</center><center>The Broken Vow </center>
Author: Crashdown_51
Rating: R
Genre: Angsty; Alien
Disclaimers: I don't own any of the Roswell characters, cause if I did, the show will still be on.
Summary: After "Busted". Max does find a ship and leaves to Antar, leaving Liz in Utah, where she's charged for the "Sam's Quick Shop" incident and the only person to get her by is the last person she expected...Michael Guerin, who plans to break her out.
Author's Note: Hi, this is my first Polar fic, so I would love to hear FB if I'm doing this whole Polar thing right. Oh, and this is influenced by PolarDreaming's challenge, from PA, so I hope I do it justice.
<center>Prolouge </center>
<center>Criminal Court Trail</center>
“Liz. It’s still not too late. All you have to do is…”
“No. Mom, I’m not selling Max out.” Liz retorted, cutting her mother off before she could finish her plea.
“Elizabeth...” Jeff Parker began to speak, sending chills up Liz’s spine at the sound of her proper first name. “Your mother and I have begged…pleaded for you to do the right thing and-and I’m afraid you leave us no choice…”
“Jeff.”
“Nancy, please.” Jeff warned, holding up his hand to stop her, advising her not to interfere with the ultimatum he was about to bestow on his daughter. “You either turn Max in-or-or you can forget about us seeing you in the prison he so willingly letting you be sentenced to.” Jeff threatened, watching as his term sent a spear through Liz’s heart, but stood firmly on his option and awaited her response, which he could assume already, by the way she was looking at him…apologetic.
“Dad…I’m sorry.” Liz answered with her voice trembling, knowing that no matter what option she would take, she was sentenced to prison no matter what, only that if she refused her father’s ultimatum, she was sentenced to a windowless room.
“Well, then, I’m sorry too.” Jeff replied bitterly and sat back in his pew-like seat in utter disappointment, keeping his eyes in the direction of the stands while Nancy began to cry beside him.
“All rise, for the Honorable Judge Grey.”
“Be seated.” A middle-aged man directs as he adjusts himself in his raised stand and begins sorting through the case files. “Miss Parker.” The Judge calls out looking to the defendants’ table with his spectacles at the tip of his nose. Liz quickly gets up after her lawyer and then nods her head a little to acknowledge her presence. “After carefully reviewing you case, I have come to the decision that with all your academic achievements, you should have had the knowledge to stray clear of a situation like this or from those who dragged you into messes like these. Therefore, you leave me no choice but to sentence you to in Utah’s State Correctional Facility where you will serve no more than five years and no less then three with possible chance of parole.”
“Your Honor!” Liz’s lawyer protested, but aside from hearing her mother crying, all Liz could hear was the Judges anvil hammering at the spacer in attempts to restore order as she was taken away in complete dismay.
<center>Chapter One </center>
Quotes from “Busted”
<center>Utah’s State Correctional Facility – Infirmary
Eleven Months Later</center>
‘Let's go.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Let's get out of here.’
‘Max, and then what? Just be on the run the rest of our lives? We'd never be able to go home again.’
‘That's not as bad as it sounds.’
‘No, max, I'm sorry, but that's just too far for me. I'm not ready to give up my home or my family.’
‘I wish we could trade places. ‘
‘No. No, no, no, Max. Ok, I don't. You're free. We came here for a reason because your son is in trouble. Now you need to go back and do what we came for. You know, see if your ship works. Come on. I don't want this to all be for nothing.’
‘I won’t leave you here. I promise. I’ll be back for you.’
“Ugh!” Liz gasped in hyperventilation as she awakened abruptly from her dream.
For the past month, she had been dreaming the same thing every night and awakened in the same part…when she hears Max’s broken vow. A vow to return and rid her of the life she is now sentenced to live. A life without her parents and a life without her friends.
Aside from her parents practically disowning her, Maria had refused to answer her phone calls and letters because of a heated argument the two had a day before her sentencing. She debated back and forth on how stupid Liz could have been for holding a gun, let alone, to follow along with Max’s ludicrous idea, for a child that was not even on their planet, a feeling that was mutual for the Valenti’s, who decided to follow in Maria’s footsteps.
