Walking By (CC,M/L,ADULT) COMPLETE

[lizard_queen]

Title: Walking By by lizard_queen aka Gus The Lovable aka Kristen aka Ki-ki aka me! <pfew>


Couples: M/L... who else?


Rating: Um... i'll say ADULT for now.


Disclaimer: I don't own anything Roswell, except season 1 dvd... cause the creators are stingy and wouldn't sell me anything else, plus the other 2 box sets aren't out in Australia yet.


Summary: Set after they destroy all the skins in 'Wipeout'. What happens when Max comes back from the future, but with a different message for Liz? (Short, yeah i know, but it was all i could think of to write. For your own sanity, i advise you just read the fic and try not to ponder over my lack of summary talent too much)


Authors Note: Okay, despite the first few chapters of this, IT WILL BE FLUFF! Or, i'm going to try and make it fluff. You have to read to like, the first four chapters before you ride this story off, because the first few parts of this are just filler, and yeah. The banner was done by me on one of those late nights when i had nothing else to do, cause no one was updating their fics and yeah, i got bored. The lyrics in it are from the song Walking By by Something Corporate, which, ironically, is also where i got the name of the fic from. How about that?

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Okay, i've been trying and trying desperatly to hold off posting this. Party because i have really big exams next week and i should be studying, but also because i only have two chapters of this written, so you really can't expect me to update more than once a week. But anyway, sorry, and i hope you all enjoy:


<center>Chapter 1

~Liz~</center>



Oh God, I’m crying again.


I just can’t seem to stop lately. I hate this feeling. This helplessness that I’ve had ever since he left.


I gave up everything for him. Every dream that I have ever had about Max and me was shattered that night. And the worst part is that he almost seemed pleased that I was heart broken, that we would never be able to go back to what we once had, all because of the world. His eyes were laughing at me as we danced on my balcony, before he disappeared into some alternate universe where everything is sunshine and roses, and the world wont end because of us.


Well, I say screw the world.


I don’t give a flying fuck if it ends because Max and I made love, or if a giant meteor flies into it. I just want to sit here in my self-pity and think about all the times we had…


Which, granted, were very limited, thanks to a certain blonde showing up and ruining my life forever. But I guess Max is just as much to blame as she is. Okay, well not present Max, but future Max, definitely.


When he told me what would happen if I didn’t make Max fall out of love with me, I felt as though I was dreaming. There was no possible way that me loving Max so much it hurts would end the world. But still, I did it, because it was him.


It broke my heart to have to go to Max and say those awful things, things that I didn’t mean and never would. I don’t care about other boys, or how young Romeo and Juliet were… I just want Max.


But I can’t have him, because I promised the other him that I would give up everything I’ve ever wanted just to save this stupid planet. So made him think I slept with Kyle, which was one of the biggest mistakes I have ever made.


The way his eyes looked at me with so much hate when we were in Copper Summit. I felt like I was the lowest thing on this earth. He trusted me. He loved me more than anything in this world or the next, and he proved that love for me so many times… and my only response was to shatter his heart into millions of pieces as soon as he climbed up onto my balcony and saw me in bed with Kyle.


I would never do anything like that to him. I would never betray his trust or his heart like that. I would never intentionally hurt Max that way... and yet I did.


Which is part of the reason I feel like this now. I feel like the world could swallow me whole right now and I wouldn’t care because as far as I’m concerned, I have nothing left. I no longer have Max, and as much as I know that I could run up to him right now and kiss him senseless after I explain everything to him, and he would take me back in less than a heartbeat… I can’t do that.


I just wish that instead of standing there stunned on my balcony, before running away, he would have climbed through my window and beaten the crap out of Kyle, or done something to show that he was feeling, to prove to me that he wasn’t as numb as I was.


But he just stood there, before dropping the Gomez tickets and disappearing.


I think that's what pissed me off the most. He didn’t even try and fight for me, he just left. But then again, he had been trying. He had done everything to make me believe that I was the only one for him. And I would have given in aswell… until the future him showed up on my balcony and ruined my life.


Which I guess is why I’ve taken to these late night walks. Roswell is quite at night. Okay, well, being the small town that it is, it’s quiet all the time, but at night it’s absolutely deserted. It’s peaceful, and it lets me think about all the things going on in my life… or not going on.


I can also cry so much that I have a headache, and no one can come and ask me if I’m all right, because the streets are deserted! Ahh yes, just one more advantaged for my self-loathing.


I quickly wipe away my tears when I hear the sound of footsteps up ahead of me. Obviously the street isn’t as deserted as I thought it was. Turning the corner at the park, I run straight into the one person I really didn’t want to see right now.


“Max.” I say as we both stop dead in our tracks. He stand about three meters away from me, fidgeting as he nervously puts his hands in his pockets and avoids making eye contact, which I’m glad for. I don’t know if I would be able to handle seeing the hate and resent in his eyes, seeing all the pain that I caused him.


“Liz.” My name comes out as a breathless whisper from his lips, and I just want to break down and cry right now, before throwing myself in his arms and never letting him go.


I don’t know if its because I have incredibly strong will power, or if I’m so scared to talk to him knowing that he’s going to bring up Kyle, but I manage to stay rooted to the spot as I once again wipe away the tears that just won’t stop.


“What are you doing out so late?” I splutter out, feeling like an idiot as soon as he looks at me. He’s studying me, looking everywhere but my eyes, but that doesn’t stop me from looking at his. I know the instant that he sees the tears running down my face because his eyes go wide, and I see him curl his hand into a fist as he tries to restrain himself from reaching out and brushing them away.


“Um… I just needed some air.” Max mumbles. I feel like the biggest jerk in the world right now. I want to scream out at the top of my lungs: MAX, I DIDN’T SLEEP WITH KYLE! IT WAS ALL A SET UP! I STILL LOVE YOU AND ONLY YOU! But I know it would be useless. It wouldn’t solve any of our problems.


As much as I want to be with Max, I can’t do that to future him. He put so much of his trust in me, and I can’t break a promise I made, even if it was to the wrong version of the love of my life.


“Okay.” That's all I can say in reply, okay. Because I know exactly how he feels.


We stand in silence like this for a few more minutes as I stand there playing with the ring on my middle finger of my right hand. The same ring that Max gave me for Christmas last year when I gave him a pocketknife with the words “Max & Liz 4 Ever” engraved on it.


But its not going to be forever. It hasn’t been forever for a long time.


I look up from my ring to meet Max’s amber eyes that are glistering with tears as the small droplets of water roll down his cheeks. If only Tess could see us now… we’re a perfect match. We’re both standing in a deserted park crying as we stare at each other. If this doesn’t give her the idea that we’re supposed to be together, then I don’t know what will.


But we’re not supposed to be together. Not any more anyway.


“Why?” His tone was pleading as he locked eyes with me, making me gasp at the intensity I can see in the amber depths.


I swear that if we weren’t the only people out at this time of night, I would have missed what Max just whispered, but I didn’t. I heard what he said, and I know that he wants an answer, but I can’t give him one.


“Why?” He says again, more forcefully this time. He clenches his fists beside him and hardens his jaw before piercing me with another look as I stand there in silence, refusing to give in and answer him.


“Tell me why!” He yells once he realises I’m not going to respond, his voice echoing throughout the park and across the street as he stares down at me.


I flinch slightly from his sharp tone, but other than that I stand my ground, not giving in to telling him everything that I desperately want to… need to.


“How could you do this Liz? After everything we’ve been through? I love you! I FUCKING LOVE YOU!”


I shake my head, his words piercing my soul as they ring around in my head. When I speak, its barely above a whisper, but I know that he hears me.


“You can’t.”







Should I continue? Or not? Maybe? Yes? No?
Does anyone else have a strange craving for baked potato? Or is it just me?

[lizard_queen]

<center>Chapter 2


~Max~</center>



You can’t.


That was all she said before she ran.


You can’t.


Why not?


All I have done my entire life is love Liz Parker. She is the one thing in this ridiculous world that has kept me alive; kept me sane. Even when I couldn’t touch her or kiss her, I would just watch her. Her presence has a calming effect on my soul. It’s like a soothing balm to all of my pain.


And then she got shot, and by some miracle, I was the one who had the chance to save her life. I brought her back from the brink of death just so I could see her smiling face for another day.


Why do you think I sit in the Crashdown everyday? It’s not for the food, and its definitely not because I don’t have anything better to do.


It’s because of her.


And then it seemed as if the Gods were shining down on me once again because she was mine. For one split second in time, I had Liz Parker. I love her more than anything in this world, and I got the chance to prove that love to her.


I got to kiss her.


To hold her.


To tell her that I, Max Evans, was completely and utterly in love with her.


But of course, no story is complete without its villain, and the one in the story is Destiny itself. The one thing that every lonely heart prays for, hopes they will find in their life… ruined mine.


Because of Destiny, Liz Parker and I ceased to exist. I was no longer some teenage boy who had the girl of his dreams in his arms, but I was some King from a far away planet and I was expected to love a complete stranger and help save my dying people from their dictator.


But I can’t do it… I won’t do it… I refuse to do it unless I have Liz by my side.


Call me selfish, call me a bastard or call me damn hopeless, but I will not do anything unless I can be with Liz again.


Okay, I’ll do one thing, which is moving from the spot where I’ve been standing for at least an hour and go home. She left here an hour ago, and I haven’t moved because I’ve been in shock.


It’s cold and dark out here, but for the past few nights I’ve found it comforting just walking around the quiet streets. It clears my head from everything going on in my life. It helps me have at least a few hours of sleep because when I get home, I’m too tired to have nightmares about a white room and being tortured. I’m too tired to see the needles piercing my skin, or hear my screams echoing off the walls.


I’m too tired to see the pain in Liz’s face when she walked away from me at the pod chamber, or to see the tears streaming down her face that night as I stood on her balcony and watched her cry herself to sleep.


I’m too tired to see her in bed with Kyle.


I know Liz, better than I know myself sometimes, and there is no possible way that she would have done that to me…to us.


Maybe I’m just putting too much faith in what we had, but I won’t believe that she would throw everything away for one meaningless night with Kyle. I know that she loved me just as much as I love her right now. I know that every word she speaks, every breath she takes, her mind is always on me, just like my mind is always on her. I don’t know how I know this… but I do. Just like I know that she wouldn’t do that.


And what timing I had aswell! Just my luck that when I climbed up her balcony, fully prepared to get down on my hands and knees and beg her to take me back… she would be in bed with Kyle.


And Isabel wonders why I don’t believe in God. If there really was someone up there, I’m pretty sure that they either hate me, or are sitting up their laughing their asses off at how much of a joke my life has turned out to be.


But, when you really think about it, hasn’t my life always been a joke?


I mean, if I ever walked up to some complete stranger and said ‘Hey guess what? I’m an alien that was hatched out of a pod looking like a six year old, and I’m also a king of a far away planet that's been claimed by war, which was why they mixed my previous life’s DNA with that of a human and sent me here in the first place,” the first thing this stranger would do is laugh.


Hence the joke that is my life.


I think that I should clearly state for all of you that I have never, ever stopped loving Liz Parker... and I never will. She has my soul, just like I thought I had hers.

I guess I was proven wrong.


“Max? Is that you?” Isabel yells from the lounge room.


In all my pondering, I didn’t realise that I had walked all the way back home. I close the front door behind me and walk down the hallway to find Isabel curled up on the lounge watching a re-run of an old black and white movie.


“What are you still doing up?” Whoa, was that my voice? I sound so shaky, so strange. I quickly clear my throat and straighten up when Isabel puts the movie on mute and turns around to look at me.


“I couldn’t sleep. Are you okay?” she asks quietly, her voice laced with concern as she looks up at me with a wrinkled brow.


“I’m fine Iz.” I say quietly as walk over to the table in the adjoining room and pick at a piece of cake my mum made for desert.


“Don’t do that Max.”


“What?” I say with half my mouth full, thinking she’s talking about eating the cake. Did I mention my mum has really bad cooking? If I haven’t already, I warn you, not even the starving children in Africa will eat her food.


“Don’t just walk away because you don’t want to talk about it.” Isabel says as she stands up from the couch and death stares me. Ahh yes, it’s times like these I wish they only found me on the side of the road.


