Since it's been sooooo long since the last update, I think you might need a recap (I would). This is - as you know - a story with a lot of information and small clues here and there, so I won't be able to give you the most detailed account. But at least it's a small "refresh of your memory". This is "Unbreakable" up to - and including - chapter 54:
Liz Parker has always been wary of Max Evans. Max Evans, the popular, magnetic, and mysterious guy attending a good majority of all the parties being thrown. When he's not followed by a small trail of girls, he hangs out with his sister Isabel and their friend Michael Guerin. No one really knows much about Max, which makes Liz suspicious. But it's not just that. Something deep inside of her is telling her to fear Max.
Which is why she is extremely reluctant to attend any parties that Max might attend. Which - considering Max's high party attendance - would be every party. Her avoidance of parties works really well. Until Max personally invites her to the yearly Halloween party at the Evans' mansion. Against her better judgement, Liz agrees to go. Along with her best friend Maria DeLuca (happy as a clam to finally have Liz attend a party with her) and goofy friend Alex Whitman. This is the party where an intoxicated Liz some hours after arrival finds herself upstairs, in Max's room, where she witnesses Max heal a wound to his sister's arm with the touch of his hovering hand. This is an incident that Liz's momentary alcohol-induced blackout will wipe from her memory.
With the realization of Liz's (real) bout of amnesia, Max takes it upon himself to watch Liz for signs of her remembering. Which she eventually does, a couple of days later. Which results in Max forcing her into the small toilet at the restaurant situated below her family's apartment, cradling her frightened face between his hands and doing something that makes her forget.
Life seemingly goes back to normal. Well, not entirely. There's the increasing attention Liz is getting from the quarterback Sean Carter. There's also the incident of Max walking down the road, shrouded in the darkness of the late evening, having obviously been exposed to horrible physical abuse. Being discovered by Liz driving home from the DeLuca residence, he's practically forced into her car and taken to his home. Where she is yelled at by Max's father and questions if she did the right thing to return Max to his family instead of a hospital.
Sean Carter has some "persuasive" force on Liz. She doesn't feel like herself when he's around. Her body doesn't obey her mind, her feelings doesn't obey her heart. And Max bugs in. Over and over again. He even interrupts her date with Sean. Her first kiss (after the experimental one shared with her friend Alex when young) is with Sean, something that is interrupted by Max and followed by his insistence on taking her home.
During this time, Liz spends a lot of time worrying about her mother's health. The scheduled father-daughter camping trip arrives smack in the middle of this, but considering what's going on at home Liz makes her father cut the camping excursion short (blaming it on her need to study). They arrive home early on Sunday morning to a violent fire devouring their home. Where Liz assumes her mother is. While Liz's father calls for help, Liz (without permission) decides to enter the home through her balcony to save her mother. Entering the smoke-filled and burning apartment in the search for her mother, inhaling lethal smoke and having parts of the ceiling fall on top of her, is the last thing she remembers before she succumbs to unconsciousness.
She wakes up outside, in excruciating pain, with Max Evans looking down at her. He proceeds to form a bridge between her mind and his in order to heal her fatal burns. Once she is miraculously healed, Max falls unconscious to Liz's lap.
This opens up a door to a world of secrecy, danger and deep grief. Liz's mother has died. But she later finds out that it was not due to the fire, but because she was a gaea. A female human with a specific gene enabling her body to provide an alien with energy, strengthening the powers of that alien. And so it happens, that Liz is also a gaea. At least, she's developing into one. Max, Sean and Max's father have paid visits to Liz throughout her whole childhood to evaluate her state of development. Her mind - and her parents' - have been erased of what's happened after every visit. When Liz is deemed "ready", she is to be connected (through intercourse) to Sean. Sean is the son of a sergeant and his role within the alien society is to be part of the military. The gaeas are always promised to an important military person. Liz has been "bethrothed" to Sean when she was little. Her destiny is to serve Sean with energy. If she happens to fall in love with Sean, she might be allowed into the alien society. Yes, there is an alien society. A large part of the Roswellian society is alien in origin. Every alien knows who Liz is, because of her role as a gaea. She is to be protected, since she's the main battery source for their "race". She has her own protector (Alex - who also is an alien), which she later finds out about.
