The Journey Home

Disclaimer: I don't own the rights to anything Roswell. I'm not making any money off this. This is just for fun.

AU with aliens.

Pairings that I may explore:

Michael/Isabel, Michael/Charlotte (original character) and hints of Michael/Maria. Max/Liz and Max/Tess. Isabel/Jesse. Friendly to all characters and pairings.

You might want to note that while romance will play a role in the narrative, it will often take a backseat to the action, to politics and/or sci/fi elements, and to general character development.

Premise

Michael emerges from his pod two years before the others and grows up separately in Las Cruces, NM. Max, Isabel and Tess all grow up together in Roswell, and the dynamic is similar to the dynamic between Max, Isabel and Michael on the original show. None of the Royal Four ever call attention to themselves, and so neither the FBI nor enemy aliens nor even Nasedo get involved in their lives. They may in the future, but they haven't yet. In addition, we haven't seen the message from Zan and Vilandra's mother, and so our hybrids don't know that they are "The Royal Four."

Liz does get shot in 1999, and Max heals her, but because Tess mind warps the entire restaurant into believing that nothing really happened, the sheriff and FBI etc. are not involved.

All of the above is backstory. In the present it is 2003, four years after Liz is shot. Michael finally gets a vision and ventures to Roswell to investigate his origins. At this point he is 22 and the other hybrids are 20. Michael's arrival is the catalyst for things getting weird.

Prologue

1987

Before he had a name, he was just a small creature climbing out of a sticky incubation pod, reaching his arms through the membrane, breathing in air for the first time. He didn't know who or what he was. He didn't know where he was or where he was going. But he did know that he needed to go out. As he scanned the cave where his pod was, he saw three other creatures in sticky pods of their own. Later he would realize that these were two girls and a boy like himself, who all looked a bit younger than he was. At the time, he went to each pod in turn and knocked on the outer face, hoping to wake up its inhabitant. But they all just slept on. Finally he turned away, and saw on the cave wall a handprint. Not knowing why, he stuck out his hand and rested his palm on the print. The wall opened up, revealing a starlit desert landscape. No moon that night, but he didn't know what the moon was yet. He climbed out of the cave and then gingerly down the rocks that led to the desert ground.

He was naked, but he had no concept of nakedness or clothes, of modesty or indecency.

A strange creature raced down a black strip of land. It had two bright lights on the front of it, and he instinctively shied away from those lights, hiding behind a rock. Later he would realize that it was a car. Later he would wonder how differently his life might have turned out if he had gone up to the road and been found right then and there. He might have grown up with the others. Perhaps he would even have been adopted by a nice family who saw him on the road, like two of the others were. But he did not trust the creature with the bright lights. And so he hid, from it and all other creatures. Not knowing what else to do, he walked, following the black strip of land that the cars sped down, but staying a good ways away so that he could hide whenever anyone passed by. When at last he got into a town, he scavenged for food, knowing hunger without knowing the word.

He walked for five days, until his feet were almost raw and he was sunburned everywhere. He finally collapsed from hunger and exhaustion, and was found by the side of the road by a rough-spoken but kind police officer who bundled the poor boy in a blanket and took him to an orphanage. There a woman tended to his body and when he woke up she tended to his soul. She was the first person who spoke to him, and she worried when he didn't speak. He seemed unable to. But after only a few days he was speaking in broken English. A few weeks later he was fluent. Still, he could tell them nothing of his background, not where his parents were or where he was from or even his name. When he spoke of the pod chamber, the adults smiled indulgingly but asked him to not make up stories. After a short time, he stopped talking about the pod chamber. And soon he seemed like an ordinary boy. More or less. He worked hard to be ordinary. He grew tired of the attention he got from adults and children alike, grew tired especially of the other children's teasing. Besides that, he had an instinct to blend in, to not call attention to himself, to survive by seeming to be like everybody else. And so he blended.

The nurse gave him a name. Michael, after the archangel because he seemed to have fallen from the sky. She hoped that he would be adopted, but for all his blending he still seemed odd. He was so determined to keep to himself, to not trust anyone else, even her, that he seemed cool and prickly when prospective parents came to see the children. They always picked someone else. So, it was a foster home for Michael, and a last name chosen at random. Guerin. Michael Guerin.

He wouldn't return to the place of his birth for many years. In fact, until he was a young adult he had no idea where it even was.