Title: Husk Funeral
Series: Kismet Unchained (sequel to Not Written Yet)
Coupling/Genre: Max/Liz, Kyle/Tess, Isabel/Alex. I'm issuing a candy angst warning for this fic... they'll get together at the end of the series, but in the meantime a lot of heartache and seeing other people.
Rating: ADULT
Disclaimer: I didn't create 'Roswell', I didn't make it a TV series, I didn't originate the plot of 'End of the world' or any others -- I'm just adapting them.
Summary: Liz tries to figure out how to deal with the challenges of the Copper Summit Harvest, and Michael finds out a little of Courtney's background
Author's note: Well, this is the (hopefully) anticipated sequel to my EOTW fic 'Not Written Yet'. (Go read up on it if you haven't already, might help make things clear.) And what would happen next after EOTW but the next episode in season 2... only I've given it my usual 'how the Roswell writers should have done things' treatment.
Saturday, October 28th, 2000. 8:18 pm.
A sidewalk, somewhere in Roswell.
"Okay, allow me to attempt a recap," Alex said softly to Liz Parker. "Max came back to you from fourteen years in the future or something, and said that you had to break up with present-day Max and get him to fall in love with Tess, or else the world will get invaded by bad guys and pretty much toasted when it gets to his time period??"
"Uhh, yeah," Liz said softly. She wasn't quite sure whether to be comforted or depressed about Alex's typically dry, dead-pan summation.
"And you weren't so sure about that, and the more you dragged your feet the more unstable Future Max seemed, so you pumped him for details about what's to come as much as you could and then ambushed him with one of those weird black five-sided alien gizmos, telling him that he had guilt issues you didn't have time to help him settle and wasn't thinking clearly, and then you killed him with a gun you stole from Jim Valenti's collection, and went off to party all night and next day with present-day Max, going with him to the Gomez concert in Santa Fe, and then back to the fortune teller, who told you that it's probably going to all work out okay??"
"Well, kinda." Liz sighed. "At least I have a chance. But it's going to be tricky, especially since I don't want to let Max or the others know about this stuff yet, because I'm afraid of how they'll react, but things are probably going to get incredibly sticky because I have to use this knowledge I have about the future to guide them without anyone getting so suspicious of how I seem to know everything before they do. So that's why I told you about it all, because I'm going to need somebody's help - someone that I can trust."
"And you're not that Maria's too stable lately, since she and Michael broke up over the Courtney situation." He took a deep breath. "And that's the that."
Liz turned to face him, stepping close. "You're all right with this, Alex?? Tell me if you're not, 'kay? I know that you were kind of trying to keep your distance from Isabel, let her make up her own mind without you crowding her, but we're probably both going to have to spend a lot of time with the pod squad now, including her."
"Easy for you to say," Alex muttered. "You and Max are back together, on cloud nine."
"Except that I don't dare let Tess clue into that quite yet," Liz sighed, starting to walk again. "It's not exactly an enviable position, let me tell you."
"Okay," Alex said, and thought for a moment. "Well, what's the next important thing that's going to hit??"
"Um, the evil skins have a dead man's switch set on Whittaker, or something like that." She sighed. "There's a letter from the 'Society of Friends' that I just put back into her office... if she doesn't check in by tomorrow at midnight, they're going to 'terminate her membership' - ie cover up her death. They have a spare husk; it's like a human spacesuit that these guys live inside of, that they were growing because her husk was about to die. They'll use that as a 'body' and have a funeral service in a few days in Copper Summit."
"But she was a New Mexico congresswoman," Alex pointed out. "She should have a state funeral here in Roswell, or somewhere in the second district. Which would mean that these skins have to give up control of their 'body' and risk somebody discovering that it's hollow, or whatever."
"I think that they find some way to keep control of it, and run the whole thing there in Arizona." Liz shrugged. "Not sure how."
"Well, Courtney will tell Michael about this stuff, right?" Alex said after a moment. "Once he confronts her, or she him. We should probably prod him into searching her apatment as soon as possible, so that he finds those photos."
"Yeah." Liz thought a second, and then asked a big question. "Do we want to do something with that deadman's letter? Before the deadline hits tomorrow night??"
