Title: Tragic Kingdom
Author: Andrea Sinisterra andrea_sinisterra@yahoo.com
Disclaimer: All Standard Disclaimers Apply
Rating: R/ Light NC-17
Category: Every one
Summary: We all know how Future Max tried to prevent the end of the world, and we all know about his mission. This is what I think happened before he returned to the past to change history.
Inspiration: After hundreds of doses of "The End of The World", I had to write something.
Have they lost their heads?
Or are they just all-blind mice
We've heard all their stories
One too many times
Hypnotized by fireflies
That glow in the dark
Midgets that disguise themselves
As tiny little dwarfs
The parade that's electrical
Serves no real purpose
Just takes up a lot of juice
Just to impress us.
"Tragic Kingdom"
-No Doubt
Heavy gray clouds hang from an even darker sky, the sun chased away so long ago. Death and blood are the only things constant in this planet now. Death... the word does nothing to unease or frighten me anymore, I'm used to it- WE'RE used to it. As I said: a constant.
We don't even know if everything that used to be in the sky is still there. So many years without seeing or even feeling the sun. If there still exists a sun... We can't see anything beyond the heavy roof of huge dreadful clouds.
The Earth has become a battlefield. Devastation is everywhere: ground, sky and sea. Everywhere. The ground is shaking, gaping, cracking, splitting up swallowing everything in its wake. The sea is no longer that beautiful azure I remember it having; wave after wave of blood-red water bathes the shores, sometimes carrying dead bodies.
Humans. Words are not enough to say how sorry I am, because of us your world is being destroyed, your lives are being taken away.
Everyday, people dies, the Earth dies. Everyday. Cities have been wiped out, ruins and death at their wake. And if before we thought how huge the desert was, you have no idea how it looks like now. With cities and towns destroyed, inhabitants gone, the desert is an ever-growing landscape, that swallows everything it comes across with . . . better said, the world is a huge, wide growing expanse of dead, inhabited territory.
The Earth dies a little everyday, the force of explosions breaking through the silence of the night. The chill of the day, the crude reality, and the darkness in our hearts, the outcome of our lost lives.
But if there's something still that keeps us going, that keeps us breathing and fighting, is hope. The only thing we keep that hasn't deserted us. But really we have nothing left in us, only the faint hope of someday finding peace, maybe not here, but somewhere up there.
Roswell was the first city to go down, because of us. Our homes, our parents, our everything -we were destroyed. We should have listened to Nasedo when he told us to evade the Skins. We should have listened.
The Skins have invaded.
Fleets of Skins landed twelve years ago. Better skins; perfect ones with powers and skills beyond imagination. Their cleverness and strategic tactics were those you can only accomplish with years of training and a long tracery of blood in your wake.
But we've learned. Through hardships and losses, we've learned. So many people we've loved and lost. People we used to live with, talk to, and care for. Are gone. The Whitman's were the first to go. They were never truly part of the team or were very involved with Alex's life and ours. They never had a clue.
It's unbelievable how you know how much you love someone after you loose them. We've lost so many. Michelle, Mrs. Deluca, Valenti, Kyle, Alex, Isabel, my parents, the Parkers...
It's our war, at least it was intended to. Not in a million years we would have guessed something like this was ever going to happen. We never thought that we would cause the extinction of the human race. Because we've certainly killed almost every human being in this part of the hemisphere.
And to think that it all happened because of her.
****
So many betrayals and treasons from people I was supposed to trust in. Lonnie. And Tess. They betrayed us in the worst possible way. Tess was never really part of the group. We felt that, she knew that. She was always 'the intruder'.
I guess it was only right. I loved her. I loved her like I love Isabel, like I love Michael. And I made it clear that that was the only kind of love she was ever going to get from me. She was supposed to know that.
She HAD to know that. I know it must have been painful for her, I mean, at the beginning, and I know it was painful for Liz, too.
Until one day, a few days after the first attack, she left. Just... left. It's been a long way since then. So many losses. When she left, we became more vulnerable. Our unit was broken, and our powers diminished considerably.
The first one of us that... died was my mother. When we told our parents, all the parents about the truth about us... they just seemed to struggle a lot to capture the reality of the situation. Not because they were having second thoughts about loving us, but because it just turned into a whole new world to them... to all of them.
Then it all became a flurry... my dad was so desolate when my mother died, that he just ceased living, I guess. Liz's parents are missing since the very beginning. And it was very painful to watch her every night look out the window as she cried silently for her lost home, a home she or any of us could ever return to.
