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There’s a raw pain rising in his soul. He can feel the bile biting at the back of his throat, the sting of tears in his eyes, the deaf pain that levered him to a ground he doesn’t belong to. The urge of kicking whatever comes his way is too tempting.He isn't sure he can resist.Tools begin swirling around him, tracing patterns. He’s lost in his power, gone in his strife. He can only lose – lose control to his gift, lose Isobel to the unknown sickness.Lose Alex to his own fears.His cry echoes in the dunes.
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I open my eyes to a thread of light burning through half open blinders. Images from yesterday haunt me.He looking at me with those big brown eyes, as lost as I have been feeling without him all these years. Words laced up in pain and need and love. A heart – mine – hoping against hope.The kiss.I don’t want to be awake, for morning means he will be long gone. I turn to my right and feel the mattress shift. I am not alone in the bunk.The smile spreads fast and a fleeting happiness kicks in.“You stayed.”
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Dear Noah.
No.
Dearest Noah.
Ugh. Definitely not happening.
Noah.
Too forward.How can you possibly begin a letter like this one to the love of your life? How can you convey everything you feel without sounding too sappy or too cold? How can you tell him that, despite not being your person, for you he is the most important thing in any world? Damn it. There is no way to put words to this farewell.
I am dying.
Cool, Isobel. That way you are not going to worry him, not at all.
I’ll come back. Please wait for me.
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She is fighting her own tears back with all the strength she can summon, which is not much given the circumstances.She wishes she wasn’t alone, but she has shooed everyone out of the bar. She has to do this on her own, ride out the rage and rise again like a phoenix.This surely is the most difficult fight she’s ever faced.Guerin enters, speaks and doesn’t take rejection well. She shares the whiskey, silent and jaded.The tears win the fight, and a hand guides her towards a welcoming chest.She cries.Like that, a bond is formed.
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He misses the old days – everything he’s lost in the process of facing his own demons. There is a single tear down his cheek as he mourns what he’s lost in this process of being human.It all zeroes in on Michael.They are both kept apart by everything Michael has had to give up – college, success, life – when he agreed to be an accomplice in crimes he never even thought of committing. He asked Michael to become someone he was never meant to be. He doesn’t know how to fix it. He doesn’t know if he really wants to.
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First he was angry without a reason, fuming with incessant thoughts of what could have been and wasn’t. Not necessarily about Liz – about his life, Isobel’s, Michael’s.Then there was fear.He didn’t know where it came from or where it might lead, he just knew the distress was overruling his will and taking control over his brain and his soul.He tried calling Isobel, but their shared connection seemed closed off. He even dialed Michael, to no avail. He stumbled out of the house and he collapsed on his knees.All Roswell went as dark as he felt inside.
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The moment Michael is taken far away, they can’t reach him anymore. They prob at their functionless connection, and it rends them restless for weeks on end, crying in their beds.Because Michael is no longer there.They promise in their heads to search for him, for Michael is their protector, they remember. They decide to learn the language as a means to an end, but the moment they utter their first word the memories from before the pods vanish and they’re left with emptiness. So they plunge into the search of their brother.Whatever it takes, whatever the cost.
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It had become a normal state for her – always fuming, relentless in her quest to finding solace in numbers and science – but she was always looking for a way to rend her heart numb. So far, she had been unsuccessful.Realizing she had to forgive Rosa in order to forgive herself for having let her sister down, but learning that it hadn’t been her sister’s fault but Isobel’s, hadn’t helped any except for the anger shifting aims. She now had to learn to forgive Isobel – and Max for the same reason – if she wanted to live and not just survive.
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The words blinked at him, mocking and unbelievably precise.
Terrorist. Level: Red.
He wanted to turn around and slap his father even harder than he had before, outside the bunker with his crutch. He didn’t want to believe the words that were cutting their way into the deepest of his soul.The truth of them was so poignant – for Alex had always known there was something different in Guerin. Now he knew.How he wished he didn’t, but at the same time he felt relieved.No more secrets, he promised himself before turning to his father for another intense chat.
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The necklace both startles him and nauseates him at the same time. He recognizes it for what it means – a shared moment of intimacy he shouldn’t have been allowed to witness. It makes him want to flee, his instincts kicking in forcefully. He needs an out, and Michael keeps giving it. Two steps into his escape his heart takes over and he stops, resolving to face Michael once and for all. The words escape his mouth before he can control himself. What he doesn’t say lingers in the air – he knows Michael listens all the same.
I still love you.
