Story Of The Royal Four

Author: Aleah
Disclaimer: If I owned them, would I be here, writing fanfiction?
Summary: Somewhat of a series recap.
Author's Note: Graduation never happened, or at least Kyle didn't go with them.

-- Daddy, tell me a story.

-- Oh, for God's sakes, you're nine years old now. Just go to sleep.

-- Grace, don't be mean to your sister.

-- Sorry.

-- Tell me the story of the Royal Four, Daddy.

-- {chuckle} Okay, but it'll have to be quick. Daddy still has to go into the boy's room and check on Jimmy. And listen to Matt whine like Grace is whining right now.

-- {pout} I know. 
-- Shut up, Dad!

-- Okay. Once upon a time, there were four aliens on another planet--

-- Angela, do you really want to hear this story again? It's so stupid.

-- Grace, that's enough. If you don't want to hear this story, you can go back to the bathroom and brush your teeth again.

-- {scowl} Fine. Go right ahead. {rolls onto her back and closes her eyes}

-- Once upon a time, there were four aliens on another planet.

-- Called Antar.

-- Called Antar, yes. The king; his wife, his sister, and his best friend.

-- And his sister and his best friend were married too, right?

-- Yes, that's right too. Anyway, they were all killed in a revolution by an evil man and his followers. The king's mother and a few other people cloned their souls into human bodies and sent them to Earth to be reborn.

-- Angela, does he have to tell this story every night?

-- Yes, he does.

-- And after they were sent to Earth, their incubation pods, the things that were helping them develop, were put into a cave, and the cave was sealed up so no one would find them there before they were born.

-- And then like forty years later they were born, right?

-- Yes. But something went wrong. The king, his sister, and his best friend came out of their pods before the queen did. And they left her all alone in the cave. And after they left the cave, they forgot about her, and they didn't remember the cave either.

-- And then when they were Grace's age, the king used his healing powers in public to save that girl's life, right?

-- Yes. It was at the diner the girl's parents owned. See, the king, his sister, and his best friend didn't know about the life they had lived on the other planet, just like they didn't know about the queen or the po--the cave. The king had been in love with the dark-haired human girl since he'd first seen her. And one day, the king and his best friend were eating in the girl's parents' diner when these two guys had a fight. One of them had a gun, and there was a struggle, and the dark-haired girl ended up getting shot. The king rushed up to her and used his powers to heal her wound.

-- And then the dark-haired girl and her best friend found out that the king, his best friend, and his sister were aliens, right?

-- Angela, why don't you tell the story?

-- Because Daddy tells it best.

-- Thank you. Now, if you two will let me continue, I might finish telling the story sometime this year.

-- Whatever. Keep going.

-- So the king told the dark-haired girl he was in love with that he, his sister, and his best friend, were aliens. And the next day, she told her best friend. And about three months after that, the two girls told their guy best friend. So now there were three aliens and three humans in the group, and they were all paired off. The king and the dark-haired girl, the king's best friend and the dark-haired girl's best friend, and the king's sister and the human boy.

-- But then the queen found them, and she'd grown up knowing who she was and who they were, and when she found them she wanted to tell them who they were. But none of them wanted to know, and so they pushed her away.

-- Grace! Let Daddy tell the story!

-- If I let him tell the whole thing, we'd be awake all night. And I don't want to be awake all night. Owen and I are having breakfast together tomorrow before school.

-- Okay, Grace, you can help me tell the story. So what happened next?

-- Um....the other human guy, the dark-haired girl's ex-boyfriend, had to join the group too, but I can't remember why.

-- Oh, it's not important. So now there were four aliens and four humans, and the same number of guys and girls again. And when the dark-haired girl found out about the queen, she was really upset. She thought that just because the king and the queen used to be together, they had to be together now. And she left the king alone for the whole summer.

-- And a couple of days after she got back, the shapeshifter who'd raised the queen died. And the queen moved in with the dark-haired girl's ex-boyfriend and his father - oh, right, his father also knew about the aliens.

