Unbreakable - Surviving the Truth (AU M/L ADULT) Ch. 15 05/28/20 p. 14

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Re: Unbreakable - Surviving the Truth (AU M/L ADULT) Ch 2 5/12/17

Post by beautifyldreamer »

I randomly decided to check Roswell Fanatics after a long time away and discovered your gem of saga! It took me 2 weeks, but I finally caught up 8)

What Liz and Max are going through is heartbreaking... the rollercoaster of emotions from surprise and fear in being pregnant, to partial acceptance, to now the devastation of finding out the baby has died - all in less than a few hours! To add on top of that the fact that Max knew for however long, but didn't give her a heads up... I can respect why he hadn't told her yet - there is no good time - but I can also respect Liz's unhappiness with his decision to keep her in the dark. To be as close as they are and still have secrets, I imagine this would do a number on their level of trust.

I hope Liz can forgive and listen to Max during this time of devastation. He's hurting too. Sometimes I'm not sure Liz does a very good job of recognizing his perspective, she lets her emotions rule her reactions. I hope to see her grow in that area. When things are tough between them, Max tends to be the "bad guy". Hearing it all from Liz's POV, I suppose its natural that it would seem that way. But, it does take two to tango.

Anyway - awesome story! I'm really enjoying your writing and the thought you've put into tying all of the details together. :D
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THREE

Post by max and liz believer »

Eve (begonia9508)
After one month in hospital, I am finally really happy to be back and I must admit, I LOVE this new story...
I really hope that you are feeling better now and that the infection is all gone. Welcome back, dear :D and thank you!
When you started the first 'unbreakable' one - it was great and Max and Liz's Story was exciting - even if sometimes, reading some ( a lot of) parts, I had real difficulties to read them until the end...

So I am going to wait impatiently for more - in the hope that it still stay in my 'comfort zone' and not like the other one...
Hmm… I'm not sure I'm really that good at keeping you in the "comfort zone". So let's see…

Thank you so much, Eve :D


SmileeUk
I feel sad for them. No one wanted it this way. Fate had caught up with them and they were powerless to change the nature.
:cry: :cry: :cry:

Wars affect everyone one way or the other. Pray for peace to come sooner......
So true :(

Thank you for the feeedback!


Carolyn (keepsmiling7)
poor Liz......she was living a nightmare.....
pregnant, but not pregnant!
No wonder she needed some distance from Max......and he was smart enough to leave her alone.
He's quite good at reading her at this point. And Liz sure is going through an emotional rollercoaster. But so is Max. Unfortunately, there's no room for him to grieve right now. He feels that he has to remain strong. For Liz.

Thank you so much for the feedback!


beautifyldreamer
I randomly decided to check Roswell Fanatics after a long time away and discovered your gem of saga! It took me 2 weeks, but I finally caught up 8)
And I'm so happy that you decided to randomly check Roswell Fanatics, took a chance at my story and left me feedback! Thank you!! (and Welcome :D )
To add on top of that the fact that Max knew for however long, but didn't give her a heads up... I can respect why he hadn't told her yet - there is no good time - but I can also respect Liz's unhappiness with his decision to keep her in the dark. To be as close as they are and still have secrets, I imagine this would do a number on their level of trust.
There really was no good time. It will be a bit more explained in this chapter, but it's understandable that Liz feels not only left out but also slightly betrayed. They had a silent agreement to share everything (and the connection should have enabled that), but still Max has managed to keep this away from Liz. What's worse is that it pertains to her rather intimately, seeing that it's her body and thus affects her the most.
I hope Liz can forgive and listen to Max during this time of devastation. He's hurting too.
In these types of situations, Liz gets overwhelmed with her emotions and the situation itself. Even though she, on a rational level, understands that Max is hurting too and hasn't withheld information from her to hurt her (rather to protect her), her own hurt is taking over right now and she doesn't have the energy to focus on what Max might be experiencing. But, of course, Max is - as you say - hurting a lot right now. He also lost a baby. And the woman he loves is in pain and despite all his extraordinary abilities he can't fix this.
Sometimes I'm not sure Liz does a very good job of recognizing his perspective, she lets her emotions rule her reactions. I hope to see her grow in that area. When things are tough between them, Max tends to be the "bad guy". Hearing it all from Liz's POV, I suppose its natural that it would seem that way. But, it does take two to tango.
I love your reflection :D Of course, as you point out, this is written from Liz's perspective, hence we are overwhelmed with her emotions. And it's the emotions of a sixteen-year-old thrown into a dangerous and frightening world. She hasn't had the chance to recuperate from her mother's death, has barely digested that there are aliens walking this earth and that she's in love with one of them, has been through captivity and torture, seeing her mother being tortured in a malicious alien's memory, seen her boyfriend covered in blood and almost dying (twice), seeing the mother of her boyfriend being decapitated, and now she's finding out that she's pregnant and miscarrying - at the same time. A therapist might diagnose her with Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, which would certainly be a condition that would magnify her emotions and send her up and down, but she can't see a therapist and she is not under any treatment.

But… Max is not the "bad guy". Not even Liz thinks so. Although, when she's mad at the world and her situation, she takes it out on Max because he's closest. We always hurt the ones we love the most, I guess. I do agree with you that Liz needs to work on not indirectly blaming Max for things that are outside of his control, but she probably has to recenter and balance her own mental status first before she can find complete peace and see things clearly.

Max is really wounded too. He needs care too. Hopefully we'll get to that.

I love that you're sticking up for Max <3
Anyway - awesome story! I'm really enjoying your writing and the thought you've put into tying all of the details together. :D
Thank you so so so much!!! And thank you for the reflections and comments!


mela3
OMG - it continues, I'm so excited! I absolutely adore this story and the character progression. Killing evil with kindness is the greatest plot ever! lol
Yes, it continues :D Thank you so so so much! :mrgreen: :mrgreen:
I feel like our group never gets a change to decompress and deal with loss.
Exactly :(
I'm worried that Max is holding too much in. His Mom is gone and his grandfather is back and he's becoming a Dad and he is leading a war and.... Whew! That's too much stress to not have a moment of reflection and peace.
You're very right. Max is holding a lot in. He's not feeling too well at the moment.
I'm very curious to see how these characters grow.
:D

Thank you so so much for the feedback!


