Stockholm Syndrome - Ch 7 (M/L, Mature) 30/01/08 [WIP]

[lizard_queen]

Name: Stockholm Syndrome
By: lizard_queen
Rating: Mature
Couples: M/L, but features pretty much everyone.
Disclaimer: I own absolutely nothing, except the banner I made, but I don’t own Photoshop or the picture I used so once again, I own nothing. Roswell and it’s characters are not mine. I just like to manipulate them into the stories in my head.

Summary: Stockholm syndrome. n.
A phenomenon in which a hostage begins to identify with and grow sympathetic to his or her captor.

Picks up near the end of S2, the last scene of ITLAITB.


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A/N: I haven't written anything in a while. I think I'm a little rusty, so sorry.




Chapter 1

Liz sat there nervously, her leg bouncing up and down in anticipation. Where the hell was that cab driver? He was meant to be here to pick her up fifteen minutes ago. If she didn’t leave soon then the plane would have left by the time she got there.

With her eyes downcast and staring at her wrists, she didn’t notice that a tawny jeep swerved and drove over the embankment of the highway, cutting across the three lanes heading into town and coming to a stop right in front of the “Welcome To Roswell” sign that she was sitting in front of. As soon as she heard the noise of the car engine Liz looked up and her heart sunk. After their encounter earlier that day she really didn’t feel like having a second round. Max had truly scared her before and she could see the control that he usually kept so well in check was slipping.

If they were still friends, if he stilled cared about her, then perhaps she would have tried to help him. She would have made him tell her what was going on and together they would have figured out a way to make it all better. It was their usual routine. But they weren’t friends at the moment and he no longer held the same feelings for her that he used to.

She could see it in his eyes every time he looked at her. Too much had changed.

“Liz, where are you going?”

Max jumped out of the jeep and took careful steps towards her. His fists clenched and unclenched at his sides. Liz bit her lip and scrunched up one eye, knowing that what she was about to say was not the thing he wanted to hear. She refused to meet his eyes.

“Sweden?”

It came out sounding more like a question than an answer, but the effect it had on him was still the same. The breath was knocked out of his lungs and for a moment he was stunned into lifelessness.

“Are you kidding me? Get in the car.” He stooped to pick up a backpack from her feet but was stopped by her determined response.

“No.”

She was tired of him always controlling everything she did, everything everyone did. No wonder Isabel was exhausted by him. Liz could feel how close she was to finding something crucial about what happened to Alex, and for once she wasn’t going to let her feelings for Max get in the way of what she knew was right, what her instincts, her heart and her mind were telling her was true.

“What did you tell your parents?”

“I'm gonna call them from the airport and tell them my girlfriend in Florida had a crisis and she needed me.”

“They'll call your aunt. Your aunt will say you're not there,” he reasoned, fortitude set on his face. If he let her leave Roswell everything would collapse, he would crumble and there would be no way to survive. At one point in time Liz Parker spun his world off balance, but now she was the only thing keeping him balanced. She was the only thing that was real, and he couldn’t loose that.

“Well, then, I'll think of something else,” she challenged, their eyes locking and their souls fighting to win.

A taxi pulled up beside them. The driver could clearly see that there was a heated argument going on between the teens, but it was a long way back to Albuquerque and he wanted to be home in time for dinner.

“You the airport?” He asked, his eyes trained on Max.

“No. Actually, I am. You're late.” Liz moved her eyes off Max long enough to slide down off of the fence and pick up her bag. A solid hand encased her wrist tightly, preventing her from passing her bag to the driver.

“Liz, don't get in that cab.” His voice broke with a plea and he begged her with his eyes.

As soon as it registered how tightly he was holding her arm Max let go, confusion wrapped all over his face. He had never tried to use force on anyone before, but he was desperate to keep his world from spinning out of control. He would do anything he had to just to keep Liz there. But she refused to be sucked in again. She had spent too much time of her life helping the aliens and in the end they wouldn’t even stand by her when Alex was murdered. Instead they chose to make it a war simply because they refused to believe they were responsible.

This time, she was doing something for herself. She needed to know what happened to Alex, even if they didn’t care. She owed him that much.

With a new resolve she wrenched her arm out of his grasp and turned to the cab driver. “Load it up.”

“Liz, get in the Jeep.” This was the last straw. Max picked up her backpack and threw it on the backseat of his car. Liz reached around him and picked it back up, intending to give it to the cab driver to load in his boot.

“What are you gonna do? You're gonna throw me in it?”

“You have to listen to me,” he took the backpack out of her hands and once again threw it on the back seat of his jeep.

“Don't even pull that King card on me, Max. I'm not Isabel. You can't boss me around.”

At the mention of his sister, the very last shreds of control snapped and he screamed. “Liz, get in the car!” His voice echoed all around them and she jumped from the power of his voice.

The driver was loosing patience with them wasting his time and thought that perhaps it was best if he intervened and tried to sort out the problem. “Look, perhaps you two should just calm down and…”

“Stay out of this!” Max roared, lifting his hand and using his powers to fling the driver onto the ground, his gaze never leaving Liz’s the entire time. She stood before him with frightened eyes. She had never seen Max loose control like this before. His face was red and his entire body was shaking.

It was the first time in her life that she ever feared him.

“Liz,” Max started more calmly this time, but the threat in his tone was undeniable. “Get in the car, now.”

She clenched her jaw as her eyes sent daggers right through his heart. With a small sigh of hatred she calmly walked over to the passenger side of the Jeep and climbed into the car, slamming the small plastic door closed. She turned her body away from the driver’s side and rested her head in the palm of her hand, determined not to let a single tear escape. In that one moment she loathed him more than anyone before in her life.

Max took three deep even breaths to focus and then walked over to the cab and picked up the other bag of Liz’s luggage. He threw it in the back of his Jeep and reached into his pocket, turning to face the driver who was still lying on the ground in shock. Max pulled out a note from his pocket and threw it on the ground next to the driver, steadying himself enough to speak calmly.

“Sorry for making you come all this way for nothing.”

The driver nodded numbly from his position on the ground and watched as the young boy jumped in the Jeep and sped off with the girl in the opposite direction of Roswell. He had no idea what has just happened. One minute he was on his feet and then suddenly he was lying on the ground and it felt as though a giant weight was preventing his movement.

Maybe his wife was right; he needed a holiday.

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After fifteen minutes of driving it dawned on Liz that they weren’t heading in the right direction. She thought he would take her back to Roswell and keep her hostage at Michaels until she agreed to stop her vendetta, but apparently she was wrong.

She wiped away the tears that were sporadically sliding down her cheeks and took a deep breath to calm herself down. “Where are we going?”

His answer was simple.

“Away.”

[lizard_queen]

OMG Kris writing a fic WOW, it's been a while.

HEY! I take offence to that.... ok fine, you're right. Lol. It's great to see all the old faces still lurking around the board, and some new ones as well.

We should all come out of hiding and scream *surprise*, try to revive the board or does that require too much effort?


Wow, I don't think I've ever had so much feedback before. How unsual. But thank you all so much.

I don't really have a set plan for when this fic is going to be updated. basically, it will be whenever I'm not a uni or working and have found the time to write.... and I doubt the fic will be all that long as well. I'm lazy like that.

Anyhoo, enough of me, back to the fic. Sorry that its a little short.