When Michelle died, that was like a massacre in a way. Despite us telling her not to, Amy had taken little Michelle out to play because she thought it was safe enough... she never knew how wrong she was. The attack came early that day, and Amy and Michelle lost their lives in the fire. And when Valenti had tried to save them, he had gotten killed, too.
Kyle was never the same after that. But, anyway, who could have blamed him. He had lost his entire family in one day. In one fucking day. I guess it was no surprise when we found him missing one morning.
When we found out about Lonnie and how she had sold us out, we could hardly believe it. Isabel had been incredulous, that her worst fear had been indeed, confirmed. Vilandra was a traitor. We tried so hard to persuade her, to make her believe us that she was an essential part of the group.
I suppose it was sort of a closure issue for her when she killed Lonnie with her bare hands.
We had received a message from a tired and haggard Rath. He had been hurt, that much was evident from the perceptible whine in his usually gruff voice. Lonnie had made plans with Nicholas and Kivar. She had later disposed of Nicholas when he had served his purpose in getting in touch with Kivar. It was because of Lonnie that the Skins had invaded Earth.
When she had confirmed to Kivar our whereabouts, he had promptly sent someone to kill her. It was not she he wanted, but Isabel. But he didn't reached Lonnie before Isabel did.
Isabel was devastated after that. We all were, but in a twisted way I was relieve that Lonnie was dead.
****
When you exit the cave, and turn left, up a small ridge of dirt, behind some rocks, there is a small clearing with patches of grass and small white flowers.
And headstones.
Lots of headstones.
A pile of ashes accumulates under the filthy dirt with the passing of ages. Ages translated into years, months, and days. And I know that one day my headstone will be there, too.
Maria spends most of her time there. Just staring at the cold pieces of stone before her. She doesn't cry anymore... I think by now she's cried all the tears left in her. She had lost her mother and her baby.
Michael sometimes is there with her, but I know that it hurts him to see her like this. If it's killing me to see her, I can't imagine how Michael should feel. Sometimes late at night, Liz and I can hear Michael whispering soothing words to Maria, stroking her to sleep, and last night, we heard him sob quietly, muffling the sounds into Maria's hair.
And I realized then, that even though our bodies are still functioning, beating, breathing... we are dead. Our souls crave peace...
Liz and I had a son once... and I remember the beauty displayed in her face as she smiled, cradling our baby son in her arms. I remember how my hands trembled as I held him... He didn't live long enough for us to give him a name. Alien chemistry versus human chemistry is my guess-but who the fuck knows.
And now it was our time to mourn. The memory of his weight in my arms still haunts me, teases me. Liz had named him Alan Maxwell Evans-Parker. It had been horrible. Or worse. He had died in her arms and she had turned cold and pale. The horrible part was when I tried to take Alan from her arms. She had refused; I tried to convince her that it was not healthy, that she was hurting herself... I don't think she cared by then.
Liz died a little that night. Part of me died, too.
Another headstone.
After that, long silent and cold nights came and went. She didn't say a word to me or to anybody else. It was like she was absent from her body. And one night, when I returned from one reconnaissance mission with Michael, I found her lying on the floor in a pool of blood.
I know she hated me after I healed her. But she wouldn't let me remove the ugly scars from her wrists. I guess she wanted them to remember, so she wouldn't ever forget him. We grew apart after that. She wouldn't talk or look at me... everything was too painful and too recent to forget.
Until Isabel and Alex died.
The four of us left, Michael, Maria, Liz, and I cried together in each other's arms.
Isabel had gone out, for unknown reasons, and Alex had gone after her. I suppose I can't tell you how it happened because I wasn't there. We waited for them for two days, two days of worry and anguish... until Michael and I decided that we had waited long enough.
But we returned empty handed. We looked and looked but they were nowhere. Like they disappeared from the face of Earth. We really don't know if they are dead.
It's better, healthier for us to assume they're dead than live with the doubt and the worry that they're out there lost and in danger. We assume a lot, we're pros by now. The Parkers, Kyle, Serena and now Isabel and Alex.
They never returned.
Nobody ever does, I don't know why I even bother.
****
Michael snuggled Maria closer to him, "shh, get some sleep."
"I can't."
"Maria, we need to move on... We HAVE to move on."
She was so cold, he could tell from the paleness of her skin and the ice-cold chill of her arms and feet.
"Do you love me?" She asked quietly into his neck.