Midnightdreamer
I just binged read the first sixty chapters in three days
Whoa :shock: Good work :D
I must say what a good story and very well written especially all the emotional aspects of the characters even Mr. Phillip Evans even if he can't show his true feelings that often he loves his wife and children.
Thank you so much!
I think he doesn't understand or not able to express a lot of human stuff or pick up on something where his wife needed comforting. It doesn't mean he doesn't care it just means he either doesn't know how or something. Now that we know max and Liz connected as children and a few scenes of memories Max and Liz have picked up that Mr. Evans felt guilty for sending his son to re education and not being able to help either of them, so he had max come along on his check ups of Liz for many reasons.
Very good reflection :D
I think like Liz on the show in this story she can feel or sense the evil within. Even as a little girl she knew the men in the room were evil but she didn't feel that with max and she instantly trusted him which I think help caused the connection.
Never realized that connection to the show, but you have a point. Maybe Liz has a special ability to see evil.
I think max was brought a long on checks up way before Sean started coming along because I think Phillip wanted to help his son and what better way than to keep Liz in his life some way and also to slowly build a connection through other means before max connected through healing.
Maaaybe…

Thank you so so so much for the feedback!!


From TWO:

“When?” I wheezed.

He couldn’t possibly know what I meant by that, but the connection filled in the rest. There was a terrible lonely break in his voice when he answered, “You will miscarry any day now. If not, I’ll help you. Doctors usually do, but I’ll-“

“No,” I said again, with my eyes still closed, trying to remain strong and keep it together. “I want my body to do it.”

“Okay,” he agreed quietly.

“Okay,” I whispered, my voice breaking with the first of many sobs as I scooted back down under the covers and pulled them up over my face.

Max had known I was pregnant for several weeks and he hadn’t told me. I didn’t want to deal with how I felt about that right now.

I pressed my hand to my lower abdomen and wept for the life our love had created but which was now destroyed inside of me.

“I need to tell y-“ Max started.

I interrupted him with a tight and stinging, “Don’t.”

“Don’t shut me out,” Max begged after a second of silence.

“You shut me out first,” I whispered, the truth in those words hurting even more when I spoke them out loud. “This is what it feels like.”

He didn’t say anything else after that. I could feel everything he was feeling. Every detail of his regret and grief. I could hear his shuffling around the room, picking up the papers off the bed and putting the laptop away.

Before I drifted off to sleep, my cheeks burning and my eyes stinging from salty tears, I heard him lie down on the floor. He was not leaving the room, but keeping his distance.

Leaving me alone.


____________________________________
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THREE

The baby’s crying filled the air. There was nothing like a baby’s desperate cries. It cut straight through your core, making it impossible to not respond. The walls around me were white, lacking decoration, making the room painfully bright. The brightness was enhanced by the sunlight shining boldly through every one of the many windows.

I didn’t recognize this room. Its details were blurry, made even less distinct whenever my gaze moved from one spot to the next in my attempt to orient myself.

The crying continued, bouncing off the bare walls, digging into my most inner being. Lacking orientation and purpose, I decided to follow the cries. The unrelenting crying kept growing louder, telling me that no one was attending to the child. The baby was alone.

With a stumble, I set out to follow the crying, but the way it was echoing and bouncing around the room, the rooms – with all of their identical naked white walls – turned into a maze of confusion.

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” I kept repeating under my breath. Mostly to hear my own voice in the ever increasing sound of crying, but also as a silent assurance to the deserted baby that help was on its way.

The white cradle with the white canopy came up so quickly in front of me that I bumped into it. It shook in its meager foundation and on quick reflex I reached out to stop it from tumbling over.

The crying was at its loudest now, signifying that I had reached my goal. There was no hesitation, only purpose, as I leaned over the white-painted wooden cradle, its interior clad with white cotton. The moment my eyes fell on the crying baby, my heart stopped. With a cry of fear, I fell back one step, putting distance between myself and the baby, but I could still see it clearly. And like watching an accident about to happen, knowing that it would be terrible, I couldn’t look away.

The baby’s skin was dark gray, almost brownish, and wrinkled. The skin looked sooty, as if it had been rolled in ashes. I could see its sunken black eyes, the (too many) fingers and the (twelve, there were twelve) toes. Its skin looked like dried paper, over-tight on the thin tiny body.

I tried to swallow past the fear that had built up in my throat. The baby looked mummified, like from one of the poorly made horror movies I had seen when younger. And just like the mummies in the horror movies, this one was alive.

Even though the baby looked like it had been dead for centuries, its mouth - with its bottomless blackness – was producing the familiar and normal sound of a distressed, and very much alive, infant. Although the baby looked like it had not eaten or drunk anything in years, it was moving its arms in agitation and kicking its legs in frustration.

The deep black eyes flickered to my face and I staggered backwards. The crying continued, with tears rolling from those staring eyes, filling me with the most encompassing grief I had ever felt.

The appeal for forgiveness was instinctive as my hoarse voice mumbled, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Without being able to explain it, I felt responsible for this child. I had made it into what it was. I had abandoned it.

The baby’s inconsolable crying was making me start sobbing, and I repeatedly echoed, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

His sudden arms around my waist, hugging my back to his front, did not even surprise me. His presence told my mind that this was a dream, a horrible nightmare. The baby’s cries grew louder and more insistent as I turned my back on it to press my face into his chest.

“Make me wake up,” I sobbed into his shirt. “Make me wake up.”

Immediately answering my prayer, I was returned to consciousness. Returned to the land of the living in Max’s room at the Evans’ residence. His familiar scent enveloped me, his arms around me making me feel simultaneously small and safe.