“I’m not walking away because I don’t want to talk about it Isabel. I’m walking away because I’m tired and I want to sleep.”


I knew saying something like that would be a mistake, because as soon as I start to walk towards my bedroom, she clears her throat and says, “Have you been crying?”


“What?” I stop dead in my tracks and swing around to face her accusing eyes, hoping to God mine aren’t all red from the park.


Yes, that’s right ladies and gentlemen, I was crying. I saw Liz and everything just came tumbling out. All of my emotions that I had kept in side since forever came rushing out, and the only way I knew how to cope was to either cry or scream, and I did both. Oh God, I screamed at Liz!


“You’ve been crying Max.” She states simply, like its an everyday fact.


“No I haven’t.”


“It’s okay Max. You’re allowed to cry. I just wish you would talk to me instead of locking everything inside. Or if not me, talk to Michael or Liz.”


I feel my breathing hitch at the sound of her name and I close my eyes and harden my jaw, trying to subside the pain that runs through my every vein whenever someone says her name. I clench my fists down at my side and force my pulse to even out. If this is what it’s like now, then you can imagine what its like when I actually see her in person, hence me screaming at her and then crying.


But the thing that really pisses me off is, as much as I want to hate her for what she did to me, as much as I want to be done with her and never see her face ever again… I can’t. I can hate Kyle all I want. I can be disappointed in Liz and blame myself all I want, but I can’t stop loving her.


Never for one second since I saw her for the first time have I ever stopped loving her. And I doubt I ever will.


Isabel has obviously noticed my frustration because she's standing there dumbfounded, her moth hanging right open from the realisation of why I’m so upset tonight.


“It was Liz, wasn’t it?”


I ignore her by turning around and walking down the corridor towards my bedroom. She starts walking behind me, trying to grab onto my arm to make me pay attention to her but I just shrug her off and keep walking.


One thing I think I should mention right now is that I still haven’t told Isabel about Liz and Kyle. I’ve told Tess and Michael knows the basic stuff, but I refuse to tell Isabel because I know that she’ll make a big deal about it and turn all Ice Princess on Liz. As much as I think Liz deserves it, I know that it’s no one else’s business but our own, so if anyone is going Ice Princess on Liz, it’s me…


…ah, better make that Ice Prince.


“Max! Would you just stop acting like such a friggin woman and tell me what the hell Liz Parker did that’s made you so damn upset!”


I keep walking until I reach my bedroom door. “Good night Isabel” is all I say before I walk inside and slam the door closed, making sure to lock it with my powers and put a chair against the knob so even if she braves trying to use some alien magic to make me talk, she still wont be able to open the door.


I lay down on my bed with my hands behind my head, replying the night’s events once more in my head.


“You can’t” she says.


And once again I find myself asking, “Why not?”




TBC...

[lizard_queen]

<center>Chapter 3


~Liz~ </center>



So here I sit, lying on my bed in the dark as I once again cry over Max Evans.


Why is it that the mere thought of him always brings tears to my eyes?


But that's not the worst part. The worst part is that I’m always thinking of him, therefore I’m always crying. I’m surprised that I actually have this many tears. Although I’m pretty sure that if I keep on this track, in a few days I’ll just be crying air.


Maria and Alex have tried to talk to me about this, even Kyle has, but it makes no difference. I was forced to break the heart of the one person who I ever truly loved, and I doubt that Max will ever forgive me for it.


Even if he does and I somehow manage to once again be with Max, I would have broken a promise with the other Max. Future or not, I can’t do that to him.


I can feel how much I’ve hurt him every time he’s near me, and I can’t stand the feeling, or non-feeling. Where Max and I used to have our ‘connection’, I could always feel it in the back of my mind. It was like my safety blanket. I felt comfortable and safe as long as I could feel Max. But now instead of that comfortable warmth in the back of my mind, there’s just numbness. A cold, vast numbness that is slowly consuming my every thought, every feeling until I’m just a giant numb Liz glob.


He’s blocking me out. I don’t know if its intentional or not, but the fact is that I can’t feel Max anymore. I don’t feel safe and warm. Instead I feel cold and scared, all because I can’t feel Max. It scares the shit out of me because it’s just a reminder of how much I truly hurt not only him, but also myself with my actions.


It reminds me that he and I are no longer, and we can never be again.


But still I hold my ground and not give in to the temptation to put on my jacket and shoes, and go running over to his house and throw myself at him. Besides, this is for the best in the long run. It may hurt like hell now, but it’ll eventually get better… right?


All that I’ve concluded so far is that reality bites. Big time.


I’m drawn out of my self-pitying from a giant flash outside, coming from what I assume is just lightning. It’s been threatening to rain all day and I’m kind of glad that it’s starting now. Storms help me sleep.


The pitter-patter of the rain is soothing; the way it bounces off the metal roof of the UFO Centre across the road and echoes in the background puts me to sleep.


Ahh yes, the UFO museum. Once again the world and my thoughts are mocking me. Max works at the UFO museum, and he comes into the Crashdown for lunch everyday he works, thus making my life uncomfortable because he still chooses to sit in my section.


At least I know that even those who hate me think I give good service at work.


The silence in my room is daunting. I’m sitting in the dark crying over a boy as the pitch-black sky outside flashes with electricity, illuminating every corner, every dark crevice of my disastrous life for a brief second before disappearing, letting the cold and black seep in once more.


‘Knock knock’


“Shit!” I scream and I jump at least a meter when I hear someone knocking on my window. Right on cue aswell. I swear this is like a scene from some horror movie.


I clutch my hand to my chest and desperately try and calm my rapid pulse as I look over at the clock beside my bed that says it 3:47am. What the hell is someone doing knocking on my window at this hour of the night… or morning?


It’s like pitch black out there, and all I can see is the outline of someone crouching over in front of the window. I reluctantly stand up and cautiously approach the window, still not sure if this is a social call or someone with a knife just dropping by to kill me.


But then again, I wouldn’t really care at this point in my life.


I quietly unlock the latch, take a deep breath and raise my window. There’s another flash of lightning as I do, momentarily screwing up my vision as I try and focus on the person in front of me.


I open my eyes slowly, holding my breath in either anticipation or fear, only to come face to face with… “Max?”


Buts its then that I realise its not Max. His face is older, strained, and full of extra wrinkles and pain. He looks just like my Max, but he’s not. His hair is a little longer than my Max and as he goes to scratch behind his ear, I notice the wedding ring on his finger.


I slowly take a step back as realisation dawns on me. At least this one isn’t leather clad with grey hair. This Future Max almost looks normal. But I’ve learnt from experience that no matter what they look like, any future versions of the love of your life always come bearing bad news.


“Liz. Please don’t freak out or anything, but I’m not-” he begins, but I cut him off with my frozen voice as it shakes from… I don’t know what. Confusion? Fear? Anger? I also think that the tears are helping.


“Max? Y-yeah, I can s-see that. What now? Forgot to tell me you never really loved me and I would be better if I went and cut my wrists?” I yell as I continue to walk backwards until my legs bump the end of my bed.


I furiously wipe at the tears that are streaming down my cheeks as he cautiously climbs through my window with his hands up in front of him to show that he isn’t a threat.


But then again, he is an alien whose powers come from his hands, so that really counters the first thought. Maybe he’s getting ready to blast me because the only way for the world to not come to an end is for me to never exist in the future?


“What?” He asks with a crumpled brow. “No! Liz please, you have to-”


He stops short as he looks at me with widening eyes, the same way my Max does when something has just occurred to him.


My Max. What a joke.


He’s not my Max. He hasn’t been my Max for a long time, and yet I still can’t seem to let him go. I can push him towards Tess all I want, but at the end of the day I would love nothing more than to run into his arms and tell him everything.


“Wait a minute. Why don’t you think I’m a skin?”


He has a point. Why did I think the first Future Max was a skin but I had no misconceptions about this one what so ever? Its almost like I know this is the real Max. I could tell the real Max from a fake any time… and this one, however many years older he is, is the real Max. No question about it.


“I-I…” I stumble over my explanation, still overwhelmed that this is happening to me again. Why can’t these future versions of the love of my life go and find someone else to stop the end of the world? Why can’t they try Maria… or even Tess would do a better job than me, and I can guarantee that she wont give it a second thought when she's stealing Max away from me.


“B-because a skin wouldn’t be that stupid. They no d-doubt already know that I’ve already heard from a f-future you, so sending another one w-would just be giving them away… plus they can’t shape shift… r-right?”


Well, I pulled that one out of my ass.


Future Max, the second, can clearly see that I’m lying, which only makes me believe more and more that he isn’t a fake…


Which, now that I think about it, is strange. How come I’m certain about this Max, but I wasn’t about the first future Max?


Why does this Max feel so much more real than the first future version? Why does it feel as though the connection I have with present Max lives on in this Max, but it was no where to be seen the first time he came back?


“You already know, don’t you?” He asks quietly as I feel his intense gaze burning into me.


Cautiously, I look up from my hands and after a long internal debate on whether I’m dreaming this or its real I answer him. “Know what?”


Is it strange that I’m almost afraid to know the answer to this question? The last time there was a long pause and a future Max withholding information, it lead to my heart being broken more than one time.


Every time I had to look at present Max and lie to him, everything I did or said during that entire time broke my heart just a little bit more. And in the end, the final blow, the cause of my heart smashing into millions of pieces was when I saw the look on his face. The one look that I hoped I would never cause anyone to give.


Max’s heart was just as broken as mine… which in turn killed me even more inside.


“You can already feel how different I am to him. You already know which one of us is more real… don’t you?” He asks slowly as he moves and sits next to me at the end of my bed.


“Max, what are you talking about?” I yell in frustration as I cover my head with my hands. I don’t know what I’m trying to do. Rip it off maybe? “Get over the crypticness and just tell me what the fuck you want me to do this time!”


He jumps at my harsh tone, but I’m too overwhelmed with tears to care.


“Liz, I’m sorry for what he did, for how much pain he caused you, and I swear to you that if I could change it myself, I would, but right now its imperative that you listen to what I’m about to tell you.”


“What? For God’s sake Max just tell me who the hell you’re talking about!” I scream in confusion. Didn’t I explicitly say that I wanted simple, short sentenced English, so I can understand what on earth he is trying to tell me?


“The first Future Me. Liz…”


There’s a long pause as he take s a deep breath before telling me what I know will undoubtly change my entire life once again. I can literally hear the blood pounding in my ears as my heart pumps it around my body, somehow keeping me alive when all I want to do right now is be dead.


I look up and my eyes meet deep amber ones, the same ones that I fell in love with and will possibly love for my entire existence. His voice is quite and soft as he whispers, laced with guilt and sorrow, but I hear him all the same.


“Liz, Future Max… it… it was all a mind warp.”



TBC...

[lizard_queen]

<center>Chapter 4


~Max~</center>



I climb up her balcony and jump over the railing so my feet hit the ground, sending small bits of dust and dirt flying off into the atmosphere.


This is my last chance. I don’t know how many more times I can have Liz turning me down. I have some pride, you know? And Liz constantly telling me no is really messing with my confidence. Mix in the fact that I relentlessly have Tess breathing down my neck about this ridiculous Destiny… and you can see where my desperation comes from.


If only Liz could understand that I don’t care about this stupid destiny. I don’t and never will care about being a King and ruling a planet that is, according to every non-human I meet, my ‘home’. My home is where ever Liz is. Antar and everything that comes with it is foreign to me, and it would never be my ‘home’.


They sent four of us down to earth so we could one day go back and save a dieing race and rule our planet again… but I don’t want that. As much of a bastard as I sound right now, I don’t ever want to go back. My home is here on Earth. It’s where I grew up. It’s where my family is, even if they’re not my blood family. It’s where everything I know and love is.


It’s where Liz is.


If they really wanted us to go back to Antar and save them, then why didn’t they give us our memories straight out? Why do we have to mercilessly do their outlandish memory retrieval sessions with someone who I don’t trust as far as I can throw her? Why don’t we remember? Wouldn’t it make this entire thing a lot easier, and we probably would have already been back and saved them.


