Author: DocPaul

Email: DocPaul2002@yahoo.ca

Spoilers: None

Archive: Nope

Rating: NC-17

Disclaimers: I don't own them, but I should. I actually like them.

Summary: A take off on EoTW. FMax trying to change the world had no effect in the ultimate outcome, and at the eve of destruction, they were planning to try again, sending Liz this time. But things were taken from their hands, and Serena sends Maria to find Michael of prePilot.

Author's Note: This should have a feel of season 1, but there are some differences. Michael becomes the person with all the knowledge, and not Liz. It changes him...

*********  

It hurt.

She stood in the shadow of the tree and hurt.

He left that poor excuse of a home in an angry huff, as a man followed him screaming obscenities, jeers and hurtful things that left more scars. So many miles from home...

She waited, watching. A thin pale hand rushed over her neck as tiredness sank her body to a heap at the base of the tree. Waiting. He left. The evil bastard went out to hit a bar, to drink into oblivion, so he could come home and beat the boy, thus for a moment elevating himself above the cesspool of his life, feeling better, stronger and powerful before a cringing child.

They cry in the dark, so you can’t see their tears. They hide in the light so you can’t see their fears….love and pain become one and the same in the eyes of a wounded child.

Too tired.

The trailer was more than she expected, and somehow less at the same time. This was not a  home, it was a sentence. A prison. Going to the back room and seeing the unmade mattress that served as his bed, she lay down to sleep. Tired. Too far from home...

Roswell. It bled us. Our blood drained in the desert and seeped into the ground, staining it red.

“I can’t!”

“You must!” Serena ran around the room gathering things. Just things. It was busywork, something to occupy hands. Word had already come from the battle's edge. They broke the remaining lines. Nothing. There was no here, no now. All that remained was nothing. Serena, Max and Liz. And Maria.

And Maria thought, "I am nothing."

“There is nothing special about me, nothing I can be or do, but die.” Bitterness and bile rose in a dry laugh. See the walking dead. See the silly tricks. She died thirteen minutes and thirty-two seconds ago. Thirty-three, thirty-four, thirty-five...

How many seconds make up an eternity?

Serena stopped and looked at her friend. Broken. She was a shell. It took from her, and when it looked like she had nothing left to take, it took more. His blood was still on her body, staining her front, and she refused to change. It was all that was left, all she had of him, with so little left of herself.

Serena grabbed Maria’s face. No tears. She was the desert. Not even a drop of moisture was left to shed. Maria’s been crying for years, and she had nothing left to give. They took it all. Max and Liz.

“You’ve got to listen. Carefully. Soon they will try again. This time he’s sending Liz. But it won’t work. It will never work. Because they can’t change. It was over before it began.”

“I hurt.”

“I know. I know, baby. But Maria, as God is my witness, you’ve got to go. Now!”

“Why not you? You’re strong, smart...and you know...”

“Yes. But they don’t. They don’t know me. He doesn’t know me. Not yet. And there is little time. Not enough to for him to learn to trust before it’s too late.” Serena sighed. This was bad. She was still in shock, empty, and the price they were demanding of her was unimaginable.

“I can’t. To see him again...even for a moment...” Maria wrapped her arms around her middle and sank at Serena’s feet in pain. “Kill me. Make it stop.”

“Do this! Do this, and it may never begin. He may live...”

“But not with me!” Maria’s voice hollowed in pain. “Never with me.”

Serena sighed. How could she ask her to give up her lover, her husband, and all that they were? It was the bleeding wound, she knew it was, and she touched it anyway.

“Maria, you can’t miss what you'll never know. You know right now what has been, but if this works, you won't.. Your past self will never know, and there is hope in that…”

Serena held the crystal in her hand and heard them coming, talking. It was now or never. Grabbing Maria's hand she dragged her out the back door and shoved her in the car. They would follow and time was short. She glanced at  her friend's shivering body. Her only trump card, the only thing she had going for her as was Maria. And Maria's  unfaltering courage.

They looked at the Granilith, and Serena inserted the crystal, initiating the sequence.

“Maria?” The woman stood with her head bowed. Suddenly she nodded and extended her hand. Serena watched as Maria entered the Granilith and sequence began. Touching a hand to her... wishing her godspeed…

“Say it, Maria! Say it!”

Maria looked back at her and repeated the phrase as Max and Liz ran into the chamber. “There is no destiny, but that which we make.”

Max screamed, “No!” as a bright brilliant light was released in the chamber knocking Max and the others over. Maria was gone.

In the silence, Liz looked at her friend Serena in anger. “What did you do!”

Max grabbed the woman who meant so much to them, that stood with them...

“You’ve doomed us all!”

Serena looked at him, and shook his hand off in anger. “I’ve saved us. She’ll do it right this time.”

Max shook the woman in anger. “What is she doing? Tell me! What did you send her to do?”

Serena shook his hands off her, and stood on shaking feet. “She’ll do what the two of you never could do. She’ll give up her love -  my brother -  to give the world a chance of surviving.”

Max looked at his wife, at Liz and shook his head. No. Maria would not. She couldn’t. Not after all these years and everything Liz meant to her. Not even for Michael. She wasn’t that strong.

Max raised himself to his full height, and stared down the viper in his presence, another betrayer. Only Liz had remained loyal. Even Michael had questioned him at the end, and the Michael- worshippers led by his sister, Serena who was once a help, soon became an annoyance as they questioned his every command.

“I’m the King!” He gripped her hard by the arms and shook her. They were all that was left.

Serena shook off his hands. “You’re no King!” She watched in wonder as her own hand began to dissolve. She looked at Liz and Max, and she could see through them. “It’s begun!’

~~~

“Who the hell are you?”

She woke, and as sleep cleared her eyes, pain hit. He looked so beautiful. So alive. So young and angry.

Sitting up in the bed and moving her hair off her face, she couldn’t speak or even stop staring at him. It was worse than she thought it would be. The woman’s hand moved over her body and stopped at her stomach. She could still feel him inside her.

“I said, who...”

“...the hell am I? Yes, I heard you the first time. Though your bellow is as obnoxiously loud as always, it remains ever constant.” Maria stood up from his bed as he looked at her critically.

“Look, lady,” Maria’s eyebrow went up at that. “I don’t care what watering hole he found you at, or where he’s at now, but this is my room. So I suggest if you're sleeping off a drunk, go do it in Hank’s bed.”

“Thanks, but, no thanks. I wouldn’t touch that man, let alone sleep in his bed, if it was the last dying act of my body and my only chance of surviving.”

Michael sighed. Great! Fucking great! Kicking his door, he turned and looked at the woman again. She was young, too young for Hank. And she was beautiful, if you liked that poured-in tight leather, too short skirt, sexy skank look. He frowned. Hating his teenage hormones.

“I came for you, Michael.”

What? Michael actually backed up. “Who are you?”

“I’m Maria DeLuca.” She left off the Guerin at the end. It didn’t matter. After ten years of marriage they had still argued over the subject of whether she should take his last name or hyphenate it. Her throat closed. Actually, they weren’t. There was no more arguing. There was nothing. Nothing.

His eyes narrowed and his posture defensive. “No you’re not! I know that crazy, ditzy Maria girl. She’s not you.”

“She will be.”

“What? Did she fall into 'Skanks Anonymous'? I don’t remember her once wearing so much leather.”

“Skanks?” She actually laughed at that. Like he was going to be anything but a walking advertisement for massive cow death. “Don’t make me get tough with you, Spaceboy. I know what the smell of leather does to you.”

He swore, and moved the jacket in his hand more in front of his body. It was just raging hormones colliding with the sight of her,  a scantily clad woman in his bed. That was all. He had that dream every night, just before the sex kitten turned into an FBI agent and blew his brains away. A fuck for the road. Alien groupie.

Maria sighed. This was wrong. She didn’t have time.

“I need your help.”

“No.”

~~~

Following him down a road as he walked away, she cursed. Yeah, this was working great.

“Would you just listen?” He just kept on walking, ignoring her.

“I said...”

“I heard you!” Running his hand over his face, he stopped and faced her. “I don’t believe this. You’re an escaped mental patient. And this has nothing to do with me.”

He turned away, and she grabbed his arm, her breast heaving in anger. Of all their long-ago circle, he was the worst. The most defensive. She had to come to him.

“You’re an alien.” She ignored his startled look. He was so young and so guarded, but not guarded or old enough to stop his reaction. “If you don’t help me, listen to me, or even entertain the notion that I’m who I say I am, and not some lunatic on a hallucinatory binge, in about twenty-four hours your world is going to change. Your deep, dark, alien secret will be exposed, and nothing...nothing will ever be the same again.”

It was her voice. The firmness. The unshakeable honesty ringing in the rich tones...and the alien thing. Michael’s eyes narrowed. Still...

He walked off again. “You like pistachio ice cream...”

