Roswell Fanatics

Title: “Remnants of Future Past”

Disclaimer: The characters of "Roswell" belong to Jason Katims, Melinda Metz, WB, and UPN. They are not mine and no infringement is intended. I’m just playing with them a little. The title is a reference to X-Men’s “Days of Future Past.” I’m getting my Kyle’s Buddhist quotes from http://viewonbuddhism.org/resources/bud ... uotes.html - the one included in this chapter is attributed to Ajahn Chah. I’m hedging here because I wanted an easy source for quotes, but I don’t know enough about Buddhism to know how reliable this site is.

Pairings/Couples/Category: Featured: UC K/I putting an end to I/J. Included: M/M, M/L.

Rating: Teen for strong language, mild violence, and sexually implicit material

Summary: A year and a half after “Graduation,” Kyle still hasn’t gotten his alien powers, Isabel wonders if she should move on from Jesse, and of course, there’s an “alien thing” going on. Future fic set after Graduation, dealing with all those pesky unanswered questions. What happens with Kyle’s yet-to-emerge powers? Will the world still end because Max and Liz are together and Tess is gone? Who is Serena?

Author's Note: This is my first Roswell fanfic, so constructive criticism is highly welcome. Also, this fic is currently a beta orphan. Any volunteers? Nervous newbie says: I just tried to post this a few minutes ago and got no error message or confirmation, and the post never appeared. If it goes for approval for posting ...sorry for the repost? /dummy behavior
“But, Kyle, I always thought that was like your worst nightmare or something. Aren’t you relieved you’re not getting any alien powers?” Liz turned around to face Kyle, seated in the back row of the van, startled by how disgruntled he sounded.

“No,” he grunted, arms folded over his chest. From the look on his face, people who didn’t know him very well would think he was pouting. The assembled company in the van, however, knew it for sure.

“Well, why not?” Liz asked, baffled by Kyle’s mood.

“Hey, I’m just relieved he can’t call us ‘his own kind.’ The Brady Bunch vibe in here is bad enough already,” Michael interjected snarkily from the driver’s seat.

“You’re such an ass, Michael. Can’t you see the man is hurting?” Maria scolded with a light swat to Michael’s arm.

“Hey! No screwing with the driver!” ordered said driver.

“Alright, alright, don’t get your panties in a twist. Just remember that order when you try something tonight, spaceboy,” Maria shot back.

“Somebody remind me why we let Maria ride shotgun when Michael’s driving?” Isabel’s voice dripped with exasperation born of long-suffering annoyance with their particular brand of flirting.

“Because it’s easier to tune them out when they’re not shouting across the van at each other.” Max’s voice carried an affectionate warmth for their particular brand of flirting. He reached out to put his arm around his wife’s shoulder, but Liz was still turned to face Kyle.

“Kyle?” Liz prompted.

“Look, I don’t want to talk about it, alright? ‘Do not try to become anything. Do not make yourself into anything.’ I guess I’m just not meant to be anything, and that’s fine by me.” Quoting Buddhist sayings usually made Kyle sound at least serene, if a bit idiotic, but his friends could all hear the bitter undercurrent to his words – even over Michael and Maria’s none-too-quiet bickering at the front of the van.

“Kyle, don’t even say that! Remember when you figured out how to kill the Gandarium? You literally saved the world. Nobody else in this van has actually done that,” objected Liz. The memory of pretending to sleep with Kyle in order to prevent the end of Future Max’s world flashed through her mind, but she banished it quickly. For one, only Maria knew about it and for another, the fact that Tess wound up evil and leaving (and then good and dying) anyway bothered her too much for it to bear thinking about.

“Hey, I’m the one that used his oxygen-sucking trick to kill the queen. Don’t I get any credit here?” Michael broke off from his banter with Maria, completely missing the point.

“You’re completely missing the point, Michael. When are you going to learn to pay attention to somebody else’s feelings besides your own?” Maria, evidently, was not in a particularly charitable mood. But she always got that way when they’d gone more than a day without stopping at a motel for a good night’s rest and a shower.

“Hey, guys, we’d better find a motel tonight before Maria goes all Kill Bill on our asses,” Kyle said, jumping on a chance to change the subject away from his lack of alien powers.

“Oh, please. I’m way more Lara Croft than The Bride. Uma Thurman’s got class, but she’s way too old. And I could so use a decent shower for once. My hair is like, too disgusting for words.” Michael, wisely, did not reply.

This prompted a lively discussion on the merits of Kill Bill: Volume I (unanimous decision: many) versus the merits of Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life (unanimous decision: few; male decision: Angelina Jolie’s…looks). Recognizing Kyle’s need to keep the conversation light, this topic lasted until they pulled into the parking lot of a Days Inn a few miles off of New York’s I90.

“Step right up, have your futures told, folks!” Kyle announced in a hammed-up carney voice as Liz began her routine round-robin handshake to check that nothing untoward was going to happen to any of them after leaving the van.

“All clear,” Liz proclaimed, but she gave Kyle a look that was hard to read.

“How’s the green, Maxwell?” Michael asked.

“We’ve still got most of our funds from that casino we hit outside Syracuse,” Max replied. It irked him that, after his lecture on responsible use of powers in Vegas, alien-powered gambling turned out to be their most reliable and untrackable source of income.

“Fork it over and I’ll check us in.”

“No unbelievable aliases, alright?” Roy Rogers! he thought with a mental snort.

*****

“Aliens and humans,” Isabel announced when Michael held up two sets of room keys. They were headed downstate on I90, which was taking them ever closer to Boston. Boston, and Jesse. If she had any chance of convincing the group to head there, she’d have to work on Max and Michael.

“Isabel…” Max warned, eyeing Liz.

Isabel rolled her eyes. Max can be so touchy about what to call Liz. “Fine. Pod squad and Earthlings.” There was an edge to her voice that overrode anybody’s desire to object. Generally, at least one couple took a room by themselves, but Isabelle so rarely expressed an opinion on rooming for herself that they were willing to give her this with little fuss. Organize rooming for the group? Often – and usually based on exiling whichever couple was bothering her more from her presence. Demand time with her brothers? Never. So nobody argued.