-- Right. And the king really thought he was going to get the dark-haired girl back, but then something happened. She was visited by the king's future self, and he told her that because they did get back together, the queen left, and the others couldn't survive without her. So since the dark-haired girl thought that the queen would only stay if she was with the king, she tried to get the king and the queen together. But that didn't work. So the dark-haired girl went to her ex-boyfriend. The future version of the king had told her that the present version of the king would be coming to her window that night. So she made it look like she and her ex-boyfriend were back together and the king saw them. It broke his heart, and it broke the dark-haired girl's heart too, because she had to keep lying to him about what he saw, no matter how many times he asked her about it. And one day, he finally stopped asking. He had to accept it, even though it wasn't true, because the dark-haired girl never told him the truth.

-- Were they kissing?

-- Well--yes. Yes, they were kissing.

-- I saw Matt and Heather kissing in the backyard this afternoon.

-- Angela, you know you're not supposed to spy on people!

-- Well, it was fun! So there!

-- Okay, back to the story. So the king thought he might finally have forgiven the dark-haired girl for sle--for cheating on him, but then he started to remember the queen and their life together on the other planet. And the dark-haired girl told him that she thought they should let go of each other. And later that night the queen came up to him, just like she had the night he saw the dark-haired girl with her ex-boyfriend, only this time they kissed--the king and the queen, I mean. And the dark-haired girl saw them. And she went to this other guy who liked her, her best friend's cousin.

-- And the next day, the dark-haired girl's guy friend, the one who was in love with the king's sister, died, right?

-- Yes. And the dark-haired girl, who had gotten some psychic powers when the king healed her, knew that something wasn't right about his death. She knew that an alien killed him.

-- The queen killed him.

-- Yes, but I haven't gotten to that part yet. So the dark-haired girl told the king "You don't want to believe that he was killed by an alien because that would mean YOU are responsible." And the king was shocked that she would say that to him. He thought she had lost faith in him. And he also thought his sister had lost faith in him, but that's not really part of the story. And since the dark-haired girl's best friend believed the dark-haired girl, so did the king's best friend, since he was in love with her best friend.

-- Oh, come on. This is just a story of guys being led around by their--
-- Grace!

-- Dad!

-- Maybe you should go downstairs. I'll call you when I'm finished.

-- No! You and Angela can go downstairs! I will not be kicked out of my bedroom just because you tell this story every night!

-- Fine. You can stay, just don't talk anymore unless it's to help me tell the story.

-- Whatever.

-- Okay, so the king was feeling more alone, and more alien than he'd ever felt in his life. And so he and the queen--they, um......he thought he was in love with her, and they, um......

-- Daddy, I KNOW how babies are made. We talked about it in school last year, remember?

-- Yeah, so the king and the queen had sex, and she got pregnant. And she--well, remember what her power was?

-- Mental manipulation.

-- Yeah, and she called it a mindwarp.

-- But anyway, they were going to have a baby, and the queen mindwarped the king into believing that their baby--

-- Their son.

-- --that he couldn't survive on Earth. Meanwhile, the dark-haired girl, her best friend, and the king's best friend were researching the human guy's death. They found out that he had been deciphering the book from the aliens' home planet before he died, and they got the translation. The king's best friend brought it to the king and his sister. The translation included the way for the aliens to get back to their home planet.

-- And that was the queen's plan all along. She wanted to go home, and she would do anything to get there.

-- Yes, Grace. So they were all going to go home in the gran--in the spaceship, and the king, his sister, and his best friend still didn't know that the queen had killed the dark-haired girl's guy best friend.

-- And then the king and the dark-haired girl went to kill the girl they thought had killed him, but the dark-haired girl figured out she was innocent. Then the king told her that they were leaving because the queen was pregnant. And she was really upset, and she let it slip that she hadn't really slept with her ex-boyfriend.

-- I thought you said they were just kissing, Daddy!