I’m not a king, far from it. If I were to go back to Antar right now and try and claim my throne, they would possibly laugh me right out of the palace. But you see, I would never try and go back and claim the throne. Khivar can rule Antar and all the other surrounding planets, because we all know that he would do a better job than I would.


You may just think I’m trying to deny what was meant to be… but how do they expect me to follow this ‘destiny’ if I can’t remember or feel any of the things that I supposedly once did? How can they expect me to give up on Liz and what I know is my destiny?


I take a deep, calming breath as I prepare myself for the face off, the last chance I have to win her back before I turn into a pathetic begging looser. I take a step away from the ladder, followed by another and another until I’m looking in through her window and…


… my heart stops beating in my chest as I try and blink away the image in front of me.


Liz is lying in bed with Kyle, both look extremely naked and… she's laughing. She's smiling and laughing after what looks like fabulous sex. Sex. With Kyle. Liz. She had sex. With someone who wasn’t me.


I think I’m broken inside.


Liz sweeps her eyes around the room until they land on me. Her smile immediately falls and what I suspect is the start of tears form in the corners of her eyes as her mouth hangs open in either guilt or surprise. Or maybe my vision is blurred from my own tears that I’m struggling to hold back.


The Gomez tickets that I was holding in my hand fall loosely to the ground as I stare at her beautiful face that is rosy and pink from the fabulous fucking sex that she just had with Kyle!


How could she do this to me? To us? Has she been screwing around with Kyle behind my back this entire year? Was everything that I felt in my heart, and thought that she felt aswell a lie?


She told me that she loved me, and then turns around and sleeps with Kyle. And from the way she's laughing and smiling now, I would say that it isn’t the first time, because from what I know, its supposed to be painful… and Liz looks mighty pain free right about now!


I stumble backwards as I watch a tear fall from her eye and her bottom lip tremble as she watches me. Kyle is just sitting there next to her watching me, not even concerned that the person he just made love to is in tears…


“Oh God!” I gasp as I sit upright in what I presume is my bed. A cold sweat trickles down my skin as I swing my legs over and plant my feet firmly on the ground, resting my elbows on my knees and covering my face with my shaky hands.


Dreams. It’s always the dreams. If it’s not something about Liz and Kyle, it’s about the white room. But none have ever been so vivid, felt so real as that last one. The insomnia I feel after I’ve had a dream, or rather a nightmare, is so intense I feel as though I’ve had too many cups of coffee, and is what usually leads me to my late night walks. I guess I’m just too scared to go back to sleep; to re-live all the horrors my life as an alien has brought me, so my body wont let me go through that trauma more than once a day.


The last walk I had ended badly, with me screaming at Liz and then blubbering the entire way home like a little girl, so I’m just a tad bit reluctant to re-live that experience again. But I know that if I just stay here and try and get some more sleep, a) it just wont happen, and b) I’ll spend the rest of the night analysing every situation between Liz and I, trying to figure out where it went wrong and when she lost all trust in me and what I said. I think it would be a smidgen bit painful.


With a big sigh, I run a hand down my face and slowly stand up, cautiously holding out a shaky arm as I try and get my balance. I’ve had a bad experience after one of these dreams where I tried to stand up too fast and my legs caved in, causing my face to have a nice meeting with the floor.


I change into my sweat pants and a spare t-shirt, grabbing my bag and heading out the door for a walk. I ended up at the sports park a few blocks from home and spent most of the night on the basketball courts shooting some hoops. At least next time Michael and I play some one on one, I can kick his ass.


I left the park at about 4 am, taking the short walk back to my house slowly as my mind once again retreated back to Liz and how things got so fucking screwed up. One minute we were perfect… and then Tess came into our lives, mouthing off about destiny and how Liz and I aren’t meant to be together. I used to think that she was full of shit, and that Liz was my destiny. But after seeing her in bed with Kyle… I’m not so sure. Would my destiny involve the love of y life breaking my heart into tiny pieces, and then trampling on those pieces?


I turn down my street, kicking the ground as I walk and letting out a deep sigh in the quiet night air. One thing I love about Roswell is how deserted it is at night. There’s no one to see your self pitying or how broken you are inside.


I pull my jacket tighter around me as I walk up the driveway, the cold air chilling my exhausted body. Just because I exhausted myself playing basketball by myself doesn’t actually mean that I’ll be able to get to sleep, it just means that I’ll look like hell tomorrow at school.


I kick a piece of gravel as I approach the door and pull my bag strap higher up on my shoulder, totally oblivious to what was about to happen next…


TBC...

[lizard_queen]

Hey everyone. Just quickly dropping by to post this as i have to go out tonight, but i'll be back 2morrow to answer your feedback. Sorry for its longness. Enjoy:


<center>Chapter 5


~Liz~ </center>



“Liz, Future Max… it… it was all a mind warp.”


“I-it was all a w-what?” I struggle to choke out as my entire body goes numb from the gigantic bomb he just dropped on me.


“It was all a mind warp.” He says again, but this time a little more audible. I gulp back every single thing I’m feeling right now as my meagre brain tries to process what it is he’s trying to tell me.


“A mind warp.” I mumble absently as I dig my nails into the palm of my hand, hoping to God that this is all just a nightmare and if I just cause myself some pain, I’ll wake up.


“Liz, please, I know that you’re freaked out right now, and that you probably don’t believe me… but you have to let me explain.” Future Max begs me as he absently plays with his wedding ring. Was it Tess? Did he marry Tess in the last time line because I successfully managed to turn him away from me, and he’s now only just realising what a lying little tramp she is?


“H-how do I know that t-this isn’t just a-a mind warp aswell?” I ask quietly, my mind working on overdrive trying to comprehend all the thoughts and emotions I’m having right now. I don’t know how I even managed to speak, let alone have the sentence be a question that is actually justified.


“Because of what I need you to do for me.” He says to me with the tiniest glimpse of hope in his eyes.


“W-what do I need to do for y-you?” I really hope he doesn’t answer that question. The first future Max changed my life when I asked him that question, but not in so many words. This future Max has already changed my life and he’s only been here for five minutes.


I’m not sure I want to go through with this and all the heartache I know will undoubtly come along with it. You get to a point in your life when you just have to put your foot down and say ‘that's enough, I’m not going to take any more of this shit’. But when I look back up, fully prepared to tell this future version exactly that… the words get caught in my mouth and I let out a restrained sigh because I know that I could never say no to Max, no matter which reality he’s from.


“Liz, please, before I ask you to do this thing that we both know is going to alter the future and your life, you need to know all the background stuff. You need to know why I’m here, asking you to do this for me.”


“O-okay.” I say hesitantly. Is my life getting stranger with every second I’m alive, or is it just me?


“Okay…” he says, as he gets comfortable on my bed, taking a deep breath and closing his eyes for a brief moment before beginning. It’s in that brief moment that I can see everything he’s been through just in his face. The first future Max, sure he looked like he had had a hard life, but not like this future Max. When you look at this Future Max, you can tell that his life story is full of pain and sorrow. You can tell that he’s had to grow up incredibly too fast in a life full of sadness and deceit.


If you ask me, he really needs a holiday. Maybe I could go with him? All of this alien crap is making my head go all funky, and I mean the bad sort.


He runs a hand down his face, stretching the small wrinkles at the corner of his eyes before he looks up at me and gives me a small smile, either to try and reassure himself or me. “First of all, I can’t tell you everything that you’ll want to know right now because-”


“Yeah I already know, its would alter the future too much, blah blah blah. Tell me something I don’t know.” I cut him off sarcastically as I remember the first future Max’s words.


“Liz.” He sighs softly and places his hand on top of mine that was sitting in my lap. “Everything he said was a lie, you have to remember that. Future Max didn’t exist.”


“Does that mean that you don’t exist aswell?” I ask curiously as I try and catch him out on his own fault.


“Well, technically…no, I don’t exist.”


Um… okay, I wasn’t expecting that as an answer.


“So how are you here then?” I slowly pull my hand out from under his. The same sparks flew through my body that always react when ever my Max touches me. It’s something that I haven’t felt for quite some time, and something that I’m positive I never felt with the first Future Max.


“Liz, my Liz… she developed powers, one of them being astral projection.”


“I-I got powers?” I stutter. Future Max nods his head as he looks at his hands, once again absently playing with his wedding ring. As much as I dread the answer, I can’t just not ask him this thing that will potentially change my entire life even more. “H-how?”


“I healed you.” He says simply like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. He must notice the confusion masking my face because he takes another deep breath before beginning.


That's another thing I’ve noticed about this Future Max. Unlike the first Future love of my life… this Max is so much more in tune with his emotions. He shows everything just like the real Max does. The first Future Max was all a mystery to me, unlike this open book Max. I can see everything he’s feeling and how much pain he’s going through just by being back here and having to ask me to do this. The first future Max looked like he didn’t really give two shits about how much pain he knew he would cause his present self and me.


“That day when you got shot at the Crashdown… and I healed you…. I-I changed you. I’m so sorry Liz, didn’t know that this would happen. I didn’t know that when I healed you it would make everything so fucked up! I’m so sorry!” Max cries as he tries to hide the tears I know are streaming down his face.


I stand up from my position on the end of my bed and walk over to my dresser where I have a box of tissues. I quickly wipe away the tears that are pouring down my face before turning to Max and handing him the tissues. He stubbornly takes one and quickly wipes at his eyes, trying to hide his tears from me just as Max would.


God, everything that this Future Max does is so much like my Max… and so much not like the first Future Max. He seems so real… but I don’t know whether to believe my heart or my mind. My heart is telling me that this is the love of my life from the future asking me to once again change the future so his life isn’t as screwed up as it is now…. But then my mind jumps in and says that if the first Future Max was some aliens idea of fun, then there’s a really excellent chance that this is the same thing.


“Liz, I-I can’t stay here for too long. Its taking so much of everyone’s energy for me to be here, but I have to tell you everything otherwise you wont understand what is bound to happen if you don’t do this thing that you have to do for me… for everyone.”


“O-okay.” I nod, eager to hear what happened to everyone in the future.


“Okay, where to start.” He says as he paces back and forth in front of me as I sit with my legs crossed on my bed. “I-I guess the beginning. Okay, as you know, Tess and I…we were married on Antar and I was King. That much I know is true, but the rest, it’s a little bit fuzzier. “


He sits down on the chair at my desk and leans forward so his hands are clasped in front of him and his elbows are digging into his legs.


“After you came back from Florida and we had the entire fiasco with Whitaker, Tess realised that she wasn’t getting anywhere with me, because all I could focus on was wining you back, so she had to use extreme measures.”


“Future Max.” I say quietly.


“Yeah. She knew that you would do anything for me, and that if it meant saving us all from the end of the world…”


“God, I’m such an idiot.” I say as I cover my face in my hands. How could I have been so fucking stupid? She knew that my greatest weakness was Max and I just feel into her little game like a pawn.


“She was desperate, and she couldn’t come up with anymore ideas of how to turn me away from you… but when you suggested the set up with Kyle…”


I can hardly see with all the tears blurring my vision, but I can see enough to know that Max is trying hard to stay strong and not break down. What happened to him to make him look as though he’s in so much pain?


“Liz, what was one of the conditions for him to disappear? What did he tell you needed to happen before the future was changed?” Max asks me, his deep amber eyes staring at me intently.


I manage to find my voice somehow. “H-he said that I had t-to make you f-fall our of love with me…” I trail off, really not wanting him to tell me that I did achieve my goal. I mean, I only just got used to the fact that he didn’t love me anymore… now this Max is about to tell me that even though it was a mind warp, he really did fall out of love with me, right? It hurts to think about, so I don’t know if I could survive him actually saying it.


“That's the point Liz! I never did fall out of love with you. The only thing I have ever done is fall more in love with you. I promise you that I have never and never will fall out of love with you Liz Parker… So how could you ever think that I would?” he whispers in a pained voice, and I’m so confused right now I want to scream.


“Y-you disappeared… you faded into nothing. I saw it Max! You said to me that you ceased to exist once I changed the future! You disappeared right in front of me!” I scream at him as I stand up from my bed and raise my arms above my head and I try to calm down my breathing and stop my crying.