Nonetheless, they all packed themselves into room 402 first for yet another routine future flash check – the television. They’d learned a few things about Liz’s powers in the past year and a half, and developed a few procedures, both time-saving and safety-oriented. Liz only got flashes from things physically involved in the future – people or objects. People could be great sources of flashes, but other than their own group, it was difficult to know whom else to touch for a useful prediction and occasionally just as difficult to make an excuse to touch them. They’d tried newspapers in hopes of getting flashes of future news, but individual papers would never get printed with another story, so Liz always came up blank. Televisions, unlike papers, would be broadcasting news reports in the future, so Liz would occasionally flash on future news reports. They’d also learned not to unpack before Liz checked the TV; sometimes somebody needed saving ASAP, and sometimes they needed to run.

“Do your thing, Crystal Ball,” Michael said to Liz, nodding at the TV.

Liz reached out, closed her eyes, and “did her thing.” After a few breathless moments, Liz announced, “Serena Campbell, physics student at Harvard, missing.” Serena. Liz knew that name.

Harvard. Boston, Isabel thought. Jesse. “Is there anything to help you figure out the date?” she asked out loud.

“I’ll make a list,” Liz replied, keeping her hand on the TV to get as much of the report as possible. Dating news stories could be tricky. Her flashes were rarely clear enough for her to catch any date that might be on the screen or announced, but details from other reports could help place the date – like Bryce McCain’s appearance in her flashes of graduation. When she’d gotten all she could, she started scribbling everything she could remember on the hotel’s note paper.

“Harvard, huh? Nothing local? What makes this one so special? Why go out of our way?” challenged Michael.

“Harvard’s two hours from here. That’s hardly out of our way, Michael,” Max pointed out.

“I’m just sayin’. It’s like you with those kids in the hospital, Maxwell. I’m sorry we can’t do more, but we’ve got to draw a line somewhere,” Michael said, slumping down on a bed.

Desperate to get to Boston, Isabel spoke up. “Max is right, Michael. Liz doesn’t get a lot of insignificant flashes, and we could get to Boston tonight.” Tonight.

“It’s that name: Serena. She’s a physics student, so she could be…” Done recording the flash, Liz started a mild panic-induced ramble. “That’s the name Max – from the future - said when he was talking about the Granolith. We’re friends, he said, and she…time travel, physics. It could fit. Tess took the Granolith, so Serena …Max won’t be able to use it. I don’t know if it worked anymore. Maybe if we find Serena…”

“Woah, woah, woah, babe! Slow down,” Maria soothed, putting her hands on Liz’s face. “You’re not making any sense. You told me all of this, but nobody else knows, remember? You’ve got to calm down. Breathe.” Liz collapsed in Maria’s arms, not crying, but murmuring incomprehensibly.

“Maria, can you explain what’s going on?” Max asked.

“I can try,” she said, arms still around her best friend.

“We’re listening.”

jbangelo – Ooooh, thanks so much for the offer to beta! This should be my magical post #10 that unlocks my ability to PM, so I’ll be doing that as soon as I can.

cjsl8ne and xaf ru208 – Thanks for the kind reviews; I hope I can keep you intrigued!




Chapter II

Sunday, November 23rd – unknown time until Serena goes missing

“I should have known you’d only get in bed with me if it was the end of the world,” Kyle quipped.

“Yeah…” Liz trailed off, losing the light moment. “The other Max made it sound like Tess would have stayed if she could have been with him. But now - He never knew what she was really planning. So, now I think that maybe she just left after Max and I were supposed to…” Liz hesitated, remembering exactly they should have been doing that night, “get serious because she realized she’d never get anywhere with Max and she’d need to find Zan in New York to follow through with Nasedo’s plan.” Liz took a deep cleansing breath, relieved to have the whole story off her chest. Maria rubbed her arm supportively, and the two looked up from the bed were they were sitting and around at the others, ready to face their questions.

Kyle stood and turned to the window, staring out at the parking lot and unwilling to think about the girl who’d been like a sister to him before betraying them. Max and Isabel sat facing them on the other bed, questions ready in their eyes. But it was Michael, leaning arrogantly against the dresser, who spoke first. “So this Serena chick, she was important?”

“Max said she was going to be a friend. She was the time travel expert behind the whole thing,” Liz replied.

“And you think Serena Campbell is the same Serena from the future?”

“She might be, I don’t know. I – She’s a physics student at Harvard and I had a flash about her. It makes her a good candidate, at least,” Liz stuttered.

“I’m sold. Let’s saddle up and rescue this damsel in distress,” he declared.

“Hang on, Michael, I think we’ve still got a few questions,” Max objected, rising from the bed.

“We don’t know how much time we’ve got. What we do know is that Boston is two hours west of here. That’s plenty of time to do your little Q&A in the car,” Michael stated as he began gathering up the things they’d brought in the room only minutes before.

“I agree,” Isabel assented quickly, anxious to get closer to Jesse. “The only things we could accomplish here we could do just as easily from a hotel in Boston.”

“So much for that shower,” Maria sighed.

*****

Packed up and back on I-90, the group had settled into an uncomfortable silence, each engrossed in his or her own thoughts.

After all of Isabel’s obsessing over being in such close proximity to Jesse, the thing that stuck out most to her from Liz’s wild tale was Alex. He’d been at Max and Liz’s wedding – a wedding that happened when they were all nineteen. Alex never even saw his eighteenth birthday. If Tess had left before getting pregnant with Max’s child, then she never needed to kill Alex to cover up her stupid, diabolical plot. Tess was never going to fill out the power of the Royal Four in either reality, but in this one Alex was dead . Isabel rested her head against the window, staring at the dark blur of passing trees. Eyes stared back at her that weren’t her own. Jerking her head back up, she found herself staring at something she hadn’t seen since Jesse’s proposal: Alex, reflected in the window.

“Remember, Isabel. You need to move on,” he whispered supportively.

Isabel whirled her head around to where Alex – or her imagination of him – should be sitting if it were casting that reflection. Kyle, not Alex, was next to her.

“Hey, you look like you’ve just seen the proverbial ghost. You OK?” he asked, sliding a companionable arm around her shoulders.

“Yeah, yeah, it’s nothing,” she replied, leaning into him with a shiver that belied her words.

Absently stroking her arm, Kyle looked out the window and thought about Tess. What a bitch. Mostly, he’d felt angry at her for betraying him. Them. Sometimes, he felt bad that he didn’t feel bad that she had sacrificed herself for Zan and the others. Knowing now that her absence could lead to the end of the world – he felt angry at her for abandoning them.

“Pass me a soda, would you Max?” Kyle asked.

