There wasn't much street light where Liz waited at the edge of the soccer field, but enough for her to mostly see where she was walking, and to notice the figure walking towards her long before he spoke. "Okay, I'm here, and when you asked, not that I see much light," Future Max said. "What's the deal? Are you going to go along with my plan, or just give me more grief?"
"Let's say, for the sake of argument, that I'm agreeing to play ball," Liz replied. "I have one question, though... How do you know when your planning has succeeded? When are you going to stop meddling in my life - when you go whoosh, bam and whiff out?"
"Pretty much," he agreed cautiously. "When the timelines are changed enough that they don't lead back to me going back in the granolith, then my physical body can't remain here, though the consequences of the intervention continue on. Serena said that I should be able to fell the course of history starting to move... or snapping back into place, as it were... but I won't rest easy until I'm not here at all."
"Snapping back into place," Liz muttered to herself. "So is that when the course of history probably won't end up in the same place, or certainly?"
Max quirked his thirty-something face at that. "Probably? I didn't you were someone who believed that the universe played dice with us, Liz."
"Well maybe it was a poor choice of words," she muttered. "I believe in free choice, not predestination... not that my future depends irreversibly on the conditions of my past and my present. Which means... if we do this thing, and I fake sleeping with Kyle and make sure present-Max catches us, you whiff out, and I go and tell Max immediately what I did and why... that'll change the course of history again, right? Maybe I'll even do something that leads right back to the invasion, and the end of the world."
Max froze. "You wouldn't."
"No, actually I wouldn't," Liz agreed. "But I could. Does that mean that you're going to stay until the timelines have changed enough that no action of mine can lead Max's life back to where you started? How long would that take - months, or years? Assuming that Serena was right about this 'whiff-out' effect in the first place, that is... otherwise you just stick around forever."
"Liz... what are you getting at?" Future Max said.
"I'm trying to show you why I will not play this out by your rules," she said. "No matter what you tell me, I'm not going to give up on us - on Max and I being together, starting today. Not as long as I can still fight for our future together. 'I will go down with this ship, and I won't put my hands up and surrender. There will be no white flag above my door. I'm in love and always will be.'"
Future Max shook his head. "Do you realize that's a bleak and fatalistic song? It's about a girl who can't accept that the relationship with the guy she loves is over, that he dumped her."
"Maybe, yeah," Liz said. "But I'll take the chorus anyway, and breathe new hope into it. Max never left me, and even though I walked away, he hasn't given up on me. That's all the opportunity I need." She reached a hand into her jacket pocket. "But you're standing in the way. I don't intend to let you go to Michael or Tess now, and I can't trust that you won't be desperate enough to hurt me, I have to write you off the stage, the only way that I can."
Future Max froze in fear, and reached up a hand, focusing his attention on Liz. But he was too late. It took a fraction of a second for Liz to twist the ominous black pentagon, and a wave of blue force spread out around her, staggering Future Max to his knees and forcing a cry of pain from his lips. He moaned for a long moment and looked up at her. "Why?"
"Because you were so determined to ruin everything I might have with Max, and to devastate my life in the process," Liz told him. "I'm not a psychologist, maybe you have deep unresolved guilt about how you got back together with me and handled things badly with Tess, and because of that, when the disaster came, you and future me - you decided that the only penance strong enough to wipe out your suffering was to give up that happiness. But I don't agree with that choice."
"You came back here to fix your past, to set it from one course, charted in stone, to another. But your past is still my future, and my future has not been written yet! I refuse to let anyone else, even you, take those choices away from me. No one else is going to choose my destiny."
"But... but," Max muttered, but he couldn't seem to put anything else into words. Liz was just getting started.
"You're not the one to fix this, Max... not you, you. You warned me of the danger, and I'll always be grateful, but you don't have the perspective to find the right solution. You don't belong in this time, you have no right to interfere. As much as it kills me..." Liz took something else out of her pocket, "I'm going to have to remove you."
She'd taken the Beretta pistol from the locked cabinet at Valenti's house when no-one was watching, thanks to a paper clip trick that Kyle taught her a year ago.
"You're going to kill me?" Future Max whispered, looking at the gun as if he still didn't understand it. "But... it was a bluff, Liz. I would never - there's no way I could ever harm one hair on your head, deliberately. I just hoped that saying I would - it might scare you straight, might get you to agree..."
"I know that," she said, her throat starting to tighten. "I never believed that you would snuff out my life, here and now. If you could ever have been the sort of person who would do that, you'd never have run up to me in the Crashdown after I got shot. But - from where I stand, it's different. No matter how difficult it's going to be for me to look at your face and pull the trigger, I know I'm not really ending your life. Because my Max's life is your life, and with the knowledge, the information you've given me, I'll be able to protect him. And you damn well better believe that I will never let him go back in time to this week, because I know that I'll be waiting for him here, with the gun."
Future Max smiled a little, accepting the odd situation. "So what would you do instead, if the end of the world approaches, and you know how to go back in time?" he asked.
"Then I go back myself, come to Max," Liz said with a laugh. "I wouldn't bother with any of this 'falling out of love' crap - there must be many different tactics to try. Maybe we'll go round and round a few times before figuring a way out of the loop."
