been working outside of Columbus, building their funds for a move out west. Michael had taken a job at a lumber yard, while Max had found a night position as a line foreman at a well-known body products company, so that it left him time to spend with Liz, who was currently covering phones at an emergency veterinary clinic at night. Kyle had gotten a job prepping cars at the same car dealership Maria was working at answering phones. Isabel had taken a position as a hostess at an expensive catering hall. Tracking the FBI's movements seemed to take most of Seeraynah's time, but it was important. Ensuring the King's safety, insured the continued safety of the Granolith, hidden deep in the New Mexico desert.
The veterinary clinic was usually quiet at night, but one night, in a panic, a woman came in with her dog, a beagle. He had suddenly dropped to the floor, seeming disoriented.
It turned out that the dog had had an allergic reaction to an insect sting. That was nothing unusual. But when Liz went to take the payment from the woman after her dog had been tended to, she received a flash from the credit card she'd given her.
They were always quick, but Liz had gotten adept at deciphering what she saw in the visions. This one was particularly easy.
She saw the woman walking toward her car, her dog in her arms. There was a flash of silver in the darkness, and then the stunned eyes of the woman as she fell to her knees, the dog struggling in her arms. Then her face pressed against the cold blacktop as the attacker fished in her purse for her keys. The bur of tires and the flash of the metal rims as the car pulled away, and the plaintive whining, and a warm wet tongue on her cheek as everything went black.
Liz had shaken herself out of her daze, and smiled at the woman.
"Ms. Donovan, why don't you let me call our night supervisor Carl to walk you out? This area isn't the safest at night," Liz said.
Liz knew the mere sight of Carl would cause the attacker to think twice about trying to take the woman's car. Not that he was a violent man, in fact, he was charged with watching the injured and sick animals who stayed overnight at the clinic, and in fact was soft-spoken and gentle. But his six foot four thickly-muscled frame would most likely deter the attacker she was now sure was waiting outside.
"Oh no, I wouldn't want to trouble anyone," the woman said.
"It's no trouble, really. I'll just go and get him," Liz said, not giving her time to protest.
The attack was avoided, and though there was not even the slightest indication that the avoided incident could be traced back to Liz, she insisted they move on once again.
Seeraynah suspected there was more to it than she was saying. She’d seen the shadows of fear that darkened her expressive eyes.
*******
She hadn’t meant to eavesdrop on Maria and Liz’s conversation outside the hotel they’d stopped at for the night, but she’d caught a snippet and couldn’t help but listen.
Isabel had gone for a walk with Kyle, and she’d seen Max and Michael playing an arcade game alongside the lobby. She’d felt restless and had decided to get fresh air when she’d spotted Liz and Maria sitting on a bench outside. They hadn’t seen her.
“Liz, you can’t keep blaming yourself for this,” Maria said, leaning her head on Liz’s shoulder.
“It’s not as simple as blaming myself, Maria. We couldn’t have known that Tess would betray us. That Max couldn’t have known. But it doesn’t make it any easier living with the reality of it all. I worry. I worry that we’ve all suffered so much, but maybe the worst is still yet to come. How do we know that what I did prevented anything? Yeah, Tess is gone. But Khivar’s still out there somewhere, and we don’t know what could happen. I...I feel like there’s this anvil hanging over my head and it’s just waiting to drop...” Liz said.
“Why? Did you see something? Did you get a flash?” Maria asked, pulling her head up.
“No,” Liz said softly. “It’s nothing like that. I just...I want to believe that someday we’ll be able to live without looking over our shoulders, and I’m scared that it’s never going to happen. You shouldn’t have to live like this. None of us should.”
“Are you having second thoughts about everything?” Maria asked in disbelief.
“No!” Liz said quickly. “No, I’ll never regret this. I’ll never regret one minute I spent with Max, in spite of everything. I can’t. I can’t imagine my life without him. I just worry about him, about all of us.”
Maria pulled Liz into a hug.
“Don’t worry. As long as we’re all together, we can get through anything. I really believe that,” Maria said.
A sad smile flickered across Liz’s face.
“I never thought I’d hear you say that,” she said wryly.
“As much as I wish the whole alien thing would go away, it’s better than the alternative, don’t you think?” Maria asked.
“Yeah, I mean, I wouldn’t want to be Jesse. I can’t imagine being left behind,” Liz said, a pained expression crossing her face.
Maria sighed and rested her elbows on her knees.
“I think it was different for him,” she said.
“He kind of got dragged into this thing without knowing what he was getting into. We knew ahead of time, and we had the choice. He didn’t,” she said.
“I feel for Isabel,” Liz said. “She wanted to tell him, and then when she did, it was almost too late.”
“Yeah well, you can blame that on “Dumb-Ass” and “Control Freak,” Maria snorted.
Liz smiled, hearing the nicknames Maria used for Max and Michael.
“I guess,” Liz said, staring out into the night. “I really think they thought they were doing the right thing though.”
“Secrets are never a good thing between people you love, even with the best intentions,” Maria said.
“Sometimes the risk of telling outweighs keeping them,” Liz said with a troubled frown. “Especially if you aren’t sure of what the outcome will be if you do.”
Maria leaned forward, looking at Liz.
“You know, it isn’t too late to tell him,” Maria said.
“It was too late the minute I asked Kyle to come that night,” Liz said.
***************
She took in the beautiful design of the lobby, and before she knew it, Max was back with the key to their room.
He took her hand and led her to the elevator, his hand resting at the small of her back, his fingers radiating reassuring warmth against her bare skin.
She felt her heart begin to race as the elevator ascended. She had thought she was ready for this, but now that the moment had come, she felt nervous.
Maria had told her that making love with Michael had been beautiful and mind-shattering, but Liz wondered if it would be the same with her and Max.
It wasn’t as if she and Max weren’t intimate at all. But they’d come nowhere near what was going to happen tonight.
What if he was disappointed? What if she wasn’t what he expected?
What if it wasn’t what she expected?
She couldn’t help the nagging thought that surfaced in her mind. What if she didn’t compare to Tess? It was logical for her to feel this way. After all, Max had been with her.
Through their connection, Max sensed her apprehension, and pulled her into his arms.
“Liz...” he said, cupping her cheek, at a loss as to what to say to her to make her understand that this night, what they were about to do, was everything he’d ever dreamed of.
How could he explain to her that Tess was something he’d wished that he could take back? That it felt somehow alien to him? That he knew with every fiber of his being that there was something off about it, something inherently wrong and primitive, something not at all human?
How could he explain to her that that night, and the weeks that followed, had been one of the darkest periods he’d ever known? That summer into late fall, he chased his son’s ghost, trying to make the one thing he knew he could, right. He knew that he had deeply damaged Liz’s faith in him, and he focused on finding Zan, trying to undo at least one wrong. But it had all been in vain, and it only widened the chasm growing between he and the only girl he’d ever loved. He’d come so close to losing her, and he’d be damned if Tess or any of the alien mess would ever come between them again. He’d die trying to prove it if he had to.
Liz saw the torment in his eyes and told herself that she would let nothing would ruin tonight. Nothing.
She smiled at him and took his hand as the elevator doors slid open.
“It’s going to be all right,” she said in a soft voice, leaning up to press a gentle kiss against his lips.
She tugged his hand pulling him out of the elevator, and the doors slid closed behind them.
The hallway was empty and hushed.
They found their room, and before Liz knew what was happening, he had lifted her into his arms, cradling her head against his neck.
“What are you doing?” she asked, with an amused laugh.
“I’m doing things the proper way,” he said, balancing her as he fit the key into the lock.
He pushed the door open and flipped the light switch on, bathing the room in a soft glow.
“Oh Max, it’s beautiful!” she breathed as she looked around the room.
Set near the window was a brass four poster bed, covered in a white spread. A table nearby held a large vase filled with white roses. The walls were papered in a blue and white striped motif, complimenting the navy carpeting beneath Max’s feet. It was romantic and inviting.
“I’m glad you like it,” he said in a soft voice, turning his head to capture her lips in a kiss filled with the promise of what was to come.
He broke the kiss, struggling to maintain his racing heart.
“I had almost not dared to hope this would come true,” he said, closing his eyes. “I mean, what I saw, I wanted to believe it, but after Alex...I thought I’d ruined everything.”
“What you saw?” Liz asked in confusion.
“I saw us like this in Las Vegas, last year,” he said. “When I was leaving. I walked out to get a cab, and I got a flash of the two of us outside a hotel, just like this. You wore a different dress, but it was you and I. That’s why I came back that night. I thought after everything....”
“Oh....” Liz said, feeling her heart twist in a painful reminder, and everything she’d tried to push away came flooding back to her. He had gotten a flash of the future, of what should have been.
She looked up into his eyes and saw the pain in his eyes, the knowledge of what he’d done soon after that had threatened to drive them apart forever.
“Liz, I know that things can never be the same as they were before Alex died. I know there’s nothing that I can do to take it back, or to change it, but I need you to believe that I will never, ever do anything to hurt you again. I promise you, with all that I am,” he said.
“I want to believe you, Max,” she said softly.
“We need to make a new start,” she said. “It can’t be a clean slate. Too much has happened. But we can move on from here. From this moment on, we make our own destiny.”
He smiled at her and carried her to the bed, lying her down on it in a gentle motion before moving to lie beside her. His fingers caressed her cheek, pushing her hair behind her ear in an unconscious gesture that had always seemed so endearing to her.
“How did I ever get so lucky?” he asked in a soft voice, his eyes shining as they roamed her face.
“Because you were brave,” she answered. “You saved me that day when I should have died at the Crashdown. Not many people would have done that.”
“But not many girls would have accepted me, what I am,” he said, the vulnerability evident in his voice. “You didn’t turn me in. You weren’t afraid...”
“It was a little bit of a shock,” she said. “But Max, you showed me you that night when you came to the Crashdown. Do you have any idea how beautiful you were to me that night? How beautiful you made me feel, knowing you felt that way about me?”
He laid his head in the crook of her neck.
“I was terrified to do that,” he said. “Terrified to show you.”
“Why?” she asked, reaching up to stroke his hair, and turning her head to kiss his forehead in a soothing gesture.
“Because, I knew I was different. I’d always known. I was afraid you’d be disgusted, or scared that someone like me had those kind of feelings about you,” he said. “But you weren’t....”
“Max, I fell in love with you that night. I’d always noticed you, even before the shooting. I knew there was something special about you, but I never dreamed that you could feel the way that you did about me. I mean, every girl I knew wanted to be with you. You were smart, and gorgeous, and mysterious...”
“And an alien,” he finished quietly.
“After that night in the Crashdown, it didn’t matter to me,” she said. “I saw you, not Max Evans the alien, but Max Evans, the boy who thought I was beautiful. The boy who had risked everything to save my life.”
“I knew that letting you see what I was, was going to put you in danger. But I had no choice. I was afraid that you’d go to the police,” he said.
“I wouldn’t have done that,” she said. “You saved my life.”
“And I put you in danger,” he added quietly. “Sometimes I think I should have just stayed away from you. It would have been better for you. I didn’t deserve you, but I was selfish. Look what happened because all of you got involved with us. Alex is dead, and now we have to run. We’ll always have to be looking over our shoulders. It’s not fair to any of you. But I couldn’t let you go, Liz, even after what I Thought I saw happened between you with Kyle. When you walked away from me after Alex died, I thought that I was right. I didn’t deserve you. I never did. I treated you so horribly, and I’d driven you away. I know that I don’t deserve you, but I couldn’t let you go. I can’t. I love you too much.”
Liz tightened her arm around him.
“Is that why you acted the way you did? Because you thought you didn’t deserve me?” she asked.
“I thought I was doing the right thing, trying to force you to face your destiny. But I never stopped loving you,” she said.
He shook his head.
“I pushed you too far. I thought I could convince you that we needed to be together. I never meant to back you into a corner, for you to feel like you had to do something that drastic with Kyle,” he said. “I know now that you didn’t do what I thought you did, but....”
“We both made mistakes. We both thought we were doing the right thing,” she said.
“Liz, after everything we found our way back to each other. We have to hold onto that,” she said. “Because if we don’t, everything we’ve been through, everything and everyone we’ve lost will all have been for nothing.”
“I know,” she said, pulling back to look into his eyes. “I know.”
“I love you,” he whispered.
“I love you too,” she answered softly, running her fingers across his cheek.
He reached up and captured them with his own, leaning closer to capture her lips in a searing kiss. She opened up to him, his tongue gently tracing her lower lip before capturing it between his own.
His heart was strong and steady against her chest as he pulled her to him, needing her to be close.
He opened himself to her, letting her feel every thought, every whispered prayer of longing, every beautiful image he’d had of her over the years. The loneliness he’d felt all of his life had been chased away with the shy glances she’d given him right after he’d healed her, and the unwavering support she’d given him even when her own life was in danger because of it.
She was beautiful, fiercely loyal, unquestioning in her faith in him. After that day in the Crashdown, for the first time he’d felt as if he belonged. The touch of her fingers, the caress of her lips, the feel of her slender body in his arms signaled that he’d finally found his home, a place where he felt safe and not judged, because she knew everything about him, and she wasn’t afraid. She felt his wonder and the hope for the future he had finally dared to dream of.
His pain at the betrayal he thought he saw her commit with Kyle was almost suffocating. He’d lived with that pain until the night he was supposed to leave Earth with Tess. It was then that she told him that what he believed wasn’t true, and that pain doubled in its intensity.
He’d treated her so badly after that, pulling away from her to search for his son. Neither of them had really confronted what had happened between he and Tess, until it got so bad that the changes he’d began in her started to manifest themselves. When he tried to heal her, she said what had remained festering between them for almost a year.
She confronted him with his betrayal. She couldn’t be around him. She left for Vermont and boarding school the next day. He’d saved her life there later, but he knew even that couldn’t erase what he’d done.
He would never forgive himself for that.
But Liz...Liz somehow found it in her heart to love him.
He didn’t have to be alone, not anymore. He didn’t care about being a King. He didn’t care about any of it. All he’d ever wanted was she, and he would spend the rest of his life proving it to her.
It was fate that he was in the Crashdown that day to save her. He believed that.
Something was happening, something she’d never experienced with him before. She felt him, more strongly than ever, a tugging on her very soul, beckoning to her.
“Max,” she whispered, feeling his arousal pressing against her belly.
“Yeah,” he said, breathing heavily.
“What is this?” she asked, as another wave of desire washed over her.
“I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head, trembling.
“I feel like I felt when we found the orb, like, magnified a thousand times,” she gasped.
She felt his heart calling out to hers, needing her to open her herself to him. Her own consciousness resisted.
His hand trailed to her waist, touching her bare skin, and she felt a jolt of painful energy race through her. Her body arched off the bed with its intensity.
“Liz?” he said, in concern. “Liz, are you ok?”
She nodded, letting out a long ragged breath.
It was too much. She thought that she could handle it, but fear momentarily paralyzed her as she received a premonition of the two of them, torn apart by the truth.
She remembered the same fear the day that they had all used the healing stones to try to heal Michael. She had had doubts then too, and had feared for him. Only now she feared for her own heart too.
It was the fear that was causing the pain, and it echoed along their connection, jolting Max’s body as well as her own with an agonizing jolt.
She heard him cry out as he pulled away from her.
She felt tears filling her eyes, for she knew what was supposed to happen between them, and she couldn’t let it. For if she did, he would know everything, and if he knew everything it would destroy the both of them.
She knew that he believed that he would never hurt her, and looking into his eyes, she saw without a doubt that he did believe it.
How can a person love someone so much, and at the same time fear that both their hearts would be broken irreparably?
She knew that it would tear Max apart to know that it was he, a future version that had made her push him away. They couldn’t have known what Tess was. That was exactly why they couldn’t chance it again. There were too many unknowns. She knew that they couldn’t risk going back and changing everything again for something like this. Who knew what might happen? It could make things worse, even if she knew how to initiate it.
She didn’t know it would be this intense. She didn’t know that their marriage was only the start of the bond that was supposed to be sealed between them when they made love. She saw it happen in her premonition, and the horror on Max’s face as the truth was revealed to him in her memories, and there would be nothing she could do to stop it.
It would destroy him, just as it destroyed her that night when Future Max his in her bathroom as she lay in bed with Kyle, spotting Max in the window.
No. No, the two of them had been hurt enough in a year and a half to last a lifetime.
Liz felt his harsh breathing, the only sound in the room, and looked up at him.
“Liz, what if this isn’t safe?” he asked, his worried eyes trained on her. “I know that Michael and Maria, and Isabel and Jesse...that they didn’t have anything really weird happen, but what if it’s different with you and me? Maria and Jesse weren’t changed. They don’t have any powers, but you....”
“It’s just...it’s intense,” she said, trying to reign in her crushed heart.
“I understand if you don’t want to do this,” he said in a low voice. “If you’re scared....”
“I’m not scared Max, but I can’t....” she said, tears forming in her eyes.
Liz sat up, looking down at the face she’d grown to love more than anything. She wished that she could just let go, but she had learned from personal experience that sometimes a person just couldn't do what the heart wanted.
He turned his head away from her.
She reached out with the tips of her fingers, turning his head to face her again.
“I thought I could Max, but so much has happened, and....my heart hurts,” she said. “I love you...God I love you, but I’m afraid.”
He nodded, and she felt the pull of his soul relinquish its hold on her.
“I know,” he whispered, his voice trembling.
“I’m so sorry, for everything,” he said, stroking her cheek.
“So am I,” she whispered.
“I want to let all of it go, but I can’t. I tried,” she sobbed.
“It’s ok,” he said, pulling her into his arms.
“I want you to make love to me, Max,” she said, pulling him closer. “I’m just not ready for what was about to happen.”
He kissed her tenderly and nodded.
“Can you still love me?” she asked.
She was almost afraid to hear his answer.
“How can you even ask that? Liz, I love you so much,” he said, trailing off, at a loss for words.
She lay down beside him again.
“Then show me,” she whispered, as her lips captured his in desperation, but her heart was closed this time.
This time, there was no jolt of pain. This time, instead of the painful crash of their souls attempting to entwine, there was only tender touches, and heady desire.
His hands on her body made her nerves sing, a balm to her battered heart. As their flesh became one, she felt the gentle brush of his essence against her own, and she knew that even if they might never truly be completely bonded, she would make sure that he always knew that she loved him, just as she knew that he loved her.
***********
After their wedding night, Liz had sent her journal to her father, hoping to help him understand what had happened.
She tried to explain why they were in danger from the FBI.
But it wasn’t the FBI that finally took them down. It was Khivar.
Khivar had been greatly wounded by the power of the wormhole that Isabel had launched him through in La Jolla. Its strength was meant to carry two, he and Isabel, and its power wreaked damage on his body.
He arrived back on Antar unconscious. He remained that way for almost six human years while his body repaired the tremendous damage wrought on it.
It was another two years after he awoke before his body could withstand the wormhole, two years of building a hatred of the brat King and his defective counterparts.
Seeraynah could not shape-shift into human form, and was forced to leave the Granolith in the abandoned underground warehouse until she had the strength to take it a long distance. She holed herself in a desert cave, while her body repaired itself, coming out at night to watch the search and recovery units at the base, praying that the Granolith wasn't found. She needed to find her King, but it was too dangerous to go anywhere near the town looking as she did.
So she watched, and waited. When the Unit uncovered the warehouse, she used her growing strength to make the Granolith invisible to human eyes.
The Granolith remained untouched.
Using most of the energy she had stored, she loosened the rock walls around the underground storage room, and sealed the Granolith. The area around it was deemed unsafe, and the recovery, what little of it there was, ended three weeks after it began, the area posted as hazardous and unsafe.
She once again retreated to the coolness of the cave, satisfied that the Granolith was safe, and concentrated on repairing her damaged body. She emerged two weeks later in human form to find out that the King and his group had disappeared.
It took her two years to find the group, constantly on the run, and another two years to gain Max's trust fully. But from the moment Liz had seen her and she'd spoken her name, she'd looked at her with knowing eyes, as if she held some secret, as if she knew her. It unnerved Seeraynah.
But it was not Liz's trust she needed to gain. Where Liz was kind, Max was guarded and remained distant. It was imperative that she convinced Max that she was on his side. Michael didn't make it any easier. Distrustful by nature, he immediately suspected the worst.
Liz told her to be patient, that Max was distrustful of most people, and the fact that she was of alien origin only magnified his distrust. Liz told her that she would talk to Max, but it would take time. Seeraynah didn't know why Liz had such an implicit trust in her, but she wasn't going to question it.
For Max, the first indication that he could trust her, was the revelation that the Granolith still existed and was still on Earth, hidden in plain sight from the government. Tess and Seeraynah had escaped Antar with it, and Seeraynah had used the last of her strength to secret it from the damaged ship to a hidden warehouse below the Eagle Rock Compound. It hadn't been used in over fifty years, and after creating another blast with the last of her energy. Collasping half of the large room, she sealed it in, making sure that no human hand could get to it. It was unlikely they would even want to.
Liz was furious that Tess had not told her that it still existed before she’d destroyed herself.
Max knew that all Tess had wanted was her son’s protection. She would not have given him or Liz the power of the Granolith, because she still hated all of them. But she counted on Max’s human nature to protect his child.
Max told Seeraynah of Kal.
Max refused to contact Kal, so Seeraynah did it herself. From him, she found out that Khivar had sent an army to Earth via ship to await his command, a week after he awakened.
Seeraynah now believed what Max had told her. Kal hated Max with an intensity she’d never beheld.
He’d told her that he should have just let his son go. He should have just lived a normal human life. He wanted nothing to do with Max.
Seeraynah returned to Max and the others with the information she had.
She was starting to wonder if Kal hadn’t been right after all, that they shouldn’t have pursued their alien heritage, and instead lived a normal human life.
In the months that followed, she developed a fondness for Max's companion Liz. It was Liz that had welcomed her into their little fold.
She admired the friendship she had with the girl Maria, and learned that the two had grown up together in Roswell. Piece by piece, she learned the complete story of Tess's deception, and her seduction of Max.
She marveled at Liz, who was loyal to Max even after all that had happened, even after his betrayal and the murder of her best friend Alex. But she noticed sadness in her as well.
The girl had developed abilities that no other normal human being had on Earth. She ascertained that they'd come from Max healing her after she'd been shot, but there had to be more to it, because the human man Kyle never developed them. Either he didn't possess them, or they remained latent.
Liz told her of her ability to see small flashes of the future. Many times, this was the reason they moved on after settling temporarily. Liz couldn't stand by and watch when she saw something that wasn't meant to happen. Sometimes people were meant to be hurt or to die, but there were other times when Liz sensed with absolute certainty that it was not meant for it to happen.
She did whatever was in her power to intervene. Max never argued with her, trusting her judgment. Even Michael deferred to her, which she found highly unusual. She'd seen him argue with Max and Maria regularly, but when it came to Liz's visions, he never objected. It was agreed that they would do what they could to prevent what was to happen, and when they'd done so, they moved on to another town. They couldn't afford to wait around for the FBI to find them.
Seeraynah watched without comment for a long time, until one week, Liz grew increasingly quiet.
