What Passes for Normal (CC, A/I, TEEN) 1/1 9-16-10
Posted: Fri Sep 17, 2010 12:42 am
Disclaimer: I in no way own the rights to Roswell or anything related to it. All rights belong to Jason Katims, 20th Century Fox, Regency Entertainment, Melinda Metz, WB and UPN. No infringement is intended.
Title: What Passes for Normal
Author: Individual Complexities AKA (Mt Gazer:Velvet Skye, Chrisken, Stargazer MD)
Category: CC/ AU w/ Alien
Rating: TEEN
Couple: Gazers, of course A/I
Summary: Nah, just read. This is just a short story because that’s all we were allowed. LOL
Enigma 2005 had a fic challenge, you had to write a 2000 word future fic, a POV fic, or an AU fic. Individual Complexities chose the future fic. Here are the guidelines and the story I (Rhonda) submitted. Of course this will get old won't it? reading this same info on all Challenge stories.
the following words have to be used no matter which category is chosen:
resurrection
doormat
vanish
hunger
For Future fics must use the following quotes:
"I need you to breathe"
"Sometimes it feels like it is us against the whole freaking world."
"This needs to end now."
"In my mind this went a whole lot smoother."
"I will find you."
I want to say thanks to my teammates Chrisken and StargazerMD You guys were great and I had tons of fun . If we'd never gotten to day 6, we'd have never got here. So this is for you guys.
Chrisken and Mt Gazer (Velvet Skye) initially invented the concept of the story knowing immediately to work with the Future Fic rules. Then it was written and reworked until it became what you now see here.
Here is the gazer story from the gazer team for the rest of you people to enjoy. This is a bit different from the one the mods saw for we were always over count. So we had to chop and rechop. LOL Not too shocking if you've read any of our stories ever. LOL We all write lengthy. LOL And still we were a bit over count, but not seriously, and we were not going to delete another word for it would start to detract from the story.
So this is the Writer's cut, the extended version, and for those of you who played, some trivia answers as well, especially Isabel #1 and 4. (Need I say anymore?) LOL
And now we get to the good stuff.
----------------------------------------------------------------
What Passes for Normal
By Individual Complexities
----------------------------------------------------------------
“The war is over!!!” The general announced. “We’re going home.”
“Fancy you calling Earth home, Michael?” Isabel teased. “But it’s a good thing to know that we’ll be home soon… I wonder how everyone is, Mom and Dad. Alex,” she said wistfully, "And the girls. And how they’ll respond to our return. Alex was pretty upset when we just up and left like we did.”
“But we really had no choices in that matter now did we?” Max shot his sister a determined look.
“No I guess we really didn’t. But technology up here has changed, and our return is assured. Can you believe this, we were honor students. Well some of us,” she shot a look at Michael. “And in one fell swoop our lives changed. Not only did we end up on another planet, which is supposed to be home, but now we’re high school drop-outs as well, and more than likely missing persons. And the rest of our little merry band? They’ve moved on. With us gone they all could pursue their dreams. And I’m sure they did. Maria did have a way of calling us the alien abyss you know? Well Abyss, abysmal, whatever, now they are living normal lives and the alien abyss is no longer part of it.”
“Isabel you can be so cold.” Max stated.
“Cold? I’m resigned. I’m resigned to the fact that nothing is ever normal in my life.” She looked down at her side for a moment and smiled before her eyes met her brother’s. “Nothing.”
“Do you regret your decision, regret leaving?”
“I miss my life, my family every day. But I can’t regret it. I made the best decision, the only decision I could,” she shifted the weight in her arms. “I know Alex was hurt. But you know me. I push people away. This was no different.”
She thought back to the time that had got them all here. Four years ago.
Flashback.
Prom night, the night that had changed everything, for the group, for her and Alex, for all of them.
