Roswell Fanatics

Hi,

I just wanted to thank you all again for your patience. I promise there is a method to my madness and I like the way the ending of this turned out much better.

We get a bit of resolution. Yeah for semi closure on certain issues.

I also wanted to say that I will be chatting at Dreaming Among Stars on Monday the 13th at 8 pm est. Please come there will be free virtuals shooters who make an appearances I might even reveal spoilers.

I hope you like.

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Chapter 26 The Nature of Elizabeth and Maxwell



We come together tentatively, a mere brush of contact, before he becomes far more interested in anything that doesn’t happen to be my lips. His refusal to connect with me hurts more than he will ever know for its just one more reminder of how my great plan with Future Max worked.

What was is lost.

And yet, Max’s arms still circle my hips keeping me close, and the silky glide of his lips is still enough to make my thoughts blur. I throw my head back as he presses frantic kisses to my neck. His hand slides underneath my shirt scooping up wet fabric as it travels up along the curve of my back.

I bury my face in the heated column of his throat. His smell mixed with the rain is almost more than I can bear. My tongue takes a swipe and then another just over his throbbing pulse.

The pull of my shirt stops as the cotton meets my shoulders.

“Look at me Liz,” Max whispers. His eyes are dark, darker than I’ve ever seen them before. The sound of our shallow breaths fills the silence threatening to stretch out between us. “What are we doing?” His fingers trace a tantalizing line down my arm accompanied by a green streak and something else that feels quite nice if I do say so myself.

“What are we doing?” He asks again flicking off a strap of my tank.

“I don’t know.”

His gaze is almost curious as he eyes the cup of my bra peeking over my shirt.

I move to wrap my arms around my chest.

“Don’t,” he says moving one arm then the other. “Someone as beautiful as you are should never feel that they have to hide.” His index finger circles just over my pulse point before traveling up the tender skin of my arm. The glide of skin over mine is addictive.

I say nothing as my shirt is taken from me and have the same response when my bra falls effortlessly off my shoulders.

“Wow.”

My eyes shoot open. “Did you just say wow?”

“Yep,” Max grins looming over me.

“They’re just ordinary. What’s wow about them?”

“They’re yours so that makes them wow,” he says simply rubbing his hands against his jeans to warm them.

“But I don’t under…oh…” My body grows s
lack as his thumb circles the hardened tip.

Gently, his hand cups the fullness. A green glow comes from between the spaces of his fingers.

“Wow,” I throw my head back. My eyes drift close at the warm touch of his tongue. I thrust my fingers into his silky hair. He lets out an irritated grunt before pulling me still closer onto his lap that grows impossible to be oblivious Max’s obvious reaction to me.

Whether it’s is some fleeting caprice that grips me or maybe it’s the resurgence of Liz Parker from Elizabeth, I don’t know, but it grows impossible to pretend away the important part that isn’t here. Grabbing his collar, I pull up as hard as I can praying that he will give me what I want but find disappointment the moment he pulls away again as I lean in to kiss him.

“I’m sorry. I don’t do that.” His tone is hard, uncompromising born from some fear of his he seems hell bent from keeping from me.

“Because kissing is a human thing.”

“Yes.” He looks relieved. “I’m glad that you understand.”

“Bullshit.” I push him away and try and to get up off his lap but only succeed in grinding my core into his erection. “Shit stop that,” I snap.

“You’re the one who’s doing it.” Max grits. “Jesus Liz.”

“I want off.” I struggle harder.

“And you’re going to achieve that by setting me off?”

“You could use it.”

“You could use it more. I barely touched you, and you’re putty in my hand.”

“I am putty in no man’s hands.” I press forward into him to reach the side of his face. The length of my tongue traces a path up to his ear. Reaching the lobe, I pull down on the tender lobe. Nipping it, I swirl my tongue against the sting.

Max’s breaths become ragged. His mouth descends onto my breasts again, and my hand descends underneath the band of his jeans.

I head for his lips again.

“Don’t Liz,” he whispers his plea trailing his thumb over my bottom lip.

“Why?”

His head arches back against the wall. “Because,” he grunts.

“Elaborate.”

“Because,” he says again.

I slow my stroking to a just a brush. “So you just want to use me, a sort of release on your part.” I take hold of him. “It appears that you just got it.” I withdraw my hand. “You’ll have a wonderful story to tell all your friends about the earth girl who jacked you off.”

“It’s not like that,” he shakes his head.

“Right,” I get up already hearing my therapist’s reprimand in my head.

“Liz, physical intimacy can not be used to fill the void of emotional intimacy. Any benefits you may receive will only be fleeting.”

Turning my back, I slide on my bra and my tank.

“I thought that you understood that I need space.”

“You need space, but you have no problem sleeping with me when you don’t trust me. What are you some kind of male whore of the universe?”

“I respect the many walls, moats, chasms, and whatever else you have guarding yourself. I don’t see why you can’t do the same for me.”

“Because I’m human and for once in my life I would like to have something stable and normal.”

He cringes.

“I didn’t mean it to come out the way. Honestly, I know how you feel about this whole normal thing, which was not my intention.”

“If you are so into normal then why are you jumping me when you’ve got your normal and ever so human boyfriend?” Max sneers.

“Because I’m in love with you, you fool.” I gasp. My heart plummets. I can’t breathe.

Max is staring at me as if he’s a child that I’ve just broken the secret of Santa Clause to.

He opens his mouth then closes it.

“I never loved her.”

Lord, he doesn’t love me back. My eyes dart around as the walls of the cave appear to grow tighter. “I…” I stumble back out of the entrance. Righting myself, I find myself in danger of falling back into old behavior patterns as my therapist would say. I barely get two feet from the cave before I’m grabbed behind and hoisted up. “Let go of me.”

“Not now, not ever.” Max sets me down. “You have to know how I feel about you.”

“Why don’t you shove the knife in a little deeper maybe you’ll hit an artery?”

He moves to block the entrance.

“I’m not going anywhere alright.”

“It isn’t safe.”

Spent, I sink down into a dark crevasse too far back inside for Max to follow.

“I know you’re angry.” His disembodied voice echoes.

“I’m not angry. I’m tired, and I’m sleepy. You might be used to walking miles, but I’m not.”

“Liz…”

“I just want to go to sleep alright.” I snap. Feeling his eyes on me, I hide my face within the rock.

“I’ve never been really good at talking. It’s the whole hiding behind the tree quirk.”

“I jacked you off. I don’t need this much clinical analysis into the thing. God, it’s a good think I didn’t give you a blowjob. You would be talking for hours. Now, I want to go to bed.” I barely get the words out before I feel myself sliding against the cave floor stopping naturally beside Max and just as easily as before he picks me up and deposits my body between his legs.

“You want a repeat.”

“Be quite,” he commands softly. “It’s might turn to talk, and yours to listen.” His hands draped around my waist give me a squeeze.

I fight against the urge to give into the warmth around me.

“I see through you. It’s only right considering I gave you this mask to wear. You thought we were special until I showed you we weren’t. So now you tell yourself that love is a joke and sex is the punch line. It makes it easier for someone with a romantic heart like yours to live in a world where everything is turned into artifice, but know this. You have been in my heart since day one, and you will still be there when my heart is nothing but ashes.”

I never loved her.

“LIAR!”

“I’m not.” Max croaks turning me around to him. “I’m not.”

“I saw it. Khivar said a lying woman had gotten you there, and you said you didn’t love her that you didn’t love me,” I hiccup, “that you never loved me.”

“I was talking about Tess.”

“Tess?”

“Yes, Tess.”

“But I lied to. I thought…I thought…” I stutter.

“You thought wrong then. I broke every rule and violation to get you better. If they ever found out, I could lose my son, but I would do it again, because I love you.”


“You…”

“Love you,” he finishes.

“But you didn’t say anything.” I say finally after I’ve gotten the ability back to speak in complete sentences.

He shrugs his shoulders.

“That’s not an adequate response.”

“I was operating under the assumption that you hate me.”

“I don’t hate you. I’m alive because of you.”

“No, don’t tie your feelings for me to that.”

“I’m not.”

“Are you sure? Have you ever thought that maybe you were with me before out of some sense of gratitude? You nearly died when your were shot and I…”

“That’s crap. How could you even think that?”

“We are all prone to turn meaningless fears into meaningful ones I guess. It always boils down to the normal and the abnormal with us.”

Suddenly, I feel very cold inside. “What do you mean?” I cover my hand against a yawn.

“You’re tired. We can talk about this tomorrow.”

“Don’t brush me off.” I warn. “It hurts me when you do it.”

“I’m not.” He strokes the side of my cheek. “Tomorrow, we’ll talk more.” He promises. “I’m kind of exhausted myself.”

I jerk up. “You’re feeling, okay?”

Creases appear in his forehead. “I’m feeling fine. Right now I just want to stay like this with you and listen to the rain.”

“Okay,” I sink back down.

“This kind of reminds me of that night in the desert.”

“That was a good night,” I say despite the lump forming in my throat.

“Yeah, it was.”

“What are we doing?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m scared.”

“Me to.”

“What if it gets bad like before?"

“It won’t. Ever hear how porcupines mate?”

“How do porcupines mate?”

“Very carefully.”

“HA! That’s stupid.”

“It was a big hit with Seth when he was four. Well at least, you’re smiling.”

For once with Max, I find that I actually am.
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I'm baaaaaaack!!!!!

I enjoyed the countdown that was too cute. As for my trip, it rocked. I had a wonderful time. I think I've fallen in love with the south of France. I can see why Johnny has choosen to live there. It's simply lovely, and don't get me started on the wine. You can get a really nice bottle. And the cheese!!!! Good times for your mouth and bad times for your waist.

I must say if you all ever go to Paris. You must go to the Orsy Musueum. It houses all the impressionist pieces. The paintings take your breath away. They are amazing.

The exact date of Liz's shooting seems to be under debate so I went with my own.

Enough chit chat and back to our lovebirds....


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Chapter Twenty Seven The Power of Belief


My eyes do not open slowly fighting in their attempts to stay under the Sandman’s spell. There is no languid, final stretch of my body before it leaves the dream world for the real one.


Like being capsized into the sea, is how I would describe it if I ever found the courage. Limbs flaying and heart racing, I hit the icy water, and it is this shock that snaps my eyes open and turns my usually normal beating heart into that of a hummingbird’s. My shallow, uneven breaths and the cold sweat trickling down the valley of my breasts round out an equation, one that has been operating under the same parameters for years.

My one on one battle with the monsters in my head.

“You’re alright. It was just a nightmare. You’re safe.”

I find myself on Max’s lap. My hands are gripping his forearms tight and are no doubt cutting off his circulation. “Don’t you tell anyone.”

“Liz.”

“Don’t you tell. Don’t you…” I collapse against his chest. “Tell,” I breathe out willing myself not to cry.

“Tell them what?” He starts to rub my back. “That you’re the bravest woman I know.”

“I’m not brave. I’m scared all the time, when I’m awake, when I’m sleeping. It will not stop.”

“It’s not fear. It’s hurt. You hurt so badly.” He kisses the top of my head. “I thought it was a miracle when you didn’t remember what had happened that at least in one way you were spared. You don’t know how many times I’ve wished for the same thing just to be able to forget, but where I have the luxury of knowing the demons under my bed. You don’t. I wish that I could take it away. Give you back what was lost, but I can’t. You have to find a way to confront the hurt then there would be nothing to fear.”

“How did you do it?”

“I haven’t.” He states simply.

“That’s not true. You’re in here with me.”

“Caves and I have always been the best of friends. I was hatched in a cave and Khivar…” He opens and closes his mouth. A blood vein stands out in relief from his forehead.

“It’s okay.” I wrap my arms around his shoulders to bring him closer to me.

“Here, I’m supposed to be comforting you.” He says after sometime.

“I think ours is going to be a partnered effort to mental wellness.”

“Partnered effort,” he repeats. His eyes find mine in the darkness. “I like that.”

“Platonic partners,” I blurt out quickly ignoring the many lurid scenarios playing out in my mind.

“If that’s what you want.”

“I don’t know what I want. I mean it’s pointless to want because wants are things that are totally unpractical and out of reach.”

“Then what do you need?”

“A nice little beach house in Baja Mexico.” I leave out any description of the mom, dad, and son that call it home.

“I can see it now sparkling waters, sand and you, sunbathing nude. I’ll be your cabana boy. I like it.”

“Please,” I flush.

“Please, what? I need to introduce you to one new aspect of my personality.”

“Your entertaining whit, I’ve already grown quite accustomed to that.”

“When you run, I will follow.”

“Oh how sweet, I’ve always wanted a little puppy to follow at my heels.” I know I’ve pushed too far in my cynicism the moment the words leave my lips. It comes as no surprise when Max pushes back, and I find myself sandwiched between the wall and Max. “This seems to be a favorite move of yours.”

He says nothing.

His silence alarms me for Max the man does not seem as readily to back off as Max the boy. Strip away this nicety. What is left? Two horny people who given the chance could probably screw each other’s brains out.

I inhale as I feel his finger move up an arm. A faint glow travels over my skin while its accompanying warmth begins between my legs. “I told you no.”

“You told me you loved me four hours ago. Now you want to be friends, and you’re trying to feed me lines of bullshit along the way.”

“I love my friends.”

He pulls me closer to him. “You give them all hand jobs to?”

“No, I kiss them.”

His head falls to my shoulder.

“What did they do to you?”

He shudders against me.

“Tell me.”

“What do you care if you’re bailing?”

“I’m not bailing.”

His fingers slide over my hips. “Then why does it feel like that day is happening all over again,” he says not needing to clarify the day in question. Older brother to that autumn night, they exist so strongly for Max and me that any explanation became redundant long ago.

I open and then close my mouth engaging in a battle with my better judgment. My hesitation proves costly as Max misinterprets it as yet another rejection. Straightening, he pushes the vulnerability of before inward.

I press my lips together. “It was never about not loving you. It was about loving you too much. I was just a small town girl from New Mexico. We worked as long as you were a small town boy, but there was your mother…”

“Zan’s mother,” he corrects.

“You can dress it up anyway that you want, but you were meant to swim in a much bigger pond than I was. How was I to help you? I hadn’t been raised by anyone with the knowledge of where you came from. I didn’t even have any powers to protect you or myself if something happened. I was just Liz Parker. I thought she loved you as much as I did.”

“Thank you.”

I blink confused as to what he could possibly be thanking me for.

“I really needed to hear that.” He gives my hand a squeeze.

I gasp against the heat that unfurls almost immediately low in my abdomen when our skin touches.

To his credit, Max looks innocent. “What?” His thumb brushes against my palm.

I bite back a moan. “Don’t you feel that?”

“No,” he says almost sadly. Laying his palm flat against mine, his fingers slide down the slits of my own.

For an instant, I feel something distinctly foreign but not unknown hovering in the back of my mind, but the seed withers the second his fingers fall from mine.

“I don’t feel much of anything anymore.” He tells me backing away. “My mind was damaged.”

“Damaged how?”

He only begins to answer after safely engaging himself in playing with some object he’s pulled from his bag. “This is and that,” he says vaguely. “I’ve never been much for conversations. Unfortunately, for me, my fellow Antarians are very adept at provoking conversations. Luckily as Zan’s mind and mine started to intermingle, I came up with ways to ignore certain conversations.”

“What ways?”

He smacks down on the item in his hands.

“What ways?”

“Why is it important?”

“Defining the monster.”

“I know the monster.”

“Who’s bailing on whom now?”

“You want details. Fine,” he gets another object to play with from his bag. “Khivar saw every smile, every kiss, every moment that ever happened between you and me, because I wasn’t strong enough in the beginning to stop him.” He finishes morosely.

“You were just a defenseless kid. He was the wolf who had the lamb cornered.”

“This is conversation is doing wonders for my masculinity.”

“Stroking your ego is next week’s discussion.”

“I have something else you can stroke in the interim.”

I hold back my snide retort realizing the trigger behind his explicitness, one that began the night I let him think that he was not man enough to have me. My thoughts blur imagining all the ways Khivar used my blunder against Max.

He cups my knee, “bad joke.” For all his posturing, his hands do not venture south.

I allow myself a couple seconds of disappointment before pressing on. “When Seth is scared, whom does he go to?”

“Me.”

“So, you would say that he expects you to protect him?”

“Yes, I would die for him.”

“He lives with you?” I ask hating the twinges of jealousy developing.

“Of course he lives with me, Liz…”

“In a home that you pay for yourself?” I interrupt.

“In a home that I own.”

“And the furniture, his toys, his pet, who bought those?”

“I did.”

“Do you love your son?”

His response is an empathetic yes.

“Now, tell me how old you were when he was born?” The old customary pain associated with any thought of Seth’s birth comes back with a vengeance.

“Please stop.”

“Answer the question.”

“I was eighteen.”

“And did you have any of those things then?”

“No, I had nothing.”

“Except your love for him,” I finish. “You could have handed him off to someone to raise when you got free of Khivar, but you didn’t. You worked to establish a life for him with a house he could grow up in. It didn’t happened overnight. The same way an already made man doesn't drop from the sky. They’re made, and some don’t ever even get to that point. Khivar is like an animal. He acts only to satisfy himself. You ask me who the man is? You are. Whatever failure you feel, the root was youth and inexperience.”

“No, not trusting you that was the root of it. I will never make that mistake again.”

“You had good reason not to.”

He presses his forehead to mine. “No more self recriminations. I was as much at fault. I’m so sorry.”

“No more apologies. When we leave this cave, it’s over and done with. We leave all the ugliness in here. It’s the only way we can work on being friends again. Just promise me something, when this is over, you’ll drop in from time to time and not go another eight years without seeing me. ”

“I promise.”

A ghost of another of Max’s promises to always be my friend tries to cut in on this moment.

“It won’t be like before.” Max answers as if sensing my thoughts. “It won’t.” He says cupping my cheeks and meeting my eyes.

“Will you stop acting like such a Barbie doll and let me concentrate Talen? Of course, it’s going to work. You need to stay very quiet pregnant lady. I can get the two on the left. Can you get the two on the right?”

I sit up startled. “Seth?”

“Seth, where?” Max looks around.

“Seth’s in my head.”

“That’s not possible.”

“It’s possible. I heard him. He’s with Talen somewhere. I think they’re in trouble.”

Max retrieves a small disc from his bag. “I’m calling Michael. Keep your eyes closed, the light from the electromagnet has been known to blind humans. I’m going to block out the sound with my powers.” His hand brushes over my earlobe for a split second.

“Run, keep running, Liz will tell my dad, and he’ll come.”

“It isn’t working. I can’t get a signal. It could be some psychic disturbance.”

I look down at both his hands. “You’re not touching me.”

“What?”

“I heard him again. He’s scared.”

“This mumbo jumbo stuff isn’t happening. It’s a trick.”

“I say it’s real so you better mumbo this jumbo and get over here. We’re going to figure this out and find them and kick whatever creatures’ asses are currently messing with my…your kid.”

“They’re playing you.”

“I know what Seth’s energy feels like and that was him.

“Antarian children can only forge telepathic connections to their parents. He can’t connect to me because of the brain damage and connecting to Tess is totally out of the question for him. It can’t happen.”

“Why does the possibility that there could be something between Seth and me scare you so much? Is it because, it means I’m not longer the normal small town girl you fell in love with?”

“I’d love you if you were three feet tall and had three heads.”

“You’d love what biology dictates you to love. In the end, it’s all about procreation.” I trail off.

“I wasn’t trying to make a baby. I was just trying to forget my hurt. Everything was just off with me.”

“We agreed, we’d leave it in here.” I swallow.

“You’re the only women I ever wanted to be with. I’m never going to marry Liz, because I can’t see myself being anyone’s husband but yours.”

“It doesn’t matter, because we’re going to be friends.”

“Let us agree to disagree on this point.”

“What? You don’t want to be my friend.”

He jerks back as if I’ve hit him. “I did a terrible thing to you when I said I wouldn’t be your friend anymore. There wasn’t any worse way to hurt your heart. If you want to be just friends, I’ll take it Liz. I just want you in my life. I’ll do whatever you want.”

“I just want to find Seth.”

He touches my ear.

“Anything?”

“No.”

“You were touching me, and we were talking, cementing maybe. Talking and touching is a form of cementing oneself. How the hell, do your people cement?”

“Who told you about cementing?”

“The other you. Do we need to cement?”

“It isn’t something we can particularly do on the fly. It’s a process. I’m too damaged to do it now anyway.”

“Watch it, finding your son doesn’t give you an excuse to touch my breasts.”

“I was attempting to see if it was parts that elicited some form of stimuli for me.”

“What?”

“I like your breasts. You got flashes all the time when we looking for the orb, and I was touching your breasts.”

“It isn’t flashes. It’s like I’m right next to him, and he’s talking to me.”

He stiffens. “Your necklace. It’s…”

I look down. “Well, that’s a new one on me. What does that mean?”

“I don’t know. I never bothered to read the chronicles. I thought it was crap.”

“Reading is fundamental.” I turn my head to the side. “What does that look like to you.”

“A necklace that is possessed and is flying off your neck in its attempts to impale me.”

“It looks like a phallus.”

“What the hell is a phallus?”

“Penis. My necklace likes you. Are Meaglans only women?”

“Yes.”

“You need to kiss me.”

“What?”

“Penis is to men as kissing is to women.”

“Speak English, I was never good at those damn things.”

“It’s about insertion. I can only physically insert myself into you through a kiss.”

