Those Left behind III:

What Now?

I am still here.

Michael pulled back as her voice sounded in his head. Yes. She was. Time has gone by. Thing had been done, but she was still here. Still in his head the entire time.

“Talk to me.”

Maria framed his face her thumbs rubbing across his cheekbones. “Words? What should I say?”

Michael moaned and lowered his forehead to hers. “Anything. Any old thing. Just talk.” His eyes found hers again. “I’ve missed the sound of your voice. I could hear it in my head, but my ears missed have missed it. So much.”

“Come with me, my love.” Maria took his hand and led him from the sunroom down another hall and up a narrow set of back stairs. At the top of the staircase, she entered a room directly across from the landing. A corner back room, large with a window seat where one could look at the darkness of the wooded area around them.

She sat down there. He could see her sitting there. Her legs hugged to her body and she rested her cheek on her knees. It was where she had dreamt of him.

“Maria, I can’t…”

“Shhh. Tell me later. When it doesn’t bleed.” Her mouth found his again, and it took a few moments before he became aware of her hands unfastening his clothes.

“The baby?”

“Is fine. Amy is fine.”

Michael stopped her hands. “Amy? Are you sure?”

Maria just kissed him again, passionately. All those years of trying to get him to talk, followed by all those weeks of him talking to her in dreams, and now he wanted to talk? God, she hated it when she got what she wanted and found it wasn’t quite what she had in mind! Talk later.

“You talk too much.”

Michael chuckled at that. “Never thought I’d ever hear you tell me that, Maria.”

Desperate. Their bodies felt desperate. For each other.

Maria was frustrated by all his clothes in the way of her hands. She couldn’t get his jacket off because her own mouth got in the way as it kissed him, making her body plaster firmly and hard to his. Her hands moving to remove clothing, but becoming distracted by just the touch of his skin under her fingertips. Starved. She was starved for the taste, smell, sight, touch and sound of him. He was a sensation overload.

“I need...”

“Maria...,” he moaned. She was rocking his control. There were things to say. Her mouth bit the side of his neck and he felt it in his groin. Groaning in the pain of breathing, his hands searched her body. His baby. He could feel the swell of her body pressed into his stomach, skin on skin. He needed that. Now.

Michael took his jacket off and lifted it in the direction of the coat-rack standing beside the door they had entered, not taking his eyes off Maria or her mouth. The jacket missed the hook and slid to the floor. Michael didn't notice.

Maria untangled herself from his arms, and went to stand with her back to him looking out over the wooded area. Her body was shaking, and she couldn’t seem to decide what to do with her hands. It was his voice, a whisper of her name spoken in her mind that had her turning back to him.

Maria took a small step toward him and then Michael was moving forward rapidly, and he had her in his arms, cradled to his chest, and he was caressing the beautiful soft hair, his mouth hungry, starving for her. He kissed whatever flesh, wherever he found her. Maria looked up at him, and then snaked her arms around Michael's neck and bent Michael's head down to kiss her again. Too fast. Too fast. It kept repeating in her head. She needed to savor him just in case it was just another dream and she soon woke up alone and unsatisfied reaching for him in the empty bed next to her.

Don’t be a dream. Don’t be a dream. Don’t be a dream…

I’m not. Feel me.

And then everything began spiraling out of control as they sank to their knees where they stood, lips still pressed together hungrily, hands scrambling at each other's clothes. Fabric ripped, buttons protested and gave way, and then Michael was bent over Maria on the floor, kissing her nipples, rubbing his face into the soft silky skin, working off the small slip of a dress she had been wearing.

Once naked, Maria pushed Michael onto his back and rolled on top of him, grabbing his head and pulling him into a bruising, frenzied kiss. Michael reached into Maria's hair with one hand, tried to pull off his pants with the other. It took too damn much concentration and motor coordination. Michael, abandoning it as hopeless, grabbed a warm full handful of Maria's ass instead. God, she was so damn slim! Too slim to hold a growing child. He pulled Maria's body down hard against his, and Maria lifted her head and moaned, and Michael flipped them over again and got on top.

Pinning Maria beneath him, Michael bent to Maria's throat and sucked furiously.

Take me, claim me!

Michael growled. This time he was going to leave a mark. Maria raised her legs and wrapped them around Michael's waist, rubbing herself wantonly against the bare skin of his body, mating her skin along his in a rasp. The action got Michael's attention.

God, you're a handful! His strong hands moved to grab Maria's thighs, to pry them from his waist, and then he was sliding down her body, intending to taste her…and then he stopped suddenly, and looked at Maria, who was lying on her back, hair spread around her head, breathing hard, nipples red and peaked, body tight, straining, writhing, legs spread wide under the firm pressure of Michael's fingers, and Michael heard the sudden, deafening sound of his own harsh breathing. He extended his right arm towards Maria's face and she took his hand in both of hers, bringing it to her mouth. She sucked Michael's fingers mutely, laving them generously with her tongue, and Michael groaned and nearly came with the image, the sensation, and the pleasure of it.

Finally he pulled his hand away and without losing eye contact with her, slid his finger down her body and into her. Tilting her hips up as Michael gently inserted a finger into the tight, impossibly hot, passage and moved it in and out. Maria's hands clenched into fists and she opened her legs wider to give him better access. He ran his finger over the sensitive bundle of nerves watching as her hips bucked uncontrollably, encouraging more stimulation.

Michael put a firm hand on Maria's abdomen and held her down, his hand moving over the stretched skin. God! His child. The movement under his hand was more than just the straining muscles of her stomach reacting to his touch. It was his baby responding to his touch as well.

Idiot.

He was going to ravish her on the floor? In her condition?

“I’ve got to get you off the floor!” Michael quickly rolled to his feet ignoring her protest at the loss of his hands on her. Picking her up in his arms, he carried her light weight to the bed. She should’ve weighed more. She was pregnant. But it just made her seem even more delicate and fragile.

“Michael.” Her voice drew him back. It was a sexy low sound in her throat, almost a rumbling purr demanding he continue what her body was demanding.

“Yes, honey.” Michael said in an amused voice saying ‘honey’ like he did once long ago in a motel on 285 South just before she kicked him in indignation. Before she could retort, he inserted another finger into her.

Maria gasped and pushed back, reached down to grasp him in her hands. Michael pushed her hand away. Uh uh. Nope. Too much. If she touched him right now, he would be over. She would have to wait until he was ready to yield the floor to her. He stroked his fingers in and out of Maria, stroking her with a steady, solid pressure. Maria whimpered.

"Maria," murmured Michael softly, "you're beautiful, you're so beautiful, you have no idea..." He increased the speed of his strokes in her. "I love you, I want you, always want you..."

Maria tensed beneath him and Michael knew she was close. He wanted to add more to it, needed to add more. He sped his strokes even faster. "Maria," he said raggedly, "you're mine. Come for me," he said quietly, and then he pulled out of Maria suddenly, bent his head, and softly, deeply kissed where his fingers had been.

Maria shuddered furiously and came, her stomach spasming from the release. Michael ran his hands over the underside of Maria's thighs, over her hips, feeling the muscles trembling seductively beneath him. Pulling his hands away gently, he ran lingering fingers over Maria's abdomen, and then down to take himself in hand, he began lubricating his cock with the moisture between her legs, teasing her by just rubbing along the opening. Heart pounding, Michael knelt between Maria's legs and pulled Maria's hips up into his lap. He positioned his cock at the entrance to Maria's body and pressed forward gently.

For a moment he thought that he hadn't opened Maria enough, hadn't prepared her well enough, but then suddenly, slowly he was moving forward, forward, forward into her beautiful, hot, welcoming body. He exhaled a long breath and looked down into her darkened green eyes that stared up at him, and Michael could see so much in those eyes, could see himself in those eyes.

Lost. He almost lost it. All of it. Her. The feelings she inspired in him, the love. It would have all been snuffed out, had not Amy and the others risked their lives to save his world. They had given her back to him, and all those years he thought them the enemy. Not believing and trusting in unconditional love, and then,  they, in one act of true sacrifice, taught the young what it really meant to be unselfish, noble, and good. None of them had expected rewards, accolades, gratitude, or even their greatest desires. They did it because it was right, and for no other reason. They did it because their child, or children, Jesse and Maria, had been taken from them, and there was no other choice but to take back. With no thought of personal safety, they did the most incredible thing. That was true valor. True honor. Small ordinary people, humans with no powers, no sense of being special, going the extra mile for others. It was humbling.

Thanks to those unsung heroes who had sacrificed so much, Michael and Maria were finally, blissfully united and the moment was impossibly long and incredibly perfect. Then it was over. They held it in awe, in a split moment that ran into forever, but it too had to end. Michael was moving and suddenly, finally, buried deep in Maria's body, he completely, totally and utterly lost control.

Michael thrust into Maria hard, and Maria urged him on with her body and her voice as Michael pounded, sliding out and in of Maria with long, furious strokes. Her voice wrecked what little he had left of anything resembling control. Her begging for him to go faster, hard, deeper. His name. His name on her lips, more a prayer than an oath. And Michael closed his eyes and felt Maria's body contract around him and he was coming and Maria was coming and the world spun and he held onto her warm body as he fell.

There it was. That was what was missing in their dreams. Completion. The overwhelming sense of contentment, and the raging feeling rushing along the body long after the act was finished.

Rolling over onto his back, Michael held her sprawled across his chest, her breathing still harsh. The baby was warm between them as their stomachs mated and the slick wet skin slid together, slowly drying. With one hand holding her to him and soothing the tangled silky strands of golden hair splayed on his chest, his other hand rested on her pregnant stomach in wonder.

“When did we do it?”

Maria made a lazy sound in her throat, a question. Michael smiled and took it as a ‘Do what?’ sound.

“When did we make her?”

Her smile moved along his skin where her mouth rested on his chest. A quick movement of a tongue, and she licked him tasting the salt of his skin.

“The last time, I think.”

That had been just three days before he got on his bike to leave forever, two days after she made him go to the fortune teller’s place, and a day before Liz and Max saved the woman from the purse snatcher, exposing themselves.

They had made love. It started earlier that day, at school. He was walking down the hall trying to remember why the hell he was still going if he wasn’t graduating, when he saw her. She was ahead of him, walking down the hall, when suddenly she raised her arms above her head and stretched try to alleviate the tiredness in her shoulders and back. It was that stretch. The sight of the long lean lines of her back in a skimpy sundress. Her incredibly long thin muscular thighs from behind. That cute tight little ass…well, all of it.

Rushing forward, his arms went around her middle, and before she could protest, he pushed the both of them into a storage closet. It was that quick. That fast. As she turned around, her mouth was already on his. She knew him by touch. And so they touched, and they didn’t stop. Their combined breath came like steam engines struggling to climb a steep grade. Then like that, she was gone. He stood there grasping air. The door was open, and he was too aroused to run after her. Going out in the hall, he looked both ways, but she was already gone.

Frustration. Hate of school. Really needing a cold shower. It all culminated into a perfect reason to get the hell out, so he took off. His place was a quick trip on his bike. Cursing her for leaving him all hot and bothered, the hands that grabbed him when he entered his apartment were a shock, almost as unexpected as the voice and the feel of himself being slammed up hard against the side of the doorjamb, as the door slammed shut.

“What took you so long?”

Maria.

Her mouth. Her hands. Groaning, Michael joined in again, easily. He had never come down from before. It was mid-day. Max was at school. They had the place all to themselves.

It was more than raging hormones. More than sex. He could feel her touch like a cut straight to the center of him. It hurt, and felt good at the same time. The first time up against the kitchen counter he thought, ‘I love you. Miss you.’ And the second time on the sofa he almost said it, but it got stuck in his throat with the sound of her name responding to hers calling his. He never got to say, ‘Come home.’ The final and third, fourth, maybe it was fifth time was in his bed, behind closed doors. It was dark and late. She was sleeping, sprawled naked across his bed with him resting on her back, when he heard the front door open and Max entering his home with Liz’s voice in the background.

They must have seen the state of the room. Clothes everywhere. Maybe they could smell the sex. A few more hushed words, and then it was blissfully quiet once again. Max apparently had gone off to spend the evening studying at the Crashdown while Liz worked.

In the soft candlelight, he whispered ‘I love you,’ aloud just before he finally fell asleep. The next morning, their world exploded. It was time to run.

That had to be when Amy had been conceived. Normally they were pretty careful with protection, but somehow between door and bed, there were many impromptu stops along the way, and protection was their last thought.

"It didn't work very well," he said.

"What didn't?" Maria was having a little trouble concentrating.

"Not being with you."

Oh. Well. All right. Maria nodded at him. She got it. She could relate. "We do better together." Maria watched a light go on in the back of his eyes.

"That's it exactly. We do better together," he said, with this beautiful smile.

Michael was such a quiet man, maybe even more now that they had that mental talking thing going, made strong by distance. He was given to bouts of happiness, but only when he let go. Those times when he forgot that he didn’t have to be dark, brooding and unapproachable, he could smile the most beautiful of smiles, that touched all the way to the soul. Awestruck, it was like looking at an angel. No one told her that a man could look so beautiful.

"So can I kiss you now?" Maria asked him, already leaning in.

She didn’t even wait for him to say yes. Too late now, as she was already rummaging around in his mouth, learning it all again, like it was all new. His teeth are so straight except for that one, and a slight gap that troubled her tongue, his tongue was strong, and it was hot in there. Her mouth fit over his perfectly, like it was made just for doing that. He had some serious stubble action going on too. Scrape, scrape. The redness on her face wasn’t bad skin, it was whisker burns.

They would stay for a few hours, those red marks all around her mouth, and she would feel them tingling. A reminder of being marked.

Marked.

"Michael?" Maria pulled back just far enough to get the word out.

"Yeah?"

"Bite me."

Oh, shit. Michael growled deep in his throat, pushing her over, flat on her back on the bed. Pouncing, pulling her head back by the hair and baring her throat. Oh my God! Maria’s voice sounded in his head. Yes. Yes! He got the edges of his teeth on her neck and he was chewing, not hard, not enough to even scratch, let alone break the skin, but Maria could feel it, the blood rushing to that spot, feel how hot it got. Michael was holding back, worrying about hurting her, marking her too hard in her delicate condition. She pushed him with her mind, with thoughts and images of them, together, hot, sexy, rutting and powerful. Michael had to appreciate the push as he worried the skin, pulling, licking, and pulling some more.

I'm gonna have a hickey for a week. Maybe longer. Turtleneck time.

Michael groaned. Hearing all of her thoughts could have some detractors. That ‘turtleneck time’ hit him in a singsong lift to her voice, and it almost made him laugh. Almost made him forget what he was doing. Almost. But not quite. While he tore at her neck, he was pushing his hips into her. Finding a place inside again, with a sense of homecoming. Up and back, up and back. Knowing this rhythm. This was his out-of-control rhythm.

I'm lovin' it. Make it last.

"Can't wait," he mutters.

"Wait? Wait? I've waited long enough, man, just do it." What does he need, a written invitation?

“I heard that.”

“Michael!”

“Nag, nag, nag.” God, it was good to be home.

He let go of her neck and raised up. Looking down at this handiwork, the red mark marring the perfect whiteness of her skin. Michael rolled, taking her with him, and he pulled her onto him and watched as she sat up and straddled his hips. Her beautiful honey golden hair swinging free sweeping down to enclose them. She was sitting on him, and he blamed the sight of her beautiful nude, pregnant body for the fact that he was having a little trouble breathing here. She looked wild.

Her hand was down on his crotch, rubbing him, like she couldn't stand it one more minute not to touch him. Michael wasn’t sure she was seeing him anymore. Her eyes were following the movement of her hand, but the small uplift at the corner of her mouth gave her away when she heard his throaty moans. She was more than a little aware of him.

“I'm just trying to help you out. I know that feeling. I've had it for the last six nights as I felt you getting closer. At least now we can both do something about it.”

His Maria. Always so loving and giving to others.

They didn’t have to worry about protection any longer. She was already knocked up. Decidedly so. It looked beautiful on her, but he could see the toll life had recently taken, from the slight darkness under her eyes and a touch of sadness in their depths. That sadness changed when she saw him. It was a strange thing to be something someone wanted to see, a savior from misery.

She was lying down on him, and where their skin touched, it was like fire. So hot. Burning. Branding another piece of each other into their souls. Nothing was supposed to feel like this, but it did. Her hands were in his hair, clutching fistfuls of it. Clench, unclench, clench, and unclench. Like a cat kneading. When he slid into her again, it took a moment to realize what happened. Her body was pushing him deeper into the bed, and her hair, hands, and mouth had him enslaved. Time seemed to move too slowly to keep up with their rhythm. He could feel her trembling, and it was just the best feeling, doing this with her, knowing he made her feel this way.

"Maria...Maria...," Michael got that much out before he seized up and felt himself coming hard, almost convulsing. The last thing he remembered hearing for a while was a giggle. Damn her...

~~~

“Should we check on them?”

Kyle stopped reading the local paper and looked up at Laurie, who was wrecking a perfectly good fingernail.

“Only if you’d like an eyeful. I shared a room with Michael for a couple of weeks. I think I can say that this is going to take some time for them to work being apart out of their systems.”

“Maria needs to eat.”

Kyle had to sympathize. Laurie had assumed the task of watching over Maria and the baby since she left her home. After all this time, they had probably developed a routine. Laurie looked real concerned.

“What is it?”

Laurie looked down at her wrecked nail and frowned. “She’s been sick. Miserable. She almost lost the baby once. It was terrible. So terrible.”

“What happened?” Kyle asked quietly. Michael was going to freak. Majorly. Maria hurt or sick was beyond him right now.

“I don’t know. She was sleeping, and the next thing I knew she was screaming in this loud high pitched screeching sound. It was god awful. I…” Laurie paused, “I didn’t know what to do, so I took her to the hospital. They said it was a panic attack, but she needed to stay calm. She was having really bad cramping, and for an entire day afterwards I couldn’t get her to stop crying.”

Kyle was silent, remembering Michael’s panic attack, and how he said it was Maria. He was joking about the connection, but now it seemed he was more correct then he knew. The dreams, Michael’s panic attack, and how they seemed to find each other. It wasn’t just the clues and the love letters; it was more.

“They’ll be okay. Michael will make sure of it.” Kyle ate some more and checked Laurie out. She wasn’t bad looking. Actually, she was kind of cute. Looked nothing like Michael, which in Kyle’s mind was a blessing. “So, what do you do around here all day long?”

“Mostly watch over Maria, I work part-time at a bookstore, and I'm in college. I'm taking a few small nine week courses at Maria’s encouragement.”

Kyle frowned. “How can you do that?”

Laurie shrugged. “I have all the information in the name of my maid, Jenny. I’m going to school under her name. Before we left, I had an ID made in her name. She didn’t know. As long as I don’t file for financial aid I should be okay.”

Kyle was quiet. A future. Laurie was working towards a future despite the problems of being hunted and on the run. “So what are you studying?”

Oh, the most horrible question ever asked a first year student! What is your major? How the heck was a person supposed to know what they would want to be or do? It was a hard thought, even on a good day. Everything seemed so hard.

“I…” Laurie paused. Great. He was going to think she was a geek, or worse, a freak. Looking at his expectant face, she gave in with a sigh and told him, “Finance. I like numbers and understanding the stock market.” She groaned at the look on his face. He looked like he was going to fall asleep from the boredom. “My grandfather, Charles Dupree was a farmer, actually a rancher until he started investing. His aptitude for numbers and working the stock market led to him amassing a fortune. The very same fortune that is financing and protecting us right now.”

Kyle held up his hand. “I didn’t say anything!” he protested.

Laurie huffed and went over to put together a tray for Michael and Maria. “Sure you didn’t. You didn’t have to.” Laurie went upstairs and Kyle frowned suspecting he heard her call him a ‘jerk’. Well what the hell was her problem?