“Liz…” He says softly, causing me to fall to the floor in silent sobs. Why is this happening to me? Am I really such a bad person that I need to be punished so much?


“After I saw you and Kyle together, I had no where to go. I-I just ran… and when I stopped, I was at the park… and Tess found me. When she saw me sitting on the bench, she forgot all about the mind warp she had on you… so Future Max disappeared. She was too focused on trying to appear concerned with the pain that she had initially caused me, and when she finally realised that the mind warp had stopped… it was too late to start it up again, so she just had to work off what she had.” He says as he sits down on the floor with me, resting against the side of my bed as I stare at the ground.


“But why didn’t you do something Max? Why didn’t you get a flash, o-or know that something wasn’t right, that I would never intentionally hurt you like that?” I mumble, seriously not believing that he didn’t know what the little bitch was up to.


“I made myself go numb. I refused to feel anything because I knew that as soon as I did… I would be too vulnerable and I wouldn’t survive knowing what you did to me.” Max says sadly and I feel my heart break even more than it already was at the knowledge of just how much pain I caused him…


He clears his throat before I have a chance to apologise to him and starts with the rest of the story. “After that things went bad. As you know, Skins come to town and we somehow managed to kill them with the help of Tess. But even then, Nicholas isn’t actually dead. In about a week’s time, three aliens will come to Roswell, one named Rath, who is a clone of Michael, one named Lonnie, who is Isabel, and Ava… who’s Tess. When they re-created the royal four, they made two sets because something went wrong with the first set.”


“What went wrong.” I ask, once again dreading his answer.


“They were too human. They sent the other pods to New York, and the defectives, we stayed in Roswell. The other four were approached by the summit – the leaders of the planets surrounding Antar – but my clone, Zan; he refused to go to the summit… so they killed him. Rath and Lonnie pushed him in front a truck. And then they came to Roswell, needing me to go and be the replacement Zan.


“You and I were fighting. I refused to just be friends with you because I knew that in the end, it would never work. It’s easier to be friends who fall in love, than lovers who try to be just friends. You didn’t want me to go to the summit because you knew that it was dangerous, but I wouldn’t listen to you, so I went to New York with Tess.


“At the summit, I refused to hand over the Granolith to Khivar, all because you told me before I left that it was dangerous if it fell into the wrong hands. Rath and Lonnie tried to kill me because I wouldn’t make any deals at the summit… and you saved me.” Max says as he looks up at me with thankful eyes, the amber orbs sparkling from the tears that he’s no longer trying to hide.


“I-I saved you? How?” I ask in awe of this perfect creature in front of me.


“Ava stayed behind when we went to New York because Rath and Lonnie were… basically evil. You found her sleeping in your dumpster and let her sleep on the couch in the employee’s room downstairs… which was when she told you how Rath and Lonnie killed Zan, and what they were planning on doing to me if I refused the deal at the summit. So Isabel helped you astral project yourself to me in New York. You saved me Liz, something that I’m grateful for everyday.


“But Tess was still up to something. Alex supposedly went to Sweden as an exchange student, but Tess had actually been mind warping him so he was really at Las Cruses University decoding our destiny book, using their super computer on campus. In the end, his mind was so weak by the mind warps that it killed him.”


“Oh God.” My eyes widen with shock as I gasp at the news of Tess killing my best friend. Max isn’t looking at me as he talks; instead he’s staring at the wall trying to keep himself composed, but failing miserably.


“She set it up so it looked like he was in a car accident, and the police declared it as a suicide. You were adamant that it was alien related, that Alex would never kill himself, but I just didn’t want to believe you Liz… I’m so sorry. If it weren’t for me, none of this would have happened… I’m so sorry...” Max cries as I wrap my arms around him. Even though he’s from sixteen years in the future, he’s still so much like my Max that it brings even more tears to my eyes. He’s so vulnerable and scared, even though he tries to put up a brave front.


“Shh Max, its okay, it wasn’t your fault.” I say as he cries into my chest. It may not be the present seventeen-year-old Max, but the feelings created when I touch this Max are still the same.


Max takes another deep breath as he tries to control his tears and tells me the rest of the story. He tells me of how everything was going wrong, and how Tess was playing with his mind, making him get flashes of what Antar was supposedly like and turning him against everyone… making him cold. He then tells me of how he got Tess pregnant, of how he gave his virginity to someone who wasn’t me as a means of revenge for my alleged sleeping with Kyle.


Maria and I then discovered that it was who killed Alex, and we stopped the pod squad, minus Tess, from blasting back to Antar after Tess made Max think that his son who was growing inside of her couldn’t survive on earth.


He then told me about how he and I were never quite the same, because he was constantly on a mission to rescue his son, and that was when I developed my powers – green energy controlled by my emotions. Tess came back with his son, appropriately named Zan, but with Tess came the FBI after her ship crashed in the desert. She gave herself up, and Max put his son up for adoption once they found out that he was human and had no powers. He wanted Zan to grow up with a normal life, away from all the alien chaos.


The FBI was still after Max, Isabel Michael and… me. I developed a new power where I could get premonitions, flashes from touching certain people or things, which was how we knew that the FBI were after us, so we left after Graduation. Max and I made love for the first time the night before Graduation, the same night that he proposed. We got married two days after we fled from Roswell, and were constantly being chased for the next fifteen years.


We finally returned to Roswell and the FBI once again found us after three weeks, but they weren’t the only ones. Max’s son and his girlfriend came to Roswell to find his parents, so they could explain to their son how he had powers and no one else did. Needless to say, it all went downhill from there.


So much for Zan being completely human, hey?


The FBI managed to capture me and they held me hostage in an abandoned warehouse in the far parts of Roswell why they waited for my transport back to Washington. Max, Michael and Isabel managed to rescue me and I got shot again, but Max couldn’t heal me because of some chemical they injected me with so they could make sure my wounds would stay open.


I was in hospital for two weeks in which time I finally met Zan, a secret Max had been keeping from telling me because he didn’t want to upset me by telling me that his son had found him.


Future Max wouldn’t tell me anything more and I didn’t push, because I could see how much pain he was going through as he recounted the last sixteen years of his life. From what I could gather, there was a giant fight against the FBI… and Maria, Michael, Kyle and Zan’s girlfriend didn’t make it out alive.


He told me about Zan’s girlfriend, about how much alike me she was, and how she found out about Zan’s powers when he healed her from a gun shot as she worked in her parents restaurant.


It seems like destiny has a sense of irony.


But still, how did they figure out that the original future Max was all a mind warp?


Me. I got a flash when I hugged Zan. A flash of Tess mind warping me, making me think that Future Max actually existed.


“So we figured out a way to bring me back here.” Future Max continues. “All of our powers were so much more developed than when we were in highschool. You discovered that you could astral project, so we all got together and combined our powers so you could project me here right now in front of you. Its taking so much of everyone’s energy for me to be here, and I’ve already wasted so much time by telling you about what happened, but it was important that you knew, that you believed me when I tell you why I’m here; what you have to do in order for everyone to survive…”


I bite my bottom lip, trying to stall the question that spills from my lips a minute later.


“W-what do I need to do?” I ask with tears streaming down my cheeks. My eyes are red and sore, so is my face, and I know that I’ll look like hell in the morning, but right now that's the last thing on my mind.


Future Max’s next words are like a cold bucket of water just after you’ve woken up in the morning. Something that I really didn’t expect to ever hear from him.


“Be with Max.”


“W-what?” I ask, not believing my ear for one minute. Did he just tell me that in order for everyone I love to not die, I have to…


“Be with Max. You have to go now, tell him everything Liz, everything that I’ve told you. Tell him about the first Future Max and how Tess mind warped all of you, tell him about me and my life, and tell him about Alex dying and the summit and his son. But please Liz, don’t stay away from him, he needs you so much right now. I’m no one unless I have you in my life… I can’t be the person I was meant to be, the king that was destined for me unless I have my queen.”


“I’m not your queen Max.” I mutter regretfully, still not entirely sure if this is all some wacky dream that I’ll wake up from in the morning and cry about all day.


“Yes you are. It’s you Liz; it’s always been you. Tess was never meant to be a queen. She was deceitful and evil; she caused everyone so much pain. You have to go and be with Max, tell him about what Tess is doing, tell him about the deal with Khivar to get pregnant with my child and return back to Antar… but please Liz, don’t push him away. You’re meant to be together. You have to stop the future from repeating itself.” He says in a whisper before standing up in front of me and putting his hands in his pockets. “Please don’t disappoint me Liz… or your Max.”


And just like that he’s gone, back into his old dimension where half of my loved ones are dead. Its then that I realise what I have to do.


I run around my room, grabbing my jacket and rushing out onto my balcony and down the ladder. I don’t stop running in my bare feet until I’m halfway across Roswell and where I need to be…

[lizard_queen]

<center>
Chapter 6


~Max~</center>


The silence is deafening as I reach for the door handle and I let out a small cough just to make sure that I still have my hearing. Everything is so strange at night time, so sinister and eerie looking. But the silence surrounding me is really freaky. I feel deaf. I can’t even hear the crickets chirping or a car backfiring in the coldness.


I hear a noise start up in the distance, the sound of something slapping against a solid object as the racket vibrates through the air. I’m just about to turn the knob and block out the sound by walking inside, but something stops me.


It’s like a force over takes me and I turn around against my own will, just staring at the road as I wait for the cause of the sound to get closer and show itself. The street is deserted, and the street light across the road flickers on and off as a small gust of wind blows some loose leaves across the neighbour’s lawns. The slapping noise gets louder as it echoes off the walls and street… and it almost sounds like someone running.


I can’t move from my spot standing in front of my door. Its like I’m riveted in place as I wait in silence. The eeriness is back, in full force this time and as much as I want to run inside and deadlock my door shut, I can’t move. What the hell is happening to me? Why wont my mind let me move from this position?


I have this feeling, that it’s something big, this sound belongs to something that will change my life dramatically in a matter of seconds… but I have no idea if it’s a good thing or a bad thing.


Waiting. I think this is the worst part of life. The waiting. Waiting for something that you know is coming and you can’t stop. It seems as if I’ve been standing here for hours, waiting for this thing that's making all the noise to get closer and show itself… when in actual fact its only been seconds. You wait your entire life for death. It’s inevitable; always coming no matter how many times you try and escape it… it will find you in the end. I don’t know what it is that's coming around the corner… but I know that it’s for me. So now I’m just waiting, standing in front of my door as I watch my deserted street in the little moonlight I have.


I can distinctly hear the noise of shoes slapping the tarmac road by now, but everything’s in slow motion. The sound vibrates in slow motion, it gets closer in slow motion… and I feel as if I can’t breathe. My heart is being pulled tightly in my chest and my brain is throbbing so painfully for a minute I’m sure that it’s the cause of all the noise in the street.


I hear harsh panting coming from behind the hedges of my neighbour’s garden that run along beside the pathway, and my gaze immediately snaps to follow the movement of the person I know is running behind them. They let out a loud gasp as the person falls to the ground after they presumably trip… and I can see a slender hand as it pushes its owner up from behind the bush.


The hand is familiar, and the small moans of pain they let out are even more familiar… but I can’t move.


I want to go and help them, or to turn around and run, but I can’t. I’m still glued to my position as I watch the person come out from behind the hedges. She runs to me in slow motion and I can hear my pulse throbbing in my temples as I watch wide-eyed. My bag falls down beside me with a ‘thump’ as it hits the concrete… but I don’t notice. My eyes are glued to the angel running towards me in slow motion.


Tear marks are evident on her face even from where I’m standing, and her eyes are all swollen and red from crying so much. I can see cuts across her palms and her knees from where she tripped but still I know that they weren’t the cause of her tears.


She cuts across the grass and jumps over the small bushes, almost tripping again as her foot gets caught in a crack on the pathway. She stumbles slightly and a look of pain passes across her face before the determined look is back in full force. I blink, trying to make sure that I’m not dreaming. I even pinch the side of my leg to try and wake me up, but when I opened my eyes again, she's no longer in front of me as she desperately runs towards me…


Instead she’s on her knees below me, exhausted as she clings onto my leg like a lifeline and cries her beautiful heart out.