While every alien carry a basic number of alien abilities, they all have special abilities (unique to them). Max's is healing. Which is extremely rare. Which means that he is to be protected as well. Michael is his protector. We don't really (at this point) know much more about Michael than that. Alex's special ability is being able to influence people's emotions (he's an empath). Sean is a mind controller. He specializes in making individuals do what he mentally tells them to do and to wipe their minds of memories. He's also trained in battle.
The main problem with Max healing Liz from her burns is that he had to form a connection in order to do so. Max was suppose to break the connection once the healing was done. Instead he passed out. And even later, he never broke the connection. Instead, he urged Liz to try and break it by blocking him out. Because as long as Max is connected to Liz, Sean can't connect with Liz. Which means that Max is breaking the law. Which sets him up for punishments for interfering with the planned future of a gaea. But Max can't let go. Because as long as he and Liz are connected, Sean can't access Liz's mind. Sean can subtly affect her bodily movements, but not influence her thoughts or feelings.
It even goes to a point when Sean is trying to rape Liz in order to force the connection. This doesn't happen. Max intervenes.
With all of this going on, there's clues to that Philip Evans is somehow aware that Max has bonded with Liz. There's also the incident of Isabel giving Liz tips on how to win over the planned connection between Liz and Sean. Isabel's theory is to have Liz have sex with Max. That way, they will bond not just through the healing but also through sex. Which might result in a stronger bond. Hypothetically. Because truthfully, no one really knows. Healers don't usually keep connections to gaea's open.
Max and Liz have sex. They are at this point head over heels in love with each other. Liz suspects that Max has had feelings for her for much longer than she has had for him. Much much longer.
Where we re-enter the story, Max and Liz has just returned home from the Evans' extra house in Hondo (where they have "cemented" the bond) and upon Max asking his father for help on what to do (knowing that it would be impossible for him to ever live without Liz at this point), Philip suggests a meeting with the alien council to present their "case". With the possibility of making them see how it would make more sense to keep Max and Liz together. That they somehow, in their bonded form, could benefit the alien society. Even if Liz is not bonded with Sean.
Haha, see? I'm not very good at "summarizing"
But there you go.Some feedback to your feedback (even if you might not remember what you wrote
)Ashley (Morning Dreamgirl) - Hey you. I know that I've probably responded to your feedback on this chapter already, so I'm not gonna do it again (instead putting some time into getting this next chapter up). If that's okay with you? Otherwise, I'll type it up later <3 Thank you so much for the feedback (as always)!
Helen (Roswelllostcause) - Let's hope so
Thank you for your feedback!Carolyn (keepsmiling7) - Yup, he sure is good at multitasking
Thank you for the feedback!L-J-L 76 - Thank you for the feedback!
Eve (begonia9508) - You might be onto something there
Thank you for the feedback!Natalie36 - Thank you
From FIFTY-FOUR:
”But we would have to fight,” I observed quietly, a sliver of fear trickling through me. I was not pro-war. I was my mother’s daughter - a pacifist.
A pacifist that might have to prepare for a war against aliens.
His smile slipped off his face and he said with quiet remorse, his concern for me strong across the connection, ”Yes.”
”Us against the aliens?” I suggested, feeling weighed down by the implication.
He nodded slowly, repeating that one-word again, like the implications of what was about to happen had removed every other word from his vocabulary. ”Yes.”
I inhaled deeply, letting my body sink against his, soaking up his warmth and concentrating on the comforting feeling of his skin against mine. ”Let’s do it.”
His hand released mine and he brought it up to cup my cheek, slowly pulling my lips to his.
”I love you,” he whispered against my lips before he united our hopes and dreams with our fears of war and death.
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"You already know a lot about the sergeant," Max started and I saw the face of Sean Carter's father flash in his mind, displayed for me to see. But when he could have communicated with me entirely through memory images and thoughts, he chose to do it the human way; speaking.