"Hmm." Alex mulled that over. "I'm not sure I can see any reason why. Wittaker is dead, and her death *does* need to get covered up -- the Skins would do us a favor if they take care of that. And from what you've told me, with the funeral service taking place at the same time as the Harvest is just about to mature, there'll be all kinds of confusion in Copper Summit. Good opportunity for our guys to make a sneak attack, maybe." He sighed. "And we don't have Whittaker to produce anyway, so what could any of us say in response to that letter that would make them pay attention anyway??"
"Well..." Liz hesitated for a long time, debating, as she had already debated in her head dozens of times, whether to tell Alex this detail. In her hearts, somehow she really believed that there wouldn't be any harm in it. "The skins seem to believe that Isabel used to be a traitor, way back when, you know. That Vilandra sold out her brother and the rest of the Royal Four. And Whittaker apparently thought that she could use this to get Isabel to switch sides. Future Max told me that that was why she tried to draw Isabel to come to her, the night of her birthday party. That she could get Isabel to betray Max again, and give her the granilith."
"Which she didn't even find until Whittaker had died," Alex said, putting it together. "But Isabel could never..."
"No, of course not," Liz insisted. "Even Future Max stressed that point, that she had always been loyal as long as he'd known her, and she'd used the 'Vilandra' angle to sucker the leader of the bad guys in and play him. But it gave me an idea." She took a deep breath.
"What if she pretends to be switching sides right now, to infiltrate the skins in Copper Summit? She could call and say that Whittaker convinced her, but Max or someone killed her too soon, and she's been hiding her newly awakened true loyalties from everyone."
"Ummm..." Alex pondered that notion for a long time. "No, it's an idea with some merit to it, theoretically, but not really workable at this point. Remember that Isabel hasn't confessed this Vilandra angle to ANY of us yet. We'd have to tell her that we already know it, and I'm not sure that she's ready enough to face the idea to turn it against an entire town full of enemy aliens yet. Not to mention the fact that Max and Michael would never go for it. And, that even if those factors weren't an issue, having her go undercover alone in a situation like that would be incredibly dangerous... I think you'd better drop it."
"Okay." She sighed. "Well, I'll probably go over to chat with Max and Michael."
"Have fun," he said. "I don't think I'll join you -- having me around might just raise questions that we don't want them to think of, co-conspirator."
"Okay," she said, smiling slightly, and turning back around to head for Alex's place.
**********
8:54 pm
Michael's apartment.
He opened the door warily for the pair of them, noticing how Liz took Max's hand quietly for a second as she passed through, and then slipped them apart as if she was trying not to have the gesture be visible to Michael.
"So, you want to talk about Courtney??" Michael said softly, turning around to look now further into the apartment, keeping both of them in his sight. "What about her, particularly??"
"Umm, well..." Max looked a little uncomfortable. "Last I heard, you said that you were investigating her and we'd talk -- well, today. About anything you'd managed to find out."
"And Alex let it slip that, umm, that he knew you had met Courtney here, tonight," Liz added. "So I thought that maybe we'd better do this in person, and I hope you don't mind my tagging along... hey, has your window been busted like that for long??"
So, with an ungracious sigh, Michael told them the cliff notes version of his rendezvous with Courtney the night before -- how Alex had taken it upon himself to land quite a punch on Michael as soon as he realized that Michael was meeting wiith 'the other woman' the same night that he and Maria had broken up, (even though it had been Maria to break things off,) how Courtney had bent over and looked at his purpling face with a bit of an oddly detached concern, how Michael, still upset at everything Maria had said to him that morning, had been unable to resist the impulse to kiss Courtney again.
And Michael told them that he'd realized what she was when a thin layer of unearthly skin had come off in his hands. How she had laughed at him, but in anticipation of some engaging challenge maybe, and escaped from him by throwing herself through the window (displaying inhuman speed and an unfamiliar alien-power defence as she went.)
There was a bit of an awkward silence after Michael had finished his story. "Um, is that it??" Max asked uncertainly. "Nothing else has happened since then??"
"Well, I managed to reach Tess, fill her in on most of that," Michael explained. "Called you guys at the Evans homestead early this afternoon, but mommy said that Maxxie and Izzy were napping, so that was that. And, well, I've been trying my best to fix up the window, despite not really having the right tools."
"Nothing about Courtney directly?" Liz said. "You haven't tried to find her again since that, say by going to look at her apartment??"
Michael shrugged a little awkwardly. "I thought that his Majesty would want to know the scoop before allowing me to go and do any such thing, especially considering that it would entail a possible challenge to an alien agent who could probably overpower me, if she put her mind to it."