She knew why they were moving on again. Liz's latest vision involved a woman in Ohio. They'd been working outside of Columbus, building their funds for a move out west. Michael had taken a job at a lumber yard, while Max had found a night position as a line foreman at a well-known body products company, so that it left him time to spend with Liz, who was currently covering phones at an emergency veterinary clinic at night. Kyle had gotten a job prepping cars at the same car dealership Maria was working at answering phones. Isabel had taken a position as a hostess at an expensive catering hall. Tracking the FBI's movements seemed to take most of Seeraynah's time, but it was important. Ensuring the King's safety, insured the continued safety of the Granolith, hidden deep in the New Mexico desert.
The veterinary clinic was usually quiet at night, but one night, in a panic, a woman came in with her dog, a beagle. He had suddenly dropped to the floor, seeming disoriented.
It turned out that the dog had had an allergic reaction to an insect sting. That was nothing unusual. But when Liz went to take the payment from the woman after her dog had been tended to, she received a flash from the credit card she'd given her.
They were always quick, but Liz had gotten adept at deciphering what she saw in the visions. This one was particularly easy.
She saw the woman walking toward her car, her dog in her arms. There was a flash of silver in the darkness, and then the stunned eyes of the woman as she fell to her knees, the dog struggling in her arms. Then her face pressed against the cold blacktop as the attacker fished in her purse for her keys. The bur of tires and the flash of the metal rims as the car pulled away, and the plaintive whining, and a warm wet tongue on her cheek as everything went black.
Liz had shaken herself out of her daze, and smiled at the woman.
"Ms. Donovan, why don't you let me call our night supervisor Carl to walk you out? This area isn't the safest at night," Liz said.
Liz knew the mere sight of Carl would cause the attacker to think twice about trying to take the woman's car. Not that he was a violent man, in fact, he was charged with watching the injured and sick animals who stayed overnight at the clinic, and in fact was soft-spoken and gentle. But his six foot four thickly-muscled frame would most likely deter the attacker she was now sure was waiting outside.
"Oh no, I wouldn't want to trouble anyone," the woman said.
"It's no trouble, really. I'll just go and get him," Liz said, not giving her time to protest.
The attack was avoided, and though there was not even the slightest indication that the avoided incident could be traced back to Liz, she insisted they move on once again.
Seeraynah suspected there was more to it than she was saying. She’d seen the shadows of fear that darkened her expressive eyes.
*******
She hadn’t meant to eavesdrop on Maria and Liz’s conversation outside the hotel they’d stopped at for the night, but she’d caught a snippet and couldn’t help but listen.
Isabel had gone for a walk with Kyle, and she’d seen Max and Michael playing an arcade game alongside the lobby. She’d felt restless and had decided to get fresh air when she’d spotted Liz and Maria sitting on a bench outside. They hadn’t seen her.
“Liz, you can’t keep blaming yourself for this,” Maria said, leaning her head on Liz’s shoulder.
“It’s not as simple as blaming myself, Maria. We couldn’t have known that Tess would betray us. That Max couldn’t have known. But it doesn’t make it any easier living with the reality of it all. I worry. I worry that we’ve all suffered so much, but maybe the worst is still yet to come. How do we know that what I did prevented anything? Yeah, Tess is gone. But Khivar’s still out there somewhere, and we don’t know what could happen. I...I feel like there’s this anvil hanging over my head and it’s just waiting to drop...” Liz said.
“Why? Did you see something? Did you get a flash?” Maria asked, pulling her head up.
“No,” Liz said softly. “It’s nothing like that. I just...I want to believe that someday we’ll be able to live without looking over our shoulders, and I’m scared that it’s never going to happen. You shouldn’t have to live like this. None of us should.”
“Are you having second thoughts about everything?” Maria asked in disbelief.
“No!” Liz said quickly. “No, I’ll never regret this. I’ll never regret one minute I spent with Max, in spite of everything. I can’t. I can’t imagine my life without him. I just worry about him, about all of us.”
Maria pulled Liz into a hug.
“Don’t worry. As long as we’re all together, we can get through anything. I really believe that,” Maria said.
A sad smile flickered across Liz’s face.
“I never thought I’d hear you say that,” she said wryly.
“As much as I wish the whole alien thing would go away, it’s better than the alternative, don’t you think?” Maria asked.
“Yeah, I mean, I wouldn’t want to be Jesse. I can’t imagine being left behind,” Liz said, a pained expression crossing her face.
Maria sighed and rested her elbows on her knees.
“I think it was different for him,” she said.
“He kind of got dragged into this thing without knowing what he was getting into. We knew ahead of time, and we had the choice. He didn’t,” she said.
“I feel for Isabel,” Liz said. “She wanted to tell him, and then when she did, it was almost too late.”
“Yeah well, you can blame that on “Dumb-Ass” and “Control Freak,” Maria snorted.
Liz smiled, hearing the nicknames Maria used for Max and Michael.
“I guess,” Liz said, staring out into the night. “I really think they thought they were doing the right thing though.”
“Secrets are never a good thing between people you love, even with the best intentions,” Maria said.
“Sometimes the risk of telling outweighs keeping them,” Liz said with a troubled frown. “Especially if you aren’t sure of what the outcome will be if you do.”
Maria leaned forward, looking at Liz.
“You know, it isn’t too late to tell him,” Maria said.
“It was too late the minute I asked Kyle to come that night,” Liz said.
***************
Part 31C (cont'd)
***************
Seeranah frowned in the shadows.
She wasn’t sure what she was talking about, but she knew that it was something momentous, something that had tested the bond between the human girl and the alien King.
A door slamming in the hotel interrupted their conversation and gave Seeraynah away.
“I’m...I’m sorry,” she stuttered, embarrassed at being discovered.
“No, it’s ok,” Liz said.
“Maria, I need to talk to Seeraynah,” she said, turning toward her friend, giving her a meaningful look. Maria’s eyes widened, and she stared at Liz nervously.
“Are you sure that’s what you want?” she asked.
“It’s time,” she said softly.
Maria nodded and stood.
“I’m going to go find Michael. If I don’t, you’ll never see Max tonight. He’s challenged him at Tomb Raider in the game room, and you know what happens once they get into a game,” she said.
Liz nodded.
“Come, sit,” she said, motioning to Seeraynah, as Maria walked away.
Seeraynah sensed something momentous was about to transpire, and she sat down, looking at Liz expectantly.
She was silent for a long moment, as if trying to figure out where to begin.
Finally she spoke.
“Did you ever wonder why I trusted you on sight?” Liz asked, turning her wise brown eyes on her.
Seeraynah was surprised at the question.
“Yes,” Seeraynah admitted, after a pause. “Though I can’t say I wasn’t grateful. If it weren’t for you, Max probably would have turned me away, or worse.”
“Probably,” Liz nodded, as she looked out at the cars passing on the busy road.
Again she was silent.
“Why did you? Trust me, that is,” Seeraynah asked.
“Because I knew you in another time,” Liz answered.
Seeraynah had to hold back her laughter.
“That’s not possible,” she said.
“It is possible,” Liz said, turning to appraise her, her face completely serious. “A few years ago, a Future version of Max came back to this time. He told me that you were a good friend. Of all the things he told me, I believe that. You helped the two of us to alter the Granolith, so that he could come back to warn me of the end of the world. It was supposed to happen in five years.”
Seeraynah shook her head, shocked and offended. She couldn’t believe Liz would even suggest she would do something like that.
“I would never do that,” she said, indignant. “The Granolith isn’t something to be toyed with, and I wouldn’t be so egotistical to think that I could play with the outcome of events!”
“You did,” Liz answered in a low voice.
“Liz, do you have any idea how dangerous it is to do something like that? It is forbidden,” Seeraynah protested. She couldn’t have done it. She wouldn’t have. Logistically, she knew it could be done, but that didn’t mean she would have ever considered helping the Zenshai to use that knowledge, for any reason. As an Antarian it had been taught to her from when she was a child, that the Granolith had a greater purpose, one which was beyond their understanding in their finite lifetimes. All Antarians believed this. It is why their race was chosen to protect it.
“Well things must have been pretty bad for us to consider it,” Liz shrugged. Seeraynah couldn’t help but notice the bitter edge to her voice.
Liz studied her, her eyes challenging her to deny what she knew to be true.
“You know how it can be done, don’t you,” Liz asked, rhetorically.
Seeraynah didn’t answer, and her silence told Liz what she needed to know.
“If you know, how can you say it wasn’t possible? When people are put in dire situations, there is no real way to know how they’ll react. That version of Max and myself made a mistake, and we’re both paying for it in this timeline,” Liz said.
"I couldn't have done it without Max. The Granolith only responds to one person," Seeraynah protested.
Perhaps this was the reason that this Max was so distrustful.
She could understand after hearing this that if he knew, he might suspect she had ulterior motives in this timeline.
“Does this Max know?” Seeraynah asked.
“I never told him. I saw what happened last time, and I know how wrong things can go. You have to promise me you won’t tell him. He can’t know about any of this,” Liz said.
Serena shook her head.
“Liz, I...” she started to protest.
“Please,” Liz answered, her eyes pleading with Seeraynah to understand.
"I can't tell him that he set this whole thing in motion. It would kill him if he knew that he'd come to me from the future and asked me to make him stop loving me," she said.
"If I hadn't done that, Alex wouldn't have been dead. We would have been married in Las Vegas and Alex would have been there," she said, lowering her head. “And Tess, he wouldn’t have...nothing would have happened between them.”
"And the end of the world would be upon us soon," Seeraynah added.
"It may still come," Liz said quietly. "I have to be prepared this time."
“Liz, is there something you’re not telling us?” Seeraynah asked.
“Nothing that I can do anything about at the moment,” Liz said. “When I get these flashes of the future, I don’t always know what they mean. Sometimes they’re just feelings, emotions. But something big is coming, and it isn’t going to be good. I had this sudden feeling that we had to leave Ohio. I don’t know why, and I can’t explain it, but I trust it. I need you to trust it too.”
Seeraynah felt a chill race down her spine.
“Liz, what are you talking about?” she asked.
“It may be nothing. I hope to God it isn’t....”
*********
Four years passed before Liz’s vision came true, and in that time Seeraynah’s admiration for her grew tenfold.
In that time, the FBI came close to them twice, and both times Liz received visions.
The last time, it had almost been too late. Two FBI agents cornered Max late one night as he walked to his car.
Max had killed the both of them. He’d had no choice, but he’d taken it hard. Michael cursed himself for not being there. They'd gotten too lax, too complacent.
Liz , Michael and Seeraynah had gone out after Max after Liz saw in a vision, the FBI agents lying in wait for Max.
By the time they’d gotten there, it had all been over, and the two men lay dead in the street.
Liz saw the anguish in Max’s eyes as he stood over them. She rushed to him, putting her arms around him, willing him to feel the love she felt for him.
“I hate this,” he whispered into her hair. “I hate that we have to exist like this. I hate that I can’t give make the dreams you had come true.”
“Max, you can’t keep doing this. I love you, and my biggest dream has come true. We’re together,” she said.
“Not completely, and that’s my fault,” he said. “I broke the trust between us.”
And here it was again. She hated lying to him, but telling him the truth would be so much worse.
“We both did Max. I...I wasn’t strong enough. I was afraid of what would happen, of the consequences of you not fulfilling your destiny, and when I lied to you about Kyle...” she faltered.
“Don’t,” he said. “Please....”
He held her tighter, taking comfort in her embrace.
**********
Max had never wanted the power of the Granolith.
He refused to use it. The Granolith remained hidden.
Khivar arrived on Earth in the year 2010. Husks had been created to match the outer appearances of the Special Unit, and the remainder placed on Earth as citizens.
The Unit was destroyed and Khivar’s men took their place, using all of the FBI’s resources to track the fugitives down like animals. Towns were destroyed. Blame was put on the foreign countries attacking the United States, and a terrible war began.
Seeraynah hadn’t been there when they’d been caught and brought to Edward’s Air Force Base. Max had sent her to try to find Kal. They needed his help. But she was too late. When she arrived at his home in Los Angeles, she found his dust. The Skins had gotten there first.
Khivar and his men had assumed control of the Air Force Base, under the authority of the “FBI”.
A ceremonial execution was planned. It was to be viewed by Khivar and his men.
Seeraynah infiltrated the compound to help them to escape.
Max’s cell was heavily guarded. Seeraynah saw that he had been brutally beaten by Khivar’s men, but the despite his own injuries, the only thing Max was concerned about was finding the others and Liz.
The moment the breach was discovered, Khivar ordered them to be terminated.
Max and Seeraynah found each of their cells. They were too late. Michael, Isabel, Kyle and Maria were all brutally executed.
Max didn’t have time to even process it. He had to keep moving.
As he and Seeraynah passed through each cell, he grew desperate. He could still feel Liz, but he knew that any moment she could be exterminated.
He could sense her inside of her cell as they approached it, and he could feel her fear as if it were her own.
When he destroyed the door, he saw Liz pressed up against the wall. He barely had time to register it before the guard inside fired his weapon.
The shot missed Max, and with lightning speed he fired a burst of energy at him. As the guard fell, his weapon went off a final time, striking Liz in the chest. She fell to the floor with a strangled gasp.
“Liz!” he cried.
He rushed to her, dropping to his knees and pulling her into his arms, tenderly brushing a kiss over her forehead.
Her hand was pressed to her stomach, and she took a deep shuddering breath.
Let me see,” he said, pulling away, and she shook her head.
“Everything’s going to be all right,” he said, smoothing her hair off of her face. “I’ll fix this.”
“I’ll be fine. It’s not that bad,” she said. “You have to get us out of here.”
She looked at Seeraynah, and something unspoken passed between them.
“Max,” Seeraynah said, her eyes never leaving the human girl’s. “I’ll tend to Liz. I’ll make sure she can make it out of here. You check the corridor, make sure it’s clear.”
Max looked at Liz with uncertainty.
“Go Max. We have to get out of here,” she said, breathing heavily. He nodded and moved to his feet, carefully checking the corridor before stepping out of the door.
She stared at Seeraynah as she heard the muffled cry of one of the guards.
Seeraynah noted the pallor of Liz’s skin, and she moved to take Liz’s hand away from her stomach to look at the wound.
“Leave it,” Liz said, sounding out of breath.
“You lied to him,” Seeraynah said.
“It’s happening Seeraynah,” she said. “You can’t tell him about this. It won’t matter in the end. Promise me. We have to get him to the Granolith.”
“Liz, let him heal you,” Seeraynah said.
Liz shook her head.
“He’s injured too. He needs his energy. It’s time,” she gasped. “Tear off your sleeve.”
“Liz,” Seeraynah said in protest.
“Just do it!” Liz hissed, and Seeraynah complied.
“Help me pack it,”Liz said, and Seeraynah started to shake her head.
“This is important. He thinks it’s a flesh wound. He has to keep thinking that until we get to the Granolith,” Liz said.
“But-“ Seereaynah said.
“Just trust me on this,” Liz commanded, as she lay back on the floor.
Against her better judgment, Seeraynah staunched the blood flow as much as she could, and Liz pressed her hand against the packed wound.
“Don’t say a word,” Liz warned, her face tightened with pain.
“I don’t think-“ Seeraynah started, and closed her mouth as Max ran back in.
“Are you all right to leave?” he asked, looking at her with concern.
“She’ll be fine,” Seeraynah said in a hard voice.
Max noted the paleness that has stolen over Liz’s skin.
“Let me look at you,” he said, dropping to his knees.
“Max, we need to get to the Granolith,” Liz said, wincing.
"Liz," Max started to protest, as he always had when it came to the Granolith.
"Listen to me Max," Liz said fiercely. "We don't have time to argue about this. Everything depends on this now. Remember when you came to my window that night before you left for New York City, and I told you to be careful with the Granolith? That if it fell into the wrong hands, it could be dangerous? I never told you why."
"It's not important now. We just need to get you out of here, so I can heal you," he said, searching her eyes.
"You need to save your energy for the Granolith. The end of the world is coming. I thought that I could stop it if I only let you go. There's so much I need to tell you, and there isn't enough time..." she said.
*********
Seeraynah led them to the Granolith hidden deep in a desert chamber, underneath the ruin of the Eagle Rock Compound. Nothing remained of the structure above, but an explosion-proof warehouse remained underneath it.
She turned to Seeraynah.
“I want you to help Max, and then leave,” Liz said, with determination
‘What do you mean?” Seeraynah protested, shaking her head. “I can't.”
“This can all be changed. It was done once, and you helped Max to do it. We have to try again, and then I want you to leave,” Liz said.
“No,” Seeraynah said. "There has to be some other way."
“We have no choice,” Liz said.
"What are you talking about?" Max asked from behind her, and she looked to see that he had sealed off the entrance. Already she could hear the Skins using their weapons against the rock. It wouldn't hold up long.
She looked at him with all of the love and loss she had felt for years.
"You came from the future and said that the world would end if I didn’t make you fall out of love with me. We couldn’t have known what Tess was. We have to try again," she said.
"I would never do that!" Max said, shaking his head. "I would never ask that of you."
"But you did," Liz insisted. "Max, I don't have time to explain it all, but it's true, and what we did, didn't change anything. I know what we have to do now."
"Liz," he started, but she turned to Seeraynah.
"Seeraynah, ready the crystal, and then I want you to go back to Roswell, to make sure that if our parents are alive, you do what you can to protect them, in case this doesn’t work," Liz said.
Seeraynah trusted and respected Liz, and knew what it had cost her to change this timeline. She knew she wouldn’t ask this of her unless she had no other alternative. She had sacrificed so much for the King, and now she was going to give up the greatest love of her life.
Seeraynah nodded.
She picked up one of the crystals.
“Come here Max,” she said. “I need your energy to transform the crystal.”
"What’s going on?" Max asked, his jaw tightening.
"Just trust me, Max, please," Liz said, watching Seeraynah.
"Can you do that?" she asked, laying her hand on his cheek.
"I trust you more than I trust myself," he said, his eyes searching hers.
A sad smile touched her lips.
He walked over to Seeraynah.
“What do I have to do?” he asked quietly.
“I’ll use your energy to channel the transformation. Just concentrate on the crystal,” she said.
Max nodded and took the crystal.
Liz watched Seeraynah as she struggled to do what needed to be done.
"It's done," Seeraynah said. “Your energy is...off, but I think it will work for what we need to do.”
"How long will that hold up?" Liz asked, wincing, glancing at the wall of rock that was the only thing standing between them and the Skins.
She could feel the blood starting to soak through the sleeve she’d pressed against her wound.
"I don't know," he said, glancing behind.
"You have to get Seeraynah out of here. Can you do that?" she asked.
"There's a lot of them out there. I can probably wipe them out once, but that's it. There will be more of them coming," he said. "Liz, what is all of this? I trust you, but I need you to explain it to me."
"I will, I promise," Liz said. "Just get her out."
"Liz, I don't think..." Seeraynah started.
"Just go. Protect our parents if you can," Liz said, taking her hand.
"It's been an honor to know you, Seeraynah," Liz said in a low voice.
"No, the honor is mine," Seeraynah answered in a solemn whisper.
Liz pulled away.
*************
Max did get her out, barely, using his energy field to protect her until she was a safe distance away.
Now it was just the two of them, and Liz was growing weaker.
She quietly told him the one secret she’d kept all of those years, the secret of Future Max.
"It's over Max. Everything still wound up the same," Liz whispered.
At that moment, the blood started to seep through her shirt, soaking it.
“Liz,” he cried, as she slumped to the floor.
Max leaned over her, tears brimming in his eyes. She touched his face.
"Everything you gave up, every sacrifice you made, it was all for nothing," he said angrily. "How could I have been so stupid? How could any future version of me have thought that the only answer was for us to be apart?" he asked.
"I love you so much," Liz panted. "I wish that...things could have been different."
"You listened to me the last time. It didn't work," Max said, shaking his head.
"Trust your own heart Max. You'll know what to do," she whispered.
"I don't want to leave you," he pleaded.
"Nothing is going to stop what's happening to me here. I can’t go with you, and I don’t want to be alive when the Skins find me. Go..." she said.
He lay his head on her chest, feeling her waning heartbeat against his ear.
"I can't," he whispered, his voice cracking.
"You can...you have to," she said.
He leaned up to place a long lingering kiss on her lips.
"What if I make things worse?" he asked, needing her reassurance.
"You can't," Liz gasped.
"I'll always love you, but you have to stop the shooting. You have to," she said.
"It means I'll never have known you, never have loved you," he said.
"Max, no one knows what the future holds. But this is our only chance. Once the shooting happened, there was no tearing us apart, even after Alex...even after Tess. It has to be changed before the shooting happened, before I saw into your soul and fell in love," she said. “Nothing stopped that, even what happened between you and Tess.”
"Liz, please, I don't know if I can do this," he said.
He brushed her hair off of her forehead, and she coughed violently, blood trickling from the corner of her mouth.
"Do it. Do it for all of us Max," she whispered.
Max stroked her face, tears flowing freely.
Her breathing slowed and then stopped.
"No," he sobbed. "Liz..."
His kissed her, knowing it would be for the last time.
He gathered her to his chest, rocking her.
An hour later her body growing cold, he laid her down gently and stood, looking at the Granolith.
She was right. It was the only way. But would his heart survive not ever knowing Liz Parker as he did now? Would he know what he had missed?
He'd made so many mistakes. He'd hurt so many people.
Now it was time to make amends, even if it meant that he would never know Liz Parker's heart.
He walked over to the Granolith and slid the crystal into its base.
A brilliant flash of light bathed the chamber, and he was inside.
He could see his beloved lying on the floor.
His Liz. His beautiful Liz.
His hand trembled as he raised it to the inside wall of the Granolith, wanting to touch her one more time.
And then he simply vanished.
********
He done what he promised her. He had stopped the shooting. No bullet had ever been fired in this lifetime. He'd never healed her, and their lives had taken a different turn.
All of the other timelines had led up to this one. They had been given a second chance if they chose to take it.
Liz saw her own life, this life, and it seemed so cold without him in it. It seemed off. Every loss she experienced seemed more profound, more painful because he wasn’t there to share it with her, as he had been in other dimensions.
She knew that Max’s worst faults had been his compulsion to take all of the burdens on himself, to protect those that he loved, and the need to have complete control.
It was these flaws that had caused him to go back in time to change their lives, and the result had been disastrous. It had ruined both of them, had broken the trust that was between them, and had tainted their bond for the rest of their days.
He had that same flaw in this lifetime, but with heartbreaking results.
Everything Max had been through in this timeline, all of the sacrifices he had made, all of the pain he endured for those that he loved was borne alone, and she experienced his pain as if it were her own.
So much pain...
She felt his loneliness as he watched her from afar as they grew up, certain that she would forever be out of his reach, because of what he was.
She had watched him heal all of those sick children. She saw him always put those he loved before himself.
She felt Tess' manipulations as if they were not just committed against Max, but also against her. She could not contain her horror as she watched his life, this life, unfold before her, her mind unable to completely grasp how truly evil Tess was.
She experienced his horror at the revelation of her parents' murders. He had felt directly responsible because of his feelings for her.
He had been tortured by the FBI and by Khivar, but he had survived, which made it all the more heartbreaking that he felt his very existence caused people pain.
It wasn’t true. The warped view Max had of the events that had transpired was wrong. He couldn’t control everything. Things happened that were beyond anyone’s control.
But could she accept that? He had taken decisions out of her hands too in this lifetime, had broken her heart by leaving her in the train station after revealing what Tess had done to her family.
Now she knew everything, and the decision would be hers.
******
See you all on Sunday
Seeranah frowned in the shadows.