“It was just a dream,” he whispered and I curled up in his embrace, pressing my nose into the warm indent at the bottom of his throat between his collarbones.

“I know,” I replied in a whisper, the barely dried salty tears making my cheeks feel oddly stiff and changing the quality of my voice. “I know.”

He was threading his fingers through my hair, moving his hand soothingly down my back and then back up to my head again. The movement was slow and repetitive, quietly pulling me back from the dream.

“Why do I have these nightmares?” I mumbled after minutes of silence.

I had always been plagued by nightmares. For as long as I could remember. They had escalated after the death of my mother, but regardless nightmares had always been a part of my life.

“I don’t know,” he replied. After a long pause, he added, “Maybe it’s your mind trying to deal with things. Maybe even giving you clues.”

“How do you mean?”

My arms were bent between my breasts, squeezed tightly between us, while leaving my fingers free to slowly roam a small area of his well-shaped bare chest. His chest was still thin, his muscles not as filled out as they had been, his skin not the warm bronze color I had become used to.

He hesitated before answering. “There is still so much we don’t know about parims. About what we are. Maybe your nightmares are a part of that.”

I frowned. “Why would the parim status - if it’s supposed to be so pure and good - give me nightmares?”

He shifted slightly, entangling his legs with mine, and pressed a kiss to my forehead. “I’m thinking that it might be because you’re so good, the evil of this world is too much for you to handle. Instead it seeps into your unconsciousness.” His Adam’s apple bopped against the tip of my nose as he swallowed. “Maybe it’s a consequence of all those memory erasures you have endured when growing up.”

When I didn’t say anything, he shrugged, “Or maybe you’re simply having nightmares and there’s no reason for it.”

“Maybe,” I mumbled in a small voice.

We laid like that for several minutes, our legs entwined, our chests pressed tightly together, my breath warming a spot on his skin, and his ruffling the air above my head.

“Do you want me to leave you alone again?”

His quiet request made my stomach coil. I was struck with immeasurable guilt for making him feel unwanted and for having pushed him away earlier. The very real risk of having to sleep alone again prickled along my arms and legs with acidic intensity. Sleeping without Max next to me usually resulted in worst nightmares. Making the monsters more real and the evil darker.

“No,” I whispered brokenly and pressed my cheek as hard as I could against his skin. “Don’t leave. Don’t leave me alone.”

It was not until his body relaxed at my words that I realized how tense he had been, which didn’t particularly ease my bad conscience for how I had reacted earlier.

“I haven’t known for long,” he said then. He was controlling his thoughts enough to not let me read him ahead of what he was saying, making me grow silent in anticipation of his next words.

“I should have known,” he continued. “I should have found the fetus when I scanned your body after we had sex in the bathroom.”

The memory flashed through my mind. The memory of Max taking me against the wall after removing me from that meeting with his father, when Mr. Evans had shown us his memories of Max and I as young. I was reminded of Max’s reaction at the time. Of how betrayed by the connection he had felt. How he had felt manipulated by it, as if we were not in control of our own bodies or urges.

As if it had wanted us to become pregnant.

Well, I guess it won. We did get pregnant.

“But I didn’t see it,” he said. Through his mind I saw him staring off into the distance, staring unseeingly at the dark wall of his bedroom, while he was giving me the explanation he hadn’t been able to before. “Maybe the connection was preventing me from doing so, or maybe it’s some kind of safety thing. A way for the connection to protect a child from intruders, someone like the Sergeant breaking into the connection. Essentially, concealing the baby from prying eyes.”

He was dragging his hand along the upper border of the sweatpants I was wearing, the movement comforting. “I never felt its presence, was never aware of a third heartbeat in our connection.”

“Mm,” I murmured absently, hanging onto his every word.

Why had it remained hidden from us? Wouldn’t it have been safer if we had known about the pregnancy, so that protective measures could have been taken?

“I felt the baby when we died,” Max said and he might as well have pushed a dagger into my heart. The emotional pain was as horrible as a physical blow.

Max’s voice was growing thicker as he continued, “As Command started pulling power from us, I heard its heartbeat. I didn’t know what it was at first. It was like the quick fluttering of a small bird’s wings. Maybe Command pulling power from the connection made the connection drop whatever veil it had held over the fetus, revealing it to me. It was first when we came back from the dead and I didn’t hear that fluttering anymore, that I realized what it had been. That it had been a baby.”

“But-,” I started.

Max interrupted me. “Once, a year ago or something like that - at the hospital, I connected with a pregnant woman. She was suffering from eclampsia and she was very bad off. I connected to calm her blood pressure. That quick heartbeat was all around me, even quicker than the fast heartbeat of an infant. The baby was stressed.”

His arms tightened around my body, pulling me even closer as he softly added, “Our baby’s heartbeat was also that quick. Stressed. Right before she died.”

The tears stung my eyes. “She?”

“Yes,” he whispered, voice trembling with lost hopes and what ifs. “It was a girl.”

I might be grasping for straws, but, “Maybe she came back to life, just like we did, and that’s why you can’t hear the heartbeat anymore. Maybe the connection went back to concealing her from us.”

He was quiet for a couple of breaths, and my heart sank to the bottom of my stomach.

“Do you want to see her?” he asked then.

The sob surprised me, giving me an abrupt shake as I pressed out, “Yes.”

He pulled back, his action urging me to look up at him. His eyes were filled with emotions, shining warmly in the mild light from the full moon outside the windows. He was watching me closely, wondering if I was going to break. He didn’t want to break me. “Are you sure?”

His serious question made me pause, made me worry that I was about to witness something terrible. Was the baby all mangled up in there? Was she missing hands or feet?

The dried up, sooted baby from my nightmare flashed into my mind, momentarily paralyzing me in coldness. I shuddered. What if she looked like that?

Reading my mind, he clarified, gently and carefully, “It’s nothing like that. But… she’s not alive. It might-“

I blinked. No matter what I might see, I needed to see her. “I want to see our baby, Max.”