Which I was happy about.
I closed my eyes, my cheek resting on his chest. My body was draped over his in a manner that made my upper body move slowly up and down with every breath he took.
I loved listening to his voice. Loved the way the masculine darkness to his voice mixed with a softness I could read in the deepest parts of his soul.
If melted chocolate had a voice, it would sound like Max's.
So I relaxed my mind, subconsciously instructing it not to pay any attention to Max's thoughts or the background noise across the bond (which I was still very unused to). It still took me a lot of energy to sort through that added level of communication, so it was almost a relief to let it slide by unnoticed for now.
I put my arm across his abdomen, cradling the left side of his taut stomach in my palm, while I tucked my body up against his right side and slung one leg across his thigh. I really tried to not be distracted by his right arm around my back, where his fingers were slowly tracing up and down my spine as he kept talking.
I really really tried.
"Sgt. Steven Carter is a pure alien. Both of his parents were military."
I frowned at this. With all the hostile male aliens around, I had only assumed that females didn't carry that much power or authority in the alien community. But while I was trying not to focus on Max's thoughts but rather his spoken words, Max seemed very aware of mine and immediately paused his story to respond to my reflection.
"You're right. Women usually don't hold a lot of power. But it depends on their heritage, which can give them either a lot of power or very little. Sean's paternal grandmother came from a very strong family. No one could ignore her powers and her possible contribution to our community. So she was made an essential part of the army. Producing a son with Robert Carter assured that their offspring would be powerful."
An ice-cold shudder raced through me. "How have I been able to fight against him? Sean?" My mumble had my lips brush against his - amazingly good smelling - skin with every word. "If he comes from such a powerful family?"
"Sean hasn't reached his full potential yet. None of us has actually. On average, you do so around the age of 19. But with practice, you can do it earlier."
"And if you bond with a gaea..?" I asked darkly.
"It depends on the gaea. If she's ready, and strong - especially mentally, there's the capacity of the alien reaching his full potential much sooner," Max whispered and his fingers curled protectively against my waist, his strong arm pressing up against my back and consequently pressing me closer.
I blinked and looked up at him through my eyelashes. His eyes were concerned and questioning as he met mine and he moved his hand from my back to bury in my hair.
"So if Sean were to bond with me now - after I've been more qualified for the job - he would become very dangerous. Very strong."
Max nodded slowly before raising his head off the pillow and placing a lingering kiss on my lips. "But that won't happen," he said with clear-cut determination as he pulled back. "We are bonded."
I smiled, even though I wasn't feeling very happy, but I felt like I should lighten up the conversation. "Yeah," I said weakly. "He can just go screw himself."
His lips twitched in bemusement and he placed a short kiss between my eyebrows. "Yes. Quite literally so."
I grimaced and let my head fall back to his chest, nuzzling my face into the comfort of his body. "Eww... mental image..."
But Max quickly became serious, and I could feel the stress of time in him. We were getting closer to noon. Max's parents had left for work and Isabel had left for school hours ago. They were all keeping up the pretense that everything was normal, while Max and I laid practically naked, except for our underwear, curled up around each other, in the middle of the day, in Max's childhood room.
But compared to other teenagers skipping school and being naked in bed with each other, we were not being triumphant at escaping the rules of society (about going to school) or even taking advantage of the alone time by having sex. We were discussing aliens, secret rebellions, sharpening senses and abilities and preparing for the most important meeting of our lives.
"The sergeant is very strong. He inherited a lot of his strength at using his specific ability from his parents, but during all the years of being bonded to your mother, his abilities developed exponentially. He has adopted some other abilities that were not originally his, but I don't know how good he is at them. He does, however, excel at mind control. Which makes him a really dangerous man."
Max's warm hand against my back caught the ice-cold shiver running down my spine.
"The sergeant is power-hungry and likes to control people. He enjoys being superior a little bit too much."
"But he's not the one in charge...?" I guessed.
Max shook his head. "No. That would be Command."