~~~

Michael stretched along her body, hugging her close to his chest. He rested his head against the crook of her shoulder. She felt tiny under him. Resting his hand on his daughter, Michael smiled to himself, keeping his eyes closed so he could feel her, not just physically moving under his hand, but really feel her. It was alike a flash of light, brilliant and alive. It moved through his head, connecting to his mind in a rush of unity. His life, his past, his heritage, it was all there, ingrained and bred in his daughter. She knew him even before she was born. Strange he hadn’t felt her before, but now he did. He would never not feel her again.

Laurie had forced them to wake up long enough to eat, and afterwards Maria had to have a nap. They slept together, and it felt good. Right. More right than anything he had felt since leaving Roswell. Leaving her behind, now that was wrong. It was so wrong. How could a person be so unaware of themselves? He thought he could survive without her, even for a moment, and he proved himself wrong. From the moment he was separated from her it hurt. He hurt. Not just inside, and not just in his heart. It wasn’t simply that deep longing and emptiness of loneliness eating away at him, but the feel of her fear, her pain, and her resignation to death. The pain was like a rising disease inside, killing him slowly from the inside out.

All of it pulled at him. Closing his eyes was a nightmare. One long, never-ending nightmare that haunted him, circled his awareness, and ate at his resilience. He felt and lived through it with her. The growing fear ate at him, making him surly and angry with the others. How could they understand what he could not name, that nameless creeping despair? It choked him. Watching Max and Liz, laughing, with their sickening simpering smiles was enough to make him lose his stomach. How could they be so happy and mindless without a thought of Maria? What little respect he might have felt for them was lost in that dawning moment of awareness. The realization that for them there was nothing but the other, and all others faded into nothing next to them. His lack of respect and the loss of even an inkling of ‘liking’ them joined his own disgust for himself. What a fine group they were, the alien contingency of Roswell! Purely soulless and unconscionable.

Opening his eyes, he focused on the other end of the room. It was a small alcove in Maria’s bedroom right next to the window seat. In the alcove was a bassinet. The entire small area was decorated for a baby. Pink. A little girl. And opposite the window seat and off the alcove was a door that was open. It was the nursery. Maria must have planned to keep the baby in her room for the first few months before moving her to the regular bedroom.

Slowly moving away from her, he got out of bed and went over to the small bassinet. It was ready. Everything was ready for Amy. Michael crouched down next to the small bed and tried to imagine something coming from him ever being that small, small enough to comfortably lie in that bed.

Michael walked into the nursery. It wasn’t done yet. There were paint chips, wallpaper samples, and catalogues for bedding, wall dressings, and furniture strewn about the entire room. Michael flipped through a few. Maria had made notes in the margins and over some pictures. Some were notes to him.

Michael, do you think this is too pink? Reminds me of cotton candy.

He smiled. She talked to him even when he wasn’t there. Everything was there to put the nursery together. All the things they needed, but she had stopped working on it.

“I was waiting for you.”

Turning to her voice, he saw her watching him from the doorway. “You did the small alcove.”

Looking at the alcove, Maria smiled. “I did. I didn’t want to do everything alone. The nursery should be both of us, not just one. So I compromised. I did the alcove to prepare for her coming home, and waited on the rest, hoping you'd find us before she was too big and needed a larger bed.”

“How long were you going to give me?”

Maria shrugged. She didn’t have the answer to that. How long? Forever? Until Amy outgrew the bassinet? It was hard to say. “Long enough. Now it doesn’t matter. You’re here.”

“Yeah. I’m here.” Michael said softly, coming towards her. His arms went around her, and he bent and kissed her mouth softly as he backed her up into the bedroom, slowly towards the bed. “So are you. You’re still here.”

“Yes. I am still here.”

~~~

“Okay, read the next one!” Michael cursed at Kyle as he moved the one piece out of the way. Maria frowned at the paper in her hand and turned it around. Around again, and then…. “Maria! Sometime soon?”

“Well…um, just a damn second! I think I flipped to the French instructions.” Maria frowned some more as Laurie joined her, both their blonde heads bent concentrating on the instructions, talking between them. Unseeing, they missed the soft tender looks sent their way by the two men. Observing the look that Kyle gave his ‘sort of sister’, Laurie, Michael snorted and rolled his eyes.

“Okay, um…I think you have to put all the cam bolts in place first.”

Laurie seemed to agree. She said something to Maria and quickly got up from the floor in the nursery to go downstairs to get them all sodas. Kyle watched her longingly, and mere moments later made a lame excuse to quickly follow the girl.

“What? Aw, no! Damn it! Kyle, get your ass…” Michael stopped in mid sentence as Maria looked at him in wonder. Rubbing her stomach absentmindedly, her face had a shocked look on it. Okay. So his language had deteriorated with constant exposure to Kyle. Actually his language had always been pretty foul, just unspoken. And recently, due to his newfound ‘vocalism’, Maria found his language inappropriate for a new father. “Shucks? Shoot? Darn?” Michael tried hopefully.

Maria laughed and kissed him, handing him the instructions to the baby bed they were trying to assemble. Aw, yes, indeed. A Roswell education, and it still took three Roswellian expatriates and a Tucson reject to put together a simple crib.

“What?” Michael asked suspicious that she was finding him more than a little amusing. He and Kyle had found them over three weeks ago. It had been a busy three weeks, what with checking out the area, meeting Maria’s doctor, and actually attending Lamaze classes. Maria was already seven months pregnant. They estimated a mid-February delivery, so that left so little time, with Christmas fast approaching.

Thanksgiving. His first with family. All those years, he rarely had anything resembling a Thanksgiving dinner. A few times the Evans had invited him, but he didn’t want the novelty of feeling it was done out of charity, so he had declined the offer. This year, it hit him hard. Maria was all alone now too. With Amy gone, her entire world had been ripped apart, and literally the baby in her body was the only blood relationship she had, except for Sean DeLuca who was no longer a possibility. They would be watching Sean. Maybe it was the cost she had paid in knowing him, or even his own insufferable grief over the loss of Amy DeLuca, but one thing was certain, he worked hard to make her first Thanksgiving without her mother a little better.

At first he felt he had failed miserably. How was he supposed to even know that a day filled with football games and another male could have such an overwhelming draw? He tried to pay special attention to Maria, honestly he did. Then Kyle turned on the game, out came snacks, cheese whiz and crackers with sausage, and then the fun began. He blamed the popcorn as the final downfall.

Maria and Laurie slaved in the kitchen trying to figure out how to make a stuffed turkey. It seemed that all the cooking genes in Maria’s body had imploded into dust, as she confessed that her mom was the cook, and she usually just burned things. Laurie in a fit of anxiety and broken nails threatened to call the cook at her home in Tucson. Finally it was the neighbor next door who came over and helped them. Yes. Turning on an oven was the first step!

When dinner finally made it to the table, the entire group was in a festive high spirit, and each of them stared at the turkey in amazement. Okay, so it originally had been a little scorched on the outside, and raw in the middle. It took a wave of Michael’s hand to fix that. Now it looked perfect. Wonderful.

“Wait! We can’t just eat!” Maria stopped them and Michael and Kyle were arguing over who carved the turkey. “We have to say what we're thankful for, or at least pray.”

The group looked at each other. Religion. It was never a real issue before, and not that they were atheist or anything…just it hadn’t.

“I’ll start.” Maria said. “I know that I strayed from my upbringing of being Catholic, which I truly regret. In my darkest hours, and when a special friend needed my comfort all I had was vague childhood memories of God, and for that strength hidden inside I can’t thank him enough. I’m thankful that Michael and Kyle found us, and that we are a family now instead of being alone. And I'm thankful for my unborn baby that has saved me in so many ways, I can never recount them. I thank God every day for my mother, and miss her more than I can say. She watches over me, I know. And I miss those friends who are far away from us on this day, those lost, those found, and those searching, may they find a beacon in the dark that will lead them home.”

Michael was silent. He had never thought of life that way. Never looked at it in checks and balances or taking what was given, no matter how small, and be appreciative of it. Perhaps he spent too long seeing big things, the very same things denied him. Home. Family. Social respect. Feeling a sense of belonging. He looked down at the table in silence.

Laurie cleared her throat. “I’m thankful for Maria finding me when she did, and for those who helped her. I’ve been alone a long time, literally since Grandpa died, and for the first time, even though I'm running for my life, I no longer feel alone. I have a sister, a brother,” she said looking at Michael, “a new niece on the way, and a new friend. My life was always full of confusion and pain, and people wanting me under control. For the first time in my life, I have control and I like it.” Laurie had liquidated as many assets as she could, taken the cash, and turned over all her remaining properties to her aunt and uncle. She would never go back, but she had learned that home was a place a person carried inside them.

Michael looked at her and smiled slightly. Laurie. In so many ways they were the same. She had a family that tried to control her or put her away, and he had a family somewhere that had forgotten him. Neither of them had much in the way of happy memories. But suddenly there was a chance, the potential of a life that he once wanted. He wasn’t alone. Not now. Never again. His daughter would never be alone, of that he was certain. Heaven and Earth. He would move them both to give her the closest to normalcy he could find.

“I'm thankful for my father,” said Kyle. “He was always there willing to believe in me, even during those years when I was upset with him for what I considered to be neglect.” Kyle smiled ruefully, glancing down at his father’s flannel shirt he was wearing. “I'm thankful for all of you, my friends, that make living away from my home not such a lonely prospect. And I'm thankful for all those who have risked everything to protect me from harm, especially those who gave their lives...” Kyle stopped. He couldn’t continue. There were too many miles between him and the others, those left behind still fighting a battle of silence, and his father who every day was potentially becoming more alien. “I thank what's inherent in my nature that finds the balance of serenity over hatred, tempering me from the harms of malice.” Maria smiled softly at the rise of Buddha Boy. Perhaps it would be that inner strength and peace that would save Kyle from the pitfalls that Liz fell into in her journey to the alien side.

They were all silent waiting for Michael. He could feel their eyes on him, and in a way, they should’ve all been thanking God for having survived him, or at the very least, his kind. Words. They stuck in his throat, welled up in his body, begging to find a release, but that wasn’t his nature. Michael looked at them, and he turned and left the room.

Maria looked down at her folded hands, and then said to Kyle in a soft kind voice. “Maybe you should carve, Kyle.”

Before the turkey could be cut, or anyone else could comment, Michael came back in the room. Giving Kyle a friendly slap on the back, and pulling Laurie’s hair gently as he walked behind her, he came to stand next to Maria’s chair. Squatting down, he looked at the floor for a moment, and then up at her. Handing her a small stack of envelopes tied in a piece of string, he watched as she untied the string reading her name on the envelopes.

Maria.

She opened the first one, the one on top, pulling it out of the envelope so slowly, with infinitesimal care. It was his writing.

My love,

Will you ever read this? I wonder. Will I ever grow up enough to find you?

I think I understand. Finally. Take the time. Make the journey. You were meant to grow up, to learn to live with regrets, and to go on.

Regrets I have ……

Maria read a few more lines and put it away quickly. Later. She would read them later, when she was alone, or lying next to him, but not now. He had written her love letters to match the ones she penned from her most secret of hearts. Michael Guerin just left her speechless.

“You. I’m thankful for you,” he said softly.

Maria closed her eyes to the tears gathering and quickly hugged him hard, holding the letters clenched to her heart. Hers. They were hers. The only love letters she had ever received, made even more important because they came from him.

Once they started kissing, Kyle had enough. “Are we gonna eat?”

The group laughed and talked their way through the feast, all sitting back in wonder and expectation of their first time together as a real family. They all took a bite together, and sat back savoring the food. Suddenly, all looking at each other, the room exploded!

“Pizza?” Kyle said hopefully. The group agreed. Michael took the offending turkey and calmly dumped it in the garbage. Looking over, he saw Maria watching him.

She just shrugged. “We’ll get it right next year.” Michael smiled at that. Next year. It had a sound of a future to it.

~~~

By Christmas, Michigan was already snowed under. It took three tries to start the car, and Kyle bitched the entire time about having to keep shoveling it out of snow banks. Maria just sat and watched the snowflakes. Nature’s perfection. Unique. Soft, yet beautiful beyond belief. Michael stopped what he was doing and watched her for a moment. It couldn’t be healthy how easily she made his heart stop at times.

“You ready?”

Maria nodded and let him take her hand and help her to the car. He was paranoid over the thought of her slipping on ice. They had finished the nursery, and Laurie was out of school. Kyle had found a job, and Michael soon joined him. They were working in a garage repairing cars, doing body work. Kyle was more into car repair, but Michael really liked the hands-on work of restoring and rebuilding cars, the detailing.

Maria had become quiet since Thanksgiving. She talked and laughed like the others and helped around the house, but most days she was found in the window seat in the alcove in their bedroom writing in a journal. For a moment, a second, Michael stood afraid to say anything. Was she writing it down? All of it? Just like Liz had?

Maria saw him, and the frown on his face. It made her hand him what she was working on. It was a book. Or rather a collection of children's stories. Michael sat down next to her and read a few. Maria. A consummate storyteller. She had started by telling Jesse stories late at night in their prison, and later to Michael in his head while he searched for her.

They were about Amy, her mom. Jesse. Alex, stories about little things they did. Amy, the first time she tied herself to a tree to protest its removal. In the fictional small town of her story was a lawyer, a moral crusader who worked with Amy to protect the sleepy town from the rages of progress. His name was Jesse, and he was a tall, dark man, with a large brilliant smile, and a heart of gold. Then there was Alex. A young man in the community who was a genius, who created wonderful things, music and computers. He built a robot that was supposed to do the horrible jobs that men didn’t want to do, but the robot was faulty, and it caused problems, confusion and mayhem. The inhabitants of the sleepy town did not destroy it though, or demand it be terminated. Instead with the help of Amy and Jesse, they made the silly robot part of the community. After all, they were all flawed in some way, and so much the better for it.

Michael laughed and read through a half a dozen of the stories, picking up people he knew caricaturized in comic relief, and safely immortalized in writing and stories so fantastical that one day he could read them to his daughter. They were all there. Sheriff Jumbo, and Whitless Whittie who resembled Alex’s father…all of them. Maria wrote them as a living memory.

“May I do the illustrations?” Michael asked softly. And that was how it began, their life together as author and illustrator of a series of children’s books. It would take another three years before they had amassed enough of them and possessed the courage to find a publisher, but some things were too good to remain hidden. The books were called the Amy of Refuge series. All the books revolved around the adventures of one woman, a social force named Amy, and a group of friends she motivated to embark on numerous adventures of finding lost skate keys, hidden treasures in an old attic, the silliness of putty, and the joy of pennywhistles. Embedded in all the stories were all of them as they were. Hidden messages home to tell those in Roswell that they were remembered, loved, telling them that things were okay.

So on that snowy Christmas morning, after finally getting the car out of the umpteenth snow bank, the four of them drove to a small chapel on the campus in Alma, and there Michael and Maria got married.

That day was a quiet one, full of ice and silence, but the breaking hush of melting snow, and the crystallized snowflakes painted a world of wonder, white and pristine. The air had a crisp quality, biting, and fresh, that dragged to the deep part of the soul. Standing in a small chapel, the bell was rung, and for a moment there was no more coldness. The room warmed as if those they left, loved, and lost were standing with them, no longer in the shadows.