Liz looked over at Max, and he nodded slightly but didn't say anything, so Liz took a deep breath and pushed the issue further. "Okay, well Max knows now, and I have a proposal to make. I think that it's really important for you to find out more about Courtney now, hopefully to meet her again. Take some backup if you think you need to - uh, take Isabel or Tess along."
Michael blinked in surprise at Liz's forceful assertion, then shot a look at Max. Max, in turn, tried to catch Liz's eye, only to have her return that enigmatic nod that he had given her earlier. "Umm... yeah, I guess it makes sense to you guys if you're careful. M--maybe I should come along too, as far as that goes. To shield and heal, if the need arises."
Liz froze, not sure how to talk Max out of this, but the sinking feeling told her that it wasn't a good idea. Max's future self had said that Courtney had resented him, because as king he had lost everything, and had been much more comfortable when dealing with Michael only or with Michael and the girls.
Fortunately, Michael took the initiative. "No, that's okay. Why don't you go up to the rocks with Liz tonight, and show her the Pod chamber? Heck, maybe if the two of you start groping right next to the thing, you'll get a vision of what the darn thing means and what we can do with it, since nothing else we do seems to help. If that special 'soulmate connection' you two have could find an alien orb, out buried in the desert, maybe there isn't much it can't do."
Max smiled crookedly. "So, I guess I don't need to ask if you can tell that Liz and I are back together."
"Kind of obvious. I'm happy for you, though it seems like the universe's accounting of checks and balances are working entirely too well. The very same day that Maria cuts me loose, you two have your grand reconciliation. I guess we won't get back together until the two of you hit the skids or something." There was an ugly silence. "Umm, forget I said that, I didn't mean to imply that eventually something will split the two of you up, or that I'm waiting for it to happen or anything."
"Umm, I will try my very hardest to forget," Liz said. "And with that, I think that Max and I should probably hit the road again. You going to go to Courtney's tonight??"
"Yeah, just need to call and see who's available for backup duty and I'm gone," he assured her. "Give me a ring tomorrow morning or something like that, and we can exchange stories."
"All right," Max said, seeming a little bemused at everything that had gone on. "Take care, man."
"I fully intend to." He let them out.
On the way to the car, Max stopped and shot an odd look at Liz. "What was that about?? Suggesting that Max go and snoop around Courtney's apartment?"
"I dunno, it just seemed to make sense," Liz muttered. "I know that it's risky, but Michael's no fool and knows how to cover his own ass. Also, I'm not sure that Courtney really wants to hurt him. If she did, she probably would have by now, whether he knew that she was an alien or not."
"Hmmm." Max mulled that over and started slowly making his way to the jeep again. Liz followed.
"Think about it this way," she blurted out. "If some other crisis hit, say if we found out about some *other* alien agent that was nosing around, the first thing you'd tell Michael to do would be to track down Courtney and figure out what her story was, right??" There was a long silence, which Liz decided to break as if it had been a reluctant affirmative. "And, it's safer and better to do it NOW, before the next crisis hits. Same strategy, we're just being proactive about it instead of reactive. Well, or at the least, reactive about an earlier stimulus, which counts for something I think."
Max shook his head at her as he climbed up into the seat. "What makes you think I'd make that decision??"
"Ummm..." Liz shrugged awkwardly. "I dunno, it just struck me as what I'd expect. Why, do you disagree??"
"I... I honestly don't know," Max admitted. "I don't tend to spend a lot of time on hypotheticals like that... not when I'd rather just be enjoying the present." He stole a quick kiss before Liz buckled herself into the shotgun. "Okay, so, the rocks... you wanna go see?"
"Umm, sure Max." Liz didn't say that she was feeling very much of two minds about Michael's suggestion of 'groping right next to it.' On one hand, making out with Max was always great, and the sensation of touching a tiny part of his soul when their intimacy triggered a flash blew the strictly physical and hormonal pleasure away as if it were nothing.
But, when she got flashes from Max, he would normally get flashes of her too, of her past or her thoughts, and there were quite a few things that she was not at all prepared to have him see or know about... like the whole 'future him' thing. Not yet, while she still wasn't sure how he would react or how even small changes could affect the future that Liz was trying to build.