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The words cut right through him as he looks up from the necklace, trying to school his features so Alex don’t notice, but he knows he’s failed miserably when Alex stops talking and coldly turns around – away – leaving him behind.Somehow, he’s managed to mess them up worse than ever before.He can’t bring himself to speak up, to tell Alex how he feels, why he thinks they deserve pyrotechnics for an ending – don’t all the great love stories end with a bang? – because Alex is once again walking away.And then Alex halts, and Michael’s world begins spinning again.
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He was dragged by some mysterious force to those bright oval white things and when he reached the spot he could see the reason why he had felt trapped in a magnetic pulse. Isobel was locked in one of the pods.It had always been like a dance between them, attracted to one another – as if they were connected by something bigger than themselves. Something almost unearthly.Although he really didn’t understand what was going on, he felt at peace for the first time in six weeks. Somehow, he knew Isobel was safe. And it calmed his own particular chaos.
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As the sun settles in the horizon, she sighs and takes a sip of her almost empty beer. She’s sitting on a chair at the back of Max’s house, but he isn’t home today. He’s scarcely been around since Isobel went into rehab, anyway.She doesn’t know what she’s doing here, other than getting slowly drunk on beer and despair – what she wants out of this quest she’s been signed up for. She doesn’t really care anymore.Jesse Manes enlisted her for a battle she wasn’t expecting, but that doesn’t mean she can’t bite him back and win this war.
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Kyle Valenti had never been one to back out of a challenge. When he was younger, he would dive right into the worst fights, blind, guns ablazing, just to prove he was strong. As he grew older he became less relentless and more mature. Ish. But that doesn’t mean he’s lost his taste for a good fight with eyes closed and one too many enemies to beat down.He still picks his battles before plunging into them – rooting for Alex in his search for justice and truth. He hasn’t signed up for a war, though.Oh, how he loves it.
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I still don’t know where we all come from – if we were headed towards the next galaxy, just got stranded on Earth – if this was our finish line, we were meant to take over humanity – because seriously humans can be so weak that any other superior race might have found it easy to overrule them – but if we aren’t meant to be like them I still don’t understand why I feel so much for him– I’m not even sure I’m not half human as well – honestly I’ve had too much acetone tonight – but it’s never enough, never enough, never enough
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I’ve followed him through town, though he all but races towards darkness once we reach the base. I catch a glimpse of a locked door at my left.I break into the hidden lair on the outskirts, computers running by the back of the hall, a few tables scattered throughout the space, Alex typing. The air is charged as I approach him. I frown at my own face onscreen and freeze.Please don’t believe it, I project. “I don’t,” he replies quietly. Our connection isn’t lost to fears and nonsense.This unthinkable place already feels like home because of him.
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The moment realization dawns on him, he can’t stop confusion from building up in his gut.He’s never considered how it must have seemed, from Michael’s side, to watch him walk away – from the toolshed, to the Air Force, from coming out, at the drive-in.He’s out of breath and terrified. He tries to brace himself for the fall when Michael actually acts on his plan to leave Earth.To leave him.The blow is too hard, too fast. He heaves before making up his mind. He’s come in geared for war, and that’s exactly what he’s going to do.
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Big brown puppy eyes stare up at him with so much hope it is almost unbearable. Alex huffs as the beagle squirms her way to his lap and licks a messy trail from his wrist up his arm. He’s already in love, Mimi’s words clear in his head – the idea of family engraved in his soul, albeit not white picket-fenced and regular marriage. Later, the beagle leads him towards his past, sitting in front of a fire pit, beer in hand.He bites the bullet and strolls up to Michael. They have a long overdue conversation worth not walking away.
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“Thought you could use some coffee,” Jenna says in a low voice, placing a travel cup in front of him, near the stack of papers he’s been frantically reading over and over.“Thanks,” Kyle mutters. He’s afraid that, upon looking up, she might uncover all the secrets his soul bears – the lies his father fed all of them, the craziness in his research, the growing appreciation of her blonde locks.But she nudges him slightly amused, and he has to gaze at her. In her eyes, bright and clear as a night sky, he sees a flicker matching his own.
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Alex wakes up drenched in cold sweat and drowning in fear. He doesn’t recognize his surroundings – it throws him off balance, the ghosts leaving him breathless.Reality hits him like a freight train when he feels the weight of an arm around his waist. Light through half-closed blinders, an array of clothes trailing a path up to the bunk, crutch long forgotten on the floor. He remembers every second he’s spent here, memories of other sands – other wars – fading with the pain.Michael hums in his sleep and Alex settles back into his embrace, seeking shelter, and falls back asleep.