Forgiveness was a hard road, not one easily traveled and forged. It took a moment of realization to understand that it wasn’t how fast the journey led, but rather the willingness and determination to continue it that really mattered. Years and regrets would be part of the very fabric of their lives, but they didn’t have to mar a life forever, just enrich it in a grand matrix of living. Those were the lessons they fought so hard to learn.

~~~

“Pig!”

“What?” Kyle said in surprise, turning back to Laurie.

“I saw you!” Kyle feigned innocence. “You were ogling that co-ed’s breasts.”

“Hooters.”

“Pig!”

Kyle swore under his breath. Again. It was always the same. Just when he made ground with her, she cut him to the quick. It was February and still cold. Did she appreciate him driving through the snow and cold to pick her up from her classes at the college? No. Of course not.

“I was just…”

“Checking her out.” Laurie finished.

“I’m a guy! Okay? It’s what guys do.” Laurie just made a snorting sound and headed for the car.

Giving up, Kyle didn’t even bother to open her door for her. She was highly unreasonable. Dating. He tried to date her, but that fell flat fast. Living in the same house was hard. Surprisingly, living with Michael and Maria wasn’t. They both kept to themselves a lot, and spent much of their time preparing for the baby. They argued and made strange conversations over the bizarre and unreal world of their lives, but one thing was certain, living with this couple lacked all the nauseating sweetness of seeing Max and Liz finally married and together. Instead of a smugness and condescending attitude, Michael and Maria remained….well, Michael and Maria. Not much changed except they were married. That and they disappeared a lot together.

After the Thanksgiving fiasco, the entire group had invested in cookbooks and took turns threatening to burn down the kitchen, or kill the others with food poisoning. Michael and Maria’s night was usually accompanied by loud noises, laughter and lots of black smoke.

His and Laurie’s were done in silence. What the heck did he ever do piss her off so much? He was close, this close to demanding that he be able to cook with Michael, and Maria with Laurie, but he was sure how well that would go over. Michael and Maria didn’t have that gooey together crap that Max and Liz had, but they did enjoy each other's company. Kyle noticed that they used the preparing for dinner hours to catch up on the day, Michael telling her about what car he was working on, and Maria outlining a new chapter of a book. It was the one time during the day they reserved for each other, away from Kyle and Laurie, away from watching sports on TV or even Lamaze class.

It was hard to want to break into their little routine. Strange. In Roswell, all those years he knew they were together, but he never knew they were together. Not like this. They talked. Discussed things. Movies. People. Events. It wasn’t all just about them getting hot and bothered together, Maria wanting him to be something else, or Michael pissing her off by his surly quietness. They were normal. Well, sort of.

“She’s impossible!”

Michael put down his magazine. Almost dinner time. That meant Maria would be down to help him cook, and he could get away from a whining Kyle. Damn. He and Laurie were constantly all over each other with stinging barbs and coldness.

“Kyle, I’m not listening.” Michael buried his nose in the magazine again.

“Sure, and why not? You’re on her side.”

Michael tossed down the magazine and getting up, he poked a hard finger in Kyle’s chest, pushing him back a little. “Nope. I’m on my side. Sick of hearing your complaints. If the two of you would stop this frustrated dancing around each other, and just actually calm down enough to talk, you might get somewhere.”

“Her side! I knew it!”

Michael sighed and called up the stairs for Maria. They were cooking now, or he was frying Kyle. “No. My side.” Michael looked at Kyle. “You did this, you know? You know this right?”

“What?”

Michael sighed. He wasn’t getting into this. No frickin’ way in hell. Oh shit. “You asked her out. Told her that you had never dated a heiress before, and lucky her, you had some major alien mojo coming her way…”

“What are you saying?” So what? It was the truth. Laurie was loaded with hot cash, a hot body, and killer legs. And he was an alien rutting machine. Good combo. He didn’t want her to think he wasn’t bringing anything to the table.

“That you came off as an insensitive hound, and she has your number. So either back off, or try to fix it.”

Okay, this was just wrong. Kyle’s mouth hung open. Michael Guerin was giving him advice? No way. Nope. Reality had shifted, but not that much. “Tell me that you wouldn’t have done the same if it had been Maria in Laurie’s position, and you in mine.”

Michael admitted inwardly that he hadn’t found much wrong with Kyle’s approach until Maria educated him, and he did have a bottle of generic shampoo and conditioner to live down, add in having her pay for dinner once or twice…shit, okay a few times, and oh yeah…the bowling date. But hey, he was in the bag! Married. No more romancing necessary. He was guaranteed sex and lots of warm comforting. He had paid his dues.

“Married guys get a lot of wisdom, real quick.” Damn. That sounded good. He’d have to use it again sometime. But it was true. The wisdom was taking the cues from the wife. She gets that look in her eyes, you backpedal real fast like. Mumble a lot. Scrape your feet, then do what she wants. Piece-o-cake.

“Is that why she tossed you out of the bedroom the other night?”

Michael made a face. “That was just a misunderstanding!”

“Uh huh. Sure it was.” Kyle suddenly went quiet seeing Maria watching them with an amused look on her face at the bottom of the stairs. “Um, hi, Maria.”

“Kyle.” Maria turned to her husband and tilted her head. “Did you bellow?”

Thank god! Michael quickly went over to take her arm and lead her to refuge. The kitchen.

“About Laurie again?”

“How did you guess?”

Maria laughed searching for a pan. “She was upstairs bitching about him. Said he made eyes at all the women on campus, and checked out a girl’s ‘hooters’. His word, not hers.”

Michael shrugged. “So he went a little crazy after he found out about the ‘change’, but he seems to be coming out of it.” Finding out that a person was hell on wheels in bed was enough to shake the balance of most men. Made Michael smile and walk a little cocky, add in that his wife was very pregnant, and he was one fertile walking machine of masculinity.

Maria just made a sound in her throat. “Did you even consider that we're talking about this alien rutting machine wanting to do your sister?” Maria looked up from her search for the correct pan when Michael went quiet, and then suddenly headed for the door again. “Where are you going?”

“To beat the crap out of Kyle.”

“Oh great!” said Maria sarcastically. “That will help! Hey, while you’re in there, maybe you boys can piss on the walls too!” Maria began talking to herself under her breath about a testosterone driven penis ruling the world. Scrotum Man. The latest of super heroes. Not.

~~~

“Why are you letting him get to you?” Maria asked as Laurie added the thirteenth box of cereal to the basket. She calmly reached over and put eight of them back. Wincing a little at the pull in her back, she absentmindedly rubbed the spot on small of her back.

“I’m not! He doesn’t affect me in the least,” said Laurie as she rounded the aisle and started to stack jar after jar of sweet gherkins in the basket, tossing in some olives. Pimentos? Maria put those back. What in the sweet love of God were pimentos doing in a small jar alone…without those green olive things?

“Oh, Laurie! No on those peppers! Michael ate an entire jar of those the other night, and I had to kick him out of the bedroom. It was that or die of suffocation. He has no self control.”  Maria quickly put those back too. Leaning on the cart she breathed hard. Her damn back was hurting so bad. So much worse than earlier in the day. Sleeping comfortably was a problem.

As soon as the baby was born, they were going to move again. Somewhere else. Maria suspected that the FBI would be looking at any couple giving birth around her due date, so it was a concern to have the baby and go.

Over a month ago they took care of their identity problem. Maria and Laurie had watched a movie in the hotel a few months back called 'Eraser.'  They made Michael and Kyle watch it too. Michael of course had numerous comments about it.

“You realize I picked this movie to watch on movie night last year, and you turned your nose up at it.”

Maria just patted his arm and passed him the popcorn. “I know. It’s as bad as I feared it would be, but I don’t want you to watch it for that reason.”

So the group of them watched, and afterwards, Michael shut off the television and looked at the two women. “Witness protection?”

Laurie and Maria both nodded. “It’s perfect. Who else is known for making people up in thin air? If our identities were created in the database, all the background information would be put in place, and for agencies outside the Witness Protection Agency there wouldn’t be any traces. They would never look for us there.” Laurie paused and then looked at Maria who made a gesture for her to continue. “We need new identities before the baby is born so Amy can be born as a part of them. That way she will be born human of human parents all her life. They would never think to look for her. She might be able to live a normal life.”

“How are we going to be able to do this? Maria, there are security levels that I’m sure Hollywood don’t even know about.”

Maria moved closer to Michael. “You can do it Michael. I know you can. You changed your fingerprints to get Max out of the White Room.” Maria’s voice lowered when she mentioned the white room. It wasn’t her favorite topic. “If we could find a way into their system, create new identities, ones that wouldn’t be questioned, we can possibly live free from fear, just wary.”

Michael looked at Kyle and shrugged. “Let me think about it. Maybe we can. At least we’re closer to where we need to be. I think Witness Protection is through the Treasury Department.” Michael ran a hand up her arm. “We’re talking getting into secured computers, and having pictures of us placed in the proper documents. That’s a lot of work. I could just alter our documents.”

“It’s not the same, Michael. Altered documents can get us by, but not under close scrutiny. They’re not going to be able to run a check on a license that says, ‘Dr. Love’ or ‘Margarita Salt’ and find a real background, credit lines and work history. No social security numbers or anything. Nothing. Someday we’re going to need to put Amy into school. What then?”

Okay. They were right. They needed real lives with real backgrounds, and the Witness Protection Agency was the only thing that really created that level of manufactured identity. It took work, and it wasn’t as polished and sexy as Hollywood made it out to be. The Federal Protection Agency ran state ones as well, and the nearest established one they could find was in New Jersey. Armed with pictures of all of them, and a weekend road trip, Michael and Kyle took off to look into breaking into the Federal offices with a computer uplink and scanner.

It actually didn’t take as much work as they feared. Michael, at Laurie’s suggestion, discovered that his alien brain came with some added perks. Not only could he scan material, but he was able to work through computer blocks like candy. So he and Kyle broke into a lower office connected to the mainframe, but below security. It took them about three hours of work, but they finally accessed the area and blew past firewalls and security protection. It took some effort, and they had to change computers three times when Michael blew out the first two, sending an energy surge through the computer uplink to help open locked virtual doors. It was the same principle as opening a real lock. It took concentration.

First he found all their records listed in a Federal database and DMV. Locating four dead individuals and their social security numbers, he moved their faces in place of him and the others, so those four deceased individuals would now be them. Scanning all their pictures, he replaced their pictures in the dead files, and reactivated the social security numbers and placed the individual back into the living. Then for the next hour, they rewrote living histories. The first names were all changed to their own since it was easier to not make a mistake if called by their real first names, and all their names were common enough.

Maria was Maria Nichols, born in Rochester, NY. The only child of two elderly parents now deceased. She attended high school in that city, and left to go to college where she met her now husband, Michael Garrett. Michael was one of four boys and a sister born to a Canadian couple outside of Burnaby. He came to the US to go to school and met his wife their first year. Both left school and married when they discovered themselves pregnant. They both planned to return to school once their child was old enough. Until then they worked jobs. His sister, Laurie came to visit when she found out he was married, and never returned home. While in the US, she met Michael’s old college roommate and best friend, Kyle Richardson, whom she is currently engaged to and plans to marry in the coming summer.

They quickly created green cards and school permits. Using the background from those four deceased people, Kyle scanned the pictures as Michael sent them. He then requested a change of address on the social security card and green card, with requests for new ones to be sent. Going into the Michigan database, he altered driver licenses to their names, numbers, and street address. He could alter their current driver license to match, and once they renewed them, it would be as if they always held the authentic ones.

“Michael, check out my credit limit! Give me some major buying power.”

“Shut up and watch the door.” Michael frowned. DMV, birth, removed death records, new histories entered, slightly altering the histories of the dead identities they borrowed. It was his luck to find a young brother and sister, twins, who had died in a car accident while returning to college last Spring. Kyle took over the identity of a young man whose parents were still living, but very old. Their son, Richard died of a congenital heart disease. “I should have made you keep his name. Dick.”

“Penis.”

“Prick.”

Using the printer, he printed out everything he could find on the identities they were assuming, including their last tax returns. He went into the tax database and zero’d out their last year's returns that were listed as deceased, and instead put their income as too low to file a return. Changing the address there he was pretty much done.

“You think they'll find it? Trace the changes?”

Michael followed a list of key strokes that Laurie had written out for him so as to remove his work out of the individual machine he used. Once all the information was saved, he put his hand on an electrical access panel and blew the electrical unit in the building. The computer he used was wiped clean and the two he destroyed would be explained by a power surge. Now he just had to hope he hadn’t blown the computer mainframe and cleaned out all the changes he made.

“Let’s go. Either it works or it doesn’t. Time will tell.” Michael locked the door behind him. They shouldn’t have to worry about security cameras. He had blown the electricity. “It’s in a system that works above the other agencies, designed to make fake people and not leave noticeable traces. Hopefully that much is true, and not a Hollywood fabrication.”

That was almost eight weeks ago, and Maria Nichols and Michael Garrett had applied for a marriage license and had their driver’s licenses changed to their new married name and address. They were in the system. It shocked Maria to see her name listed with her strange new identity in a computer.

“You’ll need a blood test, pay the fee, and a three day wait for the license to come through.”

“What does that blood test paper look like?” Michael asked. The woman behind the counter handed him a blank one, and he showed it to Maria. “Honey, did we get one of these?”

Maria smiled and handed him a blank piece of paper. “Got it done at my last baby check up. They just drew blood.” Michael smiled as Maria distracted the woman with talk about babies and her pregnancy. Moving his hand over the blank paper, he made a replicate of the blank form given him. He quickly moved his hand over it again to add Maria’s name, blood type and her doctor’s name, and below that his own, blood type 0+ and signed also by her doctor. Michael waited until the two women paused and passed over the paper he made and the blank form the woman had handed him.

None of them had much in the way of work, tax, or financial histories since the people they chose to take over were young when they died. So their new lives were a blank slate ready to be created by them. None of them could say that their new identities would hold, but at least they didn’t just appear in the system. They looked to have been there since birth, with real families, parents and histories. It was a chance that their children would be able to integrate into mainstream society without appearing too unusual. It was a chance that Michael never had.

“He is just so irritating. I mean first he makes me his ‘fiancée’ and then he ogles and sleeps around like some damn dog in heat.” Laurie shook a jar of pickles at Maria. “He slept with that last bottle job blonde he dated. What was her frickin’ name?”

“Naomi.”

“Nancy or something,” continued Laurie not really hearing Maria’s comments. “She had a damn boob job! Honestly! He sees a pair of breasts and starts salivating. It’s disgusting!” Laurie looked down at her not so ample chest in depression. “Do you think I need to consider some cosmetic surgery? I could…”

“Absolutely not!” Maria looked at the other woman in sympathy. “You are perfectly built. Lean. Tall. I think you’re gorgeous. Don’t let anyone, and especially not a man, make you feel unsightly. There is wonder in diversity.”

Laurie covered her eyes and moaned. “God! I never thought I would be cursed with the ‘She’s got a great personality!’ or ‘What a sweet kid!’ syndrome. I don’t want to be sexy and daring, except to one man. This is insane. I’m insane. He drives me insane. His fault. That’s it! I’m washing this man out of my hair and thoughts. I wouldn’t walk a foot for Kyle Valent….” Laurie saw Maria’s face and quickly covered up her mistake. Kyle Richardson, loser!”

“Ice cream?” Maria suggested helpfully.

Laurie nodded morosely. “And a box of candy. Large box. Think we can find some Godiva?”

“We’ll look,” Maria said kindly. She took a small step and then bent over in pain.

“Maria!” Laurie was at her side. “Oh god! Are you okay?”

“Do I look okay?” Maria said not a little huffily, the pain pulling in her lower back and pelvis. “God, Laurie. I think my water just broke.”

Laurie noticed the water on the floor around Maria’s feet. A touch of hysteria hit her hard, and for a moment, she was stunned, uncertain what to do. Help? Michael? Kyle? Oh damn!

“Oh, I am going to die of humiliation from this.” Maria said realizing that a grocery worker would have to clean up the mess. Laurie reached up on the shelf above them and purposely knocked a jar of pickles off the shelf. It hit the floor in a large crashing noise, the pickle juice blending in with Maria’s water.

“Oh!” Maria doubled over in pain again. Holding her up, Laurie left their grocery cart and helped her to the front of the store. A cashier saw them and came to assist.

“Is she okay?”

Laurie shook her head. “I’m terribly sorry. She had a really bad contraction and dropped a jar of pickles on aisle four. We had to leave our groceries. I’m terribly sorry about the mess.” Laurie shoved a ten dollar bill at the woman. “I hope that covers everything. I have to get her to the hospital before she has the baby right here!”

That got the woman and other people moving in store. They watched as Laurie sped away with Maria in the passenger seat in labor.

“Oh god!” Maria panted harder. That was it! It wasn’t working. The damn breathing wasn’t helping. Whoever created Lamaze was a jackass!

Laurie violated every traffic law designed by man, and spent the entire time cussing under her breath. Trying to keep her eyes on the road, avoid putting them into a snow bank and calling Michael, she gave up. The garage was only two blocks over. Change of plan.

“Breathe, Maria. Find your focus.”

“Fuck my damn focus!” Maria fell to the side as another contraction hit her hard. “This baby is in a damn hurry to be born.” Maria hee'd and haw'd her way through another contraction that felt like a vice grip on her lower body. She was sweating and through clenched teeth, she looked over at Laurie. Smiling slightly she laughed a little. “The pickle jar was ingenious. Thank you.”

Laurie laughed as she pulled up to the garage. “Just hold on a second. I’ll get Michael.”

Maria breathed hard and panted some more and Laurie ran from the car. Someone should have mentioned it was painful. Sure. Sure. They say it hurts and it's hard, and damn it, she wasn’t even in hard labor yet. But they could have mentioned that having your brains scrambled and pulled out of your body through your nose was less painful. Screaming, Maria clenched her stomach as another contraction ripped through her lower back to her front, her hand reaching for the dash, holding it hard.

Okay. No more children. This was it.

Laurie skidded into the garage literally running straight into Kyle, who quickly righted her. He started to chew her out when he saw her face. “What? Is it Maria?” Kyle was already frantic. About ten minutes before, Michael dropped his tools and doubled over in pain. He barely made it to the bathroom before he threw up, and he was struggling from spots behind his eyes.

“Baby!” Laurie said in between pants, and she tried to draw air into her lungs. “Car. Baby. Labor. Michael.”

Kyle took all the words and figured something out that made sense. “Michael! Maria went into labor!” No shit! That explained it.

Michael who was under a car, trying to concentrate and work through the confusing feelings. He had called Maria at home with no answer. Suddenly he swore as his head hit the car when he tried to sit up. Sliding out with a hand on his head he looked at both Kyle and Laurie. In a moment of time, they all stood still and then suddenly they moved, all rushing at once.

Michael climbed into the passenger side with Maria pulling her body on his, holding her tight, and talking low and soothingly in her ear. Wiping the sweat from her face, he cursed at Kyle who was standing at the driver side arguing with Laurie over who should drive.

“Kyle, get in the goddamn car! Or we’re delivering a baby right here!” Maria cried again as another contraction hit her. Kyle quickly climbed in the driver’s seat as Laurie spilled into the back.

“Too close. Michael, the contractions are too close.” Maria said fretfully between pants.

“It’s okay. It’ll be okay.” Michael looked over at Kyle in fear. She was right. She was having a contraction every few minutes. They were told that contractions would start erratically, further apart and then even out and get closer together. Hers went straight to closer together. “It is just Amy, baby. She's ready to be born. Just like your mom, she's impatient.” Michael looked over at Kyle again. “Kyle!”

“I’m going. We’re almost there!”

Kyle paced the waiting room for what felt like hours. Once they arrived, Maria was taken into Delivery and Michael with her. There was nothing left for him and Laurie to do except wait. And what felt like what should have been done in moments actually took hours. Kyle paced and stared at the door, then paced some more. He was never going to have any kids. Too much trouble. Too much worry.

Laurie read a book and frowned up at him from time to time. “Can’t you just sit down and read or something?”

“Maybe I should go in there? I mean it's been forever and…”

Laurie rolled her eyes and went back to reading. “God, you’re going to be a nightmare when we finally have a baby.”

“That’s not true! I’m calm. Buddha says that even a flea can hear the whisper of…” Kyle stopped talking for a moment. What she had said finally trickled into his brain as it permeated and soaked into gray matter. “What…” Kyle stopped to clear his throat to rid himself of the high squeak. “What did you say? Us? You? Me? Babies?”

Laurie just shrugged and kept on reading.

“Oh no you don’t!” Kyle forced her to look at him. “Are you planning to have babies with me someday? Truth.”