Kyle’s buried hate for Max had resurfaced. Despising him for being responsible for his dad losing his job and now for Liz losing her freedom, cursing the day that aliens entered their lives.
And Isabel.
Isabel had completely proclaimed her hatred for her the day that Max left, blaming no one else but Liz for making her brother leave and not taking her. Isabel cried and shouted how Liz could stand to live with herself when she lied to her, reminding her that Liz had promised that she wasn’t going to take Max away, but did.
The guilt just sunk in and it would have been a zero to slim chance that Liz would’ve survived the first month, let alone eleven, if it wasn’t for Michael.
<center>~Flashback~
Vistor's Area
10 Months Ago</center>
“Michael?” Liz gasped in shock when she saw Michael standing in the visiting area with his hands jammed in his pockets.
“Hey.” Michael replied, noticing her puffy eyes and a fresh cut on her lip that was highlighted by her gray hospital-like clothes. “What happened?” He ask, about to touch her chin to get a better look at the cut, but Liz quickly moved to the nearest available table and sat down, waiting to know why he was there.
“How are my parents?” Liz asked in a sad tone as she looked at her hands avoiding his question.
“They’re good.” He replied, lowering his head and moved to the seat across from Liz as he pulled out a rolled up book from his back pocket and rolled it tighter in his hands while Liz fidgeted nervously with her fingers from the awkward silence. He could relate to not wanting to give a detail account of the abuse, and if it were up to him, no one would’ve ever known about what he had endured in the custody of Hank Whitman.
“What’s that?” Liz asked, breaking the silence as she looked from him to the book in his hand. Michael looked down to his hand and unrolled the book, revealing the title, Edgar Alan Poe: Classic Collection.
“I needed something to read on the way here.” Michael explained, snatching the book back under the table and shook his leg nervously as he looked away, expecting to hear some remark about his literature preferences clashing with his personal appearance, but didn’t. He looked to Liz seeing her fidgeting with her fingers again but with a look of guilt for putting him on the spot. “I read it on the bus.” He added, seeing her head snap up and look directly in his eyes.
“Can you read some to me?” Liz asked nervously. Michael just looked at her pensively for a moment, before looking down at the wrinkled book and opened up to the first section. Poems. And the first one was one of his favorite, “The Raven”.
“Once upon a midnight dreary,” He began, looking from the page to Liz, who lowered her head on the cold steel table and returned to reading, “While I pondered, weak and weary. Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore. While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping. As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.”
<center>~End of Flashback ~ </center>
And that’s how it began. A silent tradition of reading from that bent book for thirty minutes each year. Taking turns, one by one, page by page, they would read to each other and nothing more. No discussions of the outside world as well as the inside, just their own. One day, Michael had brought Liz a sketchbook and pencils, and while he read, she drew the image in her head, created by Poe’s words and Michael’s voice and when it was her turn to read, he would do the same.
A tradition she had become dependent of. But today, instead of reading her last part of A Fall of the House of Ushers, she had been forced to stay in the prisons’ infirmary after a brutal attack.
“Almost lost ya there, kiddo.” Liz heard a familiar voice beside her. Stephanie “Stevie” Orton, a convict and cell mate that befriended her, who was condemned to 15 years in UCF, for nearly killing a man who was twice her size. Hence her nickname “Stevie”, which was given to her from a fellow inmate who said she fought like a man, a good ally to have in her corner.
“How long have I been here?” Liz questioned, rubbing her forehead in attempts to make the pain stop from pulsing in her head.
“A week.” She replied and then pulled out a couple of letters from behind her. “That guy, Michael, was here. Left these for ya.” She informed her as she handed the letters to her. Liz looked surprised, slowly taking the letters with her IV pierced hand and sitting up slowly but painfully with Stevie’s help and began opening the letter. “I think it’s from a book.” She added, seeing Liz’s head snap up and look at her puzzled by her assumption.
