Roswell Fanatics

Title: "The Saga of the Pod Squad." Author: Chris Kenworthy
E-mail: kelworth@chriskweb.net
Rating: MATURE
Disclaimer: I have no rights over the characters and situations of Roswell, this is a not-for-profit creative outlet so please don't sue me. :]
Synopsis: A broad-strokes picture of what the gang's future SHOULD have been more like after the junior prom.

Author's note: This is something different that I'm trying, so bear with me. Will almost certainly be leaving a lot of blanks to be filled in, but I hope that some of you like the tale.

"It was at a party," Max muttered. He was sitting on a bench in the West Roswell High corridor, not far away from the gymnasium where the junior prom was going on. He had come out here to sulk, and Tess Harding had joined him... to try to cheer him up, or commiserate with him - he wasn't sure which. "Late at night." He sighed. "And you..." He couldn't go any further.

After a long few seconds' pause, Tess shifted slightly, putting her right hand on his back, just as in his memory. "I... I leaned in," she mouthed, with a voice even more choked up than his had been. She WAS leaning, the satin of her blue prom dress touching Max's tuxedo, and somehow that made him feel very uncomfortable. "And-- and whispered in your ear." She bent her head, blonde bangs brushing against his nose ever so lightly, and then backed away.

Max looked up at her, confused, grieved... and reached up a hand towards her head tentatively. He wouldn't have continued the gesture if she didn't nod encouragingly, ever so slightly, His thumb grazed the side of her face, his fingers cupping her jaw as the thumb brushes away an invisible, but wet, fraction of a tear. "...And then you touched my cheek," she finished in a hollow whisper, trembling with feeling.

He stroked her cheek again, looking into her blue eyes, and then their heads were moving towards each other. Were they really going to do this?? "And then we just..." he muttered, and their lips slowly drifted together.

Unseen by both of them, Liz walked around the corner just in time to see the final hesitation, and Max and Tess' lips meet. Disbelieving, she watched as Max tenderly, nervously kissed the girl she hated, backed away in fright, then turned and ran out of the school.

After only a few seconds, Max pulled away. The kiss had been sweet, and precious... and as thin as tissue paper.

"This isn't real, Tess," he forced himself to say out loud.

She looked up at him, those crystal eyes pleading... but also asking. "We're just going through the motions, acting out something that happened a long, long time ago," he said softly. "There isn't any true feeling of love there. It's been an article of faith to you that you loved me since before you met me, and that makes it hollow."

"I knew you for years, on another w..." she started, and Max cut her off,, shifting sideways on the bench away from her.

"You knew *Zan*... or Ava knew Zan. I'm not Zan, and you aren't Ava. They were where we came from... and it's important to know where we came from. But they're not the same as us -- how could they be?? We have new genes... we have a new upbringing. All of that can't help but change us."

"And... and what if I, Tess... fell in love with you, Max -- since I came to Roswell? What if that's completely replaced the crush I had on a guy that I didn't even know??" Tess mumbled back, blushing fiercely.

Max paused, weighing this before he answered. "I'm not sure... I'm not convinced, that it's possible, because I never really let you in, Tess. And... as much as you mean to me as a friend, as part of my extended family... I'm not sure that I *can* let you in."

"Because of Liz??" Tess almost hissed the name.

"No," Max shook his head. "I still love Liz, but I'm going to try to let her go... that's what she wants me to do now. But -- I can't let you into my heart just because you want so badly to be there, Tess." He looked into her eyes, trying to convey what he was saying. "That isn't how love works. You've been trying to get in there... to replace Liz... for so long, I'm not sure if I could ever trust you absolutely. I'm sorry."

Tess opened her mouth for another snarky comeback... but somehow it didn't come. "I understand."

Max stood up and forced a smile. "Wanna go raid the refreshments table??"

"I'll be there in just a second."

And there, in the school hallway, Tess let Max go. Just a little bit. Just to start with. It was the hardest thing that she'd ever done.

************

Alex got out of his car, hurried up the front walk of the Evans house, and knocked on the door. The familiar face of Isabel Evans answered.

"Uh... yeah? What is it -- Whitman??"

"Umm..." This was not what Alex had expected. "You told me to come by and pick you up at a quarter to seven. The big first day of summer party, out at Wilkes point..."

"Oh, oh right..." Iz replied. "Sorry, I've had a last minute change of plans, why don't you go on without me??"

Alex felt his face go pale. "What... what kind of change of plans?"

Isabel grinned in a way that Alex was quite sure he didn't like, though he wasn't sure why. "You know... *alien* stuff. Nothing that you need to go poking your curious head into, though," she disclaimed quickly.

Feeling totally disoriented and rejected, something prompted Alex to make one more try. "Are you going to be able to make it up to the Point later?"

"We'll see, but somehow I doubt it. Now go on with you and have a great time- I've got to get myself ready." She all but shooed him out the door and closed it behind him. Alex stared at the door for more than a minute, and then, with nothing else to do... he got back into his car and drove up to Wilkes point, parking his car on the edge of the growing crowd of vehicles from other partiers.

About an hour later, he was sitting with his back to a tall rock face, about halfway up the peak, nursing a plastic glass of fruit punch morosely. That's where he was when Maria spotted him.

"What, no Isabel?"

"Does it look like she's here??" Alex muttered grumpily.

"What, did she bail on you too?"

Alex nodded by reflex, and then his brain processed the 'too.' "What... did Michael make some flimsy excuse too?"

"Do you SEE him here?" Maria cracked. But Alex didn't smile. "Do you think there's something going on?"

"I dunno, the rest of our merry troupe is all here," Maria reported. "Tess is avoiding Kyle, Max is avoiding Tess, and Liz is avoiding Max."

"Fun," Alex drawled. "You wanna try the bungees??"

"There is no way in Czechoslovakia that you are getting me to jump off a cliff," Maria warned.

"We'll see," Alex said, hiding a smile.

************

"Hey, what are you three looking so sour about??" Tess asked.

Maria and Alex had shared their worries with Liz after a week, and she had dropped by to visit Michael and confirmed that he was behaving very strangely, but didn't have any suggestions as to a course of action.

Alex looked around the Crashdown dining room - it was totally empty except for the three of them sitting at the table, and Tess, standing next to it. "We're worried about Michael and Isabel... they've been blowing us off all week and acting really weird." He braced himself for some snarky remark from Tess about the aliens versus humans thing.

But it didn't come. "You know, I think you might be right," she said, sitting down next to Maria (where there wasn't really room to sit, therefore obliging Maria to scoot over and make room for her.) "Spill - wat have you noticed, specifically."

Alex and Maria looked over at Liz, who nodded slightly, so the three of them started to recount the oddities they'd noticed. Three quarters of the way through the list, Tess cut them off completely.

"We may not have much time. I think Max was going with them up to the Maideckizne rocks... we've got to roll!!"

Somewhat uncertainly, they followed her over to the Jetta.

************

Liz peered up the rocky path, and she was pretty sure that she could see three figures up right about where the entrance to the Pod Chamber would be. The time for being cautious had run out. Tess had briefed them all about her suspicions on the long drive out past the Puhlman ranch. "MAX!!!" she yelled out.

"LIZ?? IS THAT YOU??" came the reply from Max.

"YEAH. DON'T GO INSIDE!!" she yelled back.

"UHH... WHY NOT??"

Liz turned around to look at Maria, who shrugged her helplessness at coming up with a decent answer to that question. "I CAN'T TELL YOU!" Vehemently she waved at the others behind her to climb faster, even though she already knew that all four of them were mounting the path as quickly as they possibly could... and probably faster than was advisable, except that these were desperate circumstances.

There was a long pause from up above, and then Michael's voice came down. "WE DON'T HAVE TIME FOR GAMES, LIZ. TESS IS THERE WITH YOU, RIGHT??"

Liz shushed Alex from answering... at this stage the longer that they could stall for time, the better. "WELL, IS SHE??" Michael prompted again, and Liz realized that if they didn't answer soon, *they* might convince Max to let them in regardless.

But she waited another fifteen seconds, climbing hard, before stopping and hollering "YES, SHE IS."

"THEN SHE CAN LET YOU IN WHEN YOU GUYS GET HERE, AND WE'LL TALK INSIDE. WE'RE GOING IN NOW."

"MAX..." she called again, and he interrupted her, speaking a little less loudly, since they'd closed a fair bit of the distance by now.

"Liz, I don't understand what's going on," he told her. He was very close to the entrance now, close enough that if... if either of them realized, they could probably slam his palm into the right place. But neither of them were that close to Max - Michael and Isabel were glaring balefully at the party of four still making its way up the rock.

There was nothing for it but to say it straight out now. "They aren't Michael and Isabel, Max!! They're the dupes!!!"

Isabel... no, that really *was* Lonnie -- snarled at them, and Rath charged towards Max... but Max shielded just in time, and Michael bounced almost ludicrously off the rippling wall of green energy.

Lonnie... (she still looked like Isabel -- well, the slightly preppy clothes, the long blonde hair, and undecorated skin, though the expression on her face was most un-Isabel-like...) anyway, she swept a cold hard glance across the four of them, and then hopped down the path a little ways, focusing on Liz. Tess took a step towards Liz and in front of her, shielding Liz from Lonnie's hostility.

Lonnie looked back at Rath and considered. Lacking any convenient opening to take the human kids hostage, (and Tess seemed to be willing to protect them,) they were a loose cannon that would probably work in the favor of their little friends, and against Lonnie's side.

Max was good with his powers, and Nicholas had told her how Tess had mysteriously wiped out the Copper Summit contigent of Skins, with Nick himself only surviving by shielding himself and using a mindwarp of nothingness to cover his escape. So...

She gestured to Rath, and he reluctantly hurried across the little flat space to join her.

Lonnie grabbed Rath's hand and jumped off the side of the rock, a sheer stone face that went straight down for eighty feet before running into some craggy stones that ranged up about seven feet from the desert floor.

Liz gasped in... well, not quite horror -- when she saw the two of them drop off the path. More like shock and surprise, really. She did have enough presence of mind to rush to the side of the path, where she could get a good look down just in time to see...

With about twenty feet to go before landing and making a yucky mess of themselves, the two falling bodies suddenly began to decelerate quite remarkably in midair. At least one of them was using alien power, Liz realized. PUSHING down against the ground or the cliff face in order to fall less quickly - a pretty clever application. Probably Lonnie had thought of it.

Already they had landed on the rocks - not smoothly but probably with no more jar than an ordinary person would get leaping down off a seven-foot fence... and were running for the Jeep, which Max had for some reason parked closer to directly underneath the pod chamber than the beginning of the path up.

Certainly no pursuit could catch up to them before they got to it... well, maybe if either Max or Tess or both imitated the trick of jumping off the cliff, but without practice they would be likely to hurt themselves badly, and Lonnie and Rath STILL had a head start to the wheels.

"What if Rath takes the Jeep, and Lonnie continues on to steal the Jetta??" Alex asked, looking over Liz's shoulder.

"She won't," Tess said hopefully. "They need to get out of here as soon as possible, and she won't be sure that one of us isn't charging right down the path, in which case we'd get to the Jetta at about the same time. Lonnie's trying to avoid a confrontation."

"Maybe some of us should be charging back down the path for real, just in case she's too dumb to be bluffed?" Maria asked.

"No need," Liz pointed out. Sure enough, both of them were getting into the Jeep and driving away. "They probably want to make sure that Michael and Isabel are secure, to keep us from getting the advantage of numbers over them." The thought brought a smile to her face - hopefully when it came to that, the dupes had already been outsmarted.

"What about Michael and Isabel?" Max asked. He was heading down the path towards them, a worried look on his face. "If those two are Lonnie and Rath, where are *my* brother and sister??"

"Hopefully Kyle and mister Valenti are finding that out right now," Maria told him. "We had a notion, and called them to check on it, while leaving Roswell to come here. I'll check on that now," she muttered, pulling out her cell phone. It was one of those weird little coincidences that while there was generally no decent cell phone service out this far into the desert, up here just outside the pod chamber they were high enough and in the right position to get a clear signal from one particular transponder.

"It's ringing," she said after a few seconds, then continued to wait. "No answer," she said after eight rings. "Kyle isn't picking up."

"Try the land line," Tess prompted. "555-1214"

"There's no way the phone's still hooked up there," Alex protested.

"If Lonnie and Rath were using it as a secret base, they may have reactivated the line," Liz realized. "That isn't hard, with your guys' powers, right?" Max nodded slightly, then turned as the expression on Maria's face indicated that someone had picked up.

************

"Damn, Kyle, but it's good to see you!!" were the first words out of Michael's mouth when the gag was removed. "How did you guys find us??"

"Liz called us," Jim Valenti said as he ungagged Isabel and started to untie her.

"It was..." Isabel started.

"It was Rath and Lonnie, your evil twins," Kyle filled in.

Michael turned to Kyle... coughed unexpectedly on a thread from the gag, and stared at the human teenager. "You never even met them... did you??"

"Nah, but Tess was full of horror stories once she got back from New York," Kyle said with a smile. "There's one thing I've been wondering about though."

"And what's that??" Isabel asked. Michael thought he knew what was coming.

"Well... you guys are aliens. You can reshape and transform just about anything into anything that uses the same molecules... right?? You can even unlock doors with a wave of your hand and blast through solid walls with energy blasts if you feel the need, and you can move objects just by thinking about them. So... how was it that they were able to leave you guys tied up down here, unguarded, and you couldn't free yourselves??"

"They were always watching us at the beginning," Isabel explained, with a scowl on her face. "But... there was something in the water they gave us, I think -- it was drugged. Once that kicked in --" She looked over at Michael, who nodded. "Our powers went away."

"Oh," Jim muttered, the implications of this settling in. "So... you're still..."

"Dosed up to the gills and as helpless as a human," Michael confirmed. "Which isn't THAT helpless, but the four of us are going to want to make ourselves scarce before the gruesome twosome get back."

"You... you said that Liz called you," Isabel broke in. "Why didn't she come herself?? Does anybody know what our body snatchers are up to??"

"Everybody's out past Puhlman ranch, your pod cave or whatever," Kyle explained.

"Pod chamber," Michael corrected absently.

"They... and by they I mean Liz, Alex, Maria, and Tess, who we got our information from," Jim began. "They think that Lonnie and Rath were trying to trick Max into letting them into the pod chamber and... and from there getting access to the... the grannelik?"

This time, neither of them corrected him. Isabel didn't feel too comfortable with ANYONE knowing much about the granolith... even Kyle and his father, who had mostly proven that they could be trusted. And even so small a detail as how to pronounce its name correctly. Plus, there was something else she was worried about. "How would Rath and Lonnie have known that the granolith was behind the pod chamber."

"Tess said that they tried to get into her brain, in New York, just before Max found her and took her home," Michael remembered out loud.

"It's just supposition that that's what they were after," Kyle pointed out. "But Tess thought it was a very good idea to keep them out of the pod chamber - especially if they might recognize the granolith and/or know anything that they can do with it."

All of a sudden a telephone rang. Kyle's hand went to his jacket pocket... and a look of confusion crossed his face as he realized that there wasn't a cell phone there. Jim turned his head around as the ringing came, and crossed the basement of Ed Harding's house to pick up a dusty looking black receiver up. "Hello?" He smiled over at the others. "It's Maria."

"Are Max and Tess there with her??" Michael asked immediately, getting up... and almost stumbling again, since his legs were not used to working after so many days of captivity.

Jim nodded at him, and as Michael got close Jim told whoever was on the other end that he was putting Michael on, and handed him the telephone. "Hello?" he said into the mouthpiece.

"Hey, Michael??" Max's voice came a little faintly. "I'm here on the line with Maria, and we're out here on the rock with Tess, Liz, and Alex." Michael smiled as he pictured the two of them putting their heads together to use a tiny little cell phone at the same time. "Everything's fine over here, and it's great to hear your voice. How's Isabel??"

"Probably pretty sore and cranky, just like me, but at least she's untied and de-gagged," Michael reported. "But here's the bad news -- Rath and Lonnie were using some kind of drug on us that suppressed our powers, and it hasn't nearly worn off yet."

There was a gasp from Maria and a pause from Max, as presumably he rapidly attempted to integrate this little fact into his seat-of-the-pants strategy. "Okay, well... the important thing for you guys is to stay safe and well out of THEIR way until you're back at full strength. They only just left here a few minutes ago... in MY Jeep... so you should have plenty of time to make good your getaway. Go somewhere that NO-ONE would think of looking for you."

Michael smiled. "I know just the place. What about you guys??"

There was a little discussion off the phone that he couldn't hear. "Until you and Isabel can report that you're back in action, I was thinking that we'd be guarding the gate over here. We can't afford to risk Lonnie and Rath doubling back and getting in - there's no way of telling if their handprints can open the chamber or not."

Michael thought furiously. A thought occurred to him, but he knew that it would take a long time to explain it and they really needed to get on the move. At that point Kyle made the decision easier by walking into view, carrying his cell phone, which presumably he had gone and found while Michael had been on the regular telephone. "I'll call you back, Maxwell. Maria's cell number, right??"

"Yeah, but..."

"One minute." he replaced the receiver and headed over to where Isabel was still sitting, helping her tactfully to her feet. "We're getting out of here. S D's." Iz frowned a moment, then nodded in recognition. Michael held out his hand for Kyle's cell phone, took it when he pushed it slightly in my direction, and dialled while Isabel gestured for Jim to follow us back up out of the basement.

"Okay, Maxwell," he said as soon as the phone picked up. "I have an idea about securing the pod chamber door without tying up valuable conflict-capable personnel waiting up there."

"Uhh... okay, go ahead," Max answered.

"In the front of the pod chamber, inside 'The Box', there should be two of those little pentagon devices. The... whatsitcalled... tritium resonator or whatever."

"Yeah..." Max agreed. "The one we took from Brody's things at the UFO centre and..."

"And the one that was in Congresswoman Whittaker's office after she died," Michael confirmed. "I want you to go in and get them. One of them can be set with the indicator for the jagged lightning bolt icon. That's the proximity charge setting - it'll go off if anyone alien approaches it. Better have a human being set it off with the rest of you at safe distance... and hide it somewhere very close to the chamber door."

"So... that'll take away Lonnie or Rath's powers if they come near it," Max said. By now they were upstairs, and everyone else seemed to be searching the premises quickly for anything that might be useful - such as information on Rath and Lonnie's plans or the supply of power supression drug. Michael just stood there and concentrated on the conversation with Max.

"More than that. It will shut down the chamber door completely for about four and a half hours," Michael told him, remembering the time that Maria and he had been experimenting with those devices and had gotten themselves sealed inside the pod chamber for a long, terrifying evening. "Using the other pentagon, set on the glyph with the two big dots, the short line, and the curved arc, you should be able to detect if the first one at the pod chamber gets set off - as long as you stay within ninety miles of it or so."

"This is good," Max agreed. "Where should we go once all this is set up??"

I considered. "Probably go to your parents' place. I'll be shutting Kyle's cell phone down so that Rath and Lonnie can't try to call us and track the signal through the cell network, but if everything's all right we'll be checking in with you in..." I looked at my watch, It wasn't there of course; Rath had taken it off before he tied me up. There was a clock on the wall though, and I'd check with one of the others after I hung up the phone. "In two hours??"

"Sounds good. See ya man." And Max hung up.

About ten minutes later the four of them were standing in the hallway of a run-down apartment building, waiting for someone behind the door of unit 18 to answer the knock.

"Hello??" He pulled the door open and looked at the four of them without any apparent interest.

"Hey, I know this is a big imposition, but we really need a place to sit tight for a while where no one's likely to look for us," Michael told him.

Shawn DeLuca shrugged, thought a moment, and then stepped aside, letting them into his new apartment. "Come on in."

TO BE CONTINUED...

Author's note again: Okay, just in case it isn't clear, this fic is hopefully going to be covering a lot of different storylines spread over a matter of years... I've gotten slightly bogged down in the Rath/Lonnie thing at the moment, but don't expect to spend too much more time with them.

Title: The Saga of the Pod Squad
Part: 2
Author: Chris Kenworthy
E-mail: kelworth@chriskweb.net
Disclaimer: I have no rights over the characters and situations of Roswell, this is a not-for-profit creative outlet so please don't sue me. :]
Synopsis: A broad-strokes picture of what the gang's future SHOULD have been more like after the junior prom.


Max hurried into his house through the back door, and felt a huge relief to see his mom standing there in the kitchen, chopping up tomatoes. From a large saucepan on the stove he could already smell the aroma of home-made spaghetti sauce... hamburger and more tomato and onion and garlic and oregano and just enough hot peppers to give it the right kick. "Mom!!" he exclaimed in relief, rushing over towards her.

"Uh... yeah honey??" Diane Evans asked with a clear question mark in her voice -- the question probably being what was making him act so strangely.

"Ummm..." Max quickly covered up a little. "Nothing... just that dinner smells delicious. Is Isabel here? Did Michael come by??" Certain that the true answer was no, who Max was really asking after were the sinister dupes, Lonnie and Rath.

"No, haven't seen either of them all day. Do you know if your sister's going to be here for dinner?"

"I doubt it." Okay, that was reassuring on two counts, and Max discretely waved out the window at his compatriots still waiting outside in the driveway, all crammed into the Jetta - well, not too badly crammed now that he was in here. There was no particular reason for them to all wait outside at this point, though for the whole lot of them to come in at once would probably surprise his mom.

Meanwhile, two of his fears had been put to rest, so Max decided to tackle the last one head on. "And Dad??" he asked his mother. "Is he..."

"Got home about ten minutes ago, and he's off playing with those weird moving patterns on his computer," his mother reported. "Maybe you should go in with him, Max... spend a little quality t-- oh, hello there!!" Liz and Tess had just come in. "I didn't realize that you had comp..." A sound distracted all of their attention to the driveway, and Mrs. Evans hurried to the window in time to see the Jetta pulling back out of the driveway. "Ummm... did Maria give you guys a ride? Where's the Jeep, Max?"

"Umm... I lent it to Isabel," he covered, hoping tha that half-truth wouldn't end up causing more problems later. Quickly he pulled Liz aside for a private word. Tess automatically jumped in to divert Max's mother... something about her dad always adding diced pepperoni into spaghetti sauce, which Max found doubtful considering what he knew of Ed Harding, but...

"Maria??" he hissed frantically at Liz.

"She wanted to make sure her Mom was okay," Liz said. "I didn't think it would be a big risk. She'll check in."

Max nodded, and then realized that the phone was ringing. His mother picked it up. "Hello, Evans residence?" A look of surprise crossed her face. "Why yes, she just walked on the door." She held out the phone to Liz. "It's for you."

Liz blinked in utter shock. Who would be calling for her here?? "Who is it??" she managed to mumble out.

"Umm... he didn't give a name... should I..."

Max nodded Liz towards the phone encouragingly. She smiled back slightly and took it, and Max faded back into the rec room and silently picked up another extension. When he got on the line, Liz was asking: "-at is it, Brett??" Brett was a waiter at the crashdown cafe.

"I don't know how to tell you this, but... your parents have been taken prisoner, or something like that."

Liz gasped. "What.... how??"

"It was that kid Michael, and a girl... your exboyfriend's sister, Isamenth. They musta gone off the deep end or something, because they came charging in here with knives. Agnes called the cops."

"She did??" Liz repeated somewhat blankly. Then she pulled herself together noticeably. "Thanks, Brett. By the way -- can you think of anything in particular that Michael and Isabel said while it was happening that seems like it might be relevant?? Anything that was even more out of character than kidnapping my parents with knives?"

"Hmmm..." Pause. "No, can't say that I can think of anything, Leezabella. Wish I could... your old man's been nothing but decent to me, and your mom?? Hh--"

Liz and Max hung up the line simultaneously before Brett could finish his inappropriate outburst.

Liz hurried to join Max in the rec room. "Well, I guess that answers the unpleasant question of what *they* did after finding out that Harding House was empty. Dammit, why'd they have to take it out on MY..." She trailed off in midrant, realizing that she was stepping dangerously close to wishing her misfortune on someone else.

"On your parents?" Max asked softly, taking her hand in his comfortingly. Liz only left it there a moment before taking her own hand back. "I don't know... may have been sheer opportunity, or they may have been trying to make a move that we wouldn't be defending against ahead of time." He sighed, and realized that Tess was standing there. "In any event, I'm pretty sure that your folks are safe, Liz," he told her. "Rath and Lonnie will want to use them as bargaining chips, not to do anything stupid right away."

Right then a cell phone rang, and Max took it out of his pocket - Maria's cell phone, which Max had kept because it was the one that Michael was going to call and check in on. Was it really Michael calling... or one of the dupes, or someone else entirely??

It was Isabel... the real Isabel, Max was quickly able to verify. "Tell me you're starting to get your powers back," he demanded of her.

"No, sorry, not a trace as of yet. Why??"

"We got a report that you and Michael broke into the Crash with knives and kidnapped Liz's parents."

"Oh my god," Isabel breathed. "That's... what do we do now??"

Max sighed. "We wait... as long as we can. I don't want to go up against Rath and Lonnie until we've got more firepower than they do. The gruesome twosome don't seem particularly likely, to me, to try the kidnapping routine more than once, but we'll keep watch on all the usual targets."

************

"Okay," Max said, looking into Isabel's eyes. "Are you sure that you want to do this?"

"Yeah," she nodded.

"Okay." He dropped something on the table between them. "Try to lift this."

Isabel concentrated on the heavy lead weight. After about fifteen seconds, one side of it lifted up... and fell, lifted and fell again. Finally, she managed to get that one side up and keep it up steadily... for about ten seconds, and then it clapped down again. "Whew. That's about all I can do."

"It's still more that most people can lift with their brains alone," Max pointed out. "Okay..." He reached out to take Isabel's hand, but someone knocked on the door before he could.

"It's Lonnie on the line," Michael said, barging in before anyone had answered his knock.

"You handle her, we're busy," Max said. "Ask to talk to Liz's folks; make sure they're being treated right. If Lonnie and Rath hurt them I'll make sure I see them cut apart into tiny little chunks.

Michael considered a moment. "Got it," he said, swinging back out of the room and bringing the phone back up towards his ear again.

Max reached out to touch Isabel's hand and connected with her system. "Try to lift the weight again." Isabel tried, and for a second Max could feel the weight about to take off for the ceilig because of HIS powers, which were available to Isabel because of the connection between them. But that wasn't what Max wanted - he wanted to observe Isabel's system in isolation, so he cut his own power off from her, maintaining the connection only for observation, something that he didn't know he could do before this.

Again only one side of the weight could lift, and only briefly - Isabel had been straining her system before. But Max could see... well no, not see because it wasn't like that. He could FEEL the foreign agents in her bloodstream blocking something in her brain when she tried to use her powers. Inhibiting a neurotransmitter reaction.

"Okay, that's enough." Isabel relazed her effort, and Max tried to get rid of the drug particle, to denature them into something harmless, but there were so many, almost entirely below his threshold of perception, and he wasn't sure how the drug really worked anyway. (He wouldn't want to break it down into something lethal, and he couldn't really control where they DID break... like snapping a small twig in your fingers.) When he had Isabel try her power one more time, there was no noticeable improvement.

Alex showed up next. "I've got something," he told Max. "Might be the edge we need."

************

"Okay, so gos over it for us again," Rath said, grabbing Liz by the shoulder. "How's this gonna works??"

Liz wrenched herself around enough to look back, and make sure that her parents were safe with Tess and Michael now. While she and Kyle on the other hand, were now here with Rath and Lonnie and definitely NOT safe.

"The four of us drive out to the rocks again," Liz told him. "I go up the path to detrigger the trap we set at the entrance to the pod chamber." Lonnie nodded grimly.

"You didn't go back there, did you??" Kyle asked.

"No, but I knew you cornballs woulda done something like that," Lonnie sneered. "Lemme guess - only a nonalien can get close enough to turn it off without it blowing up??" she guessed.

"More or less," Liz said, hoping Kyle would take the hint. If Lonnie and Rath didn't realize the true nature of the Tritium amplifiers, Liz would have a much better chance of carrying out her phase of the (hastily written) plan smoothly. "Once I've defused the bomb, I'll take it back down the path to let you guys know that it's safe to come up." Rath's eyes narrowed suspiciously at that point, but he nodded for her to go on. "We point out the pod squad chamber, you try to use your handprints to open it. If you can't, then we call in Max to do it."

"Not Max," Lonnie countered. "Not with the shield. If we call in someone, we call in Isabel, and she comes in alone. Got it?"

Liz and Kyle exchanged a glance, and nodded. (Hopefully, it wouldn't matter -- Rath and Lonnie shouldn't even really get to that point.) "You go in, take the Granilith and do whatever it is you want to, and you let us go. Agreed??"

Lonnie and Rath exchanged a glance at this point, and both grinned nastily. "Agreed."

Liz had to hide a smile at how badly the dupes were covering the delight in their own planned doublecross.

Liz had to force herself to neither hurry nor dawdle up the path... she didn't want Lonnie or Rath to get impatient, since Kyle would be there for them to take their frustration out on, but neither did she want to be exhausted at the time she'd have to spring their counterattack... and quite possibly fight for her life until help could arrive.

It was simple enough. She found the amplifier where Maria had left it and pressed the tiny, invisible touch-sensitive spot on it that altered the setting to a quiescent one. This, too, would be picked up on the other resonator, and would serve as a cue for their guys to move into position. Then she walked back down the path, and just before reaching Rath, Lonnie, and Kyle... she pressed on a different spot, triggering the Tritium device in an entirely new configuration.

A huge shock wave burst out of the device, passing through Liz's body without any sensation greater than a tingle as it spread out in all directions. But Lonnie and Rath were knocked back and away from Liz as if they had been hit by Mac trucks, while Kyle also seemed to be unaffected. Liz quickly ducked away behind an unlikely boulder, while Kyle scrambled up onto a rock from which he felt he would be able to defend himself.

It's a good thing that they felt confident in their powers and their knives to keep us from causing trouble, Kyle thought to himself as he watched the two clones pick themselves up... murder in their eyes. Might have been a smart idea for them to handcuff me... even just tie my wrists together behind my back. Kyle sighed slightly in relief when Rath pointed a palm up at him and concentrated... to no effect at all. Michael had told them that the setting Liz was to use would hurt the clones and supress their powers temporarily... long enough, hopefully, for the cavalry to come charging in.

Furious with the failure of his purely alien assault, Rath brought his switchblade back out and charged to the base of Kyle's rock. He started to climb up the same way the Kyle had... and then dropped to the ground when he realized how easy it would be for Kyle to stomp down on his head if it got much higher. Kyle chuckled hollowly, but didn't let down his guard... the dumb brute would figure out some other way. He just hoped that Liz would be able to keep herself hidden until Max arrived.

"Find the girl," Lonnie snapped at Rath, thumbing the switch on her own knife so that the blade glinted dangerously in the desert sunlight. "I'll handle this reject."

Oh-kay.

Kyle stood warily, watching the hybrid young woman, wishing he'd had an opportunity to pick up some Shao-lin kung fu or something of the sort. Ah well. The path he was on was his reality, and he'd just have to trust in the cosmos that that would prove enough.

Lonnie climbed up onto another boulder nearby... a nice big one with a wide flat top that seemed to point towards his own perch. Suddenly Kyle realized what she was up to, and tried to evalute his options as Lonnie stood up and took her place for a running jump. Should he dive aside, off the rock?? No, if he ran, she'd just follow him. If he stayed there, he might be able to deflect her leap, knock HER down, and then there wouldn't be much she could do but try again.

As Lonnie sailed through the air between them, Kyle tried to shove her aside and onward, but she slashed viciously at him, and he flinched away slightly by instinct, and then she was there... crouched on the corner of his high ground, but definitely THERE, and obviously not intending to be moved easily.

Kyle tried a punch to the side of her head, and it connected hard, but Lonnie just answered with a swinging leg sweep. As Kyle's feet were seemingly pulled toward and to the side from under him, he had to catch hiself with his hands in an awkward crab position to keep the small of his back from smashing itself into a rocky projection. Lonnie scuttled over his body, looking for an opportunity to drive her blade home. Kyle grabbed her arms and pushed up, flipping both of them over so that he was pinning Lonnie against the boulder, but Lonnie just reacted by using the new leverage to butt her forehead into Kyle's nose. In the crashing pain, he felt his grip loosen, and Lonnie wrench her knife arm away.

"Drop it!!" Both of them looked over to see Kyle's father standing there, pointing an automatic pistol at Lonnie. Tess and Isabel stood beside him.

Outraged, Lonnie waved her knife hand vaguely at Jim... and the cruel grin returned to her face when she realized that the gun had flown violently out of his hands. Snarling, she turned back to Kyle, determined to finish him off the old-fashined way no matter what else happened.

She didn't quite have time. The switchblade drew blood in Kyle's chest but Lonnie's fingers lost their grip and dropped it penetrated anything crucial, he somehow realized. Lonnie was staring down at him... at the knife she had just dropped... and with a final effort brought her hand up to touch the object that had penetrated her skull... a seven-inch long stainless steel nail file. And then she collapsed on top of him, and almost instantly Lonnie's body began to disintegrate into fine white dust. Everyone turned to look at the person responsible for launching that nail file with such deadly velocity... Lonnie's opposite number, Isabel.

"Whh..." Kyle's voice broke from the tension, and he had to clear his throat and start again. "What about Liz??"

************

Max and Michael were facing off a desperate Rath, who was holding his knife to Liz's neck. "Come on, Rath, don't do anything stupid," Max warned. "Let Liz go, and we'll... we'll let you go. Fair trade, the way I look at it."

