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

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

Post by max and liz believer »

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Title: Unbreakable - Surviving the Truth
Author:
Josephin
Category: AU, M/L
Rating: ADULT
Editor: Gigo

Disclaimer: This story is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. The characters of Roswell belong to its founder - Jason Katims, Twentieth Century Fox Corporation, Regency Entertainment, and Monarchy B.V.

Summary: The UNBREAKABLE Saga is the tale of lost civilizations, aliens, hybrids, secrets and the forced bridge between two worlds. But mostly, it is about love. The forbidden love between a hybrid boy and a human girl.

Max, Michael and Isabel were part of the rich and popular crowd at Roswell High. The intelligent, yet respected, Liz moved in different circles, preferably avoiding the aforementioned trio at all costs. Until that Halloween party, which changed everything.

Liz used to joke about there being something different and dark about the beautiful triad; what if she was right? What if the small town in New Mexico hid terrible secrets and repeatedly silenced the truth? Had a small town girl stumbled upon a dangerous cover-up?
*****
This is the third book in the UNBREAKABLE Saga. Hence, to avoid spoilers, there is no detailed summary of what is to come in this book. Links to the previous two books are found below. If you have not read them, do so before reading this one.

Unbreakable - A Beautiful Lie
Unbreakable - Forging Bonds

Author’s Note: I never expected this story to become so long. Due to length, I have decided to split this story into 3 books (creating the Unbreakable Saga) and the first split was in the middle of the thread of "Unbreakable - A Beautiful Lie". So if you're suddenly concerned that you have missed book 2, you haven't - if you have read every chapter on the thread called "Unbreakable - A Beautiful Lie". Since I didn't want to lose feedback, I did not make an actual split between book 1 ("A Beautiful Lie") and book 2 ("Forging Bonds"). Instead, the second book started at chapter Sixty-One.

Thank you’s: Elizabeth, my solid editor. Ashley, my support and my sounding board.

Feedback: Is greatly appreciated and welcomed :D

____________________________________
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PRELUDE

Her arm was covered in blood, the red fluid dripping from her fingertips as she stretched her hand towards me. ”It’s not about you, Liz. This is not about you.”

The tears were wet against my cheeks. ”Mom, you’re bleeding.”

She was calm as she nodded. ”They’re all dead. They all died. But not you. You survived.”

I followed the red trail of blood down her body, saw how it was drenching her clothes, fearfully noting how blood was dripping from between her legs.

I swayed, nausea running up my esophagus. Blood. Too much blood. Blood everywhere.

The frightening large amount of blood made the clothing stick to her body, revealing the small bump in the center of her body. The visible sign of pregnancy.

”We need to get you to a hospital!” I was desperate, my voice breaking with fear. She was bleeding out. No one could survive losing that much blood.

Her hand clamped down on my upper arm, smearing warm blood on my skin, fingers digging into my shuddering flesh.

”Mom,” I tried again. She was so close now, I could smell the blood. The metallic, sickening smell of fresh blood.

On instinct, I reached out and grabbed her arm, feeling like I should steady her. But maybe it was I who needed support to remain standing, because mom looked absolutely fine. If it wasn’t for all that blood, I wouldn’t have suspected that anything was wrong. Her gaze was level with mine, her lips soft in a loving understand line, and she was exuding calmness.

”You’re losing the baby.” My own observation rung false in my head. Mom had never had a baby after me. As far as I knew, she had never been pregnant after having me. So why was she pregnant? And why was she miscarrying? Because that was obviously what she was doing. Something must be ripping her apart from the inside, considering the amount of blood everywhere.

She blinked, sadness filling her eyes, and said resolutely, ”No.”

I frowned. ”Mom, listen to me. You need to go to-”

”It’s not me, it’s you,” she interrupted.

Her nonsensical interruption burrowed into my heart like a dulled knife. Her words brought back reality and I directed my gaze downwards, down my own body, while mom’s next words struck my eardrums, ”You are losing the baby, Lizzie.”

To emphasize her harsh statement, I felt warmth between my legs and the accompanied nausea threatened to overtake me. My hand was shaking as I wiped it down over my flat abdomen and I barely noticed the distortion in my mother’s voice as she repeated, ”You are losing the baby, Lizzie,” her female voice growing hoarser and more masculine towards the end of that observation.

Next I knew, mom was gone and so was all the blood. Instead, I was in bed with Max’s dark worried eyes fixed on my face, the soft shine from the bedside light shrouding his face in haunting shadows.

”It’s happening,” he told me, gently cradling my cheek.

I sat up with a start, almost pushing him over, ripping the sheet to the side only to see the blood saturate the white sheet, while I felt its warmth cling to the insides of my thighs.

I was aware of his calm concern as the air left me.