Laurie sighed and put her book down. “No. Yes. Maybe. If you ever stop walking around like a large hard-on, and stop fucking table legs…perhaps.” Laurie went back to her book. It was only fair to warn him. “Of course, I have an estimated time of possibility in about ten years.”

Kyle sat back in amazement. His legs stretched out in front of him. “That means you and I will have to fu…do it. You know that right?”

Laurie rolled her eyes. “Yeah, well I’ve got ten years, so maybe in a year or two I’ll pick up an informational video or have a frontal lobotomy to cure me of my stupid tendencies.”

Kyle smiled smugly and smiled at a nurse walking by. Gesturing at Laurie, he winked at the nurse. “She likes me!”

“In your delusional dreams,” said Laurie out of the side of her mouth.

“She thinks I’m sexy, and too hot to handle.”

“I think you’re diseased.”

“She wants to have my baby!”

Laurie looked at the amused woman. “We don’t even know what species he is.”

“Hey, I bathe! What else is there to know?”

~~~

“Okay Maria, just one more push!”

Michael winced as she tightened her grip on his hand, and after almost five hours of labor, their daughter was born. He watched it happen from the position of the mirror, and for a moment he actually felt a little queasy and kept telling himself over and over that he was never going to touch Maria again. Damn. She had been in a lot of pain. They offered her an epidural, but she refused. Alien physiology didn’t respond well to certain things, like alcohol, and they were uncertain of other drugs.

For two hours they were stuck at eight centimeters, and the contractions weren’t abating. Michael walked her around the maternity ward. Maria had been tired, and almost ready to beg them to just take the baby. Michael fed her ice chips and his stomach felt sick watching her in so much pain. During a quiet period, he was wiping her forehead, telling her she was doing great when she looked at him. She was afraid.

“I wish my mom was here.”

Michael closed his eyes for a moment, and rested his head against hers. “I know. So do I.”

They survived. At ten centimeters it was finally time to deliver the baby, and it happened very fast. Michael had taken a break before and found another woman around Maria’s age delivering a baby. He heard them talking. They were expecting a girl too. The woman delivered not long after Maria, and Michael made note of the name.

One moment Maria was pushing, and the next Amy was born. She was blue, and Michael watched his daughter's birth, holding his breath. He couldn’t feel the pain in his hand from where Maria was cutting off the circulation. Amy wasn’t breathing. She wasn’t breathing. He couldn’t breathe either. But they quickly cleared her small mouth, and he heard her voice for the first time, a loud, healthy, piercing yell. God, she was her mother’s daughter! Loud and boisterous. Michael laughed, reached down and kissed Maria on the mouth. She was crying. He wiped away her tears. He was crying too, and his hair was plastered to his head in sweat. He lived through the delivery, and felt most of the pain.

“It’s okay. She's perfect.” Maria just nodded as they laid the baby on her stomach and Michael watched as Maria’s shaking hands moved over their daughter’s hands. She was checking for five fingers on each hand.

“Michael.” He had to tear his eyes away from them. Maria and Amy. His girls. “It’s time to cut the cord.” Michael took the special scissors and hesitated. Pain. Was it going to hurt Maria more? “It’s okay. She won’t feel it. I promise.” Michael nodded, and quickly cut the cord that separated his daughter from his wife. He turned back to them watching as Maria kissed the top of their daughter’s head. He bent down and kissed her there too. They shared a look, and Michael watched as Maria’s hand moved up and down the baby, her wedding ring catching the light.

Epic. Of all the things he could ever create in his life, this one life was the epitome.

They came to take the baby, and after kissing Maria, he quickly followed. He needed to take care of the blood. He watched as they gave his daughter her first physical exam, taking her weight, height and blood. The blood drawer came, and Michael used his powers to give the man a slight push into a table of supplies. While they were picking up the supplies, he took the blood vial with his daughter’s name, and using his powers he noticed the other couple’s name with their daughter’s name marked. He swept his hand across the label, and it now said 'Garrett-Girl,' with Amy’s number which matched the medical bracelet around her ankle and the bracelet on Maria’s wrist. The lab wouldn’t be able to find the blood from the other child and they would take more. He hated that the other baby would be stuck again, but there were few options.

After the blood drawer left, Michael watched as they bathed his daughter.

“She’s hungry. Good set of lungs.”

Michael nodded as he touched her hand. Small. She was small all over. Her hands and fingers looked so tiny, and the little nails were like a novelty. “She gets that from her mom. I think she has her mother’s mouth. I’d recognize those lips anywhere.”

“Have you named her yet?”

“Amy.” The nurse finished, and handed the baby to Michael showing him how to hold her. “Will they have to take any more blood from her?”

“No. Not unless her test results come back with problems.”

“Problems?” Michael looked at the woman concerned.

“Nothing. Not really. Sometimes anemia, but statistically most the babies we deliver are perfectly healthy. She looks good. Your Amy pinked up very nicely. I’d call her a nine to ten.” She patted Michael on the shoulder. “You want to take her to see her mom? They're probably finished with her, and have her in recovery. She’ll stay there a good hour. So why don’t we let her hold her baby?”

Michael nodded, unable to speak. He couldn’t take his eyes off his daughter. She was so small, and she was his. Maria looked up when he came in the room. They let him carry her as long as he stayed in the sterile delivery area, otherwise Amy would need to go in her crib. Maria was in a special room and she turned towards the door when he walked in with Amy. Smiling she tried to sit up, but Michael stopped her.

“I hear you're supposed to stay lying down for the next hour.”

“Michael, is she…..did they…?”

“It’s okay. Everything is okay. They took some blood, bathed her, weighed her, and took her height. She’s five pounds and twelve ounces, and twenty inches long. God, Maria, twenty inches!”

Michael sat down on the bedside, and gently put the baby in Maria’s arms. Sitting back he watched as the baby nuzzled against her mother. He sat back and just watched. Maria was right. She once told him that he did his best work when he put his heart into it. She was so right. This was the most incredible thing he ever had done. Making Amy. Amazing.

He took Maria and Amy home two days later. The first night they laid in bed with Amy between them, both of them wide awake, just watching her sleep. Michael kept touching her tiny little fingers.

“What are you thinking?” Maria asked quietly. Michael looked at Maria and she was shocked to see tears in his eyes. “Michael? What?” Maria was distressed. Michael wasn’t an overly emotional man, or at least not one to let it show so clearly. Michael just shook his head. So she reached over and gently wiped away a tear. He turned his head and buried his mouth in her palm kissing it.

How could he tell her how he felt when words meant nothing to what he felt. There were no words made that could tell her how horrified he was that she had been taken. They had her. They had his unborn child, and here she was alive. Both of them. It was by some miracle that had nothing to do with him that they both survived, and that very thought shook him to his very core. They both could have been lost to him. He would’ve never seen Maria again, let alone marry her, and he wouldn’t have even known that Amy existed. The concept was too horrific for words, and it was nothing he could tell her.

He didn’t want to scare her, but inside, that place deep in his brain, where whatever remained of Rath lived, there was a killer lurking. He could feel that man. Feel him when he watched his wife and child together. He would kill. Anyone. Everyone. If they ever touched his family, he would burn down the world until he found those responsible. He wouldn’t stop with the actual person, but all those associated with them. Their families. Anyone who knew their families. He would wipe their very existence from the Earth. How could he tell her that? What he was? How could he tell her that she was his control, the part of his humanity that kept him human and sane? He couldn’t.

She had once walked away from all the alien insanity, from the fear, and the pain. And coming back, it paid her back in nothing but more pain, more fear, and a loss so great, nothing could ever compensate her for it. How was he to tell her that the evil Michael alien, the one who threatened her, screamed at her, told her to shut up and kicked her out of her own car still lived inside him, like a dormant seed waiting to grow?

“I’m sorry. Forgive me.”

Maria frowned. “For what?”

“Everything. All the times I made you feel like less, unimportant, neglected, and a bother. All the times I didn’t pay attention or listen to you, or even just try to hear what you were saying. All the times I walked away as if it were the easiest thing to do, that you didn’t matter, that we didn’t matter. Everything. Forgive me.” Michael turned her hand and kissed her wedding ring.

“There's nothing to forgive. Any forgiveness I owed you, I gave a long time ago. It took me a while to realize that I was holding mistakes against a young boy, but you…” Maria leaned over their daughter and kissed him, her tongue finding a warm place in his mouth. “You aren’t that boy anymore. You’re a man now, and things change. We change. And we stay the same. I don’t have to forgive you, because I love you. And love is enough. In this instance, love is enough.” She kissed him again. “You could forgive me. Forgive me for hurting you. Forgive me for making you feel bad and unimportant in my life. Forgive me for all the times I made you feel inadequate and just not good enough. For all the times you felt I was comparing you to Max Evans, whether I was or not. Forgive me.”

Michael ran a finger down her cheek, and then leaned in to kiss her again. “There is no need for forgiveness, Maria. I love you, too. And yes, love is enough.”

Maria woke hours later alone in bed. The room was dark except for the soft nightlight by the bassinet. Getting up, she looked into the bassinet and it was empty, as was the nursery. Taking her robe, she quietly descended the stairs. There they were. In the darkened living room with only the light of the stereo lighting the room. Michael had turned on music, and he was playing a Metallica song on low, real low. Only Michael Guerin would try to put a baby to sleep to Metallica. Maria smiled and leaned up against the doorjamb watching him dancing with his daughter. He held her close and high on his shoulder gently rocking her to the music. Amy was his daughter. She was sound asleep, rocked asleep to the sound of her father humming one of his favorite tunes.

He must have felt her. Michael looked over, and without a word, he held out an arm, and Maria walked into it. Did she say that Michael hated dancing in any form? She was wrong. He just liked to pick the music and the circumstance, and then he was actually quite graceful.

~~~

“I have to leave.” There. It was said. He had put it off as long as he could, but February has passed too quickly, and they were now into March. He had only three days until the Ides of March, the 15th, the day he was scheduled to meet the others. He had promised. A part of him wanted to wait or blow it off completely. The others would assume that he was gone forever and stop expecting him.

“The others?” Maria asked softly. Her voice was hushed. Her life was full, and somehow letting the others in was like opening up the pain again. It was stupid and foolish to feel that way, but she did.

“I promised.”

Michael sighed when Maria got up from where they were lying on the floor with Amy in front of the fireplace. She picked up the baby. “I should go bathe her. Get her ready for bed, and…”

“I'll come back.”

Maria stopped on her way out the door. “I know.”

“Will you be here? Will you still be here, Maria?”

Maria breathed hard. Closing her eyes, she drew in her breath. There was a chance he could bring someone back with him. A tail. The FBI Special Unit. They didn’t know what the others had gotten into, where they had been, or how exposed they were. Hugging Amy close to her, Maria nodded.

“I’ll still be here. We’ll still be here.”

~~~

Michael left early that morning, while she slept with Amy next to her. Amy had awakened a few hours before, wanting to be fed, and he watched Maria breastfeed his daughter. Kissing them both gently, he walked out of the room, out of the house, and away from his family. The sooner he left, the sooner he would be back.

It was the eleventh week. K. Kansas City, Missouri. Bus Depot locker 11A. It was the last day there. They would move the next day. They wouldn’t go to the next assignment, because they would assume he was captured or gone.

~~~

Isabel chewed on her nail. Almost six months since Michael had left. That was a long time. She missed him. Both of them. Kyle had been a great source of support and comfort, and now even that was gone. It took months for her to accept that Jesse was gone, to actually believe the story that Michael told them.

Jesse. Her husband. Her fault. She was right the first time. She had no right to reach for something more, and doing so had cost her dearly. Cost Jesse his life. They all sat in the hotel room, waiting. Hoping.

Over the last five months, they had checked out the stories in the papers. All the children saved that one Christmas were gone. All of them. They watched Brody Davis from afar, and he had changed. He no longer searched for answers, or aliens. He sat in his home, drank, and refused to return to the living. Once a day he went to the authorities to see if there was any news on his daughter. It was apparent that he was running out of hope.

All the parents of the children were suffering. Their children, once sick, came with a built in reality that their time with them was limited. The miracle cure took away that realization, and those families had begun to face the future with new ideas and hopes of a long life. Then one night, that hope was destroyed when their children were taken, never to be seen again.

Zan. He was the hardest to accept. The couple who had adopted him was young. They were incapable of having children and had spent four years on an adoption list. Months after receiving Zan, and finally completing their family unit, one morning they woke to an empty crib. They didn’t bother to place themselves back on the adoption list. The heartache of losing a child was too much for them. Every night they drove around their town and neighboring towns putting up fliers with Zan’s face asking for information.

The Dupes were gone. Whatever happened to Rath’s body was unknown. They tracked down the police report. He had killed eight cops before they took him down, and mysteriously his body was taken from the central morgue. Reports of Lonnie came in about two months later. A woman killed in a high speed chase. Her car went off a bridge after a long pursuit. It took two days for them to recover the body, and mysteriously that body was lost as well.

Ava. She was a tragedy. Cornered, she took out almost half a city block with her powers destroying everything in her path, and herself along with it. There was nothing remaining. Much like Tess, she combusted in an almost nuclear reaction. The Dupes were gone. The children were gone. Zan was gone. They didn’t dare return to Roswell to check on their parents. Every day they found a library and accessed as many local papers near and around Roswell, but there was no news. Not until late February. After Valentine’s Day, there was a death notice. Nancy Parker had died of massive heart failure. She left a surviving husband, and one daughter, Elizabeth Parker. They hadn’t used the name Evans. It would’ve alerted the authorities that they had been in contact.

Liz hadn’t spoken much since that day. Her mother was gone. Her father alone.

That was the final break in Max and Liz’s relationship. They barely spoke to each other. It was hard. They both had so many regrets, and so much guilt. They couldn’t work their way out from under the heavy burden. They blamed themselves, and each blamed the other. It was a partnership of blame. It ate at everything they were, and though they still loved each other, it was too hard to let everything else go.

At first there was silence.

Then came anger.

Isabel sat with her hands over her ears as they argued yet again. Their fights were never easy, or in any way pleasant. It hurt to hear them. It reminded her of herself and Jesse and those last few weeks when he came to know the truth after Agent Burns died. Max and Liz were melting down, and so was their special all-involving love. So many gave up so much over the years in the path of their ‘great’ love. So many sacrifices. And now the two of them were tossing it away, saying things that should never be said, in words that barbed and tore at their very fabric.

“He’s not coming!”

“We stay.”

Liz paced the room. “It’s insane. He said he would be here, and if he doesn’t show that means he never will. Face facts, Max. He’s not coming.”

“They wouldn’t have gotten Michael. Not Michael.”

Liz snorted in a most sneering way. “I would’ve said the same of Rath. Or even Lonnie. They found them. They’ll find us!”

Isabel got up and went into the bathroom slamming the door behind her. Enough. She was so sick of everything. Sick of them. Sick of herself. Sick of being alone. Roswell. She missed Roswell. She missed her home. And Jesse. Isabel stood staring at herself in the mirror. Two faces. Hers and Vilandra's. Both destroyers.

“Now look what you did.” Max said watching the door shut.

“Me? Hey! Share in the blame!” Liz slammed herself down on the bed. Crossing her arms, she purposely sat looking away from him. It was always the same. No matter what she did or said, he always was ready to pick at it, twist it, and soon it became a fight. They shared a bed, but never touched. Not anymore. Not since her mother died.

Guilt. It was choking them alive. Killing what they once had. At a time in their lives, they both swore that nothing would ever come between them again, nothing could ever tear them apart, but they were wrong. Guilt was doing what Destiny, Future Max, and Tess could not do. It was creating an unfathomed abyss between them. Unconquerable.

“Did I come at a bad time?” Michael asked from the doorway.

“Michael!” Liz swallowed her squeak. Her voice was unnaturally high, but in truth, she really never thought to see him again. Had she the chance to be free of it all, there would’ve been no coming back.

Max was speechless as he stared at Michael. There was a world of difference between the man standing there and the man who had left so many months ago. The obvious thing was that there was no Kyle. What Max was seeing was a calm and settled Michael. In the past it seemed that even when Michael was silent and appeared to not pay attention, some part of this body was moving. His hand. Doodling. Tapping. Or his foot was moving. Something. Now he stood unmoving in the doorway. Entering, he shut the door.

“Where's Isabel?”

“Bathroom,” Liz volunteered.

“How is she?” Michael asked. Neither Max nor Liz said a word. It must have been a strange concept for them to step back from their own self-involvement to think of what Isabel was going through. Michael sighed and he went to tap on the bathroom door.

“Go away!”

Michael tapped again. “Isabel, it’s Michael.”

There was a pause on the other side of the door. “Michael?” Suddenly the door was open and Isabel stood there staring at Michael in shock. She honestly thought she would never see him again. Throwing herself into his arms, she hugged him tightly.

“C’mon.” Michael led her out of that room away from Max and Liz.

They sat in a small roadside café. “I like your car.”

“Thanks.” Michael shoved his plate of fries over to her so she could finish them. She seemed to be starving. Eating was probably the lowest denominator for her. She looked thin for Isabel. Usually she seemed statuesque. Now she seemed diminutive. Worn. Tired. “How are you, Iz?”

Isabel stopped eating and stared at the table. Formica. A plastic table top. Old. Circa 1950’s holding the scratches and scars of a lifetime. She shrugged.

“Come home.”

“Where is that, Michael? I swear I don’t know. There is no home for me.”

Michael took her hands and held them firmly. “There can be. With me. With Maria. Kyle and Laurie.”

Isabel smiled watery as her eyes flooded with tears. “Maria? You found her?”

Michael nodded. He reached into his pocket and pulled a picture of Amy and Maria. They were sleeping. He had taken it without them knowing. He had another one of the three of them, and another one of Amy. Isabel laughed through tears as she struggled to smile. Her fingertips tracing Amy’s face, and Maria’s.

“You have a daughter.”

“Amy. We named her Amy after Maria’s mom.” Michael noticed Isabel flinching. “We don’t have much, but we have each other, and it’s surprisingly more than I ever had before, and it's more than I ever dreamed of having. I’ll share it with you.”

“Maria…how is she?”

Michael smiled slightly. “She's Maria.” He paused and looked away. That wasn’t true. He was falling back on old habits of dismissing Maria because he didn’t want people to know how much she meant to him. It was a long road, and nothing if not difficult. “No, actually, she’s not just Maria. She's more. Maria is my wife.” Michael waved his finger with a wedding ring at Isabel.

Isabel laughed and covered her mouth with her hand. “Married? You and Maria?”

“Well, sure as hell not me and Kyle! Of course me and Maria.”