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They are racing towards the rear of the room, escaping the zooming bullets and the cries deafening them, surging forward. Blinded, Michael reaches for the door, but it’s locked and his powers are diminished by a greater enemy. Alex pushes at it forcefully, but the knob doesn’t move; Kyle tries stomping on the lock to no avail. Liz and Isobel are crying quietly as they slide against the wall to the floor. Max and Jenna cover for them, firing guns and fighting back.An unconceivable foe hunting them, picking them one by one, a complete stranger taking over Maria’s body.
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You never meant for those words to slip out, you will never be just friends with Michael. When your own greed for information backfires on you, when the pain becomes too much to bear, you flee. Walking away comes naturally to you. You have been practicing the strides straight away from him from the very same moment that hammer destroyed your future.It hurts to be on the receiving end of what you have been giving for a decade, to be the one left behind – knowing you have the missing piece that might burn the last bridge between you two.
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Days roll into weeks that roll into months, the connection between them flimsier, fright building up in his mind.The chaos begins its reign when he’s sent to an acetone-induced hell in Albuquerque, only grows into spiraling dread as he’s tossed around to learn his way through tequila in Santa Fe. He has learnt all about monsters upon his return to Roswell. He is also back to his siblings.The chaos quiets some when he finally recognizes his name in their minds, although there’s still anger seeping in his bones. He might never get rid of the brokenness in him.
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That first time, the appeal overcomes him, cutting through until he spots a mind he can jump to, and the monster inside is appeased some.It’s just appropriate that it’s Isobel’s – easier to wander around, tickle here and there. He isn’t complaining that another alien has such a feeble mind, because when everything gets out of control it isn’t his hand bursting Rosa’s life out of her body.After that, he resists jumping into Isobel’s psyche until the menace becomes unbearable and he has to do something. He has to act.And so, his predatory mode comes full on back.
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She can feel the greed with which Alex searches for Michael’s aura, his eyes are following him around, wherever they are, be it the Wild Pony, the junkyard, or even the Crashdown. She senses the way they orbit around each other, as if it is physically impossible for them to be kept apart when they share the same air. It strikes her that she hasn’t noticed until now, but she’s been selfish enough the past decade, it doesn’t surprise her at all.Maybe it’s time for her to put to good use her talent and play matchmaker for her brother.
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There was guilt in him whenever he set up an excuse to not come back home from college – shortening his visit over Christmas, deflecting his mother’s efforts to make him talk to his father those Thanksgivings he’d had to endure. His father had always been foolish, all that alien stuff and the extravagant drawings with funny pictograms in them. He didn’t want to waste his time with out of this world craziness.He would kill to hear his father mutter magoo once again in his insanity.He gets astray believing he deserves his self-imposed wrath, in the wake of death.
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She doesn’t trust Max anymore – not by far, she really hasn’t ever since she’s found out he keeps more secrets than truths, and after falling apart with Charlie she’s fed up with lies. Still, there is something pulling her to him, something magnetic. At first she thought it could be infatuation – but neither of her previous crushes has lasted so long. She knows now. How she wishes she didn’t.Wherever she looks, there is always Liz Ortecho attached at his hip, and she can’t breathe.She had never believed love could break a heart. How she wishes she would have.
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The glowing glass seems to be glaring at him from its spot on the table. He placed it in his line of vision to keep it as a reminder of what he might lose. He knows he has to give it back to its rightful owner, but he isn’t sure he could survive on Earth being the one left behind. And that’s what will happen if he hands back the glass. After over a decade of back and forths, he isn’t ready to give up on the hope that someday he will be home to someone outside of his dreams.
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He felt his resolve fade as he threaded his fingers through his curly hair. He needed a chance to be happy – the opportunity to find home and a family who loved him and a future that wasn’t split between his fights at the Wild Pony and the nights in the drunk tank.Growing up he had been the one nobody ever cared about. Now it was his time to search for the origins he’d always yearned for. Alex had walked away once again. There was nothing left for him on Earth. With a desperate sigh, he plunged back into work.
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Chaos mutes when he picks a guitar, thoughts needing music to line up into something neat. He’s tried other instruments, but his fingers are only steady while composing melodies – until the tune fades out, screams and fears taking over, insides twist into knots.When he locks gazes with Alex Manes as he files for a kiss in the toolshed, the chaos quiets without music. He scares away in an attempt to understand, but as he looks away the turmoil loudens, anxiety rising in bubbles. It takes him a while to realize Alex is the only song he wants to sing.