“You’re getting this all through your necklace acting horny.”

“What if I’m like this conduit between you and Seth? I can hear things you can’t hear because of what was done to you. What if I have to be close to you to hear him, because I don’t have the power to hear him on my own?”

“I can’t connect to you.”

“Why?”

“I’m tainted. I refuse to be used as an instrument to subdue you.”

“Kyle used those same words before he,” I pause.

“Before he what?”

“I can’t say. He used his powers on me.”

“He used his powers on you. I thought you two were friends.”

“It isn’t like he’d hurt me. He helped me get away from Tess.”

“Kyle’s here?”

“Yes.”

“They were supposed to go on a trip. We saw them leave. His girlfriend came home. They were running late. They got into the taxi.”

“They didn’t make it.”

“That’s just great that bitch. You think she could leave him alone after all she did to him. It’s never enough for Tess.”

“Right now, we have to find Seth and then we’re not letting him out of our sight. ”

“Maybe, he would be better off with Isabel?”

“No, you can’t send him back to Antar. You can’t do that to Seth and me. He has to be here with us because that’s the way it’s supposed to be. ”

“We’ll talk about this later?” Max backs away from me.

“No, we’re going to talk about this now. Seth is mine.” The earth beneath starts to shake.

Max eyes shoot to ceiling.

“You’re going to take him away from me. I don’t think so.”

“Liz, you’re not yourself right now.”

“I’m more myself than I have ever been. We’re linked and if you want to ignore it, go ahead.”

“Then tell me, who’s ignoring the link between us?”

Three rocks loosen themselves from the ceiling.

"Is this your master plan, crush us before we get a chance to help Seth?”

“I don’t need your help.”

“Oh, yes, you do lady.” The timber of his voice dives about three notches while the rich brown of Max’s eyes start to take on an eerie hue. “You want to fight alien. Let’s fight alien.”

“You don’t scare me.”

He laughs low and throaty.

I shiver.

“Come here.”

“No.”

From behind me, a seemingly invisible force pushes me into his arms. The rumbling below us ceases. His hands circle my hips before slipping his fingers through my belt loops to bring me closer. “Hey,” he breathes.

“Hey, yourself,” I smile.

Max grins.

I feel goofy and like we’re back in high school.

“You’re scary when you’re pissed.” He says.

“You’re hot as hell.” I answer before remembering myself. “A friendly hot,” I amend. “I need stability. It’s important and…”

“I understand.”

“Good,” I sigh pressing my head to his chest. “Complications” a hand to my mouth stops that thought.

A parrot caws loudly from above. It is only then I notice we’re not in the cave anymore.

Max pulls me down into the tall grasses as he starts to assemble pieces from his bag.

“You brought us here?” I whisper.

“No, I think we did it together.”

“Then where is he?”

“I don’t know.” He finishes his project and hands it to me. “This is a crubelex. You point it like this and press the button at the base. It can be used to permanently disable Scions and other hostile life forms. The laser up here shows you where the bullet is going.”

“Okay.”

“Pull up your shirt.”

He slaps a small metal disc on my scarred tummy. “Think of this as your own private shield. Your primary objective is to duck and cover and take care of the boys.”

I lean up a little to look over the grass. “Where are they? Maybe, we’re at the wrong place.”

“You said it was time that I believed. I do. We got here together for a reason.”

“Does this mean I can teleport?”

“No, I teleport. You provided the location.”

“I guess I’ll have to be happy with being able to change my wall color whenever I get tired of the paint.”

“That explains a lot about your apartment, I kept thinking where were you finding the time to change the walls every three months.”

“What did you think about my place?” I find myself asking while all time wondering why his opinion should matter.

“It’s warm, cozy, the section of town is a little iffy.”

“It is not. It has character. ”

“That it does. I’ve certainly seen a lot of interesting things there. Michael actually wants to move there to be close to Maria. He says it will be a good source of subject matter for his artwork.”

“He really means to stay after this is over?”

“Yes.”

“Good for him.”

“Yeah,” Max sighs before straightening up. “Thank God, Seth’s coming. I recognize his footsteps. There’s someone with them. Woman, I think. She’s slowing them down.” He turns his head. “We’ve got seven maybe ten hostiles. There might be a squad behind that to. I made Seth memorize the maps of this area. You’ll follow him.”

“I’m not leaving you here.”

“I can handle this, and then I’ll catch up with you. Your job is to get to the safe station and work on the virus. You’ll find my computer there. If I don’t meet up with you before then, the password is September 18, 1999.”

“It’s the day I got shot.”

“It’s the day my life began." His eyes meet mine. "Here they are.”

Seconds later, I get my first glimpse of Seth’s head. I cover my heart, “thank you.”

He ducks behind a tree as a pulse of light safely hits another some distance away. A gross miscalculation I attribute to the same source that sends a familiar green shield springing up between his son and the bad guys.

Despite Max’s precautions, I’m livid. “They’re shooting at Seth. I’m going to kill each and every one of them. When I’m done, I’m going to rip their hearts out.”

Max grabs me roughly by the shoulders. “You are going to let me kill each and every one of them. You are only going to be ripping the hearts out of hostiles if they attack you on your way. You are going to fight smart, and only waste your energy when needed.”

“Is this because I’m a girl?”

“Do you remember what happened when your shorted yourself out at the hotel? I want the best with my son.” He gives me what looks to be the orb we found. “This is how Seth will find you. The hostiles can’t see the beacon that it gives off. You stay here.’

“I don’t like this plan.”

“Noted.”

“It’s like your leaving me here between a rock.” I lift up the orb, “and a hard place.”

“Would you like some cheese with that whine?”

“Shut up.”

“You shut up first.”

“Just be careful.”

“Always.” He swings his bag over his shoulder.

I decide to focus on the orb and not his immediate departure.

“Love you.”

My head snaps up, but Max’s already gone. In the distance, I hear blast fire and my bravado evaporates dramatically. I squeeze the orb tight. “Alright, Elizabeth, you’re going to be a strong woman today. You’re going to get the kids to where they need to be, and then you will have a freak out later. Oh Maria, I need you.”

A hand grabbing my leg nearly sends me screaming. I kick at the figure, but don’t connect to anything.

“Liz,” a voice hisses.

“Seth,” I crush him to me. “Do you know how scared I was for you?”

“Liz,” he wheezes. “I can’t breathe.”

“Right,” I loosen my grip.

“Plus, this is not the time for hugs. The others are over there so follow me.”

I get down on my hands and knees and crawl for what seems like miles in my heightened state. Suddenly, I barrel into Seth’s butt.

He looks back at me with a death glare.

“I didn’t know you were stopping.”

He puts his finger over his mouth.

I get the message while he starts to mimic a parrot’s caw perfectly. Hearing the obvious signal, two bodies start to come forward.

I move to try and help the obvious lagging one but am stopped by Seth.

Finally, Talen breaks through the grasses with a woman half sprawled on his back. He stares at the ground long and hard before depositing the woman on her side.

Talen’s cheeks are flushed from the exertion of carrying the woman the last couple of meters. I quickly hand him a bottle of water. He shakes his head and starts speaking to Seth using some sort of sign language.

I turn my attention to the woman clad in a torn sundress of a vacationer. Her identity comes not as a surprise when I brush her blonde hair away. I bend down low to her ear. “You’re okay, now Hannah?”

Hearing my voice, she lifts her dilated eyes to mine. “Liz,” her voice is raw. An angry bruise mars her face.

I quickly give her some water.

“Kyle?”

“We’ll get him, but now we have to go.”

“Kyle,” she says shaking her head.

Seth motions to me to move.

I try and take Hannah’s hand, but she jerks it quickly away.

“Kyle,” she says again but, this time a little louder.

Seth rubs the bridge of his nose much like his father when he’s irritated. Crawling back between us, he stares into Hannah’s blues eyes.

She nods her head almost as if she’s listening to him.

Breaking eye contact, Seth takes his spot up in front as Talen drops back behind me.

Take care of the kids. Max told me. As we set off, it appears the kids are taking care me.
___________________________________________________________

Next up Liz meets Seth's future wife and Miranda makes herself known.

LairaBehr4 wrote:Hey Caelan, don't you think it's time you came back with an update?

Since, you asked so nicely I guess I will

As always thank you for your patience. I know it seems like I'm moving at a slug's pace, but I've always been a bit of a turtle.


Thank you for bearing with me and hopefully Liz will be counting ceiling tiles before the year is out


Enjoy!!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter Twenty Eight--- Resistance is Futile


My hands are shaking.

I can’t make them stop.

There is husk skin underneath my nails and in between my fingers.

I don’t know how it got there.

Red sparks of light zigzag from my palms. They are the only visible signs of the energy growing inside of me, threatening to split me open.

I hurt so much, but it does nothing to stop what has already been set in motion. For I am only the instrument not the musician, once started the song must be played out. It is how it has always been and will forever be.

I glare at the man on his knees in front of me. He doesn’t struggle, because I have taken the struggle from him.

I know nothing of his identity.

Yet, I despise him with a hatred I never knew existed in me.

I meet Seth’s glowing eyes, and it all becomes so clear. I hate him, because Seth hates him.

This man liked to have conversations with Max. Only he brought nice little devices to instigate his chats, devices that Seth can recall with a startling clarity.

I bend down getting on his eye level intending to have a conversation with him of my own, but the debate in front of me interrupts my attempted nicety.

“You need to stop her right now.” Talen tells him.

“You need to mind your own business.” Seth answers.

I frown finding something wrong with the tone of his voice.

“Stop her, she doesn’t know any better. It’s your job to stop her.” Talen insists. “Do you want the little girl to be bad? Is that what you want?”

“You don’t know anything about the little girl.” Seth hisses.

“Yes, I do. She talks to me sometimes. I know she’s beautiful, sweet and kind and that I would do anything for her even try and like you, because that’s what she wants.”

“You’re in love with someone that doesn’t even exist. And I thought I topped the cake in romantic stupidity.” I cackle.

“I never said I was in love with her.” Talen huffs, “only humans and Antarians do that.”

“If you’re not capable of loving someone then you can stay away from my daughter.” I answer.

“You’re not going to be around to make that decision.” He tells me.

“You’re a liar.” Seth says pushing Talen hard. “Liz is going to be around. Take it back.” He demands.

Talen ducks his fist. “Why do you think the little girl is so sad all the time? She misses Liz.”

“You don’t know anything.” Seth counters as the two of them begin to wrestle with each other.

To my dismay, I realize that Talen is gaining the upper hand. “The two of you need to cut it out this moment.” I say doing my best impression of my mother after she and Kyle caught Sean and me making out in his VW. “We’re all on the same team here.” I roll my eyes as the two of them keep on as if I haven’t said a word. “Right, you two have fun with that. I am so happy I’m having a daughter, because I don’t understand boys at all.”

“Amateur,” my forgotten conversation buddy spits as he knocks me to the ground. “I’m actually quite disappointed. Here, you’re supposed to have the eyes, which you obviously don’t, or you would have put two and two together.”

I don’t even get a scream out, before a clear plastic bag is shoved over my head.

“Come on Liz, figure it out. Half the kings in the galaxy have a jones for you, because you’re supposed to be so valuable, and yet you can’t solve a simple riddle. Maybe, you’re not all they say you are.”

My lungs burn.

I fight to keep from passing out.

“We don’t have the ocean, but I’ve brought it with me. Suffocation and drowning are really quite the same when you think about it. An exiting of one world for the next.”

Water cascades down the outside of the bag.

A slight bulge begins to form in my palm. I try and speed up the process.

“Stop fighting it Liz. We just want you to be all that you can be. If you two boys know what’s good for you, you will stay back. Scrunch your head all you like Seth, your mother has taught me to look beyond mindwarps. Next time you want to set your weapon on somebody, it might be best to tell said weapon who they’re dealing with.”

I grab his shoulder.

The color drains from his face as he starts to sway.

For the first time, I see the essence underneath the husk.

I see Nicholas.

There are flashes, ghastly images as he perversely goes about doing what he does best, taking away people’s control to fill the lack of it in his own life.

“You would be amazed at the freedoms that bodied people take for granted on Earth.” He says looking out into the crowd that have gathered to welcome him back. “As a skin one must be prepared for anything. Husks can become defective for a variety of reasons.”

He winces as the memory of Khivar ripping his man husk away surfaces.

“But in the end, it’s all about facing adversity. Husk, human, idiot king hybrids, they are all the same.”

He had imagined that it would be bad but never had he been prepared for waking up in the body of a mere child.

“You must narrow them down and never let your eyes stray from them.” He thanks the audience knowing they have not heard a word that he said for theirs is a society that pays little attention to children.

He tries not to inflict the same discourtesy on the youthful boy that wants to know all about his role in bringing the false king back to Antar. Yet, his responses are brief for she distracts him.

Like some dark specter, she waits for him in the hall with the veils of mourning still covering her face from his view.

He is rude in dismissing the boy, but cannot help it. He wants to be anywhere, but in her presence. Yet by some trick of fate, she blocks the only exit.

“Get out of my way little girl.” He sneers.

“It appears that I am no longer the littlest one.”

“Look, I’m in this thing because of you. It’s been forty years, let it go.”

“You’ve ever heard of a little thing called The Code of Hamurabi during your time on Earth.”

“No.”

“I’ll spare you the effort of looking it up. You killed my husband, my heart, and according to the code I get to kill you now.”

“I like to see you try.”

“What makes you think that I’m not trying? Welcome back to Antar, Nicholas.”

How is she trying?

He becomes obsessed with the idea.

And finally sees some possible implication, in a prisoner that does not fall into line even after he been sure to take away his most prized possession.

It is an abnormality that nags him at its least and terrifies him at its worst.

For the weak always rally around the strong.

Little occurrences alarm him but nothing compares to the day that he notices each and every prisoner meeting his gaze as he passes their cells.

He takes his concerns directly to Khivar.

“So they look at you, what of it?”

“It’s him. He’s giving them hope. It could be dangerous. They’re listening to him. Take him out of the general population.”

“And what would be the fun of that?”

“This is not Earth.”

“No, this Antar where the inmates are ten times more kinkier.’

“But they respect him.”

“Max is here in my prison, because he got tricked by a woman. There is nothing respectful about that.” Khivar waves him off. “No one has ever escaped from Tantalus. Plus, we have his whelp. He won’t go anywhere without the boy. We hold everything of value for him.”

“And Liz?”

Khivar advances on him angrily. “Who told you of her?”

“He speaks to her all the time. It’s almost like she’s in the room with him.”

“He’s obviously insane. You’re wasting my time.”

But he couldn’t disagree more when he finds a pool cue being pressed down over his throat.

“Where is it?” Max demands.

“Max come on, we don’t have time for this.” Michael says over his shoulder.

“I am not leaving without it.”

“Christ, will you prioritize? You want a picture. I’ll draw you one.”

“She gave it to me. I gave the knife back. It’s the only thing left that I have that was hers.” He turns his eyes back to his endeavor, “and you are going to tell me what you’ve done with it.”

He flinches as he sees her enter.

A pale hand emerges out from beneath the many black veils that cover her form. “You know what I like about Earth?” She turns the drill on. “Power tools, with exceptionally powerful heads. This one can even drill through husks..”

“We are never going to get out of here.”

“So leave Michael no one is stopping you.” She leans down next to Nicholas. “Where is Liz Parker’s picture?”

“I destroyed it.”

“Wrong answer.”

He blacks out only to be revived by Khivar much later.

“You just let them walk right out of the door?”

“I was not in a position to stop them between the many holes your daughter drilled into me.”

“She did this?”

The look of pride in Khivar’s eyes disgusts him. He clinches his fist only to find his hands are much bigger.

“It became necessary to plant you into another husk.” Khivar hands him a mirror. “Say hello to the new you.”

Even though he finds it perverse, he misses his old face.

The flashes end.

Air’s cool touch hits my face as the bag is ripped from my face.

I sit motionless. My brain is on overload.

“I knew you were nothing.” He waves his hand in front of my face. “You’re as much a fraud as he is.” He turns to Seth. “You’re good. You know that kid? You’ve got the entire universe convinced that she’s the genuine article. You want to be powerful Seth. You want to have a name that will live forever. Then stop trying to hitch your wagons to a mule and try the filly that you were born to. You belong with Tess.”

I add my two cents to the conversations by tackling him from behind and clamping my hands down against his spinal cord. “Let’s get one thing straight. Seth is mine, not Tess’s.”

His eyes widen. “You’re right. I didn’t mean to insult you. I’m sure that something can be worked out between the two of us.”

“I’m not interesting in working things out.”

He squirms as his left arm turns to dust.. I’m starting to set to work on the second when I’m thrown some distance by a presence made up of thousands of little orange lights.

Enraged, I watch as Nicholas slink off with another light entity hard on his heels.

The orange light presses me down.

I see Seth running toward me. He’s screaming something.

I can’t make it out.

My arms flail hitting nothing but air.

The back of my head hit the earth hard again.

It is only then I make out a shape beneath the light.

I knee the form hard in what would be the balls of any human man and am swiftly rewarded when I feel the presence jerk back from me.

I don’t know how I get him on the ground, but get him on the ground I do. “How does it feel now? Why can’t all of you just leave me the hell alone?”

It makes a sound of pain.

“Liz.” Its voice is low and guttural.

“Liz,” Seth huffs. “There’s been a mistake.”

“What do you mean there’s been a mistake?” I curse myself silently when I realize I’ve taken my eyes off whomever I have below me. I put them back on the creature only to find that I’m on top of Michael Guerin.

“Liz,” Seth says sternly. “Michael is our friend.”

I study Michael carefully. “And you know this how?”

“I suggest you get off me, before I make you get off me.”

“Are you threatening me Michael?”

“Are your hormones on the fritz or something?” Michael asks.

“Let me handle this. Liz, please get off Michael.” Seth begs. “He isn’t going to hurt you.”

“They’re all out to hurt me. It’s what they do. They wind me up and see how far I’ll go.”

“I’m really sorry about that. Nicholas grabbed me and hurt me and that made me mad. He used to hurt daddy all the time and that just made me madder. I thought you knew it was Nicholas. I forgot you’re not really like us, but you act like us. You smell like Mercedes’, and Deva’s mom. And it’s really hard. I’m really confused when I’m around you.” “Liz,” he snaps frustrated. “You are going to listen to me.”

“No, I’m not. I am tired of being ordered around by everyone. He had a plastic bag over my face. A plastic bag.” I breathe out as I’m grabbed from behind.

“Don’t you hurt her.” Seth warns.

I look down to find that Michael has conveniently disappeared from beneath and is no doubt holding me. My eyes fall back to Seth. “This is not a good way to get my trust. Maybe, you think my trust isn’t warranted, because I’m not alien enough to be in the club.”

“Seth go back and get Talen and the woman.” Michael says gently.

Seth advances on me in a panic. “Liz, you’re not acting like yourself. Please, you have to understand.” He pulls frantically on my shirt. “What are you doing to her? She’s making a hurt face.”

“She’s not making a hurt face.”

“But you’re hurting her.”

“I hurt her. You dad will rip me into shreds. Maria will pick up where he leaves off followed by Serena and Larek, because everyone is on the Liz love boat. Go get them Seth. The sooner we get out of here, the sooner we can get your dad to do whatever he has to do to make her better.”

“How is dad going to make her better?”

“I don’t know give her a giant Midol pill or bang her brains out.” Michael says under his breath.

“Seth, don’t you leave me with Michael.” I yell at his retreating figure.

“You need to calm the hell down.” Michael says. “He has enough problems as is with wonky women making him feel like shit.”

“Don’t you dare put that on me. You and Isabel let Tess in. You let her in and kept me out when she did nothing to prove herself, and I did everything.”

“Do the words get over it mean anything to you.”

I slump in arms as if I’ve been physically slapped. “Just let me go. I’ll sit right here. I’m tired, and I’m scared. I had a plastic bag shoved over my head by a lunatic.”

His arms drop away from my waist.

I take a seat on a rock and wait. “Will Seth be okay by himself?”

“I wouldn’t have let him leave otherwise.”

“But Nicholas?”

“Is being chased to the ends of the Earth by a very pissed off female. If you had killed him that pissiness would have transferred over to you. She has been waiting for nearly fifty years to stick it to him. Killing him as become a sort of life’s work of hers, one that I worry that she won’t be able to function without.”

“The lady in the veils.”

“How did you know about that?”

“I’m part alien now. Surprise! Have you heard from Seth’s father? Is he okay?”

“Still not doing the first name thing, I see.”

“How did you know about that?”

“No need to get your panties in a wad over it Liz.” He kicks up a bit of dirt with the toe of his boot. “Screw it, I wasn’t going to get involved in this. Hell, Isabel gave me strict instructions to let the two of you sort this out on your own.”

“There is nothing to sort out.”

“Know this, the whole not saying his name thing bothers him. No, I don’t think bothers accurately captures it. It hurts of the ripping your heart out kind of variety, and he’s had just about everything else ripped out of him. So, I would appreciate it if…”

Without any conscious thought, I flick my wrist and watch as Michael falls hard on his ass. “You are not my friend, because you made that choice. So don’t you come over and try and give me advise.”

“You were dangerous. She was just annoying.”

“What?”

“Tess, you wanted to know why we let her in. She was like this mosquito that buzzed around our ears whining about some four square sex thing we weren’t ever going to follow.” He looks at me, “sorry. Try and understand. He broke our oath for you and then he was always out with you. He was never with us anymore. It pissed us off. The rules were changing, and you were changing them. We were nothing without him. He was our leader. Destiny kept him with us. You would have ended up taking him away from us.”

