Author: ery
Pairing: All Polar All the Time!
Rating: MATURE
Disclaimer: Roswell and all its characters are the intellectual property of people I have never met. I own nothing.
Notes: First time fic from a first time author. If that make you run away in horror, I don't blame you....but FB anyway, damnit!
Also, profanity, as always, in strongly encouraged.
Chapter One
By the time the first shot registered, Max was already dead. She hadn’t been looking. She had been gazing out her window, watching the slow passage of barren landscape and distant mountains. Her first inclination of disaster had been when the van veered sharply off course. She saw the point of entry first; the raw spider web of cracks in the windshield glass. Then she saw him, slumped in the driver’s seat, his head resting on the steering wheel. The portion of it that didn’t decorate his headrest.
That was when the sharp report of gunfire registered on her consciousness. Suddenly the context was all too clear. Max had been shot. The back of his head, even in the pale moonlight, was obviously misshapen; the dark stains splattering the bucket seat were blood. Blood and brain matter.
Max was dead.
She was lurching for the wheel even as the cry passed her lips. His name.
Without a navigator, the van had driven off the deserted Montana highway, into the dirt of the endless sandy stretches. Except that it was not deserted anymore. Suddenly it was filled with light and movement. Cars surrounded them, their headlights winking into existence, engines gunning, shots ringing out. The van was not slowing, if anything gaining momentum in its flight into the sandy desert. She steered sharply left, then right, and left again, her other arm groping blindly for the break, trying to cut their speed. It was working.
There was pandemonium behind her, in the interior of the van. Maria’s screams were too shrill in the enclosed space. They hurt her ears. The steering wheel was slick beneath her fingers, her hands soon painted red as she stumbled for control of the vehicle. The van jolted over a sand dune and Max slumped onto her, his weight on her shoulder and breastbone, oily slickness running down the front of her body.
Sickened, she shoved him off. Small shrieks of horror tore themselves from her throat.
By now, the van was slowing to a rocking stop, a combination of sandy ground and flat tires. The unceasing bullets had taken them out. A helicopter sounded overhead, and the van was suddenly drenched in white, unforgiving light. It made the white of her top and skirt glow, the red on her breast glaringly obvious. She was still issuing harsh cries when Kyle grabbed her arm, pulling her into the back, into safety as the windshield collapsed under a new volley of bullets. He shoved her down, pushing her into Isabel, roughly covering their bodies with his own.
Except that it wasn’t safe in the back either. Bullet holes began to appear in the roof, the intense light shining through in tiny round beams, onto the wild eyed inhabitants within. They were firing from the helicopter hovering above. The van had become a deathtrap; it’s security an illusion. Maria was the first to the side door, ungracefully attempting to scramble out. But it wasn’t any safer without.
Standing half in and half out of the van, she started jerking, as if caught in some unnamed and awkward dance. Liz struggled to free herself, but Kyle only clung more fiercely. Michael began to roar as a new light filled the van.
The metal wrenched as it gave way. Suddenly the roof was gone, and the light of the hovering helicopter vanished, only to be replaced with the reddish glow of a fiery explosion. Michael was fighting back.
More bullets racked the beleaguered van. She felt the impact, heard the odd whufing noise, and knew Kyle had been hit. He was a heavy, leaden weight pressing down upon her, squashing her uncomfortably close to Isabel. She struggled out from under him, Michael assisting in passing as he pushed his way out of the van, stepping gingerly over Maria to stand, hands outstretched, power flowing from his fingertips. She could see the determined set of his features as new explosions filled the night.
There was silence inside the van. In the blinding flashes that followed, she searched Kyle, bloodied and broken. His clothes were wet and his arms hung loosely as she turned him. Part of his lower jaw was missing, and she didn’t know how much more she could take. His tongue worked in his destroyed mouth, ugly guttural sounds formed from his throat. But not for long. Even as she watched, the light fled from his staring eyes.
He was dead. Liz screwed her eyes closed and felt nothing. No, nothing at all.
Where was Isabel? Beside her, still, but so silent. Had the gunfire slacked off? Maybe the onslaught was over, they were saved. In the sudden quiet, Isabel’s silence induced a new chill of horror. Panicked, she shook the shoulders of her too quiet companion.