“What? Oh, sure.” Distractedly, Max reached into the cooler at his feet and pulled out a cherry Coke – a preference change that had been the closest Kyle had gotten to developing any alien-ness. Max brooded about Liz’s revelation. All this time, and he’d never known why Liz had tried to push him at Tess. Sure, he’d eventually figured out that Liz hadn’t really slept with Kyle, but he’d always assumed it was because Liz had decided that he needed to be with Tess. But this… End of the world. Wow. Liz had kept all that to herself. He stared across the van at her, loving her even more for the sacrifice she’d tried to make.

Liz had been repressing “what if” scenarios for years, and now they were all suddenly flooding to the surface. They began with “What if It all winds up the same, except Alex died?” took a quick detour at “What will Isabel thinks of me if she realizes the same thing?” and finished with a spectacularly frightening “What if the reason nobody else has come back from the future to fix the past again isn’t because it’s all fixed, but because we don’t have the Granolith anymore?” When the Max from the future had disappeared, it had seemed like they’d succeeded. When Tess ran off with the Granolith, she’d been so relieved to have a chance with Max again that she hadn’t wanted to consider the implications of the missing Granolith. She’d been happy, and she’d focused on one alien crisis at a time. Well, now this alien crisis had come to the forefront. Maria used to want vacations from all the alien issues. Now she wanted one.

Maria continued to hold Liz’s hand, knowing how difficult it was for her to face and share this secret she’d had for years. Maria herself had mostly forgotten it – it had all turned out alright, after all. Tess, big surprise, turned out to be of no use whatsoever. Liz and Max had gotten back together without the end of the world getting in their way. Thank goodness she and Michael hadn’t had to deal with that. Sometimes getting through a holiday was more than their relationship could handle.

Michael concentrated on the road as he drove. Go figure if they all wound up dying in a car crash in the middle of all this alien end of the world crap. Like Alex. Things were different now than they were supposed to be. Alex was dead and they still might be facing the destruction of Earth in like eleven years. Serena sounded like a good place to start sorting it all out.

“What else can you tell us about Serena?” Michael paused for a moment, then added, “Either one.”

“Nothing much,” Liz replied, finally letting go of Maria and clearing her head. “Max – the future one – mentioned something about her and quantum mechanics and that we’d be friends. He kinda tried to stay hazy on the details. Those were her instructions, I think.”

“And Serena Campbell?” Michael prompted.

“I’ve got a few clues, but nothing that’ll make any sense until we can get to a computer and do some research.”

“What about the Granolith?” he continued the interrogation.

“What about it?” Liz felt unnerved having to put voice to these fears.

“You said that’s how Max came back from the future to warn you about sleeping with him.”

“Liz never said – “ Max started.

“Please, Maxwell. I’m not an idiot,” Michael said disparagingly with a glance back in the rearview mirror. “The Granolith isn’t on Earth anymore.”

“Thank you, Captain Obvious,” Kyle sniped.

“What’s obvious, Kyle, is that without the Granolith, nobody can come back from the future to warn us if we didn’t get it right. Max from the future disappeared because he altered the past. That just means he changed the future, not necessarily fixed it – especially if Tess’s powers still aren’t here to ‘make a unit’ or whatever,” Isabel rejoined, leaning away from him and refocusing on the passing world outside.

“Right. That,” he replied.

“Wait a minute!” Maria called out, flapping her hands. “Wait…wait. Powers! Liz, did that other Max ever mention your powers in the future?”

“No, he didn’t.” Liz dragged the words out in slow realization of Maria’s point. “I guess – he kind of spoke about the Royal Four like they were the only ones with powers.” Liz began to perk up with hope. “But, I don’t know, Maria… My power’s totally different from Tess’s.”

“But what if – get this – there’s like, some kind of trigger to developing your powers. And that trigger never got pulled in the other future. Or for Kyle. And that’s why other future you didn’t have any powers, and why Kyle hasn’t gotten any yet.” Maria beamed at her own brilliance.

“No, I haven’t gotten any because I spend all my time around you freaks. Not the best for a guy’s sex life,’ Kyle joked.

“So not what I meant. Grow up, Kyle.” Maria rolled her eyes so emphatically that everyone could nearly hear it in the dark. “But really, though – I’m awesome, right?”

Isabel roused herself from her Alex-driven reverie and announced, “Either way, we still have Serena to worry about. We need a plan.”

A/N Sorry about the long time between updates - it's been a crazy week. Here's two chapters as an apology!

Chapter IV

Monday, November 24th – 1 month until the 28th

You can take the girl out of the waitress, but Liz and Maria still habitually took it upon themselves to retrieve breakfast for the group. Whatever breakfast sweets were available – muffins, Danishes, donuts – wound up in front of the Pod Squad, awaiting a healthy dose of the Tobasco sauce they carried with them. Waffles or pancakes all around if offered. Toast and eggs for Maria and Liz, a slightly intimidating portion of everything for Kyle. Large coffees for everyone (except Maria, who preferred herbal tea), or somebody’s head was likely to be bitten off before noon.

This morning, when they brought trays laden with food from the buffet back to Max’s room, Kyle and Isabel were absent. Breakfast was the one meal they all took together when they weren’t driving. Generally, they valued time apart after long hours of the enforced togetherness of the van’s rather intimate size – it kept everyone sane – but breakfast was a useful time to go over everyone’s plans for the day. Anyone’s absence, therefore, was always worrisomely conspicuous. Usually, the absence of two people could only mean one thing, but this wasn’t exactly a pair known for skipping the group morning meeting for a more…private meeting.

Still holding breakfast trays for the missing recipients, Liz and Maria volunteered to go check on the absent duo. “You take her majesty, I’ll take the jock,” Maria said to an answering dirty look from Liz.

*****

Something had been bothering Isabel all night as she fell asleep, nagging at her still as she rose out of unconsciousness in the morning. Sensing a change in Kyle’s breathing that signaled that he, too, was awake, Isabel asked, “Do you bring that Buddha statue in every time we stop at a hotel?”

“In case you hadn’t noticed, we don’t lead a very stable lifestyle. It helps to have something like that for a little clarity,” Kyle explained as if it should be obvious. He’d been telling them all for years, but they’d still mock him.

“I sure could use a lot of clarity right now.” Isabel sat up, running her fingers through her sleep-rumpled hair.

“What’s been going on? I mean, besides your interstellar ex dropping in on your dreams? You were touchy before that.” Free of human pillow duty, Kyle stretched and rested his hands behind his head.

“Jesse.”

