Some of the text is from the Harvest and lyrics are to "Where is my Mind?" by The Pixies although the Placebo cover is what basically guided this part.
---------------------
Part 10
---------------------
With your feet on the air and your head on the ground
Try this trick and spin it, yeah
Your head will collapse if there's nothing in it
And you'll ask yourself
Where is my mind?
Michael scowled as he shifted in his seat. The two of them had spent at least twenty minutes in Courtney's hideout, willing her to show up. Twenty awkward, drawn out minutes. Twenty more minutes that he wasn't with Tess.
He needed to stop worrying so damn much. She was the most powerful of them all, she could deal with it, if there even was anything to deal with. But maybe he was worried because she was so powerful and she'd been taken down that easily.
He had to stop watching The View when he skipped school. Barbara, Joy, Star and Meredith were fucking with his brain.
"This isn't gonna work. She's not just gonna stroll up to her hideout while we're sitting here watching her." Maria huffed, her arms resting across her chest as she glared at him.
He always thought she looked best like this – surly and annoyed. Whereas Tess looked best when she was smiling and in his arms.
Michael was certain there was a reason for that – but he didn't want to dwell on it. He just wanted her back. And wait? Why was Maria mocking him? This was her brilliant plan – her Nancy Drew moment, as she phrased it.
"This was your idea."
"That's not the way I remember it."
Of course not. Maria Deluca was never wrong. How could he have forgotten that?
"Ok, so now it's my fault."
"Yes. You know what? Just to make things simpler, from now on you should consider everything to be your fault, ok? Ok."
Fuck. This was about more than the damn stakeout. This was about the creepy wall of shit at Courtney's apartment. And that could only mean one thing – she saw the pictures of him and Tess.
Fucking great. He'd have to deal with this now when all he wanted was his damn girlfriend back and Courtney dealt with. Obviously neither thing was going to happen anytime soon.
Sighing, Michael scratched at his eyebrow and asked the inevitable question. "What's your problem?"
"I don't have a problem."
"Whatever." He didn't want to deal with this right now. In fact, he was praying that she would just drop it. That would be fantastic and they'd go back to talking about nothing over a nice awkward silence.
After a momentary pause, he met her green eyes as she shifted to face him. "Are you dating Tess?"
No such luck on either avoiding this or not talking at all. He was a fucking winner tonight.
Yes Michael thought to himself as he feigned ignorance.
"Excuse me?" The half assed denial fell from his mouth without a second thought. He was more than happy to tell Maria the truth; he just didn't really want to deal with the fallout.
"I saw the pictures on that board of you two. So, are you dating or are you just like, cleaning her mouth with your tongue?"
"We're dating. Not that it is any of your business." Why not go with the truth – both parts of it. They stopped dating in May, after destiny, so it didn't concern her, as far as he was concerned.
"Hello!" Maria exclaimed flailing her arms in the air and pointing at herself. "Ex-girlfriend here! I have a right to know!"
"Critical piece of information here – ex-girlfriend." It was harsh, it was cruel, almost, but at the same time it was the truth, and it was past time she realized it. He was sick of her thinking that there was a chance for them, that they could just somehow get back together.
"Men," Maria sighed, exasperated, as she threw her hands dramatically up in the air. It was always like this with her, and he certainly didn't miss it. "So, you're really dating, huh? I could totally tell that this would happen."
Great, just great. She was going to say something ridiculous about Tess moving onto the next available man when it became clear that Max wasn't buying. This was exactly how he wanted to spend his fucking evening.
"Maria, if you're going to say it's about destiny and moving on to the next…"
"Michael! I am not that cruel!" Maria interjected, clearly picking up on his train of thought. Which, of course, meant that a part of her was thinking it.
But he didn't want to get into it. Instead, an awkward silence settled over the two of them.
After a few minutes, Maria smoothed her hair and turned toward him, a look of disbelief painted on her features. "I'm not! I was just going to say, okay, wow. I thought I'd be pissed about this. I really thought I'd be furious. But the thing is – you guys I don't know make sense or whatever. Plus I went to this psychic like last week or two weeks ago – I don't remember, and she was like – the next 48 hours were critical for my love life."
That was the best he was going to get from her – and he knew it. And, it was very adult of her, albeit unexpected. He didn't know what to say, so he decided to respond with humor. "Maria, I don't want to hear about how you bought a vibrator."
"Um, ew, pig! Do you kiss Tess with that mouth?"
Maria was shrieking, but he knew that her answer was her unsaid confirmation that she accepted his relationship. Not wanting to ruin the moment, he simply returned her comment with a smirk, waiting for her reply.
"You hound! Okay, whatever, so Madam Vivian, my mom's spiritual advisor, told me that these 48 hours were critical – and so I was desperate to find you, which clearly didn't work because I haven't even seen you in forever – so I was like all sad and depressed."
"And you got to know Jose that much better?"
"I hate you so much right now," Maria huffed, brushing a stray piece of hair off her face with a grin. "Anyway, Alex was there and I had this bottle of liquor and we kind of got drunk. And we realized some stuff – so anyway, we're together too. Just thought you should know."
"Romance and body shots? Sounds kinky," Michael teased, scratching his eyebrow as he rolled his eyes. He was happy for her – that she was getting over whatever they had. It was going to come out sooner or later that they simply weren't compatible, and they could at least be mature about it.
"You're disgusting."
Maria paused, then turned toward him. "But if we can talk reality here for a second, I think she booked. Out of town."
Absolutely not. If the attack on Tess was any indication, the skins were here to stay – and Courtney had a definite plan.
"No dice. She wouldn't do that. She's obsessed with me."
"I guess that makes 2 of you, then, doesn't it?"
Cute, Deluca, real cute.
"She'll show up sooner or later."
"How 'bout sooner?"
Jumping to his feet, one thought was running through his mind – oh, shit.
---------------------
She could sense something was off the second they entered the house. It wasn't overwhelming – but it was there, nipping at the back of her consciousness. Inhaling, she brushed an imaginary wisp of hair off her face as she took her seat on the couch.
Tess tried to listen as the others made idle conversation about Whittaker, the highway, but she was overcome with a sense of dread. If only Michael was here, she mused, before souring.
What was all that bullshit she was thinking in the car? She was strong enough to do this. She could totally handle this.
Inhaling, she pushed her palms down on her knees. There was something off here. Why had everyone stopped talking? What was going on?
Shifting, she noticed someone move out of the corner of her eye. He was short and young – like a teenager. God, why couldn't she see well? Why had she been relegated to a corner?
Isabel was talking now, but all that registered was muddled female voices and a mouth opening and closing. Her own fears were drowning out everything else as her apprehension overcame her. Something was wrong and every cell in her body was screaming at her to leave – but she sat rooted in place.
Maybe it was the fear. Maybe it really had paralyzed her? Maybe she had been so overcome by emotion that she couldn't move? Could that happen? God, why did she hate science?
That had to be it. Why had she agreed to this again?
Oh god, the old broad was talking. Why wasn't she hearing – why did it feel like she was drowning? Why did she feel like a guest in her own body?
The bile was rising in her throat, as her thoughts grew more panicked, more rushed, more desperate. Why wasn't anyone noticing? Why couldn't they see that she clearly was uncomfortable?
Why couldn't she focus? Was this what it was like to be high? Had she gotten delirious?
"Nicholas, there you are! Come on in here. Come on, say hello."
It was like her stomach had been coated in lead. Dancing dark eyes were trained on her and she opened her mouth to scream – but no sound came out. In fact, she couldn't even open her mouth. And Nicholas continued to mock her with his eyes, while feigning sadness.
This was a trap. And she couldn't even do anything to warn them.
She strained her face muscles to force a frown onto her face, but all that came of it was a dull ache and another amused grin from Nicholas. Maybe, maybe if she could just get out of the house – if she could just get one of them to follow her.
God, it wasn't that hard, was it? She wasn't an invalid, she knew how to walk – one foot then two. What was happening? She couldn't focus on anything – her head hurt too much.
Something had just happened – something important. What was it? Oh, right, Nicholas. St. Nicholas? It wasn't Christmas. Was it?
"If Vanessa was like your mother, well I'm like your Grandmother."
What was going on? Grandma? Why did her head hurt? Where were they? Where was Michael?
Michael. Michael. Michael. Michael.
Maybe if she just focused on him – maybe it would make sense. He helped her before, right?
Blinking, she shook her head as her mind cleared. Jerking suddenly, she threw the rice krispie treat that had been in her hand onto the coffee table. What the hell had just happened? Her head was killing her and her muscles ached and she really needed to go to the bathroom.
"Excuse me, where's the restroom?"
It didn't even sound like her voice. She didn't even remember thinking about asking the question. In fact, she just was reflecting on needing to use it and all the sudden out comes the question.
"Down the hall on the left."
Nodding, she lifted herself off the sofa and followed the directions. Maybe this was her chance – maybe if she just could get out of here, it'd all be okay. After all, there had to be a window or something right?
Pushing the door open, she brushed a stray piece of hair off her face – it'd be okay. She was getting control of her body again – she just had to keep focusing on Michael, getting out of here and fixing whatever was wrong. No big deal, right?
Inhaling, she shut the door quietly behind her and let out a silent plea. This had to fucking work. She was finally thinking for herself again, regaining control of her body.
Her body jerked and turned as she fell over herself on the way to the window. She had to get out of here. She just had to. Gripping the handle, she pushed hard against the glass – willing it to open.
Damn thing was stuck. It was fucking stuck. She couldn't get it open. Why wasn't it opening?
Clawing wildly at her hair, Tess pressed all her weight against the painted over glass. She had to get out of here. She had to get Michael – she just fucking had to do something to warn them.
If she trusted her powers, she'd use them right now. But that'd only let Nicholas know that she wasn't under whatever he'd done anymore. And she couldn't have that. Not when she was so close. Not when she was able to do something to save them.
"Fuck," Tess hissed, her arm slipping out of position, the window still painted shut. The harsh sting of a splinter cutting through her fingertip caused her to pull the bleeding digit into her mouth.
There was no time for this. She had to get out of here. Her mind was screaming as she surveyed the room, looking for something to help her lift the damn window. Finally deciding on a toilet bowl brush with a thin, metal handle, she gripped it and began to dig at the edges of the painted over frame.
Peeling at the paint, her heart pumping so loudly that she could barely hear the metal carving on the wood. Her mouth was dry and her stomach was knotted, but she just needed to get a little more of the condensed paint off and then – freedom.
It was gone. The paint was gone in one corner!
Scrambling, she shoved the brush into her back pocket and immediately pressed her palms against the glass. The window whined and bristled against her weight, but it was finally starting to move. She could feel the resistance lessening and she squealed with delight as fresh air hit her face.
She did it! She did it!
Grinning widely, Tess pressed down on the windowsill and brushed her bangs off her face as she prepared to hoist herself over the ledge.
She could save them. She could make a difference. They'd forgive her later when they saw what she'd done.
Suddenly, the window flew down from its perch, crashing against her fingertips, crushing them.
"Oh my god! Fuck!" Tess screamed, not needing to try to bend her fingers to know that more than half were probably broken. Stupid fucking house, she just needed to get out of here.
Wrenching her bloodied hands from under the shattered glass pane, she bit her lip as she pushed it open again. It was harder now, with broken fingers and cracked glass – but her resolve was stronger.
"Going somewhere?"
Oh god, oh god oh god. She was too late. Nicholas was here and she had nothing to say for her efforts except for broken fingers and bloody palms.
"Leave me alone!" Tess bellowed, pooling her energy into her palms. She had to fight him; she could do this – for herself, for her friends, for her planet.
Power flowed into her fingertips; her only thought to destroy him. Cells cracked and burned, marring her view, as her energy consumed her entire being. She had to do this, she had to – it was her one shot and she was going to take it.
Everything was so much brighter, so much louder. Her head was growing heavy and she felt like she was going to pass out from sensory overload.
Electricity sparked from her fingertips as she began her attack. Wincing through the pain, she fired her blast, determined to hit him. Screams ripping from her mouth, power flowing out of her so fast she could barely register it, Tess was consumed by only one goal – to destroy him.
Air was rushing past her and, for a second, she felt like she was flying. Was this what it was like to use this much power? You literally felt like you were floating?
White-hot pain ripped through her body, shattering muscles and bones with alarming speed. Sputtering for air, Tess moaned in agony as sharp tears ripped at her eyes, pieces of tile ripping into her flesh.
Red. All she could see when she tried to will her eyes open was red. It was consuming her being – staining her fingers, her shirt, her limbs in vermillion, scarlet and crimson. Her head drooped and spun, the weight too much to hold up without a fight – and she was tired. It would be so easy just to rest for a while. She'd deal with whatever else later.
Oh god, did she have a concussion?
Violently rubbing at her eyes, she could make out the blurry outline of feet moving closer. She had to get out of here, her mind screamed, the realization encompassing her thoughts.
Sobering, she tried to push herself up off the ground, her weight pressing down on her arms. Sharp, violent protests ripped from her muscles, and she bit down on her lip, the acrid taste of fresh blood hitting her tongue.
Wobbling and shaking under her own weight, Tess tried, in vain, to push back the tears that were spilling from her eyes. Grunting, she pushed her body upwards, rejoicing when she felt her knees curl under her.
With a sharp jerk, her head snapped backward, screaming in pain as hair was being ripped from her head.
“You never were a bright girl, were you Ava?” Nicholas mocked, his mouth mere inches from her ear
“Fuck you.” Tess was seething, struggling against his grasp in vain. He was so strong, and there was so much blood and she was so weak.
“Is that an invitation? You can scream as loud as you want – the room’s been soundproofed.” Nicholas leered as he ripped at her hair and used his free hand to cradle her breast.
Trembling at his touch, the bile rose in her throat as his hand drifted upwards, under her shirt. His fingers were like ice, she mused, unwilling to think about what might happen. Cold digits thumbing her nipple as she began to cry, unable to form words to express her revulsion, praying, by some miracle, the others would come to her rescue.
Searing, ripping pain rushed through her as he twisted her nipple, pinching it so hard that she felt it was going to fall off. Her body fell forward as he let go of her, slamming her eyes shut right before colliding with the floor.
Scrambling, Tess clawed at the tile, determined to get away from him. Screaming in agony as Nicholas’ foot grinding against her left palm, she felt like passing out. Her eyes were beginning to roll, only aware of the throbbing in her hand and her failure.
“Sorry to disappoint. I like a challenge and you bore me. Oh if your people could see you now! The great Queen Ava a sobbing teenager who fails to protect herself from even a simple attack! Pathetic, really.”
Tess let go of a breath she didn’t even know that she was holding. He wasn’t – he wasn’t going to do that. However, his words weren’t lost on her – she was weak, a pathetic recreation of predecessor. How could she save a planet when she couldn’t even save herself?
“And don’t you have a King to deflower?”
“Never,” Tess moaned reaching for something to throw at him with her good hand. Wincing as Nicholas pressed his shoe into her right hand, halting her movement, she swallowed a lump in her throat – realizing that she was also swallowing blood.
“Silly girl, it’s not like you have a choice in the matter. Pretty soon, you’ll be spreading your legs, practically impaling yourself with Zan’s hard cock. All for the good of Antar – at least your fidelity survived your reincarnation.”
Biting her lip, her thoughts wandered to Michael. This would destroy him, but the sense of foreboding was eating at her – he was right. She couldn’t fight him, he was too strong, and she was pathetic. A waste of life, a terrible queen, there was only one alternative – but that was dependant upon whether or not she survived this exchange.
“And then you’ll kill them. One by one – violent and unexpected. It’ll be poetry, I promise – and I’m sure that you’ll agree that we save Rath for last. Once we’re fully involved in our little arrangement, you’ll want nothing more than to torture him, kill him a little each day. Maybe even fuck Khivar while he watches? Cut off his cock and let him bleed out? Shove a sword up his ass. Doesn’t that make you wet Ava?”
No. No. No. No.
Her mind was screaming at her as Nicholas laced his fingers into her hair, sending her image after image of Michael dying and her holding the bloody weapon, a satisfied smirk on her face.
She couldn’t. She wouldn’t.
Her head jerked forward, vomit pouring out of her mouth as another vision took over her senses.
Naked, she’d fired a gun at him, laughing as he hit the ground – blood pouring out of him. Without even so much as a goodbye kiss, she’d finished the job, a knife peeling the skin off of his still breathing body. Turning to Nicholas, she kissed him hard, allowing him to enter her – their bare bodies coming together next to Michael’s dead body, blood coating their skin like a mark of victory.
“NO!” Tess boomed, her skin sparking and burning as power rushed out of her, willing Nicholas to die. She would never, she could never, Michael meant way too much to her. Shrieking, she jerked away from him and fired her blast, collapsing against the floor from shear exhaustion. Her lids drooping as darkness enveloped her; she hoped that she’d gotten him this time.
Sharp, stinging pain ripped across her face and she recoiled, too tired to do anything. Maybe this was the rescue party? Maybe they’d thought about her?
“I’m done with foreplay,” Nicholas announced and she tried to struggle against him as he dragged her by the hair over to him. Everything was so heavy, so hard and she couldn’t move.
Was this what dying felt like?
Moaning as electricity was violently being pushed into her head, cells and memories realigning while Nicholas laughed condescendingly she felt herself falling, slipping under. It was like she was floating, a part of her body but not and it took her a moment to realize what, exactly, was happening.
She was a failure. She’d fought and failed. Conceded defeat to the enemy – a man, who wanted nothing more than to destroy them – and use her to do it. What would happen now? What would happen to Michael? God, she couldn’t become that person – that horrible person who did those things. That wasn’t her. It just wasn’t her at all. He was Michael.
She loved him. And now he’d never know. The silent declaration repeated itself over and over as he pumped more energy into her mind, until she couldn’t feel anything at all.
Analecta (Mi/T, UC, M) 1-12; New Part 13 COMPLETE 9/29
Moderators: Anniepoo98, Itzstacie, truelovepooh, Erina, Forum Moderators
Lyrics are to "Blackened Crown" by Eisley
-----------------------------
Part 11
-----------------------------
Did you hear me holler at you
to come save me I'm in danger
My pearls have fallen into mud
and you were too late
It was like last spring all over again. Coming into that room and seeing Nicholas before him, cocky and condescending – boasting about killing him in their last life, smirking over what he was sure was something related to Tess. He wanted him dead and it scared him that he could be so sure of it, especially knowing the cost of taking a life.
In the end, it hadn't mattered – he collapsed and Michael decided that saving Courtney's life was more worthwhile than taking Nicholas'. Courtney wasn't someone he trusted, but she had information about the skins, and he knew that they'd need it – down the line.
There was a part of him that still wasn't sure he'd made the right decision. But there hadn't been time – he got outside and there were screams and orders barked in rapid succession, nothing really penetrating his consciousness. Everyone was moving, running for their lives desperate to leave Copper Summit.
Everyone except Tess. She'd been practically dragged by Max and Liz over here, something that he hadn't noticed at first, but registered it when he looked back and she was still standing there – lost and confused like she was just coming into waking.
Slamming the trunk shut, his world suddenly felt like it was in slow motion. He'd reached for Tess, only to have her jerk away and press her hands to her head. Air caught in his lungs as he watched her knees buckle under her weight, her small body collapsing to the ground, his ears trained on the pained screams ripping from her mouth as she continued to claw at her hair.
His stomach felt like it was coated in lead and the metallic taste of blood registered on his tongue before he noticed that he'd bitten the inside of his mouth. He could see Liz's mouth moving from the corner of his eye but couldn't register the words coming out, all his attention focused on the blonde in front of him.
It all was hazy after that. Someone said something and someone else reminded them that they had to leave. It wasn't until Max grabbed at Tess, pulling her frail body up from the ground as if she had no value to him that he had regained his focus.
"We don't have time for this." Max spat, his exasperation and fear colored his delivery, and Tess just turned her head away from everyone, but not before he had noticed the desolate look in her eye.
"Bastard." Michael snarled, his anger rising as he clenched his fists – desperate to get out some of the fury that had been rising within him. As he'd stepped closer, he barely registered Tess cowering to his target's left; he just wanted to inform Max that his behavior was unwarranted the only way he knew how.
But then Maria had stood next to him in what he realized now was an effort to stop the rapidly escalating violence, pressing her keys into his palm, the little alien head leaving an indent.
"Michael take Tess," Maria had ordered, guiding the smaller girl to the car. She then turned to Courtney, who was trying to get into the back seat and commanded, "hey geriatric, c'mon we're going with Max."
Then, he was in the car, his thoughts leaving him with no comfort – Tess hadn't said anything the entire car ride home, and he wasn't sure he wanted to ask. In fact, the only thing that indicated that she was even conscious was the steady stream of tears falling down her face.
It didn't take a genius to figure out that something terrible had happened – and it more likely than not had to do with Nicholas. The pained, haunted look in her eyes was enough evidence for him – and after Courtney's explanation of what he was capable of, just seeing her like this made him sick to his stomach.
He just didn't know what to do to help her.
Drumming his fingertips on the steering wheel, he stole glances at her as they drove toward the Valenti's. Apprehensive, Michael shifted uncomfortably in his seat as self doubt continued to assault his consciousness.
Clenching his fists, he resisted the urge to punch the steering wheel. An angry tear fell from his face and he swatted it away. Cursing Nicholas, he watched Tess wrap her arms around herself and push her body further into the seat.
Her skin was red and blotchy, marring her normally clear complexion. She looked so tiny as she receded into the passenger seat, her hair, loose and dull, beginning to veil her face. It was like a sucker punch to the gut, seeing her like this, broken and defeated, and so hopelessly alone.
You did this – it's your fault. An unspoken accusation that he repeated like a mantra in his head. It grew in strength with each choked sob and strangled cry that escaped from her throat.
Why had he even given a passing consideration to letting her do this? He knew it was a possibility that she'd run into Nicholas. Why the hell did he think she'd be okay?
He'd wanted to believe in the possibility that she was fine so desperately that he'd stopped himself from objecting. And that decision had far greater consequences than he could have even imagined.
Pulling up to the driveway, he stopped the car and exhaled. The ride had been draining, for both of them. "Tess, we're here."
His voice cracked and he bit down hard on his lip. He wasn't supposed to cry – he was supposed to be the strong one, he wasn't the one who was hurt here.
She turned toward him, and he half expected to see rage in her eyes. It would have been warranted – he failed and now he was about to cry. Wild, fearful blue orbs stared back at him, silently pleading for him not to leave her here.
Exhaling, he turned the ignition and started the car, noticing her visible relief from the corner of his eye. Why did she want to stay with him anyway?
What was it Nicholas had said he was? Dull and stupid – hell, the bastard had been kind in his description. He was scum, the eternal fuck up. Hell, he was Mickey, the boy who couldn't even put up a fight against a drunk shit like Hank. The one no one wanted.
Driving down the empty street, her fingers dragged against the window of the car, the cool desert air had created a fog and she was drawing obscure pictures, in what he was sure was an attempt to drive her attention away from what happened in Arizona.
Another jarring reminder of one simple truth: he failed her. And not for the first time either. It was in his genes to protect them, to protect her. But he continued to prove just how much he sucked at it – no wonder they'd all died the last time.
Courtney described what Nicholas could do as rape. And maybe it was, but maybe it was worse. He didn't want to know what that meant. But he didn't have a choice – he had to help her, it was the least he could do now.
"This is it."
"Okay." Tess sighed, extending her small hand outward to grasp the door handle. He couldn't help but hold his breath as she began the small movement, wondering if she'd actually complete it. It was strange how the simplest gesture could affect him, but he was relieved to see that she was doing something other than her best impersonation of a mime.
The tension was palpable as the two of them entered his small apartment. Neither wanting to discuss what, exactly had happened – and it frustrated him. Scratching his eyebrow, he wished he had the ability to use empty words to make people feel better – to be more like Max.
But her blank stares and apprehensive twiddling of her fingers told him one thing. She needed more than that – and he wasn't sure how to give it to her. Inhaling, he turned to face her head on, and was struck by just how different she looked from the girl she'd been only a day ago.
Confidence had been replaced by insecurity so raw that it was hard to even look at her. Her wide blue eyes were dull and sad, devastation imbued her gaze. She was jumping at shadows – something he'd failed to notice in the car, but now, on his couch, she would jerk, ever so slightly each time his foot met the worn carpet.
"What happened?" Two words. It was two words that verbalized the question that he had been wondering the entire ride to Roswell.
"Nothing!" She shouted, her voice cracking as the lie immediately fell from her lips. Not wanting to say anything yet, he simply raised an eyebrow in response and crossed his arms against his chest.
"This was a bad idea, I'm sorry." Tess mumbled, pushing her body forward, up off the couch, toward the doorway and his stomach felt like it was sinking to the floor. She was shutting him out, and, in his mind, deservedly so. It still didn't mean that it didn't hurt worse than anything else in the world.
"Don't." Michael commanded, the protest slipping from his lips without warning and his voice much stronger than he felt. Reaching out, his palm met her forearm, and without thinking, his fingers tightened around it, holding her in place. Blue met brown in a challenge, a spark of righteous indignation flashing across her face, and he felt himself being drawn into her gaze.
Her fear hit him without warning, thousands of emotions suddenly overpowering him, drawing him further into the connection. His heart was beating wildly in his chest, his lungs burning as if he'd just run a marathon and it felt like he was going to pass out from the shear force of it all.
Moments in time flashed by as the erratic thumping of his heart rang in his ear. His throat ached as his stomach tightened in knots – adrenaline kicking into high gear. Energy was coursing through his veins, desperate for release.
It was too much, and his control was too faulty. Wincing, he exhaled, silently praying that he wouldn't hurt her. Bursts of light flickered across his view as the air stilled and emotions gave way to images.
Blood, broken glass and shattered limbs permeated his view, Nicholas towering overhead, his smile malicious as he came closer, until his foot was grinding against Tess' palm. His mouth was moving, but Michael couldn't make out the words, and he wasn't sure if it was the flashes or Tess' need for him not to hear that was stopping him.
The visions shifted and changed as Nicholas moved closer, his mouth precariously close to what, he assumed, was her ear.
It felt like he had been punched in the gut, Tess fired a gun at him, cackling, her inhibitions gone as the bullet penetrated his skin, his body falling to the ground. She was towering over him now, slithering against his flesh, eyes dark and desirous, as if this was what she had wanted all along.
"Get off me!"
Violent, jerking motions pushed him away from her, and he opened his eyes to see Tess staring at him wild and angry and hurt. Her blue eyes burned him with silent accusations of violated trust.
He hadn't meant for it to happen. But there they were, easily accessible and so raw. But the scariest part was that he knew they got worse than what he'd seen in those fleeting moments. She was hiding something sinister inside herself that she didn't want him to see.
"Jesus, what the hell was that?" It was the first thing that he could think of – his mind was still reeling from what he'd experienced and how it contrasted with what, exactly he'd seen earlier. She had been bloody in those images, and then, killing him – but from what he could see there wasn't a mark on her.
Maybe Nicholas had just put all those images in her head? Courtney said he could take things out – so maybe it worked both ways? All he knew was the next time he saw that asshole would be the last.
"Nothing, okay?" Her delivery was haughty but her posture was anything but. She was fearful of her secret getting out, and unable to lie with the same gusto she had when she'd first come to Roswell.
And it infuriated him that she was covering for that little shit at all.
Clenching and unclenching his fists, the rage boiling within him as she continued to shift her weight uncomfortably from side to side. Whatever that bastard did to her, whatever he took and put in its place – he couldn't even find the words to describe how much he wanted him dead.
If he'd only been more determined – quicker on the draw in Arizona, he wouldn't be thinking about next time, he'd be tap dancing on the fucker's grave. Why was he such a fuck up and why was she trying to hide what happened?
"Don't bullshit me! Was that him? I'll fucking kill him!" His outburst was primal – his words falling over each other in stops and starts as they grew louder and more forceful until they reached a furious climax.
"Would you listen to yourself?" Tess hollered, jumping off the couch and defensively clasping a hand against her chest. The resigned look in her eye infuriated him – as if she was merely acting like she was incensed by his behavior to mask just how unwilling she was to fight.
"How can you be so calm about this? What the hell did he do?"
Pushing her hair out of her face she glared up at him, anger visible on her face. If it weren’t for the way that she was shifting from side to side, he would think that she was legitimately angry at him, and not trying to hide her fear. "Someone has to be! God, Michael! You can't just kill him!"
"He's trying to kill you and you want to what, give him a hug? We're at war Tess!" Balling his fists, he resisted the urge to let his anger get the best of him. It would be so easy to take out the wall, let his fury win out. But seeing her stand there, her bottom lip trembling even as her face was void of emotion, he knew that any outward display of his anger would break her.
"Don't you think I know that? Just drop it!" She was screaming and clawing at her hair, willing him to stop, but he wouldn’t drop it. He owed her more than that, especially when she refused to see just how much he’d continue to affect her, unless they came up with a solution.
"Are you crazy?"
Her palm collided with his cheek and he recoiled as her fingers drew themselves away from his skin. It burned worse than he thought it would, but he knew that he deserved it – and not just for insulting her mental state.
"Don't you ever call me that!"
"Sorry. I didn't mean… but god Tess!"
"I don't want to talk about it." Her arms were folded across her chest and she was staring at him like it was the end of the conversation, but he wasn’t going to take that for an answer.
Defiant, he pressed her, repeating the question that continued to plague him.
"What did he do to you?"
"I said I don't want to talk about it Michael!" She was shrieking now, her voice growing more desperate for him to stop pressing and firm in her resolve to stop talking about the entire ordeal.
"You can't just decide not to talk about it Tess. Fuck! What I saw…Courtney said that he can take your thoughts, is that what he did? Because, what I saw, that's not you, Tess."
He was stumbling over his words, anger and frustration getting the best of him as she stared back at him, emotionless and unwilling to discuss it any further. But seeing her grow tenser, quieter as he continued to broach the subject infuriated him.
"I want to help you Tess. But you have to tell me what he did."
Pointedly, she looked at him, and exhaled, saying without words that she didn’t want, or think she needed his help. Too fucking bad – he returned her glare with one of his own and she finally relented, her face softening as she shifted her hands off her hips.
"I don't know what he did, okay?"
Raising an eyebrow in response, he shut his eyes in an attempt to mask his desire to roll them. How could she not know what Nicholas did – he saw those flashes from her, sensed her fear and apprehension – so why was she lying?
Tess shifted, her feet scraping against the worn carpet as she met his gaze, anger masking any other emotion and he groaned inwardly, bracing himself for whatever she was about to say.
At least she was feeling something other than desolation, and while he hated to see the ire marring her face, he knew that she was feeling – and that, he thought, was a victory in itself.
"What do you want me to say, Michael? That I'm missing time? That he beat the shit out of me – that I thought… god I thought. I thought I was going to die! And then, I woke up, or came out of it or whatever and the first thing I notice is that I'm suddenly healed and all these people staring at me like I'm nuts! I lived and did things that I don't remember, and don't even think I had control over."
The air expelled from his lungs as he watched her shoulders sag, tears and red rimmed eyes replacing the defiant anger he’d seen moments before. He hadn’t considered that Nicholas had, basically, taken over her body – and it added a new dimension to the equation. It didn’t quite make sense yet, but from she was saying, he assumed that somehow Nicholas had the ability to turn them into puppets for whatever he needed.