She wasn’t sure what she was talking about, but she knew that it was something momentous, something that had tested the bond between the human girl and the alien King.
A door slamming in the hotel interrupted their conversation and gave Seeraynah away.
“I’m...I’m sorry,” she stuttered, embarrassed at being discovered.
“No, it’s ok,” Liz said.
“Maria, I need to talk to Seeraynah,” she said, turning toward her friend, giving her a meaningful look. Maria’s eyes widened, and she stared at Liz nervously.
“Are you sure that’s what you want?” she asked.
“It’s time,” she said softly.
Maria nodded and stood.
“I’m going to go find Michael. If I don’t, you’ll never see Max tonight. He’s challenged him at Tomb Raider in the game room, and you know what happens once they get into a game,” she said.
Liz nodded.
“Come, sit,” she said, motioning to Seeraynah, as Maria walked away.
Seeraynah sensed something momentous was about to transpire, and she sat down, looking at Liz expectantly.
She was silent for a long moment, as if trying to figure out where to begin.
Finally she spoke.
“Did you ever wonder why I trusted you on sight?” Liz asked, turning her wise brown eyes on her.
Seeraynah was surprised at the question.
“Yes,” Seeraynah admitted, after a pause. “Though I can’t say I wasn’t grateful. If it weren’t for you, Max probably would have turned me away, or worse.”
“Probably,” Liz nodded, as she looked out at the cars passing on the busy road.
Again she was silent.
“Why did you? Trust me, that is,” Seeraynah asked.
“Because I knew you in another time,” Liz answered.
Seeraynah had to hold back her laughter.
“That’s not possible,” she said.
“It is possible,” Liz said, turning to appraise her, her face completely serious. “A few years ago, a Future version of Max came back to this time. He told me that you were a good friend. Of all the things he told me, I believe that. You helped the two of us to alter the Granolith, so that he could come back to warn me of the end of the world. It was supposed to happen in five years.”
Seeraynah shook her head, shocked and offended. She couldn’t believe Liz would even suggest she would do something like that.
“I would never do that,” she said, indignant. “The Granolith isn’t something to be toyed with, and I wouldn’t be so egotistical to think that I could play with the outcome of events!”
“You did,” Liz answered in a low voice.
“Liz, do you have any idea how dangerous it is to do something like that? It is forbidden,” Seeraynah protested. She couldn’t have done it. She wouldn’t have. Logistically, she knew it could be done, but that didn’t mean she would have ever considered helping the Zenshai to use that knowledge, for any reason. As an Antarian it had been taught to her from when she was a child, that the Granolith had a greater purpose, one which was beyond their understanding in their finite lifetimes. All Antarians believed this. It is why their race was chosen to protect it.
“Well things must have been pretty bad for us to consider it,” Liz shrugged. Seeraynah couldn’t help but notice the bitter edge to her voice.
Liz studied her, her eyes challenging her to deny what she knew to be true.
“You know how it can be done, don’t you,” Liz asked, rhetorically.
Seeraynah didn’t answer, and her silence told Liz what she needed to know.
“If you know, how can you say it wasn’t possible? When people are put in dire situations, there is no real way to know how they’ll react. That version of Max and myself made a mistake, and we’re both paying for it in this timeline,” Liz said.
"I couldn't have done it without Max. The Granolith only responds to one person," Seeraynah protested.
Perhaps this was the reason that this Max was so distrustful.
She could understand after hearing this that if he knew, he might suspect she had ulterior motives in this timeline.
“Does this Max know?” Seeraynah asked.
“I never told him. I saw what happened last time, and I know how wrong things can go. You have to promise me you won’t tell him. He can’t know about any of this,” Liz said.
Serena shook her head.
“Liz, I...” she started to protest.
“Please,” Liz answered, her eyes pleading with Seeraynah to understand.
"I can't tell him that he set this whole thing in motion. It would kill him if he knew that he'd come to me from the future and asked me to make him stop loving me," she said.
"If I hadn't done that, Alex wouldn't have been dead. We would have been married in Las Vegas and Alex would have been there," she said, lowering her head. “And Tess, he wouldn’t have...nothing would have happened between them.”
"And the end of the world would be upon us soon," Seeraynah added.
"It may still come," Liz said quietly. "I have to be prepared this time."
“Liz, is there something you’re not telling us?” Seeraynah asked.
“Nothing that I can do anything about at the moment,” Liz said. “When I get these flashes of the future, I don’t always know what they mean. Sometimes they’re just feelings, emotions. But something big is coming, and it isn’t going to be good. I had this sudden feeling that we had to leave Ohio. I don’t know why, and I can’t explain it, but I trust it. I need you to trust it too.”
Seeraynah felt a chill race down her spine.
“Liz, what are you talking about?” she asked.
“It may be nothing. I hope to God it isn’t....”
*********
Four years passed before Liz’s vision came true, and in that time Seeraynah’s admiration for her grew tenfold.
In that time, the FBI came close to them twice, and both times Liz received visions.
The last time, it had almost been too late. Two FBI agents cornered Max late one night as he walked to his car.
Max had killed the both of them. He’d had no choice, but he’d taken it hard. Michael cursed himself for not being there. They'd gotten too lax, too complacent.
Liz , Michael and Seeraynah had gone out after Max after Liz saw in a vision, the FBI agents lying in wait for Max.
By the time they’d gotten there, it had all been over, and the two men lay dead in the street.
Liz saw the anguish in Max’s eyes as he stood over them. She rushed to him, putting her arms around him, willing him to feel the love she felt for him.
“I hate this,” he whispered into her hair. “I hate that we have to exist like this. I hate that I can’t give make the dreams you had come true.”
“Max, you can’t keep doing this. I love you, and my biggest dream has come true. We’re together,” she said.
“Not completely, and that’s my fault,” he said. “I broke the trust between us.”
And here it was again. She hated lying to him, but telling him the truth would be so much worse.
“We both did Max. I...I wasn’t strong enough. I was afraid of what would happen, of the consequences of you not fulfilling your destiny, and when I lied to you about Kyle...” she faltered.
“Don’t,” he said. “Please....”
He held her tighter, taking comfort in her embrace.
**********
Max had never wanted the power of the Granolith.
He refused to use it. The Granolith remained hidden.
Khivar arrived on Earth in the year 2010. Husks had been created to match the outer appearances of the Special Unit, and the remainder placed on Earth as citizens.
The Unit was destroyed and Khivar’s men took their place, using all of the FBI’s resources to track the fugitives down like animals. Towns were destroyed. Blame was put on the foreign countries attacking the United States, and a terrible war began.
Seeraynah hadn’t been there when they’d been caught and brought to Edward’s Air Force Base. Max had sent her to try to find Kal. They needed his help. But she was too late. When she arrived at his home in Los Angeles, she found his dust. The Skins had gotten there first.
Khivar and his men had assumed control of the Air Force Base, under the authority of the “FBI”.
A ceremonial execution was planned. It was to be viewed by Khivar and his men.
Seeraynah infiltrated the compound to help them to escape.
Max’s cell was heavily guarded. Seeraynah saw that he had been brutally beaten by Khivar’s men, but the despite his own injuries, the only thing Max was concerned about was finding the others and Liz.
The moment the breach was discovered, Khivar ordered them to be terminated.
Max and Seeraynah found each of their cells. They were too late. Michael, Isabel, Kyle and Maria were all brutally executed.
Max didn’t have time to even process it. He had to keep moving.
As he and Seeraynah passed through each cell, he grew desperate. He could still feel Liz, but he knew that any moment she could be exterminated.
He could sense her inside of her cell as they approached it, and he could feel her fear as if it were her own.
When he destroyed the door, he saw Liz pressed up against the wall. He barely had time to register it before the guard inside fired his weapon.
The shot missed Max, and with lightning speed he fired a burst of energy at him. As the guard fell, his weapon went off a final time, striking Liz in the chest. She fell to the floor with a strangled gasp.
“Liz!” he cried.
He rushed to her, dropping to his knees and pulling her into his arms, tenderly brushing a kiss over her forehead.
Her hand was pressed to her stomach, and she took a deep shuddering breath.
Let me see,” he said, pulling away, and she shook her head.
“Everything’s going to be all right,” he said, smoothing her hair off of her face. “I’ll fix this.”
“I’ll be fine. It’s not that bad,” she said. “You have to get us out of here.”
She looked at Seeraynah, and something unspoken passed between them.
“Max,” Seeraynah said, her eyes never leaving the human girl’s. “I’ll tend to Liz. I’ll make sure she can make it out of here. You check the corridor, make sure it’s clear.”
Max looked at Liz with uncertainty.
“Go Max. We have to get out of here,” she said, breathing heavily. He nodded and moved to his feet, carefully checking the corridor before stepping out of the door.
She stared at Seeraynah as she heard the muffled cry of one of the guards.
Seeraynah noted the pallor of Liz’s skin, and she moved to take Liz’s hand away from her stomach to look at the wound.
“Leave it,” Liz said, sounding out of breath.
“You lied to him,” Seeraynah said.
“It’s happening Seeraynah,” she said. “You can’t tell him about this. It won’t matter in the end. Promise me. We have to get him to the Granolith.”
“Liz, let him heal you,” Seeraynah said.
Liz shook her head.
“He’s injured too. He needs his energy. It’s time,” she gasped. “Tear off your sleeve.”
“Liz,” Seeraynah said in protest.
“Just do it!” Liz hissed, and Seeraynah complied.
“Help me pack it,”Liz said, and Seeraynah started to shake her head.
“This is important. He thinks it’s a flesh wound. He has to keep thinking that until we get to the Granolith,” Liz said.
“But-“ Seereaynah said.
“Just trust me on this,” Liz commanded, as she lay back on the floor.
Against her better judgment, Seeraynah staunched the blood flow as much as she could, and Liz pressed her hand against the packed wound.
“Don’t say a word,” Liz warned, her face tightened with pain.
“I don’t think-“ Seeraynah started, and closed her mouth as Max ran back in.
“Are you all right to leave?” he asked, looking at her with concern.
“She’ll be fine,” Seeraynah said in a hard voice.
Max noted the paleness that has stolen over Liz’s skin.
“Let me look at you,” he said, dropping to his knees.
“Max, we need to get to the Granolith,” Liz said, wincing.
"Liz," Max started to protest, as he always had when it came to the Granolith.
"Listen to me Max," Liz said fiercely. "We don't have time to argue about this. Everything depends on this now. Remember when you came to my window that night before you left for New York City, and I told you to be careful with the Granolith? That if it fell into the wrong hands, it could be dangerous? I never told you why."
"It's not important now. We just need to get you out of here, so I can heal you," he said, searching her eyes.
"You need to save your energy for the Granolith. The end of the world is coming. I thought that I could stop it if I only let you go. There's so much I need to tell you, and there isn't enough time..." she said.
*********
Seeraynah led them to the Granolith hidden deep in a desert chamber, underneath the ruin of the Eagle Rock Compound. Nothing remained of the structure above, but an explosion-proof warehouse remained underneath it.
She turned to Seeraynah.
“I want you to help Max, and then leave,” Liz said, with determination
‘What do you mean?” Seeraynah protested, shaking her head. “I can't.”
“This can all be changed. It was done once, and you helped Max to do it. We have to try again, and then I want you to leave,” Liz said.
“No,” Seeraynah said. "There has to be some other way."
“We have no choice,” Liz said.
"What are you talking about?" Max asked from behind her, and she looked to see that he had sealed off the entrance. Already she could hear the Skins using their weapons against the rock. It wouldn't hold up long.
She looked at him with all of the love and loss she had felt for years.
"You came from the future and said that the world would end if I didn’t make you fall out of love with me. We couldn’t have known what Tess was. We have to try again," she said.
"I would never do that!" Max said, shaking his head. "I would never ask that of you."
"But you did," Liz insisted. "Max, I don't have time to explain it all, but it's true, and what we did, didn't change anything. I know what we have to do now."
"Liz," he started, but she turned to Seeraynah.
"Seeraynah, ready the crystal, and then I want you to go back to Roswell, to make sure that if our parents are alive, you do what you can to protect them, in case this doesn’t work," Liz said.
Seeraynah trusted and respected Liz, and knew what it had cost her to change this timeline. She knew she wouldn’t ask this of her unless she had no other alternative. She had sacrificed so much for the King, and now she was going to give up the greatest love of her life.
Seeraynah nodded.
She picked up one of the crystals.
“Come here Max,” she said. “I need your energy to transform the crystal.”
"What’s going on?" Max asked, his jaw tightening.
"Just trust me, Max, please," Liz said, watching Seeraynah.
"Can you do that?" she asked, laying her hand on his cheek.
"I trust you more than I trust myself," he said, his eyes searching hers.
A sad smile touched her lips.
He walked over to Seeraynah.
“What do I have to do?” he asked quietly.
“I’ll use your energy to channel the transformation. Just concentrate on the crystal,” she said.
Max nodded and took the crystal.
Liz watched Seeraynah as she struggled to do what needed to be done.
"It's done," Seeraynah said. “Your energy is...off, but I think it will work for what we need to do.”
"How long will that hold up?" Liz asked, wincing, glancing at the wall of rock that was the only thing standing between them and the Skins.
She could feel the blood starting to soak through the sleeve she’d pressed against her wound.
"I don't know," he said, glancing behind.
"You have to get Seeraynah out of here. Can you do that?" she asked.
"There's a lot of them out there. I can probably wipe them out once, but that's it. There will be more of them coming," he said. "Liz, what is all of this? I trust you, but I need you to explain it to me."
"I will, I promise," Liz said. "Just get her out."
"Liz, I don't think..." Seeraynah started.
"Just go. Protect our parents if you can," Liz said, taking her hand.
"It's been an honor to know you, Seeraynah," Liz said in a low voice.
"No, the honor is mine," Seeraynah answered in a solemn whisper.
Liz pulled away.
*************
Max did get her out, barely, using his energy field to protect her until she was a safe distance away.
Now it was just the two of them, and Liz was growing weaker.
She quietly told him the one secret she’d kept all of those years, the secret of Future Max.
"It's over Max. Everything still wound up the same," Liz whispered.
At that moment, the blood started to seep through her shirt, soaking it.
“Liz,” he cried, as she slumped to the floor.
Max leaned over her, tears brimming in his eyes. She touched his face.
"Everything you gave up, every sacrifice you made, it was all for nothing," he said angrily. "How could I have been so stupid? How could any future version of me have thought that the only answer was for us to be apart?" he asked.
"I love you so much," Liz panted. "I wish that...things could have been different."
"You listened to me the last time. It didn't work," Max said, shaking his head.
"Trust your own heart Max. You'll know what to do," she whispered.
"I don't want to leave you," he pleaded.
"Nothing is going to stop what's happening to me here. I can’t go with you, and I don’t want to be alive when the Skins find me. Go..." she said.
He lay his head on her chest, feeling her waning heartbeat against his ear.
"I can't," he whispered, his voice cracking.
"You can...you have to," she said.
He leaned up to place a long lingering kiss on her lips.
"What if I make things worse?" he asked, needing her reassurance.
"You can't," Liz gasped.
"I'll always love you, but you have to stop the shooting. You have to," she said.
"It means I'll never have known you, never have loved you," he said.
"Max, no one knows what the future holds. But this is our only chance. Once the shooting happened, there was no tearing us apart, even after Alex...even after Tess. It has to be changed before the shooting happened, before I saw into your soul and fell in love," she said. “Nothing stopped that, even what happened between you and Tess.”
"Liz, please, I don't know if I can do this," he said.
He brushed her hair off of her forehead, and she coughed violently, blood trickling from the corner of her mouth.
"Do it. Do it for all of us Max," she whispered.
Max stroked her face, tears flowing freely.
Her breathing slowed and then stopped.
"No," he sobbed. "Liz..."
His kissed her, knowing it would be for the last time.
He gathered her to his chest, rocking her.
An hour later her body growing cold, he laid her down gently and stood, looking at the Granolith.
She was right. It was the only way. But would his heart survive not ever knowing Liz Parker as he did now? Would he know what he had missed?
He'd made so many mistakes. He'd hurt so many people.
Now it was time to make amends, even if it meant that he would never know Liz Parker's heart.
He walked over to the Granolith and slid the crystal into its base.
A brilliant flash of light bathed the chamber, and he was inside.
He could see his beloved lying on the floor.
His Liz. His beautiful Liz.
His hand trembled as he raised it to the inside wall of the Granolith, wanting to touch her one more time.
And then he simply vanished.
********
He done what he promised her. He had stopped the shooting. No bullet had ever been fired in this lifetime. He'd never healed her, and their lives had taken a different turn.
All of the other timelines had led up to this one. They had been given a second chance if they chose to take it.
Liz saw her own life, this life, and it seemed so cold without him in it. It seemed off. Every loss she experienced seemed more profound, more painful because he wasn’t there to share it with her, as he had been in other dimensions.
She knew that Max’s worst faults had been his compulsion to take all of the burdens on himself, to protect those that he loved, and the need to have complete control.
It was these flaws that had caused him to go back in time to change their lives, and the result had been disastrous. It had ruined both of them, had broken the trust that was between them, and had tainted their bond for the rest of their days.
He had that same flaw in this lifetime, but with heartbreaking results.
Everything Max had been through in this timeline, all of the sacrifices he had made, all of the pain he endured for those that he loved was borne alone, and she experienced his pain as if it were her own.
So much pain...
She felt his loneliness as he watched her from afar as they grew up, certain that she would forever be out of his reach, because of what he was.
She had watched him heal all of those sick children. She saw him always put those he loved before himself.
She felt Tess' manipulations as if they were not just committed against Max, but also against her. She could not contain her horror as she watched his life, this life, unfold before her, her mind unable to completely grasp how truly evil Tess was.
She experienced his horror at the revelation of her parents' murders. He had felt directly responsible because of his feelings for her.
He had been tortured by the FBI and by Khivar, but he had survived, which made it all the more heartbreaking that he felt his very existence caused people pain.
It wasn’t true. The warped view Max had of the events that had transpired was wrong. He couldn’t control everything. Things happened that were beyond anyone’s control.
But could she accept that? He had taken decisions out of her hands too in this lifetime, had broken her heart by leaving her in the train station after revealing what Tess had done to her family.
Now she knew everything, and the decision would be hers.
******
See you all on Sunday
Part 32
I am posting this a little early because I don't know if I'll have time tomorrow.
The Fear- Trust Company
Standing here
I'm cold inside with fear
And I can't feel my soul
Take me in
I'm yours again
For awhile - just like the last time
Lead me from the fear
And I won't leave you here
There's a way out
There's a way out
There's a way from here... believe
I feel weak
I'm slowly losing touch
With what is left in me
Take me in
I'm yours again
For awhile - just like the first time
I need you
To keep me here
I'm starting over again
Part Thirty-Two
Liz looked at Isabel with tears in her eyes. She felt every feeling that that other Liz had felt, every tender stolen moment, every heartbreak.
So many mistakes had been made, but through all of it, that one fact remained true. They had loved each other with an intensity that knew no boundaries.
“The two of you loved each other in three different lifetimes, Liz. That has to count for something,” Isabel said.
Liz wiped the tears from her eyes.
"I thought you should know all of it, so that you can make a decision," Isabel said, not hiding the hope in her voice.
"But he's already made his," Liz said, her voice cracking. "It's been three weeks. He hasn't come for me."
"Liz, I know he left you there alone in the train station, but it was only to protect you. It broke his heart to show you what he did, because the only thing he’d ever done was to love you, and in his mind, loving you ruined your life. When he saw what you just saw, it only reinforced what he already believes," Isabel said, on the verge of tears.
“All he saw was that he broke your heart, both in this timeline, and in the other,” she said.
“The last thing he wants to do was to hurt you, and I know when he found out that the world ended because you were together in the first and second timeline, and that he’d betrayed you, I knew he was convinced that he isn’t worthy of you. That he never was,” Isabel said.
"And he is, Liz. He is worthy of you. Things...things just got messed up in those other timelines, but this one is different. Max only has to be himself now, and the one thing I saw...the one thing that was true in all of those timelines was that he loved you, and the only thing he ever wanted was to be with you," she said.
Liz lowered her head, studying her clasped fingers.
“I know I wouldn’t have been alive in either of those timelines if he hadn’t healed me in the Crashdown after the shooting. I loved him enough to forgive him for whatever happened in that other timeline. He gave us up to try to save this world. He didn’t betray me in this one. He saved me. I would have died on the platform that day,” she said. “In all of them, he risked everything for me.”
“I was hoping you would say that,” Isabel said, her eyes glistening with tears. "Seeraynah said that he was being given back what he’d lost in all of those timelines...you. There won’t be any end of the world. The Antarians have taken their world back. The skins will be gone from this planet soon, if they aren’t already, and Seeraynah has gone back to Antar. There isn’t any reason for any of them to come back here for us. We don’t have the responsibility of the Granolith anymore. Max doesn’t have that power anymore. He passed the test and he's finally free to be just Max, but this, " she said, "this broke him...a time and version of himself that no longer exists.”
“He doesn’t know you’re here, defending him,” Liz said, dully.
Isabel shook her head.
“No, he would kill me if he knew,” she said. "He doesn't even know I've seen what's in the crystal. I don't think he'd been too happy with me if when he finds out either. But if you come, it will all be worth it."
There was a long pause of silence between them.
“I don’t know if I could take it if he pushed me away again, Isabel,” Liz said.
“Can you live with knowing that you had that kind of love, and knowing that you didn’t do everything in your power to have it in this lifetime?” Isabel asked.
“I have to think about it,” Liz said, avoiding Isabel's eyes. “I need time to think about all of this.”
“I understand,” Isabel said, standing up.
“Isabel, what about you and Michael?” she asked. “Has he seen what you saw?”
Isabel nodded.
“I had to show him. It was his life too," Isabel said. "I took it one morning when Max...."
She paused.
"What," Liz prompted.
"Max hasn't been right since Maryland," she said. "He wasn't around and I just thought I'd straighten up his room. I knew he had the crystal in the drawer. I took it out, and when I picked it up, I saw everything."
"It doesn't matter what happened before. It's over now, and all that's left for Max to do is to pick up the pieces of his life and try to rebuild it," Isabel answered.
Silence hung between them, and then Liz spoke.
“So you saw what you had with Alex, and Michael knows what he had with Maria. He knows what they were to each other?” Liz asked, quietly.
Isabel nodded.
“And?” she asked.
“I think that all hinges on you, Liz,” she said. "Let’s see what happens with you and Max first."
Liz sighed.
“Well, I’ve done what I can. It’s your decision,” Isabel said. "I have a plane to catch."
She pulled another piece of paper out her pocket.
“This is my address in New Mexico,” she said.
Liz nodded, taking the paper, and then a thought suddenly occurred to her.
"What about your parents? Do they know he's...you know, here?" she asked.
"Not yet," Isabel answered. "Max can never go back to Roswell. There'd be too many questions, and my parents don't live there anymore. Right now he's insisting they not know, but I think he’ll come around."
"I hope so," Liz said, remembering the loneliness she'd felt through their connection, that loneliness he'd felt his whole life. "If I had the chance to see my parents one more time, I couldn't stay away."
"I couldn't either," Isabel said, seeing the sadness on Liz's face.
She smiled sadly at Liz.
“I’ll see you around,” Isabel said, opening the door.
“Isabel,” Liz said, and she turned.
“Whatever I decide to do...thank you for trying,” she said.
