A Revenge Play in 3 Acts (Tess, Isabel, TEEN) 1/1 1.3.10

[hauntedd]

Title: A Revenge Play in 3 Acts
Author: hauntedd
Rating: TEEN
Disclaimer: Characters are the property of Melinda Metz/Jason Katims
Summary: This time, she's not the villain of the piece. (Post-Surprise)
AN: I wrote this for yuletide, originally. I don't really have much of a Roswell muse these days, so there you go...
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Tess braces against her restraints, supernatural, and burning welts into her skin, as her captor prepares for another round. This fight is anything but fair, but then again, nothing about this day seems right. She was supposed to be a guest at Isabel's birthday party, not a punching bag for a Skin eager for the challenge.

In fact, she'd wound up here by doing errands as a favor to Isabel's flavor of the month, Greg, or was it Grant? Anything for even a passing moment of inclusion, she was desperate now, when the closest thing she had to a father was merely dust in the wind.

She's certain her past self would not be proud of her desperate attempts at acceptance. Or her apparent powerlessness.

Instead of the forced friendliness of the secrets that bind, Tess finds herself teetering on the precipice of life and death, all because this woman, Whitaker, mistakenly thought she was the former whore of Antar. Though it's Tess who takes the blows for the error.

What she sees in starts and spurts within the shadows of her concrete cell, blurs beyond all recognition. Her world is tilted, more so than usual, but even through the pain, Tess can sense a shift in the air.

It comes slowly, the tension building and while it feels somewhat like pageantry, she can make out the word Vilandra, which she clutches like a lifeline. She remembers the name from previous conversation, back before the blows began, when she was simply one or the other. Only this time, Tess is not the villain of the piece.

But she knows that now is not the time for arrogance. That will come later, when the time is right and an opportunity is presented. She's always been a practical girl, after all. The important thing is that Isabel's come to her rescue, which should shock her, but her body is so broken that she doesn't seem to care.

Words jumble and contort and Tess feels her head start to buzz as language shifter s to something else, which she simply cannot make out, though it seems familiar, the soft haunt of a ghost that suggests history repeating. The buzzing increases and their voices become inaudible while pain rips at every part of her. She bites back hard in an attempt to contain the tears that threaten to spill, only to split her lip instead, and catches the hint of darkened eyes that suggest she's not about to receive a reprieve anytime soon.

Her breath hitches as she remembers words, once ominous, which seem now to be part of something more and clarity begins to take charge, a long forgotten friend in the constant change that's been affecting her life. Nasedo had always wanted Vilandra, not her, and this very well might be why.

Pink taffeta straightens while her head is spinning thousands of stories, none of which truly have a beginning, middle or end, and Tess comes to meet Isabel's gaze. Bracing for the worst-case scenario, she tenses, only to see Whittaker explode into a million little pieces, as if she was never there at all.

Isabel's arms snake around her body and Tess notes how cold her embrace feels against her skin. Her grip tightens and Tess shivers against the added pressure while making her way forward. The hint of a spark lingers between them, but she tries to shake it off as they make their way toward the car and Isabel presses into her cell phone anxiously, summoning Max to their aid.

Tess catches the shadows painting portending portraits against Isabel's features, which fade in and out of view as they drive down the empty roads. She feels hollow somehow, in the aftermath, and it feels like more than simply her second encounter with death this month.

As she flirts with unconsciousness, she catches the corner of Isabel's mouth tick up in a smile, far more malevolent than even the bitchiest of teenage girls possess, but the memory slips from her before she can do anything about it.

~*~

It's been a few months since the attack and her world continues to shift, subtle, soft, whispers of something that is just beyond her reach. She's never been good at puzzles and this one is far more difficult than most. Tess feels like she hasn't been fully present in her body since Whitaker, though no one else notices.

Then again, no one has ever noticed her at all.

She should feel angry, but her righteous indignation has dissipated, replaced by simple resignation. These are the subtle changes she notices when she tries to make sense of her world, which is spinning further out of control with every passing moment.

Sometimes, Tess doesn't even recognize herself in the mirror.

She shifts her body weight from one foot to the other, hands rake through her hair violently, desperate to hold onto anything for more than a second. She paces the small confines of her, no, Kyle's, room, like a mad woman desperate for a moment of clarity. These moments are coming quicker now, after New York, when she lost time and came to only after Max found her.

All Tess remembers is darkness and Lonnie, or at least she thinks it's Lonnie. Sometimes she and Isabel are more than just two sides of the same coin.