His body stilled perceptibly, "how can you ask me that?"
"Don't ever stop loving me, Michael. I beg you. I'll move on if you promise me not to leave me, if you promise me not to stop loving me."
Michael lifted her chin gently, her green eyes huge and deep, filled with tears, "I promise." He whispered as he bent down and closed the distance between their lips.
****
We're so tired and weak. We've grown apart as a group. Liz and Maria are not speaking to each other anymore. They're too immerse in their pain to acknowledge the world around them. They've both lost so much when they didn't have to.
Liz and I made love last night. It seems like a long time since the last time we were together. We were desperate, our motions frantic in our quest to remove the other's clothes off. Our words needy and our bodies quivering, trembling with anticipation.
Our first joining was painful. As I entered her, slowly, trying not to hurt her, images and memories flashed behind our closed eyelids. Flashbacks of our lives in Roswell when we were young and innocent. Almost fourteen years ago.
And it was then, as we opened our eyes and looked at each other, we realized how we had neglected the other, and backed off each other. The reality of how apart we've grown from the other in the last few months, maybe years, struck us cold. And as she came, my sobbed name blurting from her lips echoed off the walls and into the night.
I held her shaking frame for endless hours. Her body unconsciously snuggling against mine, her face buried in my neck, her legs straddling my hips as she rested on me, until she fell asleep.
I felt how a heavy burden was removed from my shoulders. I recall the peaceful rush of feelings flowing inside me as I held my wife in my arms. But I knew I had to brace myself for what was to come in the morning.
****
"We have to talk."
"About what?" Liz asked as she eyed Max with curiosity.
"About Serena." Max motioned Liz to sit beside him on the bed, "you remember not too long ago when she mentioned something about adjusting the Granilith to transform it into a time traveling machine?"
"Yes. But that's not possible. I mean, come on Max."
"Well, I found her notes yesterday, and I think it's possible. She based her facts on the translation Alex made from that book, and I think it's possible to travel in time, she was going to test it but-" Max stopped himself, watching her shoulders stiffen in response.
"But she got killed." Liz smiled faintly, "I know."
"You know? Why- why didn't you say something?"
"All you need is the crystal, Max." Then she looked down.
A strained silence stretched between them.
"Come with me!" He blurted out.
Liz smiled, "I can't." She reached her hand to touch his face, "only one person can be transferred at a time."
"I can't do it." He said, holding her face between his palms, "I can't leave you."
"But you have to. If you don't, we'll die. But if you go, you'll have a chance to change everything for the better. You have to go, Max. You know you have to."
****
It's getting worse lately. The earth trembles with more frequency, the skies seem darker and the clouds thicker. How can it all end like this? How could we have let this happen?
Is it time to say goodbye? How can I leave her behind?
But it's a decision we've all made. Michael had insisted on coming after me, but he has to stay and take care of the girls. I know he wanted to stay, he was just being supportive, I guess.
I never thought saying goodbye to this god awful world was going to be difficult. But I realize now that no matter how hard life's been on us, it's been my life, my existence. And I will cherish these moments, these memories till the day I die.
My wife, my son, my brother, and Maria, my sister. I will always remember Isabel, my sister; my parents, who were always supportive, no matter the circumstances; Kyle, who always had a sarcasm and who was always passionate in his living; Alex and his endless jokes; Valenti, who did his best to protect everyone he knew.
I can't believe it's all come down to this. I guess this is the end of the world to me. Leaving everyone I know behind. I always thought I would die in Liz's arms, imagined that the last thing I would see, would be her enchanting face, that the last thing I would feel, would be her tears on my skin, her lips on my face. I guess I was wrong.
****
"I'm pregnant."
"Are you sure?"
Her eyes filled with tears, "I want to make it work this time, Michael."
"Are you sure this is the right decision?"
"No, I'm not. But I don't want to give it up."
"I'll take care of you and the baby, I promise."
"I know you will."
"I love you, Maria."
****
It's getting worse. The Skins have found the cave. How they did it, we don't know.
I'm getting prepared for my parting, and I can feel Liz standing silently behind me, watching.
Michael and Maria are outside the Granilith chamber, guarding until I depart. We didn't get to say goodbye appropriately. I never thought it would be this soon; we weren't prepared for the Skins to find our hiding place.
The cave rumbles with the pounding shaking of the walls outside the cave. The Skins are here. Another explosion, and Liz and I are stumbling to the floor with its force.
****
"Maria, get back!" Michael barked, shoving Maria behind him.
