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Part Four
Max looked like he was going to be sick as he paced the short width of the motel room. His eyes darted unseeing, and when his hand went to his mouth, Liz could see his fingers trembling. She sat impotently at the end of the bed, her own stomach in knots, her entire being on edge.
“There’s nothing I can do,” Max mumbled to himself. “I can’t stop her.”
Liz bit the corner of her mouth, wished there was something she could say or do.
“She’s going to do it, I can tell. She’s going home.” He stopped his pacing as if coming to a sudden acceptance, dropped his hand and turned to face Liz. “She’s going home,” he repeated in finality.
Liz held out her hand to him, beckoning him to sit beside her. He hesitated a moment, then dropped to the bed, his head immediately falling into his hand.
“Oh God,” he sighed in defeat.
Liz wrapped her arm around his shoulders and gave him what she hoped was a reassuring squeeze. “Let’s just calm down, okay?” she said soothingly. “Take a couple of deep breaths.”
“I can’t calm down,” Max said, dropping his hand and tilting his head to look at her. “She’s going to jeopardize everything.”
Liz gave a little shrug. “What? What is she going to jeopardize?”
Max started to say something, but stopped, his mouth half open as though he couldn’t find the words he needed.
“
She’s going home, Max, not you.”
He blinked a couple of times, then Liz saw a devastated sadness settle into his eyes. It was the resignation of a man who knew he was powerless to stop something precious from being taken from him.
“Let her go,” Liz said softly, kissing the side of his head. “Just let her go.”
*~*~*~*~*
Driving a hundred miles had not tempered Isabel’s anger. Much like her brother, she was also pacing a path, only she was doing so in the living room of the apartment they rented in Erie.
“Arrogant asshole!” she spat.
On the couch, Michael cringed, knowing all too well the power of the Ice Princess’s wrath.
“How dare he!” she snapped. “All of this time, Michael! Running around with friggin’ Liz Parker, all sexed up and happy while you and I are stuck in this, in this – THING!”
It may have been the fact the sometimes Michael felt the uncontrollable need to laugh at inappropriate times, it may have been his own mechanism for releasing the tension from finding out that Max had been lying for the last year and a half – but for some reason hearing the words “sexed up and happy” come out of Isabel’s mouth nearly made him belly laugh. Thank God her anger had paced her in the opposite direction when the smile flitted across his lips. That smile vanished like an apparition when she stopped her mad trek and spun to face him.
“You should have seen them, Michael. Giggling, holding hands like any other stupid newly-wed couple in Niagara Falls. Just Guy and Girl America, starting their new life together. While you and I sit here in BFE Pennsylvania getting old.”
“BFE?” Michael ventured.
She pinned him with a glare, knowing full well he knew what that stood for, knowing full well that he was making fun of her. “Doesn’t it make you angry?”
His eyes drifted away, to the silent TV on the other side of the room. Was he angry? Jealous? Happy for Max? He couldn’t really tell. He felt sort of numb inside. After all, ties with Roswell had been cut so long ago that he hadn’t even considered contact a possibility. Speaking of which – how
had that happened?
“When did he contact her?” Michael asked, trying to remain the level-headed one for once.
Isabel blew out a snort and threw a hand in the air. He noticed that she was flushed and that her hair was a little disheveled – it had been a long time since he’d seen her this upset. “You’re gonna love this one! He didn’t find her – she dreamwalked him.”
“Wha-?” Michael’s brow furrowed in confusion.
“Yeah – great, huh? Little miss brainiac, always the over-achiever. I didn’t stick around to get the details, but apparently she’s been developing powers over the last ten years.”
“How?” He didn’t like how his voice went up in pitch, how he almost sounded panicked.
Isabel shrugged, some of the fight leaving her. “Who knows? Maybe a result of Max healing her. Dumb ass.” Her conviction was entirely gone now, the last words said without much malice.
“Wow.” Michael’s eyes drifted back to the TV and he irrationally wondered who the Penguins were playing tonight. He was still trying to unmuddle his thoughts when he felt weight beside him on the couch. He turned to face Isabel. “What are you going to do?”
She was silent for a moment, then turned sincere eyes in his direction. “I want to go home.”
Michael remained expressionless. “Is that safe?”
“Why not?” she replied, a tinge of defensiveness in her tone. “I haven’t done anything wrong. And neither have you. Don’t you want to go home?”