With all they’d been through and all they’d done, for Isabel this had been the worst event yet. It was as if she’d died inside and wasn’t even aware of it. Her heart was missing. And if one doesn’t have a heart, one could be considered dead, right? But when he returned from Sweden, a man in love no less and not with her; it was then that she realized that she had to play for keeps and to win him back. So she set about the perusal of Alex Whitman, and on prom night she won him back, and found herself in a resurrection of her soul. She felt alive, like none other time that she could remember. That night culminated in the most intimate of acts, as she and Alex gave themselves to each other and started a new chapter of their lives, a chapter of love and intimacy. A chapter that was brief and quickly extinguished.
Three weeks later her nights had drastically changed. She would awaken gasping for breath and feeling as if she was suffocating, night after night she experienced these symptoms, and night after night she wondered if she were dying, and what might possibly be wrong with her.
It was Max she finally turned to nearly a month after prom. She told him what was going on, and he did a cursory exam. Staring at her, he said, “We need to talk more privately.” He got hold of Michael and they met at the Pod Chamber.
That’s when he told her the news. She was pregnant, and the baby was dying. It couldn’t breathe earth air, and was stealing Isabel’s breath. Nighttimes were more pronounced because she wasn’t moving around and getting plenty of her oxygen as she lay there. Because of this, her baby’s effect was more noticeable. And so Isabel’s idyllic world once again came crashing down around her feet.
She pushed Alex away mentally as well as emotionally as they determined their best course of action. Using the communication stones, they learned that the granolith was a spaceship of sorts, good for a one-way ticket to home. None of the four of them were happy about the prospect, but there didn't seem to be any other way to help her. It would take all of them and nobody who hadn't been born at least partially Antarian could survive the trip.
And so they had to leave. Leave home, and for what? So Isabel’s child could survive. But Alex couldn’t make the trip not being an alien, and so she’d have to leave him behind. Isabel hated how everyone’s life seemed to be messed up because of her. Vilandra caused great pain, and now Isabel was. Starting with Alex, but leaving rippling effects as it spread outward to her family and all else who knew her.
Alex stared at her with such hurt in his eyes, when the eight of them had met at the quarry so that they could say goodbye. She hadn't told him why they had to go... couldn't bear for him to realize that he wouldn't only be losing her, but his firstborn child. The heartbreaking alternative had been Alex looking at her with such bitterness... as if he had finally given her a chance for everything she said she wanted, and she had thrown it all away.
It had been strained and awkward for the rest of them too. All of the aliens had protected her secret, so none of the human members of the gang were exactly wild about the abrupt news of departure.
Isabel stood against the granolith on its inside, pressed against the cold alien material as she said goodbye to a world that she may never see again. Their parents had been told that they had a lead on their birth parents and that they had to follow it. Diane pleaded for them to stay or to allow them to help, but with a videotaped message that they were loved, and the kids would miss them, they were gone. The Evan’s kids left in the night, late May 2001.
"It's ironic," Max had said softly as he watched the Granolith launch sequence tick into its final minute. "Sometimes it feels like it is us against the whole freaking world. And now, it's the four of us leaving it, together."
All her life Isabel had craved what she was now leaving; Normal. To enter a world that was abnormal indeed. She whispered as her hands reached out and touched the cold, unyielding surface, “I will find you.” Quietly she thought, “I must. I love you and I can’t exist without you.”
end flashback
And that past had brought her to this present. She held her small child against her hip as they once again conferred about the best way to do things. But this time she was going home, back to normal. To pizza, and James Bond films, and Peach Sorbet doused in Tabasco. To her parents and last but not least, to Alex. If he’d have her.
They were taking an actual ship, a spaceship. A very small model, but capable of stealth mode, and cloaking. So hiding it amongst earth terrain wouldn’t be too entirely difficult. And her child had been given injections of genetically modified Endoplasmic reticulum, as well as blood transfusions from Isabel and other full Antarians, until it was finally ready to adapt to another world, to another air, to another life. Max also had learned what to do should it ever happen again for any of them.
*** ***
Meanwhile on Earth, it had been four years since that fateful day, Philip Evans had not stopped searching for his missing children. He’d hired Private detectives, he’d interrogated the gang, he’d done everything a loving father would do under the same circumstances. Tried to find his children, using any means necessary.
He could not, would not, give into the fact that the leads all ended up dead. Turned up nothing. It was as if they vanished into thin air, trails consistently ran cold.