“I had to, for Max,” she said, with a small smile and closed the door behind her.
********
February 2008
Everything she’d learned had turned her life upside down and after Isabel left, she didn’t know what to do with her new knowledge.
She’d thought about everything she’d seen from the crystal, and knew now more than ever that she could love Max Evans. In some ways, she felt like she knew him on an intimate basis because of the flashes from the crystal, yet she also knew that the Max she had seen in those images was not the Max she knew in this timeline. And she was not that same Liz.
She had wrestled with his betrayal in that other timeline. He had slept with Tess, and had tainted everything they had been to each other. Even though it had happened to an alternate version of herself, she still felt that betrayal. Tess had manipulated him until he had nowhere to turn, until he was a mere shadow of his former self, and she had taken control of what was left. Max had never fully recovered from it, and neither had she, even after Tess was dead.
She herself had set that path in motion in that other lifetime by pretending to sleep with Kyle to push him away, but they had started to grow closer again after she'd saved him in New York. Then Tess' interference ruined everything.
But for all the doubts she had, her mind always came back to one thing. Those two people were not the people that she and the Max that was somewhere ahead on this dusty path were today.
This Max had done nothing but love her. This Max had risked everything, including his own life to protect her. This Max was untainted by Tess and her manipulations.
Still, those realizations hadn't been easy. She had spoken to Isabel a few times over the past two months. Max still had no idea that either she or Michael had seen what the crystal held. Isabel told her that every time she casually brought up Liz's name, or going to New York, Max had promptly put an end the conversations, flatly refusing to discuss anything to do with pursuing Liz. It had been exactly as Isabel had expected.
Liz herself wasn’t sure how she would have reacted if he had.
After everything the crystal had shown her, Liz realized why Isabel had come to see her. She knew that Max would never come for her. Maybe things might have been different before he’d been taken to Antar, or before he’d seen the truth. Isabel told her that Max wouldn’t talk about it, but she knew her brother.
Liz knew that if there were to be any chance of anything between hem, she would have to fight for it, because the revelations had devastated Max. It would have to be her choice to go to him.
She’d struggled with it for weeks, long after Kyle had left on New Year’s Day.
After Isabel had left, Alex had been relentless, wanting to know what was going on. Finally, when Maria got home that night, she’d told Alex that it was Max who had "healed" her on the subway platform.
Alex would have laughed if he didn't recall Isabel and Michael's words the first time they came to the apartment.
Liz just had to come out with it. She told them that the three were aliens. The conversation was one that carried on for hours.
Alex hadn’t believed it because Max Evans was dead. But then Maria confirmed that Max had been in the apartment.
And when Maria realized that, she started to get a little freaky. There had been aliens in her apartment.
.Alex concluded there had to be a logical explanation for Max's appearance in New York City. Max had just faked his own death.
Liz concurred, but what was at issue was why. And that was what Alex took exception to, choosing to believe that perhaps Max had done something illegal instead. Maybe he was gifted. Maybe he thought he was an alien, but there was no way Alex was going to believe he was an alien.
And he was steadfast. At least, until Isabel had confirmed it for him.
When she called, Liz told her that she had told Alex and Maria. She expected Isabel to be surprised or angry, but somehow she wasn’t. She asked Liz to put Alex on the phone.
Shae had taken a leap of faith and told Alex everything; that she, Max Michael and Tess were different, and that there had been circumstances that had pushed Max to feel as if he’d had no other choice than to stage his and Tess’s deaths. Liz knew how much it took for Isabel to put her trust in him, and she knew that the reason she had was mostly because of what she’d seen in that alternate timeline.
For the first time, Liz wondered what it must have been like to be Isabel. She had treated Alex shabbily in that other timeline because she had been afraid to trust him, and when she realized she truly loved him, it had been too late. She had married a lawyer named Jesse Ramirez the year after Alex’s death, but Liz had a feeling that the relationship with him had not been quite the same. It had mostly been one of deception until the end, when she had to leave him.
For his part, Alex had flabbergasted, but Isabel didn’t back down on the confession, hoping that he would understand. But she didn’t mention the crystal or the other timelines, and Liz didn’t mention it to Alex or Maria either. It wasn’t her place.
It took hours of long conversations for Alex to come to terms with the fact that he had gone to high school with aliens, and at the end of it, he wasn’t even sure that he believed it.
But that night, Isabel had come to him in a dream, explaining to him that she had the ability to dream-walk. She had called the next morning to talk to him, describing in great detail what had transpired while Alex slept.
Liz hadn’t pressed Alex for the details, and Alex merely told her that Isabel had perfectly described things she had manipulated in his dream, their surroundings, their clothes, and recited their conversation almost word for word.
Liz wondered if Isabel would eventually tell him what they had been to each other in that alternate timeline. It would be up to her and Michael. Liz was not going to interfere with their decisions one way or another. She had enough difficulty dealing with her own.
During their late night phone calls, Liz had come to have a certain admiration for Isabel, the girl who had been labeled the “Ice Queen” in high school. She couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for her. It was hard enough to be a normal teenager, but an alien teenager was a completely different story.
She knew that Michael had lived with an abusive foster father. Everyone in school knew. She wasn’t shocked when Michael had emancipated himself after Hank had suddenly disappeared. She wondered now if there was more to that story than met the eye. He had always seemed so distant and irascible. It was a shock to see another side to him in that other timeline, and even more shocking to see him with Maria. She had changed him for the better. They had been happy right to the end. She wondered what Michael would do with that.
Isabel had poured her heart out during those phone calls, finally able to talk to someone about who they were, what they were.
They talked about how she’d betrayed Max on Antar, and that she would do anything to ensure his happiness. She’d played a big part in Max’s decision to stay away from Liz all those years ago, and Max had given up everything so that she and Michael could live a normal life. He’d gone to Antar, knowing that there was a good possibility that he wouldn’t return, but he did it because he loved them. And now he deserved what he’d always wanted, the only thing he’d always wanted. Liz. But that all hinged on whether Liz wanted him. Isabel didn’t push her, but Liz knew that she desperately hoped that Liz would come to Max.
When Liz asked about Max, Isabel always told her that he was holding up, trying to acclimate, but she never elaborated, and Liz didn’t push. She didn’t want to give Isabel false hope that she would come, not when she wasn’t sure what to do.
In fact, for awhile, Liz wasn’t exactly sure why she kept taking Isabel’s phone calls, because at a few points during those few weeks, she’d been conflicted. Did she really want to risk having her heart broken again?
But one night, she had a vision, a vision of a life that she and Max built together, in this lifetime. A dream of a house filled with love and laughter and nights wrapped in each other’s arms, of sweet kisses, reverent touches, of slow burning passion and fathomless love.
At first she discounted it as a dream, as real as it had seemed.
But the same flash hit her as she was walking down the street on a bitter cold Monday, and the force of it sent her reeling, stumbling until she grasped a parking meter, trying to gain her equilibrium.
She could feel it, was part of it as if she were actually there.
A whisper danced in her mind, an echo of the Granolith’s words to Max as he lay in the tunnel.
You will learn the terrible truths of past mistakes. You must learn them so that you might truly cherish the love you once knew. If you and she can truly know all that was once between you and still love, then, and only then, will you will finally be free to do so…
And then the voice of the author of the letters…
What song does your heart sing? Who does it sing for? It's time to find out, if you have the courage.
…it is also a truth that no longer exists, merely recorded for you to learn from. What you take from it is up to you. What you choose to act on, or walk away from, is a decision that is yours alone.
What you learn may take you places you never dreamed. It will open your heart to the real truth: a truth far more complex, wondrous...and ugly, than anything you could possibly imagine.
A wise man and a very dear friend once said, "Your destiny is yet to be determined." I believe that, as surely as I believe all that was sacrificed to bring you to this point in time.
And then Seeraynah was speaking to her.
Know your happiness, embrace it Elizabeth, for you have paid dearly for it in so many ways. Max is not whole without you. Nothing stands between you now, no enemies, no destiny but the one the two of you would make together. You have been strong, so strong and have sacrificed much. Embrace it and see your fantasies become real….
And in an instant, the voice was gone.
Suddenly Liz was certain that those visions were no dream. They were a glimpse of the future if she chose to reach out for it.
The vision and the voice of Seeraynah in her head threw her into turmoil.
If she did embrace this, this would become part of her life. Everything would be different. What she knew now could not be unlearned.
But her thoughts came back to that bond that she had had with Max. She knew that she had known a love she had never imagined in that other life. The kind of love she had always dreamed of as a girl. She could walk away and settle for average, or take a leap of faith and know the extraordinary. After all, Max was still the boy she knew in school. There was just so much more to him than she had ever dreamed. But deep down she’d always known that.
She wanted that life that she had so desperately fought for in that alternate timeline, that she was never to have.
It had taken them three timelines to get it right, but they finally had a fighting chance, and she wasn’t going to just let it go.
And it was this that cemented her decision.
That night she had asked Maria and Alex to come with her for moral support. Alex was none too thrilled at her decision. Being grateful that her life was saved because of what Max was, was one thing. Saying she was in love with him was quite another.
"I think it's a mistake," Alex said, shaking his head.
"I know what I'm doing," Liz said obstinately.
"You don't know what could happen...if it's even safe," he argued.
"Khivar is dead. No one is coming after Max," Liz said.
"That's not what he means, hon," Maria said, glancing at Alex. "He means that you don't know if it's safe to, you know, be with him."
Liz almost laughed in her face, for it was Maria who had taken the leap first in that other lifetime, the night before Michael was to leave Earth. But she said nothing.
Oh, if they only knew.
"It's safe," Liz said.
"How do you know?" Alex argued.
"I just do, ok?" she said, exasperated. "Look, I've had feelings for Max Evans my whole life. His DNA isn't going to change that. I need your support. Please..."
Alex saw the determination in her face and knew she was not going to be swayed. She would go with or without them.
She knew Maria would have her back no matter what, but Alex was protective. She was sure he only agreed because he thought that it was better to be there to protect her in case something happened.
She secretly hoped that Maria and Alex too would find the spark that had drawn them to Isabel and Michael. When Isabel had called three days ago and she’d told her that they were coming, Isabel could barely contain the joy in her voice.
“I’m so glad, Liz,” she said. “I didn’t want to say anything or influence your decision, but Max...he’s just lost. He still won’t let me tell my parents he’s here, that he’s alive. He goes out on these long walks, and he’s gone all day, sometimes half the night. He doesn’t talk much to either of us. I’m just...I’m starting to worry.”
“Isabel, what if he turns me away?” Liz asked quietly.
“It’s you, Liz. If it were anyone else, I don’t know, but if anyone can make him see the truth, it’s you,” she said.
*****
And now she sat on a plane bound for New Mexico and either the beginning or the end of her new life. Maria had chattered on about “them”, what she’d come to call Max, Isabel and Michael, to Alex on the flight to New Mexico, but Liz barely registered it. She was too nervous to engage in idle conversation.
She knew Maria was worried about what she’d decided. There were many long, drawn-out conversations about what could happen, things that could go wrong, incompatibilities, the danger she might be in. But she also knew that Liz would not be swayed, and when she said she was going back to New Mexico, Maria agreed that they should go with her, to make sure that nothing happened.
It was strange to see the New Mexico landscape beneath them as they landed, but Liz found it oddly comforting. She hadn't been back in years, but somehow it still felt like and reminded her of home. But her home in Roswell no longer existed, and she could never go back. It was time to move forward, time to move on.
Over the past few weeks, she’d done a lot of thinking and realized she too had been running. Though She'd moved to New York, and hadn't truly dealt with what had happened at the Crashdown during her junior year of college. She'd pushed her parents’ death to the back of her mind. But she never really faced it head on. The revelation from Max had forced her to do that, reopening all of the painful wounds, now made deeper knowing they were murdered.
The plane touched down and her trepidation grew. She had no idea what was going to happen, and that scared her.
Renting the car distracted her for a bit, but her thoughts soon returned to her impending reunion with Max during the drive to Isabel’s.
She didn’t know what to expect, and that scared her.
When they arrived, Liz had expected to see Max at the house. She was shocked at Isabel's appearance when she answered the door. Her face was tired and drawn, and weariness etched her features that spoke of sleepless nights and deep-seated worry. But the smile of happiness was genuine.
"Hi Liz," she said happily, glancing at Alex and Maria behind her.
"Alex, Maria," she added nodding.
"Hey Isabel," Alex said in self-conscious tone, and Liz turned to see his face turning pink.
Liz suppressed a smile. She didn't think Isabel would have much trouble pursuing Alex if she chose to. Alex had always had a crush from afar on the statuesque blond. Liz surmised that not much had changed, despite his discovery of her otherworldly status.
Maria studied Isabel suspiciously. She still hadn't completely gotten over the way she and Michael had burst into their apartment that day, or what they were, for that matter. Her alien status only made her more distrustful.
There was an uncomfortable pause, and Isabel spoke.
"Maria, I wanted to apologize for the way we acted that day in New York," she said quietly. "I know what you thought of me, and I'm sure that what we did, didn't alter your perception any."
Maria's eyes widened slightly.
"Are you reading my mind?" she demanded.
"N-no!" Isabel stammered.
"I just...I can see that you're a little on the defensive side, and I ...I assumed it was because of that day. Liz told me you were ok with...you know..." she gestured.
"Just as long as you're not going to like, suck out my brains or something, than I guess we're cool," Maria said, folding her arms across her chest.
"Maria!" Alex exclaimed, turning toward her, mortified.
"What? I'm only being honest!" she said.
"It's ok Alex," Isabel said in an appeasing tone. "No, we don't do anything like that. We're pretty much just like you."
"Only with the added freaky dream power," Maria said nodding.
"Yeah," Isabel said softly.
"I can deal," Maria said.
"Good," Isabel smiled. "That's good."
"Just keep Guerin away from me and I'll be fine," Maria said. "He rubs me the wrong way."
"He's not always like that," Isabel said. "He was just sort of tense, for obvious reasons. It was a bad day."
"Bad day? He sounds like he's having a bad lifetime," Maria muttered.
"More than you can imagine," Isabel said in a low voice, causing Maria's brow to rise in curiosity.
"Where are my manners?" Isabel said, stepping back. "Come in."
The entered the small house, and Liz was pleasantly surprised to find a warm and inviting atmosphere with soothing southwestern décor and overstuffed furniture, something she never would have expected from Isabel Evans.
"Michael's in the kitchen," Isabel said over her shoulder, motioning for them to follow. Liz wondered if Max was with him, but she was afraid to voice the question.
Instead she complimented Isabel.
"Your house is great," Liz said, noting the throw rugs covering the wood floors.
"Yeah, it's really...pretty," Maria said slowly, glancing around.
"I've changed since high school," Isabel said dryly, and Maria reddened.
"I didn't mean anything by that," Maria said.
Isabel turned to face her with a sigh.
"I know you didn't. It's a fact. I was a bitch. But I didn't know how to be anything else. I was afraid. We all were, and we all dealt with it in different ways," she said with a shrug. "I can't make any excuses for it."
"I don't blame you," Alex said.
"What?" Isabel answered clearly confused that he was justifying her behavior.
"Everyone reacts differently to fear. Max was real quiet, Michael was kind of...prickly, but you...you chose to hang out with the shallow crowd. It's the perfect cover. They were so self-centered that they never would have dug too deep with you. That must have been pretty lonely," he said sympathetically.
"It was," she said in soft amazement, staring at him, which immediately caused his face to redden again.
"I mean, I had Liz and Maria and I don't know what I would have done without them. I can't imagine hanging out with the bitch crowd. Sure, we all had little fantasies, but looking back on them now, I wouldn't change one minute of my high school life, not if it meant giving up these two," he said, putting his arms around his two best friends.
"I wish I had that, real friends. Max and Michael were great, but Max is my brother and Michael might as well be. It would have been nice to have friends separate from them, from what we are," Isabel said wistfully.
"It's not too late for that," Liz said, and Isabel smiled at her.
"Maybe you're right," Isabel said.
"Michael, they're here," Isabel called as she walked into the kitchen.
Liz followed behind her, Alex and Maria bringing up the rear.
After an uncomfortable pause, Isabel cleared her throat.
"Are you going to say hello?" she asked in a pointed tone.
"Hey," Michael said gruffly, his eyes passing over the three of them with carefully rehearsed indifference.
"Hi Michael," Liz said warmly, "it's nice to see you."
"Hey Michael," Alex said, and Michael nodded.
"Hi," Maria said uncomfortably, and Liz knew she was thinking of what Isabel had said earlier.
Michael's eyes narrowed slightly as they fell on Maria.
Liz watched him carefully as he studied her friend.
She knew he was still trying to deal with the fact that in other lifetimes, he and Maria had been in love. She hid her amusement, turning to Maria who she knew was thinking that he hadn't forgotten what she'd said back in New York. Maria's face reddened slightly and she shifted her weight to her other foot.
"Where's Max?" Liz asked turning to Isabel, partly to break the tension and partly because she was afraid she'd lose her nerve if she waited much longer to see him.
Isabel lowered her head slightly.
"He's out there," she said, pointing toward the large picture window that looked out over the back of the house. Behind, Liz could see the arid landscape that stretched uphill. Isabel's house was built on the outskirts of the development, and behind it lay untouched hills, dotted with the hardy shrubs indigent to the desert.
"There's a spot behind that hill. It's where he goes almost every day. He should be back soon. He usually comes in before it gets dark," she said.
"I think I'd rather go find him," Liz said. What she had to say to him was private.
"Ok," Isabel said. "That hill's like a half a mile away, and there's a path that leads around the side. Stay to the left."
Liz nodded, catching the glances of encouragement from Alex and Maria.
"Alex, Maria, why don’t you both go and have a seat in the living room? I'll bring in some iced tea, and we'll all have a chat," Isabel said.
"Sounds good," Alex said agreeably, and he put his arm around Maria, leading her into the hallway.
Liz sighed and took a few steps to the back door.
"Liz, before you go, hold on one second. I have a bag that I usually leave in the fridge for Max, but he never takes it. He only takes water with him. I don't know how long, you'll be up there. Maybe you can convince him to eat something," Isabel said, walking over to the refrigerator.
"Don't hurt him, Liz," Michael said quietly from behind her, his voice startling her.
She turned to face him.
"I know you've gotten the raw end of the deal, but if you're not absolutely sure this is what you want, then just walk away. I don't think he could take it," he said.
"I think we've both been hurt enough to last a lifetime," she said, her voice laced with meaning. "I think we've all been hurt enough."
"I saw everything too, Michael. I saw what you went through. But you know, one thing Max said keeps coming back to me. We make our own destinies," she said softly. "Don't let yours pass you by either."
She knew Michael understood when his eyes softened.
“Good luck," he said.
"Thanks," she said, nodding at him.
"Here," Isabel said, handing her a thermal bag, with worried eyes.
"Liz, Max is different than he was when you last saw him, and...." Isabel burst out.
"It doesn't matter," Liz said in a low voice. "I don't know what's going to happen out there, but I know I'll never forgive myself if I don't try."
"He loves you. He's always loved you. No matter what happens out there, you need to know that," Isabel said.
Liz nodded.
"I'd better go," she said.
"Come on, Michael. We have guests to entertain," Isabel said, grasping his forearm and pulling him toward the hallway.
With a deep breath, Liz walked to the sliding doors and let herself out into the backyard. She paused to look at her destination, saying a silent prayer that Max would understand.
He would be angry that Isabel had shown her the images ingrained in the crystal. He would be angry she was here at all, she was sure. Isabel hadn't told him any of it, unsure of what Liz's decision would be. She didn't want to upset her brother needlessly, especially if what Liz had seen would have convinced her she was better off without Max.
It had never been easy in any lifetime. They'd all gave up so much. In one of those timelines, she'd lost Alex. In this one, she'd lost her parents and Justin.
But in the end, always in the end, it had been she and Max.
It was this, the reason she was climbing up a craggy outcrop toward the one person who had meant so much to her in two lifetimes, and, she was hoping, for a third.
The Fear- Trust Company
Standing here
I'm cold inside with fear
And I can't feel my soul
Take me in
I'm yours again
For awhile - just like the last time
Lead me from the fear
And I won't leave you here
There's a way out
There's a way out
There's a way from here... believe
I feel weak
I'm slowly losing touch
With what is left in me
Take me in
I'm yours again
For awhile - just like the first time
I need you
To keep me here
I'm starting over again
Part Thirty-Two
Liz looked at Isabel with tears in her eyes. She felt every feeling that that other Liz had felt, every tender stolen moment, every heartbreak.
So many mistakes had been made, but through all of it, that one fact remained true. They had loved each other with an intensity that knew no boundaries.
“The two of you loved each other in three different lifetimes, Liz. That has to count for something,” Isabel said.
Liz wiped the tears from her eyes.
"I thought you should know all of it, so that you can make a decision," Isabel said, not hiding the hope in her voice.
"But he's already made his," Liz said, her voice cracking. "It's been three weeks. He hasn't come for me."
"Liz, I know he left you there alone in the train station, but it was only to protect you. It broke his heart to show you what he did, because the only thing he’d ever done was to love you, and in his mind, loving you ruined your life. When he saw what you just saw, it only reinforced what he already believes," Isabel said, on the verge of tears.
“All he saw was that he broke your heart, both in this timeline, and in the other,” she said.
“The last thing he wants to do was to hurt you, and I know when he found out that the world ended because you were together in the first and second timeline, and that he’d betrayed you, I knew he was convinced that he isn’t worthy of you. That he never was,” Isabel said.
"And he is, Liz. He is worthy of you. Things...things just got messed up in those other timelines, but this one is different. Max only has to be himself now, and the one thing I saw...the one thing that was true in all of those timelines was that he loved you, and the only thing he ever wanted was to be with you," she said.
Liz lowered her head, studying her clasped fingers.
“I know I wouldn’t have been alive in either of those timelines if he hadn’t healed me in the Crashdown after the shooting. I loved him enough to forgive him for whatever happened in that other timeline. He gave us up to try to save this world. He didn’t betray me in this one. He saved me. I would have died on the platform that day,” she said. “In all of them, he risked everything for me.”
“I was hoping you would say that,” Isabel said, her eyes glistening with tears. "Seeraynah said that he was being given back what he’d lost in all of those timelines...you. There won’t be any end of the world. The Antarians have taken their world back. The skins will be gone from this planet soon, if they aren’t already, and Seeraynah has gone back to Antar. There isn’t any reason for any of them to come back here for us. We don’t have the responsibility of the Granolith anymore. Max doesn’t have that power anymore. He passed the test and he's finally free to be just Max, but this, " she said, "this broke him...a time and version of himself that no longer exists.”
“He doesn’t know you’re here, defending him,” Liz said, dully.
Isabel shook her head.
“No, he would kill me if he knew,” she said. "He doesn't even know I've seen what's in the crystal. I don't think he'd been too happy with me if when he finds out either. But if you come, it will all be worth it."
There was a long pause of silence between them.
“I don’t know if I could take it if he pushed me away again, Isabel,” Liz said.
“Can you live with knowing that you had that kind of love, and knowing that you didn’t do everything in your power to have it in this lifetime?” Isabel asked.
“I have to think about it,” Liz said, avoiding Isabel's eyes. “I need time to think about all of this.”
“I understand,” Isabel said, standing up.
“Isabel, what about you and Michael?” she asked. “Has he seen what you saw?”
Isabel nodded.