“I wasn’t trying to take him away from you. I just wanted to love him.”

“We didn’t see that then. What can I say? We were selfish. We had always had Max. I don’t think we had ever expected that there wouldn’t be a time when we wouldn’t be first on his priorities. Chalk it up to our greatest regret. Not only did our short sightedness let someone far worse come between us, we helped push away the only person he ever really loved or will love.”

I hug my knees to my chest.

“I’m talking about you by the way.”

I glare at him.

“Just wanted to be sure, and you weren’t listening with your self effacing ears. So, there you go. Do with it what you well.” He looks passed me. “You do realize that fifteen minutes to cover what you had to cover is totally unacceptable?”

I turn to see both boys looking down at their shoes.

“You were fighting again, weren’t you?”

Neither boy abandons the apparent interesting study of their footwear.

“I get there’s a personality conflict. I really do. Plus, Antarians and Creusians have been at each other throats, since time began. But you two need to drop it, right now. We’re in a war zone. We’re you fighting when Nicholas attacked Liz? Speak up boys. I can’t hear you. ”

“Yes.” They answer.

“A solider does not let personal vendettas distract him when on the field of battle.”

I open my mouth to say that they’re children not soldiers but close it just as fast when Michael shoots me a dirty look.

“When you’re out here,” Michael continues motioning around him. “You are a wall, nothing gets past you, and nothing comes leaking out. Is that clear?”

Both boys nod.

“And one more thing Seth,” his eyes land on Hannah. “Next time, you want to organize a rescue mission. You speak to the commander in charge. You don’t mindwarp said commander and go running off without telling him where you’re going.”

“I guess that was bad of me.” Seth inserts.

“You think.” Michael answers.

“But I had a good reason.”

“Lady in distress. I get it. Who is this woman?”

“Kyle’s girlfriend. They grabbed her and Kyle.” I take Hannah’s hand in the wake of the sudden emotion I feel. “I think she’s suffering from post traumatic stress.”

“No, they drugged her to the gills. Look like feanide, which is good. It won’t have any effect on the bun in the oven.”

“What?” I ask.

“There’s a baby in her tummy.” Seth clarifies.

“How do you know this?” I wonder.

“She smells bad.” Talen tells me.

“Really bad.” Seth adds.

“So pregnant women stink?”

“To other males yes, to the father of said child no.” Michael answers.

“Why?

“I’m not a Antarian Ed teacher. Let’s get a move on class.”

“But she’ll be okay, right?” I ask.

I expect Michael to make another wisecrack at my expense. I feel he’s definitely on the verge of doing so when he does the strangest thing. He holds back and pats my shoulder awkwardly. “She’ll be fine. We’ll take her to Serena. Serena will do her thing. Hannah will be knitting baby booties in no time.”

“Can Serena help me? Um, something just doesn’t feel right with me.”

“We need to go now.” He answers in a clipped tone.

“Right,” I answer reading through the lines of his rudeness.

I’m in trouble, a lot of it.

I take in stride.

I really do right through the jungle and the accompanying car ride. I’m completely at peace with it as we reach a compound high in the mountains.

I take the news that Max isn’t there well, all things considered.

I adequately brief Serena about everything I know about Hannah’s condition.

It’s only when I see Maria, Brian, and Mani waiting on the porch that it all goes to hell, and I start crackling like the fourth of July.

I try to duck out of sight, but don’t make it pass the Deluca eagle eye.

She bolts of the stairs clearly intent on giving me a hug but is stopped in her tracks by my personal light show. “Liz, you’re okay.” Her statement comes out more like a question.

“I’m fine.” I glue on a fake smile. “You’re okay?”

She nods never lifting her eyes up from my hands.

I turn to Brian. “I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you. I wanted to. I wasn’t certain how you would react.”

“You’re skin is sparking,” is all he says. “Maria told me you could do things. I would have never believed her if I hadn’t just found out that aliens exist, and I was in the middle of alien war.” He turns to science to combat his disbelief. “Are you blood cells still even normal?”

“Yes, my cells are normal.” My shoulders sag.

“Do you think it could be your brain waves then?”

“I don’t know.”

“Parker, you’re telling me you haven’t even thought to cataloguing your biological anomalies?”

“I’ve never really been into seeing myself as a scientific experiment worth cataloguing.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Okay,” I nod. “Will you three excuse me? I need to go and wash up a little.”

I walk away from them feeling somewhere in between dejected and disgusting.

“ISABELLA,” Mani calls behind me.

I stop dreading this exchange knowing that Mani has never been the most sensitive of people.

He reaches me red faced from the exertion. Large sweat stains hang from his armpits. “My wife’s right. Soy gordo. I just wanted to say that you shouldn’t worry. You have a good soul, and God will still let you into heaven.”

“I could have told you that.”

This time my smile isn’t an act as I look over my shoulder to see Max. “Hey.”

“I would have gotten here sooner if I knew you were going to smile at me like that.”

“And who are you for Isabella to be smiling at?” Mani asks pointedly.

“Mani,” I admonish. “This is a good friend of mine M---.” I clear my throat.

“Max Evans,” Max says quickly rescuing me from, well, myself.

Mani stares suspiciously at Max’s outstretched hand. “Has he been behaving himself Isabella?”

“Yes, very much.”

“Bueno,” he takes Max’s hand. “Emanuel Sanchez,” he says warmly. “I’m glad you’re here Max. Now you can get Isabella out of the field and make a real woman out of her.”

“Mani,” I snap.

“What?” He pulls out a cigarette and lights it. “People just think that I’m big, dumb and fat, but I have eyes. I didn’t have eyes about the aliens. You know about the aliens Max?”

“Yeah, I’m well acquainted with them.”

He takes a drag of his cigarette. “One of them had me cornered in the lab. It was not looking good and then Lena came crashing down from the ceiling and killed him with these two giant knives. She got me out and found a driver to take me here. Is she an alien Max?”

“Does it really matter?” Max asks.

“No, I guess not. Well, I will leave you two to smile at each other.” He grins.

“He has some nerve.” I scoff when Mani is safely out of earshot.

“I’ve always really liked him.”

“You have?”

“He kind of reminds me of Michael, if Michael was twenty years older, fifty pounds heavier, and Mexican. He isn’t the most pc of people, but he has heart, and he isn’t false.”

“I guess you’re right.” I throw my arms around him.

He stiffens momentarily before relaxing.

“Is it against the law to hug royalty?”

“No,” his arms slide around my waist. “You’re upset,” he mummers into my hair.

“Yes,” I say closing my eyes enjoying the feeling of Max around me.

“Did something happen in the jungle?”

“Yes, but everyone’s safe. I’ll talk about it with you. I promise, but not now. I just want to stay like this.” My little peace of heaven is shattered by a small body inserting itself into the middle.

“Seth,” Max says sternly.

“What?” Seth asks innocently. “We’re hugging again, right? I like being in the middle. It’s like it’s a Seth sandwich then, and there’s never been a full Seth sandwich. It’s always been a half of a Seth sandwich.”

Max blinks clearly pained. For a man who prides himself on being normal, I can only imagine the idea that his son would not be having a ‘normal’ family life was a bitter pill to swallow.

I lay my head on his shoulder. “I know what you’re thinking and don’t.” I tell him. “He has all he needs in you.”

“Do you know what I’m thinking to Liz?” Seth asks.

“That you would like me to stop talking, so you can be the meat in the Seth sandwich again.”

He beams. “How did you do that?”

“Because Liz is special Seth, very special,” Max answers solemnly.

Seth frowns. “I did something bad today daddy.”

Max’s eyes narrow.

“Don’t look at me like that daddy, it makes it hard to tell you.”

“You need to tell me.”

“Okay,” Seth covers his eyes with his hand and starts talking in a rapid fire of Antarian.

With every second that passes, I feel Max’s arm grow tighter around my waist.

“So that’s what happened.” Seth says finally finishing while I struggle not to suffocate in Max’s grasp.

“I don’t know…what to say.” Max stumbles over his words. “I just don’t--- kn kn kn--” he stutters.

“Daddy.”

I stand up on my tiptoes and cup his ice-cold cheeks in my hands. “Look at me, we’re fine.”

“Nnn,” he stutters.

“Daddy, what’s wrong?”

“Seth, go get Michael.” I say with a calmness I do not feel.

“No, I’m just going to stay here and help you instead.”

I get him moving with the force of one look. It’s only when he’s long gone that I begin to rethink the logic of sending him and whatever information he might possess away. I bite down on my bottom lip hard pissed beyond belief at my knee jerk response.

I turn my attention back to what matters. “You’re hyperventilating. Mirror my breaths. In and Out. Just keep your breaths even for me. Good.

Good takes a detour when Max’s legs give out. My attempts to hold him up end with both of us falling to the ground.

I move quickly out from underneath him.

His hand shakily closes over mine. “Don…don…don’t go.” He grits out.

“I’m not going anywhere. Look at me. You have to look at me. Don’t you dare close your eyes.”

And to his credit, he never does.

And to mine, I try and understand the albatross around his neck or more precisely the crown on his head. “What is with Seth mind warping people not to see us, and why can’t we get him a doctor?” I ask as Michael helps Max to lie down.

“Because, it’s a secret,” Seth answers snuggling up to Max’s side.

“A secret,” I repeat.

“Any information regarding Max’s condition in the wrong hands could compromise everything.” Michael explains turning Max’s bag over and spilling the contents everywhere.

“Is this really what you want?” I ask Max.

He nods his head slowly.

“I want to go on record and say I don’t agree with this at all. You can’t just sit back and do nothing, because you want to protect your throne. You never even wanted it to begin with. You could come back to Earth. The Antarian doctors could treat you then, and you wouldn’t have to hide it, because it wouldn’t matter anymore. You could go to college and be somebody.”

“But daddy is a somebody,” Seth answers. “And why would we want to come to live here?” He asks scrunching up his face in obvious disgust.

I wince feeling like I’ve traveled back in time to the moment after Max’s mother’s infamous breeding decree. I try hard to handle it better this time around. “I’m sorry.” I say to Max. “I wasn’t thinking. You are somebody. Who am I to give advise or meddle in what you’ve got going?” I drop my head to cover my burning cheeks. “I’m not really needed here, so I think I’m going to go before I really offend you all.”

I’m shocked when Michael ushers me to a chair and whispers, “We’re just window dressing here, you’re the window.”

Right, I’m the window.

A window that was about to flake out again.

It’s truly lovely how try as I might, I’m right back where I’ve started feeling useless and completely out of my element in the great alien abyss.

I grunt in the wake of a small body jumping onto my lap. “A little warning as to when you’re going to do that would be nice.”

“Then I wouldn’t get to see you make a surprise face.” Seth tugs my arms around his waist while giving me the explicit command that I am to hug him this instant.

“You have to be the bossiest little boy I’ve ever met.”

“What is bossiest?”

With the newly acquired knowledge of the definition, he takes great pleasure in telling me that if he is the bossiest little boy than I’m the bossiest lady he’s ever met. “You’re even worse than the lady who talks too fast.”

Michael cracks a smile in the midst of unwrapping a bundle from Max’s bag that reveals several leaves. He rips a piece of one of the leaves off and feeds it to Max. He explains without me even having to ask that the leaves come from a tree native to both Antar and Earth. “It helps to calm him down among other things.”

After sometime, Max begins to speak again and asks both Michael and Seth to leave him for a while.

“I don’t want to go. I want to stay here with you and Liz.” Seth whines stubbornly.

“Please, do this for daddy.”

“Okay, fine.” He grumbles, “but if anything happens. You come get me Liz. You come get me before you even go and get Michael.”

“I will.” I tell him.

Michael lingers in the doorway.

“It’s all right Michael. I’m fine now.” Max says.

He nods once and closes the door.

“You should know that Seth only likes Antar, because it’s what he knows. This is only his second time on Earth. Don’t take his opinion of Earth as his opinion of you as well.” Max tells me.

“It’s what I’ve said. I’m just a novelty to him. I’m cool with it.”

“And it’s what I’ve always told you back, that no you aren’t. I know my son. He’s nothing if not constant.”

Leaning over him, I brush his hair away from his forehead.

He flinches in the wake of my touch.

“I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault,” he whispers. “I’m getting a headache.” He waves his hands, and the curtains magically draw close on their own.

“You need to sleep. I’ll just be right here when you wake up.”

“I don’t sleep.”

“Do you want me to go?”

“No.”

“You’re freezing. You need a blanket. I’ll get you one.” ”

“No, I need what I’ve always needed, just you.”

“You have me. I’m your friend. You know that.”

His eyes move to the popcorn ceiling.

“Anything you need, you just have to ask.”

His eyes come down quickly to me. “Anything?”

I swallow hard at the suggestiveness in his voice. “Yes, anything,” I find myself saying despite my better judgment.

“Let me hold you.”

“While you’re in the bed?”

“No, while I’m standing on my head.”

“I don’t want to crowd you. It’s a small bed.”

“It’s a king sized bed, Liz.”

“Oh really, it looks a lot smaller. It must be an optical illusion. The chair and mirror are in the wrong place if they --”

“Why is it that you can hug me, but I can’t hold you? What’s the difference?”

I sit there stunned for a moment by his directness. “We would be in a bed together.”

“I’m not going to make a move on you, unless you want me to.”

I fold my arms around my waist.

“Is that what you’re afraid of? That you might want me to?”

“My how you let your arrogance run wild.”

“No wilder than you let your fear run.”

“You’re not doing a very good job of getting me into bed with you.”

“Don’t have much to work with really. We’re miles away from civilization so that takes wine and dine off the list. I have the motor functions of a slug right now, so I can’t yank you in here and convince you to stay with the many lurid things I want to do to and with your body.”

“Stop that.”

“Stop what?”

“Talking like that.”

“I’m speaking the truth.”

“That is not the truth.”

“I can’t help if it you’re taking my truth and filing it away as an untruth until you’re ready to deal with it as being true. Liz, please,” he turns those magnificent eyes of his on me at full watt. “Having you in my arms is like no other feeling in the world.”

“Don’t say that.” I beg.

“Why?” He challenges. “Why should I have to pretend that I don’t want you, don’t crave you, don’t need you?”

“We can get our friendship back. You said you wanted to be friends?”

“I do more than anything.”

“Then you can’t say these things to me.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s exactly what messed us up before. It always messes everything up.”

“Or makes it a hundred times better.”

“I like not being angry with you.” I say quietly. “I’d rather not go back to that.”

“I like not being angry with you to, and I don’t want to go back to that either.”

“And that’s why we need to be just friends. We didn’t work as more. You have to see that.”

“Look me in the eye and tell me, you’re satisfied with your life, and there’s nothing missing from it.”

“My parents are missing from it.”

He swallows. “You’re right. I’m sorry. ”

“I shouldn’t have said that. That was a low blow.”

“It was a truthful blow.” He answers his features already beginning to form into his pod person mask.

“No---no---please don’t start acting aloof with me again.”

“You don’t want me to be aloof, but you don’t want me to be me. Please help me out here, because I’m not following exactly who you want me to be.”

“My friend, I just want you to be my friend and not to ditch me when something more alluring comes up.”

“You’re not talking about us, are you?”

“No.”

“What did Sean do to you?” Max’s voice turns lethal.

“I never dated Sean. We made out a couple times after you left, but that was it.”

“Then who was he?”

“A friend, he met her while he was with me, nothing happened till after he broke things off. That’s what he said, and I believe him. It was never the same afterwards. He keeps his distance for the most part now. I don’t know why. I’m over it really.”

“I believe you’re over him, but I don’t believe you’re over the hurt he inflicted upon your self esteem or your trust. Come here,” he says patting the mattress beneath him. “I’ll be a perfect gentleman. Scout’s honor.”

“You were never a boy scout.”

“Then trust me.”

“I do.”

“You don’t with your heart, but you will. I can be patient.”

The conviction in his voice gives me goose bumps.

“Now come here,” he says softly, “and let me hold you.”

I try to resist but find that much like the Borg, resistance to Max is futile.

And that in itself is terrifying.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Again, I just wanted to apologize for the long delay and thank you all for your patience. Hope you enjoy!

It's kind of a long chapter so I just separated it in two posts.
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Chapter Twenty-Nine (Past's Prisoners)

I am in control.

My situations do not control me.

I stand my ground even in the face of a wily opponent that according to a tarot card reader was to give me all the happiness, love, and not to mention sex in the world.

I cannot waver, will not waver.

I am a creature that thrives on being in control.

For those who control, keep from getting smashed.

I tell this to my therapist all the time.

Who in turn responds that those that do not court a possible smashing never really love.

But I don't need to really love.

I just need to be safe and laying here next to Max is anything but.

"Did you know your face might just stay permanently like that if you keep that up?"

I give him an incredulous look.

"I guess that humor works only on a seven year old."

"You tell that to Seth?"

"Yes, he gets all these frowns when he's thinking hard about something, and I personally think there's really nothing he should be thinking that hard about being that he's seven."

"But he's your son."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning, that I bet you pondered some weighty issues as well in your day."

"Yes, I did. You would think with that knowledge I would have been able to make things easier for him." He sighs.

"It has nothing to do with your parenting. You are a good father."

He doesn't look convinced.

"He adores you. It's in his genes to be a worrier. That's all it is."

"You appear to be plagued by the same condition. Is being here with me that bad for you?"

"Not everything I think about concerns you. Hey, what are you doing?"

"Moving closer, since you don't have a problem then I don't have to give you your space." He grins.

"You're crowding me." I answer scooting back in an attempt to maintain some barrier of decorum between us.

"I thought so."

"I wasn't thinking about you." I insist.

"Do you know your cheeks turn the prettiest shade of pink when you're flustered?"

"You don't fluster me."

"If you say so."

"I say so."

"I bet you do." He challenges.

I glare at him.

"Now, now Lizzie," He says tinting my nickname with a rather dark and erotic undertone.

"I want to talk about your illness."

"Well, I don't. It will ruin the mood of you and me in the bed."

"There isn't any mood to ruin. We aren't doing anything."

"That's what an imagination is for."

"Well, how about imagining this? You telling me what triggered this. Is it that you don't trust me?"

"You are the only one that I trust, one hundred percent." He answers fiercely. "I just want a couple more minutes to imagine. Give that to me," he begs.

"Because imagining us having sex is such a thrill for you." I deadpan.

"I'm not imagining that. I'm picturing what it would be like to wake up to you every morning."

My throat closes up at his claim. "But you don't sleep." I answer in an attempt to poke holes in his fantasy. "Plus, they're billions of light years between our mutual quarters." I add as his idea starts to wrap around me with an alarmingly tight grip. "And---"

"Shh," he interrupts. "I've just gotten to the part where the sun is shinning in your hair making the deep brown streaks in it look almost auburn."

Why couldn't he just be talking about us going at it like rabbits?

I could have chalked it up easily to him being a guy who, like any other, thinks about sex every other second and that would have been the end of it.

Yet, I can't explain away the love he's had for my hair with cynicism.

It was the one little piece of me that was his and his alone.

One could even argue it was as intimate as it got for a pair of fumbling virgins that never even made it to third base.

It was the part that I punished with a brutal vengeance after he left.

I watch him warily for my little Max has become quite the crafty one.

He is going to fight like hell to keep me from writing him off.

"In the future, you can spare me your poetic verse about how wonderful my hair is." I tell him.

"Do you ever get tired of constantly pretending that nothing stirs your heart?"

"I don't need my heart to be stirred by you."

"I think that you need a lot of things to be stirred by me." He answers suggestively.

"Welcome back, I wondered where the rake went."

"Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it."

"I told you what I wish for. I want us to be friends and for you, and Seth to come and visit me if you're around. I can cook for you two. My hobby is Italian cooking. You'd really like my spaghetti."

Take the invitation Max.

Please don't ditch me, because I'm not going along with what you want.

Please don't ditch me like you did before.

"I'd like that."

I let out a breath that I didn't even know I was holding.

"You thought I would said no, didn't you."

"Of course not, why would I?"

"Liz."

"Maybe, I did a little." I admit.

"This is about before."

"No, I understand why things happend the way they did, and I'm okay with everything, honest. We don't have to rehash it anymore."

"We do until it stops coming into play. My judgment was clouded by my hurt, by my anger, by Alex, by everything. I'm not trying to make excuses. I'm just trying to get you to understand that I have not been that mean spirited person that gave you the ultimatum of what would happen if you went against me in years. You are entitled to your thoughts and your opinions. You can even tell me to got to hell if you want."

"I think I already did that." I grin.

"And you looked really hot doing it may I add." He smiles back. "The point is that I've lived life without you, and that's not a life I want to live. So if you want to feed me spaghetti I'll be more than happy to show up."

"You’ll have to bring the wine. I like white by the way.”

“I think I can manage that.”

“What is your life like?" I ask in attempt to keep this sharing thing going that we’ve seemed to have struck up.

"Busy, I work a lot. Sometimes I feel like I'm drowning in paperwork, but I'm doing what I'm meant to be doing. I like the organizing, planning, and implementing of public policy. Khivar ran my world into the ground, but I'm fixing it, making it better."

"You always were a healer."

"I haven't thought of myself as that in a long time."

"You can't heal anymore, can you?"

"No." He says softly. "I know you thought I wasn't doing it on purpose."