Max responded to my no-nonsense demand with a wordless nod. Cradling his thumb and index finger around my chin, he guided my mouth to his. As our lips met, he took my mind on a tour through my body. Calmly, he brought me into my uterus, our daughter’s transitory home.

And there she was.

She was barely recognizable as a human baby, almost looking more alien than the adult aliens I had seen in real life. But I knew that all fetuses looked alien in the beginning, and she was - after all - only a couple of weeks post conception. The neck was poorly differentiated, and fingers and toes were still webbed. She had eyes, but her eyelids were fused shut and, in her case, they would never open. She had tiny earlobes, and her mouth and nose had just started to take shape. It was difficult to tell that she was a girl, but I felt that she was, just like Max probably had.

No bigger than a grape, she was very still, floating aimlessly in the amniotic fluid.

I fell in love with her immediately. Even when I saw no sign of life, I felt that she was part of us, that she belonged to us.

And without preamble, I started crying.

Max tried to guide me away from my womb, but I stayed. I stayed there, looking at our dead baby. She looked so peaceful and unharmed. It comforted me some, that she was not visibly hurt, and that she looked nothing like the baby in my most recent nightmare.

She could have been sleeping.

Max wanted me to see this. He needed me to see what he had seen. That our baby was not alive.

It’s called a missed miscarriage or a silent miscarriage.

At this point, my violent tears were shaking my body, my inner eye staring at the fetus, seeing no beating heart. His explanation in my mind, combined with what I could see right in front of me, brought the truth to tormenting authenticity.

She was dead. She had been dead for several days. And neither I nor my boyfriend with healing powers could bring her back.

My body was trembling with shock as I retreated to the real world of Max’s bed and Max’s embrace.

“What good are your abilities if we can’t even save our own child?” I cried, my body folding into itself against him. I was melting my grief into his body, wetting his skin with my tears, leaving marks from my fingernails through indents in his arms.

A desperate need for him to bring our daughter back to life was growing. The need, which had been neither sensible nor rational had Max not been who he was, originated as a faint whispered possibility but quickly escalated into a roaring silent scream.

He knew what I was asking - demanding - of him without me having to specify or say it out loud. It would be impossible to not hear the scream in my mind, in my body, in my soul.


When I tightened my fists and repeatedly pummeled them against his chest, mangled sobs bleeding past my lips with every pounce, he didn’t say anything. With drowning sorrow, he waited me out. Waited until my fists ached, my arms trembled, my skin felt too hot for comfort. When I collapsed against his chest, eyes hurting from the salty tears, he hugged me tightly. When my brain felt like it was going to cave in and turn into dysfunctional goo, he started rocking our bodies slowly. His cool lips kissed my feverish forehead and my hair stuck to the tears on his cheeks as he pressed kisses to my tresses.

That night was difficult.

With everything that had happened to me since that last day of October, with every lie, every hit, every threat to my life, every physical blow, this was one of the most difficult things I had ever gone through.

It might not be the fact that I had lost a baby just hours after finding out that there even was one, but more the concept of ‘the last drop making the cup run over’.

I was touching rock bottom; hovering dangerously close to it. But there was a thin thread around my heart which had not been broken, which I was hanging on by. A thin thread that was keeping me away from hitting the bottom.

The other end of that thin thread was attached to Max. Max, who held me through the night, shared my tears and soothed my pain. My beautiful alien hybrid parim. My life anchor. My main reason for living right now.

In the early hours of the morning, I whispered, “I love you”, and he placed his hand against the lower part of my abdomen and echoed, “Forever.”


TBC...
Last edited by max and liz believer on Sat Jul 01, 2017 6:13 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Unbreakable - Surviving the Truth (AU M/L ADULT) Ch 3 5/26/17 p. 2

Post by Morning Dreamgirl »

Just hit us where it hurts lady!

Holy moly that was hard. Beautifully written, love. Achingly beautiful.
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Re: Unbreakable - Surviving the Truth (AU M/L ADULT) Ch 3 5/26/17 p. 2

Post by keepsmiling7 »

This is the most heartbreaking experience to live through.
I can just imagine Liz hearing the crying baby.
And of course Liz wanted to see the little girl, and it was good that Max showed her peaceful and unharmed. That would be a better memory than the mummy baby.
It's a shame Max can't grieve himself right now, but he is thinking of Liz first.
Thanks,
Carolyn
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Re: Unbreakable - Surviving the Truth (AU M/L ADULT) Ch 3 5/26/17 p. 2

Post by SmileeUk »

What a heart breaking moment for both Liz & Max :cry: As new parents of course they both wanted the baby to survive but they should not play god in this case even Max had healing ability. Things happen for a reason & we just need to be patient & listen to god's plan.

Poor Liz who had this dilemma when asking for Max to save their baby's life. She didn't want a baby so soon but wanted the baby to live :(

Max had shown his tower of strength & I am so in love with him. :P

Well done Jo! This chapter was so beautifully written as usual & you never disappoint us :wink:

ps, I have just finished re-reading Book 1 :mrgreen: & I must say the time has been well spent :) There were events I had mixed up with the timeline :oops: Things are a lot clearer now & I can see your breadcrumb trails :wink:
You are so talented :wink: and please 'don't ever leave me till death do us part' :mrgreen: :lol: :wink:
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Re: Unbreakable - Surviving the Truth (AU M/L ADULT) Ch 3 5/26/17 p. 2

Post by Midnightdreamer »

:D Still trying to catch up with the first story and I have more comments on that later. I must say this and that you are good at pulling the readers in all sorts of emotional directions and love ripping our hearts out and hoping by the end of the sequel the group will have their happy ending and have the readers hearts put back if maybe a little banged up but still happy. I am still working on my first stories and trying to make it perfect but I feel better that someone else has pulled the hearts of dreamers and hopefully by the end of you're we will be crying but happy for Max and Liz and hopefully their happy ending. I'm also glad that you have not taken any of the classic cliché routes in creating drama such as Max cheating etc... I think if that happened I would be writing a ranting and raving comment. Lol. Keep up the good work. Hopefully, I will post my story soon although right now I am trying to make it perfect and slightly scared of posting because I have never written a fan fiction story before. Hopefully, I can do it justice and trying not to do anything cliché. Looking forward to reading more and probably posting more comments. I have notes written and I will type them up and post later. Again way to pull out the hearts of dreamers and now must put our hearts back in one piece. My story does the same but by the end it should make everyone happy and hopefully yours will be the same? :D
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Post by max and liz believer »