Maybe, if she kept a tiny part of the back of her mind focused on sealing off that stuff, or forced herself to think about other things, safer things, she could keep Max from seeing it? Well, maybe she would try. She might not need to after all... the idea of a heavy makeout session just to satisfy Michael's curiosity might put Max out of the mood.
She concentrated on enjoying the desert air as Max's jeep shot past the city limits sign.
**********
9:38 pm
Granilith sacristy
Max held a hand gallantly out to Liz as she finished scrambling through the tight little passageway, which had been altogether too full of little strands of fiber hanging down that looked like they had been part of the incubation process. At least there hadn't been any actual goo to stick her palms into or get on her nice jeans, and after Max helped her to her feet, she brushed the relatively few bits of fiber that had stuck to her shirt away, and looked around at the granilith chamber itself.
It was reasonably impressive. The big G itself, the inverted cone in the center of the room, dominated the eye as it stood there, imposing but almost snobbish, refusing to give away any of its secret to a casual inspection. Liz knew that she was personifying the thing much too intensely, but she could almost hear it speaking softly, mocking her. 'What do you mean, alien secret? I'm a mathematical abstraction, as any idiot could tell. Isn't that enough for you??'
Elsewhere, there were a few risers and blocks several feet large or more... it was hard to tell if they were functional, decorative, or neither -- or something else entirely, for that matter. There was nothing that looked like a control interface, but then, it wasn't exactly like the orbs had had a 'push here to start' button on them, or the healing stones had come with directions. This alien stuff just seemed enigmatic by nature, as if the prop designers knew it was expected of extraterrestrial artifacts to be strange to the point of absurdity.
Liz cut off that train of thought, realizing that it could lead to rampant paranoia. "Umm... this may sound like a stupid question, but have you tried to find a handprint interface anywhere here?? You know, doing the, umm..." She made a wide sweep through the air with her own outstretched right hand, trying to mimic the gesture that Max used to first initialize the door to the pod chamber, and that they had seen Tess use to find the hiding place of the destiny book in the public library.
"Umm... yeah actually, as many places as I could think of," Max said with a wide smile. "I kinda got the feeling that maybe there were some, but that it wouldn't be that easy to get the handprints to come out and play inside here. That I needed some key artifact to use with them, or to have a better idea of exactly where to look for them." He stepped closer to her, grinning slightly. "Well, we're all alone here, and as much as I hate having to perform on cue, I don't like to give up any excuse to kiss you."
She smiled shyly. "Well, not me either, on general principles. But it feels kinda weird, dontcha think??"
"Maybe you're just focusing on it too much," he said in a soft whisper. "Close your eyes, and I can make you forget about all of this, the granilith, the pod chamber, all of it."
"Okay, if you feel you must." Liz knew she was smiling widely as she closed her eyes, anticipatng the kiss. She could hear Max step close, smell the mix of his aftershave and the very faint masculine fragrance which she wasn't quite sure if it was natural or a cologne, but which always struck her as uniquely, even quintessentially Max. He had to be so close to her that she was surprised not to be able to feel him touching her.
Then she felt his hands, one pressing softly at the small of her back and the other near the back of her neck, its fingers softly stroking through her hair. And then his lips met hers with the effective impact of a semiton tractor trailer barreling down the interstate at seventy miles an hour. Her arms wrapped around his without any deliberate decision on her part, just the kind if instinctive reaction that happens when somebody is about to fall, and she sank deeper into this kiss as his strong arms held her steady and...
**FLASH!**
Liz *did* forget all about the granilith and the pod chamber for an instant, or at least she wasn't aware of being anywhere near there. She was walking into the cafe early in the morning, arm in arm with Max... kissing him before going on, feeling a trace of the heavy metallic orb hidden carefully in his pocket.
She remembered the moment while still experiencing it... it was the morning after her last big reconciliation with Max... when his kisses had given her strange flashes about the '47 crash and its aftermath, and following those kisses, the two of them had uncovered that orb, buried underneath a radio tower out in the desert. They had been teasing each other, and were seconds away from walking into an ambush made up of all four of their parents, who had not been at all pleased with the impulsive, reckless behaviour that the connection had brought out in them.
Fortunately, though, Liz wasn't forced to endure a replay of that scene, as the flash ended just in time, and she was back in Max's enfolding arms with her eyes closed. "What did you see?" he whispered.
Liz told him, suddenly frightened because she hadn't even thought to try protecting the future-Max material from him. But Max said that he had only seen their first kiss, after she and Alex had been let out of jail the night of the rave at the old soap factory, and that was certainly harmless enough, and romantic to boot.