"So, no. Michael, I don't know what he did. All I know is that he told me what he could make me do – and showed me just how easy it is for him to do it."
He had no idea how to respond to what she was saying, her tears drowning out any ability for him to think clearly. Reaching out a hand, he tried to draw her into him, only to have her step backward, away from him. She wrapped her arms around herself as she took a seat on the couch and turned away.
That fucker was going down.
Had it only been yesterday that they were hugging and happy and scared to let each other go? It seemed like a lifetime had gone by since then and they were two strangers trying to cope with a tragedy.
“What can I do?”
They were four words that he’d never really uttered before, he’d never gotten this close to anyone before, not even Max or Isabel to offer his help, not that they’d want it. He was just the one that was always fucking things up, according to them – not the one who could help find solutions.
He opened his mouth to say something else, add more words in an attempt to say something else, something more poignant that could help her, but she wasn’t listening. Michael could tell from her perch that her mind was already reeling again, going a mile a minute in an attempt to find a solution.
"Don’t worry, I have a plan."
She had a plan? Why did that make him feel even worse about what was going on? Maybe it was the blasé way that she introduced it – as if it was an afterthought to her, even now.
And that meant one thing – whatever it was, she was planning on going it alone. Fucking great.
"And you weren't going to tell me?"
He already knew the answer the second he opened his mouth. It was the way that she shifted further away from him, protective of whatever idea she had. It took him a moment, but then he realized what, exactly, she was doing. Tess didn’t want him to touch her – and was she really to blame? He’d gotten flashes before, and although it killed him to be in the dark about this, he sort of understood. She needed something to be just hers again.
The only problem was this wasn’t the right time to reclaim her privacy. She was playing up her independence card with someone who had tried to kill her. The details weren’t there and he wasn’t sure he wanted to press her yet, but from what he’d seen and felt and heard, he knew this was a bad idea.
Even if he wanted to kill Nicholas.
"No."
Exasperated, he clasped his hands together, fist hitting palm as she continued to hold his gaze – silently defiant. It wasn’t so much what she said that was frustrating him, it was how she was saying it. She was still angry for the sake of being angry, not because she felt impassioned, irate and willing to fight.
"We're a group. We do things together –you can't just go off on your own here." God, he sounded like Max, lecturing her like this when he refused to accept the same advice.
She was up off the couch and angrily pacing in front of him. "Michael, I'm not a part of the group. Or haven't you noticed? You're the only person who…"
"Exactly! I care! Damnit Tess. I love you!"
Blanching, he continued to stare at her, the air expelling from his lungs as he realized what exactly he’d said. The last time he’d – hell, the only time he’d said those three words was to get Maria off his back. Sure, he’d sort of thought, at the time, that he’d loved her – but that was nothing compared to this.
And now he’d fucking told her – and why? Because he wasn’t thinking. Story of his fucking life.
The silence dragged on for a minute in a half. Tess was shifting from side to side, but said nothing. Her face was emotionless and she stared blankly back at him, brushing a stray piece of hair off her face before she opened her mouth, a sharp monotone revealing itself.
"You shouldn't."
She was shutting down – and he wasn’t about to let her, not now, not after that admission. And who the fuck was she to tell him that he shouldn’t love her? It doesn’t work that way!
"Well tough shit. Just because you’re feeling guilty that some fuckwad who’s been planning this for years attacked you doesn’t mean that you get to tell me how I should feel. You beat him, Tess! You may not think that now, but you’re still here – and yeah, it sucks what he did to you. But you beat him, and the only way he wins now is if you let him.”
Yeah, it was clichéd and stupid and probably the lamest pep talk ever, but he was hoping that at least she was paying attention to him. Scratching his eyebrow, he watched as her eyes softened slightly as she focused on him.
“I don't do flowers and chocolates or whatever the hell it is girls want, but I love you. And I don’t want to see you get yourself killed. Okay?”
“I know what I’m doing.” Tess snapped, stepping closer to him, challenging him to fight her on this. It was what she wanted – for him to call her stupid, crazy, so that she could recoil again, cite some righteous indignation that would justify her pushing him away.
“No, you don’t.” Moving closer, his lips were inches from hers as he stared down at her, impassioned and determined, but still unwilling to close the space between them, they hung in limbo, taunting her.
Irate blue orbs stared up at him, refusing to give in to temptation. He forced back the urge to smirk as she furrowed her brow and puffed her chest up in an attempt to stand taller against him.
“Yes, I…”
Cutting her off, Michael crushed his lips to hers, violently closing the space between them. She responded in kind, her nails digging into his back as her tongue darted in and out of his mouth, colliding with his tongue as he snaked his hand into her hair.
“God, Michael,” Tess moaned, her breath warm against his cheek as she lifted his shirt up and over his head before he had a chance to protest.
Lips meeting again, his hands slipped beneath her shirt, digits tracing the outline of her breast, as she took his bottom lip in her mouth, gently grating it with her teeth. Her eyes darkened as he continued to explore the soft flesh, any hesitation gone as soft curls fell away from her face as she arched her body backward.
Her hand slipped downward, underneath the waistband of his jeans and she gave him a wicked grin. Gently stroking him, he slammed his eyes shut as the course fabric grew tighter, trying not to come apart in her hands.
“Jesus,” Michael groaned, Tess’ body pressed against his, and he wondered, idly, when she’d lost her shirt as he cupped her breast, moving his mouth downward to meet the exposed flesh.
Flicking his tongue, he felt her shift in his arms, coming up as he pulled away, an amorous glint in her eye.
“Bedroom,” she commanded, dragging him behind her – Tess suddenly fully in control. Not that he minded, he mused, all his concerns about yesterday fading away as she pulled him into the room by tugging on the waistband of his jeans, shutting the door behind him.
-----------------------------
Part 11
-----------------------------
Did you hear me holler at you
to come save me I'm in danger
My pearls have fallen into mud
and you were too late
It was like last spring all over again. Coming into that room and seeing Nicholas before him, cocky and condescending – boasting about killing him in their last life, smirking over what he was sure was something related to Tess. He wanted him dead and it scared him that he could be so sure of it, especially knowing the cost of taking a life.
In the end, it hadn't mattered – he collapsed and Michael decided that saving Courtney's life was more worthwhile than taking Nicholas'. Courtney wasn't someone he trusted, but she had information about the skins, and he knew that they'd need it – down the line.
There was a part of him that still wasn't sure he'd made the right decision. But there hadn't been time – he got outside and there were screams and orders barked in rapid succession, nothing really penetrating his consciousness. Everyone was moving, running for their lives desperate to leave Copper Summit.
Everyone except Tess. She'd been practically dragged by Max and Liz over here, something that he hadn't noticed at first, but registered it when he looked back and she was still standing there – lost and confused like she was just coming into waking.
Slamming the trunk shut, his world suddenly felt like it was in slow motion. He'd reached for Tess, only to have her jerk away and press her hands to her head. Air caught in his lungs as he watched her knees buckle under her weight, her small body collapsing to the ground, his ears trained on the pained screams ripping from her mouth as she continued to claw at her hair.
His stomach felt like it was coated in lead and the metallic taste of blood registered on his tongue before he noticed that he'd bitten the inside of his mouth. He could see Liz's mouth moving from the corner of his eye but couldn't register the words coming out, all his attention focused on the blonde in front of him.
It all was hazy after that. Someone said something and someone else reminded them that they had to leave. It wasn't until Max grabbed at Tess, pulling her frail body up from the ground as if she had no value to him that he had regained his focus.
"We don't have time for this." Max spat, his exasperation and fear colored his delivery, and Tess just turned her head away from everyone, but not before he had noticed the desolate look in her eye.
"Bastard." Michael snarled, his anger rising as he clenched his fists – desperate to get out some of the fury that had been rising within him. As he'd stepped closer, he barely registered Tess cowering to his target's left; he just wanted to inform Max that his behavior was unwarranted the only way he knew how.
But then Maria had stood next to him in what he realized now was an effort to stop the rapidly escalating violence, pressing her keys into his palm, the little alien head leaving an indent.
"Michael take Tess," Maria had ordered, guiding the smaller girl to the car. She then turned to Courtney, who was trying to get into the back seat and commanded, "hey geriatric, c'mon we're going with Max."
Then, he was in the car, his thoughts leaving him with no comfort – Tess hadn't said anything the entire car ride home, and he wasn't sure he wanted to ask. In fact, the only thing that indicated that she was even conscious was the steady stream of tears falling down her face.
It didn't take a genius to figure out that something terrible had happened – and it more likely than not had to do with Nicholas. The pained, haunted look in her eyes was enough evidence for him – and after Courtney's explanation of what he was capable of, just seeing her like this made him sick to his stomach.
He just didn't know what to do to help her.
Drumming his fingertips on the steering wheel, he stole glances at her as they drove toward the Valenti's. Apprehensive, Michael shifted uncomfortably in his seat as self doubt continued to assault his consciousness.
Clenching his fists, he resisted the urge to punch the steering wheel. An angry tear fell from his face and he swatted it away. Cursing Nicholas, he watched Tess wrap her arms around herself and push her body further into the seat.
Her skin was red and blotchy, marring her normally clear complexion. She looked so tiny as she receded into the passenger seat, her hair, loose and dull, beginning to veil her face. It was like a sucker punch to the gut, seeing her like this, broken and defeated, and so hopelessly alone.
You did this – it's your fault. An unspoken accusation that he repeated like a mantra in his head. It grew in strength with each choked sob and strangled cry that escaped from her throat.
Why had he even given a passing consideration to letting her do this? He knew it was a possibility that she'd run into Nicholas. Why the hell did he think she'd be okay?
He'd wanted to believe in the possibility that she was fine so desperately that he'd stopped himself from objecting. And that decision had far greater consequences than he could have even imagined.
Pulling up to the driveway, he stopped the car and exhaled. The ride had been draining, for both of them. "Tess, we're here."
His voice cracked and he bit down hard on his lip. He wasn't supposed to cry – he was supposed to be the strong one, he wasn't the one who was hurt here.
She turned toward him, and he half expected to see rage in her eyes. It would have been warranted – he failed and now he was about to cry. Wild, fearful blue orbs stared back at him, silently pleading for him not to leave her here.
Exhaling, he turned the ignition and started the car, noticing her visible relief from the corner of his eye. Why did she want to stay with him anyway?
What was it Nicholas had said he was? Dull and stupid – hell, the bastard had been kind in his description. He was scum, the eternal fuck up. Hell, he was Mickey, the boy who couldn't even put up a fight against a drunk shit like Hank. The one no one wanted.
Driving down the empty street, her fingers dragged against the window of the car, the cool desert air had created a fog and she was drawing obscure pictures, in what he was sure was an attempt to drive her attention away from what happened in Arizona.
Another jarring reminder of one simple truth: he failed her. And not for the first time either. It was in his genes to protect them, to protect her. But he continued to prove just how much he sucked at it – no wonder they'd all died the last time.
Courtney described what Nicholas could do as rape. And maybe it was, but maybe it was worse. He didn't want to know what that meant. But he didn't have a choice – he had to help her, it was the least he could do now.
"This is it."
"Okay." Tess sighed, extending her small hand outward to grasp the door handle. He couldn't help but hold his breath as she began the small movement, wondering if she'd actually complete it. It was strange how the simplest gesture could affect him, but he was relieved to see that she was doing something other than her best impersonation of a mime.
The tension was palpable as the two of them entered his small apartment. Neither wanting to discuss what, exactly had happened – and it frustrated him. Scratching his eyebrow, he wished he had the ability to use empty words to make people feel better – to be more like Max.
But her blank stares and apprehensive twiddling of her fingers told him one thing. She needed more than that – and he wasn't sure how to give it to her. Inhaling, he turned to face her head on, and was struck by just how different she looked from the girl she'd been only a day ago.
Confidence had been replaced by insecurity so raw that it was hard to even look at her. Her wide blue eyes were dull and sad, devastation imbued her gaze. She was jumping at shadows – something he'd failed to notice in the car, but now, on his couch, she would jerk, ever so slightly each time his foot met the worn carpet.
"What happened?" Two words. It was two words that verbalized the question that he had been wondering the entire ride to Roswell.
"Nothing!" She shouted, her voice cracking as the lie immediately fell from her lips. Not wanting to say anything yet, he simply raised an eyebrow in response and crossed his arms against his chest.
"This was a bad idea, I'm sorry." Tess mumbled, pushing her body forward, up off the couch, toward the doorway and his stomach felt like it was sinking to the floor. She was shutting him out, and, in his mind, deservedly so. It still didn't mean that it didn't hurt worse than anything else in the world.
"Don't." Michael commanded, the protest slipping from his lips without warning and his voice much stronger than he felt. Reaching out, his palm met her forearm, and without thinking, his fingers tightened around it, holding her in place. Blue met brown in a challenge, a spark of righteous indignation flashing across her face, and he felt himself being drawn into her gaze.
Her fear hit him without warning, thousands of emotions suddenly overpowering him, drawing him further into the connection. His heart was beating wildly in his chest, his lungs burning as if he'd just run a marathon and it felt like he was going to pass out from the shear force of it all.
Moments in time flashed by as the erratic thumping of his heart rang in his ear. His throat ached as his stomach tightened in knots – adrenaline kicking into high gear. Energy was coursing through his veins, desperate for release.
It was too much, and his control was too faulty. Wincing, he exhaled, silently praying that he wouldn't hurt her. Bursts of light flickered across his view as the air stilled and emotions gave way to images.
Blood, broken glass and shattered limbs permeated his view, Nicholas towering overhead, his smile malicious as he came closer, until his foot was grinding against Tess' palm. His mouth was moving, but Michael couldn't make out the words, and he wasn't sure if it was the flashes or Tess' need for him not to hear that was stopping him.
The visions shifted and changed as Nicholas moved closer, his mouth precariously close to what, he assumed, was her ear.
It felt like he had been punched in the gut, Tess fired a gun at him, cackling, her inhibitions gone as the bullet penetrated his skin, his body falling to the ground. She was towering over him now, slithering against his flesh, eyes dark and desirous, as if this was what she had wanted all along.
"Get off me!"
Violent, jerking motions pushed him away from her, and he opened his eyes to see Tess staring at him wild and angry and hurt. Her blue eyes burned him with silent accusations of violated trust.
He hadn't meant for it to happen. But there they were, easily accessible and so raw. But the scariest part was that he knew they got worse than what he'd seen in those fleeting moments. She was hiding something sinister inside herself that she didn't want him to see.
"Jesus, what the hell was that?" It was the first thing that he could think of – his mind was still reeling from what he'd experienced and how it contrasted with what, exactly he'd seen earlier. She had been bloody in those images, and then, killing him – but from what he could see there wasn't a mark on her.
Maybe Nicholas had just put all those images in her head? Courtney said he could take things out – so maybe it worked both ways? All he knew was the next time he saw that asshole would be the last.
"Nothing, okay?" Her delivery was haughty but her posture was anything but. She was fearful of her secret getting out, and unable to lie with the same gusto she had when she'd first come to Roswell.
And it infuriated him that she was covering for that little shit at all.
Clenching and unclenching his fists, the rage boiling within him as she continued to shift her weight uncomfortably from side to side. Whatever that bastard did to her, whatever he took and put in its place – he couldn't even find the words to describe how much he wanted him dead.
If he'd only been more determined – quicker on the draw in Arizona, he wouldn't be thinking about next time, he'd be tap dancing on the fucker's grave. Why was he such a fuck up and why was she trying to hide what happened?
"Don't bullshit me! Was that him? I'll fucking kill him!" His outburst was primal – his words falling over each other in stops and starts as they grew louder and more forceful until they reached a furious climax.
"Would you listen to yourself?" Tess hollered, jumping off the couch and defensively clasping a hand against her chest. The resigned look in her eye infuriated him – as if she was merely acting like she was incensed by his behavior to mask just how unwilling she was to fight.
"How can you be so calm about this? What the hell did he do?"
Pushing her hair out of her face she glared up at him, anger visible on her face. If it weren’t for the way that she was shifting from side to side, he would think that she was legitimately angry at him, and not trying to hide her fear. "Someone has to be! God, Michael! You can't just kill him!"
"He's trying to kill you and you want to what, give him a hug? We're at war Tess!" Balling his fists, he resisted the urge to let his anger get the best of him. It would be so easy to take out the wall, let his fury win out. But seeing her stand there, her bottom lip trembling even as her face was void of emotion, he knew that any outward display of his anger would break her.
"Don't you think I know that? Just drop it!" She was screaming and clawing at her hair, willing him to stop, but he wouldn’t drop it. He owed her more than that, especially when she refused to see just how much he’d continue to affect her, unless they came up with a solution.
"Are you crazy?"
Her palm collided with his cheek and he recoiled as her fingers drew themselves away from his skin. It burned worse than he thought it would, but he knew that he deserved it – and not just for insulting her mental state.
"Don't you ever call me that!"
"Sorry. I didn't mean… but god Tess!"
"I don't want to talk about it." Her arms were folded across her chest and she was staring at him like it was the end of the conversation, but he wasn’t going to take that for an answer.
Defiant, he pressed her, repeating the question that continued to plague him.
"What did he do to you?"
"I said I don't want to talk about it Michael!" She was shrieking now, her voice growing more desperate for him to stop pressing and firm in her resolve to stop talking about the entire ordeal.
"You can't just decide not to talk about it Tess. Fuck! What I saw…Courtney said that he can take your thoughts, is that what he did? Because, what I saw, that's not you, Tess."
He was stumbling over his words, anger and frustration getting the best of him as she stared back at him, emotionless and unwilling to discuss it any further. But seeing her grow tenser, quieter as he continued to broach the subject infuriated him.
"I want to help you Tess. But you have to tell me what he did."
Pointedly, she looked at him, and exhaled, saying without words that she didn’t want, or think she needed his help. Too fucking bad – he returned her glare with one of his own and she finally relented, her face softening as she shifted her hands off her hips.
"I don't know what he did, okay?"
Raising an eyebrow in response, he shut his eyes in an attempt to mask his desire to roll them. How could she not know what Nicholas did – he saw those flashes from her, sensed her fear and apprehension – so why was she lying?
Tess shifted, her feet scraping against the worn carpet as she met his gaze, anger masking any other emotion and he groaned inwardly, bracing himself for whatever she was about to say.
At least she was feeling something other than desolation, and while he hated to see the ire marring her face, he knew that she was feeling – and that, he thought, was a victory in itself.
"What do you want me to say, Michael? That I'm missing time? That he beat the shit out of me – that I thought… god I thought. I thought I was going to die! And then, I woke up, or came out of it or whatever and the first thing I notice is that I'm suddenly healed and all these people staring at me like I'm nuts! I lived and did things that I don't remember, and don't even think I had control over."
The air expelled from his lungs as he watched her shoulders sag, tears and red rimmed eyes replacing the defiant anger he’d seen moments before. He hadn’t considered that Nicholas had, basically, taken over her body – and it added a new dimension to the equation. It didn’t quite make sense yet, but from she was saying, he assumed that somehow Nicholas had the ability to turn them into puppets for whatever he needed.
"So, no. Michael, I don't know what he did. All I know is that he told me what he could make me do – and showed me just how easy it is for him to do it."
He had no idea how to respond to what she was saying, her tears drowning out any ability for him to think clearly. Reaching out a hand, he tried to draw her into him, only to have her step backward, away from him. She wrapped her arms around herself as she took a seat on the couch and turned away.
That fucker was going down.
Had it only been yesterday that they were hugging and happy and scared to let each other go? It seemed like a lifetime had gone by since then and they were two strangers trying to cope with a tragedy.
“What can I do?”
They were four words that he’d never really uttered before, he’d never gotten this close to anyone before, not even Max or Isabel to offer his help, not that they’d want it. He was just the one that was always fucking things up, according to them – not the one who could help find solutions.
He opened his mouth to say something else, add more words in an attempt to say something else, something more poignant that could help her, but she wasn’t listening. Michael could tell from her perch that her mind was already reeling again, going a mile a minute in an attempt to find a solution.
"Don’t worry, I have a plan."
She had a plan? Why did that make him feel even worse about what was going on? Maybe it was the blasé way that she introduced it – as if it was an afterthought to her, even now.
And that meant one thing – whatever it was, she was planning on going it alone. Fucking great.
"And you weren't going to tell me?"
He already knew the answer the second he opened his mouth. It was the way that she shifted further away from him, protective of whatever idea she had. It took him a moment, but then he realized what, exactly, she was doing. Tess didn’t want him to touch her – and was she really to blame? He’d gotten flashes before, and although it killed him to be in the dark about this, he sort of understood. She needed something to be just hers again.
The only problem was this wasn’t the right time to reclaim her privacy. She was playing up her independence card with someone who had tried to kill her. The details weren’t there and he wasn’t sure he wanted to press her yet, but from what he’d seen and felt and heard, he knew this was a bad idea.
Even if he wanted to kill Nicholas.
"No."
Exasperated, he clasped his hands together, fist hitting palm as she continued to hold his gaze – silently defiant. It wasn’t so much what she said that was frustrating him, it was how she was saying it. She was still angry for the sake of being angry, not because she felt impassioned, irate and willing to fight.
"We're a group. We do things together –you can't just go off on your own here." God, he sounded like Max, lecturing her like this when he refused to accept the same advice.
She was up off the couch and angrily pacing in front of him. "Michael, I'm not a part of the group. Or haven't you noticed? You're the only person who…"
"Exactly! I care! Damnit Tess. I love you!"
Blanching, he continued to stare at her, the air expelling from his lungs as he realized what exactly he’d said. The last time he’d – hell, the only time he’d said those three words was to get Maria off his back. Sure, he’d sort of thought, at the time, that he’d loved her – but that was nothing compared to this.
And now he’d fucking told her – and why? Because he wasn’t thinking. Story of his fucking life.
The silence dragged on for a minute in a half. Tess was shifting from side to side, but said nothing. Her face was emotionless and she stared blankly back at him, brushing a stray piece of hair off her face before she opened her mouth, a sharp monotone revealing itself.
"You shouldn't."
She was shutting down – and he wasn’t about to let her, not now, not after that admission. And who the fuck was she to tell him that he shouldn’t love her? It doesn’t work that way!
"Well tough shit. Just because you’re feeling guilty that some fuckwad who’s been planning this for years attacked you doesn’t mean that you get to tell me how I should feel. You beat him, Tess! You may not think that now, but you’re still here – and yeah, it sucks what he did to you. But you beat him, and the only way he wins now is if you let him.”
Yeah, it was clichéd and stupid and probably the lamest pep talk ever, but he was hoping that at least she was paying attention to him. Scratching his eyebrow, he watched as her eyes softened slightly as she focused on him.
“I don't do flowers and chocolates or whatever the hell it is girls want, but I love you. And I don’t want to see you get yourself killed. Okay?”
“I know what I’m doing.” Tess snapped, stepping closer to him, challenging him to fight her on this. It was what she wanted – for him to call her stupid, crazy, so that she could recoil again, cite some righteous indignation that would justify her pushing him away.
“No, you don’t.” Moving closer, his lips were inches from hers as he stared down at her, impassioned and determined, but still unwilling to close the space between them, they hung in limbo, taunting her.
Irate blue orbs stared up at him, refusing to give in to temptation. He forced back the urge to smirk as she furrowed her brow and puffed her chest up in an attempt to stand taller against him.
“Yes, I…”
Cutting her off, Michael crushed his lips to hers, violently closing the space between them. She responded in kind, her nails digging into his back as her tongue darted in and out of his mouth, colliding with his tongue as he snaked his hand into her hair.
“God, Michael,” Tess moaned, her breath warm against his cheek as she lifted his shirt up and over his head before he had a chance to protest.
Lips meeting again, his hands slipped beneath her shirt, digits tracing the outline of her breast, as she took his bottom lip in her mouth, gently grating it with her teeth. Her eyes darkened as he continued to explore the soft flesh, any hesitation gone as soft curls fell away from her face as she arched her body backward.
Her hand slipped downward, underneath the waistband of his jeans and she gave him a wicked grin. Gently stroking him, he slammed his eyes shut as the course fabric grew tighter, trying not to come apart in her hands.
“Jesus,” Michael groaned, Tess’ body pressed against his, and he wondered, idly, when she’d lost her shirt as he cupped her breast, moving his mouth downward to meet the exposed flesh.
Flicking his tongue, he felt her shift in his arms, coming up as he pulled away, an amorous glint in her eye.
“Bedroom,” she commanded, dragging him behind her – Tess suddenly fully in control. Not that he minded, he mused, all his concerns about yesterday fading away as she pulled him into the room by tugging on the waistband of his jeans, shutting the door behind him.
Lyrics are to "Your Ex-Lover is Dead" by Stars
-----------------
Part 12a
-----------------
It's nothing but time and a face that you lose
I chose to feel it and you couldn't choose
I'll write you a postcard
I'll send you the news
From a house down the road from real love
2010
Yawning, Tess pulled a stray hair between her fingers, relieved that her hair had returned to blonde after all these years. First, it was black in homage to PJ Harvey's "A Perfect Day Elise" and all she'd left behind. It was some cheap five-dollar box she’d picked up miles from the Colorado border and evened out with her powers. Black was the color of mourning – and she was doing that a lot back then, hell she'd just left Roswell and Michael right after they'd had sex, faking her own death in the process.
It was a lot to deal with, and she hadn't even been seventeen at the time.
She hated dwelling on her life back then. If she thought about what she'd left behind for the greater good it only meant that she'd spend her day crying – and she had better things to do, like work, even if her boss had practically ordered her to take a personal day.
At least it was nice out, she mused, stepping out of the metro, rolling her eyes in annoyance as she saw the large group of tourists crowd around the escalator. If she'd been 5 years younger, she'd be screaming "stand right, walk left" by now.
But, she was twenty-six, not twenty-one, and she had nothing to really do, the House was in recess so lobbying was on hold, she was on "vacation", and it was a mild September day. Thank god for global warming.
Her finger traced the outer circle of her iPod, effortlessly following the crowd of people toward the mall, towel in hand. If she was being forced to ignore work, she was going to tan – or do the next best thing, turn a deeper shade of red.
It was a pastime she'd picked up in Los Angeles. Kal thought she'd blend in better that way, and she'd rolled her eyes – trying to mask just how much his concern for her meant.
Her hair had been chestnut then, and she'd just turned nineteen, finishing up her first year at UCLA.
She hadn't meant to find Kal. Her plan was simple enough, get the fuck out of Roswell and avoid all alien life forms. In her desperation, Tess'd done things she wasn't proud of, convinced that if she were gone, Nicholas would stop hunting them.
The original plan she'd come up with on the way back from Arizona was to drive her car off a bridge. But then Michael had to open his mouth and tell her that he loved her – right after she'd all but convinced herself that no one would mind if she were gone.
And, if she were being honest with herself, she knew that she couldn't have gone through with it.
So, it was on to plan B, the plan that she and Nasedo had concocted in the event that he was captured. It wasn't perfect, and looking back on it now, hadn't been safe, but it worked, at least for a while. She'd staged her death – an elaborate hoax involving manipulating the body of a dead woman to resemble her and sending her car into a canyon, hundreds of feet below. It still gave her nightmares.
But, at least she had a new identity – she was Vanessa Harrington, from Seattle, Washington. The newest transfer student to Hollywood High School in Los Angeles. If only she'd been thinking – she would have realized that Nasedo probably shared that information with the skins.
That oversight brought her to Kal.
It was Copper Summit all over again – she had lost time and apparently done things that she couldn't even remember. It was one of Nicholas' other powers – mind control, except it didn't normally work on Antarians. It was the fact that she was a hybrid and one with strong mental abilities that made her vulnerable – something, she learned, akin to the phenomena of a negative and a negative equaling a positive.
When she woke up, hours later, she was in Kal's mansion and he was staring down at her with an odd mixture of concern and contempt, almost as if he was unsure what, exactly to feel. He was obligated to protect her, but it didn't mean that he hated her, or himself, any less for that genetic predisposition.
Tess still didn't know the specifics of what happened to her in Arizona and in California. Kal offered only what he knew, and he did that begrudgingly – unwilling to even temporarily fill the role he'd been sent to Earth to play.
He'd said it was like being an alien puppet, a living marionette doll. Nicholas had taken over her body for a period of time, and her mind was like it was in a coma. She was still able to do simple functions – like breathe, but not able to think on her own.
Basically, it was like she was drunk to the point of blacking out – but instead of alcohol clouding her mind, it was Nicholas.
Except, unlike the temporary affects of alcohol, what Nicholas did – it was permanent if not treated right away, kind of like cancer. He could, eventually, rot a person's mind to the point where they were completely submissive to him, perverting every thought, every desire to the point where the person was just an extension of his mind – acting out his will.
Thank god Kal hadn't hesitated in helping her then – she'd been close, and they both knew it.
Shivering, she rubbed her hands up and down her bare arms – she hated thinking about this, what could have been, even though Nicholas was probably long gone by now. Kal'd never said anything explicitly, but he definitely acted like the little fucker was dead.
Somewhere along the way, the two had bonded over their unhappiness. He'd admired her intelligence and wit and she was glad for the stability that he provided. When he'd told her that she needed another identity, Tess hadn't hesitated when he suggested she take his last name.
God, she had to call him.
Making her way over to a spot by the Washington Monument, Tess laid her towel out on the grass, relieved that the tourists hadn't overrun the mall yet today and the kickballers weren't starting until at least four. Stretching, she lowered herself to the ground, when she felt a soft body collide into her legs, knocking her off balance as a red Frisbee whizzed overhead.
Biting her tongue, she pushed herself up from the ground and dusted herself off, pointedly glaring at the little brat, who couldn't be any older than six. What kind of shit-brained parents let their kids run around unsupervised?
"Sorry about that," she heard a man about her age call, and she was momentarily struck by how much he sounded like Michael. But he was in Roswell and she was in DC and that was ten years ago.
As he came closer, she continued to stare, the color rushing from her face as she realized, that yes, it was him, and no, she couldn't run.
And if she were being honest with herself, she would admit that she didn't want to.
"Andrew, watch where you're…"
His voice faded as his eyes grew wider than she'd ever seen them. Unsure of what to say, she stood there for a moment, the little boy lodged between them, forgotten. Opening her mouth a few times, she tried to form sound, but the words died in her throat. There was so much she wanted to say, but couldn't.
Inhaling, she forced herself to say something and cringed when her simple iteration of his name came out like a question. "Michael? Michael Guerin?"
He stopped in his tracks, his face blooming in recognition as his eyes grew wider and he opened his mouth a few times in shock.
"Holy shit."
Understatement. This was filed under completely implausible and wildest dream coming true. But she couldn't quiet her stomach from doing flip flops as the apprehension grew within her.
"Michael, that's a swear word, I'm going to tell mommy."
Of course the little kid had to interject himself into the conversation. Maybe it was the fear that she could never have a kid, or a byproduct of growing up alien – but she really hated children.
She watched as Michael dug his hand into his pocket and retrieved a crumpled bill, and was struck by just how similar he looked, ten years later. His face was more defined and his hair was feathered a little at the shoulder – but he still resembled the boy she'd left behind, if only physically.
"Here's five dollars, get yourself an ice cream." Michael snapped, shoving the five-dollar bill into the boy's hand and waving him off. She had half a mind to tell him not to let the boy go off by himself, but given that the ice cream cart was in view and the nature of the conversation they needed to have, she kept her mouth shut.