I put my hands in the blood, as if the baby was there somewhere, panic rolling through me in waves. Somewhere at the back of my head I knew that I at most would find a ball similar to a clot. I knew because I had seen the baby inside my uterus and I knew that it was small.

Still, I wanted to see it. I wanted to feel my baby.

He was kissing my bare shoulder, cautiously touching my back, telling me things in a soothing voice, things I neither heard nor registered. I felt the love from him barging through my mind, trying to fill me up through the connection.

But I was losing a baby. We hadn’t planned for a baby, we were still kids ourselves, but the fact remained that I was losing a baby. A baby that had died inside of me.

As I cried - my fingers covered in blood, my uterus cramping to expel the membranes - I cursed Command. Over and over again. He had killed our baby. There was little doubt that the fetus had died when Max and I had died. The chance of a pregnancy - even the one created by two parims, tied together by a connection - being able to survive the mother being dead for several minutes was slim.

He was telling me he loved me. Over and over again. He was sending healing energy into my uterus, his hand pressed up against my lower abdomen, lessening the sensations of the cramping, ensuring that I was not losing too much blood.

Max was taking care of me. In every way possible. In any way he could. Which made me cry even harder, my shoulders shaking with the wrecking sobs.

Despite Max’s efforts at calming me down, my mind was determined to wander. When he carried my shivering and sobbing body into the shower to wash the blood away, my thoughts fled into darkness. Sergeant Steven Carter had tried his best to break me when I was in captivity, casually informing me of how he had repeatedly raped my mother, how every single baby conceived from some of those horrible acts had died in the womb. He had wanted me to doubt a happy life with Max, because Max was alien and I was not. He planted the insidious seed in my mind that a gaea would never have a child with an alien, hybrid or pure.

Max had managed to talk me out of those thoughts a while back, but since finding out about my pregnancy and the subsequent information about an impending miscarriage, my whole world had been shaken.

The water was running down my body, his hands moving gently across my naked skin to help in removing the blood, while I stood dazed and apathetic, watching the pink water swirl down the drain.

Max was trying to reach me through the connection, but my own mind was screaming too loudly for me to hear him.

You will never bear Max Evans’ children. You will never have a child with Max. Never.

Never.


Never.



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ONE

”Elizabeth Parker,” the elderly man announced slowly in a warm and gentle voice, spreading his arms out in an inviting gesture. Like he thought I would run straight into them and accept his offered hug.

But I did not know Max Evans’ grandfather, George Evans. Because of that reason alone, I should not be particularly inclined to accept his welcoming embrace. But to be honest, there was something compelling about him. Something that made me feel safe. Something that made me want to get to know him.

Looking at Philip Evans’ father, who up until two minutes ago I had believed to be dead, it felt as though I had known the man forever. Like he was the long lost grandfather that I never knew I had.

His smile was warm, his brown eyes kind. They almost twinkled, his eyes. As if he was carrying a secret that only he knew. The eyes brightened with warm humor at my hesitation and, without appearing disappointed, he lowered his arms and accepted my chosen distance.

George Evans echoed my silent conclusion. “You don’t know me, Elizabeth.” He lowered his voice to add, giving me a confidant wink, “Or is it Liz?”

Lost for words, I nodded.

I searched out Max’s hand. He was standing silently next to me, his mind quiet, his stance still. His only sign of life was the light squeeze of my hand as our fingers interlaced.

George Evans smiled kindly and repeated, “You don’t know me, Liz, but I have met you many times.”

This should not surprise me. After all, the aliens were no strangers to the art of erasing memories. Still, I was both surprised and a little disappointed by the elderly man’s statement.

To be honest, I was mostly disappointed. Max’s grandfather seemed like a person that I would want to keep my memories about. He seemed like the person that one would love to have in one’s life.

“When?” I croaked, my throat dry as sandpaper.

“The first time was when you were merely a couple of days old,” George Evans replied. “It had just been confirmed that you, like your mother, carried the gaea gene.” The expression in his eyes grew sad, the compassion that filled them clogged my own throat up with emotions. “I’m so sorry about your mother, Liz.”

I tried to swallow. Max squeezed my hand. My throat prickled with sudden tears.

“Thank you,” I whispered, diverting my eyes to a spot in the floor one foot ahead of me.

“I have watched you grow up,” George Evans continued after a couple of seconds of silence. “I have spoken to you on the street once or twice. If my memory doesn’t fail me, I believe you were skipping rope with your friends one of those times.” His forehead wrinkled in contemplation. “And another time you were coloring the pavement with crayons or something alike.”

I frowned. “You have spoken to me?” If it had been any other stranger telling me that he had been watching me grow up and even made contact, it would have scared me. But I felt no shivers, no danger, only curiosity.

