Author: Parker1947
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters. They were created once upon a time by Jason Katims and those associated with the writing staff on the television series, Roswell and before that by the esteem creator of the Roswell High series Melinda Metz. A series that has captured all our attentions for more than 20 years… These series of stories are based on the television show that started in 1999 and ended in 2002. I am just borrowing them for my own fun and imagination, and I added new characters as needed…
Rating: Mature - Adult themes, sensitive topics are discussed in this story
Category: CC
Characters: ALL
Couples: Max/Liz (Beth) Michael and Maria, Isabel, and Kyle and more…
Synopsis: An unexpected trilogy: Following in the wake of “Reunion “ http://roswellfanatics.net/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=156493 and the destruction in “On the Razor’s Edge” http://roswellfanatics.net/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=157825 Everything exploded, and the carnage is widespread and immense with very few sunny spots although there were a few. Time has gone on, and people were able to rebuild their lives, and create happy beginnings and endings for themselves, but there is one gaping hole that remains, with someone who was lost to them because of the destruction Nicholas once brought them. Can she come back, and reclaim her life? And to do that, what lengths will she be forced to undertake?
Where we left the story at: In the very beginning 2022 it is discovered Liz who was believed to have died in a car accident had not died but instead suffered amnesia and gave birth two girls. Max and their daughter Grace moved on, and then when Grace is sixteen. They discover the stunning truth as they are forced to come to terms with a new reality at the same time an old threat comes back the haunt the gang and they believed it was only as simple as Liz coming back to them but then - In “On the Razor’s Edge” Max and Beth who is Liz’s new name start to come to together but as still separated by her memory loss and the lost years while the old threat starts to infest the rest of the group, most of Michael and Maria’s daughter Elizabeth who suffers an horrific attack and is changed forever. While at the same time Grace and Michael and Maria’s son Jake are falling in love and a simple act of being in love soon threatens their reputations and their futures. Maria and Michael were split apart because of a madman’s act against their family, and their eldest daughter all because it was revenge on Michael and the other aliens. Maria did not bargain for this as the group is at a loss as to how to win the greatest war of their lives when each battle is war and it holds great carnage. Can they possibly make up for lost time?
Author’s Note: This story is another “Reunion” of sorts. A family is reunited. Of course this story is also dark, angsty and real violence is experienced or referenced but I am trying to keep it to a minimum in comparison to that previous story once we get past the first chapters as it’s more of a story about picking up the pieces and trying to move on, to their ultimate endgame if that is indeed possible… There is still an enemy waiting in the wings; one is taken out early, but another is there to battle, and liable to cause pain and suffering… And in the end, who will eliminate the ultimate threat? And to end that threat, what will be expected in defeating that individual so that they can be allowed an ending once and for all?
Truthfully, this story has gone strange places and this one has been the trickiest as the darkness did battle with hope, as I tried to find the balance between them, so while you might doubt me in the beginning as it’s begins in especially dark terms, but hope is not lost…and therefore I hope you will be along for the ride in this story as I unveil the journey that begins with Elizabeth’s story but in the end everyone joins in…
As they say, there is “Always Tomorrow” but for some, it is a battle to get to that tomorrow.
Enjoy
The doors opened and a man and two children walked through them. The man in his 40’s was looking like he had seen too much and experienced too much and it had worn him down and beside him was a relative tall nearly twelve year old girl with blonde hair in a pony tail as she was on the edge of being a teenager but on this days she was wearing an expression of irritation and beside her holding her hand tightly was a five year little girl with dark hair who didn’t know what to expect when they were called to this building.
The man stopped at a door and told the nearly twelve-year-old to stay with her sister and sit and wait for him. “Belle stay with Emily please” the man asked.
Belle nodded and watched as her father walked through the doors and knew that this visit was a long time coming and she knew it was going to lead to disappointment, just like everything else about this situation. She had overheard her father talking on the phone. He wanted to wait until her mother returned from the girl’s spa trip she had taken for the weekend, but he was told to come immediately and so he had been forced to bring them along, and Belle knew this was a trip that her father didn’t want to undertake.