"I'm still going to tell," the little kid huffed, indignant as he clutched the money close to his chest, annoyed that he’d been cast aside, while making, in his own mind, a valid point. Tess had to bite her lip to keep from laughing – because, from her perspective, he’d been outwitted by a five year old.
"I really don't care."
"Fine!"
Tess watched as the kid huffed and walked away, obviously annoyed to be sent off alone. Concerned, she furrowed her brow and sighed. "Are you sure he's okay to do that alone?"
"Yeah. Fuck. Tess." He wasn't able to make sentences and it warmed her heart to see such raw emotion displayed for her – even if she was the source of his grief.
"Not my name anymore," she sighed without thinking. It'd been so long since anyone had called her Tess that it sounded strange, but comforting. A bit of stability in her ever changing environment.
"Whatever. Cut the crap Harding."
"Don't whatever me, Michael."
"Right, maybe I'll just pick up and leave instead. Oh wait, that's your specialty," he snapped, his eyes sharp and filled with years of hurt. She'd never considered this, that he'd be angry with her – even now, years after she left Roswell.
"Can we not?"
Tess' question came out more like a plea and she winced at how desperate she sounded to avoid the conversation. She just didn't want to rehash the past yet; he'd just shown up out of nowhere, right when she'd all but convinced herself that she'd never see him again.
"I see you've changed a lot." His voice was jarring, pain-filled and hateful, as his eyes narrowed, cutting into her flesh.
Did he really? Could he really hate her?
"I suppose I deserve that." She whispered, her breath hitching in her throat as she forced down the tears that were threatening to spill. This was the choice she’d made – she just never assumed it’d come back to haunt her.
Michael was supposed to have moved on, forgotten about her – and she was supposed to be alone. But she was quickly learning that her assumptions were wrong.
"You could have at least told me."
She opened and shut her mouth a few times, mulling it over. She could have – it must have been hard waking up and finding her gone, but that had been the plan. If she’d seen him she never would have left Roswell, and they wouldn’t even be having this conversation.
"Would you have let me go?"
She knew the answer, but she needed him to verbalize it. Maybe time had changed him – maybe he got it on some level now. Maybe he understood that while she should have told him she couldn’t have left if she had.
"No!"
His booming declaration, possessive and like an animal marking it territory broke her out of her melancholy. How dare he! She was doing what she had to so that he could live. So that they all could – and he wouldn’t even consider the value in it? Sure they had been discussing hypotheticals where he actually got a say – but she had expected, no, prayed, for something better.
"Exactly!" Tess huffed, glaring at him in an attempt to mask just how much his anger hurt her. She thought she'd buried this part of her life back in LA, with all the alcohol and boyfriends and parties – thankfully, adverse side effects with alcoholic beverages were limited to male Antarians.
Pivoting, she reluctantly stepped back, only to feel Michael’s hand clamp down on her shoulder, spinning her back to him. Annoyed, she wrenched her body away from him, unwilling to let him see what she’d gone through. Although she controlled her abilities better now, kept herself more guarded, seeing him again had awakened parts of her soul that had laid dormant since leaving Roswell and she didn’t trust herself to maintain control.
Michael looked like he was about to say something when that little kid ran up to them, a grin plastered on his face as white cream dripped down his fingers.
"Look! It's a cookie sandwich with chocolate chips in it!" The boy proclaimed, waving his melting ice cream in the air for Michael to see.
"That's great," Michael muttered, unable to feign excitement over being interrupted – he gave her a pointed look indicating that their conversation was far from over, despite the momentary invasion of a third party.
"Hi, I'm Andrew." The boy piped up, turning his attention away from his ice cream, and she found herself wishing she had a napkin as he stuck his chubby hand up in a wave.
"Nice to meet you," Tess returned, uncertain which name she should give him so she settled on neither.
"You're pretty."
"Thanks."
"He yours?" Tess mouthed, hoping that the boy wouldn't notice her line of questioning. The last thing she needed was a boy asking twenty questions on why she was questioning who his daddy was when he was in front of them.
"Hell no!" Michael boomed, shock resonating on his face that she'd even asked. A smirk flashed across her face as Andrew indignantly crossed his arms against his chest, clearly ready to lecture Michael about swearing again. "Isabel's – I'm just here to drop him off with his dad because she's too pregnant to fly."
Exhaling, she was shocked with how relieved she was at learning that Michael wasn’t a father, or at the very least, she wasn’t faced with his progeny. She’d never considered children before, a life spent in hiding forced her to bury those thoughts, and if she were being honest – the only man she’d have considered raising children with was in front of her.
God, she’d left him ten years ago – and yet, not even an hour after seeing him again, she was reflecting on having his children. Weak, Harding, weak.
"That's another one Michael! Mommy's going to wash your mouth out with soap!"
"I'd like to see her try," Michael mumbled under his breath, causing Tess to smirk at the mental image of Isabel chasing him around the kitchen with a bar of soap.
"Who's the dad?"
"Jesse – some lawyer she met senior year. She's with Valenti now."
"Anything, you know?" It was the question that begged to be answered – clearly she’d been able to have a baby with a human, but a part of her wanted to know if there were any risks. These were the questions she should be asking Kal, but she’d rather not deal with the veiled accusations. He knew more about what she went through, leaving Michael, than anyone – and random questions about babies and birth would have raised his suspicions.
"No."
"That's a relief. And I hope by Valenti you mean Kyle,” she teased, idly wondering what Kyle was doing these days, other than Isabel. It was good that he finally got the girl, at the very least. She thought about him a lot, he was a part of the closest thing she had t o a family in Roswell, a pseudo brother who might have been something else, if Michael weren’t around.
"Blondie, she likes them older, but not from the senior center."
"Yeah, well I live in the sleaze capitol of the world now." She liked to joke about Washington, with all its scandals and famed tales of the old boys club. Sure the Democrats were in power now, both in the executive and in congress, but reputations were hard to break.
"I thought that'd be Vegas – by the way, Parker and Max got married there when they were 19."
She paused mid-stride, taking a moment to reflect on what he said – Little Lizzie Parker and Mr. Straight and Narrow eloped. To Vegas. And they weren’t even twenty, at the time. She was sure that the rumor mills were flying with that – even now, ten years later.
It made her wonder what they said about her ‘death.’ That blonde hussy got what was coming – first she tries to get with that nice Max Evans, then it was the Sherriff’s son, and didn’t she have a thing for that Guerin boy? She certainly got around, didn’t she?
Yet another reason she liked city life – anonymity.
Realizing she’d been quiet a beat too long Tess opened her mouth, laughter spilling out as her eyes danced in the sunlight. She missed this – laughing, a shared past, history. It was like Joni Mitchell said, “you don’t know what you got til it’s gone.”
"Look at you! You've become the town gossip!"
"Trying to make small talk so I don't get fined any more money," he said pointedly and she frowned. Her rejoinder died on her tongue as she noticed the young boy that was now sandwiching himself between them.
Blinking, she smiled awkwardly, settling her arms down at her sides, mentally noting how close she’d been to touching him, drawing him in. That wasn’t her place anymore – a sacrifice for the greater good.
"Ah," she breathed in an attempt to sound aloof as he smirked at her, hazel eyes darkening with mischief and things unsaid. Why did he have to look so damn good? He probably had some girlfriend in Roswell, who was nice and normal and didn’t leave him.
"Plus it's hard to forget being the best man at a wedding featuring an Elvis impersonator."
"You're kidding!" Shrieking, blood rushed to Tess’ cheeks as she realized just how loud she’d been. Her blue eyes danced as he gave her a half smirk and stepped closer, his mouth finding her ear.
"I'm not that creative," he whispered and pulled back slowly as she shivered, warm puffs of air brushing against her skin. Why were they doing this? It’d been ten years – they couldn’t.
It wasn’t like they’d even been together that long, anyway. So why did it feel so right to be like this with Michael again?
Stepping backward, she smoothed her hair, tying it back behind her in a lazy ponytail. Inhaling, she crossed her arms against her chest and grinned. "So, important question – fat or skinny Elvis?"
"Fat. And Asian."
She opened her mouth to respond when an image of a sumo wrestler in white, glittery polyester danced in her head. Giggling, she watched as he nodded his head, bursting into fits of laughter as she wondered whether or not he tried to sing love me tender while bursting through his getup.
To think – she’d been convinced he was her one true love, her destiny was insane. She would never have done something so tacky. But, at least they were happy, right?
Except, it was the kind of thing she’d have done, once. Not as a romantic spur of the moment thing, but to mock the entire institution. It was the kind of thing she probably would have laughed about with Michael, afterward.
Shit, she had to stop doing this.
Fat Asian Elvis she reminded herself, laughing as she imagined the wedding dress Liz wore. She’d been out to Vegas once, with a bunch of girls from school and while they had some nice dresses at the shops, most of it was trash. Liz Parker, stripper chic, if that wasn’t an oxymoron – but it was incredibly hilarious.
"Sorry I missed it,” Tess sighed, getting control of her laughter before blanching, realizing what she’d just admitted. Opening her mouth to correct her comment, she forced it shut as his glare burned her flesh, the momentary reverie shattered.
"You were playing dead,” he spat, glancing momentarily down at the forgotten child who was busy digging in the dirt, bored with the two of them.
Incensed, she raised an eyebrow and glared at him – how dare he think that she was playing anything! She hadn’t wanted this – and he fucking knew that it was all a rouse.
"You knew I was alive!" God, did she have to sound so desperate? She was screaming, forcing tears back behind her eyes and all he could do was glare.
Why the hell was this reunion so bipolar? Oh wait, because you opened your damn mouth, she groaned, chastising herself.
"I hoped you were alive,” Michael corrected and she felt the air expel from her gut. Another verbal jab that as eating away at her carefully constructed idea of what, exactly, he had gone through in the wake of her disappearance.
She had fucking written him. How could he not – and she blanched, remembering she’d stopped.
Unwilling to concede the argument and in desperate need of some indication that she hadn’t been terribly wrong all these years, Tess replied, "I wrote you every month for at least a year and a half – I wanted you to get why I left."
Pleading, she gripped at her hair, threading her fingers between the long curls and pulling, hard. She’d always imagined that he’d get it – she’d poured her heart into those post cards, veiled depictions of what, exactly, she had done and why.
She was worried about being found out – if she knew Nicholas was going to come anyway, at the time, she would have been more upfront.
And then Kal came and told her to stop, and she had, if only because she was so fucking scared that she’d hurt him.
If only she realized she already had.
Fucking ridiculous and poetic – Tess Harding, never gets what she wants. He’d lived, she’d lived, but they were both miserable and he hated her – if that wasn’t a Pyrrhic victory. Angry tears slipped down her cheek and she batted them away. The last thing she needed was for him to see her cry.
She was pulled from her thoughts as Andrew raced forward, toward a tall, darker man whom she assumed was his father – Jerome? Jared? Jesse? That was it. He was kind of handsome, in a metrosexual way. But Kyle was better – not that she was biased or anything.
"Daddy!" The boy screamed, launching himself into his father’s arms and dragging him away before Michael could say anything. She didn’t blame him – if she had the chance, she wasn’t sure she’d stick around either.
"Bye Andrew." Michael called after them as he grabbed her wrist and dragged her behind him, possessive and demanding as he jerked her forward, off the grass and toward the street.
...
-----------------
Part 12a
-----------------
It's nothing but time and a face that you lose
I chose to feel it and you couldn't choose
I'll write you a postcard
I'll send you the news
From a house down the road from real love
2010
Yawning, Tess pulled a stray hair between her fingers, relieved that her hair had returned to blonde after all these years. First, it was black in homage to PJ Harvey's "A Perfect Day Elise" and all she'd left behind. It was some cheap five-dollar box she’d picked up miles from the Colorado border and evened out with her powers. Black was the color of mourning – and she was doing that a lot back then, hell she'd just left Roswell and Michael right after they'd had sex, faking her own death in the process.
It was a lot to deal with, and she hadn't even been seventeen at the time.
She hated dwelling on her life back then. If she thought about what she'd left behind for the greater good it only meant that she'd spend her day crying – and she had better things to do, like work, even if her boss had practically ordered her to take a personal day.
At least it was nice out, she mused, stepping out of the metro, rolling her eyes in annoyance as she saw the large group of tourists crowd around the escalator. If she'd been 5 years younger, she'd be screaming "stand right, walk left" by now.
But, she was twenty-six, not twenty-one, and she had nothing to really do, the House was in recess so lobbying was on hold, she was on "vacation", and it was a mild September day. Thank god for global warming.
Her finger traced the outer circle of her iPod, effortlessly following the crowd of people toward the mall, towel in hand. If she was being forced to ignore work, she was going to tan – or do the next best thing, turn a deeper shade of red.
It was a pastime she'd picked up in Los Angeles. Kal thought she'd blend in better that way, and she'd rolled her eyes – trying to mask just how much his concern for her meant.
Her hair had been chestnut then, and she'd just turned nineteen, finishing up her first year at UCLA.
She hadn't meant to find Kal. Her plan was simple enough, get the fuck out of Roswell and avoid all alien life forms. In her desperation, Tess'd done things she wasn't proud of, convinced that if she were gone, Nicholas would stop hunting them.
The original plan she'd come up with on the way back from Arizona was to drive her car off a bridge. But then Michael had to open his mouth and tell her that he loved her – right after she'd all but convinced herself that no one would mind if she were gone.
And, if she were being honest with herself, she knew that she couldn't have gone through with it.
So, it was on to plan B, the plan that she and Nasedo had concocted in the event that he was captured. It wasn't perfect, and looking back on it now, hadn't been safe, but it worked, at least for a while. She'd staged her death – an elaborate hoax involving manipulating the body of a dead woman to resemble her and sending her car into a canyon, hundreds of feet below. It still gave her nightmares.
But, at least she had a new identity – she was Vanessa Harrington, from Seattle, Washington. The newest transfer student to Hollywood High School in Los Angeles. If only she'd been thinking – she would have realized that Nasedo probably shared that information with the skins.
That oversight brought her to Kal.
It was Copper Summit all over again – she had lost time and apparently done things that she couldn't even remember. It was one of Nicholas' other powers – mind control, except it didn't normally work on Antarians. It was the fact that she was a hybrid and one with strong mental abilities that made her vulnerable – something, she learned, akin to the phenomena of a negative and a negative equaling a positive.
When she woke up, hours later, she was in Kal's mansion and he was staring down at her with an odd mixture of concern and contempt, almost as if he was unsure what, exactly to feel. He was obligated to protect her, but it didn't mean that he hated her, or himself, any less for that genetic predisposition.
Tess still didn't know the specifics of what happened to her in Arizona and in California. Kal offered only what he knew, and he did that begrudgingly – unwilling to even temporarily fill the role he'd been sent to Earth to play.
He'd said it was like being an alien puppet, a living marionette doll. Nicholas had taken over her body for a period of time, and her mind was like it was in a coma. She was still able to do simple functions – like breathe, but not able to think on her own.
Basically, it was like she was drunk to the point of blacking out – but instead of alcohol clouding her mind, it was Nicholas.
Except, unlike the temporary affects of alcohol, what Nicholas did – it was permanent if not treated right away, kind of like cancer. He could, eventually, rot a person's mind to the point where they were completely submissive to him, perverting every thought, every desire to the point where the person was just an extension of his mind – acting out his will.
Thank god Kal hadn't hesitated in helping her then – she'd been close, and they both knew it.
Shivering, she rubbed her hands up and down her bare arms – she hated thinking about this, what could have been, even though Nicholas was probably long gone by now. Kal'd never said anything explicitly, but he definitely acted like the little fucker was dead.
Somewhere along the way, the two had bonded over their unhappiness. He'd admired her intelligence and wit and she was glad for the stability that he provided. When he'd told her that she needed another identity, Tess hadn't hesitated when he suggested she take his last name.
God, she had to call him.
Making her way over to a spot by the Washington Monument, Tess laid her towel out on the grass, relieved that the tourists hadn't overrun the mall yet today and the kickballers weren't starting until at least four. Stretching, she lowered herself to the ground, when she felt a soft body collide into her legs, knocking her off balance as a red Frisbee whizzed overhead.
Biting her tongue, she pushed herself up from the ground and dusted herself off, pointedly glaring at the little brat, who couldn't be any older than six. What kind of shit-brained parents let their kids run around unsupervised?
"Sorry about that," she heard a man about her age call, and she was momentarily struck by how much he sounded like Michael. But he was in Roswell and she was in DC and that was ten years ago.
As he came closer, she continued to stare, the color rushing from her face as she realized, that yes, it was him, and no, she couldn't run.
And if she were being honest with herself, she would admit that she didn't want to.
"Andrew, watch where you're…"
His voice faded as his eyes grew wider than she'd ever seen them. Unsure of what to say, she stood there for a moment, the little boy lodged between them, forgotten. Opening her mouth a few times, she tried to form sound, but the words died in her throat. There was so much she wanted to say, but couldn't.
Inhaling, she forced herself to say something and cringed when her simple iteration of his name came out like a question. "Michael? Michael Guerin?"
He stopped in his tracks, his face blooming in recognition as his eyes grew wider and he opened his mouth a few times in shock.
"Holy shit."
Understatement. This was filed under completely implausible and wildest dream coming true. But she couldn't quiet her stomach from doing flip flops as the apprehension grew within her.
"Michael, that's a swear word, I'm going to tell mommy."
Of course the little kid had to interject himself into the conversation. Maybe it was the fear that she could never have a kid, or a byproduct of growing up alien – but she really hated children.
She watched as Michael dug his hand into his pocket and retrieved a crumpled bill, and was struck by just how similar he looked, ten years later. His face was more defined and his hair was feathered a little at the shoulder – but he still resembled the boy she'd left behind, if only physically.
"Here's five dollars, get yourself an ice cream." Michael snapped, shoving the five-dollar bill into the boy's hand and waving him off. She had half a mind to tell him not to let the boy go off by himself, but given that the ice cream cart was in view and the nature of the conversation they needed to have, she kept her mouth shut.
"I'm still going to tell," the little kid huffed, indignant as he clutched the money close to his chest, annoyed that he’d been cast aside, while making, in his own mind, a valid point. Tess had to bite her lip to keep from laughing – because, from her perspective, he’d been outwitted by a five year old.
"I really don't care."
"Fine!"
Tess watched as the kid huffed and walked away, obviously annoyed to be sent off alone. Concerned, she furrowed her brow and sighed. "Are you sure he's okay to do that alone?"
"Yeah. Fuck. Tess." He wasn't able to make sentences and it warmed her heart to see such raw emotion displayed for her – even if she was the source of his grief.
"Not my name anymore," she sighed without thinking. It'd been so long since anyone had called her Tess that it sounded strange, but comforting. A bit of stability in her ever changing environment.
"Whatever. Cut the crap Harding."
"Don't whatever me, Michael."
"Right, maybe I'll just pick up and leave instead. Oh wait, that's your specialty," he snapped, his eyes sharp and filled with years of hurt. She'd never considered this, that he'd be angry with her – even now, years after she left Roswell.
"Can we not?"
Tess' question came out more like a plea and she winced at how desperate she sounded to avoid the conversation. She just didn't want to rehash the past yet; he'd just shown up out of nowhere, right when she'd all but convinced herself that she'd never see him again.
"I see you've changed a lot." His voice was jarring, pain-filled and hateful, as his eyes narrowed, cutting into her flesh.
Did he really? Could he really hate her?
"I suppose I deserve that." She whispered, her breath hitching in her throat as she forced down the tears that were threatening to spill. This was the choice she’d made – she just never assumed it’d come back to haunt her.
Michael was supposed to have moved on, forgotten about her – and she was supposed to be alone. But she was quickly learning that her assumptions were wrong.
"You could have at least told me."
She opened and shut her mouth a few times, mulling it over. She could have – it must have been hard waking up and finding her gone, but that had been the plan. If she’d seen him she never would have left Roswell, and they wouldn’t even be having this conversation.
"Would you have let me go?"
She knew the answer, but she needed him to verbalize it. Maybe time had changed him – maybe he got it on some level now. Maybe he understood that while she should have told him she couldn’t have left if she had.
"No!"
His booming declaration, possessive and like an animal marking it territory broke her out of her melancholy. How dare he! She was doing what she had to so that he could live. So that they all could – and he wouldn’t even consider the value in it? Sure they had been discussing hypotheticals where he actually got a say – but she had expected, no, prayed, for something better.
"Exactly!" Tess huffed, glaring at him in an attempt to mask just how much his anger hurt her. She thought she'd buried this part of her life back in LA, with all the alcohol and boyfriends and parties – thankfully, adverse side effects with alcoholic beverages were limited to male Antarians.
Pivoting, she reluctantly stepped back, only to feel Michael’s hand clamp down on her shoulder, spinning her back to him. Annoyed, she wrenched her body away from him, unwilling to let him see what she’d gone through. Although she controlled her abilities better now, kept herself more guarded, seeing him again had awakened parts of her soul that had laid dormant since leaving Roswell and she didn’t trust herself to maintain control.
Michael looked like he was about to say something when that little kid ran up to them, a grin plastered on his face as white cream dripped down his fingers.
"Look! It's a cookie sandwich with chocolate chips in it!" The boy proclaimed, waving his melting ice cream in the air for Michael to see.
"That's great," Michael muttered, unable to feign excitement over being interrupted – he gave her a pointed look indicating that their conversation was far from over, despite the momentary invasion of a third party.
"Hi, I'm Andrew." The boy piped up, turning his attention away from his ice cream, and she found herself wishing she had a napkin as he stuck his chubby hand up in a wave.
"Nice to meet you," Tess returned, uncertain which name she should give him so she settled on neither.
"You're pretty."
"Thanks."
"He yours?" Tess mouthed, hoping that the boy wouldn't notice her line of questioning. The last thing she needed was a boy asking twenty questions on why she was questioning who his daddy was when he was in front of them.
"Hell no!" Michael boomed, shock resonating on his face that she'd even asked. A smirk flashed across her face as Andrew indignantly crossed his arms against his chest, clearly ready to lecture Michael about swearing again. "Isabel's – I'm just here to drop him off with his dad because she's too pregnant to fly."
Exhaling, she was shocked with how relieved she was at learning that Michael wasn’t a father, or at the very least, she wasn’t faced with his progeny. She’d never considered children before, a life spent in hiding forced her to bury those thoughts, and if she were being honest – the only man she’d have considered raising children with was in front of her.
God, she’d left him ten years ago – and yet, not even an hour after seeing him again, she was reflecting on having his children. Weak, Harding, weak.
"That's another one Michael! Mommy's going to wash your mouth out with soap!"
"I'd like to see her try," Michael mumbled under his breath, causing Tess to smirk at the mental image of Isabel chasing him around the kitchen with a bar of soap.
"Who's the dad?"
"Jesse – some lawyer she met senior year. She's with Valenti now."
"Anything, you know?" It was the question that begged to be answered – clearly she’d been able to have a baby with a human, but a part of her wanted to know if there were any risks. These were the questions she should be asking Kal, but she’d rather not deal with the veiled accusations. He knew more about what she went through, leaving Michael, than anyone – and random questions about babies and birth would have raised his suspicions.
"No."
"That's a relief. And I hope by Valenti you mean Kyle,” she teased, idly wondering what Kyle was doing these days, other than Isabel. It was good that he finally got the girl, at the very least. She thought about him a lot, he was a part of the closest thing she had t o a family in Roswell, a pseudo brother who might have been something else, if Michael weren’t around.
"Blondie, she likes them older, but not from the senior center."
"Yeah, well I live in the sleaze capitol of the world now." She liked to joke about Washington, with all its scandals and famed tales of the old boys club. Sure the Democrats were in power now, both in the executive and in congress, but reputations were hard to break.
"I thought that'd be Vegas – by the way, Parker and Max got married there when they were 19."
She paused mid-stride, taking a moment to reflect on what he said – Little Lizzie Parker and Mr. Straight and Narrow eloped. To Vegas. And they weren’t even twenty, at the time. She was sure that the rumor mills were flying with that – even now, ten years later.
It made her wonder what they said about her ‘death.’ That blonde hussy got what was coming – first she tries to get with that nice Max Evans, then it was the Sherriff’s son, and didn’t she have a thing for that Guerin boy? She certainly got around, didn’t she?
Yet another reason she liked city life – anonymity.
Realizing she’d been quiet a beat too long Tess opened her mouth, laughter spilling out as her eyes danced in the sunlight. She missed this – laughing, a shared past, history. It was like Joni Mitchell said, “you don’t know what you got til it’s gone.”
"Look at you! You've become the town gossip!"
"Trying to make small talk so I don't get fined any more money," he said pointedly and she frowned. Her rejoinder died on her tongue as she noticed the young boy that was now sandwiching himself between them.
Blinking, she smiled awkwardly, settling her arms down at her sides, mentally noting how close she’d been to touching him, drawing him in. That wasn’t her place anymore – a sacrifice for the greater good.
"Ah," she breathed in an attempt to sound aloof as he smirked at her, hazel eyes darkening with mischief and things unsaid. Why did he have to look so damn good? He probably had some girlfriend in Roswell, who was nice and normal and didn’t leave him.
"Plus it's hard to forget being the best man at a wedding featuring an Elvis impersonator."
"You're kidding!" Shrieking, blood rushed to Tess’ cheeks as she realized just how loud she’d been. Her blue eyes danced as he gave her a half smirk and stepped closer, his mouth finding her ear.
"I'm not that creative," he whispered and pulled back slowly as she shivered, warm puffs of air brushing against her skin. Why were they doing this? It’d been ten years – they couldn’t.
It wasn’t like they’d even been together that long, anyway. So why did it feel so right to be like this with Michael again?
Stepping backward, she smoothed her hair, tying it back behind her in a lazy ponytail. Inhaling, she crossed her arms against her chest and grinned. "So, important question – fat or skinny Elvis?"
"Fat. And Asian."
She opened her mouth to respond when an image of a sumo wrestler in white, glittery polyester danced in her head. Giggling, she watched as he nodded his head, bursting into fits of laughter as she wondered whether or not he tried to sing love me tender while bursting through his getup.
To think – she’d been convinced he was her one true love, her destiny was insane. She would never have done something so tacky. But, at least they were happy, right?
Except, it was the kind of thing she’d have done, once. Not as a romantic spur of the moment thing, but to mock the entire institution. It was the kind of thing she probably would have laughed about with Michael, afterward.
Shit, she had to stop doing this.
Fat Asian Elvis she reminded herself, laughing as she imagined the wedding dress Liz wore. She’d been out to Vegas once, with a bunch of girls from school and while they had some nice dresses at the shops, most of it was trash. Liz Parker, stripper chic, if that wasn’t an oxymoron – but it was incredibly hilarious.
"Sorry I missed it,” Tess sighed, getting control of her laughter before blanching, realizing what she’d just admitted. Opening her mouth to correct her comment, she forced it shut as his glare burned her flesh, the momentary reverie shattered.
"You were playing dead,” he spat, glancing momentarily down at the forgotten child who was busy digging in the dirt, bored with the two of them.
Incensed, she raised an eyebrow and glared at him – how dare he think that she was playing anything! She hadn’t wanted this – and he fucking knew that it was all a rouse.
"You knew I was alive!" God, did she have to sound so desperate? She was screaming, forcing tears back behind her eyes and all he could do was glare.
Why the hell was this reunion so bipolar? Oh wait, because you opened your damn mouth, she groaned, chastising herself.
"I hoped you were alive,” Michael corrected and she felt the air expel from her gut. Another verbal jab that as eating away at her carefully constructed idea of what, exactly, he had gone through in the wake of her disappearance.
She had fucking written him. How could he not – and she blanched, remembering she’d stopped.
Unwilling to concede the argument and in desperate need of some indication that she hadn’t been terribly wrong all these years, Tess replied, "I wrote you every month for at least a year and a half – I wanted you to get why I left."
Pleading, she gripped at her hair, threading her fingers between the long curls and pulling, hard. She’d always imagined that he’d get it – she’d poured her heart into those post cards, veiled depictions of what, exactly, she had done and why.
She was worried about being found out – if she knew Nicholas was going to come anyway, at the time, she would have been more upfront.
And then Kal came and told her to stop, and she had, if only because she was so fucking scared that she’d hurt him.
If only she realized she already had.
Fucking ridiculous and poetic – Tess Harding, never gets what she wants. He’d lived, she’d lived, but they were both miserable and he hated her – if that wasn’t a Pyrrhic victory. Angry tears slipped down her cheek and she batted them away. The last thing she needed was for him to see her cry.
She was pulled from her thoughts as Andrew raced forward, toward a tall, darker man whom she assumed was his father – Jerome? Jared? Jesse? That was it. He was kind of handsome, in a metrosexual way. But Kyle was better – not that she was biased or anything.
"Daddy!" The boy screamed, launching himself into his father’s arms and dragging him away before Michael could say anything. She didn’t blame him – if she had the chance, she wasn’t sure she’d stick around either.
"Bye Andrew." Michael called after them as he grabbed her wrist and dragged her behind him, possessive and demanding as he jerked her forward, off the grass and toward the street.
...
Lyrics are to "Nineteen" by Tegan and Sara
-----------
Part 12b
-----------
Flew home, back to where we met
Stayed inside I was so upset
I cooked up a plan, so good except
I was all alone
You were all I had
Love you
You were all mine
It took her a second to recover, the feel of his course skin on her arm brought back too many memories – casual touches and for a second, it was like she was sixteen again. A car whizzed by, followed by horns blaring in a jarring cacophony and just like that – she was back in the present.
Wrenching her arm away from him, Tess jerked backward, stumbling slightly as the brief flicker of a connection faded and she found herself sighing in relief that he hadn't managed to see anything. Straightening herself out, blue eyes darkened as he stood territorially over her and she fought the urge to smack him. How dare he touch her like that when he knew what it could do – they weren't the same people they were ten years ago, and she didn't feel comfortable letting him know everything.
Those damn flashes were so unpredictable – and he might have seen her with another guy. God, why did she care?
Because half of the time you were thinking about him, dumbass she groaned as her self-loathing grew. Why now? Why today?
And why the hell did he have to look so good?
Pathetic, Langley, pathetic. It was a weak attempt to remind herself of who she'd become, and who she wasn't – his girlfriend, or even his friend. They were just two people who used to know each other.
She opened her mouth to say something as he reached for her wrist and she stepped backward, almost hitting a vendor cart. Muttering some apology, Tess tried to give Michael a pointed look, but stopped when she saw the hurt reflected back in his gaze.
"How can you think – how, why the fuck did you leave like that!" He boomed, falling over his words as ten years of unaddressed anger bubbled to the surface.
"I had to Michael! What? Do you think I wanted to do it?" Tess stressed, trying to stay calm but failing miserably, her guilt and frustration eating at her – she wished that she was unaffected, aloof and calm about it all. And maybe in another lifetime she would have been, but falling in love with him at sixteen changed all that.
Who knew that loving another alien would make her more human? And the thing that killed her was that she couldn't hate him for it.
"You sure as fuck didn't want to fight."
It was a shot to the gut and her cheeks were wet before she even realized what was happening. Was this what he thought? Really?