He watched as his ebullient wife wilted and seemingly aged before his very eyes. Their life had become a melancholy black and white movie and was no longer filled with the vibrancy and color it once held. Diane had had a breakdown weekly or so at the start, now monthly she still did. She’d remain strong, but something would set her off, and she would ache with a renewed pain from the missing of her kids. She just couldn’t understand why they’d heard nothing of them in all that time, and what would make them just leave so abruptly. Were they enjoying their new family? And what had she and Philip done to them to make them want that family more? It was all she could assume had happened, for the other thought was unthinkable. The other thought they broached rarely, but it did come up, the thought that their children were dead.
Life had gone on, as it had to, for the others as well. Liz was attending Harvard University and majoring in Biological Sciences, Maria was majoring in music at New York State and singing in a band that had put out its demo and was being picked up by a record label shortly, and Alex was on the other side of the country in Sunny Southern California, at UCLA, majoring in Computer Science. Kyle in the meantime was studying at the local college to be in Law Enforcement. He just couldn’t get away from it try as he might.
Alex too sang in a band on weekends. But he could not take the pain out of his music, the pain that Isabel had caused over and over again. The pain that he had unwittingly allowed by being too in love with her, too much a doormat for her to wipe her dirty shoes on and stomp all over. He’d really thought it was different at Prom. And he’d warned her of her actions before she kissed him. But all that was in the past. Isabel was just a girl who could not commit. Their liaisons had been fun, but that’s all he could expect of her. He’d tried to make her the most beautiful, special person on the planet. He’d tried to pry her from her shell; he’d tried to give her a taste of what life could be. But he could only mull for the past four years that she really didn’t want that. She didn’t want what he wanted; she didn’t want to be a family with him. And so she’d left, with a one-way ticket to another world.
And so it was with all the remaining members of the club, that they missed their respective partners, but none more than Alex and Isabel who had a physical bond and connection that kept them tethered to each other’s souls whether they realized it or not. Their child.
*** ****
And for whatever reasons, none that any could determine, all the humans found their ways back to Roswell, with just a knowing that they were needed. They were being inexplicably drawn there. Late in the evening of September 2005, Crash Festival in full swing, the human kids converged on the Crashdown for an impromptu meeting.
Spaceship hidden in the desert, the alien kids, and now current saviors of another planet, made their ways to certain places. Tess headed to the Valenti’s, Michael headed to the Crashdown, and the Evans’ siblings stood on their front porch. Isabel held her squalling child to her shoulder; crying out of inexpressible fear, and hunger, and perplexity. Isabel too was in mixed emotions. She bit her lip.
Diane from inside heard the commotion on her porch, and not knowing any friends with a young child she hesitantly opened the door with a, “ What on earth is all the…” as the words died on her lips. And she blinked a couple of times to regain her presence of mind.
Isabel came undone. Between the crying toddler and seeing Mom for the first time, Max had to take over. “Hi Mom, we’re home.” He glibly stated.
“Max? Izzy? Come here.” Tears streaming down her cheeks she crushed them into her arms. “My Lord look at you. You look as if you’ve been through a war.” She spoke after a long time of hugs and tears. The baby’s large expressive eyes shifting from person to person.
“You have no idea how true that is,” Isabel stated.
“And you have a child? Whose the father? Do your other parents know?”
“Screw the other parents. You’re the only parents we’ve ever had. And the Father, Alex.” She said as she bounced the baby a little, the crying stopped, and the tired little tike just dropped off to sleep in the manner that all babies everywhere do, one minute awake, and the next completely out cold.
“He doesn’t know does he?” Diane reached out and took the toddler into her arms, as she walked over to the sofa. “He never mentioned it once.”
“No, he doesn’t. It’s why we left, but we’re not leaving again. We have everything we need or want right here.” Diane stroked the soft curly baby hair, a wistful smile enlivening her worn face.
“Are you hungry?” She shifted into Mother mode. “I could get you something? Pizza, hamburgers, ice cream, double-fudge brownies? Whatever you want.”
“No. Find Dad, we just need to talk to you guys.” Max stated ever in authority.