Ashley (Morning Dreamgirl)
Holy moly that was hard. Beautifully written, love. Achingly beautiful.
Thank you :oops: :D <3


Carolyn (keepsmiling7)
This is the most heartbreaking experience to live through.
I can just imagine Liz hearing the crying baby.
And of course Liz wanted to see the little girl, and it was good that Max showed her peaceful and unharmed. That would be a better memory than the mummy baby.
Miscarriage is not easy. Especially not under these circumstances. But thank you for recognizing that showing Liz the baby was important for her to not have the memory of the mummy baby as her main image of the baby.
It's a shame Max can't grieve himself right now, but he is thinking of Liz first.
:(

Thank you so much for the feedback!


SmileeUk
As new parents of course they both wanted the baby to survive but they should not play god in this case even Max had healing ability. Things happen for a reason & we just need to be patient & listen to god's plan.
Oh, definitely. I will not turn this into some repeat of Stephen King's "Pet Semetary" and start bringing babies back from the dead. So no, Max will not meddle with this.
Max had shown his tower of strength & I am so in love with him. :P
:D
Well done Jo! This chapter was so beautifully written as usual & you never disappoint us :wink:
Thank you :oops: :oops:
ps, I have just finished re-reading Book 1 :mrgreen: & I must say the time has been well spent :) There were events I had mixed up with the timeline :oops: Things are a lot clearer now & I can see your breadcrumb trails :wink:
Yay! Good for you :D I feel like I should do that myself at times, to keep track of my own story :roll: , but I don't have the time 8) :wink:
You are so talented :wink: and please 'don't ever leave me till death do us part' :mrgreen: :lol: :wink:
:lol: I'll try :wink: Thank you so much!!


Midnightdreamer
:D Still trying to catch up with the first story and I have more comments on that later.
Yeah, it's quite a lot of chapters…
I must say this and that you are good at pulling the readers in all sorts of emotional directions and love ripping our hearts out and hoping by the end of the sequel the group will have their happy ending and have the readers hearts put back if maybe a little banged up but still happy.
Um…thanks? :roll: :oops: :lol: I promise you, there's a dreamer insurance to this story. I know it looks bleak (a lot of the time), but it will all come together in the end. One way or the other.
I'm also glad that you have not taken any of the classic cliché routes in creating drama such as Max cheating etc...
Whatever their obstacles and difficulties, the love between Max and Liz is pure. Max has no interest in being with anyone but Liz, and Liz doesn't want to be with anyone but Max. I'm intending for this story to be larger than clichés…
Hopefully, I will post my story soon although right now I am trying to make it perfect and slightly scared of posting because I have never written a fan fiction story before.
It's always nerve wracking to post something for the first time. You never know what people will think and it's difficult to have people read your stuff. But the people here are really nice and we are always kind to each other. So don't worry too much!
Looking forward to reading more and probably posting more comments.
I'm looking forward to that too. Thank you!
My story does the same but by the end it should make everyone happy and hopefully yours will be the same? :D
I'm a sucker for happy endings, so yes.

Thank you SO much for your feedback!


From THREE:

“What good are your abilities if we can’t even save our own child?” I cried, my body folding into itself against him. I was melting my grief into his body, wetting his skin with my tears, leaving marks from my fingernails through indents in his arms.

A desperate need for him to bring our daughter back to life was growing. The need, which had been neither sensible nor rational had Max not been who he was, originated as a faint whispered possibility but quickly escalated into a roaring silent scream.

He knew what I was asking -
demanding - of him without me having to specify or say it out loud. It would be impossible to not hear the scream in my mind, in my body, in my soul.


When I tightened my fists and repeatedly pummeled them against his chest, mangled sobs bleeding past my lips with every pounce, he didn’t say anything. With drowning sorrow, he waited me out. Waited until my fists ached, my arms trembled, my skin felt too hot for comfort. When I collapsed against his chest, eyes hurting from the salty tears, he hugged me tightly. When my brain felt like it was going to cave in and turn into dysfunctional goo, he started rocking our bodies slowly. His cool lips kissed my feverish forehead and my hair stuck to the tears on his cheeks as he pressed kisses to my tresses.

That night was difficult.

With everything that had happened to me since that last day of October, with every lie, every hit, every threat to my life, every physical blow,
this was one of the most difficult things I had ever gone through.

It might not be the fact that I had lost a baby just hours after finding out that there even was one, but more the concept of ‘the last drop making the cup run over’.

I was touching rock bottom; hovering dangerously close to it. But there was a thin thread around my heart which had not been broken, which I was hanging on by. A thin thread that was keeping me away from hitting the bottom.

The other end of that thin thread was attached to Max. Max, who held me through the night, shared my tears and soothed my pain. My beautiful alien hybrid parim. My life anchor. My main reason for living right now.

In the early hours of the morning, I whispered, “I love you”, and he placed his hand against the lower part of my abdomen and echoed, “Forever.”


____________________________________
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FOUR

“Lizzie?”

I was submerged under water and the sound of my name was distorted by the heaviness of water molecules.

“Lizzie, honey? Time to wake up.”

It was not the same voice I had gotten accustomed to in my latest hours of grief and defeat. This was not Max.

The water molecules were easing back, creating space for my father’s voice to break through, resonating clearly in my head as he repeated, “Lizzie?” in that soft voice he had used when trying to rouse me from sleep when I was little.

