Title: Mnemosyne’s Daughter
Author: Josephin
Category: M/L
Rating: MATURE
Disclaimer: These stories are works of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
The characters of Roswell belong to is founder - Jason Katims, Twentieth Century Fox Corporation, Regency Entertainment, and Monarchy B.V.
Summary: Everything up to and including “The Departure” has happened (with some minor alterations) – or did it? Six years after a shooting incidence at the Crashdown in Roswell, New Mexico, Liz Parker is attending college with her best friend Maria DeLuca, and Liz is haunted by dreams. Dreams of a dark-haired boy she used to have biology classes with in high school. As the dreams continue to interrupt her life, Liz starts to question her reality and what she knows is true. Was no one injured that day in September or do Liz’s dreams about her being shot and healed by the secretive boy harbor some truth?
Author’s note: I’m trying something different here. Except writing in present tense, I’m also making this story less than ten chapters in length (six chapters to be precise). The whole story is already written and I will be updating once a week (Fridays).
Thank you to my wonderful beta, Elizabeth (Gigo), who is always there for me, willing to edit anything I throw her way and who is always prepared with thought-inducing questions and comments.
Feedback: I’ll gladly accept any feedback – long or short
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One
Her mind painfully rips out off the claws of unconsciousness and her upper body propels upwards, her frightful gasp spreading through the room like a malicious gas. Her hands are in full-out panic, clutching at the bottom of her shirt, ascertaining that she is whole.
“Liz?”
Her hands spread over her skin. The darkness offers her no answers while her fingers inform her that her skin is still intact. The loud sound still reverberates in her ears and she is certain that her fingers are lying. As her legs tumble out of the false security of her bed, her best friend sits up, squinting against reality.
“Liz?”
“Go back to sleep,” Liz whispers, her voice trembling in the stillness of the night.
Maria murmurs an indistinguishable reply before laying down again, pulling the covers up to her ears as if to immerse herself more deeply in the protective cocoon of sleep. Sleep is a protection that has abandoned the dark-haired petite woman who fumbles along the wall to find a weapon to push the darkness away. Seconds later she blinks against the bright light that floods the bathroom. The dream still haunts her. It mocks her with its persistence. This is the third night in a row that the dream has assaulted her, leaving her trembling and uncertain of her existence in the world. Leaving her somehow certain that she is supposed to be somewhere else. That she is supposed to be someone else.
Max Evans is staring at you again
She shakes her head in a futile attempt to clear her mind of the tendrils of sleep weaving their way through her mind, trapping her, making her want to scream. Her fingers work quickly to unbutton the shirt and she pulls it open, exposing her naked chest and abdomen to her reflection in the mirror. As before, her fingers travel slowly over the expanse of her skin. During their travel, the fingers encounter three moles, but none of her senses confirm her conviction that there should be a gaping hole in her stomach.
You have to look at me
Commanded by the frantic voice, she meets her own eyes in the mirror.
Something is wrong.
The thought hits her with a suddenness that causes her to sway on her feet and she has to brace herself against the sink.
“Who are you?” she whispers to the reflection, but the chocolate brown eyes merely respond with a blank stare.
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“Do you…do you remember Max Evans?”
Maria looks up distractedly from her plate, still wearing a frown of concentration from her attempt to decorate her pancakes with all available toppings.
“Uhm...” Maria stares at Liz for a few fleeting seconds before responding. “Sure. He was your lab partner, in high school. Right?”
“Mhm,” Liz acknowledges, staring absently at the bowl of cereal in front of her.
Maria cocks her head to the side, contemplating her friend’s odd behavior. “What’s with the sudden interest in someone you haven’t seen in four years?”
“I just… I was just thinking of all the people back in high school, you know.”
Her evasive answer causes Maria’s frown to grow deeper. Liz has been acting strangely for days and from the look of it, it isn’t getting any better with time. Her friend is sporting some impressive circles under her eyes and her skin has taken on a sickly nuance. Maria’s gaze travels lower, taking notice of the old sweater and pale worn-out jeans, and while shifting her eyes back to Liz’s face Maria can’t help but register the oily build-up in Liz’s dark hair. When did Liz last take a good look at herself in the mirror? Scratch that. When did she last take a shower?
Frowning more deeply, Maria impales a huge bite of a pancake, topped with the works, on her fork and shoves it into her mouth.
“Oh wait!” she announces around a mouthful of pancakes, cream and jam, “Max Evans…He was friends with that guy with the…uhm…that weird guy…what was his name…?”
“Michael,” Liz offers.
Maria nods enthusiastically, pointing her fork at Liz in triumph. “Yeah, that’s it. He was weird. They both were. Wasn’t that girl… Right, Evans’ sister-“
“Isabel,” Liz interjects.
“Those three had this weird top secret group going on,” Maria continues. Taking a hold of an abandoned bag of M&M’s laying dangerously close to the edge of the table, Maria unglamorously moves to drown her pancakes in the rainbow colored chocolate buttons. “They were weird.”
“They preferred to keep to themselves, I guess,” Liz murmurs.