“He’s out of state, I’ll call him and put him on speaker phone.” Dinae got up and dialed the phone connecting with Philip who was in Delaware.
“Hello”
Isabel held up her hand to hush Diane, “Hi Daddy?”
“Izzy? Baby is that you?”
“Yeah.”
“Where the Hell have you been young lady?”
“Um someone else is here.”
“Hi Dad.” Said Max. “Good to hear your voice again.”
“Son? WE’VE searched for you for four long years. Ever hear of a phone call? It’s like you vanished off the planet. WE could not find you.”
“Actually we did,” Isabel blithely stated.
“Come again?” And with that they spilled out the story of their lives, and they had a short, but tearful conversation, including some of the secrets of their lives.
“And Daddy?” Isabel said when all was revealed, “I hope you won’t be mad at me, but I kind of brought you a little surprise. You’re a grandfather, have been for three years.”
“Having you home makes everything else alright. I’m taking the first flight out of here and getting to you. Thanks Diane, I never would have expected that, and yet, its kind-of exactly what we’d started to assume huh?” He laughed, at the irony of the entire situation.
*** ***
The meetings weren’t over however.
After quite a tongue lashing from Maria, and a defensive diatribe from Alex, Michael finally convinced them to come to the Evans with him.
The human kids entered the door.
Isabel froze. Alex eyed her cautiously, his breath caught somewhere in his lungs. They did not move for a spell and the room seemed to go into slow motion. She walked over to him and placed a hesitant hand on his arm.
“Isabel. You left me. After I told you not to play with my heart anymore, You left me. This needs to end now.”
“What does?”
“Your games. I’m sick of them and not playing anymore. I’ve grown up, its obvious you have too, but I’ve got a life now.”
“Yeah, writing sad bitter love hates, love kills songs,” quipped Maria. “It’s a great life. He’s still moping about you.”
“And its not like you don’t miss Spaceboy,” Liz added. “Or your pining over Max,” Alex and Maria turned to Liz and said in unison.
“Ok ok, in my mind this went a whole lot smoother,” stated Alex honestly, as he raised his hands in surrender. “I didn’t intend to lay into Isabel the first time I saw her. That’s Maria’s style,” he joked, “I just… seeing her, made it all real. And I can’t handle any more pain. I’ve had my share thank-you.”
“I’m sorry,” she said it so quietly.
“For?” While the other members stared at her with their mouths hanging to the floor. Isabel never apologizes, well never before.
“For pushing you away. For putting up walls. For not confiding in you.”
“About?”
“One of the main reasons we left.”
“Which was?”
Isabel walked over to the couch where her sleeping child lie, “This,” she said stroking the blonde curls.
“My God, a baby.” the girls echoed, just now noticing the tiniest member. And Maria advanced on Michael, “If you say that child is yours so help me I’ll send you back to the planet where you’re from without a spaceship, Capiche?” She ordered.
“Not mine,” he choked out, as his finger pointed. “His.”
Everyone turned to look at Alex as he pointed questioningly at himself. In the meantime Michael was dodging another blonde. Isabel. He hadn’t meant to blurt that out, and she had obviously wanted to share that bit of news personally, considering the daggers she was staring at him.
She turned to Alex who stood stock-still in the center of the Living Room. “Alex? I need you to breathe.” She teased. “Yes he’s yours, well actually ours.”
“What? When? What happened?” Alex stumbled out.
Isabel ducked her head and blushed. “I think you know what happened…”
“No… why? You said you left because of him, why?”
And they spilled out the whole story, this time leaving out no details. And how they’d had to fight a war as well when they were there.
“He’s beautiful, you know that?” Alex whispered, as he moved ever so cautiously to the couch. “Just like his mother. What’s my son’s name?”
“La’ex… It was the closest I could come to your name on another world. Lex. His name is Lex.”
“Welcome to the family Lex.” Alex said planting a kiss on his sleeping son’s head. And looking up at the girl he’d always loved, and realizing how much she loved him in return, he whispered, “And welcome back. I’ve missed you.”
THE END
Hoped you liked it. It was fun to write when the muse hit.
