Title: Hell Is Never Having Said I'm Sorry
Author: Valerie Y. (indiana266@hotmail.com)
Disclaimer: Roswell doesn't belong to me, I'm just borrowing. No profit has been made from this story.
Rating: TEEN
Pairing: Tess - no pairing
Summary: Tess walked into Edwards Military base in Roswell... and got what was coming to her.
Spoiler/Notes: This takes place right after "Four Aliens and a Baby". I apologize in advance if you like Tess. Dreamers might enjoy it, though
This was written for the Roswell Muse challenge #6 - Fear. If you're familiar with the muse, you might have read it there.
*******
Hell Is Never Having Said I'm Sorry
Tess Harding entered the military base, taking no precaution to hide her presence.
"You! Stop right there!"
Men in military uniforms scrambled for weapons and cover. Tess walked in the middle of the large room, seemingly unaware of all the commotion she was causing.
She spotted what she was looking for. She closed her eyes and concentrated on the electrical wiring. Just a little push...
The building exploded.
******
Tess Harding entered the military base, taking no precaution to hide her presence.
"You! Stop right there!"
Men in military uniforms scrambled for weapons and cover. Tess walked in the middle of the large room and looked around her. This was strangely familiar.
She shrugged and concentrated on the electrical wiring she had just spotted. Just a little push...
The building exploded.
*****
Tess Harding entered the military base and stopped.
"What the hell is going on?" she asked no one in particular.
The military base dissolved around her as though it had been nothing more than a mirage. Or a mindwarp. Someone approached her through the remains of the illusion.
Tess immediately became defensive. If it had been a mindwarp, this was probably the alien responsible. And these days, Tess Harding had very few alien friends, on either side of the Antarian wars. The risks you run when you betray your kind and double-cross your enemy, she mused mirthlessly.
A tall man with a mane of thick dark hair stood in front of her. He didn't look like an alien, but then again neither did she. "That's an interesting choice of words," the man said, a hint of amusement in his voice that did not reach his ice cold eyes. Someone else might have been intimidated but not Tess. She was not afraid of the man, merely annoyed at his presence and at the fact that he was apparently messing with her brains.
"What word?" Tess asked shortly.
"Hell," the man replied, still sounding slightly amused.
Patience had never been Tess' forte. She was here for a reason and conversing with that man wasn't it.
"Why is that interesting?" her tone was sharp.
"Because hell is where you are." There was no mistaking the glee in the man's tone now.
Tess' mouth dropped open but she recovered quickly.
"I beg your pardon?" she asked. Surely she had misunderstood.
"You died blowing up that base. You are now in hell," the man explained, taking obvious pleasure in breaking the news to the girl.
"Hell is the military base?" she wondered. That made sense in a twisted kind of way.
"No. When you die, you are condemned to repeat what you did to end up here. One of the things, anyway," he added, looking at Tess from head to toe, as if trying to see how such a small girl could have done so much damage. He didn't look impressed, exactly. Simply interested.
Tess waved him off, annoyed. "Yeah, yeah, so I'm a terrible person and I did more than one thing to end up in hell." She said the last word as if she was humouring the man, not believing a word he was telling her. "It only repeated three times."
"Right. You were quick catching the repetition. Most people take a few hundred years, though your kind is pretty fast."
"My kind?"
"Antarians."
Tess' eyes narrowed. "You know about that?" she asked suspiciously.
The man laughed. The cold sound would have chilled any human to the core but Tess still wasn't afraid. On the other hand, her annoyance was growing exponentially.
"Do you think Heaven and Hell is a concept limited to Earth and the humans? Heaven and Hell are the names humans give it, but the same basic concept exists in the whole universe. The reality of it is far more complex than any religion or philosophy this world or any other could ever imagine, but they all have the gist down. It's the same place for everyone. So no matter where you are from, if you're one of the bad guys, you end up here."
"Spare me the philosophical lecture," Tess said holding a hand up. Her annoyance was turning into something else. What exactly, she wasn't quite sure yet. "So I died and now I'm in the bad place because I led a bad life. Is that pretty much it?"
"Pretty much," the man agreed amiably. His tone didn't match his eyes.