"Newsflash Michael – I fought. I lost! It was either try to leave and protect the three of you or end up being responsible for killing everyone I love!" She snapped, indignant as hot tears fell down her cheek as she swallowed a sob that welled in her throat.
Maybe this was what Kal meant when he said to let this all stay in the past. Not that she had a choice, except, maybe using her powers to get away. But, she had held onto some idyllic fantasy where he would somehow understand why she'd gone through with it all.
How could she have ever been that stupid?
"What do you want? A medal? I heard they give out lots of them here."
"Why not start with dropping the sarcasm?"
Wait, what? Had that really just come out of her mouth? Seriously? God, she had to stop talking, at least without thinking. She was the queen of sarcasm – and Michael knew it.
Not that she needed the additional confirmation, but his raised eyebrow said enough.
"Part of my charm," Michael returned, but it sounded harsh, another reminder that the light nature of their repartee disappeared about the same time she did.
Clearly, that line she gave about having no regrets because life was too short would have to be revised.
"Is that what it's called?" She teased, trying to move the conversation away from another argument. It was a shot in the dark, a desperate attempt to rekindle some part of who they used to be – or at least, get him to smile.
"You never used to mind," he accused, raking a hand through his long hair in frustration, hurt flashing momentarily across his face.
Shit. Her attempt at humor had fallen flat and now he was back to this, dancing close to the edge of the conversation she desperately wanted to avoid. The last thing she needed was to rehash the past again – they'd lived an entire decade apart, hell she had a boyfriend to consider.
Oh, fuck, Matt.
God, she was an idiot. Here she was, falling into old patterns with her ex-boyfriend when her loyal, dependable, slob of a boyfriend was trying to get her to move in with him. Of course, she was the one with the money, and the better place, but she had a cat and he was desperate for her to give it up.
Michael probably wouldn't make her choose between a cat and him. And she probably wouldn't even think twice about picking him, if he ever asked.
Ugh, why was she even comparing Matt to Michael anyway? Michael hated her – and she could understand it.
"Stop," Tess groaned, unsure if she was speaking to Michael or to herself as she rooted her feet in place, rolling her eyes in annoyance as a tourist nearly ran into her. D.C. was so not the best place for this – then again, it was better than Roswell, if only because it was just the two of them and not the whole gang weighing in.
"You don't get to call the shots here," Michael returned, his delivery icy and dispassionate, as if she were just a thing and not someone who had once been his friend. Maybe this was why she never stayed friends with her exes – or even bothered to see them again.
But, then again, the rest of her boyfriends weren't serious, except well, her current one, and none of them shared the same DNA, or home planet.
Small minor points, really.
"I'm not – god! I've just – It's been ten years. Can we not argue about this? Please?" She sounded desperate – but it was the first thing that came stumbling out of her mouth. The explanation mangled as she stared at him, her eyes wet with frustrated tears as she raked a hand through her curls, willing herself to find something eloquent to say.
"That's the problem, Tess. It's been ten years!" He shot back, angry and annoyed and hurt. Why couldn't he, why did he blame her?
Because you ran out on him after the sex, like they do in a B movie, you moron. Oh, hindsight, if only you were more useful before the results of my decisions were made clear, she groaned.
"What do you want me to say? I'm sorry? You know that I am – but if I had to do it all over again I would." Screaming in vain to drive home her point, her palms glued to her hips as she stared up at him. As much as she shouldn't have left him without a word all those years ago, he shouldn't blame her for everything.
He had to fucking get it, if for his own sake. And that meant opening her big mouth and talking, really talking, without the shock inherent in such an attack. Of course, it didn't mean that she wasn't nervous as hell. What if he heard everything and still hated her.
Well, then, Matt would have to deal with her tears and some lie about being on the rag. God, she was already planning on lying to her boyfriend, and not about the one intergalactic thing that was okay to lie about. This wasn't good, probably even worse than his insistence that she get rid of the cat.
Of course, nothing was happening with her and Michael. But still he was her ex-boyfriend, who she'd stupidly called her first love one night over a bottle of tequila and too many beers at some Super Bowl party she pretended to enjoy.
And Matt wouldn't really like that she suddenly ran into him again – he had this theory that you never got over anyone you dated seriously, and that was why most people didn't talk.
She told him it was silly, at the time, but she was suddenly seeing that there was some merit to the theory.
Stop it. Tess admonished herself and blinked as Michael opened and shut his mouth and asked one simple question.
"Why?"
Why? Why? Who was he trying to kid here? Granted, he hadn't experienced anything first hand, but he had seen those stupid flashing that she was giving off. Oh, right, he was asking about the other part of her statement.
Had she really gotten this bad at reading him? Then again, she'd fucked this being noble thing up majorly, so one could say that she never read him right at all.
But that was just depressing, and probably fair. Then again, he was alive, damn it!
"Because you're alive! I couldn't have – I could have handled it better, but I couldn't have lived with myself if I was responsible for that."
If that wasn't honesty, she wasn't sure what else she could say to him to convince him that she wasn't out to break his heart. If only their lives had been different. Maybe, if there was no destiny, no powers, no Nicholas and Khivar, they'd be married by now.
Ugh, fucking hypotheticals were worthless, and yet far too easy to fall into – seriously, what good did it do except bring on the depression?
"If you'd stayed…"
God damn it, Michael.
"You'd be dead!" She interjected, her voice loud and forceful, praying that this would be the end of this train of thought. She didn't want to think about it, on the one hand, there were picket fences, and on the other was her taking a pick axe to his head.
Tess wasn't a gambler, but considering what she'd been through, she knew that door number two was the other future.
It didn't stop her from playing the what if game. Usually, during the Notebook or some other over dramatized movie, god that scene with the two of them in the senior center right before the end killed her every time.
"You don't know that," Michael said finally, his voice softer, as if her forceful proclamation had finally caused him to reevaluate her point of view.
"Michael, I do," she replied, her voice no heavier than a whisper as her gaze wavered slightly; the pinpricks of unshed tears biting at the corners of her eyes.
"How?"
"I – okay, do you really want to hear this?" She questioned, the back of her hand rubbing her eyes as she forced her emotions down. Tess knew that it was in vain, but it at least helped her focus, for the moment.
"Yes," Michael answered, his voice lifting, making his response sound more like a question than an affirmation. It took her a second to register what he was saying without words, but the second she figured it out, Tess' cheeks flushed, ashamed and embarrassed.
Why would you think that I wouldn't want to hear this?
This whole thing was incredibly awkward and nothing like some cinematic get together with tears and hugs and conveniently forgetting ten years of pain and suffering.
Fucking Hollywood. She'd have to whine to Kal later about cinematic bullshit – and then he'd bring up that he produced American History X. God that movie was shot so fucking well – even if Ed Norton was a prick about his screen time.
Stop stalling.
"Okay, um, stop me if this gets confusing."
Really worked hard at the stopping stalling thing, didn't you Tess?
"Would you quit it?"
"Quit what?"
"Stalling."
Fuck – he totally noticed. She might not be able to read him anymore, but he sure could fucking read her. God damn it!
"Sorry – it's just weird, you know? Anyway – um," she drawled, an awkward laugh escaping from her throat. She'd never expected to be here, facing him – and she wasn't prepared. What, exactly, do you say to the one person you've probably ever truly loved ten years later? She mused, raking a hand through her hair as she stared up at him, noticing the momentary desire that flickered across his gaze.
What did that even mean? Probably nothing. And she had to get through this – if she dwelled on something she might have seen she'd never finish.
"You know how some people who claim to be abducted are missing time and in some random city?"
Alien experience meets alien metaphor – it would be hilarious if it weren't so sad.
"Yeah," Michael drawled, his uncertainty apparent in his gaze. Okay, maybe this was a bad approach, but she was already halfway there and it sort of made sense when Kal explained it to her like this.
Then again, she wasn’t, exactly, thinking logically at the time. So maybe the overextended metaphor worked better. Shivering, she rubbed her hands against her bare arms, she hated this whole period of her life.
"What Nicholas did – it's kind of like that. He found a way to take over my body so that I couldn't remember anything. The way that Kal – he's someone that I met in LA..."
"I know all about Kal," Michael interjected, his anger palpable as her lips thinned into a frown. How did Michael know Kal – and what did he do to him to produce that response?
And why the hell didn't Kal tell her about it? He knew how much Michael meant to her!
Because he did know how much he meant to you, she reasoned, realizing that in his own fucked up way he was protecting her.
God this sucked.
"You do?" She asked, masking her shock at his disclosure with genuine interest. This was the story she wanted to hear – Michael meets Kal, not, rehashing the poor Tess Harding faked her death and here is the life she lead for the past ten years as billionaire and movie mogul Kal Langley’s daughter story.
Not that she really had a choice in the matter. At least not if she ever wanted to talk to Michael again.
And she did want to talk to him again. Shit, she was getting nervous – it wasn’t like she was 11 and asking, “do you like me? Check yes or no.” She was a grown woman dealing with an ex-boyfriend – err the ex-boyfriend. The only one that knew who she really was, anyway.
Or experienced anything that she had gone through in Roswell, or the only boyfriend that she cared about – she was totally fucking breaking up with Matt.
Even though the sex was good and even if Michael never wanted to see her again – she’d still have her cat. And she’d be a hot crazy cat woman.
"Later," Michael returned gruffly, breaking her from her thoughts.
"Okay," she answered, suspicious. Back to the topic at hand. Fan-fucking-tastic.
"Anyway, what Nicholas does – it starts out like that – missing time; you're there, in one place, and your mind is in another,” she began, the nervous beat of her heart echoing in her ears. “But he also infects your mind, kind of like a virus. So if he gets in there deep enough, or does it enough, basically you become like a slave to him."
"What?"
Fuck. He wasn’t getting it – or maybe he was, she couldn’t look at him – she couldn’t look at anything. If she did, she’d start thinking about that day with Nicholas, when he shoved images of what could have been into her head.
Inhaling, Tess steadied herself as she stared at her feet, the brown thongs of her sandals against her feet growing more interesting as her dread built. She’d never had to talk about this before – she had questions, Kal had answers, and then that was it. Instantly buried, instantly forgotten.
"He rots your mind – and the end result is that anything left is depraved and submissive to him, and I guess Khivar too, but I never asked asked. I was really close to that point when I left, Michael. And those images you saw when you touched me – do you remember them?"
Please don’t make me rehash them, she prayed, internally invoking every deity she could think of to prevent that torture. Nothing like rehashing the many ways you could kill someone with your ex-boyfriend.
“Not something I would forget, Tess,” he returned, annoyed and hurt by her words.
Ouch. Well, at least it didn’t mean a brutal retelling of the ways she had seen herself killing him. Score one for common decency.
"Well, the broken glass and shit in that bathroom – that was all real. Nicholas attacked me whenever we went to Copper Summit, either to get me to lose my strength or for his own sick joy. I’m not sure,” Tess began, awkwardly shifting her weight from side to side as she pushed an errant curl off her face as she stared past him, unable to look him in the face. She couldn’t look at him – she was weak, not worthy of the four square, of him – and her fucking departure from Roswell only hurt him more.
God, she hated feeling like this – remembering just how pathetic she was.
“But the second thing – with the gun? That was what he planned to do, after he took control. I think he thought that he was going to have control, after that. And he did, for a while – there are things that I don’t remember that happened between leaving the bathroom and getting into the Jetta,” she shivered, rubbing her hands against her bare arms, suddenly feeling cold and naked as his eyes bore into her flesh.
Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes as the taste of bile played on her tongue and she swallowed, hard, to keep herself from vomiting over Constitution Avenue.
“I left, thinking that it would be over if I just got out of town,” she continued, deciding it was best to omit that in her original plan, she was going to kill herself. “And it was fine, for a while. I wrote those post cards to you and I had this new life in California. I was lonely, but I was safe, and so were all of you.”
She heard him shuffle his feat and caught Michael moving closer, out of the corner of her eye. Watching the cars fly by behind him, Tess took a step backward, away from him. She needed space to keep what little control she had left; she knew that much, as her eyes welled with tears.
“One day, Nicholas came after me to finish what he started in Arizona. I don’t remember much of it, just the way his hands ripped at my hair, my skin, how dirty I felt and this all-encompassing fear. And then the next think I remember is waking up in Kal’s place, scared, and alone. He… he said it was a miracle I survived, that I came out of it at all.”
Her tears spilled over and sobs wracked her body, the idea that she should have, that she had been so close to killing him – all of them. Stiffening, she felt Michael’s arms wrap around her, drawing her in and she inhaled, he still smelt the same as he had ten years ago. And even though she had no right – it felt so good to feel him around her, if only for a moment.
Wiping her eyes, she stepped backward, away from him as she looked into his eyes for the first time since she’d begun discussing what happened to her, back then. “Sorry, I’ve never really told anyone about that, before, and the idea that I was so close… god, that I should have been dead, err I don’t know a zombie? It scares the crap out of me.”
Michael merely nodded his head, gently brushing his hand against her back in an attempt to say without words that he understood. Any other time she would have raised an eyebrow, she simply leaned into his touch, humbled by any support he was willing to give her.
“I never liked horror movies,” she added in an attempt to lighten the mood. “So how'd you find out about Kal?"
Finally, a change of subject. And the answers that she really wanted.
Michael looked at her quizzically for a moment before he relented. It was only fair, she told him her story, so he should tell his. And she was grateful for the reprieve.
"I was in LA, looking for you – I did that a lot, spent weekends away, looking. And once your post cards were marked from the area, I knew you were there. But then you stopped writing."
Fuck. So he did get them, and that was probably how Nicholas found her – but then that was discounting the whole Nasedo factor in her identity at the time.
"Kal told me not to – that they could track me by postmarks, I guess he was right," she mumbled, her shoulders drooping in resignation.
"Maybe. But that's not how I found him."
"How did you?" She questioned, excited and nervous at the same time. She wasn’t sure why she cared so much, except for the fact that there was something comforting and nerve-racking about someone finding out about you when you worked so hard at anonymity.
"I saw this girl who looked a lot like you with brown hair in a bit part in a movie that was produced by Kal Langley – and I had to know. So I hunted him down and demanded he tell me about her – the only thing I got was thrown against the wall and a warning to leave his daughter alone. That was you, wasn't it?"
She had been there maybe three months when they shot that thing. Kal had thought, originally, that the best way to avoid the aliens was to become so famous that they couldn’t do anything to her. And she was so desperate for anything that would keep her safe, give her a purpose, she’d agreed without a second thought. And so they had this plan for her to go into acting, until, Kal called it off.
"Yeah – but I never thought, god."
So that’s why he did it – came home one day and said, "I don’t want you acting anymore." Tess’d asked why, and he’d made some comment about her being terrible. And she’d thought, maybe, just maybe, she was – when she wasn’t dreading that she’d been found, that Nicholas lived, despite veiled hints to the contrary.
"I thought he was supposed to recognize us – protect us."
"He is, but I relieved him of his duties, I guess, after he saved my life,” she shrugged, it was so weird, knowing Kal, to hear anyone say that he was obligated to do anything except make movies. But Michael had a point. Kal, like Nasedo, was born a protector, and as such, he should have known who Michael was, and by knowing her, know how much he meant to her.
Hell, he probably did, but like he’d told her more than once, she was his primary concern, and he believed that the skins were watching the rest of them, waiting for her return. God, sometimes, she really hated being an alien, which was ironic, because once upon a time, it was the only thing she had, she clung to it, and wore it like a trophy.
“I wanted to make sure he didn't feel obligated to protect me, he hated this, you know? Being forced to leave his family to come to Earth and protect us. Then, after I came back into his life, because he sensed that I was close and that I was dying – he resented me because he thought I'd force him to give up his life here too. So I just told him he didn't have to do it anymore – that he was free, or whatever. And before I knew it something alien happened and he was so grateful."
To quote Led Zeppelin, “ramble on.” Her nervousness was showing, and after crying into Michael’s shirt, she really didn’t care that much. Some of the tension had lifted after that, either because she was being open with him or because he was finally getting how much that still upset her, but it was working, which was nice.
"So he doesn't protect us anymore?” Michael’s question was peppered with sadness and disappointment, tempered with age.
He never talked about this part of himself, but she knew that he’d always been looking for an alien he could look up to, view as a father figure. She assumed that it had a lot to do with Hank, because although he hadn’t said anything when she told him about Nasedo, she could tell that his betrayal hurt him almost as much as it hurt her.
"No, he does, but he doesn't have to – I gave him back his freewill. That’s what he had been so grateful for that day."
"Excuse me?"
Ugh, she phrased that wrong, and he was annoyed. She could write a policy brief, but everything that came out of her mouth of this was far from eloquent. She was so fucking nervous, he was making her uncomfortable, this was uncomfortable – she’d spent ten years pretending to be someone else, and now she had to explain who “Tess Harding” was now, when she ceased to exist once she was outside of Roswell’s City Limits.
Breathe.
"Kal – he's my protector. Well, I guess he's Max's too, but I never really asked. After I was at his place for a few days, he explained it all to me – and I couldn't help but feel guilty. Did you know that he couldn't sense anything? All he could smell is the really strong stuff – Tabasco, lemons, chlorine. So, I helped him do that, be more human. It was the least I could do, you know?"
Apprehensively threading a curl through her fingers, she stared at him, blue meeting brown as she waited for a response to her chatter. Kal was the closest thing she had to a father – and to see Michael like this, questioning her, questioning him – it was hard to deal with. She never was good at this, articulating feelings, and once upon a time they could sense what each other felt.
Right, in that universe that existed, ten years ago. She didn’t smoke, but she could certainly use a cigarette right now.
"He really seemed to care about you – when I asked about you, I could tell," Michael said finally, his voice measured and devoid of emotion.
Not great, but she knew it was the best she was probably going to get. Michael was pissed that he’d lied to him about her – among other things. And, well, she wasn’t sure what to say to that, just like how she was sure he didn’t know what to say about Kal.
"He's like a father to me. I mean, we bonded out of necessity, but he's helped, a lot."
"Yeah?"
"I was a mess when I left you – I mean, I still am, but he helped me find a way to live without you, because I had to. Like, actually have a life, not do what I was doing before – existing. And he was the one who made me go to college, you know? He's the reason I'm here."
In more ways than I can count, she added, immediately chastising herself for not calling in a few days. Kal’d be worried, even if he said he wasn’t. Hell, he was the one who didn’t want her going to the East Coast, and had said that there was some shit in New York City he wanted her to stay out of – so they’d compromised on DC.
In the end, it had been one of the best decisions Tess’d made, even if she’d still never seen the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State Building. No threat of aliens, a chance to do something real with her life, and she was good at her job.
"What are you up to these days, anyway?”
Oh thank god! A change of subject – even if the answer was depressing. Work, drinking, arguing about the cat – she used to travel, but she started dating Matt, who didn’t care about going anywhere outside of the metro area and then she just got the promotion, but mostly, it was Matt’s hatred of flying that stopped her.
Not that she had the time, but it’d be nice to go back to France or England – or someplace random like Tanzania, and go on a safari. Tess hated zoos, something about seeing animals in cages gave her the creeps – maybe because she could have easily been put in one, studied and examined and put on display as the amazing alien hybrid! So, seeing zebras and giraffes in the wild would be cool.
"I work for a non-profit – I just got promoted, actually. We do a lot with mental health, I felt like I needed to do something like that, after,” she trailed off at the end, letting the silence speak for itself.
"I never would have thought, but it suits you,” Michael admitted, following her down the street and up into downtown.
God, why did such a simple comment make her break out into a grin? It wasn’t congratulatory, just that it suited her, her job, and by extension her life. It was quiet acceptance of what she’d done – Michael always managed to say one thing and his words carried many emotions, meanings.
It was one of the things she had loved about him – still loved about him. He was deep even when he was trying not to be – and unlike other people, he was sincere about it.
"Yeah, I mean, most people think that lobbyists are all bad – but we like to think that we're making a difference. So what do you do?"
"I paint."
"Really? That's awesome, Michael," Tess smiled, proud of him. He hadn’t told her anything about his love for art, but she did remember that it was one of the few classes he rarely skipped.
And it was nice to hear that he was doing something that he liked and not like working security – so did he go to college? Art school? She had so many questions.
"Eh, it pays the bills – and it gives me time to go off on my own, you know?" Michael was downplaying it – the spark in his eyes gave him away, as did the half smile that momentarily grazed his features.
He was so damn sexy when he did that.
"Yeah, do you just paint or is there something else?"
Ugh, could my voice be any breathier? Tess groaned, as she stepped slightly ahead of him – she had to stop this. And the subtle implication that she was more interested in if he had someone else? Not helping.
Michael didn’t want her like that – he’d only spent time looking for her because he wanted to make sure she was okay. He was a protector, it was encoded in his fucking DNA, and wasting any time thinking that he still wanted any part of her mess was a waste of time.
Now if she could only turn off her heart, like it had a switch that could be activated at her convenience. That would make all of this infinitely easier.
"I help Mr. P keep up the Crash – he's getting old and with Max and Liz in Boston…”
"They're in Boston?" Tess interjected, her interest piqued. She’d known that Liz was obsessed with going to Harvard – hell, everyone in Roswell, and maybe even Chaves County knew that. But she had always thought the two would come back after college.
Between the Elvis wedding and the east coast living – Max and Liz were the ones who surprised her the most.
"Yeah, Liz is in Med School at Harvard and Max is getting his JD at Boston College."
Oh, figures they wouldn’t have done the one degree and done thing. All she knew was she’d never be using Max Evans as her lawyer.
"Cool – and Isabel and Kyle are in Roswell, right?" Well, they would have to be, given that Michael was hauling Isabel’s first born across the country, since she was pregnant.
"Yeah. The oompa loompa is trying to play long arm of the law. And Maria and Alex are touring right now."
Yes indeed they were, she’d seen them a few weeks ago with some of her friends. Though, she hadn’t used the “Kal Langley’s daughter” card to get backstage like she normally did. Her friends had been mildly annoyed, but she was tired.
The truth was – she didn’t want to deal with her past. Fat lot of good that did.
"I know."
"Excuse me?"
"I helped them get their record deal," Tess supplied and smirked as Michael’s eyes grew wide at her blasé delivery. He had no idea that her name meant something to people, even before she’d grown up and moved away and made a name for herself lobbying for mental health issues.
It was refreshing.
"How?"
"People think my dad is Kal Langley – I told some label rep to go to their show in Santa Fe and he did. The rest is history."
That was how it worked for her in California. At first it’d been exciting, then mundane, and after a while she just wasn’t sure that anything she did was because of her own abilities, and not her “father”. She’d never told Kal, but that was the main reason she’d moved out to the East Coast.
"That's, uh, nice of you," Michael returned, confused.
He still didn’t get it – and for whatever reason that made her feel even better about everything.
"Thanks – so how is Roswell?"
"Fine, you know? It's Roswell."
Right. The dairy capital of the southwest! Nothing but cows, desert and aliens – how could she ever forget?
"Why'd you stay?" Tess asked, the question bubbling out of her mouth before she had a chance to think about what she was saying.
"I hoped you'd come back," Michael answered, his voice level and lacking any trace of sarcasm.
Wait. What?
She had to be hearing things – he stayed in Roswell, New Mexico waiting to see if she’d show up?
What does that even mean? And why did she feel like grinning and picking at a flower while playing the loves me, loves me not game like she was a fucking Disney princess?
Because he still has feelings for you, idiot.
"Oh."
Jesus, he basically admits to waiting ten years for you, and all you can fucking say is oh? You really know how to kick a man when he’s down, don’t you, Langley?
She really was bad at this. But she couldn’t be the only reason that he stayed in Roswell, right? The granolith and the pod chamber and all that crap had to be part of it, right?
"God! Why didn't you come back?" Michael exclaimed, angrily kicking a can into the street before stopping and facing her.
She shivered as he towered over her, a million different emotions running through her as she stared into his dark eyes. Michael leaned closer, drawing her in and her breath hitched in her throat as his calloused palm spread out against the small of her back.
God, she wanted to just give in and kiss him, but he deserved better than her.
Stepping backward, she lowered her eyes and ran a hand through her hair. She was twenty-six fucking years old! She should have some self control by now – she owed Michael that much.
She’d already broken his heart once – and doing this with him? It would break his heart all over again.
He had a fucking life in Roswell and she was in DC. And, as far as the rest of the Roswell gang and the damn state of New Mexico were concerned – she was dead! There was no way this would end well.
So, she just had to be the strong one. Even if she really, really wanted to kiss him. And she never stopped loving him.
"You know why I didn't," Tess snapped – it was easier to have him hate her. For both of them.
"I know, but I've missed you."
And that feeling? Her heart melting and breaking into a million pieces. God, she hated Nicholas and aliens and everything – why hadn’t, why couldn’t they have just been normal or at least less enemy prone?
She could be the fat pregnant one now.
Or married by an Elvis impersonator.
Life was so not fair.
"I've missed you too,” she mumbled, surprising herself with her honesty. Hadn’t she just decided, oh, I don’t know, 30 seconds ago that it was better if he hated her?
Whatever, honesty train, party of one? She could do this – and maybe she wouldn’t wind up regretting it, either.
“I'm so glad you're here! I know that's weird to say, now, but it didn't seem appropriate earlier. How much time do you have?"
God, now she even sounded like she was sixteen – all she needed was a few extra “likes” and more blush and it’d be perfect.
"My flight leaves in an hour."
Fuck.
"An hour? Shouldn't you be on your way down there?"
Here is your out Michael. And this is where you smile politely, give me your number, even though I still have it memorized and know it’s you because I got drunk and called it last year when Matt and I were on a break to hear your voice from my blocked number.
And you say, keep in touch, and I agree and we don’t.
Any moment now, you’re going to realize what I already know – you’re too fucking good for me.
"I have more important things to do."
"But, you're going to miss your plane!" She blurted out before registering what he really meant.
God, she was an idiot.
"Trying to get rid of me already Harding?"
"No! No."
Please don’t leave.
"Good," Michael huffed and her eyes widened at his revelation before she forced herself to roll them. She shouldn’t be surprised – he’d tried to kiss her only a few minutes ago. But still, it was nice hearing affirmations that he still liked her.
"So are we going to keep walking around this city or are you going to wine and dine me?" He smirked at her, his walk more confident than it had been when they first ran into one another and she bit down on her lip, combing it with her teeth as she admired him.
"Who says chivalry is dead?" Tess deadpanned, trying to keep her emotions in check. There was no reason to build up his confidence even more – at the current level, it was hot, but the Guerin ego unchecked was a little much – especially since her resistance had waned over their time apart.
"It's 2:00 and I'm hungry."
"And ever so patient. Don't worry, there's got to be a Chipotle around here somewhere."
"I come to DC and you're offering me franchised Mexican?" Michael returned, feigning disgust at her suggestion. Who would have thought that someone who still helped out at a diner that served Blood of Alien Smoothies would be a food snob?
"You. Plane, one hour? Remember?"
And here I am, giving you your out again, Michael. Because you are so above the crap that my departure caused, she thought, still somewhat unbelieving that he wanted to stay here with her. That he would give up his damn flight back home for her.
"It's the fucking capitol and you're telling me they don't have any good food that isn't from a big corporation?"
Okay, so maybe he would. Or Michael had really become a food snob.
"Damn the man!" Tess exclaimed, pumping her fist in the air before grinning at him and leading him up the street. She wasn’t going to think about whether or not he really wanted to be here with her and bring the banter.
She missed the banter.
"I'm an artist – I can't eat at the Mexican McDonalds, ruins the rep."
"A war on happy meals? And here I thought Grimace was so cute," she deadpanned, rolling her eyes for dramatic effect.
"Just feed me woman," Michael groaned, wrapping his arm around her waist.
Instinctively, she leaned into him, relishing the feel of his arms around her, if only for a moment. "And the woman's movement just keeps ticking backward, first the eight years of the Bush administration, now Michael Guerin is barking at me to feed him. Today Jerry Falwell is smiling in hell."
"I don't see you barefoot and pregnant, so lunch please,” Michael returned, flashing a grin as he brushed a stray piece of hair off her face.
Too much, too much – too bad it felt so fucking good, and comfortable. Stepping away from him, Tess slid her hand in his, unwilling to completely relinquish his touch yet.
It was stupid and silly and completely not right in any sense of the world – but it was nice to pretend like nothing had happened. That they still were the same people they had been ten years ago and they could just pick up where they left off.
"Since you asked so nicely, there's this place that's famous for its chili."
"Spicy?"
"I wouldn't offer you chili if it wasn't," Tess answered, stepping out of his grasp and toward the street. If they were going, they’d need to hail a cab, and she was the one best equipped for that task.
"Good."
"Good? I offer to wine and dine you – and all you say is good?"
"Improving my vocabulary isn't a high priority right now," Michael stated, following her as she crossed the street, and she was struck, again, by how right this all felt, even after everything.
"Right."
"It's further away from the airport, though," Tess drawled, her arms crossed against her chest, bracing for him to finally give in to logic and leave her.
It was the safe thing to do.
"Would you shut up about my damn flight?" Michael snapped, visibly annoyed with her constant nagging on the subject.
"Sorry, it's just…"
"Tess, I knew I was going to miss my plane the second I saw you. Y…It's worth it," Michael admitted, stumbling over his words as he awkwardly clawed at his eyebrow
God, she was going to fucking cry. And all because he got choked up and he was always going to stay in DC longer for her. Pathetic.
"Oh,” Tess breathed, unable to find the words to express how much what he said, what he was doing, meant to her. "Even though it's been ten years and I only sent you obscure post cards?"
Holy insecurity, batman!
"I'm over it,” Michael responded with a shrug.
Yeah, right. She didn’t believe that for a second.
"Sure," she huffed, sticking her arm out to hail a cab. He didn’t have to lie to her about coming to terms with what she did all those years ago, it was a lot to deal with – and admittedly, she could have handled it. But she was sixteen and she didn’t know better, then.
Suddenly, Michael pulled on her arm, spinning her toward him, and she met his gaze as her breath hitched in her throat. His emotions laid bare, she found herself drowning in the sadness and love reflected in his toffee colored eyes.
"Look – I don't understand why you didn't tell me, but I finally am starting to understand why you left."
God – he was nothing if not intense, and she knew that he meant every word. Which just made her want to kiss him, or hug him or do one of those girlfriend-type moves that were so not her place anymore.
"I didn't tell you because I couldn't have… I knew, if I saw you, I would have stayed," Tess whispered, her eyes watering with tears as she admitted why she’d left without a word. Sure it was cliché, but Michael had been her rock back then – and if he’d asked her to stay, she would have.
And then they wouldn’t be having this conversation – because in one form or another, they’d be dead. Her mentally, him literally. So, as much as it sucked, she had made the right decision.
Even if it was killing her, thinking about alternative universes where they were happy and together now.
"Oh."
"Yeah. Tragic, huh?"
It was the only thing that she could think of to say to that. Michael had been rendered speechless, or at least had gone back to adopting his high school propensity for one-word answers – and clearly her ability to articulate anything was failing her today.
"We met up again," Michael leered, his breath warm against her cheek as she finally waved down a cab, and lead the way inside, quickly giving the driver the name of the restaurant.
"You've certainly become more optimistic," Tess drawled, running a curl through her index and middle fingers, as she took a quick look at her nails. She had to get a fucking manicure.
"Oh that's me, one fucking ray of sunshine."
That’s more like it. The sarcasm, the banter – it was their version of foreplay. She teased all of her friends, but only Michael was able to keep up with her in the wit department.