Michael stopped, and then shrugged. Lots of people do. He kept walking.

"What incensed him the most was the blatant jokes of the ones who pass it all off as a jest, pretending to understand everything and in reality not knowing their own minds."

He stopped.

“James Joyce, Ulysses. Page 655. You read it. You read it a lot. It’s your favorite book, and you keep a dog-eared copy under your mattress, and you stole it from a foster home you once were in for six days. You couldn’t even read then, but the book...owning it...holding it...made you feel better. Later, years later, you read it and understood it more, usually after Hank beat you.”

Michael rushed her, grabbed her close and got in her face. “You know nothing! Nothing about me!”

Maria pushed him off her. “I know everything.” He started walking again. “I know you like early morning the best because it feels clean, fresh and new. You lose yourself in your own thoughts, and you’re afraid of touching and being touched, because you can’t miss something you never knew. You envy your best friends, Max and Isabel Evans, but hate them at the same time. Isabel is your favorite because she's snarky and biting and hates everyone, so you don’t feel so bad about not liking people, because she hates them more. Max is too perfect, the great moralizer, and most of the time you just feel that you’re wrong. They make you feel wrong. But you would die for them.”

His eyes darkened as he shoved shaking hands in his pockets. “I don’t know what you’re damage is, or who you think you are, but I don’t know you.”

“I know. But you will. Or you did. I’m Maria DeLuca. I’m from the future coming back in time in a device created by your people. To stop a wrong. A rip in the balance.” He remained stonefaced. “I can prove it.”

He paused, and then moved off the road to a strand of trees. “Then prove it.”

Maria pulled a piece of metal from her pocket and tossed it to him.

“Crush it.”

Michael did, and suddenly it went back to it original form. “What the fuck?”

“You got it from a man named Hal, a year from now. He saved you, saved all of you when the crash originally happened, and you owed him your very existence.”

“You know things?” Michael moved closer to her, not believing, but needing to know. She held those answers he searched for, and even if it was a lie, it was more than he had. She did look like Maria DeLuca, but not quite the same. Maria was cute with the promise of beauty when her body finally caught up to her mouth. The same eyes and that mouth, but she looked older, and as incredibly beautiful as he suspected she'd be. But that beauty was marred by the look in her eyes. There was nothing there. Not even a spark of life. Only death.

“Yes. I know so much. About you, about Isabel and Max. I know the lies you’re told, the betrayal you’ll face, and even the joys. I know...everything.”

“And you want me to do...what?”

Maria sat down on the ground, kneeling on her knees and sitting back on her hunches. “I want you to keep Max out of the Crashdown tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow.”

“He’ll drag you there so he can watch Liz Parker.” Michael just snorted. She sure called that one right. Skinny, too serious, Plain Jane Liz Parker. He just didn’t get it. She had nothing going on.

“Why? Does Liz finally notice he’s alive or something?”

“Worse. She dies.” Maria plucked the grass next to her.

“Dies?” Michael frowned and his concentration became sharper, more suspicious.

“An incident. She gets shot, and Max heals her. In front of witnesses, a café full of witnesses and alien freaks, and you’re exposed.”

Michael swore. That had to be a lie.

“That’s a lie! Maxwell wouldn’t do that! He’s...we've had a pact since childhood. It’s just the three of us. No one else. We’re all any of us have. He wouldn’t put me and Isabel in danger for a nothing of a girl who doesn’t even know his name, or that he’s alive.”

“She knows him after he heals her. They...” Maria stopped. She couldn’t say anymore. “It just starts everything. It exposes you to your worst nightmare.”

He stared off into the distance. Roswell. Fucking Roswell. Fucking planet Earth.

“So if Max doesn’t save Liz, then she’s going to...”

“Die.” Maria looked away.

He stood up and paced, rubbing his hands through his hair and making it stand up even more.

“This is a lie! You’re lying!”

“I’m not!”

“Maria DeLuca, that crazy yakking chick is Liz Parker’s best friend. She’d never, never let her friend die.” Michael moved away from her. “I don’t know who you are, or what you want, but I know nothing. You’ve got the wrong man.”

“You’re not a man! You’re a boy! A poorly washed, bad tempered, nasty and mean alien boy with bad hair! And if you walk away...if you leave without helping...this timeline will continue and everything will remain the same.”

“Why me! Why not your past self? Why should I trust a word you say?”

“Because I’m your wife.” Maria said. Fuck the 'no two identical masses occupying the same space at the same time or they wink into non-existence' stuff. She couldn't understand that science crap, and Michael was even worse at it.

~~~

Michael shut his bedroom door and listened carefully. Hank was home, sleeping off a drunk. She was on his bed again, sitting there with her hands in between her knees pressing them tightly.

“Wife? That’s insane. I’d never...”

“Mate with a human? Let anyone in close enough to marry them?” Maria's bitter laugh was tinged in regret. “Well, rest assured, it wasn’t easy. Many times you pushed me away, almost left me forever, and yet we stuck. I dumped you a few times myself like a bad habit, but like all bad habits, we kept finding each other again. It took us years of growing and raging to come to understand that we never really could leave each other, that we took each other with us wherever we went.”

Michael sat down beside her. No way.

“It wasn’t easy. It never was with us. We loved each other the best when we were apart. Too close, and it was harder. We kept losing ourselves in each other, and there were things we both needed to do. It took us a lot of time and pain to learn that we could do them together. That the weakness and vulnerability we cause in each other was actually our strength.”

“When did we finally stop breaking up?” he asked quietly, still not believing.

“The day I realized I was pregnant.” She laughed sadly at the memory. “I tossed a pot of hot food at you for knocking me up.”

Michael looked at her in shock.

She laughed. “Time doesn’t change that expression! Yeah, that’s the one. Your shocked, 'roll me and fuck me' look. Love it. Love you.”

“Maria.” He stopped. “Do I call you Maria?”

“Yeah. That took some time too. You’ve been even known to call me ‘honey’.”

He made a face at that.

She laughed again. “Yeah. It usually meant you wanted something. Usually sex.” Her eyes noted the increasing blush of his skin. God, he was so young.

“Sooo, how long?” He cleared his throat uncertain what he was asking. How long were they married? Or how long did they deny being together? Or how long did she plan to stay here convincing him that she wasn't a loon? “How long until we married?”

“Four years of frickin’ hell trying to learn to like being together, but once we did, we had ten years of pure fire and passion. I screamed, you shut down. I’d get angry, you’d get angry, and that usually led to rolling around on the floor and three children.”

“We’ve got children?” He’d never...or so he thought.

“We did.” She said silently.

“Did?” He was shocked at the glittery shine to her eyes, the suppressed tears.

“It doesn’t matter. None of this does. If we restore the balance, none of that will ever happen.”

Michael grabbed her hard. “What happened to our children?”

“Michael...”

“Just tell me! What happened?”

Maria shrugged off his hand. “They died in a house bombing along with Isabel’s two children and my mother. They took them from us, and we stood outside watching the flames with the heat too hot for us to enter and save them. Even your powers combined with Isabel’s couldn’t douse the flames. We listened to their screams...”

Her voice broke and he watched her hands shake. The feeling of loss and moisture was behind his eyes. He could feel her pain and it felt alive. It felt like part of him as well.

“Was...was I a good father?” He never thought to be, or even hoped. It wasn’t just the alien thing. It was Hank. Would he be like Hank?

“The best.” He just sat back in silence, not even sure if he was relieved.

She wasn’t finished. “We always knew there had to be something better than Roswell. It took us some time to realize that it was each other, and that the something better was them, our children.” Her voice was quiet and soft.

Rubbing a tear off her cheek, she stood up and looked at him.

“You’ve got to help me! I can’t live through it again. My younger self. It destroyed my spirit. It hardened you. All you lived for was revenge and hate after that. I couldn’t touch you. It was like even a simple touch was too painful.” Maria wiped her face. “I love Liz Parker. She’s my best friend, a sister, and this is killing me. But none of you can bring someone back from the dead. It’s forbidden. It puts the natural balance of things out of sync.”

“All this because Liz Parker lived?”

“Yes. She interacted in events that she wouldn’t have been around for, if she had died at sixteen the way she was supposed to. When Max’s future wife appeared, he ignored her because he was in love with Liz. This woman, she was kept on the outside and she could never break in. It hardened her against you. And all of you were exposed. Too young. Your powers were on the verge of an awakening. Before that, they were volatile and almost uncontrollable. Your people didn’t account for puberty. All those conflicting emotions and hormones ran crazy and none of you were prepared for the responsibilities. None of us were. We made promises and commitments too young, before we’d even grown into our bodies.”

“If Liz died, how long would we have had?”

“I don’t know. It could be years, or even days. The balance was wrecked, but you have to understand, all I know is this timeline and what happened in it. It’s this timeline that has to end.” Maria looked at him, and her face was shuttered and cold as she tried to keep everything inside. “If we succeed, the course of your life - of all of our lives - will go on the way it should have originally. That's something I can’t tell you about because even I don’t know.”

Michael looked down at his hands. If what she was saying was correct or even partially true, his friend Maxwell was going to destroy them all. It would break Max’s heart, but it was that or the end of everything.

“Okay. What do I got to do?”

“Keep Max away, so he can’t save her.” Maria sighed. Liz. Liz would be gone.

He looked at her sharply, frowning at her monotone response. “I can’t believe you’re so cold about this, that this means nothing to you! I thought she was your friend.”

Maria looked at him with tears in her eyes, but she quickly wiped them away. “She was and always has been my best friend, or at least she was until you. You can’t know what this will cost me...the price. I lose her, I  destroy my younger self who has abandonment issues, and I lose all hope of ever knowing you or getting close to you. It’ll cost me everything, and I see no chance of my younger self surviving uninjured.”

“Then why?”

She laid down on his bed and covered her eyes with her arm letting herself rest.

“Because it was wrong. Max came back and he tried to change things, tried to get Liz to help him, but it didn’t work. They couldn’t stay apart, not even for the world. We paid a huge price. We lost Alex at eighteen, and so much more along the way. Max and Liz can’t deny themselves, so the rest of us will have to be strong and do it for them.”

He watched her as she seemed to be drifting off to sleep. She really was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Not really all that skanky actually, but more like incredibly sexy.

“There is no destiny, except that which we make,” she whispered as she fell asleep.

He sat on the floor beside the bed and watched her sleep. For the first time in his life, he watched someone else whose sleep was more upset and troubled than his own.

