Roswell Fanatics

Chapter 18.

The first thing that registered as we broke through the state lines was that it was hot. Unbearably hot, if possibly, hotter than Roswell. The sun had turned everything a fugly shade of orange. Natural was gone. I was in a world of platinum blonde and fake tans, Elvis impersonators and slot machines. America’s playground. Shawn Colvin was blaring on the FM.

Viva Las Vegas. Viva shit.

Maria smiled. “I love this place! My dream – a smoky Vegas bar and me crooning like a silver-screen star of the 40s.”

“You’ve a wild imagination.” I responded, eyes red-rimmed. If it hadn’t been driving, then it was worrying. The neon signs didn’t help. Vegas was the last place in the world I’d ever think of vacationing in.

I must be mad! At least 10 cards short of a full deck. What the hell possessed me to even come after him, like a bat out of hell? What was I possibly thinking!
I chomped on an errant lock of my hair that had flown into my parched mouth, as we flew down the Strip.
That’s just the point! I wasn’t thinking, obviously! What if they’ve a perfectly acceptable explanation for this? What if I drove to Las Vegas for zilch? And what the hell will eh think if they find us? What would I tell him? And how do I tell him that whatever they’ve done to us is now affecting our lives? How do I tell him I’m sorry for my doubts? HOW?

“Liz, stop bashing your head against the window.” Maria advised, looking at me shrewdly. As if reading my thoughts, she went on. “We don’t have to go after them you know. We could turn back now.”

“Right. After we’re here.”

She shrugged. “So let’s stay a night. And then leave. They’ll never have to know.”

Alex was watching all the huge lights rapturously. He was bedazzled. He hadn’t witnessed such prodigal waste of electricity, not even in NY. It seemed unreal. He hung his head out the window and then quickly pulled back at both of our collective screams.

“Ok, ok. Mom, can we stay???”

Maria looked at me and cajoled. “We could play at the slots. I could even sing at a bar or something. We could find interesting men to dance away the night with.”

“I already have a guy, thanks very much.” I replied sourly. I had Max. I didn’t need any more guys. Not even when he acted like a freak at times. Like coming to Vegas, of all places. Then again, sometimes, I couldn’t help wondering why I still wanted him, the lying bastard.

"What possible explanation could he have?” I turned to her.

Maria sighed. “Lizzie. I agreed to jetting here hell-bent of thrashing Mikey G but hell, can’t you see how idiotic that makes us? Suppose it’s nothing? Suppose they just had some work? What makes you think they’ll even tell us?”

I exhaled, maneuvering around excited mobs. “You tell me that I haven’t totally lost it, Ria. I keep seeing things. I keep feeling goddamned premonitions. It’s like I know that things are going to happen. Bad things. That dream about Zan pretty much declared it in red. I can’t ignore them”

A beat passed without any untoward comments from anyone.

“I’m crazy, right?” I asked, seeing that smirk on her face.

Then she grew serious as Alex’s jaw hung on the floor.

He whispered. “Mom, do you see things? What do you see?”

I glared at the windshield. “Apparently, I was in some ship sometimes. Ship that crashed, no less.”

Maria swallowed. “Lizzie, ships don’t crash; they sink. How the hell could it crash? Was it..” she turned to me, eyes huge. “As in spaceships???”

I sulked. I knew how stupid it sounded. “Pretty much.”

She howled with laughter. “Oh my God! What the hell are you now? An alien?” Oh isn’t this a classic? Roswell resident discovers she’s got green blood!” She snorted again, trying to make her point.

“You made your point, Maria!” I glowered at them.

Alex had kept helpfully quiet.

She quietened. “Babe, I love you. But you’ve got to stop going to pieces. Let’s leave the explanations up to them, okay?”

I thought back to the love shining in Max’s hazel eyes. They sparkled like a desert mirage. Trust me, they seemed to say, still sparkling just trust me, Elizabeth. The sparkling dimmed, became more ominous. You owe me that.

Great! Now I’ve got a conscience that doesn’t want me to find any answers. It wants me to trust Max. Right. Like that’ll really help now. Arrrgh.

“Fine. Let’s just rest up and go back.”

Maria and Alex attacked. It’s hard to withstand both of them when they’re in full pouting mode. “PLEASE???” They shrieked in unison.

I relented. What possible harm could it do? So what if Max asks questions? How in hell would he ever know? “Fine. We’ll leave first thing tomorrow.”

Maria high-fived Alex. “Yeah, baby! Let’s find a place.”

As we drove down the Strip, Maria and Alex’s alternate screams distracted me. Their enthusiasm was contagious. The atmosphere was beginning to filter through the open top. The wind blew in gusts of hot air and interesting places.

“Oh my god! The Mirage!!” Maria screamed.

Alex shrieked as we went past a volcano exploding with colors. “Oooh!!”

I screeched to a stop in front of one. “Caesar’s Palace!! Nothing’s better than this…”

“The Grand!!” Maria begged, eyes bright. Alex, taking her cue, threw puppy dog eyes at me.

“Fine!” I catapulted. Then we saw something far more stupendous.

All three of us screamed as the fountains exploded. It was just opposite the big ones. A big, shiny hotel with bellboys running about.

Maria read off the marquee. “The Bali Hai hotel. Sounds cool.”

I sighed happily, banging on the steering wheel to get the moron in front of me to move.

“It’ll be cheaper, too.”

Maria snagged a brochure as we walked into the lobby, feeling self-conscious. We were bedraggled, dirty and too excited for our own good.

Alex saw little sharks in a large aquarium and squealed. “Mom!!”

I smiled as he raced for that. This is exactly what the doctor had ordered.

“World class shopping, marble statuary, lighted tennis courts and an Olympic sized pool. Oooh!”

“Hah! Try the casinos. We’ll never leave."

The porter threw open the door to our room. It was beautifully subtle.
“There’s a Jacuzzi and complimentary drinks at the bar for each night. “ he reeled off smoothly.

Maria fished out some change.

The guy left to go get us some ice.

We looked at each other, waiting for the door to close. It silently shut itself.

“EEEEEEEEEEEEH!!!” The exploration comittee has officially covened.
~~/\~~


It was much later when we finally hit the streets. The size and noise of the crowd was loud to the point of being unnerving. It seemed like a different world.

Sweaty bodies raced around. Women with pearl chokers and pink hair were wrestling to get a position at slot machines. Freaks in Hawaiian shirts where everywhere. Despite the cheesy smiles and the plastic tans, there was a scent in the air. Money and gambling aren’t called the greatest vices for nothing.

The sun had set over Nevada but the breeze had far from picked up. It was hot, humid and sticky. I needed a drink. Because, despite everything I’d told Maria, I’d been having a sense of deja vu, so strong, so undeniable, that I was liable to pass out any second.

"Can we go someplace, girlfriend?”

“Right.” She confirmed, stealing a glance at me. She didn’t look too good herself.

A small, jazzy place was coming up on the left. Maria swerved the car into the parking lot. And all the while, a voice in my head was screaming for things that didn’t exist.

As we walked in (in my case, staggered), weird unpleasant sensation crawled through my mind. I saw Alex Whitman, wearing a leather coat; with a digital camera aimed at someplace I couldn’t see. He was laughing at some inane thing. My heart shattered in a million different pieces.

“Maria,” I wheezed. “Get me the hell out of this place.”

She looked at me in alarm. “What’s wrong?"

How do I tell her? “I’m seeing Alex in that corner. Right over there.” I pointed, keeping my tone an angry, controlled one. “Tell me that it doesn’t exist.”

She gaped at me. “What?”

“Get me out of here. I’m feeling like someone’s pulling me onto the dance floor. As if someone’s putting a ring on my finger.” I whispered, feeling everything and numbly, nothing at all. Is that how Alex felt every time he saw crazy things? I didn’t know how he’d borne all this so long.

Dissolving in tears, mindless of the disdainful expression on everyone’s face, I reeled out of there like a common drunk.

Maria was in my heels, dragging a worried Alex. “Liz! Liz!!” She kept calling but I was too close to barfing to reply. What the hell is wrong with me?? I’ve never felt this way before.

We’d, unfortunately, taken the back door out. The car was out front. I didn’t think I could face the crowds again. Resigned, we three started trudging along the alley.

As we reached the end of the enclosure, Maria turned back. “You’re not the only one, you know. I felt something back there, too. Something very…weird.” She fished out a cigarette and started sucking the life out of it.

I rolled my eyes. “Maria, it’s not lit.”

Before she could fish out her lighter, Alex did the unimaginable. He snapped his fingers and a flame appeared on his fingertips.

My scream of disbelief was mirrored in the way Maria stared at us, eyes popping out of her head.

Alex’s lower lip wobbled. He looked back and forth, trying to gauge the level of horror on our faces. We were stunned beyond speech.

“I’m…” he started sobbing. “Mom....”

I could just stare at him. I’d no remote clue of how he’d just done something like that.

He started hiccupping, trying to keep the sobs inside. As much as I hurt to see him that way, my mind was still not functioning. I was beyond speech, beyond feeling. Nothing registered past that awful moment.

I reached out to touch him. He cowered, like an animal in pain. And I flinched. A spark of something had gone through me. An unbelievable rush of electricity seemed to be crackling under the skin, making me dizzy.

Alex trembled as I drew back, scared of hurting him. Did I do this to him?

Maria inhaled, her breath raspy. “What the hell is he?”

Before I could light into her for calling my son names, a flitter of doubt went through me. Actually, what was Alex? How did he just do what the hell he did? And what does it make him? What does it make me?

That split second was all it took Alex. He turned and ran down the alley.

“Alex!” I screamed, mad with anxiety. “ALEX!!!”

To my utter disbelief, he didn’t stop. He threw his hand out at the wire, burned a freakin’ hole through it and kept running.

Maria and I stared at each other, still groping for rational thought, still trying to understand if we’d dreamt it all up.

But we hadn’t. My son was out there in Vegas streets, running away from me. My heart gasped and then, just shattered.

We took off into the night.

tbc...



Well? Now she knows....

Sarah

Chapter 19

We raced down the alleys, weaving through crowds, shoving morons out of our way as we searched for him. He was long gone.

I tripped over a loose brick on the sidewalk. A severe sting jolted as I gashed my arm on the asphalt. I felt the vehicles swerve, trying not to hit me. But nothing registered. All I could feel was darkness. It was silent. It was terrifying. It shook me to my core. A miasma of fear was enveloping me, cold, cruel, distant.

The worst part was that I knew it wasn’t me. I knew I was getting these bewildering sensations from someone else. My son. And that the thought that he was going through this, alone, by himself, rended my soul.

A hand yanked me up. A car whizzed by, inches from my prostate self.

Maria stared at me, tears in her eyes. “I didn’t find him, Liz. I can’t believe it. It’s impossible. It doesn’t happen!!”

“Maria,” I said coldly, She was going hysterical and I couldn’t afford it now. Not with my baby out in unknown streets and feeling cornered. “Pull yourself together. Did you go to the LVPD?”

She nodded, brushing the tears from her eyes. “I met an officer. I gave him a photo of Alex, too. He said he’d try.”

Nausea stuck in my throat. Try wasn’t good enough. Nothing would be, short of Alex in my arms.

I collapsed on the pavement, never being this scared in my life. “I did this to him!” I cried, holding my head in my hands

Passerbyes stared at us. Some with pity, as if I was some deranged woman, ranting in the streets. I might as well be.

Maria tried to soothe me. It didn’t work. She blamed herself too.

“I can’t believe I just let him go…” I sobbed.

“Liz, you had no choice. He just disappeared. How the hell did he go so fast? And we had to scale the damn enclosure. That…that hole he’d burnt was too small for us.”

There were welts all over my face and neck. I shuddered as I recalled the way I’d rammed into it, trying to go after him. He’d never turned back.

“Why didn’t I? It was my duty. If no one else’s, I shouldn’t have...” I trailed off, as a new wave of fear hit me. Now what?? My mind searched for answers, wildly groping for that thread that was in my mind. I knew somehow, somewhere, it was Alex.

Nothing happened.

“It’s not your fault!” Maria screamed, trying to get me to be calmer. I felt my neck go cold. Ruthless waves of terror chilled me, each an agony to bear.

“You tried to stop him! You didn’t know…you couldn’t know what he’d do!”

"I couldn’t?”

“Could you?’ she challenged. I let my head drop. This was a nightmare.

“Should I call him?” Maria asked, dialing Max’s cell number.

“Don’t.” I whispered.

I didn’t want him involved. Instinctively, I knew that whatever had happened had something to do with him. And I’d be damned if I handed my son over to him again. Betrayal joined in the smorgasbord in my stomach, making me heave.

Maria dragged me along. We retraced each and every step we’d taken in our entire journey in Vegas. He was nowhere in sight.

I pushed away thoughts of him being kidnapped. Abducted. Killed. Maimed. I pushed back my emotions with almost inhuman effort, as I concentrated on finding him.

Gasping with stress, I clutched a lamppost to steady myself. And I let myself fall again into an inky void.

As my mind went blank, two things happened simultaneously. I heard Alex’s wail as if it was real. I felt his fright as strong arms picked him up. I felt the struggles as if it wete my own legs churning furiously, my own nails scratching at the assailant’s face. And then I saw it. A face Alex didn’t recognize but something that was burned into my memory. I knew that touch. I knew that smell. I knew him.

Maria whirled around at my roar.

“Nooooo!!”

The sound was animalistic in its appeal. She looked at me in utter hysteria.

“Liz?”

“Oh my God!!” Another shout, a very different voice, rang through the deserted night air.

We whipped our heads around.

Max and Michael stood there.

I hesitated a second before launching myself at Max.

Wailing a bunch of gibberish, almost incoherent with rage, I pummeled him with my bunched fists, trying to hurt him in the worst possible way.

“You sonofabitch!! You lying dog!”

Michael pulled me off Max as I continued kicking and screaming. They looked too shocked to say a word.

Michael fired a question at Maria as he held my arms back. I could see Max heaving in front of me, trying to recover from the not-so-subtle blows I’d rained on his face.

She sobbed. “Alex’s missing.”

If this night hadn’t already been the worst in my life, this one would’ve fixed it.

They both paled under the harsh streetlight.

“Jesus!” Michael uttered in near panic.

Something was very wrong.

I fell to the ground as he let go. Crumbling in a heap in front of his feet, I lay there like a log.

Neither man picked me up. Questions, theories, possible reasons fogged the air, making it hard to breathe.

I pulled myself up to my knees. I grabbed a hold of Max’s trousers, trying to get up but my legs were not supporting me.

He swore under his breath. Strong hands gripped my shoulders, latched at my waist. I was enveloped in a comforting embrace but nothing eked out any measure of it. Nothing was going to soothe this terror until I found my boy back. Not Max, not anyone.

“I want him back.” I cried against his chest. His hands moved comfortingly on my back, trying to impart a few drips of courage but my own stonewall was up. “Get my son back.”

Michael inhaled harshly. He’d been holding Maria to him. “I suppose it’s pointless to ask what you guys are doing here?”

She explained what had happened.

I stayed ensconced in Max’s arms while the story was retold. I felt his breathing hitch when she mentioned what Alex had done.

Michael stole an alarmed look at white-faced man holding me. They disengaged themselves from us. “We’ll go look, but we need you to do something first.”

I brushed the tears form my face. “Anything. As long as I have him back.”

Michael cleared his throat. I didn’t need to look to see the denial in his eyes. He shook his head at Max. The negative was etched in the brown depths of his eyes.

I clutched at Max’s shirtfront. “Max, I’m begging you.” My voice broke. "I’m begging you. Please, just tell me. Just help me get my son back."

Max inhaled, so hard I thought his lungs would burst.

We stared at him in silence.

A meaningful glance passed between the two men.

Michael’s eyes were full of warning but Max shook his head. “You need to know.”

If I’d fight left in me, I’d have crowed with victory. But I had nothing left.

“Liz, we’re…different.”

“How?” I asked, not missing a beat. Great time for the scientist in my brain to kick in.

“There’s no time for that.” He sighed, looking desperate. “Please, just trust me. Please.”

I nodded.

“It’ll sound absurd now but I need you to do something.”

I heaved in a gust of air.

He placed large hands on either side of my face. The memory of past images flashed in my eyes. Involuntarily, I shrunk back.

He looked wounded but shrugged it off. “Let your mind go blank.”

“Oh, you gotta be kidding me.”

He smiled; an old smile I recognized and trusted. I smiled back, my first all day.

“Try.”

I did as he asked. The now-familiar sensation of falling came back full force. I felt someone dragging me along, taking me some place. I was being dragged into someone else’s subconscious. Isabel.

I tired to struggle but she was too strong. She explored my head. She took snapshots of my hidden memories, my treasured feelings. Nothing was left unprovoked, left in shatters. If it hadn’t been to help my son, I’d never have submitted to such an invasion.

The light pooled in my eye again. I felt myself come to.

Max sighed, leaning his forehead on mine. I wanted to move away but I just… couldn’t. I’d no strength left.

“That was Isabel,” he didn’t stop to let me ask questions. “She’ll take it from here. She’ll find out what Alex was feeling. He did send you his feelings, right?”

I nodded mutely, not even daring to ask him how he knew. The world wasn’t just black and white anymore; it was shade of vibrant puke.

He went on, noticing my pallor. “She took it from you and will use it to find Alex. She won’t fail. We’ll find him soon. She will not fail.”

Every softly spoken, quasi-controlled word was a balm on my scarred mind.

I nodded incoherently, not trusting myself to speak. I wouldn’t make sense anyway.

“Liz, look at me.”

I did. There was such compassion on his face, such utter love. It was the first time I was really seeing Max Evans. I was seeing him as he saw me. I could feel everything he was feeling. And right now, he was feeling free. He was letting me know, in no uncertain terms, that he’d brought down that wall he’d always he’d hidden behind. And he wanted to heal my scars, the ones he’d himself inflicted a lot of times.

