Choices (Companion to TERMINUS) - CHILD [COMPLETE]

[JO]

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Author: JO
Category: post-Departure, future fic; Companion piece to Terminus
Rating: CHILD
Summary: Two-part fic from Absalom's pov as he reflects on the choices in his life.
Disclaimer: The characters of Roswell are the property of Twentieth Century Fox Television and Regency Productions. All original characters and concepts are the property of the author. No profit has been made from the distribution of this work of fiction.


I had thought I would wait to post until Terminus was complete but I just couldn't. Please note that these parts will be short and quite sporadic as Terminus continues. Hope you all enjoy!!!


JO


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PART ONE
2022


I once heard a country music song while Jase and I were in Texas that talked about choices: living and dying with the choices I’ve made. That’s an adequate description for my life – it’s all about choices. My mother once attempted to shove destiny down my throat, to force me to side with and believe what the soothsayer had predicted for my life. In some odd sense of irony the soothsayer was right. My battles were hard and they did divide houses. My battles divided my parents, Max and Liz, even Jase and I to some extent, but I prevailed. I won, all because of the first real choice I ever made. I chose Lily.

Lily Parker came into my life one early June morning eight years ago, her scream prompting me to investigate a portion of the Copper Summit compound I was forbidden to inhabit. I remember exactly how her face looked in the midst of her nightmare, and how shrill her scream had been. Then, without knowing me, she asked me to stay with her until she fell asleep. It’s this trusting nature that scares me because of who and what she is; the fact that my mother took she and Jase from Liz and that Lily is still in my father’s possession does nothing to diminish my fear.

Somewhere deep inside my mind, I know this is up to me. That I have to play mediator between Max, Michael and Liz. That I have to convince Jase to step away from Larissa now that they are finally in the same city again. That I have to attempt to connect with Lily in order to find her. Just like those notions float around my head, so do the thoughts of what would happen should we not succeed. Would our failures, my failure, cause Lily to live the remainder of her life with my father? My jaw twitches at the mere thought of my father running his hands along Lily’s smooth skin, and an anger boils within me, just as it did when Lily pled for Jase’s life at my father’s feet. I cannot imagine how I would react knowing he had touched Lily in a sexual way or that Lily had given birth to his child, as she is prophesied to do so I try not to think about it. I can’t think about it or else I’ll go insane and I need my sanity to find her; I need any kind of advantage possible given the circumstances.

Seth posed an interesting question to me: how did I become the person I am today given all the unhealthy and evil influences over my life? My mother, Tess Harding, is the devil incarnate in Liz’s eyes. She tortured Liz and kept such a menacing hold over her, Liz didn’t tell Max about Jase and Lily until they had been kidnaped. My father, Kivar, killed Max, Michael and Isabel in their first lives and his tyrannical rule now extends to Earth. I ask myself this question almost every day: what did I do to deserve this? And the only answer I can give myself to sufficiently push the question to the background is choices. It all comes back to the choices I’ve made and the choices I must continue to make. I can only hope those choices will bring me closer to Lily. In the end, she’s the one choice I’m confident of.

[JO]

Author's Note: I decided to make this a two-part story instead of a three-part as originally advertised. I hope you enjoy it regardless.

***Spoiler Warning for Terminus***


PART TWO
2025

It’s early in Roswell, so early in fact that the sun hasn’t made its presence known and the darkest hours of night bloom in full force. My mother once told me these were the hours of my birth, the hours in which I would find the most comfort during my lifetime. Meran would appreciate the irony of the situation, given that almost everything he taught me during my formative years were opposite the teachings of my mother. I honestly hate to believe anything my mother ever told me during my childhood but this bit of insight has proved true. It was during these dark hours that I first connected with Lily over ten years ago in Copper Summit, and reestablished our connection three years ago in a desperate attempt to save her. It was also during these hours that Lily and I created life: Fallon, and the soon-to-be born Rory. I know, somewhere in the back of my mind, that another child - our son - is waiting to join our family. It’s a precious thing for me to be a father, to shower Fallon with as much attention as she desires, and to prove, maybe only to myself, that I’m a good person, despite my family.

My parents were monsters, tyrants and abusers, all for the cause of self-promotion. Both are now mercifully dead, ironically killed by my half-brother who, true to his upbringing, was also bent on self-promotion. It doesn’t escape my attention that I am the only one of my immediate family still alive. My parents killed by Tristan, he and Morgana killed by Jase. How, when I clearly received the same education, same influences, same partial genes as my siblings, did I not become them? It’s the question that keeps me awake, the same question that has lingered through my brain for the majority of my life.

My mother had her own causes to attend to, a destiny she fought for with tooth and nail until the final days of her life when she decided she had been fighting for the wrong cause. I could call it fate that my mother’s greatest achievement - bearing the acrea - had also been her greatest deception. She hurt so many with her lies and machinations, it hurts me just to think about all the pain she caused. But I am nothing like her. Maybe it was Meran’s influence that caused me to see her in a different light; I’ve always known she served her own purposes. You could say she died honorably or you could say fate finally caught up to her. I choose to call it fate; she was killed by the one thing she had sought to control, and like all of Tess Harding’s children, Tristan had his own destiny to uphold.

My father was a powerful being in both of his lifetimes. Even now, although he has been dead for almost three years, I hear Lily cry out in an ancient tongue in the wee hours of the morning. Ar’eega. Green-eyed monster. I know my father never touched Lily in malicious ways but he held her prisoner for almost ten years. Part of him holds her prisoner still, if only in her nightmares. I can’t really be angry with him, I’ve always known his true nature. My father is not like my mother - she killed and manipulated her path to survival. My father made his own path through fear and intimidation and control. Sometimes I wonder if Lily looks at me and sees him in my features. If she were ever afraid of me or saw him for a brief moment, she would never say. Lily has trusted me from the first moment we met, the night I stormed into her room and woke her from a nightmare during her first week at my father’s compound. Part of me feels like I’m not worthy of such trust from her, considering all the things my mother, father, Tristan and Morgana did to her family but Lily manages to banish those thoughts and each time she looks at me, I am overwhelmed by her love.

Tristan and I were never actual friends. I watch Jase and Lily and Seth and how they act towards each other; they are not only family but they are friends. They confide in each other, they have bonds with each other no one else can break. Those are bonds Tristan and I never shared. Maybe it was because we were so close in age that we did not get along better, or it could have been that I was always given Tristan’s hand-downs, the things that he was finished with somehow made their way into my closet or my bed. I was resentful of him at the time because my father showered him with attention. It was Tristan that was allowed to be apart of secret meetings and strategy sessions, not I. Knowing now how Tristan behaved, I’m glad I wasn’t my father’s favorite or my mother’s favorite. I was allowed to become myself, to make my own choices.

Of the family members I’ve lost, it’s Morgana that I miss the most. She became a pawn in her young life, first to my father, then Paj and finally Tristan. It doesn’t escape me that she and Lily are the same age; what a different life Morgana could have had if Sharon had lived, or if she had allowed Jase to penetrate her heart. Jase is as haunted by her as I am but I know we are haunted for different reasons, even though we have don’t discuss Morgana’s presence in his life.

That is one of the reasons I’m so thankful for Meran’s direction in my life. He conditioned me, yes, but he also taught me to be my own man, to think for myself and to make my own choices. The greatest and best choice I ever made was when I was twelve years old, standing with Meran in the hallway of the compound ouside Jase’s room. It was a choice I haven’t faltered from or regretted once in all these many years. That was when I chose Lily, and I bound my destiny to hers.