“I had to show him. It was his life too," Isabel said. "I took it one morning when Max...."
She paused.
"What," Liz prompted.
"Max hasn't been right since Maryland," she said. "He wasn't around and I just thought I'd straighten up his room. I knew he had the crystal in the drawer. I took it out, and when I picked it up, I saw everything."
"It doesn't matter what happened before. It's over now, and all that's left for Max to do is to pick up the pieces of his life and try to rebuild it," Isabel answered.
Silence hung between them, and then Liz spoke.
“So you saw what you had with Alex, and Michael knows what he had with Maria. He knows what they were to each other?” Liz asked, quietly.
Isabel nodded.
“And?” she asked.
“I think that all hinges on you, Liz,” she said. "Let’s see what happens with you and Max first."
Liz sighed.
“Well, I’ve done what I can. It’s your decision,” Isabel said. "I have a plane to catch."
She pulled another piece of paper out her pocket.
“This is my address in New Mexico,” she said.
Liz nodded, taking the paper, and then a thought suddenly occurred to her.
"What about your parents? Do they know he's...you know, here?" she asked.
"Not yet," Isabel answered. "Max can never go back to Roswell. There'd be too many questions, and my parents don't live there anymore. Right now he's insisting they not know, but I think he’ll come around."
"I hope so," Liz said, remembering the loneliness she'd felt through their connection, that loneliness he'd felt his whole life. "If I had the chance to see my parents one more time, I couldn't stay away."
"I couldn't either," Isabel said, seeing the sadness on Liz's face.
She smiled sadly at Liz.
“I’ll see you around,” Isabel said, opening the door.
“Isabel,” Liz said, and she turned.
“Whatever I decide to do...thank you for trying,” she said.
“I had to, for Max,” she said, with a small smile and closed the door behind her.
********
February 2008
Everything she’d learned had turned her life upside down and after Isabel left, she didn’t know what to do with her new knowledge.
She’d thought about everything she’d seen from the crystal, and knew now more than ever that she could love Max Evans. In some ways, she felt like she knew him on an intimate basis because of the flashes from the crystal, yet she also knew that the Max she had seen in those images was not the Max she knew in this timeline. And she was not that same Liz.
She had wrestled with his betrayal in that other timeline. He had slept with Tess, and had tainted everything they had been to each other. Even though it had happened to an alternate version of herself, she still felt that betrayal. Tess had manipulated him until he had nowhere to turn, until he was a mere shadow of his former self, and she had taken control of what was left. Max had never fully recovered from it, and neither had she, even after Tess was dead.
She herself had set that path in motion in that other lifetime by pretending to sleep with Kyle to push him away, but they had started to grow closer again after she'd saved him in New York. Then Tess' interference ruined everything.
But for all the doubts she had, her mind always came back to one thing. Those two people were not the people that she and the Max that was somewhere ahead on this dusty path were today.
This Max had done nothing but love her. This Max had risked everything, including his own life to protect her. This Max was untainted by Tess and her manipulations.
Still, those realizations hadn't been easy. She had spoken to Isabel a few times over the past two months. Max still had no idea that either she or Michael had seen what the crystal held. Isabel told her that every time she casually brought up Liz's name, or going to New York, Max had promptly put an end the conversations, flatly refusing to discuss anything to do with pursuing Liz. It had been exactly as Isabel had expected.
Liz herself wasn’t sure how she would have reacted if he had.
After everything the crystal had shown her, Liz realized why Isabel had come to see her. She knew that Max would never come for her. Maybe things might have been different before he’d been taken to Antar, or before he’d seen the truth. Isabel told her that Max wouldn’t talk about it, but she knew her brother.
Liz knew that if there were to be any chance of anything between hem, she would have to fight for it, because the revelations had devastated Max. It would have to be her choice to go to him.
She’d struggled with it for weeks, long after Kyle had left on New Year’s Day.
After Isabel had left, Alex had been relentless, wanting to know what was going on. Finally, when Maria got home that night, she’d told Alex that it was Max who had "healed" her on the subway platform.
Alex would have laughed if he didn't recall Isabel and Michael's words the first time they came to the apartment.
Liz just had to come out with it. She told them that the three were aliens. The conversation was one that carried on for hours.
Alex hadn’t believed it because Max Evans was dead. But then Maria confirmed that Max had been in the apartment.
And when Maria realized that, she started to get a little freaky. There had been aliens in her apartment.
.Alex concluded there had to be a logical explanation for Max's appearance in New York City. Max had just faked his own death.
Liz concurred, but what was at issue was why. And that was what Alex took exception to, choosing to believe that perhaps Max had done something illegal instead. Maybe he was gifted. Maybe he thought he was an alien, but there was no way Alex was going to believe he was an alien.
And he was steadfast. At least, until Isabel had confirmed it for him.
When she called, Liz told her that she had told Alex and Maria. She expected Isabel to be surprised or angry, but somehow she wasn’t. She asked Liz to put Alex on the phone.
Shae had taken a leap of faith and told Alex everything; that she, Max Michael and Tess were different, and that there had been circumstances that had pushed Max to feel as if he’d had no other choice than to stage his and Tess’s deaths. Liz knew how much it took for Isabel to put her trust in him, and she knew that the reason she had was mostly because of what she’d seen in that alternate timeline.
For the first time, Liz wondered what it must have been like to be Isabel. She had treated Alex shabbily in that other timeline because she had been afraid to trust him, and when she realized she truly loved him, it had been too late. She had married a lawyer named Jesse Ramirez the year after Alex’s death, but Liz had a feeling that the relationship with him had not been quite the same. It had mostly been one of deception until the end, when she had to leave him.
For his part, Alex had flabbergasted, but Isabel didn’t back down on the confession, hoping that he would understand. But she didn’t mention the crystal or the other timelines, and Liz didn’t mention it to Alex or Maria either. It wasn’t her place.
It took hours of long conversations for Alex to come to terms with the fact that he had gone to high school with aliens, and at the end of it, he wasn’t even sure that he believed it.
But that night, Isabel had come to him in a dream, explaining to him that she had the ability to dream-walk. She had called the next morning to talk to him, describing in great detail what had transpired while Alex slept.
Liz hadn’t pressed Alex for the details, and Alex merely told her that Isabel had perfectly described things she had manipulated in his dream, their surroundings, their clothes, and recited their conversation almost word for word.
Liz wondered if Isabel would eventually tell him what they had been to each other in that alternate timeline. It would be up to her and Michael. Liz was not going to interfere with their decisions one way or another. She had enough difficulty dealing with her own.
During their late night phone calls, Liz had come to have a certain admiration for Isabel, the girl who had been labeled the “Ice Queen” in high school. She couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for her. It was hard enough to be a normal teenager, but an alien teenager was a completely different story.
She knew that Michael had lived with an abusive foster father. Everyone in school knew. She wasn’t shocked when Michael had emancipated himself after Hank had suddenly disappeared. She wondered now if there was more to that story than met the eye. He had always seemed so distant and irascible. It was a shock to see another side to him in that other timeline, and even more shocking to see him with Maria. She had changed him for the better. They had been happy right to the end. She wondered what Michael would do with that.
Isabel had poured her heart out during those phone calls, finally able to talk to someone about who they were, what they were.
They talked about how she’d betrayed Max on Antar, and that she would do anything to ensure his happiness. She’d played a big part in Max’s decision to stay away from Liz all those years ago, and Max had given up everything so that she and Michael could live a normal life. He’d gone to Antar, knowing that there was a good possibility that he wouldn’t return, but he did it because he loved them. And now he deserved what he’d always wanted, the only thing he’d always wanted. Liz. But that all hinged on whether Liz wanted him. Isabel didn’t push her, but Liz knew that she desperately hoped that Liz would come to Max.
When Liz asked about Max, Isabel always told her that he was holding up, trying to acclimate, but she never elaborated, and Liz didn’t push. She didn’t want to give Isabel false hope that she would come, not when she wasn’t sure what to do.
In fact, for awhile, Liz wasn’t exactly sure why she kept taking Isabel’s phone calls, because at a few points during those few weeks, she’d been conflicted. Did she really want to risk having her heart broken again?
But one night, she had a vision, a vision of a life that she and Max built together, in this lifetime. A dream of a house filled with love and laughter and nights wrapped in each other’s arms, of sweet kisses, reverent touches, of slow burning passion and fathomless love.
At first she discounted it as a dream, as real as it had seemed.
But the same flash hit her as she was walking down the street on a bitter cold Monday, and the force of it sent her reeling, stumbling until she grasped a parking meter, trying to gain her equilibrium.
She could feel it, was part of it as if she were actually there.
A whisper danced in her mind, an echo of the Granolith’s words to Max as he lay in the tunnel.
You will learn the terrible truths of past mistakes. You must learn them so that you might truly cherish the love you once knew. If you and she can truly know all that was once between you and still love, then, and only then, will you will finally be free to do so…
And then the voice of the author of the letters…
What song does your heart sing? Who does it sing for? It's time to find out, if you have the courage.
…it is also a truth that no longer exists, merely recorded for you to learn from. What you take from it is up to you. What you choose to act on, or walk away from, is a decision that is yours alone.
What you learn may take you places you never dreamed. It will open your heart to the real truth: a truth far more complex, wondrous...and ugly, than anything you could possibly imagine.
A wise man and a very dear friend once said, "Your destiny is yet to be determined." I believe that, as surely as I believe all that was sacrificed to bring you to this point in time.
And then Seeraynah was speaking to her.
Know your happiness, embrace it Elizabeth, for you have paid dearly for it in so many ways. Max is not whole without you. Nothing stands between you now, no enemies, no destiny but the one the two of you would make together. You have been strong, so strong and have sacrificed much. Embrace it and see your fantasies become real….
And in an instant, the voice was gone.
Suddenly Liz was certain that those visions were no dream. They were a glimpse of the future if she chose to reach out for it.
The vision and the voice of Seeraynah in her head threw her into turmoil.
If she did embrace this, this would become part of her life. Everything would be different. What she knew now could not be unlearned.
But her thoughts came back to that bond that she had had with Max. She knew that she had known a love she had never imagined in that other life. The kind of love she had always dreamed of as a girl. She could walk away and settle for average, or take a leap of faith and know the extraordinary. After all, Max was still the boy she knew in school. There was just so much more to him than she had ever dreamed. But deep down she’d always known that.
She wanted that life that she had so desperately fought for in that alternate timeline, that she was never to have.
It had taken them three timelines to get it right, but they finally had a fighting chance, and she wasn’t going to just let it go.
And it was this that cemented her decision.
That night she had asked Maria and Alex to come with her for moral support. Alex was none too thrilled at her decision. Being grateful that her life was saved because of what Max was, was one thing. Saying she was in love with him was quite another.
"I think it's a mistake," Alex said, shaking his head.
"I know what I'm doing," Liz said obstinately.
"You don't know what could happen...if it's even safe," he argued.
"Khivar is dead. No one is coming after Max," Liz said.
"That's not what he means, hon," Maria said, glancing at Alex. "He means that you don't know if it's safe to, you know, be with him."
Liz almost laughed in her face, for it was Maria who had taken the leap first in that other lifetime, the night before Michael was to leave Earth. But she said nothing.
Oh, if they only knew.
"It's safe," Liz said.
"How do you know?" Alex argued.
"I just do, ok?" she said, exasperated. "Look, I've had feelings for Max Evans my whole life. His DNA isn't going to change that. I need your support. Please..."
Alex saw the determination in her face and knew she was not going to be swayed. She would go with or without them.
She knew Maria would have her back no matter what, but Alex was protective. She was sure he only agreed because he thought that it was better to be there to protect her in case something happened.
She secretly hoped that Maria and Alex too would find the spark that had drawn them to Isabel and Michael. When Isabel had called three days ago and she’d told her that they were coming, Isabel could barely contain the joy in her voice.
“I’m so glad, Liz,” she said. “I didn’t want to say anything or influence your decision, but Max...he’s just lost. He still won’t let me tell my parents he’s here, that he’s alive. He goes out on these long walks, and he’s gone all day, sometimes half the night. He doesn’t talk much to either of us. I’m just...I’m starting to worry.”
“Isabel, what if he turns me away?” Liz asked quietly.
“It’s you, Liz. If it were anyone else, I don’t know, but if anyone can make him see the truth, it’s you,” she said.
*****
And now she sat on a plane bound for New Mexico and either the beginning or the end of her new life. Maria had chattered on about “them”, what she’d come to call Max, Isabel and Michael, to Alex on the flight to New Mexico, but Liz barely registered it. She was too nervous to engage in idle conversation.
She knew Maria was worried about what she’d decided. There were many long, drawn-out conversations about what could happen, things that could go wrong, incompatibilities, the danger she might be in. But she also knew that Liz would not be swayed, and when she said she was going back to New Mexico, Maria agreed that they should go with her, to make sure that nothing happened.
It was strange to see the New Mexico landscape beneath them as they landed, but Liz found it oddly comforting. She hadn't been back in years, but somehow it still felt like and reminded her of home. But her home in Roswell no longer existed, and she could never go back. It was time to move forward, time to move on.
Over the past few weeks, she’d done a lot of thinking and realized she too had been running. Though She'd moved to New York, and hadn't truly dealt with what had happened at the Crashdown during her junior year of college. She'd pushed her parents’ death to the back of her mind. But she never really faced it head on. The revelation from Max had forced her to do that, reopening all of the painful wounds, now made deeper knowing they were murdered.
The plane touched down and her trepidation grew. She had no idea what was going to happen, and that scared her.
Renting the car distracted her for a bit, but her thoughts soon returned to her impending reunion with Max during the drive to Isabel’s.
She didn’t know what to expect, and that scared her.
When they arrived, Liz had expected to see Max at the house. She was shocked at Isabel's appearance when she answered the door. Her face was tired and drawn, and weariness etched her features that spoke of sleepless nights and deep-seated worry. But the smile of happiness was genuine.
"Hi Liz," she said happily, glancing at Alex and Maria behind her.
"Alex, Maria," she added nodding.
"Hey Isabel," Alex said in self-conscious tone, and Liz turned to see his face turning pink.
Liz suppressed a smile. She didn't think Isabel would have much trouble pursuing Alex if she chose to. Alex had always had a crush from afar on the statuesque blond. Liz surmised that not much had changed, despite his discovery of her otherworldly status.
Maria studied Isabel suspiciously. She still hadn't completely gotten over the way she and Michael had burst into their apartment that day, or what they were, for that matter. Her alien status only made her more distrustful.
There was an uncomfortable pause, and Isabel spoke.
"Maria, I wanted to apologize for the way we acted that day in New York," she said quietly. "I know what you thought of me, and I'm sure that what we did, didn't alter your perception any."
Maria's eyes widened slightly.
"Are you reading my mind?" she demanded.
"N-no!" Isabel stammered.
"I just...I can see that you're a little on the defensive side, and I ...I assumed it was because of that day. Liz told me you were ok with...you know..." she gestured.
"Just as long as you're not going to like, suck out my brains or something, than I guess we're cool," Maria said, folding her arms across her chest.
"Maria!" Alex exclaimed, turning toward her, mortified.
"What? I'm only being honest!" she said.
"It's ok Alex," Isabel said in an appeasing tone. "No, we don't do anything like that. We're pretty much just like you."
"Only with the added freaky dream power," Maria said nodding.
"Yeah," Isabel said softly.
"I can deal," Maria said.
"Good," Isabel smiled. "That's good."
"Just keep Guerin away from me and I'll be fine," Maria said. "He rubs me the wrong way."
"He's not always like that," Isabel said. "He was just sort of tense, for obvious reasons. It was a bad day."
"Bad day? He sounds like he's having a bad lifetime," Maria muttered.
"More than you can imagine," Isabel said in a low voice, causing Maria's brow to rise in curiosity.
"Where are my manners?" Isabel said, stepping back. "Come in."
The entered the small house, and Liz was pleasantly surprised to find a warm and inviting atmosphere with soothing southwestern décor and overstuffed furniture, something she never would have expected from Isabel Evans.
"Michael's in the kitchen," Isabel said over her shoulder, motioning for them to follow. Liz wondered if Max was with him, but she was afraid to voice the question.
Instead she complimented Isabel.
"Your house is great," Liz said, noting the throw rugs covering the wood floors.
"Yeah, it's really...pretty," Maria said slowly, glancing around.
"I've changed since high school," Isabel said dryly, and Maria reddened.
"I didn't mean anything by that," Maria said.
Isabel turned to face her with a sigh.
"I know you didn't. It's a fact. I was a bitch. But I didn't know how to be anything else. I was afraid. We all were, and we all dealt with it in different ways," she said with a shrug. "I can't make any excuses for it."
"I don't blame you," Alex said.
"What?" Isabel answered clearly confused that he was justifying her behavior.
"Everyone reacts differently to fear. Max was real quiet, Michael was kind of...prickly, but you...you chose to hang out with the shallow crowd. It's the perfect cover. They were so self-centered that they never would have dug too deep with you. That must have been pretty lonely," he said sympathetically.
"It was," she said in soft amazement, staring at him, which immediately caused his face to redden again.
"I mean, I had Liz and Maria and I don't know what I would have done without them. I can't imagine hanging out with the bitch crowd. Sure, we all had little fantasies, but looking back on them now, I wouldn't change one minute of my high school life, not if it meant giving up these two," he said, putting his arms around his two best friends.
"I wish I had that, real friends. Max and Michael were great, but Max is my brother and Michael might as well be. It would have been nice to have friends separate from them, from what we are," Isabel said wistfully.
"It's not too late for that," Liz said, and Isabel smiled at her.
"Maybe you're right," Isabel said.
"Michael, they're here," Isabel called as she walked into the kitchen.
Liz followed behind her, Alex and Maria bringing up the rear.
After an uncomfortable pause, Isabel cleared her throat.
"Are you going to say hello?" she asked in a pointed tone.
"Hey," Michael said gruffly, his eyes passing over the three of them with carefully rehearsed indifference.
"Hi Michael," Liz said warmly, "it's nice to see you."
"Hey Michael," Alex said, and Michael nodded.
"Hi," Maria said uncomfortably, and Liz knew she was thinking of what Isabel had said earlier.
Michael's eyes narrowed slightly as they fell on Maria.
Liz watched him carefully as he studied her friend.
She knew he was still trying to deal with the fact that in other lifetimes, he and Maria had been in love. She hid her amusement, turning to Maria who she knew was thinking that he hadn't forgotten what she'd said back in New York. Maria's face reddened slightly and she shifted her weight to her other foot.
"Where's Max?" Liz asked turning to Isabel, partly to break the tension and partly because she was afraid she'd lose her nerve if she waited much longer to see him.
Isabel lowered her head slightly.
"He's out there," she said, pointing toward the large picture window that looked out over the back of the house. Behind, Liz could see the arid landscape that stretched uphill. Isabel's house was built on the outskirts of the development, and behind it lay untouched hills, dotted with the hardy shrubs indigent to the desert.
"There's a spot behind that hill. It's where he goes almost every day. He should be back soon. He usually comes in before it gets dark," she said.
"I think I'd rather go find him," Liz said. What she had to say to him was private.
"Ok," Isabel said. "That hill's like a half a mile away, and there's a path that leads around the side. Stay to the left."
Liz nodded, catching the glances of encouragement from Alex and Maria.
"Alex, Maria, why don’t you both go and have a seat in the living room? I'll bring in some iced tea, and we'll all have a chat," Isabel said.
"Sounds good," Alex said agreeably, and he put his arm around Maria, leading her into the hallway.
Liz sighed and took a few steps to the back door.
"Liz, before you go, hold on one second. I have a bag that I usually leave in the fridge for Max, but he never takes it. He only takes water with him. I don't know how long, you'll be up there. Maybe you can convince him to eat something," Isabel said, walking over to the refrigerator.
"Don't hurt him, Liz," Michael said quietly from behind her, his voice startling her.
She turned to face him.
"I know you've gotten the raw end of the deal, but if you're not absolutely sure this is what you want, then just walk away. I don't think he could take it," he said.
"I think we've both been hurt enough to last a lifetime," she said, her voice laced with meaning. "I think we've all been hurt enough."
"I saw everything too, Michael. I saw what you went through. But you know, one thing Max said keeps coming back to me. We make our own destinies," she said softly. "Don't let yours pass you by either."
She knew Michael understood when his eyes softened.
“Good luck," he said.
"Thanks," she said, nodding at him.
"Here," Isabel said, handing her a thermal bag, with worried eyes.
"Liz, Max is different than he was when you last saw him, and...." Isabel burst out.
"It doesn't matter," Liz said in a low voice. "I don't know what's going to happen out there, but I know I'll never forgive myself if I don't try."
"He loves you. He's always loved you. No matter what happens out there, you need to know that," Isabel said.
Liz nodded.
"I'd better go," she said.
"Come on, Michael. We have guests to entertain," Isabel said, grasping his forearm and pulling him toward the hallway.
With a deep breath, Liz walked to the sliding doors and let herself out into the backyard. She paused to look at her destination, saying a silent prayer that Max would understand.
He would be angry that Isabel had shown her the images ingrained in the crystal. He would be angry she was here at all, she was sure. Isabel hadn't told him any of it, unsure of what Liz's decision would be. She didn't want to upset her brother needlessly, especially if what Liz had seen would have convinced her she was better off without Max.
It had never been easy in any lifetime. They'd all gave up so much. In one of those timelines, she'd lost Alex. In this one, she'd lost her parents and Justin.
But in the end, always in the end, it had been she and Max.
It was this, the reason she was climbing up a craggy outcrop toward the one person who had meant so much to her in two lifetimes, and, she was hoping, for a third.
Part 33
Everything's Not Lost - ColdPlay
When I counted up my demons
Saw there was one for every day
With the good ones on my shoulders
I drove the other ones away
So if you ever feel neglected
And if you think that all is lost
I'll be counting up my demons, yeah
Hoping everything's not lost
When you thought that it was over
You could feel it all around
And everybody's out to get you
Don't you let it drag you down
'Cos if you ever feel neglected
And if you think that all is lost
I'll be counting up my demons, yeah
Hoping everything's not lost
If you ever feel neglected
If you think that all is lost
I'll be counting up my demons, yeah
Hoping everything's not lost
Singing out
Oh, oh, oh, yeah
Oh, oh, yeah
Oh, oh, yeah
Everything's not lost
So come on, yeah
Oh, oh, yeah
Come on, yeah
And everything's not lost
Oh, oh, yeah
Oh, oh, yeah
Oh, oh, yeah
And everything's not lost
Come on, yeah
Oh, oh, yeah
Come on, yeah
Come on, yeah
Oh, oh, yeah
Come on, yeah
And everything's not lost
Sing out, yeah
Oh, oh, yeah
Come on, yeah
And everything's not lost
Come on, yeah
Oh, oh yeah
Sing out, yeah
And everything's not lost
Everything's not lost.
Part Thirty-Three
Max sat with his eyes trained on his task, pushing his pencil feverishly across the parchment paper. He was waiting for the next image to fill his head. It had been like this for weeks. The moment he finished this one, he would begin another. It was a never-ending cycle.
He’d never had an interest in drawing before now. That had always been Michael's thing. Max had never truly understood it, before he’d come here. But now, Max had a whole new respect for it. The drawing had taken Michael's thoughts away from the ugly reality of living with Hank. It was an escape.
