Word Count: 3116
Rating: Teen, if only because Isabel uses some words the nine-year-olds shouldn’t be hearing.
Warnings: Only of extreme Michael/Isabel.
Disclaimer: I do not own and am in no way affiliated with the TV show Roswell or the Roswell High books which it was based off of. I make no profit here, and only aim to please all the poor, gypped Cliffhangers in the world by writing this.
A/N: I didn’t really expect there to be any story left to tell after Anchor. Isabel kept nagging me, though, and so at first I tried to give her a small drabble set after Michael’s story – but she was very insistent that she had a story to tell that took place before that. In Anchor we really saw Michael make the jump in his mind from viewing Isabel as a friend/‘sister’ figure to viewing her as a soul mate or love interest. At least in my mind, though, it was very obvious that Isabel was already there at that point in time. This shows how Isabel made that journey, with some all-around podster angst thrown in for good measure. It’s probably not as polished as it should be, but like everything remotely Michael/Isabel that I write it holds a special place in my heart. I hope you enjoy.
Equilibrium
Things change after the grease fire.
They’ve been changing for awhile if she’s being honest; but this is the first time that Isabel can remember the three of them being so unapologetically ugly to each other.
Michael plays on her and Max’s insecurities about their parents.
She accuses Max of having control issues.
Both boys berate her for living in the land of the eternally optimistic.
They make these charges and yell these insults, and yet nothing seems to get resolved.
-
They’re always fighting now.
Talking amongst each other so much, and she’s not sure why when her mom and dad are the ones they should be talking to. But when she says this, Michael is furious and Max grows afraid and they all argue even more. Isabel can’t seem to navigate her way out of the vicious cycle they occupy now.
She wants to know why it was okay for Max to tell Liz after he saved her life but her own mother can’t be told.
(And she can admit that she was wrong about that – that maybe for all the craziness and badness and general uneasiness, there’s an awful lot of good that’s come from three other people knowing. The secret doesn’t seem quite as heavy anymore. So if they tell her parents – if the people who have loved her when she was unlovable know the truth and still accept her – then maybe the weight will dissipate completely. Maybe it won’t be so hard to breathe.)
Max tells her that was different.
(It is always ‘different’ for Max.)
Michael doesn’t agree with this.
He tells Max that the shooting is when all their problems started and Max clenches his hands into fists as if he’s just waiting for an excuse to swing, and then Isabel is interceding and Michael is shouting over her and it is the end of September all over again.
-
Isabel thinks that she finally understands what it was like for Max when she and Michael gave him such a hard time about healing Liz. Michael is so angry – at them, at the situation; she’s not sure what, exactly – and when he speaks it feels like he’s angry that Max saved her mom. Like he thinks it was a mistake.
(It wasn’t a mistake. It wasn’t. And even if it was, they love their mother and knowing that she’s safe would be worth it.)
She pinches the bridge of her nose and tells herself to breathe deep. It will be over soon.
Max will realize how silly and cowardly this all is, and they will tell their parents together. Mom and Dad will be shocked, and they’ll probably need awhile to accept it (she and Max won’t use their powers in front of them for awhile, to help make the transition smoother). Eventually, though, they will get used to the idea.
Daddy will start asking Max for help when the car engine sounds iffy – which is stupid, because she’s ten times better at those things – and Mom will ask her to take care of the nastier stains when she does the laundry. Little things like that, but they will mean the world. They will mean that they are loved/accepted/wanted, just as they are.
She and Max will tell them and everything will be fine.
But Max is still saying ‘no’ and Michael is still making it ‘the-two-of-you-against-me’ like he always does when he is frightened and looking for a way to hide.
The fighting makes her lightheaded.
Nausea-inducing, topsy-turvy vertigo, and her once perfect posture has to suffer so she can fold in on herself and accommodate the dizziness.
All she wants is for it to stop.
(It only seems to be getting worse.)
-
Isabel and Michael battle with words.