"I did it to save my son, you know. That has got to be worth something redemption-wise."
The man raised an eyebrow. "Your son?"
Tess nodded. "Yes. My son. Zan."
The man nodded, seemingly deep in thought. "Right. Zan."
Tess frowned. "Yeah," she said again. She suddenly felt uneasy. He couldn't possibly know, could he...?
"Your son," the man repeated. "The one who conveniently could not survive on Earth, so you mindwarped the father into helping you with your plan of leaving the planet."
Tess crossed her arms over her chest. "It was the only way Max would agree-"
"Your son," the man continued, oblivious to Tess' comment. "The baby who was peacefully sleeping in his crib the night your ship crashed back to Earth and whom you kidnapped before letting yourself be captured when it became clear you would need the`father's' help again."
If she was truly in hell there was probably no way she could hide the truth any longer. Tess opened her arms in a gesture of surrender. "Okay, you got me. There never was a baby. And I needed one or Max would have killed me on the spot. Add kidnapping to why I'm here."
"We have. You were an interesting one to judge, Tess Harding. Max gave the baby up for adoption, did you know that?"
Tess snorted. "I didn't think he had it in him to give up something he thought was his own flesh and blood. But of course if it was "to protect him"..." she mocked. A thought suddenly occurred to her. "Will Max get in trouble for selling babies on the black market or whatever when they find out that Zan was kidnapped?" she asked eagerly.
"No. You are not to know the details, but I can tell you that the situation has been taken care of. The baby will live a happy life and Max learned of your treachery. He felt the loss of his son deeply..." The man's face was unreadable but a slight pause inhis speech revealed his disapproval of the triumphant smile that was slowly forming on Tess's lips. "But there will be a happy ending for him. This was the very last time you hurt him and his family. Since that day, neither he nor Liz Parker have even thought about you."
Tess pouted. "And I thought you were the devil," she mumbled. "Shouldn't you like to see people suffer?"
"I am not the devil," the man explained, his voice still calm despite indications that his patience was reaching its limit. "There is no such thing. But I do take pleasure in seeing low life creatures such as yourself being punished for their crimes. So I have to work down here. If I felt sorry for you and wanted to help you, I'd work up there. But I really don't mind. It's boring up there. And I shall enjoy watching YOU suffer."
Whatever. "So now I'm doomed to blow up Edwards Air Base in Roswell New Mexico until Kingdom comes?"
"Well, Kingdom will never come but that's another matter entirely. And no, you already went through the repetition stage."
"So now what? I work in the pits of hell with the other slaves? I try to redeem myself and catch the elevator up to Heaven? What?"
"No, once you're here, you can't go there."
Tess just shrugged. Not a big loss in her book.
"You will be reincarnated."
She snorted. "Buddha Boy was right after all."
"Well, the Buddha was wrong on many counts but as I said, most people got the basics down. He was right about reincarnation and karma."
"So I will pay in my next life for what I did in this one?"
"Basically, yes."
"So I'll be murdered by an alien?" she asked, the hint of a smirk on her lips. The uneasy feeling had subsided and she now found herself actually looking forward to what they had in store for her. She wanted the challenge to prove them wrong. She would not suffer like they intended her to.
"Do you honestly think that murder was your worst crime?"
Tess thought for a moment. "We already went over the kidnapping." She saw the man shake his head. "Okay. Yes," she shrugged.
"You did a lot of other things that ultimately landed you here," he reminded her.
"And you're going to give me the whole laundry list?" Tessrolled her eyes.
"I could. It might even be fun. But I have no time for it. You will be reborn."
"Well, it won't be the first time," Tess said casually.
Ignoring Tess's flippant remark, the man went on. "Your first crime was to not embrace your human side. In your next life, you will feel all the human emotions you have belittled in your existence, starting with love."
"I know what love is," Tess protested.
"Maybe, but you never felt it. Not to the degree where it mattered. You will feel a love so deep, so complete, the likes of which you were lucky enough to witness during your time on Earth but evil enough to want to destroy. You will love someone the way Liz Parker loves Max Evans."