For some reason, he felt a twinge in his belly, a sudden longing. His mind flashed back to a night so many years ago, Scooby Doo plates and spaghetti. A song about a black bird. And he closed his eyes in agony.
“I mean, I want to see Mom and Dad,” Isabel continued, obviously having looked away and not noticing his anguish. “Roswell is my home, Michael.”
“It’s not mine,” he said quietly. “I have no home.”
With a tug of empathy, she picked up his hand in hers. “Your home will always be with me.”
“And what about Max?”
Isabel’s jaw tightened. “What about him?”
“Isn’t he part of our home, too?”
She sighed tiredly. “I can’t forever be tethered to Max, Michael. He’s got his own cross to bear and apparently she’s chosen to bear it with Liz Parker – no pun intended.”
“You know he can’t come back to Roswell.”
“Then he’ll have to stay here. And maybe someday when I’m not monumentally pissed at him I’ll come back here to visit him.”
Michael withdrew slightly, surprised. The Evans children had always been inseparable and he wondered if this was only Isabel’s anger speaking.
“I want to go home,” she repeated, meeting his dark eyes with her own. Then her bottom lip quivered and tears flooded from those eyes. “I want to go home,” she cried.
Being a dutiful friend, Michael put his arms around her and held her to him. He didn’t hold her as a lover would, however, didn’t bury his face in her pretty auburn locks, didn’t try to absorb her pain as his own. He held her like a friend, like a brother, like a warm shoulder to cry on.
Because in reality, that’s all he was. His heart had never belonged to his wife. It had always belonged to someone a thousand miles and a lifetime away, someone he never thought he’d have the chance to see again.
Until now.
*~*~*~*~*
“So, that’s it then?” Max’s voice seemed small in the chilly afternoon air.
Standing beside him, bundled up in a sweater and jacket, Liz nodded.
“They’ll leave,” he said.
“You don’t know that Michael will go.”
He smiled knowingly at her. Max knew that Michael had never forgotten Maria, had never really been able to let her go. And he knew that if the tables were turned and it was Max who had the chance to see Liz again, he would go, knowing that Michael would understand.
“He’ll go,” Max said. “They’ll both go back to Roswell.” He looked up at the gray sky, at the light mist that had started to fall, remembered that the skies in New Mexico never looked like the ones in New York and Canada. “And you’ll go home too.”
Liz reached out and took his hand. “Only because I have to,” she said softly. “But I will return as often as I can.”
He dropped his gaze to hers and shook his head. “It will be too risky now. Once Michael and Isabel go home, people will ask questions about where I am. I can’t ask them to lie and say I’m dead or something.”
“Max, they won’t give up your location,” she half-laughed in disbelief, not wanting to think that Max would think them traitors.
“I know. But they will be watched and so will you. I don’t think you’ll get away with the expedition excuse anymore.”
Liz paled, knowing it was true. “What if you came home with me?”
He raised a quick eyebrow and shook his head. “You know I can’t, Liz.”
“But what if the sheriff could help?”
“And what if he can’t?”
Her eyes desperately searched his and then fell to the damp sidewalk. He reached over and lifted her chin, gave her a soft kiss.
“This isn’t goodbye,” she denied, trying to force the lump out of her throat.
Max only tilted his head and gave her a small smile.
“I won’t let it be goodbye,” she said defiantly. “We’ll find some other way.”
He nodded but she felt as though he was patronizing her.
Unable to stop them, silent tears seeped from her eyes. She wiped them away with the cuff of her jacket sleeve, looked away while she fought the rest of the deluge away. Across the street, a young couple dashed around a mud puddle, laughing as they held hands and ran for cover. Lovers, newly weds. People who would be infinitely happier than she would be.
“We have one more night,” Liz said, turning her attention back to Max, who’d been watching her silently. “I don’t want to talk about being apart, I just want to spent our time with each other.”
He gave her a nod.
“But I need to make that call first,” she said, snapping out of her funk and rummaging in her purse for her cell phone. “It’s not fair to have her blind-sided.”
She paused before hitting the speed dial code, gave Max one last look, searching for approval. He nodded again, rubbed her arm in reassurance. Liz hit the button, put the phone to her ear and waited until it was picked up on the other end.
“Maria, it’s Liz. No, I’m fine, nothing’s wrong. It’s just that I have something to tell you. Please don’t be mad.”
tbc
