Memory of Loss (CC A/I, Teen) 1/1 - 05/16/10

[PML]

Title- Memory of Loss

Author- PML, beta by Mt. Gazer

Disclaimer- Roswell is not mine and no infringement is intended.

Category- CC-A/I

Rating- Teen

Summary- This is the fifteenth companion piece to A Kiss to Build a Dream On. Thursday is over. Both Alex and Isabel have suffered tremendously in the last 24 hours. But only Alex fully retains the memory of what has transpired. Can they truly recover from what Aric did to them?

Isabel-

Isabel smiled as she watched her brother and Liz leave.

Liz was good for Max.

In fact they all had gotten unbelievably lucky in that regard. Kyle had somehow humanized Tess, as surely as Maria had Michael.

And then there was Alex. She turned and looked at him. She wished she could remember what happened last night. Remember the bit that Tess had alluded to.

The part where Alex had pushed back against her need to break up with him for his safety. The part where they had made love.

His eyes met hers, and she was happy that some of the darkness that she had seen there had lifted since he had entered the house. Tess had said there had been shadows inside of him. That Aric had messed up his head somehow.

Tess hadn’t gone into the details. But Isabel had found her washing her mouth out when she had pulled the details from her. So it had to have been big.

Her Alex had been harmed by someone who should be working with them. Should be Protecting them.

She felt Alex’s hand on her cheek, “It will be okay, Is. We will make it okay.”

“Maybe it would be better, if you just stayed home. I am sure Tess wouldn’t mind.” She put her own arms around his neck.

He smiled at her, his mouth quirking up a tiny bit on the right. “Now I am not even going to bother asking you to stay, Isabel. But I can’t avoid this anymore than you can. We are all in this together. All of us.”

Isabel felt her eyes burn slightly. She didn’t want him to have to face this, to face this bad part of her past that she didn’t even recall.

Tess’s voice was soft, emotional, but a bit wry as she said, “I think I can see that my date is going to need a few more minutes with you. Alone. But if you need me I will be in my room.” She looked at her watch. “Knowing Michael, he’s going to take a bit of time too. But say, a half hour? Will that be enough time? We don’t want to have Max and Liz face off with Aric alone.”

Alex said, without looking at Tess. “A half hour should be fine. Isabel?”

Isabel looked over at Tess and smiled broadly. “Thank you Tess. Thank you so much.”

Tess was crying again, “No thanks needed here. It is my psychopathic father we are fighting after all.”

Isabel felt as Alex moved over and touched Tess on the arm and said, softly but intently, “The man who raised you is not this same being. Something must have happened. Something must have changed to make him so… reckless. So willing to destroy the lives of those he is trying to protect. How else can you explain what happened to Isabel? What happened to me or Maria or Kyle…. Well he would think we are just human. But Isabel? Isabel should be real to him. And still he….” Alex stopped firmly grinding his teeth in anger.

Isabel had never seen him like this before. Never seen him so openly driven and protective. It made her feel… warm. So happy that it was her that he wanted to protect. Her that he would probably die for. She finished his comment, moving closer to him and using one hand to caress his back. “And still he raped me.”

Alex turned to face her again, “I wish, I so wish I could have stopped him. I can not believe that there wasn’t a way for me to warn you. That if I had just tried harder, just been stronger…..”

“Alex…..” She pulled him to her, and felt his tears touch her face.

Tess said softly, “I should go.”

Isabel held Alex tightly, “What did he do to you?”

“Isabel… I can’t. I can’t tell you. I don’t want it to hurt you, to make you, make you…..”

“What? Go nuts and destroy Roswell? Like I apparently tried last night? Tess already told me. The warp that she and Liz have on me is self sealing Alex. Supposedly I had an attack when I woke up. And now, now I can’t go in my room. But you, you are precious to me! Do you understand that? I will not let Aric deprive me of the thing that makes life worth living.”

Alex turned his tear struck face towards her and said, “Even more than shopping? Or Christmas?”

Isabel could tell he was trying to be funny. But it fell flat.

“You are more, mean more than anything else to me. I love you Alex. And there is no way I would say that lightly.” She kissed him lightly on the cheek and looked around the room. She saw the couch in the living room.

Perfect.

“Come on Alex, come over here and tell me everything. You need to talk it out to heal. I don’t want you doing something suicidal to kill Aric tonight. I need you. And I don’t want you hurt. Not even to save me.”

“Isabel….” Alex said, rubbing her shoulder.

“Alex if you got hurt, if you died, don’t you realize I would completely fall apart. I don’t know what I would do. So you can’t get hurt. Not even to do something noble in an effort to save me.”

Alex’s face hardened and he looked up at her. “I will KILL him. You do know that. It will be my hand, not any other. But he will die.”

Isabel steered him to the couch, still facing him, “Alex, don’t let this eat you up. I understand your determination. I share it. I share it like so many other things. But I don’t want you to do something foolish to save me. To some how avenge me for what happened last night.”

Alex’s face took on a look she had never seen on him. A look of absolute focus. Alex was always someone who tried everything. Tried to taste and feel everything, to enjoy his youth to the fullest, in everyway that would not hurt him or others. But this, this determination was new.

She placed her hand on his chest. To feel his strong heartbeat. To drink him in, to summon the well of never ending strength that seemed to radiate from him now.

She had always known in the abstract that he would walk through fire to save her, that he would do anything for her or those he loved. But she had never truly seen that aspect of him in the open before

She was seeing it now. The steel inside that he had kept hidden under his soft personality.

‘This is the man that I love.’ The strength married to kindness. The loyalty to a deep sense of honor.

She felt a well of wonder that she had found him. That she had been able to let him in. Because she knew in an epiphany, that this had been as buried deep in him as her compassion had been hidden in her.

She called his strength to the fore, just as he let her ease some of her fear. So that she could trust him, so that she could focus her own considerable strength.

And more. She could feel that even as they sat there, even as they simply looked and drank the other in, a part of them was getting closer. Deepening the Bond. Making it ever stronger.

Just by being here. Just by sitting side by side they were healing each other. Drawing strength from the other. Without the other, neither of them could survive. But they would never thrive like they would if they could just hold on.

Aric and his dated Destiny paled in comparison to what she had here.

This IS my Destiny, Isabel decided. And she could feel echoes of before. This is what Khivar should have been. What Rath almost was.

Alex complimented her in ways neither of them ever had. With Alex she not only could be stronger. She could be more of herself. Together they were greater than the sum of their parts.

Together they were magnificent!

And she kissed him.

Isabel saw it all. She saw everything that had happened to him, all that he had suffered for her. And felt as he drank in her sorrow and suffering in turn.

She sat back, openly crying now. How could they ever fully recover…..

Alex looked at her. She could feel his loving worried gaze on her. She felt him get up and fetch something.

“My love, this is for you. An early Christmas present.”

Isabel looked up at him, at his serious face. She fumbled a little at the CD case. There were no markings on it. She looked up at him.

He sat back down, and ran his hands along her shoulder. He smiled at her, a look of warmth filling some of the chill that had come so crushingly fast when she had seen the truth. “Play it for me, play it for us.”

Isabel looked at the CD. Her mother was gone, and should be gone for a little while. It should be safe.

She used her powers and the CD lifted from her hand and the side that had the music began to play.

Only it was different than anything she had ever heard. Not classically beautiful, but it called to her. It spoke to her in some deep space.

And it said simply. You are loved. You are cherished and loved.

Alex said, “Merry Christmas.”

And once more they kissed, no longer crushed by what had been, or what was.

Content that they were together. That they would form a new destiny. One that incorporated all of them, the humans as well as the hybrids.

And they would be the future.