Roswell Fanatics

CC Teen MAX POV
Disclaimer: I do not own Roswell, and all the characters are the property of Katims et. al.

The Book of Hours was largely a medieval device, and usually consisted of a lavishly illustrated (or illuminated) manuscript containing prayers and meditative thoughts for the salvation of the soul and the protection of loved ones. They usually contained eight sections to be read at specific hours of the day. The idea here is not religious but rather to share with you a sort of secular book of Max’s soul itself – written or thought by Max at critical moments of series two.
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ometimes I dream of the desert,
I dream that I and the desert are one,
and that is why I cannot act or say what I feel.
Because I have no substance.
And when I speak, I am the wind,
a sound of great solitude that no one hears,
like a lost soul looking for shelter.
I stalk the barren places of the world.

Sometimes I dream that the desert has become a white rind of sand,
Crescent mooned on the edge of a wide curved ocean.
I stand naked waiting for a ship that never comes,
a speck of light, hazed blue by distance.
Drawing towards me, taking on form,
Like a question looming out of my darkness
Someone will come to restore me.
I wait for Liz.

What is the use of waiting for someone that will never come? She will never come for me now. She has pushed me away. Liz slept with Kyle. And I must go on without her, half formed, half made up. Washed up without hope. Unfinished. Unprepared. Unknowing. This world is all I ever wanted, her world. It would have been enough for me. But I do not belong here and we are different. So I am lost. I am utterly lost without her. I can improvise, bluff, imagine, but I cannot know. I can feel, and I can have sensations, but I cannot love. I can touch but I cannot be touched. As I move closer to Tess, I move away from myself. I cannot describe it. I can love Tess but she will be an illusion, a copy of someone else, a plan devised elsewhere. I am a copy of my former self, a poor imitation. There is something cold and remorseless within me where once there was light and open space. How can I know anything when I no longer know myself?

Liz slept with Kyle.

I do not understand what that means. My soul has been extinguished. Snuffed out.

I so wanted to be human.

ometimes I dream of Michael.
I dream that Michael and the desert are one
And that is why he cannot love me or help me
Because he is too angry and too wild.
A force of nature, too abstract to yield to his half human heart
A vast wilderness of great heat and great coldness
too animated to hear my voice inside his head
Saying that this is folly, that we belong here.
That chance is not fate, and that fate is not destiny.

Sometimes I dream that Michael is how he used to be,
Flint hard but yielding, angry then happy,
Light and dark, light and dark,
the stroboscopic shadows cast by summer clouds
Racing above the ground, arms wide open
running into our lives for the first time,
To restore me to what should have been
I wait for Michael, for a window to open.
He will never come now.

Liz slept with Kyle.

Liz slept with Kyle.

ometimes I dream of the desert,
I dream that I and the desert are one,
Exhausted, barren of life, tearless in the fierce heat
And that is why I cannot cry or shout my pain
Because I have no substance,
And when I speak, I am the wind,
An enormity of silence.



Sometimes I dream that my pain is too great to bear

Book of Hours:
2nd meditation:
_______________________________________________________


y life is half-lit, semi-dark now.
Now I live out my days
in a sort of twilight, a grey swirling fog,
Or under the sea
in the coral cold fastness of the deep
People ask for Max but Max is gone
Or inexplicably lost
Or dead.

When I sleep I dream of nothing
A formless soft velvet nothing
And when human voices wake me
I dream I am someone else.
In this dream Tess smiles and laughs at me
Like I am an eccentric man whose mind wanders.
Did I call her the wrong name?
Yes, again! Who is this Liz?
We are old and our lives are nearly spent
It doesn’t matter.
It is not important any more.
I cannot speak. I am always tired.

I lie in the buzzing silence of an endless summer day
In a pine framed bed smelling of you
It is scattered deep with your belongings,
Across the sheets the imprint of our bodies
Fill out like the shadows of the dead
A testament to a relationship that never was.

You are a ghost to me.