"No cloud stands a chance against Michael Guerin?" She perked up, grinning as she remembered that stupid line Max gave Michael whenever they started practicing their powers together.
"Channeling Evans now? What, expecting me to quote Shakespeare and drag you to Vegas?"
No fucking way.
"It was Liz's idea?"
"Yep."
Seriously? Seriously?! No. Fucking. Way. And how could he be so calm about this? This was the most hilariously awful and amazing bit of gossip she’d heard about anyone she knew in Roswell and he was calm about it?
Did he not realize the great mocking potential? How could he not? Or was he just being a tease – that had to be it.
"Never would have thought that,” Tess revealed, her cerulean orbs dancing in anticipation of any additional information Michael could give her.
"Tequila makes people do stupid things – poor bastard didn't stand a chance," Michael smirked, crossing his arms against his chest as his eyes fell on her in anticipation.
She knew he was waiting for a reaction – but seriously?
"Oh my god!" she shrieked, pressing her palm against his shoulder, praying that he would keep talking.
Liz Parker was drunk when she got married.
A-maz-ing.
God, the waitress was looking at her funny, but Michael must have ordered something for her, because she was still laughing whenever the girl came back with her drink.
"She sobered up on the way, but it was pretty funny hearing about it from Deluca," Michael added after placing his order
Okay, so Liz was hung over when she got married – she’d take it.
"I bet! Damn,” Tess snickered, sipping on her drink as she gave the waitress her order.
She just had to ask him. It was the fucking question that begged to be answered, and if she didn’t do it now – it would go unsaid. And then where would they be?
"So, I guess we've been dancing around it enough. Do you have a girlfriend?"
"No, you?"
Oh thank god. And why did that make her feel so damn relieved? If he had a girlfriend, he had a girlfriend – but he was smiling at her. Really smiling, and he seemed extremely interested in her answer.
What to say about Matt? Eh, she was breaking up with him anyway. She just had to hit send on her phone – instant text message breakup. Cruel? Yes. But he had threatened to call the Chinese restaurant on her cat.
Cats are people – err cats, too.
And Michael didn’t have a girlfriend. God, she was so fucking pathetic and predictable. But something about being around him again brought it out of her – this awkward goofiness that she wasn’t sure how to deal with.
"I don't have a girlfriend, no." Tess grinned, receiving only a pointed glare for her effort. Well, at least she answered the question, right?
Okay, the hell with it, she grumbled. Here is the whole truth, nothing but the truth, so help me god. "I'm single, sort of."
"Sort of? What the hell kind of answer is that?" Michael snapped, glowering from his seat across from her.
An honest one?
"He wants me to get rid of my cat and I've recently come to the conclusion that I love the cat more than him. So, I am sending him a text message because I don’t know what else to do," Tess rambled, her cheeks flushed from embarrassment. "That sounds so lame!"
"You're not taking advantage of me in the backseat of a cab to prove the point. I don't think the driver would like it,” Michael shot back, the scowl a distant memory, replaced by a predatory leer and his trademark half smile.
Right, because if he kept looking at her like that they wouldn’t make it to the fucking cab.
"My backup plan! How will I live with myself now that I'm out of ideas?" Tess questioned in mock horror and hitting the send button on her cell.
Officially single!
"It'll be very hard, but you'll manage,” Michael teased, acknowledging that she sent the message with a knowing look.
"Subtlety with the dick jokes – how un-Guerin of you."
"I can be subtle."
Right.
"Says the man who dragged me across the mall."
"Touché," Michael grinned, raising his glass in surrender. Tess 1, Michael 0.
An uneasy silence settled over the two of them and Tess shifted uncomfortably in her chair as she picked at her chili cheese fries.
And this was going so well.
"Okay, so," Tess began, watching as Michael finished his chilidog. "How's your lunch?"
“Spicy, you did good, Harding,” Michael answered with a grin that she didn’t think was quite sincere.
Maybe it was the text message breakup? Was that making him think differently about her? Ugh, why did she care so much? He was just a boy, and she was just a girl.
Right, a boy that she’d never stopped loving, and unexpected circumstances forced her apart from.
Ain’t love grand?
"Okay, I’ve just got to say this, Michael. I’m really glad that I ran into you. I know I said it earlier, but still. I've missed this, hanging out with you. I'd say I missed us, but considering my role in it," her voice grew softer, trailing off as she wiped an errant tear off her face.
"I really am sorry for what this did - what I did to you, Michael." More than you could even begin to understand.
“I know that, now. I think I always… but it killed me that I wasn’t strong enough to help you,” Michael admitted, taking her hand in his and gently squeezing it, which only caused her to cry even more. “I have to ask one more question – why couldn’t Isabel dreamwalk you?”
God, she was a mess, and crying in Ben’s Chili Bowl of all places.
“I blocked her, I blocked all of you – I didn’t want anyone getting hurt because of me. It hurt, cutting that connection, because even though they weren’t that nice to me, they were still part of my family,” her words were measured, matter of fact – she was trying so hard not to cry in earnest, when all she wanted to do was break down in sobs and bask in all the emotions she was feeling.
Michael didn’t hate her.
“Max blames himself, you know, for you leaving? Said it was because he wouldn’t give up Liz for you,” he admitted, his thumb drawing circles on her skin as he continued to hold onto her hand.
Was he – oh my god. That was the dumbest thing she’d ever heard.
She opened and shut her mouth a few times before a loud snort escaped and she burst into laughter. Of all the dumbass things she’d heard in his life, this was certainly close to the top of her list. Max blamed himself because of fucking destiny? “It still is all about him, isn’t it?”
Seriously, what the fuck were they thinking when they decreed that Max was her destiny? Max and her? Oil and water.
God, if someone ever said, “you’re my dream girl, Tess”, she’d laugh, or smack them, or something. And this – there were no words for the idiocy of one Max Evans.
“It’s the ears, probably.”
“Uh huh. Him and Dumbo – stars of their own fucking circus,” Tess snapped, growing more annoyed with Max with each passing second. How dare he? The nerve – god, no wonder people had overthrown him last go around – what a fucking prick.
Michael, obviously realizing her mounting fury, asked, “Can we not talk about the flying elephant? I just had a good meal with this girl I haven’t stopped thinking about for ten years– and the only balls I want inserted into any conversation are mine.”
“Okay, let’s get out of here. I’ve dined you, wined you on their finest Snapple – I think it’s time I show you my place,” Tess grinned, leading him outside into the September sun, playfully swaying her hips, her ire forgotten.
Life was too short for this crap – she’d already lost ten years with Michael, and she wanted to make up for lost time, that is, if he wanted to – they’d never really established that, except for his suggestive looks and her grins.
“Ms. Harding, are you trying to seduce me?” Michael questioned, grinning lasciviously at her – his eyes darkening in desire.
Mmm – message received.
“Well, Mr. Guerin, would you like me to?” She returned, staring up at him in a challenge.
“Absolutely,” Michael breathed, cupping her cheek as he drew her in, pressing his lips against hers.
She returned in kind, years of desire and passion flowing through her as she moved against him. Her nails digging into his back, Tess let out a moan as his tongue met hers, drawing it out and in again. Raking his bottom lip against her teeth, she felt her body hit the wall, his forehead meeting hers for a moment as they caught their breath.
Warm puffs of air brushed against her face as he reverently played with the strap to her tank top. “We should get a cab,” Tess whispered, her darkened eyes mirroring his – a silent message communicated between them.
Pretty soon, kissing won’t be the only type of PDA going on out here.
“Let’s go home,” Michael mumbled, placing butterfly kisses on her neck.
Nodding, she hailed a cab – not bothering to mention that he was her home.
-----------
Part 12b
-----------
Flew home, back to where we met
Stayed inside I was so upset
I cooked up a plan, so good except
I was all alone
You were all I had
Love you
You were all mine
It took her a second to recover, the feel of his course skin on her arm brought back too many memories – casual touches and for a second, it was like she was sixteen again. A car whizzed by, followed by horns blaring in a jarring cacophony and just like that – she was back in the present.
Wrenching her arm away from him, Tess jerked backward, stumbling slightly as the brief flicker of a connection faded and she found herself sighing in relief that he hadn't managed to see anything. Straightening herself out, blue eyes darkened as he stood territorially over her and she fought the urge to smack him. How dare he touch her like that when he knew what it could do – they weren't the same people they were ten years ago, and she didn't feel comfortable letting him know everything.
Those damn flashes were so unpredictable – and he might have seen her with another guy. God, why did she care?
Because half of the time you were thinking about him, dumbass she groaned as her self-loathing grew. Why now? Why today?
And why the hell did he have to look so good?
Pathetic, Langley, pathetic. It was a weak attempt to remind herself of who she'd become, and who she wasn't – his girlfriend, or even his friend. They were just two people who used to know each other.
She opened her mouth to say something as he reached for her wrist and she stepped backward, almost hitting a vendor cart. Muttering some apology, Tess tried to give Michael a pointed look, but stopped when she saw the hurt reflected back in his gaze.
"How can you think – how, why the fuck did you leave like that!" He boomed, falling over his words as ten years of unaddressed anger bubbled to the surface.
"I had to Michael! What? Do you think I wanted to do it?" Tess stressed, trying to stay calm but failing miserably, her guilt and frustration eating at her – she wished that she was unaffected, aloof and calm about it all. And maybe in another lifetime she would have been, but falling in love with him at sixteen changed all that.
Who knew that loving another alien would make her more human? And the thing that killed her was that she couldn't hate him for it.
"You sure as fuck didn't want to fight."
It was a shot to the gut and her cheeks were wet before she even realized what was happening. Was this what he thought? Really?
"Newsflash Michael – I fought. I lost! It was either try to leave and protect the three of you or end up being responsible for killing everyone I love!" She snapped, indignant as hot tears fell down her cheek as she swallowed a sob that welled in her throat.
Maybe this was what Kal meant when he said to let this all stay in the past. Not that she had a choice, except, maybe using her powers to get away. But, she had held onto some idyllic fantasy where he would somehow understand why she'd gone through with it all.
How could she have ever been that stupid?
"What do you want? A medal? I heard they give out lots of them here."
"Why not start with dropping the sarcasm?"
Wait, what? Had that really just come out of her mouth? Seriously? God, she had to stop talking, at least without thinking. She was the queen of sarcasm – and Michael knew it.
Not that she needed the additional confirmation, but his raised eyebrow said enough.
"Part of my charm," Michael returned, but it sounded harsh, another reminder that the light nature of their repartee disappeared about the same time she did.
Clearly, that line she gave about having no regrets because life was too short would have to be revised.
"Is that what it's called?" She teased, trying to move the conversation away from another argument. It was a shot in the dark, a desperate attempt to rekindle some part of who they used to be – or at least, get him to smile.
"You never used to mind," he accused, raking a hand through his long hair in frustration, hurt flashing momentarily across his face.
Shit. Her attempt at humor had fallen flat and now he was back to this, dancing close to the edge of the conversation she desperately wanted to avoid. The last thing she needed was to rehash the past again – they'd lived an entire decade apart, hell she had a boyfriend to consider.
Oh, fuck, Matt.
God, she was an idiot. Here she was, falling into old patterns with her ex-boyfriend when her loyal, dependable, slob of a boyfriend was trying to get her to move in with him. Of course, she was the one with the money, and the better place, but she had a cat and he was desperate for her to give it up.
Michael probably wouldn't make her choose between a cat and him. And she probably wouldn't even think twice about picking him, if he ever asked.
Ugh, why was she even comparing Matt to Michael anyway? Michael hated her – and she could understand it.
"Stop," Tess groaned, unsure if she was speaking to Michael or to herself as she rooted her feet in place, rolling her eyes in annoyance as a tourist nearly ran into her. D.C. was so not the best place for this – then again, it was better than Roswell, if only because it was just the two of them and not the whole gang weighing in.
"You don't get to call the shots here," Michael returned, his delivery icy and dispassionate, as if she were just a thing and not someone who had once been his friend. Maybe this was why she never stayed friends with her exes – or even bothered to see them again.
But, then again, the rest of her boyfriends weren't serious, except well, her current one, and none of them shared the same DNA, or home planet.
Small minor points, really.
"I'm not – god! I've just – It's been ten years. Can we not argue about this? Please?" She sounded desperate – but it was the first thing that came stumbling out of her mouth. The explanation mangled as she stared at him, her eyes wet with frustrated tears as she raked a hand through her curls, willing herself to find something eloquent to say.
"That's the problem, Tess. It's been ten years!" He shot back, angry and annoyed and hurt. Why couldn't he, why did he blame her?
Because you ran out on him after the sex, like they do in a B movie, you moron. Oh, hindsight, if only you were more useful before the results of my decisions were made clear, she groaned.
"What do you want me to say? I'm sorry? You know that I am – but if I had to do it all over again I would." Screaming in vain to drive home her point, her palms glued to her hips as she stared up at him. As much as she shouldn't have left him without a word all those years ago, he shouldn't blame her for everything.
He had to fucking get it, if for his own sake. And that meant opening her big mouth and talking, really talking, without the shock inherent in such an attack. Of course, it didn't mean that she wasn't nervous as hell. What if he heard everything and still hated her.
Well, then, Matt would have to deal with her tears and some lie about being on the rag. God, she was already planning on lying to her boyfriend, and not about the one intergalactic thing that was okay to lie about. This wasn't good, probably even worse than his insistence that she get rid of the cat.
Of course, nothing was happening with her and Michael. But still he was her ex-boyfriend, who she'd stupidly called her first love one night over a bottle of tequila and too many beers at some Super Bowl party she pretended to enjoy.
And Matt wouldn't really like that she suddenly ran into him again – he had this theory that you never got over anyone you dated seriously, and that was why most people didn't talk.
She told him it was silly, at the time, but she was suddenly seeing that there was some merit to the theory.
Stop it. Tess admonished herself and blinked as Michael opened and shut his mouth and asked one simple question.
"Why?"
Why? Why? Who was he trying to kid here? Granted, he hadn't experienced anything first hand, but he had seen those stupid flashing that she was giving off. Oh, right, he was asking about the other part of her statement.
Had she really gotten this bad at reading him? Then again, she'd fucked this being noble thing up majorly, so one could say that she never read him right at all.
But that was just depressing, and probably fair. Then again, he was alive, damn it!
"Because you're alive! I couldn't have – I could have handled it better, but I couldn't have lived with myself if I was responsible for that."
If that wasn't honesty, she wasn't sure what else she could say to him to convince him that she wasn't out to break his heart. If only their lives had been different. Maybe, if there was no destiny, no powers, no Nicholas and Khivar, they'd be married by now.
Ugh, fucking hypotheticals were worthless, and yet far too easy to fall into – seriously, what good did it do except bring on the depression?
"If you'd stayed…"
God damn it, Michael.
"You'd be dead!" She interjected, her voice loud and forceful, praying that this would be the end of this train of thought. She didn't want to think about it, on the one hand, there were picket fences, and on the other was her taking a pick axe to his head.
Tess wasn't a gambler, but considering what she'd been through, she knew that door number two was the other future.
It didn't stop her from playing the what if game. Usually, during the Notebook or some other over dramatized movie, god that scene with the two of them in the senior center right before the end killed her every time.
"You don't know that," Michael said finally, his voice softer, as if her forceful proclamation had finally caused him to reevaluate her point of view.
"Michael, I do," she replied, her voice no heavier than a whisper as her gaze wavered slightly; the pinpricks of unshed tears biting at the corners of her eyes.
"How?"
"I – okay, do you really want to hear this?" She questioned, the back of her hand rubbing her eyes as she forced her emotions down. Tess knew that it was in vain, but it at least helped her focus, for the moment.
"Yes," Michael answered, his voice lifting, making his response sound more like a question than an affirmation. It took her a second to register what he was saying without words, but the second she figured it out, Tess' cheeks flushed, ashamed and embarrassed.
Why would you think that I wouldn't want to hear this?
This whole thing was incredibly awkward and nothing like some cinematic get together with tears and hugs and conveniently forgetting ten years of pain and suffering.
Fucking Hollywood. She'd have to whine to Kal later about cinematic bullshit – and then he'd bring up that he produced American History X. God that movie was shot so fucking well – even if Ed Norton was a prick about his screen time.
Stop stalling.
"Okay, um, stop me if this gets confusing."
Really worked hard at the stopping stalling thing, didn't you Tess?
"Would you quit it?"
"Quit what?"
"Stalling."
Fuck – he totally noticed. She might not be able to read him anymore, but he sure could fucking read her. God damn it!
"Sorry – it's just weird, you know? Anyway – um," she drawled, an awkward laugh escaping from her throat. She'd never expected to be here, facing him – and she wasn't prepared. What, exactly, do you say to the one person you've probably ever truly loved ten years later? She mused, raking a hand through her hair as she stared up at him, noticing the momentary desire that flickered across his gaze.
What did that even mean? Probably nothing. And she had to get through this – if she dwelled on something she might have seen she'd never finish.
"You know how some people who claim to be abducted are missing time and in some random city?"
Alien experience meets alien metaphor – it would be hilarious if it weren't so sad.
"Yeah," Michael drawled, his uncertainty apparent in his gaze. Okay, maybe this was a bad approach, but she was already halfway there and it sort of made sense when Kal explained it to her like this.
Then again, she wasn’t, exactly, thinking logically at the time. So maybe the overextended metaphor worked better. Shivering, she rubbed her hands against her bare arms, she hated this whole period of her life.
"What Nicholas did – it's kind of like that. He found a way to take over my body so that I couldn't remember anything. The way that Kal – he's someone that I met in LA..."
"I know all about Kal," Michael interjected, his anger palpable as her lips thinned into a frown. How did Michael know Kal – and what did he do to him to produce that response?
And why the hell didn't Kal tell her about it? He knew how much Michael meant to her!
Because he did know how much he meant to you, she reasoned, realizing that in his own fucked up way he was protecting her.
God this sucked.
"You do?" She asked, masking her shock at his disclosure with genuine interest. This was the story she wanted to hear – Michael meets Kal, not, rehashing the poor Tess Harding faked her death and here is the life she lead for the past ten years as billionaire and movie mogul Kal Langley’s daughter story.
Not that she really had a choice in the matter. At least not if she ever wanted to talk to Michael again.
And she did want to talk to him again. Shit, she was getting nervous – it wasn’t like she was 11 and asking, “do you like me? Check yes or no.” She was a grown woman dealing with an ex-boyfriend – err the ex-boyfriend. The only one that knew who she really was, anyway.
Or experienced anything that she had gone through in Roswell, or the only boyfriend that she cared about – she was totally fucking breaking up with Matt.
Even though the sex was good and even if Michael never wanted to see her again – she’d still have her cat. And she’d be a hot crazy cat woman.
"Later," Michael returned gruffly, breaking her from her thoughts.
"Okay," she answered, suspicious. Back to the topic at hand. Fan-fucking-tastic.
"Anyway, what Nicholas does – it starts out like that – missing time; you're there, in one place, and your mind is in another,” she began, the nervous beat of her heart echoing in her ears. “But he also infects your mind, kind of like a virus. So if he gets in there deep enough, or does it enough, basically you become like a slave to him."
"What?"
Fuck. He wasn’t getting it – or maybe he was, she couldn’t look at him – she couldn’t look at anything. If she did, she’d start thinking about that day with Nicholas, when he shoved images of what could have been into her head.
Inhaling, Tess steadied herself as she stared at her feet, the brown thongs of her sandals against her feet growing more interesting as her dread built. She’d never had to talk about this before – she had questions, Kal had answers, and then that was it. Instantly buried, instantly forgotten.
"He rots your mind – and the end result is that anything left is depraved and submissive to him, and I guess Khivar too, but I never asked asked. I was really close to that point when I left, Michael. And those images you saw when you touched me – do you remember them?"
Please don’t make me rehash them, she prayed, internally invoking every deity she could think of to prevent that torture. Nothing like rehashing the many ways you could kill someone with your ex-boyfriend.
“Not something I would forget, Tess,” he returned, annoyed and hurt by her words.
Ouch. Well, at least it didn’t mean a brutal retelling of the ways she had seen herself killing him. Score one for common decency.
"Well, the broken glass and shit in that bathroom – that was all real. Nicholas attacked me whenever we went to Copper Summit, either to get me to lose my strength or for his own sick joy. I’m not sure,” Tess began, awkwardly shifting her weight from side to side as she pushed an errant curl off her face as she stared past him, unable to look him in the face. She couldn’t look at him – she was weak, not worthy of the four square, of him – and her fucking departure from Roswell only hurt him more.
God, she hated feeling like this – remembering just how pathetic she was.
“But the second thing – with the gun? That was what he planned to do, after he took control. I think he thought that he was going to have control, after that. And he did, for a while – there are things that I don’t remember that happened between leaving the bathroom and getting into the Jetta,” she shivered, rubbing her hands against her bare arms, suddenly feeling cold and naked as his eyes bore into her flesh.
Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes as the taste of bile played on her tongue and she swallowed, hard, to keep herself from vomiting over Constitution Avenue.
“I left, thinking that it would be over if I just got out of town,” she continued, deciding it was best to omit that in her original plan, she was going to kill herself. “And it was fine, for a while. I wrote those post cards to you and I had this new life in California. I was lonely, but I was safe, and so were all of you.”
She heard him shuffle his feat and caught Michael moving closer, out of the corner of her eye. Watching the cars fly by behind him, Tess took a step backward, away from him. She needed space to keep what little control she had left; she knew that much, as her eyes welled with tears.
“One day, Nicholas came after me to finish what he started in Arizona. I don’t remember much of it, just the way his hands ripped at my hair, my skin, how dirty I felt and this all-encompassing fear. And then the next think I remember is waking up in Kal’s place, scared, and alone. He… he said it was a miracle I survived, that I came out of it at all.”
Her tears spilled over and sobs wracked her body, the idea that she should have, that she had been so close to killing him – all of them. Stiffening, she felt Michael’s arms wrap around her, drawing her in and she inhaled, he still smelt the same as he had ten years ago. And even though she had no right – it felt so good to feel him around her, if only for a moment.
Wiping her eyes, she stepped backward, away from him as she looked into his eyes for the first time since she’d begun discussing what happened to her, back then. “Sorry, I’ve never really told anyone about that, before, and the idea that I was so close… god, that I should have been dead, err I don’t know a zombie? It scares the crap out of me.”
Michael merely nodded his head, gently brushing his hand against her back in an attempt to say without words that he understood. Any other time she would have raised an eyebrow, she simply leaned into his touch, humbled by any support he was willing to give her.
“I never liked horror movies,” she added in an attempt to lighten the mood. “So how'd you find out about Kal?"
Finally, a change of subject. And the answers that she really wanted.
Michael looked at her quizzically for a moment before he relented. It was only fair, she told him her story, so he should tell his. And she was grateful for the reprieve.
"I was in LA, looking for you – I did that a lot, spent weekends away, looking. And once your post cards were marked from the area, I knew you were there. But then you stopped writing."
Fuck. So he did get them, and that was probably how Nicholas found her – but then that was discounting the whole Nasedo factor in her identity at the time.
"Kal told me not to – that they could track me by postmarks, I guess he was right," she mumbled, her shoulders drooping in resignation.
"Maybe. But that's not how I found him."
"How did you?" She questioned, excited and nervous at the same time. She wasn’t sure why she cared so much, except for the fact that there was something comforting and nerve-racking about someone finding out about you when you worked so hard at anonymity.
"I saw this girl who looked a lot like you with brown hair in a bit part in a movie that was produced by Kal Langley – and I had to know. So I hunted him down and demanded he tell me about her – the only thing I got was thrown against the wall and a warning to leave his daughter alone. That was you, wasn't it?"
She had been there maybe three months when they shot that thing. Kal had thought, originally, that the best way to avoid the aliens was to become so famous that they couldn’t do anything to her. And she was so desperate for anything that would keep her safe, give her a purpose, she’d agreed without a second thought. And so they had this plan for her to go into acting, until, Kal called it off.
"Yeah – but I never thought, god."
So that’s why he did it – came home one day and said, "I don’t want you acting anymore." Tess’d asked why, and he’d made some comment about her being terrible. And she’d thought, maybe, just maybe, she was – when she wasn’t dreading that she’d been found, that Nicholas lived, despite veiled hints to the contrary.
"I thought he was supposed to recognize us – protect us."
"He is, but I relieved him of his duties, I guess, after he saved my life,” she shrugged, it was so weird, knowing Kal, to hear anyone say that he was obligated to do anything except make movies. But Michael had a point. Kal, like Nasedo, was born a protector, and as such, he should have known who Michael was, and by knowing her, know how much he meant to her.
Hell, he probably did, but like he’d told her more than once, she was his primary concern, and he believed that the skins were watching the rest of them, waiting for her return. God, sometimes, she really hated being an alien, which was ironic, because once upon a time, it was the only thing she had, she clung to it, and wore it like a trophy.
“I wanted to make sure he didn't feel obligated to protect me, he hated this, you know? Being forced to leave his family to come to Earth and protect us. Then, after I came back into his life, because he sensed that I was close and that I was dying – he resented me because he thought I'd force him to give up his life here too. So I just told him he didn't have to do it anymore – that he was free, or whatever. And before I knew it something alien happened and he was so grateful."
To quote Led Zeppelin, “ramble on.” Her nervousness was showing, and after crying into Michael’s shirt, she really didn’t care that much. Some of the tension had lifted after that, either because she was being open with him or because he was finally getting how much that still upset her, but it was working, which was nice.
"So he doesn't protect us anymore?” Michael’s question was peppered with sadness and disappointment, tempered with age.
He never talked about this part of himself, but she knew that he’d always been looking for an alien he could look up to, view as a father figure. She assumed that it had a lot to do with Hank, because although he hadn’t said anything when she told him about Nasedo, she could tell that his betrayal hurt him almost as much as it hurt her.
"No, he does, but he doesn't have to – I gave him back his freewill. That’s what he had been so grateful for that day."
"Excuse me?"
Ugh, she phrased that wrong, and he was annoyed. She could write a policy brief, but everything that came out of her mouth of this was far from eloquent. She was so fucking nervous, he was making her uncomfortable, this was uncomfortable – she’d spent ten years pretending to be someone else, and now she had to explain who “Tess Harding” was now, when she ceased to exist once she was outside of Roswell’s City Limits.
Breathe.
"Kal – he's my protector. Well, I guess he's Max's too, but I never really asked. After I was at his place for a few days, he explained it all to me – and I couldn't help but feel guilty. Did you know that he couldn't sense anything? All he could smell is the really strong stuff – Tabasco, lemons, chlorine. So, I helped him do that, be more human. It was the least I could do, you know?"
Apprehensively threading a curl through her fingers, she stared at him, blue meeting brown as she waited for a response to her chatter. Kal was the closest thing she had to a father – and to see Michael like this, questioning her, questioning him – it was hard to deal with. She never was good at this, articulating feelings, and once upon a time they could sense what each other felt.
Right, in that universe that existed, ten years ago. She didn’t smoke, but she could certainly use a cigarette right now.
"He really seemed to care about you – when I asked about you, I could tell," Michael said finally, his voice measured and devoid of emotion.
Not great, but she knew it was the best she was probably going to get. Michael was pissed that he’d lied to him about her – among other things. And, well, she wasn’t sure what to say to that, just like how she was sure he didn’t know what to say about Kal.
"He's like a father to me. I mean, we bonded out of necessity, but he's helped, a lot."
"Yeah?"
"I was a mess when I left you – I mean, I still am, but he helped me find a way to live without you, because I had to. Like, actually have a life, not do what I was doing before – existing. And he was the one who made me go to college, you know? He's the reason I'm here."
In more ways than I can count, she added, immediately chastising herself for not calling in a few days. Kal’d be worried, even if he said he wasn’t. Hell, he was the one who didn’t want her going to the East Coast, and had said that there was some shit in New York City he wanted her to stay out of – so they’d compromised on DC.
In the end, it had been one of the best decisions Tess’d made, even if she’d still never seen the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State Building. No threat of aliens, a chance to do something real with her life, and she was good at her job.
"What are you up to these days, anyway?”
Oh thank god! A change of subject – even if the answer was depressing. Work, drinking, arguing about the cat – she used to travel, but she started dating Matt, who didn’t care about going anywhere outside of the metro area and then she just got the promotion, but mostly, it was Matt’s hatred of flying that stopped her.
Not that she had the time, but it’d be nice to go back to France or England – or someplace random like Tanzania, and go on a safari. Tess hated zoos, something about seeing animals in cages gave her the creeps – maybe because she could have easily been put in one, studied and examined and put on display as the amazing alien hybrid! So, seeing zebras and giraffes in the wild would be cool.
"I work for a non-profit – I just got promoted, actually. We do a lot with mental health, I felt like I needed to do something like that, after,” she trailed off at the end, letting the silence speak for itself.
"I never would have thought, but it suits you,” Michael admitted, following her down the street and up into downtown.
God, why did such a simple comment make her break out into a grin? It wasn’t congratulatory, just that it suited her, her job, and by extension her life. It was quiet acceptance of what she’d done – Michael always managed to say one thing and his words carried many emotions, meanings.
It was one of the things she had loved about him – still loved about him. He was deep even when he was trying not to be – and unlike other people, he was sincere about it.
"Yeah, I mean, most people think that lobbyists are all bad – but we like to think that we're making a difference. So what do you do?"
"I paint."
"Really? That's awesome, Michael," Tess smiled, proud of him. He hadn’t told her anything about his love for art, but she did remember that it was one of the few classes he rarely skipped.
And it was nice to hear that he was doing something that he liked and not like working security – so did he go to college? Art school? She had so many questions.
"Eh, it pays the bills – and it gives me time to go off on my own, you know?" Michael was downplaying it – the spark in his eyes gave him away, as did the half smile that momentarily grazed his features.
He was so damn sexy when he did that.
"Yeah, do you just paint or is there something else?"
Ugh, could my voice be any breathier? Tess groaned, as she stepped slightly ahead of him – she had to stop this. And the subtle implication that she was more interested in if he had someone else? Not helping.
Michael didn’t want her like that – he’d only spent time looking for her because he wanted to make sure she was okay. He was a protector, it was encoded in his fucking DNA, and wasting any time thinking that he still wanted any part of her mess was a waste of time.
Now if she could only turn off her heart, like it had a switch that could be activated at her convenience. That would make all of this infinitely easier.
"I help Mr. P keep up the Crash – he's getting old and with Max and Liz in Boston…”
"They're in Boston?" Tess interjected, her interest piqued. She’d known that Liz was obsessed with going to Harvard – hell, everyone in Roswell, and maybe even Chaves County knew that. But she had always thought the two would come back after college.
Between the Elvis wedding and the east coast living – Max and Liz were the ones who surprised her the most.
"Yeah, Liz is in Med School at Harvard and Max is getting his JD at Boston College."
Oh, figures they wouldn’t have done the one degree and done thing. All she knew was she’d never be using Max Evans as her lawyer.
"Cool – and Isabel and Kyle are in Roswell, right?" Well, they would have to be, given that Michael was hauling Isabel’s first born across the country, since she was pregnant.
"Yeah. The oompa loompa is trying to play long arm of the law. And Maria and Alex are touring right now."