"What do you think about trying for more?" he teased her, his lips brushing her ear as he whispered.
Liz froze, torn by indecision until her hormones made the decision for her. "I want to... but come on, not on whatever the heck this floor is. I do have standards, you know mister!" That last qualification had been the only delaying tactic that the more cautious part of her brain could come up with.
"Well, I have a blanket back in the jeep," Max replied, like the resourceful, prepared young man that he was. "Shouldn't take too long to run down and get it. Do you want to come with me, or stay here until I get back??"
Again, Liz was torn. At first, she thought that by no means she wanted to be left in this strange alien place without him. On the other hand, going through that tight crawlway with the stringy stuff hanging down again... she knew that she'd have to go through it once at least, to get out of the room, but making the passage an extra two times for a return trip didn't exactly appeal to her. And then there was the effort required for a quick trip down to the foot of the rocks and back up... and finally, Liz wanted to be able to use this time to prepare herself for the next round of flashes, putting up some kind of privacy shield about the parts of her mind she didn't want to let him into, and being around Max the whole time didn't sound like it would help with that. So... "Yeah, hurry back." She flashed him a deliberately sunny smile -- well, as bright a one as she could at any rate. "I'll be fine back here."
Max kissed her goodbye sweetly, and she smirked a little at the view of his tight end as he crawled out. And then, she could hear the door mechanism outside, sealing her in, and it was hard not to feel very desperately alone and lonely, more than she'd expected to. Liz found one of the odd blocks that seemed about the right size and height to hike herself onto and sit on, and focused on some breathing exercises that she made up on the spur of the moment.
Trying to lock particular thoughts away was seeming, now that she thought of it, like a contradiction, because there was no way of even knowing what she was locking away without thinking of it. It was almost exactly like the old chestnut about telling someone 'no matter what you do, don't think of a pink elephant.' Focusing on something else seemed like the better task, but it had to be something that Max wouldn't be upset or confused to realize that Liz was thinking of.
The flashes that they'd had earlier seemed to point a way. If she focused on happy memories of herself and her Max, of last year before destiny played a trump card, would that work?? Or would it be too easy of an associative jump to get from there to thinking of what Future Max had tried to take away from her, a leap that she could make without meaning to or realizing it??
It was about all that she could do. Liz resumed her breathing exercises and started thinking of her favorite moments of Max... which quickly got her nearly as excited as if he were actually here. Oh well... at least she had a plan now.
It was several minutes before she heard the door mechanism going again, and Liz was waiting for Max, on all fours herself, as he poked his head out of the tunnel - she brushed one strand of fiber away from his face and kissed him hard. It was nearly a minute before he was able to break away for long enough to get the blanket properly spread out on the cold, hard substance of the floor.
**********
11:21 pm
Valenti house.
"I'm really sorry."
Kyle only looked up from the book he'd been reading out of the corner of his eyes. Tess had poked her head into the living room from the kitchen side, wearing an expression so woebegone he half expected someone to rush into the room and adopt her... (except, of course, that for all intents and purposes somebody already had.)
He tried to make his voice as rough and unforgiving as he could. "Okay, let's hear the excuse."
"Does Michael Guerin count as an excuse?" She walked into the room, giving him cute puppy-dog eyes even harder if that was possible. "He literally dragged me away from my dinner plate at the diner to go and search the apartment of that psycho waitress girl who's been sniffing around him for the past few months, and lately, vice versa." She collapsed with a very believable groan into the desk chair. "And of course, I couldn't exactly tell him that I couldn't come because you were waiting in my old bedroom to screw my brains out... or at least I didn't think you'd like me telling him that. Michael would probably have been very interested to hear it."
Kyle was doing his best to reserve a decision. "So why did Guerin go stalker-boy?? I mean, I've seen that Courtney girl - she's not especially cute."
"It wasn't a hormone thing, supposedly," Tess replied, taking off her sweater matter-of-factly, and doing her best not to let on that she noticed Kyle's eyes straying to the low neckline of the tank top - or was it a camisole? - she was wearing underneath. "Apparently, well, she seems to be one of us. Well, not exactly one of us, but you know. An 'alien' -- one of the skins that Ed warned Max about just before he died."