I just married the two parts, the posted part for the contest, and the final draft.
Thanks for reading.
Rhonda Aka Mt Gazer/Velvet Skye
Title: What Passes for Normal
Author: Individual Complexities AKA (Mt Gazer:Velvet Skye, Chrisken, Stargazer MD)
Category: CC/ AU w/ Alien
Rating: TEEN
Couple: Gazers, of course A/I
Summary: Nah, just read. This is just a short story because that’s all we were allowed. LOL
Enigma 2005 had a fic challenge, you had to write a 2000 word future fic, a POV fic, or an AU fic. Individual Complexities chose the future fic. Here are the guidelines and the story I (Rhonda) submitted. Of course this will get old won't it? reading this same info on all Challenge stories.
the following words have to be used no matter which category is chosen:
resurrection
doormat
vanish
hunger
For Future fics must use the following quotes:
"I need you to breathe"
"Sometimes it feels like it is us against the whole freaking world."
"This needs to end now."
"In my mind this went a whole lot smoother."
"I will find you."
I want to say thanks to my teammates Chrisken and StargazerMD You guys were great and I had tons of fun . If we'd never gotten to day 6, we'd have never got here. So this is for you guys.
Chrisken and Mt Gazer (Velvet Skye) initially invented the concept of the story knowing immediately to work with the Future Fic rules. Then it was written and reworked until it became what you now see here.
Here is the gazer story from the gazer team for the rest of you people to enjoy. This is a bit different from the one the mods saw for we were always over count. So we had to chop and rechop. LOL Not too shocking if you've read any of our stories ever. LOL We all write lengthy. LOL And still we were a bit over count, but not seriously, and we were not going to delete another word for it would start to detract from the story.
So this is the Writer's cut, the extended version, and for those of you who played, some trivia answers as well, especially Isabel #1 and 4. (Need I say anymore?) LOL
And now we get to the good stuff.
----------------------------------------------------------------
What Passes for Normal
By Individual Complexities
----------------------------------------------------------------
“The war is over!!!” The general announced. “We’re going home.”
“Fancy you calling Earth home, Michael?” Isabel teased. “But it’s a good thing to know that we’ll be home soon… I wonder how everyone is, Mom and Dad. Alex,” she said wistfully, "And the girls. And how they’ll respond to our return. Alex was pretty upset when we just up and left like we did.”
“But we really had no choices in that matter now did we?” Max shot his sister a determined look.
“No I guess we really didn’t. But technology up here has changed, and our return is assured. Can you believe this, we were honor students. Well some of us,” she shot a look at Michael. “And in one fell swoop our lives changed. Not only did we end up on another planet, which is supposed to be home, but now we’re high school drop-outs as well, and more than likely missing persons. And the rest of our little merry band? They’ve moved on. With us gone they all could pursue their dreams. And I’m sure they did. Maria did have a way of calling us the alien abyss you know? Well Abyss, abysmal, whatever, now they are living normal lives and the alien abyss is no longer part of it.”
“Isabel you can be so cold.” Max stated.
“Cold? I’m resigned. I’m resigned to the fact that nothing is ever normal in my life.” She looked down at her side for a moment and smiled before her eyes met her brother’s. “Nothing.”
“Do you regret your decision, regret leaving?”
“I miss my life, my family every day. But I can’t regret it. I made the best decision, the only decision I could,” she shifted the weight in her arms. “I know Alex was hurt. But you know me. I push people away. This was no different.”
She thought back to the time that had got them all here. Four years ago.
Flashback.
Prom night, the night that had changed everything, for the group, for her and Alex, for all of them.
With all they’d been through and all they’d done, for Isabel this had been the worst event yet. It was as if she’d died inside and wasn’t even aware of it. Her heart was missing. And if one doesn’t have a heart, one could be considered dead, right? But when he returned from Sweden, a man in love no less and not with her; it was then that she realized that she had to play for keeps and to win him back. So she set about the perusal of Alex Whitman, and on prom night she won him back, and found herself in a resurrection of her soul. She felt alive, like none other time that she could remember. That night culminated in the most intimate of acts, as she and Alex gave themselves to each other and started a new chapter of their lives, a chapter of love and intimacy. A chapter that was brief and quickly extinguished.
