Title: Three Wishes

Author: Dark Roswellian Angel

Elizabeth McDowell

Disclaimer: Still don't. Still hopeful. Still looking for my own Alec.

Copying/Downloading/Posting: Please let me know first, and let me know where my work will be posted as I would love to come visit it. Make sure that it is put under my name, as I would love to hear how others feel about it. Thanks ;)

Rating: K+, just in case

Synopsis: If wishes could come true, these would make all the difference.

A/N: I was watching "The Berrisford Agenda" the other day and started thinking about the look on Max's face while she watched Alec at Rachel's bedside and then how introspective and thoughtful she looked while she was talking to Logan later on- how sensitive and gentle her voice was when she was talking about Alec with him (even with how normally she feels the need to downplay Alec with the man). I love the last scene where she offers to be there for Alec and he gives his famous (or possibly infamous) line. Anyway, this drabble is the result of what I was thinking while I was watching. Hope you like, and as always let me know by pushing that little button down there :)

Three Wishes

As I looked down at him, sprawled across her bed, I was frozen. By what I wasn't sure. Shock? Surprise? Fear? I'd never seen him so open. I don't think I've ever seen anyone so open. But for it to have been him- I never would have expected that. I don't think I'd ever have believed him capable of feeling anything so deeply. Maybe I was underestimating him- I seem to do that a lot. I tell myself that I've figured him out- act like there's nothing he could possibly do that would surprise me. Sometimes I wonder why I do that. It's like I'm scared to let him be a real person- to have more than one side to him, to have depth. Like maybe I'd have to care about him more if I did. Or admit that I do care about him more than I let on. But that night I didn't have a choice. His other side was out there for me to see and I couldn't deny it. And he didn't care. For once he wasn't living my lie for me. For once his heart refused to let him hide. For once something was more important than protecting himself or pretending to be the one-dimensional person I've allowed him to be. His heart was breaking and it demanded that he show it.

And I made a wish. I wished someone out there loved me like he loved her. I wished that I could love someone as completely, wholeheartedly, holding-nothing-back as he did. I wished I could feel like that, even if I also had to pay for those moments of heaven with this kind of hell. I wished I could have been part of that relationship- a relationship so strong, so powerful, so overwhelming that it could turn a born-and-bred, Manticore-raised soldier into this… mess. I don't mean that I specifically wished that Alec loved me. No, I would never want to be Rachel. Rachel was Alec's… I don't know… soulmate maybe? If I believed in that sort of thing… but then again, if I can believe that Alec could truly love someone with all his heart, maybe I can believe that soulmates really do exist. Either way, don't get me wrong. I don't want to be with Alec; we'd be all wrong for each other. I just wish that I could have experienced how amazing their relationship must have been for myself.

So when Logan asked me if I thought Alec had really cared about her, and acted skeptical that he might have had real feelings for her, I was startled. How could anyone doubt the depth of Alec's feelings for her? How could anyone possibly question that degree of pure love? And then I realized that just a few days ago I would probably have questioned it too. I wouldn't have believed that my one-dimensional Alec was capable of feeling as much emotion as I had witnessed. And for just a second I felt special. Only I had been allowed to see the true Alec- even if it had only been for a second. And I realized that that second had somehow changed me. It had made me open up to him, even if it was in my own way, even if not even Alec knew it, at least not yet. It had given me a new perspective on him, made me feel protective of him, and somehow that changed my perspective on almost everything else. It made me see how empty I was, how my feelings for Logan were missing all of the happy, fulfilling emotions that true love is supposed to include, how jealous Logan has always been of Alec because somehow he's always been able to see how vibrant and full of life Alec is and he's always been stuck away in his ivory tower. It made me feel bad for Logan.

And I made another wish. I wished that I could find some way to explain what I had seen. I wished that somehow I could open my heart- the heart that Alec now seemed privy to even though I didn't understand how and he didn't even know he was- and help Logan to understand the strength of emotion that I had been lucky to see. I wished that I could find the right words to describe the magic, the pain, the romance, the love of that one moment so that I could unlock Logan's own door so that he might be able to feel it for himself. So that maybe we could share it together and be able to find what Alec and Rachel had once had. But just as much as I wished to be able to open Logan's heart, I knew that Logan would have to find his own key. And somewhere in me I knew that I wouldn't be able to help him. So with resignation and sorrow and some wistfulness mixed in, I looked up at him and felt myself almost whisper reverently, "He loved her." I wished I could have expressed exactly what that had meant for Alec, and how exactly it had changed me, but instead all I could hear was the door closing on the path that once led to my future with Logan.

That door had never felt as closed as it did when I looked into Alec's eyes, "I'm always alright" reverberating in my head. I had offered to be there for him- to let him talk it out if he needed to, but I hadn't meant it the way he'd taken it. He'd thought that I'd meant it as his self-elected mentor, someone who thought they would be able to help him through what he was trying to deal with because they were more experienced than he was. But I had finally realized that in this area, there were things he could teach me, and I wanted to learn. And I was surprised by the fact that I wanted him to be the one to teach me. I had seen the depth of emotion he could feel, and I wanted to know what that was like. I thought he could be my friend, a real friend this time, and teach me what it was like to be a real person. Someone who could accept themselves and really live life- take the opportunities that were opened to them. But he shut me down, just like I had spent the last few months doing to him. And I felt the pain of it- the pain of losing what I had never really had, the pain of missing someone I'd never allowed myself to know, the pain of having a heart so warm and vibrant that in the space of just a few minutes it had become my sun closed off to me

And as I watched his retreating back, I finally realized what my own heart had been trying to tell me for so long. Maybe from the first time I had met him and I had looked to him as my second chance to be what I should have been for my brother. Or maybe from the moment that I had seen the bare emotion in his eyes when he had chosen me over his own life, the choice that had forced my heart to choose him over Logan just minutes later. Or maybe from the moment that he came back into my life, when I had realized that we truly were the same but had started from that same moment to deny it, because I was scared. Because I had spent so much of my life running from anything real, hiding in my own ivory tower from anything that could truly touch me. Or maybe my heart had started trying to tell me what I had still somehow managed to miss a long time before any of those moments. Maybe it's possible that a person's heart starts whispering the truth of their soulmate even before they meet them.

And so I'm making one final wish. I wish...