"Because you hated me so much that you didn't want to connect to me." I voice.

"I never hated you. There was anger, but there was never hate." He pauses looking uncomfortable. "Did you hate me? I understand if there were times that you did.” He is quick to say.

"No, I don't think that I did. There was anger like you said and hurt. I really don't want to talk about this anymore. There's no point. Will you tell me what happened to your healing ability?"

"I let it go. It was a rather devastating departure, but it didn't go far, which made it easier to deal with." He answers cryptically. "I've gotten to the point where I don't even miss it." He feigns a smile.

"Healing can take many forms."

"Yes, it can."

"So when you're not running your world, what do you do?"

"I fly. The first time I was in a plane I knew it was where I belong. There's just something about being up there surrounded by the stars or flying along the surface. I can't describe it."

"I bet it's beautiful. The flashes I got from you. They were amazing."

"Imagine, what it's like when the plane actually doesn't crash. Would you come flying with me?"

"On your planet?" The possibilities that rush through my head seem equally endless and terrifying.

He takes my silence as disfavor toward his planet. "We can do it around Earth."

"No, I just never thought I could go to your planet."

"Do you want to go to my planet?"

"Could I actually breathe there? Earth's atmosphere nearly killed Seth."

"It wasn't just Earth's atmosphere. Seth and Tess were incompatible."

"Like an Antarian form of blood poisoning."

"I guess you could say that."

"Is that why she is the way she is with him?"

"She is the way she is with him, because she's a manipulating, vindictive bitch."

"That doesn't explain it."

"It explains it quite well for me. Seth was the means to an end. That's all he was to her, and when he couldn't get her the power she craved, she threw him away. Now, she's somewhere out there kicking herself, because he is powerful just not in the way she expected. "

"I get the distinct impression that she's letting you raise him and will swoop back in when she feels the time is right."

"He won't have anything to do with her. He has a much stronger mind than I ever had. There's no way she could ever mess with his head." "

"But she's messed with his heart. She's hurt him so much. Couldn't she have loved him just a little bit? He has so much to offer. He's got such an inquisitive mind and is so stubborn. We're always fighting about who is going to protect whom. I always say it's my job, because I'm the adult. He's always saying it's his, because he's the boy." I grin. "He's delightful. He would have been the apple of any mother's eye."

"Tess isn't his mother."

"Well, she certainly shown that. I realize she wasn't raised to be human, but I highly doubt, that your planet is populated by mothers that try and run their children off the road."

"No, you're not understanding what I'm saying. I don't even know if I understand it. Liz, I think you and Seth are---."

We both jump as the door slams open, and a small body hits the space between us.

Seth gives me a rare smile. "Hi."

"Hi, yourself. That looked like fun."

"It was."

"Seth."

He perks up immediately recognizing the slight testiness in Max's tone. "What did I do?"

"Nothing," Max answers softening his voice, "but we need to have an Earth lesson right now." He strokes the top of Seth's head. "Now, if you ever see a closed door, you knock first and ask if you can come in. You don't just barge in."

"That's a stupid rule. I never have to do that at home." He looks at me quizzically.

"Yes, but we're not at home. We're on Earth." Max explains.

"Do people actually do this on Earth, Liz?"

"Yes." I answer

"Why?"

"So they don't interrupt something.'

"Did I interrupt something?"

"Nothing important."

"Liz and I were talking." Max clarifies.

"I guess that was important." Seth says.

"Sweetie, it's fine." I offer.

"Because now you know." Max adds shooting me a pointed glance.

"And, I'll do it here, but I'm not doing it at home. I never had to before, and I'm not doing it now." He settles down in between us.

"But if Liz comes to visit us, you'll have to do it then, because you wouldn't want Liz to think you were not polite, now would you?"

"You're coming to visit us?" Seth nearly squeals.

"Maybe honey," I answer as it dawns on me the real reason behind Max's Earth lesson, and it has nothing to do with interrupting conversations. Despite my ire about his complete arrogance in disregarding my repeated assumption as to the definition of our relationship, I can see the practicality of what he's doing. Human couples have bedtime. Max has a child that never sleeps and who has seen enough of everything in my opinion to last him a lifetime. There needs to be some sort of protection there. I pat his head wondering why this appears to be a novelty, but it is something I choose not to linger on. "I don't think there's going to be a lot of closed doors for you to contend with, since friends don't have conversations behind closed doors."

"But the door was closed just now." Seth answers.

"Yes, it was, wasn't it." Max says. "It's just like you said Liz. Seth is such an observant boy."

"Shut up, Your Highness."

"Come over here and make me."

"Grow up," I poke him playfully in the side.

Max says something to Seth in Antarian.

I detect the faint trace of something almost conspiratorial in their posture. "Are you two plotting something?" I ask.

"Yep, yep we are." Seth answers.

"Seth," Max admonishes. "You're supposed to say ‘no.’"

"No, that would be a story daddy. I don't tell stories anymore. I'm a Jedi now. So I must tell you watch out Liz." He runs his fingers over my stomach.

I have no clue what he's doing.

"You're supposed to be laughing. Why isn't she laughing daddy? I'm tickling her wrong, aren't I?" He asks turning his head away from me giving me the perfect opportunity to get him back.

"Liz," he giggles.

I continue in my sneak attack tickling his side. "So you thought you could tickle me and get away with it?"

"YES!" He laughs his face turning red.

"Well, you can't, can't can't, but there's always daddy." I stop tickling Seth.

"Daddy is quite fine watching the two of you have all the fun."

"So daddy plots but can't stand the heat in the kitchen, I don't think that's fair."

"No, it isn't." Seth chimes in. The two of us start to crawl toward him on all fours.

"Daddy is resting." Max tries.

"You've rested enough." I answer as we descend on him.

Our attack is short-lived as we get only a couple of good tickles in before Max's arms come around us effectively pinning our bodies on either side of him.

"This sure is nice." Max smiles. "Don't you think that this is nice?"

Nice, my breasts are pressed up against his chest. A chest that through my repeated contact with I can surely say now is in fact as well defined or even more defined than it was in high school.

I am in control.

Despite, the way my nipples are hardening painfully against my bra, and the lurid fantasies running through my head.

"Let me go now." I tell him all playfulness gone from my voice.

"Say, please."

"That is one word you will never hear me say to you."

He lifts his head brushing his lips deliberately against my ear. "You'll say it someday. I can guarantee it Ms. Parker." He promises releasing me to focus on Seth but not before his hand strays for a second to cup my rear.

I smack him. "You ever do that again, and I'll blast you."

"It's worth the risk." He says playing some blasting game of his own that he seems to have devised with Seth.

"Well it won't be if you're minus a hand, now would it?"

"And here, I always thought you were a big fan of my hands and what I can do with them."

"Arrogance is and will never be an attractive trait on you."

A grimace that I immediately recognize as not being part of Max's repertoire of play-acting grazes his brow. "All right, that puts an end to the father and son wrestling hour."

"But Liz," Seth whines.

"I'm fine," Max tells me, which I don't buy for a second, but if he wants to stay in bed all day because of overexertion that's not my problem. Yet, it feels like my problem, which not only pisses me off greatly but also leaves me strangely disconcerted. I tug at my hair angry how I seem to keep falling into some sort of vibe with the two of them despite my best efforts.

"Ah Liz, turn that frown upside down." Max hauls me backward causing my head to land once again on his well-toned chest.

"I'm trying to be sensible."

"Be sensible later."

"But I'm a scientist. Scientists are always sensible."

"Well, I'm going to be a doctor when I grow up." Seth announces sitting down just above my head.

"That's something really good to try and be." I answer.

"I'm not trying to be a doctor. I'm going to be a doctor. I saw it. I help the sick and help babies get out of their mommies’ tummies."

"When did you see this?" Max asks sounding a little weirded out as any parent would be I guess at having a child that can actually tell the future.

"Today," he nods.

"Doctor Seth Evans, I like that. It has a nice ring to it." I smile.

"The strangest thing happens when I help the people. They start to like me and stop thinking I'm like Tess."

"You're not like Tess." Both Max and I say in unison.

"You just said the same thing at the same time. Miranda says Larek and Yvonne used to do that all the time, but they had been married since the dinosaurs roamed, but I don't think that was really true. I looked the dinosaurs up, and they roamed a long time ago. When I asked Larek about, he just said Miranda was being funny, and the dinosaurs had been dead for a long time before he had gotten married, but I didn't think it was funny, because how I'm supposed to learn things if people are just standing around being funny all the time. Liz, are you laughing at me?"

"No, never."

"Oh, okay, anyway, Larek said she had taught me something called sarcasm." He huffs obviously not amused by the lesson. "Why would you say something that isn't true to be funny? That's telling a lie, and telling a lie is bad, not funny. I asked Larek that, and he said he didn't know and then he got a disc. and we learned more about the dinosaurs. Did you know they don't even know how they died? They think it was a comet that crashed on Earth and spread dust everywhere, so they couldn't breathe. Others says it was because they got sick." His eyes shoot cautiously to his father.

"Tell Liz about your favorite dinosaur Seth." Max says clearly trying to distract him.

"My favorite dinosaur is the Stegosaurus." Seth explains launching into a very detailed and well thought out analysis as to why Stegosaurus is his favorite, which seems to revolve around his recognition of the animal being such a superb fighter. "They had these very sharp plates along their back which helped keep them safe from the other dinosaurs, but they also had the plates on their tail, which were kind of like weapons so they could fight and defend themselves at the same time. That's a very good thing to be able to do. What's your favorite dinosaur?"

"Tyrannosaurus Rex."

"He had small arms." Seth says looking rather distressed at my choice.

"But very sharp teeth," I roar tickling his side, "so he could bite any little boys that came his way."

"Liz, dinosaurs and people did not live at the same time. I know they show it in the movies, but they are---"

"Has hell completely frozen over or have you lost your mind?"

My eyes shoot up to the door quickly to see no other than Maria Deluca standing there with her hands on her hips five seconds shy of going absolutely postal.

"Hasn't anyone ever told you that it is extremely rude to open a closed door without knocking? You might just be interrupting something" Seth says.

I make a gallant attempt to hold back my laughter, but it comes out anyway, which immediately seems to set Max off as well. The sound of his chuckling causes a funny feeling to settle in my heart.

Seth, for his part, finds no humor in the current exchange and demands to know why we are laughing at him.

"No," Max pats his shoulder tenderly. "We aren't laughing at you. It's what you said. It was funny."

"I was not trying to be funny. I was trying to teach Maria an Earth lesson." Seth says seriously.

"You see Maria has never knocked on a door in her life." I try to explain. "She's constantly interrupting." My cheeks heat as my thoughts land on one incident in particular.

"Like Michael's apartment," Max adds eyeing me.

"Yes." I answer totally entranced by the way Max is looking at me, and the idea that he still thinks of that night to.

A hand waves across my face breaking the trance. "There will be none of that. Up." Maria demands.

"I am not looking to get into another argument with you." I answer.

"Liz," she pleads sounding hurt.

I chew on my bottom lip.

Why does everything have to be so damn difficult?

I don't want to fight with my best friend.

"Maria, I know that you are angry with me." Max begins trying to smooth things over with her.

"Angry doesn't begin to cover it."

"We were friends once."

"Don't you dare remind me of my lapse in judgment. I used to want Michael to be just like you with your words and your pretty gifts."

"Maria, please stop, " I beg.

"No, it needs to be said. I was such a fool. Michael is ten times the man you will ever be. He's the one that actually runs this operation, doesn't he? He's off doing what you should be doing while you're here trying to seduce Liz by showing her what a family man you are."

"That's enough," a tight voice says from behind.

My lip chewing escalates to full on biting for this has just gone from bad to worse.

Maria throws a quick look behind her shoulder to Michael who Seth is quick to whisper to his dad didn't knock either.

I squeeze her hand. She looks back at me while I hope there are enough years of friendship between us for me to communicate the message silently to drop this right now.

"I should have known you'd take his side." She says indicating that the past is still or even more in play with her than it is with me.

"I'm not taking anyone's side." Michael answers.

"Right," she drawls.

"You are in the wrong here, deeply in the wrong. I am just trying to save you the guilt, and the degree of apology you are going to feel compelled to make when you find out later down the road how in the wrong you are."

"All your words about staying."

"Staying where Michael?" Seth asks. "I just wanted to know where Michael was staying if he wasn't going to be staying with us anymore daddy." He says after a rebuke from his father to keep quiet.

Maria's gaze shoots to Seth, and for the first time, I can see the wheels turning in her head, filling in the blanks that like it or not getting along with Max comes with loving Michael. "You never told me that you lived with them."

"You never asked."

I try again with my visual message of peace and harmony.

Unfortunately, it doesn't take. "He is not good for you. He was not good for you then and is certainly not good for you now."

"We are just going to be friends. We decided that."

Michael snorts which turns to feign coughing when he see me looking at him.

Maria gives me a hug, which turns out to be all for show, so she can whisper in my ear to remember how I felt like for months after he left.

I draw back from her. "I don't need you to remind me thanks." I say shortly.

"Liz, I'm just looking out for you."

"We have had this conversation twice now. We will not be having it for a third time." I warn.

"But---."

"We will not be having this conversation again."

"You want to be the doormat to him and their child. Then do that," she bites before leaving angrily.

"He isn't their child." I yell after her. Red spirals skate up my arm. I feel like I'm ready to pop.

Seth crawls down the bed to Michael. "I know that you like that Maria lady a lot, but I don't think I like her all that much. She's very bossy."

"The Maria lady has her moments." Michael answers. "That just wasn't one of them."

"I just thought," Max offers. "I don't know what I was thinking."

"That you could appeal to her sense of reason and get her to lay of Liz for five seconds." Michael answers. "She's too emotional to think reasonably right now. It happens a lot with human broads. They are a breed to themselves. You’ll do well to remember that Seth, since you seem to be cut from the same clothe when it comes to the human ladies."

Seth's cheeks turn several different colors of red. "I told you not to tell him about Mercedes, dad."

"No, it's cute Seth. The little box you made her was an excellent choice. Girls like gifts. Your dad taught me that. You want to simmer down over there Liz. I feel like I'm in a wind tunnel."

"What?" I ask taking in for the first time the little knickknacks swirling around in a mini cyclone.

"Hey, Carrie, there's no one that really needs to be caught on fire or impaled by shards of glass right now so will you please stop it." Michael says.

"I'm not doing it." I answer.

"Maxwell, control your woman."

A glass figurine frees itself from the cyclone and flies toward Michael.

He easily sends it crashing to the wall with a flick of his hand. "I'm going to try and not to take that personally." He quips. "Seth, we aren't just keeping you around, because you’re cute and entertaining. Pull your weight buddy."

"What?"

"Liz is hell bent on ripping up the place in your honor. Go over there and let her know your feelings, aren't hurt."

"Why would she think my feelings are hurt?"

"Rule number two in dealing with human ladies. Don't try to think like them. It's impossible."

Another figurine comes plummeting quite near to Michael's head.

"Stop teaching him your misogynistic ideologies."

"I don't have misogynistic ideologies. I love the ladies. Especially, the lady downstairs who is currently cussing up a storm in Spanish." He turns to Max. "Did I ever tell you how much I love it when she talks dirty to me in Spanish."

"Yes," Max says as if he has heard the story a hundred times. "It sounds like nothing else in the world. You should get her to learn French. It is supposed to be the language of love."

"Now, that's an idea."

"My feelings aren't hurt." Seth announces as he plops down in my lap. "I don't know why I had to tell you this, but Michael said I did."

"I heard." I answer as calm descends over the room and me.

"That's was weird." Seth remarks echoing my thoughts.

The two seem to take no notice as Michael begins to fill Max in on the current situation. I am struck by the altered state of their exchange. Gone are the teens that constantly butted heads, and in their place, sit two men who have grown quite accustomed to navigating the once murky waters of their Czech heritage by relying on and respecting each other.

It's a nice thing to see.

"Neva has let it been known that she's quite pissed at you for running off with her son. I told her what she had to do to ease that, and she balked at it." Michael relays.

"Well, then she can continue to balk at it. She gets Talen back when she decides to play ball."

"She says she doesn't have the political influence to get the warrants of Liz and Seth."

"Then she's lying. Her husband orchestrated the entire thing to begin with. She can unorchestrate it. She wields just as much or even more power behind the scenes as he does. I will not budge on this."

"I would never suggest that you do. You are in charge of the alliance not them. They're simply testing you, counting on the fact you'll fold since Larek is no longer in the picture. Plus, Liz is starting to grow on me again. It would be a shame to have to send her off to a prison colony. It was a joke Liz." His eyes take on a glowing yellow color. "Oh, you want to fight me now, is that it?"

"Michael," Max admonishes.

"Sorry," Michael mumbles turning back to Max, "but she did the eye glow thing on me first. I'm counting on the fact that it's coming from aggression not arousal."

Max's eyes take on a sudden green sheen.

"Look, Liz is not my type. Remember Maria downstairs, that's my type."

Max shakes his head, and the color fades. "Sorry," he apologizes bringing Talen's mother back up again. "I find it strange that Neva's doing the talking, and we haven't heard a word from Sinon."

"Trouble in paradise, perhaps? Who could really blame her? Sinon is a prick that and if the rumors are correct likes to spend a lot of time in the company of ladies who are most certainly not his wife. It's something that could be capitalized on and make Neva more agreeable to our wishes."

"No, we have no proof that the rumors are correct nor do we have time to cut through the skepticism she might have in regards to her husband's fidelity. If we're going to get through Neva, it has to be through her son. Her making contact with us is extremely irregular. Tradition dictates that I'm in the right here, and we shouldn't even be hearing from her, which tells me she'll be ready to deal soon. I know you're not completely onboard with this Michael."

"It's the parent thing, again?"

"Yes, has anything been heard from Larek?"

"No, Isabel is gung ho to leave the capital for Nausica."

"We need her there."

"I told her that. I’ve never seen her like this. She said all of three words to the man in the last eight years, and now she's all ready to take a force to go and find him."

"It's Vilandra."

"What? You said that there was no chance of our other personalities resurfacing for Isabel or me." He sounds as if the option distastes him greatly.

"There isn't it fully, but aspects might in reaction to certain stressors."

"I wasn't even aware that Vilandra and Larek were close."

"Larek fumbled around after, but he wasn't her type. She didn't use him though like she used everyone else, so maybe they were close in their own way. He did protect her child that she adored above everything else from Khivar. That's enough to make her go to the ends of the galaxy for him and leave the capital, which we can't have."

"Then we get the adored child to tell her to lay off."

"We don't know where the adored child has gone off to, since she threw her temper fit."

"She's here. I ran into her when I was looking for Liz and the boys. Didn't you wonder what all the Eric Clapton you were hearing was coming from?"

Seth perks up but says nothing.

"She didn't come back with you all, why?"

"She had an errand to intend to."

"So help me if she's killed Nicholas, we have to keep our heads about us if we're going to win this."

"Maxwell, do the words 'duh' mean anything to you? Ours is a well-oiled machine. History is not repeating itself."

Max looks haunted for a moment.

"You are not Zan. Look, I'd be the first one to tell you if you were sucking at this. You aren't."

"Thanks for the ringing endorsement."

"Kyle's lady is coming off from her high." Michael turns to me. "How well do you know her?"

"Only in passing."

"Your eyes are glowing again. Antarians only do the glowing eye bit for two reasons aggression or arousal." He clucks his tongue. "Maxwell, you've been away for so long Liz had to go and play for the other team for a bit."

"What team?" Seth asks.

"There is no team. Michael is a moron." I answer him.

"Can you feel the undercurrent Max?" Michael asks.

Max rolls his eyes mercifully not picking up that part of the undercurrent is not actually coming from Michael's teasing. "She might know something that can help us find Kyle and Khivar."

And Tess.

"How much does she know about everything?" Max asks.

"I don't know. Hannah and their relationship never really came up in our conversations," except when Kyle was promising on everything holy that nothing happened until after we were done.

"You would think Kyle might have talked things over with you considering you’re in the same boat being humans with powers trying to date humans who don't have them." Michael offers.

"I'm sorry if my relationship with Kyle doesn't meet your muster."

Something in my wording unwilling tips Michael off.

I recognize it in the widening of his eyes, and the quick sweeps he makes in Max's direction trying to discern if Max has realized it to.

Max, for his part, seems to be still blissfully unaware, which bothers me.

For unlike most men, Max sees everything.

He can be like a damn computer processing every detail down to the last byte of information.

Yet with like any system, it does have the ability to be crashed.

I should know.

While trying to impart her fairy tale notions of love to me, my therapist has helped me to see one crucial thing.

I expected him to somehow read through what he saw of Kyle and me together.

I expected him to know that I was lying.

I expected him to figure out the entire charade and come back to me.

He saw my soul after all, knew who I was, but that knowledge no doubt got lost in the information overload he suffered that night.

It was an overload that made him susceptible to his enemies, an overload that I caused, and the fallout from it nearly drove me insane, which is all the more reason to stay clear of him for both of our mutual benefits.

Only I'm not staying clear.

I'm here engaging in what one could deem a strategizing session.

He once told me that I messed with his balance.

I'm fairly certain that I don't have the power over him now.

He would probably wouldn't even bat an eye over the news that Kyle and I were in fact a real couple.

Not that he needs to know, because I'm sure as hell not itching to know about all the women he's got hanging on him back home.

"Liz, Michael isn't trying to criticize you. I'm just trying to learn everything about the situation."