Yes indeed they were, she’d seen them a few weeks ago with some of her friends. Though, she hadn’t used the “Kal Langley’s daughter” card to get backstage like she normally did. Her friends had been mildly annoyed, but she was tired.
The truth was – she didn’t want to deal with her past. Fat lot of good that did.
"I know."
"Excuse me?"
"I helped them get their record deal," Tess supplied and smirked as Michael’s eyes grew wide at her blasé delivery. He had no idea that her name meant something to people, even before she’d grown up and moved away and made a name for herself lobbying for mental health issues.
It was refreshing.
"How?"
"People think my dad is Kal Langley – I told some label rep to go to their show in Santa Fe and he did. The rest is history."
That was how it worked for her in California. At first it’d been exciting, then mundane, and after a while she just wasn’t sure that anything she did was because of her own abilities, and not her “father”. She’d never told Kal, but that was the main reason she’d moved out to the East Coast.
"That's, uh, nice of you," Michael returned, confused.
He still didn’t get it – and for whatever reason that made her feel even better about everything.
"Thanks – so how is Roswell?"
"Fine, you know? It's Roswell."
Right. The dairy capital of the southwest! Nothing but cows, desert and aliens – how could she ever forget?
"Why'd you stay?" Tess asked, the question bubbling out of her mouth before she had a chance to think about what she was saying.
"I hoped you'd come back," Michael answered, his voice level and lacking any trace of sarcasm.
Wait. What?
She had to be hearing things – he stayed in Roswell, New Mexico waiting to see if she’d show up?
What does that even mean? And why did she feel like grinning and picking at a flower while playing the loves me, loves me not game like she was a fucking Disney princess?
Because he still has feelings for you, idiot.
"Oh."
Jesus, he basically admits to waiting ten years for you, and all you can fucking say is oh? You really know how to kick a man when he’s down, don’t you, Langley?
She really was bad at this. But she couldn’t be the only reason that he stayed in Roswell, right? The granolith and the pod chamber and all that crap had to be part of it, right?
"God! Why didn't you come back?" Michael exclaimed, angrily kicking a can into the street before stopping and facing her.
She shivered as he towered over her, a million different emotions running through her as she stared into his dark eyes. Michael leaned closer, drawing her in and her breath hitched in her throat as his calloused palm spread out against the small of her back.
God, she wanted to just give in and kiss him, but he deserved better than her.
Stepping backward, she lowered her eyes and ran a hand through her hair. She was twenty-six fucking years old! She should have some self control by now – she owed Michael that much.
She’d already broken his heart once – and doing this with him? It would break his heart all over again.
He had a fucking life in Roswell and she was in DC. And, as far as the rest of the Roswell gang and the damn state of New Mexico were concerned – she was dead! There was no way this would end well.
So, she just had to be the strong one. Even if she really, really wanted to kiss him. And she never stopped loving him.
"You know why I didn't," Tess snapped – it was easier to have him hate her. For both of them.
"I know, but I've missed you."
And that feeling? Her heart melting and breaking into a million pieces. God, she hated Nicholas and aliens and everything – why hadn’t, why couldn’t they have just been normal or at least less enemy prone?
She could be the fat pregnant one now.
Or married by an Elvis impersonator.
Life was so not fair.
"I've missed you too,” she mumbled, surprising herself with her honesty. Hadn’t she just decided, oh, I don’t know, 30 seconds ago that it was better if he hated her?
Whatever, honesty train, party of one? She could do this – and maybe she wouldn’t wind up regretting it, either.
“I'm so glad you're here! I know that's weird to say, now, but it didn't seem appropriate earlier. How much time do you have?"
God, now she even sounded like she was sixteen – all she needed was a few extra “likes” and more blush and it’d be perfect.
"My flight leaves in an hour."
Fuck.
"An hour? Shouldn't you be on your way down there?"
Here is your out Michael. And this is where you smile politely, give me your number, even though I still have it memorized and know it’s you because I got drunk and called it last year when Matt and I were on a break to hear your voice from my blocked number.
And you say, keep in touch, and I agree and we don’t.
Any moment now, you’re going to realize what I already know – you’re too fucking good for me.
"I have more important things to do."
"But, you're going to miss your plane!" She blurted out before registering what he really meant.
God, she was an idiot.
"Trying to get rid of me already Harding?"
"No! No."
Please don’t leave.
"Good," Michael huffed and her eyes widened at his revelation before she forced herself to roll them. She shouldn’t be surprised – he’d tried to kiss her only a few minutes ago. But still, it was nice hearing affirmations that he still liked her.
"So are we going to keep walking around this city or are you going to wine and dine me?" He smirked at her, his walk more confident than it had been when they first ran into one another and she bit down on her lip, combing it with her teeth as she admired him.
"Who says chivalry is dead?" Tess deadpanned, trying to keep her emotions in check. There was no reason to build up his confidence even more – at the current level, it was hot, but the Guerin ego unchecked was a little much – especially since her resistance had waned over their time apart.
"It's 2:00 and I'm hungry."
"And ever so patient. Don't worry, there's got to be a Chipotle around here somewhere."
"I come to DC and you're offering me franchised Mexican?" Michael returned, feigning disgust at her suggestion. Who would have thought that someone who still helped out at a diner that served Blood of Alien Smoothies would be a food snob?
"You. Plane, one hour? Remember?"
And here I am, giving you your out again, Michael. Because you are so above the crap that my departure caused, she thought, still somewhat unbelieving that he wanted to stay here with her. That he would give up his damn flight back home for her.
"It's the fucking capitol and you're telling me they don't have any good food that isn't from a big corporation?"
Okay, so maybe he would. Or Michael had really become a food snob.
"Damn the man!" Tess exclaimed, pumping her fist in the air before grinning at him and leading him up the street. She wasn’t going to think about whether or not he really wanted to be here with her and bring the banter.
She missed the banter.
"I'm an artist – I can't eat at the Mexican McDonalds, ruins the rep."
"A war on happy meals? And here I thought Grimace was so cute," she deadpanned, rolling her eyes for dramatic effect.
"Just feed me woman," Michael groaned, wrapping his arm around her waist.
Instinctively, she leaned into him, relishing the feel of his arms around her, if only for a moment. "And the woman's movement just keeps ticking backward, first the eight years of the Bush administration, now Michael Guerin is barking at me to feed him. Today Jerry Falwell is smiling in hell."
"I don't see you barefoot and pregnant, so lunch please,” Michael returned, flashing a grin as he brushed a stray piece of hair off her face.
Too much, too much – too bad it felt so fucking good, and comfortable. Stepping away from him, Tess slid her hand in his, unwilling to completely relinquish his touch yet.
It was stupid and silly and completely not right in any sense of the world – but it was nice to pretend like nothing had happened. That they still were the same people they had been ten years ago and they could just pick up where they left off.
"Since you asked so nicely, there's this place that's famous for its chili."
"Spicy?"
"I wouldn't offer you chili if it wasn't," Tess answered, stepping out of his grasp and toward the street. If they were going, they’d need to hail a cab, and she was the one best equipped for that task.
"Good."
"Good? I offer to wine and dine you – and all you say is good?"
"Improving my vocabulary isn't a high priority right now," Michael stated, following her as she crossed the street, and she was struck, again, by how right this all felt, even after everything.
"Right."
"It's further away from the airport, though," Tess drawled, her arms crossed against her chest, bracing for him to finally give in to logic and leave her.
It was the safe thing to do.
"Would you shut up about my damn flight?" Michael snapped, visibly annoyed with her constant nagging on the subject.
"Sorry, it's just…"
"Tess, I knew I was going to miss my plane the second I saw you. Y…It's worth it," Michael admitted, stumbling over his words as he awkwardly clawed at his eyebrow
God, she was going to fucking cry. And all because he got choked up and he was always going to stay in DC longer for her. Pathetic.
"Oh,” Tess breathed, unable to find the words to express how much what he said, what he was doing, meant to her. "Even though it's been ten years and I only sent you obscure post cards?"
Holy insecurity, batman!
"I'm over it,” Michael responded with a shrug.
Yeah, right. She didn’t believe that for a second.
"Sure," she huffed, sticking her arm out to hail a cab. He didn’t have to lie to her about coming to terms with what she did all those years ago, it was a lot to deal with – and admittedly, she could have handled it. But she was sixteen and she didn’t know better, then.
Suddenly, Michael pulled on her arm, spinning her toward him, and she met his gaze as her breath hitched in her throat. His emotions laid bare, she found herself drowning in the sadness and love reflected in his toffee colored eyes.
"Look – I don't understand why you didn't tell me, but I finally am starting to understand why you left."
God – he was nothing if not intense, and she knew that he meant every word. Which just made her want to kiss him, or hug him or do one of those girlfriend-type moves that were so not her place anymore.
"I didn't tell you because I couldn't have… I knew, if I saw you, I would have stayed," Tess whispered, her eyes watering with tears as she admitted why she’d left without a word. Sure it was cliché, but Michael had been her rock back then – and if he’d asked her to stay, she would have.
And then they wouldn’t be having this conversation – because in one form or another, they’d be dead. Her mentally, him literally. So, as much as it sucked, she had made the right decision.
Even if it was killing her, thinking about alternative universes where they were happy and together now.
"Oh."
"Yeah. Tragic, huh?"
It was the only thing that she could think of to say to that. Michael had been rendered speechless, or at least had gone back to adopting his high school propensity for one-word answers – and clearly her ability to articulate anything was failing her today.
"We met up again," Michael leered, his breath warm against her cheek as she finally waved down a cab, and lead the way inside, quickly giving the driver the name of the restaurant.
"You've certainly become more optimistic," Tess drawled, running a curl through her index and middle fingers, as she took a quick look at her nails. She had to get a fucking manicure.
"Oh that's me, one fucking ray of sunshine."
That’s more like it. The sarcasm, the banter – it was their version of foreplay. She teased all of her friends, but only Michael was able to keep up with her in the wit department.
"No cloud stands a chance against Michael Guerin?" She perked up, grinning as she remembered that stupid line Max gave Michael whenever they started practicing their powers together.
"Channeling Evans now? What, expecting me to quote Shakespeare and drag you to Vegas?"
No fucking way.
"It was Liz's idea?"
"Yep."
Seriously? Seriously?! No. Fucking. Way. And how could he be so calm about this? This was the most hilariously awful and amazing bit of gossip she’d heard about anyone she knew in Roswell and he was calm about it?
Did he not realize the great mocking potential? How could he not? Or was he just being a tease – that had to be it.
"Never would have thought that,” Tess revealed, her cerulean orbs dancing in anticipation of any additional information Michael could give her.
"Tequila makes people do stupid things – poor bastard didn't stand a chance," Michael smirked, crossing his arms against his chest as his eyes fell on her in anticipation.
She knew he was waiting for a reaction – but seriously?
"Oh my god!" she shrieked, pressing her palm against his shoulder, praying that he would keep talking.
Liz Parker was drunk when she got married.
A-maz-ing.
God, the waitress was looking at her funny, but Michael must have ordered something for her, because she was still laughing whenever the girl came back with her drink.
"She sobered up on the way, but it was pretty funny hearing about it from Deluca," Michael added after placing his order
Okay, so Liz was hung over when she got married – she’d take it.
"I bet! Damn,” Tess snickered, sipping on her drink as she gave the waitress her order.
She just had to ask him. It was the fucking question that begged to be answered, and if she didn’t do it now – it would go unsaid. And then where would they be?
"So, I guess we've been dancing around it enough. Do you have a girlfriend?"
"No, you?"
Oh thank god. And why did that make her feel so damn relieved? If he had a girlfriend, he had a girlfriend – but he was smiling at her. Really smiling, and he seemed extremely interested in her answer.
What to say about Matt? Eh, she was breaking up with him anyway. She just had to hit send on her phone – instant text message breakup. Cruel? Yes. But he had threatened to call the Chinese restaurant on her cat.
Cats are people – err cats, too.
And Michael didn’t have a girlfriend. God, she was so fucking pathetic and predictable. But something about being around him again brought it out of her – this awkward goofiness that she wasn’t sure how to deal with.
"I don't have a girlfriend, no." Tess grinned, receiving only a pointed glare for her effort. Well, at least she answered the question, right?
Okay, the hell with it, she grumbled. Here is the whole truth, nothing but the truth, so help me god. "I'm single, sort of."
"Sort of? What the hell kind of answer is that?" Michael snapped, glowering from his seat across from her.
An honest one?
"He wants me to get rid of my cat and I've recently come to the conclusion that I love the cat more than him. So, I am sending him a text message because I don’t know what else to do," Tess rambled, her cheeks flushed from embarrassment. "That sounds so lame!"
"You're not taking advantage of me in the backseat of a cab to prove the point. I don't think the driver would like it,” Michael shot back, the scowl a distant memory, replaced by a predatory leer and his trademark half smile.
Right, because if he kept looking at her like that they wouldn’t make it to the fucking cab.
"My backup plan! How will I live with myself now that I'm out of ideas?" Tess questioned in mock horror and hitting the send button on her cell.
Officially single!
"It'll be very hard, but you'll manage,” Michael teased, acknowledging that she sent the message with a knowing look.
"Subtlety with the dick jokes – how un-Guerin of you."
"I can be subtle."
Right.
"Says the man who dragged me across the mall."
"Touché," Michael grinned, raising his glass in surrender. Tess 1, Michael 0.
An uneasy silence settled over the two of them and Tess shifted uncomfortably in her chair as she picked at her chili cheese fries.
And this was going so well.
"Okay, so," Tess began, watching as Michael finished his chilidog. "How's your lunch?"
“Spicy, you did good, Harding,” Michael answered with a grin that she didn’t think was quite sincere.
Maybe it was the text message breakup? Was that making him think differently about her? Ugh, why did she care so much? He was just a boy, and she was just a girl.
Right, a boy that she’d never stopped loving, and unexpected circumstances forced her apart from.
Ain’t love grand?
"Okay, I’ve just got to say this, Michael. I’m really glad that I ran into you. I know I said it earlier, but still. I've missed this, hanging out with you. I'd say I missed us, but considering my role in it," her voice grew softer, trailing off as she wiped an errant tear off her face.
"I really am sorry for what this did - what I did to you, Michael." More than you could even begin to understand.
“I know that, now. I think I always… but it killed me that I wasn’t strong enough to help you,” Michael admitted, taking her hand in his and gently squeezing it, which only caused her to cry even more. “I have to ask one more question – why couldn’t Isabel dreamwalk you?”
God, she was a mess, and crying in Ben’s Chili Bowl of all places.
“I blocked her, I blocked all of you – I didn’t want anyone getting hurt because of me. It hurt, cutting that connection, because even though they weren’t that nice to me, they were still part of my family,” her words were measured, matter of fact – she was trying so hard not to cry in earnest, when all she wanted to do was break down in sobs and bask in all the emotions she was feeling.
Michael didn’t hate her.
“Max blames himself, you know, for you leaving? Said it was because he wouldn’t give up Liz for you,” he admitted, his thumb drawing circles on her skin as he continued to hold onto her hand.
Was he – oh my god. That was the dumbest thing she’d ever heard.
She opened and shut her mouth a few times before a loud snort escaped and she burst into laughter. Of all the dumbass things she’d heard in his life, this was certainly close to the top of her list. Max blamed himself because of fucking destiny? “It still is all about him, isn’t it?”
Seriously, what the fuck were they thinking when they decreed that Max was her destiny? Max and her? Oil and water.
God, if someone ever said, “you’re my dream girl, Tess”, she’d laugh, or smack them, or something. And this – there were no words for the idiocy of one Max Evans.
“It’s the ears, probably.”
“Uh huh. Him and Dumbo – stars of their own fucking circus,” Tess snapped, growing more annoyed with Max with each passing second. How dare he? The nerve – god, no wonder people had overthrown him last go around – what a fucking prick.
Michael, obviously realizing her mounting fury, asked, “Can we not talk about the flying elephant? I just had a good meal with this girl I haven’t stopped thinking about for ten years– and the only balls I want inserted into any conversation are mine.”
“Okay, let’s get out of here. I’ve dined you, wined you on their finest Snapple – I think it’s time I show you my place,” Tess grinned, leading him outside into the September sun, playfully swaying her hips, her ire forgotten.
Life was too short for this crap – she’d already lost ten years with Michael, and she wanted to make up for lost time, that is, if he wanted to – they’d never really established that, except for his suggestive looks and her grins.
“Ms. Harding, are you trying to seduce me?” Michael questioned, grinning lasciviously at her – his eyes darkening in desire.
Mmm – message received.
“Well, Mr. Guerin, would you like me to?” She returned, staring up at him in a challenge.
“Absolutely,” Michael breathed, cupping her cheek as he drew her in, pressing his lips against hers.
She returned in kind, years of desire and passion flowing through her as she moved against him. Her nails digging into his back, Tess let out a moan as his tongue met hers, drawing it out and in again. Raking his bottom lip against her teeth, she felt her body hit the wall, his forehead meeting hers for a moment as they caught their breath.
Warm puffs of air brushed against her face as he reverently played with the strap to her tank top. “We should get a cab,” Tess whispered, her darkened eyes mirroring his – a silent message communicated between them.
Pretty soon, kissing won’t be the only type of PDA going on out here.
“Let’s go home,” Michael mumbled, placing butterfly kisses on her neck.
Nodding, she hailed a cab – not bothering to mention that he was her home.
gnrkrystle -- thanks for the fb, I'm glad you like it! This is actually the last part, I've written a few MV stories, all of which are accessible at PA, but this one holds a special place in my heart.
--G
Flashbacks are in italics; Lyrics are to "Intervention" by the Arcade Fire
-------------------------------------
Part 13
-------------------------------------
The king's taken back the throne
The useless seed is sown
When they say they're cutting off the phone
I'll tell 'em you're not home
No place to hide
You were fighting as a soldier on their side
You're still a soldier in your mind
Though nothing's on the line
2014
Racing up the hill as gravel ground under his feet, the hard crunch was inaudible over the staccato rhythm of his heartbeat echoing in his ears. Time was running out - a realization so trite and yet so daunting that it tore at him, driving him to move faster through the desert.
He was the only one who could do this - it was his impetus and his burden. But he was the only one who knew all the players, the motivations, the necessity and the panacea. They all knew that it had something to do with her, but that was where their knowledge ended -- the immediacy of the war had become their primary concern.
But Michael was a soldier, a general, and while it was his job, first and foremost, to protect the rapidly depleting members of his "army" he couldn't forget the objective, even if it was like throwing a hail-mary pass in the super bowl.
There was no room for error.
Khivar's forces were rapidly gaining ground -- and the core group of six had become three – Max, Liz and him. He wore their deaths like a tattoo, scarlet letters reminding him of how he'd failed -- lives that he had an obligation to avenge.
But her death was still the one that pained him the most.
He couldn't think about this now -- he was so close, the pod chamber looming over him as he continued his rushed march toward absolution. If he could do this, he could save the world and Tess at the same time.
It was like he was in that TV show, and Tess was the cheerleader.
But that would mean that he was that Asian guy, Hiro, and he wasn't exactly grateful for this burden -- he needed to stop thinking in metaphors, it was only screwing with his focus.
Brown strands of hair flew in his face, dirty and sweaty as he continued the trek up to the once familiar mountain. He hadn't been here in years; the need to find Tess and the necessity of keeping the chamber's location a secret had prevented him from coming back. Only the two girls had been here since the war started -- making the necessary preparations.
He'd never been good with science -- and they'd needed him to lead this suicide mission.
At least the people who'd recreated him were consistent; Michael mused stifling a mirthless laugh. He'd led a failed army against Khivar in two life times, though, to be fair, his army was just a bunch of rednecks fighting for good ole freedom, whatever the cost.
The rest of them were all dead or enslaved. Khivar's people thought the wealthier ones made better pets. Shuddering, he tried to ignore the way his stomach tied in knots thinking about it. Khivar's minions stripped people of their free will, en masse, creating an army of autonomous humans reprogrammed into fighters wholly devoted to Khivar.
It made him sick to think that Tess could have suffered the same fate by Nicholas' hand. They'd never discussed it after they found out about the army, trying to bury themselves in the fight for Earth, but it was constantly there, the silent elephant in the room.
If Nicholas had his way, Tess would have been the leader of Khivar's army.
Michael'd never been more thankful that Kal had been there for her than he had in that moment. He hated fighting enough, years with Hank and his attack on Pierce had taught him at an early age the true price of violence on the soul -- and facing her, he knew, instinctively, he wouldn't still be here.
Hundreds of feet marched in tandem, centuries blanketing the desert as they came closer as the metallic taste of adrenaline masked his panic. They were coming closer, no doubt aware of his presence and determined to destroy him.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
Cursing, Michael scowled as he propelled himself up the mountain, racing, trying desperately to remain two steps ahead. Stealth no longer an option, he hurled his frame up the rocks, not caring that he might alert the soldiers to his presence -- this was his only shot to end this, and while it was not ideal, he had to do this for her.
Tiny red lines slithered down his palm as he clawed at the rocks, praying that he'd find the only stone that mattered. Why hadn't he fucking paid attention whenever Max did his stupid pass over the rocks?
"Damn it," Michael bellowed, balling his hands into fists and pounding them into the rock, frustrated and desperate as Khivar's army marched toward him. There was no room for failure and yet here he was, screwing up royally and putting the mission in jeopardy.
Whoever thought he was a suitable general clearly was allied against them. He couldn't even find the entrance to the chamber.
Michael Guerin. Eternal fuck up.
If she could see him now -- she'd regret ever tasking him with this. Tess deserved someone who could actually complete this mission.
Sharp, blistering pain cut through him, ripping, splitting skin and nerves overloading as the impact of the blast on his back registered. Stumbling, jerking as his body fell forward, he moaned as his arm shattered against the rocks, darkness overtaking him.
Raking a hand through his hair, Michael watched as the door turned and Tess walked in. They married two years ago in an elaborate ceremony that neither of them wanted, but went through so Kal could have bragging rights amongst his industry friends about the wedding of his only "daughter."
Tess looked beautiful in that white gown, walking down the aisle in Athens, a bunch of producers told her that she should act, and she'd laughed, graciously turning them down. The only regret he had about it all was that he couldn't share that moment with Max or Isabel -- Tess was too afraid that she'd endanger them if they suddenly found out she was alive. Reluctantly, he'd agreed.
What killed him was that she was right -- the reporters were spending the day cycling through their monologues, a fearful din repeating the latest update from Roswell.
Aliens were among them.
"Michael, what is this?" Tess whispered as she stared at the candlelit table and array of flowers in the dining room, a hint of dread hanging on her words as she surveyed the room.
She was on to him -- he should have known better, Tess knew him better than he knew himself, most of the time.
"Can't a man cook for his wife?" he responded with a smirk in an attempt to mask the serious nature behind the gesture. His flight was leaving at dawn – from LAX to Albuquerque, he'd drive the three and a half hours down to Roswell. He'd had to book a private jet; the FAA had grounded all commercial flights.
Michael hadn't had time for questions, Max had ordered him to Roswell, from the disposable cell phone he hadn't used in years, but still kept in case of emergency, and then Kal had been on the other line, telling him what he already knew.
The enemy had arrived.
"Uh, yeah, but didn't you catch the news?" Tess returned, crossing her arms against her chest in a challenge as she brushed a long strand of blonde hair off her face.
"I don't want to talk about that right now."
"But Michael, it could be Khivar!" Tess shot back, indignant as he put plates of pasta on the table, refusing to let him pretend like everything was normal, at least for tonight.
"Please, Tess," Michael returned, his protests weak to his own ears. He just knew if they started this conversation, his last memories of her would be Tess relegating him to the couch, or kicking him out of the house, angry and upset over the news.
"You know something," she accused, her lips thinning to a pale white line as her arms rested across her chest.
Michael knew that it was wrong, but this was truly the last thing he needed right now. Max had ordered him back to Roswell, on a call to the disposable cell phone he’d kept for emergencies, ever since he left to find Tess all those years ago, telling him that the news was true and he was needed. Never a question on how he’d been all these years, just a request that he knew he had to follow through on, even if he hadn’t wanted to honor what he’d been engineered for.
He just needed a happy last night together with Tess, since he was literally going off to war in the morning. Michael’d never understood the soldiers who wanted ‘chicks waiting for them’ back at home, but now, confronted with his past and his sense of duty, he knew that he needed this night of escapism to keep going.
"What?" He tried to brush off her words, hoping that she would drop it even though he knew she wouldn’t.
"No, don't play dumb with me Michael Guerin. You never cook! We bought this place because of the massive kitchen and the only fucking thing you've made is a lot of orders to Domino's! What the hell is going on?" Tess accused as she nervously grabbed at her hair, her insecurities apparent in her delivery.
She knew him too well -- and if it was any other time he’d be flattered by her attention to detail, or at least amused by her accurate assessment of his cooking habits.
"Tess," Michael pleaded, knowing full well that he was in the middle of a losing battle with her.
"Don't Tess me! You're sending me away, that's what this is! You're going to Roswell and you don't want me to go!"
Her words stood unanswered for a few moments as he tried to figure out what he could say to her to calm the rage that was building within her. He hadn’t realized what this would do to her -- or that she even felt that he didn’t trust her after what Nicholas had tried to do all those years ago.
"You know, your silence is really telling, Guerin," Tess spat as she grabbed her keys, heading for the door, her eyes watering as she headed for the exit.
"What do you want me to say?" Michael bellowed as he chased after her, willing her to at least hear him out.
"That you want me to come! I'm an alien too, or have you forgotten?" She snapped, turning to face him, her blue eyes blazing as the anger coursed through her veins.
"Tess, you're not coming to Roswell with me," Michael returned, scowling as she spun on her heal and reached for the door, opening it slightly before slamming it shut, her indignation getting the better of her.
"Who died and made you king?" Her tone icy as she marched toward him, determined to prove how important she could be to this mission.
He knew that look, Tess wasn’t going to back down unless he came clean and told her what, exactly, was going on. Kal had warned him that she’d be upset, but he’d never thought that she’d be this angry with him.
Fuck.
"It's dangerous! Khivar is in Roswell and he's trying to kill us, now that Max and Liz alerted him to our presence and he tried to reclaim his birthright by using the stupid granolith," Michael explained, as calmly as he could while she glowered at him, her palms flattened against the Formica countertop.
"What?" She whispered, her anger deflating a bit at his revelation as she slipped her left hand into her hair, processing what he’d said.
"Kal called -- he said that Max and Liz were fucking around with the granolith because Max wanted to do something special for their anniversary and make her his queen. Since he doesn't know how to use the granolith, he wound up laying claim to his crown and challenging Khivar's rule.”
He decided to leave the part about Max calling out. Michael knew that she would look for someone to blame, and as angry as he was with Max, he knew that the person at fault here was Khivar.
"So, Max started a war... all by accident? Can't he just apologize?" Tess questioned, her voice higher than usual as she choked on a laugh that seemed more like a desperate sob, unable to grasp what, exactly this meant for the both of them.
"No -- this is what Khivar has wanted to happen all along. It gives him a legitimate reason to go to war with us, since the King of Antar instigated it," Michael replied, taking her hand in his as a few fearful tears slipped down her cheek.
This was for real, and it would change their lives forever – Tess still bore the scars of what Nicholas had done all those years ago, and he was nothing compared to Khivar, according to Kal. Khivar was out for blood; he’d been training and cultivating his gifts for years while they’d been reveling in their human sides, to their own detriment. Because, funky light shows and unidentified flying objects aside, he would do whatever he could to protect his throne.
The ironic thing was Max didn’t even want it.
"Fuck," Tess whispered, batting at her cheeks, trying to hide her fear behind determination.
"Tess, I need you to stay behind," Michael pleaded, his eyes meeting hers as the self-loathing rose within him.
He hated that he had to be the one to do this, especially knowing how much she wanted to help. Out of the four of them, this was her fight – the stupid deal, the years she spent on the run – she had more reason to hate Khivar than the rest of them.
Ripping her hand out from under his, Tess glared at him, hurt by his request. "Michael, I'm the strongest of any of you! You need me! This is about Nicholas isn't it? You don't trust me!"
"I trust you, god! I just don't trust myself with you there; I'll be more concerned for your safety than I will be for the mission."
"That is such bullshit Michael! I'm the better -- I know what to expect!" Tess returned, furiously pacing from the dining room to the kitchen and back again.
"I know -- that's why you need to stay here, in hiding. If I die, I need you to come in and end this," Michael admitted as she crumpled into the kitchen chair, distraught over what he’d just said – that death was a real possibility here.
"Michael, I need you! You can't just leave me!" Tess pleaded, sobs escaping from her throat
"Not as much as I need you,” Michael whispered, knowing what Tess really meant was don’t die on me. “You're the only one who is strong enough to do this -- Kal's expecting you."
"How much time do we have?" Tess asked finally, clinging to the armrest of her chair, her white fingers revealing how scared she was and that she’d resigned herself to his fate, processing what, exactly, he was saying.
"My flight leaves early tomorrow," he admitted, bracing himself for her fury at the news that he had planned to leave without telling her until moments before he left, but it never came.
"I love you," Tess said finally, her red-rimmed eyes scrutinizing him, trying to put everything to memory. He’d seen that look many times before, in class, when a painter was studying an object before immortalizing it on canvas, however it’d never seemed so tragic until he faced her.
"I know, I love you too," Michael whispered, closing the space between them as he wrapped his arms around her, burying his face in her shoulder as he broke down, the two of them collapsing onto the tile floor, painting each other with their tears.
Stilling his breath as one of the soldiers walked over his broken mass of bones and skins, Michael silently prayed they'd think him dead and move on.
He heard the young kid say something, mangled and nonsensical under the haze of pain and dread and the drumbeat of a hundred men retreating, satisfied that they'd done their job.
Waiting a moment before moving, Michael registered the angry sting of salt licked tears meeting with fresh cuts and the sticky wetness of his blood pooling under him.
"What are you doing?" he snapped, glaring into his wife's now green eyes, a mirthless gaze reflected back at him. Even though the dread was rising within him, he couldn't help but admire how her auburn hair looked against her gilded skin, the royal blue cotton of her tank top riding up slightly as she leaned against the wall of his makeshift headquarters.
While Michael would have preferred she look like Tess she was still his and that was what mattered.
One of the soldiers had told him that there was a prisoner in his office -- an alien. Max had volunteered to come with him, but he'd refused -- they all thought it was another skin that served as follower of his from Antar and it just wasn't safe for "Zan" to be in harm's way.
Never in a million years had he expected to see her when he walked through the door.
"I know I look different, but normally, Guerin, when your estranged wife, who was forced away by circumstances beyond either of our control, shows up, the appropriate response is 'hi honey, nice to see you. I've missed you. I love you.’ just in case you forgot," Tess returned with a smile, stepping closer to him, and reaching a hand up to cup his cheek, only to have him grasp it and move it away from him.
He couldn't have her touching him, because the second she did, he'd be begging her to stay. The only way he'd survived the eight months of this war had been to ignore all of his emotions, shut himself off from his family, his friends and her, and focus on the mission at hand.
"Tess," Michael warned, rolling his eyes as he took a step away from her, trying to appear unaffected by the hurt that was registering on her face. She shouldn't be here -- it wasn't safe, he wasn't safe, and she had a role to play in this war.
"Well, I've missed you -- and I think we both know that I still love you," she huffed, pursing her lips together as she twirled a strand of hair between her fingers. He knew she was masking fear with female bravado, but he couldn't bring himself to scowl at her.