The little girl was oblivious about it all and held a kid’s wonder about life. Belle had seen too much over the last six years to still share that kind of wonder, but she wanted the little girl to hold onto it because Life sucks when you get older. So, yeah, she was getting jaded as she turned twelve years old.
Inside the room, the man sat on the chair in front of the desk that gave the doctor’s name, ‘Dr. Eileen Reynolds’ and waited for the doctor to get off the phone, which she did.
“So, what has she done this time?” the man asked in a sharp tone. “Another overdose?” as this was not the first time, he or his wife had been called to one of these buildings, but it was the first time in four years, and he had begun to have hope she might have gotten herself straightened out. But now he assumed wrong… Why sweet drop, why? But he knew why. If I could find him, Nicholas would be dead
“Mr. Guerin, I am sorry to have to call you here, but your daughter was admitted on a 72-hour psych hold” the doctor said the collapse of the man’s face. “She tried to kill herself?”
“Oh god,” the man asked as he whispered… “How?” he asked as this was not what he expected to hear when he was called to this place.
“I am told your daughter is 22 years old?” the doctor asked as she looked down at the chart. “Her name is Elizabeth?”
“Yes,” Michael said as weariness but also tears begun in his eyes. “She just had her birthday” he murmured. Although he had not been able to celebrate with her nor had she come to anyone in the family to celebrate the occasion with her… “How did it happen?”
“She was in a jail cell,” the doctor explained and from the look on the father’s face, it was not a shock or an outrage. “That doesn’t seem to surprise you?”
“No,” Michael said wearily as he looked down at the floor as he got up out of his chair and paced the room and looked straight at the doctor. “I am well aware my daughter has issues doctor, but she didn’t try to call her mother or me to bail her out…”
“If she had, would you have…?” the doctor asked as she tried to assess Michael and found him to be a very tough person to figure out. On one hand he was very emotional at the fact his daughter almost died but then on the other hand he had a tough shell around him and it’s not like she hadn’t dealt with her share of strong individuals but Michael carried a different essence to him, and he could see the worn down expression on his face as if this was the last thing he needed to be dealing with, now of all times.
“If she had wanted us to,” Michael said matter of flatly as it was the truth. “Doctor, you should know that my wife nor I have seen our daughter in four years since shortly after her 18th birthday,” he admitted like it was wound that would never close up in his heart, which it was, and he only could pray she would find some peace. “At this point, she is very much a stranger to her mother and I…”
“Why is that?” Dr. Reynolds asked as took assessment of the situation.
“We had her in a rehab center for six months prior to her birthday because we knew we lost say when she turned of age to make her own decisions about her medical care. She didn’t want to be there, but because we had the say… she stayed, and she did seem like she cleaned up her life and seemed to be turning the corner than she turned eighteen.”
“And they let her out?” Dr. Reynolds asked knowing the rules for a patient when they turned eighteen and did not want to be there anymore and therefore parents lost control of any say as she had often seen it happen.
“Yes,” Michael allowed. “She seemed okay, but then she promptly had her first overdose and was hospitalized and when she walked out of the hospital, she disappeared from our lives. She didn’t come home again.”
“What was her drug of choice?” Dr. Reynolds asked.
“You name it she tried it,” Michael sighed. “At the time we also had her three younger siblings at home who were very impressionable and a baby to think about. We didn’t go after her and figured she would come home on her own because that had been her ammo in past when we were confronted with her knack for disappearing.”
“She never did?” Dr. Reynolds asked.
“No, not this last time” Michael confirmed. “She stayed gone until your call telling me that she has resurfaced. So, you have not said, how did she do it? Was it drugs she sneaked in herself or by the officers?”