Chapter 2


Her brown eyes fluttered open to once again meet blurry scenery as it flew by on the side of the road. It was the last few minutes of sunset, when the icy-cold air seeped into your skin and the darkness enveloped your body. The last of the orange glow of the sun over the desert could be seen retreating behind the oversized rocks.

They had been driving for what seemed like forever. The first hour had been filled with Liz’s cries of anger while Max silently drove. When her voice became horse and she realized that he wasn’t going to let her go anytime soon, she turned her back to him and sat in a seething silence.

Since Liz still refused to talk to her abductor, the only way to pass the time was to sleep or plot her escape from the moving vehicle. She had debated in her mind just how far she would be able to run once she escaped from the Jeep using a commando roll, before Max would catch her. In the end her plans were destroyed when they pulled up at a truck stop to get supplies and Max had melted her seatbelt shut to prevent her from running whilst he was inside.

It wasn’t that she was scared of him hurting her. Even before when he had completely lost control, Liz was never afraid that he would purposely do any harm to her. Sure he had grabbed her arm and most probably left a bruises, but she had to believe that it wasn’t a conscious decision. She needed to. After all, Max had let go once he had realized how much force he was using.

She was mostly scared that he would be so lost in his anger that the Max she had once known would cease to exist. The process had been slowly happening for a while now, aided by Tess and the other aliens. Even though Liz had made an effort to be less involved in the alien abyss and more importantly Max’s destiny, it didn’t stop her from observing him from afar. The irony that she was now the one sitting in the shadows watching Max was not lost on her.

He was a heavy object hanging by a tethered thread. The pressure from Michael, Isabel and Tess was weighing him down more, which was why Liz was not at all surprised that the thread had snapped.

The relationship he had with her probably didn't help either.

It didn’t stop her from being frightened of where they were going. It didn’t stop her from wanting to find a phone and call the sheriff. Max had taken away her cell phone a few hours earlier when he caught her trying to message Maria for help. Liz may have understood why Max needed to escape, but that didn’t make her comfortable with being taken with him.

Alien abduction suddenly had a literal meaning to it.

Max gripped the wheel tighter when she shifted her position, her back still to him. His hands were white from the strain of his hold, but if he removed his hands they wouldn’t stop shaking. If Liz weren’t ignoring him she would have noticed when he returned from the bathroom at the store that his eyes were red-rimmed and blood shot from the tears he had spilled.

He didn’t know what had compelled him to practically kidnap the love of his life, but it seemed like it was the only logical option at that point in time. All Max knew was that he didn’t want to return to Roswell right now. He could feel the nagging in the back of his mind from Tess, and an urge to turn around and go to the Observatory. It had only been recently that he had been able to feel when she tried to mindwarp him, but he was too deep into a sea of despair and depression to care that he was being manipulated.

Fear drove him. The fear of losing Liz was what compelled him to treat her like some hostage. Fear of becoming ‘alien’, of losing his human side was what constrained him to drive in the complete opposite direction of Roswell. It was the reason why he hadn’t called anyone to let them know that he and Liz were safe.

It was the reason why he couldn’t let her go. She was the only thing connecting him to the person he used to be. She was the last thread back to his old life, back to who he really was.

Liz’s stomach betrayed her vow of silence when it rumbled. Max once again offered her a chocolate bar he had bought at the store but like all previous attempts, she ignored him. He didn’t blame her. He didn’t want to be the psychotic ex-boyfriend that he was becoming but he couldn’t let her go home yet. He just needed a few days to gain his bearings, to become himself again.

Liz was the only one who could help him to just that.


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The Jeep continued on down a dusty, dirt road coming closer and closer to the passenger’s final destination. Relief flushed over Max when his eyes focused on the dilapidated old shed ahead of them. When Liz had run off to Florida for the summer, his only salvation had been to just drive into the unknown and hope to find a place where everything made sense.

It was a ritual that Michael and Isabel had accepted as Max’s way of recharging and regaining his thoughts. He would just drive through the desert for hours and think. He had always been an advocate of the concept of having a ‘personal bubble’ that would block out the entire world and no one could invade. It was usually the only thing that stopped them from killing each other.

The desert was his bubble.

The only person who didn’t seem to understand this was Tess. She was constantly trying to invade his thoughts and feelings, not caring at all about his privacy. It was an invasion through her body language, her thoughts and her powers.

Her weight was crushing his soul.


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“Honey, have you seen Liz? She’s late for her shift,” Jeff Parker asked his wife who was busy taking stock in one of the back rooms. She looked up from her seat on the ground and shook her head.

“She left a few hours ago, said something about doing research at the library for her Chemistry class. I haven’t seen her since. She probably just lost track of time.”

Jeff nodded his head in agreement, but he couldn’t ignore the gnawing feeling in the pit of his stomach. Something didn’t feel right.


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Max shifted the Jeep into park outside a small cabin and turned off the ignition with a sigh. He looked over at the sleeping girl beside him and pulled the blanket more securely around her shoulders. She had fallen asleep a little over an hour ago, exhausted from fighting the situation and crying.

He inhaled the desert air, feeling it deep in the bottom of his lungs. If it was possible, he already felt lighter. Being away from the constraints on his life, from Tess, Michael and Isabel, from duty and from false pretenses: he immediately felt lighter.

The sun’s glow was barely visible above the horizon anymore and exhaustion filled his bones like lead. The cabin would do for tonight. They could figure out the next step in the morning.

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“Liz, are you up here?”

Maria walked into her best friends bedroom and looked around at the stark appearance. The room that once glowed with life now seemed dead. The photos that previously covered the desk and the colour that filled the room slowly began to dissolve over the summer, leaving a blank shell in its place.

The Liz they all knew was evaporating before their eyes.

A folder of photos sat in the middle of the bed. Liz must have left them out for her. They were more pictures to be used in the yearbook as a tribute to Alex. As Maria sat down on the edge of the bed and began to sort through the photos, the phone beside the bed sprang to life with an obnoxious ring. She shook off the noise, knowing that the answering machine would click on any second.

Sure enough, the outgoing message started and the ringing was replaced with Liz asking the caller to ‘please leave a message’. However, it was the message that the caller left that made Maria drop the folder she was holding.

“Ms. Parker? Mr. Stockman from the embassy. We found your building. There's just one curiosity-- that structure was torn down in 1994. 3 people in my office have confirmed it. That building is gone.

“I’m sorry but unless this is an old photo of your friend, there is no possible way that he could have been outside this building in Sweden in the last few months.”


TBC...

[lizard_queen]

It's shorter than what I had hoped to get out, but I figured that I had made you all wait long enough. Thank you all so much for the fb. Without it I would probably forget that I'm even writing this fic and I would never finish it, so thanks.

I'll try and get the next part out faster.

Chapter 3


He had been watching her world from afar for years, gradually falling more and more in love. His eyes stalked her every move at school and around the Crashdown, not at all worried how terrible he was at being inconspicuous. She was an obsession that sucked him in. He didn’t want to have feelings for her, but he didn’t want them to fade either.

Before Liz was shot, Max used to dream about how perfect they could be if they were together. And for a brief moment, they were perfect. When he kissed her for the first time out on her balcony, it was as if time had stood still. It wasn’t awkward as he imagined his first kiss would be. It felt natural, like he was never meant to kiss anyone else. The world stop spinning, time stilled, everything ceased to exist. It was every single love song cliché all rolled into one.