The skin before him raised its hand to attack, and Michael raised his own as well. Their powers collided, but Michael's energy shoved the skin's one back, burning it and turning it into a pile of ashes.
And it went that way for a while, as Michael blasted everyone that dared near him and Maria. Until a small squeak brought him to a cold stance. As he turned around the sight the greeted him brought him to his knees.
Maria was lying on the floor, eyes closed.
Fury rose inside of him, raging power flowed through his veins as he killed everyone in the cave and then sealed the entrance. He ran to her. Cradling her body in his lap, he slowly rocked her back and forth.
"Baby." He whispered, tears stumbling one after the other on his cheek.
"Love."
"Shh." Michael moaned loudly as he felt the sticky wetness in his hands holding her. It flowed out of her freely.
"Thank you for keeping your promise."
His hands rose up to touch her rapidly paling face, "I love you."
"I love you, too."
The shield blocking the entrance of the cave was blown off. And as he saw several skins enter, he just closed his eyes in resignation, pulling Maria's cold body closer to his.
****
When I heard the explosion, a cold nervousness invaded my chest. I told Liz to stay, as I rushed outside the Granilith chamber to help Michael and Maria.
I wish I hadn't. I was too late. I could feel my body growing cold when I saw the skins looming close to the prone forms of Michael and Maria's bodies lying together in the dirt floor.
And I watched as if from another person's eyes as my body raised its arms and the room was bathed in a brilliant light, too bright to look at. Ashes were all that was left. And I didn't even feel guilty from the killing.
I rushed to their side, the hope that they were still alive making my limbs tremble with excitement. But I guess to hope in this world is useless. I carried their bodies up to the patch of green outside the cave, and buried them together, adding another headstone to the two of them. I hugged Liz as she cried. She told me Maria had told her that Michael had connected with the baby, and that it was a girl.
Maria had wanted to name her Amy Marieh. So I placed Amy Marieh Guerin-Deluca's headstone beside the ones of her parents.
****
"I won't leave you."
"No, no, no. Max, you have to."
"If I'm successful, if I can do this, you and I won't exist. Not as we do now."
"Max, if you don't do this, we're going to die. Everyone will. Max, you have to do this. You have to try it."
"I'll never see you again." He reached out to touch her face tenderly, "thank you."
"For what?" She asked, encasing his hand with her own.
"For every kiss, every smile."
"Max, I don't have any regrets."
"I can't leave you alone, Liz." He said, hugging her close, "who will protect you?"
"You will. I will always be with you, Max. Always."
Their lips met in a fierce kiss, longingly, desperately.
****
As our lips parted, dread overcame me. I was leaving her behind. I always knew I had to, but never realized what and how it would really feel to leave her. Her hands on my chest, she slowly pushed me back from her.
I know she saw the hurt in my eyes, because I saw the hurt in hers. This was it. After everything we had gone through, this was how it was going to end. I never imagined it would be like this. Never.
But it was real, I knew with certainty as she handed me the crystal. I inserted it into the Granilith's base, and saw with dread as it swallowed the crystal.
Guess I am leaving after all.
And with a flash of light, I felt my body disintegrating and reappearing inside the Granilith. Even through the glass, I could see her wet cheeks, her bottom lip trembling as she tried not to cry.
The purple mist around me swirled faster with my every heartbeat, until my consciousness became fussy and the last thing I saw was Liz curled into a tight ball in one corner of the room.
When I could finally open my eyes again, all I saw was darkness. Then the images rearranged before me, and I was suddenly outside her window. A window I haven't seen in over a decade.
And as I bent down to peek inside the room, I saw her, the younger version of her, intact from memories of death and blood. And I knew with a certainty that left me cold and blind for a second, that my Liz and I would never be together in this life again.
And as I stood before this younger version of my wife, I knew that life was not worth living anymore. Might as well finish what I came here to do. The knowledge of what it felt like to be married to the intricate and passionate woman I called my wife pushing me forward, for I knew that after I finish with my assignment, I will return to her, and my family. I know she will be waiting for me with her arms outstretched, standing in the middle on that patch of grass, Michelle, Amy Marieh and Alan Maxwell running around wild and happy. The sun streaming down onto the faces of everyone: Valenti, Amy, my parents, the Parkers, the Whitman's, Kyle, Isabel, Alex, Michael, Maria and even Tess.
They will all welcome me. I can't wait to join them. I can't wait till the end of my world. I just hope it ends soon.
The End