She leaned forward, and a glint in her eye told Kyle that she knew exactly the sort of effect that move had on her cleavage. "And let me tell you, I used the term 'psycho' deliberately. She had this incredibly creepy shrine to Michael Guerin in one of her closets... An old t-shirt, some other stuff that she swiped from him, and all kinds of pictures that she snapped from across the street from his apartment. I think it's fair to say that 'stalker' is appropriate on THAT side of the coin, actually. We found her stalker hideout apartment, the place looked like a dump, but she wasn't there. He said he was going to go back later, and I told him to shanghai someone else to come along. So... uh, do you forgive me for standing you up unintentionally?? How long did you wait for me anyway??"
"Umm, I just got back about fifteen minutes ago," Kyle said. "And -- 'where there is no intention, there is no offense.' If you could have come, without blowing the secret, you would have. I know that. I'm disappointed, sure, but I don't hold it against you now. I'll just have to find some way to pay Guerin back, I guess."
Tess smiled. "Well, it's kinda too late to go back to the love nest or out parking... Where's your dad anyway??"
Kyle grinned. "He got called in because there was a body discovered somewhere, or something like that. Probably won't be back for hours... whatdya say we try it here??"
Tess stood up and, with some kind of odd shymmying motion, her tight pants slowly fell to the floor. "Try and stop me, lover."
************
Early hours of Sunday, October 29th, 2000. 2:17 am.
Poe street neighborhood, near Michael's apartment..
Isabel grumbled under her breath as Michael led her along. "Why did you make me park so far away??"
Michael shrugged slightly. "If she's there and waiting for me, I thought aproaching on foot would be lower profile than just driving up and getting out in front of the building -- either building."
Isabel sighed softly. "All right. Which one is hers?"
Michael pointed silently to a ratty looking apartment squat, maybe three stories high and seventy feet across, nearly opposite from where his own place was. Isabel tried to stay as quiet as she could when Michael led the way inside, (there was no lock on the front door of the complex, or call bells or anything like that,) and up the stairs, down the hallway to 214. A sweep of his hand in front of the doorknob opened up the lock and the door itself at the same time, and the plywood swung in far more silently than its hinges should have allowed for, without anyone touching it.
Isabel looked all about her with expressions of distaste as she followed Michael into the main room of the crappy little apartment. "I... I have to say it doesn't seem as if anybody's been here for a year or so."
Michael nodded, smiling. "Yeah, that would be the way she wants it to look, right??" Iz nodded a little doubtfully. "But over here by the window, I found little patches of skin that hadn't disintegrated yet, and a bit of plastic wrapping from a roll of camera film, and an empty bag of those red-hot chips she's always popping. Plus, the view from this window to my apartment is exactly the same in all of the pictures."
"Okay, okay, I believe you," Isabel groaned. "So what do we do if she shows up??"
"You go into warrior princess mode while I try to intimidate her??" Michael suggested. That got him a very nasty look indeed.
"Well, no-one's here right now," Izzy decided. "Michael, can I ask you a question?" Perhaps wisely, she didn't wait for any kind of reply before she continued. "While I was away, did Alex, like, talk to you or anything??"
"Nah, I'm pretty sure he was staying away from me on purpose," Michael said offhandedly. "You might want to ask Max though, I think I saw them together a couple times."
"Hmmm." Isabel considered that, looked for someplace to sit down, rejected all of the likely candidates for hygienic reasons, and shifted her weight awkwardly from foot to foot.
"He called me, tonight... just before you tried to reach me, actually. I went out and took a walk by myself after speaking with him for a little while. It was nice to catch up with him, but something seemed a little different with him. Like he was, I dunno... *reserved.* Which is something that he's just about never been, as long as I've known him."
"Maybe he's had enough of you jerking him around, this way and that, telling him you're not ready to be interested in anyone and then openly flirting with older men, right in front of him. Maybe, just maybe, Whitman's decided to suck it up and be a man." Isabel's mouth had dropped open at Michael's rant. "Who'd a thunk it," Michael finished, under his breath.
It took a moment or to for Isabel to collect her thoughts. "Is... is that what you really think I've been doing to him?"