“L-Liz?” I gasp out. It takes me a moment to have everything sink in but as soon as it does I’m on the ground right next to her as I wrap my arms around her shaking body.


“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry Max. I’m so sorry…” She murmurs repeatedly into my chest as I hold her tightly against me, rocking us back and forth and running a soothing hand up and down her back.


I can feel her tears soaking into my shirt as she cries against me but I can’t seem to care. I’m too stunned to feel anything right now. So many questions are running through my head right now that I can’t decipher one from the next. But there is one that stands out as bright as day, one that I’m repeating in my head right now like a mantra:


What the fuck?


I should be asking her what happened? Why is she here? Why shouldn’t I just walk away right now and pretend that I don’t see her? But I don’t. Instead I pull her body closer to mine so she sitting on my lap and gently stroke her long silky hair.


As much as I hate to admit it, I can never say no to one, Liz Parker. She can push me away all she wants. She can spit on me and break me as many times as she wants, but in the long run, I still wont be able to say no to her.


I know that it makes me a pathetic fool. I know that she's hurt me so much and I should hate her, but like I said before, I can’t.


“Liz?” I whisper tenderly as I gently wipe away her tears and try and look into her glistening chocolate eyes. I can hear my voice breaking as I try and hold back my own tears. The sound of my voice, as it turns out, makes her cry even harder. Her sobs and murmurs against my chest are the only noise for about a kilometre, and I know that sooner or later someone’s going to wake up to see what all the racket is… and knowing my luck, it will be one of my parents.


“I’m so sorry…” She continues to whisper against my chest as I try and calm her down. She's repeating those three words in a mantra, afraid that if she stops I’ll disappear. Once again, that one question stands out over all the others.


What the fuck?


“M-Max?” I hear a soft voice from the doorway behind me, and if it’s possible, I pull Liz even closer to my chest in a pathetic attempt to shield her from the intruder of our private moment. I crane my neck as I try and look behind me to see an extremely tired and pissed of looking Isabel.


Her hair is all tousled from sleep and a scowl is etched across her face as she stares down at Liz and me. It’s only now that I realise how strange we must look.


I’m leaning up against my bag for support so I don’t topple backwards, with Liz sitting on my lap looking as if she's about to burrow inside of me. I’m in my sweaty work out pants and top, and Liz is in her very small and revealing pyjamas as she clings onto me for life.


“What's going on?” Isabel asks quietly as she rubs the sleep out of her eyes. Shit, I’m in for it now. Not only will I get yelled at for waking her up, but she’ll also feel the need to yell at me when she find out that I haven’t been sleeping for a while now, and that I’m not looking after myself.


I don’t answer her. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what's going on, so how am I expected to give her an answer. Instead, I do my best to give a nonchalant shrug, which proved more difficult than I thought since I have Liz sitting on top of me.


But still, I don’t want her to move. We’re closer than we have been in months, physically and emotionally, and I’m not going to give that up just yet. This is the first time in ages that I’ve been close enough to Liz to see the fine freckles that blanket her nose… and this is the first time in months that she's showed any clue of emotion towards me, any sign what so ever to needing me like I need her.


Isabel sees my confused expression an my strange looking shrug, and it only takes her a minute to realise that I’m just as clueless as she is. I know when she understands because the permanent scowl on her face is replaced with a sympathetic gaze towards the small brunette curled up in my arms.


“Max, you should get her to your room before mum and dad wake up, or one of the neighbours see.” Isabel says.


I give her a small nod before she disappears inside and I turn back to Liz.


“Liz…?” I ask gently, and her only response is another “I’m so sorry Max…”


“Liz? I have to get you to my room okay?”


She shakes her head against my chest and once again mumbles how sorry she is. My heart breaks when I realise the mental state she’s in. How can I expect Liz to explain to me what the hell happened when I can’t even get a coherent response out of her when I ask her a simple question?


“I’m so sorry Max… I’m so sorry…” She sobs and I let out a defeated sigh as I continue to run my hands through her soft hair.


“Shh, its okay… Everything’s going to be okay…” I sooth gently, and I’m glad to say its worked wonders so far. She no longer crying so hard that she looks as if she's about to faint from exhaustion and lack of body liquids, and her grip on my shirt has loosened slightly.


“I’m so sorry…”


I feel shattered as I watch how broken she is. What the hell am I supposed to do? Just sit out here and wait until she falls asleep?


“Liz, it’s okay, I’m right here… please, look at me?” I ask her in a pleading tone as I place a small kiss on her forehead. She slowly moves her head from its position buried against me and looks up at me with big brown eyes that are glazed with sparkling tears.


“Max?” Liz asks me like she's just come out of whatever trance she had been on, and comprehension dawns on her beautiful face as she slowly looks around to see where she is.


“M-Max…” she cries gently and hugs me tighter, and I’m so afraid that she's going to start apologising to me again for God knows what reason that I cut in before she can begin.


“Liz, I have to get you inside before my parents wake up and find you here.”


I can’t help it; my hands have a mind of their own as I reach out and brush back the strands of hair that have fallen over her eyes, just like I used to do. She leans into my caress as closes her eyes as she softly sniffles away her tears that are still gradually running down her soft cheeks.


This moment is perfect, and I want to lean in and caress her lips with my own… but I’m reminded when Liz opens her big dough eyes that she came running to me for a reason and I need to know what it was.


“Come on.” I whisper softly as I gently push her off me and stand up, catching her in my arms when her shaky legs fail and she falls against me.


Did I ever mention how well we fit together? It’s like she's made for me… the way she just… fits. It’s hard to explain.


I lace my fingers with her trembling ones and push the door open, quietly dragging her through the house and to the safety of my room. I close the door behind us as softly as I can and walk over to turn on my bedside lamp, never once letting go of her hand tightly clasping mine.


I flick the small switch on the stand and my room is basked in a small glow, just enough so that I can see Liz’s face as she stands nervously next to me, leaning against my door frame for support. What now?


“So…” I say to break the silence, shoving my hands in my pockets and staring down at my shoes for a bit. We stand like that for at least five minutes, both of us waiting for the other to start the talking.


Liz’s eyes widen as she brings her head up and looks at me, and before I know it she's slid down the door and is crying into her hands as they cover her face.


“Fuck…” I mutter as I run a hand through my hair. How the hell am I supposed to fix what ever the hell caused her to be like this when every time she looks at me she breaks down into tears? I feel so useless. I don’t know what she wants me to do!


I hate seeing Liz like this, so helpless and lost, and she knows that I would do anything for her… but I can’t fix the problem if I don’t know what it is!


“Liz?” I squat down in front of her as I whisper her name, taking her hands and moving them away from her face so I can see her eyes. She gives a small sniffle and wipes her nose. I lightly pull her into my arms, deeply breathing in her vanilla and strawberry scent as it clogs up all of my senses… trying to take control of me, tempting me to lean down and kiss her.


But I don’t. Her skin is like ice and she's shaking slightly in my arms, trying to fight of sleep for a few minutes more. Instead I pull her onto her feet and over to my bed, making her climb under the covers before I follow her, pulling her body flush against mine as I run my hands up and down her arms and back.


She calms down instantly, her tears drying as she burries her head against my chest. Before I know it, her breathing evens out and she's sleeping peacefully next to me. The entire time I watch her sleep, I have one thought plaguing my mind:


I never found out why she was here...




TBC.... sometime next week, if i can write a chapter by then

[lizard_queen]

<center>
Chapter 7
~Liz~ </center>



I feel something soft and warm moving up and down my back as I slowly come out of the land of dreams and back to reality. I’m aware of hot air caressing my face in steady puffs, and my pillow rising up and down in time with the air.

But the thing is, my pillow isn’t soft and cushiony like I remembered it to be. Instead it’s hard and strong. Its feels like I’m sleeping on a rock, but rocks don’t move, and they’re not covered in soft material and I’m pretty sure that they aren’t warm.

My eyes slowly flutter open as I try and re-gain my sight with my head throbbing from the events of last night that I can’t quite remember. But when I open my eyes, I suddenly wish I hadn’t.

They meet a pair of sparkling amber jewels, and it’s in that instance that last nights events choose to come flooding back to my memory. Future Max 2, Tess mind warping me, what Max told me to do… but they seem less real in the daylight hours, more like a dream or just my imagination than they did from what I can remember of last night.

“Hey, you’re awake.” Max whispers softly as he brings his arm up and tucks a strand of my hair behind my ear. The gesture is o familiar yet so strange at the same time.

“W-what happened? How did I get h-here?” I whisper back to him. I honestly can’t remember how I came to be in Max’s bed with him, let alone anywhere near his house last night. My head is throbbing and it feels as though I have a hang over, but I don’t remember anything to do with alcohol.

“I was just about to ask you the same thing.” He states, and if I’m not mistaken, there’s a tad bit of hurt laced into his voice. What did I do last night?

“W-what do you mean?” I say as I push myself into and upright position, bracing my hands on the mattress next to me and closing my eyes as everything around me starts to swirl.

“Last night, at about 4am, I don’t know what happened to you Liz, but you ran all the way here and just started crying. I-I didn’t know what to do so I brought you in here… but you fell asleep before I had the chance to find out what happened…” He trails off as he sits up next me and stares at his hands as he wrings them in his lap.

He’s sitting close to me, and the urge to flinch away from the closeness is strong, but he’s familiar scent fills my senses and I soak in the warmth of his strong thigh caressing mine under the blankets.

“I guess you want an explanation now, hey?” I ask sadly. What am I supposed to tell him? What did I do last night? I can’t remember anything except crying on my bed all night. I think I cried myself to sleep and my imagination took over, creating some ludicrous story of another future Max with a different message. I probably woke up and freaked out, and Max was the first thing on my mind… the only thing on my mind.

“It would probably help me piece together why you came running over here in the middle of the night after I practically abused you in the park the other night.” He says as he looks down at his hands with a guilty expression.

I look up at his harsh words and I know that he’s remembering just like I am. Max shifts his weight beside me, his bare arm brushing up against mine, and all of a sudden my mind is flooded with flashes of last night.

<center>~*~*~*~*~*~</center>

“Liz. Please don’t freak out or anything, but I’m not-”


“Max? Y-yeah, I can s-see that. What now? Forgot to tell me you never really loved me and I would be better if I went and cut my wrists?”

<center>~*~*~*~*~*~</center>

“Liz, Future Max… it… it was all a mind warp.”


<center>~*~*~*~*~*~</center>

“That's the point Liz! I never did fall out of love with you. The only thing I have ever done is fall more in love with you. I promise you that I have never and never will fall out of love with you Liz Parker… So how could you ever think that I would?”

“Y-you disappeared… you faded into nothing. I saw it Max! You said to me that you ceased to exist once I changed the future! You disappeared right in front of me!”

<center>~*~*~*~*~*~</center>

“It’s you Liz; it’s always been you. Tess was never meant to be a queen. She was deceitful and evil; she caused everyone so much pain. You have to go and be with Max, tell him about what Tess is doing, tell him about the deal with Khivar to get pregnant with my child and return back to Antar… but please Liz, don’t push him away. You’re meant to be together. You have to stop the future from repeating itself.” He says in a whisper before standing up in front of me and putting his hands in his pockets. “Please don’t disappoint me Liz… or your Max.”

<center>~*~*~*~*~*~</center>

“I’m so sorry Max… I’m so sorry…”

<center>~*~*~*~*~*~</center>


“Liz?” Max gently brushing the back of his hand over my flushed cheek and whispering my name in his husky voice brings me out of my deluded state.

The flashes were so intense, I would almost believe that everything I saw had happened last night but… how could they have been real?

Why would anyone come back from the future and tell me that Max and I are meant to be together, when I’ve already had more than enough people tell me that Its Tess that he’s supposed to be with? Nasedo, Tess herself, Max’s mother at the pod chamber, the Skins, Future Max…

The odds are against me, and it seems only likely that it was all just a dream. I can’t remember anything clearly from last night expect trying to cry myself to sleep like I do every night… only this time I had a good dream.

This time my dreams weren’t plagued with images of Max and Tess together and ruling over what I assume Antar would look like. This time they weren’t of Max and I together until Tess comes into the picture and willingly takes him away from me… this time I didn’t wake up in the morning crying.