“Isabel! Isabel?!” She cried, wrenching the prone figure beside her, begging for a reaction.
Isabel’s features were slack, her face covered in blood, her hair matted with it, but she was noticeably breathing; quick panting breaths, in and out. Liz exhaled a great whooping breath herself, one she had not know she was holding. She was alive, her mind exclaimed, flooding her limbs with the palpable sensation of intense relief. The blood must belong to Kyle.
He had saved her life. Both of their lives. And he was dead. So was Max. And Maria. She grabbed Isabel’s unresisting hand. It was up to her to ensure they would remain alive. With new determination, she vowed that they would live through this, and pulled Isabel from the wreckage of their cramped and lonesome home away from home for the past month.
Funny to think she could be more lonesome yet. But that was a thought for another time, another girl. The girl she would be when all this was over and she no longer had to be a part of it.
Outside the van, Michael had been busy. They were surrounded, not by vehicles now, but a ring of fire, burning mounds that had been their dread pursuers. Vehicles had been razed and burned freely now, still occasionally igniting minor explosions. Sporadic gunfire was still issuing from a number of directions, and, as she watched, Michael levelled a wave of destruction upon one, then another armed figure. He was without cover or even the glowing blue shield Max had previously evinced, but an aura of power and heat surrounded him, one which no flying projectiles penetrated.
Energy shot from his hands, and more vehicles succumbed to the might of his blasts. There were screams in the distance, people caught in the infernos burning all around her. And then the gunfire renewed, seemingly unending.
They had to get out of the open. She yanked Isabel’s arm again, and they stumbled over Maria, lying in a lax heap on the ground just outside the van. She couldn’t spare her more than a glance. Not now. Isabel was heavy, much larger than Liz, and strangely resistant to her direction.
“She’s in shock! Michael, we have to move!”
He glanced at them, but his attention was consumed with the enemy, survivors, snipers now, taking potshots at the three of them, clumped together and obvious targets. His eyes fairly glowed with the violence of his anger. As she watched, he levelled another abrupt blast, and an armed figure let out a high pitched shout as he was thrust rudely from his feet, lying still were he landed.
“We have to move!” She repeated, and he nodded his approval. When Isabel still seemed reluctant to run, Michael bent at the waist and lifted her over his shoulders in one swift movement. Liz darted to the back of the van and, jogging with his burden, Michael followed.
There was cover, an intact sedan, all four doors ajar, thirty long and dangerous yards in front of her. She ran as quickly as she could, nearly tripping over her long skirts and, her back to him, trusted Michael to follow. She could hear little in the dense cacophony of explosions and probable injury to her sensitive eardrums. It felt as though her ear canals were stuffed with cotton. Another worry for later. She forced her legs onward, as bullets, real or imagined whizzed inches from her body.
Finally reaching the car, she landed badly, and a twisting pain centered in her left calf muscle. She scrambled behind it, and turned to receive Isabel from Michael. Barely pausing, he was moving again, arm raised and ready to go on the offensive. Liz concentrated on Isabel.
Liz checked her for injuries, running her hands over blood spattered clothes and limbs, but found nothing to indicate that she had sustained any physical injury.
“Isabel, speak to me, say something, please, please,” She crooned, trying to cajole a reaction from Isabel, who remained passive and silent. She smoothed her hand upon Isabel’s checks, trying to sluice away the blood still covering her face. That was where she found it. High on her forehead, covered with her blood knotted hair.
The hole. Perfectly round and about the size of a quarter.
“Oh, oh, oh no, nononononoooooo,” Liz moaned.
Isabel had been shot. In the head.
“Michael!!!”
He glanced down from his post, still protecting them from random gunfire.
“Isabel. Isabel’s been shot, Michael. Shot in the head!”
Immediately, he hunkered down beside her, his hardened eyes studying the newly revealed bullet hole in Isabel’s right temple.
“There’s no exit wound, and she’s still breathing, Michael, she’s alive. But she’s been shot.” Liz explained, cradling her charge. Gentler now, hands caressing her face.
“Can you heal her?” He asked, desperation in his face and voice.
“This much damage? I’ve only mastered the small stuff Michael, cuts and broken bones, well, one broken bone. But that was easy,” she paused, “this…” she trailed off in despair.
“Try it,” He commanded.
