Disclaimer: Jason Katims and Melinda Metz own Roswell. I don't. I only own Aaron - and he isn't even in the story for the first ten chapters.
Summary: After Liz leaves for boarding school and Maria heads off to New York, Isabel, Max and Michael struggle to put their lives back together and to achieve that ever-elusive thing called healing. Maria finds success and tries to forget that she ever knew who Michael Guerin or the other aliens were. Liz has made iron-clad friendships with her old boarding school roommate Eileen Burrows and Eileen's older sister Serena, but with out-of-control powers and hellish nightmares she's just hanging on by her fingertips. As in any halfway ordered universe, things fall apart - and somehow, everyone is brought together in the center of the madness by Liz's most chilling premonition yet.
Pairings: Max/Liz, Isabel/Jesse, Michael/Maria, Kyle/Eileen, and Serena/OC
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Probably not for the younger readers or for anyone who's rather sensitive. I'm giving warning, if I've been over-cautious in my ratings before this isn't the case now. This is probably a firm 'R.'
A/N: Hello again, Roswellians. :) This story started out as a one-shot, grew into a two-shot, and has steadily evolved into its own weird thing. After posting the first ten chapters on RF, I'm finally getting around to posting it here. I'll probably update once or twice a week - although if someone asks for more frequent updates I'm not opposed to getting up what I have. If you like, review. If you don't like, you can still review. If you like and don't feel like reviewing, this is also your prerogative. I promise not to kill you with my death-ray vision for not upping my review count. :P That said, I think I'll end this rather cheerful author's note and let you get started on the angst. Best of luck!
Part One
"Liz, come on. We can't keep doing this."
Tears trembling on the tips of eyelashes. Stuttering hands and shaky breaths. It cuts her straight to the marrow.
There's nothing she can do, she tells herself. Still she stands there, paralyzed and waiting for the inevitable rush of excuses and rationalizations.
Instead, only:
"I know. I just… don't know what else to do."
Exasperated, torn green eyes avoid brown ones. Perfectly manicured fingernails digging into the palms of her hands and she swallows, dodging the guilt and empathy. There's only energy for one last, weak resistance.
"It's not ethical."
"I know! But I have to do something. God, you think I want to be like this? I'll pay you, I just… you're my best friend. And I can't go to anyone else."
Serena lets her eyelids fall down, shaking her head back and forth. The motion upsets the black curls perched on her shoulders, and she feels her back muscles cramping. It's too hard to say no to her when she's like this.
Broken.
Confused.
Most likely unstable.
"I'm going to end up screwing you up more than I help you. You know that, right?"
"I can't tell anyone else. And I can't… I don't need a friend. I need a doctor."
Is it a doctor or a best friend? Liz can't seem to decide anymore than she can. They stand motionless. Facing each other, maybe to challenge or maybe to help. It's unusually hard to tell when Liz is trying to be antagonistic.
Harsh sobs break the silence, a barely contained wail hiding somewhere underneath them. Her whole body is contorting, the palsies so bad it's a wonder she's not already seizing on the floor or shooting off green sparks.
The urge to hug this friend, this utterly lost woman-child, almost overtakes her.
People like Liz are not supposed to be seen when they're helpless.
She sighs.
Was there every really a doubt?
"Come on then. You have to be up at five tomorrow."
-
"So you met someone."
"No. I mean, it was just some guy from work. He said it was a group thing, but then… I didn't leave when I found out. And it just kind of progressed from there."
Liz's fingers flutter as they run through her closely-cropped hair. A moment of best-friend envy stabs Serena, because Liz has possibly the most gorgeous hair in the world. For all the good it'll ever do her when she wears a boy's haircut.
The muscle spasms haven't stopped. Her gaze is distant, with no room in it for her new life and new friends and new memories.
Serena wonders how, when she deals with emotionally isolated patients every day, it's Liz's emotional distancing that always manages to intimidate her.
There are walls around her.
Face shuttered.
Jaw clenched.
Poised for a fight and begging to disappear.
She doesn't rush her.
"I'm not made of stone. I have… physical needs, and it's not like I expect Max to be waiting around for me. Obviously. But I-" She breaks off.
The psychiatrist in Serena comes to the forefront. Demands that she wait just a little longer. Then, when nothing further is forthcoming, she prods gently, "You what, Liz?"
Long, elegant fingers attached to a tiny palm suddenly shoot a bolt of green energy into the corner of the room. It hits an end table. The furnishing collapses, legs crumpling under a weight suddenly too heavy to bear.
Serena jumps, half-startled and half-frightened. That kind of power will always seem unnatural to her.