"Yeah, right," Rath spit. "Da way youz said you wuz gonna give us da Granilith, in exchange for her parents, and den for her and de other human kid. Youz wuz just WAITIN' for a chance to screw us over!! No way I'm gonna give you whutcha want this..."

All of a sudden things started to happen. Rath's knife flex away, propelled by a burst of force from Michael, and Max rushed forward to try to effect Liz's rescue as soon as he realized that he had an opportunity. But Rath was realizing what was happening at the same time, and he clapped his right hand to Liz's neck in a commanding grasp, and waved his left hand out. A small rock near Max, sitting on the desert floor, exploded in a tiny hail of stony shrapnel.

"Nicely done," Rath spat. "Youz woulda had me by now, 'cept that I've got my powers back now from that surge overload." He turned to look at Max warningly. "Now, yous is probably figgering that you's close enough to touch me and connect wit' me... squeeze my heart valves closed, or my brain arteries. But just think about this: I'm right here, and I can connect with your dear darling in as much time as it takes to think about it. If I can't kill her before you get to me, I can do something so bad that yous and she would wish I had. Don't think I can't."

Max waited a moment, staying perfectly still. "Okay. Then what do you want?"

Rath frowned. "Gimme a minute, alls right??"

Suddenly a car door slammed, and Max dived forward, terrified that Rath would panic with this new development. It was only a split instant before he was touching Rath's hand, and connecting. Instinct was in full control.

"FREEZE! *POLICE*!!" Max looked 'into' Rath's brain, stunned at what he managed to do. Something else occured to him -- something that he'd never even thought he was capable of before, but the same instinct was showing him how. (A detatched portion of Max's brain noticed that Liz had run away from her attacked and rescuer already, and was crying in Michael's arms with relief. Max did the second thing and disconnected, shoving Rath away and collapsing himself.

"Well, not to say that I didn't believe Mister Parker, but that's something else," Sheriff Hanson was saying, looking at Michael and the unconscious Rath. "You really do look like Xerox copies. Any notion where your identical twin came from, Mister Guerin??"

"Um... not really, except that he said something about New York," Michael mumbled, his brain racing. Liz's parents had called the sheriff in?? And just what would Rath have to say to the cops? Could Hanson even hold him? Rath had gotten his powers back, and he seemed good at using them to protect his own ass - and without the slightest consideration for human beings.

"Well, that's the tatoo there," Hanson said, looking at the side of Rath's neck under his hair - he must have been too sloppy or too vain to get rid of it. Hanson investigated Rath a little bit further, and turned to Michael. "Under the circumstances, I hope you won't object to helping me verify your identity, Mister Guerin?? You may want a little privacy." He nodded at Liz.

In a few moments, Liz was sitting with Kyle and his father and almost all calmed down, Isabel had made sure that Max was alright, and between two rocky outcroppings Hanson had run through a list of Michael's distinguishing characteristics on record, and was satisfied about his and Rath's identities. "So... can I ask what happens to him now?"

"Well, I'm not sure that the Parkers are wild about testifying, and it turns out that this character has a list of outstanding warrants as long as your arm. But I'm pretty certain that he's going away for a long time."

When they got back, Hanson's deputies had secured custody of Rath, who was awake, and the group of them watched the police car drive away. "Max, what are we going to do??" Michael asked.

"I'm not sure we need to do anything, Michael," Max mumbled. Before Michael could interrupt, Max continued. "I don't think I could do it again, but I've taken his powers away for good and scrambled his memories. Didn't plan it this way, but somehow I think Rath's going to be paying his dues to society... and not causing US any more trouble."

Michael blinked in shock. "You took away his powers for good? How??"

"I'm not really sure," Max admitted. "I just... I connected to Isabel earlier and tried to help her regain her powers, right?? I couldn't really do much with that, but somehow I could do the same things that the drugs did, directly to Rath's brain. And that means it's permanent... it's not a chemical that can fade from his system, and brain tissue never really heals completely." He looked at his hand in shock, realizing the horrible power that had been brought to bear through it.

"Well... I guess that's better than having to kill him," Michael pointed out. "I'm just glad Alex found that antidote to the drug in time."

**********

(March 9th 2002)

Alex Whitman's birthday party was in full swing... a small gathering, mostly of the usual suspects in the club, but highly spirited nonetheless.

Any wishes the birthday boy might have had in mind were blown out of the park when Isabel whispered her birthday surprise for him... later on, when they coulld find somewhere to be alone, she'd enact a reversal of Alex's own performance (or attempted performance) at her surprise party over a year and a half before.

Maria and Michael were slow dancing all by themselves. Tess and Kyle were watching 'Ocean's Eleven' on the super widescreen DVD player that Alex's parents had rented for the party.

Liz came up to Max as he started on his second helping of the birthday cake. "Listen, Max -- there's something that I have to tell you."

Something about the way she put that let Max know he wouldn't like it. "We can do it another time, if you like. I just thought... I mean, we hardly even see each other any more, so... but I didn't mean to ruin the party for you."

"Might as well get into it now," Max said. He wouldn't be able to enjoy the party with the secret hanging over him after all. "What is it?"

"I'm going to Chicago... for university, next year," Liz blurted out awkwardly. "They offered a free ride - I've confirmed."

"That... that's great," Max forced himself to say, wondering why the news was hitting him like a freight train. They hadn't been boyfriend and girlfriend for a long time, true, and they didn't hang out particularly often lately, but Liz had been exaggerating when she implied that they hardly ever saw each other... there wasn't a week that went by that he didn't spend a little time with her in some way or another. And he couldn't grasp the notion of her being thirteen hundred miles away. (Yes, he'd checked in an atlas when she'd first mentioned Northwestern.)

"I hope that you love it there."

"Goddammit Max!!" The expostulation apparently startled Liz as much as Max from the look on her face, but she continued on. "If we have nothing else left, why can't we at least be honest with each other??"

"Do we really want to be, Liz??" Max asked. "I could say that I don't want you to leave, that I don't understand why you don't want to be with me, that I'm still as muc in love with you as I ever was. That's all the truth... does saying it make anything any easier??" He waited a long moment, with everyone staring at them, Liz overwhelmed and clearly fighting back tears. "I didn't think so." He turned around and stormed out.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Title: The Saga of the Pod Squad
Part: 3
Author: Chris Kenworthy
E-mail: kelworth@chriskweb.net
Disclaimer: I have no rights over the characters and situations of Roswell, this is a not-for-profit creative outlet so please don't sue me. :]
Synopsis: A broad-strokes picture of what the gang's future SHOULD have been more like after the junior prom.


"Okay, here's the last of the tops," Maria said, holding out a small overnight bag and tossing it into the back of Liz's father's station wagon, which was already crammed with everything she owned, just about. The worst thing was, all of it didn't really seem to take up very much space.

"You sure the CDs and books are all in here??" Liz asked, a little doubtfully. One of the things that upset her was that if she couldn't find enough stuff to fill up the back seat, her mom might insist on coming along on the road trip to Illinois. It was getting towards the last week of August, and orientation would be starting at Northwestern before too long.

"If they aren't, they're nowhere else," Maria told her. "Plus, if you look hard, you'll see that the boxes of books are forming the bottom layer of the port column and most of the central column of the cargo area, and we have compact discs piled on top here, and off here on the starboard stern, and of course the passenger's side back seat." Liz giggled a bit at Maria using nautical terms to describe parts of the car, though she supposed it made sense -- terms like left and right were relative to which direction you were facing, which was why 'port' and 'starboard' had been invented in the first place, to turn them into absolutes. (As far as the vessel itself was concerned, of course.)

"There has to be something that I'm forgetting," Liz insisted, frowning slightly.

"Maybe to tell Max the truth before you leave town??" Maria suggested probingly. It was hardly the first time she'd made such a suggestion, but Liz suddenly realized that if she didn't respond to it seriously, the trip might get very frustrating for her. Suddenly she made an imperative gesture, waving Maria into the car behind the driver's seat. Once Maria opened the car door, she followed, taking the front passenger position, and made sure that both doors were closed before continuing.

"I know that I haven't really discussed this with you lately... no offense, but best friends forever notwithstanding I wasn't sure if it was any of your..." Liz broke off, realizing that not only did that not sound right, it WASN'T right. "I didn't think you'd understand."

"Well, I don't understand a lot of what you tell me," Maria said in a small voice. "Chemistry and the allure of 'The West Wing', to name two subjects at random. It doesn't mean that I don't want to hear what's on your mind."

Liz smiled, truly grateful for the sentiment. "Well, my feelings about Max have been... changing recently. It wasn't something I wanted -- I just kinda woke up one morning and I *wasn't* a lovesick mess pining away for him any more."

"Well, I'm all for that," Maria confirmed. "Big 'No' on the ining-pay... I was the one who told you that, remember?" She paused for a moment. "But do you still love him, Liz?"

"I -- I'm not sure," Liz had to admit. "He's very dear to me, and always will be... at least I think 'always.'" She sighed. "But it's started to seem to me like it wasn't any one thing that kept Max and I apart... not his future self or Tess or the throne of his planet or even the fact that we're different species... it was the WHOLE situation. We were star crossed lovers, literally, and it was never going to end well." She sighed, noticed Maria about to say something, and blurted out a pre-emptive reply without meaning to. "And I'm not *in* love with him any more, I'm pretty sure of that; I fell out somewhere along the way, though I'm not sure when." She realized that there was a phrase passing through the shadows of her mind, and paused a moment to chase it down. "'Falling out of love and falling back into life...' where do I remember that from??"

"I'm not sure," Maria said softly. "But if that's the way things are, then I guess you're right: better to leave things be with Max. No sense in stirring up the past." She sighed. "And I'm a little disappointed on your behalf." Liz turned and looked at her best friend in surprise. "I just still remember how MUCH you were in love with Max. I always thought that was going to work out in the end."

"Hmmm..." Liz thought. "Yeah, you're right. But that love brought me *so* much pain, that..." She couldn't finish the thought... wasn't even sure if it HAD a finish.

They stayed there, in the car, a long moment without speaking. "C'mon," Maria said finally. "Let's go tell your folks that we're about ready to leave." She spotted a single tear on Liz's face, and reminded herself to tell Liz to use the washroom. In about ten minutes the gang would be dropping by with their goodbye presents for Liz.

**********

"Okay, Tess, was it you who put these bowls in the bathrooms?" Isabel called out. There was no answer. Iz put it down and headed off in search of the other hybrid girl.

She found Tess, along with Maria, trying to heft a large desk up the last few steps to the landing, and helped out. With all three of them working, the piece of furniture was inside the door of their new place in a few minutes.

"Maybe I shouldn't have told the guys they weren't needed to help us move in," Maria admitted, conceding the obvious. "I'm sorry, but Michael was being so damned *smug* about it! 'You pretty little ladies need a few big strong men to do the heavy lifting for you, huh?'" she mimicked in a passable imitation of Michael at his most condescending.

"Heck, girl, you were right," Isabel agreed. "Who needs guys?" With a small nod to Tess, Isabel concentrated, and the desk lifter into mid air and cruised down the hall, floating into a room and gently settling against the far wall.

Maria looked as if she didn't know whether to rub her eyes or scream. "And the reason you girls couldn't do that to lift it up the stairs was..."

"What else?" Tess replied with a small sigh. "Too much chance that someone walked around a corner and spotted it. We probably shouldn't even be doing it here in the apartment, but I'm too tired to care right now."

The three of them had all enrolled at Eastern New Mexico U, the only college within the near vicinity of Roswell, and Maria and Isabel realized that working together might be the best way to find an off-campus apartment and move out of their parents' houses. Tess had been looking for somewhere new to stay in Roswell after Jim Valenti left for a new job in Albuquerque. (An established private investigation firm had made him a very generous employment offer,)

Isabel repeated her question about who had put the bowls in the bathroom. "Oh, those are mine," Maria replied. "Solosys crystals... to purify the spirit and give you energy. I've found that they seem to work best right after I've finished showering."

"They stink," Isabel opined concisely.

Tess just looked back and forth from one to the other, and somehow the message was clear. The three of them had to find some precedent for sorting out little clashes like this, or they'd drive each other crazy before christmas exams. "Try them in one bathroom for a week??" Maria suggested, and Isabel nodded.

**********

"Yeah, Max just got back from Los Angeles yesterday," Isabel said to Alex. They were up in Frazier woods, sitting and watching the stars from the very same rock that they had used on the father's camping weekend, nearly three years before. It was their special spot now. "Not that much too it, the way he tells it."

"I don't really see why he felt he had to take off and drive to California as soon as he heard about this Langley guy," Alex commented.

"Think it's because he's so worried about Ava. She was supposed to check in months ago... it's like she disappeared off the face of the planet." After the nearly disastrous incident with Lonnie and Rath, Liz, Max, and Isabel had worked together to track down Ava, the last surviving clone, and make sure that she was okay. She'd been calling Max regularly every few weeks, up until early October, and now it was nearly New Year's. "But Kal said that he didn't know anything about her... considering that he was originally their guardian, he didn't even seem to care. Max said that he seemed more curious about us."

"And... what was this stuff about not being able to hurt Max? Biologically able??"

"It... Max said that it was encoded into his genes somehow, though I don't really get how," Isabel repeated. "Not only couldn't he hurt Max, he had to obey a direct order, though he hated it. I have to say, I'm not sure I blame him... I'd resent something like that if it were done to me."

"Sounds like Max was probably wise to head home when he did," Alex agreed. "Even if the tiger's in a cage, there's no good point in making him mad."

"Well, I think that's enough about Max," Isabel said, and proceeded to demonstrate the point very thoroughly. "Oh Alex, I missed you so much," she whispered huskily when they came back up for air.

"Maybe I should transfer back to Roswell," Alex suggested.

"No, no," Isabel insisted stoically. "NMU is such a great school, and you're loving it in Albuquerque, don't deny that you are. And we're only four hours drive away... it's not like that's so far, really." She kissed him again. "We're just going to have to make more of an effort to visit each other regularly."

"I guess I can't argue with that," Alex said with a grin.

"Oh, speaking of transfers, Max might be leaving," Isabel said. "Mom and dad have noticed how depressed he's been lately, and Dad wants to send him to this fancy private university up in Santa Fe. Saint Johns. He's thinking about it... they might be right that a change of scenery will do him good."

"Hmmm," Alex thought. That would leave, of the original gang, only the three sisters of Upsilon Phi Omega in Roswell... (that was an in-joke about the loft apartment that Isabel and the others were sharing... you had to know that Phi was the closest greek equivalent to a letter F to see the hidden meaning of the name of their pretend sorority...) And of course... "How's Michael doing?"

"Struggling a little, but I think he really loves being the working guy." Michael also had gotten a job offer, security shift manager at the electronics plant not far outside town, and it had been an easy decision for him to take... especially since his high school grades weren't exactly the ones that even mediocre colleges liked. "And Maria is shocked that he's actually started paying for things." Alex laughed.

"And then there's Tess," Isabel continued. "She goes to her classes and hangs around the apartment with us, and she seems fine. Excited, happy. And then, like the flick of a switch..."

"Not so much??"

"Yeah. She..." Isabel struggled for words to describe. "I think she's lonely in a way that being with us can't do anything about. Tess loved Kyle like a brother -- and now he's gone. He hasn't been back to Roswell all term. And Max... I don't think he's looked in her direction since Liz told him she was going to Chicago." Isabel sighed. "He blames Tess for the fact that Liz moved on, and that's killing her."

Alex sighed... he certainly didn't have any answer to that problem. Unless... "I realize this may sound stupid, but... well, maybe it would help her to make a new connection. With... well, y'know--"

"With a guy?" Isabel finished. "Believe me, we've been trying to set her up! Maria and I, that is. Considering that she always seems to get worse when it hits her that both of us have boyfriends... but she never really lets anyone in. I don't know if it's because they're human, but we don't really have any other alternatives available, you know what I mean??"

Alex laughed softly. "Yeah, I think I do. Well, when Tess is ready, she'll find someone... I'd hope." He brushed a lock of hair away and kissed Isabel's air, and then something caught his attention. "Hey, is that the Trifid Nebulae??"

Isabel looked. as Alex scrabbled for a skywatching guidebook, and she quietly made the print fluoresce so that he could read it without turning on a light that would block out the stars and force their eyes to readjust. "Is Trifid in saggitarius?"

"Yeah, I think so," Alex agreed. "Yep, here it is. Messier number twenty, emission/reflection nebula."

"It's beautiful," Isabel breathed, staring out at the soft red patch in the sky.

"So far away," Alex whispered.

A thought struck Isabel, and she leaned over to check her facts in Alex's book. "Less than six light years. As interstellar distances go, that's practically 'right down the street.'"

**********

"Hey, Parker!" Liz looked up from her burger, (among other things,) to see Casey Richards sitting down at the table next to hers in the small campus coffeeshop.

"Hi there." She gave him a small wave, just to be polite. Casey was in two of her biology classes this term, (first semester of sophomore year,) as well as the course she had taken for her physics requirement. He was fairly tall, stylish, witty and outspoken during discussion sessions, with wavy blonde hair. For a few weeks now, Liz had felt something about him rub her the wrong way, though she hadn't been sure exactly what. She didn't seem to feel it now -- but after a few moments she went back to her book and brought a forkful of rice up to her mouth.

"The Predation questions??" Casey's voice probed at her. Liz looked up and had to force herself to restrain a scathing reply... since her mouth was full of food that she didn't really want to spray all over the place. Casey might have mistaken her annoyed expression for shock, because he continued. "Saw you had your nose in the ecology reader, and I guess I figured you were already doing reading for the discussion questions about predators, prey, and predation." He sighed slightly. "You don't have to keep hitting the books quite SO hard just to make sure you stay at the top of the class, Parker."

By this time, Liz had swallowed, and took the brief opportunity to get a word in edgewise. "If you *must* know, I was taking a look at the feature study on community competition." She allowed her eyes to take on something of an angry glare... at least, she hoped that was what they were doing. "I'm not some grade-grubbing brown-noser. I just happen to really like this stuff."

"You're a little bit of a grade grubber," Casey corrected her. Before Liz could vehemently object, he continued. "You're a scholarship student from way out of state, so you kinduv *have* to be something of a grade grubber."

He had a point there... slightly. "I try not to let myself think about it."

He nodded, and changed the subject without a second's pause. "Have you been keeping up with Doctor Ebelin's work with the burrow cats?? In Argentina?"

Liz shook her head, mystified. "Never even heard of them."

"Oh, it's amazing stuff!" Suddenly animated, Casey swung his chair around so that it was halfway to her table. "She discovered this entire new species of felines... digging and tunnelling wild felines, not much bigger than house cats, living in the Andes foothills. I've seen the pictures -- cute little guys when they're sitting around posing for the camera... pretty vicious when they've spotted anything big enough to eat and small enough to catch." He sighed. "There aren't many of them, of course, and despite everything the professor is doing to raise awareness they seem to be more in danger of extinction with every passing month." Just why is he here, sitting at the tables without any food or drink, Liz couldn't help but ask herself.

As Liz finished her lunch, she continued to talk with the keen young man -- their mutual interest in the sciences provided several topics of conversation right off the cuff. And as they chatted, Liz suddenly got a realization of what it was that had startled her about Casey Richards when she had first met him... something that was completely different from what she had expected.

Suddenly a beeping rang out. Casey checked his pocket watch, but it was actually Liz's trusty palmpilot that was sounding the alarm. "Sorry... I've got an hour booked in the lab with one of the genetic simulator computers, and I don't want to waste it," she said, hurriedly packing up her belongings and throwing out the small portion of lunch she hadn't gotten to yet.

"Oh, no, I totally understand," Casey allowed. "I've got my booking for... is it next week or the week after that?? Maybe the weekend in between." He shrugged the question off. "Make the most of your time."

"Okay," Liz said, and checked her watch. Even allowing for a possible delay on the way to the biosciences building, she had thirty seconds to spare. "Case... do you want to grab dinner some time??"

Casey blinked in surprise... and then smiled, a trifle shyly. "Yeah, that'd be all right," he mumbled with an understating nod.

"Okay... you know my ee-maiil," she called out as she rushed away.

**********

As thunder rumbled faraway and the rain poured down on Roswell New Mexico, a dark green sedan pulled up outside the south doors of ENMU's fine arts building. After peering out at the raincoat-clad figure still waiting under the shelter of the small sunroof that extended out just above the doors, the driver groaned and leaned way over to open up the passenger door a few inches. The figure, hard to make out in the dim light and through the rain, lifted up one hand palm out in a 'wait a moment' gesture. Michael closed the door again and arranged himself once more behind the steering wheel.

About a minute and a half later, the drumming of the rain on the windshield seemed to slacken slightly, and when he turned to look that someone was rushing towards the car and letting herself in on the passenger's side. "Sorry about that," Maria DeLuca muttered, sweeping the hood of the coat back from hanging over her face once she was safely inside the car.

"Me too," Michael said quickly. "I'm really, really sorry that..."

"It's okay," Maria insisted, buckling herself up, and Michael put the car back into gear and drove off. "You were only... what, fifteen minutes late coming to pick me up? And the weather isn't exactly great for driving," she allowed tolerantly.

"Yeah, but that wasn't what slowed me down, really," Michael admitted. "I just couldn't find... well, find my fancy pants." Maria snickered goodnaturedly.

"Looks like you found them eventually," she said, reaching out a hand, (carefully dried from the rain,) to brush softly against his right leg, as if to reassure her that the fabric was indeed the fine italisn wool that she had helped pick out... and unable to not be aware of the smoothly muscled flesh of his leg underneath.

"Yeah," Michael agreed, breathing a small sigh of bittersweet relief and renewed attention to driviness when Maria took her hand back. "You look pretty smashing yourself... did anyone comment on the fact that you were all gussied up for the tutorial session??"

"A few people commented," she allowed, "and I used the excuse to brag to everyone within earshot how my boyfriend, the bigshot working man, was taking me to a fancy dress party for his company's twelfth anniversary."

"Yeah, like it's really going to be that cool," Michael sighed. "Man, I wish that we could both just blow this thing off." He looked sidelong in Maria's direction under the pretext of glancing at a road sign. "We could go back to my place... pop some corn, put some good music on the stereo." His voice was softly persuasive. "I bet you're feeling a little stressed - I could give you a foot massage... and then help you take that tight little dress off." He shot a flirtatious glance over towards her openly now.

"Michael!!" she screeched in delighted indignation. "No, come on... we HAVE to go. We've been over this, it's a good opportunity for you to network, make some contacts, impress the big boys. Right??"

Michael sighed. "You impress them for me," he said, only half joking. "You're better at it than I am."

"Hmmm... well, just maybe." She winked over at him. "But then you'd owe me, and I'd have to take it out in trade, wouldn't I??"

**********

"Morning, darling." The words woke Liz Parker up gently, and she froze in shock for an instant, as she had many times over the past few weeks, unable to quite believe that she hadn't been sleeping alone.

Not that she felt she was doing anything WRONG, of course. Although it had only been a little over a year now that she'd been dating Casey... (a year and twenty-seven days now, not too hard to keep track under the circumstances,) Liz had realized after only three weeks that she was very deeply in love with him. She hadn't believed, up until that very moment of epiphany, that she could ever fall like that again.

For anyone other than Max Evans, that was...

Casey seemed to feel the same way, and the two of them had quickly become inseparable. She had drawn the line fairly conservatively on physical intimacy, and even that hadn't fazed him, though he did see fit to tease her about the subject good-naturedly. But when Casey had asked her to marry him on their one-year anniversary, she hadn't been able to restrain herself, or him, any longer, and...

"Are you getting up??" Case asked. He had already stood out of bed and was slipping on a T-shirt. "Got lots to do this morning."

"Yeah," Liz agreed, taking just a moment to admire the sleek lines of his physique before struggling out of bed. The cordless handset, sitting on her dresser, was blinking with a red light on a one second interval. "There's a message... did you hear the phone ring??"

Casey looked across the bed at her, and when he didn't answer the question Liz realized with a pleased sensation that he was admiring the view as much as she had - she was wearing a bra and tap pants, her habit for sleeping in. "Umm... yeah, actually I did. Didn't feel like getting up for it though." He looked at the clock. "Might have been someone from out west, come to think of it - we both slept pretty late."

Liz nodded and tapped in the voicemail codes. "Hey Liz, it's me Maria..." the familiar voice sang out over the handset. "What's up... I'd have thought you'd be up already, what's going on??"

"Who is it??" Casey asked softly at her.

"Why do you think??" she whispered back. Casey smiled and nodded.

"...can't wait to see my best girlfriend, so you'd better not miss that plane. Oh, and I am NOT going to let you weasel out of telling Max Evans about your new status as an engaged woman while you're here for Christmas break. He knows that you've been dating someone all year, but the poor boy is still so crazy about you that he keeps saying it's not serious," Maria rambled.

Liz blinked in surprise. This was the first time she'd heard *that*!

"I almost blurted out the news to him last night... but you CANNOT duck the issue and drop it in my lap, because it's not my place to tell him the bad news. Okay, let's see, what else is new? Oh, you will NEVER believe this!" Liz sighed... why Maria insisted on telling gossip to her voice mail, over LONG long distance, when they'd be seeing each other in person in about fourteen hours, Liz never knew.

"Guess who's dropping out of university as soon as his winter finals are done, which should be any hour now? Alex Charles Whitman, that's who!! Yep, he got a job offer from this fancy software company, and Iz has been talking about wanting to transfer to UNM so they could be together and she could go on to get her doctorate, and they included a big honkin' signing bonus. Guess what he's gonna be doing with it? One guess, rhymes with swing. And it's to be given to Isabel. Yep... you aren't going to be the only one who gets asked the big question!!"

"As far as Michael and me... well, no notion that he's going to be saving up for a 'swing' for me anytime soon, but we're doing plenty all right... nothing seems to ever change in his job, and as for me... I got an A minus on my business management paper!! Yeah I know, business and music make an odd combination, but you gotta try to pay the bills somehow, am I right?"

"Okay, we'll pick you up at the airport at eleven thirty PM, Roswell time. See you both then!!"

Liz sighed, deleted the message, logged out of voice mail, and hit the END button. Casey was looking at her, standing on the bedroom side of the door to her en suite bathroom, (quite a rare perk for Columbia's residences, but Liz was a star scholarship student and a residence advisor besides,) looking freshly scrubbed. "What did Maria want??"

"What else, to yatter at me for five minutes, share all the latest New Mexico gossip, and right there at the end confirm our airport pickup." Liz grinned. "Okay, what's on the to do list for today??"

"Well, I'm heading up to Northfield to buy those little figurines as a gift for your mother," Casey rhymed off, as Liz slipped into the bathroom herself, took a small box out of a nondescript bag, opened it up, and closed the door almost all the way while she attended to business. "You wanted to drop by Professor Warner's office to pick up your midterm, so that you can pore over it on the plane and study how you can do better than ninety-six percent next time. And to drop by that acquaintance of yours... what's-his-nick, who offered to burn that disc that you think your friend Alex would be interested in."

"Right," Liz agreed, stepping back out of the bathroom after a minute and stealing a kiss. "Have I thanked you for all the trouble you're going to with this trip to see my parents??"

"Hey, that's indicated for purely selfish reasons," he said, brushing a lock of hair back and tickling her ear affectionately. "Your parents are going to be my in-laws... and I want to make a good impression on the occasion of them realizing that little fact." Liz laughed at him.

"Okay, so... we want to be arriving at O'Hare around quarter after two, which means leaving here around twenty to one... how long do you figure for getting the car packed?"

"We're not taking that much luggage," Casey reminded her. "Ten minutes at most."

"Okay, sounds good," Liz replied, with a nod and a smile. The agenda nailed down, she could start to concentrate on what to wear for the day, and began searching through the clothes that hadn't already been packed.

"Oh, I was talking with my parents," Casey mentioned as she started to dress. "They want to throw us an official engagement party sometime, maybe in February, and they were hoping that your parents and some of your friends from down in Roswell would be able to make it."

"Hmmm..." Liz thought about it. "Yeah, I think that could be managed. My parents will probably worry about exactly who's minding the cafe, but Dad was telling me that they've got a new manager who's really working out well."

"Cool. Oh, and... well, I want to disclaim that we weren't making plans without you, just discussing the timing, and they thought that maybe we could schedule the wedding for May or June a year and a half from now, once we're both graduated, and..."

Liz poked her head into the bathroom... and the color drained from her face in an instant. "Might... we might want to consider setting a date a little sooner than that."

"Err... what??" Casey looked up, his running shoes tied, and saw Liz standing there in the basement doorway. He went up behind her, and after a moment cleared his throat. Liz got back out of the way, gesturing inside with one hand.

Sitting on the edge of the sink was the unmistakeable shape of a home pregnancy test. Casey had no idea what the system of interpreting results on the test itself was, but it didn't take a genius to understand what Liz's own reaction meant. "We're... you're going to have a baby??"

"Looks kinda that way," she said in a soft tone. "I... I didn't really believe it, just thought it was probably good to check rather than let myself get worked up over a tiny possibility. But... there it is."

"I..." A thousand thoughts were running through his head. "I thought we were being careful."

"Not careful enough," she reminded him. "Oh, my god, what happens now??"

"What do you think?" Casey replied in a mildly incredulous voice. He took Liz by both shoulders and looked at her, waiting a moment for her to make eye contact before continuing. "We're going to get married. Probably in just a few months. We're going to have a baby and I promise you, Elizabeth Sara Parker, that I am going to do WHATEVER I need to do to take care of you, and our child."

Liz beamed, tears starting to brim in her eyes. "Oh, god, Casey... I love you. And thank you." She reached up to brush at Casey's cheek, where a small manly tear was also dripping slowly down.

"All part of the service," he quipped, and then considered a moment. "Are we going to tell your parents when we get to Roswell? Are we going to tell my parents??"

Liz only had to think about that for a second. "No... the mother and father aren't supposed to tell anyone else this early. It's bad luck."

"Really? I never heard that."

Liz nodded in affirmation. "This early on... well, there are a lot of things that could go wrong. I think I heard that the custom of not telling originally started so as a way of sparing loved ones the pain and grief... but it's become a point of superstition and I think we can use all the good luck we can get."


"Yeah. Say, should you really be, you know, flying?? In your condition?"

Liz shook her head at him. "I'm four weeks. There isn't going to be any danger to me or the baby from travelling until a lot further on... that is, in anything short of a rocket ship."

"Sorry!" he chirped. "Just... don't know these things."

"It's alright," she promised. "Now come on, you'd better get going." He kissed her one more time and hurried out of the door.

Liz watched him go, made the bed and tidied up just a little, and then stepped out herself. Someone was waiting right there in the residence corridor, just outside her room. A little twelve-year-old boy with a demented smile.

Nicholas Crawford. But how...

She backtracked instinctively, trying to close the door for what little good it would do her. But he reached out and touched the palm of her hand -- there was a wrenching sensation in Liz's head, and she couldn't get her body to do what she wanted it to... but apparently, Nicholas could. As smoothly and gracefully as if it were her own will behind the motions, she flipped off the light, closed the door, locked it, and walked off very calmly with the pint-sized alien.

Neither of them noticed Casey, who had turned around, realizing that he'd forgotten his keys in the room. Something struck him as odd about the scene playing out between Liz and the little kid, and he followed them at as great a distance as he could manage.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Title: The Saga of the Pod Squad
Part: 4
Author: Chris Kenworthy
E-mail: kelworth@chriskweb.net
Disclaimer: I have no rights over the characters and situations of Roswell, this is a not-for-profit creative outlet so please don't sue me. :]
Synopsis: A broad-strokes AU picture of what the gang's future, starting from the junior prom.


Liz raged helplessly, trapped inside herself, as Nicholas Crawford led her subtly around the campus. To anyone watching them, he might have been her impressionable younger brother, and there was nothing that she could do to signal that the situation was anything but familial.

Nicholas had surprised her outside her dorm room, and with a single touch, he had... had twisted her brain far enough to make resistance impossible. At least overt resistance or diversion... if he could control her motion and speech centers so perfectly, could Nicholas rewrite other parts of her brain? Her memories, her logical reasoning center, even her emotional attachments and value judgements??

But there was no way to answer such questions but the hard way, and Liz had no ability to force the question even if she wanted to. It felt like she had no ability to do anything.

Once they had descended into the empty basement passageways under Culbert Hall, Nicholas grinned mockingly at Liz, and all of a sudden she could speak again. "What the hell are you doing?" The question that she had been asking herself silently burst from her lips before she could stop it.

His grin turned down on one side as soon as she had spoken, and something in that expression struck her, vaguely, as incongruously aged on that perpetually pre-adolescent face. How old must he be, Liz wondered. If he had been a contemporary of the original Zan and Vilandra and etcetera... well, there was no way to tell that much.

They thought that Nicholas would be long dead. He alone of the Copper Summits skins, presumably, had escaped Tess' punishing firestorm, but the replacement skin that would have allowed him to survive longer on earth had been destroyed at the Harvest. Had he had another replacement growing in a safe location, an emergency backup in case the worst happened at Copper Summit? Or had he just managed to find some way of getting a few more years' worth out of the one he had?

"I'm settling old debts," he told her after a long pause, in a voice that would never be mistaken for a twelve-year-olds. It was raspy and far too worn out. "The meta-ronic treatments will not long sustain this..." he reached out a hand and looked at it contemptuously - it was starting to wrinkle around the edges -- "this forsaken husk, this spent shell for more than a few days. I have little to lose, now, and my good name to regain if I should succeed. I mean to take my revenge on Zan Evans, the half-breed prince, and you, my dear, are going to be my secret weapon."

"Whh-- what??" Liz stuttered. "Why me?? What do you think..."