~~~

“Maxwell.”

“Michael, didn’t expect you to show at school today. That makes twice this week. A new record?”

“I was trying to hide from the truancy officers, figured here was the best place. I can sleep just as easy in class as out of it.”

Max smiled slightly, but he was suddenly distracted by the movement of Liz Parker down the hall with her best friend, Maria DeLuca. Suddenly there was a tall thin man tossing himself around the back of Maria hugging her tight and talking to Liz excitedly. Liz Parker made a funny face and reached over Maria to pinch Alex’s cheeks talking in a funny voice, making Maria laugh. Alex rushed the girls and the three of them ended up in a mass of arms and legs laughing and hugging.

Michael watched the interaction with interest. Alex Whitman. He died. She said that he died at eighteen, in just two short years. How? She didn’t say, but it was a direct result of Max’s saving Liz Parker and them not being able to change the timeline on their first attempt. Or changing it, but not enough to save the world, or any of them ultimately. Maria said that they couldn’t change. Max and Liz couldn’t give up their great love, and no matter how they tried, or how much they knew of the consequences, they made excuses to be together. Actual events changed...but the end results remained the same.

Her smile. It started inside her and then just shone out, all brilliant.  Those eyes, their smile was even more dazzling than her mouth, but it was those lips that attracted him first. They were all shiny with her lip gloss, and whenever he passed her in the hall, she smelt so incredible. Her laugh was all light and tingly moving along his spine...She was everything he was not. Alive.

“Michael?” Max looked at his friend and frowned. “Michael!”

“Huh?” Michael suddenly startled awake, as if caught in a dream.

“Man, you must’ve not gotten any sleep last night. Where were you?”

Michael just grunted a non-response and followed Max. He didn’t sleep at all. He watched her all night long.

“So after school, we should go catch a bite to eat at the Crashdown.” That caught Michael’s attention.

“Actually...I was hoping you would come somewhere with me after school. It shouldn’t take long, and we can go to the Crashdown afterwards.”

Max paused. Michael asking him politely?

“Where?”

Michael dug the piece of metal that Maria showed him, the one that he wouldn’t get for over a year and passed it to Max.

“Crush it.”

Michael watched as Max crushed the piece of the metal, and then his amazement as the metal took its original shape.

“Michael?”

“I found it in the desert. I don’t know if I can find the same place again, or if there's more.” Michael didn’t even falter in the lie. Maria had told him where to look. “I think its part of our ship, Maxwell. The Roswell crash site.”

“What do you hope to find, Michael?”

Michael just shrugged and let Max’s lack of interest irritate him.

“Who knows, Maxwell? Maybe something about who we are, or where we come from? Maybe you like your life and Roswell, but I need to know. I need more!” Michael practically sneers at Max. “Sorry to suggest you delay your daily Liz Parker moonfest.”

Michael started to stalk off, when Max quickly caught him.

“Okay. I’m sorry. You’re right. It can’t hurt just to look around a bit.”

Michael just shrugged as a tense muscle in his jaw flexed. He could always count on Max feeling sorry for him.

Looking over his shoulder on their way out of the school to get into the jeep, Michael looked over at Liz Parker and her friends. It was the last time he’d ever see her alive, and perhaps the last time he’d ever see that Maria girl smile.

~~~

She stood in the shadows, watching among the trees in front of the open café area of the Crashdown. It was almost time and as promised, Michael and Max were nowhere to be seen.

Even knowing it would come, expecting it, The ringing of the shot that ended her world still startled her. It sounded too unreal, almost hollow and contrived. Maybe it was a backfire from some car down the street.

“Liz!” Her old voice, so young and afraid rang through the air, and Maria leaning against a tree, slowly turned her back to it and sank down, hugging her knees tightly to her body. Bending her head into her body, she willed it away.

“Oh God! Liz! Someone call an ambulance! Liz, hold on! You’re okay...you’ll be okay. I’m here. Someone! Help me! Liz! Liz?”

She couldn’t take anymore. Standing, she looked inside and saw that young woman whose life had just changed forever, crying over her dying friend, covered in her blood. She slowly walked away, not feeling the tears rushing down her face as emergency sirens pierced the silence of Roswell.

One life for many? Was that the trade? Liz for Alex, or even all of them? Maria couldn’t know. They had all seemed so sure. Max, Liz, and even Serena. They all seemed so sure about what was the correct path. But maybe destiny was Max saving Liz that day, and they had just wrecked it again.

“There is no destiny, except that which we make. There is no destiny...”

Even repeating it didn’t help. Alone. This was what it was like to be alone waiting for the void of nonexistence to whisk her away. Would he be waiting on the other side of that void, standing tall and alive with their children? Would she ever see them again, or were they confined to nonexistence as well? Did that remove their pain, or did their cries keep that alive in her? Would it end when she did?

And who would mourn Liz Parker? Maria DeLuca and Alex Whitman would. Her mom.

Maria didn’t even notice how she got here, but here she was. Standing outside her old home, looking in the window at her mom talking on the phone. Making an order or confirming a delivery. She looked so young...so alive. Years of bitter war no longer lined her face, and she was no longer trapped, burning alive with her grandchildren.

Maria closed her eyes as the tears continued to fall. Oh please God, make it worth it.

~~~

“Michael! What is it?”

Michael watched the emergency vehicles rushing the intersection, heading in the direction of the Crashdown. He looked at Max, as he tried to follow.

“What are you doing, Maxwell?”

Max looked at Michael quickly. “I’m going to follow and see what’s happening.”

“It’s probably a fender bender, or Mrs. McGarrick’s cat stuck in the power lines again, threatening to be fried.” Michael winced as even more emergency vehicles raced by. Another police cruiser. “It’s swarming in cops, Maxwell. Not the place for us.”

Max hesitated and took one last look down the street, and turned his jeep towards home. Michael slowly released his breath, not realizing he had been holding it. They stopped outside the Evans home, and Michael looked at the road that would take him home to Hank's.

Would she be there, or already gone? How did it happen? Did she have to leave or did she just disappear. He should go, but Michael decided to stay with Max until he heard the news, and it was confirmed that Liz Parker was dead. What if she survived it for even a small space in time, and Max rushed to her side? Would that be enough to set things back in motion again?

He stayed. Walking into the house, his thoughts were elsewhere. His hand held the piece of alien scrap metal so tightly, his knuckles were white. As long as it continued to exist, she must as well.

They were drinking orange juice and eating a snack in the living room, flipping the channels when Isabel came home all excited. Rushing into the room, she tossed herself down in the chair swinging a leg over a side.

“Oh god! You won’t believe what happened today!” Michael frowned at the blond. Damn. She was just going to blurt it out. Just like that, not about caring its effect on Max. Her excitement sickened him. In that space of time, he hated her. Hated her cold callous disregard for anyone and everyone not them. She hated Liz Parker, she hated her brother’s fascination with the girl, and at that moment in time she held a tool for inflicting great pain, while losing something she loathed. Liz Parker.

Maybe Iz was right to instinctually dislike Liz Parker, or maybe she realized that if forced to choose between them and Liz Parker, Max would have chosen Liz.  He would’ve sacrificed their trust and their lives for Liz. That instinct was adding that gleam of hate and spite to her eyes, and it made it easy for her to add to her brother’s pain.