"You shouldn't be here," he replied, his response ringing hollow in his ears. God, she was even more beautiful than he remembered and seeing her, alive in front of him brought him so much relief.
He had missed her, more than she knew.
"You're in a shitty mood,” she drawled in an attempt to change the subject and mask how much his cold delivery hurt her. Michael could read her, even after months apart and more death and destruction than any man should ever face.
"I lost thirty men today," he sighed, their deaths heavy on his mind, another thirty names tattooed to his soul, another mark of failure in the face of adversity.
"Jesus," she breathed, her calm facade gone under the reality of the situation. "I really am sorry Michael."
"I know," Michael frowned, clawing at his eyebrow as he forced back the urge to take her in his arms and bury the horrors of the past eight months in her skin. "It's not safe for you here -- we're relying on you and Kal now."
It was the first time he'd admitted the reality of the situation -- they were going to lose to Khivar, like a bad sequel to a predictable war movie, resistance really was futile. Max was an inspirationless leader, even when the fight was for humanity. Michael knew that he was more of a teacher than a soldier or a general, and Isabel was too concerned for her children's safety to be the public face of the struggle, like a princess should be.
Liz had even resigned herself to defeat, spending days hunched over the destiny book looking for any remedy to the conflict instead of supporting every fool handed measure Max brought to the table.
It wasn't that she didn't love him -- hell, she probably loved him too much, since she was still trying to clean up after Max's mistakes.
Tess' voice cut through his thoughts, her panicked falsetto highlighting the immediacy of whatever she had to say. "Michael, I need to tell you something..."
"What?"
"Kal's dead. Michael. The skins finally tracked us down and he died saving my life," she whispered, her voice wavering as the first glimmers of unshed tears showed on her face. It took him a moment to process what she was saying; the war had desensitized him to death and destruction.
"Are you okay?"
The question slipped awkwardly from his lips and it felt, for a moment, that he was unsure he’d said it. He was never good at comforting others, and the war had taken so much from him.
"Are you?" She deflected, taking a step toward him and extending her hand, slipping it into his when he wasn’t expecting it. Staring at her for a moment in shock, he processed just what she’d done and how right it felt to touch her again.
"I'm supposed to be the fucking general and I keep losing, Tess. No wonder we all died on Antar -- I'm fighting fifteen-year-old soldiers and losing! My men are deserting me, and the sad thing is I can't fucking blame them! We're all going to die. And it's all my fault!"
He was screaming now, his voice harsh and angry as a few frustrated tears slipped from the corners of his eyes. Violently swatting them away, Michael scowled at her concerned gaze. She shouldn’t feel bad for him, he was the fucking reason that Kal was dead and they were in this situation.
"Whoa. Michael -- it's not your fault! You can't possibly be blaming yourself for this! We both know how this all started and it's not like you could have run to the government for help, at the time. I am so proud of you; I can't even begin to tell you."
"Stop being my wife for a second, Tess," he snapped, backing away from her, annoyed by her sympathy and her faith in him, when he clearly didn’t deserve it.
"Excuse me?"
"You can't objectively say that I've done a good job here," Michael snapped brushing his sweat-licked hair off of his face.
"You have," Tess replied, biting down on her lip as if she was debating whether or not to say something. "Look, we've all fucked up and I could tell you a million ways that I think I am a failure in comparison to who I was on Antar, but it'll only help Khivar win."
How was she able to say exactly what he needed to hear, whether he wanted to hear it or not? And why did she believe in him when all the evidence proved that he was a failure at this. He was a fucking community college art teacher, and he used to roll his eyes at military recruiters in high school when they targeted him in the trailer park, offering him a better future -- two things that were evident in his failures win battles against Khivar’s army.
"What are you talking about?" Michael asked, wondering how she was unable to see that Khivar had won and they were just borrowing time before he killed them all.
"Our insecurities -- it's part of what makes us human. But, look -- we're not all going to die, unless we will it. Kal told me some things -- a way to fix all of this. That's why I'm here Michael. I need your help, because what I'm going to do is risky and you're the only person I trust to help me stop this."
Tess sounded half crazy, her delivery peppered with desperation and purposeful rhetoric, but somehow he couldn’t find it in himself to ignore her and send her back into hiding yet.
What the hell could she do to fix this war? Fighting Khivar was a suicide mission, and eventually all of them would die, losing the planet in the process.
"Stop what?"
Tess flashed him a sad smile before walking toward him, her mouth finding his ear as a strand of auburn hair brushed against his cheek. She wrapped an arm around him and stretched her body upward before whispering, "The end of the world.”
Stirring, Michael clawed at the debris as dread settled in his stomach, his breath growing shorter by the minute.
He was going to fail her -- the blast had been fatal, it was just a matter of time, now, until he was reunited with her and he could see her disappointment firsthand.
Michael knew what he had to do -- he just prayed that Max was able to do what he couldn't.
Snaking his hand underneath him, he painted his fingers red, his muscles tearing under the weight of his movements. A guttural moan escaped from his throat as he began to draw a message in his own blood.
He'd used a number of mediums in his artwork -- watercolors, charcoal, pencils, acrylics, but he'd never felt so close to his work as he did in that moment, scraping his fingers, raw and brittle under his weight against the rubble, trying to leave a message for Max before the inevitable.
The color drained from his face when he saw copper hair sprawled on the rocks, limbs awkwardly framed by the glistening crimson of fresh blood pooling underneath her body. His knees buckled under his weight and Michael collapsed to the ground, frantically grabbing at her body, trying to shake her into waking.
This wasn’t happening. Not now. They’d just lost Isabel a week ago; soldiers had staked the place out, thinking that it was close to the granolith. She’d promised to avoid him, avoid this – she was their only hope, and now here she was, a pile of broken limbs.
"Michael," she breathed, her faint voice breaking him from his panicked thoughts as she choked on her pained sobs as a thin red line trickled down from her mouth.
"Shh," he pleaded, relieved that they still had time to correct this. He could give her some of his energy; postpone the true impact of the blast, while he went to get Max from their headquarters. "Don't try to move, I'll get Max."
"Michael, you have to listen to me, there isn't much time," her voice was strained, the exertion that her panicked delivery was taking on her body evident in her face as her eyes rapidly shifted from side to side, imploring him to listen.
"What? No, Max can... he can save you," he whispered, his answer more a prayer than anything as he wrapped his arms around her, propping her torso up against his chest, ignoring the slightly blue tint to her bloodstained flesh.
Elevate the body – slow the blood loss. The extremely rudimentary knowledge of wounds raced through his head as he watched the slow rise and fall of her chest.
"It's up to you, now. I fucked up – came back too early -- and now you're the one who has to... has to... go back," she rushed out, her voice cracking as a result of her efforts.
"Tell Liz; tell her that I told you what's going on, that you’re the one. We've been working on it together -- it's almost ready, another week, maybe,” she continued, her statements jumbled and a bit nonsensical due to the extreme blood loss.
But Max would come.
He had to.
Why the hell wasn’t he here?
Fuck – what did she even mean? Tell Liz? The one?
Shit.
She’d just drafted him to take her place as the alien Marty McFly – what the hell did he even know about the granolith? He’d been kept away from it for safety reasons – they all had.
"I can't. I don't even know what I'm supposed to change, what's supposed to happen," Michael argued, tears biting at the corners of his eyes as her glassy stare lost its focus. "I know less than anyone -- Jesus, I let Isabel die!"
“Not your fault. You didn’t. Stop blaming yourself -- we both know who really to blame,” she rasped, her eyelids drooping as her breath grew shorter – there wasn’t much time left.
He was losing her.
Just like he lost the war.
It all came back to that – regardless of her ire at Max Evans, if he had been a better general, then they’d have won. She told him once, after she rejoined him with this mission that she stopped believing in destiny a long time ago – it was one of those things he’d known, but never heard her say – and at the time, he’d felt relieved.
Now, with her blood marking his skin like a scarlet letter – he would give anything to heed destiny’s warnings years ago. Not the stupid soap opera garbage – but cared more about who he was supposed to be.
Maybe then he could have at least put up a fucking fight.
“Tess, c’mon baby, stay with me, Max will come and save you,” he pleaded, gently brushing a stray hair off her face, unwilling to move her, since she was still breathing, although it was shallow.
"1988. Los Angeles. You need to focus on that – it's a machine, but it goes where you're thinking about," Tess coughed, her brow knitted together as she struggle to breathe. "You need to go to K...Kal, and tell him everything. Michael, you're the only other one who knows where I was going… the only one I trust."
"What if he doesn't listen?" It wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility. Kal was Tess’ protector, and only required to listen to her – she could order him to help them, if he decided to ignore their pleas.
She wouldn’t, but the option was there.
And that was why he was convinced she was the only one Kal would trust, completely.
"He will, I have faith," Tess answered, her voice much stronger than he was expecting.
"Since when?" The question came up without warning, and his jaw dropped after it fell from his mouth.
He was such an asshole.
Actually, asshole didn’t begin to cover what he was.
Why the hell was she smiling?
"Leave you to be a smartass when I'm dying," she sputtered, a faint laugh peppering her coughs with an ominous tone. "God it's so cold."
This was really happening.
She was really – there was nothing that – he couldn’t even think, it was like his heart stopped in his chest, her breathing growing shallower by the second
"Baby, don't…”
"I've... I've always had faith in you, Michael," Tess murmured, her body slumping into his, too weak to even sit upright anymore.
"I know. I know," Michael choked out over his tears, shaking from the impact of his sobs on his body as he gently pressed his lips to the crown of her head. Matted hair brushed against his mouth, brittle and lifeless as he whispered, “I love you.”
Her dry hand lay on top of his and she held it tightly as she whispered a barely audible affirmation, "love you."
She was gone.
Michael groaned as the sharp sting of skin on skin jerked him into waking. His eyes lolled as a blurry figure came into view. It was hard to focus – pain was overriding every one of his five senses – but he could make out the long, sweat-licked dark hair shining against Max's leather vest.
He couldn't save Tess – but maybe he could save the world.
"Michael, you have to look at me!" Max commanded his panicked voice cutting through the haze and he winced in response.
He finally got it – that feeling of impending doom, the realization that death truly was only seconds away and it simply was too late.
Fuck – he had to get Max to see it.
Max Evans was their only hope – he had to get Evans to understand, as he passed off the message to another -- and he didn't have the same faith Tess had when she'd done the same, that their new savior would do what was asked of him.
"Too late," he wheezed as Max's hands pressed against his back. "Save your strength – you need to listen. Don't have much time."
“God damnit Michael, this isn’t the time to be stubborn!” Max boomed, his warm hands pressed against his flesh, the pressure barely registering as his cells died off by the second.
“I’m dying, you’re too late – always too fucking – talk to Liz, you got about an hour… you need to go back, fix this,” Michael wheezed, imploring him to listen.
He had to listen.
Their lives depended on it.
“What?” Max asked, shock painted on his face. Ever since the war started, he’d only bothered to involve himself in matters that directly concerned him. He’d fight when he wanted – claiming that the camps needed his healing abilities, and while he shrugged it off as he and Kyle fought side by side, he now got why Tess was annoyed.
“Liz knows how to use the granolith – you have to go back, you’re the only one of us left – stop the end of the world,” Michael groaned, weakly attempting to move Max’s hands off of his abdomen. There was no time for this – the die had been cast, and there were things far more important at stake than his life.
“Just look at me! I can’t – fuck, Serena was the one who…”
“D… T…” he grunted angrily, his mouth felt like it’d been coated in cotton, unable to speak. He was drying up – like Tess and Isabel before him, and soon he’d be dust.
“What?”
Shit.
What he’d said – it hadn’t made sense. He had to do something – had to make Max understand. Even Liz didn’t know what was going on – just that the granolith acted on thought.
Max had to read the message he’d left. It wasn’t comprehensive, but it was enough to drive home a point, one that he still didn’t grasp, that he and Tess had been hiding from everyone.
Black spots colored his view as he thrashed against Max’s arms in a desperate attempt to get him to pay attention – he didn’t have much time. Darkness overtook him as Max tried to steady his body, one realization evident.
He was going to fail her, all over again.
"You sure we have to do this?" Michael asked as she paced the small room that served as quarters, a threadbare towel covering her gilded skin, darkened from the southern California sun and what he was sure was a terrible trek to New Mexico -- it took over thirteen hours by car, and by the look of her, he knew she hadn’t driven most of the way.
She’d told him what she could about the plan, and his role in it, which was small, given his position within their coterie, and the need to keep everyone at arm’s length, should Khivar’s men get a hold of any of them.
He was basically supposed to just convince them that she was right while keeping her identity a secret. Another lie to add to the many he’d told them through the years.
"Michael, the only reason I'm still alive is because they don't know who I am. And the thing is, if Max and Isabel think that this is about me trying to save my own ass, they won't be receptive to it," Tess reasoned, her lips pursing as she registered his discontent with her plan.
"Why don't you trust them?"
"It's not that -- what we're asking, it's going to change everything. We're involving Kal way earlier -- I mean, who knows, Max may never meet Liz, Isabel might not wind up with Kyle," Tess explained shifting her weight uncomfortably from side to side as she awkwardly twirled a strand of hair between her fingers.
"We may not be together," Michael stated, glowering at the prospect of his wife with another man.
"Guerin, it may be a whole new world, but it's still us,” Tess whispered, her eyes dancing as she brushed a stray piece of hair off his face, the towel slipping slightly as she pressed herself against him. “Look, I gave up on destiny a long time ago, but I do believe that some things, like the two of us, are meant to be -- but do you see what I mean?"
"Not really."
"If you tell people, 'Tess is back and going to change the past to save the future, oh and your lives may be entirely different', they're going to resent it. That's why we need to make this about the four-square -- that I'm some outside force.”
"I hate lying to them," Michael sighed, conceding that she had a point.
"God, this whole thing is so fucked up. I can't believe we're not even going to tell Max what he did," Tess shot back, angrily retrieving clothing from her backpack and throwing a green t-shirt over her naked body. It was strange, seeing her this angry and cold, knowing that she’d been so soft in his arms only moments before as they buried their sins in each other’s skin, trying to find solace in one another, if only for a while.
"What's the good in that? We need him to agree with us, and that means Max has to be blameless," Michael reasoned, hating that their attempt to save them all would feed into Max’s stupid theory that he was the one who pushed Tess away, since she was too fragile to understand Max and Liz’s relationship.
All this crap about the four-square being stronger together, working as a unit, and that Tess’ departure somehow weakened them all was bullshit. She was letting herself take the fall for things that were far beyond her control, when both of them knew that she was the strongest of any of them.
"I know, it just sucks,” Tess huffed, slipping into her jeans, her icy veneer in place as she waved her hair dry. “I mean, I have to look Liz Parker in the eye, knowing that by changing the future she may die at sixteen because Max might not be there to save her!”
“Fuck. You can’t -- there won’t be any casualties,” Michael ordered, forcing back the guilt that was rising within him. He trusted her implicitly, but he only knew the bare outline of what she planned to do -- go back in time to stop this future from happening. Kal had a major role to play, but she wouldn’t say what it was.
She thought it was safer that way. And while she was probably right, he hated not knowing, especially since her explanation was sounding a lot less like Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure and more like that Simpsons’ episode where Homer traveled back in time only to fuck up everything even worse.
It was his faith in her and the fact that they really were at their last resort that he was even going along with her plan.
“Look, these are all things that I’m going to talk to Kal about -- but I mean, I don’t know everything, either. We’re relying on him to do things when he might not be receptive to it,” Tess explained, her voice betraying the conviction in her stance.
“I mean, I believe in him, and I’ll be there to steer him in the right direction, but I... never mind, this is dumb,” she exhaled, flashing him a smile as she stopped pacing. “I’m going to go back in time and fix everything, and who knows? Maybe I’ll be pregnant and you’ll be feeding me gross things like I don’t know, pickled eggs instead of fighting a war at thirty.”
Kids? She was talking about kids now? It was the elephant in the room when they’d gotten together after their reunion in Washington, DC. Between the wedding, her desire to change fields and move closer to Kal and his promotion to assistant department head after only two years, it’d never been the right time for them.
They’d moved into that house outside San Diego six months before the war started with the hope of finally having children, but after he’d left, he’d never been so grateful to know that they hadn’t conceived, yet.
"No one knows you found me, right?" She asked, breaking him from his thoughts, her strange emerald eyes, which seemed more familiar than they should, boring into his flesh.
"No -- Isabel might have an idea, but looking like you do, she's not going to figure it out," Michael replied, never entirely sure whether or not Isabel was invading his dreams when he wasn’t aware of it.
"Okay, good. That's so weird, being relieved about something so terrible,” she returned, her nervous laughter reverberating around the office as she slid her bottom lip between her teeth.
"Are you going to be okay?" he asked, watching her drum her fingers against her other arm one after another.
"Yeah, I'll be fine, I just need to focus on this, because if I don't then I'm going to think about Kal and everything else that happened and I can't do that right now."
Translation: she was not ok.
"Te..."
"Michael," Tess interjected, frowning at his Freudian slip – there was no time for error, and he was finding this detail much more difficult than he’d thought. "We need to be on the same page -- and that starts now."
"I hate this,” he grumbled, staring at her for a moment before adding, “Almost as much as I hate your red hair."
"Michael."
"I like your hair blonde," he admitted with a shrug, deciding not to tell her all that he hated about her plan, knowing that it was truly the only solution left for them.
"And I like yours maintained – looks like we're both not getting what we want!" Tess huffed, a playful smirk plastered on her face. He knew that she was putting on a show for him, trying to seem blasé in the face of so much pain, and while his conscious told him to ask her about it, he needed this momentary escapism as much as she did.
"I just like you, the real you -- including your hair color," Michael stated, drawing her into his chest and wrapping his arms around her.
"I know," Tess murmured, leaning into him as she gently pressed her lips against his before pulling away, the corners of her mouth turning upward in a shy smile, disappearing almost as quickly as it came, the tender moment gone.
"So let's go over this again?"
"You know this is going to just convince Evans that it's his fault you went away," Michael grumbled, scratching his eyebrow, trying to delay his foray into Tess’ re-imagined history. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to help her – it was that after they told Max, Isabel, Liz and Kyle this, the last ties to his old life would be cut, making this really all he had left.
"I don't care – he's not the one going back – I am," Tess shot back, annoyed at the mention of Max’s guilt over her disappearance from Roswell, fourteen years ago. "Ok, what’s my story?"
"You're the only daughter of our protector, Kal Langley, who died trying to save all of our lives when he faced Khivar alone moments after he landed. You've spent your adult life searching for Tess because the united four square is the only way to defeat Khivar -- our gifts compliment each other and we make a complete fighting unit. But since Tess is dead, there's only one option -- time travel, because it's only a matter of time until we're all destroyed. Our soldiers are deserting by the week, and the army keeps killing us off," Michael sighed, watching as she nodded her head emphatically to everything he said.
"Okay, and how do you know this will work?"
"Because Kal taught you everything you know about the granolith. He said this was a last resort, and frankly, we only have two options -- try this or die."
"How can you trust me?"
"You're my wife!" He shouted possessively, glaring at her for even asking the question, despite knowing that she was acting like the others would, when they told them their plans.
"Improvising?" Tess shot back, a wry grin on her face.
He knew that look – she was turned on. How fucking wrong was this?
And why didn’t he care that much?
"I've let you run the show, you're not denying this," he growled, fingering his wedding band as she leaned suggestively against his makeshift desk.
God, it had been too fucking long – and she was doing nothing to help matters, which might have been her intent.
"You're hot when you're pissed," Tess drawled, brushing a strand of red hair off her face. "Ok, caveman, you’re right, I’d never deny that -- you’re still the Tarzan to my Jane." She grinned, her eyes darkening as she looked pointedly at his jeans.
Yeah, there was no doubt what they’d be doing later.
"Good," Michael grunted, trying to ignore the image of her in a loincloth and how many ways he could take it off of her.
King of the Jungle indeed.
"And what's my name?" Tess asked, getting back to the matter at hand.
"Tess.”
"Michael, seriously," Tess snapped, her arms akimbo as she made her annoyance known. She was nervous now, he could read her facial expressions, and this was becoming real to her for the first time as well.
"Mrs. Guerin,” Michael returned with a smirk, only to be greeted with a frown and a raised eyebrow. She was really going to make him do it – acknowledge this stupid name Langley had given her years ago as legitimate – the last fucking thing that was theirs destroyed.
Sure, she’d agreed to still, publicly, be his wife, but it wouldn’t be the same – at least before he wasn’t lying to his friends, he’d just never said anything – now he was laying Tess Harding to rest.
She’d already done it – it was more than the hair and the contacts – nothing overt, but it was the way that she committed herself fully to the mission, head over heart. Though he’d never ask her, he knew that if he’d refused to help her she’d have gone it alone, never bothering to dwell on his refusal.
It was a departure from who she’d been before – someone who was a victim of feeling too much that she was unsure she could make a contribution. Now, she was all about the mission, saving the day, closing herself off from distractions – winning was the only solution.
Exhaling, he answered her, driving home the final nail in the proverbial coffin, "Serena.”
“Fuck, Michael, don’t!” Max screamed, violently shaking him into waking. “I’ll do it, go back in time – just don’t die on me. I need you.”
Maybe he still had a chance to tell him.
Opening his eyes slightly, Michael grunted in response, his arms felt like dead weights, too heavy to move.
Fuck he had to do something.
“Talk to me!” Max implored him, looking far younger than his thirty years – almost as if he were a petulant child and not a man who’d seen more death and destruction than most.
Shaking his head no, he watched Max’s face fall, defeated, realizing that Michael truly couldn’t speak to him.
“Shit, Michael, I tried to – my powers, they wouldn’t work, you were right,” Max whispered, brushing a piece of hair out of his face as his dark eyes stared at him, despondent. “I’m so sorry.”
This couldn’t turn into a pity party for his impending death. Grunting, he emphatically pointed at the message he’d written Max, only to see it covered in dirt and footprints.
Max’s footprints.
Hopefully he could still make it out.
He needed to read it. He needed to understand who she was, what her role was in this mess.
Letting out a silent plea, he watched Max turn around to face the blood-etched message, hoping that somehow he could still make it out.
“Tess is S…” Max read, his brow furrowing as he tried to make out the rest of it. “Michael, I can’t… jesus, you wrote this in your blood?”
“Never mind, I can’t. Tess is special?” Max asked, staring past him, ignoring the violent sway of his head from side to side.
He needed to see. He needed to know that Serena was Tess’ alias, and because of that Kal was an important part of the story – not an afterthought.
“I know Tess is special. You guys all told me that -- you were going back to save Tess, keep her in Roswell. We’re stronger when we’re together! We need the four-square,” Max breathed, filled with purpose.
Michael knew that look.
It meant that Max Evans was in his own world, filling it with thoughts of how he was going to be the savior.
Opening his mouth to call out, to draw attention to Max’s inability to realize the truth, he was met with nothing. His vocal chords had collapsed, probably not long after his throat dried out, rendering him dumb and ignored in the wake of his newfound derring-do.
“I was a real bastard to her after Liz and I slept together – she was going through something, you could just see her looking so sad, and then she up and left after we went to Arizona,” Max rambled. “I know, I’ll go back, tell Liz that we shouldn’t have sex – that she needs to break up with me so that Tess doesn’t leave. I know that you two were close, but she was so obsessed with me that she couldn’t stand to be in town after Liz and I got back together.
“Plus, you marry Serena, and you won’t waste ten years chasing Tess down for nothing, anyway,” Max finished, a prideful grin on his face.
Banging his fist against the dirt, angry, frustrated tears escaped from his eyes as Max got up from his seat next to him. He wasn’t listening – and Max Evans had just figured out what time he was going to be returning to, and it wasn’t Los Angeles in 1988.
He had failed them all.
And Tess was going to suffer, all because of him.
His eyes watched as Max’s footprints covered the is S, leaving only Tess in his wake – a final reminder of the girl he’d loved and the woman she’d never grow up to be, because he hadn’t been willing to abandon his army in that last week, thinking it was his duty.
Destiny had taken another victim, and the four of them would suffer the consequences.
Sobbing, he willed himself to die, the weight of his failures and the innocent victims they’d claimed too much for his soul. Sliding his eyes shut, his last image was of a bright light shooting off into the night sky, fifty feet away.
--G
Flashbacks are in italics; Lyrics are to "Intervention" by the Arcade Fire
-------------------------------------
Part 13
-------------------------------------
The king's taken back the throne
The useless seed is sown
When they say they're cutting off the phone
I'll tell 'em you're not home
No place to hide
You were fighting as a soldier on their side
You're still a soldier in your mind
Though nothing's on the line
2014
Racing up the hill as gravel ground under his feet, the hard crunch was inaudible over the staccato rhythm of his heartbeat echoing in his ears. Time was running out - a realization so trite and yet so daunting that it tore at him, driving him to move faster through the desert.
He was the only one who could do this - it was his impetus and his burden. But he was the only one who knew all the players, the motivations, the necessity and the panacea. They all knew that it had something to do with her, but that was where their knowledge ended -- the immediacy of the war had become their primary concern.
But Michael was a soldier, a general, and while it was his job, first and foremost, to protect the rapidly depleting members of his "army" he couldn't forget the objective, even if it was like throwing a hail-mary pass in the super bowl.
There was no room for error.
Khivar's forces were rapidly gaining ground -- and the core group of six had become three – Max, Liz and him. He wore their deaths like a tattoo, scarlet letters reminding him of how he'd failed -- lives that he had an obligation to avenge.
But her death was still the one that pained him the most.
He couldn't think about this now -- he was so close, the pod chamber looming over him as he continued his rushed march toward absolution. If he could do this, he could save the world and Tess at the same time.
It was like he was in that TV show, and Tess was the cheerleader.
But that would mean that he was that Asian guy, Hiro, and he wasn't exactly grateful for this burden -- he needed to stop thinking in metaphors, it was only screwing with his focus.
Brown strands of hair flew in his face, dirty and sweaty as he continued the trek up to the once familiar mountain. He hadn't been here in years; the need to find Tess and the necessity of keeping the chamber's location a secret had prevented him from coming back. Only the two girls had been here since the war started -- making the necessary preparations.
He'd never been good with science -- and they'd needed him to lead this suicide mission.
At least the people who'd recreated him were consistent; Michael mused stifling a mirthless laugh. He'd led a failed army against Khivar in two life times, though, to be fair, his army was just a bunch of rednecks fighting for good ole freedom, whatever the cost.
The rest of them were all dead or enslaved. Khivar's people thought the wealthier ones made better pets. Shuddering, he tried to ignore the way his stomach tied in knots thinking about it. Khivar's minions stripped people of their free will, en masse, creating an army of autonomous humans reprogrammed into fighters wholly devoted to Khivar.
It made him sick to think that Tess could have suffered the same fate by Nicholas' hand. They'd never discussed it after they found out about the army, trying to bury themselves in the fight for Earth, but it was constantly there, the silent elephant in the room.
If Nicholas had his way, Tess would have been the leader of Khivar's army.
Michael'd never been more thankful that Kal had been there for her than he had in that moment. He hated fighting enough, years with Hank and his attack on Pierce had taught him at an early age the true price of violence on the soul -- and facing her, he knew, instinctively, he wouldn't still be here.
Hundreds of feet marched in tandem, centuries blanketing the desert as they came closer as the metallic taste of adrenaline masked his panic. They were coming closer, no doubt aware of his presence and determined to destroy him.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
Cursing, Michael scowled as he propelled himself up the mountain, racing, trying desperately to remain two steps ahead. Stealth no longer an option, he hurled his frame up the rocks, not caring that he might alert the soldiers to his presence -- this was his only shot to end this, and while it was not ideal, he had to do this for her.
Tiny red lines slithered down his palm as he clawed at the rocks, praying that he'd find the only stone that mattered. Why hadn't he fucking paid attention whenever Max did his stupid pass over the rocks?
"Damn it," Michael bellowed, balling his hands into fists and pounding them into the rock, frustrated and desperate as Khivar's army marched toward him. There was no room for failure and yet here he was, screwing up royally and putting the mission in jeopardy.
Whoever thought he was a suitable general clearly was allied against them. He couldn't even find the entrance to the chamber.
Michael Guerin. Eternal fuck up.
If she could see him now -- she'd regret ever tasking him with this. Tess deserved someone who could actually complete this mission.
Sharp, blistering pain cut through him, ripping, splitting skin and nerves overloading as the impact of the blast on his back registered. Stumbling, jerking as his body fell forward, he moaned as his arm shattered against the rocks, darkness overtaking him.
Raking a hand through his hair, Michael watched as the door turned and Tess walked in. They married two years ago in an elaborate ceremony that neither of them wanted, but went through so Kal could have bragging rights amongst his industry friends about the wedding of his only "daughter."
Tess looked beautiful in that white gown, walking down the aisle in Athens, a bunch of producers told her that she should act, and she'd laughed, graciously turning them down. The only regret he had about it all was that he couldn't share that moment with Max or Isabel -- Tess was too afraid that she'd endanger them if they suddenly found out she was alive. Reluctantly, he'd agreed.
What killed him was that she was right -- the reporters were spending the day cycling through their monologues, a fearful din repeating the latest update from Roswell.
Aliens were among them.
"Michael, what is this?" Tess whispered as she stared at the candlelit table and array of flowers in the dining room, a hint of dread hanging on her words as she surveyed the room.
She was on to him -- he should have known better, Tess knew him better than he knew himself, most of the time.
"Can't a man cook for his wife?" he responded with a smirk in an attempt to mask the serious nature behind the gesture. His flight was leaving at dawn – from LAX to Albuquerque, he'd drive the three and a half hours down to Roswell. He'd had to book a private jet; the FAA had grounded all commercial flights.
Michael hadn't had time for questions, Max had ordered him to Roswell, from the disposable cell phone he hadn't used in years, but still kept in case of emergency, and then Kal had been on the other line, telling him what he already knew.
The enemy had arrived.
"Uh, yeah, but didn't you catch the news?" Tess returned, crossing her arms against her chest in a challenge as she brushed a long strand of blonde hair off her face.
"I don't want to talk about that right now."
"But Michael, it could be Khivar!" Tess shot back, indignant as he put plates of pasta on the table, refusing to let him pretend like everything was normal, at least for tonight.
"Please, Tess," Michael returned, his protests weak to his own ears. He just knew if they started this conversation, his last memories of her would be Tess relegating him to the couch, or kicking him out of the house, angry and upset over the news.
"You know something," she accused, her lips thinning to a pale white line as her arms rested across her chest.
Michael knew that it was wrong, but this was truly the last thing he needed right now. Max had ordered him back to Roswell, on a call to the disposable cell phone he’d kept for emergencies, ever since he left to find Tess all those years ago, telling him that the news was true and he was needed. Never a question on how he’d been all these years, just a request that he knew he had to follow through on, even if he hadn’t wanted to honor what he’d been engineered for.
He just needed a happy last night together with Tess, since he was literally going off to war in the morning. Michael’d never understood the soldiers who wanted ‘chicks waiting for them’ back at home, but now, confronted with his past and his sense of duty, he knew that he needed this night of escapism to keep going.
"What?" He tried to brush off her words, hoping that she would drop it even though he knew she wouldn’t.