"I think that he's still in love with you," Nicholas spat, and then froze her voice still with a gesture as a racking cough consumed his lungs and spasms spread through his body. For a long moment Liz was terrified that he might pass out, die, and still leave her like this, helpless even to yell for help, in a chamber where no-one would likely find her. But Nicholas recovered his composure, or as much of it as he had had when he showed up at her door at least.

"Love is the weakness of all men, perhaps, and I plan to capitalize on Zan-- excuse me, on *Max's*." He pronounced the human name with the greatest sneer factor that Liz could imagine. "Once he finds out that you're right here with me, well, I don't think it'll take so much to get the best of him then."

He sighed and started to prowl the large chamber restlessly... without having given Liz so much as the ability to move or speak back. After about a minute or so, he turned and looked back at her. There was no way to tell what he saw in her frozen gaze, but he shifted restlessly under it. "Just laying low here for a little while, until it's time to make my move... well, our move, I suppose." He laughed hollowly at that.

He didn't wave or even blink at her this time, but Liz suddenly realized that she could talk and even shift the parts of her body a little bit, though her arms and legs didn't have full mobility - so she couldn't try to hurt him or run away, she supposed. "You're wrong about Max," she told him fiercely. "He's over me. Trying to threaten me might make him mad, but it won't make him lose his head. You're gonna lose *SO* bad."

"Ehhh." Nich shrugged off that prediction and sat down on some old crate or something. Liz sighed and shuffled herself back a little to lean against the wall... the most dignified rest she could think of with the pint-sized privateer's restrictions on her muscle control. She turned towards the tiny windows up at the very top of the wall, wishing that she was out there with the student body where she was supposed to be, instead of stuck in here with the littlest extraterrestrial.

She didn't see when it started. Footsteps at the door... "Liz... Liz??" She tried to turn around, a little too quickly, and knocked herself over quite ungracefully. "What's wrong... what the hell is going on??"

It was Casey's voice. "Go," she told him as loudly as she could. "Get away... you shouldn't be here!! It's too dangerous."

"No the hell way am I just going to go and leave you here without some explanation..." He was helping her up, sitting her down on the floor, and checking for any kind of injury. From where Liz was, she could see Nicholas standing and looking at both of them, cold cruelty on his face. She tried to shout out another warning, but the words stuck in her throat... was that Nicholas' brain control or just plain ordinary terror??

"I don't need you," he announced, "and you'd just get in the way." Casey turned around, worry just starting to show in his face, and Nicholas pointed at him. A burst of black power erupted and streamed with stunning speed into Casey's chest, and he was knocked against the wall. Liz scrambled over, her limbs seeming more surely hers in this moment of crisis, and examined her fiancee.

The entry wound in his chest looked almost exactly like she'd expect a gunshot effect to appear... had that been intentional on Nicholas' part?? There was a glazed look in his eyes, and he wasn't moving. She put a hand gently to his throat, but couldn't find a pulse. It looked like half of his heart would have been torn to shreds, and one of his lungs.

Liz could notice all of these little details, but her brain balked at adding them up into the obvious conclusion. It had been too sudden... one instant to change anything. Two of them, maybe. One split second for her to recognize Nicholas at the door, not quite in time, and get trapped. One split second for him to point at Casey, and...

It couldn't be!! He was the father of her child, the guy she loved. The one who had shown her that she could love again. They were going to get married in a few months and start a life together. It wasn't conceivable that this was really him, lying there and...

"Dammit," Nicholas groaned, "why did your new boy toy have to show up right now?? We'd better get moving... or he could attract attention to us that I'm just not in a mood to have to deal with."

Liz just stood there, staring at Casey. At Casey's body... "Fuck, Parker, I said COMEON!!" Nicholas swore. In the end he had to grab her arm and lead her physically away from the room.

**********

Liz sat heavily on the bench, all the bustle and hurry of a frenetic international airport swirling around her. And then, almost unnoticeably, she sat up a bit straighter and shook her head, trying to concentrate.

What had happened to Case had sunk in... on an intellectual level, at least. It could take weeks or months for her to really understand that he was gone -- to begin to grieve. But for now, that was alright. As much as the man she had loved was worth her tears, right now they were a luxury she could not afford.

'I don't need you,' Nicholas had said before blasting Casey down... she wondered if he realized the sentiment he had betrayed. Maybe he didn't care if he did. But if Nicholas sucessfully finished whatever plans he had in mind with Max, he then would not need Liz herself... and she now had a good idea what to expect then.

As many good things as she currently thought of Max, she was in no mood to just sit tight and hope that he defeated Nicholas and rescued her. So... she would have to find some way to push the odds in her favor; either escape, or warn some of the 'pod squad' before Nich was ready to have them know, or both...

Escape seemed unlikely, at the moment. Her leg muscles seemed completely dead... that was presumably Nicholas' emotional control. She could try to fight her way past it, but the chances of getting sufficient mobility to outrun him in such a busy and crowded place seemed slim. On an impulse, she thought about pushing things the OTHER way... of making her muscles even more unresponsive and clumsy, like when they had to get on board the plane. If Nicholas thought that his controls were having aftereffects severe enough to inconvenience him, he might go easier on them... and that could be important later.

But it didn't matter now. Nich was standing about twenty feet away, at a public internet kiosk. She wasn't sure what he was doing, but since he'd just put a lot more money in, it seemed a safe bet that he wouldn't be coming back to check on her for several minutes. Anything that she could do, sitting here, without attracting his attention at a distant and uninterested glance... now was the time to do it.

It would have to be her cell phone. The phone was right there, in the small purse that she always carried with her. Nicholas hadn't seemed to pay much attention to that... She forced herself to think of how best to play it. She couldn't afford to bring it up to her head, or even to look at it too obviously. Otherwise, she should be alright, especially if she could shield the handset itself from Nicholas' view with her body.

Her fingers seemed terribly clumsy and she couldn't even be quite sure of what speed dial number she had punched, but she made a connection. When a voice began to speak after two rings, she couldn't make out whose it was or what it was saying, but the meter was definitely that of a recorded answering machine blurb. Sounded like a girls' voice... Isabel? Maria, or even Tess?? It would be someone in the 'club,' the we-know-aliens club, she was almost entirely sure of that. She held the phone down at her side, hidden behind her leg, and after hearing a faint beep spoke as loudly as she could without attracting barrels of attention. No-one was paying her much mind, and if they noticed that she was saying things that seemed a little odd... well, for all they knew she was an actress rehearsing her lines or something like that.

"I don't know if you'll be able to hear all of this, but it's very important. It's Liz calling -- Nicholas surprised me, using his powers, in my dorm room. He... he killed a friend of mine, and he said that he was going to use me to get the best of Max in the end. I don't think he has long to live, but he might... he might do something to me, if he realizes that he doesn't have much time left." She took a long breath and forced herself to continue.

"We're at Chicago O'hare airport... I think he's going to use our tickets at least through Albuquerque... that'll take us..." She tried to think. "Where was the first layover? Houston I think. Anyway, I'll see what happens when we get to Albuquerque. May try to get away from him, if I get the chance." She took a deep breath. "If not... I hope you can find us. Whoever you are."

She pushed the 'end' button on the phone by reflex, moved to put in into her purse, and fumbled it in a spectacularly awful fashion, bouncing the handset against the inside of her calf and managing to knock it under the bench. DAMN!! There was no way she'd be able to get it back without Nicholas noticing... in fact, it looked like he was almost done at the kiosk. Well, leave it, then. It would have been nice to have, maybe make another call for help a little later on, but there was no help for it now.

"They're gonna call our flight soon," Nicholas said as he came up and sat beside her. "Sis." He smiled ironically with that last little word... he probably knew that Liz hated the fact that they'd be presumed to be a little brother and big sister by everyone they met.

**********

"Okay, this is our stop." Nicholas waved a hand in the vicinity of the deadbolt keyhole and doorknob of the abandoned factory, then kicked the door open and propelled Liz through it ahead of him, never letting up his grip on her forearm, bent behind her back. No matter how young and unthreatening he looked, the Skin captain was *strong*!

The two of them had flown the friendly skies as far as Albuquerque without incident, and, as Liz had somehow guessed, Nicholas had turned away from the little commuter plane that would have taken them to Roswell's small feeder airport. They had taken a dull gray taxi to what looked like a very run-down part of town, in Liz's opinion anyway. Nicholas probably felt right at home in places like this, she thought with mean satisfaction.

The nervous energy that had built up inside Nicholas' tiny body during the two plane trips was not nearly used up already. He led her through the dark building for maybe two minutes, (or three?) ending at some kind of forsaken storage area outside an office that still had a light on. "You sit here," he ordered, indicating a crate almost opposite the open doorway that blue-white flourescent light filtered vaguely through.

Liz got down onto the crate and tried to find a comfortable position as best she could, guessing what would happen next. Sure enough, Nicholas pulled out what looked like a few lengths of bicycle-lock chain, looped some of it around her arms, and then used his powers to bind the chain TO ITSELF, not using the mechanical locks, but merging one loop of reinforced steel into another, or itself, and then resolidifying the overlap. He did the same thing to tie her legs together at the ankles, looping some of the bicycle chain around a solid iron ring that had been embedded into the floor for some reason Liz couldn't immediately tell.

Liz submitted to all of this mistreatment with fairly good grace, trying not to attract Nicholas' attention either by being too difficult or suspiciously compliant.

She wasn't sure if Nicholas had the ability to read her thoughts, but she intended to give him no reason to probe into her self, mostly for the pragmatic reason that she thought she might finally be holding a few good cards up her sleeve.

One, a well-placed queen, was the warning call she had managed to make, that she still didn't think Nicholas knew about. Over the time it took to fly from Illinois to New Mexico, (with a flight delay in Texas,) her friends could have made a lot of preparations. As long as they thought of some way to find her...

The next card, a good solid ace, was the fact that Liz judged her mobility to be considerably better than Nicholas expected. She'd made a big show of tripping, stumbling, and bumping things in all three airports and on both trains, delighting secretly in Nicholas' frustration every time someone else's attention was drawn to them in public. He'd been using his powers less and less to affect her muscle control since then, which explained why he had tied her up here. He had to believe that she was still experiencing strong after-effects though.

The third wild card, definitely a trump, was a vague sense of untapped abilities that had slowly been coming awake in Liz over the course of the last flight and ever since they landed in Albuquerque. Ava had told Liz that she'd been changed when Max healed her at the point of her death; after some ambivalent months of expectations, Liz had concluded that this 'change' would never manifest as anything so splashy as the powers that her hybrid friends enjoyed. Right now, though... her life was in danger, and the future of her unborn baby... and Liz was sure that the benefits of that change would be available to her. If she only knew how to draw on them...

Nicholas checked on her arm restraints one more time, and then stalked off into the office, deliberately sitting where he could keep an eye on her. (Liz didn't actually think all of those things about the cards up her sleeve all at once, in detail while Nicholas was watching her up close, of course - that would have been tempting fate. It was a brief impression of things that she had thought, bit by bit, over a number of hours... and when the little Skin wasn't paying attention, as much as possible.) He picked up an old rotary phone, wiped the dust off it as best he could, and began to dial.

Liz, left without anything obvious to do, started focusing on what would happen next when she got out of this nightmare mess... both because it was reassuring, and because it was probably precisely the sort of thing that Nicholas would expect her to be thinking of -- just in case he happened to 'check' somehow. Getting back to Roswell... seeing Maria and Alex again, and spending christmas with her parents. It would be nice to see Michael and Isabel again, too.

The few times she thought about Max, Liz shied away... not wanting to somehow trigger a taunt from Nicholas about how neither she nor anyone else would see Max again after this episode was done. And somehow, Casey, and the fact that she was pregnant, never even intruded on her flights of fantasy. They were both far too heavy notions to weigh her down at the moment.

Suddenly Liz was startled out of her reveries by a string of expostulations in some alien language from the direction of the office -- indecipherable, but quite vulgar sounding somehow. Once Nicholas had calmed down enough to go back into english, she could tell that he had had much more trouble actually getting in contact with Max than he'd ever expected.

"His roommates say he left and took the car, his cell phone number doesn't pick up, and his parents aren't expecting him. What the unholy hell is going on??" He looked at Liz, and strode over to her. "I don't have time for this. Does Evans have a new girlfriend? Any idea where the fuck he could be??" And, not even waiting for Liz to answer, he reached out to grab a hank of her hair, then spread his hand out through her tresses, getting close to the scalp.

And Liz *SCREAMED* inside as Nicholas' essence invaded her, ransacked her memory, going through every scrap of information or second-hand news she had heard about Max's activities since he left for Santa Fe -- which was little enough, and he seemed to quickly grow dissatisfied with it. After only a few seconds, he snatched his limb back and pounced away, leaving Liz to wilt over, sobbing and shuddering at the residual sensation of violation. She forced herself back into composure as soon as she could, forcing the pain and the humiliation of it back in her mind with all the rest of the stuff that she'd deal with as soon as she had the luxury of time.

As hard as this was to believe, she had just been very lucky. If Nicholas had not been quite so single-minded on what he thought he was looking for, he could have found some things in Liz's thoughts that he would probably have been very interested in knowing, and that Liz very much didn't want him to find out about. Starting with the real reason that he was having trouble reaching Max, perhaps - whoever Liz had managed to reach, and warn, had spread the word, and Max was ducking Nicholas, making himself hard to get ahold of for hostage negotiations, as a delaying tactic.

Normally that would have been a good move, but neither Max nor the rest of his friends could see how unstable Nicholas seemed to be getting. If circumstances continued to thwart him, he might just get pissed off enough to take his frustrations out on Liz with brutal force... and she knew that she had no way to defend herself effectively against the kind of frontal assault he was able to bring to bear.

Or he might decide to go through her brain again, more carefully. He would find the hiding place of the Granilith, for instance - a secret he probably never imagined that she might hold, but she did... along with the information on how Nicholas might force his way into the pod chamber with a similar hostage technique, and where Max and the others had hidden the key, and the tidbit that the Granilith could be used to send someone back in time, a fact that Nicholas might try using somehow to reverse his previous defeats.

Suddenly a terribly real image flashed in excruciating detail before Liz's eyes... of Nicholas not even bothering with such niceties, but attacking her physically... blasting out several of her limbs, and she could feel the explosions of pain in them, and then creating a huge, cruel machete out of some leftover metal object, and beginning to take her skin off, piece by piece...

Liz started herself out of that morbid presentiment, and took stock of the situation. Her body seemed free of any interference through Nicholas' powers... possibly the shock of the mindrape had ended that. Nicholas himself was not in sight - she could hear his footsteps as he wandered the deserted factory, reasonably far away. She had to make her break, and there would never be a better time.

Except for the fact that she was still restrained, after all. Liz stared at her hands dully, cursing the loop of restraining cable that looped about them and held them together. Impulsively she yanked her right arm towards herself, expecting it to hurt quite a bit.

She was so completely NOT expecting what happened that it took several seconds to even piece it together. Her right arm and hand was free, the cable dangling suddenly around her left wrist, now so slack that she could even shake it off if she wanted to... how was that possible??

She peered at her right hand more carefully, wondering how it had managed this feat. This closer inspection revealed that the hand looked funny... much narrower than before, quite unnaturally so. She prodded at it carefully... the bones weren't in their usual configuration, but there was no pain or soreness. She shook the hand, worried and slightly grossed out -- and the fingers, the entire hand, popped back into their usual shape.

MAN, that was weird!!

Well, it had gotten her out of Nicholas' makeshift shackles at least... maybe it would work the same on her feet. She concentrated hard, and this time was aware of the extraordinary sensations of the bones of her ankles and feet and toes moving in ways that they had not originally been designed to. The sensible running shoes that she had been wearing when she left the dorm room in Chicago fell off, and then so, with a little kicking and pushing, did the bicycle cables that Nicholas had used to tie her to the floor.

This had possibilities! Returning her feet to normal, she got up, picking up the shoes and carrying them - she would move more quietly without them. Experimenting, she reached an arm behind her and tried to touch her shoulder blade -- and grinned as her elbow bent to accomplish the famously impossible feat. This was like some kind of super double-jointedness... not a great source of firepower, alas, but a pretty useful trick in situations like this. She wondered if she'd be able to keep it once her ordeal was over.

Aware that all this was still deadly serious, Liz crept through the abandoned factory, taking care both to keep her own noise emissions down and to analyze every hint of information her ears gave her about Nicholas' activities and location.

She froze.

Nicholas was very close to the exit from the factory. Probably that was entirely coincidence... but she wasn't at all sure she could get through that area without him becoming aware of him.

She should have retreated back into the maze of angled passageways, playing the cautious mouse until Nicholas had moved on. But that had its risks -- if Nicholas realized that something was amiss, who knew how quickly he could find her??

Instead Liz gave in partway to panic. Spotting a metal stairway leading up the side of the building wall, connecting up to a series of catwalks, she hurried to it.

And three quarters of the way up the stairs, the entire flight groaned out loud and then let out a creaking sound that had to be audible across the whole building. Liz froze for an instant, less than a second, then continued to scramble up as fast as she could. She was committed to this course now.

The next bit was a nightmarish jumble. Liz hadn't been sure at the time if she really heard the sounds of Nicholas' pursuit behind her or was just imagining it, and she was never sure afterward how long she spent making her way through the catwalks or exactly what kind of route she had followed, besides a suspicion that there was no rhyme or reason to it.

What she clearly remembered was turning back from a dropoff where the catwalk had been somehow torn away... and saw a small figure standing there with a demented grin on his face, cutting her off from any possible escape.

Nicholas looked even worse now. Clearly, as he approached, Liz could see that two different layers of skin were peeling off of his face in different areas.

"Okay," Nicholas rasped hoarsely. "I don't know what the hell is going on with Evans, and right now I don't care. I will see you *burn up into smoke* before I leave this spot, Parker." Liz turned to make a break for it, wildly hoping that the cosmos would grant her the power to fly at the moment she most needed it -- but she never even got the chance to find out. Nicholas knocked her to a crouch on all fours with a single gesture, and then froze her motionless.

"I've suspected for a long time that you saved Max from Lonnie and Rath somehow, when they were all in New York. Warned him somehow. Maybe you were able to warn him again to stay away... but that means that he won't be able to save you this time. And right now I don't really care what happens after you die." He reached up a hand, and Liz raged helplessly inside her skull, not knowing what flavor of death would come out of that hand for her.

Nicholas' power kept her from closing her eyes to wait for the end, but they couldn't, (or at any rate didn't,) keep her eyes from welling so full of terror tears that she couldn't see a thing, so that was almost as good.

The impact, when it hit her, wasn't nearly like what she was expecting. A soft 'whumph' sounded and a gentle wind seemed to suround her. Was that all it was like, dying? Maybe so. Next, she believed there was supposed to be a bright white light, that she had to go into... maybe Casey would be waiting for her, and Grandma Claudia, and...

No bright light. There was a swinging sensation that was slowly shaking the tears out of her eyes, and it was that which finally clued her in that whatever happened, she wasn't dead. If she were dead there wouldn't be a swinging sensation, and she wouldn't have eyes really, or tears in them. She had her hands up to her face, wiping the rest of the moisture away, before she even realized that she could move again.

The end of the catwalk where Liz crouched was swinging to and fro quite alarmingly, and she quickly grabbed onto a support cable in an attempt to steady herself. There was no sign of Nicholas at first. She looked around, totally bewildered, and was stunned to see two other familiar faces. Isabel, and... and Tess? They were standing on a platform perhaps twenty-five feet away from the catwalk where Liz clung, and perhaps a foot and a half lower. Each of them had her right arm stretched out in Liz's general direction, and a look of surprise frozen on her face. A blast of wind hit the platform just at that moment, blowing their hair back from their faces in an awesomely dramatic matter.

Liz was still trying to put the pieces back together. The first thing that occured to her was that the direction that the two girls were pointing their upraised palms in was exactly where she had last seen Nicholas.

Suddenly curious, she made her way carefully over to the edge of the catwalk, which was starting to settle down, and peered over the edge. A huge cloud of dust was billowing up from the floor, but there was no sign of Nicholas. Michael was making his way over to that area, carefully -- and he looked astounded.

Unless... unless the dust *was* a sign of Nicholas. Unless --

Unless some of the DUST was Nicholas!!

Somehow, it filtered through all of this wild speculation that the ordeal was over. Even if it wasn't... well, help had arrived. Let *them* deal with it.

Liz collapsed in a heap on the catwalk, crying and shivering, torn between delayed stress, grief, and a formless fear of her future.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Title: The Saga of the Pod Squad
Part: 5
Author: Chris Kenworthy
E-mail: kelworth@chriskweb.net
Disclaimer: I have no rights over the characters and situations of Roswell, this is a not-for-profit creative outlet so please don't sue me. :]
Synopsis: A broad-strokes AU picture of what the gang's future, starting from the junior prom.


A loose group of them were gathered around the far end of the Parker family living room, clustered near the stairway that led down into the back of the cafe. In fact, Alex and Isabel were sitting on the stairs, while Tess perched on the couch and Michael and Kyle sat on the floor.

After a short silence, Maria crossed the room, carefully silent, and sat down next to Michael and took his left hand in her right. There was a look of concern on her face, but she didn't say anything for a few moments, and Kyle prompted her softly. "Well?"

Maria looked at him, slightly pale. "Well what?"

"How is she..." Kyle couldn't even finish that sentence. "Is she sleeping??"

"I'm not sure," Maria admitted after an instant's pause. "Her eyes are closed, she's not moving much and she doesn't answer me... draw your own conclusions from that." She sighed. "I'm not sure if I'd be up for talking much, myself."

"What do you mean??" Alex asked softly. "I mean sure, it was a scary experience, but..."

Maria shook her head, cutting him off. "Not so much that..." Everyone turned to look at her, and she groaned a little. "Well, I feel bad spilling the news like this, but there isn't anyone else who knows and is talking, and you guys kinda have a need to know now so... it's about her friend, the one Liz mentioned in her phone message." The other five were silent, waiting on her to continue.

"While you guys were gone," (this was accompanied with a gesture to indicate Isabel, Michael, and Tess,) "I went on the web. The story's on local news sites in the Chicago area, and, well..." Maria took a deep breath, forced herself to stop babbling and get to the point. "I think I know who Nicholas killed. At any rate, someone Liz knew is dead, and the timing is pretty much beyond coincidence."

"Oh, boy." Isabel sighed. "Once we had Liz safe, and Nicholas was gone, I guess I forgot about that part. Who was it??"

Maria hesitated. "Oh, no," Alex muttered softly. "Casey??"

"Who's Casey??" Kyle put in.

Maria and Alex answered at the same time, with different desciptions. Alex replied with "Liz's boyfriend," while Maria substituted 'fiancee' for the B-word. Alex turned to stare at Maria in wordless shock once the difference sunk in.
"Oh my god, they got engaged??" Alex breathed. "I never thought... they've only been going out--" and he suddenly shut up at this point.

"I think there's something else to do with Casey, too," Maria mused. "Something that Liz hasn't told any of us y..."

"Wait just a second," Michael broke in. "Why don't any of the rest of us know about this guy?"

For a second, that question hung in the air, along with the unspoken answer: 'because you talk to Max more often than we do, now.' But instead, Maria replied, "Come on, honey, I'm sure I mentioned him to you before."

Michael considered this. "Yeah, I guess - in passing. I had no idea she was this serious about the guy."

"I think that's the way Liz wanted it," Alex said softly. Apologetically. "Oh, Maria - Max called in while you were checking on Liz. He'll be here in twenty minutes." Maria nodded.

"I wonder if Liz will even want to see him," Isabel said softly.

Several people turned to look at her. "What do you mean??" Kyle asked.

"Well, this whole thing happened because of Nicholas' grudge with Max," Isabel pointed out. "To us, it seems a little irrational to blame Max for that, but I'm not sure how things look from where Liz is."

There was a long silence after Isabel finished that observation, and then Maria spoke up. "One thing I still don't understand. Once I got the message from Liz, the three of you," (she indicated Michael, Isabel, and Tess,) saddled up and took the commuter plane from Roswell to Albuquerque in time to get there before Liz's connection from Texas, while I got in touch with Max and told him to stay out of touch except for checking in with me every hour, until I knew Liz was safe. You three staked out the airport, knowing that Nicholas wouldn't be watching for you there, and followed the taxi he and Liz took to his hideout in a rental car." Alex and Kyle were listening attentively - they'd been picked up in Albuquerque after everything was over and had not yet heard some of these details. "But how did you know when it was safe to go inside the abandoned factory?? Nicholas might have been sitting there and waiting for you, a hand around Liz's throat."

"Well," Isabel began, "Michael was able to 'sense' some of the activity inside, and we waited until he could tell that Nicholas had left Liz, that they weren't together. And then Tess, well..." she broke off, flushing a little.

"I mindwarped Liz. It wasn't my idea," Tess said defensively. "But we were hoping that if I could scare her enough, she would try to escape and create a diversion. Then the three of us could sneak in and rescue her in the confusion."

"Well, it worked, right?" Alex commented.

"It wasn't a good plan," Tess insisted. "Liz was restrained: something that none of us had thought of. It was a total fluke that she was able to free herself. And even so, Nicholas nearly killed her." She was hiding her face, and when Michael reached up a hand, meaning to pat her knee comfortingly, she got up and rushed into the kitchen.

After a quick look was exchanged, Kyle hurried up to follow her, and for an awkward moment their voices, charged with emotion, could be heard faintly in the living room. Obviously trying to change the subject, Maria turned around to face Michael instead of half leaning against him, which she had been doing at his unspoken cue. "How sure are you that Nicholas is toast??"

Michael shrugged awkwardly. "I've learned not to accept any certainties where that little one is concerned... but it's ninety eight percent at least, maybe 99. He went over the edge of the catwalk and just... SHHOOOM, fell twenty-five feet like a stone. Came down hard right on his lower back, and all of a sudden there was nothing more than huge clouds of dust, lots more than there should have been from a simple impact. It started to clear away in seconds, and there was no sign of him."

"Hmmm..." Alex weighed that. "Did... did either of you sense a mindwarp? Did Tess??"

"No, and we asked her that at the time," Isabel put in softly. "Tess is better at sensing the telltale of a mindwarp than the rest of us, but Michael's been getting pretty good lately. And plus... a mindwarp takes concentration. I'm not sure I buy that Nicholas could make a mindwarp cleverly enough to fool us all while in the middle of..." She broke off, suddenly aware of the complexities in the situation an unrecognized mindwarp could have wrought... Nicholas might not even have fallen off the catwalk, he might not have been taken off guard by their appearance...

"It's okay," Maria assured her with sisterly affection. "This stuff has always been confusing. We'll be careful, even though we're probably just worrying ourselves about nothing."

There was a short silence afer that - even Tess and Kyle's voices had gone away by now. Everybody seemed willing to let Maria have the last word on the hostage crisis. "You free tonight," Alex asked Isabel suddenly.

"Umm... yeah, of course," she replied, a little taken off guard by the question. "For you, anything."

He leaned over and kissed her softly. "I want to take you out to dinner - somewhere nice. We've got a lot to talk about."

-------

When Liz awoke the next morning, it was with the unsettling sensation of having had to crawl out of a dark dream world where her body and will would not often obey her, populating by maniacally grinning hobbits and notable for the frequency of dark explosions aimed at the people she cared about and loved. As her eyes began to get used to the real world, she realized that Maria was sitting on a chair next to the side of her bed, a forced expression of calm on her face, but Liz could sense, even without being more than half awake, the support, concern, and love that was flowing into the air around her oldest friend like waves.

"How do you feel sweetie??" Maria asked softly, reaching out and putting her hand against the place where Liz's foot was, though a bedsheet and two layers of blankets seperated them just there.

"How do I feel?" Liz mentally oriented that sentence inside herself, over and over eleven different ways, before admitting. "I have... no context or basis for coming up with an answer to that question," she said dully, sitting up in the bed, slowly freeing her arms from the blankets and crossing her legs underneath them.

"Oh-kay." During a silent pause, Maria slowly got up out of the chair, and after waiting a moment for any sign of objection from Liz, carefully sat down on the covers so that she was facing her oldest friend. "I... I hardly know where to start," she admitted. "Do... do you remember all of it?" The expression crossing Maria's face clearly told that she thought that question sounded really stupid. "Is it okay if I ask you about stuff??"

"No, it's okay... I don't mind talking," Liz mumbled, sounding none too sure about it. "As far as remembering... I think I've got most of the basics. The details are kind of fuzzy in places... maybe it's better that way."

For a long moment Maria didn't say anything, and Liz reached out to take one of Maria's hand in her own, and smiled gratefully at her. "I... I know about Casey," Maria blurted out after a few seconds. "That... that he's the one you were talking about in your message, the one that Nicholas killed. I'm so sorry, babe."

For a moment, Liz focused on the most trivial part of that. "That was you? The person who I called?? I couldn't even be sure of who I'd speed-dialled, at the time."

Maria's eyes widened for a moment in shock, and she smiled. "Yeah. It was me. I missed the call by about a minute... would it have been better or worse if I'd picked up the phone, do you think??"

Liz didn't answer the question, but asked one of her own. "And you spread the word to the alien cavalry, and they came to Albuquerque to wait for me??" Maria nodded. "Thank you so much... you guys saved my life -- Max's too??" The end of that line was a question, and Maria nodded. "Okay, well..."

"About Casey??" Maria interrupted softly, and Liz met her eye and nodded. "It's okay to feel sad, and to grieve... I mean, Casey was a big part of your life and an even bigger part of this future you were planning." She reached out and rubbed Liz's arm through the blanket. "It doesn't make you weak or pathetic to confront that loss... even if it feels like the grief is so much bigger than your right now. You're going to have a piece of Casey Richards inside you for a long time, and that's really..."

Maria didn't make it any further through her supportive speech, because Liz made a sound that was somewhere halfway between a whine and a strangled giggle and sagged to the side, shuddering all over. Maria scrambled forward, trying to check and make sure that she wasn't having some kind of sudden seizure. "What, what is it??" she muttered when Liz had calmed down a little bit.

"I... I'm sorry," Liz gasped out, and Maria realized that Liz had been sobbing silently and her face was wet with tears. "It's just... the way you phrased that -- was *very* unfortunate." Maria cocked her head questioningly at the way Liz had finished that comment. "I know what you meant... but I think I literally have, well, something connected to Casey inside me." There was a pause, and then she began promptingly, "You know, for about another..."

"You're gonna have his baby??" Maria burst out.

Liz shrugged helplessly, still crying some. "I... I think so," she said, not clarifying for the moment whether her doubt was about present or future circumstances. "I had only just taken the pregnancy test before everything with Nicholas started, pretty much." Five minutes or so wasn't worth nit-picking about, she decided silently. "We'd decided that we weren't going to tell anyone else about it... superstition and risk in the early months and all..." This prompted another round of heavier tears, and she looked up at Maria through the last of them. "I guess you've taken his part in that particular consipracy... for now at least. Is that okay??"

"What??" Maria was still obviously having trouble adjusting to the revelation, and the particularly tragic circumstances it presaged for Liz. "Yes, sure, of course... I won't tell anyone else until you're ready..." She thought about it, and then qualified. "Well, *maybe* Michael, but I will swear him to secrecy on the GRANILITH if I need to!!"

Liz actually laughed softly at that. "Yeah, that's okay." She sighed. "How are you guys doing??"

"Not bad at all," Maria replied. She found it a little hard to talk about things going well with her own boyfriend when Liz's life had just obviously fallen apart, but maybe it would help. "Oh, we made so many plans... christmas morning at the loft, with everyone coming by... and Michael's going to be hosting a new year's party at his place..." She couldn't gather herself well enough to make much sense, she knew. "You're gonna come?"

Liz smiled. "Yeah... I think that would be good... starting the next year with my friends." Another ragged, teary sigh. "What about... about the police, Maria?? Should I... should I be worried? I mean, I can't exactly tell them the truth about what happened to Casey, and..."

"Ssshh," Maria soothed her. "You're gonna have to wait quite a while before you hit america's most wanted, girl. They may want to talk to you at some point, but you were his FIANCEE! You were devastated by his death, and have come back to the comfort of friends and family."

"Yeah," Liz sighed. "And I mean to stay." Maria looked up in surprise at that. "I'm serious... I know this is sudden, but I just couldn't bear going back to Chicago again. Do..." There was a long pause. "Do you think maybe someone could go up there and gather up my stuff? I'd just really like to have it back here by Christmas."

Maria thought about that. "I'll see what I can do, chica." She made a mental note to herself to have whoever went get refundable airline tickets, because Liz was, admittedly, in a vulnerable place and might change her mind.

"Now, what about this Christmas morning thing??" Liz asked. "Who all is going to be coming over??"

-------

When Maria got back to the loft apartment that had been her home for the past two and a half years, (well, almost,) she nearly collided with Isabel's parents, who were just leaving. "Ohh... Hi, Mister and Mrs. Evans," Maria mumbled as she stepped over to the small landing ledge in order that they could pass her and start down the stairs.

"Hello, Maria, nice to see you," Diane Evans said with a friendly tone in her voice. Isabel's dad just kind of looked up at her and nodded before continuing on down the cramped staircase.

Maria had a pretty good idea why the senior Evanses would have been dropping by to visit their daughter on today of all days, and so she was not at all surprised to see Alex sitting next to Isabel on the loveseat in the front room when she finally got into the loft proper. Both of them looked happily exhausted in that moment, but as soon as Isabel caught sight of Maria she let out a squeal of surprising excitement and energy and practically jumped up to dash towards her. "Maria! You'll never guess..."