“It’s not as easy as that, Michael,” She cautioned.
“Try it,” He repeated, ignoring her denials.
Sighing dejectedly, she explained, “Maybe with the healing stones, if we,” But before she had even completed the sentence, he was off, running in an exaggerated crouch.
It seemed all her hope fled with him. Dead, so many dead, and Isabel, wounded so grievously. What chance had they left?
A new explosion rocked her, and she doubled over Isabel protectively, attempting, at least, to shelter her from further harm. The roses that had crowned her head slipped and landed at the ground at her feet. She ignored them. There was shouting from the right, the far right, nearer to the smoking husk of the van. Liz closed her eyes tightly, ignored the commotion, concentrated only on Isabel, on forming a connection.
She could almost feel it, if she could cast her mind out, like projecting, out from her body into the placid form lying on her lap. If she could just get a gauge on it, see it in her mind…the extent of the damage…
A fire flamed to life nearby, and just as suddenly it was out. A fireball then. She had seen Michael emit them, although admittedly at a much smaller scale. This one had been impressive. His rage was fuelling his power, she reasoned.
If him, than me…she thought, and felt her own answering surge of power. The trickle of her consciousness was thrust all of a sudden, into the body beneath her, and she heard and saw no more of Michael’s quest.
The next she knew, he was beside her, thrusting a cold hard object between her and Isabel.
Oh, the stone.
“You’re safe,” She said dumbly.
“Yes,” He replied, “I think I got ‘em. All of ’em. Dead. Maybe…..I don’t know.” He gestured with the stone. “I got it. It will work now.”
Liz slowly let out a tense breath. “It’s not that simple, Michael. The other times, it was…it was like the body wanted to be healed. Like it knew its natural state and I understood and guided it. Like synchronicity,” She explained, “But this? Oh, Michael, this is another thing entirely!”
She would have gone further, but there was a sound nearby, muffled as it was by her impaired hearing. Michael immediately took action. He bounded to his feet and loped off in pursuit. Liz huddled closer still to the prone figure in her lap, and waited for his return.
“What was it?” She cried as soon as she saw his head bobbing its way back to her.
“Survivor. I have a plan,” His eyes turned to her in frank appraisal. “Isabel. You gonna heal her?”
“Wait, plan? For what?”
“Later,” He stressed. “Isabel now.”
He stared pointedly at her, so she tried again to explain.
“It’s not like an ordinary injury, Michael. I think I can close the wound, no, in fact, I know I can, but the damage to bone and flesh is one thing. The brain damage…..” She trailed off.
“What, it’s all just flesh, and it all wants to be fixed, so fix it!”
“No, it’s not just that, you cannot imagine how complex the brain it, the way it operates, connects, synopses firing…….” Seeing the determination on his face, she relented. “I can try. I need your help.”
“How, what, whatever, I’ll do it.”
“Okay, we need a connection. With the stones.”
He handed her the stone from the ground beside her, and grabbed another from the small stack of three.
“Okay. Now, a connection. Give me your hand.”
He switched hands with the stones, once, then again, finally setting them both down upon Isabel’s abdomen. Liz grasped his hands firmly within her own, and tried to find that place within her mind, the place that allowed her to combine her consciousness with another’s. It was almost easy. She had grown accustomed to it in the last weeks spent on the road, practicing with Max and Isabel.
Max….
But not now, now she had business to attend. The stones began to emit their eerie glow, as if surging with a life of their own.
She felt it like a click, like a physical sensation, as Michael’s mind fit into place beside and within her own. Fitted together, their energies began to intertwine, like tendrils of smoke circling a fire. Something like that. She could think of analogies later. Now she had a purpose.
Fixing the connection in place, she thrust it forward, into the body lying between them. For a moment she felt the resistance of Isabel’s separate matter, trying to remain separate, but within seconds, it was gone. They were within her body, travelling the complex circuit of her cells, seeking the damaged area, the hard metal encasement violating the soft tissue of her brain. It hadn’t penetrated very deeply, and inch or so, but wasn’t that all that was necessary?
She felt Michael’s emotions surge, was inundated with an influx of his anguish both in and around her. Without words, she compelled him to be calm. They needed to be able to feel their way through this, and his emotional torrent would only get in the way. Without realizing it, she sought dominion over his emotions, ushering them where she could, secreting them in compartmentalized passages of his psyche, the way she so often did her own. They could not feel what they were feeling now. Not now, maybe not ever. The pain would be there.