When he'd seen what the crystal contained a mere day after he returned to New Mexico with Isabel and Michael, it shattered him and everything he had ever believed he was incapable of. He never wanted them to see the way things had been, ever. They didn't know the crystal contained anything, and if he had his way, they never would.
The result of those alternate realities hadn't been pretty, and they had made terrible mistakes, mistakes that had brought about the end of the world.
As he watched the events unfold, he felt as if his heart were being ripped to shreds. Watching those other versions of himself with Liz, seeing and feeling the power of the love between them made his soul ache. He was in awe that she had given so much of herself because she loved him. She had given up everything, family, a normal life, her safety, because she loved him so deeply.
He didn't think it would be possible to love like that and be loved so much in return. He felt what it was like to be half of a whole, one completing the other, two souls melded into one.
Conversely, he felt its absence in the secondary timeline when the bond couldn't be completed. That version of Max hadn't known what he was missing. That Max had no idea what a true bonding really was. That Max had tainted the purity and trust that should have been between them, and never truly knew how deep the hurt ran within that Liz's battered heart. She loved him just as fiercely as the other Liz had, but that love was intertwined with the emotional wounds he had inflicted on her, wounds that could never completely heal.
He didn't think he would ever come to terms with the things he had done. He knew Future Max truly thought he was doing the right thing trying to go back in time, convincing Liz that the boy she loved needed to follow his destiny. He had been trying to keep her safe, but in the end, Alex had paid with his life and the trust between he and Liz was forever damaged when he went to Tess.
Liz had kept the secret of Future Max to protect his heart, because despite the way he’d treated her, despite everything, she loved him so much that she couldn’t cast that last stone, until she had no other choice at the end when the whole world depended on it.
He should have been angry about it, but somehow, after everything he’d seen, all the mistakes that were made, he didn’t have it in him to fault her for doing exactly what a future version of him had asked her to.
Maybe things would have been different, but how could he truly know? Maybe things would have turned out worse.
That had driven that Max to come back again and prevent the shooting in his own timeline, and he'd almost been successful, hadn't he? He and Liz had never been together in high school, and she had had years of safety at Harvard and in New York. But fate brought them together again.
He wished there were a way to go back again, to make sure that they were never picked up in the desert as children. For that would be the only answer, the answer those other versions of himself had never learned. For he had been lost the moment he his eyes met Liz Parker's on the playground. He wished that they had wound up on some other town, for then Liz's parents would be alive today.
But there was no way to go back. He no longer had any duties to another world. The Granolith was with Seeraynah. His powers still had not fully returned after Baltimore and he wasn’t sure that they were going to.
He had to live with the truth that he and Liz were never meant to be together at all.
In those timelines, their love knew no bounds. But sometimes love just wasn't enough.
Sometimes love, in the end, destroyed.
But even that belief did not ease the bittersweet ache of the knowledge that she was once his, as he was hers.
It was all so unfair.
He thought of what he'd seen, that night when Liz had come to his room, telling him that he had to let her go, that she wanted to date normal boys, and get married. She wanted children, and she wanted her children to be safe.
She had been lying, her heart breaking as she spoke the words, but those lies had been right.
She'd started to look for that in this lifetime, and might have had it with Justin McKinney if fate hadn't been so cruel to the both of them.
Despite his jealousy, he saw that Justin truly cared for her, and saw all of the special things in Liz that Max had noticed so many years ago as a child. He would have treated her as she deserved, and cherished her as she should be cherished.
He knew he had broken her heart that night in the train station when he showed her the truth in what happened to her parents.
His only consolation was that in breaking her heart, he kept her safe and out of Tess' clutches. He knew she would have followed him to Baltimore. He'd had no other choice but to show her, but in doing so he had shattered his own heart as well as hers.
Kal had said he was free to do as he wished now, that they were safe. But how could he truly ever know that?
He thought he could protect them all in the other dimensions, but in the end, he couldn't save any of them.
Who knew what awaited Seeraynah on Antar? How could he know that they were ever truly safe?
How could he ever really be sure that there might be a Skin remaining here on Earth? Or that the FBI would not renew an interest in his kind?
He didn't trust himself any longer after he'd seen what he was capable of. He couldn't imagine himself treating those he loved as badly as he had, but that version of him had turned on those that he cared for most.
He now knew the depths he was capable of sinking to. He had treated all of them so badly because he couldn't face the possibility that Alex’s death might have been alien-related. His unwillingness to face that left him wide open to Tess' machinations. He had alienated not only Liz, but his sister and Michael as well, all in favor of a murderess.
He would have to live with that knowledge for the rest of his life.
For days he couldn't eat or sleep, his mind replaying what he'd seen over and over.
At night, he would walk the hills behind the house in the cold night air by the light of the moon, trying to make peace with all of it, but peace was impossible.
Isabel had wanted him to see his parents, but he was adamant that he needed time. He couldn't face them when he couldn't even look at himself in the mirror.
One afternoon Max found himself alone wandering the house. Isabel had gone to look at a graduate school in California. He wanted that for her. He really did. If they had to move, then so be it. It might not be such a bad thing, getting away from the memories in New Mexico.
Michael had returned to his job at a local community college, where he worked as a groundskeeper. Max had found that unusual, but Michael had always been one to blend in to the background, and that position afforded him the anonymity he was comfortable with.
Isabel had been reluctant to leave him alone, but he told her flatly that if he had to endure any more of her doting, he was going to have to leave the house. She was smothering him.
He had planned to take a long walk that morning, but the desert had been unusually cold this year, and when he stepped outside and the bitter wind hit his face, he suddenly lost interest.
Prowling around the house, it was inevitable that his thoughts turned once again to Liz, a familiar ache filling his heart.
He had a sudden inexplicable ache to see her face, but that was impossible...
Or was it?
Isabel kept everything. She was pack rat, a neat one, but a pack rat all the same. He was sure that she still had her yearbook. It would have to do.
He began his search in the bookcase in the living room, but it wasn't there. An hour later, he had gone through almost every drawer in the house, with no luck.
He leaned against the wall in the hallway and sighed. Maybe she hadn't kept it after all. His head fell back against the drywall and he straightened as he saw the pull-down for the attic.
It was a long shot, but he had nothing to lose. He pulled on the ring and the fold up stairs slid down a bit. He pulled them down the rest of the way and began his descent.
He looked around and shook his head. Against one wall near the small window, was a drafting table. The other three walls were barely visible.
Even in the attic, Isabel was organized. Lining the unfinished walls were plastic bins, containing everything from decorations, old clothes, to old magazines and books. Each was meticulously labeled.
His eyes scanned the labels and quickly found what he was looking for.
Senior Year/2003
He pulled the bin out and set it on the floor, pulling the lid off and setting it on the floor. He started to rifle through the contents. Amidst the notebooks, magazines and Isabel's diploma and graduation cap was the object he was looking for.
He took it out and brought it over to the drafting table, and sat down before opening it carefully. He flipped the pages slowly, looking at the sea of faces, most of them strangers to him. He had gone to school with these people and had never really known any of them.
He saw Maria's photo first. He smiled, remembering the alternate timelines, and how she had befriended that Max during the summer of 2000 when Liz left Roswell for Florida, to leave him to his destiny. Maria had loved Michael so much. Max was amazed she stuck it out when Michael kept pushing her away. But she did, and they were together until the end. She was dramatic and quirky, and amazingly loyal, something he never knew about her. It was true he knew that she was loyal to Liz in this lifetime, but it humbled him to see that she had extended that loyalty to all of them in the other dimensions.
His smile faded. The decision she made to stay with Michael inevitably cost her dearly. She paid with her life.
He flipped the page again and spotted his photo and Isabel's side by side on the page. How young they looked there. How much they didn't know. How cautious they tried to be, but in the end, one of their own betrayed them.
It didn't take long to find Michael's insolent smirk on the following page. Michael had always been prickly. He'd always felt as if he didn't fit in, shuffled around from foster home to foster home as he was.
Michael too had missed out on a lot in this lifetime because of Max's decision to come back and change this one. After seeing all the crystal held, he wondered if Michael would resent him for it if he knew, but he realized that he probably wouldn’t. He had seen that Michael lose Maria, unable to protect her. That Michael had agreed with Max's decision.
On the opposite page was Tess. He felt the bile rise in his throat, looking at that face, the smile that didn’t reach her eyes. He hadn’t liked her from the moment he laid eyes on her, but he hadn’t listened to his heart. He couldn’t even muster sympathy knowing that she had been engineered to behave the way she did. It didn’t soften everything she’d done to him, or to Liz one iota. If anything, he hated her more now than he had before he’d killed her.
He continued on, skipping a section of the book, seeing Kyle and Alex's photos. He and Kyle had always tread on cautious ground around each other. But Kyle was loyal to Liz. She had asked him that night to help her, and he had done it without an explanation. He had always looked out for her. Max found himself strangely saddened that he hadn't known him very well at all this time around, and in fact spent most of his time hating him for having the only thing he had ever wanted, Liz.
Tears filled his eyes as he looked at Alex's photo. The earnest and witty boy had been an unwitting pawn in Tess' games, and he had paid the ultimate price. It was his death that had torn the group apart and had led to the events that had marred all of their lives forever. He took a small comfort in knowing that Alex was alive now, and unaffected by the alien abyss.
He flipped back a few pages, and his breath caught in his throat when his eyes fell upon Liz's photo. She seemed to be staring at him from the page, with that secret smile he had never known in this lifetime. His throat tightened as his finger ran over the photo. Seeing her face even more bittersweet now that he knew all that he had lost.
He had known those lips, had touched her soft skin, had run his fingers through her silky hair. He had known every inch of her body intimately, the ripeness of her lips, the soft flare of her hip, the weight of her breast in his hand, the smooth expanse of her stomach, the tender curve of her shoulder, the sweet taste of her throat. Those memories were his and yet not, experiences and moments from another lifetime.
He looked away from the photo, feeling a suffocating ache, knowing that he would never have any of those moments now. For if she were to look at him now, he was sure it would be with loathing.
But he couldn't keep his eyes from the book for long. He stared at the picture for long moments. The photo only captured a tiny facet of the person she was. There were so many other nuances that he could see in his mind’s eye so clearly, so many other smiles, so many other expressions captured in his head like photographs.
The photo didn’t express any of them.
Studying the photo, he picked up one of Michael’s pencils and began to sketch.
********
That afternoon began an exercise in obsession. Each time he finished one drawing, he immediately started on the next, for there was always another picture waiting in his head.
Most days, he left the house early for the solace of the rocks. Out there, with the cold air keeping his mind sharp he would sketch until his the sun fell low in the sky and his fingers were cramped and numb. He had developed calluses from the pencils' barrels rubbing against his skin.
He supposed some aspect of their genetic makeup had left all of them with these innate skills, for though he had never seriously attempted to create art like Michael had, his ability was above average. He was certain that if Isabel ever seriously sat down and tried, she would be just as good at it.
The renderings were lifelike, but he was never left with a sense of satisfaction when he completed one, for his restless mind was always thinking about the next.
There were times when he forgot to eat, much to Isabel’s consternation. Many evenings when he returned, he would head straight to his room to finish a sketch he had started. And most times, he would blearily sketch until he couldn’t see straight and fell into bed, only to get up the next morning to begin again.
He wouldn’t let either Michael or Isabel see any of them. They were his, and he felt that showing them would only fuel Isabel’s belief that he should go to Liz. She hadn’t said anything aloud, but he could see it in her eyes.
Even if he could have faced her again, even if by some miracle she forgave him, he wasn’t sure that he could move past the pain he'd caused her. And how could he trust himself not to hurt her again? He had to let go of her, of the idea of her, the memories of her. It was the only way to ever be sure she was safe.
Seeraynah had said that the truth would set him free, but he didn’t feel free at all. He felt trapped by decisions that he had made in other lives, smothered by the mistakes he had made, unable to forgive himself for making them. Every one of those lifetimes had ended badly, and he was afraid that this one would end badly too. He couldn’t see any other way around it. Whether he was with Liz or not, damage had already been done, and he was terrified that it wasn’t the end of it, that there might still be more to come.
Drawing was his attempt at exorcising Liz from his mind and heart, but it wasn’t working, because there was always one more picture in his mind to create, one more memory, one more nuance he had to put to paper, until now.
Now as he sat in the desert his latest drawing almost complete, there was no new image waiting to be rendered, only a quiet, yet familiar hum in his veins. For the first time since he’d picked up that pencil in the attic, his mind was quiet.
Was this it? Would the completion of this one finally be the one to allow him to let go of Liz? To accept the penance he had imposed on himself?
Suddenly the idea of finishing the drawing terrified him, and the pencil cradled in his fingers faltered.
****
I'll be back tomorrow with the final installment of "Serendipity", and will start to post the companion "Genesis" shortly after I return after the 6th of January.
When I counted up my demons
Saw there was one for every day
With the good ones on my shoulders
I drove the other ones away
So if you ever feel neglected
And if you think that all is lost
I'll be counting up my demons, yeah
Hoping everything's not lost
When you thought that it was over
You could feel it all around
And everybody's out to get you
Don't you let it drag you down
'Cos if you ever feel neglected
And if you think that all is lost
I'll be counting up my demons, yeah
Hoping everything's not lost
If you ever feel neglected
If you think that all is lost
I'll be counting up my demons, yeah
Hoping everything's not lost
Singing out
Oh, oh, oh, yeah
Oh, oh, yeah
Oh, oh, yeah
Everything's not lost
So come on, yeah
Oh, oh, yeah
Come on, yeah
And everything's not lost
Oh, oh, yeah
Oh, oh, yeah
Oh, oh, yeah
And everything's not lost
Come on, yeah
Oh, oh, yeah
Come on, yeah
Come on, yeah
Oh, oh, yeah
Come on, yeah
And everything's not lost
Sing out, yeah
Oh, oh, yeah
Come on, yeah
And everything's not lost
Come on, yeah
Oh, oh yeah
Sing out, yeah
And everything's not lost
Everything's not lost.
Part Thirty-Three
Max sat with his eyes trained on his task, pushing his pencil feverishly across the parchment paper. He was waiting for the next image to fill his head. It had been like this for weeks. The moment he finished this one, he would begin another. It was a never-ending cycle.
He’d never had an interest in drawing before now. That had always been Michael's thing. Max had never truly understood it, before he’d come here. But now, Max had a whole new respect for it. The drawing had taken Michael's thoughts away from the ugly reality of living with Hank. It was an escape.
When he'd seen what the crystal contained a mere day after he returned to New Mexico with Isabel and Michael, it shattered him and everything he had ever believed he was incapable of. He never wanted them to see the way things had been, ever. They didn't know the crystal contained anything, and if he had his way, they never would.
The result of those alternate realities hadn't been pretty, and they had made terrible mistakes, mistakes that had brought about the end of the world.
As he watched the events unfold, he felt as if his heart were being ripped to shreds. Watching those other versions of himself with Liz, seeing and feeling the power of the love between them made his soul ache. He was in awe that she had given so much of herself because she loved him. She had given up everything, family, a normal life, her safety, because she loved him so deeply.
He didn't think it would be possible to love like that and be loved so much in return. He felt what it was like to be half of a whole, one completing the other, two souls melded into one.
Conversely, he felt its absence in the secondary timeline when the bond couldn't be completed. That version of Max hadn't known what he was missing. That Max had no idea what a true bonding really was. That Max had tainted the purity and trust that should have been between them, and never truly knew how deep the hurt ran within that Liz's battered heart. She loved him just as fiercely as the other Liz had, but that love was intertwined with the emotional wounds he had inflicted on her, wounds that could never completely heal.
He didn't think he would ever come to terms with the things he had done. He knew Future Max truly thought he was doing the right thing trying to go back in time, convincing Liz that the boy she loved needed to follow his destiny. He had been trying to keep her safe, but in the end, Alex had paid with his life and the trust between he and Liz was forever damaged when he went to Tess.
Liz had kept the secret of Future Max to protect his heart, because despite the way he’d treated her, despite everything, she loved him so much that she couldn’t cast that last stone, until she had no other choice at the end when the whole world depended on it.
He should have been angry about it, but somehow, after everything he’d seen, all the mistakes that were made, he didn’t have it in him to fault her for doing exactly what a future version of him had asked her to.
Maybe things would have been different, but how could he truly know? Maybe things would have turned out worse.
That had driven that Max to come back again and prevent the shooting in his own timeline, and he'd almost been successful, hadn't he? He and Liz had never been together in high school, and she had had years of safety at Harvard and in New York. But fate brought them together again.
He wished there were a way to go back again, to make sure that they were never picked up in the desert as children. For that would be the only answer, the answer those other versions of himself had never learned. For he had been lost the moment he his eyes met Liz Parker's on the playground. He wished that they had wound up on some other town, for then Liz's parents would be alive today.
But there was no way to go back. He no longer had any duties to another world. The Granolith was with Seeraynah. His powers still had not fully returned after Baltimore and he wasn’t sure that they were going to.
He had to live with the truth that he and Liz were never meant to be together at all.
In those timelines, their love knew no bounds. But sometimes love just wasn't enough.
Sometimes love, in the end, destroyed.
But even that belief did not ease the bittersweet ache of the knowledge that she was once his, as he was hers.
It was all so unfair.
He thought of what he'd seen, that night when Liz had come to his room, telling him that he had to let her go, that she wanted to date normal boys, and get married. She wanted children, and she wanted her children to be safe.
She had been lying, her heart breaking as she spoke the words, but those lies had been right.
She'd started to look for that in this lifetime, and might have had it with Justin McKinney if fate hadn't been so cruel to the both of them.
Despite his jealousy, he saw that Justin truly cared for her, and saw all of the special things in Liz that Max had noticed so many years ago as a child. He would have treated her as she deserved, and cherished her as she should be cherished.
He knew he had broken her heart that night in the train station when he showed her the truth in what happened to her parents.
His only consolation was that in breaking her heart, he kept her safe and out of Tess' clutches. He knew she would have followed him to Baltimore. He'd had no other choice but to show her, but in doing so he had shattered his own heart as well as hers.
Kal had said he was free to do as he wished now, that they were safe. But how could he truly ever know that?
He thought he could protect them all in the other dimensions, but in the end, he couldn't save any of them.
Who knew what awaited Seeraynah on Antar? How could he know that they were ever truly safe?
How could he ever really be sure that there might be a Skin remaining here on Earth? Or that the FBI would not renew an interest in his kind?
He didn't trust himself any longer after he'd seen what he was capable of. He couldn't imagine himself treating those he loved as badly as he had, but that version of him had turned on those that he cared for most.
He now knew the depths he was capable of sinking to. He had treated all of them so badly because he couldn't face the possibility that Alex’s death might have been alien-related. His unwillingness to face that left him wide open to Tess' machinations. He had alienated not only Liz, but his sister and Michael as well, all in favor of a murderess.
He would have to live with that knowledge for the rest of his life.
For days he couldn't eat or sleep, his mind replaying what he'd seen over and over.
At night, he would walk the hills behind the house in the cold night air by the light of the moon, trying to make peace with all of it, but peace was impossible.
Isabel had wanted him to see his parents, but he was adamant that he needed time. He couldn't face them when he couldn't even look at himself in the mirror.
One afternoon Max found himself alone wandering the house. Isabel had gone to look at a graduate school in California. He wanted that for her. He really did. If they had to move, then so be it. It might not be such a bad thing, getting away from the memories in New Mexico.
Michael had returned to his job at a local community college, where he worked as a groundskeeper. Max had found that unusual, but Michael had always been one to blend in to the background, and that position afforded him the anonymity he was comfortable with.
Isabel had been reluctant to leave him alone, but he told her flatly that if he had to endure any more of her doting, he was going to have to leave the house. She was smothering him.
He had planned to take a long walk that morning, but the desert had been unusually cold this year, and when he stepped outside and the bitter wind hit his face, he suddenly lost interest.
Prowling around the house, it was inevitable that his thoughts turned once again to Liz, a familiar ache filling his heart.
He had a sudden inexplicable ache to see her face, but that was impossible...
Or was it?
Isabel kept everything. She was pack rat, a neat one, but a pack rat all the same. He was sure that she still had her yearbook. It would have to do.
He began his search in the bookcase in the living room, but it wasn't there. An hour later, he had gone through almost every drawer in the house, with no luck.
He leaned against the wall in the hallway and sighed. Maybe she hadn't kept it after all. His head fell back against the drywall and he straightened as he saw the pull-down for the attic.
It was a long shot, but he had nothing to lose. He pulled on the ring and the fold up stairs slid down a bit. He pulled them down the rest of the way and began his descent.
He looked around and shook his head. Against one wall near the small window, was a drafting table. The other three walls were barely visible.
Even in the attic, Isabel was organized. Lining the unfinished walls were plastic bins, containing everything from decorations, old clothes, to old magazines and books. Each was meticulously labeled.
His eyes scanned the labels and quickly found what he was looking for.
Senior Year/2003
He pulled the bin out and set it on the floor, pulling the lid off and setting it on the floor. He started to rifle through the contents. Amidst the notebooks, magazines and Isabel's diploma and graduation cap was the object he was looking for.
He took it out and brought it over to the drafting table, and sat down before opening it carefully. He flipped the pages slowly, looking at the sea of faces, most of them strangers to him. He had gone to school with these people and had never really known any of them.
He saw Maria's photo first. He smiled, remembering the alternate timelines, and how she had befriended that Max during the summer of 2000 when Liz left Roswell for Florida, to leave him to his destiny. Maria had loved Michael so much. Max was amazed she stuck it out when Michael kept pushing her away. But she did, and they were together until the end. She was dramatic and quirky, and amazingly loyal, something he never knew about her. It was true he knew that she was loyal to Liz in this lifetime, but it humbled him to see that she had extended that loyalty to all of them in the other dimensions.
His smile faded. The decision she made to stay with Michael inevitably cost her dearly. She paid with her life.
He flipped the page again and spotted his photo and Isabel's side by side on the page. How young they looked there. How much they didn't know. How cautious they tried to be, but in the end, one of their own betrayed them.
It didn't take long to find Michael's insolent smirk on the following page. Michael had always been prickly. He'd always felt as if he didn't fit in, shuffled around from foster home to foster home as he was.
Michael too had missed out on a lot in this lifetime because of Max's decision to come back and change this one. After seeing all the crystal held, he wondered if Michael would resent him for it if he knew, but he realized that he probably wouldn’t. He had seen that Michael lose Maria, unable to protect her. That Michael had agreed with Max's decision.
On the opposite page was Tess. He felt the bile rise in his throat, looking at that face, the smile that didn’t reach her eyes. He hadn’t liked her from the moment he laid eyes on her, but he hadn’t listened to his heart. He couldn’t even muster sympathy knowing that she had been engineered to behave the way she did. It didn’t soften everything she’d done to him, or to Liz one iota. If anything, he hated her more now than he had before he’d killed her.
He continued on, skipping a section of the book, seeing Kyle and Alex's photos. He and Kyle had always tread on cautious ground around each other. But Kyle was loyal to Liz. She had asked him that night to help her, and he had done it without an explanation. He had always looked out for her. Max found himself strangely saddened that he hadn't known him very well at all this time around, and in fact spent most of his time hating him for having the only thing he had ever wanted, Liz.
Tears filled his eyes as he looked at Alex's photo. The earnest and witty boy had been an unwitting pawn in Tess' games, and he had paid the ultimate price. It was his death that had torn the group apart and had led to the events that had marred all of their lives forever. He took a small comfort in knowing that Alex was alive now, and unaffected by the alien abyss.