Alex interrupted her at this point, hardly moving and sounding just as tired out as he looked. "I'm sorry, but she already knows." Isabel literally skittered to a stop and turned about to glare at him, upset. "Hey, I'm within my rights here," he protested. "Even a sensitive and romantic boyfriend is entitled to one woman-friend confidante when planning a proposal, to answer the questions that..." He chuckled. "Well, if you'll excuse the question, all those 'guys are from Mars, girls are from Venus' things."

Isabel looked far from convinced, so like a good friend, Maria jumped in with a diversion. "Okay, the ring!" Isabel shot her a look and actually hid her hand behind her body. "Yes, I've already seen it," Maria admitted, "but that isn't the same as seeing you WEARING it."

Izzy smiled and he temper melted away as she brought her left hand back up for inspection. "So, do I have you to thank for how gorgeous this is??" she asked Maria.

Maria grinned for a moment as she considered the engagement band on Isabel's third finger... yellow gold, sporting a full-carat purple sapphire, (princess-cut, of course, for Alex's alien princess,) and two smaller gemstones on each side, also princess-cut, quarter carat chrysoberyls: yellow emeralds. Then she looked Isabel in the eyes and shook her head.

"Much as I'd like to take the credit, your boy did an amazing job at picking this out all by himself - I was just along for moral support." She thought back to that jewelry shopping excursion he had invited her up to Albuquerque for just last weekend: Alex apparently had a bone to pick with the DeBeers syndicate and had refused to look at traditional diamond engagement bands... but Maria had to admit that this ring was so breathtaking just *because* it was outside of the norm. "Wasn't shy about laying down the big bucks, either."

Mentioning money seemed to suddenly remind Isabel of something. "So... did Alex also tell you--"

"That he was going to ask you to move in with him in Las Cruces?" Maria guessed. "Well, yeah. What did you say?"

Iz seemed momentarily confused. "What do you mean, what did I say?"

"Well, I didn't think it was a term of the proposal or anything," Maria pointed out. "It's pretty sudden to move to a new city, change schools and all that. Are you up for it?"

"What do you think??" Isabel grinned. "I may be a little late starting classes at UNM, but I'm pretty sure I'll be able to catch up. And my parents have been saying that I should transfer somewhere that I can get my doctorate." She sighed. "So I guess that means I have to move out of the sorority house, huh?"

"Yeah, I guess so," Maria agreed with a smile. "We'll miss you."

"I'll pay up for January, of course," Isabel said, "since there's no way I'll be ready to leave by New Year's. Will you guys be okay for after that? I hope you can find a replacement room-mate or something -- it'd be a shame to have to give up the loft entirely."

Maria thought about that for a second. "Yeah, I might be able to arrange that."

"Liz?" Alex asked.

"No, she wasn't who I was thinking of." Maria thought how she and Michael, also, had been talking about moving in together... though there were Tess' feelings to consider. Living with a couple would be very different than sharing an apartment with two girlfriends, and might be considered to be rubbing Tess' nose in her own single status. "But speaking of Liz..." She crossed the room and sat down in a chair next to the window. Isabel took her place beside Alex again. "I have a rather big favor to... oh, did you guys tell Alex's folks too??"

Neither of them protested Maria's non sequitur -- they were both far too used to them by now. "Um, yeah, last night," Alex answered after a moment. "I'd rather have had the talk with Isabel's parents on their home ground, but they insisted on coming by here - said that they'd be in the neighborhood. I don't think they knew what they'd be getting into."

Maria smiled faintly. "Well... I almost hate to ask you guys with, considering that you've got so much to do by early January, but I'm not sure who else to suggest and it might actually be a good opportunity for you..."

"Maria??" Isabel prompted. "You're getting up into a babble factor. Whatever it is, just ask!"

Maria laughed at that quietly. "Well... Liz was hoping that somebody could fly up to Chicago before Christmas and drive her stuff back home to Roswell before the holidays."

There was a short pause at that. "She's not going back to school??" Alex asked.

"Not to northwestern, I guess." Maria let the silence linger, then, "I kind of get where she's coming from, emotionally. Not that I really know what it's like to go through all that, but..."

"No, no, if that's what she wants, we'll be glad to help out," Isabel insisted. "Um, right sweetie?"

"Yeah, I think I could manage," Alex laughed. "You're right, it'll be a nice excuse to travel for a bit and get away by ourselves."

"Do you remember how long it took you and Liz when you drove up there for freshman year??" Isabel asked Maria.

"Umm... three days," Maria answered. "We took our time."

"Okay..." Isabel flipped out her PDA and tapped it on, fumbling out the stylus. "Let's see... we could probably get a flight on Monday, huh? If they're not too backed up -- probably better check as soon as we can." She was tapping, probably pulling up her calendar program. "If we fly up Monday and stay the night, packing up a rental car Monday night and Tuesday morning, then we can be on the road three days and still be back here in Roswell the night before christmas eve."

"Sounds like a plan," Alex agreed, grinning over at her. Maria couldn't resist trying to tease him one more time... she and several other people, like Liz and Michael, had tried repeatedly to freak Alex out by prodding Isabel into ever-more-intense heights of planning Nazi-ism at suitable opportunities... like every Christmas they'd spent together. Maria had to admit she'd never had much success with this particular game; Alex was very good at 'rolling with it' and throwing himself into whatever it was Isabel was getting excited about, but for cripes' sake she was getting MARRIED now!! If she couldn't conjure up Isabel the planning Nazi in fine enough form to reduce him to the shakes and shivers... well, she'd better give up the game, and not just because the two of them were going to be moving several hours' drive away.

"So... I know it's only a few hours since it became official, but you *must* have some thoughts for the wedding," Maria prompted shamelessly. "Dress, ceremony location, date, reception -- anything??"

"Not really, well, ummm..." Isabel shot a look at her honey. "We're thinking about trying for a spring break wedding, which isn't much time I know... probably it's only going to be a fairly small ceremony, friends, family, and whoever else our parents *insist* we invite." She blushed slightly. "And I have to admit, there's this wedding dress that I saw years ago that I've never been able to forget, if only I can still find it. Oh, and Maria??"

"Um, yeah??" Maria noticed that Alex was shaking his head a little, but that was all - oh well.

"I hope you won't be upset about this, but I think I want to ask Tess to be my maid of honor. Not that I think of her as a better friend than you at this point -- but I kinda have the notion that it would mean more to her, you know?? She's all alone, you'll have Michael as your date to the wedding. Is that alright??"

Maria smiled. "Sure. I'll be fine as just a bridesmaid of the ranks... assuming that you'll want me as that." Isabel grinned and nodded. "And speaking of, I don't know if you were thinking of this, but it might not be a good idea to ask Liz, under the circumstances."

"Yeah, I know," Isabel agreed with a pained expression. "Maybe you could sound her out about it, but no pressure. We probably won't need that many in the bridal party, and I could ask one of the girls I know from school or something."

Maria opened her mouth to answer... and was stopped when a loud knock rang out on the front door of the loft. Maria exchanged a glance with Isabel and Alex. "Tess??"

"I'm pretty sure she's still in her room," Isabel said, moving past her towards the door. "The whole thing with Nicholas took a lot out of her, and not just from using her powers." She opened the door, "Oh, hey."

"Just thought I'd drop by, see if you've heard... What's that??" Maria laughed softly to herself, recognizing Max's voice before he stepped inside. Maria had assigned Michael to intercept Max, (well, asked him, that didn't sound quite so bossy,) knowing that he would have a mountain of questions about the recently concluded crisis, and not wanting him to unintentionally upset Liz, or to disrupt Alex's romantic plans for Iz. Well, better having him over here hearing the news about the engagement than at the Crashdown -- Liz still needed her rest, not to mention a chance at some kind of peace of mind.

"What does it look like??" Isabel teased, bringing her ring finger up to eye level.

-------

"Come on, I know a little something about Alex Whitman by now," Tess bantered. "There *has* to be some funny story about how he popped the question. Share, share!"

They were at Miguel's, a favorite place that Michael and Maria had discovered a few years ago, a fancy/casual Mexican restaurant that had opened up near the college -- and the 'they' is inclusive. All eight of the original gang had shown up to celebrate Alex and Isabel's engagement... plus one, being Martine Tychnowich, Kyle's steady girlfriend of about a year and eight months, who had come down to visit with him over the winter vacation. Only Alex and Tess had met Martine before this, so everyone else was interested in her -- a pretty, athletic girl with curly, medium brown hair.

Even Max and Liz had both come to wish Izzy and Alex the best, although Maria had been emphatic about refusing to allow Max to attend until Liz had assured her three times that she'd be okay with him in so large a group, although she wasn't certain about spending any time with him in any more intimate a situation, and hadn't even really said hello to him tonight.

"Well, okay," Isabel said. "So, we were sitting there at Senor Chao's, I was mostly done my sweet and spicy pork over rice, and wondering exactly what this important thing we had to talk about was, because Alex hadn't got out of small talk mode all evening. The waiter comes up, tells me I had an important call, and handed me a cordless phone. I say hello, and there's nothing for a few seconds, and Alex's voice comes over the phone, right when he's still sitting across from me!!"

"I'm totally confused for maybe ten seconds, not even really listening to what his voice is saying because I'm trying to figure it out, and then I finally clue in that it's a pre-recorded message he made. By that point, it's up to some point about knowing what he wants for the future, and then that's how he asked me -- over a message on the phone, while he's sitting across the table from me with a cheshire-cat grin on his face!!"

"Awww," Maria breathed.

"Well, I came up with the idea as a way to keep from stuttering and getting a mental blank when the moment came," Alex explained, smiling and pulling Isabel a little closer to him.

"Who was on the phone anyway??" Tess asked.

"That would be me, his partner in crime," Kyle announced. "He gave me the tape to play on his parent's old answering machine, and said that I was to call at such-and-such a time, ask for her, and not to say a word myself once Isabel picked up, just to start the tape playing." Since Kyle's father had moved to Albuquerque, it had become common for Kyle to stay at the Whitman place when they were both visiting Roswell.

"And how did you know that they would bring a cordless phone to her, instead of calling her away from the table??" Martine asked. "It wouldn't work if you weren't there to bring out the ring at the right time, yes?? Has this sort of thing come up before?"

"One or two times," Maria filled in. "Did he say anything when he showed you the ring for the first time, Isabel??"

"Nope, just opened up the box and grinned at me," Isabel said. "Of course, I went crazy, whooping and babbling and getting up to kiss him and everything... oooh ooh, here we go!!" The food arrived at their tables at just that moment.

After the initial eating part of the festivities was done, Michael and Maria, Kyle and Max took their seconds down to the big screen to watch a Mexican western movie, while the others remained at the tables. "By the way," Martine said nervously to Liz. "Kyle told me about... about your boyfriend, and what happened to him. Ooops, fiance, I guess I mean. Do you think the police are ever going to catch the guys who shot him??"

Liz sighed, wondering how many times she'd have to answer a question like this. At least the way she had put it, Liz didn't really have to lie. "No, somehow I don't think they ever will."

"It was so great of you guys to volunteer to go up to Chicago, what with everything else that must be going on in your lives this week," Martine continued, addressing that towards the happy couple. "Seems a little sudden to me that you'd decide to move back to Roswell, but then I'm not quite sure how I'd react if anything happened to Kyle, cosmos forbid, and I know we really aren't as serious as you and Casey must have been..."

Liz just put her best smile on as Martine continued to chatter sympathetically.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Title: The Saga of the Pod Squad
Part: 6
Author: Chris Kenworthy
E-mail: kelworth@chriskweb.net
Disclaimer: I have no rights over the characters and situations of Roswell, this is a not-for-profit creative outlet so please don't sue me. :]
Synopsis: A broad-strokes AU picture of what the gang's future, starting from the junior prom.


"I mean, I can understand why Liz is upset, of course I can," Max said, and let out a low whistle, frowning. "How a lot of it centers around me, even, though I can't help but feel like I really didn't have anything to do with it." He cocked a look at Maria. "Being told that I can't see her or talk to her is a new one, though."

"I guess so," Maria remarked, nodding without any hint of apology. "That is the way things are, though. Liz doesn't want it, not right now, and I'm feeling VERY protective of her right now. I mean to see that what she wants happens - in this and other ways."

"Check," Max replied with a deepening frown. "So, I won't go to the sorority house for Christmas morning and Isabel and I will meet at my parents' house later on in the day... maybe eleven thirty."

Maria nodded slowly. "It won't be so bad... we'll probably all see you sometime close to the holiday. Midnight service, the big dinner party at the Crashdown..."

Maria had invited Liz to stay over with her and the other girls in the loft the night before Christmas morning. Michael, Alex, and Kyle would be coming over first thing in the morning for opening presents, a huge pancake breakfast, and other festivities.

"Well, okay, I'd better get going," Max said, standing up after an awkward moment. They had bumped into each other christmas shopping in the mall, and Maria had insisted they go off to the food court to have a bite to eat and talk. "Most of the list still remains un-crossed off."

"Happy holidays," Maria called after him, and then shook her head for several seconds at how pitiful the line sounded in context.

It was late afternoon the next day when Max got the call, and he answered his cell phone without even looking at it. "Hello?"

"Hi Max, it's Liz. Is this a good time??"

Max looked around automatically for a place to sit down. None. He tried to lean comfortably against a streetlamp pole, which worked at a factor of about one quarter. "Not too bad. How are you??"

"I feel like I've kinda recovered my equilibrium," she said matter-of-factly. "Been crying a lot. Trying to figure out what I do next? And you??"

"Umm... I'm alright under the circumstances I suppose," he mumbled. "Everything's so weird... not the least of which is you calling me after Maria told me under no uncertain terms that you did NOT want to talk to me in the forseeable future. Is it alright if I ask for an elaboration on that one?"

Liz's laugh, so soft and thin over the phone connection, nearly broke Max's heart. "Well, I dunno. Maria told me about it, and you seemed so upset about not being able to see me, I decided that it wouldn't hurt to call. You'd probably feel better, hearing my voice, knowing that I'm not doing too badly all things considered, and it might even do me some good too." She sighed. "Where are you, anyway?? It sounds like you're outside."

Max chuckled a little himself. "I'm standing at the corner of Deborah and North Washington."

It took a little moment before Liz replied to that. "At the hospital??"

"Where the hospital *used* to be," Max corrected. "Or, across the street from where the hospital used to be. The whole building is GONE!"

"Wow," Liz remarked. "When did that happen??"

"You're asking me??" Max sighed. "Neither of us have been spending much time in Roswell I know, but somehow I didn't expect them to just go and tear a HOSPITAL down." So many memories, and such weird memories, centered around the place. Liz's grandmother dying... the infamous blood sample switch. Laurie Dupree's great escape.

"Well, ummm..." Liz seemed to be lost in thought a little too. "Was there anything you wanted to say to me that we didn't get to yet??"

"Errr..." Put on the spot, Max's mind blanked, of course. "I'm so sorry. For what you went through, what happened to your -- your friend. If I'd known beforehand, if there was anything I could have done to protect both of you..."

"But there's no way you could have known," Liz finished, sighing. "I think that's what frustrates me the most." Max was silent at that for a long moment, and Liz snuck in a "Bye, Max. It was... interesting talking to you," and hung up on him.

Max stared at the phone for a second, reaching out and tracing over the pixels that spelled out 'Parker' ("J Parker" really, but so what,) and the familiar phone number. Then he turned around and started to walk back home.

---------

Isabel looked up when she saw the motel room door open. "Hey, sweetie," she said to Alex, still unpacking a few things from the bags that they'd brought into their room to the dresser drawer. "What did he say??"

Alex had been smiling in the doorframe, looking at her, and it took a moment for him to realize that she had asked him a question. "Oh, the clerk??"

"Yeah, who else did you go off to talk to?" Isabel teased, standing up and crossing over to him.

"Emmm," Alex mumbled, deciding not to answer her question. "Yeah, he recommended a place down the street for a good, quick breakfast. The twelfth street grill, it's called." He grinned, tousled Isabel's long hair as he passed her, and collapsed on his back on the single, double bed that dominated the room.

Izzie closed the door definitively, strode slowly across the room, and climbed onto the bed next to him, leaning over so that a lock of her long golden hair tickled his chin and neck. "Is my baby feeling tired??"

Alex smiled. "Yeah, a little." They had only just gotten into this small town, Shamrock Texas, long enough ago to find the Econo-lodge and check in... and it was after ten in the evening now. Isabel's carefully planned out itinerary for the three-day road trip hadn't called for them to drive very long on any one day, but they had gotten sidetracked twice, sight-seeing in Wichita and buying tickets for a late-afternoon minor league hockey game in Oklahoma City. The plan had actually been to get a little bit closer to Amarillo tonight, but he had decided that going on any further wouldn't be a good idea.

Isabel just bent down further, putting her lips onto his with a long, slow kiss that ended warm and moist. "Just *how* tired are you, now??" She grinned a fierce grin at him.

Alex smiled back, playing along without words. Quickly he rolled her over, returning the kiss on her lips with rising passion, then kissing the rim of her ear and licking at that tender pulse point on her neck. He undid the first button beneath the V-neck of Isabel's red sweater, then a second, and looked deep into her eyes.

She held the look for a second, wanting him to be the one to break the silence, and then caved. "What are you waiting for, lover??" she whispered throatily.

"You to say that." He backed off a little, stripping off his light but warm jacket in just a few smooth movements and tossing it away, where it happened to land over the television, obscuring most of the screen. He also shucked away his shoes and socks and undid the first few buttons of his long-sleeved shirt. Smiling, Isabel took the opportunity to take off her sweater and kick away her heels.

"So..." Alex murmured, his voice also low and a little husky, as he sat down again, next to her. His hands reached out, slowly, tauntingly, took hold of the waist of her camisole and moved the fabric up her torso, his fingers stroking her skin here and there as they went. She growled back at him, hungrily and yet playfully, and he swung the garment up her body in a single movement.

She lifted her arms in co-operation, so that the piece of ivory cloth flew up over her head and landed at the other end of the bed, leaving her chest covered only by a single piece of black strapless nylon/lycra, which covered only a little more than half of her curvaceous bosom. Smiling, he bent down and kissed her smooth skin, starting on the shoulder and moving his lips along the line of her collarbone.

Isabel hissed at the pleasant sensation and twisted her body around, pushing Alex down onto the bed, so that he was lying on his back with his head resting on the pillow. Grinning with wholehearted anticipation, she unclipped the bra, letting it slip aside, and unzipped Alex's fly, freeing his stiff manhood from the crotch of his dockers and the boxer shorts within. "Strap yourself in, captain," she joked, and bent her face down towards his member, letting her golden hair fall about Alex's flat stomach and the covers he was resting on.

..

Alex pulled himself up into a sitting position and shook his head slightly as he looked at the incredible, sexy, passionate woman he was going to spend the rest of his life with. "So... what can *I* do for you," he asked playfully. "Would you like a return on the favor??"

She shook her head at him. "No... what I'd *really* like, dear heart," she said with a twinkle in those brown eyes, "is for you to make love to me. Assuming that you're up for it, that is," she added with a giggle.

"Well, I think that I *could* be up for it," Alex joked along, crawling over and unsnapping her pants, starting to ease them off of her body. "If you co-operate." His hands strayed across her soft skin, tickling and tweaking.

"Oh, just tell me what I need to do," she said, opening his shirt further and blowing cool air on the sensitive flesh she found there. He brought his lips back to hers and drunk hungrily from them.

...

They lay in the bed, arms around each other, not sleeping quite, just relaxing together.

Picking up Liz's things in Chicago had gone fairly smoothly. There had been a few questions of course, but the stock answer that Alex and Isabel had agreed on aboard the plane -- that Liz had been traumatized when she was kidnapped by the same people who killed her boyfriend and was staying with her parents in Roswell -- had been accepted without further comment by everyone. Actually packing the things Liz had said she wanted and loading them into a small rental van had taken less time than Izzie had budgeted on.

"So... should I ask what you're thinking, or do I not want to know??" Alex asked after a while, a big smile still on his face.

"Not sure," Izzie said dreamily after a while.

"Then I guess I'm asking."

She looked over at him, and blushed a little. "Well, actually I was wondering whether I'm going to cut my hair before the wedding."

"Really??" Alex reached out and his fingers soon ran into a stray lock of Isabel's hair, which he twiddled absently. She had been growing it out for quite a while now, so that it reached more than halfway down her back when she wore it down, nearly to her waist, thick with tiny curls. "I have to say, I really love it this way... but far be it from me to tell a bride ANYTHING about how she wants to run her wedding day. Doesn't pay off."

"Alex!!" She looked over, saw that he was laughing helplessly, though managing to keep it nearly silent, and 'whumped' him one softly on the chest with the back of her hand. "It's your day too, though I think I take your point, and thank you." She sighed. "What were you thinking about??"

"Honestly? Well, there was something about Liz running through there. How much it must suck to be her right about now... and hearing about the two of us getting married can't have helped, really." Alex let out a low moan. "Maybe I should have put off asking you for just a few weeks, but somehow I couldn't, not with this extra reminder of how short and painful life can be, it just made me want to hold you tighter to my life, any way I could."

"Awww," she crooned. "That's sweet, I have to admit."

"Plus, well, I knew that I was going to have to tell you about dropping out of school and going to work for Datasoft, and I wanted to ask you to come to Las Cruces and move in with me, and I hadn't really worked out a way to ask you that much without hooking you for the whole wedding and everything."

She 'whumped' him again for that one.

"Well, I guess we should probably turn the lights off and get to sleep," Alex said, rubbing a tender spot between his ribs softly. "There'll be plenty to do once we finally get back to Roswell... preparations for the holidays and all."

"Yep." Isabel got up and switched off the table lamp, and then the wall light next to her bedside table. She had already changed into her white silk pajamas with the little fuzzie puppies on them. "I love you, Alex Whitman."

"I love *you*, Isabel Evans," he said into the dark, replaying a cherished ritual for the three-hundredth time or so.

"I wonder if Maria and Tess have figured out what to do about the loft," she said as she climbed back into the bed.

---------

"Hey, c'mon Parker." There was a gentle nudge at her shoulder. "You were told that if you wanted to stay here for Christmas Eve, that there was one rule. No sleeping in late on Christmas morning!!"

"Huhhh?" Liz opened her eyes, yelped a little as light streamed in too bright for her to cope with, and scrunched them up shut again. "Whaaa??" Something about the voice she had heard suddenly surprised her, and she popped one eye open a crack, trying to filter out as much ambience as she could and resolve the fuzzy and misshapen image that her mind relayed to her that way. Well, if *that* was a head, then the hair would match up with the voice? She retreated back into comfortable darkness again. "Tess?" There was a noncommital sound of impatient confirmation, and Liz sighed. "What time is it??"

"Nearly eight o'clock, Michael and Kyle are here already. Alex is probably on his way up the stairs, struggling to carry a gigantic mountain of presents all by himself."

Somehow that statement woke Liz up instantly like an imaginary bucket of cold water dumped all over her... except not really as unpleasant. "Presents," she repeated, not with great childlike anticipation but simply as the beginning of a backwards review through Tess' chain of speech. "Michael, Kyle. Christmas morning, sleeping in late, one rule. Sorry!!" She tossed off the blankets and sprang a little unsteadily to her feet. "Should I get ch..."

"Nah, your jammies should be fine. We aren't too formal about this little occasion around here." Liz realized that Tess was indeed dressed very casually... long loose pink T-shirt, soft-fabric blue shorts that went most of the way down to her knees... probably *her* sleeping clothes too. "Might want to duck into the bathroom quick and take care of a few things though."

And Liz smiled, grabbed the small overnight bag that she had brought with her, out of the loft living room, (where she had slept the night on a hide-a-bed couch,) and went off to brush her teeth and wash her face.

"Okay," Isabel called about an hour later, reaching up into the cupboards above the kitchen counter and pulling out ingredients. "How many for french crepes??"

A few people sitting out in the living room, and Alex (working the waffle maker,) raised their hands. Kyle called back "What do you have to put on top? Or inside, or whatever??"

"Let's see," Isabel rattled off from memory. "Real maple syrup, fake maple syrup, corn syrup, tabasco of course..." Kyle groaned at that, and the various hybrids giggled or chuckled. Liz frowned a little at that, realizing that she'd been noticing an odd craving for sweet-and-spicy herself over the past few weeks. "Whipped cream, confectioner's sugar, strawberry jam, peach jam, cherry jelly or peanut butter if you happen to want to try either of those..." She frowned a second, then crossed over to check the freezer. "Ice cream... we have raspberry ripple, butter pecan, mexican vanilla bean, and..." She pulled out a half-empty box and wiped a little frost away from the name. "Chocolate checkerboard." Replacing the box, she poked her head out to wait for Kyle's reaction.

"Yes, I'd love a few crepes with whipped cream or jam," he said with a smile, and she returned to the counter to start mixing batter. "Oooh, cool!!" Michael had just finished unwrapping a present from Tess, two Xbox game discs, NHL hocket and a spy adventure. "So, who's next??" He asked Tess. "You wanna go, or nominate somebody?"

Tess smiled. According to the rules, whoever had given the present being unwrapped had the chance to open next or pick someone else. "How about you, Maria??"

"Alright, let's see... how about that one??" Liz passed over the box that she had pointed out, and Maria read the label. "'From Isabel to Maria... we'll always be sisters at heart. Happy holidays.' Awww..." Grinning, Maria tore apart the wrapping with gusto. Alex watched with interest as he started passing out Belgian waffles. Finally a logo from one of Isabel's favorite boutiques was visible on the package underneath, and when Maria carefully opened this up, her hands brought up long stretches of silky, rosy-red fabric. "It's a dress!!"

"I really hope you like it, sweetie," Isabel put in, wiping off the lip of the batter bowl and turning around the small frying pan to make sure that the crepe would be evenly thin. She managed to steal enough of a look around the counter to see that Maria had brought the garment entirely out of the thin cardboard box and was holding it up against herself to check the cut.

"Ohmigod, it's gorgeous! Thank you so much!!" She put the gift down and hurried over to give the taller girl an impulsive hug. "I'll think of you every time I wear it." She thought about that a second, and then turned to Michael. "Just so long as *you're* only thinking about me, bud!!" That got a laugh. "Well, since you're busy cooking Izzie, who do you want to nominate? I'll make sure to give you my next pick once you're free."

"Umm, how about Kyle??"

"Can't open presents," Kyle joked, tearing away a huge chunk of waffle with his fork. "Eating."

----------

"Here okay?" Alex asked, gesturing at a booth with one bench free. The Crashdown's dining room was nearly full already, and it was going to get fuller. That was the point, after all.

Isabel looked first at the faces on the other side of the table, and smiled. "Great." She sat down and began to shuffle towards the wall side of the booth so that Alex could join her. "Merry Christmas, Mister Hanson."

"Just call me..." Timothy Hanson seemed to run out of gas in midsentence as he realized that Isabel actually hadn't referred to him as the Sheriff. "Well," he muttered, chuckling softly, "I guess that'll do."

Isabel had already moved on to greet the fourth attendee at the table, a short woman with a pleasant, narrow face and dark hair with just a tinge of grey, who seemed to be maybe a few years older than Isabel's own mother. "Hi, I don't think we've met. Isabel Evans."

"Oh, I know who you are, Miss Evans," the lady replied in a soft treble tweet. "You wouldn't remember me, but how could I forget seeing you at Sunset Villa? Never spoke with you, as best as I can remember, but I asked more than one young volunteer what he or she was doing spending a beautiful Saturday visiting a bunch of old invalids, only to hear that Isabel Evans talked them into it, and have them point you out. I'm Evelyn Myers."

"Hi," Isabel said, smiling.

"And is this dashing young man your beau, Isabel?" Evelyn continued, turning her attention on Alex.

"In a way, I suppose," Isabel admitted, laughing at hearing someone actually use the word 'beau' in conversation to mean boyfriend or significant other. "This is my fiancee, Alex Whitman."

"Fiancee?" Evelyn's head jerked, and she focused on Isabel's hand, spotting the ring even though Isabel carefully made no movement that might serve to point it out or emphasize it. "Set a date yet?"

"Actually yes, early in April," Isabel admitted. "Didn't feel like we needed to wait much longer."

"Miss Myers," Alex said, extending his hand across the table as he introduced himself. "I have to say, you don't look old enough to live in a place like Sunset Villa."

"I don't!" she snapped in surprise. "I work there... registered nurse." When Evelyn realized that Alex was blushing at his mistake, she laughed goodnaturedly and smiled in an obvious attempt to put him back at ease.

"Nice to meet you, Mister Alex Whitman."

At that point the conversation was interrupted by someone rapping a spoon against a big plate to get attention. Isabel looked over and smiled - it was Maria, of course, standing where she could be seen by most of the people in the room, even in the booths off on the far ends. (The space had not really been designed to make her task easy.)

"Okay, first off, I'd like to thank you all for coming to my first Crashdown Cafe christmas party... I knew I was taking a bit of a risk futzing with an old favorite, the simple, uncomplicated Christmas turkey dinner special -- but I also knew that the Crashdown is much more to all of you than simply a place to go and get something to eat. It's a place you can go to be with the people that you care about, the other members of your community, and so I was betting that if I threw a celebration that was a little warmer, a little more friendly and in the spirit of the Christmas season, you would come."

Maria beamed as she launched into the next part of her speech. "I'd like to remind all of you to have your meal tickets ready, you were given these when you paid for your plate, and the wait staff will be collecting them when they deliver the main course. Anybody with small presents for the gift exchange, just come up and put them on the table next to the front door, you'll be given a slip of paper to write down your name for the selection order drawing. And I want EVERYONE to be chiming in for the carol sing, so make sure to get those pipes good and loose. Have a great time, everyone!!"

Alex smiled as the drink pitchers and rolls started to come out of the kitchen. "Nice turnout, huh??"

"Yeah," Isabel agreed. "Lots of old familiar faces, actually... as well as some new ones." She had seen Sean DeLuca and Brody Davis as they came in, and Laurie DuPree had flown in from Arizona to see her quasi-brother on Christmas.

----------

"Okay, that's the floors all swept, is there anything else?" Michael asked with a smile.

Maria finished brushing the last of the upholstery cleaner off a spot on the armchair, got up and cast an eye around Michael's place. "No, I think we're done... nothing that can't wait at least." She watched as Michael propped a bag of garbage up next to the door and sat down on the couch... then Maria propped herself up on the other end and stretched her legs out across his lap. "It was a good party huh??"

"Yeah, not bad," Michael agreed. "A nice size." In an attempt to widen the social circle a little beyond the usual people, some lengths had been gone to to get some people to come to Michael's new year's eve party who were not actually in on the 'alien secret.' Which had been pretty much a success, between a few of Michael's friends from work and their girls, various acquaintances of the 'loft girls' from the junior college and respective jobs, along with in many cases the significant others of such acquaintances... plus Martine of course, the party had gotten up to about twenty-five people at its height, and everybody seemed to be having fun.

"I guess that was how we managed to get the critical mass necessary to have Max and Liz in the same room without setting off a cataclysmic nuclear detonation," Maria mused, completely unaware of how badly she was inverting the metaphor. "I even saw them talking together for a little bit. Hmmm... so, what did you think of Tess' quote unquote 'Just friend', Brian from Spanish Lit??"

"I really liked him," Michael commented, stroking Maria's calf affectionately, which prompted a soft sigh from Maria. "It's too bad he left about a half hour before midnight."

"Oh, really??" she replied, disappointed. "Do you know why??"

"Couldn't say... didn't see them arguing or anything beforehand... maybe he had other plans." Michael let out a low breath himself.

"Ohh, on another note," Maria said after a moment, "Rebecca Gilroy is definitely interested in subletting Isabel's place in the loft, as long as she can be moved out by the weekend of the 22nd, which Isabel thinks so." She yawned a bit. "We'll kinda have to drop the Upsilon-Phi-Omega thing, but it shouldn't be too big an adjustment. One alien girl, one girl who knows about aliens, and one girl who doesn't. It'll let us keep the loft until the lease comes up in May at least. Ahhh... and then we'll be able to sort something out. Tess should be able to swing a little place of her own, if that teaching thing at the junior high works out. And... well, maybe I'll be moving in with someone else??"

"Was that a hint??"

"No, actually, I was kind of thinking about Liz, though if you make me an offer I'll probably be all over shacking up with you," Maria laughed. "Just trying not to push it. Boy, it's really weird to think that just as Liz is moving back home to Roswell, Alex and Isabel are off to Las Cruces. Gonna be really weird to think of her not being right there in the next room... more like a five hour drive!!"

"Actually..." Michael looked around, and then pulled himself closer to Maria so that he could speak at an almost-whisper, even though there was no reason to think that anyone could hear him. (Maria laughed at a little as her legs bumped from Michael moving underneath them... he stopped when she was just not quite sitting in his lap.) "Isabel, Tess, and I have been working on something whenever we had the chance. We haven't told anyone else until now that I know of... it might help as far as keeping Isabel and Alex in touch - Max too, for that matter, though we won't be able to use it often outside of emergencies, because it could attract attention."

"What... what is this 'something'??" Maria asked, her head swimming suddenly. "Why haven't you told anyone?"

"Well, partly because we didn't want you or Alex, or Kyle to stop us because it seemed too dangerous, or to worry." Maria started to feel a frown forming on her face. "We've been working on molecular transportation... teleportation, effectively."

"You mean, blipping out from one place and into another with your powers?" Maria paused for an instant. "You're damn right I'd have worried and tried to stop you! For god's sake, if anything goes wrong, you might not blip back in again, or arrive dead, or any of a number of things... don't tell me it's not a possibility."

"Maybe theoretically," Michael allowed. "But we've been very careful and I'm convinced that it's reasonably safe now... as safe as driving around here or flying, maybe."

Maria was still a little doubtful, but she decided to give him the benefit of the doubt for now. "How does it work? Where have you gone??"