-- Need I remind you that I am seven years older than you, Angela? I've been hearing this story for like five years longer than you have. They pretended to sleep together.

-- Daddy, how did they pretend to sleep together?

-- Another story for another time, Angela. Now, the king told the dark-haired girl that he could never love the queen like he loved her, and he kissed her, and then she went home. And the king cried because he was never going to see her again.

-- Meanwhile, the king's best friend and the dark-haired girl's best friend were sleeping together. And after they did, the king's best friend told her that the Royal Four were leaving in about an hour.

-- They had to leave then, because the spaceship was on some kind of timer, right, Daddy?

-- Yes. 
-- Yeah.

-- Grace.

-- What? I'm helping you tell the story!

-- Fine. So then the dark-haired girl and her best friend were sitting at her best friend's house, and they heard something in the kitchen.

-- It was the best friend's mother. The queen had mindwarped her, but it was to make her forget something, and it was important and everyone knew about it. So the best friend's mother broke free of the mindwarp, and the dark-haired girl and her best friend heard it. They rushed into the kitchen and watched, because there was nothing they could do to help her. And then suddenly the mindwarp took hold again, and the best friend's mother started tapping her fingers on the stove--

-- Like this {demonstrates the mindwarp-tap}

-- Yes, just like that, Grace. And so the dark-haired girl remembered that both her guy best friend and her ex-boyfriend had been tapping their fingers like that, and so she figured out they'd both been mindwarped. So they went to the dark-haired girl's ex-boyfriend's house, and he didn't believe he'd been mindwarped. So they told him to look around the room and see if he could break free of it. And he did.

-- And then he remembered that the queen had killed the other boy, and the three of them drove out to the cave. And they almost didn't reach them in time--in fact, they DIDN'T reach them in time, but then the king's best friend opened the door to the cave and came out, because he wasn't going to go because of the dark-haired girl's best friend.

-- Right. And then they told the king and his sister that the queen had killed their friend, and the king told everyone to get out of the cave. And the queen told him that she had killed the boy, and that it was an accident. And the king was going to kill her, but she reminded him that if he killed her he killed their son. And so he let her get on the spaceship alone.

-- And after that, the king and the dark-haired girl got back together and teamed up to find another way back to the planet. And nothing worked. So finally the king gave up hopes that he would ever see his son.

-- Yes. And then the queen came back with their son. And shortly after that, she died. None of them killed her, though--in fact, essentially she committed suicide. And the king's adoptive parents helped him put his son up for adoption.

-- What about the king's sister?

-- Angela, you KNOW what happened with her. She got married to that guy, who was like eight years older than her. And a few months after that he found out that she and the king and his best friend were aliens.

-- And the king's best friend and the dark-haired girl's best friend stayed together too, right?

-- Yeah. And a couple of months after the king's son was put up for adoption, the king and the dark-haired girl got married.

-- And the six of them lived happily ever after.

-- What about the dark-haired girl's ex-boyfriend, Daddy?

-- Well, he went off to college and graduated four years later. He never saw any of them again.
*****
"Now both of you go to sleep," Kyle Valenti. He tucked his younger daughter, Angela, in and kissed her on the forehead. Then he walked over to his older daughter, Grace's bed and hugged her. As he left their bedroom he turned out the light.

Ava Valenti came out of her sons' bedroom. "I already took care of them," she said, a hint of her New York accent still there, even after twenty years. She smiled at him. "Let me guess--they wanted to hear the story of the Royal Four again, right?"

Kyle nodded.

Ava sighed. "Kyle, when are you going to tell them the truth?" she asked.

Kyle shrugged. "We don't ever need to tell them the truth," he reminded her. "Just like Zan, they're fully human."

Ava nodded. "Okay," she said.

Kyle put his arm around his wife, and they walked into their bedroom together. They lay down in their bed, and Kyle rubbed Ava's round stomach. "We'll tell them someday," he promised.

"Someday," she echoed, closing her eyes.

~end~