“You might only remember me as a random man on the street,” George Evans said and shrugged his shoulders. “Probably not enough to make a permanent imprint in your memory. It was not supposed to affect you or make you remember me. I only wanted to speak with you.”

His eyes moved from my face to Max’s, making me follow the direction of his gaze to the blank face of my boyfriend. “I’m sorry I left you, Max.”

Max’s face was pale, almost white, as he squeezed his lips together, a deep line between his eyebrows.

“And I’m sorry I left you, Isabel,” George Evans continued, looking at Isabel.

George Evans addressing others brought my attention to the fact that I was not alone with Max and his grandfather. The grandfather had probably spoken to the others in the room while Max went to get me, considering that Isabel’s face was a teary mess and even Philip Evans appeared to be having trouble keeping his emotions in check. In fact, Philip Evans looked like he was about to simultaneously cry with relief and scream in anger. An odd sight to witness.

Letting his gaze wander over the participants of the living room, George Evans told us, “We have a lot to talk about.”

“Yes,” Philip said, affirming his confident authority in that one syllable.

George nodded. “But first, Liz needs to rest.”

All eyes flew to me, confusion mixed with suspicion blended with annoyance. My heart skipped a beat. I hated being at the center of attention. Especially when I didn’t myself know what was going on or how I could remove myself from it.

But looking into George’s kind eyes, it slowly dawned on me that he knew. Somehow he knew that I had, merely minutes ago, found out that I was pregnant. He could see auras too and was probably the most skilled of all the Evans men. Somehow he also knew that I needed some time alone, to get my bearings.

I glanced at Philip’s face wondering if he knew too. A heavy coldness slowly crawled into me at the possibility of Max’s father also knowing of my pregnancy, just like Max had, before I had. It brutally brought back the emotions I had felt not long ago, feeling not only hurt but also betrayed by Max. Without a single attempt at sugarcoating, my emotions crash-landed as I was reminded of what had just happened before the reality of the return of the long lost grandfather was added to my life.

Unaware of what I was doing, I pulled my hand out of Max’s grip and took a step to the side - one step away from my boyfriend. His eyes burned into the side of my face, but I couldn’t get myself to look at him.

Instead I addressed George in a burning voice, “You are right, Mr. Evans. I need to rest.”

George looked from my face to Max’s, a slight confusion to his expression. He understood that I knew what he meant by his suggestion, but he probably hadn’t expected my reaction. Still, his voice remained as gentle as before when he said, “It was nice meeting you, Liz. I have been looking forward to it for a long time.”

I tried to smile. Really. I tried. But my eyes were burning with tears and my body was trembling with a sudden lack of energy. “Nice meeting you too, Mr. Evans.”

Max’s hand wrapped around my upper arm as I turned with the intention of leaving the room. His breath was warm against my ear as he whispered, “I’m coming with you.”

I stilled and looked up at him. I looked into those dark eyes, with the long dark lashes that I loved, the blush to his upper cheeks, and the sharpness of his jaw. I saw the dark circles under his eyes, the thinness to his once powerful jaw, and the dryness to his lips. I could see the pain shining out of those confident eyes, felt his desperate need to explain in the way he was gripping my arm, and saw the request for forgiveness and understanding in the worried shape of his mouth.

The words that came out of my mouth were as impersonal and distant as the cold manner in which I was delivering them. “You stay here with your family. Your grandfather just came back from the dead. You should talk to him.” I didn’t recognize my own voice. But I didn’t care. I had needed Max to explain in the bathroom earlier, but he had chosen to prioritize something else. I wasn’t ready to listen now. I wasn’t ready to talk anymore.

His grip tightened, his breath flew over my face, as he whispered forcefully, “Liz…”

A tear dropped from my eyelash as my gaze fell to the floor and I brokenly whispered, “I can’t.”

“I can explain,” he said, his eyes pleading while his grip on my arm remained obstinate.

“Don’t,” I warned him.

I was aware of the fact that the room was quiet. That everyone might be watching us. That everyone might be wondering what was happening between the Star Crossed Lovers.

“I need to be alone,” I added, meeting his eyes while emphasizing every word.

He looked at me for a long time. Searching my eyes. Silently begging me to let him come with. Well, not silently per say. I could hear him very clearly in my head. Through the buzzing of my hurt and pain, I could hear him asking me to let him explain, that we needed to talk, that things were not as they seemed.

It resulted in me pressing my eyes tightly shut and whispering, “Please. Stop.”

Get out of my head, my mind told him.

His reaction to my words was shocked coldness. I felt how taken back he was at my order and heard how it silenced everything in his own mind.

He let me go. His hand dropped away from my arm and he diverted his thoughts away from me. It was the only way he could leave me at peace now when we were, by all things that counted, unable to block the other.