Tell me why you did something that you could never do?
When did you become a person I never knew?


y life is a series of hand and foot prints
across the floor, henna palmed.
A collage of clothes, trainers, socks,
Liz’s top and my sweatshirt randomly torn
A still life of passion, freeze framed
Or is this the scene of a crime?
There is a strand of long black hair in my mouth
She called me Kyle. She murdered me here.
In this bed.


Tess sits with me sometimes and talks of Antar. Each time she does this I move away from myself. Each time she touches me I see the outlines of my human life recede, almost imperceptibly. Can she not know what I feel? Can she sense my own struggle to think of her as someone else? I am ashamed of this, ashamed of this infidelity. Imbedded in my shame is huge anger and resentment at Liz, at Kyle, at myself. And yet I have to see them daily. I have to see Liz look at me and live her deep, secretive lie. Every day. Everyday the pain grows less. Half of an infinite pain is still infinite. I speak with Maria and Maria looks at me through her own pain, like an accusation.

I am afraid of my anger
I am afraid it will escape from me
A predator
A fire from heaven.

y life is not a life at all, now.
It is a sort of cosmic joke.
I am kept sane by the sheer chaos
Of the alien chase, dead Congress women walking,
Exploding stones, the air thick with the dandruff of dead skins
This blur of sound and motion
Drowns out my screams.



Liz betrayed me. She lost her faith. She gave in
To my destiny.

Wonderfully written piece! This unique look into the mind of Max Evans is a great companion piece for events from season two. Reading this you can't help but take a different stance on Max's portrayal during those pivtoal episodes of S2. Beautifully crafted, keep it up!

Many thanks for all the posts - I want I think to get to Departure if I may.

Book of Hours: 3rd Reading.




hen I am calm, when I am softened towards stillness
When I strip away this veneer of what I have become
And lay it aside, sweat covered, angry,
Incoherent with rage.
You come to me.

When I lie on the threshold of sleep,
And my eyes grow heavy with tears
I see not the boned white sands of Antar
But the dappled, green flecked intimacy of Earth
And for a brief moment I do not see Tess
her seas of fire, or her curious waiting patience.
I do not see the cipher of our destiny
I see you.

You are standing by an open window,
Your forehead against mine, as if you or I am a shadow,
One for the other
I lean my face towards you, my lips know their way:
we fold perfectly together.
Where have you been?
Why have you been so long in coming?

These moments are scarce now.
Zan does not like sorrow and remorse:
But they drug him; they make him indolent.
And briefly, in these unfocused moments of sleep
His enchantment weakens:
And I find Max again, pressed
Hard beneath the ages,
Like an old flower found,
Tissue wrapped in a book
A memory of innocence.

It is in this brief moment of transition,
Rarer and fainter with each passing day
That I feel the enormity of my love for you:
No word or symbol can convey the power of our alchemy,
And yet there are forces around me that will over-throw it.
Are we out of time?


There is something here that makes no sense, some inscrutable mystery. When I went to New York, you mentioned the Granolith, you spoke of it in a way that conveyed knowledge, experience, even wisdom. And you looked at me in a way that I knew but could not explain. And there was a voice in my head saying: `listen to her’. And in New York, abandoned and lost, surrounded by squalor and the madness of a duplicate universe, you came to me. At the end of all things, I saw you.

And in Vegas, stung and angered by Michael beyond words, what in Gods name did I see then? A life that would have been? A life that was?

Liz you are my once and future wife.
Was that an echo or a prophecy?
How many times will you save my life?
Is that why you betrayed me?


e must talk quickly, Liz, in these snatched moments
Zan will be awake soon.
He is prowling the darkness for his wife and throne
And I have not the strength to resist him.
Did you sleep with Kyle? Could I have got this all wrong?
Is there something I cannot see? Another mistake?

Why do I not know!!!!!!!!
Tell me you slept with Kyle to save the world,
Because you thought it would release me from your spell
Tell me anything!
Tell me you love me.
Make a sign, before I become an alien king
who will not recognise you.