Three weeks later her nights had drastically changed. She would awaken gasping for breath and feeling as if she was suffocating, night after night she experienced these symptoms, and night after night she wondered if she were dying, and what might possibly be wrong with her.
It was Max she finally turned to nearly a month after prom. She told him what was going on, and he did a cursory exam. Staring at her, he said, “We need to talk more privately.” He got hold of Michael and they met at the Pod Chamber.
That’s when he told her the news. She was pregnant, and the baby was dying. It couldn’t breathe earth air, and was stealing Isabel’s breath. Nighttimes were more pronounced because she wasn’t moving around and getting plenty of her oxygen as she lay there. Because of this, her baby’s effect was more noticeable. And so Isabel’s idyllic world once again came crashing down around her feet.
She pushed Alex away mentally as well as emotionally as they determined their best course of action. Using the communication stones, they learned that the granolith was a spaceship of sorts, good for a one-way ticket to home. None of the four of them were happy about the prospect, but there didn't seem to be any other way to help her. It would take all of them and nobody who hadn't been born at least partially Antarian could survive the trip.
And so they had to leave. Leave home, and for what? So Isabel’s child could survive. But Alex couldn’t make the trip not being an alien, and so she’d have to leave him behind. Isabel hated how everyone’s life seemed to be messed up because of her. Vilandra caused great pain, and now Isabel was. Starting with Alex, but leaving rippling effects as it spread outward to her family and all else who knew her.
Alex stared at her with such hurt in his eyes, when the eight of them had met at the quarry so that they could say goodbye. She hadn't told him why they had to go... couldn't bear for him to realize that he wouldn't only be losing her, but his firstborn child. The heartbreaking alternative had been Alex looking at her with such bitterness... as if he had finally given her a chance for everything she said she wanted, and she had thrown it all away.
It had been strained and awkward for the rest of them too. All of the aliens had protected her secret, so none of the human members of the gang were exactly wild about the abrupt news of departure.
Isabel stood against the granolith on its inside, pressed against the cold alien material as she said goodbye to a world that she may never see again. Their parents had been told that they had a lead on their birth parents and that they had to follow it. Diane pleaded for them to stay or to allow them to help, but with a videotaped message that they were loved, and the kids would miss them, they were gone. The Evan’s kids left in the night, late May 2001.
"It's ironic," Max had said softly as he watched the Granolith launch sequence tick into its final minute. "Sometimes it feels like it is us against the whole freaking world. And now, it's the four of us leaving it, together."
All her life Isabel had craved what she was now leaving; Normal. To enter a world that was abnormal indeed. She whispered as her hands reached out and touched the cold, unyielding surface, “I will find you.” Quietly she thought, “I must. I love you and I can’t exist without you.”
end flashback
And that past had brought her to this present. She held her small child against her hip as they once again conferred about the best way to do things. But this time she was going home, back to normal. To pizza, and James Bond films, and Peach Sorbet doused in Tabasco. To her parents and last but not least, to Alex. If he’d have her.
They were taking an actual ship, a spaceship. A very small model, but capable of stealth mode, and cloaking. So hiding it amongst earth terrain wouldn’t be too entirely difficult. And her child had been given injections of genetically modified Endoplasmic reticulum, as well as blood transfusions from Isabel and other full Antarians, until it was finally ready to adapt to another world, to another air, to another life. Max also had learned what to do should it ever happen again for any of them.
*** ***
Meanwhile on Earth, it had been four years since that fateful day, Philip Evans had not stopped searching for his missing children. He’d hired Private detectives, he’d interrogated the gang, he’d done everything a loving father would do under the same circumstances. Tried to find his children, using any means necessary.
He could not, would not, give into the fact that the leads all ended up dead. Turned up nothing. It was as if they vanished into thin air, trails consistently ran cold.