“She was on drugs yes, but no, she slit her wrists” Dr. Reynolds sighed as she saw Michael expression change to one of frantic worry as he paused. “I am deeply sorry. She almost didn’t make it, but she pulled through and now is in one her wings on a hold as assessment is made whether she needs further treatment.”
“How in the hell did she do that?” Michael asked with a sharp glare. “I am well aware you’re not allowed sharp instruments in a prison cell” he muttered. “Didn’t anyone pat her down, or least do a search before they left her alone?”
“She apparently was able to wedge of a metal piece off the bed in the cell” Dr. Reynolds sighed. “They don’t know how she did it. As she was pretty high and didn’t exhibit that kind of strength when our officers took her into custody.”
“Well I do,” Michael murmured as she knew her daughter’s significant gifts could accomplish a lot to the detriment of her own recovery although she hadn’t been to use them much since her descent had started because she had become too unreliable and a loose cannon. Max was able to help with the physical scars, but he could not touch the mental ones.
“Mr. Guerin, this wasn’t the first time she slit her wrists. There is evidence she’s tried it before… as her arms still show those scars along with others…” Dr. Reynolds murmured. “You don’t seem surprised by my saying that?”
Michael nodded an affirmative because although he had not seen the evidence in the past, it did not shock him to know she had used and abused herself in many forms. “Can I see my daughter?” he asked simply as the need to see his daughter had increased as he sat and listened to how close he had come to losing her, without even knowing she was nearby.
“Yes in a few moments,” Dr. Reynolds confirmed as she sensed that her patient’s father was a man who had lost a lot in these past years. “Can I ask because it will help our staff. Do you know the source of your daughter’s troubles? Why she went down the route she did?”
“Yes,” Michael nodded. “She was well adjusted and extremely bright and happy until she was fifteen.”
“What happened when she was fifteen?” Dr. Reynolds asked.
“She was abducted,” Michael spat. “At the end of her high school prom and for the next two weeks we went through a very hellish time, but she went through a torturous experience that you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy. She went through things that no one would want to experience, and she never truly came back from it. She tried in the beginning, but it became too much for her…”
“Oh my god. Are you telling me she is that girl? I remember hearing a case of a teenage girl who went missing for a few weeks. The media I remember only covered her rescue but never really talked about her condition or the aftermath, but they never caught who did it, right?” Dr. Reynolds asked of the case she remembered hearing in the news so many years before and how she had felt heartbroken by the violence committed towards the young girl, and to know she had that young woman as a patient broke her heart even more.
“We wanted it left out of the media,” Michael remembered because of their national profile and because of what Maria had done in the past with her career, and they had just wanted to be left alone. “We felt our daughter would recover better if she did not have camera’s her face. Unfortunately for my daughter, no, she wasn’t able to get justice and the experience and the memories were always too much for her to come back from and therefore she was never the same, and we eventually lost her from our lives…”
Sighing Dr. Reynolds made some notations in her chart and looked back at Michael. “Mr. Guerin, I am truly sorry for the fact your family had to go through that kind of experience, and that Elizabeth had to endure what she did” Dr. Reynolds murmured as she knew it was not a time to keep him from his daughter much longer. “No person should experience that level of pain…”
“No, they shouldn’t,” Michael agreed.
“So, you did mention that you want to see her?” Dr. Reynolds asked as she stood up from her desk and asked of her visitor.
“Yes, I need to see my daughter” Michael asked as they got up from the desk and walked to the door and opened it up and left the room.
“Belle heard the door open and she got up expecting to be able to be told they could go home now, but he appeared with a woman in a white coat. She knew it was trouble, and she knew it involved her eldest sister who she had not seen in over four years. Michael came out and nodded at his daughter. “Belle, can you stay here a little longer?”
“You’re seeing her, aren’t you?” Belle accused of her father as he looked not like the strong man he did when he arrived, but someone burdened by years of worry and hardship and yet she wasn’t ready to forgive for the hell her sister had put their parents through over the years. “Why can’t we go home? She obviously doesn’t want to see us, or she would have called us, herself.” The budding twelve-year-old muttered to her father.