Blinking my eyes open, I realized that I had not been under water (obviously), but in the deepest of sleeps. My mind - and possibly my body too - was exhausted by the last couple of days. Also, it had been late into the early morning hours before I had fallen asleep after Max and I had discussed the horrific ramifications of the pregnancy and had guided me into my own womb to look at our daughter.

In my best teenage impersonation, I pulled the pillow over my head and grumbled, “Go away.”

The pause that followed was lengthy enough to make me suspect that he had actually left. Until his careful and sad voice declared, “Breakfast is ready. You need to eat something, honey.”

The pillow was removed from my head and I groaned as the light from the room hit the outside of my closed eyelids. The bed dipped and I warmed as he placed his hand on my head. Slowly caressing my hair, he added, “You have gone through so much, Ella. You need food. You’re looking too thin.”

The lack of sleep was tempting me to be annoyed with him and inform him that I needed sleep just as much as food to recuperate, but the worry that was cloaking his voice stopped me. Instead I curled up, hugging my knees to my abdomen and whispered, “Five more minutes, Dad.”

There was a pregnant pause before he chuckled, increasing the warmth inside of me. He gave my head a familial pat and said lovingly, “Of course, honey.”

The mattress moved again as he got to his feet and I listened intently to the squeaking of old floorboards as he crossed the floor to the door. When the soft sound of a door moving reached me, I turned my head towards the sound, pulling the comforter away from my partly hidden face, “Dad?”

He immediately turned, looking over at me. My heart swelled to the point of almost breaking with the familiarity of his face and the hope that lightened his eyes. “Yes?”

“I love you,” I told him, my voice thick with emotions and sleep.

The soft smile reached his eyes in the most beautiful of ways. “I love you too.”

He stayed like that, looking at me across the distance of wooden floor between us, until the unconditional love for his daughter became too much for my heart to bear right now and I cleared my throat. “I’ll be right down, Dad.”

Dad shifted, broken from the spell, and chuckled again. “Sure. Of course, hun. See you downstairs.”

By the time he had left the room, I was wide awake. But my sudden alertness provided me with no encouragement to move. The pillow was soft against the back of my head as I stared up at the white ceiling. I heard the soft sounds of indistinct conversations from downstairs and if I focused I could clearly hear what Max was up to and what he was thinking. I could even see through his eyes and almost feel present at the breakfast table without being physically there.

Max was watching his grandfather a lot, his feelings and thoughts about his grandfather’s return moving from wonderment to curiosity to confusion to hurt to betrayal. In other words, Max was struggling to make up his mind about his grandfather’s sudden appearance. I had been too wrapped up in the events of my (missed) miscarriage to go through what information George Evans had already provided during conversations which I had not attended.

Making an effort now to start piecing some things together, I attempted to go through Max’s thoughts and memories. It felt foreign to do so; intruding. Up until now, I had never actively rummaged through anyone’s mind, only passively received what Max had provided at the time. My stomach audibly churned with discomfort, my own actions reminding me of how my privacy and free will had been tainted and rejected during the forceful encounters with Sean and his father.

Undoubtedly, Max was aware of my stroll around his mind, but being a supportive pillar of strength, he calmly let me pass. It was my own aversion to trespassing that had me pick up on only a few details about George’s story.

George Evans had disappeared from Max’s life when Max had been around seven years old. He had not let anyone in his family know about his plans of faking his own death. For some reason, it had been important that no one knew of the true reason or his whereabouts. This little fact made me search Max’s mind more diligently, following that string of thoughts that had been created in my boyfriend’s memory. But I couldn’t find the exact reason for George’s mysterious disappearance, merely that he had spent the past (almost) ten years with an Indian tribe.

At that point, my head was hurting and I cancelled the active mind search.

Your dad’s made hot chocolate for you, Max announced softly in my head.

A rush of love billowed through me, a combination of my own feelings for both my father and Max, plus Max’s feelings for me. It made me simultaneously warm and cold. I pulled the sheet to the side and looked down at my my abdomen. Hauling the T-shirt up to the bottom border of my breasts, I slowly stroked the skin of my exposed abdomen.

It was a strange feeling. Knowing that something was in there, but also knowing that it was not alive. That I was carrying something dead. Not even that fact could lessen my affection for the unborn girl.

And Amy is making pancakes with chocolate chips, Max continued, his mental voice more subdued than before, nearly hesitant in addressing me. Wanting to distract me, while hating to disturb.

“That’s a lot of chocolate,” I mumbled, not realizing that I was addressing my womb before I continued talking, still in that quiet voice that you would use for an animal or a small child. “They want me to eat. To regain my strength. But there’s no reason to, is there? Because it won’t help you.” My trembling hand continued to caress the area where my daughter was hidden. “It won’t nourish you or make you grow. So what’s the use?”

Tears rolled down my cheeks. Unnoticed. Unremembered. Unimportant.

“But they don’t care about that,” I continued, my voice becoming thicker. “They’re only interested in rebuilding their warrior. Their weapon. Their means of killing the mayor.”

Lifting my gaze from my abdomen, my hand stilling against my skin, I stared unseeingly out in the room. “I’m not a person anymore.” The words - the realization - cut into my heart, shooting a shudder through my entire body. “I’m a thing.”

Biting into my lower lip I fought to restrain the onslaught of violent tears. “I’m no longer free.”

It finally hit me. I finally realized what Max had been afraid of all these years. Why he had worked so hard to scare me away. Why he had refused to let me close, even with the risk of Sean getting a hold of me. Why he hadn’t wanted me to love him.

Max had foreseen this. Years ago. Even if he impossibly could have known of the uniqueness of our connection or the concept of parims, he had feared that he would be rescuing me from one hell only to throw me into another.

Had Sean gotten his way, my life would have been filled with sexual assaults, forced acts, energy drainage, memory erasures, and being entirely robbed of my free will.

With Max, I had love and compassion. I had his constant support. He never forced me into anything and we shared in each others’ pain. When I bled, he bled. But outside of Max, only by living my life as Max’s girlfriend and bonded, there was violence and demands. There was pain and risks.