His conclusive mumbled, “Fine,” cut through my heart. I could hear his own hurt in that single word and I struggled to not give in and reach for his hand, to retract my request for him to leave me alone.

His dark eyes met mine and I shielded myself from the wetness in those eyes. My hand unconsciously drifted to the lower part of my abdomen and it was not until Max’s eyes dropped to follow that hand movement that I realized that my mind had traveled to the fetus in my womb.

“Let me explain,” he tried again, our gazes locked on my abdomen, on my trembling hand resting against my sweater.

I swallowed. Without looking at him, I said, “Talk to your grandfather. Be with your family.”

You are my family.”

I broke along with the break in his voice. The desperation. His fear that he had done something that might permanently damage us.

Tears fell down my cheeks as I chose not to respond. The words were getting stuck in my throat, like traffic at rush hour. I was left with only one option: Escape.

So I did.


TBC...
Last edited by max and liz believer on Thu May 28, 2020 2:24 pm, edited 27 times in total.
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Unbreakable (M/L, AU)
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Re: Unbreakable - Surviving the Truth (AU M/L ADULT) Prelude + Ch 1 5/12/17

Post by SmileeUk »

Uh oh..... :(

Poor Liz!!! So much emotion crushing on her in just a few minutes. No wonder she needed to be alone. Not even Max could do anything at the moment :(

I am curious about this lost of Liz's baby scene. When did it happen & how it fitted in with the whole story? :?

Do I have to wait for another 2 weeks for the next update? :cry: :cry:

Ps, I am re-reading from Book 1 to see if I have missed anything :roll: & to buy time :mrgreen:
Last edited by SmileeUk on Sat May 13, 2017 4:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Unbreakable - Surviving the Truth (AU M/L ADULT) Prelude + Ch 1 5/12/17

Post by Natalie36 »

oh my, can't wait for the next part
Polgara
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Re: Unbreakable - Surviving the Truth (AU M/L ADULT) Prelude + Ch 1 5/12/17

Post by Polgara »

I love the attention to the emotional and psychological detail that you include in this story. Frankly, I can't wait to see what the future looks like for Max and Liz. How will they balance a "normal" life with being the de facto leaders of an alien society on earch?
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Re: Unbreakable - Surviving the Truth (AU M/L ADULT) Prelude + Ch 1 5/12/17

Post by L-J-L 76 »

Poor Liz she lost her and Max's baby after finding out shortly she was pregnant. It is a lot for Liz to take in. And I can understand why she wanted to be left alone. OK Max's grandfather is not dead but alive now that seems strange. It is also weird that Max's grandfather knew Liz lost the baby. Why did Liz lose the baby? What happened to make Liz lose the baby? What does Max's grandfather have to tell Max, Liz and everyone? Will the news be good or bad news? Will Max and Liz be able to help each other get past losing the baby? Will Max and Liz be able to have a baby? Will Max and Liz be able to survive? Will Max and Liz get married? Will Max, Liz, Michael, Maria be able to have a happy ending together?

From:
L-J-L 76

P.S - Where is Liz running too? Where will she go? Who is going to follow her? Will Liz talk to the person? Will Liz go back to Max? What will happen when Liz goes back to Max?
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Re: Unbreakable - Surviving the Truth (AU M/L ADULT) Prelude + Ch 1 5/12/17

Post by keepsmiling7 »

That is so sad........even though they were not ready for a baby, it is still painful to lose one.
Will that always be true......a gaea and alien unable to have children??
They were so helpless. And now so uncertain of the future.
Thanks,
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TWO

Post by max and liz believer »

SmileeUk
I am curious about this lost of Liz's baby scene. When did it happen & how it fitted in with the whole story? :?
It will all make sense later on. But I can tell you that the scene happens in the close future. Maybe this upcoming chapter will give you some idea.
Do I have to wait for another 2 weeks for the next update? :cry: :cry:
I don't make you wait that long very often, do I? :roll: :roll: :oops: Well, this time you only had to wait one week and the next chapter is also written and edited and will be posted next Friday. See? Only one week in between updates :wink:
Ps, I am re-reading from Book 1 to see if I have missed anything :roll: & to buy time :mrgreen:
This comment made me all smiley and stuff :D

Thank you so so so much for the feedback!


Natalie36 - Thank you :D


Polgara
I love the attention to the emotional and psychological detail that you include in this story.
Thank you :D :D :D
How will they balance a "normal" life with being the de facto leaders of an alien society on earch?
Yeah, that would be the tricky part.

Thank you so much for taking the time and leaving me some feedback!