He sickened himself. He had always been more like Isabel in his contempt for humans. Maria gave up everything to save them. She gave up her friend, her future with the man she loved and her children just to save them, to give them time...to give the world time. He was wrong. He’d been wrong. They weren’t the enemy, not all of them. Some were worth it.

“Liz Parker was shot in the Crashdown today by some unknown man!”

Michael didn’t even watch, or bother to look.

“What?” Max’s cry of disbelief was hard enough. He didn’t feel anything for Liz Parker. He didn’t even know her. But for some reason he felt the most for young Maria DeLuca, and for Max. “Is she okay? Did they take her to the hospital?”

“No. She was declared dead on the scene.”

Michael stood, unable to stand it anymore. Isabel’s voice of triumph, and Max’s sound of horror. Why was she still here? The metal in his pocket remained firm.

“I’ve got to go.” Michael didn’t even stop to hear their response.

“What’s with him?” Isabel asked in her cold tone.

~~~

Hank wasn’t home when he got back to the trailer. Going inside, he sighed his relief when he saw her standing looking out his small window from his room.

“You’re still here?”

“Apparently.” Maria turned to look at him ignoring his intense stare as he noted the tear tracks on her face. She was tired. Too tired to go on.

“Why?” Michael shut his door in case Hank came back.

“I’m not sure. Maybe because it’s not real to Max yet. Maybe he needs to let go.”

Michael watched as she sat on his bed and rubbed her face with her hands, almost like she couldn't take the tiredness any longer. Too far from home.

“You want something? While we wait?”

Maria looked at him. This wasn’t her Spaceboy. The young Michael she remembered hadn't yet learned to be kind.

“Sure.”

Michael left her and went into the kitchen to search for something for her to drink. Anything. Grabbing a can of Cherry Coke, he was starting back to his room when Hank came in.

“Home already, you little shit?”

Michael could feel the redness rising in his skin along his neck. It burned in humiliation knowing she could hear.

“What’s it to you?”

Hank just smirked at him. “I’m going out. Don’t expect me to make you any food, and do the damn laundry.”

“Big surprise! I’m not your fucking maid!”

Hank advanced on him as Michael stepped back in alarm when a voice came from the door.

“Michael, did you get me something to drink?”

Both men startled at her voice. Michael stood speechless. She was standing there in nothing but one of his ratty old shirts, barefoot, and she had wiped her face clean of makeup. Her hair was wild around her head, almost like she had been...they had been...

“And who do have here?” Hank looked the young girl up and down. She looked older than Mikey, but still young, fresh and nubile. A waste on the boy.

Maria just looked insolently at Hank, and then quickly ignored him as being unimportant. Taking the Coke can from Michael’s hand, she smiled at him and headed back to his room. Pausing in the dark short hallway, she looked at him again.

“You coming?”

Michael couldn’t talk so he just nodded at her. With a smile, she was gone. He heard his bedroom door close.

“Do your own fucking laundry, Hank. I’m busy.”

Hank frowned. “Who is she, Mikey?”

“She’s none of your business.” Michael took off down the hall and went into his room. He rested against his closed door looking at her until he finally heard Hank leave the trailer.

“Thank you.”

Maria just nodded. Patting the bed next to her, she waited until he came to sit next to her.

“I don’t know how much time I’ve got left. There’s so much in my life that will change because of today, and so little I should tell you...but so much I should tell you.”

“About my background, who I am?”

“Maybe. But, I’m afraid to tell you too much. It could cause lasting effects in your life in far-reaching consequences, maybe more far-reaching than Max saving Liz. I can’t take the chance. I probably already told you too much.”

“But there is something...something you want from me?”

Maria plucked at the front of his shirt she was still wearing.

“Yes.” How could see say what needed to be said? How could she leave without knowing he was going to be okay? “I’ll tell you this, because I must...because I can't stand to think of you alone.”

“What?”

Maria took his hands and looked in his beautiful golden eyes, still wary of her, uncertain. They were the eyes of her children. Closing her eyes she willed them away.

“There’ll come a time very soon when he’ll hit you again. That monster will hit you. In my time my Michael found the courage to ask for help, to free himself from the abuse, and he came to me and found comfort for just a small period of time.” She reached up and rubbed his cheek wiping away imaginary tears that she wouldn’t be able to wipe away in this future.

“I...” Michael ducked his head, looked away.

“You had the courage to ask Mr. Evans for help. He helped you become emancipated, free of Hank. It was the turning point for my Michael. He built his first real home, and he was finally no longer afraid of the dark and hiding in the light.”

“Emancipated?” Michael asked.

“Yes. He freed himself. When the time comes...I’d like to think you’ll find the same courage again.” He was avoiding her eyes. His abuse was something he had never come to terms with, or at least not enough to comfortably talk about it. “Michael, you never deserved this. Never. And all those times that other people made you feel like...less. They were wrong. Believe me when I tell you that you’re strong. Stronger than you can ever imagine. And I’m sorry that I won’t be there for you, but I’ve got to know, to believe that you’ll still become that same incredible man I married. Just give yourself a chance and believe in yourself, because in all the years I knew you, you never lied to me, and you never failed me. Not once. Not ever.”

Michael looked at her.

~~~

Max let himself into the door, slowly moving down the quiet sterile hall. Moving cautiously, he tried to listen for people approaching. Coming to the door at the end of the hall, he quickly unlocked it with his powers and entered.

Turning on the light, he stood facing a wall of small metal doors. Moving towards them, he slowly opened them one by one, finding some empty and some with bodies, until he found her.

Liz.

She lay on that cold metal slab. All the color of life was drained from her face. Her lips, once ruby red were the coldest of pale white bordering on blue. Her dark hair hung lifeless and obscene from the slab, accentuating the paleness of death and the graying blueness of her skin. The shadows under her closed eyes were gaunt and sallow, as nothing resembling Liz Parker moved in the shadows of her once alive form.

Moving the cloth away from her body, he searched her abdomen for the wound that took her from this world. It was gaping and horrific in the assault on her flesh. Already drawn and collapsing, decay had set in.

Max reached out his hand to pause over the wound, concentrating to mend and return what was already gone. Nothing. He couldn’t feel the life force inside, the moving of tissue and blood to seal the wound. It was too late.

Liz Parker had died.

~~~

“I feel it.”

Michael looked at her. No. He needed to know more. He opened his mouth to protest, to ask her to stay just a little while longer.

She just shook her head. “My time here is done. Just promise me that regardless of what you learn or what is told to you, that you’ll remember this one thing.”

“What?”

Maria smiled at him sadly. He had so far to go. Alone. Maybe in this timeline he and Isabel would try together, without her there to interrupt them.

“There is no destiny, except that which we make.”

Michael looked at her, as she gestured for him to repeat after her. “There is no destiny, except that which we make?”

She smiled her approval. It was starting. She couldn’t describe it, but it felt as if her body was losing touch with itself. Unable to resist or to stop herself, she needed to touch him, just one more time. He wasn’t hers. Not her Michael, not hers ever again, but she needed it just once more.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry for all the times I won’t be there for you.”

Leaning forward, she gently touched her mouth to his. He didn’t move, uncertain, but the movement of her tongue on his lips made him open his mouth, and she kissed him…

~~~

"Are you trying to distract me?" she asked with a small smile, running one hand over his leather-clad leg.  Michael's muscles shivered under her touch. She liked how he responded to the kiss, the way he leaned into it and opened up for her to move inside him.

 

"Is it working?"  There was a definite lilt in Michael's voice now, a grin struggling not to surface through the words.  He smoothed his palm over Maria's leg lightly back and forth, until the patch of skin under his hand warmed to his touch.  Maria couldn't suppress a slow shiver as the first slow quickening that began to grow in her pelvis, deep inside her.

"Yeah, maybe," Maria replied, feeling faintly breathless. The darkness around them was nearly complete now, broken only by the strange flickering patterns that the firelight made as it washed over them.  It was easy to believe that they existed inside a nimbus of light at the center of the universe, cut off from everything and everyone, existing only with each other and for each other in this moment.  Maria felt a wave of exhilaration; it was something she could never get enough of - Michael’s touch. Just the thought of it, the freedom of it, was enough to give her that thrill she felt from loving him.  Because Michael loved her.

His hand moved slowly along the inner curve of Maria's thigh, and Maria let her legs fall open without thinking, her breath catching as Michael's other hand burrowed up under the front of his shirt that she borrowed. The feel of warm fingers against her skin was intoxicating, and for a moment, everything but the warmth of Michael's body blanked out everything, leaving her adrift in a kind of free-floating limbo where every synapse in her body was poised to react to the slightest stimulus.