I silently sighed. More military people. Why would they put them in charge? No wonder the rules were so rigid.
"You'll meet him tonight, I presume," Max said quietly and I tried to discern who this Command was. What impressions Max had of him.
But, "You haven't met him very often?" I guessed.
Max traced his fingers up my spine and weaved them through my hair. "No. He only attends the very important meetings. Most of his tasks are given to the sergeant, his second in command."
"So for you to suspect that he will be attending the meeting tonight...?"
"We're a really significant problem," Max said grimly.
"Right," I observed quietly, distractedly drawing circles with my finger over his smooth chest, tracing the ridges defining his abdominal muscles, his pectorals, briefly wondering how much he had to work out to get that body.
"I presume he's not the most pleasant person?" I asked.
Max hesitated, considering my question, before saying, "It's hard to put a finger on who he is. He doesn't say much. He doesn't have to. His mere presence demands authority and respect. You know the second he steps into a room. He's extremely powerful, mostly due to the fact that he's of royal blood."
This surprised me and I lifted my head to look up at him. His eyes were shifting with emotion as he met mine.
"Royal?" I asked in intrigued surprise. "You have royalty?"
"We had on our own planet. The royal blood provides more power - more energy - than a 'regular' alien. Their royal blood is equal to the power provided by a gaea."
"Oh," I whispered. "That's why Command didn't need my mother, why she was assigned to the second in command instead."
Max nodded. "Yeah."
"Which means that Command is extremely powerful, judging from what you've just told me about aliens who successfully bond with gaeas."
Max looked sad as he slowly scanned my face. "And he doesn't have to expend energy on bending someone's will to get access to that power or even wait for that human to refuel."
"Convenient," I mumbled sarcastically, while I was - once again - wondering how we were supposed to do this. How were we supposed to not only be able to convince this group of powerful frightening aliens of the right to our own lives and wills, but also how were we supposed to even survive a meeting with them?
"Sean will probably also attend," Max said clearly, obviously to distract my dark thoughts and prevent the numbing pain from spreading in my body.
"He's fairly good with his ability." I could tell that Max was struggling to keep his voice neutral and his account objective, when he really wanted to inform me of what a scum and idiot Sean was (as if though I didn't already know that from first-hand experiences). But pouring his hatred for the guy that had mistreated me out right now wouldn't appropriately utilize the little time we had before the meeting to our advantage.
"But he could have been better if he had been able to focus."
"What do you mean?" I asked, placing my cheek back against his chest, letting my head move slowly up and down with each one of his even breaths.
"He's too easily distracted by his feelings-"
"Yeah," I interrupted, "About that."
I pushed myself up on my elbows, closed my eyes momentarily against the sensation of my nipples brushing against his chest as I slightly elevated my upper body above his to look at him.
"You told me once that aliens don't have emotions. But still, I've seen the opposite in your father just recently and I've seen Sean get really frustrated and lose his temper. Plus, even if you yourself have human in you, you are also alien, and I've never met a person with your range of emotions before."
"Maybe I should have clarified that," Max answered guiltily. "We have feelings. But the more human we are - and the impact of society also seems to affect how much our emotions develop - the more feelings we are able to express. The purebloods more strongly feel the primal emotions. Anger and desire. The raw, untamed feelings. They possess other emotions as well, but are not very good at feeling or expressing those. When I say that they lack emotions, I'm talking about their ability to connect with others, to sympathize and to understand what another person is going through. In a way, they lack empathy."
"Like psychopaths?" I stated, thinking back to a book I had read on the subject of just psychopaths and how they were defined as having neither empathy or remorse, their disorder manifesting in aggressive, perverted or amoral behavior.
That sounded disturbingly familiar. I frowned. Why hadn't I made that connection before? Essentially, they were all a bunch of psychopaths, perpetually armed with dangerous inhuman abilities.
"Yeah," Max agreed, finding my unspoken definition oddly fitting. "Exactly like that."