L-J-L 76
Poor Liz she lost her and Max's baby after finding out shortly she was pregnant. It is a lot for Liz to take in. And I can understand why she wanted to be left alone.
She's on an emotional rollercoaster :? :(
OK Max's grandfather is not dead but alive now that seems strange. It is also weird that Max's grandfather knew Liz lost the baby.
Yep, it sure is strange. But it will be explained. Later. And Max's grandfather knows a lot…
Why did Liz lose the baby? What happened to make Liz lose the baby?
It's coming up in this next chapter.
What does Max's grandfather have to tell Max, Liz and everyone? Will the news be good or bad news?
A. LOT. And the news will probably be both good and bad.
Will Max and Liz be able to help each other get past losing the baby?
They are our dreamer couple. I'm sure they wouldn't give up on each other.
Where is Liz running too? Where will she go? Who is going to follow her? Will Liz talk to the person? Will Liz go back to Max? What will happen when Liz goes back to Max?
Liz just escaped the room. Not the building. More on that in this upcoming chapter.

Thank you so so much for the feedback!


Carolyn (keepsmiling7)
That is so sad........even though they were not ready for a baby, it is still painful to lose one.
Yes :(
Will that always be true......a gaea and alien unable to have children??
Maybe. Maybe not.

Thank you so so much for the feedback!


From ONE:

It resulted in me pressing my eyes tightly shut and whispering, “Please. Stop.”

Get out of my head, my mind told him.

His reaction to my words was shocked coldness. I felt how taken back he was at my order and heard how it silenced everything in his own mind.

He let me go. His hand dropped away from my arm and he diverted his thoughts away from me. It was the only way he could leave me at peace now when we were, by all things that counted, unable to block the other.

His conclusive mumbled, “Fine,” cut through my heart. I could hear his own hurt in that single word and I struggled to not give in and reach for his hand, to retract my request for him to leave me alone.

His dark eyes met mine and I shielded myself from the wetness in those eyes. My hand unconsciously drifted to the lower part of my abdomen and it was not until Max’s eyes dropped to follow that hand movement that I realized that my mind had traveled to the fetus in my womb.

“Let me explain,” he tried again, our gazes locked on my abdomen, on my trembling hand resting against my sweater.

I swallowed. Without looking at him, I said, “Talk to your grandfather. Be with your family.”

You are my family.”

I broke along with the break in his voice. The desperation. His fear that he had done something that might permanently damage
us.

Tears fell down my cheeks as I chose not to respond. The words were getting stuck in my throat, like traffic at rush hour. I was left with only one option: Escape.

So I did.


____________________________________
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TWO

I did what I always do. An alien war, learning the process of how to heal, dying and becoming pure energy had not taught me how to not run when faced with overwhelming incidents. I was still me. Still a 16-year-old high school student who was rather unused to matters of the adults. Even though I had experienced more than any other high school student that I knew of.

Not many girls met the love of their lives at 16. An infinitesimal number of girls fell in love with an alien hybrid. And I was rather sure I had exclusive right on forming a mental connection to a boy, which empowered us to exchange both emotions and thoughts every second of every day.

Sure, it might seem romantic. It might seem like the perfect solution to finally getting men to understand women. What better way was there than to let them (literally) read our minds?

Of course, it had its advantages. Max being able to calm me down by ‘adjusting’ my line of thinking. Us being able to communicate without using words, having secret dialogues. Happy experiences got magnified by our happiness feeding into the other, building it up.

But twice the joy also meant twice the misery. When one was sad, the other one was pulled along. Our moments of sorrow, fear, misery, anger, and every other dark emotion out there, were brought completely out of proportion if we fed into those emotions.

Plus, there was the issue of never being completely alone. Never having private thoughts. Always sharing everything. Even if I loved him, being so close was sometimes too much.

A lot of things flew through my mind as I laid there in the bathtub, moving my hands over my lower abdomen. The water was turning cold, signaling that I had been in the tub for too long. The skin of my hands and feet had wrinkled a long time ago and there was a mild ache in the upper part of my back from leaning back against the edge of the bathtub.

Max had not knocked on the door. He had remained downstairs. His side of the connection was rather subdued. If I focused directly on him, I could clearly hear what he was experiencing (a mixture of mainly thinking about me and listening to what his grandfather, his sister, Alex, and his father were discussing), but if I didn’t, his thoughts and emotions were merely a whispered background buzz.

I liked it like that. I was not very happy with Max at the moment; acquiring some distance was just what I needed.

Trailing my finger through the water, over the location of my unborn child, I focused on that small life growing inside of me. On that small life that was going to change my own life forever.

The feeling was a blend of fear, anxiety and tentative happiness. I was going to be a mother. I was going to be a mother at the age of 17. What kind of child was it going to be? How much alien genetics would he or she have? Would the baby be mostly human or mostly alien? Perhaps Max and I had created a completely different race. Something made from two parims. Did us being parims make a difference?