"Breathe," Michael's voice whispered in her ear, and he sounded faintly amused. There was something about them touching this way that set Maria's nerves on fire.  She felt open in a way that she rarely experienced. She was exposed, and it thrilled her, exhilarated her; it sent her mind spinning with thoughts of him. The hand on her thigh rode up a bit, massaging gently, and she whimpered as he moved over her, into her, stroking.

"Shh," Michael soothed, and he slid his fingers into her as his other hand moved up the curve of Maria's ribs to stroke lightly at her collar bone, tracing delicate whorls over the skin. His lips pressed briefly against the side of Maria's throat, then lifted away, heated breath warming the skin there.  "I've got you. I want you. And I’ll always need you."

And the words seemed to speak directly into Maria's mind, into her heart, into her soul. “I've got you.”  Of course Michael had her, had always had her, even before they became lovers.  Even before they became friends, or partners, or random acquaintances thrown together out of a bizarre twist of destiny, fate, cosmic karma, or whatever the hell theology they might choose to attribute the fact that they'd found each other against all odds. In a world of bustling chaos, of pandemonium incarnate-whatever miraculous convergence of the fates had allowed for them to find everything in each other, it had happened.

"I love you," Maria whispered, not sure if she'd spoken loud enough for Michael to hear.  But of course Michael heard - he always heard, even the things that Maria would have preferred to keep hidden. Michael, with those wonderful lips of his, those wonderful eyes, that wonderful...mouth...that was now sucking all the blood to the surface of Maria's throat in a flurry of delightful suction against the side of her neck. 

Maria let her head fall back and moaned deeply, kneading her fingers into the hard coiled muscles of Michael's thighs like a cat.  Michael's right hand was rubbing over her and into her, tracing the swollen nub of nerve endings that he was stimulating to the breaking point. “Oh God!” she hissed through her teeth.  He kept stroking her from root to tip sliding into her, over and over, hard palm sliding over the hardening nub, until Maria's hips were rolling smoothly in time with the repetitive motion, and her breath was hissing out between her teeth in small, whistling gasps.

"Michael," she whispered, and the word turned into a strangled groan as his fingers moved into her even more, adding another finger as he tested the tightness of the channel, and joining the same repetitive cadence as her moans rose in volume.  Maria could feel teeth against the sensitized skin of her neck, and the low, rumbling growl that Michael made seemed to echo in through that one point of contact to shudder through every nerve ending in Maria's body.

And just that simply, she was lost.  Maria gave up control with a low groan and stretched back on the bed, letting him move over her, open her legs wider, giving herself up to the hands that touched her, stroked her, ruled her.  The pleasure moved out through her body in warm, tremulous waves, and Maria shut down her brain and just went with it, existing in the moment, this one bright, shining moment where Michael was hers and she was his and the world was so far away, that nothing mattered but them.
 

"I love you, Michael" she said, or thought she said, as Michael's fingers were removed from her, and his hands went to the clasp of his pants, and then the zipper was sliding down, and she was pressing her hips up into Michael's body, begging him in silent entreaty, or near-silent entreaty, as the whimpers slid past her lips to hurry. 

Then Michael's hand was on her, really on her, fingers closing with calm familiarity. Maria cried out, her entire body shuddering as Michael stroked her hard, thumb sliding over her clit again as the head of his cock moved just inside the swollen lips, parting her, moving along the lubrication,  just the way she liked it. The joy of that touch moved through her, fucking seared through her body, branding her. Michael's hand was hot against her skin, where it touched her, where it fucked her slowly, so hot it burned. 

Maria moaned again, not caring what kind of sounds she was making, aware only that they were steadily increasing in volume as Michael continued to work her, prepare her. She could feel Michael's smile against the skin of her neck, through the lips that pressed against her skin, the tongue that traced a path of blazing white fire up to the back of her ear and then sucked the lobe of her ear up into that mouth, that amazingly talented mouth...

Michael's arm tightened around her just a moment before Maria felt her breath catch the final time--god, if he didn't always know before she did when the ride was about to come to an end--and for a moment Maria fought it, just dug in her heels and willed it not to end, but then she threw back her head as his name ripped from her and the world hazed to black and white around her. Oh God! Alien sex - accept no imitations!!

It took a few moments for Maria to get her bearings back, and when she did, she found that she was on her side with her head pillowed on one of Michael's arms, with Michael's body strong and fortifying in front of  her holding her tight.  Michael was lapping softly at the skin behind her ear, making pleased little humming noises as he held her smaller body tightly against his chest, one thigh draped possessively over Maria's hip.

"God, you're beautiful," Michael said softly, and the words made Maria shiver
deeply.

Maria wanted to say something in reply, but she was distracted by the slow, insistent movements of Michael's groin against her. It was readily obvious that Michael had not shared in the mind-blowing orgasm that had just remade the fabric of Maria's world.  He never even penetrated, but brought her off with is mouth and hands, and the blunt end of his cock was still rubbing in her, along the lips of her swollen sex, coated in her released orgasm. Bastard. She hated it when he drove her ahead of him while holding back his own pleasure, but she loved it too. Maria pressed her hips forward towards Michael's next slow thrust and was rewarded with a low, strangled groan which Michael did his best to smother against her hair.  He moved inside her just a little bit more, and her walls gripped him, wanted him. So long, it felt so long since they had had time just for them.

Maria smiled slightly.  "How do you want me to do you?" she asked, keeping her voice low. She was going to tease him with just her voice, get even for him taking her on a ride and not coming along. Her smile deepened as she felt the subdued shiver pass through Michael's frame pressed hotly to her.  "Anything you want, Michael," she insisted, lowering her voice even further.  Her hand stroked gently over Michael's arm where it draped around her to hold her tight.  "Anything."

The movements of Michael's hips grew bolder, more demanding. Maria arched her neck against the low sounds that Michael was muttering against her skin. She felt hot, excited, almost more so than when Michael had been coaxing her to the brink of orgasm. This was her area of expertise, after all-the realm of words as weapons, tools to bring about an intended goal.  Just as Michael could bring her to screaming orgasm with nothing more than the touch of his hands, Maria's particular talent hinged around the effect that the sound of her voice had on Michael's libido, and his total love for sex talk, the dirtier the better.

"Do you want me to touch you?" she asked, letting her hand slide up along Michael's arm to cup over the back of his neck, pulling Michael's head up against her so that she was practically whispering huskily in his ear.  "Is that what you want, Michael?  My hand?  My hands are aching to touch you."

Michael made a low noise in the back of his throat and rubbed his face roughly against Maria's.  His breathing was heavy, rasping in her ear.

"Or maybe you want to take me? Enter me hard with those long deep strokes, practically raping me with your need, holding me open so that all I can feel is you...you.  God, Michael, do you know how long it's been since you've taken me that way?  I'm almost on the edge of another orgasm again just thinking about it.  Nothing feels the same as when you fuck me, Michael--nothing feels more.  It's like I'm utterly possessed by you, like you own every part of me.  I can't tell you how hot that makes me. I love it when you make love to me all caring and gentle, but I love it when you fuck me all hard and brutal too, as if you want me so much, need me so much, that you lose all your control. I love those times when we just fuck so long and hard that I can't walk for days." She groaned deeply to emphasize her desire.

Michael's hand clenched on her body, crunching the fabric of his shirt she was wearing as his body strained forward, desperately asking for Maria to do something - anything - to ease his need.  Maria had to bite back a groan at the feel of the tremors that were now moving steadily through Michael's body, transferring directly into hers.  She loved it when Michael got this way, so pure in his need, so utterly open about the things he wanted Maria to do for him.  There was something undeniably raw about it--hell, Michael was fucking pre-verbal now, letting his body do his talking for him.  Maria had to moisten her lips with her tongue and clear her throat before she could find enough breath to continue her monologue.

"Or maybe you want my mouth," she said, and now her voice was barely audible, a ghost of a whisper past her lips.  And damn, if she wasn't moving against him all wanton like, a bitch in heat with that tingling need inside her where he was barely penetrating. His bitch, his slut, his everything, and anything he needed. She increased the seduction again by sliding one hand down his belly and stroked lightly at his aroused flesh.  "You've always said that you love my mouth, Michael."

"You have...beautiful mouth," Michael whispered, and the effort behind the
words was obvious. It was warm and inviting, with those beautiful lips, and a taste only she had. Once he tasted her, he knew no other woman would ever do, would ever satisfy him. In all those years, never once did the thought of straying from her ever enter his mind, so entrapped was he from the moment they first kissed. Even in youth, all others paled next to her.

It was enough.  Maria rolled over and pushed Michael onto his back in one smooth motion, resting between Michael's spread thighs so that she could still reach every inch of him. Without pausing for breath, she unfastened Michael's fly the rest of the way, and freed the straining erection within completely from his leather pants.  Reverently, she smoothed her fingers over the sides of the flesh in her hands, cradling it lovingly, and before Michael could even draw in a strangled gasp of protest at the delay, she bent down to swallow him whole.