The word hung in the air between them like the proverbial elephant in the room – on a tightrope, ready to fall and assert that it could no longer be ignored. Isabel, ever the silent sufferer until she boiled over in frustration, rarely mentioned her absent husband. An absent husband whom she’d personally banished from their cozy little alien fugitives and friends club. Everybody knew what she’d given up, and why, and how painful it could be for her to watch Max and Liz’s and Michael and Maria’s happily ever after play out in front of her while Jesse lived his normal life somewhere far away from her, but nobody ever talked about it. At least, not in front of Isabel. They waited for her to broach the subject, ready to lend their support.

Of course, their support all came filtered through their own agendas. Max, true to his abdication, was ready to support whatever Isabel wanted to do about Jesse, so long as it was final. Michael waited to tell her she’d made the right decision – although his reason for believing it to be the right decision wavered according to his status with Maria. When things were going well with Maria, Michael admired Isabel’s ability to stick to keeping her lover out of harm’s way for his own good. When they weren’t, Michael’s reasoning leant itself more towards the safety of silence for the group than anything related to love. Liz and Maria, faithful believers in human/alien relationships, wished she’d bring Jesse back to them. Kyle refused to examine his own feelings on the matter and left it at a vague interest in supporting Isabel.

“Jesse,” Kyle echoed.

Maria, in possession of a key to Kyle’s room, burst in before they could continue the conversation. “Oh. My. God,” she enunciated, so stunned at the sight of Kyle and Isabel in bed together that she failed to notice the key detail that they were both fully dressed.

“Maria, there’s something we’ve been keeping from you guys. It felt wrong. I’m so glad it’s finally out in the open,” Kyle announced with a twinkle in his eye.

“Get over yourself, Kyle.” Isabel returned, grabbing the nearest pillow and thrusting it in Kyle’s face. “And Maria, get your mind out of the gutter. We’re late for the morning meeting, I take it?”

“Uh. Yeah. Max and Liz’s room.” Straining to regain her mental balance, Maria paused, turned, and walked slowly out of the room. As soon as the door clicked shut, Kyle and Isabel dissolved into a fit of giggles at Maria’s misunderstanding.

*****

Maria raced down the balcony to meet Liz. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!” She bubbled over, bouncing at Liz’s side.

“Maria, what is the matter?” Liz would have been looking at her best friend as if she were from another planet, except, for obvious reasons, that didn’t exactly connote behavior strange enough to match Maria’s.

“Don’t get too excited.” Liz raised a pointed eyebrow at the obvious irony. “But I think…something might be going on between Kyle and Isabel.” Maria let out a characteristic high-pitched squeal of delight at her news.

“What are you talking about? Isabel’s married, and Kyle’s…well, Kyle’s Kyle.”

“Please, Liz, do not disparage the workings of the human or half-human heart. Jesse and Isabel essentially separated a year and a half ago. You and I both know that Isabel couldn’t have made Jesse stay away if he’d really wanted to go with her. Jesse was good for Isabel, but he’s not as enlightened as you or I,” she gestured grandiosely to herself and Liz as they began walking back to Max’s room, neatly glossing over her own history of flip-flopping on being in or out of the alien business.

“Okay, that’s fair. But Kyle? ” Liz objected.

“Just because you found him too boring to compete with your exotic mystery man alien lover doesn’t mean that Isabel is looking for the same thing,” Maria pointed out.

“Fair enough.” Liz paused. “But Kyle?! ”

*****

With everyone finally piled back in Max’s room over breakfast, they took stock of the situation at hand.

“We have a name, a date, and a crime. We need information on this chick and access to her,” Michael summed up succinctly.

“We also have a connection to a future that may or may not happen,” Max added.

“There’s something else,” Kyle piped up, nudging Isabel.

“What’s that?” asked Max.

“It – it’s nothing,” Isabel stammered. “I don’t see how it’s relevant.”

“You told me about it so you wouldn’t back out from saying something now, Mrs. Chicken,” Kyle reminded her.

Maria raised her eyebrows and looked from Liz to Kyle and Isabel and back. See what I mean? her expression seemed to say.

Isabel looked up at her friends. “It’s Khivar.” She looked down at the floor, her tone less confident. “He was in my dream last night,” she finished in a rush.

Max and Michael automatically stood to attention. Max spoke first. “So, what did he want?”

“I – I don’t know, I – he didn’t really seem to want anything from me. It was different this time. He wasn’t after anything from me that I could tell.”

“It’s okay; we’ll figure this out, Isabel,” Max soothed. He pressed on, “If he isn’t after anything from you, did you get any sense of what he’s really up to?”

“A woman. A human, on Earth. He didn’t say who, just that she’s important somehow.” Isabel stopped and closed her eyes, straining to catch details of the dream from her memory. “He mentioned being in her dreams, um…that he has no rivals for her? And something about finding her first.” She paused again, the significance of his remarks hitting her anew. “Guys, he’s looking for somebody that he thinks we want to find.”

“Serena. It can’t be a coincidence,” Michael mused.

“What are the odds that he’d be looking for her at exactly the same time we are?” Liz spoke up, afraid of the implications of this all being connected to the missing future.

“Exactly my point,” Michael reiterated.

“I don’t get it,” Maria shrugged. “If she plays a part in a future that doesn’t even happen, why is some alien usurper half a galaxy away interested in her? And why would he tell us about it?”

“If he doesn’t know where she is, he may be trying to follow us to get to her,” Isabel speculated.

“But we’re after her because she’s going to go missing. What if he’s the one who takes her, and we’re the ones who bring him to her to make that happen?” Kyle ventured, catching the rapid fire flow of ideas sparking across the room.

“Catch 22,” Michael grunted, sliding down into the nearest chair.

“No, the future didn’t work like that,” Liz thought out loud. “We usually manage to stop my visions by getting involved. We don’t make them happen. And the other Max disappeared when I pretended to sleep with Kyle. He didn’t create the future he’d already lived by influencing the past. I can’t believe we’re going to cause her disappearance by investigating it. I can’t believe the future works like that.” She pounded the table in frustration for emphasis.

“Which still leaves us with her abduction and his involvement to stop. Whatever he wants, it can’t be good.” Max crossed the room and placed his hand on his sister’s shoulder. “Whatever he wants, we won’t let him get it. And we won’t let him get to you, I promise.” She covered his hand with hers and smiled up at him.

“Which brings us back to we need info and access to Serena,” Michael prompted.

“Here’s the plan…”





Chapter V

Monday, December 1st, 27 days until the 28th

Liz adjusted the leather bag slung over her shoulder and took a bracing breath before turning to face a dream for her future from the past.