He flipped back a few pages, and his breath caught in his throat when his eyes fell upon Liz's photo. She seemed to be staring at him from the page, with that secret smile he had never known in this lifetime. His throat tightened as his finger ran over the photo. Seeing her face even more bittersweet now that he knew all that he had lost.
He had known those lips, had touched her soft skin, had run his fingers through her silky hair. He had known every inch of her body intimately, the ripeness of her lips, the soft flare of her hip, the weight of her breast in his hand, the smooth expanse of her stomach, the tender curve of her shoulder, the sweet taste of her throat. Those memories were his and yet not, experiences and moments from another lifetime.
He looked away from the photo, feeling a suffocating ache, knowing that he would never have any of those moments now. For if she were to look at him now, he was sure it would be with loathing.
But he couldn't keep his eyes from the book for long. He stared at the picture for long moments. The photo only captured a tiny facet of the person she was. There were so many other nuances that he could see in his mind’s eye so clearly, so many other smiles, so many other expressions captured in his head like photographs.
The photo didn’t express any of them.
Studying the photo, he picked up one of Michael’s pencils and began to sketch.
********
That afternoon began an exercise in obsession. Each time he finished one drawing, he immediately started on the next, for there was always another picture waiting in his head.
Most days, he left the house early for the solace of the rocks. Out there, with the cold air keeping his mind sharp he would sketch until his the sun fell low in the sky and his fingers were cramped and numb. He had developed calluses from the pencils' barrels rubbing against his skin.
He supposed some aspect of their genetic makeup had left all of them with these innate skills, for though he had never seriously attempted to create art like Michael had, his ability was above average. He was certain that if Isabel ever seriously sat down and tried, she would be just as good at it.
The renderings were lifelike, but he was never left with a sense of satisfaction when he completed one, for his restless mind was always thinking about the next.
There were times when he forgot to eat, much to Isabel’s consternation. Many evenings when he returned, he would head straight to his room to finish a sketch he had started. And most times, he would blearily sketch until he couldn’t see straight and fell into bed, only to get up the next morning to begin again.
He wouldn’t let either Michael or Isabel see any of them. They were his, and he felt that showing them would only fuel Isabel’s belief that he should go to Liz. She hadn’t said anything aloud, but he could see it in her eyes.
Even if he could have faced her again, even if by some miracle she forgave him, he wasn’t sure that he could move past the pain he'd caused her. And how could he trust himself not to hurt her again? He had to let go of her, of the idea of her, the memories of her. It was the only way to ever be sure she was safe.
Seeraynah had said that the truth would set him free, but he didn’t feel free at all. He felt trapped by decisions that he had made in other lives, smothered by the mistakes he had made, unable to forgive himself for making them. Every one of those lifetimes had ended badly, and he was afraid that this one would end badly too. He couldn’t see any other way around it. Whether he was with Liz or not, damage had already been done, and he was terrified that it wasn’t the end of it, that there might still be more to come.
Drawing was his attempt at exorcising Liz from his mind and heart, but it wasn’t working, because there was always one more picture in his mind to create, one more memory, one more nuance he had to put to paper, until now.
Now as he sat in the desert his latest drawing almost complete, there was no new image waiting to be rendered, only a quiet, yet familiar hum in his veins. For the first time since he’d picked up that pencil in the attic, his mind was quiet.
Was this it? Would the completion of this one finally be the one to allow him to let go of Liz? To accept the penance he had imposed on himself?
Suddenly the idea of finishing the drawing terrified him, and the pencil cradled in his fingers faltered.
****
I'll be back tomorrow with the final installment of "Serendipity", and will start to post the companion "Genesis" shortly after I return after the 6th of January.
Conclusion
Well, it's here, the end of this part of the journey. You'll see why I felt there was more to come, but the companion won't be anywhere near as angsty. It will have a more positive theme from here on out, though Max and Liz still have issues to work out.
Thanks to everyone who stuck with this. I know it wasn't always an easy tale to read. I truly appreciate all of the feedback from everyone.
Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and I'll be back with "Genesis" after the holidays.
The Scientist – Coldplay
Come up to meet you, tell you I'm sorry
You don't know how lovely you are
I had to find you
Tell you I need you
Tell you I set you apart
Tell me your secrets
And ask me your questions
Oh let's go back to the start
Running in circles
Coming up tails
Heads on a silence apart
Nobody said it was easy
It's such a shame for us to part
Nobody said it was easy
No one ever said it would be this hard
Oh take me back to the start
I was just guessing
At numbers and figures
Pulling your puzzles apart
Questions of science
Science and progress
Do not speak as loud as my heart
Tell me you love me
Come back and haunt me
Oh and I rush to the start
Running in circles
Chasing our tails
Coming back as we are
Nobody said it was easy
Oh it's such a shame for us to part
Nobody said it was easy
No one ever said it would be so hard
I'm going back to the start
Part Thirty-Four
Liz slowed as she spotted Max sitting in the shade of an outcropping, his attention concentrated on a large tablet in his hand as his fingers moved a pencil furiously across it.
She'd felt the quiet hum vibrate through her body, that same silent song she'd heard when she'd found him in the alley, and later at the train station. It wasn't until now that she realized the implication of what it was.
She forgot to breathe for a moment, taking a deep breath, reminding herself that Isabel had said that Max had been through a lot.
What Isabel had said hadn't prepared her for the reality of the changes Max had gone through.
She noted the paleness of his skin. Dark circles shadowed his eyes, his face drawn.
He was now once again clean-shaven, like she remembered it in high school, and his hair was cropped short, but she could see now tiny sprinkles of gray at his temples.
"Just like Future Max had," she thought to herself.
But it wasn't these things that alarmed her. No, what scared her was the desolation she saw etched on his face.
********
At first, he thought he was seeing things, but when he blinked and she was still there, he knew he wasn't imagining anything. She was very real and standing only yards away from him.
Max felt a moment of sheer panic. He wasn't ready to face her. Not like this. Not now…maybe not ever.
Liz saw a flash of surprise and then fear in his eyes before he masked it with a neutral gaze.
"Max," she said, stepping toward him.
"What are you doing here Liz?" he asked, stopping her in her tracks for a moment.
Suddenly, she was at a loss for words.
"I came to see you. I...needed to see you, because there are things I need to say to you, " she began.
Max felt as if the rock surrounding him was suddenly closing in on him.
"I can’t do this, Liz, not now. I just, I can’t...." he said almost frantic, rising from the rock and turning his back on her. He had to walk away, anywhere but near her, where it hurt to look upon her, to be reminded of the things he had done to her, both in this lifetime and the others.
And it was then that he realized the truth. He was afraid to stand and face her accusation, afraid to see her beautiful eyes filled with loathing for him. It was hard enough to come to terms with losing her in this lifetime. He’d never expected to have to face her again. In fact, he’d made up his mind to avoid it.
“You owe me the chance to say what I need to say, Max. You left me sitting in that train station after showing me what happened to my parents. You owe me this,” she said.
Max footsteps faltered, and his body went completely still. For she was right. He was being a coward.
He did owe her that. After everything, he owed her at least that.
He turned to face her slowly, concentrating on the rock behind her. It was too hard to look at her.
His peripheral vision caught the flow of her hair lifting around her face.
"I spoke to Isabel. I know everything Max," she said. “I know about Alex, about you and Tess, all of it. I know about the end of the world, and the Granolith. I know about Seeraynah. I know it all.”
His mind reeled, feeling as if the world was spinning on its axis. The tablet dropped from his hand to the ground.
She knew. And Isabel knew too.
How could his sister have done this to him? It was bad enough that Liz knew about this lifetime, but telling her about the others was just throwing salt in their wounds. What was she thinking?
"I swear I'm going to kill Isabel," he swore, running his hand through his hair. "How did she...she invaded my privacy! Did she call you? Is that how you found out?"
"No," she said, shaking her head and taking a few tentative steps closer.
He couldn't look her in the eyes, knowing that she knew the horrible truth. What had happened to her parents had been indirectly related to him, but now she knew all of the other horrible things he’d done.
Liz’s heart thundered in her chest as she looked at him as if seeing him for the first time all over again. She felt as if she knew him intimately, and yet in reality she really didn't know this Max at all, not like the other versions of herself had known their Maxs, men who had shared so many striking similarities as well as differences.
It was strange and wonderful and exhilarating, knowing she shared those different histories with him, knowing that they had once shared a love so momentous, so beautiful, despite what had gone so wrong.
But in reality, this Max was a stranger to her with different life experiences than his counterparts.
This Max looked like he wanted to be anywhere but here. This Max averted his eyes, avoiding her gaze.
Maybe he really thought they shouldn't be together. Maybe he really had given up on her.
"Isabel flew back to New York a few weeks ago," she said in a soft voice. "She didn't just tell me everything. She showed me, with the crystal. I saw it all. She had a right to know too, Max. You shouldn't have kept it from her and Michael. You can't protect everyone."
The California trip. Isabel hadn't gone to the West Coast, but to the East Coast. Max’s eyes widened as he realized what she meant.
Isabel had played him, and he’d taken the bait. She’d purposely hovered over him, knowing that when she mentioned her trip, that he would welcome the time alone.
And her ruse meant that Liz had seen everything. She now knew everything he’d done, every mistake he ever made. She’d lived it as if she were there, just like he had.
"And what good has it done for you to know the truth?” Max asked, shaking his head. “How has that made your life better?"
"Tell me that you wouldn't choose differently, tell me you wouldn't rather have continued believing your parents' deaths were an accident," he asked.
"Sometimes the truth isn't pretty, Max," she said staring into his eyes. "But it's better than living in a lie. That truth was particularly painful, and the way you told me was pretty bad, but now I know."
"Then why are you here?" he asked in a dull voice.
"Do you really need to ask that question?" she asked quietly, pushing her hair behind her ear, moving closer.
It was painful to be near her, knowing what was coming, and he had no right to stop her from saying her piece, from giving her at least that, even if it shattered his already wounded heart.
Max's face tightened, and he closed his eyes.
“You’re right Liz. It’s time I stopped running. I owe you your say,” he said in a low voice, keeping his eyes averted to the ground.
He would face her words, but he didn’t have the heart to look at her.
She sighed heavily.
“I was so angry with you Max,” she began, and his heart tightened, preparing for the worst.
“You showed me what happened to my parents, and then you just...you left me there,” she said. “I know that you thought you were trying to protect me, but how could you do that?”
Max knew there was nothing to do but tell the truth.
“Because it was the only way I could think of to make sure that you wouldn’t follow me,” he said, his voice quivering in his attempt to control his emotions. “I knew it was wrong…I knew what it would do to you, but you didn’t give me a choice. It was the only way I knew that I could keep you safe.”
She didn’t say anything, and he was terrified to look at her.
“I’m so sorry for that. You have no idea how sorry I am. If there were any other way I could have spared you that, I would have, but I couldn’t let you come with me,” he said, “It was the only way...”
“Because Tess would have killed me,” she finished. “It seems she always had it out for me, in all of those lives. This time around, my parents paid for it.”
And there they were, the words he had feared to hear falling from her lips.
"Liz, I can't even begin to apologize, and I know it will never be enough to make up for what you've lost," he began. “I’m sorry I ever wound up in Roswell, that I didn’t wind up in some other place. Things would have been different.”
"It wasn't your fault," Liz insisted gently. "I know you blame yourself, but it's not your fault, Max."
He struggled to hold back the tears that were welling in his eyes.
"How can you say that? I'm the reason your parents are dead!" he said angrily. “Liz, I’ve seen you, seen your heart, but you can’t take any of it away. I can’t either.”
He looked away, his mouth tightening.
"Tess...did what she did because of me, because I..." he faltered, unable to continue.
"Because you loved me," Liz finished softly.
She wanted to reach out to him, but she was afraid he would run.
"Max, you make that sound as if it was wrong," she said.
"It was wrong," Max said fiercely, meeting her eyes. "It's always been wrong."
Liz felt her breath leave her lungs as her eyes met his, seeing the depth of the pain clouding his honeyed eyes.
“That's not true," she said, raising a hand to his cheek, and he jerked away.
"Don't," he said in an anguished whisper.
"Why do you think that loving me was wrong?" she asked.
He could have imagined a thousand scenarios, but he never would have imagined this one. He might have expected yelling. He might have expected her to hit him.
But, he hadn't expected her to be compassionate. He never expected her not to hate him.
"How can you even look at me?" he said stepping back. "In every lifetime that you’ve known me, you’ve lost everything that was important to you."
"Because I know your heart too, Max Evans," she said. "You are a total stranger to me, but we shared something so special, and...."
She paused, trying to find the right words.
"And the world ended because of it," he interrupted. "If I had gone back to Antar with Tess in those other lifetimes, the world would have been safe. You would have been safe. Everyone would have."
She met his eyes angrily, crossing her arms over her chest.
"And you would have been dead!" she protested. "They would have killed you, killed all of you. And I never would have known how special you are. I never would have known what it was like to be loved by you."
Hearing those words from her lifted his heart and battered it all at the same time. But this was Liz, selfless and honest, and he shouldn’t have expected any less.
"I'm not so sure that would have been a bad thing," he said quietly.
"How can you say that?" she asked shaking her head slowly. "Did you see any of what was between us? Did you really see it? Are you telling me that everything we went through, everything you did to make things right, wasn’t worth it?”
She felt tears welling in her eyes, but she didn’t care.
“I know you saw my life...this life. I know you saw that I lost people I loved. I know you saw that I’ve been looking for something a long time,” she said.
He knew she’d been searching, and he knew she’d known loss. She’d not only lost her parents, but she’d lost Justin. He’d borne silent witness to that pain. He knew how great of a loss all of them were to her.
Max looked away from her, suddenly feeling as if he’d been an intruder in her heart.
“I’m sorry about Justin,” Max said quietly.
“You didn’t let me finish,” she said, a tear sliding down her cheek. “I was looking for something, and it was you. It was always you.”
“He would have been good for you Liz,” Max whispered.
“That sounds so familiar. I watched a future version of you say that to me about Kyle,” she said humorlessly.
“Maybe Justin might have been good for me, but he wasn’t you,” she said, craning her head to meet his eyes.
"What are you saying Liz?" he asked, his voice hitching.
"I'm saying that I belonged to you Max," she said, "and you belonged to me, in every lifetime we've been through together."
"I’m saying that I want to know you again," she said. "I want to know this you. I want know if we can have again what was once between us."
He shook his head in disbelief. How could this be happening?
Here she was saying all of the things he hadn't dared to even dream, but he couldn’t chance her heart or her life… not again. He didn’t trust himself any longer.
"Liz...I can't," he said, turning away from her.
"You haven't even considered it?" she asked softly, challenging him.
"Look what I did to you," he pointed out in an anguished voice. "I slept with Tess! I let her manipulate me, and I believed the lies she told me. I broke that trust between us Liz, and it was never the same between us again."
She laid her hand on his arm.
"You're missing one thing Max," she said. "That wasn't you, not who you are now. Yes, it hurt me to see that because I know how much it hurt that Liz to push you away in the first place. I think she was hoping you'd figure it out. I'm not going to lie to you. I don't blame that Liz for not being able to trust enough to complete their bond after they got married. I thought about that for weeks after I saw what happened. Things were so confusing...for all of us. Alex was dead, and Tess was manipulating you, the group was torn apart."
"But I'm not that same person either. I made you believe that I slept with Kyle, that I didn't want you, and that changed everything between us. I thought I was doing the right thing, but it wasn't," she said.
Max ran an agitated hand through his hair.
"You did it because I asked you to! I came back from the future and asked you to do something that I knew would destroy you...destroy us, and it did," he said. "It ruined everything between us."
She chewed on her lower lip and looked out at the sun falling lower in the sky.
"It was a mistake," she admitted. "But maybe that’s the problem Max. You were trying to protect me, but you didn't give me a choice. You didn't tell me everything. I think that's where everything went wrong all along, especially when you tried to fix things. I've seen you at your best and at your worst. Maybe Seeraynah was right. Maybe this time we can get it right," she said.
"I want to try,” she said, looking up at him. The hope in her eyes twisted his already bruised heart.
“I don't want to have any regrets this time around. I've had too many in my life already," she said softly.
"It's can’t be that simple," Max said, shaking his head.
"It can be, Max. You have feelings for me. I know you do,” she whispered, moving closer until their bodies were mere centimeters apart.
“I felt what you felt that night in my apartment,” she said.
His jaw tightened and he closed his eyes, ebony lashes brushing ashen skin. How he wanted to take her in his arms, to pretend that the world didn’t exist, that there was nothing else but the two of them. But it had never been that way before, and he couldn’t trust that it was now.
“Liz, I need to do the right thing this time,” he whispered. “Please, just go.”
His eyes opened, begging her to understand.
“Max, you died in that tunnel! Seeraynah brought you back and gave you another chance, and you’re just going to let that go? You’re just going to pretend that it doesn’t mean anything? You’re not a King now. You’re just Max. That was what you always wished for and now you have it,” she said.
“And you should know by now that things are never what we want them to be,” Max returned. “I don’t trust myself. I don’t trust that this is over for good, or that they’ll never come back for me. I don’t know anything anymore, and I’m afraid. I’m afraid of what the future holds.”
“And you’re afraid to take a chance on me,” she said, challenging him. “Tell me you don’t feel anything for me and I’ll walk away.”
A gust of wind blew the sand at their feet, and her eyes strayed to the ground. His eyes followed her gaze, as the breeze blew across the tablet, the cover falling open, revealing his drawings. The pages seemed to turn of their own volition, revealing each sketch.
She gasped and bent over to pick it up. They were all sketches of her, past versions in high school, future versions that no longer existed. In some she was smiling, in others her eyes haunted. In a few her hair was shorter, in others it was longer than she wore it now. But in each, he’d captured her perfectly.
“Max,” she whispered, looking up at him in awe.
This moment couldn’t possibly get any worse. He had been trying to tell her that he didn’t want to love her, but this, this told her something altogether different, and he panicked.
“It doesn’t matter whether I have feelings for you! I can't have them anymore. My feelings for you hurt everyone, people I didn't even know. Innocent people suffered because of it,” he said angrily. "Is that what you want? In those other lifetimes, we didn't see what had happened. We didn't know everything. Now we do. Can you live with that, knowing what you know now?"
He wished he could take the words back, but it was too late.
She looked stricken for a moment, and then crestfallen.
She carefully laid the tablet back on the ground.
"I guess I was just...just listening to my heart," she said, her voice quivering.
"Do you have any idea what it took for me to come here? I’m putting my heart on the line, Max. You aren’t the only one who’s scared,” she said.
“This isn’t just about you! This was never just about you! Don’t you realize you can’t carry the whole world on your shoulders? I chose to be with you, and I want that choice again, and I know you do too. I know it because I know who you are. I know your heart, and if you let yourself see it, you’d realize that you’ve always known mine,” she said, her voice hitching in a sob.
“I loved you once, just like you loved me. And you still do. It doesn’t matter what you say. I know it in my heart. I can’t make any promises, and I don’t know what the future holds. None of us do. Nothing is certain in life. But I do know that I wasn’t whole unless I was with you, and that hasn’t changed in this lifetime. I’ve always loved you, and I always will, and nothing can change that,” she said. “There will never be another you for me Max. Ever,” she said.
“But if you can’t see that, if you’re too afraid to take the chance on real happiness, then maybe I was wrong,” she said, her voice cracking.
All of those lifetimes, in every one of them, she’d been the one to make the first move, to convince him that what was between them was right, and now, he knew if she walked away this time, then he would never have another chance.
His heart broke seeing the tears streaming down her face. The words he had been blocking from him mind came forth, unbidden.
There are timelines that cannot be completely erased. There are lessons to be learned from them. To truly begin again, you must finish what has begun in this one, and you must do it on your own. You must remove the obstacles that stand between you and what you desire. You will learn the terrible truths of past mistakes. You must learn them, in order to truly cherish the love you once knew. If you and she can truly know all that was once between you and still love, then and only then will you will finally be free to do so....
“I’ve been afraid to feel anything for a very long time. But you, you gave me a second chance, and you made me feel things again. I thought...I thought you might take your chance too. But maybe I was wrong. Someone I thought was very wise once said to me that we make our own destinies. But maybe he wasn't so wise after all," she said, turning away from him.
As he watched her walk away, he knew that if he let her go, this time it would be forever. His heart cried out silently for her to stay, while his head screamed to let her leave.
Your path will be set in motion, but ultimately it is you that will have to make choices, choices that will affect the rest of your days here...
Could he choose? Did he dare to take the chance again?
Could he truly face the rest of his life without her? He had thought he could, but she was walking away, walking out of his life forever...
“Liz,” he whispered, tears forming in his eyes, watching her walk away.
His feet were moving before he was even aware of it.
*********
She made no effort to control the sobs that wracked her body.
She failed.
She swiped at the tears that soaked her cheeks as she stumbled along the path that would bring her back to the house, away from Max, away from all of the hopes and dreams she had dared to let fill her heart on the journey out here.
She had been so sure that things would be different. She’d been so sure that if she came out here, that he would see that every loss had led up to these few moments, with no secrets between them any longer, no enemies to fight, no planet to save. Now it was just the two of them, Max and Liz, both hearts battered, but still breathing, still feeling.
But she’d been wrong, and now her dashed hopes seemed to weigh on her soul until it felt leaden.
“Liz!” he cried from behind her, and she stopped, utterly still for a moment, feeling a strange parallel to another moment, in another lifetime, when she’d walked away from the pod chamber, leaving Max to his destiny.
Did she dare to turn around? Did she dare to feel that small flare of hope in her heart hearing his call out to her?
She turned slowly, her vision still blurred with her own tears. He stood mere feet away, unmoving, a mirage filtered through her sorrow. But through her tears she saw the heaving of his chest, the desperate emotions in his eyes he had been trying to hard to keep from her, and she knew that all was not lost.
“Liz,” he said breathless, his voice telling her everything she had needed to hear with that single word.
She didn’t know who moved first, but suddenly she was in his arms, those arms she’d longed to feel around her for as long as she could remember. His hands buried themselves in her hair at the back of her neck, and she knew she’d come home, finally.
He drew in a hitching breath as her hands slid around his waist, pulling him closer.
They clung to each other for long moments, her ear pressed against his chest, his heart beating furiously.
Finally he spoke.
“He was right, Liz. You are right. We do make our own destinies,” he said, his lips brushing against the top of her head. “I lied to you, because I do want that, to make our own destiny, together. I want that more than anything.”
A smile danced across her lips, even as her tears slid down her cheeks.
She pulled away slightly to look into his eyes, and her heart danced with joy seeing that very same look she had come to cherish in those other lifetimes. Tears moistened his own eyes, his expression filled with more than a little bit of fear, but now also with hope.
“I just...I couldn’t let you walk away. Not again,” he said, taking a deep breath. “I don’t...I’m not sure what we do from here.”
“We take it one day at a time,” she whispered, reaching up to cup his cheek.
His hand slid forward to cup her cheek, his thumb stroking her lower lip tenderly. She lifted her head brushing her lips against his, and in the next instant was lost in the sensation of his tender kiss.
She sighed, opening her mouth to his tender ministrations, his velvet lips caressing hers with the promise of what could be.