No, this time my dreams were of another Future Max, a different Future Max with a different message. A message that probably made me smile from the thought… until I woke up in my room, surrounded by darkness and ended up running to the only place I feel remotely safe anymore…


Max.


“I-I can’t really remember…” I say in answer to his previous question. I can’t tell him about my dream, because he would then somehow find a way to relate it back to be allegedly sleeping with Kyle, and I don’t know how many more of those conversations I can have without telling him everything.

My patience and strength to resist telling Max everything is wearing so thin. I don’t know how much longer I can hold out. And him sitting so close to me right now, scrutinizing me with his beautiful eyes…

“I think I just had a bad dream, that’s all.”

There, I’m not lying… much. It wasn’t the dream that was bad, it was the reality of waking up to everything that I want, everything that I pray to happen daily be just a dream. It’s the cold, hard truth that Max and I can never, and will never be. I’m just not his destiny.

But was it all just a dream? Everything felt so real, but… it just… couldn’t be.

“Liz…” he says with warning in his tone, and I know that I wasn’t as convincing as I thought. Damn him. Why does he have to know me so well? Why does he have to be able to tell when I’m lying? Not even Maria has perfected it as well as Max has. Stupid aliens.

I have to get out of here, fast, before something happens that I can’t control. Before Max touches me again and gets a flash of Future Max, before I end up telling him everything, including my dream of Future Max Two and his message... Before I end up throwing myself at him to take me back.

I need to get out.

“I-I have to go… now…” I mumble as I stand up on shaky legs, desperately trying to keep my devastated tears from falling until I get out of his house, away from him and everything that I know I can’t have.

I stumble around his floor, looking for something to cover my body apart from my very small pyjamas, something to make me warm, but I come up with nothing. Max would have to be the cleanest teenage boy I have ever seen. Aren’t they supposed to have clothes thrown everywhere and food going mouldy under a pile of rubbish in the middle of his floor?

But no, I have to get the good alien! I have to get the one that is always too concerned and protective, the one who is shy and quiet, the one who is romantic and…. And…. Clean! Damn it! I can’t even find one of his shirts to put over my small pyjama top in an attempt to cover myself up.

I see Max stand up beside his bed in the corner of my eye and I completely forget about trying to find something to cover myself with, and instead go onto to trying to find my shoes.

“Liz, what are you doing?” he asks with an exasperated sigh as he runs a hand through his thick, dark hair. I love the feel of his hair, which is ironic considering he would be content if her could just run his hands through my hair all day. I love how he looks when he’s just woken up in the morning and his hair is sticking out everywhere from moving in his sleep, I love the way his bangs fall on his forehead and how the tone of his hair causes his brilliant amber eyes to stand out, to make you think he’s staring into your soul.

“Looking for my shoes.” I say as continue to search his room, appearing quite insane to the casual onlooker I imagine.

“Liz,” He starts as he takes a cautious step towards me and moves his arms in front of him for emphasis. “You weren’t wearing any shoes.”

“Oh.” I say as I turn around to face him. Why would I come to Max’s and not wear any shoes? Granted, as far as I can remember it was all a bad dream, but I’m sure that I would have worn shoes, right?

I’ve just wasted the past five minutes searching around for shoes that don’t exist, when I could have been running back to my house and away from Max. How am I supposed to even look at him without forcing myself to believe that it wasn’t all just a dream?

“I-I…. uh… bye.”


I walk determinedly past a stunned Max and out of his bedroom, ignoring his pleading voice as he calls out my name. I walk down the hall and wrench open his front door before I trudge down his drive way and onto the footpath. The air is like ice around me, and considering I’m wearing next to nothing and its almost winter, I’m pretty sure that I’ll get frostbite before I get home.

“Liz!”

Max yells out my name from his doorway as he tries to get me to go inside and out of the cold, but I don’t hear him as I continue to walk in the general direction of The Crashdown.

I turn the corner at the end of his street and keep walking. Soon after I hear footsteps behind me and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out who they belong to.

Max’s heavy breathing gets louder as he jogs up behind me and slows down to avoid a collision. His hand softly wraps around my arm to stop me from going any further and to make me turn around and pay attention to him, but I pull it out of his grasp and continue walking, desperately trying to ignore him and hold in my tears of devastation.

“Liz… where are you going?” He calls but just like before, I disregard him and keep moving. I can’t let him see how much this dream is affecting me. I can’t let him see how broken I am that that’s all it was; a dream.

I wrathfully brush away at the tear that’s rolling down my cheek and take in a deep breath, trying to hold back my emotions at least until I reach the safety of my room. I can’t let Max see me cry. He already has too many questions that I don’t have answers for.

We enter the park and I can feel him behind me, struggling as he tries to fight for me, but we both know it’s useless. My father always said I was stubborn. Guess its time to prove him right.

“Liz! Would you just stop running away from me for one second?” He yells right behind me, and in one long stride he has both of my arms in his grip and he’s standing in front of me, his fierce gaze pleading with me to talk to him, to trust him, but I can’t.

“I’m not running, I’m walking at a reasonable pace. If you can’t keep up then it’s your own problem.” I say with sarcasm oozing off my words as I avoid looking into his eyes. One look and I know that I wont last. One look is it it’ll take before I break my promise.

This is what Max does to me; being in his presence slowly wears me down until I’m so weak I need him to help me stand up. This is why I’ve stayed away from him.

He lets out a frustrated sigh and loosens his bruising grip on my arm, taking a small step backwards and running a hand down his face as he tries to calm down. Its like one of his signature moves, kinda like how he scratches behind his ear when he’s nervous, or sticks his hands in his pockets when he really wants to reach out and touch me.

I think its fair to say that I know all of his secrets… he used to be able to say the same about me.

His tone is sombre when he speaks again, his gaze penetrating me to the very core, but once again I avoid looking directly at him. “Exactly Liz, your walking… that's all you ever do. You never once stop to think that maybe there’s a reason why I’m chasing after you and not Tess! You never even consider the fact that I love you and not her! And I know for a fact that you never stop to think about what you’re feeling because you know that if you do, you’ll have to face the harsh reality that you love me just as much. Instead you ignore everything that I know your feeling and just keep on walking by!”

I let out an ignorant huff at his words. He thinks he knows me so well, but like I said before, I have secrets. I look up at his face, his determined eyes matching the fury burning in mine and the anger that I was feeling before is nothing compared to the fire I feel now.

“Go to hell Max.” I say bitterly as I skirt around him, shaking of his arm as I walk out the entrance of the park and cut across the road. I start down main street and I know that he’s right behind me.

He doesn’t call my name, or try and stop me anymore. Instead he just follows silently behind me, stalking me without further protest.

I can see the dormant UFO of the Crashdown up ahead, protruding out from the gutters of the building and my pace quickens. If I can just get into the sanctuary of my room, I can lock everyone and everything out of my life, but most importantly, I can lock Max out.

It’s nothing new to me. Its what I’ve done ever since that day in the pod chamber where Max realised that he had a destiny, one that didn’t include me. Slowly, for the past few months, I was opening up to him again, letting him in to see me once again, but that was until a certain mind warped version the love of my life from the future came to town.

I finally reach the doors of the Crashdown and push to open them, but they don’t move. The entire restaurant is clouded in darkness and I figure that last night after I woke up from the Future Max 2 dream I must have left from my balcony. If I was in such a panic over getting to see Max, why would I take the time to leave through the restaurant when I could just go out my window?

Max’s footsteps stop behind me as he waits for my next move. His eyes burn through the back of my mind as he stares. How in the hell does someone naturally have eyes like his? Maybe it’s just a clever trick of being bio-engineered. Kinda like in movies how they digitally enhance things so the scene looks how you want it to.

I take a deep breath, clenching my hands at my sides as I prepare myself for what I’m about to do. I just need a small head start, enough time to make it into my room before Max does so I can slam the window down in his face and lock it. It doesn’t even occur to me that he could just use his powers to open it.

He takes a cautious step towards me and I bolt, running down into the alley beside the Crashdown. I can hear his echoing steps behind me as he leisurely runs to catch up to me. I have just basically run the fastest in my life to get to my balcony ladder, and all he has to do is pretty much jog and he’s standing two metres behind me. Damn his alien stamina. Or maybe its just all the track practice he gets in PE.

Without a second thought, I climb the ladder, my grip and footing slipping in the darkness but I eventually make it, running the short distance across my balcony and sliding into my room through the window like a pro.

I can hear Max as he climbs over the railing of the ladder and his feet hit the hard ground of my balcony, and I’m just about to turn around and slam the window in his face but something over the far side of my room catches my eye. In the darkness of the corner stands the proof I was waiting for.

I feel paralysed as I stare with wide eyes, my tears running freely now from the fact that it wasn’t all a dream.

It wasn’t all a dream.

I reach a trembling hand up to my mouth before I manage to choke out the words, “Oh God.”

[lizard_queen]

<center>Chapter 8

~Max~</center>


I jump over the railing of her balcony and extend my arm, knowing that Liz is about to slam the window down on me again in another blatant attempt to lock me out, and also aware that I’m going to fast to stop if she does shut the window, so by having my powers ready to blast through it if the need comes, I’m avoiding any physical damage to myself.


As for the emotional damage… well, lets just focus on physical right now. My emotions are too many to count at his present time.


I should really stop and ask myself why I felt the need to chase Liz across half of Roswell at the wee hours of dawn, but I don’t have an answer, plus, as pointed out above, I’m going to fast to stop.

I guess the truth is that I’m just sick of all this bullshit. I’m sick of her always lying to me, saying we can never be but always avoiding giving me a reason. I’m sick of Isabel and Michael telling me that I can’t tell them what to do just because I’m King, yet as soon as trouble comes I’m expected to know what to do? And it’s somehow okay for them to decide who I’m in love with? Like I have no choice in the matter? Why do they get to date and frolic about as they please but I have to follow destiny? Weren’t Michael and Isabel also married in the last life?

I’m sick of Tess taking every opportunity she has to sprout off about destiny when she knows that she probably has a better chance of getting into Isabel’s pants than mine. I’m sick of all this alien shit that I never asked for in the first place, but most importantly, I’m sick of everyone thinking they know what’s best for me!

The only person who knows what’s best for me is me… not Isabel, not Tess, not Michael, not some aliens on a far away planet that was doomed to begin with, and not Liz Parker. What do I have to do to convince her that I know what I want and what I want is her, not any one or anything else. I don’t want to be a king, I don’t want to follow destiny, I don’t want to do anything unless it’s be with her.

Is that really too much to ask?

If she were to turn around right now and ask me to run away with her and start all over again, I would probably do it. I would leave everything behind, everyone behind if it meant that Liz would give me another chance.

I may be selfish and not thinking clearly, but another thing I am is stubborn, as Isabel likes to point out as often as possible, so I will not back down without a fight first. I will not give up Liz that easily.

The only problem is she’s just as stubborn as I am.

I jump in through her window, smiling to myself that I got in before she had a chance to shut it, but my smile quickly fades when I notice that she’s just standing there, staring at her corner with a look of horror on her face and tears streaming down her cheeks, looking like she’s just seen a ghost. I slam on the breaks and come to a complete stop before I run into her back. Something is really wrong here.

“L-Liz?” I almost choke out. There’s a strange feeling in her room, almost as if there’s some other presence here with us that we just can’t see. The room is icy, but I just figure it’s from the winter air and the threat of snow that we’ve had for the past week.

I slowly approach her, taking two short steps before I’m standing right behind her frozen body. She’s just staring at her dresser table with a pale face, her eyes not blinking, her breathing shallow.

Something shiny in the corner catches my eye as I turn back around to face Liz, something that looked like a ring, but I ignore it, placing a large hand on her shoulder and stepping in front of her line of site.

“Liz?” I say soft, dipping my head slightly so I can look into her shimmering brown eyes. She closes her eyes, holding them tightly for a minute as the tears silently stream down her cheeks and fall to the floor once they reach her chin. Ever so slowly, she opens her eyes and looks up at me, taking a deep breath and letting it out with a shudder.

I lift up my hand and rest it against her cheek, brushing away her tears with the pad of my thumb. She’s clearly in pain, not physical pain, but emotion pain, and this is my attempt to try and make it better. If only a gentle caress could take away her pain… but its not going to happen.