It was his Elysium.

His mother always used to say “What goes up must come down,” and it was true. Gravity was the force responsible for pulling things back down to earth, and it was only a matter of time before the physics of their joining outweighed the chemistry and they came plummeting back down to the ground.

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“Michael, where’s Max?”

Michael turned around from the burger he was frying and regarded his on again/off again girlfriend. What were they this month? On again? He really needed to buy a calendar to keep track.

He noticed that Maria looked a little paler than usual and she was clutching one of her hundred incenses bottles tightly in her hand. It was probably just another patented Maria freak out, nothing to worry too much about.

“How the hell should I know? Do I look like his keeper?”

Her eyes went wide with panic and Michael prepared himself for a fight. It was their standard routine. He would act like an ass, she would call him on it and after about two days of the silent treatment they would have explosive makeup sex.

But the tongue lashing never came.

Or the sex.

“Michael, I need to find Max right now. It’s important. And I need to find Liz, but I already asked her parents and they don’t know where she is, and neither of them are picking up their cell phones so I need to find Max and-”

“Maria!” He shouted over her ramblings, putting down the spatula he was using and moving to stand in front of her. A tear fell from the corner of her eye and he instinctively reached up and brushed it away. “What’s going on?”

“Alex never went to Sweden, Michael. I think Liz was right.”


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When Liz opened her eyes, it took a moment for her to realize that the nightmare she had experienced last night was in fact a reality. The mattress she was laying on was not her bed; instead it was a lumpy pullout couch with loose springs. The blankets draped over her body to keep her warm whilst she slept were all old and tatted, except one that she recognized as the one Max kept in the back of the Jeep.

Max. Liz wasn’t sure if she wanted to help him or kill him. Her heart ached for the old Max to reappear this morning and somehow make it all right, but she knew that wishing for something was meaningless. If there was one thing she had learnt in the past year it was that nothing ever happened by chance or fate, not when destiny was lurking around the corner.

She pushed herself up into a sitting position and ran a shaky hand through her deshelved hair. The room she was in was small, consisting of a dilapidated kitchenette and the lounge she was laying on. A shower curtain was hanging up to cover the far corner in what Liz guessed was an attempt to create a makeshift bathroom. A rusty fireplace was held loosely against the far wall and the windows were cracked and blacked in by dust.

It was then that she noticed Max sitting in the shadows. She took a moment to look at him, to really see him. He was emaciated; a shell of the boy who she had shared jokes about fortune cookies with and kissed under the stars. He was haggard, bony and broken. The only time she had ever seen him looking remotely this horrible was after the white room, but even then he just looked exhausted. This Max was different. This Max was the result of self-flagellation for the last year. He had slowly been wasting away, punishing himself for all the wrongs they had endured since she had been shot and he risked everyone’s lives by healing her.

The thing was, no one had noticed. They had all been so wrapped up in their own world to realize that Max was far from healthy. Isabel and Michael were too busy finding ways home, Tess was preoccupied with selling herself as his wife and Liz went out of her way to avoid thinking about his welfare.

Max sat with his back against the wall, his arms resting on his knees and his head in his hands. His body shook so slightly that Liz was almost sure she had made it all up.

He was crying.

The instinct to reach out and comfort him ran straight through her body. She was halfway through standing up when his head snapped up and their eyes met. The pain she saw in his amber depths riveted Liz to the spot. He quickly brushed away the tears, avoided her gaze and took a deep breath the calm his nerves.

“Hey.” His voice was husky with guilt and tears. Any outsider looking in would see that he was nowhere near a man or a king. He was just a boy who made one too many mistakes and was struggling for a way to fix them.

Liz sat back down and watched him. Her arms unconsciously circled her waist and it felt as though a shell was created around her body. Max opened his mouth to say something, apologise maybe, but no words came. The silence enveloped their beings like a blanket. They we pieces on a chessboard, stranded by the idea of checkmate. One move could either save their souls or destroy them.

Liz’s stomach gave an involuntary growl that reminded them both that she hadn’t had anything to eat since lunch the day before. Max rifled through his pack, pulled out the last chocolate bar and handed it to her. They needed food and supplies, but he knew there was no way Liz would voluntarily get into the Jeep with him again. The only option he had was to leave her at the shed and go back to the gas station they had passed the night before.

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“Where’s Max?” Michael demanded as soon as Isabel had opened the front door.

She rolled her eyes and started walking back towards the kitchen, leaving the door open as a silent invitation for Michael and Maria to enter. “Nice to see you too Michael.”

“I don’t have time for you to suddenly turn into a Princess with a broom up your ass Isabel. We need to find Max. It’s important.” His hand clenched into a fist beside his leg. Maria placed a calming hand on his shoulder, but it did little to stop the adrenaline from coursing through his veins.

“Have you checked him room? His probably sitting in the dark in his closet slitting his wrists for all I care.”

Ok, so maybe Isabel was still a little bitter that he had played the king card on her yesterday and she had every right to be, but they didn’t have time for her to be a petulant baby at the moment. “Isabel,” Maria started but suddenly found herself at a loss for what to say. It was bad enough having to hear that your almost boyfriend committed suicide. How would she survive when they told her that there was a chance Liz’s accusations were correct?

How could they tell her that Alex was murdered?

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He pulled the ball cap further over his forehead and took a deep breath. It wouldn’t matter if the attendant recognized him or not. All they had to do was identify the Jeep and Max knew that the sheriff would be called and he would be charged with kidnapping.

The logical side of his brain recognized that they had only been missing for just over twelve hours, and a missing person report could not be filed until forty-eight hours had gone by. The other side of his brain, the side that houses suspicion and fear, the side that made him caution everyone and everything around him had alarm bells ringing out. If he went to jail, it would only be a matter of time before the FBI found him again and continued the experiments that they had started last year. And once they had him, there was no telling what lengths they would go to the capture the others, especially Liz. After all, she would be dead if his alien hands hadn’t dissolved the chunk of metal infiltrating her system.

Max walked around the isles as quietly as he could, grabbing as many items that he thought Liz would need. A large pack of bottle of water, some candy, instant soup and instant noodles, batteries, toilet paper, matches. He didn’t know how long they would be hiding in the middle of the desert for, or more accurately, how long he would be.

Max knew that all Liz had to do was ignore him for long enough and he would cave and let her go. He may need her like he needed oxygen, but he wasn’t going to keep her there against her will just to make himself feel better. In a few days when he felt more stable, more like himself again, he would give her the keys to the jeep and let her go, but for now he just needed something to anchor him.

He needed to hold onto her.

[lizard_queen]

I'm back. Yay.

Max is so broken. He might've acted like an ass in those last episodes of season 2 but at the same time he was silently screaming for help. There was just something really off with how Max acted.

Exactly. I always thought that they never really explained why he was so un-Max during season 2 and they kind of left it for you to figure out on your own. This fic is kind of my interpretation of why he was a jackass. Plus its a great way to rewrite the horrible baby storyline.

Thank you for all the wonderful feedback. It always makes me smile.

Sorry if you feel that the dreamer parts are going a little slow at the moment, but I don't plan this to be a terribly long fic and I kind of feel that the silent treatment stuff needs to happen in order for it to be in character and for our Dreamers to really move on.