Isabel suddenly became quiet. “Did she tell you?” Michael closed his eyes. He knew what she wanted to know. She wanted to know about the imprisonment and Jesse. Michael swallowed hard as he tried to think of something to say, something short of the truth. Isabel saw that. “Please, Michael. Please? I need to know.”

Michael sipped his cold coffee. Putting the cup down, his finger ran along the rim. “She doesn’t talk about it. Not even to me.” Michael knew though. Most of it. He caught it in flashes and dreams. His faced paled. “They experimented on her before they realized she was pregnant. Once they knew, they stopped hurting her. They wanted the baby.”

Michael paused and swallowed hard. “Jesse?”

Michael shook his head. “They had no reason to stop testing on him.” Michael watched as Isabel buried her head in her hands.

“It was bad?” She asked in a whisper.

“Yes.” Michael blew the breath from his body harshly. “I don’t know how bad, not really. Only Maria does, and she won’t talk or even mention anything about what happened. I just know that she has scars on her back where they removed strips of skin from her body.”

Isabel put her head down on her folded arms and cried. Michael reached out and patted her bent head. He let her cry. A woman’s tears. They were hard. Deep. Sorrowful. He heard them from Maria too many times. He surrendered to his love for Maria, but he still couldn’t surrender to his own tears. They were one thing that was pulled from his body reluctantly. It was hard not to envy the ability these women had to express their grief. It was hard being a man at times.

“Isabel, come home with me. Come make a home with us. Take the time. Heal.”

Isabel shook her head. “Let me think about it?”

Michael nodded, but he knew that meant no. She wouldn’t come with him. He finally learned to forgive her, and himself, but unfortunately Isabel hadn’t learned that lesson yet.

He had help. Maria and Amy. Isabel only had Max and Liz, and they were no help. So caught up in themselves and their own problems, they barely had time for Isabel. She needed to come with him. Help was available where he lived. Maria. She was the only one for Isabel right now. The only one that could ease her mind, tell her about Jesse and those last days, help her find peace with it. Isabel needed Maria, but Michael was stumped at how to get her there.

Max and Liz were oddly quiet when they got back. They weren’t sitting together, but apart, across the room from the other. Isabel. She looked better from having talked to Michael. When they entered the room, she kissed him on the cheek and squeezed his arm, then she went to the bathroom and shut the door. It was the only place she could think. Anyplace away from Max and Liz and their dark auras.

“Max. Liz.”

Max was quiet. He glanced at Liz. At one time, she would’ve expected him to talk for them both, but not anymore. He was actually afraid of taking the initiative, less it set her off.

Liz swallowed her tears. It was good to see him. A touch of home. A touch of normal. “Did you find her? Maria?”

Michael nodded. He handed Liz a picture of Maria and Amy, the same one he showed Isabel. Liz sat down and smiled tremulously. A baby. Maria had a baby, and she was alive! Found. The first thing she noticed was the golden ring circling Maria’s finger as the hand rested on the baby’s back. Discreetly she glanced at Michael’s hand. A matching gold ring.

“You got married?”

“Yes. Christmas Day. Amy was born on February 16th.”

Liz noted the date. It was around the date her mother died. “She’s beautiful. Both of them.” Liz smiled at the picture. Her heart hurt. She missed so much. Maria. There was a time when she thought she and Maria would always be together, living close. Friends sharing their lives. Liz’s face fell. That was her fault too. She let them leave her behind, not even with a protest. She chose to not have Maria in her life, and now there was no place for her any longer. “Is she okay?”

“Her mother is dead, Liz. She was tortured and terrorized. What do you think?”

Michael swore under his breath. He thought he had let some of that anger go. So much of it was aimed at Liz, Liz and her journal, and some aimed at Max and his inability to really act as a King. Michael had to admit that the lion's share of the anger was still resting on his own shoulders, and as much as Maria tried to convince him to let it go, he knew he would carry it forever. It was his guide. His reminder to never treat something as cheap and unimportant, his reminder to take special care. He had lost the impulsiveness that hallmarked his youth. Now he had too much to lose to take chances.

“I’m sorry, Liz. Yes, she's alright. Surviving. Healing. Amy's helping. The baby makes Maria feel she has a part of her mom still.”

Max finally found his voice. “Congratulations, Michael. On finding Maria, your daughter, and the marriage. I hope you're happy.”

Michael looked at his friend. Max was haggard. His hair was too long and there were black rings under his eyes. He looked old. Much older than their nineteen years. He looked thirty or more. The lines of his face were telling. His hands were clenched in fists.

“You look like shit, Maxwell. What the hell have you been doing?”

Liz looked at her husband, and then away. She knew she looked worn too. It was hard to care about anything. Her skin was dry and peeling. Her hair needed brushing. She hadn’t bathed in about two days and her clothes were the ones she wore for those two days. She even slept in them. A clinical psychologist might diagnosis her as being severely depressed.

“We checked out all the stories my father sent us. It was true. All of them were taken. Gone. All of this was for nothing!” Max said in anger not noticing the flinch from Liz. “I risked everything for nothing!” Max let the futility of his life role over him as a wave of despair and pain ripped through his body. Everything. Gone. Lost. Destroyed.

Future Max had been right. The path he was on led to destruction and loss. If things continued as they were, they had nothing to look forward to but death and the end of the world, and that would be on his head as well.

Liz sat on the bed with her hands between her legs. Nothing. She was nothing. He regretted ever saving her. The one focal point of her life, the defining moment, and he regretted it. She was the risk. The largest and most dangerous one he ever took. All for nothing. Giving a small cry of despair, she quickly left the room slamming the motel door behind her.

Michael watched her leave with a frown between his brows. “Damn it, Maxwell, go after your wife!”

Max just turned away. “I can’t. I don’t know what to say.”

Michael couldn’t see how they got this far from each other. Max and Liz, the two who always had endless talks about themselves, their relationship, and their love was suddenly wordless.

“Tell her that she wasn’t a mistake. Tell her what you once told me! Tell her that if you knew all that came before, that you would still save her because life without her wouldn’t be life.”

Max stood in shock. Looking at Michael, he really saw the man, his one-time best friend. Michael wasn’t fidgeting any longer. He was calm. At peace. “You found it, didn’t you?”

There was no need for explanation. Michael knew what he was asking. “Yes. I found it. I found home.” Michael scratched his eyebrow. “I’m not an educated man, Max. I spent a life avoiding school and all the trappings, but I do know one thing and that is love is enough. It has to be. In the darkest of times, it is sometimes all that there is to help you survive. You just have to believe.”

Max laughed bitterly. “Unconditional? You believe in unconditional love?”

Michael picked up the picture of Maria and Amy and stared at it. Handing it to Max he nodded as his friend looked at his family. “I do. After everything that happened, and what they did to her, and to Jesse, Maria never once blamed me. Not once. Forgiveness, Maxwell. It was what I had to learn. You were right about that.”

“Have you, Michael? Have you forgiven everyone?”

Michael laughed a little under his breath in almost a puff. “I’m still working on it. Forgiving you, forgiving Liz, forgiving Isabel and even Maria is proving to be easier than I thought it would be. It's forgiving myself that I find so difficult. That's the hard one.”

Max dropped into a chair. That was it. Forgiveness. He couldn’t find it in himself. For himself. For Liz. It wasn’t that he blamed her, but rather he blamed what they were, how they were. It hurt. He hurt. Everything in him wanted his wife back, but every touch had so many people between them. Her mother. His parents. Amy DeLuca. Jesse. Alex. Maria. Even Michael and Isabel. The Christmas children. Brody Davis. The Dupes. Cal. All of them. Guilt. It ate at him. If he allowed himself to be happy with Liz, it was as if he sacrificed all the others for that dream. His dream of Liz. He wasn’t a dreamer anymore. The dream had become a living nightmare.

“Why did you come back, Michael?” Isabel asked from the doorway.

Michael shrugged. “Loose ends. A journey uncompleted. I don’t know.” Michael rubbed his neck. “I don’t know. Maybe to bring you home?”

Being a savior wasn’t part of his plan. He had always been the one left behind. Of the three of them, he was the one given the least in life growing up. It was a shock to look at his two lifelong friends…his brother and sister, and for once in his life feel not envy of them, but rather…pity.

“You’ve wasted your time.” Isabel came into the room. “None of us are prepared to face Maria, to look in her eyes and know what we cost her. She is…our burden. There can’t be a place for us there. Jesse. I feel him still, in my heart, but somehow I know that he wasn’t with me when he died. He had already given up on me, and there was no connection. You felt Maria from the moment you left her side, knew she was in pain, and it troubled and haunted you. I didn’t, Michael. What does that say about me? About my relationship with Jesse? I loved him. I swear I loved him with all there was in me to love anyone, just as I loved Alex.” Isabel brushed a tear from her cheek. “Why wasn’t it enough to build an unbreakable bond? I didn’t even know he was gone. That's something I can never forgive myself, and seeing Maria, knowing she knew that I let Jesse die alone…I can’t. I just can’t.”

“How long are you staying?” Max asked quietly. Isabel was right. He couldn’t see Maria. He couldn’t look in her face. She was his friend once. Someone he trusted and respected. She paid a severe price for her friendship to him and Liz. He couldn’t face her yet.

“I’m leaving within the hour.” Michael reached into his jacket and pulled out an envelope. “I learned how to change our identities through legal channels. I wrote down the instructions for you, so you can do the same. Maybe if you have a real life you can learn to forgive and start over. I can’t tell you my name, or where I live. I can’t risk that. But I placed information in there. A way to contact me. Maria and Mr. Whitman set up a way to get messages to Roswell, to your parents if you need it. I put that in there as well. Please memorize the information, all of it and destroy the documents.”

“Michael, are you happy?” Isabel asked him a question that Max had. It seemed important to them.

“Yes. I can say I am the happiest I've ever been.” Michael smiled at Isabel. “Remember once you told me that in the Destiny dream I looked happy, that you never saw me that happy?” Isabel nodded. “I’m even happier. I didn’t know there was such a place. That dream was just a ghost, an idea of what I could someday have, but it couldn’t compare to the real thing.”

Isabel smiled through tears. She understood. For one short period in her life, she felt that with Jesse. That one day when she married him it was as if nothing could ever come between them. How wrong she had been, but she still had that one moment. It was the only moment in her life she wished she could trap in an endless loop. Her heart was broken.

Michael couldn’t stay any longer. Every moment he did, it made the risk of exposure greater. That, and he was afraid that Maria would be gone. It didn’t matter. If she had to leave, he would find her. He would find them both, Maria and Amy.

Liz was outside when he shut the door to the motel. She was leaning up against his car smoking a cigarette and drinking a beer straight from the bottle. He hadn’t realized that she smoked.

“You’re leaving?”

“Yes. Maria's waiting.”

Liz nodded. Of course she was. It was his home. His family. Liz laughed bitterly to herself. She had missed it. All of it. So trapped in the perfect special position her love to Max placed her, she missed that Maria had something more. She had Michael. Loyal Michael. Even as an alien, an evil amoral alien, Michael wouldn’t betray Max. All these years, despite everything, Michael never once left Maria. Not really. He could’ve slept with Courtney or even tried Destiny with Isabel. He didn’t. They were both more like him. Someone like him. But he never strayed. And Maria. The same. She was offered a life of real luxury from Brody Davis. She could’ve sold out and signed a huge recording contract wiping Michael Guerin and Roswell like dust from her feet. She didn’t. She came home to him, an angry young man with broken pride, an unforgiving nature, bad attitude, and no money.

All this time, she smugly thought she had it all, true love. And Maria was just playing with a ghost, a pale imitation of what she and Max had, trying to create something special with Michael to mimic them. Bitterly, it was a terrible pill to swallow realizing that it was Maria that had found what was real and she was the one living a poor imitation, a lie. Yes, she envied Maria all right.

“Maria…Could you tell Maria something from me?” Michael nodded and waited. “Tell her…tell her I envy her.” Liz went to go into the room again, to return to the life she had chosen at such a great cost. Stopping, she reached up and gently kissed Michael’s cheek, almost as if it would be a replacement for kissing Maria’s. “Thank you for giving me another reason to envy Maria DeLuca.”

Michael shifted on his feet, uncertain what to say. Liz was reaching for the door when he stopped her. “Liz! Wait.” She didn’t even turn around. “You could come with me. Home. To Maria.”

Liz looked down at her hand on the doorknob. No. No she couldn’t. She burned that bridge a long time ago. Max Evans above all else. Her family. Her friends. Her own dreams. Everything good she felt about herself. Her self respect. “I can’t.” She opened the door.

“Liz, wait!” Michael struggled to think what Maria would say. It her voice in his head that he heard. “History is a nightmare from which I am trying to wake. Take the time. Make the journey.”

He didn’t even know if she heard him or understood. She went inside and shut the door. They wouldn’t look for him again. He would never return. His journey was over.

~~~

It was cold in Ithaca. The snow was pretty much gone, but the weather was still artic and there were reports of another storm front moving in from the northwest. Michael was afraid if he stopped and took a piss outside his pee would freeze like crystals in his dick.

Cold. Snow. After a lifetime of Roswell, it was a novelty. He liked it. He really didn’t mind the snow and cold because it had a biting cleanness that cut at his lungs. Alive. He felt alive. His home. Maria. He parked the car. The house looked empty. Laurie’s car was missing. The house looked dark. Maria? She said she would wait...

Michael ran the last few steps up to the door. Not bothering with a key, he opened the door with his powers. It was quiet. Silent. Dark. Standing at the entryway and below the stairs he listened to the silence. It was pounding in his head. She wouldn’t leave.

Slowly finding his feet, he walked towards the living room. There was a faint glow. Firelight.

Maria.

She was kneeling on a rug in front of the fireplace with a warming fire in the grate popping and crackling. He watched her as she lifted the baby and rubbed her head in Amy’s warm body then kissed their daughter. That was when she sensed him. Holding Amy close, she turned and saw him.

Their eyes held.

Michael couldn’t breathe. His heart was like a piece of lead in his chest, thumping hard and erratically. Love. This was what it felt like to be so in love. All encompassing. Overwhelming. Sick. Like a bottomless hollow in the pit of his stomach. He knew there would never be a way to make himself feel full. She was his insatiable lust and desire.

Maria slowly got to her feet holding Amy high to her front, her hand cradling their daughter’s head. “You came back.”

Michael nodded. “You waited.”

“Yes. I am still here.” Michael walked forward and enfolded his life in his arms tight to his chest.

I am still here.

~~~

Almost a year later….

“C’mon baby, eat for Daddy,” Michael tried the spoon again. Little Amy laughed and dumped her food over the side watching it plop to the floor. “Maria, your daughter is never going to learn to feed herself.”

Maria snorted as she clicked through a few more papers on the computer. Their computer was hooked to the Internet. Every morning they had a ritual of scanning major national papers reading news, checking obituaries, and back stories.

“My daughter? Why is she my daughter when she fails to do something, but your daughter when she's brilliant?” Michael just smiled and didn’t comment. It was self explanatory.

Laurie came down the stairs with Kyle hot on her trail. “Damn it, Laurie, don’t do this to me!”

Laurie just shrugged and grabbed a piece of toast. Kissing Amy on the head she winked at Maria on her way out the door. She was late for class. Ignoring Kyle, she shut the kitchen door behind her.

They had relocated to Canada almost a year ago. Since Michael and Laurie were considered citizens it didn’t take much to have Michael’s wife and daughter granted citizenship. Kyle had a longer task, but he was finally legal. They lived in a nice town, small and quiet, close to a larger one. Laurie was at the University, and Kyle was taking night classes. During the day he worked with Michael in a shop that specialized in restoring cars from wrecks. Michael was the detail man. He was better than good, he was an artist. He could do with his clever hands what other men dreamed of.

Kyle and Michael had applied for business loans, and in the next month or two they were opening up their own specialized shop. The alien thing had kicked in on Kyle, and he and Michael decided that they needed a special place to work where they could use their special talents unhindered. Kyle could transform matter, and strangely he had an innate sense of ‘wrongness’ to the organization of things. He could look at an engine and ‘feel’ what was wrong or out of place.

Michael. He always was very artistic and good with his hands, which Maria usually made some comment under her breath like ‘Is he ever!,’ so he found his niche in the artistic revamping and remodeling of cars. But he liked fixing things. Anything. Toasters. Cars. Televisions. And he found computers to be something his brain could understand. Maria watched him as he surfed the net mentally with his hands on either side of the terminal, he was able to move inside the machine, transverse it like a highway at incomprehensible speeds. He was an alien hacker from hell with little to no knowledge of computers, but then he didn’t need it.

At night, Michael sat with his closeknit family and did illustrations for Maria’s books. They had finally located a literary agent who would represent them, and the first book in the Amy of Refuge series was slated to be published later that fall.

“What did you do?” Maria asked Kyle as she drank her coffee and smiled at her daughter who was surprisingly covered in oatmeal, as was her father. “Amy, sweetie, don’t throw oatmeal at Daddy.” The answering giggle and wiggle made her laugh.

“Me? Why are you assuming it's me?” Maria made a face. “Hey! It’s her fault this time. Did you know that she made a date with that…that….that no-neck jock?!”

“Ted.”

Kyle made an angry growl. Ted. Fucking bastard. Ted? What the hell kind of name was that anyway? Gay. The bastard was gay, and using Laurie as a blind. Ted. Ted this, and Ted that. Bastard.

“What did you expect, Kyle?” Maria asked as she got up to get a wet cloth and de-oatmeal her husband who was making embarrassing gurgling noises at their daughter.

Michael Guerin as a father was a strange creature. All the playful innocence of his soul was found in his daughter, and together it was like the two were having their very first childhood. Maria quickly removed oatmeal from Michael’s hair and kissed him gently on the lips as he smiled at her boyishly, a devil entering his eyes as his hands came around her slim waist.

He rubbed his face in her flat stomach, and her heart melted. He wanted another baby. They were discussing it. She wanted to wait until his new business took off, at least another year.

“What are you saying?” Kyle asked suspiciously as his eyes narrowed suspecting that Maria was going to suggest something he didn’t want to hear. Maria sighed and shook her head. Taking Amy from her chair she went to wash her daughter off and dress her for the day. Michael sucked on Amy’s fingers before Maria could take her away, her childish giggles lightening his heart.

“She means that you need to either shit or get off the pot, Kyle.” Michael laughed at Maria’s voice from the other room telling him he was ‘classy’.

“What? I’m not dragging my feet!”