Frowning, Tess pushes away the errant thought on instinct. She shouldn't think these things, not when they're beginning to get on so well. And it's Christmas, at least it will be soon, and now is not the time for negativity, as the Christmas—Isabel would say.

Though it's hard to get cheery when there's neither a tree nor a chair at the damn table for her and she's stuck with Valenti and Kyle watching Octopussy in yet another James Bond marathon.

Isabel, however, is flittering around town, the perfect picture of teenage holiday cheer. She's running the pageant, organizing charity drives; all resume builders for college applications.

Apparently, she does this every year, though Tess thinks someone might have mentioned it sooner. It seems sudden, almost planned for someone's benefit, though she's unsure whom Isabel needs to impress. Then again, she's on the outside looking in most of the time, window dressing on a distorted display.

But she can't shake the feeling that something doesn't seem right. Though, nothing seems right, these days. When it's dark and she's on the cusp of sleeping and waking, her mind wanders back to the looks that passed between her and Ava, moments that were filled with words unsaid.

It's not lost on her that she knew something, and Tess knows nothing. It's not the first time she's felt that way, but the thoughts reoccur far too often to be latent fears bubbling to the surface. She's considered asking Liz Parker for her dupe's whereabouts, but every time she tries, the words die in her throat.

She hasn't been able to mindwarp in weeks. Not since New York and Isabel's increased presence in her life.

Sometimes, it simply doesn't matter. After all, it feels like she's getting everything on a platter, except a damn chair. First Liz concedes Max, now Isabel's friendship, tenuous at best, but still more than she can say for anyone else in their group. However, she learned a long time ago to be wary of aliens baring gifts. Though she's learning that paranoia isn't good for her well-being. At least that's what Isabel says, and she's starting to agree with her.

It feels like she's always agreeing with Isabel lately. She's never been one to simply go with the flow, but maybe it's the latent humanity coming to the surface.

Tess notices, though, that the only one who won't speak to her is Michael, which seems odd, given that they spent their entire summer together. When she's alone, Tess admits that there might have been something there, but it was a small window of opportunity that closed with the start of junior year, and she has Max, now, ripe for the picking. Even if she's not sure she wants it. Kyle does present a breath of fresh air.

But Isabel thinks they would be perfect for one another, a new take on a common theme. The words seem hollow, sometimes, like there's a deeper meaning that she just can't reach. But then she shrugs it off – Isabel's just so concerned for her brother, after what happened, she doesn't trust Liz, and maybe Destiny has merit after all. None of it seems logical when she thinks about it, but it's getting easier.

Kyle's eyes have been wandering elsewhere, lately. Isabel says the girls saw him with Vicki Delaney, who he went to the prom with last year. She doesn't question it, but there's a soft, nagging voice that whispers that she's never seen Isabel with anyone outside of their group, except for her boyfriends, always older and nondescript.

Her thoughts shift, billowing into the ether as she catches a blurred red light in the corner of the window, which reminds her of home.

What no one knows is that she dreams of Antar, a red-painted ghost of a former life that she was content to leave buried in the aftermath of Nasedo's death, but it seems more immediate, now. Those are her people, and they're desperate for their former rulers to come back as saviors, not students.

Isabel has suggested using Alex to translate the book, but Isabel can't ask him herself, there's an obligation that remains, the cross born by young lovers so polite. Tess wonders, sometimes, in the privacy of her own mind, when her thoughts are clear and uninterrupted, what Isabel cares about the destiny book, anyway. But while her bruises are physical and her scars are fresh and raised, Isabel might have been just as ruined by Whitaker.

However the pieces don't fit, like a puzzle with shapes slightly askew forced into slots they don't belong.

She doesn't even know how to ask someone something so insane. None of the Antarians can read the language, so why Alex? Isabel once said something about Alex and computers and programs and algorithms and binary code – Tess has no idea what she was talking about, or that Isabel had an interest in computers, anyway. It feels like lines forgotten from a script unfamiliar, but Isabel laughs off her concern while the implicit hint of any means necessary hangs in the air.

She knows Isabel is alluding to her powers, but she can't even mindwarp anymore, so she's not even sure that she'd be of any use. There's that nagging, churning disquiet in the pit of her stomach that is begging for her to find the strength to protest, though the reason escapes her.