Anyhoo, enough babble from me:



Chapter 4


The rock bounced across the cracked desert floor and finally came to a stop a few feet away, spinning on its axis like a penny before landing flat on one side. It was about the fiftieth rock Liz had thrown in the last hour. At first they were done out of anger. She needed a way to expel all the emotions bubbling up inside and this was the most cathartic way she could find.

Now the rocks were just being thrown out of boredom. It wasn’t exactly like there was a TV in the shack, and she had finished her book when she was waiting for the cab yesterday.

Max had been gone for a few hours and she was left all alone. It would have been the perfect chance for her to escape the makeshift prison he had created, but logic held her body in place. Liz had no idea which direction the main road was located in, and even if she did know: it was miles away and a hundred degrees outside. There would be no point. She would either die from the heat or get lost. If a car did happen to pass her by, chances were it would just be Max on his way back.

If Liz was honest with herself, there was another reason that she stayed, nagging in the back of her mind. She tried to ignore it but it didn’t go away.

She stayed because of him.

Max was off-kilter. He was unwell, and Liz was almost positive that his illness was directly related to Tess. She was like an acid, eating away at everything it could get to until there was nothing but destruction left. The aliens were blinded by the fact that she had answers to a few questions. It seemed that all you needed to do was to blast a ball of energy out of your hand and you earned yourself automatic trust and were able to rein over everyone’s lives.

It was alien bias, and Max had been sucked into the movement.

Liz still wasn’t entirely sure why she was there. Sure, Max didn’t want her to go to Sweden because he didn’t want to be responsible for Alex’s death and he didn’t want to risk her exposing them, but he could have just taken her back to Michaels and kept her trapped there. It would have been a cleaner way to stop her search for the truth. Her parents wouldn’t be worried about her and neither would Maria.

Unless this was all part of one of Tess’s plans. Maybe she had finally broken Max down enough that she convinced him to take Liz out to the desert and dispose of her? No, this wasn’t some mobster movie from the fifties. This was Max, a simple teenage alien who healed her when she was shot, had a wife from a past life and who was captured and tortured by the FBI. Her life for the past two years didn’t at all sound like a bad movie plot line.

A dust cloud appeared on the horizon and false hope sprung in Liz’s gut. Maybe the person who owned the shack was coming and would help her get home? Maybe someone at the gas station called the police and they arrested Max for kidnapping her? Or maybe it was just Max, back from picking up supplies.

Sure enough as the dust cleared, a tawny coloured Jeep grew closer and closer.

Liz sighed, resigned to the fact that the boy who was once her white knight in shinning armour was now the wicked witch with the poison apple.


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“We have to call someone.”

“Who? The police? And say what Maria? ‘Two of our friends are missing and we think aliens took them since aliens took another one of our friends a few months ago, made it look like he was in Sweden and then killed him,’” Michael growled in response. He really couldn’t deal with Maria’s hysteria right now.

“Well what the hell are we supposed to do Michael? Sit back and wait for King Max to give out the instructions like always? Oh, that’s right, he’s not here!”

Maria felt like she was hyperventilating. Liz was always the one who calmed her down in situations like these, but she was missing as well.

She really needed to throw up.

“We should call Tess and Valenti,” Isabel a mumbled around her nails. She had been pacing back and forth across her living room for the last few hours, trying to piece it all together in her mind. It made sense in a twisted way, but there was still too much information missing.

“No!” Maria demanded, startling both aliens with the force of her tone. “Valenti, fine. But not Tess. I refuse to have her involved in this. ”

“It’s not your brother who didn’t come home Maria. It’s not your body the FBI wants to dissect. It’s not your blood an entire solar system wants to see splattered on the ground. You don’t get a say in this,” Isabel snapped; taking in a low, sharp tone.

Maria refused to back down. She had been pushed around by these aliens for too long. “You’re right Isabel, it’s not my brother. It’s Liz, who is my best friend and practically my sister.” She took a few steps closer to the tall blonde, fire raging in her eyes. “You think the reason she didn’t trust Tess was because she was jealous? Liz wasn’t that petty. She didn’t trust Tess because her instincts told her not to, just like all your instincts told you not to. That is until Tess did a little magic trick and suddenly you were all best friends.”

“Maria,” Michael warned, placing a hand on her shoulder to stop her from encroaching on Isabel any further. “That’s enough.”

“No, it’s not. Liz did everything you people asked her to. She covered for you, she risked her life for you, but as soon as Tess showed up it became ‘Liz who?’ It didn’t matter how many times Tess tried to manipulate you or she lied to you, you always trust her over us because she just happened to also fall out the sky. Now something is going on here and I will not let Tess get involved because there is nothing more that she would like to see than Liz completely out of the picture. I’ve already lost one best friend this year, I can’t lose another one and I’m not going to let you risk her life like that!”

“Maria,” Michael tried again, pulling the sobbing girl into his arms. Isabel bit the inside of her mouth and looked away from the scene with an astringent sigh.

“I can’t lose her Michael. I can’t,” she mumbled against his chest. His hand stroked through her hair in a vain attempt to calm her down.

“You won’t. We won’t tell Tess yet, ok?” he reasoned. “But if we don’t find them soon Maria, we’ll have no choice.”

<center>* * * * *</center>

“I wasn’t sure what stuff you had in your suitcase so I got some soap and a towel and stuff,” Max offered but received no reply. Liz sat on the bed with her legs drawn up to her chest and her eyes fixed out the tiny window. He picked up the brightly coloured beach towel – the only kind he could find – and placed it with a bar of soap and some shampoo on the edge of the bed.

“I also got some magazines and stuff, in case you got bored,” he sighed, placing the stack of reading material on the bed next to the towel and once again received no response. He crossed his arms over his chest and dug his nails into his biceps. His energy had officially left the building and this feeling of despondency was like sandbags in his heart.

The silence from Liz was almost as unbearable as the searing pain he experienced in the white room. He wasn’t sure which would damage him more.

“I’ll try and fix the faucet and then you can have a shower.”

Liz’s eyes followed his back as he walked away and her heart clenched with guilt and sorrow. This was not how things were meant to be.


<center>* * * * *</center>

Maria knocked on the door and waited impatiently for Derek to answer. She had gone back into Alex’s computer and searched through every one of his files and emails relating to Sweden, hoping for some sort of clue left between the rubble.

Michael and Isabel were on a mission of their own. Isabel was trying to dream walk Max but as it was the middle of the day she didn’t expect to have much hope. Michael was there to offer support and energy in the hope that both of their powers would be enough to get into Max’s head when we was awake.

The front door opened to reveal a geeky looking boy with wild curly hair and a confused expression on his face.

“I uh, I need you to tell me exactly where this email is sent from.” Maria demanded, handing him the printed email and rethinking her decision to entrust the task to someone who looked like they had just woken up.

“You’re Liz Parker’s friend, right?” Derek asked, eyes skimming over the email briefly.

“Maria Deluca, it’s really nice to meet you, so…” she waved her hands in a motion that indicated she didn’t have all day to make idle chit chat.

“Um, the origination point has been encrypted.”

“Obviously,” she rolled her eyes in exasperation and felt the hope slowly slipping from her body. “I need you to do your computer nerd stuff and figure out exactly where this email came from.”

“You’re asking me to do something illegal,” he explained.

“And?”