"I... it's a little hard to describe how we do it, except that we need to work together. All three of us working together helps... I want to start training Max on it soon, now that we think we're ready." He smiled, brushing aside a lock of her hair. "As far as where I've been... I went to Marathon, and I've been to Laurie's place in Arizona. As well as shorter trips like up to the pod chamber. So far, we've never gone up and talked to anyone on one of these trips... we didn't want anyone to maybe catch on that there was something odd about it, so we just didn't want anyone to know we were wherever at all."

"I want you to send me somewhere," Maria blurted out, and Michael blinked at her. "That's the acid test. If you can put me through this without freaking out, then I'll know that it's safe enough for you to keep messing around with it."

"Hmmm..." Michael's face creased as he considered that. "Yeah, actually, we've been wanting to try it with someone human. Once we're sure we're ready, okay??"

"Alright," Maria agreed, shifting herself forward a little onto Michael's lap. "Any idea what you're going to wear for the wedding?? Isabel's booked that gorgeous little ceremony hall at the Convention center -- she actually got it for the evening of the last Saturday in spring break, April the second I think... from five o'clock until nine thirty. Has Alex talked to you guys about who's to be best man and ushers yet??"

"No, he hasn't brought it up yet," Michael said, kissing Maria firmly and definitely on the lips. "And in case this is part of your way of subtly hinting around, Maria Lauren Deluca, then here: I will ask you to marry me and share the rest of my life when the time is right. In the next year or so. *Probably* not until after Isabel and Alex are married, so that she can't accuse me of trying to steal her thunder."

Maria had to blink away tears for a moment to stare into his eyes. "Awww, spaceboy." She sighed happily. "Now, that I will seal with a kiss, if you don't mind."

Michael had no objections at all.

---------

"Hmmm." Martine examined the playing board carefully. It was clear to all three of them that if she extended the little blue marble into position to continue the conduit that she was trying to build across the board, it would also mean re-establishing the line that connected Tess' source and destination regions, and which Kyle had sacrificed so much to break up. But Martine wasn't really sure what else to do with it, so she considered again, and then tentatively tried moving it off in another direction, hoping to cross Tess' red line at another point.

"Not bad," Kyle observed. They had been playing Chinese Checkers in the loft for about an hour -- it was sunday afternoon after new year's day, and Kyle and Martine were going to have to head back up to Albuquerque the next day to start their new semester of classes.

"So," Tess said as Kyle considered his own move, "Are you two officially boyfriend/girlfriend, going steady, whatever?" She turned to Martine. "Did he actually ask you?"

"In fact," Martine shot a shy look over at Kyle, "I think I asked him... it was on our sixth date, a warm November night and we were waiting for a movie to start outside on the commons. I started asking him about where he thought we were at, you know, typical girl questions to ask... and I think he knew what I wanted but made me ask him." She swatted Kyle affectionately on the shoulder as he moved his piece, and then waited to see what Tess would do.

"Yeah, he's tricky that way," Tess agreed.

"So... umm, tell me a little about yourself Tess," Martine continued. "Kyle's told me a little of your story... I hope you don't mind, I kinda pushed him for details after he said that his dad had took in an orphan and you were like a sister to him. Told me how you'd grown up travelling with your dad from place to place, and then all of a sudden he disappeared." She made a sympathetic sad face.

Tess shot a look over at Kyle surreptitiously. Unseen by Martine, he shrugged apologetically. "Yeah, that was... extremely weird. We, um, we never did figure out exactly what happened with him, though I... I do think that he's dead." She sighed. "That probably isn't the best thing to talk about. But Kyle and his dad were amazing, and the other friends I've made here. I really feel like Roswell is home." She shook her head. "Martine, Kyle said that you have a cousin who lives here??"

"Yeah, second cousin once removed really. But cousin Jay and his wife have been really great about letting me crash when I want to come down to spend some time with Roswell when he's down here and staying with the Whitmans."

Tess won the game.

Kyle managed to get a quick word alone with her before he had to drive back home. "I just really wanted to know what you thought of Martine," he said. "As corny as it sounds, your opinion really does mean a lot to me."

"She seems great, Kyle. I really like her," Tess assured him. "Wish I had the time to get to know her a little better, but that'll come in due course I guess." She winked at him teasingly.

"Cool," Kyle laughed. "Don't worry, you'll find yours when the time is right."

"What, my Mister Perfect??" she shot back.

"Yep." At Tess' look of disbelief, Kyle insisted, "Just wait and see."

Tess shrugged, then changed the subject. "By the way, have you heard anything about what Liz is going to be up to? I know that she's effectively dropped out of Northwestern, she doesn't seem to have signed up for school or gotten a job around here..."

"Not really," Kyle admitted. "I could understand it if she just wanted to take some time off."

"Somehow, that doesn't sound like Liz Parker to me," Tess said softly. "Dead fiancee or no dead fiancee. That is a woman who just cannot sit still for long."


TO BE CONTINUED...

Title: The Saga of the Pod Squad
Part: 7
Author: Chris Kenworthy
E-mail: kelworth@chriskweb.net
Disclaimer: I have no rights over the characters and situations of Roswell, this is a not-for-profit creative outlet so please don't sue me. :]
Synopsis: A broad-strokes Alt-timeline picture of what the gang's future should have been, starting from the junior prom.


"We don't have to agree on a place for the two of us today," Alex mentioned as they stood together in the doorway, looking this way and that. "I could, I dunno, get a hotel room and keep you up to speed on the apartment hunt by phone." He sighed uncertainly. "Still, the guy said that it's ours if we want it."

Isabel paused to consider, fluffing a lock of hair impatiently behind her shoulder. "I'm not entirely sure... it's nice, if slightly unusual -- What do *you* think?"

Alex only had to pause a minute to answer that. "I have to say, I love it. I just... well, I don't really want to commit to an apartment if YOU don't love it too."

Isabel stepped back out of the doorway, away from the comfy bedroom, and stepped into the living area that formed the main hub of the apartment. One of the room's walls was common with the corridor that connected a half-dozen other flats on this side of the building, and the opposite wall was exterior, with windows that looked out on low desert hills. The other two sides of the living area had doors or open doorframes that led into the smaller rooms that made up the rest of the apartment - a kitchen, bathroom, closet, the bedroom, and...

"If we take it, you can turn that spare room into a workroom," she commented matter-of-factly.

Alex just grinned. "Not a chance... come on, you're going to need it more as a study room. I don't plan on taking that much work home from the office, and I can set up a desk for my laptop out in the main living area."

Isabel thought about that, and didn't argue. "You just want to live here so you can go up and down the escalators every day."

"Well... I won't deny it comes out as a plus. I've never heard of an apartment building with escalators in it... it's unique, it's kinda cool!" The building manager had shown them these on their way in, of course, as well as the back stairs, which were useful for moving furniture and such.

She turned to smile at him. "Okay. Let's write out a cheque. How much did it come to, first, last, security deposit, the whole nine yards??"

"Pretty much the last of my signing bonus," Alex laughed. "But we'll be able to handle the rent easy on my paycheque and your housing budget." He gave her a hug and a kiss, and then sat down at the living room table to fill out the cheque and the lease that the manager had left with them.

"I have to admit, I feel better knowing that there'll be a place waiting for me when I'm done back in Roswell, packing up my stuff from the loft, and that I've actually set foot in it," Isabel admitted. "Yeah... I can see the two of us being happy here for quite a long time."

Alex shot another happy look over his shoulder. "Maybe even more than the two of us??"

She arched an eyebrow playfully. "And whatever could you mean by that?"

"Well..." Alex started to blush. "We're going to be getting married in a few months. I know that we're both still young, but traditionally around the same time as people get married they think about... having kids."

There was a pause, and then Isabel pulled up another chair at the table and put her hand in Alex's. "Okay. First of all, you know that I'd like nothing better than to have a baby with you, but it's not quite as easy as that. First off, yes, we're both young, and I'm still in school. Also -- well..." She looked around by reflex, as if checking to make sure that no government spies were monitoring them from the bedroom, or trying to pick up listening devices. "The whole Czechoslovakian thing. I mean... I'm a hybrid from a completely different species than all life on Earth, and it took me over forty years to grow into being a little girl, inside some creepy-ass incubation pod! Given all of that... how can we be sure that if I get pregnant, it would be safe -- safe for me, safe for the baby??"

Alex thought about that. "Well, nothing is guaranteed to be safe in this world, more's the pity. Max did ask Kal Langley about hybrids having kids with humans, and he seemed to think that there wasn't too much risk... not compared to hybrids having babies with other hybrids, considering the recessive gene effect."

"I'm not sure I have too much faith in Kal Langley's information, considering that he's shown a thorough lack of interest in our welfare," Isabel put in.

"In any event, I wasn't necessarily saying anytime soon," Alex continued. "We can wait... maybe there'll be an opportunity to learn more." He finished signing the check and pushed his chair over in order to wrap his arm around Isabel's shoulders. "Somehow, I'll find a way to make sure that you can feel secure... and our children, at such time as we want to have any. I don't know how, but I promise that I will."

She smiled and kissed him. "Wanna try a practice run? Give that new bed a workout?"

"Try and stop me!!"

----------

Maria pulled off the two-lane road and parked her car next to a beat-up green Honda that she recognized. After getting out, she took a moment to check the license plate on the Japanese car and make sure. Yep, it was definitely the third-hand automobile (using the term rather loosely,) that Liz had bought about a week and a half before. She had asked Maria to come along and take a look at the engine, to verify whether it was worth the small amount its previous owner had asked for it, and would keep operating at least a few months without more expensive repairs.

A few months exploring the area brought Maria to Liz herself, bending over near a clump of low-lying shrubbery and doing something that Maria couldn't make out the details of immediately. "Hey, thank god I found you out here!!"

Liz straightened up to a standing position, after a little difficulty getting leverage. "Why? Is something wrong??"

For a second, Maria couldn't make any sense out of that question. "Is something WRONG??? You leave a note for your parents 'back home by eight,' and take off, without letting me or any of the rest of the gang know where you're going, I find you way out here in the middle of nowhere with no way home but that construct of steel and too little rubber for which 'unreliable' is an understatement, and you have to ask me if something's *wrong*?!??"

Liz blinked in utter shock, started to shoot back what would have been a pretty scathing comeback, then thought better of it and counted to five mentally. Maria was obviously worried about you, she told herself silently. Whether she had reason to or not, don't bite her head off for it.

Once Liz thought she had recovered enough composure, she began. "I wasn't aware that I needed to log my plans beforehand with you or anyone else, and I didn't think the car was THAT bad. Sure, there's always the chance of a breakdown, but there's my cell phone, and I wouldn't need to go far 'thataway,'" (she pointed back past the vehicles,) "to be close enough to route 265 to get a decent signal.

Maria shook her head. "Too bad that little trick doesn't work when someone else, oh say me, wants to call you and check in."

"Maria, I gotta ask," Liz said after a moment. "Are my folks so freaked out about me going out for the day, or is this just you??"

Maria thought about that. Yes, it had been Liz's mother who had called her in the first place, asking if she happened to know Liz's whereabouts, but there hadn't been any particular concern or fright about the matter. Maria had generated that all on her own, after figuring out that she *couldn't* account for Liz's whereabouts, for the first time since her best friend came home to Roswell. "Umm, just me I guess. Don't worry, I didn't get them... all worried or anything. Though Michael, Max, and Tess are slightly concerned too."

Liz shook her head. "Maria -- you're treating like I'm some delicate, fragile creature!! I'm not that far along, and I'm quite capable of taking care of myself AND my unborn child out here. I've got a job to do!"

"What??" Maria was speechless for a second, and then she broke down laughing, shaking her head continuously the whole time. "You think I was being so overprotective because you're pregnant, girlfriend??"

"Ummm... well, no offense intended, but duh!!"

Maria shook her head. "Actually, we were *kinda* thinking that you'd managed to go and get yourself kidnapped by some other evil alien!" She looked down at the ground, still laughing. "Well, I'll move to put the whole thing behind us, and-- oh, what job?"

"Umm... heh?"

"You said that you had a job to do," Maria repeated. "'Splainey?"

"Oh, right, that." Liz sighed. "It's just volunteer work right now. For the New Mexico alliance for the preservation of endangered species. If I stick with it for a month or two and do good work, they might even be able to pay me."

"Endangered species, huh??" Maria considered that. "What, are you counting bushes or something??"

"Trying to trap a lesser prairie chicken," Liz laughed. "So that it can be tagged with a miniature radio transmitter and its movements monitored."

Maria raised one eyebrow. "Iinterestinng..."

----------

Michael climbed up the rocky path at an even pace, paused at the familiar spot, and handprinted his way inside the pod chamber. Once his eyes adjusted to the dim, eerie blue light, he could recognize Max sitting not far away, idly rooting through the box of 'Czechoslovakian stuff.'

"Oh, hey man, thanks for meeting me here."

"No problem, I didn't really have much to do with my afternoon off anyway." Michael stepped over and sat down near his best friend. "What's up??"

Max sighed before even attempting to answer that. "I'm not sure, man. Feeling kinduv at loose ends -- worse than usual. Doing okay at my classes, but I don't even seem to care." And he let out a quiet groan at the thought.

"Hmmm." Michael thought about that. "Could be the February blues... even here in New Mexico they sometimes manage to survive long enough to catch someone -- I think. Not sure I've had any for a few years." He shot a sidelong look at Max to see if the half-joke made any particular impression. "Or could it have something to do with how Liz Parker came back into the area again?"

"You know, it just might." Max sighed. "I've seen her a few times since New Year's... she seems to be doing pretty well, getting over the whole Nicholas/Casey thing faster than I probably would -- but there's something different about her. Something that I can't really put my finger on."

"Oh, really?" Michael said, keeping a slightly straighter face than usual. Luckily for him, Max didn't notice.

"And then there's Saint John's..." Max said a few moments later. "I don't know, it's been a good place to spend the last little while, but -- liberal arts is just code for 'poor schmuck who doesn't know where he's headed in life.' I need a path. I want to find a calling." He took a deep breath. "And I think I need to move back to Roswell for that."

"Wow." Michael considered that a minute. "Have you talked to your folks about that?"

"Not really... kinda wanted to bounce it off you and some of my other friends first."

"Well... we've all gotta do what we've gotta do, and it sounds like you know... parts of what you want to do." Michael laughed wryly. "Figure the rest of it out and then go for it, that's my advice. On a more personal level, I'd love to see more of you around the town... it's been different ever since Isabel moved over to Las Cruces, and having Liz back isn't exactly the same. Two members of the original Pod squad isn't close to enough."

Max laughed at that. "Okay. Hmmm..." He dug down into the box and came up with one of the odd metallic orbs. "Do you ever think that maybe these were meant for something else, other than showing us that message from my mom?"

Michael considered. "Not sure if I've ever thought about it... why?? Have you got a thought?"

"More like a feeling," he confessed. "Not sure about what or how... but there's almost like a physical vibe, a potential, that I can sense just below the threshold of sound when I hold one." He paused a moment. "You wanna try, see if you can pick it up too??"

----------

When Liz looked up from the display of brightly colored skirts in the mall boutique window, there he was. Max Evans, staring at her with, possibly, almost the same expression she had been contemplating the clothes with.

"Um, hi!" she said after a moment. "Home from school for the weekend?"

Max smiled. "Pretty much like clockwork, every two weeks. Were you going to go in??"

Liz hesitated only a split instant before shaking her head. "No, I couldn't justify those kinds of prices for a lycra belt that I'll probably never wear again." She sighed slightly, and started down the mall corridor, gesturing to the effect that Max was welcome to walk beside her if he should so wish. After a moment's hesitation, he did just that.

"Classes okay?"

"Not too bad," Max replied. "Are you still hunting for the wily and elusive lesser prairie chicken??"

Liz laughed softly. "In between a few other projects, yeah, but I haven't had much luck finding them. Maybe there's a lot fewer of them left in the Roswell area than we thought."

"Or else they're smarter than the av-er-age chicken!" Max deadpanned, and Liz almost choked on an explosion of laughter. It took more than a minute for her to calm down enough to talk. "Oh, thanks Max, I needed a really good laugh like... hehe, like that." She paused for a second. "Not even sure why that's so funny... the averge chicken."

"Well, you start with a classic Yogi Bear line," Max answered will all the outward appearance of scholar's sobriety, "and substitute in an extremely humorous word at the end of the gag. Studies have shown that 'chicken' is among the top three funniest words in the English language. Or at least... it used to be. I'm not sure the question has been revisited since the early nineties, and language is a constantly evolving entity." He paused. "So is humor, I guess, in a kind of different way."

Liz smiled. "Well, I think in a few weeks the prairie chickens can go back to stealing pic-a-nic baskets for all that I care. Won't be able to keep up with running around the desert and doing fieldwork for long at this rate."

"Oh, really?" Max asked. "I would have said that the fresh air, or something at any rate, was doing you good. You look *terriffic*!"

Liz did an uncertain take at this remark, and realized that she was reaching out to take hold of Max's arm. "Hey, do you have time to grab something at the food court? There's something I want to talk about, and not right here."

Max shrugged, the curiosity showing on his face. "Got nothing *but* time."

It took a few minutes for them to decide what they wanted and make their purchases at the modest 'food fair extravaganza.' Liz settled on a garden salad and pink grapefruit juice, while Max took a bottled water and a paper plate full of spaghetti and marinara sauce. The tables weren't crowded on this particular late friday afternoon, and Liz had no trouble picking out seats near the edge of the court where no-one else would be particularly near them. After they had each made an inroad on food, Max asked, "Okay, so what's the big secret anyway?"

"It's not exactly a secret," Liz disclaimed, "even though the subject is kinda private. I've only just started telling people other than Maria, and that includes my parents. Thought you should hear it from me, given... given our history." She took a deep breath. "Max, I'm pregnant."

"Oh," he said, so mildly at first she wondered if he had actually heard what she said. Then "Oh... oh!" in ascending order of shock and surprise. "And who... well duh, of course. Oh... *OHH*." He stared off into some faraway distance for a long few seconds, then shook himself and tried to recover composure. "Did you... I mean, did Casey know before that whole thing with Nicholas? I'm assuming... well, of *course* Casey was the father, right? Stupid to even ask, I'm sorry."

"It's okay," she assured him. "Yeah, Casey's pretty much... well, he was the only candidate, as it were. And to answer your other question, yes, I told him, umm, about fifteen minutes before Nicholas came to my door... just after taking the pee test." Her voice was thick with bitter irony. "He told me that we'd move the wedding up and have it early this spring, maybe just a small ceremony with our families in Chicago. And he said... he said he'd take care of me." Tears were running down her face now. "I guess I can't blame him for not living up to that, can I?? It's not his fault he-- he got k-k-"

All of a sudden, Max was next to her, his arms wrapped around her as she cried, comforting silently. "No, it's not," he whispered silently. "It's not anybody's fault but Nicholas'. Losing him -- losing the father of your child, your fiancee was something you should never have had to go through... there's nothing I can say that will make any more sense out of it than 'that's the world we live in.' And, to whatever extent the battles that I've chosen to fight have put you and the people you love in danger... I apologise. Again."

Liz struggled back out of Max's embrace to look at him... brushing tears out of her eyes. (Huh, no makeup goo... guess that mascara really WAS run-proof and indelible.) "It's not your fault either, Max. I realize that. You never chose to pick a fight with Nicholas... he hated you before he ever met you. And you would have eliminated him as a threat before, if you'd had the chance."

Max smiled. "The important thing to remember, Liz... is that there are lots of people, here in Roswell, who love you and care you and would do anything to keep you, and now your baby, safe. I'd like to think I qualify as one of them." She smiled back. "So... have you been going to your doctor? Taking all the tests?"

Liz made a pained look. "Well, I've been to see an O-B, but..." She closed her eyes while confessing something that she hadn't even admitted to Maria. "I'm scared of all of the tests! I mean -- Ava said that I was changed, and the kind of thing I did when escaping from Nicholas... well, there are human beings who can do that maybe, but I bet they've been to circus school for years, plus being double-jointed from an early age. I can't say either of those things!"

Max nodded silently, and then got a 'light bulb' look on his face. "Okay, well we'll work together on it. Do the reading on what's involved with each test, and try them all ourselves... either the simple bio lab way, or otherwise using my... talent, and connecting to you."

Liz blinked. "Well, thanks. I'd thought of trying something along those lines myself. But it's probably going to be a lot of work for every other weekend..."

"It's not going to be just every other weekend," Max announced. "I'm transferring back to Roswell, and going into nursing." At Liz's surprised look, he grinned. "It was something that I've been thinking of already. I've already got a lot of the biology and biochem requirements taken care of."

"Wow," was all that Liz could say. "Well, thanks for the help." Max shrugged 'don't mention it.' "Say... there was something else I wanted to mention."

"Oh --" Max allowed himself a friendly laugh. "What NOW??"

Liz giggled too. "Well... I've been SEEING Casey every now and then. The first time was after New Year's. Really weird, kinda like a hallucination but - well, not as scary. It reminded me of what you'd said about being haunted, that one Christmas, and I wanted to compare notes."

"You saw him?" Max blinked for a few seconds straight at that one. "What does he say to you."

"Nothing terribly much... that he's in a better place now, that he's sorry he won't be there when our daughter grows up. Yeah, he seems to be certain that it's a girl! And... um, well, this may sound weird, but I kind of told him about the alien stuff. Had to explain what happened with Nicholas and all."

"Umm... I guess that's okay," Max said slowly.

----------


"You almost done packing??" Isabel called, stepping out of the bathroom in their apartment.

"Yeah, thirty seconds," Alex's voice came from the bedroom. "But I have to say I'm not sure this is such a good idea."

It was actually closer to forty-five minutes before Alex emerged from the bedroom, a bag of luggage in each hand, and in all that time Isabel had not let up her smoky glare at the doorway. "Not *sure*??" she repeated slowly.

It took Alex a few moments to partially shake off the effect of that look. "Well, we're kinduv going to be the center of a lot of attention anyway... it seems like the last time to be doing anything that people might notice as 'unusual.' We're what, just going to show up in Roswell with this much luggage and no car??"

"I've worked it all out... 'There was car trouble. We took the greyhound, and Michael picked us up at the bus station.' How hard is that to remember?" Isabel growled in frustration. "We're almost a day and a half behind schedule, and this is a relatively easy way to make up some of that time!"

"Sheez, you really are turning into the wedding nazi," Alex muttered under his breath. "I didn't really believe them. Well, okay mein fuhrer... if you want to 'zap' us across to Roswell, and the other people in the squad agree that it's safe, I'm not going to object."

She considered that a moment, then melted and walked across the room to give him a quick kiss. "I'm sorry if I'm being pushy, darling. I just know that it would drive me crazy to drive all that way, knowing that there was a faster way. Call it a mental health necessity."

Alex smiled back. "I just said that I'll do it... go on, make the call."

Isabel beamed and went over to the small end table where the touch tone phone was kept. (She insisted on having a receiver that wasn't cordless, since there was a possibilty of someone accidentally overhearing a conversation because they were listening on the same frequency.) Alex looked over his bride-to-be as she placed the call: Isabel had cut her hair in a completely new style about a week and a half ago, and the long curls that had reached nearly to her waist were gone. Now layered, softly waved strands of pure gold framed her face, only the longest of them reaching as far as her collar. Alex kinda thought he still liked it better the old way, but she was still breathtakingly gorgeous.

"Hey, yeah, it's me. Okay, how about we do this in three steps, first the pile of luggage, then Alex, and finally me?" A short pause. "Yep, yeah... oh, dammit, I nearly forgot. Alex, could you get the window??"

"Umm... huh?"

"Just... leave it open a little. Enough to let molecules out."

Somewhat uncertainly, Alex pulled the curtain aside a little, lifted the window frame perhaps five inches, and stood well back. Isabel, still on the phone, was staring intently at the stacked luggage... and one by one the bags burst into swirls of color and wind that streamed out the window and were gone. "Okay, they're off. Let me know when you've got them all put back together on your end," she instructed over the phone.

Alex had never really seen this 'teleportation' in action before, and he was more than a little creeped out by the demonstration. That was what she wanted to do to him?? Sure, yeah, they hadn't had an accident or a problem putting someone together at the other end yet, but hell, it only took once!!

"You ready sweetie?" Isabel asked, turning to look at him.

"Ummm..." Taking a deep breath, Alex forced himself to calm down a little. He was being paranoid... if all four of the hybrids, not to mention Maria and Kyle, thought that this method of travel was reasonably safe, then probably it was. He had just been startled by how quickly it had happened, and that it hadn't really looked anything like a transporter beam effect. "Okay, yeah."

The sensation, when it hit him, was hard to describe. Alex never remembered an actual sense of his body getting taken apart... possibly because none of his senses had a frame of reference for that eventuality. But his skin, his entire body felt like it had gotten stuck head-first into a lake that was colder than freezing, yet not entirely uncomfortable -- and he couldn't so much as shiver. There was no smell or taste beyond the hint of open skies on a chilly spring morning, but he saw a strange color show and heard a deep, resonant thrum that seemed to move all the way through his bones... and then he was standing in Michael's living room, every fiber of his being shocked to full awakening.

"Wow..." he breathed, and blurted the only thing on his mind. "Right at the end there I had that sensation when you're falling, except you don't fall."

Max smiled. "Actually, you did fall. Sorry, man, I was being a bit too careful and you materialized an inch and a half above the floor. We'll try to do better next time."

Alex thought about that. "Hey, as long as my shoes, or my feet for that matter, aren't embedded in anything solid, I'm fine. Do I have to move, or..."

"Actually, we'd rather you didn't," Tess said. Alex realized that the luggage was about four feet to one side, and the three aliens were concentrating on a space that was a similar distance away on the other side. Obviously that was where Isabel would end up, and he'd better not do something stupid like walk into it.

It was a long, breathless wait, and then she arrived like a clap of thunder and an exploding rainbow. "Hey!!" She turned to find Alex, hugged him and kissed him. "Now, that wasn't so scary, was it?"

Alex laughed. "Can I go again, can I go again??" he mimicked in a squeaky little kid voice.

"No," Michael instantly announced, and the rest of them laughed.

"Okay..." Isabel took a piece of paper and unfolded it. "First things first, we've got a fitting appointment to get to. Is Maria here too??"

"No, she's at the diner, but she insisted that she'd be ready to go when you girls came to pick her up," Michael reported. "Where are you guys going to be staying, until the night before the big day?"

"Umm... at her parent's place," Alex said.

"Okay, I'll run you and all the luggage over there while the girls are getting measured and trimmed," Max laughed, "and you can unpack."

"Great," Isabel continued, almost out the door with Tess already, "and we'll meet for dinner at 5:30 at Eiffel. You will ALL get assignments." And with that, she left the three guys behind, departing in a cloud of bridal superiority.

----------

"Okay, at the risk of stating the perfectly obvious," Isabel announced, "this was a GREAAAT idea!!"

"Well, you didn't have to tell me," Maria shot back. The two of them, Tess, and Liz were all soaking in steaming tubs full of herbal oils and essences, sea salts, and moisturizing elixers, which was the Paradiso spa's Tropical rejuvenation ultimate steam bath. "My idea, remember."

"OUR idea," Tess insisted, not wanting to be cut out of the credit. "I was the one who... oh, nevermind, it's too tiring to argue about who said what. Agree??"

"Well, you certainly both get plenty of credit from me," Liz agreed. "And thanks for inviting me along - I know this was supposed to be a wedding party only thing, but..."

"Hey, no problem," Tess insisted. "I mean, you would probably have been the third bridesmaid, except the timing wasn't exactly right. You deserve this as much as any of us do... and, since it just so happens that Nancy couldn't make it, we can talk about... you know. If it happens to come up."

"So," Maria said, changing the subject. "What did Alex's parents want to talk to you guys about??" There was no answer for a moment. "Isabel??"

"Oh, ummm..."

"I bet it was a wedding present," Tess said. "Are they buying you a condo or something??"

"Tess!!" Isabel sighed. "Alex's folks don't have *that* kind of money -- but yes, it was a present of a sort."

"I know," Liz guessed confidently. "Starts with an 'h', rhymes with funny-moon..."

"Ohh, you know, I completely forgot about that," Maria chimed in. "It's traditional some places... I can totally see the Whitmans doing that. Where are they sending you??"

"And when?" Tess pressed. "It can't be right after the ceremony, because you have to get back to campus for classes..."

"Let me get a word in edgewise, why don't you??" Isabel blurted out. "As in, quiet!!" The babbling from the other girls hushed instantly. "The Whitman parents have, very generously, arranged a six-day, five-night getaway for us in beautiful... Myrtle Beach, south Carolina. A month from now, in late April, after my exams are done and before the summer term starts up. Alex's dad even called his work to make sure he could have the time off... which can't have been that easy considering what he had to go through to work long-distance this week, etcetera etcetera."

"Well, playing the honeymoon card probably got him some distance," Tess commented. "Everyone seems to go the extra mile for honeymooners!"

There was quiet for a little bit. "Are you sure that staying in here this long is alright for the baby, Liz??" Isabel asked.

Liz laughed. "Yeah, Max was up all night checking it out, it's completely fine."

"He's so cute, doing the mister Nancy nurse thing," Maria opined. "Doing everything he can to take care of you and the baby." A pause. "Do you think there's any chance that the two of you will..."

"Probably not right now," Liz replied. "I mean, yes, Max is being great, and I'm *so* grateful for the support and the love I can feel from him... and I love him too. But the reason why it's working between the two of us now is because it's just a friend thing. I'm not ready to get romantically involved with anyone yet, least of all starting something back up with Max. And I know he understands that." Liz sighed softly. "There's a part of me that wishes things could be different, sure. But they just aren't."

There was a slightly awkward silence, and then Tess tried changing the subject again. "How's everything going with you and Michael, Maria?"

"Yeah," Liz laughed. "Will I have to be maid of honor next time??"

"Umm..." Maria laughed, slightly nervously. "Things are pretty great, except that we never seem to have enough time to spend together. As far as the second question... Well, the morning after the New Year's Eve party he told me that he wasn't going to propose until after Isabel's wedding. Didn't want to be accused of trying to steal her thunder."

"Hey," Isabel interrupted. "I'm not that bad, am I?"

"Well... you do sometimes have a tendency to obsess about anything not going to plan." Liz smiled. "And every bride deserves to be the center of attention. Heck, that's why I started telling people about the baby weeks ago. I didn't want it to suddenly come out in the midst of all this."

There was a somewhat upset look on Isabel's face, which suddenly disappeared beneath the water. When she emerged a moment later, spraying out a bit of water and blinking furiously, she shrieked "Tess?"

"Hey, no harm meant," Tess managed to say in the midst of her laughter. "Just thought you could do with an extra dose of tropical relaxation... right in the facial area."

They all started laughing helplessly then, even Isabel.

----------

Alex smiled slightly as he opened the door to Isabel's old bedroom in her parents' house and looked around. Isabel's twin-sized bed and the rest of it had been moved out long ago, since for years before she moved to Las Cruces Isabel had been living at the loft with Maria and Tess. Diane Evans had been using the space lately as a craft room, she's said, but there wasn't much evidence of that other than the unusual homemade nicknacks and odd supplies on some of the shelves. A queen-sized foundation and matress had been brought into the room the morning before they arrived... just put on the floor without a conventional bedframe, but neither Alex nor Isabel minded that detail at all. Isabel was lying down on the bed at the moment, paging restlessly through one of her neverending 'to do' lists.

"Oh, hi," she said, looking up a few seconds after Alex walked in. "Everything okay??"

"Oh, yep," Alex confirmed, dropping down onto the bed and wrapping an arm around her. "They just needed me to go over the priority queueing data structures for the scheduling module. I didn't really have time to document them well enough before we left." He let out a loud sigh. "Glad that the company's paying the phone bill on this baby. Have you got your battle plan sorted out for tomorrow?" He tweaked a lock of hair away from her ear. "Three days and counting, wedding Nazi -- actually, less than that now. Two days, twenty-oomph..." Isabel had tossed aside the spiral-ring note book while Alex had been talking, and planted a serious, no-kidding-around kiss onto his face. "Mmm, does that answer your question??" she asked nearly two minutes later.

"Yeah, actually, it kinda does," Alex whispered. "On the other hand, you're bringing up some other very important issues that I think we need to settle out..." He reached up to tickle a pressure point, (discovered quite by accident only a month and a half before,) on the underside of Isabel's jawline that usually made her melt.

She almost literally melted this time, sgging into Alex's embrace and letting out a long, vocal moan. "Come on, it's just weird..." she protested ineffectively.

"Your mom and Max left for the evening," Alex told her. "Your father's down in the basement listening to some music - he made sure to tell me. I kinda think they're trying to give us as much space as possible."

"Yeah, but... It's just still weird - the room that I grew up in..."

"Oh, yeah right," Alex whispered. "Like you need me to remind you that this was where we made love the *first* time."

She blushed. "Well, it was a little different, three years ago. I just couldn't keep my hands off you, and the fear of getting caught made it even worse - even though NEITHER of my parents were home at the time."

"Have we lost the spark already??" Alex teased. "So soon?"

Isabel grinned and pushed him back against the mattress, her hair tickling his face as she kissed the crook of his neck. "Never. But go slow, okay??"

"As you wish." Alex swung her around again, his lips leaving a trail across her cheek and teasing the lobe of her ear. Then he chuckled softly and brought his hands up to her collar. Isabel had changed for the evening into a short sleeved red shirt with buttons down the front, and a comfortable black linen skirt; and Alex disengaged each tiny disk one by one, spreading the sides of the shirt wider as he went. Isabel moaned with anticipation as his fingers teasingly touched her skin and stroked it lightly.