I wish I had the words to express it. I wish I had the strength. I didn’t. I let my head hang.

By the time I’d looked up, there was wealth of sorrow in his eyes. The pain of lost chances just don’t go away, do they, Max?

“Max, just get him back.” I whispered inaudibly.

I felt his pain as if it were my own.

“I will.”

I raised my head to discover the longing in his. He wanted something that he didn’t think I was going to bestow him.

I stood up on tiptoes. He stiffened as my smaller hands cupped his face. He dropped a kiss on my palm. Everything shimmered, despite the violence in the air.

I brushed my lips against his. Warm, gentle, sweet. I’d never needed that assurance as I did at that moment. He gave all of himself in that one, single moment. And again, I was pulled back into the abyss.

Noooo!

Please STOP!!

Waves of cold. Real, arctic cold brushed past my skin. I was being held under something. There was no air. The world spun. Faces blurred.

Do you know what I can do to you?

Let them go, please! They didn’t do anything.

So didn’t you. The pain eased for a second. But you might. Who knows?

A scalpel cut into my skin. The agony was beyond bearing. I felt my consciousness beg for a breath of air.

There was none

I felt the world turn black. Still no air.

I wanted to die. But I didn’t. I was living death in a white, sterile room.

“Uh!!” I moaned, opening my mouth for sweet air. Max backed off to give me some room. The horror on my face was reflected in his. It was him!! Oh my God!

The moment broke.

Michael barked an order as the cell phone rang. Max spoke in terse lines.

Before he could complete the sentence, a flicker of light sparkled through the air. Unimaginable physical pain crashed through me as I felt myself fly backwards. My neck crashed against the side of the building. Agony danced up my spine.

I looked up in utter shock.

“Shit.” Michael hollered, his own body covering Maria.

Max dove for me, screaming something at Michael.

I watched in horror as he stepped up to the very ordinary looking people who’d been standing there. There was a taste of death in the air. And then it happened. Before they could move, a surge of insane, white-hot power arced through the air, hitting them dead straight.

Michael’s hand was still glowing.

Maria wailed.

Max hauled both of us up.

“Move, dammit!”

Maria sagged as she watched Michael take off after the one that had escaped.

“MOVE, Maria!” Max snarled, practically dragging us out of the area.

We fell back silently behind him as we raced through the crowds. What we’d seen was as unbelievable as Alex burning that hole through the wire. They weren’t anything like we’d ever seen before. They weren’t even human.

Maria clutched my hand as we struggled to keep up with Max as he ducked through the busy roads. He’d chosen the densest crowds, the busiest streets. Anyone following us would never make us out through here.

He threw open the backdoor to a building. We scurried in. The door banged shut behind him.

“Upstairs.” Max bit out, already racing ahead.

Satisfied that it was clear, he turned to us.

“Liz…stay here. Don’t even think of going…out after us…I’ll be back…gimme a second...” he collapsed on the floor on all fours, trying to breathe.

We were down there with him, all gasping for air. The memory of that dream or rather image, rather, came back vividly to me. I could felt the moisture beginning to flow. There was no way in hell I’d forget such inhuman torture.

“Go…” I wheezed. “Michael may need help. We’ll be fine. Go.”

His eyes shone with gratitude. “Thank you. Don’t move.”

Maria sobbed as we heard the door slam after him. “Oh my god…”

I wrapped my arms around her, trying to console her but there was no consolation.

Just what the hell were they?

~~/\~~

I lost track of the minutes as we sat on the floor, wiping off our tears. I’d never felt this helpless in my life. Not even at childbirth.

Alex. That got me thinking again. What the hell was he? What did I do wrong? Was it my fault or Zan’s? Evidence showed that there was 99% probability that this was his fault.

He and Max had the same donor. The years of silence, of pulling away, of walls were beginning to make sense now. I was just realizing the effort Zan had put into my never finding about his mystical skills.

And Alex. What did that make him? Hybrid? Cyborg? Android? Words failed me. The enormity of the implications of what I’d witnessed was finally, caustically sinking in.

My son wasn’t fully human. And he was missing. What greater shock was there?

And those flashes I’d gotten from Max. What was that supposed to mean? Now that I had an inkling of what I’d seen, I could well believe, that in some weird way, I’d connected with Max. I was capable of accessing some of his past. Maybe he’d seen things in my past too.

My face went hot at what he’d seen. Id’ probably been doing the horizontal tango. If it wasn’t that, then it was the loneliness. Damn.

The only way I’d preserved my sanity as we kept the silent vigil was my connection to Alex. Deep inside, I’d picked up a thread of his consciousness. And I’d clung to it precariously. It was like dangling down a cliff without a harness, free-falling without a parachute. There was no way for me to even trust this meager feeling but I wasn’t about to let go.

Hours passed. Maria nodded off, crying herself to sleep. I kept awake, clutching my picture of Alex and praying like I’d never prayed before. I’d been feeling him. He was scared, lonely but not terrified anymore. Maybe he’d found a safe place. A shelter. Maybe he’d even made his way back to the hotel.

At that, I jumped up. As much as I was loathe to leave Maria alone and turn aside Max’s desperate plea, I wasn’t about to sit still when my son was concerned.

Leaving a little note for her, I locked the door behind me and raced away into the heat of the night.

I ran all the way back to our hotel. People still milled around. I stepped across the threshold. The receptionist gave me a weird look as I asked for the key.

“But the key’s gone, ma’am.”

“What? HOW?”

“I don’t know. It wasn’t my shift.”

Alex. He came back. Relief flooded my veins, turning my legs weak. As I caught the edge of the desk for support, the manger rushed forward.

“Mz. Parker. You’re back.’

“Yes.” I shouted back, already running up the stairs, too impatient for the elevator.


I flung the door to our room open. Before I could move, the door slammed shut.

Something was very, very wrong. The place was trashed. Our clothes were strewn all over the place. No sign of Alex.

A trap.

I whirled around. A man was standing at the edge. Menace stained the air.

“Liz Parker?”

“Ye…yes?”

“Well, well.” He smiled, displaying crooked teeth. I felt my breath hitch. He was one of them.

“Where’s my son?”

His smile grew wider. “Then we have the right boy.”

I felt dangerously close to losing it. “Please.” I begged, unable to bear the thought of my son in the clutched of the likes of him. “He’s a little boy. Please, take me in his place.”

“You won’t do.” His smile grew even bigger. “You see, he’s the heir.”

Well, fuck me. How did this happen?

Be VERY aware...

Chapter 20


I stared at him, the blood still receding from my face in an agonizing rush. “He’s… what?”

"The heir. Bastard, to be sure. But still the heir.”

“Hey!” I growled. “He’s not a bastard, you shmuck. He has a father. And I know you know him, too.”

"Yes, we do. King Zan…”

Zan. Zan. Zan. The name echoed hollowly. I was a queen? Damn.

“Of course, he calls himself something else now.” The man continued, buffing his nail with a flickering white light emanating off his hand.

The activity of staring at him in morbid curiosity kept me from answering his rather inane comment. He still calls himself Zan. Don’t these shitheads know anything?

Think, Parker! Get the hell out of this! But why would he say that Zan was someone else? And if Zan’s not the king of whatever, then why go after his son?

The questions didn’t cease but his buffing did. “You, my dear, are an unexpected bait.”

“No, hold on.” I said sharply. He looked at me in surprise. “Zan’s the king?”

“You know him as Max Evans.”

I felt the world whirl beneath my feet. A rush of something fizzled though my blood, making me lightheaded. The pounding started a pagan rhythm. King. King Max. King Zan. Same person. King.

I stumbled and fell.

Cold hands caught my wrists and tied it up. I was too dazed to fight. How could this be? In this day and age, how was this possible?

Then the rationale started thumping in the dark recesses of my mind. Have you completely lost it? Alex is NOT Max’s son! Tell them that! Get a deal!

My heart was going down another route. You can’t give them any information about Max, you traitor! Lie! Use something else!

My maternal instincts kicked in. Your duty is to your child first. Every one else second, EVERY ONE. Don’t you dare lose this chance! Break him, use him. You can have your son back.

“Wait!” I cried as he started dragging me down the stairs. “People will notice.”

He bestowed an odd, revolting smirk. “They won’t, sweetheart. I’ll mindwarp them.”

I’m gonna be sick.

I puked all the way downstairs, retching up air. No one even looked up. I was dragged, screaming and kicking to a car and no one even glanced up.

“Please! Listen to me!” I shrieked as they started the car.

They looked back, two totally ordinary men with ridiculous powers. “What is it, love?”

I shuddered at what I was about to do. “Alex...he’s my adopted son. He’s no bloody heir to whatever! Just let him go! He’s totally innocent! Please. He’s just a child. Just a helpless child.” I could feel myself losing it.

They looked at me, jaws slack with shock.

Between them, they started muttering. The car started again.

I stared to scream but one well-aimed blow to my skull nearly rendered me unconscious.

As I drifted in and out, I heard them talk. I’d never head such rubbish in my life.

“Zan has no heir. The royal bloodline’s finished.”

“He could’ve still passed on the seal.”

“The Granolith won’t accept anything but the royal blood. He can’t change that.”

“Fucking bastard lied! I’m going to sic Avarek onto Cal. Idiot got us into too much trouble.”

“Suppose Zan comes back?’ The second man asked, sounding distinctly nervous. "What then? We’re no match for King Zan.”

“Rubbish. He went soft.” The first one jeered. “Anyway, King Zan knows that he’s as helpless as his whelp. As for the double, anyone seen him?”

Double? Now who were they talking about? Max or Zan? Well, obviously Max was the king. A totally misplaced pride zinged all the way through me even as I lay there half conscious.

The second one scoffed. “He’s around, too. Which’s weird. I don’t know whose son it is.”

The first one coughed. “It doesn’t matter. The boy was adopted. We don’t even have him. He’s worthless now. The girl would do just fine.”

We don’t have him. We don’t have him.

OH MY GOD!!!

I fainted with relief.
~~/\~~


By the time I came to, I found myself in an abandoned alley. My hands were tied behind my back. My clothes were ripped and scruffy. I felt the bruises even though I couldn’t see them.

What the hell did they do to me?

I looked around from my position on the dirty road. I was still somewhat modestly covered, but one look and most people would think I’d been raped. The thought made my blood pound. They intended for Max to think that way. Well, thank God they didn’t actually do anything. Numbly, I wondered if they’d drugged me.


“Max...” I moaned, thick tears seeping from my swollen eyes. They’d beaten me up, that was for sure. “M...” I bit back from giving away more information.

The earth tilted as I callously dragged up by my hair. “You sit still now, it won’t be long till he’s here.”

“Wait!” the stridency in my broken voice commanded respect. “Who’s coming here?”

“King Zan.” The bigger one sneered, looking me over. I repressed the shudder.

“Why would he? I’m no one to him.” I said boldly.

“No need to lie, princess. One call and he’ll be here.”

“Wait!” I shouted hoarsely, desperation making me whine. “I’m not anyone to him apart from a friend. He let his best friend die! Because he didn’t want to get discovered!” I ranted along, not caring if I made any sense. My one and only escape route lay in confusing these assholes.

“Alex Whitman died! Remember? And Max would never be so stupid as to come here! He’s setting you guys up!”

“What do you know?" the other one growled. I could tell he meant business.

I scoffed. “You miscalculated. I’m not Max’s lover. I’m Zan’s wife. His…double.” Swallowed, a sharp pang accompanying the words. “Zan’s not here, is he?” I taunted.

They glared at me and then at each other. Then Beavis smiled menacingly. Uh oh.

“That’s too bad then, isn’t it sweetheart? Now, we could let you loose on the streets like this. After we clean your memories, of course. Or, or we could be kind and finish ya off right here.”

Terror surged through me, making it hard for me to speak. I swallowed thickly. “Please…I have a child.”

‘Too damn bad.” Butthead chimed in. They raised their hands together.

Oh well. Never thought I’d go out with a bang.

I looked around desperately, but being trussed up like a chicken wasn’t working in my favor.

‘Well, look what we have here.” A sickeningly sexy voice sounded. I opened my eyes.

Lonnie stood there, in all her Mafia glory.

Bile rose in my throat. She’d be no help. I knew that. I knew that like I breathed, because the next instant, she was fondling Beavis’ crotch and cooing to butthead.

Oh, lord. Watching that bitch get off seconds before I died wasn’t a priority.

Then she walked over. A sharp boot toe nudged me over. I felt the blood start to run from the kick she’d delivered. Through the haze of pain, her voice registered.

“Yo, I got dis one.” She chomped on the gum and waved a casual hand towards them. They bowed and backed off.

‘Yes, Princess Vilandra.”

I laughed through my bleeding nose. “Oh, a princess? How the not so mighty falls, huh?”

“Shut the fuck up, bitch! I’ve waited a long time for this.” She hissed and backhanded me again.

I reeled over.

As she leaned over me to finish it off, I held up my green, crackling hand. The look on her face was priceless. Her hulking form hid me from the clowns.

“You know what this means. You know what I can do. I could finish ya’ll clowns right her, right now. Stay the hell away from me” I warned.

She stepped back lightly, She also summed up that I wasn’t glowing because I’d indulged in some neon candy. It was special and she knew it.

"Good. Now, untie me or else you can join these bozos on their funeral. Zan’s here, Lonnie. I know it and you know it.” I actually knew no such thing but she, for some freaky reason, did as I told. I felt the knots untie magically.

The she did the weirdest thing. Her eyes fluttered and it was no longer lines heavily with eyeliner.

“Isabel?!” I asked weakly, praying for a miracle.

She nodded. “Yeah. Wait just a second, till I dispose of them.”

“No, “ I whispered. “They’re talking about Max. Find out what’s going on.”

She laughed gently. “Relax. We deal with idiots like this once every month,.”

I stared at her in open-mouthed shock. What the fuck is she talking about? Getting nearly beaten to death happened every day? Frying someone was commonplace? Who the hell ARE they???

I watched. With a powerful flick of her wrist, she’d blown them to dust. A fine, white powder rained on me. The world flickered in Technicolor. This can’t be real. This could not be REAL.

Gentle hands untied me. “Liz?” The voice sounded so far away.

She hissed under her breath. I came to.

“Alex!”

“Shhh…” she cooed, almost carrying me out of there.

I struggled to get away. “Where is he!”

She let go abruptly. “I don’t know. I tried to go into his dreams, get him to tell me anything but he didn’t respond.”

“Didn’t respond?" I stared at her blankly as we drove along. “What is he? DEAD??”

“No!” Isabel took her eyes off the road long enough to give me a reassuring look. “He just didn’t respond. Sometime it could be because he didn’t know how to or that he didn’t want to.”

“Oh god.” the tears started again, “I know why he didn’t want to! He thinks I’m ashamed of him. Oh, my god!”

Isabel brushed off her own stray tears. In her Goth garb and the strangely vulnerable stage, she looked so normal, so utterly human, that I was rendered speechless.

“It’ll be okay.”

“Where’re we going?” I asked groggily. Whatever they’d done was catching up. I felt close to a deep slumber but my mind wouldn’t rest.

“I’m trying to get in touch with Max. They’re probably looking for you.”

“Isabel…” I trailed off, trying not to panic. “They were specifically looking for Alex. They told me so. They wanted to do something about a godforsaken bloodline. Kings, bloodlines, royal seal…” I trailed off. It was too hard to swallow.

She turned her legendary haughty look on me. Right now it covered more fear than anything else. “Liz, this isn’t the time or the place. You deserve to hear this from Max. Just wait a while.”

“Yeah” I sighed, giving up. I’d no strength left in me. The last reserves were exhausted. Again, I started to pray. Please God. Let my son be all right.
~~/\~~

As we hurtled along, I kept a watchful eye on our rear. After a few minutes, it was pretty clear.

“We have a bogey.”

She snorted. “Who the hell talks like that?”

“Shut up and get us out of here!” I shot back.

The car zoomed forward as her hand glowed against the dashboard. The lousy engine whined with increased horsepower.

“As long as you keep pulling such stunts, we’ll make it yet.” I settled back, a little more alert.

The tires burst simultaneously. The car swerved dangerously onto the oncoming traffic.

I experienced a horrible memory of seeing Alex’s mangled body. The real Alex. My best friend.

Isabel whimpered. She held her palm flat on the top of the steering wheel. Sure enough, we stopped inches from the barrier.

The car behind us screeched to a stop.

“Duck!” Grabbing her head, I pushed it out of sight.

Another burst of light exploded, the air scorched and mangled.

Isabel rammed her hand out and a green one flickered back, throwing them off.

“Get out!" I shrieked. Cars were honking behind us. Discovery was certain death. I knew that. They knew that.

We simultaneously lunged out both doors, in different directions.

The place was quickly filling up.

“Liz!” I heard her shout but a couple was blocking my way. Their soft peeling skins told me that they were not just suffering from normal sunburn. No wonder they’re called Skins. Lookit them. Gross.

I turned and screamed at another coupe that was standing laterally. As they looked at me in anger, I rammed into the Skin couple. They fell like bowling pins. Using the opportunity, I ran the hell out of there.

Oh God, please don’t let Isabel be stupid enough to come look for me. I thought as I ran inside a casino.

“Blackjack!” The dealer shouted from somewhere. I turned. Only to come face to face with a skin. The man’s insistent itching and vacant eyes told me everything I needed to know

How the hell do they know who I am???

I climbed up on a table.

People stared at me like I was mad.

As the beat of some jazz sounded, I swayed casually on the table, never mind that my clothed were barely there as it were.

But the table was high and I had a clear view of the exit.

The bouncer yanked me down from the stage as whistles sounded. Sirens wailed outside. Police! Should I? Then I recalled that idiot we’d talked to. I remembered the raspy voice. It’d been Beavis. SHIT!

I fell down, almost trampled under the feet of a dozen excited people. People had started staring at my torn clothes. I needed a makeover if I intended to make it out of here alive.