I stroke Seth's hair thankful that he's in my arms. "Kyle is in love with her. Honesty and truth are very important to him. He says you can't have a relationship without it." I tell them remembering with crystal clarity how he told me the same thing the day he showed up unannounced to my dorm to break things off. "From that, I would assume that she knows about his powers, my powers, and everything else. She's never said anything about it to me personally though."

"Okay." Max nods.

"I don't know what reaction you'll get from her. You're not one of Kyle's favorite people."

"I'm not anyone's favorite person it seems these days."

"It's only because they don't understand. Ignorance breeds antagonism. Start letting people in, and then they'll start understanding why you do the things that you do. I learned that the hard way after falling on my face several times because of it."

Max struggles to get out of the bed.

"You don't need to be doing that yet Maxwell."

"No, I need to be doing it. As Maria so eloquently put it, I've been sitting on my butt long enough."

"Why?" I ask startling both men. "There's no mood to ruin. I want to know what's going on. I want you to open the door for me just a little. No, I don't want it. I demand it. You owe me that."

"I do." Max answers rubbing the bridge of his nose. "Michael, can you take Seth?"

"I want to stay to daddy."

"No, you need to go with Michael."

"Please don’t think that I’m trying to interfere with your parenting, but I really think Seth needs to hear this to."

"I'm worried daddy." Seth adds. "I'm scared to, and I wouldn't be so scared if I knew some things."

Max looks conflicted.

It's one thing to be constantly reminded of your mortality. It's quite another to put into words explaining it to your child of all people.

"Michael," Max looks apologetic.

"I'm going to take five. Find Maria, teach her some French or something."

A ghost of a smile appears on Max's lips. "You have fun with that. First off, I want the two of you to know that I'm fine. I'm taking care of myself and doing the things that I need to be doing." He pauses nervously. "I've pictured this conversation a hundred times. You'd think I could conduct it better."

"We just want to know what's going on that's all." I nod feeling quite certain that knowing what's going on is going to be quite a bitter pill to swallow.

"I get headaches a lot."

"And you have to be very quiet then and not make a lot of noise." Seth adds gravely.

A forlorn expression grips Max as he is no doubt thinking about yet again his failure to give Seth a normal childhood.

I reach out and take his hand. "Stop," I insist.

"Or your face might just stay like that." Seth comments.

"It might just." Max eyes lighten a bit in reference to their shared joke. "The two of you are quite a tandem together."

"Daddy, I don't want to talk about tandems. I want to talk about why your head hurts all the time."

"Right, my head hurts because of Khivar. He liked to look at my memories, and I didn't want him to. Now, there are a lot of cuts in my head that hurt sometimes."

"Which I could make better if you would let me," Seth insists.

"No, you can't make them better."

One giant similarity pops out at me between not wanting Seth to heal him and not wanting me to kiss him.

He doesn't want to connect to me, or to his son, or possibly anyone.

I file the thought away.

"It could be worse." He begins again. "It could be a lot worse. They are beings whose minds don't even work anymore, because they have so many cuts in their head. So, I've been extremely lucky in that retrospect. Everything else that you've seen is because of Grey."

I squeeze Seth to me, "but that happened before he was ever born."

"Yes."

"But people are getting sick now and dy---expiring in a few days time."

"What does expiring mean?" Seth asks.

"It means to die. Seth, I'm fine. I'm not dying." Max is quick to point out. "I was exposed to a less lethal, weaker," he adds trying to keep things simple for Seth,” version of the disease. I get the same symptoms as the others. It just attacks me slower."

"Why would Khivar do that?" I ask.

"He didn't. Grey did."

"You're telling me he made the conscious decision to do that."

"Yes, there are traces of Alex in him."

"If there are traces of Alex in him, then he should have spared you all together."

"He wasn't in a position to do that."

I curse underneath my breath.

"He did what he could. I'm grateful for it and alive because of it. Please don't hold it against him. I once asked him why he did what he did."

"For Isabel, I suppose."

"No, he said he did it for you that you would want me safe. I wasn't particularly sure of that at time." He says wryly. "I'm sure of it now though."

"This bout that you had. What brought it on?"

"It's kind of embarrassing. I think it was a panic attack over the idea of Nicholas being anywhere near the two of you."

"Oh, you don't have to worry about that daddy. You should have seen Liz when Nicholas grabbed me. She told him to give me back. He said he wasn't afraid of a human and then Liz made him afraid."

"I don't remember any of that." I whisper. "I just came to with Nicholas' husk on my fingers."

Max looks concerned while Seth excitedly continues on. "She gets really angry if people try to take me away, and I don't want to go. Liz is very good at keeping me safe. She's like having my own giant guard lady."

"That's what it's about Seth, isn't it? Having someone that will keep you safe and stop people from taking you places you don't want to go." Max comments softly.

"I don't know." Seth answers.

The quick succession of flashes he sends me say otherwise.

He kicks, bites, and screams against a pair of arms who is taking him away from Isabel and Michael’s prone body.

"ISABEL!" He screams as he begins to be dragged away. "ISABEL HELP ME!"

"We will find you Seth." He hears her call. "We will find you."

He doesn't understand why she is not keeping him safe. Why no one seems to be able to keep him safe.

There is terror, so much terror, and like that it's gone.

He is nestled in his daddy's arms, but he doesn't stay nestled for long. His daddy is leaving and not taking him to. They have talked about this, but he is still confused and is hurt that he's being left behind.

The first flash comes back into play.

The arms holding him now have a voice. "It's really quite simple. You let us leave Isabel. I spare Michael.”

Outrage grips him as he puts a face to the body behind him.

Her face enters the scene.

He thinks she's pretty. She calls herself his mommy and is the first lady ever to do that. He has always been curious about mommies, for every living thing has a mommy, every living thing except for him. He thinks he might spend some time with his mommy when his daddy is away. His mommy smiles when he says this but reminds him not to tell anyone that he has seen his mommy, or he will never get to see her again.

He definitely doesn't want that, so he tells Michael a story, and another story, and still another story all so he can spend lots of time with his mommy.

But his time with mommy isn't like his time with daddy.

Mommy doesn't give him hugs or kisses. She doesn't even call him by his right name no matter how many times he tells her.

Mommy likes to step on animals and hurt them when they're talking and gets mad at him whenever he tries to fix them. "Never heal creatures that are beneath you Zan."

He doesn't understand.

He likes to heal everything.

Michael's head is starting to hurt a lot.

He wonders why.

Isabel comes and frowns at him.

He wishes she'd go away. He's never liked her.

He catches them talking in that funny Earth language they sometimes use.

"We need to call Max."

"We aren't calling Maxwell. The whole purpose of this was for him to get his head on straight. He can't do that if he's worrying about his kid."

"Something is up with Seth."

"Yes, he misses his dad."

"No, it's something else."

"You always think something is up with him. Can't you just give the kid a break?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Right, you're down his throat at the slightest provocation."

"I am not."

"You are to. I see it. Max sees it. Do you have any idea how much that hurts him?"

"He's the one that cut himself off from me."

"Only because you insist in trying to constantly gut his child for things that he didn't do."

"Seth's a warper."

"And a healer."

"Who's broken."

"He is your nephew. Jesus, what is wrong with you?"

"Max is not strong enough to balance him out, and you're kidding yourself in thinking that you're helping the situation."

"Isabel get out."

"Khivar never touched Seth. He messed with all of us except Seth. Why? Don't you see. Khivar was scared of him."

"So we should be to. That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard you say."

"It's the only explanation."

"There are numerous explanations. Someone was protecting him, most notably Tess."

"Tess kept on for hours after Seth's birth saying that he wasn't hers that he has no mother."

Seth rushes into the room and lets them know that he has a mother, and he's been spending lots and lots of time with her.

A pair of arms clamp around Seth's waist before pulling him back as he tries to reach them.

Michael raises his hand, winces once, and falls to the ground.

Seth tries frantically to go to him.

"It's really quite simple. You let us leave Isabel. I spare Michael his life. I suggest you make up your mind quickly unless you want him to go the same route as the unfortunate Alex Whitman did."

He turns his head to see that it really is his mommy holding him.

He doesn't understand.

"MAKE UP YOUR MIND ALREADY. I WILL KILL HIM." His mommy yells.

"LET ME, GO MOMMY." He kicks her hard.

"Take him Tess." Isabel whispers.

"ISABEL!" He screams as he begins to be dragged away. "ISABEL HELP ME!"

The flashes end, but little pieces of his thoughts still trickle through the connection.

He is no longer the same little boy who is fascinated by the idea of mommies. He finds the idea of having a mother to be distasteful.

Mommies are liars as are most women.

Seth's fingers are on my cheeks brushing at my skin. "We were talking, and you just started crying for no reason." He explains.

"Human ladies do that sometimes. Honey, can you get down? I need to open the window to let some air in. It’s a little stuffy in here."

He obediently complies. "Is everything okay?"

“Fine,” going over to the window I raise up the glass.

Hot humid air brushes against my face while from the corner of my eye I’m aware of Max hitting me with his one hundred volt study stare and feel another pair of eyes warming up behind me from the studier in training. “Stop,” I tell Max. Looking over my shoulder, I meet Seth’s gaze. “That goes for you as well. The two of you spend an alarming amount of time obsessing.” I comment returning my attention back outside to brood on the best way to dispose of a body.

I clutch at my ponytail finding the tightness of it is suddenly giving me a headache. Pulling the band out, my fingers sweep over the scar etched into my scalp and just like that there’s knowledge of how I really got it, and it wasn’t by taking a header through the Crashdown’s giant glass window.

The exact story is far bloodier, but it happened.

Read any book about repressed memory, and you’ll find the same message. One removes the guard of the brain by removing the fear that it’s guarding.

She tried to split my head open.

Lye can reduce a body to an organic soup.

She laughed every time I screamed.

There can’t be any DNA left for another clone to be made.

I feared her from the very first day she sat foot in Roswell.

I don’t anymore.

It’s time she fears me.

“I want you to teach me how to use my powers.” I tell Max.

“If you open this door, you don’t close it.” He answers gravely.

“Then let’s open it.”

“You’re a scientist. You help people.”

“If you won’t do it, I’ll find someone that will.”

“I’m just asking that you give this some thought.”

“I have. I’ve given it lots and lots of thought.” I answer leaning down to him. “So much thought you wouldn’t believe it.” I nuzzle my nose against his.

“You got more flashes from Seth, didn’t you? What did you see?”

“Liz, you can’t just look into my head without asking. That’s very rude.”

“Seth, if she had gone into your head without asking, your head would be hurting right now.”

“Oh, but daddy I’ve never let anyone into my head.”

I brush my lips down Max’s cheek.

His attention cuts back to me in an instant.

“So, what’s your answer?”

“You’re all over the place. A month ago, the idea of your powers terrified you, and now you want to know how to use them.”

I yawn. “This is getting tiresome.”

“I think Seth might have thrown some wires in your head when Nicholas found you all. He didn’t do it on purpose. Children when their frightened stimulate certain hormones in their parents. I don’t really know how he did that in you. He just got scared and wanted someone there that would keep him safe.”

“I’m not scared of Nicholas. I could beat him up easy.” Seth says. “I just let Liz beat him up, because she wanted to really badly. I was being nice to her daddy just like you told me to.”

“Or it could just be you’re feeling threatened right now by what happened with Nicholas, I don’t know, but something is going on.”

I twist a long strand of Max’s hair around my finger and watch it fall. “This is a very interesting conversation we’re having, but you still haven’t given me your answer.”

He stops me from taking another piece of his hair to play with. “I can’t think when you do that.”

“There’s nothing to think about.”

My cell starts to ring. With my mind, I reach out unzip my purse and send the phone flying up from my bottom of my bag and into my waiting hand. “Liz Parker,” I answer.

“What’s with the name change Parker?” Brian asks. “You never call yourself Liz. It’s always Elizabeth.”

“Variety is the spice of life.”

“Are you all right? You sound different.”

“I’m more than all right.”

From behind me, I’m aware of Seth getting quite agitated with his father. “I didn’t do anything.” He huffs in response to a series of questions his dad has asked him in Antarian.

“About before Parker, I wanted to apologize. I didn’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable. This is all very new to me. I need you to know that I’m okay with it, because I am with everything than you can do.”

“Thank you, I’m relieved to hear you say that. I know that---” I am interrupted by a pair of hands grabbing at me.

“Daddy thinks I did something to you.” Seth complains. “I didn’t do anything. Please tell him to stop asking me questions.”

“Brian just a second.” I put my hand over the phone shooting a glance to Max who looks rather irritated.

I, myself, find it curiously reminiscent of a study I once read regarding willful children and their habit of starting trouble when things aren’t going their way.

“You have a problem with your daddy you resolve it.”

“But.”

“But what? I may feel compelled to do a lot for you kid but ganging up on your daddy isn’t one of them.”

“Liz.” He whines.

“She’s on the phone Seth. Have all your manners just flown out the window?” Max demands.

“She’s on the phone with her friend.” Seth answers. “You don’t even care.”

“Yeah, Brian, I can hear you. I’m coming right now.” I turn away from Max and the willful child. “I know I’ve been preoccupied. There’s no excuse for it. I just had some personal things to attend to. Right, will do.” I hang up the phone. “I have to go.” I lean down to give a kiss to Seth who responds by ducking away from me.

“I guess that means I get two kisses his and mine.” Max answers as I kiss his forehead.

“Must be your lucky day,” I say. “Are you going to be okay by yourself?”

“I’m not an invalid.”

“I’m not suggesting that you are.” My eyes fall close as his hand cups my cheek. The warmth of his skin against mine feels so good.

“I’ll teach you if you want me to. Just be sure it’s what you really want.”

“I want to help you.”

“Help me with your science.”

“I want Tess dead.” I whisper into his ear, “and I want to be the one that does it.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I know. No loving yet, but it is coming. I am satisified that our couple has resolved a lot of their issues so yes the loving is near.

Happy Cinco de Mayo everyone.

After reading Doublestuff's wonderful update, I felt inspired. What do you know? I wrote something.