Tess reaches up on her toes to grab a hair tie from the top shelf of her bookcase to pull her curls away from her face when her fingers come in contact with a folded piece of paper and she furrows her brow in confusion as she slides the thin sheet between her fingers. She's not one to keep things around her room; years of life in constant motion have forced her to learn early not to leave anything behind.

She flops on the bed, brushing her hair back, a ponytail no longer an immediate need, and unfolds the paper, fully expecting some awkward love note between Kyle and an old flame that she can tease him about later. Instead she sees her own handwriting, frantic and hurried but still her own, scrawled across the page.

It takes her a moment, then two as she tries to make sense of her own words – they're nearly unintelligible, but when she does, she feels like the wind has been knocked out of her.

The room spins and she gasps for air, drowning in the implications that these twisted words provide. "Oh god, oh my god."

Her hand comes to her mouth as the dread piles in her stomach, and thousands of thoughts race through her head begging for attention.

Isabel is Vilandra and she's using you to help Khivar.

She reads the words over and over again, clinging to them like a lifeline. Conversations she doesn't remember flicker through her brain, haunts of a parallel life that is colliding into her own. She has no idea who to talk to, but she needs to tell someone now while she still can. There's a deeper meaning here, one she can't quite remember, but this is far more than she's had in months.

Isabel slips in the backdoor, and Tess tenses at the sound of her voice, adrenaline urging her on. She fumbles through the motions, which grow harder with every passing second, but she manages to shove the paper back on top of the dresser.

Her fingers fumble with the lock on the window and she cringes at the idea of crawling outside, like a coward. But she knows now better than she ever has that currently, she's got no advantage to use.

She overhears Isabel in the kitchen, the greetings are routine, and she's filled with the Christmas cheer that covers her intent. Tess feels her fingers slip from the window – why was she opening it, anyway? It's cold outside, well, cold for Roswell at least, and dusts herself off.

She tenses for a moment at the saccharine words that drip off of Isabel's tongue; a sense of foreboding always accompanies these meetings. She's got a sneaking suspicion that something's not right, but her head is cloudy and who would believe her, anyway?

The door opens and Tess catches her reflection in the mirror, dread building within her as she notices the polite smile and slightly blank expression on her face. Silently, she wonders if she's losing it, whatever it is, and opens her mouth to protest, but it fades in another moment as Isabel brushes a stray curl from her face – wasn't she going to tie it up? Isabel says that she looks pretty with it up, and she believes her.

Isabel's eyes are boring into hers, brown on blue and she finds herself slipping into her gaze, despite her protests, though she's never known what, exactly, she's protesting, and she wants to scream in frustration in the hope that someone might be able to make sense of it all, but all she can say is, "Hello, Mistress Vilandra."

~*~

There's a rush of activity that snaps her out of the haze and nervousness that has eaten at her for hours now. She doesn't know what to make of it at first, but when she sees Liz Parker she feels both relief and confusion at the same time. She hasn't been one with her body in months now, since December, she thinks, though everything fades and blurs into jumbled messes when she tries to make sense of it all.

She's a guest, an unwelcome, but necessary one, in her own body and she has no voice and no mind, not really. She knows enough to know that not everything is what it seems, but when she presses the issue, all that happens is a bunch of sharp pains in quick succession that cripple her to the point that she falls and the only words that come out are all related to a baby she isn't sure she's carrying.

Liz is near her now, eyes wild and hair flying in a rage while tears burn at the corners of her eyes begging for release.

"Tess did it, Tess killed Alex!"

Tess opens her mouth to protest, begging for control and desperate to get out two letters, tied together to make a denial, but nothing comes. She shouldn't expect anything, but she knows that she didn't kill him, she wouldn't, would she?

But she finds herself lost in Liz's gaze and memories begin to crystallize and settle in a logical progression, the pain of independent thought momentarily forgotten as everything slows around her.

Tess remembers the blood on her hands, just a small sliver that trickled down from his nose onto her palm, a fitting metaphor for how little control she has had over her own actions. Though she doesn't remember the whys and hows, they're still too far from her grasp, Tess does know that it wasn't her, not really.

Isabel stares at her, eyes narrowing and Tess frantically places her palms against her stomach, needing to feel something real and immediate. But the only thing that she has left is built on what she thinks is a figment of her imagination, though she's seen the small hand on her stomach, delicate and sinister all at once. Her child. The one she barely remembers making.

Max is staring at her, begging for explanation, but she has none. She remembers Alex standing in her room, loud and screaming, telling her there isn't anything left. Tess recalls trying to tell him that she knows the feeling, though the words never leave her throat.