A sign on a side door caught my attention.

STAFF.

Oh, what the hell. I threw open the door and raced inside a closet. It was a dressing room.

A few painful minutes later, I was out. This time, no Skin was liable to recognize me. Instead of my sensible shorts and half-ripped off shirt, I was wearing a black, leather bustier and pants that looked like it’d been painted on. My hair was loose, covering the worst of the bruises.

I smiled somewhat ruefully. All dolled up and nowhere to go. Could I even recognize Max’s room? Not a chance, I decided. My mind was in haze of pain and denial.

I stumbled along, deciding that waiting in front of the Bali Hai hotel, acting like a cheap hooker would be the best course of action. So long as I found someone to guide me back to my group.

As I hung outside the hotel, trying to freak out the morons who’d queued up, I let my mind reflect on all the insane things that’d happened. If I hadn’t seen it with my own two eyes, I’d never have believed it.

Shit, Max’ll kill me when he sees me again. If he sees me again. I longed for the safety of his arms. I kept a lookout and prayed that Alex was okay.

A familiar face caught my attention. It looked like…

“Zan!” I whispered, still unable to believe what I was seeing.

Torn, I watched as he sauntered across the street. Go to him! He’ll help!

My mind screamed a warning. Are you completely retarded? He’s probably on their side!

Oh fuck it! I limped after him, not caring at the look on the faces of the people. Salacious grins, disgusted snorts, indifference – I saw it all.

I dared not call him, in case someone heard, but it was getting increasingly difficult not to scream for help.

He slouched along the side of a building automatically keeping a lookout. I sighed; if he was ambling along, meant that I could, too.

Happily I followed him as he ducked into an alley. Gawd! Not another one of these. How many alleys are there in this town anywaaaa…..

I was about to go in after him when a hand shot out. I found myself pinned against a wall by some invisible force.

“Zan...” I gurgled, trying to get loose. “Let me…”

He stepped up; face still handsome, after all this weathered years. Still unforgettable, if a little lined. He might’ve had the same genes as Max but their similarities ended there.

“Nice try, babe. But you should know that impersonating an ex wife never works.”

“Huh? But it’s me…” I trailed off. Doesn’t he recognize me? I didn’t think I could surprise myself anymore but I did; a green arrow of envy lodged itself on my throat.

"Unhand me. Now.” I ordered, squirming as his eyes took in all of me.

He gently took my hand. Smooth flesh glistened with green sparks.

“Jesus Christ.”

“God ain’t gonna help you!” I shrieked. “Where’s my son??”

Before I could say another word, his lips were on mine – demanding, brash, almost bitter.

I could only stare at him in shock.

He stepped back, wiping the trace of blood from his lips. My blood. He was staring at me intently. “It is you.”

“Excellent deduction.” I gasped, the pain excruciating. “Put me down!!”

He took his hand away from my stomach, where he’d been squeezing the life out of me.

Strangely, he looked lost for words.

“Why’re you dressed like a hooker?"

“Where’s my son?”

We spoke at the same time. I glared at him, unwilling to give an inch. I’d seen him from Alex’s dreams. That flash.

His eyes darkened. “He’s not with me.”

I collapsed into his arms, fully mad with frustrations. This couldn’t be happening.
~~/\~~

It was a while till I’d calmed down sufficiently to make sense.

“Look! I SAW you, damn it. That flash or image or whatever…thing. I saw you. You were picking him up. He was scared. He’d never seen you before in his life!”

The dark eyes glinted for a second, as if something funny’d just occurred to him. The smirk didn’t go away. “You recognized me. I’m flattered.”

I hit out at him. “Stop it! If it’s not you, then who could it be?”

“What about Max?” There was no rancor in his voice but something locked in the hazel depths.

“Alex wouldn’t be scared of him! And Max would never take my son without my consent.”

And then a truly horrible thought occurred. What if, in this unbelievable power play, Max was allied with the Skins? Maybe he did want Alex…

I forced in a deep breath, as Zan’s smirk increased to epic proportions. “No, he doesn’t! Beavis said they wanted Max. Obviously not to kneel in reverence.”

"Whatevah.”

“No!” I yanked him around. “Not whatever, Zan. I want to know where my son is! Get him back. Now!”

“Sounded like a real queen.” There was an edge in his voice. A bitter edge as much as he covered it up with blandness.

“Well, I wasn’t, now was I?”

I was right. He is still bitter over it.

Things were fitting in, things I didn’t want to fit. If I started making sense of this, I’d ever stop. With inhuman effort, I put it away. It’d come later. My son was all that mattered.

“Look, let’s not talk about that now.” He said after a while, studying my battered face. “What happened to you?"

“Two men found me. I told them Alex was useless to them because he’d been adopted. But then they said they didn’t have him.” I clutched the hand that was still around my waist, drawing blood. “If they don’t have him, who the hell does?”

He swore. “This has to be the biggest assault I’ve seen in 10 years. It’s like they kinda played us into them. Last I heard, it was an ambush planned for LA. Don’t know why the plan shifted and how you guys fell right into this.”

“This is a coincidence, I swear! No one’s been manipulating me.”

He stared at me coldly. “What made you decide to come?”

I went hot. I couldn’t tell him I was afraid that Max was marrying Michael.

He looked at me shrewdly. “Right. You came because you felt an urgent desire to gamble.”

“Zan,” I enunciated, almost spitting with rage, “I’ve put up with your sorry ass for too damn long. If you think that after disappearing for FIVE years, it gives you the right to judge me, go buy yourself a clue.”

“Not now, Liz. I’d rather enjoy our… um, trysts, in private and in a more congenial atmosphere.”

I knew him too well to get riled up by that. “Die, why don’t you?”

He slung an arm around my shoulders. “Been trying for years."

Despite myself, a shiver of recognition went up my spine. As much as I knew that what had happened between us was wrong, I couldn’t completely extinguish the way my body reacted to him.

His trademark flashed. “Babe…now you start feeling sorry for me.”

All the warmth disappeared.

“I’m in no mood for this. You don’t know what it’s like to have a child. I do.” I snapped back at him.

This time, there was no denying the anger in his eyes. They were bitter and harsh. “You’d have to bring it up.”

I blinked back a tear. “Zan, I can’t fight you now. Alex is in the hands of God knows what…I...”

“It’s fine.” He pulled away. Without his support, my knees wobbled. I started tilting. In horror, I knew I was falling and he wasn’t going to catch me.

I latched on to a part of his leather jacket and dragged myself up, cursing him for all he was worth. Why could he not make an effort? Ever?

At that instant, he was shoving me away. A violent shudder rocked the ground as the impact came. And then I was flat under his bulk, sheltered, while feathers floated around me.

“Sonofabitch!” he growled, examining the blood draining from the side of his chest. It’d hit him.

I stared in dark fascination as he splayed his hand over the gaping wound.

“Wait! What…what’re you gonna do?”

He looked at me like he’d forgotten I was there. His hand fell back hesitantly. I didn’t know why it trembled.

“Here, “I rummaged in my pocket for my shirt. “Hold that over it.”

His smile was tired and more than a little condescending; warmth hidden over a veneer of fine arrogance. He just never changed. “Whatever you say.”

“God, could you try??”

“Gotcha.” He winced and limped along.

“Where’re the others?”

A lazy hand reached down to tousle my already mussed up hair. “Glad you still wear it long.”

I knocked it off. “Zan!”

He pulled me to a standstill. I thought my neck would snap.

“Look!” I backed away at the roar. “For all I know, your precious Max has bartered Alex for their own hides! And you’re still worried about him! My son could be dead for all I know, and you’re scared for them! For once in your life, could you stop treating him like he’s some kind of GOD? He’s not helpless! He’ll deal!”

“Okay, okay...” I whispered, as he heaved and clutched at the wound. Blood gushed. “Don’t talk so loud.”

He gasped and grabbed a hold of the wall behind me. It kinda hurt that he wouldn’t lean on me for support but then again, it shouldn’t. This was exactly why I’d given up on us. His breath warmed my frozen, tear-streaked face, while he stewed like a wounded lion.

“I’m going to call him” I said shortly, trying to keep myself from screaming at him. It would accomplish nothing. “I’ll see where they are. You sit down there.” I pointed at the pavement.

Angry tears were smarting behind my lids. He saw it and sulked. I wanted to bitch slap him into the next century.

I dialed Max’s number. "Number not in use? NOT IN USE?” I screeched. Damn!

“What did you do them?” I turned back at him. He glared at me. “You heard me! What the hell did you do to him? I heard what those Skins said…they said they were looking for Max! He couldn’t be on their side! If I hadn’t been so shocked at your outburst, I’d have thought of it before! And you have some gall playing the wronged card! Oooh! And your son? YOUR son?? Since when??”

He clapped a hand over my mouth so hard that I nearly fell over. “Shut the fuck up!”

Finally, the predicament we were in made sense. Max was unreachable. We were in a city with an army of God knows what on our asses and on top of that, we were all easy targets since they knew who we were and we didn’t.

"Fine, fine. Let’s just go.” I closed my eyes, trying not to break down in front of him.

He took a gentled hold of my arm and propelled us forward. It was easy melding into the crowds.


Well? What do you guys think of Zan?

Sarah[/i]

recap:
I was about to go in after him when a hand shot out. I found myself pinned against a wall by some invisible force.

“Zan...” I gurgled, trying to get loose. “Let me…”

He stepped up; face still handsome, after all this weathered years. Still unforgettable, if a little lined. He might’ve had the same genes as Max but their similarities ended there.

“Nice try, babe. But you should know that impersonating an ex wife never works.”

“Huh? But it’s me…” I trailed off. Doesn’t he recognize me? I didn’t think I could surprise myself anymore but I did; a green arrow of envy lodged itself on my throat.

"Unhand me. Now.” I ordered, squirming as his eyes took in all of me.

He gently took my hand. Smooth flesh glistened with green sparks.

“Jesus Christ.”

“God ain’t gonna help you!” I shrieked. “Where’s my son??”

Before I could say another word, his lips were on mine – demanding, brash, almost bitter.

I could only stare at him in shock.

He stepped back, wiping the trace of blood from his lips. My blood. He was staring at me intently. “It is you.”

“Excellent deduction.” I gasped, the pain excruciating. “Put me down!!”

He took his hand away from my stomach, where he’d been squeezing the life out of me.

Strangely, he looked lost for words.

“Why’re you dressed like a hooker?"

“Where’s my son?”

We spoke at the same time. I glared at him, unwilling to give an inch. I’d seen him from Alex’s dreams. That flash.

His eyes darkened. “He’s not with me.”

I collapsed into his arms, fully mad with frustrations. This couldn’t be happening.
~~/\~~

It was a while till I’d calmed down sufficiently to make sense.

“Look! I SAW you, damn it. That flash or image or whatever…thing. I saw you. You were picking him up. He was scared. He’d never seen you before in his life!”

The dark eyes glinted for a second, as if something funny’d just occurred to him. The smirk didn’t go away. “You recognized me. I’m flattered.”

I hit out at him. “Stop it! If it’s not you, then who could it be?”

“What about Max?” There was no rancor in his voice but something locked in the hazel depths.

“Alex wouldn’t be scared of him! And Max would never take my son without my consent.”

And then a truly horrible thought occurred. What if, in this unbelievable power play, Max was allied with the Skins? Maybe he did want Alex…

I forced in a deep breath, as Zan’s smirk increased to epic proportions. “No, he doesn’t! Beavis said they wanted Max. Obviously not to kneel in reverence.”

"Whatevah.”

“No!” I yanked him around. “Not whatever, Zan. I want to know where my son is! Get him back. Now!”

“Sounded like a real queen.” There was an edge in his voice. A bitter edge as much as he covered it up with blandness.

“Well, I wasn’t, now was I?”

I was right. He is still bitter over it.

Things were fitting in, things I didn’t want to fit. If I started making sense of this, I’d ever stop. With inhuman effort, I put it away. It’d come later. My son was all that mattered.

“Look, let’s not talk about that now.” He said after a while, studying my battered face. “What happened to you?"

“Two men found me. I told them Alex was useless to them because he’d been adopted. But then they said they didn’t have him.” I clutched the hand that was still around my waist, drawing blood. “If they don’t have him, who the hell does?”

He swore. “This has to be the biggest assault I’ve seen in 10 years. It’s like they kinda played us into them. Last I heard, it was an ambush planned for LA. Don’t know why the plan shifted and how you guys fell right into this.”

“This is a coincidence, I swear! No one’s been manipulating me.”

He stared at me coldly. “What made you decide to come?”

I went hot. I couldn’t tell him I was afraid that Max was marrying Michael.

He looked at me shrewdly. “Right. You came because you felt an urgent desire to gamble.”

“Zan,” I enunciated, almost spitting with rage, “I’ve put up with your sorry ass for too damn long. If you think that after disappearing for FIVE years, it gives you the right to judge me, go buy yourself a clue.”

“Not now, Liz. I’d rather enjoy our… um, trysts, in private and in a more congenial atmosphere.”

I knew him too well to get riled up by that. “Die, why don’t you?”

He slung an arm around my shoulders. “Been trying for years."

Despite myself, a shiver of recognition went up my spine. As much as I knew that what had happened between us was wrong, I couldn’t completely extinguish the way my body reacted to him.

His trademark flashed. “Babe…now you start feeling sorry for me.”

All the warmth disappeared.

“I’m in no mood for this. You don’t know what it’s like to have a child. I do.” I snapped back at him.

This time, there was no denying the anger in his eyes. They were bitter and harsh. “You’d have to bring it up.”

I blinked back a tear. “Zan, I can’t fight you now. Alex is in the hands of God knows what…I...”

“It’s fine.” He pulled away. Without his support, my knees wobbled. I started tilting. In horror, I knew I was falling and he wasn’t going to catch me.

I latched on to a part of his leather jacket and dragged myself up, cursing him for all he was worth. Why could he not make an effort? Ever?

At that instant, he was shoving me away. A violent shudder rocked the ground as the impact came. And then I was flat under his bulk, sheltered, while feathers floated around me.

“Sonofabitch!” he growled, examining the blood draining from the side of his chest. It’d hit him.

I stared in dark fascination as he splayed his hand over the gaping wound.

“Wait! What…what’re you gonna do?”

He looked at me like he’d forgotten I was there. His hand fell back hesitantly. I didn’t know why it trembled.

“Here, “I rummaged in my pocket for my shirt. “Hold that over it.”

His smile was tired and more than a little condescending; warmth hidden over a veneer of fine arrogance. He just never changed. “Whatever you say.”

“God, could you try??”

“Gotcha.” He winced and limped along.

“Where’re the others?”

A lazy hand reached down to tousle my already mussed up hair. “Glad you still wear it long.”

I knocked it off. “Zan!”

He pulled me to a standstill. I thought my neck would snap.

“Look!” I backed away at the roar. “For all I know, your precious Max has bartered Alex for their own hides! And you’re still worried about him! My son could be dead for all I know, and you’re scared for them! For once in your life, could you stop treating him like he’s some kind of GOD? He’s not helpless! He’ll deal!”

“Okay, okay...” I whispered, as he heaved and clutched at the wound. Blood gushed. “Don’t talk so loud.”

He gasped and grabbed a hold of the wall behind me. It kinda hurt that he wouldn’t lean on me for support but then again, it shouldn’t. This was exactly why I’d given up on us. His breath warmed my frozen, tear-streaked face, while he stewed like a wounded lion.

“I’m going to call him” I said shortly, trying to keep myself from screaming at him. It would accomplish nothing. “I’ll see where they are. You sit down there.” I pointed at the pavement.

Angry tears were smarting behind my lids. He saw it and sulked. I wanted to bitch slap him into the next century.

I dialed Max’s number. "Number not in use? NOT IN USE?” I screeched. Damn!

“What did you do them?” I turned back at him. He glared at me. “You heard me! What the hell did you do to him? I heard what those Skins said…they said they were looking for Max! He couldn’t be on their side! If I hadn’t been so shocked at your outburst, I’d have thought of it before! And you have some gall playing the wronged card! Oooh! And your son? YOUR son?? Since when??”

He clapped a hand over my mouth so hard that I nearly fell over. “Shut the fuck up!”

Finally, the predicament we were in made sense. Max was unreachable. We were in a city with an army of God knows what on our asses and on top of that, we were all easy targets since they knew who we were and we didn’t.

"Fine, fine. Let’s just go.” I closed my eyes, trying not to break down in front of him.

He took a gentled hold of my arm and propelled us forward. It was easy melding into the crowds.


Chapter 21


The tears kept coming. I tried to keep it inaudible but they wouldn’t stay inside. Every time I let out a whimper, trying to breathe, Zan’s scowl would become more prominent. It was horrible. I didn’t want to be this liability to him, to them. I was tired of them looking at me with accusations in their unearthly eyes.

“Liz!” Zan whirled around as we raced through the dark streets. “Could you give it a rest?”

I opened my mouth to tell him I was fine but a wail emerged instead. He stopped, turned back. There was a fierce light in his yes. I felt lower than I ever had. Obviously, he was trying to make amends and I was just screwing things up. But couldn’t he be a little sympathetic? Alex was gone.

Arms wrapped themselves around me, warding of the bitter chills of the desert night. It’d gotten colder but not as cold as I felt.

“I want him back.” I sobbed against his chest, wincing at the macabre similarity to this exchange and the one I‘d had with Max. "He’s cold and hungry and frightened. We’ve hardly ever spent nights apart. I don’t want this to be the start of a trend.”

His breath heated the frozen part of my ear. “He’ll be okay. Trust him. He’s stronger than you think.”

“He’s not! He doesn’t know all this freaky things. They scare him!”

It shocked me how I could rant to Zan that being different scared Alex, and I couldn’t meet Max’s eyes when I wanted to say it, much less speak the words.