But most importantly, would the baby be healthy? Would it be lacking toes or be born with parts of its organs on the outside of its body (like I had seen in one rather scary documentary once, about fetal developmental defects)? The risk of the baby having been damaged in some way was high based on the fact that I had died when he or she was-

Ice cold fear struck me, putting an abrupt end to my train of thought.

I couldn’t get out of the bathtub fast enough.

I had died.

I had died while being pregnant.

The thoughts were fast and erratic, jumping from one question to the next.

How far along did one have to be before it showed up on a pregnancy test that one was pregnant? How far along was I? How many days ago did Max and I have sex? Was it even possible to be pregnant? We had not used any birth control while at the hostel, but even though it seemed like forever ago, it couldn’t have been more than a week. It wasn’t possible with a pregnancy. How was it possible?

Thoughts continued to fly through my mind while I, dripping with water, bent down to the bin to search out the pregnancy test I had hidden. The display was still on, the black non-serif letters causally spelling ‘Pregnant’, but there was no indication of how far along I was. Desperately, I ruffled through the used tissue papers and the occasional dental floss, to find the cardboard box that had contained the test. Wasn’t there supposed to be an clarification as to how many weeks along you with a positive result?

My hand felt the box and I held it up in front of me, panting while I scanned the text and the images.

No. I had managed to buy a test without a week indicator.

“Damnit,” I mumbled to myself.

I pressed the empty box and the old pregnancy test back into the bin, no longer putting too much time or effort into concealing them. The water from my cooling body had dripped all over the floor, my head felt cold from the water cooling in my drenched hair, and more like an afterthought I ripped a towel off a towel rack to wrap it around my body.

The water in my hair left a trail of water droplets down the corridor as I rushed out of the bathroom towards Max’s room. The loud rushing of blood in my head drowned any sounds coming from below, where Max and the rest were still talking to George Evans.

The goal was Max’s laptop, neatly situated in the center of the dark desk. The power cord was connected, the small light indicator on top of the cord shining green, telling me that the battery was charged and ready to go. When I disconnected the cord and brought the laptop with me over to the bed, I prayed that it was not password-protected.

As soon as I opened the lid, the screen blinked on, and a curse flew over my lips. Staring back at me was a small picture of a vampire (Dracula?), the name Max Evans next to it, and the request for a password.

It’s ‘Fuck Destiny’, Max announced in my head.

His voice was so loud compared to the buzz I had grown accustomed to this past hour that I jumped, almost dropping the laptop.

I should be angry with him for eavesdropping, but how could I? I was practically trying to break into his computer. Plus, I already knew that he had been thinking about me, even though we had both pretended the reverse to be true.

So without a reply, I sullenly typed in Fuck destiny, but was refused entry.

Immediately, I got the mental image of how the password was really typed.

fuckdestiny

After correcting how the password was typed, I was logged into the computer and Max respectfully retreated to that buzz at the back of my mind.

Firing up the web browser, I firstly found out how pregnancy is counted in days. We had gotten some information on reproduction in biology, but not the details of how to count the days.

The development of pregnancy is counted from the first day of the woman's last normal menstrual period (LMP), even though the development of the fetus does not begin until conception, which is about two weeks later.

Period. When did I have my last period?

My head was hurting. Nothing made sense.

I opened a writing program on the computer and started typing up the days. My last period had been at the hostel, when Max had carried me into the bathroom in the middle of the night and afterwards, in bed, soothed my menstrual cramps throughout the night. But how long ago had that been?

About two weeks ago, I reasoned. My period had been about two weeks ago. I went back to the web browser, scouring the net further for information. Ovulation happened about two weeks after the first day of a woman’s period, which would be approximately…now. How could I be pregnant and it showing up on a pregnancy test when I had barely ovulated?!

It didn’t make sense.

However I looked at it, I came back to that menstruation. Max and I had had sex before and after my period, but the times before were irrelevant due to the arrival of my menses.


Was it different? Were alien pregnancies different? Was this baby growing super fast? Would I be giving birth in, like, a week?

When Max came through the door one hour later, I was seated in the middle of the bed, wearing only the towel, my hair still fairly wet since I had never even wrung it out, laptop on my lap and pieces of papers strewn all around me.

The papers contained diagrams and calculations, tables and several exaggeratedly filled in question marks.

“Hey,” Max said quietly, carefully closing the door behind him, his eyes fixed on my face.

Before the door had a chance to close, I announced, “I had a period. I didn’t miss my period.”

There was a slight grimace on his face at my voice and I felt like I wanted to do the same when I heard the raspy and frustrated tone of my voice. Seeing myself through Max’s eyes, I saw a madwoman. I saw how large my eyes were, how the desperation had widened them into unblinking staring.