It took a while for them to take off all of each other's clothes, fondling and kissing as they went, listening for any sound of someone climbing the stairs -- just like that first time that Alex had mentioned. Isabel had been in her first year at the local college in Roswell (though she hadn't had any thought of moving out of her parent's house until all the rest of the gang had graduated as well.) They had known how much they loved each other and would do everything they needed to stay together, and they had wanted each other bad enough to taste it. (Especially after Isabel's private striptease routine a week and a half before, after Alex's birthday party.)

Now, years later, Alex smiled as he bent his head to lick the tips of Isabel's luscious smooth orbs, and then to pay due homage to the shrine of her passion. "It's time." And so, with another tender kiss, he moved into position and entered her.

They would be married in three days' time. Right now, Alex Whitman and Isabel Evans were together, and loving each other, (in at least two senses.) As always when they were in the act of this most intimate union, Alex felt that it wasn't correct, in any more than a strict anatomical sense, to talk about the one of them and the other.

For this brief amount of time, they became one soul.

TO BE CONTINUED...

D'you want more cameraman? Well, here ya go, hehe

Title: The Saga of the Pod Squad
Part: 8
Author: Chris Kenworthy
E-mail: kelworth@chriskweb.net
Homepage: http://www.fanfiction.net/~chriskenworthy
Rating: MATURE
Disclaimer: I have no rights over the characters and situations of Roswell, this is a not-for-profit creative outlet so please don't sue me. :]
Synopsis: A broad-strokes AU picture of what the gang's future, starting from the junior prom.


"Okay, your turn," Isabel said, passing the final guest list across the table to Alex. "You kinda need to play hard if you're gonna catch up."

"Yeah, like that's gonna happen," Alex muttered under his breath. "Okay, er, well, this is kinduv a decent one." He turned the list back around while keeping it closer to his side of the table than hers. "Doctor and Missus Willem Petrovchy. I think I met him *once*, when I was like eight, at some boring awards dinner for my Dad's department."

Isabel considered. "That's worth some points," she admitted. "From back when you guys lived in SoCal?" Alex nodded. "And the good doctor RSVP'd that he'd be delighted to attend," she muttered softly. "Okay, yeah, that's worth some decent points... seventy five, how's that??"

"Gotta be eighty-five at least." Alex grinned shrewdly.

"Eighty," she countered, and Alex nodded. "Okay, give it up - now the gloves are off." Alex surrendered up the guest list, and Isabel pondered. "Okay, I didn't play her yet because it sounds kind of hard to believe, but..." She pointed out an entry to him. "Great Aunt Harriet Thomas, from Santa Nina. Now... I want to be very clear." Isabel focused her brown eyes on Alex's with the intensity of a dual-beam particle rifle. "I have *NEVER* heard of this woman until my mom insisted that she had to be sent an invitation. If it were anyone else, I'd suspect she had been made up as a joke, but my mom's sense of humor doesn't run that way."

"Hmmm..." Alex weighed that. "You don't be chance just deliberately tune out when your parents start talking about their distant relatives? I know I kinda do."

"Not *that* much, at least not deliberately," Iz insisted. "And I don't think I space out that much at all. She doesn't talk about them that much... except for weddings I guess."

Alex smiled. "Okay, okay, ninety-five points." He watched Isabel's face, and as she was about to voice an objection, he interrupted with "Ninety-nine, going once."

Her eyes narrowed distrustingly, but she nodded. "Ninety-nine." But she put the list aside instead of offering it back to Alex. "Are you sure you don't want to just elope to Vegas??"

"Not really, not now that it turns out Louise will be able to make it after all... umm, can I help you?" All of a sudden, several tall young men wearing serious expressions on their faces had come up to the table.

"What do *you* want??" Isabel snapped.

"We've come to abduct your fiancee," one of them said in what sounded, ironically, like his best 'Men in Black' voice.

"Oh, lord help us," Isabel muttered, rolling her eyes to the ceiling.

"Hi, Max," Alex said, with a wave. "Guys. 'Sit time for the party already?"

"Why else would we kidnap you?" Kyle asked, making a 'stand up already' gesture. "Your cadre will be arriving once we've made off with the groom, princess."

"Okay, okay, just one thing before you guys leave." Iz's eyes flashed darkly. "We've talked about this already, but I felt I had to say it again in case a 'last minute change of plans' was being considered: If I find out, even on my deathbed, that any kind of dancing girl, or girls, were involved in this bachelor party... Well, suffice it to say I'll find some unmentionable way to make sure that all four of you rue the day! Do I make myself sufficiently clear??"

"Um, hypothetical question," Kyle shot back, waving his hand from the elbow like a little kid with a question for the teacher. "What if you find out on your deathbed, and we've already passed away??"

"I will figure something out, even if I need to find your next spirit incarnation and track it across the planet!! Do not test me, Buddha buddy."

Alex chuckled a little, and then leaned over to stroke the side of Isabel's face momentarily. "You're getting all worked up over nothing, sweetie. There'll never be any other girl for me, and I don't want to audition candidates, tonight of all nights. Just a night out with the boys. See you after midnight."

As they started to leave, Michael pointed out, "Hey, do we get to take it out on Isabel and the bridesmaids if we found out they ordered Chippendale's boys for her bachelorette?"

"It's not even a bachelorette," Isabel called out from her booth. "So help me, it's an actual bridal shower." A second's pause. "And don't drink too much, for god's sake!" A double meaning there, of course... she didn't want Alex or his best man, (Kyle,) to overindulge and be struggling with a hangover on the last day before the wedding, but for Max and Michael, just as for Tess and Isabel herself, 'too much' was just about any noticeable amount of alcohol. They never had figured out why their hybrid metabolism had such strange reactions to it, though most of them had tried it by now, and regretted it.

As the bridegroom's party walked from the front door of the cafe to the parking lot, Kyle made a signal, and from a car across the street, Tess and the bridesmaids emerged and headed over to 'abduct' Isabel to her bridal shower. Michael and Kyle walked on each side of Alex as Max led the way to the Jeep. and the four of them took seats for the drive over to Michael's place.

He'd been able to move from the small dingy apartment he'd had ever since he was emancipated into a slightly larger and nicer pad after getting a pay raise last summer. Max had moved in when he'd come back from Santa Fe to stay, two weeks ago, and as Michael led the way in, Alex saw that four chairs and a square table, modest in size but sturdy, had been set up in the living room. Bottles of soda pop and bags of snacks were sitting on the kitchen counter.

"Okay, boys, you all know the game," Michael said, picking up a deck of cards from the table and sorting through it with practiced movements. "Six-card euchre with a full blind, four tricks or more to make contract, swapping on 'no ace no face no trump' allowed by the first to call. Game to ten points, and everyone puts a twenty-dollar bill into the pot now, winners split the take fifty-fifty. Stake goes up by five dollars from each of us per game."

"Hey, this sounds like it could get expensive," Max joked as he grabbed some spicy nachos and wandered over. "Maybe you and Alex have money to throw around like that, but Kyle and I are still starving students."

"Then maybe we'd better draw each other as partners, Evans," Kyle suggested. "And take the working men to the cleaners."

"Yeah, yeah," Michael said, shuffling just four cards overhand, and then cutting them and bringing them back together several times in quick succession. "Reds against blacks... you can go first, Valenti. Spades deal first." He offered the cards, spread out, for Kyle to select one. He did, and Alex picked next, then Max, leaving Michael with just one card. They turned them over and compared... Kyle and Michael had the red fives, Alex and Max the black ones.

"Next time, maybe," Max told Kyle as they took their seats. Alex shuffled the half-pack that Michael had left aside, and dealt out... six cards for each of them, six cards to the 'blind' hand in the center, plus one card face down, and one face up -- the eight of diamonds. "Kyle??" Max prompted after they had all had a few seconds to take stock of their hands.

Kyle passed, and so did Max. "Pick it up," Michael said, taking the face down card into his hand and throwing another one away. Alex took the eight, throwing away his only club and resisting the impulse to move his jack of hearts over to align it with the diamonds, since that might give something away. Instead, he mentally reminded himself that the card counted as a diamond and a trump for this hand, and not really a heart.

"Bring it on," Max mumbled. Kyle led out the Ace of hearts.

----------

The door of the loft apartment opened, and Tess smiled from the other side, stretching out her hand in greeting. "Liz, Mrs Parker!! So glad that you could both make it."

"Thanks for having us," Nancy Parker said, shaking Tess' hand, and waving at Maria as she stepped inside. Liz followed her in, hugging Maria hello and giving Tess a bit of an uncertain smile. "Sorry that we're a bit on the late side," Liz's mother added. "Are we the last??"

"No," Maria said. "We just got a call from Alex's mother... traffic was backed up in an accident at Mountain view when she was coming back from picking up her little sister Louise at the airport. But they should both be here in five or ten minutes."

"Oh my gosh," Liz breathed. "Alex's Aunt Louise, fabled and famous from song and story, is coming for the shower, I'm actually going to get to meet her tonight??" She grinned. "Alex has been telling me stories about her practically from the first day we met."

"Yeah, I know," Maria agreed. "Well, until then, the guest of honor is in the lounge, mostly catching up with Laurie DuPree, though Tess has been able to get her to mingle and chat with some of the other guests. Once the guest list is all present and accounted for, we'll start the festivities proper."

"Okay, well, I'll play the getting to know you game," Liz said as she finished hanging her jacket up. "Mom??" And so they found some seats, and Liz ended up talking to Kyle's girlfriend Martine and Ashley Nelson, who was a new friend that Isabel had made in her psychology classes in Las Cruces, and who had decided to come to the wedding while she was visiting with her family over spring break - her grandparents owned a ranch just outside of town. Nancy talked with Amy DeLuca and Rebecca Gilroy, who had taken over Isabel's room here in the loft after Iz had moved out for Las Cruces.

Gloria Whitman and 'Aunt Louise' (Louise Managan,) did show up about ten, or maybe eleven minutes, and Tess got the whole company playing charades (with wedding-themed phrases and movies to guess of course,) and a few other icebreakers. Then Erica suggested a 'getting to know each other' diversion of her own... with a bunch of little instructions for something to share on cards... one person would read the details, and then everyone would go around the circle and answer. Liz thought she saw Maria, Tess, and Isabel sharing an uncertain look, but most of the other guests seemed to really like the idea, so none of them objected.

The first instruction was 'say five things about the house or residence you grew up in (first that you can remember well if there are multiple choices,)' which was fairly safe territory. Liz mentioned a few things about the cafe apartment, like how her parents had marked her height every few months on the kitchen doorway, and that when she was seven she'd discovered a peephole from the linen closet that let her look down on the Crashdown dining room... until her father found out and had the hole 'fixed.' Some of the other replies had been interesting, like Tess, who had picked an twenty-second floor apartment in Maryland that she'd got to spend two years in when she was just starting juior high, and Martine, who had actually lived only a few blocks away from Maria when they were younger... for all that Kyle had had to go six hundred miles away to find her.

The second instruction was to retell first memories of meeting the bride, or in the case of Isabel herself, the first thing that she could remember. This was more awkward, and both Isabel and Tess had to fudge on their answers to avoid giving away the secret of the pod chamber or any of the other really weird things that they knew about their origins. Even Mrs Evans downplayed the weird part about how she had met her adoptive daughter for the first time, but even so it became fairly clear to everyone that Isabel and Max *had* been adopted, and under more than slightly odd circumstances... to everyone who hadn't already known that much or more, that was. Liz and Maria didn't have nearly so much trouble with their answers.

The third, and last, instruction was to describe your first kiss with your current partner, or if you didn't have one, with the last person you were dating or together with. Liz saw the panic in Isabel and Maria's eyes when this one was read out, though they hid it well.

Luckily, it started on Isabel's right and continued around, which would put the two of them last. Tess told them about a guy named Ryan Tanner, who she'd apparently gone on a few dates with in her sophomore year, and how they'd kissed during a planetarium show and been told off by an usher for it. The various tales told by the three married mothers in attendance had no great surprises, (though a little old-fashioned charm,) and Liz didn't pay that much attention to Isabel's various school friends.

When Mrs DeLuca was up, Liz had to fight the temptation to stuff her fingers in her ears when she realized that not only had she picked Jim Valenti, (apparently they were stuck in an on-again, off-again long distance pattern, with Jim in Albuquerque and Amy back here in Roswell,) but their first kiss had been the same night that Liz and Maria nearly walked in on them together. Liz's turn was up next, and so she told them about her second date with Casey, how the two of them had gotten into some blazing argument in the movie tickets line, so bad that Liz thought they would never even be friends again, let alone a couple. But, as furious as she was, for some reason Case had swept Liz into his arms and kissed her, and the madness had drained away so much that even now, she couldn't really remember what they had been fighting about.

Some of the next stories were a little surprising, like Laurie, who was dating a law student out in Arizona - he'd be showing up the day of the wedding to escort her. (Liz couldn't help but wonder if Michael knew about this guy.) Aunt Louise's 'life partner' of nineyears was another woman, and several of the younger girls were intrigued to hear what was different about a first kiss in a sapphic courtship. (Liz wasn't sure what to make of the expressions on her Mom's face, or Mrs Evans.) And then it was Maria's turn.

"Well, um... this was quite few years ago, yeah... we were hanging out in the diner after it was closed. I didn't really know Michael or Isabel well then, but we were waiting... uh, for a few mutual friends to show up, and then we were going to a late party. Anyway, Michael was getting on my nerves, and I think I was getting on his too, and Isabel was upset at both of us sniping at each other, and Michael was snacking from the desert case like he owned the place and making incredibly XY comments about being stuck waiting with 'two girls.' Isabel got tired of waiting and went home."

"Um, this part is kinduv a little like Liz's story, but remember it happened to us first. We were both really tired of waiting and making smart remarks at each other, and from then it got into an argument. I stormed off a little way, and he came up behind me. I turned around and was about to ask him what now when I realized that his hands were on my forearms lightly, and he bent his head down slightly and kissed me. I brought one of my hands up to his shoulder and kissed him back, and it seemed to last a long time, and when we were done I was just staring at him. He says, I kid you not: "That was to calm you down.'" There were some laughs at this point. "And I mumbled thanks or something and we both walked off."

A slight pause to see if Maria would volunteer, and then Laurie said, "Okay I guess. Isabel, your turn."

Iz smiled nervously. "Okay, well, this is kinduv a strange story, but here goes." Liz suspected she knew the story, (having heard from Alex on the subject of his first kiss with Isabel Evans,) and knew that there was no way she would be telling the full strangeness of it.

"Spring of my sophomore year, there was... well, a bit of a joke going round about my brother Max. That he had E.S.P., and when he kissed a girl they would both get psychic visions." Isabel paused, and there were a few nervous laughs. Liz tried to keep a straight face as hard as she could. "Alex heard about it, and one day at lunch he started teasing me about it... saying that I should find out if I had the same E.S.P. powers, and that he would volunteer as 'a subject for experimentation.' Seriously."

"So you guys weren't dating or anything?" Martine asked.

"No... Alex had a crush on me, and I kinda liked him too, but wasn't ready to let him in past my walls. Okay, um. Well... the night of the next day, Max and Liz had taken off for for a drive through the desert and not come back, and the parents were freaking out." She nodded slightly at her Mom and Mrs Parker. "First thing in the morning, like right after dawn, when there was still no sign of either of them, I went over to Alex's house and he met me at the door. Told him about Max and Liz being missing, and he was all set to borrow his father's car and go out looking for them with me, but that wasn't what I had in mind."

"I said, literally, 'Okay, and kiss me.' He practically asked why," there was some mild laughter at this point, "so I played along with the game, and told him that I wanted to try to get a vision of Max and if he was okay."

"He was really nervous and sweet about it, stepping out over the threshold to stand with me on the porch; he stepped right up to me and bent his face just a little bit, and I leaned my neck a little just before he kissed me. It was pretty long, and tender and sweet, with just a little bit of a hot edge to it that sizzled all the way down to the tips of my toes." Rebecca made an 'aww' sound, and then blushed when people shot her looks and Isabel continued after a moment. "I leaned my body into his a little and put one hand on his shoulder, and the other kind of ended up at the back of his neck, and he put one arm around my back.

"I, um, I'm not sure if I was imagining it or not, but I could have sworn I really did see something... an incredible landscape, rolling hills and patches of bushes and trees amidst stretches of grass and some kind of groundvines or something, with a big bright sun shining down on it all. It didn't look anything like anywhere in New Mexico, so I didn't think that was where Max and Liz were." Liz noticed how Isabel had phrased that, and made a mental note to ask Isabel just what color the sun she saw had been. "I opened my mouth a little just at the end, but he didn't try to make it french, and then suddenly the kiss was over, and I was looking into his eyes, wondering how I'd looked at Alex so many times and never really seen him. And then he was giving me an expression like he was really wondering if I'd seen anything, and the moment got a little awkward and I blurted out that I didn't get anything useful. I wasn't quite sure why, but I turned around and walked away, and Alex called out that he'd be happy to help with future experiments."

There was a little more laughter, and Liz said "Hey, you should have taken him up on his offer and gone out into the desert looking for us, maybe."

Isabel shrugged vaguely. "Maybe yeah, but... I dunno, I wasn't quite ready to spend a whole bunch more time with him right then. Do you know what I mean??"

"Ummm..." Liz wasn't sure. After the first time she had kissed Max, it felt like her heart was getting ripped out when he had to go back home... and with Casey, they had watched the movie together, and enjoyed it immensely. But Liz supposed she had never been quite as guarded a person as Isabel had been back in her sophomore year. Letting Alex in hadn't been easy for her. "Ehh, that is--"

"Hey," Tess broke in, a little too loudly. "How about we say it's time for presents now??"

"Sounds good to me," Isabel replied with a little sigh.

----------

"Oh, my god," Max insisted. "I-- I so totally do not need to hear this!! Definitely not about my sister, and kind of not even about you, Alex!"

"Oh, give it a rest," Michael told him. "You're just more prudish than usual lately because you're the only one here who's not gettin' any." A short pause. "At least, well, I'm kind of assuming that Kyle's getting something in the most general sense. But it's your own fault - you haven't been so much as on a date in years, just because you're still hanging on to what you used to have with Liz."

"It's not just that," Max insisted a little feebly. "There's a serious TMI factor when it comes to..."

"Just have another ale," Kyle told him shortly, and turned back to Alex, determined to keep the topic on track. "Do, d'you let her tie you up often?"

Alex paused a second, wondering whether he really wanted to continue sharing this, considering that he was a little drunk and Max wasn't so happy with it, and then started to blurt it out anyway. "Not tie -- cuff, though the distinction isn't that important I suppose. As for how often... well, since we got the apartment together we try it two or three times a month, I guess. Not that often."

"Did you ever do it before you moved in together?" Michael prompted as Max sat back down at the table with his mug full and the scowl less intense on his face. The drink was called 'Antarian ale' only because it suited Michael's sense of whimsy. Because they couldn't drink ethyl alcohol without seriously problematic side-effects, a few years ago some of the pod squad had started fooling around secretly in bio-chem labs to find something that would work as a rough substitution, and surprisingly enough had found one... a particular aromatic ester that could be refined from components available at the food&drug warehouse, once they knew how. The resulting bitter, spicy extract could be added to a number of different drinks, although Michael occasionally insisted that only Martinelli apple cider was the base for a 'real' Antarian ale.

"Yeah, a couple times. Little harder when you don't exactly have a bedroom of your own, but yknow," Alex slurred back, taking a swallow of his rum & coke. "Um, is somebody going to lead?"

"Oh, yeah, that would be me I guess," Kyle replied, tossing out a black queen to get captured. "Alex, man... do you mind terribly if I ask why you let your girl chain you up?? I mean, well, heck, I might try it once if somebody asked, but what is it that keeps ya going back for more?"

"Well..." Alex had to think about that one a little bit, which was no simple task at the moment. "I don't really get off myself on bondage or submission or any of that stuff--" He frowned slightly and tossed out a card. Michael thought to himself, recreating the previous play to see if it was actually Alex's turn to lead, decided that it was, and trumped him. "It gets her excited," Alex finished. "And when Izzie gets excited, she is *really* good at finding ways to make me glad that I'm playing along." A short pause. "But that isn't... well, isn't really what I had been about to say, just kind of the background."

"Hang on a sec," Max said, and Michael glared at him. "He... he can finish in a moment," Max insisted, "I just need to figure out this lead it's a little tricky." After pausing and staring at his two cards for a while, Max opened with one of them, the last few tricks were played, and it became clear that Max and Alex had won this particular game. "One more and then we all go home??"

"Sure, give it your best shot," Michael grumbled, fishing for some money to throw in for the largest pool yet that night. Max was definitely leading, with Alex having picked up a little extra cash, Kyle down a bit, and Michael had easily lost the most. (He tended to bid recklessly.) "Okay Alex, go on," he prompted with a crooked grin after switching seats (they changed partners after every game,) and while Max was shuffling the cards.

"Okay, well, it was a Saturday afternoon, and we had what I think was a VERY mutually satisfying, umm... session." Alex shook his head quietly to indicate passing the bid without interrupting the story. "Isabel started getting dressed and saying that she had to go to campus quickly to pick something up, and she was nearly out the door before I actually said, 'umm, aren't you forgetting something, like letting me out of the cuffs??'"

"The trump is diamonds," Kyle announced softly, and then after a bit of silence turned back to Alex. "Well??"

"She smiles this incredibly sexy smile, and tells me... well, mostly sexy with just a bit of teasing and playful bitchiness mixed in. 'No, not a chance. You're gonna stay right there until I'm back, because I'm not through yet.' And that's it -- she takes off for half an hour and literally leaves me stuck there."

"Ohhhh," Michael said as he led out to the second trick, and Kyle raked it in. "But, well... was it good, when she finally got back??"

"Unbelievable," Alex admitted. "I dunno, maybe I'm just slightly submissive after all. That one time, laying there feeling totally humilated, remembering how she'd looked at me like I was just a pawn to be used for her own pleasure... there was something, er, intensely arousing about it." He took a trick, and then looked around. "Okay, and I think that's enough sharing from me. Max looks like he's not sure whether to kill me or himself."

"Okay," Michael laughed. "And how's YOUR sex life doing, Kyle??"

"What, hey, why me??" Kyle protested a little unsteadily. "Why should it be me and not you? I'm not the one who's dating someone we've all known for years." He blinked slightly as if hoping that this logic would make sense to the others.

Alex and Michael watched as Max seemed to consider this and nod slowly. "Well, for whatever that's worth, Kyle... Michael asked first. 'Fess up." He smiled slightly, enjoying this diss session a little now that Isabel wasn't the topic. (As Michael had pointed out, there weren't any recent indiscretions to be dragged out of Max himself.)

"Um, well," Kyle mumbled, giving in with mediocre grace. "There isn't that much to tell actually. Marti's, erm... well, she's a good-girl. Mostly. I respect that."

"'The first step on the great gray road to enlightment,'" Alex mocked in his best deep and booming voice, "'must be the step that is Patience.'"

Kyle shot him a look. "Nobody ever said that, dumbass, least of all me," he shot back. "Though I guess I won't deny that in certain situations being patient can be a good thing. So... we've fooled around quite a bit, just... well, nothing REALLY heavy."

Michael shot Max a look, and nodded. "Good ol' second base."

"And center field, and some of left field," Kyle added with a wink. "Your all-inclusive teenage groping. So... any other questions from the gallery??" There was no reply. "Then your turn, Michael."

Michael smiled tightly. "Ummmm. Welll -- the sex between Maria and I is pretty excellent. We're both pretty busy, but, errr... uh, I'd say we do it one or two times a day."

"Worst details ever," Kyle shot back. "Does Maria have a special move that she uses when she really wants to make you *horny*?"

"Well, um, my turn to say 'hey,'" Michael protested. "You weren't exactly going into detail about exactly what you ARE doing with Marti. Even Alex... I mean, fun with handcuffs, getting left in them too long -- that isn't exactly going into the nitty-gritty of it, and I think that's the way I like it."

"Well, I haven't had that much experience, especially recently," Max joked, "but I think if anything involved is gritty, that should be a warning sign." That observation was met by a groan, a half-chuckle, and a silently shaken head.

"She, well," Michael started uncertainly. "Sometimes she just kind of teases... no, I'm sorry, there is just plain no way that I can say that. Erm... okay, how about this for a detail. Ever since mid-last fall, Maria's idea of fun when we can't actually be in the same room has been to talk dirty to me over the phone. When I'm at work, or while she's at work. When she's on campus, waiting for a class to start."

"Oooh, how very Camilla Parker-Bowles of her," Alex taunted in a snooty accent, then dropped back into a more regular tone of voice. "How filthy are we talking about??"

"Dirty enough that I won't repeat it to you guys," Michael started. "Half of it dirty enough that I have a hard time saying the same kinds of things to her in the bedroom. Heck, some of the things she talks about doing to me or me doing to her on the phone she won't even *do* in the bedroom! Just tease me about them on the phone."

"Oh, boy," Max breathed. "And she does this when you're at work? That sound like a recipe for embarassment, one way or another."

"That, with apologies to Alex because he *did* tell the humiliating story, I have to beg off. Not saying tonight, okay?? Come on, it's your turn to deal."

Kyle gathered in the cards and started to shuffle.

----------

"Okay, um, let's see..." Isabel picked up the relatively small box and started to turn it over, examining it. "From Maria, thanks so much." She shook it a little and listened carefully. "Clothes, maybe, or... ohhh??" She blushed slightly, and some of the younger girls there giggled a little.

About half of the presents had been opened before the refreshments had been served, and then more games, and now the second batch of gifts was almost finished. A surprising quantity of shower loot was spread out surrounding her chair, and placed out of the way wherever possible... school books for her next two terms of classes, blankets and linen, a small set of new luggage, large cookbook, some assorted camping gear, two small kitchen appliances, an attache bookbag to take to school, some cooking pots and lots of other kinds of houseware. Finally, Isabel started to open the wrapping on Maria's addition, putting the paper carefully aside and letting the flat box rest on her lap while she gently lifted off the top. Moving the packing paper aside carefully, she lifted out black silky material, a beautiful nightgown, and held it out just long enough for everyone to see it before packing it away again, flushing even more visibly now.

"Yeah, that'll get Alex hot to trot for the wedding night," Ashley called out, grinning.

"Probably he won't calm down until the honeymoon," Laurie added, her eyes twinkling with mischief. "Even though it's three weeks away!!"

"Okay, okay, I think that's enough from the heckler's gallery," Tess insisted, staring firmly at both of them. "I have one more thing to give Isabel." She hurried off to fetch something out of a cupboard as Isabel looked inquringly at Maria and Erica, each of whom just shrugged back at her. Tess had already given some textbooks, a little earlier.

When Tess started back with her second present, it was obvious why she hadn't kept it out and waiting... it wasn't wrapped, and probably would have taken quite a lot of effort to wrap safely. She held carefully in her hands a beautifully painted china flower vase, and carefully held it out for Isabel to accept.

"So that, um, so that you and Alex can always keep a little bit of beauty in your lives, to lift your spirits," she mumbled.

"Oh, gosh." Isabel turned the receptacle around in her hands, carefully examining the detail and the colors, and she felt a small tear come to the corner of her eye. Carefully passing the vase off to Maria, she got up and hugged Tess tightly. "Thank you so much. It's amazing."

Once the hug ended, Isabel and Tess looked around a little uncomfortably, and Maria decided that it was a good moment to take charge, "Okay, getting late and there's nothing more planned, so... get out of our apartment!!" She smiled at that, and people started to take the hint, coming forward to say quick individual goodbyes to Isabel and the other members of the bridal party, getting their coats, and preparing to leave. Liz was almost out the door when Maria caught her eye and shook her head... Liz tilted her head questioningly and Maria pointed slightly downward, as if to indicate the floor. Liz wasn't quite sure what was meant, but she quietly told her mother that Maria would be driving her home, and that seemed to satisfy the other girl. Liz took a seat again and watched as Rebecca intercepted Erica, said something to her that Liz certainly could not make out, and the two of them prepared to leave along with the rest. That surprised Liz, since she knew that Rebecca lived here at the loft now, but she fought down a shrug. Soon, the only people left were her, Maria, Tess, Isabel, and Laurie Dupree.

"Okay," Maria started a little uncomfortably. "Now, I feel a little nervous about cutting the others out, especially Erica because she's a full member of the bridal party, so this never happened. But, well, I thought it made sense to have a slightly more private and intimate bachelorette party. The four of us, really, are Isabel's oldest girlfriends, and the only ones who really know her secret."

"Umm, okay," Liz said, looking back and forth a little nervously. "So, er... what now??"

"Well, first, drinks," Maria said, passing out some glasses.

Laurie blinked in surprise at the clear plastic tumblers of frothy amber nectar being handed to Isabel and Tess. "I, uh... are those..."

"Antarian ale," Tess assured her. "Your brother's recipe."

"Oh, er, okay I guess," Laurie said. "So, Isabel, how's your sex life with Alex?? Leave out no detail, no matter how private or sacred." Isabel spluttered out a bit of ale-spray. Liz shot a surprised look from Laurie to Maria, and then Tess. "What?? You guys said that's what we'd be talking about now," Laurie continued ingenuously.

"Umm, yeah, we did say that," Tess mentioned. "Just... were probably thinking of bringing up the subject a little differently." She grinned slyly. "But what's done is done, and the question is put. Isabel??"

All four of them turned to look at the bride-to-be then, who had finished her spluttering, but still managed to look mightily unimpressed at the ambush. "Okay, I have terms," she insisted finally. "I'm *NOT* spilling all the beans; yes, you're my girls and I love you all very much but it's still not gonna happen. And like any good dish session, there has to be give and take, and that goes for all of us, even you Tess... Miss 'what sex life?' If you put your mind to it hard enough, I'm sure you can come up with some little nugget to confess, and if not, then you'd better come up with a damn good lie."

There was a moment's pause. "Done," Tess decided, and the other girls nodded willingness to agree with her statement. "But you have to go first."

"Okay," Isabel took another mouthful of her drink and made sure that it went down the right way. "Oh, and do you have any more munchies??"

"Uh, yeah, I think so," Maria said, getting up. "Sure you'll be able to fit into your dress for the big day??" Isabel shot her another one of THOSE looks as she went into the kitchen. "Okay, okay. But stop stalling and get talkin', girl!!"

"Okay, well, umm..." Isbael took a deep breath. "It's great with Alex... well, of course. He's -- um, I'm not quite sure how to put it. He's *very* good at paying attention to me; to my body, and knowing exactly what I need or want him to do before I know it myself. And, well, obviously I try my best to return the favor."

"Well, that's only common courtesy," Liz heckled from the comfy chair next to the window.

"Just how 'big' is young Master Whitman, anyway??" Maria joined in while Maria was glaring at Liz. Everybody turned to stare at Maria. "Well, I have to admit I've been, um, I've been wondering for a little while now."

"Like, oh maybe, ever since you saw Michael's for the first time??" Isabel teased back. "Well, we've never actually grabbed a ruler and measured it, at least I haven't. But I'd say... five and a half inches and it fits *just* right!" There was some soft laughter at this.

They went around and around for a while, sharing risque secrets. Maria went into quite a bit of detail about the trip that she and Michael had taken to El Paso, that September just before fall classes started, and 'only left the hotel room for the ice machine, four days straight.' Liz blinked a little at the list of things that the two of them had experimented with on that trip... outfits, dom-sub, backdoor play (both ways,) tickle torture, role-playing, extreme tease... and the list went on even further!

Tess took her turn next, and explained how she had been wildly in lust with Kyle during their senior year of high school, (despite, or maybe because of, him telling her that she was like a sister to him at their junior prom,) and described how one winter night, when Kyle had been drinking and upset about being dumped by Heather Roberts, he and Tess had started making out and had very nearly slept together before Tess stopped it, realizing that Kyle wasn't really in a stable frame of mind and that she'd regret taking that step in the morning if it didn't mean anything to him. (Liz was a little uncertain about Tess' tale, mindful of Isabel's injunction for her to either confess something about her sex life or lie if she had to... but the details sounded right, even down to a few little things about Kyle that Liz remembered from way back when she had been dating him, that she had only ever told Maria. So...)

Laurie went next... apparently David, the law student who was coming for the wedding, was her first serious boyfriend, and although the two of them hadn't done 'it' yet, they'd certainly covered a lot of ground on the hot and heavy end... even what Liz would tend to think of as 'virgin by technicality' stuff: satisfying each other with creative use of fingers, hands, and lips, just no traditional mattress dancing. She went into quite a lot of detail actually, (stuttering every now and then,) about favorite oral techniques, which got Isabel and Maria discussing the merits of different things their respective guys tried when going downtown.

At this point, Maria suddenly started to run interference on Liz's behalf, saying that she shouldn't be expected to participate, but Liz called her off, explaining that she didn't mind talking a bit about Casey, and what things had been like between them while he was with her, by now. Liz set the scene a little bit for that one-year anniversary, when he had asked her to marry him, and how that was the first time that they had, err, become one. She tried to describe the way he smelled, (which for some reason always stuck out in her memory when she thought of that night,) and how it felt to reach out and touch the little bit of skin right at the side of his waist.

And Liz's voice started to tremble when she told him about that moments, once the lights were down low, when Casey had brushed an errant strand of hair away from her face, and somehow that little gesture had made her feel so safe and protected to be lying there with her arms around him. A few tears started to run down her cheeks when she said that she'd probably remember how sweet that gesture had been for the rest of her days.

There was a longish moment of respectful, sympathetic silence, and Tess casually pushed over a box of tissue paper so that it was within Liz's easy reach. Once Liz had composed herself again, Maria pointed out that the rest of them had shared in considerable detail, and that it was probably time to go back to bride-to-be Isabel, who had been, it now seemed, a little coy in comparison.