So it's on you now Evelynn. When are we getting some Denial Game action?

~~~

Chapter Thirty: Bonnie and Clyde

I am a woman on the verge.

The verge of what proves to be an interesting but a troublesome question as I begin to form my plans for the alien pop tart.

There is a sense of an epiphany that morality is nothing more than a con, breathed into being to kid us all into thinking humanity has progressed far beyond from that of a jungle cat prowling around looking for its next meal.

We hide behind ideas of fraternity and delight at stories of the underdog having his or her day all in the attempt to ignore one basic biological principle. The strong always win while the weak cling to idolized visions of how life should truly be.

It’s the law of the jungle after all.

One, I refuse for the people I love and myself to be on the receiving end ever again.
With that one endgame in mind, my focus shifts from Tess and her list of crimes to the creation of my probable ones, because one does not become ruler of the jungle on moonbeams and stardust alone.

The old conventional wisdom of if you want to break an omelet you have to break some eggs still stands.

I am definitely for the breaking.

Tess was supposed to be the answer to saving him and the world, to fight the fight that I couldn’t, because I was just a small town girl from New Mexico.

If only I had told him to go hell, there is so much anger.

I am choking on it, but said choking is really just a preliminary to chocking her. The more and more I imagine it. The realer it becomes. How I would pull her up by her blonde hair, and wrap my hand around her windpipe. Squeezing, until those blue eyes of hers roll into the back of her head. Then I would ask her dead corpse something pithy and memorable.

My failure wouldn’t be such a failure then.

“You’ve been rather quiet Parker.” Brian begins his eyes glued to the microscope's lens.

“Don’t really have much to say,” I answer looking at the strands of hair from one of Alex’s clones sticking out from the microscope’s platform. It wasn’t simply enough to kill him. They had to harvest his DNA while they were at it, and turn him into some kind of monster.

“It was a good idea for you to collect this.”

I shrug my shoulders.

“I know that having them look like him must have been very hard for you.”

“Are you getting anything from it?”

“The mitochondrion looks to be abnormally large.”

“Which could mean just about anything,” I snap.

His head pops up from his study. “Science isn’t about quick and easy answers. It’s a process. You know that.”

“Meanwhile, they’re out infecting more people.”

“We’re in a holding pattern. The quarantines are being maintained. We’ve circulated their picture. Granted, we’re calling them terrorists not walking viruses, but it still counts for something. My only issue is that it should have been done days ago. They displayed great hubris trying to keep it in house by fabricating samples.”

“If Pierce had gotten his hands on the real thing, there’s no telling what he would have done with it.”

“So you believe their Pierce is a maniac story?”

“Yes, if he had something that he could use against them, he would use it without any regard to whether it might take some humans out along the way. What his son did to---.” I trail off. "He tortured and tried to use science as an excuse.”

“So junior was a bit of a psycho, but is it fair to group the sins of the son on the father?”

“Yes, ” I stress as he looks decidedly unconvinced. “What other reason would they have to not to act?”

“I’m just naturally wary of the establishment whether it be domestic or otherworldly. I guess it’s the legacy of being a politician’s kid, but you never trust the official story. There is always something more that they aren’t telling you.” He sighs. “You will do well to remember that if you’re going to go play in the big leagues with them.”

“I’m not trying to play in their leagues.”

“You honestly don’t feel like we are all just pawns here having are strings pulled by something else or a whole lot of other somethings.”

“What do you mean?” I frown.

“I wasn’t completely honest about the taxi. At the time, I didn’t think it was relevant. However, I get the sense that these people play hard, and they play to win.”

“You don’t think it was an accident?”

“It came out of nowhere like a bat out of hell.”

“That’s nothing unusual for taxi drivers.”

“The person didn’t stop, not even to shout at the stupid gringo that didn’t get out of the way fast enough. That’s---.”

“Unusual,” I finish.

“Then look at you. You weren’t even supposed to be here Liz. And yet, here you are, working on an alien plague while you just happen to have gone to high school with many of the key players. They needed an in with the CDC. We needed some kind of assurance that they were the good guys. Those are a lot of converging factors, don’t you think? It’s as almost as if it was destined.”

“I don’t believe in destiny.”

“Then try a manipulation.”

“Who would have the power to do something like that?”

“Maybe, you should ask the blue blood?”

“That’s ridiculous,” I protest.

“You’re like a moth to the flame where he’s concerned.”

“You’re seeing things that aren’t there.”

“And your refusing to see things that are. I like you a lot, maybe too much. Just watch yourself Liz, there’s a lot things swirling around here that I don’t get nor like.” He warns.

“You don’t know him like I know him.”

“Correction knew, of course, things were exactly that great when you knew him either if my memory holds true.”

“I’ve already had this conversation with Maria.”

“Funny, that’s two people now. There appears to be a trend forming. All we need is to throw Kyle into the mix. We really shouldn’t be the ones having all the fun with the aliens. His ass should be down here with all of us in the muck, instead of in some cushy office in DC.”

“His ass is down here. Tess,” I spit out, “took him and Hannah. We have Hannah. We don’t have Kyle.”

“What do they want with Kyle?”

“I don’t know.”

“Who is stronger? Could you beat him if it came down to it?”

“Kyle would never hurt me.” I scoff.

“If they didn’t take him to even things out, why go to the trouble to take him in the first place?”

“Because Tess wanted to screw with him. It’s what she does.” My eyes snap away from Alex’s hair.

“You ever play chess?”

“No."

“It’s my father’s favorite game. He says it’s all about predicting the ultimate motivation of your opponent and using it to draw him or her out.”

“I see the logic in that. Everyone is driven by his or her own personal set of quirks. I have to wonder at their choice though. You would want someone that would create the highest level of panic like Seth for instance.”

“And that would be the best plan of attack if Max was the one that Khivar was trying to draw out. Maria was attacked in her apartment. I was nearly run over. Kyle’s been abducted. What is the commonality?”

“The gas explosion wasn’t really a gas explosion. It was Tess.”

“I’m sorry. It’s much easier to accept a thing if you can chalk it up as a random event as oppose to a deliberate act of maliciousness.”

“Do you know what gets me the most? I let it happen.”

“That has to be the dumbest thing I have ever heard you say.”

“I had powers. I couldn’t blast, but I could move things. If I had just fought harder.”

“Parker, I have no doubt that you fought like hell. I think that’s what Khivar is counting on. Hence, the little experiments he seems to be running on your nearest and dearest. The control is the attack. He just seems to be switching the variables looking for the right one. He’s a scientist, so he’s approaching his problem as any scientist would. It appears the Scientific Method is an intergalactic concept.”

“No, it’s Tess being Tess.”

“Or Tess is being Tess, but she is also serving as his catalyst.”

“It’s kind of a waste of their time to do those things when I’m not even there to be observed.”

“Maybe, you don’t have to be there for it to have an effect. It’s obvious that they haven’t found your motivation yet.”

“Tess’ head on a stick is motivation enough.”

“That’s not funny Parker.”

“I wasn’t trying to be.”

What is even less funny is when my thoughts drift to my much-maligned visitor from the future. He got the easy way out never having to see that not a single good thing would come from his and my actions.

“LIZ!”

“Seth, your cheeks are flushed.” I press my hand frantically to his forehead.

“I ran here.” He pulls me up from my chair and grabs the pieces of paper around me before thrusting them into my hands. For a moment, I am struck numb looking down at my thoughts strewn over the sheets. It’s been over seven years, since I’ve felt compelled to put pen to paper. The sheets suddenly catch on fire, and I drop them to the ground.

“I hope those weren’t important.”

“No,” I stomp the flame out.

“Come with me, I need you. Your Barbie has been saying things to Miranda. Now, she’s telling Michael and daddy about them. She thinks they should send me back. I was trying to listen at the door, but then they activated the thrala, and I couldn’t hear anymore. What did you tell him?” He demands.

“He’s my friend. When you eavesdrop, you don’t get the entire story. He wouldn’t betray my confidence like that.”

“Miranda is very good at getting people to talk to her. Plus, he has yellow hair. Yellow haired people can’t be trusted.”

“Says who?”

“Tess and Isabel both have yellow hair.”

“That’s just a coincidence.”

“You, Michael, and daddy don’t, and you don’t ever lie to me. See, I’m right.”

“No, you’re not.” I choose to abandon this argument in favor of focusing on the real problem.

We stop outside a glass door, and he motions for me to sit down. “I cannot go back home. I have to be here.” He stresses, “near you.”

“Why?”

“Why do I have to have a reason?” His look turns forlorn. “Do you want me to go?”

I touch his shoulder. “The mere thought of it makes my heart hurt so bad.”

“Then you tell daddy that you’re aren’t going to let him send me away.’ ”

“He’s your father.”

“And your,” he struggles for a word before deciding on, “Liz."

"That's not going to get us very far."

"It will with my plan. You should be able to hear what they’re saying and see them.” He answers pressing his head to mine

“How am I going to hear and see them if you can’t?”

“You are different than I am. Your body can be one place, and your thoughts can go elsewhere.”

“I can’t do something like that at will. The last time Isabel had to,” I meet his eyes, “connect with me.”

“Liz,” he says clearly exacerbated. “Isabel is not someone that you can trust.”

“I know that you’re upset with her.” I broach the topic carefully not really sure if he even remembers the flash that I saw of his abduction.

“I can’t talk to you and ask your Antarian side to help us as the same time. It’s kind of tricky to find it when you’re not scared.”

“So that’s what you did when we blew up Tess’ car?”

“Yes.”

“Will there ever be a point when I can do it by myself?”

“Maybe, now shh, thinking about nothing means not talking.”

He veers back suddenly as if surprised and mouths “daddy” before the rest of what he says gets lost in a buzz of white noise that slowly turns into organized sound.

“Look, I’ll be the first to admit that they’re extremely cute and cuddly when they’re being humans, but then they switch. It’s some scary shit Maxwell. They got the drop on Nicholas of all people. Liz was systematically dissolving his body parts when I got there, and Seth was holding him down with his powers.”

The wall in front of me dissolves away revealing Max leaning up against a desk. His color is still bad. I am unable to stop myself from touching his cheek.

He shivers. His longer fingers fiddle with a pencil in his hand.

“Brian says she’s abnormally short tempered.” The ever-illusive Lena Cruz adds.

“Who would have thought you could get the douchebag to turn on Liz so fast?” Michael quips. “I bet he gave up without much of a fight.”

“There is a genuine concern. He’s very sensitive for a human and knows that’s she is an extremely dark place, which makes what you’re saying about Liz and Seth’s relationship even more dire. What Tess didn’t achieve in her little kill feast with Seth, Liz could do. The potential is there.” Lena tells him.

“Because Seth is a passive vessel that has no free will or understanding of right and wrong?” Max asks with a slight edge to his voice. “I’m glad you think my son is a sociopath.”

“That is not what I’m saying, and you know that. Things can sometimes get lost in the heat of the moment.” She argues. “It’s impossible to know what the addition of Liz could lead to the equation.”

“They are a tag team Maxwell. The scions in the freezers and Tess’ car, they couldn’t have done that by themselves.”

“They were attacked, and they defended themselves. There is nothing wrong with that.” Max argues.

“How long until their defense because an offense? The power that they are bringing out in the other is extremely potent, and the feelings of entitlement can be great. You factor in than it’s an Antarian child and a human woman, it doesn’t bode well. Brian said she was talking about killing Tess.”

Max breaks a pencil in his hand.

“He wasn’t sure if she was joking or being serious.” Lena continues her eyes on Max’s hands. “It’s Vilandra all over again.”

“Liz is not Vilandra. Her anger is not born out of the need to kill or for personal gain, but her own perceived failures. She thinks that she’s failed on every level, and that’s where the true danger is if I don’t get through to her. She will do something reckless, and it will probably get her killed.”

“And take your son with her,” Lena continues. “You have to see that what Tess wasn’t to Seth, Liz clearly is.”

“How is that even possible?” Michael’s face darkens as a certain scenario plays out in his head. “Could Tess have messed with your memories Max?”

“It’s not genetic.” Lena says almost apologetically. “I had him DNA tested when he was born. He is Tess’ son.”

Max curiously detaches himself from the rest of the conversation choosing to stare out the window rather than participate. Only talk of the convergence shakes him from his stupor quite explosively.

“It’s shut.” His voice thunders.

“How long can you really keep it contained from her?” She challenges. “I’ve read the warrant on Liz. Khivar could turn her so fast. He has everything at his hands to do so.”

“He has the thoughts and observations of a sixteen year old child. Newsflash, the majority of that wasn’t so accurate. Khivar doesn’t have a clue as to whom he’s dealing with.”

“Do I have to remind you what your faith in her got you the last time?”

Max said there were other women. I just never realized that there would be women that he would share himself with so. The sound and picture wobble. I lose focus of about everything except my hollowness.

“It got me a son that is my world, and who is the only reason that I’m standing here with some semblance of humanity left. Her love game me Seth, because she loved me enough to give me up. I understand that now.” His voice cuts across the divide before my new little trick sputters out completely.

“He’s really going to do it.” Seth breathes. "He's going to make me go home."

“He didn’t say that.” I wipe my eyes.

“Then why are you crying?”

“Didn’t you hear and see him to?”

“Liz, I already told you. I can’t do stuff like that.”

“I’m sorry. I forgot.” I mumble.

“If he didn’t say I had to go, then why are you sad?”

“I’m not sad.”

“Sad people cry, and you’re crying.”

He reaches behind me and snaps a red flower of a bush. Closing his palm around it for a beat, he opens it again to reveal the same white something that has haunted me from before he was born.

“You don’t like it. I can change it.” His palm closes.

“No, please don’t.”

“Then here,” he thrusts the rose at me with the frankness in tact that I find so amusing in children.

“It’s beautiful.” I hold the blossom up to my nose and close my eyes. “I got a bouquet of these once. I pressed every single one of them.”

“They grow in the glass house in the backyard.”

I open my eyes trying to halt the travel of my thoughts. “It must be pretty with all the different colors of flowers.”

“It’s just the white roses out there. Daddy won’t let them plant anything else.”

I twirl the rose in my hand before looking at Max’s own little rose whose price was so dear but worth it all the same. “You’re my one good thing Seth.” And as the realization leaves my lips, the pain that has held me prisoner since that night lessens. Not to the point of complete absence mind you, the memory like all turning points will always linger, but now I have the power to associate some good with it.

Seth leans his head on my shoulder and looks at me with his big, brown eyes. “What are you thinking about?”

“That I’m glad that I got to meet you, but I am even happier that you decided to be my friend. You’ve given me a gift that no one else could have given but you.”

“It’s very easy to change a flower. Everyone can do it.”

“I’m not talking about the flower.”

He crinkles his forehead in thought. “Oh, I get it.”

“Good,” I smile.

A shadow falls over us. “Your dad wants to see you Seth.”

“Why?” He asks suspiciously turning away from my shoulder to look Lena dead in the eyes with a threatening intensity.

“I don’t know.”

“How could you not when you’re going around causing trouble for me?”

“Did Liz tell you that?”

“Have I done something to offend you, or is there some kind of initiation that requires Antarian woman to come down here and give me grief?” I demand standing up.

Seth scoots quickly in front of me.

“So you admit that you have a hostility toward Antarians?” Lena asks.

“You came down here to talk to me, not Liz.” Seth tells her.

“Are you that afraid of what she might say Seth, or are your more afraid of what she might do?” Lena asks.

“Why are you being this way? You’re the one that told me if I gave up a little piece of daddy, I would gets lots of something more just like the way you did with Yvonne.”

“Because you might be getting something that I didn’t intend for you.” She answers.

“YOU’RE WRONG!” He screams at the top of his lungs. The ground begins to shake.

I grab Seth from behind rather fearful that he intends to pounce on her.

He struggles against me. “She’s wrong.”

I give the 'she' in question my best death glare as I realize that there is a lot more than meets the eye here. “Tell me something. What would Yvonne think about this or even Larek for that matter? Upsetting a child to prove a point Miranda.”

She doesn’t dispute the name or my accusations.

“But your little plan only works if I go ballistic, it’s about me being the bad guy not Seth. You might want to let it be known that I’m pulling my own strings now. I jump only when I deem it necessary.”

Michael is the first to respond to Seth’s screams. “What’s going on? I thought I heard screaming.”

“I’m sorry. I just got a little upset. Miranda doesn’t believe in global warming.” I run my fingers through Seth’s disheveled hair. “Thinks it some kind of liberal plot,” I press my head to Seth’s. “We’re going to go and see your daddy now.”

“I can’t go home.” Seth whispers.

“He isn’t sending you home.”

“Because she wouldn’t have tried to make you mad if he was,” Seth adds.

“Bingo.”

We both turn our head to look at the former Lena Cruz.

“Your nose is bleeding.” Michael tells her before both their gazes shoot back to us.

“It must be the elevation.” I answer.

“Yes, it's very high up here." Seth adds.

Sorry for the late posting, I blame NBC.

They're evil people stringing me along as I wait patiently for pairs skating.

I just wanted to thank everyone for their continue support despite the long lag. It's my New Year's resolution to finish this.

And thanks to Smac for her wonderful edits.

Quote: Taken from End of the World


Another reviewer suggested a previously on Convergece might be helpful, since it's been a while.

So previously on Roswell.....

Liz is in Mexico with the CDC fighting a virus that Khivar has genetically engineered to look like Alex. Khivar also infected Max with a weaker version of the same virus. Max also has to contend with the fact that the mental division that keep Zan out was destroyed during his time in prison, which results in Zan coming out and making a general mess of things.

Liz has her problems as well. She has recently discovered that her parents death and her subsequent coma were Tess’ doing. She has also learned that Max took over Brian’s body a la Larek to help her recover, which inadvertently led her to develop feelings for Brian.

Currently, the Roswell clan is holed up in the rainforest. Kyle and Hannah were kidnapped by Tess. Hannah escaped and is pregnant.

Seth has some serious mommy and behavioral issues.

Man, this is really melodramatic.

There are other peripheral things go on as well, but I think this covers the highlights.

Original characters
Hannah- Kyle's girlfriend
Miranda (Lena)- Khivar and Vilandra's daughter
Brian- Liz's boss
Mani- works with Liz
Serena- Miranda's grandmother in law

Let me know if anything is unclear and I’ll add it to this list.

____________________________________________________________________________________
Chapter Thirty-One: Jealousy

By all accounts, I am an extremely level-headed person. Two years with a Buddhist and nearly decade in science has taught me that calm approach is the best medicine when confronted with a problem. Passion only serves to exacerbate the messiness of a conflict.

My mind at the moment is like a gentle breeze.

Miranda beating Seth and me to the punch to regale Max with stories of how I am distracting him from his school work in a last ditch attempt to separate us doesn’t surprise me. Nor does the fact that Max is so transfixed by Miranda that he doesn’t even register Seth or my presence. Opposition against me in the alien abyss is like gravity in the outside world. Eight years ago, it was about keeping me away from Max while now the focus seems to have shifted to that of his son.

Perhaps if I were looking on the situation from the outside, I’d see things from their point of view. A human girl in love with an alien and now casting herself as the protector of a child bore by a woman she plans to kill. Biology should have prevented the first and psychology the second. I can freely admit the oddity of the situation, but nature is filled with little oddities.

I handle the situation like any adult would.

I don’t make a fuss as Max continues to be so absorbed with Miranda and so oblivious of me, because there’s a regularity in even that. Years might have passed, but it’s always the same. Sure his human side digs me a lot choosing to believe in Max’s words of before, but there’s another side to him that’s never had much use for me. He was still attracted to Tess even when things were still good with us. I took it, because that’s what good little girls with self-esteem issues do. They step aside for the greater good while never once asking for something in return.

I’m as good and as peaceful as I’ve ever been.

Until, I snap.

“Go away.” The order issues from my lips. And remarkably enough, Ms. Tess 2.0 hightails it out of there in record speed.

And that’s when things get interesting.

Too engrossed in gloating over besting finally one of these interfering Antarians, I fail to see the switch in Max to his less loveable counterpart Zan, but I get the message clear as day when a seemingly magical force pushes Seth from the room and slams the door behind him.

I flinch at the noise.
Suddenly, I’m aware that Zan is beside me.

Not a single sound betrayed his movement.

I try to back up only to find that he has trapped me between him and a large desk.

Zan stares me down with the help of Max’s eyes. “If it comes down to it, I will crush you, have no doubt. I have not endured what I have endured to let you come along and throw everything into a tailspin.”

Great, if I didn’t have enough to deal with, I have to listen to someone threaten me using Max’s voice to do it in. “Would you like to explain to me what has gotten your panties in such a wad, Zan?”

“I didn’t give you permission to speak, human.”

“I don’t require your permission to do anything, Antarian.”

Air rushes out of his nose in one angry puff.

I brace myself as his body moves to squash the distance between us, to no doubt begin the crushing process of yours truly, but at the last moment, he halts from his path in a single jerky movement. It bares none of the coordination that seems to be so characteristic of all Antarians. There’s a moment of shock on his face before he drops his head. He lets out a shaky sigh.

Without thinking, I reach for him.

He shakes me off as if my touch burns.

I show him the palms of my hands in surrender. “Please, whatever it is. I’ll do it. Just stop hurting him. He’s been through enough.”

“Stop hurting him.” He repeats as if the mere thought is absurd. “I only wish that I could hurt him. Maybe, that would remind him who is in control here.”

I look at him dumbly.

“Don’t you get it? He’s using my body against me. All so he can protect you,” he spits the word out with as much distaste as he can muster. “A walking abomination to the Antarian bloodline,” he rails angrily.

“It figures that you’d be a fan of eugenics. You’re just going to have to learn to deal with the fact that I’m part of your little club now Zan.”

“You can have all the special tricks in the world, but you will never be one of us. I make the decisions here, and you are not useful nor wanted. All you have to do is walk away. Max has been through enough. If you love him as you say that you do, I would think you would shy away from causing him even more immeasurable pain.”


Just twenty five minutes before I came here, I held Michael in my arms...dead. Isabel died two weeks before that. Now you have to do this. You have to find a way. All of our lives depend on it.


His words and his resemblance to Future Max trigger an overwhelming wave of déjà vu along with emotions that nearly suffocate me.

“No,” the word escapes from my lips. If it is reference from my not so happy trip down memory lane or in response to Zan’s bullying, I don’t know. The point is that I get it out and don’t cave despite Zan giving voice to the same insecurities of old.

“I know that I made mistakes, but things are different now. I’m older. I understand things now. I have powers. I’m not a liability like I was before.” I fight back the tremor in my voice.

“Really, then how come the child saw your death then? What do you think your untimely demise will do to Max? Don’t you think Max has been through enough,” he adds softly using my words of before. “He abandons Seth, because of your death.”

“He would never do that.” I argue emphatically.

“I am sure Michael and Isabel thought the same thing up until the day Max risked exposing them all to heal you in the Crashdown. The proceeding years have only made him more self- destructive where you are concerned. He simply cannot outlive you. If you do not stop meddling in Antarian matters, that is exactly what will happen.”

“Timelines can change. I should know.” A bitter laugh escapes my lips. “I know what you’re trying to do. It’s not going to work. This time it’s going to be about what we want and no one else. ”

“So you’re trying for your happy ending,” he chuckles darkly before dropping his voice to a low and albeit sensual murmer “I can assure you that it will be anything but. Max can’t keep me out all the time.” His hands encloses around my wrist. “Imagine for me coming home from a hard day of work,” he begins as I vow not to imagine anything for him but still find myself doing it all the same. I pull against his hold. “You’re tired. Your feet hurt. You drop your keys on the counter.” The images and feelings in my head continue right along with his words. “You figure a shower might do you good. You wander the hall. Open the door to your bedroom only to find there is two shapes moving in your bed.”

“Stop it!”

He drops his hold and shakes his hand as if I’ve burned him.