Max and Michael use their fists to argue, and all that her brother has ever needed to stop her is a long look.
There is something different about how she fights with Michael, though – she sometimes thinks they play the verbal equivalent of chess when they argue.
And that is strange, because she has made a career of letting her looks and mannerisms do the talking for her and Michael doesn’t usually say anything at all, much less something very intelligent.
(But she knows that this is a front – she’s seen him stuffing Portrait of a Young Man and Ulysses into his jacket, and sometimes she wonders what he’s so afraid to say.)
However strange it is, whatever the reason they feel compelled to always choose opposite sides of the fence, their squabbles are a fact of life. In some ways this is the most stable thing about the entire mess. It is blessedly and comfortingly familiar.
So they revert to form. She goes through the ‘why’ ’s and he ticks off the ‘why not’ ’s and they run around each other in circles until she feels like passing out.
(Her balance has been steadily going downhill the past few days.)
During the time that they spend fighting, with him gathering up words to throw at her and her accusing him of fear and pessimism and selfishness, Isabel wonders what it would be like if for once – just once – they fought on the same side.
-
The people at school don’t notice anything odd.
Pam Troy offers to walk her to the nurse’s when she almost passes out on the way to fifth period English, but Isabel refuses. Says, ‘I’m fine, just forgot to eat breakfast this morning,’ and because she’s not thin enough to be anorexic and looks too put together to have a virus no one questions her.
Michael is there when it happens, and he pushes through the crowd and stands at her side. He lets her clutch his forearm fitfully.
As soon as he is convinced that she’s alright, he walks away and she is left grasping at the air he occupied.
Everyone talks and laughs around her, and she struggles against the suspicion that the floor is rising to meet her face.
-
Max goes to talk to Liz. She says something to him, and suddenly he is confident and composed and is telling Isabel that he will “take care of it.”
Isabel feels like the more sensible side of her brain is finally back as she embraces him, and she trembles with terror and anticipation at the thought of their parents’ reaction to the news that they’ve been harboring fugitive aliens for the past twelve years.
She wants to come with him. But Max says that he needs to do this alone, and because she is so happy that he is doing it period she readily agrees.
Isabel waits by the reservoir; and even though this is good news and she is ecstatic, every time she shifts an inch it feels like a foot and she weaves hopelessly when she paces back and forth.
Max comes back.
(But he didn’t tell mom and it’s still a secret and she is still on her own and goddammit, it was supposed to get better after this.)
She wails. Trying to suppress it, shove it back down where all her sobs go, but Max has seen and heard and they come up anyway. He looks guilty but resolute, and she knows he isn’t ever going to change his mind.
He hugs her. She clutches at him as tightly as she can, but she is still spinning, spinning, spinning and off kilter and somewhere altogether not here.
(Things aren’t better at all.)
-
Michael is placated and Max is cautiously relieved. Her mother is no longer abrasive in her questioning, and if the looks she sends them say ‘who are you and should I be afraid of you or afraid for you?’ Isabel is the only one noticing it.
Michael obsesses over the cave paintings, Max obsesses over Liz, and the fighting abruptly stops.
Things go back to normal.
-
Her ‘friends’ have forgiven her for filling in at the Crashdown in October and for revealing nothing about her recently bloated schedule. She is back up on a pedestal, the example to which every girl in the sophomore class looks. Even though it takes most of her energy to walk across the school lobby without tripping, she manages to be cool and witty and enviable. (And when it comes right down to it, envy is the sincerest form of admiration most teenage girls possess.)
Isabel is the perfect ice princess as she holds court at lunchtime: cutting but not cruel, distantly amused but never really happy. All she wants is to forget the many days she’s had lunch with Liz or Alex in the past few months, and the way that her house suddenly feels that much less like a home.
Michael slides in next to her on the picnic table bench. He throws a mangled brown paper bag onto the tabletop and tries to restore the twisted neck.