“I know, I know…” he kissed the tip of my red nose soothingly. I wanted to trust him, wanted to believe that faith in his golden eyes. But I didn’t want to expose myself to that again.

He slanted his lips over mine. Before I could withdraw, it had grown voracious. I wanted to shove him away, push him off. I loved Max. I’d always loved him. Doing this, while he could be hurt or dead somewhere was wrong and cruel.

I gasped. “Zan, stop!”

He did. Instantly. His hands were shaking with restraint. I’d never seen him so violent. Except, maybe, that night I’d almost left him. That desperation was back. “I never wanted to…” he started, his voice low and hard. Dangerous.

“Liz!” It was a cry of a man in pain. It was Max.

He was across the road, Michael and Isabel behind him. Maria screamed. We stood apart from each other, across the street. Zan and me. Him and his motley crew. I wanted to revolt.

I looked up at my ex husband. There was denial in his eyes. I took a step forward, away from him. Like an image from the past, his hand latched onto mine.

“No.” It was more than just a whisper. It was a plea for something that just remained in ashes.

I could see Max’s face. It was full of bittersweet regret.

“Let me go, Zan. Please.”

I didn’t have to say another word. The strength behind the grip drained. He let it fall. Even across the space of nearly 50 feet, I could hear Maria’s sigh.

Not caring whether I got hit by a car or not, I stumbled across the road.

Max, seeing my mad dash, had started racing forward. Michael had a steady grip on his arm but he shrugged it off savagely.

Another few feet and I collapsed in his arms just as he clutched me to him like he’d never let go. I felt the sobs rack his body as they did mine. I didn’t need to see the raw need on his face to know that it was mirrored in mine. No matter what, we belonged.
~~/\~~



“Howdy, all.”

Max lifted his head from me as if I was on fire.

“Zan.” He noted surly.

“Progress?” he inquired silkily, moving across with feline grace. It was almost mortifying the amount of scorn he bestowed on the Roswell trio.

“Not much.” Max admitted before Michael could shoot off his mouth. “No one’s talking.”

Zan nodded curtly. “I’ll go look. You take her and uh..." he stopped, not sure how much our relationship had progressed.

Max’s eyes darkened balefully. “You and I are going. Isabel, you stay with the girls.”
Then his eyes softened. A shaky hand ran across my tangled hair. “Are you all right?!”

I nodded, not daring to speak. My voice sounded like a guy’s …broken, harsh. That wouldn’t convince Max I was okay.

Zan waved his hand dismissively. “Take care of her. Me and Mikey G here can take care of them.”

Arrrgh.

“Zan, I’m fine. I’m perfectly capable of looking after myself.” I said in a cloying voice.

Neither man paid any attention. They were too busy staring each other down.

“Oh, brother. “Maria rolled her eyes.

I started walking away. Isabel stopped me. “What’re you doing?”

“If the Skins don’t have him, you guys don’t, Zan doesn’t, and then who could possibly have Alex?”

“Human miscreants?” Michael supplied with an unpleasant smile.

“No,” I said succinctly. “That person looked like either Max or Zan. I doubt you guys have more of your double running loose.”

Each nodded curtly.

“Shapeshifter.” Isabel hissed.

“WHAT?” I gaped. What the hell is that?

“Lizzie, this is why I never wanted you to get involved to begin with.” Zan smarmed back, his voice dripping with acid and smooth as silk. “I even thought, that after I left, your friends would have better sense that to drag you into it.”

Every word was honey coated with bitter sarcasm. I felt my hackles rising.

“Of course they couldn’t.” he went on, still smarming. “They were too busy trying to be humans. Something they weren’t.”

Michael was the first to break. “Are you implying that it was US who brought her into this? You, Zan, of all people are accusing us?”

Zan glared back at him, meeting him eyes to eye. Michael, after a disgraceful second, backed off seeing the ugly sneer there. “Yes, Michael. That’s exactly what I’m doing.”

Michael broke loose from Isabel’s fierce grip with a snarl.

Only Max’s stepping up to Zan stopped a bloodbath. “I don’t care who the fucking hell you think you are! But you’re not doing this to her now. Not again. I’m tired of you twisting things to your benefit. ”

Zan snorted. “I’ll do whatever the hell I want. I don’t hide behind women and children to get what I need, Max.”

“All right!” I shouted, trying to stop the imminent violence. The fact that they weren’t human hadn’t even registered.

Max’s face had gone pale. He swallowed in anger. There was a mute pause.

“I’m going after Alex. You’re coming with me. Isabel, take care of Liz. Michael, you follow up on that Skin defector. We can get some more information from the inside than acting like idiots on the sidewalk.”

There was an unreal quiet. I closed my gaping mouth. Wow…

Zan inclined his head. “As you wish, Your Majesty.”

Max ground his teeth. “Stop saying that. You’re not helping.”

“It was never in my very selfish interests to help you guys out, Highness. I spent the 16 years ALL on my own whim.”

I glanced at Max, who was still deathly pale. “What’re you talking about, Zan?”

He drew deliberately level with Max. As if it was a comparison.

“I’m talking about my life, Lizzie. I spent all the years on my own vision quest.”

The words were a lie, as big a lie as his humble tone; instinctively I knew Zan had done exactly the opposite. That despite the lies and deception, he’d spent all this time trying to make sure the Roswell group was safe. And why he’d do something like that was beyond me.

“Don’t you dare go down that route!” Michael snarled from behind Isabel but his voice lacked any real fire.

Max stepped up, still trembling with rage. “Don’t think, for even a second, that I’ve forgotten what you’ve done for us. And I’ve repaid it.”

Zan scowled at the ground. When he looked up, the sneer was missing. “Yeah, you did.” And since he wasn’t one to miss a beat, he added, “I’m sure it was such a hardship on you, though. All those long trips to New York.”

It dawned on me then. Max’d come all the way to NY to keep an eye on us to satisfy a bloody conscience?? How dare he!

“What?” I growled. If looks could kill, Zan and Max would both be part of the asphalt by now.

Zan smirked. “Yes, our fearless leader is very umm, generous, in such matters. Thank you, milord, for keeping my family safe.”

I quailed when I saw the vacant look of rage in Max’s amber eyes. They were molten, aflame. And it wasn’t a pretty sight. “I’m not going to repeat myself. We have things to do.”

Zan stood his ground, hardly intimidated. “Let me ask you this – did it affect your noble conscience when you hit on my wife? How does it feel to betray not only your Dupe’s trust, but to take away his place, too?”

Max made an unintelligible sound of rage. “I said, move it.”

Nothing stirred. And then it did. Everyone whirled into motion. Isabel started dragging Maria and me away.

Michael readied a rented car to go after whomever he was supposed to.

Only Zan remained where he was.

“Wait!” I pulled away.

All eyes turned on me. Suddenly, I was a major player in this drama of monstrous proportions and I wasn’t used to seeing Max in command. He was the sweet guy who mowed your lawn without asking, not some King.

I stumbled in front of them. Max, especially. He didn’t meet my eyes. “Where do you think you’re going? I told you, I’m coming with you.”

“No, no you’re not.’ He said immediately.

I watched Zan hide a smirk. He’s had practice. Whereas Zan’s been in command for most of the time, I’d never seen Max spouting orders. And Zan had experience with my reactions to orders.

“What did you say?”

Max gulped but didn’t back down. “Liz, you’re hurt. I’m not having you mow down streets, looking for Alex.”

“He is MY son!” I said slowly, furiously.

“And I love him like he’s my own. You’re not going out in this condition. I’ve never broken my word to you. I’ll find him.”

At that last comment, Zan snorted with derision. “Didn’t break your word?”

Max turned around, barely able to control his fury. “Yes. That’s what I said. Are you having trouble listening?”

“No, I have amnesia. I am having trouble recollecting those words…what was it again, ‘you deal with the skins. I’ll take on Liz?’”

My enraged gasp got lost in Max’s roar. “And you didn’t decline! You could have! I gave you EVERY opportunity to and you didn’t!”

“Wait!” Isabel snarled, almost frothing. “Since when is this breaking his word?? He said he’d take care of her and here she is. Alive!”

Zan froze her with a look. “Stay the hell out of this. This is between King Max and me.” The king was a slur.

Max shoved Isabel behind him roughly.

“You think I engineered to have her here? I planned this entire stupid fiasco? That I exposed her to danger? ME?”

Zan followed right up. “And you didn’t? Look at where she is! Take a good look!”

Max went white. “You sick bastard...” he whispered, almost guttural. “You married her. You left her pregnant. What was I supposed to do? Walk away? With Alex’s powers emerging years later while we led calm, neat lives back in Roswell? For something like this to happen?” It had grown in volume till all of us cringed at the roar.

Zan paled this time. It was so surreal watching the two of the adopting the same expression – murderous, regretful, full of such virulent love.

Then he smiled. It was almost painful to watch, it was so twisted. “Why don’t you tell her why I walked?”

I froze. Now what? “Why?” I asked, my own voice cold.

He wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Zan was impersonating me. It was no happy coincidence that I went to NY all the time. I was taking his place while he took mine. He saved all our lives that way.” His eyes were glassy and tortured when they finally met mine. “I did it all for myself! Happy now?”

Zan looked sheepish as I swayed in disbelief.

He’d gone to NY to take Zan’s place? All of this was some sort of imaginary power play? Royalty, bloodlines, dupes.

I started laughing.

My world crashed and burned at my feet but situation was so stupid that I couldn’t help but laugh.

Max’s eyes were still a haze of regret and pain. “I’m so sorry. I used you. I used Alex.”

I laughed harder. I could tell he was lying. That’s Max. King Martyr.

Worried, Michael strode forward, and gathered me up. I went limp in his arms. Then the tears started to fall.

Sorry for the delay, you guys. I've been going from one midterm to another (going mad in the process) and finally got a breather. I know this part might leave you guys more confused than ever, but take heart, dears. It'll be explained from all three's POVs in rotation.

I hope this explains Zan's disappearance.

Frenchkiss - *hug* Hope you liked it, hon.
roswellluver - hey you! I was worried about you, sweetie. You usually never miss a day. You okay?

Anyway, love you guys and thanks for being so patient.

Sarah

Chapter 22


We all trooped back to that small room Max had taken us to. Now that I could see it better, it had peeling walls and a whole lot of mothballs everywhere.

Both Zan and Max had kept a silent vigil out for me. But I was beyond caring.

Maria had ranted and screamed all the way back that while my son was missing, they’d been busy wallowing in guilt. That had pretty much shut everyone up.

Michael laid me down on the duvet in the tiny bedroom. Maria had gone for the bathroom while Isabel prepared coffee. Zan and Max were outside.

My cell rang. I shot a fearful glance at Michael.

The door burst opened as Zan raced inside, Max in his heels, albeit furiously.

“Hello?” The caller id wasn’t familiar.

“Liz? It’s me, Kyle.” the voice was more than familiar; it was patently welcome.

“Kyle!” I sobbed.

Max cleared his throat. But he didn’t say anything.

Finally, after shooting Max a disgusted look, Zan warned me silently not to talk about anything that had happened.

I raised my middle finger as a ghost of a smirk shimmered on Max’s face and then vanished again.

Zan settled back, suitably chastised.

“Liz. I heard from LVPD that Alex is missing! I already told them to cooperate fully with what they know. They’ve manhunt out for him. Don’t worry. Little tyke will be around soon.”

I inhaled sharply, the image of Beavis being the perfect police officer making nausea rise up in my throat. “Um, actually, I found him. Please, call this thing off.” Even as I spoke, I knew I’d just about done the worst thing I could. But getting Alex in the clutches of a wannabe police officer was worse than his being out on the streets with a kidnapper.

“What? Are you sure?”

“yes, yes. Just please call this off.”

"Are you okay?”

“Fine! I’m fine. Just…everything’s fine, Kyle.”

“All right.” I could tell he was hardly convinced. “Do you want me to come out there?”

“No!” I shouted, “I mean…no. Everything’s okay.”

“Liz?”

“I gotta go, Kyle. It’s late.”

“My point exactly. It’s probably gone past 3 am in the morning and you’re totally panicked and you answered the phone in the first ring. What the hell’s going on?”

I started crying for real. “Kyle, it’s NONE of your business. I love you but now, I really must go.”

With that, I hit the off button.

Maria rushed forward. She bit her lower lip, as I cradled my head and tried to think logically.

The whole thing was so…cruel. So insane. I didn’t know what to believe. If for the sake of sanity, I started dissecting each pieces of evidence. If I got my son back, nothing else would matter.

But try as I might, all that was registering were two facts. Zan had left me, pretty much on Max’s order. Well, maybe not, but still. Max had taken his place, not against Zan’s altruistic motives

And he had never wanted to go. Again, debatable. When Zan declined to do something, no force on earth could make him. So, it wasn’t completely above his wishes.

And then, the whole fugly picture. What the hell were they?

Max bent down. I felt him fight back shudders as he cradled my face. “Listen to me. I’m not proud of the things I’ve done to get to this point. But I want you to know something. You were always my first.”

I smiled as everyone else rolled their eyes. Max looked away. “Your first what? Priority?”

He nodded, face still down. “I didn’t want anything to happen to you, not if I could help it. Seems like I let you down.”

I wanted to reassure him. But the words wouldn’t come. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I whispered. My heart lay in shreds at the look in his yes.

“I didn’t want to put you in danger.”

Before I could respond, the phone rang again.

Zan latched on to it before I could.

I tugged on it, dangling a few feet off the ground as we fought for control.

He wrapped an arm around me, lowering me to the duvet again.

Max watched, eyes slitted.

Zan added an extra squeeze for good measure.

I rolled my eyes as Max turned a vibrant shade of purple.

“Hello?”

“Mom?”

I shrieked a bunch of gibberish.

Instantly, the atmosphere changed.

“Where are you!” I demanded.

“Mom, this…guy...” I heard whispers nearby but I couldn’t make it out.

“Alex, DO NOT, under any circumstances, hang up! What does this guy want?” I shouted down the line, clutching the phone so hard, my knuckles ached. “Tell me!”

“Mom, he says to tell you that Max and …” and more whispering.

“Alex!!’ I screamed. “ALEX!”

“I’m here, mom, I’m here.” He was beginning to cry again. I could picture him, sucking his thumb and trying to damn the tears. If I’d thought all the events of the night made me feel helpless, nothing came close to this.

“Are you all right? Did he hurt you?”

“I’m fine. Really…I’m just hungry...” More cooing. I wanted to be sick. Maria held me firmly.

“Listen, Mom, he’s crazy...” Alex ‘s voice came out small and puzzled.

I nearly fainted.

“Let me talk to him “ I pleaded, imposing a control over myself, I knew that would shatter in minutes.

“No, mom, he says for Max and …this guy called Zan to clear out. Zan as in Dad, mom?” he asked again, voice still small.

I trembled. Raising my chin, I met Zan’s hazel ones. The blood from his gash still ran down his chest. That was the first time anyone from here had seen it. Max started to raise a hand but Zan waved him off irritably.

Max didn’t bother to do whatever he was going to do again.

"Yes. Zan’s your dad. He’s here.”

Again that dubious pause. “Well, he says it’s…whatchucallit?” he asked again to his abductor. I wanted to go to pieces, very nearly did but withheld.

Max was already shaking his head. “No. No.”

Zan grunted. “Ya’ll think with your brains anytime soon? He wants us out in case there’s a bloodbath. Whoever he is on our side.”

Max glowered at him. “I’m not leaving Liz, Isabel, Maria here, unprotected. Not with Michael as the only back up.”

Michael and Isabel glared at him. He scowled straight back.

“Alex. Tell him to give us two minutes and then call. By that time, Max or Zan will be nowhere near. Ya hear me?”

I could practically see him nodding. “Okay. I love you, mom.”

I clasped the phone to my heart. “Me too, baby. I’m so sor..” the line cut off.

I jumped up.

“Here’s what we’re gonna do. Max, Zan. Leave!”

They looked at me like I was mad. “No.” This time, they were both united.

“Leave!” I shouted at the top of my lungs. “I felt him! He wasn’t scared. Just exhausted and hungry! I’m not waiting for you guys to have a testosterone war here now while my baby’s standing outside. GO!”

They glared at me.

Zan made the first move. “God, woman, why don’t you ever realize what’s good for you?”

I blew him a kiss; so delirious I was with relief. “Out!”

Max’s eyes remained in amber slits.

They took up a position in the rear of the apartment, within easy reach. Just in case. The door was firmly closed.

Isabel stood directly in front of Maria and Michael’s hulking frame covered mine.

The phone rang.

“Yeah?”

"Mom, can we come up?”

“Yeah. You can.”

“Mom, he says it’s very important that Max or…or Zan is nowhere in sight.”

“They aren’t, dammit! Come up!”

He rang off.

The room pulsed with anticipation. I shot a look at the closed door, feeling the sick feeling at the pit of my stomach. Oh god, please…

A knock sounded.

I had visions of Alex lying in a pool of blood, cut down before he could reach me. By the time Zan and Max would make it out of there, we’d be all dead.

But the only thing I felt from Alex was eager anticipation.

Michael nodded at Isabel and went for the door. She had hand extended, ready to blast whomever into their next life.

Maria clutched at her throat, trying to contain herself.

My nerves screamed with impatience as Michael took an inordinately long time to open the door.

It opened with a creak; a short, violent movement..

I ran for the door just as Michel shouted.

Alex flung himself upon me and started to cry for real.

As I clutched him to me, I chanced a look up, eager to see why Maria, Michael and Isabel had gone all quiet.

Max stood there, hair long, unshaved jaw and wearing leather?

We were speechless.

The door started to open; Zan and Max had had enough.

The Max standing in front of me acted rapidly.

He dragged me and Alex out with him and slammed the door shut.

I watched in horror as he sealed the door with crackling, green hands.

The sound of battering came from inside. The sound was nerve-shattering.

I shoved Alex down the stairs. “RUN!!” I screamed, mindless with terror.