The taste of Michael was liquid fire on her tongue.  Maria closed her eyes as the rush of desire hit her and the flavor exploded through her mouth, sweet and bitter and salty and Michael, and she sucked hard, barely aware of the sounds Michael was making, of the hands that clenched to near pain in her hair, the hips that strained against her as she tried to hold them down with her body weight. He hated it when he came back to himself and found her mouth all swollen and abused by him, when he lost control and fucked her mouth, losing himself in the sensation and forgetting to be careful. She never minded, but he did. 

The room felt warm and safe burning around them, but it was secondary to the heat that burned right beneath her, in her, through her, more real than anything that existed around her as he moved in her mouth, his voice husky and calling to her.  The only thing that mattered in this moment was Michael, the feel of him, the scent of him, the taste.  It was the thrill of him, it was addiction, it was nirvana incarnate, and she couldn't get enough of it, never enough of it.  It was like looking into his heart and seeing the shape of his soul.

The hands in her hair were tightening now, and Maria finally gave in, releasing her hold on Michael's hips and dropping one hand down to stroke at his erection, using the same familiar motion that Michael had just used on her as he fingered her to an orgasm, and the memory made her moan around the hot flesh in her mouth, the flesh that slid past her lips with ever-increasing urgency as Michael's fingers in her hair tightened in silent demand and held her head still, held her immobile as those strong hips stroked up into her.  Oh yeah, that's it, Michael, Maria thought in silent encouragement, trusting that Michael would somehow understand the words she couldn't say.  Use me, fuck me...love me.  Come on, Michael, do it, do it, baby. Force me to take it all.

And Michael was riding her now, really riding her, and Maria relaxed her throat muscles, determined to take anything that Michael could give her, as Michael slid deep into her over and over again, and Maria squeezed her eyes tightly shut, using her free hand to snatch up a handful of her own hair and tangle it up in her fingers and wrap it around the base of Michael's erection, fucking Michael with her hair, her mouth and her hand, and then Michael was coming, coming deep in her throat, and oh god it was good, it was so fucking good...the sounds he made as he raged in her, the stilling of his body as he orgasmed under her shouting her name and his love for her.

Maria's second orgasm hit her head-on, and the cry seemed to bubble up out of her into Michael's cock and right up out of Michael's lips. He could make her come from just the feel of him coming off. Michael was screaming Maria's name, and there was something undeniably raw about the way he did it, something real that was missing from their day-to-day lives of obligatory self-sacrifice and war. In this moment there was nothing, nothing but the two of them together in this one, bright, and glorious union of truth and love, heart and soul and mind and body all wrapped up together in the joy that sang between them. There was no war, no fear, no loss and no pain.

Maria snorted on a fluttering laugh as she collapsed bonelessly across Michael's lap, her cheek resting in the hollow of his hip.  The cooling skin of his sweat covered flesh pressed insistently against the bridge of her nose, but she couldn't bring herself to move, or even to lick the salt from his skin.

"Something funny, Maria?" Michael said, with a note of wry humor in his voice. His fingers played idly with the hair at the nape of Maria's neck, sending little thrills of residual pleasure shooting over the surface of the her skin. His hands. All these years and after all this time, his hands held so much power over her.

Maria couldn't contain the grin that continued to spread across her features. Taking a deep breath to help sort out her disjointed thoughts, she replied, "I was just thinking how my mind tends to wax fucking poetic when we have moments like these."

Michael chuckled softly, a low vibration that carried right up into Maria's cheek where it pressed against his side.  "I really don’t want to know. It's hard enough following your trains of thought when you're supposedly coherent and relatively sane--I don't think I'd have a chance in hell of deciphering what goes on in your head when you're a hair's breadth away from an orgasm."

Maria laughed outright at that.  "Welcome to the Guerin-DeLuca zone, my love."

“DeLuca-Guerin,” he said offhandedly. The battle raged on. She smiled at his low half-made attempt to keep the dispute going, even though she knew at any time she could make him yield, since there was nothing he wouldn’t do for her.

Then Michael's hands were tugging her up so that they were lying side-by side, and damn if this wasn't even better than the sex had been, or at least as good as the sex had been, this post-coital cuddling that Michael seemed to crave so very strongly every single time they made love.  It was something that Maria would never grow tired of, and it was her addiction…him.  She curled in against Michael's chest without having to be urged and Michael's arms moved around her, holding her close.  Michael cupped one hand at the back of Maria's head and tucked it under his chin, and Maria sighed happily, feeling surrounded and loved and sated and utterly, bone-wearyingly spent. His one hand stroked low on her body, touching her with an almost reverence.

"I love you," Michael said, and this too was a part of the ritual.  A reminder, a reaffirmation that this wasn't just for kicks, that there was more going on between them than just two bodies drawing together for warmth on a cool night. It seemed they could forget this part after all this time, but neither was willing to give it up.

Maria couldn't suppress the shiver of joy that passed through her at the words.  No matter how many times she heard them, they never ceased to give her a thrill.  She smiled against the skin of Michael's neck and kissed him softly in the hollow of his throat.  "I love you, too, Michael.  Always love you."

Michael's arms tightened around him, and Maria let herself relax into the embrace. She fitted her body to his as he turned her in a little. She took his still semi-rigid erection in hand and rubbed it up along her clit. He helped her with a small thrust of his hip, to rub himself up against her. They weren’t going anywhere with this right away...later. She liked the feel of him, of his flesh connected to her while she slept.  Maybe in a little while they'd get up, clean themselves up and maybe cook some dinner. Afterwards they might sit together in front of the fire, maybe make love again, or just hold each other and watch the moon climb the sky.  And then finally, they'd fall asleep together, her head on Michael's chest, lulled by the cadence of the heart that beat beneath her. That was the joy of being them--not having any particular plan, no rhyme or reason to the rhythms that flowed between them.  And, best of all, not having to pretend.  For as long as one of them survived, they both survived, she could touch Michael whenever she wanted, however she wanted, be as vocal as she wanted about the love that she felt for her man.

And suddenly it didn't seem to matter so much that they couldn't express their love for each other every day of the week because life parted them at times. That they had even managed to find this kind of happiness at all was pretty fucking unheard of. Even Max and Liz, with their great soulmate love never came close to achieving what they did. They were too wrapped up in themselves, their own guilt and the pain of never having children, on top of watching everyone they loved and who once loved them slowly die because of them. 

It didn’t matter to Michael or Maria. Max and Liz’s tragedies were of their own making, and the rest of the world was just along for the ride. All those years they were so convinced that they were the center of the universe, and they proved themselves right. As the world exploded and burned around them on the eve of destruction, as Isabel’s blood barely congealed from the self-inflicted wounds she tore into her flesh at the pain of losing her children. No matter...nothing mattered any more.  What they managed to get away with in small spaces in time didn't change the way they felt about each other. The love, the passion, the magic was still there, still real.  And no one could take that away from them. Nestled deep in her body, sleeping was their future, their hope for more...not to replace what they lost, just to ease the pain a little. Their new unborn child.

A moment.  A weekend.  A lifetime.  It was all the same, actually, when you cut right down to the heart of things. Love was love, and it turned a moment to hours, a second to a lifetime, and nothing could touch it if you didn’t want it to.

~~~

Michael started in a gasp from the gentle quick kiss. It had lasted a lifetime, in a mere brush of her lips, the small taste of her tongue. Sitting there confused, he looked around desperately...she was gone.

Sliding from the bed to sit next to it on the floor, he pulled his legs up to his body, hugging his knees. He wept. All these years he had hid the tears, kept them inside until they choked him. He wouldn’t yield. He couldn’t. Once down that path of self-pity, he would’ve drowned. But these tears were different. They were her grief combined with his, left over from a world that no longer existed. In that flash, he lived their last time together, the entire night from beginning to end, from the last time he plunged into her body coating her inside with his seed, to the movement of his hand on her womb connecting to their unborn child...a son.

Twelve hours later, she had sat on the ground holding his dying body as Max desperately tried to heal the damage, his blood staining her clothes above their baby, and seeping into the ground. He watched her, his eyes never faltering as her face was the last thing he saw, and the beauty of her voice quickened him in a rush of light...to them. Their lost children, Amy, Isabel, Jesse and Alex. They were all there except his love...she...the one left behind. Hurry. I miss you.

Michael fell to his side, still hugging himself as he laid on his floor in a fetal position. All of it rushed in. She had told him nothing, and in that flash, everything.

The years they struggled to stay together while both were so unsure of the other. The years they finally let themselves feel and just be, and the joy of their children, the rush of all they loved. The pain and destruction that tore both of their souls apart, and all the tears he felt on his flesh as he held her. The anger, bitterness, and hate raging, raging, violent and fast as they were broken and beaten watching their once best friends cooing at each other, oblivious to everything around them.

A world lost. Them. It was all fading fast. And he felt it pass with regret so deep. All the pain and sorrow. All the hard times, and the good times. All they were, and wanted to be together...and mostly, the love. Unconditional, stark...and endless.