What the hell is going on today? One minute I’m walking home from a late night basketball session, trying to come up with ways to get Liz back, the next minute she’s crying herself to sleep in my arms. Then, when I ask her what happened, she runs away from me, yells at me, runs again, but basically freezes as soon as she reaches her room.

Is this all just some weird dream of mine? Was I so exhausted after the nightmares that I’ve been having repeatedly of the white room and the night of the Gomez concert that instead of torturing myself with Pierce or Liz and Kyle, I just make up some ludicrous dream? Will I wake up in my bed and find that none of this actually happened?

Liz moving out of my grip brings me out of my crazy thoughts. She moves over to the corner cautiously and extends a shaky hand out to pick up the ring that I saw before. A ring. This is all about a ring?

She bites her bottom lip and closes her fist around the ring, resting her hand against her heart and letting the tears fall, and all I do is stand here totally clueless. Agh! What the hell is going on?

“Liz!” I say, my voice coming out harsher than I intended but what do you expect, she’s completely ignoring me, nothing is making sense and I just need to scream!

The fingers of her hand fumbled with the ring, holding it up to the light. She squints her eyes and looks hard at what I presume is an engraving on the inside of the ring. I can see small marking from where I am but I can’t make out the words. I take a step closer so I’m standing behind her, slightly to the side.

Liz’s face goes even paler, and where there was once no expression there is now pure agony. Her eyes go wide and she chokes out a tortured sob, stumbling back to her bed, the ring tumbling down to the floor.

“He was real.” She manages to whisper in between all of her tears.

I watch in as the ring moves in slow motion, rolling around in slow circles on its side before finally falling flat on the ground and coming to a complete stop. I remove my glued eyes of the small object that seems to hold so much power and settle my gaze on Liz who’s lying curled in the fetal position, holding on to a pillow for life and staring blankly at the wall.

What is she talking about? Who was real?

I turn back around and bend down to pick up the object that has caused such a odd reaction out of her, but as soon as Liz sees my hand go within inches of the ring she launches her self at the ground, gripping around until she has the small piece of gold securely in her hand. I’m almost expecting her to start chanting ‘my precious’ like Gollum in Lord Of The Rings, but instead she just moves back to sit on the edge of her bed, the ring still secure in her right hand.

I just stand in shock and watch her. What the hell is going on? Why is she acting so strange about a fucking ring for Christs sake? What is happening?

I can feel the start of tears in my eyes. I feel so helpless, something is happening to Liz and I don’t know what it is. She won’t talk to me and she’s not acting normal. I just want to go back to when everything was simple… I just want to wake up.

“Max…” I snap my head up at the sound of her husky voice. Her face is serious and her eyes a burning a hole in mine but I won’t look away. I have to know what’s going on.

“There’s something I have to tell you.” She says as she extends a shaky hand, her palm facing upwards and the golden ring sitting dead centre. Her breathing is deep and her body shaking, but I’m too consumed in what’s about to happen to notice.

“W-who’s ring is that?” I stutter out. What the hell happened to my voice? I sound so lost and confused, and even though I am both those things, Liz isn’t supposed to know it. Her answer is simple but completely unexpected.

“Yours.”

[lizard_queen]

<center>Chapter 9


~Liz~</center>



“W-what do you m-mean, m-my ring? Liz I’ve… I’ve never seen that ring before in my life!” He yells in frustration. I guess I can understand where he’s coming from. He knows absolutely nothing that’s been going on lately and I haven’t exactly been jumping to help him out. But things are about to change.


“Not in this life time, no.”


“Huh?” He just looks at me and blinks. This is going to be harder than I thought. I mean sure, I love Max and I know that he has a brilliant mind but Jesus, these aliens can be dense.


“Max, do you remember the night of the Gomez concert? And how you thought Kyle and I slept together?” I ask quietly, fearing his answer. This is where the truth comes out. I don’t know if I can do this in words, I don’t think he would understand. Maybe I could send him flashes so he’ll understand?


“How could I forget.” He whispers softly, sitting down next to me and leaning forward with his elbows digging into his knees. The pain is radiating off him in waves and I know that there’s bound to me more soon.


Be strong Liz, the faster you get this over and done with the less pain either of you will have to go through. “And do you remember a few days before that when you kissed me in Whitakers office?”


“Get to the point Liz.”


“I-I wasn’t alone, either of those times.”


“Well of course you weren’t alone when you fucked Kyle! So what, that day at Whitakers I accidentally walked in on something? I interrupted you and Kyle going at it? Well, I’m so sorry to hear that Liz!” I flinch at his harsh tone but I know that he’s just hurt, and I hope to make all that pain go away, but I have to do this slowly, I have to make him understand. He stands up and starts pacing, clenching and unclenching his fists in anger.


“No Max, I mean that someone else was there. Someone…” Oh God. I can do this. Just breathe, in and out. Calm down and then tell him. “Someone from the future.”


Max immediately stops his pacing, folding his arms over his chest and looking at me with a raised eyebrow. Shit, now he thinks I’ve gone insane.


“He was you, Max. It was you, thirteen years from the future, and… and you told me that… that I had to make you fall out of love with me, okay? That’s why I tried to set you up with Tess, and that’s why I said all those things in your room that day! I never slept with Kyle, Max. It was all a set up. And I’m so sorry for causing you all of this pain, but you have to believe me that it was eating me alive, every time you looked at me with disgust and… pity.”


Max is silent for a minute, sitting back down next to me on the bed and letting out a harsh, shaky breath. His face is pale and he just sits there, staring at my bedroom wall as if in a trance. Finally, he turns his beautiful amber eyes that are laced with tears towards me and speaks. “Why are you telling me all this?” His voice comes out as a strangled whisper and I reach forwards to wipe away a tear running down his perfect cheek.


“Because I was wrong. He wasn’t from the future Max, he… he was from the fucked up mind of Tess Harding. You were all a mindwarp, and I was stupid enough to believe it.” I say with a pitiful smile and a shrug of my shoulders.


“W-what?”


“This future Max, he… he told me that the reason we couldn’t be together, is because thirteen years from now, earth is overrun by your enemies, and the world is basically destroyed because of us, you and me. Because the night of the Gomez concert… we made love.”


“I don’t understand. H-how could that – us – end the world?” He asks softly, looking up from his hands to meet my eyes. On the bright side, I have stopped crying. I can’t let him see me like this anymore, I have to be strong. I’m not some pathetic little girl who cries at every opportunity.


And well, honestly, I’ve gotten to the point where the tears just wont come anymore.


“Because of Tess. Future Max said that you and I became too close and in the end… she left. But when your enemies came, you, Isabel and Michael weren’t strong enough to fight them. You needed Tess to complete the four square, and in the end everyone died except you and I, so he used the granolith to come back in time and make you fall out of love with me.” I say with bitter sadness. Tess is one convincing liar, that’s for sure.


“Liz, no!” Max says as he shakes his head vibrantly, grabbing both my hands in his and holding the tightly. “I-I never, ever, not for one moment fell out of love with you Liz Parker.”


“I know that… now. But Max, the point is that there never was any future Max. Tess mind warped me into believing he was there, she manipulated how I felt for you and managed to turn it back around. That night, when she found you in the park… she was too focused on you to remember that she was halfway through mind warping me, so Future Max disappeared.”


“How do you know all of this?” Agh yes, the one question that I’ve been dreading more than anything. Wish me luck.


“Because you came back.”



<center>~*~*~*~*~*~</center>



“I don’t get it Liz.” Max says, once again pacing back and forth in front of me. Lets just say that if he thought I was crazy when I told him about the first future Max, then he’s already signing the papers for the psychiatric hospital now that I’ve told him about the second Future Max. “How do you know that this isn’t just another mindwarp?”


“Why would Tess all of a sudden change her mind and say that you and I can be together Max? It just makes no sense! And also because of this…” I hold out my hand with the ring in it and he stops his pacing, his eyes glued to the small gold piece of jewellery. “Max, nothing from the first Future Max stayed because it was all a mindwarp, so as soon as the mindwarp stopped, so did he, and everything that he came with… but this Future Max, he left me this. It… its his wedding ring.”


“Wedding ring?”


“We got married after graduation, we couldn’t wait. Even the FBI couldn’t stop us from doing this.” I say simply with a small smile playing on my lips. I conveniently left out our wedding in the story about the second Future Max so when I had to convince him about the ring, he would understand its importance.


The hardest part to get through was where I had to break the news to him that Alex died because of Tess, and that he then slept with her, totally clueless as to what she was up to until it was too late and she was pregnant with his child. Max went physically green from my words and he had to fight so hard not to vomit from those thoughts. It gave a small sense of satisfaction knowing that the thought of Tess made him ill.


“So… he was real, and he said that you and I could be together?” Max asks in awe as he sits down next to me for about the twentieth time.


“Pretty much, yeah.” I say with a sad smile. He doesn’t understand like I do that it can never be, and I’m dreading the moment when I have to break it to him.


“And… nothing is going to stop us, right? I mean, not Tess, not destiny, not the end of the world, no one?” He asks as more of a rhetorical question, his eyes lighting up from the realisation of what that could mean.


“Max…” I start but he cuts me off.


“Liz, don’t you get it? You and I can finally be together and no one can stop us! This is… amazing! This is…” He gets the biggest grin on his face that I have ever seen and it hurts me so much to have to shatter it just as fast as it came.


“No Max.” I say, shaking my head back and forth. His face immediately falls as dread clouds his features.


“What?” he whispers in disbelief.


“We… we can’t.”


“Why not? You just said it yourself Liz, you were the one who told me that we could be together. I even came back from the future just to make sure that we were together! How can you possibly still say no?” His voice gets harsh and loud as he talks and I flinch sightly from his tone.


“Its not like we exactly have the best track record Max. Every time you and I finally get together, every time everything is finally perfect, something always breaks us apart. Tess, destiny… it’s just like you said. We’re just too different.”


Oh god, he looks so heart broken. I hate having to do this again, to always have to be the bucket of cold water that comes crashing down on his world. He moves in closer and reaches his hand out to touch my cheek but I scramble away before he has the chance. I can’t let him touch me right now because I know that as soon as he does my entire resolve will crumble into oblivion.


“Well I was wrong! I was stupid and just… wrong! We aren’t too different Liz! We’re perfect together. Please…” He says, coming to stand right in front of me. His hand moves up to cup my cheek and I lean into his touch. I can’t help it; it’s just a natural reaction when Max is around me.


“No… we can’t…” I say, trying to stay strong my failing miserably. His eyes divert from my eyes to my lips and back up again. I can immediately tell his intentions but I’m powerless to stop it.


“Yes, we can.” He mumbles, right before his lips come crashing down on mine. The sparks that fly are undeniable and I melt into his embrace straight away, having missed this feeling for so long. It feels as if it’s been an eternity since I’ve felt this way.


Max runs his tongue along my bottom lip, asking for entrance to a place that he can’t go. I pull away from him suddenly, out of breath and still buzzing from the feel of his heated skin. Before I can control myself my hand connects with the side of his face and he stumbles backwards a bit, holding his burning cheek from the slap.


“We can’t Max.” I say through clenched teeth. I then turn around, running down the steps to the Crashdown and out its doors into the fresh air. I just need space. I need to breathe.


“Liz!” Max calls, bursting through the Crashdown doors and getting the attention of all of the customers sitting inside, here for an early breakfast. “Would you just stop running from me for one minute?”


“Why can’t you just let this go Max? Why can’t you just accept that we can never be and move on?” I scream at him, shooting dirty looks at people passing by on the other side of the street who feel its there right to stop and stare.


“Because I love you too damn much!” He yells back with just as much force. Everything goes quiet around me and now would be the perfect time for that cricket chirping soundtrack. “Can you honestly stand here Liz and tell me that you would give all of this up, all that you know we have because your afraid? God, do you even love me any more?” he asks in a whisper full of fear and heartache.