“What are you doing here?” she asks. Her voice is longsuffering, carefully modulated in case any of her friends turn up before he’s gone.
He snorts, raising his eyebrows in that vaguely patronizing way she hates, and says, “I’m eating. Is that a federal offense now?”
She misses their banter. She misses the rare shared lunches where he sticks out like a sore thumb in Metallica t-shirts and denim while all of her designer-clad underlings try to be inconspicuous about sneaking glances at him.
Most of all she misses how easy it is to be strong around him without feeling like a fraud.
Isabel feels the earth shifting under her feet and has the awful sensation of stretching to meet a rotating sky.
“If I followed your line of paranoid delusions, it just might be,” she snaps.
Something shifts in his eyes, and Isabel wishes she could physically hold the vulnerability she sees there, both alien and familiar.
(Maybe if she can make this moment stretch, everything will be still.)
“Is –”
– and as he says it she remembers that he is the only one who has ever gotten away with calling her that, and her cracking shell hardens all over again.
“Max is over there. I’m sure you’ll have more fun picking apart conspiracy theories with him, assuming you can pull him away from Liz.”
She doesn’t look up from her salad. He sighs heavily, and even though they’re half a foot away from each other she feels his chest rise and fall.
“You’re pissed. I get that. Why are you taking it out on me?”
“It’s not so fun when you’re on the receiving end, is it?” she snarls. A tear abruptly splashes into the corner of her mouth. Her fingers are trembling crazily as she goes to brush it away. She groans when they come away and she sees the black smudges indicating a dissolving coat of mascara.
“Do you… do you want to talk about it?” he asks, looking supremely awkward.
She chokes back a humorless laugh. “Yes, Michael, I do want to talk about it. But not with you.”
Standing up and grabbing her bag quickly, Isabel walks away. She is absurdly pleased that for once, she is the one doing the leaving.
Her balance flickers in and out, and she has to restrain herself from breaking into a run.
-
She walks in on her mother clutching Max’s toy house to her chest and bawling her eyes out.
Isabel wonders how many tears have been cried on that trinket over the years and feels weary. Somehow she finds the strength to cross the room.
“Mom, please don’t cry,” she pleads, putting her head on her mom’s shoulder the same way she did when she was little and looking for comfort.
Her mother turns to regard her with a tearstained face. “Isabel, tell me the truth, sweetheart. Did I do something wrong? Do you and Max not know how much I love you?” She is pleading for an answer, and in the face of her pain Isabel is forced to turn her head.
“No, mom. We know.” She bites her lip, hesitates. “I know.”
Her mom cries harder.
They sit like that for a few more minutes. Eventually Diane gets up and goes to finish folding the laundry. Isabel takes up her mother’s previous activity and cries until she thinks she might be sick.
She can’t do this anymore.
Max will understand. (He won’t have a choice.)
She’ll tell her mom the truth tonight.
-
Somehow even in the face of all her good and brave intentions, Isabel finds herself parking the jeep near the reservoir half an hour after dinner ends.
Michael is already there, skipping rocks across the water.
She wishes he weren’t.
(She has let herself be selfish and insensitive and failed to think about how this will affect him. And she has conveniently forgotten how betrayed he will feel once her parents know the truth.)
He gives her an unreadable look and she feels guilty for being such a bitch to him earlier.
“Hey.”
“Hi,” she says quickly, smile (too) bright.
They stand awkwardly for a moment – and this cuts, too, because silences with Michael have never been uncomfortable before – until Isabel starts talking. She complains about Max’s infatuation with Liz and Liz’s infatuation with Max and viciously berates Maria for her neurotic behavior this morning at school. She insults Pam Troy’s latest ensemble and complains about Kyle Valenti’s scrutiny of the group. She babbles until she’s boring herself. (Michael, she’s sure, has been tuning her out for awhile.)
Say something, she thinks. Make this easy for me.
Michael is silent.
So she talks some more.