<center>* * * * *</center>


Brown eyes watched with sadness as Max fiddled with the shower tap in the crude bathroom. His jeans and shirt were splattered with muddy water that had exploded from the faucet moments before and his soft curses could be heard across the room. He looked cold, tired and hungry, but still insisted on fixing the tap so she could shower.

It occurred to Liz that she hadn’t seem him eat a single thing in the last twenty-four hours. All the food he bought was for her; all the supplies were for her. He had given her a sleeping bag but kept nothing for himself. His bottle of water had barely been opened and there were no clean male clothes to be seen.

It amazed her that even when things were at their worst, Max still put everyone else above himself. He still felt as though he had a responsibility to look after everyone. In any other situation it would be endearing, but at the moment it was just plain stupidity.

Liz rummaged around through the bag of food to find something decent for dinner. There was a pack of instant noodles that would be enough. She pulled out the small camping stove that his parents insisted be kept in the Jeep for emergencies and started to boil some water. Five minutes later she had two cups of steaming hot noodles ready to silence her rumbling stomach. But first there was something she had to do.

Max looked up when her shadow fell over his face. Her bottom lip was drawn between her teeth, a classic habit for an uncertain Liz. In her hand was a cup of instant noodles, which she held out to him. He looked up at her, uncertain, but her eyes pleaded with him to just take the damn thing and not make a big deal about it.

It may not have been a peace offering, but it was something.

tbc...

Dialogue taken from “Baby It’s You.”

[lizard_queen]

Wow, 15 pages. I feel special.

Thank you all for the bumps and comments. Without them there's a good chance that I would forget I'm even writing this fic.

I know it's not the best excuse, but you have to understand that I'm not one of those writers who can just sit down and write out fifty pages of a fic in one go. I get distracted easily and I have to be in the right mood otherwise I tend to write nothing but pure crap (not that some people don't think that this is crap, but you know what I mean). Fic writing probably isn't the best way for me to fulfill my creative needs in this respect, but I do love it and it's hard to give up...

So in short what I'm saying is that I will attempt to keep updating this fic, but that there's very little chance it will be once a week. I aim for once a month, but even that doesn't seem to work out very well... but I am trying.

This part probaby isn't the best, but it's been so long since I posted that I was starting to feel guilty. Thank you again for the wonderfully amazing comments. They make me smile.




Chapter 5



The bass pumped through his veins like a drug. Any moment now synesthesia would produce colours behind his eyes, like a screensaver on the computer. This was the harder stuff, the stuff he kept hidden from plain view. Counting Crows was for wallowing, Moby was for relaxing but this, this was for drowning out the entire world.

It was pure bliss not being able to think, not able to feel anything but the grinding guitar and thrashing drums. Every train of thought would be quickly swept away is a tide of noise until concentration seemed utterly impossible. For the first time in months it felt as though his mind was completely empty and free. There was no destiny, no kingdom, no alien powers and no wars, internal or otherwise.

There was just music and sun.

The sun had a habit of relaxing Max right down to the core. The pressure and the heat sunk into his skin and pushed out all of the tension, the stress and the thoughts until he was just a melted, tranquil shell.

With loud, angry music forming a protective bubble around him.

It was just what he needed after the horrific sleep he had had the previous night. He had donated to bed to Liz and attempted to sleep on the floor. It wasn’t the hard ground that had kept him up all night though. It was the fact that every time he closed his eyes and tried to sleep he could feel her worming her way into his mind that caused him to get very little sleep.

Fear gripped at his soul. If he slept, he would relinquish his control and let his guard down. If he let his guard down, she would destroy him.

Michael would be proud of the entertainment choices Max had stowed away in the bottom of his car. It just seemed to be one more reason why he loved his secluded corner of the desert: there was no one around to complain about the volume of the music or question his emotions.

He had been lying stretched out in the back of the Jeep for what seemed like hours, simply soaking up he heat and trying to relax whilst the car stereo blared out screaming tracks on repeat. It rejuvenated him a thousand times more than what sleep would have. Liz had disappeared for a walk hours ago and still hadn’t come back, but Max wasn’t worried. He knew that she would come back when she was ready. There wasn’t really anywhere else for her to go. Even though she hadn’t said a word to him for almost two days, he could see the internal war raging on inside her every time she was around. It was only a matter of time until she cracked.

Until then he was happy to pretend for one moment he was a regular teenage boy spending the closest thing he would ever get to a holiday in the warm desert sun.


<center>* * * * *</center>

The phone in Michael’s apartment managed to get out one shrill ring before Isabel snatched it up in her hands and answered. She had been staring at it for hours, daring the plastic contraption to ring.

Dream walking had been a waste of time. She couldn’t even find Max’s conscious to get into, let alone be blocked from. It was as if her brother had disappeared off the face of the earth, a thought that held much scarier implications than usual.

“Hello?”

Her greeting was full of apprehension and wasted hope. Logically she knew that if Max and Liz were being held hostage by Alex’s alien killer, he probably wouldn’t be ringing her. A nagging part of her brain tried to push the idea of a ransom call to the forefront, but she was determined to think positive. Maybe who ever it was would ring to demand the rest of the royal four give themselves up? There was no telling how many enemies of the alien variety they had out there.

“Hey Isabel, is Max there?” Tess asked from the other side of the line. She had been ringing his mobile for the last day and was yet to get an answer. Her grasp on his mind seemed to be getting weaker for some reason, and that wasn’t a good sign.

“Max? No, he’s ah… gone camping for a few days with Michael. Why?” Isabel bluffed, receiving a harsh glare across the room from Michael. Now he would have to go out of his way to avoid Tess for a few days. It wasn’t as if he longed to spend time with her or anything, but because of Isabel’s quick thinking the next few days would no doubt involve him having to expel too much energy hiding from her view.

“Camping, really? Why didn’t they tell me?”

Isabel resisted the urge to point out that neither of them had any obligation to report their whereabouts to her every hour, but bit her tongue.

“Oh, it was a spur of the moment thing. They both decided that they needed to get away for a few days. They didn’t even tell me where exactly they were camping. Just grabbed their stuff and went yesterday.”

“Oh, that’s probably why Max isn’t answering his phone then.”

Isabel itched to just hang up. What if Max was calling right now but couldn’t get through because the line was tied up? What if whoever had taken them only allowed one phone call? They could be dead all because she didn’t answer the phone.

“I guess. Was there any particular reason why you wanted him Tess?”

“We were meant to try some more memory retrieval things last night but he never showed up.” Tess didn’t understand it. She had worked her magic on him for hours last night, planting the idea of the observatory in his head over and over, but he never showed up. At one point her nose even started to bleed from the strain on her mind. Even if he was camping, she still should have been able to get through to him. Her power of Max was meant to be stronger than this.

“I have to go, but they should be back in a few days, you can do it then.”

“Yeah, thanks Isabel.” Tess mumbled absently and hung up. She had the strangest feeling that something wasn’t quite right.


<center>* * * * *</center>

He had been mumbling in his sleep. Things like “Stay out of my head” were accompanied with strangled moans and whimpering. Liz had lain awake all night just listening, trying to make sense of the muttering. She had wanted to wake him up and let him know that he was safe, that no one was in his head, but it wasn’t exactly a promise she could guarantee.

Was he talking about Tess? Had she been mindwarping him again, manipulating him? Liz wouldn’t put it past her and it wasn’t like it would have been the first time. It would also explain a few things, such as his sudden behavioural changes and mood swings. Either that or he had a bad case of alien PMS.