Michael looked at his friend and partner and just shook his head. Kyle and Laurie finally dated about three months after Amy was born. It went nuclear fast. Before they knew it, Kyle and Laurie were sharing a room, and it looked like the two were going to be a couple. That was until Kyle backed off. He broke up with Laurie. His reasons were vague, but it came down to him getting cold feet and a fear of making a commitment so quickly. So six months later, he was trying to get back with Laurie, but she had moved on to dating other men. The dating other men was what woke Kyle up. He hated it. Passionately. So now they were dating, but not exclusively, and that was killing Kyle.

Michael just made a sound of disbelief in his throat, but it quickly changed into delight as Maria brought Amy back, cleaned and dressed. Maria passed him the baby as he made noises at her. Strange. Very strange. The two seemed to have their own gurgling language. Maria just shook her head amused. Going back to her reading, she half listened to Michael and Kyle argue while they made breakfast for the adults. Amy sat in her highchair happily making a new mess while chewing on a cookie. Her eyes bright and alert following her father’s every move, and occasionally looking over at her mom and smiling a grin with a few baby teeth.

It was her sound of distress that pulled the two men over their intense discussion over bacon versus sausage.

“Maria?” Maria had stood up and backed away from the computer. Shaking her head she turned her back on them and stood looking out the kitchen window with arms wrapped around her middle.

Michael sat down and read the article. Kyle over his shoulder. It was a story about a woman who lived alone. Her neighbors hadn’t known her, and she kept much to herself. She was found on Valentine’s Day. She had committed suicide in a hot bath. She slit her wrists and bled to death. There was no one to stop her or intervene in time. She left a suicide note for her husband, Jesse. Begging him for his forgiveness, it was the last request of her life. Michael passed a hand over his mouth as he stared at Isabel’s picture. Standing, he put his arms around Maria, hugging her close to his chest. She was quietly crying, and he never noticed the tears running down his face. He just knew he couldn’t see.

Kyle backed up, shaking his head. Isabel. Oh God! He walked out of the house forgetting his jacket. Taking the car, he found himself at the University. He was wet and cold, ragged in the biting wind. That was how Laurie found him. He stood under a tree on the campus in the sleet and rain.

“Kyle? Is it Maria? Michael? The baby? Kyle?”

Kyle shook his head and grabbed Laurie to him. Holding her as close as he could get her it was the relief of feeling her warm body against his cold one that had him trembling in her arms.

“Kyle?”

Kyle drew away from her and searched her eyes, and her face. She was so young. So beautiful. Unstressed by this world, but she knew fear. She knew his secrets. She knew him. Touching her, holding her, it was everything. He had run from it, because he was afraid of making that final connection that Michael told him about. He had run from it, because he was afraid that something would take her away and that connection would kill him. It had all but destroyed Michael and Maria when they were apart. It was a tremendous thing. He couldn’t risk fearing it, throwing it away. Kyle pulled Laurie back to him and held her tight.

~~~

Isabel. Isabel Evans. Isabel Ramirez. She was a woman who had cheated herself out of that very connection to her husband. She never knew he had been in trouble. She never knew to go to him. That lack of the final melding cost her everything. Jesse. It was hard. Perhaps they didn’t give her heart enough credit. No one really saw her love for Jesse as anything but the next step in the long sordid tale of Isabel’s revolving love life. Alex. Grant. Jesse. Even Kyle. Kivar. So many men, but none of real substance in her life. None that could make a connection beyond the physical. She was left alone inside.

They miscalculated the extent of her love. Isabel, finding herself alone, couldn’t go on with Max and Liz, so she waited and one night she left. She followed the instructions that Michael had left, with the goal of changing her identity. She was going to reclaim a life for herself. Go to school. Maybe one day find love again. Maybe. But when she sat there staring at the new name that would be hers, her hand tightened. Jesse. Ramirez. It was all she had left of her husband. His name. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t stop being Isabel Ramirez.

How long could a broken heart survive if it could no longer feel the warmth of living? It took almost a year and a half for her mind to understand what her heart already knew. Never. There was no will to go on without Jesse. Her life was in shambles, and she didn’t care. Not one bit. No Jesse. No home. No baby with him. It was all lost, and she had walked away from it. That was a mistake that could never be fixed. Michael had been lucky. Maria had been saved. Jesse had not.

Isabel cried every night, alone in her little apartment in her small bed. She dreamt of him. He was walking away from her, but suddenly he stopped and turned. He saw her and he smiled that wonderful, beautiful smile. Jesse. Honey?

Isabel, finally tired of running, decided to go home. He was waiting.

If you think I love you not,

Don’t.

If you think I mourn you less,

Don’t.

There is no light from the sun,

Eclipsed in your eyes.

There is no sorrow, but that sown,

If you think I will not follow,

Don’t.

In your footsteps I trend softly,

In your arms I tremble,

delighted in your touch,

For there is no love, save you.

If you fear you will not be found,

Don’t.

For I am here,

my love.

Not in your shadow,

but at your side.

~~~

Five years after Roswell….

They had been watching for days. They were trouble.

Michael was in the driveway washing the car. It was a bright, late summer day, and the sound of the neighborhood lulled and pulled the observers into a sense of peace. The buzzing of lawn mowers and children playing was almost like a panacea to heartache. Michael was dripping wet, and he was chasing a small blonde child around the car with a water hose, laughing at her high shrieks. Dropping the hose, he quickly picked up the four year old, hugging her close and rubbing his face in her neck, making loud noises while she giggled and squirmed in his arms. He twirled around as she put her head back to watch the world circle around, her arms around her daddy’s neck, safe and happy.

There was a small black puppy, nipping at Michael's feet. Suddenly the happy family exploded as Kyle came out of his house next door in a flurry.

“Michael! Grab him!”

A little boy just over two came streaming down the other drive around Kyle’s car, buck naked, except for a holster of pistols around his tiny waist. He was laughing loudly and running from his dad. Laurie stood in the doorway watching her son give Kyle a run for his money. Bath-time was always a challenge. Little James, or Jimmy as they called him, loved to be nude like his dad, but hated water.

“Whoa, there Jimbo! You’re flapping something in the breeze.” Michael easily intercepted the little boy, hauling him up by an arm to his waist after he put Amy down. Amy was staring at Jimmy in interest, checking out his…um, package. Michael scowled and placed a hand over her eyes. “None of that!”

Kyle rushed to retrieve his property. His son. What a chip off the old block! Every day he looked more and more like Jim Valenti. Kyle and Laurie sent Jim wedding pictures and pictures of Laurie pregnant, and finally of Jimmy when he was born. They sent them to the Post Office Box that Mr. Whitman had set up, and then just hoped that Jim would receive them.

He did. There was an ad in a newspaper from Jim, in the personal ads from 'Those Left Behind' announcing the birth of a blessed grandson. Kyle actually cried. It was good to hear from his dad, even in a roundabout way. They had to trust that those living in Roswell were still unhindered by the FBI. It was all they had.

Kyle and Laurie, and Michael and Maria periodically sent progress reports of their lives, but they were careful to let nothing slip that would indicate where they were being photographed. Laurie came out of the house as Maria joined the others. She was holding a small bundle in her arms. A baby. A little boy this time. Alex. He was only three months old. It had taken Michael that long to convince Maria to have another baby. She was willing, but because they had Amy so young, practically before they married, she argued that they needed time together with just Amy before they started producing more. So when Amy turned three they finally decided it was time.

They were happy. Maria was the author of a popular series of children’s books with Michael as her illustrator, and Michael and Kyle owned and operated their own car restoration business. Laurie had finished college and was working in a special brokerhouse, investing Maria and Michael’s money from the books, and Kyle and Michael’s money from the business. It was a good life. Simple. Uncomplicated. Happy. Normal. Or as normal as hour long screaming orgasms could be, or living with children who could turn your head green with a wave of their hand. But it was normal for them.

Laurie and Kyle came over for dinner. When they married the two couples decided to split their households into two separate families to give a little more privacy. But they all still had Sunday dinner together, and barbequed on Saturdays after Michael and Kyle’s baseball game. They were playing in the city league. It was Sunday, and the children were fed and sleeping, except for Alex who was breastfeeding. Maria finished and passed him to Michael who burped him gently and rocked him to sleep.

“You going to put him down?”

Michael kissed the top of his son’s head. “In a little bit.” He liked holding him. The group was discussing their summer vacation plans for this year. Last year they had gone camping, which wasn’t really camping since they rented a large cottage on a lake. Both Michael and Kyle somehow spent more time in the water than they did on the fishing boat they rented. It was a fun summer.

The knock came. None of them could be prepared.

Max and Liz.

~~~

Kyle was laughing at a story that Maria was telling when he opened the door. Maria spent the days at home taking care of the children, Amy, Jimmy and Alex, since she was a writer, and didn’t need to go outside of the house. They loved sitting around late on Sunday drinking coffee while she filled them in on the children’s adventures. Amy and Jimmy had turned the backyards into a trap to catch babies, and then they begged Maria to put Alex down so they could test it out. Kyle was laughing at the stories of his son, when he opened the door to Max and Liz.

The room instantly became silent. Max and Liz. They hadn’t seen them in over four years. Michael had left them instructions on how to find them if they needed or wanted to, but in four years they never came. The group of four were suddenly standing, all of them looking at each other. Was it safe? Did Max and Liz accidentally lead the FBI to them and their children?

“We weren’t followed.” Max said quietly. Kyle stepped back and let the two of them into the house. “We watched for days to make sure. It took us over two weeks to get here.”

There were only five of the six original fugitives there. Isabel was gone, and preceding her were Alex, Jesse, and Amy. Laurie, who knew the history, stood back as Kyle, Michael and Maria stood together facing Max and Liz. Maria stood back, a little behind Michael.

“We’re sorry to interrupt your evening,” Liz said softly, afraid to directly look at Maria.

Michael cleared his throat. “It’s okay.” He moved forward slowly and hugged Max. They were both stiff for a moment, and then suddenly something broke, and the two men where hugging hard.

It was a strange evening. Friends, and yet strangers. So much of their lives had gone down separate paths since they had parted, but they were still unified by Roswell and the toll that those years forged on their souls. It was late when Kyle collected his son and his wife and went home (next door), leaving Michael and Maria to put Max and Liz up for the night. Tomorrow, after they all had recovered from the shock, they would finally talk.

“I hope this isn’t too much of an inconvenience.”

Maria paused in making the bed. She just shrugged. What was she supposed to say or do? It was unclear. Liz was a stranger to her even before they left Roswell, but definitely more so now.

“No bother. I have to warn you that Alex is still waking up around three and he’s one loud kid. Takes after his father, whining and cranky when he wants to eat.” Maria smiled slightly at the insult to Michael, wishing he was there to hear it so he could punish her later for dissing him.

“Are we still friends, Maria? Can we still talk?”

Maria sighed. “I don’t know. Tomorrow. Let's see how we do tomorrow.”

Liz nodded. She stood in the shadow of the guestroom as Maria left her towels and a freshly made bed. The room had its own bathroom. A few moments later Max appeared closing the door behind him.

“I’m sorry about this. Do you want me to ask for another room? Or I could sleep on the floor.”

Liz looked at the large Queen size bed. “That’s okay. We've shared smaller beds.” Liz took up her clothes and went into the bathroom. Leaning against the door, she slowly slid down to the floor, her shaking hands covering her face.

Max tried not to watch her brush her hair before bedtime. She had a new tattoo on her shoulder that he never noticed. When did she get it? They no longer shared a bed. In motel rooms she slept in one bed and he slept in another. This began after Isabel left. They hadn’t been husband and wife for almost four years, only roommates. They traveled together. Most nights she spent reading and he watched television.

What started out as the  grand adventure of them saving the world had turned into nothing more than one sleazy motel after another, across the country. Liz hadn’t had a vision in almost two years, and her powers had all but waned. The only time they manifested was when she was angry, and only then in an explosive burst that was uncontrolled. So for five years since leaving Roswell Max and Liz had traveled the world, avoiding living and avoiding themselves.

A journey of self exploration usually begins with an honest look at the heart and at what pains a person, motivating them to act and react in certain ways. The best either Liz or Max could describe their behavior was avoidance. Looking at things made them difficult, and accepting other truths made it hard to want to continue, so they lived in a marginal existence, barely recognizing themselves or the other.

“Did Michael talk to you?”

“Not much. He was busy putting Alex down.” Max sat on the side of the bed and looked at the ground. “It was hard. It reminded me of Zan, and I kept wondering if he was alright or if they hurt him.”

Liz stopped brushing and looked at herself in the mirror. In the old days she would have flown to Max, enfolded him in comfort and tried to say all the right things to make him feel better, regardless of what she felt or believed. So many times she held her tongue or just settled for what she got, but those days were over. She had divorced him two years ago.

“I’m sorry about Zan, Max. Really I am. But I don’t want to hear about him anymore. Not him, and not the other children. That's something you need to work through. It is bad. It is sad, and yes we have regrets. But using it all to justify moping and being depressed and not even trying to live, is a self-feeding sickness.”

Max looked at Liz. “Is that what broke us, Liz? The guilt? Mine over the children, Maria, Jesse, Alex, even Cal? You over what? What is your guilt that weighs down your life?”

“You.” Liz said simply. “You are my guilt. That I chose you above all others, forsaken everyone and everything for my love, and I woke up one morning to realize the person I left was me. You knew that though, didn’t you? Almost from the beginning. I saw it.”

“I don’t know…”

“At least be honest. Give me that much. You hated that you struck out at Michael when he came back. You taunted and accused him of risking our lives by going back to Roswell, but you never once blamed yourself for things you felt you needed to do, despite the risk to yourself or others. Healing the children at Christmas was one of those times. Healing me was another. All of it. You exposed us so many times for your own selfish agenda, and I sat there supporting you through it all, without question. I became your doormat, your ‘yes man’ standing like the ‘little woman’ behind you, wringing my hands because I didn’t want anyone to think less of you. I wanted to be special, with a special love that elevated me beyond the ordinary. Thing is, Max,” Liz said looking him directly in the eyes for the first time for a long time. “I would kill to be just plain old Liz Parker again. Ordinary. A small-town girl with dreams of a bright future. She was kind, honest, and happy. I miss her. I miss me.”

Max was quiet. She was right. He knew she was. It felt wrong, and it had sickened his stomach striking out at Michael, when he knew that Michael only did what he could, no less than what Max himself would’ve done. It sickened him when she didn’t tell him to stop, to apologize. Instead she stood behind him, supporting him in his wrongness. How many times had he taken a condescending high ground, shoved his selfish needs down everyone’s throats, and then censured Michael for doing what he had to do? How many times was he wrong, but closed his eyes to the reality of what it meant?

“So what now? What now, Liz?”

Liz shrugged. “I don’t know. I just know I want to feel loved again, and not using sleazy pick ups in bars to masquerade as affection, or finding myself getting old sitting on a barstool, smoking and drinking, wishing for a life that I threw away. I was smart once. Not a genius. Not brilliant. But I had potential. I could have been someone, and in my youth I thought being Liz Evans was someone.” Liz laughed at herself bitterly. “Did you know that I never even thought of myself as ‘Liz Evans’? Only as ‘Mrs. Max Evans. How sick is that? It wasn’t enough to be that person. I know it's not.” Liz sat down on the opposite side of the bed from Max. “I finally understand what Maria was doing when she broke up with Michael. She was finding her shadow.”

Max scooted back on the bed and rested against the headboard to listen. It was good to have her just talk to him again. It had been so long. Coming to find the others was a good thing. It had to be.

“Her shadow?”

Liz laughed bitterly. “Yes, Max, her shadow. A real person casts a long shadow on the ground. It follows them all their lives and their shadow mixes with the people they walk with, sometimes overlapping. And when you love, really love, your shadow walks side by side with that special person’s shadow, sometimes as two shadows, sometimes two bleed together, joined, and sometimes they overlap on one another. But there are always two shadows. Two people choosing to be one.” Liz moved the bedding and climbed in the refreshingly clean bed. “Maria woke up one day, living in Michael’s shadow, and that would've been okay if she had her own. She didn’t. There was no music in her life, no ambition, and no drive. She was using Michael’s shadow to define herself. So she did something so hard, so crushing, even to her own heart. She left him. She left him to find her shadow, to find herself, and maybe to find him again. I never thought of Maria as courageous, but I do now. I have to admire that about her, because she risked the greatest love of her life to find a way to make herself whole, and then she came back and took everything he tossed at her, even being left behind.”

Max turned off the light next to his side of the bed, and in the light from the bedside light next to her, he could see the shadows on the wall. Maybe aliens didn’t have shadows. Or maybe they had dominating ones that crushed and engulfed all others. Isabel’s overwhelmed Jesse, making him go against his principles. Michael overwhelmed Maria since the day they met, and the Liz Parker he admired and loved as a youth was slowly eaten away by his needs and wants. Perhaps Liz was missing the point. It wasn’t the loss of a shadow, it was merely having it choked away. The blackness inside the aliens cast long deep black shadows, sort of black holes, or what Maria once coined as the ‘alien abyss’ and from it nothing emerged whole.

Liz laughed at the folly of their lack of insight. She had missed an important lesson, one that unfolded before her very eyes, and so caught up in her own self-importance was she, that she refused to see the gift that it was. Maria. Maria was teaching a lesson, but no one had been listening or paying attention. That was the real mistake, the real offense, that broke her friendship with Maria. No one ever paid attention to Maria. No one ever listened or even tried to see what she was saying. No one but Alex.

Maria woke up one day and she was Peter Pan, searching to catch her shadow as it left her. She woke up afraid that in her youth, all the promises she made would keep her trapped in a sixteen year old body, forced to live that way forever. Maria woke up one day and wanted to stop being Peter Pan. It was time for her to make adult decisions, to grow up and make decisions about the future. Hard ones. Not perfect. Just hard and painful. She walked away and left Michael. She was telling them to fight for their self-respect. To fight to grow up and be somebody. Not perfect. Not a King. Not a Queen. Not an alien. Just somebody that you could look in the mirror every day and actually like, and be happy being that person. They had all missed the point.

Michael and Kyle slowly found the way. They found Maria and in the process, they found themselves. Not an easy life. Not a perfect life. But a life that made them happy, made them happy to be who they were. They had everything. Everything.

“I thought I was doing that when I ran away to Vermont. I thought I was making decisions for myself, but I was deluding myself, Max. Vermont wasn’t about me. It was about you again. It was about me paying you back in pain for sleeping with Tess, for having a baby with her, for choosing her over me. For losing your virginity to another woman, and not me. It was payback for wrecking my self image. I was better than Maria. We were better than Michael and Maria, because we were important. Changed. So why did Michael and Maria only love each other? Why did Michael never try Destiny or take Courtney up on her offer? Why did Maria risk her life to leave with us when she could have been free? Why was their first time with each other, and literally from the moment they met, there could never be another love for them save each other? Wasn’t that what you promised me?”

“I did love you, Liz. Just you. Forever. Things got complicated, but what I felt for you never changed.” Max said softly into the dark, as Liz turned off the light. He laid on the top of the covers and she was underneath, both of them were staring at the ceiling. “I still love you today.”

Liz felt a tear roll down the side of her face. She still loved him too, but it wasn’t enough. She couldn’t fool herself into believing that anymore. Two partial people joined together didn’t make a whole. A relationship needed two full, strong, and healthy members to make it work. They had flitted around for five years, but they never walked the miles necessary to get them from here to there.

“Do you know how smug I felt that I brought you back to life? That you came for me? That it was me that kept you from dying all together? I didn’t go away for me, Max. I went away to bring you to heel. And it worked. So I didn’t need Vermont anymore. I won. I got you where I wanted you. No more search for Zan. No more leaving. It was all about me. All you were allowed to concentrate on was me. It shames me, Max. I'm humiliated by myself because I wasted my parent’s money for my pride. All for pride.”

Max rolled over to face her in the dark. “What now, Liz? What now? It's a question that people have asked me all these years, expecting me to have an answer. But I'm not a King. I'm just Max Evans. You're no longer Liz Evans, just Liz Parker. So I'm asking you, what now?”

Liz turned to face him in the dark. She wanted to touch his face. She hadn’t wanted to do that in a long time. He was once her husband. She remembered that. They were barely able to look at each other, let alone touch. Liz had had pictures of them when they were younger, first in love. The sickening stares and the smug smiles were too hard to look at, so she destroyed the pictures. Where they always that sickening?

“Liz?”

“Huh? Oh, what to do?” Liz concentrated on what he was saying. “I don’t know. Not really.” She seemed to be lost in thought again, but she spoke before Max could. “The last time I saw Michael he said something to me. He told me that history was a nightmare from which he was trying to wake. I heard him, but I didn’t really listen. I’m listening now. History, Max. Our history. Our past. Future Max, Tess, Alex’s death, your betrayal, and my betrayal. All of it. It led us down this path, and we didn’t tread lightly or carefully, looking for pitfalls. We reached and grabbed like greedy children. Well, I’m not a child any longer. I can’t afford to be, because I might stagnate, but time marches on. Michael said to take the time. Make the journey. Well, I was still avoiding what had to be done, but not anymore. I’m starting now.”

Max sighed. He needed to make some headway too. He wanted Liz back, but she was so far away even though physically she was within his reach. He made mistakes. So had she. They made mistakes together. He had slept with other women. At first he didn’t. She divorced him, and he couldn’t believe she was serious. He followed her at night. Watched her. And when she finally started going home with men from bars, he watched that too. A stalker. Angry. Mean. He said mean things to her. Hateful. Called her a bar slut, and so many bad things, and she just shrugged and turned away, drinking more and more. That was when he picked up women. Young women. Younger than Liz. Prettier. In college. Smart. Blonde. So many of them resembled Tess. He made sure she saw them.

It was a war between them. A silent one. They refused to split up and go their separate ways because then the only purpose they had in life would be lost. Their need to wound and hurt the other was all they had left. Six months ago, it changed.

Why? No one knew. It was like both of them grew tired of it all. Weary. The fighting. The pain. All of it had lost its meaning. For six months there was ceasefire, and then one day, Max looked up the ad that Michael ran in the paper for a full year, every year. Instructions to find them. Liz saw what he was reading and she nodded her agreement. Maybe they had stopped because it was time. They spent the last few years punishing each other and themselves, and now it was finally time to put that aside and start living again.

So they followed the others and came home. Home to heal.

“Where do you start, Liz?”

Liz was quiet. It hurt to admit, but there was only place she had left to start. Her mother was gone, and her father was beyond her. “Maria. I have to start with Maria.”

Max stared at the ceiling for a long time, long after she went to sleep. He listened to her gentle breathing. She was once his wife. He still loved her. That would always remain true. But he no longer liked her or respected what she was or who she was. It was hard to admit that to get back with her, he needed to learn to like her again. She was a stranger, and he was one to her as well. If he wanted her back, wanted her in his life, then he needed to learn all about her again, and learn to like who she was today.

It was going to take a long time.