She says that Topolski was probably a random thing and that they shouldn’t read too much into her disappearance. She says that it’s good that Liz is alright, and that Max healing her didn’t screw her up too much. She says that she’s glad that they can trust some humans.
She says this and wordlessly begs for him to see through her. Know what I’m about to do, she thinks desperately, know and don’t hate me and tell me it’ll be okay and please, please, forgive me.
Because she doesn’t actually voice these longings he doesn’t respond.
Irrational anger bubbles in her chest.
“What are you thinking about?” she demands.
He stares at the surface of the reservoir thoughtfully. Then, “Nasedo.”
And just like that, Isabel is hit with the memory that long before a silver handprint appeared on Liz Parker’s abdomen one was found on a corpse, and slammed by recollections of how often Topolski singled the three of them out – and then her fragile dreams are being smashed into tiny, irredeemable fragments.
This time she doesn’t win the battle with her equilibrium.
“I can never tell her,” she sobs, clutching at her chest and sinking to the desert floor. “I can never be their daughter if they don’t know, and I can never tell them if I want them to be safe.”
Michael is hurrying to her side, and the sight of his face, so handsome and worried as he takes in her present state, makes her cry in earnest.
He draws her into his arms, cupping the back of her head in his hand and supporting all her weight. She whimpers pathetically, and as that not-all-there feeling permeates her extremities she thinks of standing here with Max last week and is struck by déjà vu.
“I’m so sick of being alone,” she whispers. The words are mangled and ugly as they slip out between hiccups and gasps, but she thinks they would be ugly no matter what her voice sounded like when she said them.
“You’re not alone,” Michael tells her firmly. His grasp on her is infinitely tender, but he doesn’t attempt to coddle her as he speaks. “They are your family, Isabel. And you have Max, too.”
He doesn’t say it, but hiding somewhere in the pause where he inhales after saying Max’s name is an unspoken ‘You have me.’
She buries her head in his chest, made shameless by her pain. His heart beats a steady rhythm against her ear.
And then she looks up just as he is looking down at her, and as their eyes lock the strangest thing happens –
her balance returns.
-
It’s not really that simple, of course.
There are still moments after that where Isabel feels the bottom falling out from underneath her. Times when Max is criticizing needlessly or getting too close to Liz, or when Alex unintentionally asks more of her than she’s ready or willing to give.
(Also, Isabel finally comes to understand that the reason she dislikes Maria so much has nothing to do with her bluntness and affinity for social suicide.)
Mostly her dizziness now stems from watching Michael.
She does that a lot these days; and quite a few things that went unnoticed previously come to her attention.
Firstly she sees that underneath the hair gel and snarls and general unruliness, Michael has beautiful hair.
(She has resolved that if she’s ever given the chance, she’ll run her fingers through it for hours.)
Next, she notices the way that his eyes flicker and cloud when he’s hurting out in the open.
(This comes to her when the signal at the library goes unanswered; and as much as she hurts for Michael, Isabel selfishly is a little bit grateful that she’s gotten to see this side of him. Grateful too that no one is coming to steal him away from her when she thinks that she’s finally beginning to have him.)
Of course she notices the fluid lines of his body and the faint definition of his muscles. She is female, after all – and as she’s beginning to realize, Michael is, in this respect, at least, as close to perfect as an alien can get.
Lastly, their eyes begin to meet more frequently; and when they do, Isabel always has the terrifying/amazing feeling that the thing that makes them so alike has nothing to do with DNA.
All in all, she’s suffering from a faulty equilibrium more often than not these days.
But somehow, Michael always seems to know when it’s at its worst. And when that happens, he catches her eye or her hand or her arm and whispers gruff words with that voice that makes her shiver, and her world finds balance all over again.
He finds a way, with simple gestures and tactless words, to show Isabel her own inward strength and help her stand tall (if at times a little unsurely).
She supposes that constant vertigo would be a curse to most people. Most people, though, don’t get the return from it that she does.
Most people haven’t been given Michael.