It always was.
With newfound control, they centered their consciousnesses on the wound, the object within it. She concentrated her effort, and the metal wisped out of existence, leaving only the fragmented brain tissue behind.
Liz felt the connection deepen, solidify in her mind. They were going to heal, now.
Starting with the obvious trauma, they began the arduous process of knitting together the rent flesh and bone. The skull came first, it’s cells practically screamed to be corrected, and the body knew how to be whole, knew to reconstruct what once had been.
Then the skin, the dermis connecting to it’s severed self in easy and predictable patterns. Liz had been right. The body wanted to mend. The question remained; did it know how?
She hadn’t exaggerated the complexities of the brain. She did what she could, followed a flow, what should be, what seemed to be. The cells still spoke to her, but she did not know if she could trust the message. Whatever. She restored connections, regenerated missing molecules from their companion cells, and felt for the operation of regenerated cells she left in her wake. The activity was alien and incomprehensible, but it was active, synopses were firing, messages were received. But the effort was tiring.
She drew more and more heavily from Michael as the struggle progressed, until she was able, finally, to do no more. She let the connection waver and disappear. It greyed out of existence, and her body tried to follow it.
But Michael wouldn’t let her. He still had a plan.
“Hey! Don’t bitch out on me now!”
Liz struggled to open her eyes, god she needed rest, but he grasped her firmly about her shoulders and gave her body a quick, ungentle shake.
She forcibly ejected the last webs of fatigue dragging at her conscious, and opened her eyes, searching for his face in the unremitting darkness. Her vision abruptly cleared.
Michael. Just Michael, a deep frown spoiling his features.
She looked down and searched Isabel for any signs of her wound. Her forehead was unmarred. Not even with thought or feeling. She was deeply asleep.
But the bullet wound was gone.
“I need you.”
“Isabel…” She started, but he roughly interjected.
“She’s sleeping, and I can’t get an answer out of her. I tried. We’re gonna have to leave it at that for now. Let’s go.”
With that, he stood, and held his hand out to her. Isabel was still resting in her lap, and she gently placed her head in the sand. She grasped his hand and accepted his aid. The pain in her leg had dissipated, and she hardly limped as they set off.
He led her in a weaving path through and around the assembled blazes still burning in the night. She sidestepped a burning tire, only to stumble upon the arm of a black clad body. Wincing, she pressed on. They stopped some distance from the last of the fiery wrecks, which she counted at eight. That made nine cars, including the undamaged sedan they had left Isabel behind beside. No, eight cars and a helicopter, she amended.
Glancing back she was amazed at the level of destruction. Michael had done that. Only Michael. She had been no help at all. He pulled her to a halt, and gestured to the ground at her feet.
A man was lying on his back, his eyes wide. Dead.
No, not dead, she decided as she watched his mouth move. He was mumbling something, or hey, maybe shouting it. Her hearing wasn’t working so well these days. She threw Michael a cautious glance, and, at his approval, she leaned over the injured man.
“Sir….got….so much…. Fire power….dead...”
She could barely make out his words, but the gist was coming through. He was trying to perform some kind of report on the ambush. He and his buddies had slaughtered her friends, her husband, and now he was trying to account for the resulting madness.
“Fix it so he thinks it worked.”
“What?” She asked.
“Him. Fix him. So he remembers us all dead.”
She jerked back; almost fell as the implication of what he was saying hit her. “Michael, no, that’s…I can’t”
“Yes you can.”
“No I…”
“I saw you,” He interjected. She stared hard into his unrelenting eyes. He knew. She didn’t even want to know. It had only happened twice, and she had managed to convince herself that it was mere coincidence. But she knew. She had mindwarped someone. Two someones. And now Michael wanted her to do it again.
“What….when did you see me?”
“At the gas station. In Wyoming.”
“The cop.”
“Yeah.”
“Oh,” No disputing it now. She had done something to the state trooper in Wyoming, convinced him that he had seen something he had not. “I don’t know if I can do it on purpose.”
“Well, guess what, you can. Now convince this fat fuck that his fucking mission was a resounding success and we are dead. So is everyone else, but, YAY! so are we.”