"Umm... well, I'm a little nervous about saying this, but what else do you want to know, Maria??" Isabel asked.

"Hmmm." She gave that quite a bit of thought. "The last occasion that you and Alex... spent noticeably more time than average on sexual activity... what all did you do??" Liz and Tess giggled at the way Maria had phrased it.

"Ummm, well..." Isabel thought, and blushed slightly. "Well, ever since we've had the apartment to ourselves, we occasionally do a thing where I... well, I dress up in a leather outfit to start with, pretty tight and revealing. And we play around with the mistress Isabel stuff and I--" She had to clear her throat twice before getting it out. "Well, I handcuff him to the bed. Wrists and ankles, not that tight but spreadeagled, y'know??"

"Not from personal experience," Tess put in, "but I think I get the picture."

"Okay, okay, that's good explanation so far," Laurie added. "Then what?"

"Umm, well, last time we did it, which I guess was nearly two weeks ago -- I teased him a lot to start with, stripping him naked of whatever clothes he didn't take off before the cuffing, rubbing and pumping his thing, but only just enough to get him excited. Stroking my, erm, my hair all over his body, that always gets him all hot and bothered."

"That's not all you tease him with, I bet," Tess predicted. Isabel blushed a deeply vibrant pink. "Yeah, I thought so -- you rub your tits against every part of his body too, don't you??"

"Ummm... yeah." Unbelievably, Isabel shook her head and continued on. "So, after the first round of teasing, I gave him my favorite vibrator and climbed up on my hands and knees on the edge of the bed. my legs over his arm, so he could just reach, and told him that he had to get me off like that. Which he did, quite well, and so to reward him for being such a good sport I gave him a nice, long, slow thank-you blow job. And then it was back to teasing again to get him wound up for the next stage..."

"Wow, I'm not sure if I should be feeling sorry for Alex or not," Laurie muttered under her breath.

"My guess would be, definitely not," Liz replied. "So, what next, Izzie? Did ya stick the dildo up his butt??"

"No!" Isabel replied, seeming shocked by the situation. "No, then I, um, I climbed up on top and, err..."

"Rode him like he was a thoroughbred??" Maria finished, and Isabel nodded her agreement without any words. "Well, was that it?"

"Umm... uh, not quite," Isabel replied. "You see, I kind of hit on this trick by accident, and I don't do it all the time, but when I'm touching Alex, I can connect to him and affect his physiology in certain simple ways."

"Well, yeah, okay," Tess agreed, and then did a double-take. "Oh, for crying out... Don't tell me you --"

Isabel grinned shyly. "Yeah, actually. Every time he was about to come, I pulled him back a few notches. And we went on and on like that, over and over, until... erm, well, the fourth time he sent me over the edge I wasn't able to concentrate hard enough, and he shot off like a gun firing inside of me." A pause. "In, in the best possible way of course. If something like that can be good..."

"Yeah, I think I understand what you mean," Liz said, and yawned. "Well, I think that's quite enough sharing of smut for now... who's handling the driving home?"

"I guess that'd be me," Tess said, "since Maria's definitely had a few. I only drank half an ale, and it doesn't really affect hand-eye co-ordination as much." She held out her hands, and Maria tossed her some car keys. "Liz back to the crashdown, Isabel to her parent's place... where do I take you, Laurie??"

"Umm, I've got a room at the, the tumbleweed motel," Laurie said, getting up and fumbling for her coat. Isabel was trying to sort out which of her shower gifts to take now and which to leave for later when she turned to Maria.

"Just out of sheer curiosity and a desire for comparison... how big is Michael's little general?" she blurted out.

"Umm... well, to be honest I don't think he's anything over five inches. But spaceboy knows how to use what he's got, and isn't that what's important??"

--------

Isabel got out of the back seat of the car, waved to Tess and the other girls, and headed up the front walk to her parents' place on Murray lane. She let herself in and was stacking a few packages in the corner of the entry hall when she felt a familiar smell behind her, just a moment before the strong, smooth arm wrapped around the front of her shoulders.

"Hey, lover." It suddenly occured to her what it would be like to call Alex 'husband' instead. "Have a good night out with the boys?"

"Not bad, not bad at all," he told her. "Up fifteen dollars at the euchre table. Max cleaned out and Michael bombed."

"He always did bid up on a wing and a hope," she replied with an unseen smile.

"And the bridal shower??" he asked in return, his voice soft and intimate in the vicinity of her ear. "I see you were but lightly laden arriving here..."

She giggled. "That shouldn't be taken as indicative... everyone was REALLY generous, to an incredible extent. Maria is keeping the rest..."

"--of the take until we can cart it away?" Alex finished, chuckling. "Well, that was nice of her."

"That and other things..." Alex brushed away a bit of her hair, kissed her neck softly, and made a polite, curious sound. Isabel looked over her shoulder, smiled at him, and led the way into the living room. "Once things to do with the bridal shower had run their course, she kept a few people around the loft for a more intimate celebration of my upcoming nuptials... kind of a bachelorette party like your bachelor stag, I guess. Just the four of us from way back, and Michael's sister Laurie. It was really nice, after the shower, just unwinding with people who I don't keep any secrets from."

They were sitting next to each other on the couch now, and Alex stole another kiss, a long slow and luxurious one, lips to tongue. "Not a single secret??"

She giggled. "Not after tonight, I don't think. You'd be surprised."

"Oh boy."

"You're not mad at me, are you Alexx-ey?" she teased, letting her tongue flicker across, but hardly touch, the line of his jaw.

"I don't think I possibly could be," he sighed. "I love you, and if you wanted to shout our intimate details off of a mountaintop I'm not sure I'd mind." There was a pause. "Come to think of it, I might have mentioned something or other to the guys myself."

"Did they like hearing about it?" she asked. "Well, probably Max didn't, both because of the brother sister thing and since he's a little uptight in general."

Alex didn't answer, he seemed lost in his thoughts for a moment. "So, just the five of you? How did they keep Rebecca out, since she lives there and all??"

"Not really sure, I think Maria may have had her and Erica keep each other busy - what she told either of them, no clue."

He leaned close, and Isabel could tell that he was smelling a familiar spicy smell on her breath. "And how many helpings of Antarian ale did you have, anyway? I'm just curious."

She smiled. "Maybe two and a half glasses."

"Well, tomorrow is the rehearsal and the rehearsal dinner," he said. "And then saturday - our wedding day."

Izzie turned to him and smiled. "Did you see either of my parents when you got in?"

"Umm... naw, I think they went to bed early. Why?"

She stood and offered out a hand to help him to his feet too. "Well, because Maria mentioned something at the bachelorette that I have just GOT to try with you!!"

TO BE CONTINUED...

Part Nine

"Okay," the older man, (older than middle aged, at least,) in the light black jacket said with a very small smile. "And then, umm, actually, do you want 'Alex, you may kiss the bride' or 'Alex and Isabel, you may now kiss'? I usually ask that one earlier, but if I did the answer must have slipped my mind." He paused, and then added, "I suppose if I didn't, then it slipped my mind to ask."

The two of them shared a look, and Alex shrugged as if he didn't mind much one way or the other. "Actually, this may sound weird, but I've always liked 'you may kiss the bride.' Trying to make it non-sexist just kind of ruined the ring of the line."

"Yeah, and this one time you'd rather not have to make the first move yourself," Kyle said, sotto voce but not quiet enough for the rest of the wedding party not to hear.

"Please, no more unsolicited exclamations fro the gallery," the priest intoned, fixing him with an intense glare. "We are, after all, nearly finished. Umm... alright, 'Alex, you may kiss the bride.'" Alex gathered Isabel into his arms and planted a short but emphatic smooch onto her lips. "Yes, quite. Then the two of you turn around to face the audience; 'Ladies and gentlement, it is my pleasure and privilege to introduce to you, for the first time, Mister and Mrs Alex Whitman.' Hold for applause, and then you proceed down the aisle, side by side, and exit at the rear of the church." He waited a moment, and then waved a hand between their heads, because they were still facing away.

"Oh, right." Alex smiled over his shoulder at the Pastor, (who was an old friend of Isabel's parents, though they didn't go to church very often anymore.) took Isabel's arm in his, and then proceeded down the space that had been marked out as center aisle of the wedding hall.

"Not quite that quickly, I think," he advised. Once they were about a quarter of the way down, "Now the best man and maid of honor..." Kyle and Tess stepped together and followed. "Bridesmaids and groomsmen, from inside to outside, then the parents of the bride, and the parents of the groom." Alex continued until they were 'outside the hall', and then turned around to see the rest of the wedding party following them, Max with Erica, Maria with Michael, and the parents together of course. "Then I thank all of the guests on your behalf, tell them about the reception, and I suppose that's it."

"Thank you," Alex called back. Since the location that they were actually getting married in was so busy, they hadn't been able to hold the rehearsal there as well, and eventually had decided to hold it in the Evanses' back yard, with chalk marks drawn onto the grass to indicate important parts of the layout.

"And now, I guess that means it's time for the rehearsal dinner," Mrs Whitman said. "Chez Pierre is holding the back room for us, and for a few other special friends. Umm... if anybody doesn't have a ride, well, they shouldn't be too hard to find."

----------

Sure enough, there was no problem with anybody getting to the rehearsal dinner... and once there, guests found, in general, that the food was plentiful and the cheer good. The Whitmans, knowing how important their extended network of friends was to Alex and his bride, had been careful going over the guest list to make sure that they hadn't missed anyone... everyone from Isabel's bridal shower was there, along with a similar number of friends and relations of the male persuasion, and a few more. John Whitman mentioned casually to several people that, as it just so happened, the final number of their company turned out to be 'a score, a dozen, and a couple,' and that fact seemed to please him more than almost anyone could understand.

As the dishes for the entrees and the rest of the main course were being cleared away, Kyle stood up and clinked his water glass a bit. Quickly a hush developed as everyone waited to see how the best man would begin.

"When I first met Alex and Isabel, I thought he was a hopelessly nerdy geek, and she was an arrogant queen bitch. This was probably before they'd ever said more than two words to each other." There was a quiet ripple of laughter at this. "I was... a very different guy back then, more prone to making decisions based on superficial facts than I really care to remember, and if I've grown much at all, which I like to think, then it's probably due in no small part to the fact that I got to know better the members of the happy couple whose fortune we are here to celebrate tonight."

"Alex: beneath your quiet jokes beats the most charitable and loyal heart that I've ever known... and apparently there's a first-class mind back there somewhere too, insightful, creative, and brimming with talents that most of us can only dream of. I'm not sure what chance of fate led you to Roswell, man, but I think the whole town can count it as lucky that you stuck around as long as you did, and if we didn't have enough reasons to hate Las Cruces before they stole you away, now the football team rivalry is like nothing.

"Isabel: I probably don't know you quite as well as Alex, because... well, I'm not one of the people who's spent two and a half years out of the last three living with you, like I have with Alex. Certainly, in a lot of ways, I'd have liked to be invited to move into the loft..." pause for loud laughter from some of the guests who realized what he was talking about.

"But I feel like I've been lucky to know you quite a bit. I know about your heart, and talent, that will be such a great gift to your patients, once you've finished getting through school and all of that. You're already an amazing gift to Alex, and somehow... well, this might be jumping the gun a bit, but I predict that within a couple years at the most, you're going to be an amazing mother. That kid... or kids, are going to be so lucky to have you and Alex as parents, and not just because you love each other so much and you're going to stick together forever."

"Umm, uhh... I've kind of rambled on and on, but the important stuff is said. So, without further adieu; dearly beloved and friends, I give you... the future Missus Alex Whitman and the soon-to-be Mister Isabel Evans!!"

THere was laughter and cheering of 'hear, hear' and similar sentiments amidst the mass clinking of glasses at that point. After the toast had been drunk, Alex got up briefly, thanked Kyle on behalf of himself and Isabel, and the owner had come in at that point, to announce that he'd prepared a special dessert buffet on the occasion of his two favorite customers' wedding eve, and about a quarter of the guests immediately lined up, while the rest waited for the first flush of crowd to thin out, and mingled and talked with each other instead.

About twenty minutes later, after everyone had had at least one crack at the elegantly crafted sundaes and the different kinds of light, fluffy cake and the rich, flaky pies and all the rest, Max pulled Alex off into a small group, all of the male persuasion. "Since Isabel scored so big at the bridal shower, we thought that we'd take a quick shot at restoring the balance," he quipped. "There wasn't time to orgamize another get-together, but I thought it wouldn't be straining protocol too much to give you a few 'jack' presents now."

Alex sat down in the chair that had been left open for him. "Jack??"

"Apparently, the term comes from jack-and-jill wedding showers," Michael put in. "Him and her, both genders attending. Don't look the gifts horse in the mouth is what I suggest." He chuckled softly. "Umm, okay, this one is from Max and me together. So that you'll never be out of contact." He handed over a plain brown box, which Alex opened up and blinked in surprise. Packed inside were a fancy, brand-new palmpilot-smartphone and the usual collection of accessories and manuals.

"Wow, this is... is really generous, guys," Alex said, blinking. "I'm not sure I can a--"

"You'll accept it," Max told him confidently. "Call it an offer that you can't refuse, 'kay??"

"Umm, alright."

"Me next," Kyle said. "Well, Dad and me. Hope you don't mind that we're doubling up here, and in some cases even tripling up, but the feeling was that it's better to give you a few really cool things than a lot of mediocre swag."

"Oh hey, I don't mind at all," Alex assured him. "Especially considering that I wasn't expecting anything at all."

----------

"Thanks, M-- John, Gloria," Isabel said with a shy smile. "It was a wonderful dinner."

"You're very welcome, dear," Mrs Whitman told him. "Not having any daughter of our own, we'll never have to throw a big fancy wedding, but it's our pleasure to do what we can to... well, to welcome you to the family, after a fashion."

"I'm... I'm just glad you were happy to have me," Isabel murmured. Her arm was already around Alex's middle, and she squeezed him for a moment with extra tenderness and caring.

"Our two families are b-- becoming one," Mr Whitman stammered happily. "Oh, Philip, Diane?? You'd better catch the happy couple before they sneak off and say their final goodbyes." He waved until it was clear that Isabel's parents were coming over to join them.

"Hi there."

"Better catch us for what??" Alex asked Mr Evans with pleasant interest.

"Umm... I told your folks that I wanted to talk to you about something before the dinner was over," Mrs Evans replied happily. "For the wedding night... we thought that you deserved something to make it extra-special."

"We all know that you're going to be driving back to your own place in Las Cruces the day after," Mr Evans continued, "but that isn't the wedding night, so -- here." He handed over a small, elegant booklet over to both of them. Isabel opened it up and her eyes widened.

"A paid reservation for the honeymoon suite at the Best Western??" she repeated. That hotel was where the reception was being held as well. "Come on, this on top of everything else is too much. We couldn't possibly..."

"No, trust us, you're going," Izzy's mother assured her with a twinkle in her eye. "It wasn't that much, really, and it's not fully refundable. Plus, just this once, you deserve the best available. Both of you do."

"Thanks, Diane, Philip," Alex told them. "I... well, I think we'll be able to put it to good use."

"Good enough," Mrs Evans assured him. "And remember our deal. Once the wedding is final, you're calling me mom."

"Yes, ma'am," he joked back. "Now, um, if you'll excuse us, we have private goodbyes to take care of." And he waved very obviously while leading Isabel away from their parents.

"This is going to be the longest I've been since seeing you since... since I got my stuff moved to Las Cruces I think," Isabel said softly. "What, around nineteen hours??"

"Mmm, maybe not quite that much," he said. "Don't worry, you'll get caught up in all of the last minute details and the time will fly by."

"I'm not sure there's enough details to spend all day on," she complained. "I've been too good at my job."

The two of them had agreed to comply with old tradition slash superstition and not see each other the day of the ceremony until Isabel entered the wedding hall itself. In accordance, (and to give her parents a bit of a break from having young people under their roof again,) Isabel was going to be spending the night at the loft apartment, along with all of her bridal party, and Alex had been invited to crash at Michael's apartment along with Max. (Kyle had been staying at Amy DeLuca's house for rather complicated reasons, but as Alex's best man he'd be arriving at Michael's bright and early the next morning.)

"Just remember," Alex said, his lips hovering close to Isabel's cheek but not quite touching, "by this time tomorrow we'll be husband and wife. I'll be holding onto that when I'm missing you tomorrow."

She smiled. "Yeah, I think that'll work." She kissed him, oh so sweetly, and looked at her watch. "Tess is probably waiting for me."

"She can wait a bit longer," Alex teased, running his fingers lightly over the skin of her neck, and Isabel gasped. Then he kissed her back, much more passionately, and longer.

"Hey!!" The voice that interrupted them was barely supressing laughter. "Get that tongue off my sister, Whitman!!"

Reluctantly, Alex pulled away and turned to look at Max. "Sorry if it offends you, but she *is* my fiancee after all."

"I know," Max replied. "And so, that was pretty much my last chance to say something of the sort, before she becomes your wife." He paused a second. "So, can we motor, or do you wanna do the nasty right here in the parking lot??"

"Max!!" Isabel nearly exploded.

"He's just trying to get a rise out of you, sweetie," Alex guessed. "See you tomorrow, Miss Evans." He brushed a finger against her cheek, and turned to go.

"Until tomorrow," she repeated softly, and went off to find Tess.

----------

The next morning, Maria was still singing to herself, and not quietly, as she finished drying off from her shower. "...Don't worry, you'll be fine, if you just keep in mind: / All you really need is love." She left the bathroom, towel wrapped around her, but didn't stop the song.

"And bridesmaids, and groomsmen, and a wedding co-ordinator." She dropped the towel and started to put on a casual top and shorts for the morning's errands. (They wouldn't be getting ready with the bridesmaids gowns and such until that afternoon.) "And food for the reception; you'll need someone to cater. Did I forget to mention, it'll take a couple rings?" Dressed already, she started to pack a small purse. "And *of course* a PA system -- if you're wanting me to SING!!"

Isabel poked her head into the room. "I have all of that," she reminded Maria severely. "Except for the wedding co-ordinator, that is. The PA system will be there in the banquet hall, and yes, I do want you to sing. But not, for preference... right *now*. Got it??"

"Umm, uh, yeah," Maria replied, a little deflated. "Sorry."

"Sokay," Iz assured her. "Almost ready?"

"Umm, yeah, just give me two shakes."

"Certainly." Isabel was about to leave when Maria spoke again.

"What's first on the agenda again??"

"Ummm... I need to drop by my mom's," Isabel said after a moment's thought. "Promised her that I'd take something of hers or something from when I was little as my 'something old', but we haven't figured out which." She sighed. "What was I thinking of, wanting an evening wedding?? If we were having this earlier, then I wouldn't have to go so long without seeing him."

"If the wedding was earlier, then we'd be in trouble unless we'd gotten these errands done with earlier," Maria observed, "but that isn't really the point. Slightly more on target is that you really wanted that hall in the convention center for your wedding, and it wasn't free anytime during the day today, or yesterday, or tomorrow. So, if you wanted it and you wanted to have the wedding festivities on spring break, you had to go with an evening wedding."

Maria got up and took Isabel's hands in hers. "And, possibly most important, is that you don't need to worry about missing Alex today, because after tonight the two of you are going to be together forever. Symbolically if perhaps not completely literal. And the more that you miss him today, the more special seeing him at the ceremony tonight is going to be."

"Wow," Isabel repeated, a little surprised. "As far as supportive insight goes, that was pretty damn good."

"Part of a bridesmaid's job," Maria laughed. "Now let's get going."

----------

"Laurie, hi!!" Michael said with a broad grin as he recognized one of the few guests still waiting to be 'ushed' to a seat. He had seen her already of course, the day before they had spent a few hours together, catching up at his apartment and driving around town, and then she had been at the rehearsal dinner later. But he gave her as big of a hug as wedding propriety would seem to allow anyway. "And you must be Richard," Michael continued a moment later, extending his hand to the clean-cut youngish guy who had been standing and waiting with Laurie. "Nice to meet you."

"Yes," Laurie confirmed with a smile. "Michael, Richard Wallace, my boyfriend. Rich... well, I've told you plenty about Michael, haven't I?"

He nodded a little uncertainly. "Wanna sit on the brides' side?" Michael asked after a second.

"Umm, yes please, I guess," Laurie answered again. "Since she's one of your oldest friends and all. I don't really know Alex so well." Michael nodded a little and led them into the hall, looking for good seating that was still open.

"I have to admit," Richard said softly, "that I'm not quite clear on what the deal is with you and Laurie. She calls you her brother, but, well... not to put too fine a point on it, you just kind of showed up out of the blue several years ago, as near as I can make it."

Michael turned around to aim a questioning look at his sister, but she shrugged a little vaguely, which Michael took to be his cue that she really hadn't told him much about this stuff and he should just go ahead and take his best shot. Obviously, she hadn't wanted him to know of the alien involvement, or at least, not just yet, and Michael didn't want to get into the whole 'psychiatric hospital/buried out in the woods' stuff either. But... some of the conclusions that Laurie's evil aunt and uncle had come to might do, more or less...

"It's kinduv a long story, but I was abandoned and found, not knowing that many details about who my parents were until I was seventeen. Happened to come across a picture of Laurie's grandfather, Charles Dupree, when he had been fairly young, and it was a spitting image, I mean, the guy could have been my twin. Went to try and find out what happened to him, and some of the family thought I was out for a share of the inheritance." He shrugged vaguely, while indicating the row that they should sit in. "It kinduv looks as if I could have been an illegitimate child of Charles' born when he was fairly old, and for whatever reason my mother couldn't take care of me once I got a little older." Michael sighed and shot an affectionate look over at Laurie.

"So technically, maybe, I'm her uncle, but that's weird, especially because she's a year and a half older than I am, so we just stick with 'brother' and 'sister.' Neither of us really have any other family to speak of, and I'd rather have a sister than a cousin or a niece, so... well, there you are."

"Though having a sister AND a niece could be good too," Laurie put in mischievously. "Or a nephew. And even a brother-in-law." Then, after a very long moment, "Breathe, baby Rich, I wasn't thinking of anytime soon." Michael laughed softly at the look Richard had got on his face. (Though, come to think of it, if Maria chose to tease him tonight about getting married and having kids, Michael was willing to admit that his face might be even worse.)

He looked up, and saw Kyle signalling with a gesture. "Gotta go guys, we're nearly ready to roll," he said quietly to the two of them. "Enjoy the show."

First, Michael hurried most of the way to the back of the hall, and passed the gesture along to Maria as she poked her head through the doors. All of the last guests had been seated now by the groomsmen, and Michael hurried up to the front to take his place with Max, Kyle, and Alex. Isabel's mother, the parents of the groom, and the priest were sitting nearby.

Maria rushed back away from the closed hall doors to where Erica was waiting around a corner. "We are a go for the big entrance," she stage-whispered. "Pass it along." The other bridesmaid hurried off, and soon arrived back, with Tess, Mr Evans, and Isabel in tow. Once more Maria opened the doors just a crack and made a discreet signal, and in a few moments the sound of a familiar organ processional could be heard inside.

"Okay," Isabel said, smiling so brightly the beams of light emanating from her face were almost visible in their own right. "Here we go."

Maria entered first, slowly stepping down the aisle, and then a long moment later, Erica followed. As 'bridesmaids of the ranks', they were wearing nearly identical dresses in a rich pink color, which beautifully set off the fresh-faced good looks and mid-shaded hair that the two girls shared. Tess, waiting to follow at the appropriate moment, was wearing a slightly more elegant light blue gown, both to mark her off as the maid of honor, and because she didn't have quite the right skin tone to go with that same shade of pink. She was carrying a small bouquet of bellflowers and morning glory. (Maria's and Erica's flowers had been crysanthemums and carnations, and Isabel herself was carrying a bunch of sterling roses and lilies.)

Tess looks absolutely gorgeous, Isabel thought, watching her slip into the hall. If she only opens up a little she could end up with at least two dinner invitations and some phone numbers exchanged at the reception. The thought made her smile, and she spent a few brief seconds coming up with a list of single guys to whom she could slip the news that her honor attendant was also eligible, and then turned to her father.

"Do you have your four somethings??" he asked, smiling.

"Dad, we've gotta go," she replied. "Everybody's waiting for us."

"Well, let them wait," he insisted. "As... as soon as we get to the end of that aisle, you aren't ever going to be my little babygirl any more. Let your old man wallow for just a moment, okay??"

She smiled warmly. "Not quite sure if I've been a baby girl for quite a while, but fine. Yeah, I've got everything: something old is the emerald earrings you got for mom on your first valentine's day together..." she waved vaguely at the small pieces of jewelry on her lobes, in case he hadn't noticed them. "Something new is the shoes, bought this afternoon. Something borrowed is, well, I've got Maria's favorite aroma vial tucked someplace secure under the gown. Something blue is the ribbon in my hair. I even have a sixpence in my shoe, or the closest possible American equivalent."

He smiled. "That's my girl... everything has to be absolutely perfect for your special day. You used a nickel and a penny??"

"Yep, and in these shoes I need to be careful that they won't throw me off balance just enough to trip and fall in a most undignified fashion, so we'd better get started now."

Philip Evans smiled, offered his arm, and they made their grand entrance just as the processional started up again. Maria, Erica, and Tess were already lined up at the front of the hall, opposite Michael, Max, Kyle, and of course Alex. Everybody's eyes were on Isabel, in a contemporary but elegant white sheath gown, thin straps around her shoulders holding it up. Slowly the two of them walked up to the front, and Isabel nodded thanks to her father and stood next to Alex as Mister Evans went to sit down next to his wife.

"Dearly beloved," the priest started with evident relish, and a soft hint of polite laughter emerged here and there from the guests. "We have gathered here tonight, obviously, to bear witness and celebrate, as Alex and Isabel give recognition to the worth and beauty of love, and join together in the vows of love."

"If there is anyone here today that knows of a reason that Alex or Isabel should not marry each other, let them speak now, or remain forever silent." There was a short pause. "In this case, I really didn't think so." Another soft laugh of appreciation.

"Who has come with Isabel today, chosen above all others to be close to her today?"

"I have," Mister Evans began, and the short reply was repeated by his wife, by Maria, Erica, and Tess.

"Thank you. And who has come with Alex, chosen above others to be close to him, as he enters the institution of marriage with Isabel?" Alex's parents, the groomsmen, and Kyle repeated the ritual of identifying themselves. "Thank you as well."

The priest smiled and took a deep breath. "It's usually at this point in the ceremony that I deliver a fairly stock speech, a short lecture, really, about the power of love, what young people can expect from marriage, the importance of trust, commitment, and communication."

"But, given what I've learned while talking to the two of you, and heard about from your parents and friends, especially over the past three days, I've decided that giving you the usual spiel would be more than a little patronizing. You may be young, but Isabel, you have wisdom that betrays an old soul, and Alex, you are gifted with a true and open heart, and those elements of your characters, among others, have led you through more trials than some people a decade your senior."

"You understand the importance of open-ness, and having faith in each other, and each of you have seen that the heart can work miracles. Hold onto these things, and I think that you'll stay together a long time, and build a happy life for yourselves. Keep learning about love every day, make time for each other no matter how busy your lives may get in the next few years, and try to hold onto that young and fierce passion from when you first started to know each other, because it's too easy to let that slip away with the sands of time. That's all the advice I have for you."

"Thank you," Alex whispered, and Isabel muttered a wordless agreement.

"You're very welcome. Now, um, Max Evans, one of Alex's good friends and groomsmen, has asked to do a reading about the power of love. Oh, and he's Isabel's brother as well."

Max walked over to the center, in front of his sister and Alex, as father Brown retreated several steps, and put a paper on the stand. "Umm, thanks. I wanted to share this passage from 'The irrational season' with you all, because it describes what I think about Isabel getting married pretty well."

He cleared his throat and began to recite. "'Ultimately there comes a time when a decision must be made. Ultimately, two people who love each other must ask themselves how much they hope for as their love grows and deepens, and how much risk they are willing to take. It is indeed a fearful gamble. Because it is the nature of love to create, a marriage itself is something which has to be created...'"

----------

"Maria DeLuca, one of Isabel and Alex's closest friends, wanted to be in charge of the unity candle ritual," the priest said several minutes, (and points on the ceremony rundown,) later. "It isn't something I generally open up to members of the wedding party, mostly because I like the way it goes myself, but I decided to humor her on this, because I've learned that Maria can get pretty difficult when she doesn't get her way on something she really wants. Maria??"

Blushing a little, Maria stepped over to where the candles were set up, on a seperate table on the bridesmaid's side of the hall, and Isabel and Alex came over to join her, everyone else turning as necessary to watch.

Maria smiled and took a second to remember the beginning of her part. "Alex, Isabel, these two seperate candles symbolize your seperate lives, seperate families, and seperate hearts." Belatedly she took the small lighter that had been left on the table and lit their candles. "Please, each of you pick up your candle and use them together, to light the seperate candle." Alex and Isabel carefully took the candles, making sure to keep the flames away from their fancy clothes. Their eyes locked, knowing that they had to co-ordinate their motions carefully at this point to get the whole process to work the way it was supposed to.

"The individual candles represent your lives before today," Maria said, as they brought the seperate candles in to light the much larger stationary one. "Lighting the center candle represents that your two lives are now joined, as one light, and represents the joining together of your two families and sets of friends to one. Thank you." They took their places, and on the way Isabel tapped her uncle Phil on the shoulder and asked him to keep an eye on the candles and make sure that they didn't tip over or light something else on fire, since he didn't seem to be paying attention to anything else.

"Thank you Maria," Father Brown said, "that was great. And for any of you who might be wondering, yes, we're nearly at the main event now. I'd like to take a moment to read a traditional Cherokee Prayer for the happy couple." After a pause, he continued. "God in heaven above, please protect Alex and Isabel and the ones they love, who honor all you created as they pledge their hearts and lives together."

"We honor mother-earth, and ask for their marriage to be abundant, and to grow stronger through the seasons. We honor fire, and ask that they sail through life, safe and calm as in our father's arms. We honor water, to clean and soothe their relationship, that it may never thirst for love."

"With all the forces of the universe that you created, we pray for harmony and true happiness as we forever grow young together. Amen." He looked up again at the audience. "Now, Alex and Isabel have chosen to each make a personal statement of testimony and commitment before taking their vows. Alex??" The two of them turned to each other, and Alex smiled, fished a little cue sheet out of a pocket of his suit, and started.

"You let me in.

"It wasn't something that happened as soon as we met, or that had to wait for a certain period of time and then came all at once. Over and over again, just when I wasn't expecting it, you'd let me through your walls a little bit, and I'd get surprised all over again at the beauty, or the uniqueness, that I saw inside a room of your heart, Isabel, or in a little piece of your soul. Sometimes you'd get frightened and try to block me back out afterwards, but after the first few times, I learned not to be disappointed, and put my faith in time, and love.

"And you'd let me in again. Now I've asked you to stand beside me for the rest of our lives, and you took me up on the offer. I'm not quite sure if you've let me see everything in those hidden places of yours yet, or if there's still something there that might surprise me, but either way I can't wait.

"I promise, today, to take care of you, whenever you need my love, Isabel Corinna. I promise to trust what you tell me when it's important to you, to always hold out hope for your dreams and my own, and to cherish you as much as is humanly possible. I pledge that I will work to be the best father to our children that I can be, if and when they come to us, and to provide whatever you and they need, to the best of my ability. This is my wedding committment to you.

"And thank you, for letting me in." Somewhat nervously, Alex took Isabel's hand, and very lightly kissed one of her fingers to finish the statement.

"Thank you, Alex," the priest said. "Isabel??" Isabel brushed the trace of a tear out of her eye before beginning to make her own statement from memory.

"Did you fall from a star?

"I know how ridiculous that sounds, but there's a little voice whispering in my head, that insists it must be true. Because how could so incredible a man have been born to a biologist and a cook, even in the city of Angels? How could he have come to Roswell when he was eight, like any other little kid? It doesn't explain anything.

"From the first moment we met, you have challenged my expectations, sometimes in delighting ways, sometimes with behaviour that baffled me because it didn't fit into the way I saw the world, or frustrated me because I would compare myself to you and think that I didn't measure up. But you took everything that I could throw at you in stride, Alex, and showed me that love was not nearly what I thought it would be like. Slowly, once I got over my pride, I started to learn it from you.

"And so that little voice in my head insists that the only way you could have come to Roswell was to fall from a star as my wish come true, the wish that I never even realized I held in my heart, until you brought it to life.

"On this day, the first of our marriage," and Isabel was crying again now, just a little bit, "I promise to stand by you always Alex Charles, and stay true only to you. I promise to keep learning about love from you all of my life, and teach you when I can. To have faith in what you say, when I know that it's coming from your heart.

"And I vow to take care of your children, our children, when the right time comes, and to be a good mother to them. I will love them, I don't think I even need to promise that, because I hardly think I could help it. And I pledge to do whatever I can to be your dream come true, and to make you feel as loved... as loved as I feel whenever I see you smile at me. That... that is my promise, Alex."

There was a slight pause, and the priest took his cue. "Thank you, Isabel. That was beautiful." He waited another moment, and then said Alex's name softly, to signal the next step in the ceremony.

"I take you, Isabel, to be my wife. I promise to love, honor, cherish, and protect you, forsaking all others and holding only unto you forevermore."

Isabel took her turn only a second after Alex had finished. "I take you, Alex, to be my husband. I promise to love, honor, cherish, and protect you, forsaking all others and holding only unto you, forevermore."

The priest stage-whispered "the rings?" even though Kyle and Tess each had them ready.