Liz will apply for a lab tech position at Harvard. It’s the only way any of us can get good, legit access to the campus this late in the semester.

The December chill and dead lawn of what must be a gorgeous campus at the right time of the year brought back unpleasant, hazy memories of her abbreviated time at Winiman. But she spun around, and the green and bronze doors of BioLabs thrilled a part of her that had been sleeping since her botched Harvard interview. Patting the bag containing a large array of clever forgeries, she opened the center door and stepped into the world that once could have been hers.

We’ll forge transcripts and recommendations from a college too far away to for the professors to be on a buddy-buddy basis with their professors. But somewhere impressive. Somewhere in Australia.

Glancing at the directory, Liz identified her destination: Dr. Laura Holtz, room 326. She couldn’t believe, after all this time, that she’d still at least actually get to meet her old heroine of molecular biology. It was the only reason that she had any shot at getting past an interview.

There’s no way I can get a position in a physics lab with Serena. I don’t know anything about physics. We’ll have to make molecular biology work. I know Dr. Holtz’s work inside out.

Indeed, Liz did know her work through and through. They’d each taken up studying skills to get them through both the day to day and the long term of their peculiar lifestyle. Lock-picking, for instance, posed no challenge to four individuals adept at molecular manipulation, but computer hacking and molecular biology were a different story. From their history with the Gandarium, decreased alcohol tolerance, and Liz’s own changes, they knew that a firm knowledge of biology was important to their continued survival. So that’s what she studied in the van – in theory, at least. She’d studied any textbook or science journal – especially any work of Dr. Holtz’s – that she could get her hands on, but her lab time had been almost non-existent.

You nail the interview, we’ll take care of the rest.

“Show time,” Liz whispered to herself as she approached room 326 and summoned a confident knock.

“Bethany Walker, I presume?” asked an imposing woman with an impressive handshake.

“That’s me,” Liz lied, doing her utmost to exude a sense of truth and capability. She only had one way to fake it through this interview – turn it around on the interviewer. “I’ve been so anxious to meet you, Dr. Holtz. Ever since I was fourteen, I’ve wanted to work with you.”

“Fourteen? That’s young for an interest in molecular biology. And you didn’t come to Harvard to study because…” This woman was hard. Judgmental, but fair. She would be an exacting taskmaster and an excellent teacher. Liz’s Harvard interviewer was right, they could hit it off.

Dr. Holtz took a seat behind her desk, adjusting herself with quick, efficient movements. She indicated between the desk and the door.

“Honestly? I didn’t get in. I had the flu during my interview and I think I came across like I was cracking under the pressure. Or maybe worse. I was very dizzy that day.” Liz sat as she spoke. The more realism she could use, the more real the whole interview sounded in Liz’s head.

“What are your plans now? I don’t see someone with your resume dropping out of school to become a lab tech.” Dr. Holtz steepled her fingers and awaited an answer.

“No, neither do I. As you can see from my resume, I’m taking this year off to get some experience. I’m really hoping to get a position here to make myself a strong transfer applicant next fall.” A rehearsed, logical story.

“A woman with a plan. I like it. Follow me to the lab, if you will.”

We’ll set you up as a high school intern in a University of Boston lab for a few days first. That way, you’ll be believably familiar with lab procedures.

All in all, they’d invested nearly a week’s worth of time researching, forging, and preparing to get Liz on campus. Only two weeks left, and this plan might not even work. It all came down to here and now, and her.

*****

Tuesday, December 2nd – 26 days until the 28th

“So how’d you get Australian phone numbers to call to these cell phones, anyway?” Liz asked, having missed a lot of the research that resulted in her forgeries while she was playing the high school shadow at a lab on the UB campus. She expected to be relieved, comfortable, back in the motel life that was becoming like home, but now she was nervous about the inevitable reference checks Dr. Holtz – or Dr. Holtz’s assistant – would be performing.

“We found a guy,” was Michael’s oh-so-descriptive answer.

“It’s all very complicated. And very expensive.” Maria ruefully drew out the word very. “Sometimes it almost hurts to see what we spend our money on these days,” she continued with a wistful sigh for her days in the Dupree mansion.

“And who’s going to fake the Australian accents? It’s times like these I almost wish we had Tess around to mindwarp,” Liz pressed.

“Isabel and I are taking care of that, mate,” Kyle replied in a jarringly impressive Australian accent.

“We’ve been watching Walkabout and Strictly Ballroom all day,” Isabel explained in a likewise pitch-perfect Australian accent.

The nudity of Walkabout might have been Kyle’s style, but Liz had to burst out laughing at the thought of Kyle spending the day being subjected to the romance and, well, ballroom dancing of Strictly Ballroom. “What, you couldn’t find any Crocodile Dundee?”

“For your information, Parker, we took a purist approach. There are too many American actors in Crocodile Dundee,” Kyle explained haughtily.

“Also, he subjected me to a Crocodile Hunter marathon a few weeks ago, so he owed me,” Isabel added with a light swat to Kyle’s arm.

“Kyle, I swear if you answer that phone ‘Gidday, mate,’ I am going to kill you,” Liz warned, recovering from her fit of hysteria.

As if on cue, one of the cell phones lying on the table sprang to life.

“Here goes nothing,” said Kyle.

*****

Kyle put the TV on mute and rose to answer the door. “By the way, you so owe me for…” he said before looking. “Oh! Liz, it’s you. What’s up?” A brief flare of disappointment rushed through his stomach before he quashed it.

“I just wanted to thank you for your help getting me that job. You and Isabel both – you were really impressive.”

Kyle opened the door wider and stepped out of the way. “Come on in. Thanks and praise are always welcome in casa Valenti. Such as it is.”

“Any idea what’s going on at casa Valenti back in Roswell?” Liz perched herself on the hard chair placed by the table, asking because she was curious, but knowing that there would be no real answer.

“No contact. That’s our rule. It’s for his protection as much as ours. What he doesn’t know won’t bite him in the ass if the Feds come a-knocking.” Kyle fell back on his bed and propped himself up on an elbow. “Not that I’m not tempted.”

“I’m sorry, Kyle. It was nice to be able to send my journal back home, but I kind of wish I could know how my parents reacted. I’m happy, but are they?” Liz fiddled with the folders advertising local pizza and golf venues.

“You’re stalling. What do you really want, Liz?” Kyle prodded.

“I was thinking,” Liz began slowly. This was becoming a touchy subject for Kyle. “Now that I’ve got this job, I can use it to do a little more than reconnaissance on Serena. I’ve got access to a state of the art research facility now. Maybe if I could compare our blood samples to Max’s or something, I could figure out what’s going on with you and your powers.”