All I can do is look away and bite my bottom lip. I can’t answer him, because of course I love him. I love him more than anything in this or the next world, but I can’t tell him that. I can’t tell him what he desperately needs to hear because only bad things will come of it. Sometime, whether in the near future or in twenty years from now, something is going to happen to tear us apart and I don’t think I can stand all of that pain that I know I’m going to have to go through.


“God I must be the biggest fool on this planet!” He says, taking step away from me and running a hand down his face. “But I can’t give up on you Liz. I love you… and if you ever change your mind, then you know where I am…”


I bite back the tears threatening to fall as I watch him walk away. For the first time I see things differently. It’s always been me who's walked away and Max has constantly come after me, never giving up. Even after he thought I slept with Kyle he wouldn’t rest until I told him the truth.


Maybe it’s a comfort thing. I feel comfortable stringing Max along because he’s not close enough that I can get hurt, but he’s still there in the end. I push him away but not so far away that he falls of the edge. He would do anything I asked with just a flick of my wrist. I use him for when I need something, comfort, protection; but I never let him get close enough to hurt me. I’ve turned this entire thing into a game, and now its finally ending. Now Max is the one walking away from me and it hurts like hell. Now that the tables have turned… I should be the one following him, but I’ve given up.


I can’t do this. I can’t let him go, knowing that there will never be anyone else for me. No one will ever compare to Max Evans, the boy who risked everything for me so many times and all I can do is push him away.


I love him just as much as he loves me and I can’t let him get away.


“Max!” I yell as my feet start moving. I go from a walk to a jog to a full out run, desperate to catch up with him before its too late. “Max! Max!”


He stops walking and just stands there once he hears my voice, unsure of what to do. Should he keep walking and rid himself of me completely or should he turn around in hope that I’ve changed my mind?


He turns around and looks at me with red eyes from crying. I hate this feeling I have, knowing how much I hurt him every time I tell him no. I don’t want to ever hurt him again. From now on I promise myself that I will never hurt Max Evans again.


“Max!” I cry once more and launch myself in his arms holding onto him for life as I cry against his chest. He nervously wraps his warm arms around me, unsure of what my actions mean. I lift my head up from his strong chest and look into his confused eyes. I take in their sparkling glaze of tears and join my lips to his, answering his silent question.


I pull him closer to me and he burries a hand in my hair, his tongue seeking out mine in the heated kiss that speaks a thousand sorrows. I feel my salty tears running down my cheek and pull away from him, resting my forehead against his as we catch our breaths.


“I’m so sorry Max. I’m so sorry. I love you so much! I’m so sorry…” I murmur over and over, looking into his beautiful amber eyes.


“Shh, its ok. Everything’s ok now.” He whispers back, brushing away my tears with the pad of his thumbs before kissing me again, softer than before and slower, but still speaking just as many words.


For the first time in months I feel free, like the giant burden of secrets I had resting on my shoulders is now gone and I have Max back. My Max. And I love him more than anything.


TBC...

[lizard_queen]

Hey everyone.

Thank you all so so so much for your fb. It means so much to me. As for all of you who think that Tess needs to get her ass kicked, well, do you mind waiting for a while? I am trying to make this fluff and kinda a happy Dreamer story, and if i kill Tess off straight away i haven't exactly got much of a plot line left. Granted, it did take me 9 chapters to get this far, but you get the point...

Now, for my very short but hopefully good enough attempt at some fluff. Remember i'm still kinda new at this non-angst stuff so be gentle. Enjoy:


<center>Chapter 10


~Max~ </center>



“God your beautiful…” I gasp out in between kisses. Today has been one of the screwiest days of my life. I’ve had to pinch myself several times just to make sure it wasn’t all some horrible nightmare… but then, some how, it became perfect. And I’m pretty sure it has something to do with the fact that the girl of my dreams is now laying in my arms.


She told me things today that would make anyone else call an asylum and lock her away for the rest of her life, but not me. Because I don’t know how, maybe it’s the alien in me - my instincts taking control - but I believe everything she said. I know that she's not lying. I believe that Tess would do anything to separate Liz and I so we could follow our destiny, but ironically, I don’t entirely blame her.


Tess is just living by what she was taught. She was taught that her and I would be together because it was ‘destiny’. Nasedo practically shoved it down her throat like a mantra every single day before they moved to Roswell. And then when she finally did find us, I didn’t run into her arms and confess my love like she was told I would. Instead I ignored her completely because I had finally found Liz, and I wasn’t prepared to give her up. And I never will.


That still doesn’t mean that she gets off lightly. Tess screwed around with all of us, manipulating us to her advantage and from what Liz told me of the future, she's not the angel we make her out to be. People died because of her, innocent people like Alex. She hurt all of us, making deals with the enemy behind our backs and using us just so she could get back home. It may not have happened in this time line, but I wont ever forgive her for what she did to any of us.


I join my lips to Liz’s once more, seeking to get all thoughts of Tess out of my head. No matter what I’m thinking about her, it always has the same effect – a bucket of ice water, completely ruining the mood.


“Max… we should…stop…” Liz pants out, completely contradicting her statement when she pulls me closer to her. We’ve just been lying here for hours on her bed, making up. Talking, kissing, and basically just reacquainting ourselves to each other, taking long languid moments to stare at the one thing we have wanted so much for these past few months but have never given in to.


I feel as though it’s been years, centuries since I’ve been able to touch Liz like this, to be this close to her without it all being a dream. To be able to make her moan out my name like I did so many times last year, to kiss her as much as I want without her pulling away and muttering some bullshit about how we’re not meant to be.


I know that those doubts still lie inside of her. I feel them every time we touch, every time we kiss. But now it’s ok, because we’ve seen the future and we know that only bad things can come from us being apart. I just have to find a way to convince her that what we’re doing is all right, that we’re not breaking any rules and that even if we are, I don’t care. I don’t care about anything unless it’s Liz.


“Stop… yeah…” I mumbled against her lips before plunging my tongue into her warm orifice. I emit a low groan from the intimate contact that I’ve missed so much. I’ve missed her taste, her intoxicating scent that makes me so high I feel as if I’m drunk on the best alcohol ever.


Liz is bad for me, the way she makes me forget that anything outside of her exists, the way she puts me off balance… but I don’t ever want to be balanced again. She is this amazingly beautiful creature that you just have to have in your life, no matter what. And finally, she's mine. I promise myself that I wont ever let her get away from me again. No matter how hard she protests or who is telling her we can’t be, I wont let her go again. I’ve been away for her for too long in each and every lifetime.


Her tongue massages mine as I reacquaint myself with every part of her body. Every crevice of her mouth, every freckled on her skin, I want to find it and spend time worshiping it. Liz Parker is a goddess and deserves to be treated like one. I move my mouth from hers and start my journey to her shoulder, down her jaw and elegant neck, all the while running my hands through her silky hair.


“Everyone’s… gonna be… be waiting for us… downstairs…” She gasps and buries her fingers in my hair as I bite at the tender flesh of her neck, swirling my tongue around on her delicate skin to mark her as my own and no one else’s.


“I don’t care.” I say, pulling her hips closer to the giant tent in my boxers that she caused. Some time ago Liz made me stop attacking her with feverish kisses so I could ring everyone, bar Tess of course, so we could have a meeting and tell them everything that’s been going on in the last few months between Liz and I. Okay, I just want to brag that we’re finally back together, maybe throwing some things in there about Tess and her plan to get pregnant and return to Antar, but only if we get around to it.


Now that I think about it though, I don’t want to tell anyone anything. Instead I just want to lay right here in Liz’s room and do things to her that should never be talked about in public. I don’t want to ever leave her side again in fear that if I’m not touching her, if I’m not completely positive that she's here with me, I’ll blink and she’ll be gone.


I pull my lips away from hers and take in some much needed air, feeling the way it stings my lungs as it goes down. The heavy rise and fall of Liz’s chest underneath me is as distracting as hell, her hard nipples poking against the tight material of her shirt. I rest my forehead against hers, placing small lazy kisses on any skin that I can get to which won’t obstruct my view of her sparkling brown eyes.


“Max, you called the meeting, you can’t just bail… even though I really want you to.” Liz says with a sexy smirk, running her soft hands along the muscles of my back. What I wouldn’t give to just lie here with her for the rest of eternity…


“But I don’t’ wanna.” I pout, eliciting an alluring giggle from her luscious lips.


“If you’re a good boy and do what your told you may just get a reward later.” Liz looks up at me with innocent eyes, completely contradicting what she just said and where her hands now happen to be situated on my ass.


Yes ladies and gentlemen, this is Liz Parker and I taking it slow! Something we both agreed to do before she dragged me back into her room and I started to ravish her. It just proves how little self-control I have around her and how much she can affect me. All Liz has to do is say ‘jump’ and I’ll say ‘how high?’ It’s pathetic really when you realise just how whipped I really am… but I wouldn’t’ have it any other way.


“Are you really here?” I blurt out before my mind can even process what's coming out of my mouth. My God I’m an idiot. I guess I just need some reassurance that I’m not just living through another of my Liz Parker fantasies. Of course this would have to be the least action I’ve ever gotten in one of my fantasies, but I’m not complaining… yet.


Liz just looks up at me with a sympathetic smile and cups my cheek in her palm, leaning up for one more sweet kiss that sends tingles throughout my entire body. Oh yeah, she's definitely real.


She pulls away and I go to follow her lips but her words stop me. “Are you really here?” Liz whispers and bites her bottom lip, looking way from me in fear of my answer. How could she even ask? Of course I’m here, I’m not going anywhere. Even if this is just a dream you would need a crowbar to get me out of it.


“I love you.” I say sincerely, gently putting a bent finger under her chin and turning her eyes to meet mine. I don’t know why but that was my answer to her question. I’ve been itching to tell her that again all day but it’s never been the right time. I guess I just solved that problem. But now that I’ve said it once I don’t want to have to wait just to tell her again.


One of the many things I love about Liz is that I can see her soul just from here eyes. I can see what she's thinking, what she's feeling… I can see everything. She opens up to me and lets me see instead of blocking me out like she does most people.


Liz's concerns are forced to the back of her mind from my blunt words and the love that I know she has for me comes swimming to the surface. “I love you so much Liz, and it’s been worse than hell these last few months not being able to tell you that every second of every day. I missed your smile, the way your eyes light up when you’re happy or excited, your laugh, your eyes…” I continue, reaching a hand up to run through her silky hair, “your hair, your skin, your strawberry shampoo… I missed it all so much. Most of all I missed being able to tell you that I love you so much, and I missed being able to do this,” I whisper quietly, gradually leaning in closer until my lips come into contact with hers. I kiss her softly, sweetly, full of everything I’ve been holding inside, telling her everything and more with my actions.


Her arms come around my neck and she kisses me back with just as much passion, pulling me closer to her small body. It takes me a few minutes to realise that the wetness I can feel on my hand that’s cupping her cheek was from the tears streaming down her face. “Liz? W-what's wrong?” I ask in a panic. What if she's about to break my heart again, to tell me for the hundredth time that we can’t be together? Why else would she be crying?


Liz simply shakes her head, a soft smiling playing on her lips when she notices my worry. Her smile immediately calms me down because I figure that she wouldn’t be smiling whilst telling me that it’s impossible for an alien king to be with his soul mate, right?


“I love you too Max. I hated lying to you; I hated hurting you so much. God, I felt as though I had died every time you looked at me… I’m so sorry. I love you Max...” She says in a whisper, never taking her eyes off mine. Her words stun me. I’ve only ever heard her say those three little words once before and that was in a dark, funky smelling bus when I was still fucked up on drugs and just before my entire life changed dramatically.


My only response is a kiss, joining my lips to hers and plunging my tongue in her mouth to get as close to her as I possibly can. Her hands slide under the hem of my shirt, caressing my back and leaving a trail of electricity flowing all through my body everywhere she touches. My skin comes to life from the skin on skin contact and I have to have more. I reach down to the bottom of her top, fully prepared to rip the shirt off her just so I could feel her creamy soft skin against mine but a loud banging on her bedroom door interrupts us. I let out a sigh and bury my face in her neck, kissing her sweet skin as Michaels voice booms through the air.


“Maxwell Phillip Evans! Put it away and get you fucking ass downstairs NOW! Don’t make me send Maria in there!”



TBC... probably sometime next week... in theory...