“I will flaunt every salacious detail of it right in front of your face. How long do you think you’re going to be able to convince yourself that’s it okay, because it isn’t really Max doing them?”

I breathe in and out trying to still my churning emotions, but I am not too gone to realize that this is just another attempt to push me, to make me lose control, but it being instigated by a much stronger opponent than Miranda ever was.

I squeeze my hands together. There is so much light coming from my hands that you can make out the fine bones of my hands.

I swallow the lump back down my throat. “Did you know that I have always had a
fascination for neurobiology?” Driven by some form of insanity, I close the space between us. “Your existence is a product of that.” Without even being aware of it, the pads of my fingers find his cheek. I slide them once, twice over the scar etched into his skin expecting him to bolt, but he stays in place like some wild animal stunned into stillness. “So while you’re fantasizing on how many women you’re going to bang in my bed,” my tongue snakes out to lick my bottom lip under his watchful gaze. “I want you to know I’ll be fantasizing about performing a little exorcism. You’re not around all the time. I don’t think our mutual friend is all that fond of you to begin with.” With the tips of my fingers, I angle his jaw so that he’s looking straight at me. “So, you think long and hard before you start a war with me. You think Khivar has given you problems. Then you try me out Zan. I’ll show you problems.”

“I’m only here, because you made me,” the warm air of his breath puffs onto my face. “I was always here, but Max being tortured day in and day out,” he pauses, no doubt taking pleasure in my reaction, “gave me the stage that I needed to truly exert my influence. It was either embrace me or go insane. So thank you for your betrayal.”

“Tess,” I begin.

“Oh, but you got the ball rolling if I recall,” he interrupts. “And now you’re set on doing it again. Tell me, is it your logic to destroy Max so Seth will most certainly be retaken by his mother.”

“Tess is not his mother!” Small sparks jump from my fingertips onto his chest.

“And what, you are?”

My shoulders sink for a beat before rising again. “No, but it doesn’t mean that I don’t love him.” I stop reveling in the fit of the words, “because I do.”

“Then leave Max,” he says solemnly.

“No.” I look away from his eyes.

He slides a strand of hair through his fingertips all the while locking me in with Max’s gaze. “You know I’ve always been fascinated what beings will do in the so called name of love. My sister bore the devil his spawn and let him waltz right in to murder us all, because she was so in love.” He sneers. “And Max,” he rolls his eyes. “The geneticists made some serious miscalculations in that department.”

“Perhaps, they thought the original version was lacking compassion.”

His thumb pushes for a second against my pulse point. “You know the one thing that I hate above all else is artifice. You sprout some very beautiful sentiment about your great love for Max, but none of it is true. He means nothing to you. You’ve showed it again and again by your actions.”

“Baby, tell me what’s wrong?” My mother pleads as she unsuccessfully tries to pry my sobbing body off the bathroom floor.

“We’re done. We’re actually done.” My voice rises in pitch

“Did you and Kyle get in a fight?”

“No,” I shake my head. “We definitely did not get into a fight.” I start to laugh hysterically still feeling the memory of his hands along my thighs and the delicious things that happened afterwards. “I think I love him.”

“That’s not a reason to be crying Liz.”

“But it is mommy, it is.”

“What’s going on in there? Am I finally starting to get through that ape’s mind of yours that this great love is all in your head?”

I push him away. He grabs my wrists in one of his large hands.

I start to struggle against him. “You don’t know a single thing about me or what I feel.”

“ I know if you are so much in love with Max as you say you are. Then this,” he runs his hand down from my neck down the sides of my breasts “shouldn’t be affecting you so.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about.”

“I can smell you Elizabeth, and every time I touch you it gets stronger. So that great love that you claim to have seems to be only skin deep.” His lips graze my throat before his head comes back up to face me. “Hmm, maybe, I’ve been looking at this all wrong, it appears it doesn’t have to be another women in your bed. It could be just you and me. That would definitely do a number on him.”

“You are disgusting.”

“Then why aren’t you running away?” He ducks his head and his open mouth traps my upper lip before releasing it into a kiss. “I do believe that would be the proper response. Squeezing your thighs together is just going to make it worse. I could most certainly make it better for you.”

I push him back up against the wall. “Let’s get one thing straight. You wouldn’t know the first thing about making it better for me.” The muscles of his stomach jump as my fingers run over them. “Zan, Zan,” I lean into him and cluck my tongue against the back of my teeth. “Don’t tell me that the human is getting to you? What would all of your friends think?” He pins me with Max’s eyes, and it suddenly becomes all about his smell, his body, and how warm I could be if he could just get inside of me.

I close my eyes.

His hands are on my waist. With one strong tug, he eliminates the distance between us. My nipples peak against the warmth of his hard chest.

“Look at me.” He growls.

I do it.

I am putty.

Twining my hands around his neck, I bring his face closer to my level. The green energy dances around his head almost like a halo. “God, you’re so beautiful.” He turns his scarred check in my direction as if in response. Pushing my tongue out between my lips, I place its against his skin before traveling the jagged line down the length of his cheek. When the line ends, I keep going until I reach the corner of his mouth. Stopping, I look up from underneath my lashes.

His Adam’s apple bobs. It is a classic Max gesture.

“I love you so much. There will never be another you. Everyone else has always been second best.” echoing the words that I should have told him and not another the night of Gomez.

His hand slides my shirt up until his palm stops just below my ribs.

The contact is too much and not enough.

“GOD!” I cry as a steady burn begins to sizzle inside of me. “There’s so much color. It’s everywhere.” I watch as five distinctive blue particles zoom around my head. They collide onto the ceiling above us. The biggest slides into the center while the two smaller ones take up a position diagonal on either side. Their actions are repeated by the remaining two balls. Together, they create a perfect replica of Max’s galaxy.

“I’ve damned you. I suspected, but now I know.”

I blink momentarily thrown for those are not the words that I expected from him.

“You don’t understand, yet?”

“Enlighten me.”

“You need to leave and get as much distance from me as you can.”

“I said enlighten me not to make overwrought demands.”

“I’m a monster.”

“Then we’ll be monsters together.”

He buries his nose in the skin of my neck. “I want you so bad.”

“Then have me.”

I expect him to go for my jeans’ zipper. Instead, he angles my chin up. His eyes on my lip sends my giddiness into overdrive.

He lowers his head, and I can’t believe after all my pressing this is finally happening. That it could be so easy.

My teeth press into my lower lip. There is so much energy coiling inside of me that it is getting difficult to handle.

He stops just millimeters from my mouth. “Tell me again, that I can take it all.”

“Maxwell!”

Max’s eyes turn black. My waist slips through his hands and seconds later my butt hits the floor. Dazed, it’s Michael who helps me up. “I don’t understand,” I trail off when my eyes land on Max floating nearly a foot of the ground.

We were floating.

I can float.

There’s the general mental hiccup of disbelief that comes with any new addition to my powers, but luckily, time has diminished the length of denial that so characterized my early years. Where it took months before to accept things, it now takes a matter of seconds before I’m back trying to work out my new ability’s mechanics.

So I was floating and fell.

I frown.

Max let me fall.

Max wouldn’t let me fall.

Blood seeps into my cheeks and the putty feeling of before is nowhere.

I cover the spot beneath my ribs feeling as if something extremely intimate has happened but with the wrong person. “Get down here now,” I say interrupting the shit fit Max/Zan is throwing about Michael disrupting us and wondering if that’s something he’s picked up from his human woman. “I said get down here.”

Suddenly, Zan plummets from the air onto the floor at my feet looking every bit confused.

“What did you do to me?

“Nothing you didn’t ask for,” he answers. “I guess loyalty does not really exist for your species. Your lack of gullibility is astounding.”

“No, it wasn’t you. It was him. I felt him there with me.”

“You’re so easy to manipulate. No wonder Tess had you wrapped around her little finger.”

I flinch as if he’s struck me.

“Liz,” Michael offers. “Maybe it’s time that you go.”

I shake my head remembering Brian’s observation that Antarians like to play rough. If I’m going to survive, I have to bury my insecurities about Tess once and for all. “Is he aware of what is going on when Zan’s here?” I ask Michael.

“Why are you afraid you’re going to have some explaining to do when Max comes back?” Zan quips having stretched out on the carpet like some lion buying his time till he can pounce.

“There’s disorientation involved sometimes for him. We really don’t talk about Zan much.” Michael answers, ignoring Zan’s comment all together.

“Yes, it’s amazing what a conversational stopper guilt can be. Poor Max was in that hole for nearly two years while his second was free to move around and have a great old time.”

“I was not having a great old time.” He says between gritted teeth.

“So what exactly were you doing while they were torturing Max, quite innovately might I add? Ah, yes, sitting at Khivar’s right hand side and getting fat off mansef.”

“It was impossible to get into the prison. I had to make contacts and find out who could be trusted before we could act.” Michael’s tone shakes toward the end.

“Michael, you don’t have to justify anything to him. If you need to talk wait…”

“I don’t need to talk to Max about it.” He interrupts.

“Michael doesn’t believe in apologies. He’s very much like Rath that way.”

“I’m not anything like him!”

“You reek with his incompetence. You couldn’t even keep track of one little boy.”

“Stop it right now, Zan.”

I have no idea if it’s the tone of my voice or the fact that I’m five seconds from blasting him to oblivion, but he sits up from his position on the floor.

We engage in an old fashioned stare off.

He breaks eye contact first.

In the wild, I would be deemed the victor.

In the alien abyss, it’s anyone’s guess.

“Why are you here, Michael?” He asks sullenly, rubbing his chin as if someone has punched him.

“There have been some new developments. Our response must be decided by you. It is after all why you have the priciest headwear in the galaxy. ”

“Can he decide things when he’s like this?” I question.

“Why? Do you feel that it is your right to do the deciding?” Zan sounds from behind me. My eyes flick to the carpet to find his spot now vacant. “I am the king here.” His voice is low and threatening.

I try my best not to let it get me. Throwing my head over my shoulder, I say. “In the immortal words of Bart Simpson ‘duh’.”

I hear Michael snicker.

Zan’s response is a little more unorthodox.

I feel one of his arms wrap around my waist.

:”What are you trying to do to her?” Michael demands.

“Leave now,” Zan orders, and Michael dutifully obeys.

“You know, that has to be my favorite ability. It’s so good to be the king.” Zan mutters as he manhandles me over the couch’s arm and pushes me onto the cushions with his body.

I began immediately trying to launch my defense.

Nothing happens.

“Right now your heart is overriding your brain.” Zan explains. “You see Max, not an enemy.”

“He won’t let you hurt me.”

“Your confidence in Max will be your undoing. He’s the interloper in all of this, not me.”

“You had your chance and blew it. Now, let him have his.”

“Let us agree to disagree on that point. Now where were we before we were rudely interrupted. Ah yes,” he goes for my shirt. I try and kick him. He holds my legs down. I twist and turn against his hands as they push my shirt up. “You have something of mine, and I want it back. The pain involved in the procedure is up to you. So I hope for your sake, you will not fight me.”

One lone spark jumps from my skin.

I just need a little more time.

“Well, I guess you can’t have everything.” He answers.

He lowers his head, and it dawns on me that he really means to kiss me. I turn my head away from him while marveling about the perversity of the situation of having to deny something that under different circumstances I would have definitely reciprocated.

He grabs my chin and turns it roughly back toward him.

“Please, don’t do this.” I search his eyes but find no signs of Max in his gaze. “I don’t know what he gave me, but it’s all I have left of him. I can’t loose it.” My fingers are drumming crazily at my side.

“Nothing lasts forever Elizabeth.”

His lips are about to connect to mine when somehow one little word makes it out.

“Max,” it’s the faintest of sounds that would have gone unnoticed by human ears, but he isn’t human.

He stops in his path and wipes the stream of blood that now flows from my nose.

“Fight him,” I take a deep breath. “Max,” the decibel of my voice is louder and the amount of blood is greater. “I can’t do it by myself. I need you Max.” I wince realizing that someone has worked me over with some really serious alien voodoo,

“Mm,” I get out before Zan covers his hand over my mouth. “You keep doing that and you are going to give yourself a serious aneurism.”

I am bereft as I realize that I got his name out, and it didn’t do a damn thing.

Again, we are outnumbered and outplayed. There is always going to be someone in our way. This one is going to be ten times harder to shake than Tess ever was.

“You’re a little too old to believe in fairy tales, don’t you think.” Zan mocks, somehow picking up on my despair. “Now let’s get this over with.” He lowers his head and is just brushing my lips with his own when a whirling sound of a blast cuts through the air followed by the crash of impact.

He snaps away from me. I notice the football-sized hole in the wall before I see Seth standing in the doorway. His eyes are completely red and hair is standing up on edge making him look like an angry gremlin. He is seconds from losing it in a very big way.

“Seth, it’s okay sweetie. Everything is going to be fine.”

“No,” he laughs a laugh with no humor behind it. ”My sister is gone. I have no future. Antar has no future. She disappeared. It’s your fault.” He points an accusing finger at Zan. “If I can’t have my sister, you can’t have my daddy anymore.”

The floor begins to rumble.

“Seth, do you remember the talk we had about your daddy needing me, that he couldn’t survive without me.” Zan offers, in what could be considered somewhat pleasant for him.

“I don’t believe you any more. If you wanted to help daddy, you wouldn’t have made my sister disappear.” Seth’s eyes settle on me and what’s rest of his human features contort into something utterly scary. “You made Liz bleed.” He hisses. The air around his body begins to shimmer like the desert in the peak of summer.

“It wasn’t him. I think it was someone else.”

“Who?” He demands, using an interesting alien acoustic trick that causes his voice to echo back and forth throughout the room.

“I don’t know.” I answer, choosing to play dumb despite there only being one possible candidate. I interrupt him as he starts to form her name. “It doesn’t matter. The point is I broke through it. She didn’t win.”

“But she has, they all have.” A big fat tear drops down his cheek. He wipes it savagely to his fingers. “What is this?” He asks studying the water with a horrified expression on his face.

“They’re tears. You’re sad. Humans cry when they’re sad.” I tell him.

“I’m not human.” He gnashes his teeth together.

“You’re not.” I answer, deciding this is definitely not the time to explain the finer aspects of his genetics to him. I shoot a glare to Zan as his hand coils around my wrist stopping me from moving away from him toward Seth.

“Let go of Liz,” Seth spits. “You can’t tell humans what to do. It’s very rude to even try.”

Curiously enough, Zan does something quite unusual. He complies.

I move to wrap my arms around Seth but am left speechless when he moves out of my embrace. “Okay, I won’t touch you if you don’t won’t to be touched.”

“You can’t right now. I like you as a human too much.” Seth answers turning his attention to Zan. “She makes a good human Zan.” His voice grows angrier. “She’s going to be a human forever and ever.”

“What are you talking about?” I ask him, but my question falls on death ears, because Seth seems to be engaging in a little dominance match of his own. “Gimme my daddy back right now.”

“You don’t get to control this.” Zan answer coolly. “I’m the king.”

“My God,” I roll my eyes. “Are you for real? It’s hard to believe you ever passed puberty. You’ve got the mental capacity of a three year old. Seriously, grow up already.” I stop in my rant as I notice both pairs of eyes on me. “Carry on posturing boys, but keep it clean.” I gesture to the couch. “I’m going to sit down.”

“Order him to give daddy back.” Seth answers as a smug smile spreads across his lips.

“What?” From the corner of my eye, I see Zan’s form begin to blur, prepping himself for what I know will appear to be single flash of movement from one point to another to my mammalian eye.

He appears seemingly out of nowhere in front of me. “I’m the king.” He growls with his claw like hands reaching for me with some unholy purpose in mind. However, they never meet their destination as a small body appears in the space between us. It quickly and effectively sends Zan flying into the back wall.

Take that bastard, but my euphoria is short lived as I notice that Zan is staring back at us with triumph instead of anger.

The sound of footfalls sounds gradually getting louder before we find ourselves surrounded by a group of beings that could give the Incredible Hulk a run for his money.

Zan says something in Antarian before dropping his head in a display of feigned emotion.

. “What did he just tell him?”

“To send us to jail for trying to kill him. He wants to send us to Tantalus.” Seth translates.

I throw up a force field as Seth darts behind me “Don’t hurt them. The more you fight, the more he will be able to make us look like we’re bad.”

Fair enough.

“Tell them, there’s been a mistake.”

“I can’t. They are his guards. They will do whatever he tells them. Daddy said they were free to do whatever they wanted, but they wouldn’t leave. They like not having minds.” ”

Naturally.

Zan wails something from his perch.

“Why are you doing this?” I answer as the guards begin to circle around us.

“A ship can only have one captain my dear. As it is, this ship is a little too crowded to begin with.” Zan answers cryptically.


“Order them to stop.” Seth mummers from behind me.

“What?”

“Do it.”

“Stop,” I tell the guards as the circle around us begins to shrink.

“Use your power,” Seth insists. “You have to believe that they will obey you. You’re uh, I don’t know the word in English. You’re the boss like my dad, but a lady,” he finally explains.

Like your dad, but a lady.

A lady boss.

My stomach does a flip-flop.

Zan told Michael to leave, and he left then proceeded to tell me that’s what kings do.

I told Miranda to leave, and she left.

“The word is queen, isn’t it, Seth?” I ask just as a fist breaks through the force field.
_________________________________________________________________________________

I'm happy to say that I'm almost done with then next chapter. Shocked, so am I.

As always, I love to hear from you so drop me a line.

I just want to thank you all for your responses. It keeps me writing. I also want to warn you that there is an implied but not explicit loyalist afterglow scene. Please don't hate me. It does exist for a purpose. I can promise you that the next love scene is a) going to feature everyone's favorite dark haired mystery man from an exotic location and ain't going to be so pg rated either.

For me, the first part about this story is about how Liz discovers who she used to be and part of that is her reflection on how she became who she is now. Kyle did contribute a lot to that so please don't lose faith in me. Can you tell I'm a little nervous about this chapter's reception?

Chapter Title taken from Kermit who I believe is owned by Jim Henson.

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Chapter Thirty-Two: It’s Not Easy Being Green

John Donne once wrote “No man is an island.”

His quote ceased to be applicable on September 4, 2001 for that was the date that Liz Parker became a species of one and a law onto herself.

When the first signs of my new alien powers made themselves known, my id kicked my super ego out of the driver’s seat. In layman’s terms, I freaked the hell out.

It was if my cool and collective demeanor had died with Alex or had hopped the Granolith Express with my former high school sweetheart and his baby mama.

Yes, that was a rather interesting year in the life of one Liz Parker. It was the year that horrible moniker Perfect Parker ceased and rumors that I had lost my mind over Alex and Max’s deaths began their rotation, but theirs was not the only death I was grieving.

With shaking hands, I place my blood sample beneath the microscope’s platform.

Wetting my lips, I place my eye to the lens.

I was dead, gone, not me, was the message my blood cells related and the spontaneous combustion of my microscope served as the exclamation point.

Afterwards, I became restless, pushing things to the limit while telling myself that this was the most humanist of human responses to waking up one day finding that I had acquired otherworldly powers.

There was reason after all that every culture had their own myths about people forgetting themselves in the euphoria of power.

My powers made me stronger by making the impossible possible.
My powers made me weaker by making the impossible possible.

It was only in the dead of night, locked safely away from the human world, that I would ponder a more disturbing alternative that my outbursts had nothing to do with being human and everything to do with something new, foreign, and alien growing inside of me.

Set adrift from anyone who could possibly understand or let alone teach me, I began to picture myself as some feral child stumbling around and acting out when the situation arose, and during that first year, it arose a lot.

“Smile Liz, it isn’t like we’re going to the Spanish Inquisition.” Kyle answers easing his Mustang into the parking place.

“No, it’s just high school.” I snort staring at the brick building and half dead trees clinging bravely to life in the face of one of the worst droughts ever.

“Come on, it’s the first day of our senior year.”

I flip my attention back to his face. “Ra, Ra.” I half- heartedly chant.

“Well, I guess that’s going to have to do.”

“It’s all you’re getting out of me.,” I answer sliding out of his car.

“You’re feeling okay, really?” He asks, his blue eyes now serious, appraise me over the top of his car.

I purse my lips together. “So this is why you offered to drive me today? So you can quiz me on my mental health?” I struggle to keep the tremor out of my voice before taking off across the parking lot.

Kyle easily catches up. “Liz,” he grabs me by the arm and pulls me around the side of the building. “Something is not right with you, and it has a lot more to do than Max.”

“Do not say his name.” I warn.

From across the lot, a series of car alarms go off despite no one being near the parked cars.

“You can talk to me.”

Talk to him, tell him that his body is a ticking time bomb waiting to go off that in the very near future that he could possibly be joining my merry little band of one. No, he would not spend his last months like that if I could help it .“Why are you making a shit fit out of me being drunk and making out with Sean?”

“It looked like you were doing a little more than just making out.”

“What business of it is yours?”

Kyle takes a long cleansing breath. “When my mom left my dad he self imploded. I just don’t want to see that happen to you.”

I swallow.

“I care about what happens to you.” He says simply.

“Okay,” I nod shakily ,remembering just how dependable and loyal Kyle could be if you let him. My cheeks color in embarrassment. “I’m sorry for being such a colossal bitch. I just feel so empty.”

He glances over my head for a second before coming back to me. “I feel the same way sometimes. It’s like someone has sucked all the air out of my lungs.”

My eyes widen, surprised that he has just described perfectly the way I feel knowing that Max and I will never be anything to each other ever again. “I didn’t realize that you and,” I pause to let a deep gulp of air into my lungs, “Tess were so close.”

“She was like a sister to me.”

“A sister?” I’m about to tell him that what he’s describing seems a little more intense, but decide better of it. If thinking of Tess as a sister helps Kyle get through things, who am I to take that away from him?

“Um, Liz, you have some fuzz in your,” he points to my hair.

I reach up to try and pull the offending piece of fuzz out.

“No to the left, can I?”

“Yes.”

Very gently, his fingers slide down the strand of my hair. I watch haunted as he deposits the fuzz on the ground.

“What is it?” He asks.

“I was just remembering,” another time, another place with another boy. I bite down on my bottom lip.

“I got to go. Coach has us running laps this morning. Don’t be pissed at me Liz?”

“I’m not Kyle.” I say, playing with my necklace’s chain.

“Cool,” he answers. It is only after he walks away that I notice my jewelry selection for the day. “Hell,” I mutter, wondering how I could be so out of it as to have put on Max’s necklace. I finger the design lost in my own thoughts.

“I just wanted to make sure you were okay.” I look up to find none other than Pam Troy invading my personal space, “with Max being dead, but it seems that Kyle has that covered.” She smirks.

“Get. Away. From. Me.”

“God, you’re such a psycho.” She says absurdly aloud so the rest of the students mulling around can hear her. “I was just trying to be a friend. I can’t help it if Max left you for someone who actually did not have a body like a twelve year old boy not that you seem to upset about it now.”

I do not turn around, instead heading for the library. Browsing the stacks, I settle on a Call of the Wild. I open the book up and begin to read while waiting for the first bell to ring.

“Miss. Parker, I don’t think starting your first day off by skipping class is the best way to go.” Mrs. Trayler, the librarian's voice says rousing me from the first page.

“I’m not skipping. There’s still forty five minutes until school starts,” my voice trails off as I eye the clock.

“Miss. Parker, is something wrong?”

I wet my dry lips. “Time just got away from me. Please don’t report me. I’ve just been distracted lately.”

Her face turns suddenly sympathetic. “I’ll write you a pass. There’s a grief counselor here today if you want to talk about Mr. Evans.”

I fight the urge to shout ‘no’ from the rooftops. “I’m fine.” I answer taking the pass from her and somehow make it to my lunch period without incident.

Sitting down next to Kyle and Maria, I look through windows to see the red and blue lights of a police car and an ambulance.

“Did you hear that karma made a visit to the bitch today?” Maria asks.

I tear my attention from the window. “What?”