She let out a deep breath and continued climbing over the small embankment of rocks. The sun was starting to set and the cool desert wind rolled over the land. It was refreshing. The thought of going back to the small shack for another night was maddening, but Max’s presence seemed to ebb the anger away the smallest bit.

It was strange. He was holding her hostage, yet the thought of having his company was peaceful. In fact, the entire day had been surprisingly relaxing. Liz had never taken the time to just explore the desert before. The scientist in her had marvelled at the rock formations she had found and her somewhat dormant creative side begged for a camera so she could snap away at the landscape.

Yet the strangest thing by far was that she hadn’t thought about Alex or the aliens at all during her hike. It was as if the further she got away from Roswell and civilisation, the clearer everything became. The animosity she felt towards being taken against her will seemed to fall away into the dirt. Max’s desperation and need for control over the last few weeks suddenly seemed founded and sane. His world was spinning out of control and he thought that if he gripped it tighter it wouldn’t be able to get away from him anymore. The only problem was that the tighter he gripped it, the faster it ran.

Liz still didn’t forgive his behaviour and her sudden abduction, but his actions seemed to make a strange sort of sense to her now.

She rounded a large rock and the small cabin came into view. It was dilapidated and depressing, yet her feet continued to take her towards it. A soft thumping surrounded her ears, becoming louder and louder as she approached the shack. Two feet sticking out of the back of the Jeep came into view and lyrics became recognisable over the noise. It seemed she wasn’t the only one attempting to relax today.

A thought suddenly occurred to her. Maybe it wasn’t Tess Max had been dreaming about? Perhaps the white room and Pierce had once again made a guest appearance in his dreams. Liz remembered him telling her how they had tried to play with his mind, how they had showed him images of her death. She had hoped that by now he wouldn’t be plagued by the four white walls as frequently, but it was still an option to consider.

Empathy welled up inside of her chest, replacing the bitterness that had been the driving force for her silent treatment. She didn’t understand what she was feeling. The need to hate and resent Max was strong, but the need to comfort and help him was quickly overcoming it.

One thing was for certain though: even in sleep he was a tortured soul.


<center>* * * * *</center>

“Las Cruces.” Maria said, bursting through Michael’s front door and starting both aliens. Isabel looked up with a hopeless expression and Michael’s mirrored it. Maria immediately knew that they hadn’t had any luck with the dream walking.

“Las Cruces?” Michael repeated, clearly confused. “What’s in Las Cruces?”

“The University Of New Mexico.”

“Maria…” he sighed when she didn’t elaborate, running a ragged hand down his face. He really didn’t feel like decoding his Maria-filter today. He didn’t have the energy left.

She held up the e-mail the computer geek had tracked for her.

“It’s where the e-mail was sent from. Alex didn’t go to Sweden, Michael. He went to Las Cruces.”


TBC...

[lizard_queen]

Apparently insomnia's good for one thing: getting your fic on.



Chapter 6

Explosions coursed through his skin, his entire body on fire from the simple touch of her lips on his own. Max was in heaven. Liz Parker was in his arms, kissing him. She wasn’t running away screaming because he was an alien. She wasn’t recoiling in disgust, or even trying to let him down gently. Instead she was kissing him back with just as much determination, her hands pulling his lips and his body closer against her until they were melded as one.

This was his Elysium. She was his everything.

Max had just been walking around the streets, too wired up to fall asleep when he suddenly found himself standing in front of the ladder to Liz’s balcony. Maybe it was the sweltering heat, but before he could control himself, he had called out to her on a whim not expecting a reply. He hadn’t planned to climb up the ladder and kiss her. Her lips were all he could think about, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t using all the control he could muster to restrain himself.

That was until she had grabbed his hand to move them away from her parent’s watchful eye. It wasn’t until her soft fingers had threaded through his own that his control suddenly snapped. The next thing he knew he had mumbled some cheesy line about needing to touch her silky hair and started to move his head closer to hers.

When their lips finally touched it felt like home. It didn’t matter that they weren’t the same species or that he was breaking every rule he had made for himself. All that mattered was pulling her body closer until he could feel every one of her contours fit perfectly against his own. His hand glided over her hips and around her body to the hem at the back of her shirt. Her skin was on fire against his fingers, scorching the blood pulsing through his veins and providing a pleasure he never knew could exist.

Her lips parted, allowing a kiss so intimate that it took his breath away.

His first kiss.

He pulled back, instantly missing the feel of her lips but needing to look into her dark eyes to make sure he wasn’t dreaming. He needed to give her an out, one last chance to decide that she didn’t want this because once he kissed her again he doubted he would ever let her go.

Max closed his eyes and breathed in deeply, memorising her scent to his memory. She had this amazing ability to intoxicate him with her synesthetic ways. He opened them again, looking forward to seeing her smiling face but was met instead with a condescending snarl. Liz’s long, dark hair was suddenly blonde and curly. Her gorgeous chocolate irises now a sparkling blue.

He took a step backwards, stumbling out of the cold grasp of the girl in front of him. This wasn’t how it was meant to happen, he was sure of it. This wasn’t how the night went. Liz had vanished. Her warm, inviting presence replaced with the harsh reality of destiny.

Tess took a step towards him, smiling as his back hit a wall, blocking his escape. She reached out and brushed a hand down his cheek. A chill shivered through Max, fear encompassing his entire being. No matter how hard he tried to fight, there was no way he could escape her. There was no chance to win. She would always be stronger and smarter. She would always be there.

“No…”

“There’s no point running Max,” Tess breathed against his ear. “I’ll always be in your head.”


<center>* * * * *</center>


“Why Las Cruces? What’s there?” Isabel asked quietly. The events of the last few days started to weigh down heavily on her, leaving the way open for all of the bottled emotions from the last month and even year to seep into her mind. It was suffocating, knowing that everything was snowballing but unable to stop it.

“Computer geeks,” Michael snorted. The university always used their state of the art technology as the selling point when it came to people choosing to go there.

“Exactly!” Maria shouted, mistaking his sarcasm for understanding. “They have that brand new, super-duper, fantastical computer that they’re using to decode everything and anything. I think he went to use that.”

She wasn’t exactly sure how she knew that was the reason for his trip, but when Maria had been looking through a pamphlet about the school earlier her gut had clenched and instinct took over upon reading about the computer. It made a strange sort of sense that had no logical explanation.

“If Alex wanted to go to a nerd camp for a month or two, why didn’t he just say so?”

Michael was frustrated. Nothing was making sense. They weren’t the ones who came up with feasible explanations and plans. That was the job for Max and Liz: science geeks. He was just the lackey, the brut force that complained about the plans and then got to blow stuff up. He wasn’t as good as following the clues and figuring things out like Max.

“That’s what I can’t figure out. He obviously went there to use the computer equipment they have, but I can’t figure out why he didn’t say anything. I mean, this is Alex. Apart from Isabel all he ever talks about is music or computers. If he got to use this brilliant machine that could outsmart Einstein, why wouldn’t he tell us?”

“Maybe something was stopping him?” Isabel suggested after a few minutes of silence. She noticed Michael stiffen at her words, realisation dawning in his eyes.

“Or someone.”