“Hmm,” he grunted, falling down to his back. “Let me think about that. It might be worth a shot. But why look a gift horse in the mouth, you know?”

“Wait, I thought you were starting to want to…wind up like me.” Liz would never cease to be surprised by the twists in the character of the boy she’d once watched puking after a night of irresponsible teenage binge drinking.

“I was. I am. I was just dreading it for so long, I figure it’s better to be grateful that it isn’t happening instead of worrying about why it isn’t,” he philosophized.

“Maybe,” Liz stressed. “But it would be nice to have another trick up our sleeve.” She practically mumbled the last, as if it were a private musing.

“Liz, you can’t blame yourself for Tess. She was an evil schemer who was never going to be on our side no matter what you did. And what you did, you did to save the world.”

“I guess. I mean, I know. It’s just hard to keep it all in perspective when I might have failed.”

“Do not pursue the past. Do not lose yourself in the future The past no longer is. The future has not yet come,” Kyle quoted.

“Thanks. That actually makes a lot of sense.” Thinking of Isabel, Liz added, “You know, Kyle, you’re a really great guy. You can make a girl laugh, make her feel better. It would be a waste if you’re always just a friend. You’re right. We can’t go back to our families. But we can go forward.”

It didn’t take a wild stretch of imagination to get who Liz was talking about. Unwilling to commit to a response, Kyle merely grunted.

A/N Back to one chapter, or I'll get caught up to what I've got written way too quickly. Thanks for the feedback, cjsl8ne! The triggering is going to take...awhile.

Chapter VI

Wednesday, December 10th – 18 days until the 28th

“I still don’t understand why we don’t just walk right up to her and tell her the deal,” Michael grumbled over lunch with Maria and Max.

“You are so clueless, Michael,” Maria sighed. She bit into another fry and narrowed her eyes in concentration. “The fries are slightly too crispy, but that burger is heaven on a bun.” She passed expert judgment on every diner graced with their presence.

“Why do I always have to be clueless? Why can’t you just be wrong?” he objected, blinking in non-comprehension at Maria before Max could intervene. “And these burgers have nothing on mine.”

“Serena is an intelligent young woman living in a big city. She’s not just going to hand her life over to six strangers with some crazy story about an alien planning to abduct her,” Max explained. “Besides, we have more than two weeks. If push comes to shove, we’ll do it your way at the last minute.”

There was also the unsettling matter of Isabel’s inability to dreamwalk her. Isabel described it like there was some kind of interference in the signal. It wasn’t disrupting Isabel’s dreamwalking powers on the whole – she could still dreamwalk any and all of them, and a few local, random test subjects. But whenever she tried to get into Serena’s dreams, she woke up with a wicked headache and a stick up her ass. The going theory was Khivar had beaten them to Serena’s dreams and was keeping Isabel out, but it was just a guess.

“I still don’t like it,” Michael complained, slamming down his peach Snapple.

“We’re not asking you to like it. We’re just asking you to be cautious,” placated Max.

“Screw cautious!” Michael’s mood had shifted in the face of his companions’ lectures. Ready for action after several days of sitting on his thumbs, he bolted from the diner.

Max rose to chase after him and stop him from doing anything rash that might blow the cover on their surveillance operation. Maria reached out to grab his arm. “Maybe Michael’s right, or maybe he’s just going to blow off some steam. But you’re working on that whole abdication thing. I think you need to trust him and let him walk,” she reasoned.

Max hesitated and stared at the door chimes, still ringing from Michael’s enthusiastic exit. Maybe just this once, he’d let Michael go.

*****

Armed with Serena’s schedule, dorm info, and activities list, Liz did her best to casually bump into her outside her workday. No luck yet. Today, the plan was to head straight from work here to Annenberg Hall, the freshman dining center. Odds were that this plan should work eventually if she tried it long enough; Serena was, after all, a freshman. Of course, it interfered with her ability to “work late” and use the lab’s equipment to study Kyle’s blood sample against hers and Max’s, but she did her best to keep her priorities in line.

Truth be told, it was actually a relief to be headed to dinner at Annenberg: there was no deception involved. Members of the academic staff were encouraged to eat there and interact with the freshmen – something about collegiality and recruitment which made very little sense as these students had obviously already been recruited.

Stepping into a random line in the area sectioned off for food service, Liz scanned the crowd for a short-shorn shock of red hair that would indicate Serena’s presence. Blinking, Liz did a double take. There was Serena, alright – looking unnerved and ready to bolt – from Michael. Shaking her head with a slight eye roll, Liz maneuvered herself closer to listen unobtrusively hidden in the press of hungry students gathered at the grill.

“You go to Harvard, you should get this. Danger. Abduction. Kidnapping. Victim.” Only Michael could sound so condescending while he was pleading.

“Get the hell out of here, creep. From where I’m standing, it looks like you’re the one threatening me,” the spitfire spat at him. Her fingers twitched as if itching to punch Michael.

Liz took a moment to consider how to turn the situation to their advantage. It didn’t take long to see how she could make it work – as long as Michael could take a cue. She settled her features into a look of indignant outrage and shoved her way through the crowd.

“You’ve really got some nerve, haven’t you?” She spat venomously, concentrating on Michael and willing him to pick up on her plan. She spared a brief glance for Serena. “Is this menace to society bothering you?” Turning back to face Michael on the word menace, she continued without waiting for an answer from the girl she was trying to “rescue,” and addressed her rant to Michael. “This lumbering ape pulled the same routine on me last week. I reported him to the campus police, who banned his pathetic, puny ass from Harvard. I’m sure he’s going to leave you alone right now before I call them in and have him hauled off campus in a rent-a-cop car.” She raised her eyebrows at him and pointed towards the arched entranceway to the seating area – and exit.

“Whatever, doll. Catch ya later,” he replied with a smooth arrogance and retreated into the crowd.

“Thanks, whoever you are. You probably just saved me from…well, from a run-in with the campus police myself. I really wanted to deck that jackass!” Serena shook her head and then her hand, as if imagining the pain of throwing a closed-fist punch.

“So, what was he trying to you? With me, it was a mission from God telling him to protect me from being murdered.” Liz rolled her eyes melodramatically.

“Alien visions and kidnapping here,” Serena replied with a short wave like the crime was her introduction.

“I’m Beth Walker. I work over in the BioLabs building.” Liz stretched her hand out, silently thanking Michael for playing along and providing her with this opening.