"No, don't play dumb with me Michael Guerin. You never cook! We bought this place because of the massive kitchen and the only fucking thing you've made is a lot of orders to Domino's! What the hell is going on?" Tess accused as she nervously grabbed at her hair, her insecurities apparent in her delivery.
She knew him too well -- and if it was any other time he’d be flattered by her attention to detail, or at least amused by her accurate assessment of his cooking habits.
"Tess," Michael pleaded, knowing full well that he was in the middle of a losing battle with her.
"Don't Tess me! You're sending me away, that's what this is! You're going to Roswell and you don't want me to go!"
Her words stood unanswered for a few moments as he tried to figure out what he could say to her to calm the rage that was building within her. He hadn’t realized what this would do to her -- or that she even felt that he didn’t trust her after what Nicholas had tried to do all those years ago.
"You know, your silence is really telling, Guerin," Tess spat as she grabbed her keys, heading for the door, her eyes watering as she headed for the exit.
"What do you want me to say?" Michael bellowed as he chased after her, willing her to at least hear him out.
"That you want me to come! I'm an alien too, or have you forgotten?" She snapped, turning to face him, her blue eyes blazing as the anger coursed through her veins.
"Tess, you're not coming to Roswell with me," Michael returned, scowling as she spun on her heal and reached for the door, opening it slightly before slamming it shut, her indignation getting the better of her.
"Who died and made you king?" Her tone icy as she marched toward him, determined to prove how important she could be to this mission.
He knew that look, Tess wasn’t going to back down unless he came clean and told her what, exactly, was going on. Kal had warned him that she’d be upset, but he’d never thought that she’d be this angry with him.
Fuck.
"It's dangerous! Khivar is in Roswell and he's trying to kill us, now that Max and Liz alerted him to our presence and he tried to reclaim his birthright by using the stupid granolith," Michael explained, as calmly as he could while she glowered at him, her palms flattened against the Formica countertop.
"What?" She whispered, her anger deflating a bit at his revelation as she slipped her left hand into her hair, processing what he’d said.
"Kal called -- he said that Max and Liz were fucking around with the granolith because Max wanted to do something special for their anniversary and make her his queen. Since he doesn't know how to use the granolith, he wound up laying claim to his crown and challenging Khivar's rule.”
He decided to leave the part about Max calling out. Michael knew that she would look for someone to blame, and as angry as he was with Max, he knew that the person at fault here was Khivar.
"So, Max started a war... all by accident? Can't he just apologize?" Tess questioned, her voice higher than usual as she choked on a laugh that seemed more like a desperate sob, unable to grasp what, exactly this meant for the both of them.
"No -- this is what Khivar has wanted to happen all along. It gives him a legitimate reason to go to war with us, since the King of Antar instigated it," Michael replied, taking her hand in his as a few fearful tears slipped down her cheek.
This was for real, and it would change their lives forever – Tess still bore the scars of what Nicholas had done all those years ago, and he was nothing compared to Khivar, according to Kal. Khivar was out for blood; he’d been training and cultivating his gifts for years while they’d been reveling in their human sides, to their own detriment. Because, funky light shows and unidentified flying objects aside, he would do whatever he could to protect his throne.
The ironic thing was Max didn’t even want it.
"Fuck," Tess whispered, batting at her cheeks, trying to hide her fear behind determination.
"Tess, I need you to stay behind," Michael pleaded, his eyes meeting hers as the self-loathing rose within him.
He hated that he had to be the one to do this, especially knowing how much she wanted to help. Out of the four of them, this was her fight – the stupid deal, the years she spent on the run – she had more reason to hate Khivar than the rest of them.
Ripping her hand out from under his, Tess glared at him, hurt by his request. "Michael, I'm the strongest of any of you! You need me! This is about Nicholas isn't it? You don't trust me!"
"I trust you, god! I just don't trust myself with you there; I'll be more concerned for your safety than I will be for the mission."
"That is such bullshit Michael! I'm the better -- I know what to expect!" Tess returned, furiously pacing from the dining room to the kitchen and back again.
"I know -- that's why you need to stay here, in hiding. If I die, I need you to come in and end this," Michael admitted as she crumpled into the kitchen chair, distraught over what he’d just said – that death was a real possibility here.
"Michael, I need you! You can't just leave me!" Tess pleaded, sobs escaping from her throat
"Not as much as I need you,” Michael whispered, knowing what Tess really meant was don’t die on me. “You're the only one who is strong enough to do this -- Kal's expecting you."
"How much time do we have?" Tess asked finally, clinging to the armrest of her chair, her white fingers revealing how scared she was and that she’d resigned herself to his fate, processing what, exactly, he was saying.
"My flight leaves early tomorrow," he admitted, bracing himself for her fury at the news that he had planned to leave without telling her until moments before he left, but it never came.
"I love you," Tess said finally, her red-rimmed eyes scrutinizing him, trying to put everything to memory. He’d seen that look many times before, in class, when a painter was studying an object before immortalizing it on canvas, however it’d never seemed so tragic until he faced her.
"I know, I love you too," Michael whispered, closing the space between them as he wrapped his arms around her, burying his face in her shoulder as he broke down, the two of them collapsing onto the tile floor, painting each other with their tears.
Stilling his breath as one of the soldiers walked over his broken mass of bones and skins, Michael silently prayed they'd think him dead and move on.
He heard the young kid say something, mangled and nonsensical under the haze of pain and dread and the drumbeat of a hundred men retreating, satisfied that they'd done their job.
Waiting a moment before moving, Michael registered the angry sting of salt licked tears meeting with fresh cuts and the sticky wetness of his blood pooling under him.
"What are you doing?" he snapped, glaring into his wife's now green eyes, a mirthless gaze reflected back at him. Even though the dread was rising within him, he couldn't help but admire how her auburn hair looked against her gilded skin, the royal blue cotton of her tank top riding up slightly as she leaned against the wall of his makeshift headquarters.
While Michael would have preferred she look like Tess she was still his and that was what mattered.
One of the soldiers had told him that there was a prisoner in his office -- an alien. Max had volunteered to come with him, but he'd refused -- they all thought it was another skin that served as follower of his from Antar and it just wasn't safe for "Zan" to be in harm's way.
Never in a million years had he expected to see her when he walked through the door.
"I know I look different, but normally, Guerin, when your estranged wife, who was forced away by circumstances beyond either of our control, shows up, the appropriate response is 'hi honey, nice to see you. I've missed you. I love you.’ just in case you forgot," Tess returned with a smile, stepping closer to him, and reaching a hand up to cup his cheek, only to have him grasp it and move it away from him.
He couldn't have her touching him, because the second she did, he'd be begging her to stay. The only way he'd survived the eight months of this war had been to ignore all of his emotions, shut himself off from his family, his friends and her, and focus on the mission at hand.
"Tess," Michael warned, rolling his eyes as he took a step away from her, trying to appear unaffected by the hurt that was registering on her face. She shouldn't be here -- it wasn't safe, he wasn't safe, and she had a role to play in this war.
"Well, I've missed you -- and I think we both know that I still love you," she huffed, pursing her lips together as she twirled a strand of hair between her fingers. He knew she was masking fear with female bravado, but he couldn't bring himself to scowl at her.
"You shouldn't be here," he replied, his response ringing hollow in his ears. God, she was even more beautiful than he remembered and seeing her, alive in front of him brought him so much relief.
He had missed her, more than she knew.
"You're in a shitty mood,” she drawled in an attempt to change the subject and mask how much his cold delivery hurt her. Michael could read her, even after months apart and more death and destruction than any man should ever face.
"I lost thirty men today," he sighed, their deaths heavy on his mind, another thirty names tattooed to his soul, another mark of failure in the face of adversity.
"Jesus," she breathed, her calm facade gone under the reality of the situation. "I really am sorry Michael."
"I know," Michael frowned, clawing at his eyebrow as he forced back the urge to take her in his arms and bury the horrors of the past eight months in her skin. "It's not safe for you here -- we're relying on you and Kal now."
It was the first time he'd admitted the reality of the situation -- they were going to lose to Khivar, like a bad sequel to a predictable war movie, resistance really was futile. Max was an inspirationless leader, even when the fight was for humanity. Michael knew that he was more of a teacher than a soldier or a general, and Isabel was too concerned for her children's safety to be the public face of the struggle, like a princess should be.
Liz had even resigned herself to defeat, spending days hunched over the destiny book looking for any remedy to the conflict instead of supporting every fool handed measure Max brought to the table.
It wasn't that she didn't love him -- hell, she probably loved him too much, since she was still trying to clean up after Max's mistakes.
Tess' voice cut through his thoughts, her panicked falsetto highlighting the immediacy of whatever she had to say. "Michael, I need to tell you something..."
"What?"
"Kal's dead. Michael. The skins finally tracked us down and he died saving my life," she whispered, her voice wavering as the first glimmers of unshed tears showed on her face. It took him a moment to process what she was saying; the war had desensitized him to death and destruction.
"Are you okay?"
The question slipped awkwardly from his lips and it felt, for a moment, that he was unsure he’d said it. He was never good at comforting others, and the war had taken so much from him.
"Are you?" She deflected, taking a step toward him and extending her hand, slipping it into his when he wasn’t expecting it. Staring at her for a moment in shock, he processed just what she’d done and how right it felt to touch her again.
"I'm supposed to be the fucking general and I keep losing, Tess. No wonder we all died on Antar -- I'm fighting fifteen-year-old soldiers and losing! My men are deserting me, and the sad thing is I can't fucking blame them! We're all going to die. And it's all my fault!"
He was screaming now, his voice harsh and angry as a few frustrated tears slipped from the corners of his eyes. Violently swatting them away, Michael scowled at her concerned gaze. She shouldn’t feel bad for him, he was the fucking reason that Kal was dead and they were in this situation.
"Whoa. Michael -- it's not your fault! You can't possibly be blaming yourself for this! We both know how this all started and it's not like you could have run to the government for help, at the time. I am so proud of you; I can't even begin to tell you."
"Stop being my wife for a second, Tess," he snapped, backing away from her, annoyed by her sympathy and her faith in him, when he clearly didn’t deserve it.
"Excuse me?"
"You can't objectively say that I've done a good job here," Michael snapped brushing his sweat-licked hair off of his face.
"You have," Tess replied, biting down on her lip as if she was debating whether or not to say something. "Look, we've all fucked up and I could tell you a million ways that I think I am a failure in comparison to who I was on Antar, but it'll only help Khivar win."
How was she able to say exactly what he needed to hear, whether he wanted to hear it or not? And why did she believe in him when all the evidence proved that he was a failure at this. He was a fucking community college art teacher, and he used to roll his eyes at military recruiters in high school when they targeted him in the trailer park, offering him a better future -- two things that were evident in his failures win battles against Khivar’s army.
"What are you talking about?" Michael asked, wondering how she was unable to see that Khivar had won and they were just borrowing time before he killed them all.
"Our insecurities -- it's part of what makes us human. But, look -- we're not all going to die, unless we will it. Kal told me some things -- a way to fix all of this. That's why I'm here Michael. I need your help, because what I'm going to do is risky and you're the only person I trust to help me stop this."
Tess sounded half crazy, her delivery peppered with desperation and purposeful rhetoric, but somehow he couldn’t find it in himself to ignore her and send her back into hiding yet.
What the hell could she do to fix this war? Fighting Khivar was a suicide mission, and eventually all of them would die, losing the planet in the process.
"Stop what?"
Tess flashed him a sad smile before walking toward him, her mouth finding his ear as a strand of auburn hair brushed against his cheek. She wrapped an arm around him and stretched her body upward before whispering, "The end of the world.”
Stirring, Michael clawed at the debris as dread settled in his stomach, his breath growing shorter by the minute.
He was going to fail her -- the blast had been fatal, it was just a matter of time, now, until he was reunited with her and he could see her disappointment firsthand.
Michael knew what he had to do -- he just prayed that Max was able to do what he couldn't.
Snaking his hand underneath him, he painted his fingers red, his muscles tearing under the weight of his movements. A guttural moan escaped from his throat as he began to draw a message in his own blood.
He'd used a number of mediums in his artwork -- watercolors, charcoal, pencils, acrylics, but he'd never felt so close to his work as he did in that moment, scraping his fingers, raw and brittle under his weight against the rubble, trying to leave a message for Max before the inevitable.
The color drained from his face when he saw copper hair sprawled on the rocks, limbs awkwardly framed by the glistening crimson of fresh blood pooling underneath her body. His knees buckled under his weight and Michael collapsed to the ground, frantically grabbing at her body, trying to shake her into waking.
This wasn’t happening. Not now. They’d just lost Isabel a week ago; soldiers had staked the place out, thinking that it was close to the granolith. She’d promised to avoid him, avoid this – she was their only hope, and now here she was, a pile of broken limbs.
"Michael," she breathed, her faint voice breaking him from his panicked thoughts as she choked on her pained sobs as a thin red line trickled down from her mouth.
"Shh," he pleaded, relieved that they still had time to correct this. He could give her some of his energy; postpone the true impact of the blast, while he went to get Max from their headquarters. "Don't try to move, I'll get Max."
"Michael, you have to listen to me, there isn't much time," her voice was strained, the exertion that her panicked delivery was taking on her body evident in her face as her eyes rapidly shifted from side to side, imploring him to listen.
"What? No, Max can... he can save you," he whispered, his answer more a prayer than anything as he wrapped his arms around her, propping her torso up against his chest, ignoring the slightly blue tint to her bloodstained flesh.
Elevate the body – slow the blood loss. The extremely rudimentary knowledge of wounds raced through his head as he watched the slow rise and fall of her chest.
"It's up to you, now. I fucked up – came back too early -- and now you're the one who has to... has to... go back," she rushed out, her voice cracking as a result of her efforts.
"Tell Liz; tell her that I told you what's going on, that you’re the one. We've been working on it together -- it's almost ready, another week, maybe,” she continued, her statements jumbled and a bit nonsensical due to the extreme blood loss.
But Max would come.
He had to.
Why the hell wasn’t he here?
Fuck – what did she even mean? Tell Liz? The one?
Shit.
She’d just drafted him to take her place as the alien Marty McFly – what the hell did he even know about the granolith? He’d been kept away from it for safety reasons – they all had.
"I can't. I don't even know what I'm supposed to change, what's supposed to happen," Michael argued, tears biting at the corners of his eyes as her glassy stare lost its focus. "I know less than anyone -- Jesus, I let Isabel die!"
“Not your fault. You didn’t. Stop blaming yourself -- we both know who really to blame,” she rasped, her eyelids drooping as her breath grew shorter – there wasn’t much time left.
He was losing her.
Just like he lost the war.
It all came back to that – regardless of her ire at Max Evans, if he had been a better general, then they’d have won. She told him once, after she rejoined him with this mission that she stopped believing in destiny a long time ago – it was one of those things he’d known, but never heard her say – and at the time, he’d felt relieved.
Now, with her blood marking his skin like a scarlet letter – he would give anything to heed destiny’s warnings years ago. Not the stupid soap opera garbage – but cared more about who he was supposed to be.
Maybe then he could have at least put up a fucking fight.
“Tess, c’mon baby, stay with me, Max will come and save you,” he pleaded, gently brushing a stray hair off her face, unwilling to move her, since she was still breathing, although it was shallow.
"1988. Los Angeles. You need to focus on that – it's a machine, but it goes where you're thinking about," Tess coughed, her brow knitted together as she struggle to breathe. "You need to go to K...Kal, and tell him everything. Michael, you're the only other one who knows where I was going… the only one I trust."
"What if he doesn't listen?" It wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility. Kal was Tess’ protector, and only required to listen to her – she could order him to help them, if he decided to ignore their pleas.
She wouldn’t, but the option was there.
And that was why he was convinced she was the only one Kal would trust, completely.
"He will, I have faith," Tess answered, her voice much stronger than he was expecting.
"Since when?" The question came up without warning, and his jaw dropped after it fell from his mouth.
He was such an asshole.
Actually, asshole didn’t begin to cover what he was.
Why the hell was she smiling?
"Leave you to be a smartass when I'm dying," she sputtered, a faint laugh peppering her coughs with an ominous tone. "God it's so cold."
This was really happening.
She was really – there was nothing that – he couldn’t even think, it was like his heart stopped in his chest, her breathing growing shallower by the second
"Baby, don't…”
"I've... I've always had faith in you, Michael," Tess murmured, her body slumping into his, too weak to even sit upright anymore.
"I know. I know," Michael choked out over his tears, shaking from the impact of his sobs on his body as he gently pressed his lips to the crown of her head. Matted hair brushed against his mouth, brittle and lifeless as he whispered, “I love you.”
Her dry hand lay on top of his and she held it tightly as she whispered a barely audible affirmation, "love you."
She was gone.
Michael groaned as the sharp sting of skin on skin jerked him into waking. His eyes lolled as a blurry figure came into view. It was hard to focus – pain was overriding every one of his five senses – but he could make out the long, sweat-licked dark hair shining against Max's leather vest.
He couldn't save Tess – but maybe he could save the world.
"Michael, you have to look at me!" Max commanded his panicked voice cutting through the haze and he winced in response.
He finally got it – that feeling of impending doom, the realization that death truly was only seconds away and it simply was too late.
Fuck – he had to get Max to see it.
Max Evans was their only hope – he had to get Evans to understand, as he passed off the message to another -- and he didn't have the same faith Tess had when she'd done the same, that their new savior would do what was asked of him.
"Too late," he wheezed as Max's hands pressed against his back. "Save your strength – you need to listen. Don't have much time."
“God damnit Michael, this isn’t the time to be stubborn!” Max boomed, his warm hands pressed against his flesh, the pressure barely registering as his cells died off by the second.
“I’m dying, you’re too late – always too fucking – talk to Liz, you got about an hour… you need to go back, fix this,” Michael wheezed, imploring him to listen.
He had to listen.
Their lives depended on it.
“What?” Max asked, shock painted on his face. Ever since the war started, he’d only bothered to involve himself in matters that directly concerned him. He’d fight when he wanted – claiming that the camps needed his healing abilities, and while he shrugged it off as he and Kyle fought side by side, he now got why Tess was annoyed.
“Liz knows how to use the granolith – you have to go back, you’re the only one of us left – stop the end of the world,” Michael groaned, weakly attempting to move Max’s hands off of his abdomen. There was no time for this – the die had been cast, and there were things far more important at stake than his life.
“Just look at me! I can’t – fuck, Serena was the one who…”
“D… T…” he grunted angrily, his mouth felt like it’d been coated in cotton, unable to speak. He was drying up – like Tess and Isabel before him, and soon he’d be dust.
“What?”
Shit.
What he’d said – it hadn’t made sense. He had to do something – had to make Max understand. Even Liz didn’t know what was going on – just that the granolith acted on thought.
Max had to read the message he’d left. It wasn’t comprehensive, but it was enough to drive home a point, one that he still didn’t grasp, that he and Tess had been hiding from everyone.
Black spots colored his view as he thrashed against Max’s arms in a desperate attempt to get him to pay attention – he didn’t have much time. Darkness overtook him as Max tried to steady his body, one realization evident.
He was going to fail her, all over again.
"You sure we have to do this?" Michael asked as she paced the small room that served as quarters, a threadbare towel covering her gilded skin, darkened from the southern California sun and what he was sure was a terrible trek to New Mexico -- it took over thirteen hours by car, and by the look of her, he knew she hadn’t driven most of the way.
She’d told him what she could about the plan, and his role in it, which was small, given his position within their coterie, and the need to keep everyone at arm’s length, should Khivar’s men get a hold of any of them.
He was basically supposed to just convince them that she was right while keeping her identity a secret. Another lie to add to the many he’d told them through the years.
"Michael, the only reason I'm still alive is because they don't know who I am. And the thing is, if Max and Isabel think that this is about me trying to save my own ass, they won't be receptive to it," Tess reasoned, her lips pursing as she registered his discontent with her plan.
"Why don't you trust them?"
"It's not that -- what we're asking, it's going to change everything. We're involving Kal way earlier -- I mean, who knows, Max may never meet Liz, Isabel might not wind up with Kyle," Tess explained shifting her weight uncomfortably from side to side as she awkwardly twirled a strand of hair between her fingers.
"We may not be together," Michael stated, glowering at the prospect of his wife with another man.
"Guerin, it may be a whole new world, but it's still us,” Tess whispered, her eyes dancing as she brushed a stray piece of hair off his face, the towel slipping slightly as she pressed herself against him. “Look, I gave up on destiny a long time ago, but I do believe that some things, like the two of us, are meant to be -- but do you see what I mean?"
"Not really."
"If you tell people, 'Tess is back and going to change the past to save the future, oh and your lives may be entirely different', they're going to resent it. That's why we need to make this about the four-square -- that I'm some outside force.”
"I hate lying to them," Michael sighed, conceding that she had a point.
"God, this whole thing is so fucked up. I can't believe we're not even going to tell Max what he did," Tess shot back, angrily retrieving clothing from her backpack and throwing a green t-shirt over her naked body. It was strange, seeing her this angry and cold, knowing that she’d been so soft in his arms only moments before as they buried their sins in each other’s skin, trying to find solace in one another, if only for a while.
"What's the good in that? We need him to agree with us, and that means Max has to be blameless," Michael reasoned, hating that their attempt to save them all would feed into Max’s stupid theory that he was the one who pushed Tess away, since she was too fragile to understand Max and Liz’s relationship.
All this crap about the four-square being stronger together, working as a unit, and that Tess’ departure somehow weakened them all was bullshit. She was letting herself take the fall for things that were far beyond her control, when both of them knew that she was the strongest of any of them.
"I know, it just sucks,” Tess huffed, slipping into her jeans, her icy veneer in place as she waved her hair dry. “I mean, I have to look Liz Parker in the eye, knowing that by changing the future she may die at sixteen because Max might not be there to save her!”
“Fuck. You can’t -- there won’t be any casualties,” Michael ordered, forcing back the guilt that was rising within him. He trusted her implicitly, but he only knew the bare outline of what she planned to do -- go back in time to stop this future from happening. Kal had a major role to play, but she wouldn’t say what it was.
She thought it was safer that way. And while she was probably right, he hated not knowing, especially since her explanation was sounding a lot less like Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure and more like that Simpsons’ episode where Homer traveled back in time only to fuck up everything even worse.
It was his faith in her and the fact that they really were at their last resort that he was even going along with her plan.
“Look, these are all things that I’m going to talk to Kal about -- but I mean, I don’t know everything, either. We’re relying on him to do things when he might not be receptive to it,” Tess explained, her voice betraying the conviction in her stance.
“I mean, I believe in him, and I’ll be there to steer him in the right direction, but I... never mind, this is dumb,” she exhaled, flashing him a smile as she stopped pacing. “I’m going to go back in time and fix everything, and who knows? Maybe I’ll be pregnant and you’ll be feeding me gross things like I don’t know, pickled eggs instead of fighting a war at thirty.”
Kids? She was talking about kids now? It was the elephant in the room when they’d gotten together after their reunion in Washington, DC. Between the wedding, her desire to change fields and move closer to Kal and his promotion to assistant department head after only two years, it’d never been the right time for them.
They’d moved into that house outside San Diego six months before the war started with the hope of finally having children, but after he’d left, he’d never been so grateful to know that they hadn’t conceived, yet.
"No one knows you found me, right?" She asked, breaking him from his thoughts, her strange emerald eyes, which seemed more familiar than they should, boring into his flesh.
"No -- Isabel might have an idea, but looking like you do, she's not going to figure it out," Michael replied, never entirely sure whether or not Isabel was invading his dreams when he wasn’t aware of it.
"Okay, good. That's so weird, being relieved about something so terrible,” she returned, her nervous laughter reverberating around the office as she slid her bottom lip between her teeth.
"Are you going to be okay?" he asked, watching her drum her fingers against her other arm one after another.
"Yeah, I'll be fine, I just need to focus on this, because if I don't then I'm going to think about Kal and everything else that happened and I can't do that right now."
Translation: she was not ok.
"Te..."
"Michael," Tess interjected, frowning at his Freudian slip – there was no time for error, and he was finding this detail much more difficult than he’d thought. "We need to be on the same page -- and that starts now."
"I hate this,” he grumbled, staring at her for a moment before adding, “Almost as much as I hate your red hair."
"Michael."
"I like your hair blonde," he admitted with a shrug, deciding not to tell her all that he hated about her plan, knowing that it was truly the only solution left for them.
"And I like yours maintained – looks like we're both not getting what we want!" Tess huffed, a playful smirk plastered on her face. He knew that she was putting on a show for him, trying to seem blasé in the face of so much pain, and while his conscious told him to ask her about it, he needed this momentary escapism as much as she did.
"I just like you, the real you -- including your hair color," Michael stated, drawing her into his chest and wrapping his arms around her.
"I know," Tess murmured, leaning into him as she gently pressed her lips against his before pulling away, the corners of her mouth turning upward in a shy smile, disappearing almost as quickly as it came, the tender moment gone.
"So let's go over this again?"
"You know this is going to just convince Evans that it's his fault you went away," Michael grumbled, scratching his eyebrow, trying to delay his foray into Tess’ re-imagined history. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to help her – it was that after they told Max, Isabel, Liz and Kyle this, the last ties to his old life would be cut, making this really all he had left.
"I don't care – he's not the one going back – I am," Tess shot back, annoyed at the mention of Max’s guilt over her disappearance from Roswell, fourteen years ago. "Ok, what’s my story?"
"You're the only daughter of our protector, Kal Langley, who died trying to save all of our lives when he faced Khivar alone moments after he landed. You've spent your adult life searching for Tess because the united four square is the only way to defeat Khivar -- our gifts compliment each other and we make a complete fighting unit. But since Tess is dead, there's only one option -- time travel, because it's only a matter of time until we're all destroyed. Our soldiers are deserting by the week, and the army keeps killing us off," Michael sighed, watching as she nodded her head emphatically to everything he said.
"Okay, and how do you know this will work?"
"Because Kal taught you everything you know about the granolith. He said this was a last resort, and frankly, we only have two options -- try this or die."
"How can you trust me?"
"You're my wife!" He shouted possessively, glaring at her for even asking the question, despite knowing that she was acting like the others would, when they told them their plans.
"Improvising?" Tess shot back, a wry grin on her face.
He knew that look – she was turned on. How fucking wrong was this?
And why didn’t he care that much?
"I've let you run the show, you're not denying this," he growled, fingering his wedding band as she leaned suggestively against his makeshift desk.
God, it had been too fucking long – and she was doing nothing to help matters, which might have been her intent.
"You're hot when you're pissed," Tess drawled, brushing a strand of red hair off her face. "Ok, caveman, you’re right, I’d never deny that -- you’re still the Tarzan to my Jane." She grinned, her eyes darkening as she looked pointedly at his jeans.
Yeah, there was no doubt what they’d be doing later.
"Good," Michael grunted, trying to ignore the image of her in a loincloth and how many ways he could take it off of her.
King of the Jungle indeed.
"And what's my name?" Tess asked, getting back to the matter at hand.
"Tess.”
"Michael, seriously," Tess snapped, her arms akimbo as she made her annoyance known. She was nervous now, he could read her facial expressions, and this was becoming real to her for the first time as well.
"Mrs. Guerin,” Michael returned with a smirk, only to be greeted with a frown and a raised eyebrow. She was really going to make him do it – acknowledge this stupid name Langley had given her years ago as legitimate – the last fucking thing that was theirs destroyed.
Sure, she’d agreed to still, publicly, be his wife, but it wouldn’t be the same – at least before he wasn’t lying to his friends, he’d just never said anything – now he was laying Tess Harding to rest.
She’d already done it – it was more than the hair and the contacts – nothing overt, but it was the way that she committed herself fully to the mission, head over heart. Though he’d never ask her, he knew that if he’d refused to help her she’d have gone it alone, never bothering to dwell on his refusal.
It was a departure from who she’d been before – someone who was a victim of feeling too much that she was unsure she could make a contribution. Now, she was all about the mission, saving the day, closing herself off from distractions – winning was the only solution.
Exhaling, he answered her, driving home the final nail in the proverbial coffin, "Serena.”
“Fuck, Michael, don’t!” Max screamed, violently shaking him into waking. “I’ll do it, go back in time – just don’t die on me. I need you.”
Maybe he still had a chance to tell him.
Opening his eyes slightly, Michael grunted in response, his arms felt like dead weights, too heavy to move.
Fuck he had to do something.
“Talk to me!” Max implored him, looking far younger than his thirty years – almost as if he were a petulant child and not a man who’d seen more death and destruction than most.
Shaking his head no, he watched Max’s face fall, defeated, realizing that Michael truly couldn’t speak to him.
“Shit, Michael, I tried to – my powers, they wouldn’t work, you were right,” Max whispered, brushing a piece of hair out of his face as his dark eyes stared at him, despondent. “I’m so sorry.”
This couldn’t turn into a pity party for his impending death. Grunting, he emphatically pointed at the message he’d written Max, only to see it covered in dirt and footprints.
Max’s footprints.
Hopefully he could still make it out.
He needed to read it. He needed to understand who she was, what her role was in this mess.
Letting out a silent plea, he watched Max turn around to face the blood-etched message, hoping that somehow he could still make it out.
“Tess is S…” Max read, his brow furrowing as he tried to make out the rest of it. “Michael, I can’t… jesus, you wrote this in your blood?”
“Never mind, I can’t. Tess is special?” Max asked, staring past him, ignoring the violent sway of his head from side to side.
He needed to see. He needed to know that Serena was Tess’ alias, and because of that Kal was an important part of the story – not an afterthought.
“I know Tess is special. You guys all told me that -- you were going back to save Tess, keep her in Roswell. We’re stronger when we’re together! We need the four-square,” Max breathed, filled with purpose.
Michael knew that look.
It meant that Max Evans was in his own world, filling it with thoughts of how he was going to be the savior.
Opening his mouth to call out, to draw attention to Max’s inability to realize the truth, he was met with nothing. His vocal chords had collapsed, probably not long after his throat dried out, rendering him dumb and ignored in the wake of his newfound derring-do.
“I was a real bastard to her after Liz and I slept together – she was going through something, you could just see her looking so sad, and then she up and left after we went to Arizona,” Max rambled. “I know, I’ll go back, tell Liz that we shouldn’t have sex – that she needs to break up with me so that Tess doesn’t leave. I know that you two were close, but she was so obsessed with me that she couldn’t stand to be in town after Liz and I got back together.
“Plus, you marry Serena, and you won’t waste ten years chasing Tess down for nothing, anyway,” Max finished, a prideful grin on his face.
Banging his fist against the dirt, angry, frustrated tears escaped from his eyes as Max got up from his seat next to him. He wasn’t listening – and Max Evans had just figured out what time he was going to be returning to, and it wasn’t Los Angeles in 1988.
He had failed them all.
And Tess was going to suffer, all because of him.
His eyes watched as Max’s footprints covered the is S, leaving only Tess in his wake – a final reminder of the girl he’d loved and the woman she’d never grow up to be, because he hadn’t been willing to abandon his army in that last week, thinking it was his duty.
Destiny had taken another victim, and the four of them would suffer the consequences.
Sobbing, he willed himself to die, the weight of his failures and the innocent victims they’d claimed too much for his soul. Sliding his eyes shut, his last image was of a bright light shooting off into the night sky, fifty feet away.