Author: Pilar
Rating: Hard R
Disclaimer: Again, if Katims was gonna do this, he wouldn't need me. Since he ain't, I take *some* credit. UPN, WB, Metz, Katims etc... no infringement intended.
Summary: Alt-History ending to Max in the City.
Note: Big thanks to Juxian Tang for helping me find the ending to this thing, to Kate for loving beta goodness and to Laura & Ana for making me feel okay about it. And it's dedicated to Soma, she knows why.
Warnings: My mind. Not a pretty place. This is basically Prisoner!Fic. Themes include torture, an allusion to non-consensual sex and other nastiness.

Near. And Not Close.

You know nothing beyond how you find yourself when your eyes flutter open and the pounding in your head and your chest turn to deafening. You only remember the moment when your eyes try to focus and you taste the warm, copper blood against your tongue and you realize that the blood is your own. The carpet you lay on is stained with it too, dark crimson and brown.

When you try to move your arms, you realize they are bound. Over your head, crossed, chained.

Little by little memories return to you like mini film loops and you shut your eyes to try not to see them.

They had taken you back after the summit; they had pretended that they supported you. And you looked at their faces and thought for just a moment that you recognized them. They were almost your family. Almost.

But not quite. And not even close.

You had let yourself be swept away by the idea of learning more about where you come from and who you are and you had seen Michael and Isabel in these people. Those you know are nowhere inside them. And you made them mad. And you are paying.

They hurt you. They're going to hurt you more.

You had wanted that moment of really being a king from a planet far, far away. Your vanity led you here; led you to follow them. You thought they might have been able to lead you home.

In this moment of almost silence, you are alone with your pain, but you know that they are close; you hear their muffled voices in the next room, can almost see their movement through the sliver of light under the door. The comfort of not seeing them near is overwhelming.

Your eyes never really adjust to the dimness of the room you are held captive in. You see too much anyway. You can't lift your head from the floor and your legs are like stone weights. With every small adjustment of your body, you notice another broken bone.

They beat you with their hands and they beat you from across the room. You are afraid to even think maliciously about them for fear that they will know and will beat you from the other room. Through the door. Through the walls. They are stronger than you.

For a moment, you think of Tess and you wonder what they have done with her. She's not nearby; you would feel her, you would be able to hear her in the back of your mind calling you. But she's not dead. You would know that, too. You wonder if she's just gone, if she's abandoned you like you have her.

Then you would deserve this, you think to yourself.

If she were dead, it would be your fault and this would be the price.

But she's not dead. And you think you don't really deserve this.

When did it start? You can't sort out your thoughts; everything is muddled and dark behind your eyes. You can't hear over the pulsing behind your temples. You wish you could squeeze your head between your bound hands.

They are arguing in the next room, but you can hardly make out their words. It reminds you of Michael and of Isabel and for a moment it's almost calming. You can try to pretend that none of this is really happening and that you are at home. The warmth under your face is not your own thick blood but a soft, soft pillow. The heaviness that surrounds you is your blanket, but not of pain.

Michael and Isabel argue just as hard and as loud.

It's not the same, though. And through the haze of your body's weaknesses and the incessant pounding of every vein inside you, you can't pretend. You let it slip over you like a death shroud, you almost wish it were one.

You must have fallen unconscious because you wake when you feel firm hands on your body. Hard, callused palms on your legs push your bones back into place and your skin cauterizes beneath their grip. You feel their heat left behind as they move to your next bruised limb, to the next wound that they attend. You feel the pain escape from your body as the hands save your life.

Your eyes are still sealed shut, though. You fear that if you open them, your savior will stop and you'll still hurt like you did just a small time ago. As it stands, you feel almost whole again, the strength is returning to your not-so-broken body and you feel your ribs straightening and your skin closing underneath the tender ministrations of your healer.

Through one half-closed eye, you look into Rath's face as he plies at your skin and presses against your hardening bones looking for more fracturing, for more scrapes and bruises and slices that bleed. He studies you like an insect under a microscope, his eyes seeking your body for the next fix. Finding nothing left to restore, he leans back against a wall of the small chamber-like room and exhales a long breath. He's tired -- you know that feeling. You know how much the healing can drain you. And he's so much stronger than you are.

Their powers are honed in a way that yours will never be, exponentially. They have known who they are for their entire lives and you knew nothing at all. You waited while they trained.