He watched as his ebullient wife wilted and seemingly aged before his very eyes. Their life had become a melancholy black and white movie and was no longer filled with the vibrancy and color it once held. Diane had had a breakdown weekly or so at the start, now monthly she still did. She’d remain strong, but something would set her off, and she would ache with a renewed pain from the missing of her kids. She just couldn’t understand why they’d heard nothing of them in all that time, and what would make them just leave so abruptly. Were they enjoying their new family? And what had she and Philip done to them to make them want that family more? It was all she could assume had happened, for the other thought was unthinkable. The other thought they broached rarely, but it did come up, the thought that their children were dead.
Life had gone on, as it had to, for the others as well. Liz was attending Harvard University and majoring in Biological Sciences, Maria was majoring in music at New York State and singing in a band that had put out its demo and was being picked up by a record label shortly, and Alex was on the other side of the country in Sunny Southern California, at UCLA, majoring in Computer Science. Kyle in the meantime was studying at the local college to be in Law Enforcement. He just couldn’t get away from it try as he might.
Alex too sang in a band on weekends. But he could not take the pain out of his music, the pain that Isabel had caused over and over again. The pain that he had unwittingly allowed by being too in love with her, too much a doormat for her to wipe her dirty shoes on and stomp all over. He’d really thought it was different at Prom. And he’d warned her of her actions before she kissed him. But all that was in the past. Isabel was just a girl who could not commit. Their liaisons had been fun, but that’s all he could expect of her. He’d tried to make her the most beautiful, special person on the planet. He’d tried to pry her from her shell; he’d tried to give her a taste of what life could be. But he could only mull for the past four years that she really didn’t want that. She didn’t want what he wanted; she didn’t want to be a family with him. And so she’d left, with a one-way ticket to another world.
And so it was with all the remaining members of the club, that they missed their respective partners, but none more than Alex and Isabel who had a physical bond and connection that kept them tethered to each other’s souls whether they realized it or not. Their child.
*** ****
And for whatever reasons, none that any could determine, all the humans found their ways back to Roswell, with just a knowing that they were needed. They were being inexplicably drawn there. Late in the evening of September 2005, Crash Festival in full swing, the human kids converged on the Crashdown for an impromptu meeting.
Spaceship hidden in the desert, the alien kids, and now current saviors of another planet, made their ways to certain places. Tess headed to the Valenti’s, Michael headed to the Crashdown, and the Evans’ siblings stood on their front porch. Isabel held her squalling child to her shoulder; crying out of inexpressible fear, and hunger, and perplexity. Isabel too was in mixed emotions. She bit her lip.
Diane from inside heard the commotion on her porch, and not knowing any friends with a young child she hesitantly opened the door with a, “ What on earth is all the…” as the words died on her lips. And she blinked a couple of times to regain her presence of mind.
Isabel came undone. Between the crying toddler and seeing Mom for the first time, Max had to take over. “Hi Mom, we’re home.” He glibly stated.
“Max? Izzy? Come here.” Tears streaming down her cheeks she crushed them into her arms. “My Lord look at you. You look as if you’ve been through a war.” She spoke after a long time of hugs and tears. The baby’s large expressive eyes shifting from person to person.
“You have no idea how true that is,” Isabel stated.
“And you have a child? Whose the father? Do your other parents know?”
“Screw the other parents. You’re the only parents we’ve ever had. And the Father, Alex.” She said as she bounced the baby a little, the crying stopped, and the tired little tike just dropped off to sleep in the manner that all babies everywhere do, one minute awake, and the next completely out cold.
“He doesn’t know does he?” Diane reached out and took the toddler into her arms, as she walked over to the sofa. “He never mentioned it once.”
“No, he doesn’t. It’s why we left, but we’re not leaving again. We have everything we need or want right here.” Diane stroked the soft curly baby hair, a wistful smile enlivening her worn face.
“Are you hungry?” She shifted into Mother mode. “I could get you something? Pizza, hamburgers, ice cream, double-fudge brownies? Whatever you want.”
“No. Find Dad, we just need to talk to you guys.” Max stated ever in authority.
“He’s out of state, I’ll call him and put him on speaker phone.” Dinae got up and dialed the phone connecting with Philip who was in Delaware.