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She doesn’t know where she stands right now – the beacon her husband had become has suddenly lit out and she is lost in a sea of madness and uncertainty – stripped off her beliefs, heart ripped out of her chest.The deceit leaves a permanent mark in her newly hardened heart.She would have trusted Noah with her life but she has only met farce, an attempt to control every aspect of her life. It is high time she reigns back in her existence, but she is so lost without him – she feels she’s being held hostage in this Stockholm syndrome.
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They share a milkshake and fries one evening after everything is said and done – the pod squad safe from government conspiracies, the fourth alien caged in a bunker surrounded by yellow pollen, Charlie free of her demons.They enjoy the silence, only broken by a nervous huff of laughter here and there when any of them reaches out to dip a dry in the shake and accidentally brushing the other’s skin.They tiptoe around each other and fall in deeper, until they forget about the world outside. And then a hand holding a hand, lips searching for lips. A kiss.
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The heat is rising from his hand up to his head, lighting a thread of destruction and overwhelm through his arm. He ignores the burning pain, the nausea, the fear – he needs to stay focused.Red blazes against stains of blood on a green dress. He cannot falter, he cannot fail. He cannot step aside and turn away, this time. For he feels deep inside that, if he lets her go this way, he will never forgive himself.He has yet too many things to apologize for. Letting Liz Ortecho die without a fight will not be on his list.
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She knew whatever was developing between them was just another game to the blonde. She knew it, and yet she allowed herself to grow hopeful.She relished in every touch, longed for every word that left Isobel’s lips – she lived for every look from those impossibly clear eyes. She had desired to be better, to become the person everyone had ever wanted her to be.She knew she shouldn’t have trusted Isobel. With the knowledge that Jasmine and Katie were dead because of her own foolishness, she knew.Darkness and silence took over. She never had to know anything anymore.
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He wakes up to darkness, loneliness and coldness around him as he tries to catch his breath, take in his surroundings. Disoriented, head pounding as if a whole herd of horses were running in stampede, he tries to decipher the obscure lines of the walls in front of him.There is an aseptic odor floating in the hall. Hands and feet tied up in knots that cut through his skin. He shivers, fear creeping up his spine. The echo of cries of pain has long faded, but the sound reverberates in his mind.He won’t give up without a fight.
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He can’t breathe. His whole life is playing in his mind – his mother leaving him behind, his father’s fists, bullies at school. Big bright eyes. Wild curls through his fingertips. Warm body underneath his shivering frame.He thought he could be whole once upon a time. He wishes he hadn’t been such a foolish child.He feels his father’s hand on his nape, hot and threatening, and he falters, pen jerking in his shaking fingers. This is the only chance to keep Michael safe – if only for a while, until he flees to college and away from Roswell.He signs.
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She tries to convey all she feels in that touch – manipulating matter so her hand can trespass the window and finally hold her son’s, like she’s wanted for over seventy years.She lets her memories seep through, emboldened by the knowledge that all they have is this precious moment. She shows this beautiful man her baby’s grown up to be how she’s loved him – how she’s wished he was loved and safe.With a last glance back to the man standing behind her son, she recoils.He’s safe with that man who irradiates love whenever he looks at her baby.
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He rides in the back of Alex’s Humvee, a storm building up in a sky he’s looked up searching for answers, when they were so close he could have touched them with his fingertips.He’s holding back tears – but he’s not good at faking self-control. Manes and Valenti are the reason his mother was experimented upon for decades, but he’s the cause of her ultimate downfall – the trigger of the genocide.The first time he takes a life instead of covering up for murder, and it’s his own family’s – it has to be his whole race.Guilt doesn’t wash away.
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He doesn’t want to die. He hung on a thread of hope in his pod – not in stasis, not fully alive either. When he’s finally laid everything in the open – when he’s managed to push Isobel away, when he’s got Max all worked up ready to kill – the only thing he wants to do is fight back. Live.He doesn’t want to confront Michael in his thirst for answers.He can’t tell them the truth of their upbringing – how he was a lowlife, how they were royalty. In the end a bullet decides if he gets to live or die.
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Back in his apartment, Kyle allows himself to grieve. There are angry tears and the feeling that he has lost something he will never be able to retrieve. He won’t find solace in wreckage.He doesn’t recognize himself in the mirror, the blood coursing through his veins pumping a different beat.He’s capable of great things and despicable things. He’s trained to cherish life, yet he cannot mourn the losses of the day. It scares him that he cannot relate to the pain Michael was undergoing after what they witnessed in Caulfield.Maybe he is his father’s son, after all.