~~~

Liz watched in the shadows from the doorway. It was strange to see Michael and Maria in their kitchen talking as they fed the babies. Michael was cooking for Amy, making her special 'Amy pancakes' with a large A on them in the shape of a Mickey Mouse head. Maria was breastfeeding their son. The little boy was so cute. Small. A newborn, but even Liz could see Michael Guerin’s hands. He had his father’s hands and coloring. He was twenty three inches long and seven pounds and thirteen ounces at birth. At three months he opened his eyes and the startling warmth of those golden brown orbs held Liz enthralled. Amy looked like a replica of her mother, tiny, golden and lively with a beautiful bee-stung mouth, but she too had Michael’s eyes, and the combination was startling and incredibly beautiful. Amy Guerin/Garrett was destined to break hearts. Watching Michael, it wasn’t hard to see that for him, Amy was his life. His hand found a way to touch her all the time, to whisper to her, and Maria smiled as their two heads were bent together instigating some great adventure.

It was strange. Liz wondered if Maria ever got jealous of their secret alliance, but in that moment she saw Michael’s hand reach out and stroke his son’s head, rest there for a moment, and then move down to cup Maria’s bare breast. Michael looked over at Maria, and the look in his eyes made Liz step back in the shadow, her heart beating out of control in her chest. Never. Not once had a man looked at her like that. Not even Max when their love was at its peak. Maria wasn’t jealous. She had no reason to be, because Michael’s face and eyes held it all in just a glance. Maria was everything to him. Everything. The children were an extension, but Maria was his heart. He watched her breastfeed, and he was so powerfully turned on that Liz could feel it from the hallway.

“That’s it buddy, you’re through.” Maria reached down and kissed her child, her face content. Serene. Unlatching her son from her breast, she held him for a moment, smelling him and feeling the warmth of his body next to hers. Michael was watching her intently, his face hungry and his eyes heavy and sensual. Maria cleared her throat which surprisingly reminded Liz of Amy DeLuca. Maria sounded like her mom. “I’ll go put him down for a nap before the noise gets here.”

“I’ll do it. You can finish up with Madam.” Michael said huskily. He took his son, and Liz’s hand went to her heart when suddenly Michael made a low growl in his throat and stooped to take Maria’s breast in his mouth before she could close her shirt, her hand moving up his body to hold his neck as her fingers played in his hair, Maria’s eyes closed and she breathed heavily through her mouth in a soft moan. Michael's mouth moved from her breasts to her mouth, and he joined her in a kiss that tasted of her milk, as he explored her warm mouth with his tongue. Maria slowly opened her eyes, almost as if she was drugged, and Michael whispered in her ear making her laugh softly, but they were both very turned on. It was Amy’s voice that brought them back from wherever they were together.

“Kissin’!” Her young voice said disapprovingly. With a sniff, young Amy pouted at the loss of attention. “Boys are yucky, Mom.”

Michael laughed and stood up, hoisting his son high on his chest. He left the room to let Maria deal with their four year old that was beginning to suspect that boys were a subspecies that were more trouble than they were worth.

“Yes, baby, boys are yucky.”

“Daddy?”

Maria laughed, pouring Amy some more milk in her little special cup. “Especially Daddy. But he's so cute about it, that we forgive him.”

“Alex?”

“Oh, definitely Alex. But then you're the older sister, so it will be your job to watch out for your yucky brother and make sure he stays out of trouble. Boys….they need extra help.” Amy nodded wisely. She suspected as much.

Maria knelt down next to her daughter. “So I’ve got a two chapter deadline today, but I already kicked out the first one, so that leaves only one more. So what should we do today? Should we wait for Jimmy and see what he wants to do?”

“Zoo?”

Maria nodded. “Zoo. Zoo would be fun. Let’s ask Daddy if he wants to take off half a day and come with us. I bet he would buy you pink cotton candy.”

The ecstasy was too much for Amy’s wee little heart to handle. She clasped her small hands together in joy and in her sweet childish voice began to tell her mom all the things she wanted to do for the day. All the animals and a train ride. Then the house exploded in a small tornado as Kyle came in with Jimmy. Laurie was behind him with Jimmy’s special bag of toys that he couldn’t live without.

“Ant ‘Ria, see my fanger?”

Maria looked down at the small cut and noticed the tiny tears in his eyes. “Oh sweetie, you hurt yourself! Did Mommy kiss it better?” Jimmy nodded and held his finger out for Maria to kiss too. So she did.

“Daddah’s razor is sharp. Sharp. Don’t touch. Sharp means ouch.”

Kyle shrugged, but Maria could see he felt bad about the cut. He liked using an old fashioned straight razor to shave. Jimmy liked to watch his dad shave in the morning. He must have wanted to touch it, and when he did, it cut him.

“Hey, let me see, little guy!” Michael came back into the room tucking his shirt into his pants. He had changed out of the sweats he had been wearing earlier while cooking. “Did it bleed?” Michael asked curiously.

Jimmy nodded sagely. “Red. Lots of red.”

“Like a stuck pig, huh? Cool!” Michael smiled at his nephew who suddenly suspected that his injury had elevated him in his favorite uncle’s eyes. He hugged Michael’s neck tight when Michael picked him up. Boys. They stuck together. Suddenly Jimmy was quite proud of his injury and hammed it up. Kyle looked over at Michael gratefully. He was in a terrible position. A father. He hated to see his kid hurt, but he didn’t want to over baby him either. So somewhere in the mesh of adults, the little boy got a nice balance of tender loving care, and male bravado.

Laurie talked to Maria for a few moments, and the group of them all discussed the zoo as a fun adventure for the day. Both Michael and Kyle decided to close the shop, and let Maria and Michael take Jimmy and Amy while Kyle babysat Alex. Liz watched the interaction with interest from the hall. After Laurie left for work and Michael and Kyle finished eating breakfast and took off, Maria was alone with Amy and Jimmy. She settled them into the playroom with Sesame Street on the television and them playing quietly while she went upstairs to shower. The doors were locked, and Max was still asleep.

“Who are you?” Amy asked Liz as she stood in the door watching the two children.

“I’m Liz. A friend of your parents. I went to school with them long ago. About five years ago.”

“You must be old.” Amy observed. Five years? She was only four. “I’m this many.” Amy held up her four fingers. Jimmy watched and tried to do it too. He held up two hands full of fingers. He was sort of that many. “No, Jimmy, you’re only this many.” Amy fixed his hands.

“I’m not! I’m this many!” Jimmy stubbornly put his other fingers back up.

Amy just rolled her eyes surprisingly like her mom and took on a stubborn look that only could have come from Michael. “Boys,” she hissed under her breath.

“Hi.” Maria said coming into the room. She looked at Liz curiously. “Amy, let Jimmy be as many fingers as he wants today, okay? He hurt himself, so it is a ‘Be nice to Jimmy’ day.”

Amy nodded. Sure. She could do that. She’d do anything for her mom. The two shared a look and young Amy’s face changed suddenly. Liz was curious. The little girl seemed to nod at her mother, and then she went back to playing. They talked to each other. In their heads. Liz was sure of it.

“Liz, you want some coffee? Or breakfast?”

Liz nodded, still shocked by the silent communication between Amy and Maria.

Maria looked beautiful today. And every day. She still looked as she did five years ago. Her skin was clear and young. Her eyes bright and alert. She was wearing a sundress, slim and light with spaghetti straps. She looked like the world never touched her, that she was blessed and free. Until she turned around, and her back was exposed to Liz.

Liz couldn’t stop the sound of distress from leaving her throat. Max had joined them without them realizing it. He stood in the door, and he saw it the same time Liz had. Maria’s back. Her back was a roadmap of tiny white lines with grooves all meshing in oblique patterns down her back. They were healed scars.

Maria turned quickly and backed up against the sink. She had forgotten. They didn’t bother her anymore. She wore shirts and dresses that exposed the scars, but not to Max and Liz. She didn’t want them to see what it had cost her. Her pain.

Max was pale. “Maria? God, Maria!” He advanced slowly on her. “Let me heal them. Take them away.”

Max was shocked at the color draining from Maria’s face and a look of utter terror moved over her face. They all stood still, and it was mere moments as Michael burst into kitchen, his breathing coming fast and uneven. He immediately went to Maria, tucking her behind him, standing threatening between her and Max and Liz.

“Michael…I, we…” Max paused. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean harm. I saw the scars and wanted to…”

“Heal them?” Michael asked. He swore and turned around gathering Maria close still feeling her fear. She reached for him. Touched him. He had been in the car on his way to work when he felt her terror. They had left the house and hit a donut shop a few blocks away to get the shop's daily donut supply that they provided with coffee. It took a little while, and they had barely left when he felt Maria. He literally jumped out, leaving Kyle to deal with the traffic mess he caused, and he ran for his life to get back to her. Michael bent his head and whispered to her, as if he were trying to gentle a frightened horse. “It’s okay. It’s okay, baby.”

Liz was silent. She couldn’t figure out what they did wrong. Michael held his wife’s trembling body in his arms, refusing to let her go. He kissed the side of her head and gently rocked her, their faces were mated and Liz saw it again. The look. A silent communication. They were talking to each other mentally. Before she could ask or even fathom what was happening, a distressed Kyle came through the door.

“Michael! Maria! What happened? The kids!?” Kyle leaned against the counter breathing hard. Michael had scared the crap out of him.

Michael shook his head. “It’s okay, Kyle. Go check on the kids. I’ll take Maria upstairs.” Kyle nodded and quickly went down the hall to the playroom. They could hear the happy squeal of Jimmy at the unexpected appearance of his father.

“I was being good, Daddah!”

Max and Liz stood in the kitchen uncertain what they should do. Looking at each other, Liz felt helpless just standing there, so she searched the cabinets for coffee cups. Pouring a cup for herself and Max, she sat down at the table and took refuge in the warmth of the coffee between her hands.

Kyle came back into the room. He grabbed a cup and poured some too. Drinking he looked at Max and Liz with speculation. They were strangers to him now, but he knew them. “What happened?” Kyle listened as both Max and Liz described the events and Kyle shut his eyes and groaned. “You offered to heal her scars? Did it occur to you that her scars are healed, that she is beyond needing to be saved?”

Michael stood in the doorway. Maria had calmed down and was now asleep. She settled down when Alex woke up, and Michael handed her the baby. The two of them were asleep on their bed.

“Never try to heal Maria again or even offer.” Michael said as he came into the room. “Kyle, you want to go to work? I need to stay here.”

“No. No problem. I’ll be back by lunchtime and watch Alex.” Kyle waved and was out the door again.

“Michael, I’m sorry. I hadn’t realized.”

“I know.” Michael took the coffee and sat down. “Maria doesn’t talk about what happened or what they did to her, but she wears the scars.” Michael looked deep into his cup. “She won’t even tell me, but most of it I know. I lived it with her through a haze, and other parts I gleaned through our connection. She can’t talk about it. There are no words to use.”

“Why did she…?” Liz paused. She didn’t know how to finish asking what she wanted to know.

“Maria thinks that being healed, being changed by an alien is a bad thing. She thinks it rips away a person’s humanity, and leaves a vacuous, soulless creature. The White Room is preferable to being healed. The only person she has ever let touch her is me. I've healed small cuts, a sprained ankle, but that's it. Nothing big. And not her scars.”

Liz looked at her hands sadly. “She thinks that because of me.”

“Yes. You and me. Alien Michael was as soulless as a person could become. She knew me. And she knew you. She knew Max. At a time she would’ve sworn that there was nothing Max wouldn’t do to protect you, Liz. She saw him break your heart and so much more over the years. Aliens. To Maria, being alien is the worst thing. She's human. That's all she wants to be, and it's enough.”

“She's afraid that if I healed her, she would change?”

“Not really. But there are hidden places in her. Dark. Places that were hurt when they captured her. Places even I have never been able to touch or heal. There, she holds this fear. It’s like believing in the monster under your bed. She rationalizes it. Tries to let it go, but her instincts hold that fear.”

“She called to you?” Liz had to know.

“Yes.”

“How?” Max was confused. He didn’t have that sort of connection with Liz. Once they had the beginnings of it. Liz had sensed he was dead. But nothing this intense.

“We don’t know. We’ve been connected pretty much since the first time we made love. I let her see into me, and we’ve been hotwired ever since. It was how I knew I needed to find her, that things were wrong, and why I couldn’t rest.” Michael paused uncertain how much to reveal. “Amy, her mother, and Amy, our daughter, saved her life. The three of us are connected. When Alex was conceived we could feel him almost immediately from the moment he existed. Kyle can feel Jimmy, and so can Laurie. We’re all connected in some way.”

“So you changed them?” Max couldn’t understand how Maria and Laurie could feel their children. Perhaps delivering alien children changed the women.

“No. They're human, Max. Nasedo said that our powers are human ones, remember?. How it happened or what it is, I don’t know. I don’t care. But I do care that you don’t ever try to heal Maria again. Ever.”