“Serena Campbell. I’m a lowly freshman physics concentrator now – or I will be when they let me declare - but someday I’m going to be a kick-ass quantum physicist. Assuming I survive my first finals, at any rate,” Serena replied, taking Liz’s hand in a firm shake.

A flash of white completely erased the dining hall from Liz’s sight. An afterglow of the bright white clouded her vision as it switched to the red-black of a city night. Serena was leaning into a passionate kiss on a bridge. Breaking contact, the impossibly tall man wove his fingers into the hair at the back of her neck and brought a hand seductively to her chin. Rapidly and forcefully, he snapped her neck. “Hands off that ship,” he sang with childlike glee before tossing her the bridge.

Blinking to clear the vision, Liz spoke as if nothing had happened. “As a future kick-ass molecular biologist, I’d like to extend the official welcome to the Association of Future Kick-Ass Scientists,” Liz joked with an affected hauteur, hoping to turn Serena’s mood and get her talking. She nearly winced at her own reference to the future, but managed to keep a straight face.

“Hmmm, I don’t know…Are there any dues? I’m already burying myself in debt to pay for this place.” The pair crept closer to the front of the line, turning to face the same direction.

“There’s no fee. You just have to forfeit your social life.” Liz let herself get swept away in the joke and the conversation, hoping to establish a good connection before starting any sort of interrogation, no matter how subtle.

“Oh, well that’s more than fine by me.” Serena sounded strangely emphatic on this point. Responding to a quizzical look from Liz, she explained, “I don’t play well with others. I think I’m a tad confrontational.” She shrugged her shoulders exaggeratedly on the word tad and exuded a highly indifferent attitude towards her apparent unpopularity.

“I have a few friends like that,” Liz said with a wry twist of her mouth, thinking of the very friend she’d just banished. “Maybe I could introduce you.”

“Maybe you could at that. All my social life consists of these days is a few dream visits from a sex god.”

Khivar! Liz concluded with a stomach-numbing sense of dread. “Sounds fascinating. Tell me about him.”

*****

Isabel’s every last nerve screamed with angry impotence. Jesse remained tantalizingly near but out of reach. She couldn’t dreamwalk anyone useful. Half her dreams were mental rape spiked with Khivar’s threats and indifference. The most useful thing she’d been able to do in a week and a half was confirm that Khivar was at least claiming not to have found Serena yet. She was so wastefully angry that the room began to turn before her eyes.

No, the room wasn’t spinning. Neither was she. She was spinning everything in the room – smaller furniture and all. Rearranging her thoughts into a more peaceful pattern, Isabel raised her hand carefully and returned everything whirling about the room to its proper place.

Needing to find an outlet for her energy, needing answers, Isabel opted for the safest route to those ends: dreamwalk Jesse. She dug through her small bag in search of her photo album and retrieved it from the bottom. Flipping to her wedding picture, she settled herself onto her bed and placed her finger on Jesse’s face.

Jesse’s hands wrapped around metal bars. A spotlight shone on the cage, a cell barely large enough for Jesse to lie down in. For a cage, it was well-appointed. Clearly expensive furniture was accented by gold knick-knacks and a crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling. But it was still tiny, and still a cage. Jesse was pleading with somebody who had her back to Isabel.

“You’ve got to let me out. It’s my choice,” he begged.

“It’s for your own good. I’m making things right this way. It’s too dangerous out here.” Isabel recognized her own voice coming from the figure outside the cell.

She – her real self – took a breath to call out to Jesse, but she’d already missed her chance.

“Just open the door and leave,” a new voice spoke. Female. Isabel looked across from herself to see a brunette with a terrible nose leaning against the bars. “It’s not even a real cage!”

“But she’s at the door,” Jesse objected, turning to the newcomer.

“Try the one by me. I’ll let you out,” the brunette (whose hair was also a bit frizzy) promised.

Isabel woke herself abruptly and promptly crumpled under the weight of the implications of Jesse’s dream, drawing herself into the fetal position and twisting her face to force back her tears.

A/N I'm hitting a case of writer's block...but I've got 5 more chapters already written, so hopefully I'll have broken it by the time posting weekly catches up with what I've got so far. This is also getting longer than I expected, and therefore taking longer to write.

Thanks for the continual, kind feedback, cjsl8ne! There's a little more sad Jesse stuff to come, but obviously something else will make up for it


Chapter VII

Thursday, December 18th – 10 days until the 28th

“I don’t know. Khivar has been in most,” Isabel emphasized with a sigh and a lift of her eyebrows, “of my dreams in the past few weeks, but I haven’t gotten a good look at him. He’s taller than Max or Michael, and blond. That’s all I can really say.” She rested her head in her hand, leaning against the table and pushing away her half-eaten tray of Danish, hot sauce, and OJ. The Khivar dreams and earlier-than-usual breakfast meetings (owing to Liz’s commute) were not playing nice with her body. Between those and her anxiety over the potential meanings of Jesse’s dream, she was beginning to fray from exhaustion.

Liz reached across the table from the other chair and pulled Isabel’s tray under her own, rearranging the dishes and garbage to stack properly. “That matches what I saw, but I didn’t see anything more to identify him, either. I’m pretty sure he hasn’t found Serena yet, or she would’ve said something. She’s, like, seriously infatuated with ‘Dream Dude.’” Liz passed a Tobasco sauce-laden donut down to Max, who was leaning against her knees.

“One thing we know: it’s going to be hard to convince her to trust us over what she thinks is her soul mate,” he declared. Max, nearly full, ripped the donut and tossed half across the room to Michael, leaning on the divide between the bedroom and dressing area.

“Well, thanks to me, she does have a known enemy the rest of you can protect her from to build her trust,” Michael bragged before shoving entirely too much of the donut in his mouth. Behind him, Maria smirked to herself as she exited the bathroom and turned on the faucet to wash her hands. Liz had let Michael pretend that the scene in the dining hall had been of his own clever design, but Maria was far too familiar with being made the dupe in Michael’s skewed retelling of events to buy it for a second.

“So, you’re what – going to be her stalker or something?” Maria scoffed, looking back at her friends in the mirror. Kyle caught her eye and shrugged his tacit approval.

“It could work. Michael could stalk Serena and Liz, then Max or I could beat him up or something. Then she’d have to trust us when we said Khivar’s bad news,” Kyle suggested.

“Not on your life, Earthling,” Michael sneered. “Nobody’d ever buy you taking me down.”