<center>* * * * * </center>

Liz couldn’t sleep. Tumultuous thoughts cascaded fleetingly through her head, never staying long enough for a pensive exploration of their hidden depths. Her heart and her mind we at odds, instinct playing the role of Switzerland in the war raging on inside. Her heart longed to take Max in her arms and shield the broken boy inside of him from the cruel outside world. She knew that something wasn’t right and that all it would take was her opening up to him, even just a little, for some of the questions to begin to be solved. Yet her mind was determined to counter her hearts pleads with logic and truth.

Someone had killed Alex.

Someone alien.

And Max didn’t want her to find out who.

He had even kidnapped her and was holding her hostage, just to stop the quest she was on to find her best friends killer. Why would he go to all of that trouble if he thought Alex had just committed suicide?

He’s not just here for you, Liz’s heart screamed. He’s here to repair, to regenerate. He’s here to fix his scars.

Her heart and mind clenched simultaneously. At least it was one thing they could agree on; Max was desperate to heal the one injury alien powers couldn’t fix.

His soul.

The sound of shuffling came from the floor over the other side of the room as Max rolled over in his sleep. Guilt clenched the pit of Liz’s stomach. She felt horrible that he was asleep on a ratty blanket on the floor. It would have been so easy to offer him a place on the resinous mattress next to her, yet she wasn’t quite able to forgive and forget yet. Her resolve may have been slowly crumbling, but that didn’t mean the resent she felt towards her captivity was as well. He was preventing her from finding out the truth, and Liz wasn’t sure how to move past that.

Her eyes swept around the room and landed on his small bag under the window. As quietly as possible, she stood from the bed and crept towards the bag. Max had put her phone in there after he had taken it from her at the gas station. All she had to do was send an SOS call to Maria and the cavalry would come. Surely they had realised by now that they were both missing?

She pressed down the small power button and the phone sprang to life with a deafening beep. Her entire body went rigid and Liz prayed that Max hadn’t heard that. She cautiously glanced at his huddled form and started to breathe once more when it was clear that he was still fast asleep.

Her fingers were shaking. In fact, her entire body was shivering, both from the cold and from the thought of what Max would do if he woke up. His emotions had been so scattered lately. One minute he would be the old Max that she knew, the kind Max who would understand her need to reassure everyone she was safe. But the next moment he would be Hulk Max, alien Max. The Max who manhandled her in the school hallway and kidnapped her from the side of the road. Still, the adrenaline and hope raging through her body were an aphrodisiac for the fear. She watched the screen anxiously, waiting for the message bank to alert her to how many times her parents and Maria had rung, but there was nothing.

There was nothing because there was no reception.

“Shit,” she whispered and closed her eyes. The hope she had felt before plummeted. It made sense. They were out in the middle of nowhere. Why would the phone companies bother to supply reception to an area that was pure desert?

It was with a sense of defeat in her heart that Liz turned off the phone and slid it silently back into Max’s bag. She would get it back tomorrow and take it with her on her walk to try and find a signal, but for now it had to remain in the bag in case he noticed it was missing.

“Liz…”

The quiet whisper cut through the silent night air like an explosion. Her frightened eyes flickered to his face. The only indication that something wasn’t right was the shiver that racked his body from the cold. Other than that he was perfectly content in slumber.

Love welled up inside of Liz, touched that after all this time his dreams were still flooded with her. When they had connected the year before and received flashes to find the orb, she had also received other flashes from Max. Flashes of his dreams, of his fantasies. They all revolved around her. Liz knew that she should have been freaked out that he thought about her in those situations back then and still did, but the knowledge of how much she affected him was like an energy boost. It gave her a small sense of hope that even through all of the roadblocks that had been thrown at them over the last two years, maybe one day there would be a future with Max.

Another shiver trembled against his skin and he tried to fold himself deeper into the thin excuse for a blanket. Without a second though Liz moved to the bed and picked up one of the blankets he had given her. Even at breaking point he was still the most selfless person she knew. Max would go cold just to make sure that she was comfortable.

Liz sat down on the freezing concrete beside him and draped the blanket over his cocooned body. Her hand reached out and brushed back the bangs on his forehead, aching to be able to run her fingers through his soft hair like she used to.

His eyes strained behind his lids, suddenly moving rapidly as the peaceful dream changed to something more sinister. The knuckles gripping the edges of the blanket turned white with the strain and a moan drew itself up from between his lips.

“No…” Max whimpered into the night, struggling with the invisible demons that help him captive.

“Shh Max, it’s okay,” Liz tried to comfort him. Her hand stroked his face softly like her Grandma Claudia used to do to her whenever she had nightmares.

“Leave me alone…”

Was he still dreaming about her, Liz wondered? Was the dream version of herself hurting him more, adding to the pain she had already caused? Was Liz the demon that haunted him?

“Get out of my head… please…”

She breathed in shakily as the puzzle pieces fell into place. It wasn’t her he was dreaming of, but Tess. “You’re safe Max. It’s okay,” Liz promised, realising that even in sleep Tess was reluctant to give up on the concept of destiny.

His whimpers quieted down and he rolled over in his sleep, burying his face against the warmth of Liz’s stomach. She continued to watch over him during the night. Fatigue didn’t plague her as her mind was too busy. It was caught on something he had said, something that made her wonder about the last year.

Get out of my head…






Thank you all for your constant fb and bumps. I really appreciate them. *hug*

[lizard_queen]

Creativity can strike you at the strangest time - such as 1am in the moring. I apologise for any spelling/grammar errors but I'm half asleep.

Thanks for the fb and bumps. I would say sorry for not posting sooner but I get the feeling you probably don't care at this point, so I'll just leave the part and go sleep...

Enjoy.



Chapter 7

Howling wind slammed against the pathetic excuse for shelter and the skies opened up to reveal angry, wet droplets of ice cold liquid. Electricity crackled through the heat of the desert and the smell of ozone wafted upward when the water hit the sand. A giant storm was coming to reap destruction on the desert, and the small shack housing the two teenagers was caught in the crossfire.

Max awoke with a start when a thunderous roar bellowed through the air and lightning flashed outside. His head throbbed from a collaboration of the nightmares and the hard ground he had been asleep on. It seemed as though he would never experience a peaceful nights rest again in his life. Even if he could calm his brain down enough to not dream, he would still have to face the miserable floor he had called his home for the last two nights.

Lightning flashed once more and his eyes immediately softened at the sight before him. Liz was curled up into a ball on the ground next to him. The blankets from her bed barely covered them both and she shivered slightly as a gust of air blew in through the windows cracks. He had no idea how she had gotten there, but there was no way he would let her stay there.

Max stood up awkwardly and stretched his strained muscles. Being cooped up inside for the last couple of days was not only stressful for his mind but for his body as well. He needed to do something, to get out and just run for a while. He needed to feel the adrenaline pumping through his body and his heart pound from exertion. He couldn’t go anywhere now that there was a storm, but maybe he would go after it was over, before the air became thick and hot from the dry desert again. Maybe if he exhausted himself he would have an almost decent sleep the next night.

He bent down over Liz and gently scooped her tiny body into his arms. He tried not to wake her as he walked her back to the rundown bed and placed her on the grimy mattress. She shouldn’t have to suffer the floors punishment as well. He had already put her through enough the last two years.

Max placed the blankets over her sleeping form and sat back down on the floor to lean against the wall. There was nothing to do now except wait out the storm and hope that along with light, it would bring a solution to this mess he had created.