“She needs us,” Michael said softly. “She’s not in any condition to have called us”
“I don’t care,” Belle said with that classic Guerin stubborn pose. Elizabeth used to have that Michael reflected, as he missed it so much in his eldest daughter. “She doesn’t want us here…”
“I have to see her regardless, so can you stay here with Emily?” he asked nodding the youngest in their family. The five-year-old looked up at the woman in the white coat and frowned. The doctor saw her patient in the little girl’s eyes and face, as Belle reluctantly agreed with her father and she and Emily sat back down. “Just don’t make it long” she chided her father. “This is a waste of time.”
Michael was quiet as they walked. “Is she you know?” Dr. Reynolds asked.
All Michael said was a simple Yes as they walked and arrived at the assigned room. Looking through the window Michael saw a figure on the bed, passed out. Dr. Reynolds opened the door and in they walked he was captivated by the figure on the bed, strapped down and heavily bandaged around her wrists.
“Are those necessary doctor as she looks drugged” Michael asked in despair at the state of his eldest daughter.
“She threatened harm when she was brought in here Mr. Guerin, and that of my orderlies. We had to do this otherwise she would have created more harm than good for both herself and this institution,” Dr. Reynolds muttered. “For someone in her condition, she was pretty strong”
“You have no idea what my daughter is capable of doctor,” Michael sighed as he looked down at his daughter as he glanced at her for the first time in four years. She might be now 22 years old but to Michael she looked so young, and flashes played in his brain of that day when his daughter was fifteen played on a loop. “It’s just that she was heavily drugged during her ordeal six years ago, and that is what got her dependent on drugs in the first place” Michael murmured. “No matter how we helped her, and we did, she always slipped back because she always saw it as easing the pain and numbing her from the memories that kept eating at her...”
Not ready to commit to reducing or eliminating the drugs, she tried to wake up her patient “Elizabeth, your father is here to see you” Dr. Reynolds of the patients who was lying as if she was sleeping with her eyes closed and knew no father wanted to see their daughter in this kind of state. “We’ll try to wean her off the drugs as she recovers, and as she sees that we’re trying to help her and not hurt her…”
“Good luck with that,” Michael advised as Dr. Reynolds tried again as she tried to shake the patient awake. “Elizabeth, your father is here to see you?”
The shake caused eyes to pop open as a terrified Elizabeth shrieked liked she had been attacked, and her eyes went wild and then went dead as they looked through her father, as if he wasn’t there and like she was zoned out and, in a trance and like she had met evil. He had not seen that kind of expression in his daughter in six years and knew she was living her nightmare again. “Dr. Reynolds, you have to stop the drugs. I am telling you, the worst thing right now for her recovery is for her to be drugged. Keep her tied down if need be, but you have to stop the drugs.”
“Mr. Guerin,” Dr. Reynolds. “I really think…” she started to say and then they heard a small voice. “That is my Mommy!” as they whipped around as they saw twelve-year-old Belle looking stunned at her older sister who didn’t look like she had any part of the sister she remembered and loved in her, as it was like she was staring a shell of her sister as Elizabeth was staring into space while Emily who stood beside her voicing her memory.
“Belle, why did you have to bring her here?” Michael asked as reality intruded into the room as Belle and Emily stood as strung out Elizabeth fell back against her pillow, her arms still tied down and her eyes closed as Michael looked back at his daughter.
“I had to see her for myself,” Belle struggled with seeing her sister so completely out of it. She had never been exposed to how bad it was years before, and now she saw it for herself. “Dad, what’s wrong with Elizabeth?” Belle asked as this was the first time, she had seen her sister in four years since she was nearly eight years old, and she had never seen her sister this bad, but it was obvious her father had…
“Everything,” Michael murmured as he walked and hugged his daughter. “We will help her…” he insisted.