“Wait!” he caught a fierce hold of my wrist.

I shrieked louder, trying to get free, screaming with all my strength for Alex to leave.

But he didn’t, he cowered in the stairs, watching me struggle. His hand was raised, flickering with green bolts.

“Liz, it’s ME!”

"Who are you? Lemme go! Shape shifter!” I hollered. The damn place was fucking deserted. In desperation, I screamed my throat out. “Help! HAAALP!!”

“Liz, it’s me!! It’s MAX!” The guy clapped a hand over my mouth.

I whimpered as the door seemed to crack underneath battering from inside.

“Liz, I’m the Max you know. One thing is that I came from the future.”

“You what??” I gaped. “WHAT?”

“I’m Max. I’m a future version of him” he indicated inside.

Dang. That’s a bit unexpected.

tbc...

Sorry for the short part.

Sarah

I was so hard pressed, that I didn't have time to reply to all the questions. Sorry. But THANK YOU - Crystal, I'm a dreamer, Eve, mezz, behrstars, roswellluver, Sweet teeny, mar (welcome back ), Meghan, Stacie and extingman. Love all of you and I think this line sums it all up.

you put it ... oh so well. emagine what 3 max's could ... ~clears throat~ ANYWAY ...

My question exactly.

Recap...

"Who are you? Lemme go! Shape shifter!” I hollered. The damn place was fucking deserted. In desperation, I screamed my throat out. “Help! HAAALP.”

“Liz, it’s me!! It’s MAX!” the guy clapped a hand over my mouth.

I whimpered as the door seemed to crack underneath battering from inside.

“Liz, I’m the Max you know. One thing is that I came from the future.”

“You what??” I gaped. “WHAT?”

“I’m Max. I’m a future version of him” he indicated inside.

Dang. That’s a bit unexpected.


Chapter 23


“Liz!!” Came the roar of a wounded animal. “LIIIIZ!!”

Alex sat a few feet away, whimpering in fright.

I stood there, rooted to the spot. If the man in front of me had danced around waving a crown and a machete in each hand with eight heads and four noses each, I wouldn’t have been more startled.

He put up a hand towards me; speaking softly, rapidly. Urgently.

“Liz, I’m a future version of the man you know as Max. You don’t know me. I know you. I’m assuming you know of our, um…. unreal status but I’m here now and I need your help. You must tell…”

He yanked at my arms, drawing me halfway against him, as he sensed my attention wandering more for the stairs. I wanted to shudder in revulsion. Strangely, that old feeling came flooding back. There was no doubt. He was Max.

“Listen to me! You must convince them that if I come into direct contact with either of them, Zan or Max, they’ll die and I’ll just vanish. All three of us would cease to exist.”

Seeing my disbelief, he went on. “I know this is hard to believe but trust me. I gave up a lot to come back here and save all of them.” The them was obviously the raving people in the other room

“Really?” I couldn’t keep the shock from him.

“Yes, I gave you up.” With those cryptic words, he shoved me towards the door.

Alex came running back. “Mom.”

Clasping him under my arm, desperately afraid of shadows and half-truths, I waited.

He nodded at Alex.

“What’s going on?” I shouted as Alex’s hand started to freakin’ glow. A nightmarish instance of the incidents of the night shimmered before my eyes. Alex burning through barbwire.

“He’s using his…” he took pity on my dumbstruck face. Then that familiar face frowned. “Wait a second…you don’t know anything?”

I clenched my teeth to stop it from chattering. The night air was suddenly freezing. “No, I don’t! So, for the love of god…just tell me!”

He looked highly disturbed. “You don’t know who I am?”

I sighed. This was ridiculous. Max and the rest in the room were battering the daylights out of the door and any second now, it would snap.

“Go.” I turned to this apparition from the future. “They’ll break through any second.”

And why, of all things, I suddenly believe him, eluded me. Maybe, because a feeling of familiarity was sweeping through me like the desert wind. I knew him. I knew this place. There were memories just beyond my irises. I could only just sense it. It was more of a dream than a reality but I knew they were, in fact, more real than my current life. Things between Max and me had always held a shade of difference and this elder version in black leather, with his straggly beard and a few gray hair, was proving me right.

There had always been something about him, a calling to my soul. And I was beginning to understand that calling now. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

He let go of my wrists. I couldn’t help but be startled every time they same eyes, the same mouth turned towards me. I’ve seen Max and Zan, but they were so different, so infinitely opposites that I’d never given their looks a second thought. But here was an older version of Max, a flippin’ future version (if anyone can credit that!) in my face and I was torn.

“Wait...” I called out. He turned, that same expectant look on his face. There were a myriad of questions and I didn’t know where to start. “Wait! You’re from…?”

He smiled that self-deprecating smile I knew so well. “8 years from the future. Tell them that. And add that what I’ve come to say and do, is pretty important to the history of this planet. Tell them it involves the granolith.”

I felt the words swirl. I’d heard these words before, too. Why was my life a deja vu all of a sudden?

The door took a final battering. The hinges were almost torn. He took one look and ran lightly upstairs. Pretty damned spry for a 40 year old. Funny, that.

Alex bit his lip and concentrated on ungluing the door. I was too amazed to say one, hysteric word.

The first one out was Zan. He reeled in shock at seeing us both unharmed.

“Did he touch you?!” was the first question spat out.

“No, Zan...he is...” before I could get further, Zan was kneeling down, looking Alex in the eyes.

A glowing hand passed over his son’s trembling from. What were they? Son, father, godfather, family…what were they all?

“They’re okay.” He said shortly, getting to his feet.

Alex continued to stare at his sire with a lot of trepidation. I could identify. Zan radiated a powerful, killing charisma.

Max emerged. There was queer, hurt look in face. I wanted to reassure him, wanted to tell him that it was ok. But I couldn’t. Not when I didn’t even know what they were.

“That guy was a future version of you, Max.” I looked him in the eye. He was too stunned to talk. “He said that it was important you two didn’t come into direct contact with him. It’d be a metaphysical disaster. And that what he had to say affects the future of Earth. And, he mentioned a freaky thing called granolith.”

I stopped to inhale. The rest of them were frozen with terror. “How...” Max rasped “How does he know that?”

I couldn’t bear the panic going through all of them. “Because he’s you, Max. He’s a... future version of you.”

“How do you know?” it was Zan; he’d kept quite up till now.

“I just…did.” Lord, but that’s hard to say in this crowd!

Before anyone could process what I’d said, a very cryptic look passed between Max and Zan.

“Look,” Maria broke through it sharply. “I don’t care who the hell’s behind all this, but right now, we need answers. I saw, we saw some pretty incredible stuff. You might as well start now.”

Everyone turned to Max. He swallowed, but no word was forthcoming.

Michael sighed. “Fine! We…” he trailed off again.

“Hey,” I said quietly, understanding finally leaking through my brain. “Let’s just take it easy.”

Heads nodded. Relief made the air heady.

I bent down to Alex. Barely covering the ferocity in my tone, I gripped his podgy arms till they turned beet red, like his swollen face. “Don’t you ever, ever run away. You hear me?”

His head wobbled. “I’m sorry, ma. I just….”

I rattled him again. “EVER!”

“I promise…" he started snuffling again.

With effort, I stopped the tears from starting. Time enough later on. The tragedy was far from over. “I’m gonna take him to sleep.” I stared at all of them, landing on Zan. Try as I might, keeping the betrayal from my face was too hard. “You guys can get your stories straight.”

With that, I went in.

Maria followed, albeit a fearful look at all of the, I could almost hear Michael’s heart breaking.
~~/\~~


Two hours later saw me propped up on the tiny couch, trying to hold Alex in my arms, till he slept. Even then, the occasional whimpers of fright were getting to me.

The door opened. It was Zan.

A violent ache started behind my eyelids. Great! Migraine.

“You okay?” he settled down beside me.

“Fine.” was his only response. I was too tired to deal with him.

He didn’t waste time. “I need to know, do you...”

“Please, Zan, for the sake of what we once had, can we not do this right now?” I’d sworn I’d never beg to him again but that was the only thing left.

He retreated. “Okay. Just tell me this. Who would you prefer to hear this from? Me or him?”

I could kill Zan with a smile on my face for asking me this now.

“I...”

“Just tell me the truth. It’s too important for us.”

“There is no us!” I snarled back.

His smile wasn’t pleasant. “Yes, there is. Us, as in Max, Isabel, Michael and me.” he seemed to be encouraged by the pained look in my face. I knew he was. “Not everything in their lives revolves around you, Liz.”

“I’d rather hear it from you.” I shot back.

He looked stunned. “Oh, really?”

“Yes!” I spat back, unaware that Alex was wide awake and not liking my tone. “I can’t take it when he lies to me. You, on the other hand, I’ve had years of practice!”

There was a malicious silence. I knew I’d wounded him. I wanted not to care, but unwilling sympathy was beginning to bubble from my traitorous heart like butter on a hot sidewalk.

“You can hear it from Max.” he replied, distant and cool. “You’ll yammer on a mile about how I’m lying to you and we’ll never get anywhere. And this situation’s too volatile to waste time.” I could almost smell the pleasure he derived from my anger.

“Fine.” I bit out, too tired to argue.

“I’ll ask his Majesty to be right in.” There was unchecked malevolence in his tone.

“Wait…Zan.” I tugged on the muscular bicep that had drawn near face-length as he’d risen from his perch on the floor. “You obviously can’t stand Max and the rest. Why do you protect them?”

I had to know. I just had to. No reason was good enough, but suffice it so say it was needed if I was doing the right thing.

He looked back at me for a long time, eyes dark and mysterious. I was beginning to see it all over again. The opaque shell. If Max had a wall, Zan had a bloody fort with canons loaded and manned on the parapets!

“It’s what I do.” He turned to leave, but I’d kept my hold. The skin was so familiar and yet, so unimaginably distant. He was a stranger, this person I’d shared so many years with.

“Let go, darlin’.” He drawled, his voice flinty. “I can’t go if you’re gonna be holding on.”

“What about us?” I wasn’t willing to let him walk without finishing this one. “If taking care is what you do, then what about your own?”

We made a sorry, pathetic sight – sitting on a shabby couch, Alex scrunched up under my arm and my own face woebegone with the strains of a long day. I’d pictured this scene often. I’d be in control. Not him. I’d be strong and cold. Not weak and begging him. And Alex wouldn’t be looking at him with glazed, wondrous eyes.

“I used you. I thought I wouldn’t have to, but yeah.” His voce was remote. His look was anything but. “I thought I wanted a normal life. I obviously didn’t. Liz,” he stumbled for words, obviously not able to explain it well enough, “it wasn’t meant to be. I had a duty, a job. My calling. If he could do his part, I could do mine.” There was no doubt the he was Max. Then he frowned. “Didn’t you get that damn letter?”

Typical him. He’d run at any given opportunity. Zan was the consummate, most persistent opportunist I’d ever met. So why do I find myself adding sympathy to his every move?

“Here,” I drew up shortly, “You guys get to know each other. I’ll go to Max.”

His jaw locked at my words and an unwilling blush flooded my cheeks.

Alex kissed the hand I’d been clutching. “G’night, mom.”

I ruffled his hair and left quietly, not wanting to see the betrayal on Zan’s face. He’d no right showing anything of the sort to me.
~~/\~~


I came out into the tiny dinette.

Max was sitting there, head in hands, staring at his reflection in a cup of coffee.

“Hey.” I whispered.

He looked up. I flinched back at the self-loathing in his eyes.

“Shouldn’t you rest?”

The anger and the pain were flooding back.

“Max, don’t start.” I warned, sitting down across from him.

He looked old. Lines were etched around his eyes in a crow’s nest. He wasn’t having a field day.

We stared at each other across the white Formica, neither willing to give an inch.

Finally, my eyes dropped, unable to bear the plea in his eyes.

Between them, I’d been cheated, duped, nearly killed and I’d no business wanting to hold him close. None at all.

“Max, what’re you?’

He heaved. “God…”

“WHAT ARE YOU?” I didn’t just shout; it was a roar. Everyone rushed inside. Max held up his palm and the slight door cracked shut like a thunderclap.

I shuddered, nearly hysterical. “See? How the hell did you do that? What did you do? Good God!!”

“Liz, this is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”

“Really?” My bitterness shocked even me. “Why is telling me ALWAYS the hardest thing to do?”

“No.…keeping this from you.”

“Shut up! You LIED to me!” I raged, not caring if I was incoherent.

He didn’t respond. My fury mounted at the way he hung his head.

“You didn’t just lie, you used me! Oh, god…all those visits to NY, that was for what? Surveillance? Playing a part? Pretending? Or was it just to save your own royal hide?”

The words trembled at the ‘royal’. He blanched but didn’t face me. I knew how unfair that statement was. Only the whiteness of his clenched knuckles gave an indication that he was not stone.

“So what was it, Max? Obligation? Or did you just think you could keep playing me like you’ve done all these years?”

At that, he raised his head. I visibly shrank at the white-hot rage emanating from him.

“You, of all people, know the way I feel.”

“I don’t!” I screamed back. “I don’t know what you ever felt for me! I don’t know why you’d keep something like this from me, when you fucking knew I have a son who’s not… not human, for God’s sake!” I spat the last word out, and even in my blind rage, I regretted it. I’d screamed it aloud for everyone in the entire building to hear. Not only Max. Michael, Isabel, Zan. And my son. I wanted to take it back with a vengeance that humbled me.

Unable to bear the dumbfounded shock in his face, I turned towards the window. Mistake. I could see his ashen face on the black glass. If I’d started cutting him up like I’d seen being done to him in that white room, I don’t think it’d hurt this much.

He didn’t, couldn’t talk.

“I never knew you at all.” I started to shout again but all that came out was a broken whisper. My throat had cracked conveniently.

At that, his eyes flashed fire. “Maybe you didn’t.” But his voice held none of it. It was half-defeated.

If I’d never understood the words when love and hate collides, I certainly did now. I didn’t know if I wanted to kiss away the tears I knew he was shedding inside or bitchslap him to wherever he’d come from for making me feel guilty to have the doubts I’d earned to have. Earned at a very high price.

Pride won. “Don’t you dare start!” I shrieked, stalking towards him.

He’d gone to the window and I could see his reflection trying to swallow but failing. I knew that feeling. I knew that hurt. I’d felt it so many times over the years.

“Leave.” he mumbled.

My jaw dropped. “You think I will, huh? When will you get over yourself, Max! If I wanted to leave, you can’t do a damn thing to stop me and you will NOT, hear me, not, order me around like I’m your slave!”

The savage sound of the glass breaking took all raging shouts out of my mouth. The kitchen pane shattered, blood dripping down Max’s tight fist.

I was ashamed at my first thought. I‘d half expected it to be green.

“Get something straight!” He approached, fury written in every proud line of him. I’d never seen him look so beautiful. “I DO NOT order people around. That’s number one. Second, you’re absolutely right when you say you never knew me at all! Every word the perfect Ms. Parker says is undoubtedly true.” The passionate venom in his tone shook me. He didn’t care. “Who am I to say otherwise?” His voice broke on the I.

I latched on to a chair for support. His nostrils flared, trying to control the rage that was getting out of hand. The night hadn’t been too kind to us.

“You never knew me at all. Not if you believe what you’ve said.” He repeated.

“I don’t know what to believe, Max! Can you honestly tell me that whatever that went down today is new to you? That you’ve never been exposed to these conditions? That the way you’ve acted all this years was not to preserve and protect your…secret? That you’ve never, in your life, known it was like to be a king? That this is not your life at all??” I detested the tremble in my voice but it was automatic. “Can you look me in the eye and tell me that?”

The harsh demand was unnecessary; he’d hung his head again.

“Well, it’s new to me. It’s beyond new; it’s unbelievable.” I enunciated every word carefully, willing him to feel the pain behind every syllable. “Funny, that you think I know you.”

I waited till the tears choking me receded. “And you wanted to me to tell you every detail of my life.” Another malicious snort escaped before I could smother it. Inhaling deeply, “Did I tell you about those things I saw inside you?”

He didn’t look up, didn’t even breathe.

“Let me ask you something. It obviously works both ways. How much did you see? Was it an interrogation? Did you rape me of my memories, my dreams, for information? Did it give you some semblance of satisfaction to see how thoroughly I’d bought all your filthy lies?”

I heaved for air and resumed shouting. “Between you and him, I’ve nothing left! ”

I’d honestly not thought about saying such ugly words, but nothing would stay down. I was beyond coherence, beyond control. My life had been a lie for 16 years. I wasn’t about to be coherent.

He snapped.

“I saw hell.” said Max, his voice ice. “I saw everything you wanted me to see. Yes, among my many qualities, is one to read memories…” That awful, deprecating, humble voice was back. I shrank further. “Yes, all your fantasies, all your dreams, all your heartache. I saw everything. And let me tell you, it wasn’t pleasant. It was hell knowing that you’d painstakingly woven goddamned dreams! ”

I was too stunned to be angry. “What’re you saying?”

He checked the words that were about to get out. “I didn’t mean to read your mind. It just…happened. I’m sorry.” The meek ‘sorry’ rent my soul. And then he went the extra mile. “People around here think I’m God. I’m just….well, trying be human. I make mistakes. It wasn’t intentional.”

Then the reality of what he was saying broke over me. He’d seen all of it! All of my plans, my concoctions to snare him, all those childish pranks to make him notice. All the tears I’d shed the day I’d left Roswell.

My blood turned ice water.

A horrified tear slipped out before I could scrub it off my face and off my system. “Now that you’ve taken the last shred of my pride, I hope you’re happy.” I told him, matching his humble tone, reveling in the abject despair in his face.

I went to the door. “Please unlock it.” My tone was till hushed, still full of obeisance. He shuddered in revulsion. Good! Let him hurt!

“Liz.”

“Let go, Max. You’ve done enough.”