*****

Tess was pissed off. This was not how it was meant to go. Her entire existence had been based on the premise that she meant something to Max, to the King. It was what she had been taught since she had crawled out of the pod on her hands and knees. It was what Nesado drilled into her every waking moment of the day. It was destiny.

She was told it would be easier than this. The impression she had been given by all of Nesado’s teachings were that at first glance Max and the other two wretched excuses for aliens would immediately recognise her and that would be that. They would jet off into the stars and live happily ever after as royalty on a far off planet.

Maybe she was a little too optimistic, or maybe she was just naive. Either way, things had not gone as planned. Her mentor didn’t seem to factor in that the other three had built dismal lives for themselves here and were oddly attached to them and the humans in them. He didn’t warn her about the road blocks she would experience: human emotions, girlfriends, pesky computer nerds and spontaneous camping trips. It wasn’t meant to be this hard.

Tess closed her mobile angrily and threw it at the wall opposite her bed. Max still wasn’t answering his cell. What if something bad had happened to her? What if their enemies had attacked? How was she meant to contact him? Why was he ignoring her?

It struck her as strange that Max and Michael decided out of the blue to go camping. Not only was Max not known for being impulsive, but the last time she checked, he and Michael weren’t exactly in best friend mode. Not only had they disappeared, but Tess hadn’t been able to find anyone in this God forsaken town to talk to except Kyle. Even Maria and Liz seemed to have disappeared.

The thought that the humans were on the camping trip as well was unsettling and she refused to add it to the list of possibilities. She had done so much work trying to separate them that there was no way they would all decide to spend a few nights in the woods alone. The group was falling apart and no one had noticed yet. It was fantastic. All she had to do was play on their insecurities, whisper in their dreams a suggestion of how the others felt about them and their emotions would take hold and manifest the insecurity into fact.

Destruction was always entertaining to watch unfold, and it was even sweeter when she was the cause of it.

For now she would go to the Crashdown and get some breakfast, but after that she would try to warp Max again and figure out just how to make him need her like he seemed to need Liz Parker.

*****

Liz opened her eyes and was greeted with darkness. It was strange, being wide awake and yet seeing nothing. Peaceful, but empty.

The first thing she noticed was the rain. The second was the thunder and lightning that accompanied the storm. She rolled back into the mattress and was suddenly struck by an odd sense of amnesia. She could have sworn she remembered waking up in the middle of the night by Max’s nightmare and sitting with him on the floor. What she didn’t remember was getting back to the bed.

She rolled over and was greeted with the soft glow of the lantern. Liz could make out Max’s silhouette from behind the curtain that was used to separate the bathroom. He was having a shower, standing still under the feeble spray with his neck arched back as the droplets hit him. The strong muscles and ridges of his body seemed more prominent in the darkness. Edgier somehow. It was hard to believe that the man in that skin was still just a boy.


He must have carried her back to the bed when he woke up. The corner of her mouth threatened to lift up in an appreciative smile. Maybe the real Max was still locked inside there somewhere.


Perhaps if their lives had been simpler, if there was no such things as aliens or destiny, perhaps then Liz would be able to rise from the bed, strip down to her bare flesh and join him under the waters cascade. They would laugh and share intimate kisses filled with longing. They wouldn’t have any reason to be apart.

Then again, if their lives had been simpler, they probably wouldn’t have been in the shack in the first place.

A loud crack echoed through the air and a tingle went through Liz’s spine. It was like an electric shock travelling through her system caused by the static in the air. The sound was like someone playing with a whip right next to her ear and caused the thin layer of hair on her body to stand on its ends. Storms never usually made her freak out, but this storm felt significant. She could feel the anticipation churning in the pit of her stomach. Something momentous was going to happen during this storm.

A sudden beeping from Max’s bag almost made her jump out of her skin. She placed a hand over her heart to calm her breathing down and steady herself. The beeping sounded again and it registered in the back of Liz’s mind as her ringtone.

How was that possible? They were in the middle of nowhere. How was she getting reception? She must have left it on when she checked it the day before.

Thunder boomed once more as the storm picked up pace outside and realisation dawned. It was the storm. The electricity in the air must somehow be carrying a signal further than it usually went.

The phone beeped again, louder, and Liz raced towards the bag to silence it before it startled Max out of his reverie. She didn’t know how long he had been in the shower, which meant he could catch her with the phone at any time.

Liz scrambled around in the bag until she found the offending item and silenced it. The screen flashed back at her: “57 messages.” She didn’t have time to listen to them all. Most of them were from Maria, probably in hysterics about the disappearing act she and Max had pulled, but one number in the missed calls list stood out.

The Swedish Embassy.

Logical Liz would have ignored the messages and instead try to get some help; ring the police or Maria and tell them what Max had done. Her instincts, however, were raging tumultuously down in the pit of her gut. The feeling that the message was important was too strong to be ignored. She pressed the button for her voicemail and moved the mobile up to her ear, not at all prepared for what she was about to find out.

The reception was full of static, but she could still make out the message clearly.

“Ms. Parker? This is Mr. Stockman from the embassy. I left you a message on your home phone but since you were so insistent about this building I assumed you would appreciate me trying your cell phone as well. We found your building, however that structure was torn down in 1994. 3 people in my office have confirmed it. That building is gone.


“I’m sorry but unless this is an old photo of your friend, there is no possible way that he could have been outside this building in Sweden in the last few months.”


* * * * *

The water did little to sooth the ache seeping in through Max’s bones to his soul. It all seemed so pointless in the darkness the storm created. The grim atmosphere left way for macabre thoughts to enter his consciousness. They would all be better off without him there, especially the humans. Who were they kidding, he was no leader. Every decision he had made in the last two years had been questioned and insulted.

Liz would be better off without him.

Maybe he could drop her off at the nearest bus stop or gas station and keep driving off into the sunset? They wouldn’t find him, at least for a little while. Liz would be able to move on without having to deal with aliens or ex wives, Michael would automatically become the new fearless leader, Isabel could go to any school she wanted and Tess would no longer plague his dreams.

Roswell would be simpler without Max Evans, that was certain.

A soft beeping broke in through his periphery thoughts, becoming louder and more insistent. Max recognised it as a cell phone and immediately turned off the water and started to get dressed. His battery must be going low and he didn’t want the noise to wake up Liz. The more sleep she got the better he would feel about the whole kidnapping catastrophe.

Fully dressed, he pulled aside the curtain quietly and was about to quietly creep towards his bag when he suddenly registered the picture in front of him. Liz sat at the edge of the bed, her face pale and eyes wide as if she had seen a ghost. Her right hand was up next to her ear like she had been listening to something, but the cell phone was on the floor beneath her.

“Liz?” Max questioned, not entirely sure what to make of the situation. He could see her chest moving in and out almost imperceptibly from shallow breathes. “What happened?”

She gave him no response.

He bent down and picked up the phone. He could hear the messages playing through but couldn’t quite make out the words until it was put to his ear.

“... it’s Maria. I don’t know where you are or if you’re okay but we think Max is with you and we know that he’ll keep you safe until we find you...” The signal rattled and static filled the speaker briefly, cutting off some of the message. “...message from the embassy guy that said the building was torn down years ago. Alex never went to Sweden Liz, he didn’t even leave New Mexico. Michael, Isabel and I are trying to find out as much as...”

Thunder crackled overhead and the signal dropped out completely.