“Does she want help?” Belle asked as Dr. Reynolds remarked on the family dynamics within the family as they walked out of the room, and they closed the door and Dr. Reynolds locked it after insisting that it was for the best interest of the patient.
“I hope so,” Michael asked as they walked back to the office, and now with both children in the room Michael sat down. “Are there some papers I have to sign or something for her treatment?”
“Not necessarily because as it stands now, it’s court ordered,” Dr. Reynolds replied. “She doesn’t have any choice unless the assessment comes back that she’s not a danger to herself and is able to be released and if that day does come, then it’s likely back to jail for arraignment.”
“Right, what were the charges,” Michael asked as he was reminded that there was a reason, she had been in jail in the first place.
“Drugs, Prostitution” Dr. Reynolds said to Belle’s gasp as Michael held her hand. He wished he had not brought in the kids, but Emily would not understand what was going on, but he knew Belle was too jaded into the ways of the world not to know. “Apparently it’s not the first time for that charge…”
“God,” Michael asked as he shouldn’t be surprised, he told himself given how she was going through guys like the she did drugs before she disappeared, and it made Michael almost yearn for days when he was frightened of her dating Finn. Finn would have been a comfort after seeing the despair on his daughter’s face in the wake of Nicholas.
“And there is a charge of child endangerment” Dr. Reynolds said softly to the gasp of Michael and Belle. Emily was sitting next to Belle reading a book, oblivious to the tension.
“What are you talking about?” Michael asked as he felt shaken at the newfound revelation.
“Obviously, you did not know, but your daughter did have two little boys living with her at the time of her arrest. A three in a half year old and a six-month-old who were taken away shortly before she was taken into custody.” Dr. Reynolds as the migraine in Michael’s head increased as Belle gasped at the revelation of two new members to their clan.
“Jesus,” Michael said out loud which Emily looked up, inquisitive about her father curses although she shouldn’t have been since they were constant around the house since Emily came to an age of understanding, and Belle didn’t bat an eye but on this day, she told her younger sibling to go back to the reading and so the child did as Belle turned her hardened expression back to the doctor..
Dr. Reynolds could sense that Belle had too much burden placed on her shoulder for a young girl who was so close to being a teenager to have to bear, as she focused back on what she knew of the patient in her charge. Sighing, she read her notes “She’s being accused of neglect, and not providing the necessities of life for the children in her custody” Dr. Reynolds confirmed, and Michael was about to burst.
“Where are they now?” Michael asked as he overlooked the charges because they felt like nonsense to him because he knew his daughter and while she was always troubled, she would never be neglectful. But Michael you do not know your daughter today his inner self told himself. Still he could not believe it would be true. “The children, where are they?”
“Foster care,” Dr. Reynolds replied. “They are getting ready to place the children if another suitable placement with someone who is related them doesn’t become available,” the doctor murmured as Michael instantly became aware of altering of the dynamics around them. “You get what I am saying, don’t you?”
Michael knew but he needed the confirmation and to hear it from someone other than his own brain. “What do you mean?” Michael asked but knew what she was getting at.
“Mr. Guerin, I promise that kind of charge your daughter is facing is not going to be looking good on any application to get her children back if that is what she wants to do if she manages to get better. There was suspicion before about the older boy, and now with the addition of a baby. They aren’t going to allow it slide and give her the chance to do it again unless she proves she can turn her life around… and even then, it’s going to be hard to get them if they go into foster care.
“I know,” Michael murmured as a former victim of the system. He got out but not before a lot of pain and angst, where was the system when Hank was beating the shit out of me before I could fight back…
“So, what do you want to do?” Dr. Reynolds asked.
The room was silence for an endless moment but Belle knew what her father was going to say, and she knew her mother was going to have a fit about it because she had long given up on her eldest daughter or tried the hardest to give up on her, because of too many chances and too much disappointment.
“We’ll take them,” Michael said instantly.