"Well, that's just excellent," I declared succinctly. I looked up into his eyes, my feelings softening at the troubled expression on his face. "Then why did you turn out the way you did? Is it because of your mom? Did she raise you a certain way?"
He looked away from me and I could feel his discomfort. He didn't like to talk about himself, especially not about something that I was in awe of. For some reason, he didn't think he deserved my attention in that way. He didn't find himself very special.
I was just about to comment on this, when he cut me off by hypothesizing, "I think it's a combination of things. My mom certainly had something to do with it, giving me as much of a normal human upbringing from the start as she could. And then there was Sarah-"
I remembered the beautiful young woman I had seen in Max's memory earlier. Max's caretaker while they were trying to break his connection to me in that institution when he had been not more than a boy.
"She was amazing," Max filled in. The love for that woman was noticeable in his voice, making my stomach tightened with warmth. I had never met this woman, only seen the image of her face, but already I was very fond of her because of her positive involvement in taking care of and shaping Max.
"And then there's the healing."
I worried my bottom lip as I looked at him. But he was still keeping his eyes averted, concentrating his gaze on following the fluttering trail of his fingers down the outside of my arm which was draped across his abdomen.
"The healing?" I prompted.
"Isabel was the first one I healed," Max said quietly, losing himself in thought. "I was three."
I swallowed deeply. "You were three?" That was young. That seemed too young to take on a responsibility like that.
"She wasn't seriously injured," Max clarified, trying to smooth my shocked appall over. "She broke her leg."
That sounded serious to me, but I refrained from asking him what he considered a 'serious' injury. I was suddenly afraid to find out what horrors Max might have been 'forced' to heal over the years. Maybe some while he was still very young.
"Why didn't your dad heal it?"
"He wanted me to start easing into using my ability. It would be easier for me to connect with her, considering that she's my twin."
It felt as if my eyes almost fell out of their sockets. "She's your twin?"
Max laughed at me and finally met my eyes. "Yeah. You didn't know that?"
I frowned incredulously. "No?"
Why hadn't I known that? Of course, they were in the same year in school, but I always assumed that one of them had stayed behind a year or the other one had skipped ahead a year.
"No one has ever mentioned it," I said hesitantly, searching my memory for such a statement.
Max shrugged. "I guess you're right. We usually don't talk about it much. And most people make the same assumptions that you have made - that one of us has skipped ahead or got behind."
"Does this mean that Isabel has healing powers too? If you're twins, you should share the same ability right?"
Max shook his head. "I guess, if we were identical twins. But obviously, since I have a penis and she doesn't, we're not."
My laughter was abrupt, his crudeness surprising me in the midst of our heavy conversation. I rolled my eyes at his satisfied grin for making me laugh and agreed, "You have a point."
He put his hands around the top of my upper arms and gently pulled me up along his upper body, aligning our mouths together. "Come here," he mumbled and fused our lips together.
I softened against him, letting my left leg fall between his legs, my thigh consequently resting against that aforementioned difference between these particular fraternal twins. He groaned into my mouth and fisted his hand into my hair at the pressure from my body and I dug my nails into the sides of his ribs as his tongue swirled with mine, blazing heat through my body.
"Is it possible to need someone all the time?" he questioned as he separated our lips.
"I think stalkers have that feeling," I supplied with a smile.
He brushed the hair that was falling forward, and brushing alluringly against his chest, back with his fingers running down the side of my face and answered seriously, "Then I'm stalking you, Liz Parker."
"I don't mind," I whispered back, his words doing delicious things to my body.
His response was to tighten his arms around my back, forcing me to surrender to his pressure and merge my body with his in a tight embrace. I felt his cheek press against the top of my head as everything that couldn't be put into words flowed calmly back and forth through our connection.
I kept quiet for about three minutes, enjoying his close proximity, before I really needed to know, "What are Isabel's abilities then?"
TBC...
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A/N: So, since I've ended up being a bit behind on my posting schedule, my plan is to update 1 chapter per day until I'm up to speed. If this is too often for you, let me know and I'll increase the posting interval.
Thank you so much for reading