You open your eyes and find him staring at you, probably remembering the other one with your face but not your life, and he starts when he sees you watching him back. He smiles, then, a toothy slash interrupted by cheap silver and bad hygiene. Eyes like Michael's, but not.

"Thank you," you say and his smile gets wider. And he laughs.

"Don't thank me, I didn't do it for you."

His smile reminds you of something. Of that clown in the Poltergeist movie that you had nightmares about after your mother (not your mother) told you not to watch it but you did anyway and had nightmares afterwards for weeks. You'll probably dream about this for the rest of your life and wake up covered in sweat and screaming.

Thinking of your mother, your Earth mother, the woman who has consoled you and cared for you for most of the time that you have been alive, you feel no comfort now.

Rath laughs again and it's a horrible sound that reverberates through the small room where you are held, bouncing from wall to dank wall and hovering in the air around you. He braces himself on the cold radiator you are chained to and stands, leaving you alone again. This is the first moment that you aren't aware of every bone in your body. Instead, you smell your own fear radiating off you in rippling waves.

He's left the door slightly ajar and you can see him pace around their horrible sewer space; they were the garbage, alien detritus, tossed into a sewer and left to fend for themselves in a city where they could just disappear among the masses. They were never intended to know you, it was never supposed to be like this.

But you are weak and you let them take you.

This was your decision and this is your fault.

And they will hurt the rest of your family; they probably caused the death of the one like them with your face.

You wonder if he was anything like you or if he was as damaged as the others. This raging bitch with Isabel's face who kicked you with steel-lined boots until your ribs and knees buckled under her blows, is nothing like your Isabel. Your sister.

But you saw Michael in small gestures: the way Rath pounded on the steering wheel in time to the music they listened to in the car from Roswell to New York. In the way that he kept his voice sure and steady -- pretending he knew exactly what he was doing -- when they had lost their way on the drive. But this man was not Michael, Michael would never have twisted your neck in his hands and laughed as you gasped for the smallest breath. Michael would have never pressed your face into the damp carpet as he pushed himself inside you to the soundtrack of Isabel's glee.

What parts of yourself would you have seen in the contaminated king?

How much stronger than you would he have been?

Lonnie comes into your view and trains her eyes in your direction, watching you watch her. A malicious grin takes her face and she moves towards you. There is a pure evil in her eyes that makes the hair on your arms stand at attention and a grueling shiver take your weakened spine.

You're not ready yet; you still need time to gather your strength, to maybe have enough power to overtake them. You're nowhere near ready. You're so much weaker than she is.

"Hey, Rath, come look how this little pussy shivers when he sees me," she calls out to her comrade-in-horror, and you try to curl your body into a tighter ball. The sweat begins to prick up from your pores again. "Ain't it cute? Almost reminds me of Ava."

Lighting a cigarette, Rath moves closer to the open door again with that same slashy grin on his face. "Maybe they got all the essences mixed up and shit, maybe this King one is really his own bitch." They both laugh and her boot collides with your rib cage again.

"Don't you fucking look at me, pussy. I'll let you know when you're man enough to fucking look at me."

Thick saliva from deep in her throat smacks your face and drips into your eye with no way for you to wipe it away.

The door slams closed and you're in the dark again.

They're giving you time to recover, you realize. Time to heal. Time before they begin the next fucking round.

There are no windows in this place, no where to escape to other than the tunnel that you entered through. You try to formulate plans through the aching noise in your brain, through the blasting behind your eyes.

If you could just free your hands, you think while trying to pull apart the chains with your arms and your mind. The cuffs that hold your hands dig deeper into your skin and you feel the warmth of the metal friction burning you, slicing you.

If you could just free your hands, you could get away.

If you could just free your hands, you could hurt them back.

If.

If you could take back leaving Roswell. If you could go back in time and listen to the real Michael and the real Isabel and never have come here to this horrible place in the first place. If. If.

If.

If doesn't help you now. If is never going to help you.

Noises come from the room beyond your door. Not footsteps nearing you or the harsh voices arguing. Hushed moans and half-angry whispers, tense slaps. You realize that they're fucking in there and it brings bile up into your throat that you swallow back.

You don't want to think about it. You don't want to know.

You only want it to go on forever until they forget about you. You don't want to hurt anymore; you don't want them to hurt you. Not anymore. Please. No more. You grasp that your thoughts only make you weaker. In their eyes, in your own eyes. Your own eyes that are filled with tears and drying spit. You are so weak.

-end-