Rating: Teen for tone and for using the "f" word.
Pairing: None, for the most part. But if you squint hard enough I suppose you can see shades of M/L.
Disclaimer: I don't own Roswell. I'm just using JK and MM's main character to vent a few frustrations. I promise that none of the characters are coming back worse for wear.
A/N: I have a million other stories I need to be working on. And with all the parenthesis and general present tense madness I've been using lately, I'm verging wildly on ridiculous. But I started this months ago when it was actually seasonal, and after re-reading it and realizing that I hit a brick wall with the plot because it wasn't supposed to go any further, I edited and decided to post. This pretty much proves that Reconstructing Madonna is a fluke and I can't write decent angst... ever. And that my Liz borders on uncannon at the best of times. But for some reason, I still heart this story. So I hope you enjoy!
Falling into Place
She lies on her back, staring up at the ceiling listlessly as minutes pass. Songs on the radio tick off the seconds in her restless wait for something (she isn’t quite sure what, yet), and she finds her mind going off on crazy tangents in time with the unaccountably weird electronica station she’s tuned into.
The setting is a singular oddity in her small town, where country western and bubble-gum pop music reigns supreme. She and Maria discovered it the summer before freshman year, right after she’d gotten her permit. They took the Jetta out for a joyride, without a licensed driver in the front seat and without telling their parents where they were going. (How could they, when they themselves weren’t sure?) Maria had hit the scan button on the car radio, and after scrambling through a handful of songs they already had committed to memory, the machine settled on 95.2. It took them forever to stop laughing. When they did, Liz contributed accompanying screeches and howls while Maria added sounds for her air guitar.
They switched the station back when they pulled back into Maria’s driveway fifteen minutes later (their daring threshold was much lower back then). The station number has been ingrained in her head since then, stored in the same place that names of actors from bad TV movies and random algebra textbook pages take up residence.
Right now the music fits her mood: wispy, not all there, a departure from quality and normalcy.
Alex would groan in disapproval if he saw her now, because to him alternative music only deserves a listen if it carries heavy guitar and self-deprecating lyrics. Maria would cluck her tongue, because really, Liz, with all the other crap we have to put up with, why would you torture yourself by listening to this? Lately, Liz thinks that Alex is a music snob and Maria is full of shit.
But even as she thinks these things her conscience reprimands her, feeding her the not-so-gentle reminders that lately she’s second only to Isabel Evans in aloofness and that she’s sitting on a pile of bullshit that makes Maria’s neurotic ramblings look positively truthful.
Her thoughts are a balancing act this way lately. She is determined to be angry at someone, but save her initial rush of rage her logic and problem solving skills have refused to let her be all that liberal with misplaced blame. Many days in recent weeks she’s saved herself some time, repeating a silent mantra of ‘It’s my fault, mine, all mine’ over and over in her head from the moment she wakes. Maybe she’s martyring herself, but she doesn’t think so. It usually only takes a good half hour to come to this conclusion otherwise, and that’s usually a half hour of inattention to external events that she doesn’t have to waste.
The eerie bass and electric guitar is beginning to sound ridiculous instead of mysterious. With deft fingers she flips the volume knob on her boombox as far right as it will go. (Anything sounds good if it’s communicated loudly enough.)
With this reflection as a jumping point her mind tries to take her down a darker path, and even as she tries to stop them, poisonous and cutting thoughts slip through her mental barriers.
Because repetitions of sex, obligatory reproduction, alien politics and DESTINY, MAX, can penetrate even the thickest of skulls after awhile; stonewalls crumble with enough insistence that weakness is strength and humans are assets, not hindrances or easy targets.
Dreams can be killed by barely contained shouting matches about the fate of worlds and by soul mates making love on a childhood twin bed.
She’s actually spent a good deal of time wondering about this last instance. Max is not a sappy guy, but he is sensitive and, more importantly sensible – as demonstrated by the condom-in-the-back-pocket policy – so she can’t understand why making love (or maybe just having sex; screwing; fucking) with her parents in the next room would have struck him as a good idea.
Maybe they just weren’t thinking clearly. They had that effect on each other back then, after all. (And she listens to herself remembering as if it’s been years, and as if over half of her treasured memories weren’t sacrificed so that this chaotic, self-destructing world could keep on turning for a few more decades.)
“Liz! Turn that the hell down before I take a sledgehammer to your stereo!”
Her mother, usually calm and collected, has been a wreck since learning her parents won’t be coming to see them for Christmas. Grandpa O’Sullivan is too sick to travel, and no one could watch the restaurant at this short notice. A year ago this comment would have made Liz see red, and within moments a full-out screaming match would have ensued. Now she understands the bitter disappointment of being abandoned too well to hold a grudge.
(And really, how does she understand abandonment so well when she always seems to be the one doing the leaving?)
Too tired to pull all her weight up, she swats half-heartedly at the power button with her toe. After a moment of fiddling the sound disappears, sucked out of her room and taking all the air with it. She may understand her mother, but she’s not going to try to compromise. As far as she’s seen, all of Max and Maria’s and Alex’s and – and yes, her own compromises have only had bad results.
Someone always has to bend a little too far. She’s afraid that this time it will be her (again).
Yes, she understands her mother’s anger. But she still doesn’t think that she can stand to be on the receiving end of it, tonight of all nights.
After a minute of too-oppressing silence, she pulls herself up and forces her legs to carry her out of her bedroom, through the apartment and down the stairs to the backroom.