And eventually, the outcome became the same; loss of free will.

I sat up in bed, pulling my knees to my chest and wrapping my arms around them. Resting my chin on my knees, my tears drying on my cheeks as the analytical part of my brain fired up, I wondered if my life would have been calmer with Sean. If I had been left to follow the aliens’ plan. I probably would have been allowed to continue school, maybe even college. Quite possibly they would have let me retain my friendship with Maria and certainly with Alex - seeing that he was my protector.

All the nasty things that might happen would be erased. For all I knew, I would be leading a normal, comparatively uneventful life.

Counting from that night when Max and I had gone to the Evans-owned house in Hondo, to have sex for the first time, I hadn’t attended school. I missed school. How had my (and everyone else’s) absence been explained? Would I ever be able to go back? Would I ever have any semblance of a normal life or would Max and I (considering our unusual abilities and status) always have to be at the aliens’ beck and call?

Would I go to college? Would Max and I have a family?

Or would we continue as these broken shells of who we used to be, surviving on bare minimum only to be ready for the next fight?

The raised voices from downstairs interrupted my dark thoughts. I could pinpoint the owners of those voices in a heartbeat.

Max and his father.

The angry confrontation instantly pulled me out of the daze I had been in and thus Max’s emotions flooded me. His anger and frustration were so deep and overwhelming that I could not make any sense of it.

But I knew that he needed me.

Swinging my legs over the edge of the bed, I was halted in my mission by the door flying open.

Maria whirled inside, the opening of the door magnifying the screaming from downstairs.

“What’s going on?!” I asked hurriedly before she had a chance to open her mouth.

“Max told me to come up here and be with you,” Maria said breathlessly. “And just as I left for the stairs, all hell broke lose.”

She had melted chocolate in the corner of her mouth, her hair was decorated with the movements of sleep and she wore an oversized T-shirt and cotton shorts, accentuating the length of her bare legs.

“What hell?” I asked, walking past her towards the door. She turned and grabbed my arm. I frowned, looking towards her impatiently, “What happened?”

“I don’t know,” Maria said, slowly and irritated, emphasizing every word. “It’s your boyfriend; he’s hard to figure out sometimes.”

I hesitated. Max was screaming downstairs about my rights and my need to go to school and…

I inhaled deeply and sighed the breath out slowly. Of course.

“Tell me what you know,” I asked my friend tiredly.

She shrugged. “Everything was fine. We were having breakfast. Mom made her infamous chocolate chip pancakes and I was happily minding my own business, adding even more stuff to the pancakes-“

“Maria,” I interrupted. “Please.”

Back in the day, she would have rolled her eyes at me or even got annoyed with me for interrupting. But she was acting differently around me nowadays. Like she needed to be careful what she said and did. As if I would break otherwise.

I hated it.

“I didn’t really see what Max was up to. He was seated right in front of me, but I was really too busy-“ This time she interrupted herself, looked at me with a goofy guilty expression, before continuing, “I look up when he drops the spoon. When our eyes meet, he stares at me - like super-intensely - and tells me to go to you.”

“Why?” I whispered.

She shrugged again. “Didn’t say. Just that I needed to go now.” She looked down at where her hand was still holding onto my arm. “And knowing that you have this special connection, I was afraid something had happened to you, so I left. Immediately. It was a bit weird that he wouldn’t go himself, but I guess he had this urgent need to yell at his father.”

“And stop me from interrupting,” I added quietly.

Maria had been sent to calm me down and keep me distracted.

She raised her gaze and searched my face closely. “Maybe you should tell me what happened.”

I met her eyes, considered doing as she suggested, then turned and walked towards the door.

“Liz,” Maria said cautiously, “I wouldn’t-“

She grew quiet as I closed the door, blocking the voices out and leaving only the two of us in the room.

I swallowed, walked back to her and took her hand. “Let’s talk.”

With a hesitant, “Okay,” she let herself be lead to the bed and we took a seat.

I folded my legs underneath me, wrung my hands in my lap. I was the perfect picture of distraught nervousness.

“What’s wrong?” She was concerned, placing a calming hand on my knee while her large green eyes catalogued the small nervous movements of my body.

Heck. I met her eyes. Let’s just get this over with.

To the person positioned in front of me, who could not read my mind, I said, “I’m pregnant.”

Her response was silence. Which was never a good thing when it came to Maria DeLuca. Her face shifted several shades of pale while her eyes kept staring at me. Frankly, they looked like they were going to fall out of their orbits.

My mouth was dry. “Apparently, I’ve been pregnant since my first time with Max. Since before Command captured me and Max.”

“Apparently?” she squeaked. “But that’s…”

“…quite a long time ago,” I filled in. “Yeah, I know. Max thinks it had something to do with the connection, that it was concealing the baby-“

Maria put her hands up in front of her, “Whoa whoa. Wait. You didn’t use protection? Liz?” She shook her head in confusion, her forehead wrinkling with perplexity. “You, of all people-“

“We did,” I interrupted loudly. Lowering my voice, I repeated, “We did. But it didn’t work.”

Maria let out a heavy breath. “Huh.”

I looked at her, forgetting that I was supposed to tell her more, momentarily losing myself in the semi-concealed truth I had yet to tell.

“So… What now?” she asked. “We’re raising a baby? God…” She dipped her face into her hands, scrubbing them rather harshly against her cheeks and eyes. “You’re only sixteen - well, almost seventeen, but still… Oh My… This is big. This is-“

“It’s not alive,” I said quietly.

She shouldn’t have been able to hear me, but she did, and her response in the form of complete stillness was instantaneous.

Her face remained hidden behind her hands when she asked, something akin to fear in her voice, “Not alive? Is that some alien thing? Babies are not alive until born? Or what?”

It was like looking at myself from the outside. I could see myself sitting on the bed and calmly explain the details to something that had wrecked me just hours earlier, without feeling that it was actually me speaking.

“I’m supposed to miscarry. My body just hasn’t got it yet.”