Max brushed past me. I practically threw myself into the stove to avoid a collision. Body contact was death to all the fury I’d built up. I’d inhale his scent and I’d forget that he’d deceived me so badly.

I stared in wonder as he threw the door open. Self-hatred, and something else I could only grasp as similar to the last movement of a cornered, wounded animal, was bold in his face. He didn’t meet my eyes. That look they’d all worn when we’d started 3rd grade was back. Michael had been prone to violence, Max to quiet, torturous runs and Isabel to a vulnerable snobbery.

As I went past him, I couldn’t help but wonder that this was them to the core, their very marrow and they’d never shrank from making it known. I knew them all right. I’d just forgotten that. Too late now, I thought, as Max’s broad back slumped.

My heart was a bloody carcass thumping weakly in my chest cavity. I wanted to stop the ache.

I never knew you at all.

No, you didn’t.

The tears I’d managed to keep at bay refused to say down any longer, I watched in dismay as the world swam in a bleary havoc of pain. God, why me again?


Love,
Sarah

Chapter 24

I don’t remember how long I stood in the doorway outside the room Zan and Alex occupied.

As the initial waves of trauma receded, I was almost grateful for the opportunity Zan gave me to stop worrying about Alex. I wanted to think. I wanted to heal.

But Max wouldn’t let me.

I don’t recall how long I paced up and down the dingy hall, but it took 16 steps to reach one end, 32 in a revolution. The stuff is imprinted on my soles, no pun intended.

I used different formulae in my head, fitting in equations. Nothing made sense but I’m grateful for the rationality that finally prevailed.

And I thought about everything Max had said, every piece of information I’d gotten from his revelations. And I had no time, either. A future version of him was upstairs, being grilled to death by Michael and Isabel. I ached to see him. The future version, I mean. Instinct, stronger than reason was wailing in my head that he knew me best. That the life I’ve led was not my life at all. I’d been acting out a part in a play. There was more to Liz Parker, whoever she was and that Max Evans was more than just a friend, more than just a lover.

And I thought about my Max. There was so much to think of, to resent, but underneath the rubble, I was beginning to understand his reasons.

It’d always sting that he’d never told me, lied to me, probably even used me unconsciously or not, for a long time. Even knowing all that, my head had started accepting what my heart had. I could almost understand. Because if it had been me, I don’t think I’d have acted much differently.

The ultimate question that checkmated all the rage, all the pain, and all the doubts was this - Why? Why would he put everything in the line when he didn’t have to? After I left Roswell, it should’ve been the end of Maxwell and Elizabeth. It hadn’t. It’d been just the start.

People don’t give so much of themselves, so selflessly if they didn’t care. Max might’ve hidden his identity from me. He might’ve lied and manipulated me. But none of that had been overboard to loving me in a way that no one else had, secretly or not.

He’d pretty much brought up Alex by himself, during those early days. He’d influenced him, guided him, sheltered him. I couldn’t be blind to that, even though I resent being kept in the dark. And he’d done that unasked. He’d put all his stakes out there for us.

Now, bits of information fit in the jigsaw, being just a little clearer. He’d given up all of his pride, all of self-esteem to be humbled by the rest of them. Them being his family and now I can see it’s more than that – his subjects, if you’d have it, time and again, if only to make sure we were okay. I knew without a doubt, that if in fact, the problem with Alex had developed complications, he wouldn’t have hesitated to blurt it all out.

And in a weird sense, even though I’d told him otherwise, I could perfectly understand his reasons for keeping it a secret. Not just because it’s such a huge, life-shattering revelation, but also that he’d had to keep quiet when his life had been torn asunder. He’d watched as the world had left him behind and he hadn’t been given the right to open up then. So why do it now? All those hellish years would be for nothing. He’d curbed himself in order to fulfill whatever destiny that had been pre-ordained by his past. He was the one who had to clench his teeth and bear it all; he was the one who’d been cut open like an animal – not me. And not Zan. If nothing else, I’d always respected Max’s strength. Breaking his own tenets after suffering the consequences was not only unthinkable, it was impossible. I’d have called it selfish, but to my chagrin, it was more human than the latter.

It would take time to heal the scars and I hadn’t given it to him when I’d started ranting and raving about letting me in. But having been rudely awakened to such incredible news that he was an alien king, I was beginning to see that while I was right in demanding he let me in, I’d no right to treat his sufferings like they didn’t matter.

The more the thoughts pervaded, the more confident I became. I needed to know the whole deal if I wanted to fight for him. And even after all this, I knew, without a shade of doubt, I would. I’d fight to the end.

A memory, so fitting, came flooding back.

It was near the end. I’d come home to find Zan gone again. That was the last tine he’d go. In fact, he’d never returned till now.

Max had been sitting in the dark. He’d gotten to his feet, still very much aware of courtesy.

“What brings you here?”

“Liz, about Zan.”

“Yes,” I’d sighed, knowing what was to come. “He’s gone again. I don’t know when he’ll be back.”

Max had sighed, a long deep sigh. “I see. Can I?” he gestured towards the couch. It was late. I knew he was here for another surveillance.

“Why don’t you ever tell me the truth, Max? What do you do?”

He’d fidgeted. “Liz…”

“Fine, fine.” And that was the start of the end. I’d given up on all of them that day. “Let me know if he’s dead, or in jail or whatever.”

“Come on! Why’d he be in jail?”

‘I don’t know, Max! Isn’t that the whole point? I don’t know!”

He’d looked at me with such feeling that I’d ran into the kitchen, mumbling about something to eat.

“Can I get you anything?”

He’d smiled; an old smile he’d bestow on me, sitting on booth 6. “Alien Blast?”

We’d laughed. The romance of the night had dispelled after that.

And then we’d been quiet. The TV was turned on, when I came in to say good night.

“Know what? I could use a stiff drink today.”

He’d glanced at me, an odd look coming across his face. “Is something wrong? I thought...I thought you were used to this by now.”

And of course, I’d had to say all the wrong things. “I’ll never get used to it. What is this life anyway? It’s like I’ve a fucking roommate. Oh yeah...” I‘d been drunk by then, having gulped down a quarter of the brandy we’d kept locked up. “Fucking roommate. Well,” I’d slurred, looking at him with bleary eyes. He looked like someone walking on shattered glass. “Well, we’re that, too. Maybe, that’s all we are.”

He hadn’t talked, just kept a firm hold of my hand.

“Do you know what I mean, Max?”

He’d swallowed hard. “I suppose I do. God, Liz...”

“Shhh...” I’d shushed him. That was the first time I’d touched his lips. Maybe I was too drunk or too much in denial. They’d literally trembled beneath my fingertips. “God won’t help me. I’m pretty hopeless.”

“No, you’re not! What happened to you? You’ve been through much worse! You’ve never…never gone to pieces like this!”

The harsh words were meant to cut. And they did. I wanted to shriek at him that I’d been cheated out of happiness. That every time Zan disappeared and he came in his place, the loneliness didn’t decrease; it just grew. That, every time Max revealed a little more of his soul to me, somewhere, in the recesses of my heart, something died quietly. I didn’t need to be cared for by a stranger when my own husband wouldn’t take the trouble. That, now, of all times, I didn’t want to put up with second best.

Then his voice had gentled. “And you’re saying stuff you’ve never confessed before. Is it really that bad?” I’d gripped his fingers. The tears had started. Gentle fingers had brushed them away. “If it is, then maybe you should consider coming back to Roswell.”

“Can I? After everything that has happened? I don’t want to be alone anymore.”

He’d leaned over to pull me in. “You have me. You’ll have Maria. Your folks. Everyone but Zan. Would that…would that be so bad?”

I knew that if I’d been sober, he’d have never even uttered such words. In the lull of the alcohol and late night sounds, we’d both been drugged into revealing our jealously guarded thoughts. We’d dreamt it everyday, imagined it happening but never dared to voice it.

And then I’d shattered all of it.

“I can’t, Max. I’m pregnant.”

To the end of my days, I wouldn’t forget his face.

Something stirred. I woke with a start. I’d been dreaming again. I turned around. Max was standing in the doorway. I’d never realized when I’d slumped down against the wall.
He extended a hand hesitantly, wary if I’d be repulsed.

I grabbed a hold. He drew me up.
We were so close. But the distance could’ve been wider than a black hole.

"I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize, goddammit!” He said through clenched teeth. “Don’t make this harder on me.”

I nodded, feeling the tension rise in my stomach again. “Let’s start over. From the beginning. Tell me.”

The simple plea was all it took. I wasn’t prepared for the truth.
~~/\~~

We faced each other on the dinette. Tension flickered in and out of thin air.

“So…”

He glared at the tabletop, unsure where to start. “So.”

“Max!”

“Fine, fine!’ A ghost of a smirk crossed his face but faded at my black scowl.

We waited another full 15 minutes before the words would come. I’d no intentions on making this easy for him.

“Aw, Liz...” he whined, seeing my level stare.

“No aw Liz. I want answers. And I want them NOW.”

“I wish I knew where to start. This is not easy.” He’d grown defensive again.

“Start with Alex.”

He looked at me pleadingly. “I’d have done my best to make sure he was okay. Tell me you still believe that.”

I sighed. This is hard stuff. “Max, I know you love him and I want to believe that you’d have helped him through.” At my ‘want to believe’ his eyes had started sparking. I hastened to continue. Another argument and we’d never get it done. “But is it really about him? Is Alex in any real danger? Dying, chronic illness?” I wanted to scream at the words that were wending their way out patiently. So unfair.

He sighed. “Not, he’s not dying. He’s not sick either. He’s just…”

I sensed that this was it. Whatever his secret was, this was it. “He’s what?”

Max’s voice was quiet. “He’s evolving.”

“Evolving into what?” I damned the fearful quiver in my tone.

“Into one of us. It’s his time.”

TIME? My lungs ballooned at the copious amount of air I breathed in. “Ti…time?”

He took my white-knuckled hands in his, trying to impart some semblance of faith. “Liz, you know we were orphans.”

I nodded.

“Well, the Evans didn’t just find us out in the desert because it was a happy coincidence. Something happened that night.” He watched me like a hawk.

I swallowed the terror in my throat. This was Max. I knew him. Yeah, sure. “What happened?”

“Um, we were born that night. This happened in 1984.”

“198….? What? No! You’re my age, for god’s sake!” Understanding broke over me. “You mean…you’re a…a time traveler? Is that why another you was able to come back from the future? Is that it?”

The scientist in my brain hadn’t been activated yet. I was content to believe that this was real. Because the things I’d seen had no explanations.

“No…not exactly.”

"Then what?”

He looked me dead in the eye. “Remember the 1947 crash?”

Indignant laughter burst out of my throat before I could stop. “Oh, please!”

“I’m not kidding.”

“No, you’re not. God, would it kill you to tell me the truth for once? You don’t have to add gullible to all my other ….qualities!” I sneered, hating him for thinking me a fool.

“I don’t, all right!” He shouted at the top pf his lungs, putting me effectively back to my place.

“Well?” I barked as he subdued.

“Liz, I know this sounds ridiculous, but trust me, you won’t consider it to be so stupid if you were created out of something like this.”

I felt bad and shut up.

He started toying with his chair, growing more and more nervous every second. “Well, the 1947 crash? It was real. The Government cleaned it up but it was real.”

The words shook loose something from some hidden part in me. Another of those memory flashes rose in me.

My Grandma took this picture right before the government cleans it up.
Don’t show it to anyone.

I kept the urge to roll my eyes to myself. Maybe it was true. How would I know otherwise?

“And how do I know this? Because…" he fell silent at my arched eyebrows and disbelieving look. “Because I was in it….”

The coffee pot fell from my numb hand. Max winced at the racket it made in the dead of the night.

I was too stunned to realize it.

“What?”

He started babbling. “You know Taken? The mystery of the Roswell crash? The UFO stories? Well, most of them are bogus but this really happened. Liz…aliens exist.”

I checked the flip retort about to break lose. “And you’re saying what? You’ve been abducted by aliens?”

Growing horror started establishing reasoning in my head. Maybe all those horror stories about alien abduction were true. Didn’t Brody Davis claim to be one? That nut who’d bought the UFO Centre? Maybe…maybe there really was this big conspiracy.

He looked at me, a hysterical look settling in. “I’m a cat, not the canary?”

Animals??

“I don’t understand.” I’m far from dense, but this situation has me tongue-tied. “You’re saying you were abducted?’ I fought back another ridiculous chuckle. This is serious, dammit! “Or wait! Maybe it was your folks, or something! After all, then how would Zan get it? And is that why Alex has such complications? It’s genetic, isn’t it?” Pleased with my own prowess, I smiled at him.

He rolled his eyes. “This is the part you’re not gonna believe. I wasn’t abducted. I…I…”

“Then what?” God damn him for turning into a stuttering fool now!

“The reason I know the crash was real, is because I was in it. I’m not from around here.”

“Where’re you from?” It was no time for hysterics, so I kept my voice as level as I possibly could. I didn’t succeed.

He raised a finger towards the heavens. Comprehension flooded me in terrifying, chilling waves. This was worse than I’d thought.

“I’m what you call,” he groped around for words, “not of this Earth. As it were.”

“You’re…??” I stuttered this time, trying to find a word.

“Um, yeah…I’m an alien. So is Zan. So are Michael and Isabel. So is Alex.”

I passed clean out.


Sorry for the short part.
Sarah

First off, extremely sorry for the delay. Somehow, the file I'd saved this fic in got totally bungled and I didn't want to post yet another WIP, lol, so I tried to recover it. And recover I did. Almost all the parts I'd written out are there, so updates should be coming in quite fast.

Reposting Chapter 25, since it got eaten up in the server crash.


Chapter 25


By the time I came to, all of them were there. All except Maria and Michael.

“Sorry.” I muttered, face beet red. It was mortifying knowing I’d passed out; their obscene solicitousness was making it worse.

The only person who still smirked was Zan.

“What is it?” I growled.

“You getting knocked off your feet.” He didn’t add ‘by Max’ but his tone had shouted it out. I turned redder.

At that instant, a prolonged wail broke lose. Maria. I jumped to my feet but Max had a firm hold of my shirt. “Give them some time.”

Voices were audible now. They were not pleasant. A lot of yelling echoed dimly around the room, lending gray to their faces.

“You….!” Maria shrilled.

The door burst open as Maria raced out. Taking one look, she made a flying leap into my arms. “Oh, my God…”

“Shhh....” I rubbed her back. Michael was pacing up and down the far end of the room, looking violent.

Max went after him.

“Maria, take Alex and go back to sleep. I’ll be right in.”

There was disbelief and paranoia written all over her face. “Are you…” she faltered at Isabel and Zan’s forced arrogance, “are you okay?”

“Of course I am! Jeez, Ria, these are our friends.” I hissed in her ear. Although I’ve had my moments of paranoia too.

She stepped back, spine straight. “No, Liz. If they were friends, we wouldn’t be finding this out 20 years later.”

I couldn’t help myself; the words had a volition all their own. “And did it occur to you that their reasons were justified? For God’s sake, look at us! We don’t even believe them!”

Maria turned away and I felt contrite. “G’night, Liz. Just remember something. By always taking his side, you don’t even know where you stand anymore.”

Isabel stopped her, eyes glowing with rage. “What does that mean?” she spat out.

Maria glared right back at her. “Liz never made excuses for lies before. Now, she’s not just accepting them, she’s making them up, too. That’s what I meant.”

Isabel let her go without another word.

Zan’s smirk lost its edge for all of a second. “And now that we’ve hashed it all out, shall you be indulging in cheese flicks from time to time?”

“You’re not funny, Zan.”

“Oh, no?”

“No.” I gritted out.

Isabel made an impatient gesture. “Please! Okay,” she turned to me. “Let‘s start with Future Max.”

“What about him?"

“It’s only fair that you know everything," she replied, eyes downcast, but Zan broke through. “Lemme handle her, Iz.”

Iz? That’s news.

Isabel left without a backward glance.

"Well?"

He took a hold of my elbow and started towards the door.

Startled, I glanced up. His face was inscrutable. “Zan?”

“You can hear it from him.” With that, I was pushed none too gently out the door.

Son of an alien bitch.

I trudged up, still a little unsure how to act with this Max who seemed to know me so well.

He turned towards me with a bright smile. “Hey”

“Hi” I replied warily.

“How’s the boy?”

“Fine.” I sighed as we fell quiet. “Um...can we just get this over with?’

“They really didn’t tell you?” There was disbelief clear in his voice.

I shook my head, feeling the anger that was so justified, spilling back to life. “No, they didn’t.”

“Tell me this. Did I...Max, heal you?”

“Heal?” My voice shrilled loud enough to wake the dead.

He winced. “Not so loud. Well, I guess he didn’t.”

“No… no.” I backed off a few steps.

“Liz, you need to know something. This is a pact that we’d made – Michael, Isabel and me- that we’d never tell anyone. I broke it. In September 1999, I broke it publicly and they’ve never forgiven me for it. Do you know why? Because it led the government right to us. I’ve spent practically my life trying to run away and out of sight, but it hasn’t been easy. Not on any of us.”

“I see.” They were outlaws?

“What did you do?’ I asked him, sure that it involved me. “Why did you take such a risk?”

He smiled and suddenly, I felt like I was back in West Roswell high, in the old music room, bathed in sunlight and watching a girl fall in love with a boy. It was you.

“It was you.”

And then I smiled, because now I knew. Now, I knew everything. “I know.”

He started from scratch. What happened and what succeeded the whole debacle. He told me all about his Liz, her love for him, her loyalty and her devotion that had nearly destroyed them, all to keep him safe. And that he’d repaid her by lying, sleeping with the enemy and conceiving a future heir to the throne of Antar. I’d have laughed but I couldn’t. The story was true.

“And even in the midst of all that, I’d never stopped believing in us. We were indestructible, unstoppable. Soul mates.”