~~~

Isabel looked at them and frowned. The entire school was buzzing with gossip and the talk about Liz Parker’s death. Isabel had spent the entire morning passing notes and giggling with her girlfriends, gossiping. Why did she bother? Lunching with her brothers was a waste. Max’s quietness she could understand, and almost feel sympathy for, but Michael? She expected him to share her sarcastic looks as they rolled their eyes at Max’s loss. Great loss. The girl didn’t even know he existed. Whatever.

For just a moment, her eyes met Michael’s and her breath stopped in her throat. His hard angry eyes stopped the flow of banter in her. Silent, Isabel sat confused. What could Liz Parker matter to Michael? He always made snide remarks about her, nasty comments about Max’s cowing after her without an ounce of pride, but here he was angry at her. For what? The truth? How she felt? Liz Parker was a small town nobody. She died that way. Period. Standing up, Isabel left in a huff, to join real people as they gossiped.

Michael looked up at her and watched her leave. One thought from the flash still confused him. Isabel. His sister of almost ten years was destined to be his mate? Michael let the wave of revulsion move through his body. Not likely. Isabel, he loved. But even he knew that she loved best when her every whim and desire was being met. When they were forced to hang her fuck Christmas lights, or watch the movie of her choice, or buy her that present she felt she deserved, or just pay endless attention to her...the only girl in their small tight circle. Isabel had a warm heart, but it was warmed mostly by her own self-interest and greed. The perfect man for her would be one that she could control and twist around her finger. Not him. Never him. Love her, he may, but never like that. His spirit was unwilling, and his flesh even less so. She was his sister, and that was how she would remain.

Destiny. He huffed. There is no destiny, but that which we make.

“I’ll catch you later, Maxwell.” Michael left his devastated friend. What could he say?

~~~

He stood under the tree close to their living room window watching them. Maria. Maria and her mom. They were both crying and holding each other as Maria’s thin tiny body shook in sorrow and pain. Two different worlds, and some things never changed. She was still hurt and torn.

He stayed. Watching over her. Nothing. There was nothing he could do to change what was done, nothing he could say that would ease her pain. But he could watch over her. She deserved that and more.

~~~

“You know, you’re not fooling anyone.” Isabel said nastily in a low voice.

“What?”

Isabel just snorted her derision. “The DeLuca creature. You’re staring at her again.” Isabel just rolled her eyes. “First Max with his six years of fawning over the now dead Liz.” Isabel said Liz’s name with a hint of sugary sweetness. “And now you...you of all people, staring after that wacky Maria girl.”

Michael stopped watching Maria for a second. It was true. He watched her, followed her, made things easier for her, even though she didn’t know. People didn’t tease her, because he was there looking down at them with enough anger in his eyes to make them back off. He was her unknown bodyguard, and slowly people were accepting that, so that when she walked in her dazed world, people moved out of her way. She no longer laughed, and her smile was lost. All that remained was the bruises around her eyes, the sorrow, and the stoop of her shoulders, as if the very weight of her body was too much for her small frame.

Michael turned his eyes on Isabel, and just gazed at her, not commenting, giving her no more ammunition. Suddenly he stood and left without a word. Maria was on the move.

“See? Didn’t I tell you?”

Max finally looked up at his sister, and said quietly, “Shut up, Iz.”

Michael followed her after school. She stopped at the florist, and went to the cemetery. Sitting on the ground at Liz Parker’s grave, she talked and talked, telling Liz about her day, the latest gossip and her disgust with Vicky and her trashy clothes.

“Kyle is dating Vicky now. But I think he’s just doing it to get over you. Even the mysterious Max Evans is quieter than usual, and he still hasn’t got a new lab partner.” Her voice faltered and grew husky with tears. “God, I miss you so much, girlfriend. I miss you.” She stood up to leave wiping the tears from her face when a shadow moved over the grave. She looked up into the deep golden brown eyes of that strange Michael Guerin. He gave her the creeps. Gasping, she moved away from him.

He held out his hand, a hand that fascinated her with its silver ring. His hands they were...Maria just shook herself away from the thought, and tried to appear unaffected by him, and brave.

“What do you want?”

He cleared his throat. Strange, he barely spoke a word since it happened. “I saw you here, and I wanted to say...” Damn, he sounded so fucking lame. “I wanted to say I was sorry for your loss, for losing her.”

She just nodded, and slowly walked away, her forehead creased in confusion. Unable to resist, she look back at him still standing silently at her best friend’s grave.

~~~

Mr. Sommers stopped writing on the chalkboard and turned to face the class. Reaching behind him, he grabbed a ream of papers.

“Everybody has their secrets. There isn't a person alive today who's what they appear to be. Exposing these secrets is the job of the...historian. Even the most normal of us has extraordinary qualities just waiting to be uncovered.” He walked across the front of the class dropping stacks of paper at the first desks to be handed back. “For tonight's assignment, I've paired you together. It is your job as...historians, to find out as much as you can about your partner by asking these specific questions, and then writing up an oral history report for tomorrow.”

Maria looked down at the paper, and her mouth opened in an “O” as her eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Uh, excuse me, but these are kinda personal, don't you think?”

“Exactly. Personal is the goal of the professional biographer. And who knows? You just might make a new friend. Ok, so the partners are as follows: Daskal with Hausman, Kalinowski with Nell. Parker...” Mr. Sommers paused, and searched his books. “Make that Whitman with Evans...that's I. Evans. M. Evans is with...Valenti. Papas with Cooney, DeLuca with...Guerin.”

Maria’s eyes had clouded over at the mention of Liz’s name, and the crushing pain stabbed her in the stomach, but the teacher’s words finally trickled in.

“Wait, did you just say Guerin?”

“Yes, Michael Guerin.” Mr. Sommers looked at her unflinching.

“No, no, I'm sorry. That's unacceptable.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Maria gestured to the room at large.  “I mean, the guy's not even here.”

Mr. Sommers looked around the room at the usual spot that his inattentive, sleeping student usually resided, when he chose to actually attend. “Well, then it'll be like true field work, tracking down your subject. Trussell with Wolf...”

Maria stopped at Mr. Sommers' desk still talking to herself, ranting and irritated. “I mean, this is like cruel and unusual education. I mean, aren't there, like, Geneva Convention rules against this sort of thing?”

“I expect it to make you a better person, Ms. DeLuca. Think of it as personality training, living in the trenches, undergoing the ravages of war...all for your story. The Michael Guerin story.”

Maria just shook her head. “Where did you get these questions? Cosmo? Psychology Today? A website called ‘Knowing You, Knowing Me?’”

“You’ll be pleased to know they are approved questions from the Teaching text and sanctioned by the School Board. Go make a friend.”

Maria’s eyes narrowed even more. A friend? Michael Guerin? He scared her. It was like he was always there, watching her and following her. He did nice things for her. Helped her pick up plates she dropped in the Crashdown. Once when she was walking home at night after her shift a group of boys stopped her, and were hassling her. He suddenly appeared out of the shadows, and they fled. He followed her the rest of the way home, and when she was safe inside, he walked on.

She went to Liz’s grave and there was a rose bush planted there. He started showing up with a bottle of water, and calmly handed it to her to water the bush. It was like a routine. And he almost never talked.

~~~

“Michael!” He turned at Max’s voice. Damn.

“I thought you were going to try to make classes again. Or did you oversleep?”

“Look, Max, can the crap. I been thinking...” Michael ignored Max’s response to that. “I need to look up more alien stuff. Some of these rumors have to have some truth.”

“Michael, been through this. What’s wrong with you lately? It’s like all you think about is aliens and finding the truth. Try watching 'The X-Files' to get your fix.”

Michael rubbed a hand over his brow. The images were fading into memories after all these months and barely reclaimed, but his dreams were full of mysterious images. A man, dead, with a silver handprint on his chest. A place in a desert, and a dream plane with alien symbols, even the stars in the sky were holding his fascination.

“Look. I’ve got to know.”

Max looked down at his feet. “Is it because of the piece of metal you found in the desert?” Michael knew that Max still remembered that metal, because of that day. If they hadn’t been in the desert, he would’ve been there when Liz was shot. He would’ve saved her, regardless of the risk to himself and to the others. The metal was gone. It had disappeared with her, but the memory still lingered.

“It’s a lot of things.” Michael couldn’t tell him. The world he saw torn apart, destroyed was because of them. Aliens. They were too young, too powerless, and they didn’t know until it was too late. He couldn’t let that happen. Not again. “I don’t think we’re alone. I think there are others.”

“Michael...”

Shrugging in anger, Michael just walked away. “Either you’re with me or you're against me, but I’m going to find some answers.”