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She’s used to heartbreak. She’s always been cool about it, because they all were just pastimes.Max Evans doesn’t fit into any of the categories of lovers she’s had before. Not because he’s tall and handsome and a true cowboy to heart, but because he is tender, caring. It’s difficult not to fall for someone who shows love within each touch.She wasn’t planning on falling for Max Evans, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt finding out he doesn’t love her back. So when the chance comes up to follow Charlie to Ohio, she takes it with earnest hands.
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The day after the accident, Roswell wakes up in a frenzy. Everyone has an opinion on what happened, on who’s to blame – and evidently they all point to Rosa with accusing fingers. It doesn’t matter that nobody really knows what happened that night in the desert. It will never matter to anyone but to Rosa’s family, who will fight to remain sane in an ocean of hatred and bigotry.It will never matter to anyone but to the three teenagers who had to make a life changing decision in a split second, damaging Rosa and themselves in one painful movement.
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The fog clouding his mind is relentless. He knows he shouldn’t surrender, but the warmth spreading through calls to him like nothing on Earth ever has.There’s a soothing voice softly speaking in his ear, sweet niceties that grow louder the longer he researches for Project Shepherd. The voices go from telling him how good he’s doing to shouting at him that his youngest son is a deviation that should be corrected.When he enters that toolshed and allows the voices to talk him into picking that hammer, he gives in completely. There’s no coming back from becoming a monster.
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He’s lived a long life outside the pod. He’s learned human laws, he’s abided by them. He’s found the crack to keep a double existence – the perfect husband and citizen against the thirst and pull of human blood. He’s been on his own with his secret for so long, he doesn’t remember how to act around others knowing who he is. What they all are. All of his decisions – good, bad, disastrous – have led him to losing the upper hand. Tied up to a chair, darkness surrounding him, there’s no light at the end of the tunnel. Until there is.
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He flexes his hand, making sure every bone and every tendon fall into place, but he can’t shake the phantom feeling haunting him – ever present when he stares at his fingers, piercing whenever he looks away.He never does.As though the scars remain hidden beneath the surface, in a melee of knots and buttons pulsing through his veins. They call a name that’s reminiscent of pain and suffering – of love and passion. A bond so strong it can survive time and space – a feeling so deep that cuts shreds right off his soul.He doesn’t want to listen anymore.
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The thrill of the unknown courses through her with a force that should knock her back, but it’s only pushing her off her limits. Losing Noah – realizing she’s trusted a complete stranger – has yet to sink in, and she’s taking advantage of her current predicament as the newest Roswell’s crying widow.Only, she isn’t crying.She just wants to become more powerful. So no one else can enter her mind and control her – make her do wrong by the people she loves.She focuses, stance completely still, willing the reminder of her fake happiness to break into millions of pieces.
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The spiral of craziness is swirling inside of him, making him dizzy with fear and sick with vertigo. He believes he’s seeing clues where there only are shadows – the hint of a sinister military man following him around wherever he goes might flag in red about his sanity.His mind is not the best place right now for him to wander around without surveillance. He knows he’s quickly losing his fucking shit, and there is nothing he can do – he’s entering a wild realm armed with nothing but a fragmented reflection of what once was a happy memory of family.
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She’s desperately trying to bring him back with nails and fear – no success. Rosa is back, behind her, wide eyed at the scene unfolding. Max – Max is no longer.She claws her way from his chest to his face, leaving a trail of white along his neck. She collapses on top of him, sobs piercing her.She never got to say I love you. Not in the ways that count, anyway. Now she’ll never have the chance.She wishes for Max to stare back at her, face grim, eyes tired, but alive.Some dreams just aren’t made to come true.
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A blanket. A gasp. A wheezing sound. Black becoming sharp bright white. Eyes wide and unfocused. A cold so dire it sweeps into her bones and makes her shiver. Her knees give in as she tries to stand up, out of the warmth that has been guarding her. There are burnt bruises in her cleavage.She stumbles before regaining some balance, taking in her surroundings. She’s alive again – she didn’t know she was dead until she’s been able to breathe again. Her glance stops on a body sprawled on the floor.Max Evans, face pale, pulse inexistent.Gone.She cries.
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The sun blinds him on its way up to its peak. He doesn’t really notice time passing by, for as much as he's checking his watch constantly he isn’t paying that much attention to anything but the beating of his own heart fighting a way out of his ribcage. But the hours pass, and Michael doesn’t show up as he promised before heading out in the middle of the worst storm they've all seen. He starts getting antsy, his prosthetic killing him, insecurities heavy on his soul. But he remains still, never faltering. He awaits, languishing. Idling. Until the sunset.