I bowed my head. To think that Max and I had indeed shared such a life was not only shattering, it was downright cruel to be tossed in my face.

“And you came back, why? To rub it in?”

He laughed. It gave me such a warm, fuzzy feeling. “Yeah, right. I came back just to let you know what you’ve been missing.”

I glowered, all warmth banished. “ I do know.”

Silence.

“Why’re you telling me all this?” Instinct stronger than logic was shrieking that he wasn’t doing this to me without having some other agenda.

“Because I wanted you to know. I regretted not telling my Liz what she meant to me.”

“You didn’t tell her? You married her! Me. Married me.” Gosh, that sounds freaky. Married without me even knowing.

“I did. Often. Not sure if she believed me, though.”

“Look, I know myself. As ridiculous as it sounds, I can tell you without hearing any part of your past; that she knew, too. Wanna know why? Cuz even though Max kept this from me, I knew how he felt. And you not only told her, you gave up everything for her. Trust me, she knows.”

He smiled again; a wistful, painful smile. “And she gave up everything for me.”

I leaned back, satisfied. I was happy knowing that I’d given everything for a man I loved with all my soul.

“So, what is all this? I mean, what are you people? Kings? Queens? Rulers?”

He stiffened. “That’s a bunch of crap. We’re stuck on earth. There’s no point carping about a stupid destiny. It just messes with everything.”

“You mean Tess. Max’s destiny.”

His eyes glowed with silent worship. I looked about nervously. “You…” he trailed off. An odd jolt racked me. Then the glow dimmed. “I should let him say it. It’s what he’s been wanting to for years.”

“You didn’t propose, did you?” My breathing hitched.

He scowled. “I wish I had, at that time. That was my biggest mistake. Letting you go that day.”

I waited him to expand, but he didn’t.

“You know what’s funny?” I broke through the silence. He glanced up from perusing my face.

“What?”

“That we’re supposed to belong together, and yet look at the stuff we’d had to face.” He looked surprised, so I clarified. “Destinies, dead spouses, responsibilities, betrayal, secrets, children out of and in wedlock. Loyalty.” I raised my eyes to his. “Isn’t it funny?”

“Incredibly” he mumbled, looking lost in thought. “You missed something, though.”

“What is that?”

He literally shook. I looked around in alarm. Was he having a heart attack?

“The Special unit, Liz. They had you. Why do you think I came back?”

Oh, sweet god.
~~\/~~

“Does Max know?” I said the first thing that came to mind.

“Yes, I told Isabel and Michael. I just didn’t know that this timeline would be so different. I made a mistake.” There was a world of pain in him.

“So, what exactly would this have accomplished? You’d came back in your own time and do…what?’

“I’d kill those bastard Burns and Cal. I let them go. I should’ve listened to Mike.”

“So, you’re saying that now, eight years ago from your timeline, you were…”

“We came into contact with Cal Langley after taking off after graduation. He was supposed to be our guardian. He was supposed to lead us to safety. Sold us out, the slimy traitor that he was. And as it were, it was an ambush. Kyle was killed, so was Maria. Michael told me to take them out. I had the chance and I didn’t.”

“So, eight years down the line, they repaid the favor?” it was more of a statement. Enhanced by his growl.

Maria and Kyle dead. The words wouldn’t come. Suddenly, I had to know. Maybe… “Max, is…was...Alex alive?”

His lips trembled slightly. “That was our biggest mistake. Tess killed Alex.”

The world went black as rage, unlike any other took a mad hold of me. “Tess?”

“She was allied with Khivar. He’s the one who took my throne. There was a coup de etat.” He sounded dispassionate about the whole thing, as if the mere mention of the word ‘realm’ angered him.

“So, in all possibilities, the same thing is happening to Max. He’s a king and there’s someone on his throne.”

Future Max laughed rather crudely. “Yes. It amazes me no end what that damn word did to all of us. We gave up on the best things of our soddy lives because of it! Unbelievable!”

“What?”

“Absolute power corrupts absolutely, my love. Even aliens.” And he was back to smiling.

“I see.” I actually didn’t. if the throne was so damn worthless, then why did my Max and Zan worry incessantly about it? No doubt their little forays were on its sorry behalf. No doubt that all that distance, that holier-than-thou, touch-me-not bullshit was on its behest. So why say it’s all in vain?

And then it hit me. He was saying, actually saying, that I, Liz Parker, was more than the throne of a fucking planet.

“I…see.” New respect lit my voice and he nodded.

“I learnt the lesson too late.”

“Tell me something. Where was Zan in your timeline?”

He clipped back inaudibly.

“Sorry?”

“He was dead. Killed by Lonnie and Rath.”

“WHAT?”

He looked up, as if trying to gauge my feelings for the latter. “That was the most unexpected thing I’ve seen in this timeline.” He remarked, studying my scarlet face. “Second only to the fact that my future self actually permitted this nonsense.”

“I’m not your or his subject! You don’t ‘permit’ anything, geddit?”

He roared with laughter. “Did it to a T, my dear.”

“Huh?”

“The royalty stuff.” He made a mock bow. “Suits you real fine.”

“Shut up.” I huffed, not enjoying being laughed at. He was purple with chortling. “What do you mean, he was dead? Did they come to Roswell, or did you go to New York?”

“I did. I got my first taste of being a ruler. Negotiations.” He sighed wryly. “Not much to be all cut up about. And i mean that literally. Cut up, that is.”

“Look, I need to get back. What do you want me to tell them?”

He reached out, took my hand. A feeling, so fleetingly familiar, flew through my stomach.

“I already told Michael and Isabel what to do, what to tell Max. He is the only one who’ll have the opportunity to take Burns out. Cal is easier. You know, the weird thing is that even though the circumstances of this time period is so very different from mine, some things just didn’t change. Thank God for that.” He exhaled, running a hand through his ponytail.

I studied him. He looked the way Max would, with a little more exposure to the elements. Everything, but the long hair.

“Yeah, I suppose your purpose is served.”

He grinned at me. “You sound suspicious of my motives and rightly so. If you have a few more minutes, I’ll tell you another joke.”

He was infectious. “Go ahead.”

Chuckling at some morbid anecdote, he settled himself easier on the chair. “When I was 17, another future version of me came back to my time. He was 30. According to Liz, he came to her with a solemn request to end things between us, put me together with Tess and basically to suffer silently while we, the Royal Four, stay together and apparently save the earth.” He grinned crookedly at my stunned face. “What do you think? Isn’t that freaky?"

‘I’ll tell you what’s really funny.” I snapped back, wanting to wipe the anguish in his eyes, despite the jests. He’d been hurt badly over it and than plan had borne no fruits at all. No need to reopen wounds that’d never heal.

"What could be funnier than what I’d told you? If you must know, I hold these little sojourns into timelines with more than a little contempt, seeing how one such intrusion nearly destroyed my life. How incredibly ironic, I’m now one of them.”

He smiled bitterly. I rushed on, not letting the moment linger. It was best left unsaid.

“All my life, I’ve waited for Max to offer something more than politeness. And now there’s not one, not two, but THREE freakin’ versions of him running around, all proclaiming undying love. I find that a darn sight funnier.”

A troubled look entered the jade depths. “Don’t count on it. He has responsibilities. I’d given up on the whole crown thing before graduation. He’d dealt with it all these years; years I’d spent running. Maybe, maybe there is more to it than what I’d known.”

He paused to let it sink in. “After all, the time when Cal betrayed me, the bastard no reason to. I’d given all of it up. In exile, so to speak. Why turn us in? Maybe he’d known something that we hadn’t. Something that your Max is obviously aware of.” He rose from the seat in excitement. “By god, that explains the attack the Skins planned. It all fits. There must be something that this timeline knows that mine didn’t.”

I rose, too. That’s all I need. Max to turn all kingly on me. “I’ll tell them.”

He caught my arm as I pushed past him. As familiar as he was, as infinitely dear, he didn’t arouse any ardor in me. I looked at him in surprise and not a little bit of archness.

“Your face.”

“Oh.” The cuts and welts must have swelled to monstrous proportions. “I’ll put some ice on.”

He winced. “Please. I don’t…I don’t want to see you like this.”

“Whatcha gonna do?”

He went a little red. A 40-something man blushing? “I’ll do what I’ve did the first time. Maybe you’ll get a glimpse of what my life really was.”

He stared into my eyes and I was falling again into his fathomless amber eyes.

Let’s just keep running. you and me. Away for here, away from everything. I see it all so clearly now.

Max, stop. You…you're drunk.

You’re my dream girl, Liz.

I hear the lullaby, the whirling overhead lights flickering down on us like sheer cut crystals. I feel the magic of the moment.

What if I believe you tonight?

Then we live happily ever after.

The sappiness of his smile is overshadowed only by his glowing eyes.

And what about tomorrow? When you go back to realizing who you really are and all your fantasies go away?

Eyes lock. The whirling, the noise, everything stops. The magic grows.

I’ll still have you.

This could never be normal, max.

He brushes past. Fireworks explode from lampposts. And I am no match for the hope in his face.

What’s so great about normal?

I gasped. Max just held my face tighter and concentrated.

What’re you doing here, max?

Well, I’ve orders form my home planet to take over the Earth.

Coquettish, challenging look. The air is fraught with newly awakened passion.

Besides that.

So, we’re friends?

The disappointment is palpable. The chemistry is tangible. I could almost touch it.

Yeah. We’re… friends.

A slow tingle of insanity prevails.

Just friends?

More coyness, increase in the temperature.

Yeah. Just friends.

And then it’s madness. Sheer heaven; blissful madness. He pushes me up to the fryer, pushing between my legs, hands traveling everywhere as we continue to devour each other. A vision of a planet spinning in orbit and then everything explodes in fireburst. Literally so.

“Oh!” I gasped, feeling the explosion pretty deeply. “You did that?”

He grinned, happy with his prowess. “I did. Thought it was just repayment. For all the wet dreams torturing me for that entire year. Years, actually.”

I blushed.

And then he showed me more. How we’d first connected. Our first kiss. The leap of faith off the bridge. The night he’d found me in bed with Kyle. The day Alex died. The real reason why he needed to kill Jennifer Coleman in Las Cruces. My jail time. His failure to heal me. The day Max’s son returned. Our wedding. Our first night. Our fights – full of vitriolic passion. The reunions when he came back after missions, successful and failed alike. My capture.

I was floored. The emotions I’d felt all these years had paled into nothingness compared to what they’d felt for each other. What they had felt because of each other.

“Wow…” I breathed, trying to take it all in. “it’s like…my life didn’t even start.”

He tucked a piece of hair beyond my ear. His hand lingered, as if trying to memorize the texture. I felt him, knowing that in few short hours he’d cease to exist. An era, a life would end. It would be the end of Max and Liz in their purest form, no matter how many future versions came back.

A pang went through me. “Will you ever see her again?”

He shook his head. “She is…dead. She was used as bait during the exchange. I’d have given myself to them readily if they’d just kept their word not to harm her.”

“So, your point in coming back to this timeline was to…”

“To make sure Max did what was right. Being compassionate is useless when your own dies. And dies painfully.”

“Did you have children?”

He was rueful again. “No. Our biggest regret. She’d always wanted a child. The fact that I‘d impregnated Tess played an added part. Until we had a child of our own, nothing would soothe that one demon in Liz. But due to her changes, her reproductive system apparently got the worst of it. We were never able to have a child.”

I felt pity. I wanted her to now what it was like to have Max’s child. I wanted her to know what had preceded it. At least one of us should’ve had that experience.

“Max, I have to go now.”

He kissed me gently. A final squeeze and he let go. “Goodbye, Liz.”

I stared back, not wanting to break away. This man knew me so well. At the same time, shame ate away at me. He was someone else’s husband. Even if she was dead and a future version of me. These loving looks belonged to her. Not me.

“Go on. Just give him time.”

I smiled back. “I know.”

The door closed behind me gently. I leaned back. What a night.


I'll be right back with the next part.

Sarah

Okies...

Chapter 26.

I came down slowly, holding on to the rickety banister. I felt so tired. So bloody tired.

“Hey.” Zan emerged form the shadows. “How’d it go?”

“Can you not skulk in the dark like some thief?” I shot back “You nearly gave me a heart attack!”

He bowed low. “As you wish.”

“Stop it.’ I muttered ungraciously. “You’re not helping.”

“I never did.” He confessed shamelessly.

“Too true.” Another glare and I subsided. “Sorry.’ His eyebrows went sky-high. “It’s been a really, really bad day.”

He accepted with a regal incline of his head. The more I thought of it, the more it made sense. He was definitely more royal than Max. Max had no such gestures, no such arrogance. It almost seemed cruel that Zan wouldn’t get what he obviously coveted. And Max wouldn’t get what he so obviously wanted.

"So, you’re an alien? From Antar?” I asked, settling in the stairs above him.

“Yeah.” He smiled at my sarcasm. “I am. The King’s dupe, no less.”

“Tell me something, Zan.” I measured each word. “When did you know all this?”

He put a booted feet next to me, leaned forward. Instinctively, I shrank back. I knew this. Zan was being charming and he was not charming unless he wanted something. And I had a sneaking suspicion I knew what he wanted.

“It’s hard to miss when you burst out of a goddamned pod. You know for sure you’re not born to a woman.”

I scowled and he started laughing again. “C’mon, Liz. You’re too old and too experienced to be blushing at my crudity.”

“First, I’ll never be experienced enough for your crudity, as you put it. Even though, God knows, I’ve heard enough of them. Second, don’t change the subject.”

"Fine.” He wiped the twisted grin off his face. “We were dumped in the sewers. By none other than Cal Langley himself.”

At that name, my pulse started thundering again. This man had killed all of us.

He went on, unaware of my distress. “From then on, we built a life for ourselves. We knew what we had to do.”

“How?”

“He told us some of it and I drew my own conclusions. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that this was self-defense."

“What was?"

He waved a hand impatiently, already bored. “The whole dupe shit. The eight pods. We are, whatchucallit, backups. Back ups of our revered leader and his family.” The irony wasn’t lost on me.

“So all this time, you spent securing them? Is that what you do?”

He stared at me a while. “Yes. That’s what I do. We went to Roswell when we were 17. From then on, it was all about protection.”

“Why not yourselves?” I asked, still a little awed by his generosity. That outburst in the street he’d had with Max, proved beyond doubt that they weren’t really friendly. It also seemed like it’d been a first. Maybe Max was more of a king than what I’d known.

“Protecting them naturally covered our hides. It wasn’t completely above helping myself, if that’s what surprised you.”

"Where’s Lonnie and Rath? And who was Tess’s dupe?"

"Lonnie is in California. She’s in some two-bit cheese flicks. You wouldn’t recognize her. Rath is dead. I haven’t seen Ava after we first came to Roswell. She never came, you know.” And he offered nothing else.

“Did you kill Rath?” I made a statement, not a question.

“Of course. The cocky bastard was getting to be too much, even for me.”

I gulped. How heartless was Zan if he killed at whim? Even his own brother.

He read my shock accurately. His tone gentled but there was steel underneath. I wanted to cover my ears.

“He was trying to kill Max. It was an ambush. I did what I had to do.”

I suppressed the initial gasp with some success but my mind reeled. His voice didn’t reveal any of the pain it must’ve inflicted, to kill a person he’d shared his life with. No matter what their general attitude was, underneath all that bluster - they’d all been close. Something like Us versus Them.

“I’m sorry.” I whispered, not knowing what else to say.

His callused hand reached out, touched my hair. “Don’t be. He’d have done it himself.”

“What?”

“Rath and Lonnie lived for the moment they’d go back. They thought we were the Royal Four. It crushed them when they found out they were wrong. Lonnie recovered after a lot of hassle, but Rath…he wasn’t willing to live an ordinary life, especially protecting them.”

“You didn’t want an ordinary life, either.”

His face darkened. “No, I didn’t.”

Before I could ask, he replied. “You think I was generous? That it was out fo the goodness of my heart? I hate to disappoint you, but it wasn’t like that. I used them, broke them, traded on them. I even stole something from him.”

He didn’t say what. He didn’t have to. There was long silence. After a while, he raised his head and peered into my eyes.

“Why aren’t you ranting at me? I thought this one would’ve taken the cake.”

“Why do you always assume I’m never on your side?” It was a question I’d wanted to ask from the day we’d met. He’d always assumed, somehow, I was against him. No wonder we’d ended up like this.

He stared at me for a long, long time. The dark grew more pronounced, less soothing. I started wondering if he’d even heard me.

“Well, are you?"

And what do I say to that?

“Zan, I’ve given you reason to mistrust me, and I know that. But if you’d ever asked it of me, you know what my answer would’ve been. You were my husband. I may not be religious and all that crap, but I do believe in some things. All you had to do was give us a chance.”

“Conveniently blaming it on me, Liz?” The sarcasm that would’ve rankled at other times, cut deeply.

“Shut up!” I shouted back at him, goaded. “I gave you everything but you wouldn’t accept it. Your problem was not that you put me second, but yourself, all the time, even when it came to MY feelings, goddammit! Who gave you leave to decided something like that? I wanted us to work out but it was impossible when 9 days out of 10, you were missing and even that ONE day, you couldn’t be bothered to fight for us!"

I paused to stop the words, but my deepest regret when it came to Zan was bubbling dangerously beneath the surface. And then it gave way. "That you’d make him to do it for you!”

I gasped for breath. I could still hear the echoes spiraling around us.

“I didn’t want to ask more of you than what you’d already given.” He said in a low, hard voice. “I knew that you felt something for Max. I knew that and I still got you out of Roswell. When you came, that was enough.”

“Enough for who? It may have been enough for you, but did it ever occur to you that I needed something more than that? That I might despise myself for feeling so much for another man despite my marriage? That I would feel demeaned when you couldn’t be made to fight for us even when I gave you ammunition to? God damn you!” I shoved the hair that had come undone from the hasty bun I’d made.