Liz is not in a bad mood, exactly; she does not feel like crying or screaming or pinching her forearm until the physical pain convinces her that yes, there is still a person there to feel pain after all. This is a vast improvement over her general state of mind. It is also, however, extremely dangerous – pensively reflecting on everything from the dust bunnies under her bed to whether she’ll ever meet the now-infamous Serena usually leads to a depression deeper than any brought about by a plain old shitty mood.
Without much thought she breezes through the swinging door, navigating the still-wet floor until she can carefully slide into the ever-coveted corner booth. Intellectually she knows that it’s strange to be sitting in plain sight of anyone who would care to look when she’s in such a precarious state, but she thinks sitting in the see-through dining area might force her to keep it together. Constant scrutiny is all that’s kept her from going insane every time she lies to her parents, all that’s kept her feet moving in the crazy tap-dance she and Max have taken up since he returned from New York.
When he suggested they be friends she’d believed that it was something he genuinely wanted. Now she realizes how stupidly naïve she was to think that. He does not want to forgive her, or share jokes with her about Mr. Seligman’s toupee, or go to movies with her. He simply finds it easier than trying to really understand what happened in October and more practical than avoiding her altogether.
She is, after all, still part of the group. They can’t exactly vote her out now.
As always, once her thoughts have found their way to Max a million questions wrap around her mind like tendrils, each vying for her attention and anxiety.
Is he with Tess?
Is he at home?
Is he happy?
Is he thinking of her?
Is he reconsidering his offer of friendship?
This last question terrifies her. She invariably gets a sour taste in her mouth every time she thinks of the two of them as friends in a week, six months, two years. (She deserves more, after everything she’s given up for him. She deserves his heart, his soul – and yes, if his future self was to be trusted, his body, too. And he deserves the same from her.)
But still, every time that she makes up her mind that she is through, dammit, he smiles at her or places an absent hand on her wrist, and every thought of discontent is banished to the far reaches of her heart.
The truth remains, however, that he could just as easily be the one to end their friendship.
The irony of it all is that there’s really nothing to reconsider but a few awkward exchanges of small talk and a handful of forced smiles. He owes her nothing and she (still) owes him everything.
At least from his perspective. According to Maria all the Czechs should be kissing her feet and erecting a statue in her honor. (But wasn’t she thinking just a little while ago that Maria is, in fact, full of it?)
This train of thought is exhausting her.
It starts not so much as a tingle but as a whisper against her neck. Those unavoidable, once-anticipated goosebumps rise along her skin, and she glances up to catch sight of him in the doorway. His discomfort is worn like a cloak.
(But he is here, and that’s more than she can say for the five, eight, ten days before this.)
She stands up, moves forward. Turns the lock back automatically. The door opens, and she hopes he can’t read what she’s feeling any more than she can.
But she shouldn’t have worried. He’s lost in his own nightmare, and it must be a bad one for him to have come to her. (She’s only ever made privy to the worst.)
“You know how we said that we were gonna try to be friends?” he asks, and the little-boy-lost look on his face confirms it. She’s going, going, gone before she’s had a chance to blink.
“Yeah.” What is that sound in her voice? Can he recognize it, discern the guilt and pain and frustration inside her?
But no, he’s too busy going straight for the jugular, hurting and healing and confusing her all at once. “I think I need a friend.”
The world grinds to a halt for a minute. Can she? Even if she can, should she? Isn’t this supposed to be Tess’s job now?
Before she has the chance to wonder if her silence has been noticed, words are tumbling from her lips. “Oh, okay. Come on in.”
And he does.
More baby steps. She is still in her strange mood, half caught up in her own head, that place where not even Alex attempts to follow her.
But Max needs her, and with purpose comes a fragile sense of the belonging that she’s been missing.
-
He talks and rants and teeters on the edge of the schizophrenic; and she soothes, talks reason; speaks sharply when he loses himself in his own imaginings.
He’s unstable, uncharacteristic, ashamed. And terribly, painfully human.
But this doesn’t even faze her. For once, she is the old Liz, and while he is far from the old Max he is still somehow hers.
Even when he leaves in a disgruntled mess, she isn’t perturbed. He will come back.
If he doesn’t, she will finally feel secure enough to go after him.
-
Maria is having a full-blown meltdown. Even by Maria standards, it is catastrophic. She is considering marrying someone almost twice her age and becoming the mother of a terminally ill little girl.
Liz sits by her, holding her hand, hugging her, being the voice of reason; and for the first time in months she is really there with (and for) her best friend. The knowledge brings a long-lost glow to her eyes.
The air is cold and crisp on her face, shocking her into breathing when she needs the reminder. It hits her lungs bitingly, and with the familiar restiveness brought on by too much air in too little time she turns her head, and her gaze collides with the petite, graceful form of Brody’s sick little girl.
And like Ebenezer Scrooge and a million other leads from holiday movies, she forgets every last one of her troubles for one world-changing moment (and she’d forgotten that world-changing doesn’t always mean bad). She knows how to help Max. She knows how to help Sydney. She knows how to make Maria feel better, and – maybe, she thinks, herself also.
Healing Sydney may not fight Max’s ghosts away, and it certainly won’t do much for her own. Maria will still be her wacky and crazy friend (although hopefully she’ll no longer be considering an illegal union). But it might give them all a little light, and a little hope to hang onto with both hands.
Liz thinks maybe that’s all someone like her can ask for.
