Running-Maria
by
Princess McPhee
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Dedication: To Mala, whose work inspired me to write Roswell again after too long mourning the loss of my favorite show.
Summary: On the run, emotions run wild.
Rating: G
Sometimes at night, she cries for hours. Her straight brown hair gone, the blond curls that were always Michael's favorite flop all over everywhere, her face, his. Sometimes she's glad when they obscure her eyes so that she doesn't have to look into his. Because she knows how lucky she is, and she feels guilty that she's sad for such a small loss compared to what he's been through.
She's here with him, she's here with the one person on the planet she's sure she can't live without. She's here with him, and it should be enough.
And if it isn't, she's here with Liz, too. The girl- no, she's a woman now, she reminds herself- that she's shared everything with for her nearly nineteen long years. When she was ever unsure of something, Liz was there, trying to show her the way, even though she was often more confused than Maria.
Isabel, Kyle and Max are here, too. And though she never really knew them that well before, now she finds that they are all more dearer to her than her longest life-time friends in Roswell. Being thrown together like this, it's changed things. She knew that Kyle had changed since sophomore year, but she didn't really know how much until now.
She knows Isabel wasn't always an ice queen. She remembers Alex telling her about the rare moments when the alien girl would break down and share her darkest secrets. Alex would never tell her what they were, of course, but he always came to tell her and Liz when Isabel finally let one more thing spill off her shoulders and into his eager hands. He used to tell her all the time that she didn't have to handle things alone, Maria knows.
It was only once in a seeming-millennia that she would hand him the smallest piece of that responsibility, but it was enough to keep Alex happy. Enough to make him hope.
Max is the one that she was never around much. He's been close to Liz for so long, even when they are apart, that she hears more about him than she's sure she wants to know sometimes. But she never really made her own friendship with him, not until now. And now that she has a chance, however forced upon her it may be, to get to know him, she finds she can see all the things in him that make Liz so head over heels in love.
But she still cries.
She cries because she knows that her mother is left without a vital part of her life. She misses her mother, too, but mostly she is sad that she can't be there for her. Because her mother has no one. Jim Valenti, perhaps. They broke up, but they've done that before. Maria wouldn't be surprised if the shock of her only daughter's sudden departure threw her into the recently re-employed deputy's arms.
But in the end, there is no one there for her. Because Maria has always been her mother's life. Pregnant at seventeen, she never got a chance to see the world or make an identity of her own. Her life was always about her child. Always about Maria. And Maria can't help feeling that she's a horrible daughter to repay her mother for that incredible sacrifice with this.
With running away because she can't stand to be left behind.
Because that's why she's here. She knows she could live her life in Roswell well enough so long as she knew Michael and Liz were alive and well, but she couldn't bring herself to do it. Couldn't bring herself to cut them off from her life so completely.
She tells herself that she's not so much like her mother, but she knows that, deep down, she is. Leaning on others, never really making her own identity.
But as much as the idea should sadden her, she feels no despair or longing for any other life. She's Maria Deluca, and she knows who that is. She's Liz's best friend, and the slightly kooky, perpetually optimistic member of the fittingly-dubbed 'Pod Squad' and she's hopelessly in love with Michael Guerin, and she never wants to not be any of those things, despite what she might have to give up for them.
She's happy here, where she is. In Michael's arms and in Liz's life, running with the rest of the only people who have been there for her since her life changed so completely.
And she cries because she thinks she shouldn't be happy. Shouldn't feel such contentment, tempered only with the slightest hint of mourning for her relationship with her mother, when she knows that she's left Amy alone, without the only thing that defined her as a person for so long.
And Michael just holds her, not understanding, because everything that was dear to him in Roswell is with him now, too, on this strangely small van that seemed so large at the beginning of their trip. But he feels her pain, and rocks her in his strong arms and soothes her with just the right gentle tone of voice, and finds the most obscure post offices at the ends of their stays in little towns so that she might send her mother a note, just to let her know she's alive.
And Maria Deluca has never been more happy... or more sad.... in her entire, short existence.
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