He took my hand, as if to soothe me and I gave into the one instinct that had plagued me longer than running my hands down Max’s scrumptious abs. I slapped him. Straight across the face with as much force I could gather. The impact sent his head reeling to the side. Hah!

He looked at me, stunned.

I felt a perverse thrill as he slowly brought up a hand to touch where blood had started running from the side of his nose.

Before he could recover, I backhanded him again. This time, his head crashed left.

“And that’s for crushing my bonsai!”

He gaped at me, looking at me like I was the alien with 7 heads and eating flies.

And then another sound tore the night. Laughter. He started first, laughing at my rebellious expression. And then the corners of my mouth twitched. As much as I tried to keep my ire, the events of the night had me lolling in the floor.

We laughed ourselves to tears. Not even the presence of all of them deterred us. I clutched at Zan’s arm and squeaked as he started afresh. “Stooooop!”

He ticked me mercilessly, not even glancing at Max’s taut face. I rolled away and slumped against Michael’s leg. “Halp!” I panted, squealing with fresh “Oooh!” Clutching my side, I batted my eyelashes at the hulking monsters standing over me. “C’mon… help me up!”

Without a word, Max bent and scooped me up in his arms. Zan’s laughter went to hysterical proportions. From upstairs, I could hear Future Max snickering like there was no tomorrow. Isabel glared at Zan’s new outburst, worried, but I understood and mine went up another notch.

Max stiffened; somehow sensing this was directed at him. I snuggled against him, putting my ear to the thunder of his heartbeat. “Shhh…” I rubbed those scrumptious abs, (over his shirt, of course!) and felt the tenseness finally leave him.

“What’s the joke?” Michael urged icily.

Zan started cackling again. I didn’t register when Max started snickering. I was breathing into his neck, almost asleep.

Isabel’s angry scream jolted me out of it. “What the hell is the matter with all of you?!”

A second’s shocked silence prevailed. Before the night was torn apart with another burst out raucous, irrepressible laughter. Even she joined in. Standing in the dark, dank staircase, ensconced in each other’s presence, we laughed ourselves to bits, mocking fate and destiny, all at one time. Come to think if it, it doesn’t get funnier than that.

I'll be good, I swear!!

Sarah

Chapter 27.

Bright sunlight filtered through. I moaned, feeling about 90 years old. Why is this pillow so hard?

It didn’t feel like my toasty room in Roswell. Nope, stank to high heaven of god knows what and a whole lot of nervous sweat. Just exactly where was I?

I shot up, throwing the covers off. Maria was snoring beside me on the narrow cot and Alex was sleeping at our feet. Isabel had the couch. She, too, was fast asleep. The rest of them were nowhere in sight.

Blearily, I pawed at my watch. 12:30. Noon. We’d been asleep for nearly 7 hours.

Alex blinked his eyes. “Good morning, mama.”

I regarded him with raised eyebrows. “Morning yourself, sunshine. Mama?”

He looked at me slyly. “What were you saying last night when I used that flash thing?” he chirped innocently.

I narrowed my gaze. “Are you trying to blackmail me?”

He grinned. “Only if you say yes.”

“Fine! What do you want?”

“Chocolate fudge pastries for breakfast with a hotdog, too.”

My eyes bulged. “That’d give you indigestion for a week!” I said, appalled.

“Pweeeease!!”

“All riiight!” Maria scowled, not happy to be woken up.

“Get up, sleeping Beauties.” I called to both of them. Neither stirred.

Alex looked on, eyes glowing expectantly.

I conceded defeat. Given the choice of putting up with Alex’s numerous requests, this seemed to be relatively less harmful, than, say, going biking in the desert. Yep, infinitely better.

The dinette was filled to capacity. Max, Zan and Michael were all big guys.

“Hola, Gulliver, Julliver and Pulliver, and in that order.” I smiled viciously at Michael, who scowled back at that slur towards his valiant fighting skills. “How’d ya all sleep?”

“I’m beat.” Michael yawned.

Max rolled his eyes. “How about you two? Did you guys get some rest?”

“We’re fine.” I gave him a small tentative smile. There were still two worlds to solve between us and while I was willing to listen to his side of it, I’d some pretty good points to make myself.

Zan crouched near eye level with the kid. They’d talked a little last night but Alex shrank backwards. There was betrayal in Zan’s eyes as he rose again without a word.

“Honey,” I took Alex’s face in my hands “Go get cleaned up.” He nodded off.

I turned towards Zan. He was on the couch, rebelliously glaring at me.

“You make an effort if you want to pretend you know him. You will not make my son beg to be accepted. You will do the begging. Am I clear?”

Michael snickered. Zan just sat there sullenly.

“We need to move.” Max broke into the tension. “We need to move fast. If what that guy upstairs said was true…we have trouble nearby.”

“Do you think he’s real?” Michael turned to me.

I nodded. “I do. I think you know the reason why he’s here.” I kept my face down. Everyone knew that future Max came back, not to save the earth, not to save mankind, but to save Liz Parker. It didn’t take Einstein to figure that much out.

Max took a gentle hold of my arm. “It won’t happen.” There was quiet reassurance in his eyes. I believed him.

“I know. He said it was that Langley guy. Remember, that guy you were talking about the other night?”

Max cloaked a rather triumphant expression as Michael swore.

“I knew it!” Max crowed, forgetting that he was being magnanimous. I wanted to laugh. ‘I knew that guy was trouble. And how very convenient, isn’t it, that he’d show up now after having left when you guys,” his arm swung towards Zan, “were, what? 7? 8?”

Zan clarified a nod of his head and went back to skulking by the TV.

Alex came back out. All conversation ceased. This was the one part of the prophesy that future Max hadn’t counted on. A real heir. Apparently baby Zan had been defective because of his tainted birth status. God knows, how and where they get their tech from, cuz Z and X mix doesn’t make Y, it makes ZX. But apparently, when the king sows his royal oats with a human, it begets a genuine heir.

The ways of the universe shock me.

Zan stood up, determined to break the ice. “Howdy, son.”

“Um.”

“Well, ya sure got that off me. Do you practice the smirk, too?”

“Um.”

“Talk, dammit!”

I glared at Zan. “Enough!”

Max and Michael looked at us helplessly. They didn’t want to intrude, neither did they relish interfering; but it looked like they’d have to wade in, no matter what.

“Well?” he continued, not deterred. “Your mom didn’t teach you to be polite to strangers?”

Alex scowled back. I knew he was close to tears. But my brave darling wouldn’t let his mother’s name be sullied. “Don’t say that!” he said with a decided pout.

“Oh, so you can talk. Whew. Got worried there for a sec. Silence doesn’t become a prince.”

“Zan!!” I shrieked.

“What? He needs to be trained and trained properly. Between the pod Squad and you, I’m surprised he has the guts to talk.”

Michael unclenched his fist. “That’s nice, coming from the man who wasn’t there to begin with.”

Zan kept the cat-caught-a-mouse look trained on the real king’s livid face.

Max leaned down, took a hold of Alex. “Come on, lil guy. It’s chow time and we growing boys need our carbo loading.”

Michael followed them out soundlessly. Max came back inside. “I’ll clear this up right now. I’ve have had it with your innuendoes. I never asked, nor ordered you to disappear when Liz got pregnant or at any other time. Since you’ll never mention it, I have to and I did.” He left quietly.

“He doesn’t like me.” Zan plopped back down on the couch, referring to Alex and completely ignoring Max’s confession.

“Gee. I wonder why.”

“Now, now, Lizzie. Sarcasm doesn’t become you first thing in the morning.”

I shot him a glare. He’d been in town for 30 hours and already we’d fallen to the old habit of glaring and scowling.

“I’m gonna get a shower. Ponder on what I said.”

“That you’re taking a shower?’ he rubbed his hands, leering. “You’re right. Lots to ponder on.”

‘Fuck you, Zan.” I started stalking out.

Thankfully, I didn’t have to see the lascivious look on his face as he cooed “Anytime!”
~~/\~~

By the time I returned, everyone was decent.

Max was the first to cave. “We need to talk.”

I nodded towards the bedroom and headed out.

After a moment’s dithering, Max followed. The door closing sounded like a death knell.

“So.”

“Not again, Max.”

He gave a cheeky smile, the first in the last 30 hours. Something stirred beneath my skin and settled back.

“Well?”

“Liz, I need you to tell me what you want to know.”

“Everything.”

“Everything about what? My heritage? My throne? My responsibilities? I need you to be more specific.”

“Fine,” I crossed my arms and stood up. “Start with Tess.”

He ran a shaky hand through his hair. After a lot of delays and at the signal that I wasn’t about to be patient, he started, looking like someone was ripping out his nails. “Tess is…dead.” He finished weakly.

“Is that the best you can do?”

“I killed her.”

Whoa! WHAT?

“You!” I gasped, reeling backward.

He fiddled with his stubble. “Yeah. In Arizona. I rammed her clean off the road.”

“Uh…why?”

He made his way to me, looking very lost. This has to be bad…

“Liz,” he said softly, taking my face in his hands. It’d be almost normal, save the dread in his face. “Tess killed Alex.”

All the air left my body.

“She manipulated him into translating this…this book we have. She had it all along, never even sharing it with the rest of us. She used him, broke him and when the strain got to be too much, she killed him.”

I continued staring at him. The fact that I’d started drawing blood from where my hands had clasped his, didn’t even register.

“She was allied with the Skins from the start. She was supposed to be this pre-destined…”

“Wife.” I broke in. The first words I speak and it has to be related to matrimony. Puke.

He gave a pained, relieved smile. “Ye…yeah.”

I kept dumb. Alex killed by Tess was just starting to sink in. Why hadn’t I known this? Future Max had told me that this was how Alex had died in his timeline but I’d prayed that, since so many things were different in ours, this wouldn’t have been one of the rare coincidences. Seems like that’s what it was.

“She wanted the Granolith. She needed to know the instructions in the book, but she didn’t know how to decode it. We did. If only she came to us…” he trailed off, swallowing. “She mind warped him into translating it. But there was some problem and he broke. His mind was finished. He...”

“Died.” I supplied robotically.

“Liz?” he questioned, looking deeply into my eyes. “You okay?”

“Fine.”

His voice fell to a whisper. “I didn’t know.”

That slight break told me that he’d regretted their inadvertent role in it. That he’d paid with blood. And repaid it, too.

With an effort, I took off my nails from his skin. Blood was trickling in a gentle sliver. “I’m sorry.”

At first, he didn’t understand what I was talking about. His brows drew together in a frown. Then he stared at my blood-tipped nails. “It’s okay.”

“No, really. I’m sorry I screamed at you before.”

He regarded me with poorly concealed curiosity. “You’re…sorry? You? For what?”

“Last night.” I replied, sitting on the bed. “I was mad and tired and well, frightened.” He looked down. “No, don’t do that. Frightened for Alex.”

He gave me a self-deprecating smile. “It’s okay to be frightened. It’s okay to be repulsed. God knows, I was.”

My heart twisted at his words. But I made myself continue. “That’s not what I wanted to talk about.”

“I know.”

“Well?” I demanded, as he kept quiet. “Aren’t you going to tell me why it was okay for everyone else in the world, but not us?”

The tension thickened, making it hard to breathe. Not that I could breathe much, anyways; seeing how my respiratory organs were threatening a revolt.

He paced up and down, releasing some of the frustrations. I could be blind and still feel the waves of apprehension coming off him.

“Fine!” I broke in, “Since you’re not gonna talk, I will. Look at me.”

He obeyed.

“Max, all the things that you said,” I swallowed. This was so hard to say. “tell me that you meant it.”

This time, he was looking me dead in the eye. “I did.”

Air whooshed out in a quiet sigh. Because, despite all that had gone down between us, all the lies and the secrecy, the pain – I still wanted him.

“Okay...” I started, but apparently, his vow of silence was over.

“Listen to me. I wanted to tell you. Ever since 10th grade, that’s all I ever wanted. But I couldn’t. I wasn’t allowed. Can’t you see that?” he stopped, still furious at some invisible demon. “I wasn’t allowed.”

“Max, you’re not a child that needs permission! You’re the goddamn king! What good are you if you can’t dictate what goes on!” I shouted back.

He inhaled enough air to float a helium balloon. “There’re a few things you don’t know,” he got out through clenched teeth, “so don’t judge me just yet.”

“Get off it!” I shot back, approaching him. “Do you know how this feels, that you’d keep something like this from me, and then lecture me on the merits of silence! You, of all people!”

“Liz, this was a vow we all took that we’d never get involved with humans, never tell anyone.”

If he’d slapped me across the face, he couldn’t have shocked me more. The ache made my chest cavity constrict with each intake of air.

“Never get involved… oh, Max!” I choked out.

He was watching in alarm, but evidently he hadn't realized the implication of his words just then. Then understanding dawned. A look of horror broke on his face but I raged on, driven by the most potent anger and hurt I’d felt.

“I can’t believe you! Not get involved?? What do you think I was to Zan? His teddy bear? And Maria and Michael? What about them! For God’s sake, Max!” I spat out.

He winced. “Liz, listen to me.”

But I was way past listening. Way, way past that. “Do you know how that makes me feel? That it was fine and dandy for the rest of them to get involved but you to remain totally immune. And then you have the gall to face me! I …I don’t know what to say!” I threw up my hands. I really didn’t think I could function any longer.

“Liz, I didn’t want you in any danger.”

“Shut up! You lied, didn’t you? All this was just talk, about loving me. You…bastard!!”

“I did love you!” he snapped back. “Which is exactly why I didn’t, couldn’t get involved!”

“Do you have any clue what a slap in my face that revelation is? That you’d feel so much and still let Zan marry me. That you’d love me all along and still not try to do a damn thing to hold me back? How is that okay and we never were?” I bit back a sob. Getting emotional now was a mistake. “Do I mean so less to you?”

It was, like, the dam broke. Max got to his feet instantly, towering over me. I almost shrank back. The heat of his fury came off him in waves, stifling me.

“Because I could never have kept it from you!” he roared. “And before you start, let me just ask you something. Did he ever tell you?”

“What?”

“DID HE EVER TELL YOU?”

For a moment, all movements ceased. Nature bowed to a fury stronger than her.

“No.”

“That’s what I meant. Michael could have a relationship with Maria and never tell her. Zan could marry you and still keep it a secret. But I couldn't! And both of them backed out, didn’t they? You think I’m capable of being that callous, but I’m not! All I ever wanted was for you to be happy. And you wouldn’t have been happy with me.”

I was too surprised to refute it. All I could do was glare at him.

“They knew how to escape!” His voice ripped through the air. “ I didn’t. When it comes to you, I’ve no defense. Deep down inside, they had walls. I had NONE. My life, if it had been with you, would’ve been my dream. You would’ve been my whole life! And that life had no scope, no place for secrets. But Zan could and I couldn’t. Can you understand?”

I fell back against the chair, almost choking from the pain within. What he’d said…

“You think that makes me happier? That you’d loved me so much, wanted so much and then let me go? That you’d deny both of us?”

For a second, we didn’t speak. The roar that had converged both of us, fell silent. The entire room was still ringing with our shouts.

H spoke in a much more somber tone. “Years ago, something happened and I was…captured by the Skins. They’d been posing as the FBI and you can imagine what had happened. They’d threatened to expose us, turn us in. All of us. We’ve been wary ever since.”

“When was this?” I asked quietly. I didn’t have to imagine. I’d seen and felt it all. In that vision.

“Sophomore year. Remember that weekend just before school closed for summer?”

I nodded. A sick feeling spread its tentacles outwards. While we’d probably been shopping and stuff, Max had been carved up.

“Yeah.” He nodded, too. “Ever since then, we’d vowed we wouldn’t. And we kept our contact to a minimum. We’d been warned that our associates would meet a similar fate. Something like leverage. They wanted the Granolith and any means were justified. We couldn’t risk other people’s lives. Especially not without their knowledge or consent. We did it with our parents, and every day we live in fear.”

And what could I say to that? I hadn’t been put through that; not been tortured mercilessly, not been threatened of seeing my family slaughtered.

“So you see?” he asked, desperate. “Can you understand why I did what I did? I don’t expect you to forgive me. I really don’t. I just need you to believe me.”

I kneaded my burning forehead.So many things fit. The exhaustion in him, when school, had started that fall. And then the way he’d stay remote. Zan hadn’t faced it, so it lessened his fears. In a macabre way, I could understand where Max was coming from. I knew it, because had I been in his shoes, I’d have done the same thing. And god help me, I was. In another lifetime.

Max knelt before me. There were literally two worlds of remorse reflected in his pain-lashed eyes. "I know I pretend to be a lot of stuff. A good friend to you, a good father figure for Alex, a good leader. I've failed on all counts. Right now, I've one chance to safeguard all our lives, and I'm going to take it." he paused, at a loss for words. "I don't know if there's anything I can do to heal what you've been through..."

"Max, " I interrupted, "you're rambling."

"I've pretended to be a human being in public and doing an about face when I was with the others and when I was alone," he went on in a rush. The significance of his last words didn't escape me. "I've forgotten who I am. It seems like every day is this battle that I've been fighting against myself and I have to wonder if I was ever equipped for that."

"What're you saying?"

"Every step of the way, I've doubted myself. Every single decision I've had to take was for seven other people. I haven't had so much as a single day to think about myself, and the only time I had was when it was about you or when it came to my career."

I put my hand on his shoulder. He was still kneeling. What a scene out of Harlequin Historicals. "Just tell me."

"I'm trying to apologize for letting you and Alex down. I know we pretend that we're not human and we don't have such failings, but we do. I'm sorry that I made a lot of bad decisions, regarding you and me. Sorrier than anyone realizes. My only excuse is that I...I'm not perfect. I make mistakes, too."

“Give me some time.” I whispered.

He nodded hurriedly, replacing himself with his mask. “Take it.”

The door shut quietly behind him. I sniffed on the last whisper of his cologne and mulled it all over.