His kiss was gentle, tentative and slow. Her heart quickened as his tongue brushed against hers, their kiss deepening, their hearts a tidal wave of emotions, love, loss, hope and fear, all mingling into one swell, washing over them. It was a tentative yet familiar feeling, one they’d both longed for from the moment they had known it existed.
The future was theirs, finally. Despite the painful journeys they had taken to get to this moment, or maybe because of them, they embraced this new beginning with an appreciation that had been born with love, shaped with loss.
For the first time in this lifetime, the possibilities were endless.
**********
*~Antar~*
She sat in the temporary stronghold that looked out across the battered terrain of the planet she had left many years ago, hoping to find its savior.
She hadn’t known that it would be her, in the end.
There were still many battles to be fought before the land would truly be free, but it would be freed and returned to her people. It had told her so.
But the picture it gave her was murky, and she knew now more than ever that sometimes, the answers were not as they appeared. There were always things that occurred, that were unexpected and she was not foolish enough to think that the future would be simple, or easy for that matter.
She had eliminated the remaining Skins on Earth. For now, that had to be enough.
The monolith glowed softly in the center of the room, its pastel light shining from within. She smiled as she looked within its clear walls, seeing the couple embracing against the arid backdrop of the desert.
For now, she only felt peace, a sense of balance restored, a circle complete, finally. Their future too was still uncertain, but they were armed with a new knowledge, a new appreciation that would carry them through good times and bad.
The Granolith’s debt with Zan had been settled. He had passed the test. Now the future was purely what he and Liz wished to make of it.
She had served them in many lifetimes, but now more than ever, she admired the courage and the love that had carried them through many lifetimes. It would be theirs again, for above all true love heals all wounds, all wrongs. They had learned this through sacrifice and loss.
Though his Antarian blood no longer bound him to the Granolith, Zan was a true King, now more human, now relieved of his duties. Now he was just Max, and she was just Liz, two souls forever entwined, bound by something more powerful than anything they’d ever dreamed of.
And that was more than enough.
END
Thanks to everyone who stuck with this. I know it wasn't always an easy tale to read. I truly appreciate all of the feedback from everyone.
Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and I'll be back with "Genesis" after the holidays.
The Scientist – Coldplay
Come up to meet you, tell you I'm sorry
You don't know how lovely you are
I had to find you
Tell you I need you
Tell you I set you apart
Tell me your secrets
And ask me your questions
Oh let's go back to the start
Running in circles
Coming up tails
Heads on a silence apart
Nobody said it was easy
It's such a shame for us to part
Nobody said it was easy
No one ever said it would be this hard
Oh take me back to the start
I was just guessing
At numbers and figures
Pulling your puzzles apart
Questions of science
Science and progress
Do not speak as loud as my heart
Tell me you love me
Come back and haunt me
Oh and I rush to the start
Running in circles
Chasing our tails
Coming back as we are
Nobody said it was easy
Oh it's such a shame for us to part
Nobody said it was easy
No one ever said it would be so hard
I'm going back to the start
Part Thirty-Four
Liz slowed as she spotted Max sitting in the shade of an outcropping, his attention concentrated on a large tablet in his hand as his fingers moved a pencil furiously across it.
She'd felt the quiet hum vibrate through her body, that same silent song she'd heard when she'd found him in the alley, and later at the train station. It wasn't until now that she realized the implication of what it was.
She forgot to breathe for a moment, taking a deep breath, reminding herself that Isabel had said that Max had been through a lot.
What Isabel had said hadn't prepared her for the reality of the changes Max had gone through.
She noted the paleness of his skin. Dark circles shadowed his eyes, his face drawn.
He was now once again clean-shaven, like she remembered it in high school, and his hair was cropped short, but she could see now tiny sprinkles of gray at his temples.
"Just like Future Max had," she thought to herself.
But it wasn't these things that alarmed her. No, what scared her was the desolation she saw etched on his face.
********
At first, he thought he was seeing things, but when he blinked and she was still there, he knew he wasn't imagining anything. She was very real and standing only yards away from him.
Max felt a moment of sheer panic. He wasn't ready to face her. Not like this. Not now…maybe not ever.
Liz saw a flash of surprise and then fear in his eyes before he masked it with a neutral gaze.
"Max," she said, stepping toward him.
"What are you doing here Liz?" he asked, stopping her in her tracks for a moment.
Suddenly, she was at a loss for words.
"I came to see you. I...needed to see you, because there are things I need to say to you, " she began.
Max felt as if the rock surrounding him was suddenly closing in on him.
"I can’t do this, Liz, not now. I just, I can’t...." he said almost frantic, rising from the rock and turning his back on her. He had to walk away, anywhere but near her, where it hurt to look upon her, to be reminded of the things he had done to her, both in this lifetime and the others.
And it was then that he realized the truth. He was afraid to stand and face her accusation, afraid to see her beautiful eyes filled with loathing for him. It was hard enough to come to terms with losing her in this lifetime. He’d never expected to have to face her again. In fact, he’d made up his mind to avoid it.
“You owe me the chance to say what I need to say, Max. You left me sitting in that train station after showing me what happened to my parents. You owe me this,” she said.
Max footsteps faltered, and his body went completely still. For she was right. He was being a coward.
He did owe her that. After everything, he owed her at least that.
He turned to face her slowly, concentrating on the rock behind her. It was too hard to look at her.
His peripheral vision caught the flow of her hair lifting around her face.
"I spoke to Isabel. I know everything Max," she said. “I know about Alex, about you and Tess, all of it. I know about the end of the world, and the Granolith. I know about Seeraynah. I know it all.”
His mind reeled, feeling as if the world was spinning on its axis. The tablet dropped from his hand to the ground.
She knew. And Isabel knew too.
How could his sister have done this to him? It was bad enough that Liz knew about this lifetime, but telling her about the others was just throwing salt in their wounds. What was she thinking?
"I swear I'm going to kill Isabel," he swore, running his hand through his hair. "How did she...she invaded my privacy! Did she call you? Is that how you found out?"
"No," she said, shaking her head and taking a few tentative steps closer.
He couldn't look her in the eyes, knowing that she knew the horrible truth. What had happened to her parents had been indirectly related to him, but now she knew all of the other horrible things he’d done.
Liz’s heart thundered in her chest as she looked at him as if seeing him for the first time all over again. She felt as if she knew him intimately, and yet in reality she really didn't know this Max at all, not like the other versions of herself had known their Maxs, men who had shared so many striking similarities as well as differences.
It was strange and wonderful and exhilarating, knowing she shared those different histories with him, knowing that they had once shared a love so momentous, so beautiful, despite what had gone so wrong.
But in reality, this Max was a stranger to her with different life experiences than his counterparts.
This Max looked like he wanted to be anywhere but here. This Max averted his eyes, avoiding her gaze.
Maybe he really thought they shouldn't be together. Maybe he really had given up on her.
"Isabel flew back to New York a few weeks ago," she said in a soft voice. "She didn't just tell me everything. She showed me, with the crystal. I saw it all. She had a right to know too, Max. You shouldn't have kept it from her and Michael. You can't protect everyone."
The California trip. Isabel hadn't gone to the West Coast, but to the East Coast. Max’s eyes widened as he realized what she meant.
Isabel had played him, and he’d taken the bait. She’d purposely hovered over him, knowing that when she mentioned her trip, that he would welcome the time alone.
And her ruse meant that Liz had seen everything. She now knew everything he’d done, every mistake he ever made. She’d lived it as if she were there, just like he had.
"And what good has it done for you to know the truth?” Max asked, shaking his head. “How has that made your life better?"
"Tell me that you wouldn't choose differently, tell me you wouldn't rather have continued believing your parents' deaths were an accident," he asked.
"Sometimes the truth isn't pretty, Max," she said staring into his eyes. "But it's better than living in a lie. That truth was particularly painful, and the way you told me was pretty bad, but now I know."
"Then why are you here?" he asked in a dull voice.
"Do you really need to ask that question?" she asked quietly, pushing her hair behind her ear, moving closer.
It was painful to be near her, knowing what was coming, and he had no right to stop her from saying her piece, from giving her at least that, even if it shattered his already wounded heart.
Max's face tightened, and he closed his eyes.
“You’re right Liz. It’s time I stopped running. I owe you your say,” he said in a low voice, keeping his eyes averted to the ground.
He would face her words, but he didn’t have the heart to look at her.
She sighed heavily.
“I was so angry with you Max,” she began, and his heart tightened, preparing for the worst.
“You showed me what happened to my parents, and then you just...you left me there,” she said. “I know that you thought you were trying to protect me, but how could you do that?”
Max knew there was nothing to do but tell the truth.
“Because it was the only way I could think of to make sure that you wouldn’t follow me,” he said, his voice quivering in his attempt to control his emotions. “I knew it was wrong…I knew what it would do to you, but you didn’t give me a choice. It was the only way I knew that I could keep you safe.”
She didn’t say anything, and he was terrified to look at her.
“I’m so sorry for that. You have no idea how sorry I am. If there were any other way I could have spared you that, I would have, but I couldn’t let you come with me,” he said, “It was the only way...”
“Because Tess would have killed me,” she finished. “It seems she always had it out for me, in all of those lives. This time around, my parents paid for it.”
And there they were, the words he had feared to hear falling from her lips.
"Liz, I can't even begin to apologize, and I know it will never be enough to make up for what you've lost," he began. “I’m sorry I ever wound up in Roswell, that I didn’t wind up in some other place. Things would have been different.”
"It wasn't your fault," Liz insisted gently. "I know you blame yourself, but it's not your fault, Max."
He struggled to hold back the tears that were welling in his eyes.
"How can you say that? I'm the reason your parents are dead!" he said angrily. “Liz, I’ve seen you, seen your heart, but you can’t take any of it away. I can’t either.”
He looked away, his mouth tightening.
"Tess...did what she did because of me, because I..." he faltered, unable to continue.
"Because you loved me," Liz finished softly.
She wanted to reach out to him, but she was afraid he would run.
"Max, you make that sound as if it was wrong," she said.
"It was wrong," Max said fiercely, meeting her eyes. "It's always been wrong."
Liz felt her breath leave her lungs as her eyes met his, seeing the depth of the pain clouding his honeyed eyes.
“That's not true," she said, raising a hand to his cheek, and he jerked away.
"Don't," he said in an anguished whisper.
"Why do you think that loving me was wrong?" she asked.
He could have imagined a thousand scenarios, but he never would have imagined this one. He might have expected yelling. He might have expected her to hit him.
But, he hadn't expected her to be compassionate. He never expected her not to hate him.
"How can you even look at me?" he said stepping back. "In every lifetime that you’ve known me, you’ve lost everything that was important to you."
"Because I know your heart too, Max Evans," she said. "You are a total stranger to me, but we shared something so special, and...."
She paused, trying to find the right words.
"And the world ended because of it," he interrupted. "If I had gone back to Antar with Tess in those other lifetimes, the world would have been safe. You would have been safe. Everyone would have."
She met his eyes angrily, crossing her arms over her chest.
"And you would have been dead!" she protested. "They would have killed you, killed all of you. And I never would have known how special you are. I never would have known what it was like to be loved by you."
Hearing those words from her lifted his heart and battered it all at the same time. But this was Liz, selfless and honest, and he shouldn’t have expected any less.
"I'm not so sure that would have been a bad thing," he said quietly.
"How can you say that?" she asked shaking her head slowly. "Did you see any of what was between us? Did you really see it? Are you telling me that everything we went through, everything you did to make things right, wasn’t worth it?”
She felt tears welling in her eyes, but she didn’t care.
“I know you saw my life...this life. I know you saw that I lost people I loved. I know you saw that I’ve been looking for something a long time,” she said.
He knew she’d been searching, and he knew she’d known loss. She’d not only lost her parents, but she’d lost Justin. He’d borne silent witness to that pain. He knew how great of a loss all of them were to her.
Max looked away from her, suddenly feeling as if he’d been an intruder in her heart.
“I’m sorry about Justin,” Max said quietly.
“You didn’t let me finish,” she said, a tear sliding down her cheek. “I was looking for something, and it was you. It was always you.”
“He would have been good for you Liz,” Max whispered.
“That sounds so familiar. I watched a future version of you say that to me about Kyle,” she said humorlessly.
“Maybe Justin might have been good for me, but he wasn’t you,” she said, craning her head to meet his eyes.
"What are you saying Liz?" he asked, his voice hitching.
"I'm saying that I belonged to you Max," she said, "and you belonged to me, in every lifetime we've been through together."
"I’m saying that I want to know you again," she said. "I want to know this you. I want know if we can have again what was once between us."
He shook his head in disbelief. How could this be happening?
Here she was saying all of the things he hadn't dared to even dream, but he couldn’t chance her heart or her life… not again. He didn’t trust himself any longer.
"Liz...I can't," he said, turning away from her.
"You haven't even considered it?" she asked softly, challenging him.
"Look what I did to you," he pointed out in an anguished voice. "I slept with Tess! I let her manipulate me, and I believed the lies she told me. I broke that trust between us Liz, and it was never the same between us again."
She laid her hand on his arm.
"You're missing one thing Max," she said. "That wasn't you, not who you are now. Yes, it hurt me to see that because I know how much it hurt that Liz to push you away in the first place. I think she was hoping you'd figure it out. I'm not going to lie to you. I don't blame that Liz for not being able to trust enough to complete their bond after they got married. I thought about that for weeks after I saw what happened. Things were so confusing...for all of us. Alex was dead, and Tess was manipulating you, the group was torn apart."
"But I'm not that same person either. I made you believe that I slept with Kyle, that I didn't want you, and that changed everything between us. I thought I was doing the right thing, but it wasn't," she said.
Max ran an agitated hand through his hair.
"You did it because I asked you to! I came back from the future and asked you to do something that I knew would destroy you...destroy us, and it did," he said. "It ruined everything between us."
She chewed on her lower lip and looked out at the sun falling lower in the sky.
"It was a mistake," she admitted. "But maybe that’s the problem Max. You were trying to protect me, but you didn't give me a choice. You didn't tell me everything. I think that's where everything went wrong all along, especially when you tried to fix things. I've seen you at your best and at your worst. Maybe Seeraynah was right. Maybe this time we can get it right," she said.
"I want to try,” she said, looking up at him. The hope in her eyes twisted his already bruised heart.
“I don't want to have any regrets this time around. I've had too many in my life already," she said softly.
"It's can’t be that simple," Max said, shaking his head.
"It can be, Max. You have feelings for me. I know you do,” she whispered, moving closer until their bodies were mere centimeters apart.
“I felt what you felt that night in my apartment,” she said.
His jaw tightened and he closed his eyes, ebony lashes brushing ashen skin. How he wanted to take her in his arms, to pretend that the world didn’t exist, that there was nothing else but the two of them. But it had never been that way before, and he couldn’t trust that it was now.
“Liz, I need to do the right thing this time,” he whispered. “Please, just go.”
His eyes opened, begging her to understand.
“Max, you died in that tunnel! Seeraynah brought you back and gave you another chance, and you’re just going to let that go? You’re just going to pretend that it doesn’t mean anything? You’re not a King now. You’re just Max. That was what you always wished for and now you have it,” she said.
“And you should know by now that things are never what we want them to be,” Max returned. “I don’t trust myself. I don’t trust that this is over for good, or that they’ll never come back for me. I don’t know anything anymore, and I’m afraid. I’m afraid of what the future holds.”
“And you’re afraid to take a chance on me,” she said, challenging him. “Tell me you don’t feel anything for me and I’ll walk away.”
A gust of wind blew the sand at their feet, and her eyes strayed to the ground. His eyes followed her gaze, as the breeze blew across the tablet, the cover falling open, revealing his drawings. The pages seemed to turn of their own volition, revealing each sketch.
She gasped and bent over to pick it up. They were all sketches of her, past versions in high school, future versions that no longer existed. In some she was smiling, in others her eyes haunted. In a few her hair was shorter, in others it was longer than she wore it now. But in each, he’d captured her perfectly.
“Max,” she whispered, looking up at him in awe.
This moment couldn’t possibly get any worse. He had been trying to tell her that he didn’t want to love her, but this, this told her something altogether different, and he panicked.
“It doesn’t matter whether I have feelings for you! I can't have them anymore. My feelings for you hurt everyone, people I didn't even know. Innocent people suffered because of it,” he said angrily. "Is that what you want? In those other lifetimes, we didn't see what had happened. We didn't know everything. Now we do. Can you live with that, knowing what you know now?"
He wished he could take the words back, but it was too late.
She looked stricken for a moment, and then crestfallen.
She carefully laid the tablet back on the ground.
"I guess I was just...just listening to my heart," she said, her voice quivering.
"Do you have any idea what it took for me to come here? I’m putting my heart on the line, Max. You aren’t the only one who’s scared,” she said.
“This isn’t just about you! This was never just about you! Don’t you realize you can’t carry the whole world on your shoulders? I chose to be with you, and I want that choice again, and I know you do too. I know it because I know who you are. I know your heart, and if you let yourself see it, you’d realize that you’ve always known mine,” she said, her voice hitching in a sob.
“I loved you once, just like you loved me. And you still do. It doesn’t matter what you say. I know it in my heart. I can’t make any promises, and I don’t know what the future holds. None of us do. Nothing is certain in life. But I do know that I wasn’t whole unless I was with you, and that hasn’t changed in this lifetime. I’ve always loved you, and I always will, and nothing can change that,” she said. “There will never be another you for me Max. Ever,” she said.
“But if you can’t see that, if you’re too afraid to take the chance on real happiness, then maybe I was wrong,” she said, her voice cracking.
All of those lifetimes, in every one of them, she’d been the one to make the first move, to convince him that what was between them was right, and now, he knew if she walked away this time, then he would never have another chance.
His heart broke seeing the tears streaming down her face. The words he had been blocking from him mind came forth, unbidden.
There are timelines that cannot be completely erased. There are lessons to be learned from them. To truly begin again, you must finish what has begun in this one, and you must do it on your own. You must remove the obstacles that stand between you and what you desire. You will learn the terrible truths of past mistakes. You must learn them, in order to truly cherish the love you once knew. If you and she can truly know all that was once between you and still love, then and only then will you will finally be free to do so....
“I’ve been afraid to feel anything for a very long time. But you, you gave me a second chance, and you made me feel things again. I thought...I thought you might take your chance too. But maybe I was wrong. Someone I thought was very wise once said to me that we make our own destinies. But maybe he wasn't so wise after all," she said, turning away from him.
As he watched her walk away, he knew that if he let her go, this time it would be forever. His heart cried out silently for her to stay, while his head screamed to let her leave.
Your path will be set in motion, but ultimately it is you that will have to make choices, choices that will affect the rest of your days here...
Could he choose? Did he dare to take the chance again?
Could he truly face the rest of his life without her? He had thought he could, but she was walking away, walking out of his life forever...
“Liz,” he whispered, tears forming in his eyes, watching her walk away.
His feet were moving before he was even aware of it.
*********
She made no effort to control the sobs that wracked her body.
She failed.
She swiped at the tears that soaked her cheeks as she stumbled along the path that would bring her back to the house, away from Max, away from all of the hopes and dreams she had dared to let fill her heart on the journey out here.
She had been so sure that things would be different. She’d been so sure that if she came out here, that he would see that every loss had led up to these few moments, with no secrets between them any longer, no enemies to fight, no planet to save. Now it was just the two of them, Max and Liz, both hearts battered, but still breathing, still feeling.
But she’d been wrong, and now her dashed hopes seemed to weigh on her soul until it felt leaden.
“Liz!” he cried from behind her, and she stopped, utterly still for a moment, feeling a strange parallel to another moment, in another lifetime, when she’d walked away from the pod chamber, leaving Max to his destiny.
Did she dare to turn around? Did she dare to feel that small flare of hope in her heart hearing his call out to her?
She turned slowly, her vision still blurred with her own tears. He stood mere feet away, unmoving, a mirage filtered through her sorrow. But through her tears she saw the heaving of his chest, the desperate emotions in his eyes he had been trying to hard to keep from her, and she knew that all was not lost.
“Liz,” he said breathless, his voice telling her everything she had needed to hear with that single word.
She didn’t know who moved first, but suddenly she was in his arms, those arms she’d longed to feel around her for as long as she could remember. His hands buried themselves in her hair at the back of her neck, and she knew she’d come home, finally.
He drew in a hitching breath as her hands slid around his waist, pulling him closer.
They clung to each other for long moments, her ear pressed against his chest, his heart beating furiously.
Finally he spoke.
“He was right, Liz. You are right. We do make our own destinies,” he said, his lips brushing against the top of her head. “I lied to you, because I do want that, to make our own destiny, together. I want that more than anything.”
A smile danced across her lips, even as her tears slid down her cheeks.
She pulled away slightly to look into his eyes, and her heart danced with joy seeing that very same look she had come to cherish in those other lifetimes. Tears moistened his own eyes, his expression filled with more than a little bit of fear, but now also with hope.
“I just...I couldn’t let you walk away. Not again,” he said, taking a deep breath. “I don’t...I’m not sure what we do from here.”
“We take it one day at a time,” she whispered, reaching up to cup his cheek.
His hand slid forward to cup her cheek, his thumb stroking her lower lip tenderly. She lifted her head brushing her lips against his, and in the next instant was lost in the sensation of his tender kiss.
She sighed, opening her mouth to his tender ministrations, his velvet lips caressing hers with the promise of what could be.
His kiss was gentle, tentative and slow. Her heart quickened as his tongue brushed against hers, their kiss deepening, their hearts a tidal wave of emotions, love, loss, hope and fear, all mingling into one swell, washing over them. It was a tentative yet familiar feeling, one they’d both longed for from the moment they had known it existed.
The future was theirs, finally. Despite the painful journeys they had taken to get to this moment, or maybe because of them, they embraced this new beginning with an appreciation that had been born with love, shaped with loss.
For the first time in this lifetime, the possibilities were endless.
**********
*~Antar~*
She sat in the temporary stronghold that looked out across the battered terrain of the planet she had left many years ago, hoping to find its savior.
She hadn’t known that it would be her, in the end.
There were still many battles to be fought before the land would truly be free, but it would be freed and returned to her people. It had told her so.
But the picture it gave her was murky, and she knew now more than ever that sometimes, the answers were not as they appeared. There were always things that occurred, that were unexpected and she was not foolish enough to think that the future would be simple, or easy for that matter.
She had eliminated the remaining Skins on Earth. For now, that had to be enough.
The monolith glowed softly in the center of the room, its pastel light shining from within. She smiled as she looked within its clear walls, seeing the couple embracing against the arid backdrop of the desert.
For now, she only felt peace, a sense of balance restored, a circle complete, finally. Their future too was still uncertain, but they were armed with a new knowledge, a new appreciation that would carry them through good times and bad.
The Granolith’s debt with Zan had been settled. He had passed the test. Now the future was purely what he and Liz wished to make of it.
She had served them in many lifetimes, but now more than ever, she admired the courage and the love that had carried them through many lifetimes. It would be theirs again, for above all true love heals all wounds, all wrongs. They had learned this through sacrifice and loss.
Though his Antarian blood no longer bound him to the Granolith, Zan was a true King, now more human, now relieved of his duties. Now he was just Max, and she was just Liz, two souls forever entwined, bound by something more powerful than anything they’d ever dreamed of.
And that was more than enough.
END
Last edited by Majesty on Fri Dec 26, 2003 12:19 am, edited 1 time in total.