Michael shrugged. "That's what it looked like from here." He sighed, shook his head slightly, and caught her eye with about as sympathetic an expression as Isabel could ever remember seeing from him. "Look, I know you didn't mean it. But... well, all of us, especially you, me, Max... maybe Tess, we've gotten used to living inside our own heads. There's so much that we're keeping inside, that we feel like we need to keep an eye on, that we don't spend as much time as other people looking around and trying to see the world from somebody else's perspective. And so, the way we treat the people we care about... it's easy to get blinded and not see how what we do might look to that other person. Or to someone else close by, watching." A long, low moan emerged from somewhere inside Michael. "Trust me, I've gotten a very serious reminder of that just recently."
Isabel thought about that for a second. "Hmmm." She didn't comment otherwise, and in the silence, suddenly it was impossible not to notice the relatively quiet and careful footsteps coming up the hall. Without a word spoken, Michael and Isabel turned to face the door, he with a hand held up at about shoulder level, Izzy with her right arm crossed over her body to the left side, ready to reel off a backhand gesture, (which was the way she felt she could get the best telekinetic oomph.)
The door swung open, and they could see the figure of Courtney Brooks, her hand still on the doorknob. She was wearing baggy jeans, old sneakers, and a long, heavy shirt, and her blond hair was pulled up into a fluffy ponytail. "Michael... Isabel. We have to talk."
************
Sunday, October 29th, 2000. 12:08 pm..
Old Towne cafe
The next day, Liz met Max for lunch at a restaurant that he had suggested they try. The place seemed to be full of families and older couples that had just gotten out of church, but that wasn't exactly a bad thing.
"I've been trying to put together everything that I got from you last night," Max whispered once they had made their orders. "The whole thing with the G blasting off and circling around the earth sounds really weird, but maybe it's actually supposed to be telling us something." Liz had to fight hard not to let frustration and embarassment show on her face.
That image that Max had been describing, as far as she could tell, was not an honest flash about how the granilith itself functioned, but a subconscious expression of what she knew about Future Max having used it to come back in time... with the imagery straight out of that incredibly dumb moment in the 'superman' movie. Circling backward around the earth to represent travelling back through the days and years. Well, at least Max had apparently not figured out that possible interpretation of it.
"Maybe we can try to 'consolidate our research' over at my place??" she whispered, trying to distract him... or maybe just tempt him into further kisses after lunch, although that might well get her into more trouble. After all, proximity to the granilith didn't neccessarily have anything to do with whether something incriminating would pop into Max's flashes. Her room, and Max's room, and the balcony, were all places that she also associated with his future self still.
"Well, I suppose maybe we could..." Max made a very strange sound, and collapsed forward into his buttered roll all of a sudden. Liz shoved her chair around the table and lifted up his head, gasping at the blood dribbling out from between his slack lips. She flung an arm around his body and felt more sticky wetness around the middle of his back, and torn fabric where his sweater had come asunder, and ragged skin...
"Hi, Parker." She looked up, horror stricken, and saw a tall man with a shock of white-blond hair staring down at both of them from behind Max. No-one else seemed to notice him. "Too bad that you can't heal *him.*"
What the hell?? Liz scrambled up, trying to think of something that she could do to help Max. Bandage the wound?? If he was spitting out blood, would that do any good or would it be just closing the vault after the bank robbers had fled, or something like that?? And mouth-to-mouth wasn't the right thing either, even if she could manage to seal her lips over Max's with all of that...
===
Liz shot up in bed, realizing that it had been a nightmare but not willing to let herself believe it for a long moment. Her clock said that it was still the middle of Saturday night, more or less, about twenty minutes to three in the morning. The parts from the dream that she had 'remembered' about making out with max in the granilith chamber had been real, but she was pretty sure that they hadn't even agreed to meet for lunch. He was supposed to call her early in the morning... though not this early. After the sun had been up for at least an hour.
Liz didn't really calm down until she had made her way out to the kitchen, drunk a glass and a half of cold water, and put some more water into the microwave to boil for herbal tea. The apparition had seemed so incredibly real, with Max dying in front of her, and the twin realizations that she could do nothing to help him, and that she had not, for all of her clever scheming, been able to prevent that disaster from happening.
"But it's a dream, it's not real," she insisted to herself. "There isn't really an alien killer just waiting to get a clear shot at him. There are people who want to hurt Max, but they're further away, and you can help him beat them... if you're smart and if you keep it together."
As she put the bag of rose petals and willow bark into the hot water, she wondered if all of that was true.
She didn't even wonder, as she started to drink, about Michael's mission to find Courtney. Of course, she had no way of knowing that she had found him, or that a tense encounter was still unfolding...
TO BE CONTINUED!