When I am calm, when my passion is spent,
When I step out of myself into the thin air
Of a distant planet
Who shall I be? What shall I look like?
Will I remember anything?

ill I remember me?

Guys - thanks so much for the feeback - it is so encouraging and so thoughtful. This is the penultimate hour of course -

Book of Hours 4th Reading:
(episode before Departure)
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here was a doorway once
I found in a dream
a small low entrance
Into a walled garden
Dark on my side
Luminous and beautiful on the other
An intimate place of whispered kisses
A sea of roses swelling in the breeze
And the heavy bossed crowns of Hydrangeas
Crowding the low lintel of the gate
As you passed through.

Nothing prepared me for the beauty
I found there
Nothing cautioned me
Or warned
That it would not last.

You and I would sit, welded together
We would plan out our life,
It led away from us,
A bold line, cool in the soft light,
It had no end, just hazy distance
through the sound of children
And the soft murmur of great age.

We kept the key to the garden a secret
Safe between us,
hot metal to the touch, hidden
beneath the white boned masts
of birch trees in summer.
It smelled of Earth and you.


The garden is gone now.


Alex is dead.



here is a place,
a hole in the world through which
My soul ebbs away
A bleeding stain of pain
Leaking into space
a pencil trail of vapour
a blood red tide
A memory
of light


There is a slashed line
Cut through the face
of a lost lover who knows the truth
She brands it into me.
Her accusation cuts like a knife.
I can never erase her anger.

Alex is dead.

I sit in the places where the humans go
Translucent after their short brilliant lives
To the long halls crowded,
of their ancestors.

I cannot persuade him to leave.
He gives me a lock of golden hair
A clue to something?
A gift outright?
`Find her, Majesty!’
I kiss his forehead and swim hard
My lungs exploding.
He will visit Isabel. I sense this.
Is it of Isabel he speaks?


I tried to save him.
Max depended on it.

We plunged together
Deep into the blue well of the earth
Down, down down
Far into the dark, slab cold places
But he would not return with me.


Everything will now come to nothing.
In the beginning was my end
I am out of time.

here is a place where nothing works
Where nothing meets
And all that I know grows strange
Tess comforts me, she draws me closer
And her strength is immense
Hard, inscrutable.

As the others fade and betray me
I fold into her, and I see a vast
Angry world of war and revenge
Steeped in the song-lines of Antar
She touches me to erase this sense of
Someone else
It arouses me
It placates my grief.
I do not love her yet,
but she persuades me.


Alex is a white noise
A sort of static,
I am prepared for a journey now,
It takes me out of myself,
Out from under the blue rim of this world
Homeward.

Liz is dead.
I do not know her,
I have no memories.
Just power, a book of Knowledge
Or folly?


I awake in the cold late evening
Gummy with sex, sickened to the core
In my hand
Is a lock of hair
fools gold,
a mark of shame.


Overhead
the stars tremble with rage.

The final hour
___________________________________________________

n my end is my beginning

In that moment between
The traitor’s kiss
And the coming
of the soldiers

You return to me.

In that moment of betrayal
The shock of knowing
Between the consummation
of a conspiracy
And the murder of a friend

You find me.

On the eve of my departure
And the route march home
To my execution
and the death of my sister

You save us.


Between
the abyss
and the blinding light

Between what was to be


You stand
Wings unfolded.


You catch me as I fall


am so far from grace
Our role’s reversed
The stone rolled back.
I step into the biting air
The tomb is empty.

You did not forget.
The dream
We once had.
You did not abandon
The promise
We made.

Our love is here now,
All about us
It reclaims us,
Like the light
of a new day


What can I say?
What can I ever say
to you?

Can I say:

`My name is Zan of Antar
King of Kings
Look upon my works you mighty and despair!’

Max laughs,
The man is a child again
Cradled in your arms.

Can I say
you made me human,
the gift outright.

Can I say
Alex died so that I would live?
That we all live?

Can I ever overcome this?


My fingers lock into yours
Take me
Forgive me
Heal me

In my end is my beginning

With you

Always

On all sides
the lone and level sands of
Antar stretch far