But instead he collapses onto her floor, pale and not breathing, and she simply doesn't know what to do. She reaches for the phone and presses numbers, hoping that she has enough control to dial 9-1-1, but instead gets Isabel.

Isabel always does know what to do.

In fact, Isabel concocts the whole story, twisting words and phrases and spinning logic from panic. Tess needs to mindwarp Kyle, a power she's regained in Isabel's presence tell him to help with the luggage and act like it was a car accident. Tess doesn't even think, at the time, that the evidence won't fit. Isabel has a plan and she's going with it. Then, they need to work on retrieving the translations of the book.

It seems like everything comes back to Isabel. She forgets why, but she knows it's important and she's desperate for an answer. She presses further through the haze, but feels a hand on her shoulder and everything begins to blur as she catches Isabel's gaze.

Max turns to her and asks her with anger-peppered disbelief, "Did you do it Tess, did you kill Alex?"

Her eyes are wide and wet and wilted as she meets his gaze, the control she had is fading fast and she knows that Isabel has something to do with it, but she still has nothing to go on except the random strands of coherent thought that slip out of the jumbling mess of her brain.

She considers his question and thinks, Yes, technically, but that's not all as the guilt rips through her and she waits for tears that won't come as she feels control slip through her grasp.

But instead of the apologies that she knows will do nothing to salve the guilt of newfound awareness of crimes she had no way of preventing, the words that slip from her tongue are angry and not remorseful. The only red she sees is rage as she snaps and spits like a caged animal attempting to be free.

Her body wilts as Max responds to her anger and when he threatens to kill her, she hopes that he's successful. She's weak, pathetic, and a murderer or at least a murder weapon, neither of which is the marker of a just and loyal queen. Or even a good girlfriend.

She forces out a strangled sob and tenses as she feels herself being pushed down into the darkness, only this time something has shifted and she can sense her personal Brutus taking control. She feels the energy burn through her, like a wildfire, unhinged and uncontrolled and she can sense Isabel, no, Vilandra, force her underneath layers of fog and confusion, where memories she's tried to forget remain, allowing her to be a ghost in her own body.

Despite Isabel's best attempts, Tess can hear the words coming out of her mouth, though they are not her own.

"You kill me, you kill our son."

She balks at the truth behind her, no, Isabel's words. What does Khivar want with her son, if indeed she has one? What does Khivar want with her?

Tess doesn't have to wait long for an answer. "Nasedo made a deal, forty years ago."

"To turn us over to our enemies?"

"They're not my enemies, Max."

She knows it's not true, Nasedo knows better than to make deals with devils and that logically, it simply doesn't fit. But there is a hint of truth in every lie. Khivar wants her for her child, an heir, with the seal. She knows she's pregnant now for sure, Vilandra has always crossed her T's and dotted her I's, and Isabel is no different.

What a way to find out, she muses, morbidly, as she palms her womb, nervous and scared and weak and pathetic all at once. She's never been prepared for something like this, and she wishes Isabel, no Vilandra, does it even really matter, was here so that she could congratulate on her victory. Well played and well executed. No one saw it coming. She only wonders what, exactly, was going to happen to the rest of them, now that the plan has changed, or even why she'd bartered away her soul again.

Her feet move like dead weights and not of her own volition as Max orders her to go, or maybe allows her to, with a look, broken and battered, yet filled with the implication that this is far from over. Despite Isabel's words that fell from her lips, Tess thinks he seems more like a King in these moments than he ever has before, and she knows that she had some role in his undoing.

She places a hand against the cool otherworldly metal without a word, her brain running a mile a minute while her body is still not her own. Once inside she feels her knees give, though she cannot collapse under the weight of all her cards falling down. Max runs, racing out of the chamber like a bat out of hell and she frowns, realizing this has all been choreographed from the start. Khivar might want all of them dead, but Max is his contingency plan if this doesn't work, and he needs him alive to get a seal.

Being ruined by a woman is a crippling thing and Max will turn to his sister for guidance, which will give Isabel another bit of prey to wrap her tendrils around, suctioning and sucking at a fresh brain like an octopus on a rock. She feels silly making these comparisons and thinks of Alex, who made odd similes at the most opportune time. Choking on a sob as the Granolith takes flight, her tears wet her cheeks for the first time and vows to return. Vilandra may have exacted revenge for unknown and possibly imagined slights, but Tess knows the battle she's facing, now, and she's less of a pawn than a queen.