“Pam Troy fell down on the quad this morning.” Kyle translates. “Apparently, she tripped over her own feet or something.”

“Is she okay?”

“According to Laura, she sprained her ankle, and it’s really bad.” Maria stabs at her salad. “She’s devastated, because she won’t be able to cheer. Blah, blah, blah. She got into such hysterics over the entire thing they had to call the EMTs. Plus, her pricey little sports car that daddy got her is toast.”

“It’s like acid rain fell on the hood and back of her car. It’s the strangest thing. Pauley and John are outside taking pictures with it right now.” Kyle adds.

I sit back in my chair. “Oh.”

“I tell you that the Wicked Witch of West Roswell High just had the worst day ever and all you have to say is ‘oh.’ Liz, you really are a saint.”

“Hardly,” I answer grimly.

Was it coincidence or was it my powers at work somehow?

When Kyle finally came into the fold, he rallied against any idea of me being an evil human alien hybrid bent on world domination.

“You don’t remember doing it, so it means it wasn’t you.”

“Not remembering, doesn’t let me off the hook?”

“It doesn’t give you an excuse to torture yourself either. She fell and sprained her ankle. She missed like half the season.”

“But she didn’t fall.”

“You didn’t beat Pam Troy up Liz.”

“How can you be so sure?”


I would love to say that Kyle struggled as much as I did with his new found abilities, but that was not the case. Where my energy burned and seethed from within, his was of far more calmer variety. Naturally enough, he became the leader of our two member tribe.

“Maria’s poor face, she has to stop looking for Michael in these unstable artist types.
Something has to be done about that bastard.” I throw my purse down angrily onto the floor.

“The cops are handling it.” Kyle’s eyes fall on my sparkling hands “Liz, breathe.”

“I don’t want to breathe. Why can’t we handle this?”

“Because we’re college students, not vigilantes.”

“He broke her nose.”

“I know,” he grinds out.

“He’s just going to cop a plea or daddy will get him off.”

“Liz,” he warns.

“It could be so easy to send him a warning. No one could ever link us to it.”

“That’s not even funny.”

“Who says I was trying to be funny?”

“Why don’t you go and take a bath? You know how that calms you down.”

I eye the door.

“Don’t even think about it, you know I’m faster.”

“But I blast harder. You can’t keep me in here if I don’t want to be.”

“Then I just need to make sure that you want to be in here then.” Without warning, he seizes me in his arms. His mouth comes crashing down on my own as the need to off Maria’s boyfriend is replaced by an entirely different one.

Sometime later when we are both naked, sweaty and sated, I find myself staring up at the ceiling finding all of my aggression spent. “I feel like a pervert. I was ready to kill Maria’s boyfriend and now I’m not.”

“What can I say? I’m just that good.”

“Kyle, seriously?”

He mock frowns. “You mean I’m not that good?”

I smack him playfully on the shoulder before snuggling up to his side.

“Nothing is wrong with you Liz.”

“I don’t see you losing it all the time.”

He shrugs his shoulders. “Experience has taught us that there are different people and different Antarian hybrids. So why not, should there be differences in whatever we are?”

“I guess, but that still makes me the more psychotic.”

“You’re merely the more powerful one.”

I lift my head. “How can you say that when you can do so many more things than I can do?”

“It’s not the quantity but the quality. It’s just something I feel. You sizzle with power. It’s all around you. It just keeps building and building. It’s like it’s waiting for something or someone.”

“Well, feel free to indulge anytime you want.”

“I can’t hold onto it, which makes me think it’s not mine for the holding.” He slides a strand of hair behind my ear. “I just wish that you could see yourself truly. See how magnificently regal you are, you have power, and I’m not talking about the blasting things to Kingdom Come variety either. Sometimes when you look at me, shit. You can bring people to their knees with that look.”

“That’s just your love for me.” I answer in my best saccharine tone.

“We being different make sense when you think about it. I was just some sorry putz to Max but you…. Hey, where are you going?”

“Bathroom.”


I look up from where both my hands are pressed into the small bump of someone’s stomach. My eyes move up over a pair of breasts until they rest on Hannah’s face.

In my ears, the strong beat of her baby’s heart plays.

I have no clue as to how I got here, which means only one thing.
I’ve done something big and probably very bad with my powers.

Hannah is on her knees beside me now. Her pretty brow is knitted into a frown while her lips form words that don’t compute. Her small dainty hand is poised just above my shoulder seemingly torn as to what is the proper decorum.

We are not friends.

“Tell me, she’s fat, ugly and stupid.”

“She’s fat, ugly, and stupid.” Maria’s voice sounds over my cell phone.

“What does she really look like?” I sigh.

“Liz.”

“Maria,” I counter.

“I want you to pinky promise that a, you won’t blow anything up. B, you won’t start macking on Sean, and C, you won’t go generally ape shit again.”

“I’ve grown up Maria. I’m different. It’s like that song says. The first time is always the deepest.”

“I didn’t hear the words pinky or promise.” She sing songs.

“I pinky promise.” I roll my eyes.

“She’s a pre law major. She’s blonde and blue eyed.”

“Of course, she is.” A flash of lightening spurts out of my hands and collides into the wall.

“You better not be destroying anything.” Maria hollers from across the line.

“It’s lightening.” I huff. “ I bet the Sheriff is just heads over heels about the whole thing.”

“It isn’t like the Sheriff doesn’t like you. He just thinks,” Maria pauses.

“Thinks what?”

“That Max is going to come back someday, and you’d end up giving Kyle the boot.” She says very quickly in one breath. “Liz?” She calls, after I fail to respond in the proper tone.

“I guess senility has finally caught up to him then.” I answer, studying the perfect handprints that I’ve burned into my dorm’s wall.

“I know, like you would ever take that ass back.”

I bank my head lightly against the wall. “Kyle’s happy, right?”

“From what I saw, yes.”

With the wave of my hand, my prints disappear. “Good.”

The palm of Hannah’s hand comes down over my shoulder at the same time that I notice there is blood on both her shirt and mine.

MY GOD.

My response is immediate.

My body lurches back away from her with so much power that it smacks the wall.

From the corner of the room, I see Miranda push herself off the wall. Her long dark hair is now wrapped up in a bright blue cloth with the eye of my medallion on it.

Something about that image sets my brain off on double time.

I am simultaneously aware that my hands still twinge with unused power, that I can no longer hear the baby’s heartbeats, that beneath this very room Maria is demanding to know why Hannah of all people can be with me and not her, “Michael, they’ve had like two conversations together and both times she was an uber harpy toward Liz.”

Still further away, I hear Seth’s quiet whisperings in Antarian with the occasional English words of "daddy, Liz, sister and so sorry.” I’m so caught up in my ease dropping that I’m startled when Miranda grabs me roughly by the arms.

A second later she finds herself on the floor subdued beneath me. “You” is all I get out as I am unable to understand how I could allow myself to be duped yet again by another Antarian bitch. She pushed and pushed me and finally set me over the edge with that stunt with Max and let me loose on Hannah and her baby. I vow to end her, but don’t get very far in that endeavor in that one second after that I find myself beneath her with a knife to my throat.

“Calm, the hell down.” She demands.

“Liz, what’s wrong?” Hannah asks.

Tears are falling down my cheeks. “There is blood on your shirt. I was connecting to your baby.”

Hannah looks utterly confused on how my two sentences fit together but Miranda finds the connection disturbingly fast. “There was a disagreement. You tried to stop it, but got hurt in the process. Hannah was helping you, and your blood got on her clothes. I fixed your injuries.”

“I was connecting to her baby.” I insist.

“Connections do not damage offspring. Without the intent,” she adds as if somewhat as an afterthought.

I take her doubletalk to mean that had I been behaving like a psycho Alien bitch that she would have run me through with her very large knife. I give a shaky nod, and Miranda releases her knife from my neck.

I study my shoes deciding that this might in fact be some metaphorical version of hell being in the same room with my ex’s new girlfriend and with a women who is just a tad bit possessive of Max for a mere casual acquaintance.

I smile grimly thinking things could be infinitely more worse.

Tess could be here.

I snicker and am aware of both women’s concerned eyes on me. “What?” I arch my eyebrows at Hannah.

She releases her bottom lip from between her teeth. “You seem to be having rather strong mood swings.”

“So, now you are concerned about my moods?” I snap voicing my anger over her past transgressions. I clinch my fist and watch as band after band of red energy circles around it. Can I really blame Hannah for protecting what was hers? My gaze falls on Miranda before turning back to her. “I’m sorry. I am not myself right now.”

She shakes her head. “You’re angry. I did things. I’m not proud of them. I pushed him to end your friendship.” She trails off no doubt catching my icy glare.

I turn to Miranda to see if I can pull some information regarding how the hell I got here when little Ms. Lawyer opens her big stupid mouth.

“I was scared.”

My neck literally snaps back to her. “You were scared?” I answer incredulously inching closer to her. “How about you try being the only one of two humans on the planet that you know of that has powers that you can’t control? How about you try living with the knowledge that with one misstep you could end up as a science experiment in a government lab? Kyle was the only one that could understand that. You had him ignore me for a year, because you were scared.” I’m nearly on top of her now and to her credit she doesn’t cower when confronted with my rage.

“I didn’t understand until it was too late. He wasn’t himself the entire time. I thought about calling you to try and fix things, but I was too much of a coward, so I let him suffer. I almost threw up when he first came up to you at the wake. I was so nervous that you were going to reject his overture. It would have killed him.”

“I had just lost my parents and nearly died. It kind of puts things into prospective. Life is too precious to spend it being pissed or insecure.” I answer pointedly, realizing for the first time that it was more than just that at work that day.

Despite losing everything, there was peace to me that day that I had never felt.

I curl my hands remembering how I had held Brian’s hand in a death grip the entire day.
He had never once complained about me treating him like an extra sized security blanket.

When everyone’s condolences of ‘ “ sorry” ‘ left me feeling empty and hollow, he found the words that I needed to hear by just being. Brian had found them, because he was Max. As Kyle had observed all those years ago, Max just knew when things came to me.

Yet, he isn’t here now when I need him to tell me that there is still some sliver of hope for us.


I spear my fingers through my hair and tug on the strands trying to guess what is going through his head. The fact that I haven’t been in his head in nearly a decade, coupled with our general lack of communication when it comes to anything tough makes it a challenge.

“I was so scared. Your abilities allow yourself to understand him in a way I will never be able to.” Her voice is so quiet that had my cells not been little and green there would have been no way for me to hear her.

A potted plant on the windowsill takes the brunt of my anger.

I suck my lips together like a dying fish trying desperately to hold onto air, because her words are so heartbreakingly similar to the feelings that graced the pages of my journal, but I'll be damned if I am going to acknowledge that or where listening to those feelings got me aloud.

Hannah never did me any favors.

I get to the door and study it for a beat before realizing I’m not Tess Harding or even Future Max. People’s insecurities aren’t something to be manipulated no matter if the purpose is to save the world or satisfy vengeance.

“You're wrong about Kyle and me.” I grind out through teeth that still have not been exactly won over to my new course of action. “What he felt for me pales in comparison to what he feels for you. Kyle loves you with everything that he is, because you love him with everything that you are. We weren’t ever that intimate with each other, because he was waiting for you. I was just,” I cover my eyes with my hands. “I was just waiting.” I say softly.

The heat from my medallion shakes from the tendrils of sadness threatening to encircle my heart. I turn around to finally face her.

She is scrubbing her eyes wiping away her tears. “I would give anything for that to be true, but it isn’t. He doesn’t want me. He kissed her.”

I shake my head against the memory of watching a boy and a girl kiss in the rain.

“Why did you not divulge this to Max in your debriefing?” Miranda demands.

Hannah’s blue eyes turn to ice in response. “Because I don’t really feel like telling the entire world that the father of my child has run off with someone who he has always claimed was just a sister to him.”

“Hannah,” I say. “Tess has an ability to put memories in people’s head,” choosing to argue the entire thing was a mind warp. “She likes to push people with it. Tess has the kind of personality that if you give her an inch she will take a mile. You have to be careful how you react to her.”

“No, it was real.” She is adamant. “For three days, they did nothing but ask him questions. He didn’t give them anything then suddenly he’s spilling his guts. She couldn’t have fabricated his answers. Afterwards, when he had given them everything, that’s when they kissed and were all over each other. God, I feel like such an idiot.” Her bottom lips quivers.

I crouch down so that I’m eye level with her. “I know that things look really bad right now, but you are going to have to believe. Believe, like you’ve never believed in anything your entire life. Believe, even though your heart, your eyes, and your brain tell you that you won’t win. Believe, because if you stop, you’ve lost, and finding your way back to where you once were a second time around might prove impossible. There are just too many permutations to take anything for granted.”

The slight breeze that rustles my hair is the only harbinger before Miranda makes like the Antarian roadrunner and crosses the room to be at my side. “Ask her what they got from Kyle,” she says in a low tone that must be beneath human hearing from Hannah’s lack of reaction. “You’ve gotten her to indentify with you. She isn’t going to tell anyone else. We need this.” She presses, when I fail to act on her first command. “Tess could be making a play to retake Seth.” She adds seemingly waving a red flag in my face.

I glare realizing that I might have vowed to be above using people’s insecurities, but the people around me are certainty not.

“Hannah,” I stumble over my words trying to find a coherent string of thought. “It’s important that we figure out what they want from Kyle.”

“I already told you. Tess couldn’t keep her hands off of him, and he let her.” She answers heatedly. “I’m sorry.” She rubs her temples. “You’re trying to help. Kyle always said that you had the biggest heart of anyone he ever knew.” Her eyes begin to water with tears. “Anyone else would have been running for the hills when they found out aliens really do exist.”

“Hannah,” I say with a slight force trying to get her back on topic. “Do you remember anything about the questions they asked? It’s okay if you don’t.”

She shrugs her shoulders. “Khivar was curious about your powers, how you controlled them, and how Kyle was able to use them for himself.” She rattles off in a monotone. “When Kyle said that he couldn’t, Khivar became enraged. He grabbed Kyle by the neck and started yelling that couldn’t be true, because Kyle had fucked you. Those were his words not mine. They gave him another injection and another. His eyes turned white and lips turned upwards into a scowl. He lunged at me once.” She covers her mouth with her hand.


From the corner of my eye, I watch as a spasm cross Miranda’s usually stoic features. My newly attuned hearing picks up a sudden rise in her heartbeat while the sheen of sweat breaks out on her brow.

Though my time with Max was relatively short, I had picked up certain key tidbits about Antarian biology. One being that he was imperious to temperature change. It mattered very little if it was 36 degrees outside or 97 degrees. There was no need for the contraction of blood vessels to maintain warmth or sweat to regulate body temperature. Sweat was only something he did in the throes of his illness or when running from a patrol of government agents.

“I thought he was going to kill me.” She says just above a hoarse whisper. “He actually wants me dead.” She shakes her head.

Miranda takes hold of Hannah’s hand tenderly in an uncharacteristic human gesture and beats me in my defense of Kyle. “Whatever Kyle may have done, you need to remember that it wasn’t him. It was the drugs and Tess. He is as much a victim in this as you are.”

“He’s a victim.” Hannah nods. “I understand completely. It makes so much more sense now that it has been explained to me.”

Could someone please tell me what I’ve been doing for the last ten minutes?

“Good.” Miranda turns to me. “Get her back on topic.”

Suddenly, it dawns on me. “You’re screwing with her mind. ”

“On topic Liz.”

“Stop screwing with her mind Miranda if that’s even your real name.”

“You don’t even like her.”

“That’s irrelevant. Get out of her head.”

“We need this information. They’re going to be sending Kyle after you. His anger toward her was just a warm up of what he will become.”

I study for her a second unsure whether she is serious or not. “How do you know this?”

“Because I know how Khivar works. Seventy-five years ago, he was somewhat honorable then he wasn’t. He doesn’t understand what happened and thinks if he can observe the actual decline in practice he’ll get closer to an answer. He developed a serum that strips higher level thinking from sentient beings and leaves only the baser instincts in tact. He’s begun that treatment with Kyle.”

“You can fix it, right?”

Her black eyes shift to the right as if remembering a memory. “No one has ever been successful in isolating a research subject away from Khivar. I do know that the end of the procedure culminates in the subject trying to eliminate the person most important to him or her. Khivar miscalculated with Kyle and believed that person was you.

“We aren’t even together.”

“It doesn’t matter. He was the only male of Antarian origin that you were ever…” she trails off.

“Great, is there anything else you don’t know about me?” My cheeks redden.

“Privacy is not an Antarian concept.” She answers before returning to Khivar. “He is a scientist not a romantic, to him sex equals commitment and cementation. He believed Kyle was the one. They would send him to you. You would dispatch him. It would drive the Antarian parts within you insane then you would be more pliable to Khivar’s wishes.”

“What will he do now?”

“I prefer not to engage in mindless speculation.”

“Engage in it,” I challenge.

“Kyle can still be used to lure you out. I am worried about what his reaction will be to you. It sounds as if Khivar has created a lackey that he has minimal control over at best. This could result in you having to dispatch him.”

“I’m not killing him.”



“Would you rather he kill you and Max go insane? We can accept when things beyond our control take our mates, but by the hands of others, no. Vengeance is very much one of our beliefs. Max held himself back when they attacked you, because you lived. If you were to die,” she trails off ominously.

“He would hold himself to the rule of law that he has established.”

“If you prefer to think of him to be the lamb over the lion so be it, but your belief has no basis in reality.”

“I’m just supposed to believe you, because you know him so well.” I answer hotly drumming my fingers against the floor.

She regards my fingers for a moment. “You would do well to hide your insecurity better. It could be used against you.”

“I am not insecure. You can’t get any more secure than I am. I’m like the Pentagon in my security.”

“Then the sudden source of your ire is jealousy, perhaps?” She asks without missing a beat.

I don’t flinch.

I don’t blow anything up.

I just stare at her coldly. “For someone who was raised by a human, you are an extremely unkind individual. Maybe, you were with him, and maybe you weren’t, but it’s irrelevant.
He wants me. He’s chosen me.”

“Exactly,” she answers with an expression that could be deemed almost hopeful. “I’m glad that when push comes to shove you are able to see that for yourself. The fewer distractions you have the better.” She tears her vision away from me and back to Hannah.

Her comments confuse me, because they are not of the jilted romantic rival but of the advisory sort, but Tess was also all about the advise in the beginning.

“With your permission, I would like to return to the interview?” she presses, causing me both to remember Hannah and what started this conversation in the first place. Briefly, I wonder if I could possibly be under her influence as well.


“Right,” I press my lips together before releasing them. “Get out of Hannah’s head then,” opting this time for an explanation to my request. “This mind stuff all of you do makes me nervous. So for once could you just do what I ask?”


“Fine,” Miranda says before treating me to a bitchy sigh that sounds quite reminiscent of Isabel.

Hannah starts. “What were we talking about again?”

“About Kyle and the questions that Khivar asked him.”

“Yes,” she nods. “They wanted to know who helped you get better after your parents’ death.”

“Whose names did he give?”

“It’s not like he was able to give him much, because you guys weren’t…”

“The names,” I interrupt.

“Maria, Sean, and the two French sisters from the wake.

“Elle and Sherrie,” I swallow.

“Yes, and Brian.”

I see nothing but blackness for a moment.

“He was much more interested in the men than the women.”

I watch as my hands begin to blur in front of me. Suddenly, I’m moving. My legs are unaccustomed to the energy pulsating through them feeling as if they are amped up on PCP. Scraps of color wiz pass my eyes too quickly for me to process.

Then just as quickly as whatever this is begins, it ends with my knees giving away.
I flinch, preparing myself for an impact that never comes thanks to a pair of arms that catch me around my waist.

“Whoa, Nelly.” Brian answers letting go of my waist. “I don’t want you to bruise those lovely knees of yours.”

“Sorry,” I mumble embarrassed.

“That’s some pretty fast moving you got going there. We definitely need to wrangle up a cheetah next time we’re in Africa. You could really give it a run for its money.”

“I must be starting to move like an Antarian. I just haven’t figured out how exactly to stop.” I reach in my pocket for some Antacids anticipating another bout of indigestion. “We need to talk.” I grimace realizing too late how cliché my choice of words sound.

“Peachy,” he mumbles motioning me to join him at the table.

I take a seat and pick up an iodine stain of the virus. “This doesn’t look like the virus.”

“It isn’t. Miranda gave it to me as a side project until whatever happens with the virus starts happening. Apparently, the infection is cyclical. She has a friend who is infected with a different strain and thought some new eyes could prove beneficial.”

“And did it?”

“No.”

“Of course, not.” I throw the picture down violently not particularly interested in looking at what is slowly killing Max.

“I just started Parker. I don’t exactly have their stamina.” He studies me, fuming for a moment. “Why do I get the idea that Miranda’s friend is your friend as well?” His eyes light up in realization following his words.

I am out of my seat and crouching next to him in half a second. “Please, you can’t tell anyone. If the general public were to find out.”

“There would be anarchy.” Brian adds.

“He’s very good at what he does. There’s stability on his planet for the first time in years. Please, Brian.”

“And you believe this, because Max says it so?”

“Well, yeah.” I answer confused.

“Without seeing it with your own eyes,” He grimaces. “You’re still in love with him.”

My mouth forms a perfect “o” shape momentarily surprised in the turn of this conversation before I answer with a nod.

“Oh, Parker,” he closes the distance between us to the point that mere inches separate our face. “From what Miranda gave me, it’s not good.”

“I don’t care. I’m sorry that I told you that we could be something and then take it back.
Up until two weeks ago, I thought he was in my past, but he won’t ever be. I am physically unable to love anyone like I love him. I didn’t understand that before, but I understand it now.”

“Are you sure that it isn’t just because he’s the one that got away?”

“It’s not that. If I was to try and explain it all, you would think I was crazy.”

He smiles sadly. “No, I think that would be you being in love.”

“I’m so sorry.” I cup his cheek.

“I think we really could have fun together.”

I’m enough of a realist to acknowledge that loving Max is more uncertain than it ever was between Zan and all the history between us that hasn’t yet become water under the bridge.

Loving Brian would definitely be the day to that night. I imagine that our life would be much like it is now. We would circle the globe fighting against disease and playing poker with the locals while getting drunk off some very bad moonshine. He would occasionally throw in a pitch about me getting my PhD.

Holidays would be spent at his parents’ home on the Vineyard. There would be caroling, jokes and most of all family. When we would leave, his parents would give me the biggest hugs and just for one second I would pretend that it was my own parents holding me.

One day, he would take me to my favorite Italian restaurant two blocks away from my apartment. Somewhere between lasagna and gelato he would get down on one knee and pull out a small velveteen box from his hand and say something corny like “Parker, will you merge your element with mine and form a compound,” and open the box, and I would say ‘no’ to everyone but one.

“Fun maybe, but permanent no,” I answer remembering Seth’s prediction of Brian, me and the lipstick collar.

“Perhaps,” he lets out a rush of air like a deflating balloon. “So now that you’ve told me why you felt compelled to break the barriers of speed and sound,” he pauses no doubting catching the look on my face. “That wasn’t it?” He asks incredulous.

“No. You see,” I begin telling him of Khivar, the danger, my heartfelt apology while carefully glossing over the part where Max high-jacked his body.

I omit it, because I’m manipulative and desperate coward and wonder if Brian would continue to look at Max’s file if he was to find out.

It’s hard to believe so many things have changed, but one thing has not.

I will screw everyone over to keep Max safe.

I wonder if that is still one more thing to chalk up to what being in love means.
The ring of Brian’s cell provides the excuse for my escape.

Once outside, I close my eyes against the sudden breeze and just let my thoughts go.

When I finally open them again, Max is standing before me like a vision of my own private heaven and hell.

“We need to talk.” He tells me.

“Peachy,” I answer repeating Brian’s words of before.
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