“What?” Liz questioned with a weak laugh and then opened the letter to see that it was the last part of The Fall of the House of Usher. “How did-?”
“I saw him writing it down the first time, which is weird.” Stevie commented, scratching the top of her head displaying her confusion.
“What is?”
“Well, why write it when you can just tear the page out from the book?” She asked seeing Liz’s eyes open wide at the suggestion. Liz had been assigned to work in the library and Stevie had once commented on how the librarian position suited her. “He was kinda worrried for ya too when I told him you were in here.”
“He was?” Liz asked, surprised again.
“Yeah. He did the whole ‘I-can’t-believe-it-pacing-back-and-forth’ man thing.” She explained, while she stood up and imitated him by the end of the hospital bed, making Liz laugh by the sight of her imitating Michael to the “T”. “It’s good to see you smile.”
“It’s nice to have something to smile about again.” Liz replied, dropping her smile again when reality hit her.
“Something? Don’t you mean someone?” Stevie asked teasingly as she wiggled her eyebrows in mischief and sat beside her again in time to catch Liz rolling her eyes in annoyance.
“It’s not like that with Michael.” Liz clarified, as she shook her head lightly with her eyebrows arched.
“Oh, Honey, who are ya trying to kid?” She asked, irritated by how naïve she was and then leaned forward to whisper to her in secrecy. “Whenever a woman says 'it’s not like that', it's like that, and trust me, between you two, it is definitely like that.” She concluded, standing up and waving good-bye to her before exiting the infirmary.
Liz shook her head on the ludicrous and then looked down when she realized she had his letters clenched tightly to her chest. Slowly releasing the hold, the letters set on her lap and she looked over the one she had opened that contained a ‘P.S.’.
‘P.S. I hope you’re okay Liz.’
She read through the chicken scratch and then released the second page that was clinging onto the back of the first with a click of her finger on the sheets, seeing the drawing of Edgar Alan Poe’s, “lost Lenore”. She held her breath when she noticed the resemblance of Michael’s version of the “lost Lenore” and how much it looked like her. Looking up to the door where Stevie had exited from, she hugged the letters tightly again and sunk back down slowly to think…about Michael Guerin.
<center>Visitor’s Area
Two Days Later</center>
“Michael. Hi. I got your letters.” Liz rambled, after two days of thinking about the two of them, walking in with an attempt to control her hurt back.
“Hey-” He greeted, with a sigh of relief about to pull her in for a hug when he notice the white brace on her arm. “What the hell happened to you?”
“So, um, from your letters, we’ve started on The Tell-Tall Heart.” Liz questioned, completely dodging his question as she sat down on their original table, tucking the loose strand of hair behind her ear and looked up to Michael, who had an unsettling look to match with his crossed arms.
“Liz, just cut the crap and tell me what happened?” He demanded, sitting down and pulling her closer from her elbows in order to examine her arm. “I can’t heal you.” He said disappointed, not looking at her but continuing his examination on her arm.
“Michael, don’t.” Liz pleaded, seeing him look up and caught a quick spark of guilt flickering in his eyes before he sat back on his chair, pulling out a new book. She looked up at him as she took the book and examined the cover, The Count of Monte Cristo. She had become accustomed to holding the Edgar Alan Poe book, in order to prevent it from rolling up, but this book was just as equally dented and rolled up, meaning he had been reading it before now. Shrugging the thought, she opened the book to the first page and began reading, “On the 24th of February, 1810, the look-out…”
Michael let her read the remainder of the time while he drew inside the sketch book he brought on his visits and began drawing, but not of Monte Cristo, instead he drew Liz, sitting and reading, while he planned. When her time was up, she handed him the book, but to her surprised found herself in Michael’s arms. “I’m gonna get you out.” He whispered and then pulled away, leaving her to watch him confused as he walk away and then turn to give her one last glance before he left the area completely.
Gotta love them cliffhangers. 
Hence the 20 fics lol. 
and soing the challenge justice. 
But now I'm back with DSL, Old Faithful.