She looked uncertainly at the man in question. “He’s hurt.”
“Shot. Friendly fire. Huh.”
She nodded. The whole thing was so stupid. Friendly fire. What kind had it been that had killed Max?
The bullet, or maybe bullets, she didn’t know, had entered his abdomen. Maybe life threatening, maybe not. Didn’t you take forever to bleed out on gunshot wounds to the stomach?
“He’ll live for at least as long as it’ll take someone to spot this inferno.”
Oh.
No point in delaying, she thought. Time to get to business. Concentrating, she struggled to form a connection. To bridge the gap between her mind and that of the wounded soldier.
Nothing.
Then, a thought. Why not? “Michael, go get the healing stones. Maybe they can foster a connection, get me in.”
“You’ll be okay with him?” He indicated the downed soldier with a nod of his head.
“Yeah, I’ll be fine.”
He loped off soundlessly. She watched the black clad stranger who had decimated her small family. She watched him and tried to think of nothing until Michael returned with the stones. “Thanks.”
“No problem.” He said, hands resting on his knees, searching for breath.
Gathering the stones to her, she worked to feed her connection to their warm radiance. In turn, they bolstered her power, enabled her to connect her psyche to that of the wounded man. She could feel him now, was inside him. His injury assaulted her senses. She could see the bullet, trace its path. There it was, lodged in his stomach. It had nicked the liver, and cut through his intestines. He would need a colostomy bag, she thought, not without some grim satisfaction. If he lived. The liver wound wasn’t deep, but it would bleed, was bleeding a lot. If she closed that one bit, he would be practically guaranteed to live till help came. Help and witnesses. With some trepidation, she began the process of knitting the rent flesh.
Except there was something else. All of the tissue was inflamed. Confused, she opened her senses to it, until the mystery resolved itself in her brain. Alcohol. He drank. Enough to have damaged his liver, perhaps permanently. No matter. He only had to live long enough to bear witness, not forever. Let him drink himself to death later. She had a job to do now. Finished with the small tear, she continued on the task at hand.
She drew a picture in her mind, one which featured her, her and all the occupants of the van. In it, they were all dead, explosions engulfing them, and then enlarged the picture, showing the widespread devastation of the burning vehicles. She carefully peeled this image from her mind, and supplanted it within the mind of the soldier. She pushed it in, trying to make it become a part of him. Shaking with the exertion, she redoubled her effort, and felt something…slip in his mind, a sort of shorted connection. Then the created image took to the surface of his mind, and became a part of his memories.
Gasping for breath, she released the image. It was over, it had worked.
“Is that it? Is it done?”
She looked up at Michael, his anxious face. She nodded. She wasn’t certain of her voice just yet. He grasped her hand again and helped her stand. “Time to go.”
He led her back to the car, to Isabel. She was still unconscious, huddled up on the bare ground. Liz envied her.
“Get in,” He said, indicating the open doors. She watched him bend down and struggle to lift Isabel into the back seat. Aching in mind and body, she struggled to help.
She paused a moment, enraptured. “She looks so peaceful.”
“Do you think it worked?” Michael asked, still panting from his exertions.
“I don’t know. You were there. Sort of,” She looked at him. “Did it feel like she was….y’know, whole?”
He shook his head. “I can’t tell. I guess now we wait. But first, we gotta get out of here. And we gotta cover our tracks. Hop in.”
Closing the rear doors, she crossed over to the passenger side and climbed in. She watched through the windshield as Michael raised his hand again, and in response several of the burning wrecks were propelled together, convening on the bullet ridden van. One last explosion rent the night, and he climbed in beside her.
They pulled out of the dirt and onto the highway. There they stopped and looked back. A sharp wind gusted and fanned the flames for a moment. It was a scene from a nightmare, or a movie. A big budget action adventure where everyone is hurt, but nobody dies.
Looking down, she spied a map. A Rand McNally folded to reveal a stretch of the Montana highway. There was a large circle drawn in red ink. She looked at the clock.
12:34 Am. It had been precisely seven hours since leaving the chapel. Seven hours, sixty miles an hour, with one gas stop….it looked right.
“I know where we are. Go north.”
Turning the car, he did as she suggested.
End Chapter