Tess couldn't help the little laugh that escaped her lips. "Ialways thought living as Liz Parker would be hell. But seriously, how can feeling that kind of love be bad?"
"It will not be reciprocated. You will feel an even greater despair than the one you inflicted on Liz when you turned Max away from her."
Okay, that didn't sound too good, but Liz had survived. So would she. Tess tried to fight the return of the uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach, tried to ignore it so it would go away. She had survived a couple of lifetimes without truly loving or being loved in return. She could manage a third.
"You know, some people on the committee here toyed with the idea of having you be reborn as Max and Liz's daughter but we figured they didn't deserve to be put through that. After all, it's your punishment, not theirs."
Tess ignored the insult and said, "Max and Liz have a daughter?"
"Yes."
"Since when?"
"She will soon be born."
"That was quick," Tess muttered under her breath.
"Not really. They have been married for close to seven years now."
"Married?" Then the rest of the information sank in. "Seven years? How is that possible?"
He looked down at her condescendingly. Even Tess had to admit that with his height it was fairly impressive. She swallowed. "Do I have to point out to you that time moves differently in hell dimensions?"
Tess lowered her head sheepishly feeling slightly ashamed. She should have guessed that. She always said stupid things like that, she was never good enough...
Her head snapped up. "What are you doing to me?" she asked suspiciously.
"Whatever do you mean?" the man retorted, his tone as condescending as ever.
"You're making me feel like I'm..." she wouldn't give him the pleasure to hear her say it out loud.
"Yes. We are. Making you feel. And you don't like that, do you? You never truly felt anything before, have you? Welcome to hell."
Shaking the feeling of shame, she raised her chin defiantly. "Whatever. So I will be reborn as...?"
"Michael's daughter," the man answered with a smirk. Tess paled visibly. "Kidding. Though that's what I voted for. You will not be reborn on Earth."
Tess grimaced. "Antar?" She never liked Earth much, but her short time on Antar had not endeared the crimson planet to her.
"No. You will live on a different planet. One where people with emotions are persecuted as being weak. One where you would fit in perfectly the way you are now."
Tess felt a bit of hope. That didn't sound too bad. Then she realized that she had been worried. The man was getting to her. She had to make it stop. She would not let them win.
"Only you won't be as you are now. You will be one little ball of emotions. Love, anger, longing, sadness, joy... All the things you refused to feel while you were on Earth as Tess Harding. All the things you were incapable of feeling when you were Ava of Antar. You will feel them all the time. And you will suffer because of it."
Tess's hope of getting off easy was quickly being quashed by the man's words. While his tone had previously been pleasant, it was now cold and hard. She suddenly felt very small standing here before him. Had he always been so tall? The uneasy feeling that was still in her stomach started to spread across her whole body. It filled her mouth with a bitter copper taste that reminded her of blood. She tried to swallow it down but found that her mouth was dry. She didn't recall ever being so thirsty in her life.
"From your earliest childhood you will be told the story of a love so pure and so beautiful that it will have survived across time and space and still be told in a millennium on another planet. You will be told of how the world changed because a boy loved a girl despite his destiny and all you did... oh, pardon me," he amended with a sardonic smile, "all someone did to keep them apart. You will long to be that girl all your life. You will aspire to that kind of love with your soul mate. Only he will not care for you. He will not notice you for the first half of your life and despise everything you are for the rest of it. You will learn the meaning of crying yourself to sleep over someone."
A part of Tess wanted to curl up into a little ball and put her hands on her ears to block the man's voice. She didn't care what he had said he was not. He had to be the devil to want to see her suffer, even with the absence of horns or pointy tail.
"Get a grip!!" a voice that sounded suspiciously like Nasedo's suddenly resonated in her head. She tried to straighten her shoulders. This man was messing with her brain. She would not let him win. She tried to control the feeling of apprehension that was slowly weaving its way through her soul.
"Through most of your adult life, you will be the subject of every whim and fantasy of a man you will call master. He will use you and abuse you and you won't be able to do a thing about it because he will, shall we say, alter your memories." Tess's eyes widened.