Alex slipped the gold band onto Isabel's finger next to the unique engagement ring he had given her four months ago, repeating the traditional words of to have and to hold, in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, and so on. Then Isabel put the ring that Tess handed her onto Alex's left hand, echoing the same litany. "...in joy, and in sorrow, and I promise my love to you." They turned back to the priest for his turn in the ceremony.

"Wedding rings are an outward and visible sign of dedication and commitment, as Alex and Isabel unify their lives in marriage." He smiled out at the crowd, then continued to the happy couple. "The two of you, tonight, have agreed to live together as one family; you have promised your love for each other both in your own words and in the traditional vows. By the giving of rings, and the joining of your hands," and he carefully brought their hands together, "by the power vested in me by the universe and the state of New Mexico, I now declare you to be husband and wife. Alex, you may kiss the bride."

"About time," he joked, and gathered Isabel to him for a decorous, but definitely enthusiastic public kiss. There was scattered applause and soft cheers that could be heard from the audience. Alex and Iz turned around, and happiness seemed to radiate from each of their faces as they looked at everyone who had gathered together to be there on their special day.

"Ladies and gentlement, it is my pleasure and privilege to introduce to you, for the first time, Mister and Mrs Alex Whitman," Father Brown announced, and more applause. Isabel took Alex's arm in hers and they receded back down the aisle, followed by the rest of the wedding party.

"On Alex and Isabel's behalf, I would like to thank you all for coming. The reception will begin in about half an hour, in the Desert Rose banquet hall at the Roswell Best Western hotel. Thank you again, and good night."

TO BE CONTINUED...

Funny you should mention that, timelord.

Part Ten

"Umm, err..." Isabel's brain stumbled for a moment. "So pleased that you could come, ehhh..."

"Grandma Madigan," Alex encouraged one of the junior associates of Mister Evans' law firm down the receiving line and jumped to her rescue. "I was sorry to hear that Granpa couldn't make it."

The elderly woman patted Alex's offered hand and smiled beatifically. "Well, at least he's able to make it up and around, which is more than a lot of people who are eighty-nine can say. He's just not up for such a long car ride, and staying in a hotel room and all of that... so I told him, 'Harold, it's fine, you can stay here and take care of yourself, the girl from next door will just pop her head in a few times a day to make sure that you haven't thrown your hip out and can't get up, but everything will be fine and I'll bring you back the video tape.'" She smiled and turned so that her smile bore full on Isabel. (It took some careful aiming to achieve this effect, since Grandma Manigan wasn't as tall as the young bride, and her usual posture was a little hunched down rather than pointed up.) "You looked so beautiful walking down the aisle, dear. Best wishes. Best of wishes. And congratulations, Alex. You've found yourself quite a gem."

"Don't I know it," Alex admitted, stealing a sidelong look at his wife of almost an hour.

"Now, Isabel, Gloria tells me that you're studying to be a head-shrinker, yes??"

"Um, err, yes," Isabel said, blushing. "Clinical psychology, we like to call it. But, well, I'm sorry to say this grandma, but you're kind of holding up the line." One of Isabel's friends from East New Mexico was shooting slightly dirty looks at the older woman as she continued to make small talk with Alex's mother.

"Okay, okay, I'll move on to Alex alone and let someone else congratulate the spectacular bride," Grandma allowed. "At least give me a moment with my favorite grandson." She shuffled a little further over, letting the line move up. "So, Alex, did your Aunt Louise tell you that she's thinking of marrying her girlfriend sometime soon??"

"Umm, no," Alex murmured, "but I haven't had much of a chance to talk with her yet."

---------

"Okay, you know the deal by this point," Kyle Valenti announced to the assembled guests at the reception. "Let's give a big hand, as they step out for their first dance as husband wife... Alex and Isabel! And you goofers sitting up there on the stage, why don't you do us a favor and hit it!!"

Alex grinned as he took his bride's hand and led her out on the floor, flashing a smile to the band as the music started. It was made up of Maria, a few of her musically-inclined friends from college, alumni from Alex's old garage band, (with some overlap between those last two groups,) Jim Valenti on accousic guitar, and Jeff Parker playing the keyboards. Michael had encouraged Maria to sing, knowing that as long as she was up on stage giving the song her all, she wouldn't be expecting him to be dancing.

"It's amazing how you, can speak right to my heart..." Alex and Isabel spun slowly around, each trying to memorize this moment. "Without saying a word, you can light up the dark. Try as I may, I could never explain / What I hear, when you don't say a thing..."

----------

"To give the first toast to the happy couple," Maria introduced... "Tess Harding." Kyle almost finished standing up before he realize that something weird was going on, as Maria handed the microphone down the head table to the maid of honor.

"I know what you're, you're all thinking," Tess said with a slightly nervous smile. "It's traditional that this be the best man's job. But tradition schmadition -- Kyle gave us his best material at the rehearsal dinner, and it was nothing to write home about." A few of the people who had been at the rehearsal dinner were shaking their heads in surprise or disagreement, and Kyle was realizing that he'd been had. "So I'm going to give it my best shot."

---------

"Okay, everybody ready??" Isabel shot a coy look over her shoulder and waved the duplicate bouquet very obviously. About a dozen women had gathered to try their hand with this ritual... all of Isabel's bridal party, several school friends, Liz, Amy DeLuca, Laurie, and Martine. Also Aunt Louise, the girlfriend of one of Michael's work buddies, and a cousin from Philp Evans' side of the family that nobody really knew well. They had gathered into a loose clump behind Isabel, and aside from a few who were pretty much competing out of form, (Liz and Rebecca Gilroy,) every single one of them seemed to be waiting to an indication as to where Isabel would aim the toss, before planning their strategy.

And all of a sudden, the flowers were airborne. Louise shoved gently this way, Martine pushed back the other way a little. And suddenly Maria launched herself into the air with a flying intercept, nearly landing on top of Erica... but she had the bouquet firmly in her grasp. As the rest of the girls sorted themselves out and started clapping with hearty congratulations, she took the stems in both hands and waved the bouquet, very obviously, in Michael's direction, grinning and laughing out loud. Michael blanched for a moment, and then smiled, nodding back to her. He pointed out two fingers straight out from one hand and gestured ambiguously.

--------

And, so quickly it seemed, everything was over. Well, the *reception* was over; that didn't really qualify as everything. Cake had been served out, the last dance had been danced, the wedding presents gathered up for safe keeping by their parents, and the banquet hall was probably being cleaned and locked up any minute now. Most of the guests had left to go home, and a few who had come from out of town had gone up to their hotel rooms.

Isabel used the key card to open the door to the honeymoon suite, and almost shrieked as Alex pulled her back from stepping through the doorway. "What's wrong??"

"Umm, you were about to step across. Instead of letting me carry you across the threshold."

"Umm, isn't that supposed to be for our house, not the wedding night??" Isabel asked. "Anyway, umm... well, not to impugn on your manliness in any way, my dear, but I do know I'm quite a lot of woman. You sure you're up for that??"

"Yes, miss snarky pants," he shot back, smiling. "I'll do it here AND when we get back home to Las Cruces. Come on." And sure enough, he gathered Isabel, as long as she was, into his arms pretty easily, and though negotiating the lock and the doorway in that position wasn't easy, they managed it together with something approaching, dare I say it, grace.

The honeymoon suite, on first impressions, lived up to high expectations. A huge sumptuous four-poster bed, considerably larger than queen sized. On every available surface were dim, flickering light sources with lots of surface area, apparently designed to simulate the romantic effect of candles without the fire hazard. Out in the living room, there was incredibly thick and soft carpeting, a medium-sized and sturdy looking breakfast table, and a generously dimensioned hot tub.

Isabel turned to him, and smiled shyly, which he found subtly ironic. "Well, I guess that's it. We're husband and wife, Mister Whitman."

"Yes we are, Missus Whitman," he shot back. "It's going to take a few days, or maybe more, to really get used to it, I suppose. Like all the other big changes in life."

"I guess so," she agreed. "But in the meantime, we ARE married, and we have this amazing room that my parents paid for..." She teasingly let one strap stray down over her shoulder, supported only by a half upraised arm.

Alex grinned. "Get *rid* of that thing," he suggested, quickly shucing away his tuxedo jacket and hanging it on a conveniently placed coat tree. "Otherwise, I might just have to tear it off of you, or hurt my hands trying."

"Give me a minute, why don't you!!" she protested, returning the strap to its place. "I've been picturing this moment for... well, for quite a lot of years. Don't want to ruin the effect by rushing it." And with that, she slowly eased the wedding gown down over her body, finally stepping out of the rich material, now wearing only a strapless bra, bikini underwear, stockings, garters, and shoes - all in the purest white. (Well, except for the stockings, which were the 'invisible' kind.) Alex grinned and unbuckled his belt, starting to take his shoes and pants off. "Well, I realize that we'll probably have to get a few hours' sleep at least, before noon or so, but..."

Alex shook his head. "But?? What dirty thoughts have you got hidden in that pretty little head?"

"Oh, nothing," she chirped innocently. "Well, except wondering just how many places in this suite we can manage to do it."

Alex shook his head. "If you insist. Leave the bed for a little bit later?"

Isabel cocked her own head to one side as if that particular notion hadn't occured to her. "Well, why not?" And she lay down on her back on the floor, just where the carpeting looked thickest and most comfortable, far away from any obstructing furniture. "You want the shoes on or off?"

"Off, but allow me." Alex said, and kneeled down near her feet, now wearing nothing but a partially unbuttoned dress shirt and boxers himself. He gently slipped the shoes off of her feet, and then shuffled across the floor a few feet, scratching gently on the inner skin of her left thigh... (which made Isabel quickly inhale a breath of air and let it out as a high-pitched, pleasant moan.) Then Alex efficiently set about detatching the stockings from the garter belt and slipping them off of her legs, stroking and kissing her bare skin as it was unwrapped.

Seemingly in a split second, both of them were naked, and Alex maneuvered his head carefully between Isabel's legs to lick just once, twice, teasingly at her lower lips, then started to use his hands to drive his blushing bride into a burning bonfire of need as quickly as he could. He started down at her crotch, moved up her abdomen to pay sufficient honor to her magnificent mammaries, and was teasing her neck and ears with her fingertips, when, unable to wait any longer, she jumped him. Alex ended up underneath, his passion pointing quite obviously up into the air, as Isabel climbed over him, an incomparably sexy expression on her face, carefully oriented her bottom into just the right place, and emphatically sealed the deal, plunging her love tunnel down about his pole. Alex screamed out her name.

----------

Max looked deeply into Liz's eyes. "Are you sure that you want to go through with this?"

Liz took a deep breath and nodded. "Yes. Nothing that you've ever connected with has been hurt by it yet, has it? We think of unborn babies as delicate and fragile, but they're not THAT different from all other known life forms."

Max smiled. "Okay, I think you know the drill by now." They both laughed, and Liz gazed intently towards Max's face. He shook his head, took a deep breath, met her stare, and extended his mental 'touch.'

Liz felt a rush of images flashing into her mind as the connection was made. A station wagon driving away down the road... had that been Liz herself, leaving for college? With Maria along to drive her father's car back to Roswell?? A tall, bald man wearing sunglasses and expensive clothes, looking extremely annoyed. Isabel and Alex saying their vows. A lonely desert landscape...

And then it was over, and Max was smiling at her. "Is it..." she started, and then didn't know what to say.

"First off, your baby looks completely healthy and beautiful," he told her excitedly. "About six inches long, putting pressure on your bladder, developing stratified skin layers, hair and nails growing... pretty much textbook development for week twenty, as far as I could tell." Liz couldn't entirely contain a squeal of euphoria. "And... the ghost of your fiancee was right. It's a baby girl."

"Ohmigawd," Liz breathed, completely overwhelmed. "You saw? I'm going to have a daughter??" He nodded, and Liz leaned over and hugged him joyfully.

She was caught off guard when Max pressed his lips to hers, though. For an instant, with that moment of total intimate connection in her mind, she kissed him back, then caught herself and pushed gently away. Max's face fell and he made a little embarassed sound.

"I... I guess I shouldn't have done that?" he said softly.

"Well, I think I'd rather you hadn't," she said softly. "But maybe now I should know why you did, if you can explain it."

"I... I'm not sure," he admitted. "You... you looked so beautiful and animated in that moment, so happy, and I... I guess I've been noticing old feelings coming back to life lately, since we've been spending so much time together." A long breath. "And I guess you haven't... at least, not *those* feelings."

"Umm, not really, no." Liz sighed. "I... I was glad that we were friends again and spending time together, yeah. But no-kidding-around FEELINGS? It... it's way too soon for that for me, Max... and not the least because I'm still carrying Casey's baby!" She sighed. "I'd almost rather it weren't, on some level, because being with you would kind of be easier than still being in love with a dead man. Umm... that sounded a little, umm..." She sighed. "Of course you have many things going for you besides just being alive, but..."

Max smiled a little. "I think I know what you mean. I was kind of expecting it, which is why I didn't try to cross that 'just friends' line before. Can we just leave it behind and try to get back to where we were three minutes ago?"

"Umm, yeah, I think so." Liz smiled at him. "So, umm, have you heard anything from Isabel? How's she taking to married life?" It was only five days after the wedding, but since Isabel and Alex had gone right back to Las Cruces, it had been a little easier than Liz had expected to forget them and slip back into her own concerns.

"Umm, pretty well, except that they've been too busy to really adjust to the fact that they've finally made it official," Max replied. "I think it'll probably sink in about the time they're getting ready to go on the honeymoon."

"Yeah," Liz agreed. "I mean, if you look at it in terms of their everyday life, not much has changed since before, since they were already living together." She smiled. "Not that I necessarily believe in waiting for the formalities. Life is too short... sometimes ridiculously so."

Max realized that Liz was showing signs of starting to get very bummed about Casey, and hurried to take her mind off it. "She wanted me to pass on her thanks for the bookbag, and the silver. An official note will be forthcoming soon."

Liz giggled, happy at the thought of her bridal shower and wedding presents. She had refused to let them be financed by her parents, (like most of her life was, considering that she was still working part-time for less than peanuts at the preservation alliance.) Generally she didn't get huffy about accepting any help that was freely offered, but getting something special for Isabel and Alex was somehow different, considering all that they meant to her. She had eventually sold a rare first-edition signed Hemingway, (itself a treasured present from her Grandma Claudia for christmas when she was thirteen,) on ebay to raise the funds, and Max was the only one who knew that part. "Thanks. I'll look forward to her thank-you note; I'm sure it'll be lovely."

"Oh, and I believe you indicated on NO uncertain terms that you wanted to hear about it as soon as Michael started, erm, shopping for a particular item?" Max continued, winking.

It took Liz a second to figure out the veiled reference. "Oh, are you serious, he's looking for a ring already??"

"Why, how did you ever guess that?" Max replied in a faux-surprise tone. "Yeah, it seems that he was always figuring that the clock would start ticking as soon as Alex and Isabel drove off with 'just married' on their bumper, and the fact that Maria caught Izzie's bouquet didn't exactly help give him any breathing room. He's being a little cautious about it, knowing that he's often terrible with things like this and not wanting to do anything that'll upset her, but hopefully everything will be ready for him to pop the question in a week or two."

"I'm sure that just about any ring will be fine," Liz said. "That he wants to spend the rest of his life with her is what Maria is waiting to hear."

"Yeah, I told him that," Max agreed. "Also that I'd help him with the rings. So far, his taste hasn't been bad, at least, not according to my own judgements. Leaning towards something conventional, relatively tasteful. Probably not too expensive... he expounded at great lengths on the three month's salary rule of thumb as a piece of propaganda perpetuated by the diamond cartel. I think I've managed to convince him that he cannot go as low as a single paycheque."

Liz laughed at that. "So, come on, details? Do you remember any of the ones he's been looking at?"

"Umm... diamonds mostly, in oval and emerald cuts. Half carat up to, umm, maybe around point six. I suggested that to get his money's worth with Maria, he'd better concentrate on finding something with low color and high clarity, instead of just as big a rock as he could afford."

Liz smiled. "Yeah, that sounds pretty good. Any idea for the ring itself??"

"Umm, gold of course... there's one kind of band style that he likes... but I have no clue what it's called, I'm sorry."

"That's okay." Liz sniffed a little. "I wonder when they'll want to hold the ceremony??"

"What, you haven't talked about it with Maria?" Max smiled. "She's made it pretty clear that she's expecting Michael to do his part pretty soon... I would think that she's started to plan a timeline already."

Liz laughed. "Probably she has. Maybe she thinks it would be too, I dunno, white-trash or something to talk about it to anybody before he actually asks. Or maybe, she doesn't want to rub my nose in the fact that I don't have anybody. Well, not in the same way that she and Michael, Isabel and Alex have each other."

"Yeah," Max said, softly. He and Liz's caught each other's eyes, and there was a moment of total understanding. Each of them knew that the terrible feeling of loneliness was something that they both had in common. But the wall around Liz's heart was something that neither of them knew how to simply abolish, (or even if it would be a good thing to do,) and with that wall standing tall, there was no way for their lonely souls to find solace in each other. Just another of the cosmos' cruel ironies.

"Oh, I got my course picks for the summer term," Max told her after a moment. "Everything that I needed, including that intro to nursing that the guidance people told me would fill up fast."

"That's great," she said. "Ohh, and somebody over at the alliance told me about a grant that I should apply for. I was kind of rambling on about... well, about something that Casey and I were talking about doing as an joint study project our senior year, about... well, I'll tell you all the minute details another time, if you're actually interested. Myself, I'm not sure if I actually have a shot at state grant money, considering that I don't even have a college degree and I've dropped out of school, but it'd be a great opportunity to maybe actually make a difference."

Max smiled. "Well, I wish you the best of luck, and sometime I really DO want to hear all those minute details. Right now, though, I kind of have to get going and hit a study session for my biochem final. Wish me luck?"

"Only the best," Liz insisted as Max got up, grabbed his jacket, shot her one more friendly smile, and hurried out of the room. After a moment, she got up herself and went to the kitchen, seeing what she could get ready for dinner by the time her parents got home.

----------

Maria looked up from the computer spreadsheet she had been scrutinizing, scanning the room for where her ringing phone was actually ringing from. No sign of it. Sighing, she got up, discovered where it had fallen off her bedside table, and hit the talk button. "DeLuca management."

"Hey, DeLuca," a high-spirited tenor voice replied. "I've heard the news, and I just wanted to call and say congratulations. A little surprised that I actually got you, as busy as you seem to be lately, but not complaining of course."

Maria lay back on the bed, grinning, and instinctively went to adjust the gold band on her third finger, even though Alex could of course not see it. "Well, thanks ever and so! And now I feel bad, because I've been meaning to ring over to you guys ever since I got my thank you note, and, well... have not so much managed to actually call, obviously."

"'Tis nothing," Alex replied, smiling himself at the Maria-isms. "So, Liz mentioned something about a surprise proposal, and said that I should get the details straight from you. If Michael managed to get fancier than me, I have to admit I'll be a little disappointed."

"Oh, it's not like that," she insisted. "The way you popped the question to Isabel was very simple and classic, which was just perfect. Michael had the benefit of coming later, while you were the one who took a flying chance, being the first one in our little group to actually bring up the real possibility of marriage. You get plenty of props for that from me, hun."

"Stop trying to flatter me and make with the details," Alex shot back, chuckling.

"Okay. Well, for a while now, I've been helping Spaceboy with his laundry while I'm over at his place. Don't mind it too much, because it IS spending time with him, and the boy manages to pull of some incredible boners when it comes to a washing machine and clothes, especially his fancy work duds."

"I'm starting to sense, or maybe guess, where this is going," Alex related. "But I'll wait."

"Good thing," she retorted. "So, he played it quite cool, I have to admit. Asked me to check the pockets of some pants that I'd already loaded into the washer, because he thought he might have left something in it. So I look, and nearly crammed into the pocket scene was a small, gorgeous gold ring, with the most beautiful little oval diamond. And he looks over, cool as a cucumber, and says 'Oh, did I leave *that* in there?? Well, since you've seen it, I might as well make it official.'" And he slips down onto one knee for about ten seconds to pop the question and then gets up."

Alex smiled. "It's a nice story, but I feel compelled to ask. Are you sure that he didn't ACTUALLY forget the ring in the pants by accident, and just manged to cover it really well??"

"Umm... now that you mention it, no. But I'll choose to forget about that possibility, if you don't mind," Maria replied glibly. "Now, on to other things. Are you guys packed for the honeymoon?"

"Umm, no," Alex replied. "It's what, four days until we leave."

"Three and a half," Maria said. "Just make sure you don't lose track... it always takes longer than you think. Especially when you keep getting overwhelmed by passion and consummating the marriage as you go." She chortled. "Mind if I ask just how much sleep you guys DID get on your wedding night, before having to check out of the hotel?"

"Umm, actually, nearly eight hours," Alex replied. "The spirit was very willing, but our bodies were tired, after all of the excitement of the wedding ceremony and the reception going nearly 'til midnight. Oh, and we both had the WEIRDest dream!"

"Both?" Maria asked. "As in, the same dream?"

"Yeah, as nearly as we can figure out," Alex replied. "And that wasn't all of the spookiness about it... it almost seemed as if we were... well, were seeing the future."

"Really?" Maria took a moment to think of a joke. "How did my hair look??"

"Umm, not too bad," he admitted. "I think you tried some sort of an extremely straight thing, dyed a slightly darker brown than your natural. VERY dramatic and impressive on you." He laughed. "But it wasn't just this, I mean... Liz's daughter was in the dream, and Isabel and my daughter!! (Who, just for the record, does not exist even as a conception yet... we have CHECKED.) Some other kids that we aren't sure whose they are, and another alien guy..." Alex shook his head against the phone. "And... and there's something that went terribly wrong, but I couldn't tell what it was."

Maria frowned. "Well, if real life does start matching up against your dream, hopefully we can figure out what the wrong thing is and stop it. Either that, or we'll all have forgotten about the dream until too late." She sighed. "Listen, I hate to cut this off short, but I have a balance sheet for the Crashdown's march accounts that I really need to get back to. Was there anything else?"

"No, not really. Say hi to Michael for me, and we'll give you a ring after getting back from Myrtle Beach, if not before, 'kay??"

"Sounds great. My love to Isabel."

"Got it." Alex hung up the phone, frowned to himself, and went off looking for an actual pen and paper.

----------

"Oh, umm, hey," Michael said, somewhat surprised to find Kyle sitting with Tess in the loft lounge. "If you guys are, well, are busy with something, I can splitsky and come back later."

"Were you looking for anybody in particular?" Tess asked him.

"Umm, yeah, was about half hoping to drop in on Maria by surprise, and half happy to hang with anybody who happened to be here," he said with a smile. "But..."

"Well, Maria isn't here, as I think you've figured out," Kyle said, "but there's nothing we're talking about that's a secret or anything. Come on, sit down, and tell me if I'm going to have to be wearing a tux again anytime soon."

Michael smiled at the way Kyle had put that as he got into the armchair. "Umm... probably, though it depends on Maria as far as how strict the dress code will be. I'd definitely like you to be a groomsman, Kyle, if you're up for it. I'm afraid you're out of the running for best man."

"Hey, that's alright," he agreed, nodding. "Once was plenty, I don't need to go for two in a row. I imagine Max will appreciate it, if he's who you're thinking of."

"Umm, haven't completely decided yet," Michael admitted. "But hey, that's enough about my wedding for now, it isn't going to be for at least six months."

"Saw how crazed Isabel and Alex were and decided to insist on more breathing room?" Tess joked.

"Well, there's that. And both of us kind of like the idea of a December ceremony... there might even be a freak desert snow if we can arrange it." He laughed. "But come on, what else is up?"

Tess shot Kyle a look, and he nodded slightly. "Kyle met Martine's big brother for the first time the night before last, and apparently it did NOT go well."

"Mmm, sorry to hear that," Michael told him. "What kind of nastiness are we talking about??"

"I... well, he's very assertive, very opinionated, and not-quite-directly announcing that he doesn't think I'm good enough for her." Kyle sighed.

"Come on, Kyle, don't take it so hard," Tess insisted.. "The brother sounds like a royal jerk and it isn't his opinion of you that matters a brass tack. It's Marti who you care about, and she loves you."

Kyle looked up, an odd expression on his face. "Does she?? I don't think she's ever told me so. That she likes me a lot, that she cares about me, that we have a lot of fun together, yeah. But the big one??"

"There are some things that matter more than the words she says," Tess said. "Trust me. It's there in the way she just stares at you when you're not looking her way, the way her face lights up when someone mentions your name."

Kyle smiled a little, but didn't seem entirely comforted. "And then, there's the question of whether I have a direction in my life, which I'm starting to think is a valid criticism. I'm a year away from leaving university with a liberal arts in english lit, and the only thing I know is what I DON'T want to do with it, ie write, edit, or review."

"Well, if you're a college student who isn't sure about the direction of your life, that puts you in pretty good company, or at least numerous company," Tess insisted. "You're twenty-two, you'll sort it out."

Kyle grunted a little, and this time there was a long, awkward pause. "Umm, what about you, Tess??" Michael asked her feebly. "Got any plans, as in, say, for the summer??"

"Student teaching for the summer skills program and trying to find a new place to live," she sighed, and then added in an undertone, "thanks a lot."

"Hey, I didn't ask Maria to move in with me," Michael protested, "but she's decided that living together once they got engaged worked well for Alex and Isabel, and was I really going to refuse the girl I just asked to marry me? Given Maria's legendary temper?" He chuckled to himself. "And it just kind of worked out too perfectly to stop anyway, with Max getting a room in residence that opens up just a few days before the lease is up here at the loft, so he'll be moving out, and it really is quite a lot of space for just one guy. Now I wonder why I ever got it all on my lonesome."

Kyle turned a speculative gaze on Michael for a moment, and then shrugged. "Yeah, you'll be able to find someplace else nice, Tess. Don't sweat it."

She nodded, acknowledging and appreciating the thought. "Umm, sorry, we kinda passed this by before I got a chance to ask about it --" Michael started. "Summer skills program?"

"It's a city-sponsored babysitting program for mid-ages kids," Tess said with a slightly sarcastic smile. "Not really like summer school, that counts for school credit if they've fallen behind or want to get ahead of the other kids... the courses are all Enter-cational stuff that they'll learn stuff from, but also might have fun doing... cooking, computers, sports, art, drama. That kind of thing. For nine to thirteen year olds, I think. They've got me assigned to a drama & theater class."

"Hmm... well, doesn't sound like the worst way to spend the summer," Michael admitted. "And you'll be earning credits towards your full teacher's diploma or something?"

Tess nodded, and stretched a little. "I'm bored," she said with a sigh a moment later. "Either of you guys wanna go hit the Crashdown?"

----------

"Ohhhhh...." the low, pleased moan coming from deep down past Isabel's throat resonated in the air for about fifteen seconds. "If I just melted into a puddle of goo right here, would you dig a reservoir for me and keep me from flowing out into the sea??"

"Of course, honey," Alex replied in a faraway, contented voice, too relaxed himself to be struck by the oddness of the hypothetical. "And when the evening came, I'd carry you back to the hotel with me in a bucket." She laughed softly to herself.

It was the afternoon of their fourth day in Myrtle Beach, and the various passions and excitements that had enveloped both of them for the first few days... for marathon sex, sightseeing and diversion, new taste sensations found at the hotel grille and various fancy restaurants, had faded before an overwhelming compulsion to relax, to fit some rest and 'vegetation' in before going back to Roswell, where Alex would once again be pushed to his limits by the demands of a new job, and Isabel would soon begin a new slate of challenging courses in the university's summer term, lasting May through August.

Right now they were both flat on their backs, supported by fancy deck chairs out on the Atlantic beach, surrounded by a few hundred other pleased sunbathers doing much the same thing. Alex was wearing fairly brief sunshorts and little plastic sunshades over his eyes, and his new bride's statuesque body was covered only by a tan-colored string bikini and a short, nearly transparent coverup skirt. The sun beat down fiercely on the scene, and humid mugginess clung in the air, but somehow Alex found the sweaty weather pleasant rather than oppressive. There was nothing to do but lie here, dripping as much moisture as he needed to, and the heat seemed like a soothing electrified blanket surrounding them.

Reminded of the heat, he took a shallow drink from the bottle that had been resting next to his hand in the sand, and realized that it was almost empty. It would be too easy to get dehydrated in this heat... except that there was an insulated cooler in between their beach loungers, still fairly full of ice, cold water, and drinks. Maybe he'd take an ice slushy bag from the cooler once his bottle of fruit-flavored water was done... even in the cooler they wouldn't last too long before melting, so better to enjoy them first.

About half an hour later the sun went behind a fairly large, dark cloud and a cooler wind started to blow off the water, rousing both of them, (and most of the other people there,) out of a light drowse. "Ehh, and it seemed so hard to believe when the guy at the front desk said that a cold front was going to roll over us," Isabel complained. "Ah well, at least we got the most out of the warm sun while we could. Any idea what you want to do this evening??"

"Well, assuming that it isn't just raining buckets by then," Alex said, "I was wondering about trying to find the Italian bistro that the people on the exursion boat told us about. You know, the, umm, the african-american couple from Erie."

"Oh, Bill and Yshonne?" Isabel replied? "And the place they said that I'd love because of all the really spicy spicy sauces?"

Alex smiled and nodded, looking out at the water and trying to decide if that really was a thunderstorm cloud. "Yeah. And then maybe we'll call it an early night again... because I've got a few ideas that could keep us busy in the room 'til well after midnight, if everything goes well."

Isabel laughed. "Well, what if it DOES rain buckets? I'm not sure I want to just take cover and wait it out... we could sing and dance in the rain, why not??"

Alex smirked. "I'm not so sure you want to dance in the rain in *that* outfit."

She looked down at her bikini for a moment, and shrugged eloquently. "Why not? It's better than a bunch of heavy clothes that can't keep off the rain anyway... all they'd do is get soaked through and cling and get clammy on my skin and make me feel much wetter and more uncomfortable than I had to be. And a raincoat or umbrella doesn't let you really feel the rain, it's just trying to be a room that you can carry around with you to stay under shelter. In a bikini, I'd get wet, sure, but I'd dry off quickly when it was over, and I wouldn't be weighed down."

Alex was looking at her and grinning. "I guess I can't argue with that. Except that your little coverup skirt would probably get torn off. I suppose I never really thought of you as the free-spirit type, Isabel. Not that I mind -- I love that you keep surprising me."

Isabel smiled. "I don't think I used to be this free. But I know that you're looking out for me, and I guess that means I'm free to take chances and open my heart. You... you don't mind being my rock, do you??"

"Not at all," Alex said, standing up and swinging her about. "There are certain... compensations for the job, after all."

As it happened, the rain did start falling before dinner-time... not 'buckets' of rain by any means, but Isabel still insisted on going out into the drizzle, wearing nothing but their beachwear and carrying a water-proof bag with a few essentials in it.

They weren't the only ones out in the street, or at the Italian ristorante, wearing light summer garb, though perhaps not many beautiful young ladies were wearing quite as little as Isabel was, and she got a number of admiring or envious stares; also there were quite a few jealous looks aimed at Alex for being lucky enough to escort such a divine goddess.

They hardly noticed anyone else, focusing on each other and the food: tiny little pan-fried 'pazzini', which were vaguely pizza-like but had no cheese, perhaps because mozarella and provalone were so thickly drenching the linguine al forno, also something a little like chicken cacciatori, but without bones, just strips of tender white chicken slathered in tomato, vegetables, and served on crisp garlicy bread. All of it was made with sauces nearly hot enough to fry off Alex's taste buds, but he kept forging bravely ahead and slowly developed a very basic tolerance for the bite of it. Isabel seemed to be in no difficulty, loving ever spicy little drop.

The rain had stopped and the crowds vanished by the time Alex and Isabel were done with dessert and coffee, and paid the bill, and they went back to the hotel, changed into more conventional casuals, and wandered by one of the hotel's evening social events... a team stock market game. It was all played very tongue-in-cheek, with fake 'business news' announcements that had obviously been carefully scripted, and they decided to join in... even after being told by one of the hotel staff that they'd have to join different teams. By nine o'clock, however, Alex's group had wiped themselves out, declaring bankruptcy after going twenty thousand dollars in debt, and Isabel's team, while still solvent, was low on capital and seemed to have little chance to catch up far on the leaderboard. They said quick goodbyes and hurried back up to the hotel room.

It wasn't a designated 'honeymoon suite', and not as luxurious as the accomodations they'd had for their wedding night back in Roswell... lots of honeymooners came to a place like Myrtle Beach, and the special honeymoon suites were so highly sought after (and so expensive,) that Alex's family probably wouldn't have been able to arrange one... not for five nights at least. But it was all they needed for a vacation, one spacious room and generous bath, a beautiful king-sized bed, as well as a single that looked positively tiny in comparison. Two dressers, big-screen TV and a surround sound stereo, breakfast table, desk, makeup table... and all the other usual amenities. Alex would have to make sure to thank his parents in person, and as soon as possible after they flew back through El Paso and returned to their home in Las Cruces. (If the tickets home had been to Roswell, he'd have been able to pay them a visit en route, but Roswell didn't get many direct flights out to the east coast.)

"Okay, so what's this bright idea of yours," Isabel said with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes, the top three buttons of her top undone.

"It's turnaround time," Alex declared, producing a two pair of handcuffs and some lengths of comfortable, strong rope. "Take everything off, lie down on the bed and spread-eagle." He grinned at her in slightly nasty anticipation.

"Oh, boy," Isabel giggled as she started to strip her skirt off. "Something tells me this is gonna be fun."

TO BE CONTINUED...