Maria grimly blew air out between her teeth, removing her hands. “And you accuse me of not being clear when I retell things.”

I licked my lips. “Sorry.”

Her shake to the head dismissed my apology. “No, no. That’s okay. This is probably one of those weird alien problems that I’m just not supposed to understand.”

“Actually,” I grimaced. “There’s nothing alien about it.”

She tilted her head to the side, trying to figure me out. “Okay, then. You and Max do the deed and you get pregnant. No one knows about this for several weeks and now when you finally figured it out, it’s dead?”

“Basically,” I whispered, the grief catching up with me.

She caught sight of the grief as it dripped into my trembling hands. As it crept into my already cried out eyes.

“Babe,” she murmured, looking guilty for summarizing it that way. Her arms wrapped around me without delay, luring the grief to the front, breaking my feeble facade.

“The baby died when Command killed me.” The words got stuck in my best friend’s blonde thick hair right before the tears clogged up my throat and there was no more room for words.

I guess the shouting from downstairs ceased somewhere around then. Sometime when Maria was hugging my tightly, shushing my sobs and letting her shirt absorb my tears, all anger ran out of Max and he left the kitchen to aimlessly roam the garden.

Fast forward one hour and I had told Maria all of my dark thoughts, all about my grief about losing the baby, and as life has it, my childhood friend was succeeding in making me smile and laugh.

It had been more than 24 hours since my last meal, which was probably what eventually drove Max to enter the room and crash our bubble of girly giggling and eye-rolling at Maria’s stories about Michael.

Max had wanted to stay away, to give me this much needed time with Maria, but he was also worried that I hadn’t eaten.

“Aww,” Maria announced theatrically as Max entered the room with a tray filled with beverages and baked goods, “Isn’t he the best boyfriend ever?”

Max offered her an eye-roll, which looked misplaced on his upset face, while I boxed her lightly on the arm.

She laughed lightly and looked back at me. Her face made me smile. This past hour had transformed her to something a lot more like the Maria I used to know and it calmed my spirit in ways I hadn’t dared to hope. We were not completely damned, after all.

I spread my arms out and she willingly crept into them. Hugging her close, I whispered into her hair, “Thank you, Ria.”

“Any time, girlfriend,” she replied, a catch in her voice. Pulling back, she patted my knee affectionally, “Now. Eat something.”

My smile cooled some at the thought of food, and I firmly ignored the slight turn of my stomach when I nodded, “Right.”

Max stood like a statue, with the tray in front of his chest, and waited until Maria had left the room before he placed the tray on the bed in one assertive move.

“Amy prepared a tray for you,” he said, folding his left leg underneath him to take a seat on the edge of the bed, his right foot resting on the floor. There was something cautious, almost distant, in his voice.

Pointing to beverages, plates and bowls, he monotonously labeled the various food items, “There’s chocolate chip pancakes, cereal, egg and bacon, oatmeal, hot chocolate, peanut butter and jelly sandwich, tea-“

I was shaking my head in amusement, “Did Amy do all of this? Who is she trying to feed? An army?”

Max looked up at me, eyes dark and serious. Not a single thread of amusement on his face. “No. Not an army. Just you.”

The chagrin heated my cheeks and I turned my gaze away, feeling ungrateful.

“Everyone’s really worried about you, Liz,” Max said quietly but strongly.

“I know,” I whispered, still not meeting his eyes.

Three seconds of silence passed and when he spoke anew, his voice was softer, “There’s also some chicken broth, if your stomach can’t handle all the other more heavy stuff yet.”

I nodded, my attention fixating on the stain on the knee of Max’s jeans. I frowned. It was not grass. Too dark. What was it?

“Liz?” he said, rerouting my attention to his face. “Please eat something.”

I scanned the food and reached for the chicken broth. It was probably the wisest choice right now.

He let me eat three slow spoons of the broth before saying, “You’ll need your strength when going back to school.”

The spoon clanked against the bowl when I dropped it, droplets of broth escaping the bowl and landing on the back of my hand. “What?”

I didn’t know if I should be happy, nervous, anxious or upset. I didn’t know any more.

“I talked to my father-“

’Talked’? I questioned, quite clearly remembering the yelling between Max and his father.

Max sidestepped my mental jab, “-and we’ll be going back to school next week.”

I looked at him closely, finding no words.

Max was trying to read my reaction but coming up short, just like I was. “Is that okay? That’s what you wanted, right?”

Was it? Of course it was. But…

In the absence of my answer, he changed tracks. Very clearly so.

Darkness slowly bled into his eyes, chilling me as I saw it happened, and then he asked the question that made my blood turn completely cold. “Would you rather have been with Sean than me?”


TBC...
Last edited by max and liz believer on Sat Jul 01, 2017 6:26 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Unbreakable (M/L, AU)
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Natalie36
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Re: Unbreakable - Surviving the Truth (AU M/L ADULT) Ch 4 6/2/17 p. 2

Post by Natalie36 »

oh poor liz is just messed up right now and so is Max. hope they get back on track
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SmileeUk
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Re: Unbreakable - Surviving the Truth (AU M/L ADULT) Ch 4 6/2/17 p. 2

Post by SmileeUk »

I knew it! :twisted: Max was upset because he knew Liz's thought. It put doubts in his head & Max felt guilty to put Liz through all these horrible days/weeks/months.

But Liz is human after all. She is allowed to at least think of these 'options'.

Poor Max :( My heart breaks for him. I feel his pain as if my most beloved even think in this way :cry:

I look forward to reading more of his inner thoughts :wink:
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keepsmiling7
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Re: Unbreakable - Surviving the Truth (AU M/L ADULT) Ch 4 6/2/17 p. 2

Post by keepsmiling7 »

Will we find out more about George Evans.....?
My heart breaks for Liz......carrying a dead baby would make you depressed and almost crazy with thoughts of what if?
And she does realize Max is suffering also.
But thank goodness Sean didn't get his way with her !
Thanks,
Carolyn
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