The man smiled coldly. "Mindwarp you, if you will. All your life, you will have the strong belief that the man is incapable of hurting you, that deep down he is kind." He waved his hand in front of Tess's face and an image shimmered in the air in front of her. It slowly began to resemble a human face. Tess blinked twice in disbelief as the smiling face of Alex Whitman came into focus.
"You will always believe in his kindness because this is the being your soul will remember as belonging with the face. But the man who will control you will only bear a passing resemblance to the boy they called Alex." Another wave of his hand and Alex's features turned angry and dark until nothing remained of the boy Tess had killed. She gasped despite herself and a shiver ran down her spine.
The apprehension and uneasiness mixed together into a new unidentified and very unpleasant emotion that seem to want to take permanent residence in her heart. The more she tried to ignore it, the more it became insistent. She try to lick her very dry lips with a very dry tongue.
"Then there will be your son. Your real son. Yours and that man's," he indicated the distorted face of Alex. It vanished from before them, transforming into another face. "A beautiful baby boy, with big blue eyes. You will love that boy unconditionally."
Tess couldn't honestly say that she was surprised when the second face turned out to look alarmingly like Kyle Valenti's. But she'd be damned if she could explain why the coldness that had ran down her spine a moment earlier was now spreading all over her body. She had never felt anything quite like that before. Her breathing was rapid and shallow and she noticed that her hands were shaking. What was going on?
Seemingly oblivious to Tess' increasingly nervous state, the man went on. "When you will need him most, he will turn away from you. He will ultimately be the death of you."
Unable to control her shaking body any longer, Tess fell to her knees. She turned pleading eyes to the man.
"What is wrong with me?" she asked in a trembling voice. She heaved a sob.
"You mean beside the fact that you are a murderous wretch?" he looked at her shaking and sobbing and took pity on her. "You know what awaits you. You are afraid. Another emotion you never truly experienced before."
Tess managed to steady herself long enough to say, "What are you talking about? I was afraid of Pierce and the special unit." A part of her wondered how she could be so proud to be admitting a weakness to the man but most of her just wanted the feeling to stop.
"True. But it was not real fear. You never cared about anything enough to be really afraid. How do you think Liz felt when Max was taken to the white room? How do you think he felt when Pierce tortured him and threatened to kill Liz?"
Tess shook her head. They couldn't have possibly felt like she was feeling now and lived through it.
"How do you think Michael felt all his life growing up? How do you think Maria felt when her father left her mother? How do you think Kyle felt when he'd wake up in the middle of the night convinced that he had developed some new and strange alien powers?"
Tess was now sitting on the floor her chin on her knees, rocking back and forth, shaking her head and crying.
"How do you think Isabel felt when she saw the video her parents made of her using her powers? How do you think Jim Valenti felt when he realized he had shot his own son?"
"Stop! Please stop!" Tess begged. "Why are you telling me this? Why are you doing this to me?"
"You will not remember anything I just told you when you will begin your new life. To you, it will be the only thing you'll have ever known so you won't know you are being punished. The fear you are feeling now is part of your punishment. You will feel it until you are sent to be reborn."
"When will that be?"
"In about 2000 years."
Tess choked on a sob and tried to find something to hold on to. Time was moving differently here. At least seven years had passed on Earth since she had met that man no more than 10 minutes ago. Maybe this would be okay.
The man looked up and snapped his fingers.
"What did you do that for?" Tess asked, hating how weak her voice sounded.
"I altered the way time will move for you. Every day you spend here will feel like a week to you. For the next 2000 years, the fear you feel will intensify. There will be a point when you will wish to die. You will want nothing more than for death to come and claim you. But then you will be afraid that it will. You will think you are going insane but your mind will stay clear and sharp. But this fear will paralyse you. It will become your whole world, your entire existence. There will be no escaping it. Just when you think you can handle the fear, it will grow even beyond your most vivid nightmare."
Still sitting on the floor, Tess moved away from the man until her back hit a wall. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry for all that I did," she sobbed. "So sorry..."
"Not yet. You're not truly sorry yet. But you will be. Oh, you will be."
And without another look at the shrieking girl, the man vanished in a cloud of dark smoke.
The end
Thanks for reading!!