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Brave Enough
Author: Chione
Rating: Mature
Category: M/L K/T I/A M/M
Disclaimer: I don’t own Roswell.
Summary: Picks up mid-Destiny. The gang rescues Max and, determined to get their lives back, set out to destroy Pierce and the Special Unit. But Pierce never underestimated them.
Author's Note: I'm a bad, bad person. I said I'd get the next chapter to Vegas out, but I really wanted to post this. I've already got several parts of this story written, but I will be posting them - for the most part - in rotation with my other stories, so please be patient. (Of course, as evidence by this, I'm horrible at following schedules, so you never know.)
PS. This is not going to be a happy story. It will be dreamer, and it will have a happily ever after, but it might be awhile.
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<center>Fear no more the heat o’ the sun
Nor the furious winter’s rages;
Thou thy worthy task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta’en they wages;
Golden lads and girls all must
As chimney sweepers, come to dust.
Fear no more the frown o’ the great
Thou art past the tyrant’s stroke;
Care no more to clothe and eat
To thee the reed is as the oak.
The scepter learning, physic, must
All follow this, and come to dust.
Fear no more the lightning flash
Nor the all-dreaded thunder-stone;
Fear not slander, censure rash;
Thou hast finished joy and moan.
All lovers young, all lovers must
Consign to thee, and come to dust.
-William Shakespeare</center>
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Prologue- Gray
She’d give anything to see red again.
She wasn’t even sure her eyes would be able to recognize warm colors anymore. After days of staring at the skin on her arm, the only warmth in the room, the color had dulled to a soft gray, matching the walls, the floor and the ceiling. If they hadn’t cut her hair to just below her ears, she knew she’d have held it before her eyes until it too turned cool and colorless. Brown was better than gray. Anything was better than gray.
They called it the White Room. In Max’s memories, it had been white. The robes they wore were white, the scrubs they’d forced on her were white, the bed and sheets and pillows were white. Water, when placed in a white cup or against a white wall, became white. But she discovered after awhile that the whites had subtle differences. The whites in her room, whether from the pale, fluorescent lighting or a tint to the paint, were more gray than completely white. (She’d prefer white.) Unlike the white plates, cubes and robes from outside, which hinted at a sickly, yellow green.
Shadows and highlights blended, shifted, fell away, and the world was flat. If she unfocused her eyes, the walls would cease to be standing and everything in existence was simply gray. Closing her eyes, not to go to sleep - she never slept - but to gaze at the marvelous kaleidoscope of colors, swirls and shapes, lights and darks, rainbows, explosions of hues that lived beneath her eyelids, became her escape.
Those, too, were fading.
Shades of gray. (She’d even prefer black and white.)
When the day came that her haven failed, she knew it’d be the end of her. Sanity depended on the fading colors in her mind.
She didn’t know how long it would take. She didn’t even know how long she’d been in the little gray room, with the little gray table, and the little gray bed. She’d rested four times with long periods of wakefulness in between. If that meant four days, she wouldn’t survive until the end of the week.
She didn’t even want to.
Gray hadn’t sucked out her life yet, but it’d destroyed her desire for it.
She’d give anything to see red again.
Bright yellow.
Orange.
As long as it wasn’t gray.
Resting her head against the tile of the wall, she waited for time to pass and the future to come. Anything was better than the present. Gray and frozen time.
There was a sound, the only other aside from her breathing, and a portion of the smooth, gray wall came open. Men stepped through, three of them, dressed in white with a sickly green tint, ready, arms out, to restrain her should she resist. They needn’t have bothered. If they intended to take her somewhere, she’d go willingly. No matter what lay in store, she’d deal, because it was a chance to move, to see. Pain she could fight; gray, she couldn’t.
They pulled her up by her arms, tugging at the joint in her shoulder, and ignoring her attempts to catch her footing. The men wore masks so she couldn’t see their faces, only their eyes, covered by shiny plastic and obscuring any colors there. Only the reflection of the lights above. More white.
Her feet were bare, the plastic floor burning where they stumbled and dragged.
The men’s grip on her arms was firm.
Even the hallways were gray, she observed with growing dismay, when it seemed as if she’d never escape it. Would she end up in another square room, nothing but walls in a world of no color?
She’d rather die.
A sharp jerk on her arm drew her left, down another hallway, identical to the last. As she passed the doors, some with windows, some without, she didn’t dare glance over, for fear of seeing what lay inside. Dread had filled her stomach in place of food since her capture, images and feelings she’d acquired from Max’s memories haunting her every thought. What would they do to her? Did they think she was an alien, or did they somehow know she’d been healed by one?
And worse, what would they do if they did find something different about her, after Max’s healing?
She wasn’t strong enough. If her imprisonment lasted much longer, she’d go mad, no matter how much love she had for Max, no matter her desire to protect him, to keep him safe. How could anyone, human or otherwise, survive in such conditions? How long could anyone last until the gray consumed them as well?
And that didn’t even include the pain.
She liked to think she was strong. She liked to think she was stubborn. She liked to think, if it came down to it, she’d have the courage to stand up to them.
But that was as much as lie as saying the guards were there to release her, to let her go home, and hug her parents once more in the door of the Crashdown, that door with the horrible blue paint she’d welcome if it were to greet her again. Fear had a way of overcoming the qualities you thought you had, until all you were was a bundle of fear, and ways to escape it.
Black was the first thing she became aware of outside the monotony of the gray and the circles in her thoughts. A solid, black door leading to heaven, or hell, or anywhere in between that she couldn’t yet see. The eternities that passed as she waited for the men to open it seemed to eat away at any hope she had left.
Then there was color, color everywhere, overwhelming color, and she swooned at the sight, nearly fainting, dizzy with the sensation of seeing.
Twirling about like a child at the beach for the first time, marveling at the expanse of water, at the colors and the unfamiliar surroundings, she basked in the color, the very warmth of the sun. How could she have forgotten this? Even if they locked her away for the rest of her life, she swore she’d never forget this rush. If ever she was able to escape, or was rescued, it was a lesson she’d never forget: such a simple appreciation, of such a simple thing. But oh so wonderful. Miraculous.
After too short a moment, a guard reached for her arm, slapping her across the face harshly, to bring her down to reality, and gray, once again. The same guard pushed her forward, and she caught herself, made sense of the colors before her, recognizing the face.
A beautiful face, or what would’ve been, without the dark circles, and the pale, white of her cheeks. But her eyes were still crystal blue, ocean blue, the only blue of its kind anywhere in sight. The curling locks on her shoulders had fallen from their neat, perfect ringlets; just waves, and thin, dirty at that, but still the warm blonde they had always been.
There’d been a time only too recently the image would’ve been a cause for alarm, for fear, and trepidation. Now it only brought joy, blinding, boundless joy, at something familiar. Something colorful. And something that, perhaps, made her a little less alone.
Tess Harding, standing just oppose her on a field of emerald grass and pale, blue sky.
Liz Parker closed her eyes, and memorized the sight.
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Please, please, please tell me what you think. Feedback is much appreciated.
I am so ridiculously proud of myself for getting this out today. You have no idea. To even get the time to sit down and write has been a battle, and then to finish something and to get around writer's block. . . but here it is, after far too long. . .