Despite witnessing the lunacy through Max’s eyes, I couldn’t stop myself. I was waving the papers filled with my nonsensical scribbles in the air in front of me, demanding him to look at them, while I was giving him numbers and facts that didn’t make much sense without background information.

All that time, he didn’t say a word. He stood quietly looking at me, wearing an expression I didn’t have time to decipher in my need to map out the inconsistencies of my pregnancy to him. It was when I announced that the only feasible explanation to all of this must be that the pregnancy test result was incorrect (I had only taken one, after all), that he slowly closed the distance between his position in front of the door and the bed.

His silence was unnerving me and the manner in which he had stopped at the edge of the bed, slowly looking me over, was making my sentences ebb and vanish. The words grew quiet on my lips as he reached out and took a hold of the towel that had been slipping down my body for the past ten minutes without me noticing.

Holding onto the edges of it, he tugged me forward, opening the towel in the process, turning the towel into a sling. Perplexed by his quiet actions, I let myself be scooted forward to the edge of the bed. He dropped his hold on the towel and it bundled up around my hips, exposing my naked body to him. Max’s eyes were dark and focused as they swept down my nude front. I didn’t shy away from his gaze, rather my body warmed and responded. I was too puzzled by his actions to remember that I was actually angry with him, that I should - at the very least - be annoyed with his lack of response to my thorough equations and diagrams.

Instead I sat there quietly while he embedded all ten of his fingers into my poorly dried hair and started heating it up. The heat spread wonderfully along my scalp, removing the deep chill I hadn’t been aware of, drying the dark damp tresses. He moved his hands down my neck, along the lines of my shoulders, down my arms, all the while supplying heat to warm my cold body.

His palms whispered over my breasts - the accommodating heat affecting me in ways I didn’t want right now - before he heated the skin of my abdomen, my thighs, my shins, my calves, and lastly my feet.

The heat remained in my body, long after he had moved away from that specific place, even during the time he went to retrieve one of his T-shirts and a pair of sweatpants.

“I can’t be pregnant,” I mumbled when he started to dress me in silence. His movements were gentle, like I was made out of porcelain. I had to struggle to keep focused on remaining upset. His silence was robbing me of my words, my anger, my need for an explanation. And I didn’t like it.

“You are both pregnant and not pregnant,” he told me, uttering his first words since entering the bedroom with his single-worded ‘Hey’. His quiet acknowledgment hit me hard against the background of his long silence. But mostly it was what he had actually said.

“What?”

He silently gestured for me to lift from my seat so that he could pull the pants over my hips, and I did so while staring at him, demanding an explanation now more than ever before.

“Let’s get you under the covers,” Max said. “Get you warm.”

“No,” I refused, placing my hands on his contracted biceps to stop him from lifting me into the position he wanted. “No.”

Damn you, Max Evans. Tell me what’s going on. Now.

He looked into my eyes for a long second, the guilt and regret on his face in sharp contrast to the angry demand in my own tear-filled eyes.

I hated that he was keeping secrets from me. I thought we were past that by now.

“I have been trying to figure it out myself,” Max said solemnly, keeping his gaze locked with mine. My fingers dug deeper into his hard unrelenting biceps.

“I think you got pregnant our first time together.”

No.

No.

No, that couldn’t be.

I shook my head in absolute negative, while my mind was restarting calculations and scenarios. “No, that’s not possible. For one, we used protection. And I had my period after that.” I let go of him to wipe tears of frustration from my cheeks. “See,” I mumbled behind my hands, “It doesn’t make sense. I can’t be pregnant. I wasn’t before and I’m not now.”

“You are about 8 or 9 weeks pregnant,” Max said, as if he hadn’t heard a word of my reasoning.

I stilled. “How do you know?”

“It’s complicated.”

I removed my hands to glare at him. No shit, Sherlock! What was another complication to this already fucked up situation?!

But Max did not want to answer that specific question, rather he informed me, “The condom didn’t work. That’s the only explanation.”

“The condom-“ I started, but he interrupted me.

“It happens, you know.” His youth came through in that defensive statement, how he rushed the words out like he was a kid that was trying to talk his way out of trouble. “Condoms are only safe 98% of the time.”

I shook my head. “No.” Angrily, I pressed my lips together and crossed my arms across my - now T-shirt clad - chest.

A 2% chance of pregnancy? And it would happen to us on our first try. With me losing my virginity? With me later having a period? The probability numbers must be ridiculous for that one.

“Your period was a breakthrough bleeding. Must have been,” Max continued, donning his more professional doctor role. He was, after all, a born healer who had attended numerous hours at the hospital. So maybe he knew.

But it all sounded so far-fetched. And I hated that I hadn’t come up with ‘breakthrough bleeding’ in my internet search and thus had no idea what it was.