“Is that right…” Kyle started, rising from his seat on the edge of the bed.

“Boys, boys, if you could just put your measuring sticks away for a moment, maybe we could actually make a plan that’ll work,” Maria placated with a hard look at Kyle and a hand on Michael’s chest.

“We should stop Khivar before he even gets to Serena,” Isabel said, attempting swallow down a part of Vilondra that was jealous of his interest in the girl.

“Great. Tell us where he is and we’ll sit on him until his human host runs out of juice.” Michael’s voice reeked of sarcasm.

“Don’t give me that attitude Michael, you know I can’t get in his head without a picture,” Isabel shot back with a glare.

“We could always search the human way,” Kyle reminded them, quick to divert potential criticism of Isabel. “Didn’t you guys find out he had a human host last time from a missing person poster?”

“We can search local missing persons reports for Caucasian males from the last few weeks,” Max offered.

“He might not be local, Max. He hasn’t found Serena yet, remember? For all we know, he’s in Australia right now,” Isabel objected, feeling defeated by the entire scenario.

“It’ll give the rest of us something to do while Liz is at the lab. Speaking of which, shall I walk you to the station?” Max rose and offered his hand to Liz.

“Oh, goody, ” Maria gushed unenthusiastically.

*****

“How are you doing?” Having followed Isabel out of the breakfast meeting, he stood in Isabel’s doorway before the door swung shut behind her.

“Oh I’m just fine,” she replied, her not-so-suppressed anger seeping out in her high-pitched voice.

“I think your dresser would beg to differ.” Isabel was, as Kyle was speaking, yanking dresser drawers open to throw her recently laundered clothes in them and then shoving them shut. It was also still littered with glass and ceramic shards from her reaction to Khivar’s first unwelcome visit. (She’d called housekeeping and asked them to stay out of her room, determined to regain enough control to repair the mirror and lamp before allowing an outsider in.)

Taking Kyle’s point, Isabel turned and rested against the dresser, burying her face in her hands. A giggle bubbled unbidden out of her throat. “So would the lamp,” she said, dissolving in a fit of hysterical laughter. Kyle shut the door behind him and watched her carefully for any sign of the laughter turning to tears. It subsided without turning sour, and Isabel stood with her hand at her chest, catching her breath.

“There’s something else, though, isn’t there?” Kyle had been watching her hold herself together against both the strain Khivar’s dreams were causing her and her inability to do anything useful. Something else was causing this crack in her composure, he just knew it.

“Yeah, there is.” With a renewed sense of calm, Isabel turned away from Kyle and reached for the last of her clean clothes. She didn’t volunteer any additional information.

“Jesse?” Kyle sat down in what passed for the arm chair in the room and looked intently at Isabel’s face – attempting to keep his eyes off her fistful of panties.

“What are you, my personal shrink?” There was a slight hostile edge to her voice, though she said it like a joke. “Sorry. You’re getting too good at this. Yes, Doc, it’s Jesse.” The underwear remained clenched in her fist, forgotten, as she crossed to the bed and lay down, psych-patient style. She launched into the story of her only recent successful dreamwalk, and gave voice to her fears about what it meant. “At first, I thought that out of the cage meant here, with me,” she said at the end of her tale. “Like the normal life I wanted for him was the cage and he could be free if he could be with me. Then she showed up, and it made me wonder. Maybe the cage is our marriage and he wants out so he can be with her.” Isabel had managed to keep a light note of parody in her voice throughout her recital, but tears were streaming silently from her eyes by the end.

“Two doors, two women, two interpretations. Lucky bastard,” Kyle couldn’t resist adding. “Are you going to let him out of the cage?” he asked, more seriously.

“I suppose I have to. I left him behind because I felt like I’d trapped him. Obviously, I didn’t fix that,” she replied, pained. She rolled on her side to face Kyle for the first time since beginning the story. “The question is – which door do I open?”

“No, Isabel,” Kyle contradicted gently. He placed his palms together as if about to impart a great pearl of Buddhist wisdom. “The question is – are you ever going to put your underwear away?”

Isabel looked down at her hands, still clutching the last of her laundry, and dissolved into laughter once more. “I guess I owe you, Dr. Valenti. Your therapy sessions do wonders for me. I suppose I should get you laid.”

Various parts of Kyle’s anatomy fluttered with a sudden interest that he stifled with equal suddenness. She means be your wingman, idiot, he chastised himself. “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt Liz’s get-to-know-Serena mission to take us out to a party,” he suggested.

“That, Doc, is the best plan we’ve come up with yet,” Isabel agreed.

*****

“So, we have a love that not even the end of the world can stop,” Max said, raising his wife’s hand, entwined with his, to his mouth and kissing it as they stood together on the train platform. “I’m not surprised,” he decided, flashing Liz’s favorite smirk. It was the first time they’d approached the subject of Future Max’s visit with any levity, and they both reveled in the moment.

“Was there ever any doubt?” Liz neatly ignored her months of conviction that it wouldn’t work out and leaned in for a dizzying kiss.

A train screamed to a halt at the platform, punctuating the end of their morning together with a hiss of brakes. “Have a nice day at work, Mrs. Evans,” Max said as he kissed her cheek.

“Don’t wait dinner for me, Mr. Evans,” she replied with a glowing smile. Their married life was unique, and they wouldn’t trade it for anything.

*****

Maria’s eyes very nearly bored a hole in the back of Michael’s neck while he cleaned up the breakfast dishes. “What?” he barked gruffly.

“What really happened at dinner?” she prodded, coming around to bore holes in Michael’s eyes.

“You heard the story already.”

“I know I heard the story. But this is me, Maria, the woman who does all the brilliant detective work you take credit for all the time.” She spaced out the last three words with pointed deliberation. “Now I want to hear what really happened.”

“You heard the truth, what more do you want?” he persisted, tossing the last crumpled napkin like a basketball into the garbage can.

“I am not letting you out of this one, Michael, so you might as well just admit whatever you did that Liz managed to turn around,” She wrapped her arms around his neck in a sweet counterpoint to her tart tone.

“It’s not that important.” Nonetheless, he returned the gesture and slid his hands around her waist.

“Au contraire, mon spaceboy,” she objected with a shake of her head. “I’d like to be specific when I congratulate Liz on her stunning work.”

“It’s not as important as what it takes to distract you.” His voice held a dark promise that he’d better be right.

“You cannot distract Maria DeLuca on a mission, bub.”

“Can’t I?” Michael drew Maria closer and did some very distracting things, indeed.

“I suppose you can.”