Max nodded. He looked sick. Liz didn’t look any better. It was hard to realize that in Maria’s eyes, they were monsters. Horrible. Unnatural. Amoral.

~~~

“Do you hate me?”

Maria stopped stirring the pot for a moment. They had a good afternoon at the zoo, and the children were tired. Kyle took Jimmy home, and Michael was upstairs bathing Amy and talking to Max. Alex was in his special chair in the kitchen sucking on his fist and watching his mother’s every move.

“No.”

Liz sighed. “You should.” Liz swallowed hard. “When I heard…when I knew what happened to you. To Jesse. I…”

“I really can’t talk about it, Liz.” Maria checked the bread. Anything to keep busy. “It was a long time ago.”

“Your mom, Maria.”

Maria shut the door hard, slamming it and making a loud noise that caused Alex to cry in fright. Maria quickly went to him, taking him in her arms she made soothing noises and held him close. “I do not talk about it! My mother is dead. There can be no going back from that, Liz. Dead.  So are Alex and Jesse. Why rehash ground that can’t be changed? What good does it do? It doesn’t bring back my mom, Alex or Jesse. It’s over now. Over.”

“Can we ever be friends again?”

Maria’s back stiffened. Friends. “I don’t know. We haven’t been friends for a long time. I forgave the fact that you left me behind. I forgave that because there was no reason to hold that against you forever.” Maria finally turned and looked at Liz. “I forgave a lot over the years, but it took the longest to forgive myself. I can’t go back, Liz. I can’t. I love my life. I love my husband and my children. That sick unhappy person who only felt pain is gone now. Dead. I can’t bring her back for you, so you can find forgiveness or whatever it is you need. Look into yourself. Forgive yourself and go on. What else is there left to do?”

“My mom died.” Liz sat down. Maria nodded. She knew that. Nancy Parker never recovered from being taken. Her heart was weak and broken. Nothing could ever change that either.

Maria sighed and sat down at the kitchen table across from Liz holding her son. “I don’t hate you. I really don’t know you. Not anymore. I heard about your mom. I read the announcement. She was a good person. Loving. Concerned. Your dad loved her a lot, and she helped to save my life. I owed her more than I could ever repay.”

“I broke her heart. Back then, all I could see was how she was determined to stop me from being with Max. That was all I could see. She was standing in the way.” Liz brushed hair away from her face. “It’s so crystal clear now. All the words, the arguments, and things I did and said. I'm ashamed of myself. She didn’t want much. She just wanted me to take growing up slowly, take time, take care, and find a future for myself. I took it as interference. I was wrong.”

“Yes. Yes, you were. So was I.” Maria moved her fingers along the wood of the table. “Do you think I could ever forgive myself for my mother? Knowing? Knowing that my lies and deceit were what led to her death? I lied to my mom, Liz. I placed Michael and the others above her, and even you. I held my silence when Alex died. I wasn’t an innocent. Perhaps the White Room, being tortured and experimented on was my punishment. I don’t know. But losing my mother, it all became crystal clear for me. I couldn’t go on being who I was. I couldn’t mindlessly take chances with others lives. So I left. And I went to save Laurie. I told the Whitmans the truth. It was the start of my own redemption.”

Liz brushed tears from her face. “How do I start, Maria? How?”

“Inside, Liz. Take the time. It won’t be easy or fast, but you can make it.” Maria stood up to check the food, again putting a calm Alex back in his chair. “You want me to be your friend?” Liz nodded. Yes. She needed that more than she needed to breathe. “Then find Liz Parker. My Liz Parker. My friend. My sister. Find her. And then we can start.”

~~~

“You okay?”

“Define okay, Spaceboy.”

Michael kissed her on the temple, loving the nickname she had for him for so many years. “You okay with Max and Liz moving close by?”

Maria shrugged. “Not really. Everything bad I’ve ever felt, practically revolved around them. I need to be okay with it though. I need to be.” Maria pushed herself up and rested her arms on his chest. “I love you. Loving you healed me. It made me want to live, to go on. I miss Liz. I miss Isabel. I miss Max. It’s hard. I can survive without them though. Isabel….I have to because there is no bringing her back. I can’t survive without you.”

“You don’t have to, you know that, right?”

“Of course.” Maria licked his salty skin.

“Let’s have another baby.”

“No.”

“Just one more.”

“Alex is only three months old. Give me a good year to get over the shock of having you knock me up.”

Michael laughed at that. His hand moved down her flat stomach. She was still lean and thin. “I love you pregnant.”

“It’s your ego seeing me fat.”

Michael lifted her face from his skin and looked in her eyes. “It’s more than that. I want a family, Maria. A large one. I want to hear their running feet, their laughter, and I want to know that they're healthy and alive, that parts of you and me survive. I was never really good at anything, but I’m good at this. I love being a father. I love being a husband. Here I can succeed.” He never had family. Not really. Family was like an addiction to him. He looked at his children, and he wanted more. A hell of a lot more. The thought of them one day growing old and moving away hurt.

Maria kissed him passionately. “You are good. A great father, and wonderful husband. The best. There was no question of you succeeding at this. We’ll talk in a year. Maybe negotiate.” Maria sat up and slid her hand down his flesh, loving the way his muscles moved under her touch. “What did Max say? Did you tell him about Isabel?”

Michael closed his eyes and nodded. His fault. He should’ve tried harder to get Isabel to come home with him. He should’ve…

“Stop it.” Michael looked at her. “Isabel’s heart was broken, but her choices were her own. We can’t save them all. Sometimes they have to save themselves.”

Michael kissed his wife. She was right. They had barely made it themselves. But they had. He didn’t know how he felt about Max and Liz being there, but he was actually happy to see Max. For most of his life, Max had been a brother. They had time. Lots of time.

2 years later…

“Maria!” Liz crashed through the door of the house.

“Hey Liz, what's that smile about?” Maria grabbed two cups and poured Liz a cup of coffee, and pushed a teabag in hers, starting the kettle. Liz waved a piece of paper at Maria in delight.

“Your test scores! Damn, let me see!” Laughing Maria grabbed the paper from Liz and sat down. Her eyebrow went up in surprise. “You crapped out in science? Liz? How can that be?”

Liz just shrugged. “Keep reading.”

Maria scanned the other columns. “Impressive. All your other skills are high. Real high. But Liz, science? I mean honestly, science was always your passion.”

Liz took the test scores and felt abnormally pleased. “Things change. Did you catch my other qualifying scores? I’m in the catbird seat, Maria! Totally!”

Laurie came into the kitchen with Jimmy holding her hand. “Baby, go play in the playroom.” Jimmy kissed Maria and hugged her and stopped to let Liz tickle him. “Is Alex in the playroom?”

“Worse.” Maria said. “He went to work with Michael. I give Michael another half an hour before he carts his butt back here. A two year old isn’t the greatest assistant.”

Laurie wedged her very pregnant body into a chair moaning in relief with the pressure off her feet. “I don’t know why I bother sitting down. I’m going to have to go pee in a few moments anyway.” Liz and Maria laughed and quickly commiserated with the poor Laurie who was already a week past her due date. “I swear Kyle is killing me with his anal retentive enthusiasm. He insisted that we have a mock labor run last night. The rat timed me with a stopwatch.”

Maria laughed and got up to get a glass from the cabinet. Filling it with milk, she sat it in front of Laurie who made a face of disgust. “I’m hating milk, too! This pregnancy is taking away all the things I used to love.” Laurie watched as Maria filled her cup with hot water and sat down again. Tea. Maria was drinking tea.

“So Liz got her test results back.”

Laurie was distracted. Looking at Liz, she raised an eyebrow. “Well? The suspense, Liz! I have an abused bladder here.”

“Good. The results were good. I can apply for the law program.” Liz had already caught up on college, three years in two. She doubled up on classes and went through the summer. She had one more year to go, but she took the Law School Admittance Test and her results were good. Now she needed to decide what programs she was going to apply for in the next few months.

“Did you narrow it down?” Maria asked. It didn’t bother her this time. When they were young, and in Roswell, it was hard to see Liz leaving without a look back. All her friends were gone, and she could feel the loneliness. But her life had changed. She had changed. She had her own life, her own family, and she had Michael. She would miss Liz when she went off to law school, but it wouldn’t be devastating.

“My first choice is here. I’d like to stay close to home.”

Laurie frowned. “Is that the best choice, Liz? We’ll be here in three years.”

Liz laughed and looked down at her coffee. “Perhaps not the best choice, but a good one. I…I didn’t choose it for you, I chose it for me.” Liz looked up at Laurie and smiled and then turned to stare into Maria’s eyes. “You’re the only family I have in the world, and once I might have thrown that away for my own dreams, and whatever that is, I’m not so willing to do that again. I need you. All of you.”

Maria’s eyes filled with tears and she quickly wiped them away. Reaching out a hand, she squeezed Liz’s hand. “Good.”

It had been a hard road for Liz, but she worked on cleaning up and finding herself again. It was harder than any of them had realized it would be. Over those five years of roaming, Liz had developed a drinking problem, one that with her slightly altered alien body, she had found almost impossible to kick. But Liz was Liz. In her was that young girl, Liz Parker, who once had a firm grasp of what was right and what was wrong, and an iron resolve to do what had to be done. Maria watched her, worried, but also very proud, as the woman slowly emerged from the girl she once knew.

Max and Liz were still apart. Their divorce held. Maria watched them around each other. They were careful and polite, but both held back in reserve, unwilling to break the peace between them. At times though, say during the summer at the lake with the boys helping the kids shoot off fireworks, and in the setting of the evening sun, Maria would catch the one glancing at the other, then quickly looking away before the other noticed.

Time. That was what they all had stolen and wasted in their past. In a rush to be grown up so fast and furiously, they bartered away their youth, taking on more than their young bodies and minds could handle. Things might have been different for Max and Liz if they had watched each other longingly from afar through high school, and then found each other in college when their emotions and minds had caught up to their bodies. Michael and Maria had it difficult, but easier in a way. The early pregnancy had made it impossible for them to remain children, fighting and squabbling over whose fault it was. It made them reorder their lives immediately. For their daughter, they would do anything.

“So are you going out with him or not?” Laurie asked.

Liz blushed. She didn’t know she still could do that, but then Max Evans always had that effect on her. She shrugged. Both women made sounds of disbelief in their throats.

“Okay, do you want to?” Maria asked softly, her eyes gentle.

“I slept with him last week.” Liz said.

“What!” Maria and Laurie both got interested. News. Big news. Maria bit on a finger nail. “So, spill! How was it?”

Laurie snorted. “Alien sex, give the girl a break, Maria. It was orgasmic. Screw the blushing, Parker, hit the high notes and don't forget the details.”

Liz covered her eyes, embarrassed. Peeking through her fingers, she joined the other two in laughter. Max. They had started sort of dating in the last six months. First it was just them being fifth wheels with the other two couples and ending up sitting together and talking. Talking about their new lives. Max had joined Kyle and Michael in their business. He learned Michael’s computer trick, and he was fast exceeding the limits. No one knew what the boys were doing at the shop every day, not really. But between restoring wrecks and fixing things, the trio was having a good time. Kyle and Michael were the senior partners, and technically Max was only a worker, but they all treated each other equally, so no one seemed to care about the logistics.

Their talks were about everything but their past and themselves, led them to getting coffee. Liz found Max waiting for her after her last class and they would hit a coffeehouse, arguing over the latest book they had read or movie they had seen. Politics. Hockey. Everything. They never touched, they looked. But the looks had changed. It wasn’t all lovey dovey gooey and dripping with sickening sugar. They were intense. Liz could feel Max’s glance penetrating her depths. He could see her. Really see her. Liz Parker. Not a romantic notion. Not an idea. The real her. Warts. Problems. Doubts. Dreams. They were walking real slow. With every step forward they took a pause back, afraid to break the deeper strands and connection between them.

“Liz?” Maria looked at her concerned. “Did you finally do it? Did you make the connection?”

Liz gulped hard and nodded. “He burnt his hand this morning on the coffee pot.” Liz turned her hand over. Both women could see a faint red mark on Liz’s hand. Maria laughed through tears, and suddenly Liz found herself being hugged by both Maria and Laurie.

All those years, Max and Liz had seen each other, had flashes, but they failed to follow that natural connection deeper and further. They had stood on the verge of what they could be, but never completed the journey. They never made love, the final physical connection that completed the bond between mates. Perhaps in the other timeline, the one with Future Max, when Liz and Max had made love after the Gomez concert, they reached that level of connection. They didn’t have the problems of Liz’s lies about Kyle, Tess, or even Alex’s death weighing them down. Changing the future did more than either of them could realize. It changed them, their bond and connection. When Max slept with Tess first, he broke something fragile between him and Liz. Something that Liz for years tried to ignore and discount as not there, but it was.

It was the cancer between them, growing and seething until it exploded. When they married, they both pretended that it was over, that they were okay with the past, but they were lying to themselves. Liz and Max held themselves apart from the other, afraid to really trust, so when they finally married and made love for the first time, the time that should have cemented their bond, it was too late. They were guarded and unwilling to open up all the way. Max had been afraid Liz would get flashes of him with Tess. Liz was unconsciously afraid of trusting her heart completely to a man who had abused it in the past.

Without the deeper bond which was so apparent in Michael and Maria, their relationship broke apart. They had no way to feel each other, to feel deeply what the other could not say. What little connection they had, slowly dissolved away as mistrust, guilt and blame tore it apart.

So time was the teacher. It was rewriting what was missed and lost long ago between Max and Liz. They were taking the first steps towards finding each other. This time it meant more. It was no longer something given under the guise of a romantic notion, soulmates. Instead, it was the hard work and care given to a real lasting love match.

Maria hugged Liz hard, and a tear slowly trickled down her cheek. It was as if the world that had been turned upside down for so long had finally started to come back to balance.

The women wiped their tears and talked about everything, mostly the guys and their children. When Maria refilled their cups and poured Laurie tea, finally Laurie realized what had bothered her before, but she had let it slip unaware.

“Maria, you’re drinking tea!”

Maria looked down at her cup and smiled as slight secret smile. “So observant, my Laurie! Yes, I do believe this is tea.”

“You’re pregnant!”

Liz perked up at that. “What? I don’t understand?”

Laurie looked at Maria suspiciously seeing the slight pull on the side of her mouth. “Maria switches to tea from coffee when she's pregnant because of the caffeine.” Laurie tipped her head and tried to get her pregnant bulk more comfortable. “Confess!”

Maria sighed. “Yes.” The Liz and Laurie went crazy both talking at once. Having babies would always be a big deal for a group that once feared their lives would be lived on the run, out of a broken down VW minivan. “But…” Maria held up her hand to stop their chattering. “You are not to say anything. Not a word. I haven’t told Michael.”

Laurie snorted in derision. Like Michael would care. Half his waking thoughts were on how to get Maria pregnant again. He had waited, suggested, and begged over the past two years to have another baby, and about three months ago, Maria said okay, that Alex was old enough to think of another baby. That was all that Michael needed, a green light. For the last three months he was a motivated babymaking machine, taking long lunch breaks, and literally getting Maria in a state of undress as often as possible. Laurie found them in the broom closet once.

“Maria, when did you know that you were pregnant?” Laurie asked with her eyes narrowing.

Maria shrugged sipping her tea, wishing it was coffee. “Immediately. It was the same with Alex. It was like looking through a glass that was slightly blurred and then suddenly it came into focus and clear. We felt Alex almost from the moment that the sperm hit the egg. This one is Mikey. Did I tell you that my insane husband has a list of ten names? Ten!” Maria snorted. “I am not pushing no ten kids out of my body! Nope. No way.” Maria’s hand moved over the table. “Maybe four or five.”

Her hand was moving over the table, pushing around grains of sugar that missed her tea. She and Michael were agreed on that one point. They wanted a huge family, the one thing neither of them ever had. What they didn’t agree on was how fast they should have them. Maria was aiming for two to three years in between, maybe four. Michael wanted to pop them out like an assembly line.

Laurie looked amused. “So how far along are we?”

Maria almost looked ashamed, but not really. “Oh, I don’t know. About four weeks.”

Liz laughed. “So why haven’t you told Michael?”

“Maybe because he's in mating mode? Sneak attacks, nookie lunches...huh, Maria?” Laurie was too wise to the way of alien-human mating rituals.

Maria laughed delightfully. “Oh, it's very sexy seeing him all predatorlike. Hate to ruin his fun! Or mine.”

Laurie hated to burst Maria’s bubble, but she was after all, family. Delusions break hard. “Maria, if you knew immediately, and last time Michael knew at the same time, don’t you think that he'd know this time, too?”

A frowned marred Maria’s face, and then suddenly it cleared. “That sneak! Ooooh!” Laurie and Liz couldn’t stop laughing. They were still at it when Michael suddenly came through the door, all windblown, his face taking on a look of irritation. What the hell was it about his home that made everyone want to hang out there every day, for hours? No frickin’ privacy! Amy was in school, and Alex and Jimmy had a half day playdate at another kid’s home. He had already dropped Alex, and assumed Kyle would be by to collect Jimmy. That left just him and Maria. Alone.

The three women looked at him at the same time, and Michael suddenly felt uneasy. Looking around him quickly, he tried to quell the feeling. Laurie cleared her throat and struggled to her feet with Liz’s help. “I better get home before Kyle shows up. Where there is one, there is another.”

“I’ll go with you.” Liz collected young Jimmy and snuck a look at Michael and then winked at Maria on her way out the door with Laurie.

Maria stood up, leaning back against the kitchen counter. Michael watched her carefully, and the intensity of her stare made him shift on his feet. He tipped his head to the side and casually scratched his eyebrow.

“Spaceboy, you’ve been very bad!”

Michael frowned, then he noticed her hand resting unconsciously on her stomach low. Smiling charmingly, he advanced on her. “Bad? Define bad? I thought I was being pretty good.”

Maria laughed when he pulled her close and folded her along his body and mauled her neck. God, he was already hard, his lower body pressing suggestively against hers. Making babies turned him on. Maria giggled. Actually, everything turned him on, but making babies really did it for him. Seven years. Almost seven years she had been married to this man, and he still never failed to surprise her. Never failed to delight her with his ability to love.

~~~

So finally, the aliens of Roswell were from up there. Yes. Up there. Canada. Their lives were nothing as they once imagined they would be. For some such as Michael, life was better than he could have ever dreamed. For Kyle, it was a walk into the unknown that delighted and excited him every step of the way. And for Max and Liz, those who once had the brightest of futures, the greatest of expectations, it was a journey into reality, the cost of living, and all the checks and balances that went with that.

Knowing what they did, as they were, it was hard to say that if they could go back in time, things would be the same, or if they would they make different choices. The answer was yes. They would. All of them. They would make different choices and try to save those lost. But their love and who they were would remain the same.

They had lost so many of them along the way. Jesse. Alex. Amy. Isabel. Nancy Parker. All of them gone. None of them forgotten. Their voices were still heard, their presence still felt. And there wasn’t a day that they weren’t mourned and missed. It was in the stillness of time, in that lull between midnight and waking, when a person drifted into twilight sleep, they could hear their voices, their laughter, and for a moment it was as if they were still there.

Those left behind in Roswell guarded the secret and the truth. They held those secrets better than the younger generation ever did. There was an alien in Roswell, Jim Valenti. He was guarded and supported by his friends of a lifetime. They had melded into a group, unbreakable by the secrets they kept, by the secret communication with their children, and by their love of each other. There were six again. The Whitmans, the Evans, Geoff Parker and Jim Valenti. There would always be six in some form.

So Roswell was the lesson, the regret, and later the dream. It became a mythical place for the newest generation. A land of mystery, untold and exciting. Roswell was the place they would never be able to visit, but perhaps one day their parents would find a way for them to safely meet their grandparents, and all those who loved them who had been left behind. Love was love. And through all the living, it was the regret and pain that taught the soul exactly how precious love and life was. The lessons were hard learned, and the message clear. Teach the young the difference. Take infinite care. Make the journey. History was the nightmare they all woke from, and in that moment of clarity they found themselves again.

Roswell had moved on to the next generation.