Reluctantly, I asked, “What is a breakthrough bleeding?”

“It is not that uncommon during the first trimester of pregnancy. You can bleed at 4 weeks, maybe even at 8 weeks and 12 weeks, when you would normally have your period.”

Letting go of his arms and instead using my hands to press into the mattress to lift myself backwards, I made the decision to crawl underneath the covers after all.

He sat down on the edge of the bed, not moving to tuck me in or to lay down next to me. Maybe he was still respecting my request from earlier.

“It happens when there aren’t enough hormones to tell your body that you’re pregnant, so the body keeps having periods at intervals when it normally would have had them in a non-pregnant state.”

I pulled the covers up to my chin, curled my body up into a fetal position, and whispered, “So I’m pregnant.” A shudder of insecurity and fear went through me. “We’re having a baby.”

“No,” he said. The finality of the word cut off the air supply to my lungs.

Barely squeaking out the question, I asked, “What?”

I was looking at him over the edge of the covers, tracing the grief in his frame, the resigned slumping of his body, the way he was now avoiding to meet my eyes.

“The baby is dead.”

Something was squeezing my heart. A cold, ironclad hand. Squeezing it so that it couldn’t beat properly. Chilling it so that all the warmth left my body. I found no words to ask for another clarification, but obviously Max knew that he owed me one.

“The baby did not survive our death. Your death.”

I let this hang in the air between us. Let it soak into the silence. Let it slowly reach my ears, pierce my eardrums and echo into my brain.

“Then why…?” I whispered, stumbling on the words. “The pregnancy test. Why was it positive? I haven’t… Don’t you have a miscarriage if it dies? Is it still inside of me?”

I would usually consider myself as relatively intelligent, but my mind was drawing blanks at the moment. I knew too little about pregnancies, to be honest. It was not something I had, at my age, had the need to become acquainted with.

He seemed to be having difficulties getting the words out. Like he was forcing them out through a straw. “You will abort the baby, eventually. But just like your body didn’t understand it was pregnant, it now doesn’t understand that it’s not. Your pregnancy hormones have finally reached appropriate levels and they have not simmered down yet, making your body believe that the fetus is alive and not getting the signal to terminate the pregnancy.”

Terminate.

My throat closed up and I pressed my eyes together. Heat spread in my face and that familiar pressing feeling pushed on my chest.

“Breathe, Lizzie,” he whispered gently.

But instead I curled into a tighter ball of human body, making myself small from the world, torturing myself with the lack of air.

So much was going through my mind. Grief, fear, relief, guilt, shame. I was feeling incredible lost and alone.

“Please, breathe.” His voice was closer now, his plea more urgent.

Large tears rolled down my cheeks while I thought of it being my fault that the baby had died. I had failed horribly at protecting our child. If what Max was saying was true - if the baby had been conceived our first time together - the baby, during its first short weeks of living, had been (along with myself) starved in captivity. The baby had suffered the consequences of me being tortured and refused sleep. After captivity I had used a ridiculous amount of energy on training and later on healing Max, further pulling from the baby, probably. To top it all off, I had brought the child straight into battle along with me and let myself get killed.

Max’s hand against the front of my chest had my eyes sprung open in startled shock and I immediately shrunk away from him.

“NO!” I cried out.

Pulling the covers with me, I bundled them up around me while Max looked at me with eyes glistening with tears, on his knees in the bed, his hand levitating aimlessly in the space between us.

“Let me help you breathe,” he whispered pleadingly.

The sight of his torn up expression only further debilitated my breathing and I closed my eyes again in attempt to regain some self-control while emotions were tearing me up in every way possible.

“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.


TBC...
Last edited by max and liz believer on Sat Jul 01, 2017 6:30 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Unbreakable (M/L, AU)
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begonia9508
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Re: Unbreakable - Surviving the Truth (AU M/L ADULT) Ch 2 5/12/17

Post by begonia9508 »

After one month in hospital, I am finally really happy to be back and I must admit, I LOVE this new story...

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... Thanks EVE :roll: :wink:
- Les jouissances de l'esprit sont faites pour calmer les orages du coeur!
- On reconnaît le bonheur au bruit qu'il fait quand il s'en va!
- L'amour vous rend aveugle et le mariage vous redonne la vue!
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SmileeUk
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Re: Unbreakable - Surviving the Truth (AU M/L ADULT) Ch 2 5/12/17

Post by SmileeUk »

:cry: :cry: :cry:
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......
~~~~~~ ###### Smiling is a Gift ###### ~~~~~~
keepsmiling7
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Re: Unbreakable - Surviving the Truth (AU M/L ADULT) Ch 2 5/12/17

Post by 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.
Thanks,
Carolyn
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