“Nah-uh,” Maria objects, waving the fork in the air as she happily crunches the M&M’s between her teeth. “That group went way beyond ‘keeping to themselves’. I bet they thought they were better than everyone else. That they were above socializing with us mere mortals.”
Liz smiles weakly but proceeds to shake her head in faint disagreement. Something about what Maria just said unnerves her.
us mere mortals
“I think they were just…” searching for the right word, Liz finishes the sentence with, “different.”
Maria nods appreciatively. “Uh-uh. They were different alright. Downright I’m-gonna-kidnap-you-and-take-you-out-in-the-desert-and-eat-your-liver kind of different.”
Before Liz is able to protest, feeling the innate need to defend the odd group that she never really had any substantial contact with during her years in high school, Maria continues by smoothly changing the subject.
“Now. Let’s talk about me. Since you are my best friend in the whole wide world, I will let it slide this once, but are you not dying to hear everything about my date yesterday?”
Liz’s eyes open wide in regret. “Oh, Maria, I’m sorry. How was it?”
“Eh, it was okay,” Maria says casually.
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”Liiiiz!!!”
Her head whips upwards, her muffled cry spreading in the lecture hall, causing the lecturer to discontinue his monotonous monologue.
“Liz.”
She shakes her head, expelling Maria’s fearful voice from her head and instead attempts to focus on the other female voice saying her name with less desperation but with hushed sharpness. She turns to the redhead sitting next to her and looks into her classmate’s green eyes.
“I…” Liz mumbles, but a silence, normally foreign to the lecture hall, currently hungrily embraces the occupants and Liz is tempted to look out over the audience.
“Miss Parker? Am I disturbing your sleep?”
Heat spreads up her neck and face and she shakes her head vigorously. “No, no, sir.”
“Right. Would you mind, then, if we returned to the lecture?”
Liz bites her bottom lip, feeling the heat of the other students’ gazes on her face. “No, sir.”
“Okay then.” The professor stares at her for a few seconds, his face momentarily revealing the bewilderment he feels about having one of his top students falling asleep in his class, before returning to teaching the genome of the paramyxovirus. The rest of the class loses interest in the drama concerning the usually studious girl and return their varying degrees of attention to the professor.
“What’s wrong with you?” the girl next to her whispers, her voice a tangle of admonishment and concern.
“I’m having trouble sleeping,” Liz answers quietly, rubbing her forehead.
“You want some sleeping pills? I have some.”
“No. Thank you, Nicole, but I think I’m just gonna…drink some tea or something.”
Nicole gives her a disbelieving look; she has suffered from insomnia for years, and her experience was that standing on your head would be just as helpful as drinking tea when you couldn’t sleep, “People are always optimistic in the beginning.”
But Nicole is unaware that she has already lost Liz’s attention as Liz stares down at her notepad, wondering why the words seem to detach from the paper and float around. Merely seconds seem to have passed in Liz’s world when Nicole nudges her elbow informing her that the lecture has reached its end. Liz looks up, to discover an almost empty lecture hall. Her legs feel unsteady as she makes her way down the stairs and out of the hall.
Why is it okay for them, but it's not okay for us?
Her books slide out of her hands and end up on the ground, papers spreading out around her like a waterfall.
“Crap,” Liz mumbles and falls to her knees.
“What’s up with you today?” Nicole asks as she kneels to help Liz.
Before she has a chance to answer, she feels a wave – pressure – consume her, knocking the wind out of her. Falling on her backside, she encounters the heat of tears forming in her eyes. She vaguely hears Nicole giggle next to her, calling her a klutz, but she is unable to do anything else but focus on the burning inside of her.
I'm afraid of feeling everything that I know I would feel. Because I know it's not meant to be.
She distantly notices someone walking by, her senses zooming in on that person, but finds herself unable to open her eyes. Suddenly she is covered in a cold sweat and her heart is thudding heavily in her ears. Whatever is shaking her, enhancing every emotion she has been struggling with for the past few days, is very close.
“Liz? Hello? Earth to Liz?”
Whatever it is, it moves away. Her aching lungs desperately pull in air and her heart slows from its terrified thundering. Tentatively, she opens her eyes and locks them on Nicole’s concerned gaze.
“Maybe you should see a shrink?”
Ignoring her statement, Liz whips her head around and scans the mass of students. She does not know what she is looking for, what she is expecting to see, but it is as if her eyes knows exactly where to look. They stop, having located their target, and her breath catches. She sees the back of a man as he walks through the crowd, walking away from her.
She scrambles to her feet, feeling desperation claim her. Whoever that is, she can’t lose him. Forgetting her books, forgetting the concerned, green-eyed, red-haired friend, forgetting the world, Liz Parker runs into the thick mass of bodies. Her head whips from side to side, tears burn her eyes as she frantically tries to locate him again.
Max Evans is staring at you again.
But she doesn’t. He is gone.
TBC...
Thank you!
I have no idea if you have figured out the plot or not, but I'm grateful that you've decided to keep it to yourself for the time being.
This is my interpretation of that scene. Feedback is appreciated and highly recommended 