Max just stood there shaking his head. Hot-headed, brash and uncaring. Michael was going to expose them all.

Michael was stalking out of the school, confused. Where to begin? How to start?

“Hey, wait. Uh, what's your favorite ice cream flavor? We have to do this completely queer history project for tomorrow.”  Maria had barely noticed him striding away at a high speed from the school. Great! She was afraid she was going to have to track him down at his home.

“Sorry, I'm busy.” Michael barely spared a glance at her. God, she looked beautiful, but he was too busy for that.

Maria grabbed his arm to stop him from walking away. “Wait, will you just answer these questions, ok? Uh, um...who's your favorite relative?”

“Get lost, all right? I've gotta...”

“What? You've gotta what? What?” She crossed her arms insolently, tapped her foot and waited. What could be so important? Another nap?

 Michael looked at her and sighed. “Look. I’m busy, okay? I need to find some information, and I’m...clueless where to begin.”

Maria looked at him. “Okay. Understood. You’re clueless.” The movement of exasperation and the narrowing of his eyes made her heart speed up. Unable to stop it, the corner of her mouth moved upward. “Maybe we can make a deal?”

Michael started to walk away, but stopped to look at her. He had heard that from her before, in the before. His body seemed to coil at that the suggestion, and stood ready.

“Deal?”

“Yeah. I’ll help you start with whatever has you actually awake and functioning like a human, and you’ll answer my questions for this stupid survey, so I can pass History and actually someday leave this wretched place.”

“Fine.” Michael rocked on his heels. It wasn’t like anyone else was rushing to help him, or even wanted to notice that he had thoughts that might matter.

Maria grimaced. Pact with the Soulless Devil. Great. It felt like a twenty Hail Mary penance and six Acts of Contrition.

“Spill. What is it?”

“Aliens.”

Maria laughed. “Excuse me? In Roswell? Just go to the UFO center and let the freaky guy there talk your ear off. But careful of standing in front of him. He gets that spittle thing going when he’s excited.”

“That guy wigs me. I want real information, not hyped up conspiracy theories.”

“Why? Is this for a paper or something?”

“Or something.” Michael looked at her. “Are you going to help or what? Thought we had a deal.”

“Okay, you’re interested in strange occurrences since the famed Crash?”

“Specifically, any unexplained death or anything bordering on the paranormal.”

“Fine.” Maria took out her keys and headed for her car. Michael followed her.

“We driving somewhere?” Maria just nodded. “Okay. Where?”

“The Halls of Knowledge.”

Michael looked at her even more confused. Was that like the Halls of Justice from the Super Friends comics?

“The Library!” Maria said at his look. Rolling her eyes, she got in and opened the passenger’s door. Oh god, breathe. She was in a close space with that weird boy, Michael Guerin. She checked the Post Office’s most wanted pictures, and didn’t see his, but still...

He stood over her reading over her shoulder as they scanned microfiche since the 1947 Crash. Michael would see something that sparked a memory or thought as ask her to copy it. In the 1950’s he found it. They found it.

Dead man. Mysterious. No leads. Silver Handprint which later disappeared.

“That’s it! That’s what I was looking for.”

Maria squinted her eyes and read the information as the copier spewed it out in hardcopy.

“There’s not much here.”

Michael took the copy, and scanned it. She was right.

“I need more.”

Maria turned in the chair and looked at her watch. It was getting late, and they hadn’t started on the History assignment.

“Well that’s all you’re going to get. There only one other place I can think of that might have more information.”

Michael looked at her. “Where?”

Maria just shrugged and went back to scanning the microfiche. “Sheriff’s Office. It looks like Sheriff Valenti’s father was the investigating officer. They must have files.” Suddenly she was up out of chair, as his hand lifted. “Hey! Stop with the hands thing!”

“Let’s go.”

Maria quickly rewound the microfiche, put it back in its box and into the return basket for the Library staff to refile.

“Fine. Where? And your answer better be to finish up our assignment.”

“The Sheriff’s Office.”

Maria just snorted. Yeah, like Sheriff Valenti was going to let bad boy, Michael Guerin rifle through his files. Not going to happen. She piped up her observation.

“That’s why we're going to break in.”

Maria stopped in her tracks. “No way! That’s illegal, buddy! I’m not going to be sent up the river to Juvie for a person I don’t even know.”

Michael looked at her closely. “You’re not even curious? Too afraid?”

“Hey, I’m not afraid of anything, especially not you! But if you think you’re going to drag me to the dark side, you better be willing to put out first!”

Michael was intrigued. Oh yeah. He was more than willing to put out. Actually he put out every night in his dreams. Licking his lips, he tamed his hormonal response, and looked at her critically.

“How do you mean?”

“Oh!” Maria hit him on his arm. “Not like that!” She shuffled through her papers on the way to the car. “What’s your favorite television show?”

Oh that. Michael just shrugged. His thoughts were more interesting. “The View.”

Maria’s eyes narrowed. “You can't just make up answers.”

“Who said I'm making 'em up?”

“You do not watch "The View".

“Keeps me in touch with my feminine side.” At her small scream of exasperation he smiled. “Win Ben Stein’s Money, okay?”

They got into the car. Michael taking the driver’s seat as she continued asking him questions.

“Who’s you’re favorite relative?”

“Don’t have any. Next.”

Maria looked at him. “I’ll put down Isabel. You treat her and Max Evans like siblings, but I think you like her best.” She didn’t like thinking he had no one.

“Yeah, well whatever. Recently, Isabel has fallen in my estimation.”

Maria followed him down the quiet halls of the Roswell Sheriff's Department. They easily eluded the officer on duty at the front desk.

Michael looked over at her, wheezing and mumbling under her breath, as her small hand clutched his shirt at the small of his back. She pulled the shirt from his pant’s waistband, and he could feel the touch of her skin on his flesh. Licking his lips, he looked down at her golden head and used anger to keep some control, ignoring his aroused body.

Her "OMG's" were getting louder, and she was making him dizzy from all the sniffing of a small vial.

“Would you shut up!” Michael reached out and grabbed the small brown vial. “What the hell is this shit?”

“Cedar oil. It calms me!” Michael made a face and handed it back to her. No wonder she was damn whacked. She was pickling what brains she had on that crap. And dammit, her whisper was hardly a whisper - more like a scream.

“I can think of better ways to calm you.”

Maria said flippantly, “I don’t do drugs.”

Michael just chuckled quietly and said in a soft voice. “That wasn’t what I had in mind.”

They entered the office, and Maria stood by the door listening to sounds while Michael rifled through the file cabinets. He found it. Looking at the picture, and picking up a key, he immediately felt a rush of the flash, and fell backwards knocking over a chair.

Maria looked at him quickly at the resounding crash and swore as she heard noises in the hall coming to investigate.

“They’re coming!” Maria rushed over to him and helped him up. Righting the chair, they both went to the window and opened it. Michael shoved the file in his waistband and helped Maria through the window. He reached over and used his powers to melt the window shut, and then he took her hand as they jumped into the dumpster below.

Michael quickly got out and pulled Maria with him to round the building before someone came to the window and looked out. Back in the car, they both sat panting. Maria’s hands were shaking as she dug out her cypress oil. The damn cedar wasn’t going to cut it.

“Mind telling me what all that was about?”

“All what?”

“The falling over, the flashing hand, and getting my damn clothes dirty in a dumpster!”

“I can’t. I can’t trust anyone.”

She huffed at him! “Well you better rethink that attitude, buddy, or this chick is going to sing! Confession is good for the soul, so it’s either, or. Me or you. Either you confess, or I will.”

Michael looked at her. And almost groaned aloud. She was so damn beautiful. Those lips coated in pink lip gloss, the flashing of her eyes, and her false bravado exposed by her shaking hands. She was the most courageous person he knew.

He kissed her. His mouth found hers, and nothing mattered but them and the moment. In that small car, what little room there was seemed endless. She tasted as he remembered, as he dreamed. And after her first initial hesitation, suddenly her arms were around his neck and she was  kissing him back with everything she had in her small body. The shaking was no longer in fear, but in passion.

He pulled back from her and leaned his forehead against hers.

“That was to calm you down,” he said huskily, trying to breathe in spite of the heavy beating of his heart.

Maria cleared her throat, but couldn't stop looking at his lips. Oh God! Michael Guerin had kissed her, and kissed her good!

“Strange. I don’t feel calm at all.”

“What do you feel?”

She finally looked up at the honest open fire of his eyes, feeling the

movement of his hands on her body…

“That I should scream.” Maria leaned into him, her arms tightening even more around his neck. “Maybe you should kiss me again?”

Michael just grunted and complied. Yeah, he already knew that she was bossy.

“What about the History survey?”

Maria smiled against his lips. “I’ll just make up the answers.”

Michael smiled as he took her mouth in another long kiss. That was his girl.

There is no destiny, but that which we make.