Immediately Liz is up and out of her chair, moving towards the damage. Cursing under her breath.
"Honey, leave it," she commands gently. She cringes at the endearment. Wonders how much longer she'll be able to pretend this is actually doing her friend any good.
Liz ignores her. She stoops next to the pile of sawdust and screws, poking at the splintered wood and trying to fix it with her hands. Eventually she erects a pathetic skeleton of the piece Serena bought for over a hundred dollars. Eyebrows furrowed in concentration, she waves her hand over it.
Nothing happens.
She tries again. Still nothing.
Her heart hurts to be watching this.
"I can't even fix a damn end table. God, you'd think he would have given me something useful with all of this power!" Her hands are sparking again.
Serena moves to her quickly, tugging on the hunched form. So tense it's a wonder she isn't made of stone. "Liz, you have to calm down. Remember the breathing exercises I taught you? Try to use them now."
Ever the good patient, the shaggy head of hair comes to rest between two too-apparent knees. Her back rises and falls, quickly at first and then more slowly. Her noisy breaths echo in the room.
When it comes, her voice is muffled. "He wanted to sleep with me. I knew that. He didn't even have to… I just… I tried. I let him kiss me, but I just… couldn't."
She doesn't say anything.
What can she say? 'Get over it?' 'Move on with your life?' Liz has tried, so many times. Long gone is the defiant teenage girl still set on playing the victim and hoping that Max would somehow fix everything. Fix her. But whether it's days' or years' worth of progress, when the setbacks come they almost destroy her. And she's not strong enough to endure that many more.
The story's not over yet. "He slid his hand under the hem of my shirt. And all I could think was that, we hadn't even been kissing a full minute, and already he was… I was already half drunk. But I still couldn't do it. Not even – not even a one night stand."
There's bitterness there. Contempt for the boy who could escape for a night.
"Liz, you're following a passive behavior pattern. You didn't intend to be alone with him, obviously didn't want to be alone with him – but you stayed anyway. If you feel you need alcohol to have sex, you probably shouldn't be having it."
Liz does her best to listen. Her head is still somewhere else, though. Like always. "I just… I wanted fireworks. I wanted flashes. I wanted to…"
A choked laugh; a sigh expelled like a sob.
She lifts her head up, the resentment and self-loathing making her features ugly. "… to see into someone's soul."
They sit in silence for a long time. It's not uncomfortable, but some detached part of Serena notes that she feels the urge to climb the walls.
Ever-strong shoulders slump in defeat.
"I didn't want him at all."
-
Serena sits with her for another twenty minutes. Does her best to respond clinically to everything her best friend says. By the time Liz leaves the end table is repaired, but there's a thin sheen of sweat on the small woman's upper lip when she tugs on her jacket.
The powers are too much for her.
Too much energy and not a big enough outlet.
Too much raw ability but next to no control.
The check on her desk laughs at her. She rebels against the idea of cashing it, knowing Liz will fly off the handle if she doesn't. More than even an excuse, it is an apology. For someone who hasn't apologized nearly enough in the past it's important to do so copiously now.
How is she to help her friend?
She won't rest until she does, because Liz was and remains to be a friend first and foremost; but it's this that keeps her from being any real help. She can't accept that there's nothing Serena the doctor can do. And Liz would never let Serena the friend close enough to help her heal.
A Harvard master's tells her she should know better, but the fact that she can't help is damaging her faith in herself. As a physician. As a person. She and Eileen both feel the sting of having a best friend who gives everything but will accept nothing in return. Liz does penance for crimes she's committed in the past.
And crimes that carry into the future.
She will never forget what Liz asked her after confiding about the future version of her love. Wide-eyed like a child reprimanded for a trespass they don't understand, she asked if everything bad in the world now had somehow stemmed from her. If the death of her best friend and birth of a new child were not the only gains and losses in a world she didn't quite fit in anymore.
Was 9/11 her fault? Were numerous hate crimes, rapes, molestations somehow a direct result of desperate and careless actions?
What do you say to that?
'No, of course not! Thinking any differently is stupid and self-absorbed and damaging.'
It's what she thinks, but it's not what Liz wants to hear. And there's an infinitesimally small chance that it's not the truth.
That chance is enough to drive Liz crazy.
Tears slip down her face.
They leave, providing a momentary respite from all of her insecurities and questions. She doesn't consider what will happen if Liz's connection with her otherworldly soul mate flares up again. She doesn't question what will happen when she gets a live-in boyfriend or husband, how she'll explain a friend showing up at their door during the night in hysterics five or six times a year. She doesn't even wonder why the visits are getting more frequent lately.
Right now she just wants to get back to sleep.