“Hello”
Isabel held up her hand to hush Diane, “Hi Daddy?”
“Izzy? Baby is that you?”
“Yeah.”
“Where the Hell have you been young lady?”
“Um someone else is here.”
“Hi Dad.” Said Max. “Good to hear your voice again.”
“Son? WE’VE searched for you for four long years. Ever hear of a phone call? It’s like you vanished off the planet. WE could not find you.”
“Actually we did,” Isabel blithely stated.
“Come again?” And with that they spilled out the story of their lives, and they had a short, but tearful conversation, including some of the secrets of their lives.
“And Daddy?” Isabel said when all was revealed, “I hope you won’t be mad at me, but I kind of brought you a little surprise. You’re a grandfather, have been for three years.”
“Having you home makes everything else alright. I’m taking the first flight out of here and getting to you. Thanks Diane, I never would have expected that, and yet, its kind-of exactly what we’d started to assume huh?” He laughed, at the irony of the entire situation.
*** ***
The meetings weren’t over however.
After quite a tongue lashing from Maria, and a defensive diatribe from Alex, Michael finally convinced them to come to the Evans with him.
The human kids entered the door.
Isabel froze. Alex eyed her cautiously, his breath caught somewhere in his lungs. They did not move for a spell and the room seemed to go into slow motion. She walked over to him and placed a hesitant hand on his arm.
“Isabel. You left me. After I told you not to play with my heart anymore, You left me. This needs to end now.”
“What does?”
“Your games. I’m sick of them and not playing anymore. I’ve grown up, its obvious you have too, but I’ve got a life now.”
“Yeah, writing sad bitter love hates, love kills songs,” quipped Maria. “It’s a great life. He’s still moping about you.”
“And its not like you don’t miss Spaceboy,” Liz added. “Or your pining over Max,” Alex and Maria turned to Liz and said in unison.
“Ok ok, in my mind this went a whole lot smoother,” stated Alex honestly, as he raised his hands in surrender. “I didn’t intend to lay into Isabel the first time I saw her. That’s Maria’s style,” he joked, “I just… seeing her, made it all real. And I can’t handle any more pain. I’ve had my share thank-you.”
“I’m sorry,” she said it so quietly.
“For?” While the other members stared at her with their mouths hanging to the floor. Isabel never apologizes, well never before.
“For pushing you away. For putting up walls. For not confiding in you.”
“About?”
“One of the main reasons we left.”
“Which was?”
Isabel walked over to the couch where her sleeping child lie, “This,” she said stroking the blonde curls.
“My God, a baby.” the girls echoed, just now noticing the tiniest member. And Maria advanced on Michael, “If you say that child is yours so help me I’ll send you back to the planet where you’re from without a spaceship, Capiche?” She ordered.
“Not mine,” he choked out, as his finger pointed. “His.”
Everyone turned to look at Alex as he pointed questioningly at himself. In the meantime Michael was dodging another blonde. Isabel. He hadn’t meant to blurt that out, and she had obviously wanted to share that bit of news personally, considering the daggers she was staring at him.
She turned to Alex who stood stock-still in the center of the Living Room. “Alex? I need you to breathe.” She teased. “Yes he’s yours, well actually ours.”
“What? When? What happened?” Alex stumbled out.
Isabel ducked her head and blushed. “I think you know what happened…”
“No… why? You said you left because of him, why?”
And they spilled out the whole story, this time leaving out no details. And how they’d had to fight a war as well when they were there.
“He’s beautiful, you know that?” Alex whispered, as he moved ever so cautiously to the couch. “Just like his mother. What’s my son’s name?”
“La’ex… It was the closest I could come to your name on another world. Lex. His name is Lex.”
“Welcome to the family Lex.” Alex said planting a kiss on his sleeping son’s head. And looking up at the girl he’d always loved, and realizing how much she loved him in return, he whispered, “And welcome back. I’ve missed you.”
THE END
Hoped you liked it. It was fun to write when the muse hit.
I just married the two parts, the posted part for the contest, and the final draft.
Thanks for reading.
Rhonda Aka Mt Gazer/Velvet Skye