"And if you don't get the time travel technique one time?"
"Then we've played the game as best we can, and lost." Liz sighed. "You'll be there to see it, I guess, but you won't remember this."
He nodded. "Take good care of me, Liz."
She pulled the trigger. Time had run out - the self-preservation instinct might have pushed Future Max to try something desperate, no matter how much he appreciated the truth in theory. The explosion in her hands, the flash of light, and the sound, the wave of air and trace of smoke coming from the small gun surprised her, but not enough that she didn't see the gunshot wound in Future Max's neck. Liz's breath caught, and she would have sobbed if her throat hadn't seized up. Then he collapsed to the ground... and blasted away into dust.
Liz stood there for a moment, tears running down her face, struggling not to let go of the pistol, no matter how hot it felt in her hand. A breeze started to blow just then, picking up the remains of her time-travelling love into the air and carrying them along. It wouldn't be long, she realized, before there wouldn't even be a pile of dust left.
She spent a little while looking for the bullet, actually found it, still stained with blood, and looked to see if she had anything she could put it in. In her left pants pocket, she found a small white paper bag, all crumpled up, and she smoothed it out flat. The paper read 'Madame Vivian's Know Your Future.' After getting her cards read earlier that week, Liz had been feeling grateful enough to spend extra money on a souvenir, a gold-plated pendant with two hands clasping each other, on a thin silver chain. She was still wearing it now.
The fortune teller had claimed that as long as she wore the pendant, the bonds that connected her with her true love would be protected.
#
Michael knocked on the door. Several minutes later the door opened, revealing an unhappy Amy DeLuca. "Oh, hi Michael. What do you want?"
"Umm... I came to see Maria. Are you okay, Mrs. DeLuca? You don't look that well."
"I'm not," she grumped. "Bad cold - you'd probably better not get too close, or you'll catch it too."
"Oh, not to worry," he said. "I have a very strong immune system - never get sick. May I come in?"
Amy considered a moment. "Maria may not be happy to see you, but... I think she's having breakfast in the TV room." She stepped aside and let Michael inside, before closing the front door and heading up the stairs.
Michael found Maria sitting in the old sweat pants and tank top she sometimes wore to bed, watching videos with the volume turned up, which might have been one reason she didn't answer the door herself. The sour, depressed expression on her face was another, and guessing that it might have been Michael could qualify as a third.
"Hi," he said. "I was hoping to be able to talk to you."
"So talk." Maria took another bite of dry cornflakes.
"I'd rather not have to compete with Enrique."
That remark struck Maria as completely hilarious. "Yeah, like you'd stand a chance." But she produced a remote from the couch cushions and hit the 'Power' button.
Michael took a moment to gather his thoughts. "We have an odd dynamic, and I think it doesn't really hinge on my Albanian status, just the kind of people that we are."
"That's 'Czechoslovakian,' if you were groping for the reference that I think you were," she pointed out. "But continue."
"I'm well aware that, when we first met... I wasn't the most - sympathetic, or peaceful, or respectable guy you'd ever come across." He laughed hollowly. "Even putting aside all the stuff that I'm never going to be just because I wouldn't still be me, there are some things that I didn't like about myself. Things that I think you wanted me to be, that I wanted to be too. Maybe that's part of what drew me toward you... I looked at you and saw all the things that I could be, because you thought I could."
"But... as much as we care about each other, I think there's another side of it. If we're together, and you don't have faith in me, I don't have faith in myself either. If you're thinking the worst of me, I start to think the worst about myself. If you have low expectations of me..." He cleared his throat. "Then I immediately start to live down to them." He sighed. "And you have low expectations of me a lot recently. I can't say that I'm surprised, considering the kind of crap I've put you through since spring, but it's not healthy for me and it's not healthy for us."
"So... I'm thinking maybe it'd be better to take a clean break from 'us as a couple' for a while. So that I can get my act back on track, and so that you can figure out what you want and if you're ready to take responsibility for the things you say and do. I guess that's all. I'd like to know what you think."
It was a while before Maria replied. "So, you want to go on a break?"
"Umm..." Michael had to swallow hard. "I want to make a break. Cutting loose from each other - for a while."
Maria's eyes glinted narrowly. "Making a break. So we can see other people?"
"Sure you can, if you want - I'm not going to stop you."
"And you?" Michael didn't reply, and she shook her head. "Typical. All of this is just a nice way of saying that I'm dumped so that you can go after Courtney. You think I don't know what your face looks like when you see her?"
Michael blinked in surprise. "Well, I don't know what my face looks like then. I don't tend to have a mirror handy at the time."
"It's like the way you used to look at me, but just a little different. The same because you're intrigued, you're attracted to her and wondering if she's really attracted to you. Different because you have this notion that maybe, just maybe... she's like you. That she's not like me and the rest of the poor pitiful earthlings, that she understands what it's like to be different from everyone around her. And that you really want to be able to share that feeling with someone... someone you could fall in love with, as opposed to Isabel or Tess."
Michael was stunned speechless for a long moment. He hadn't realized any of those feelings... but then, he was clueless about things like that, and Maria was just as sharp about them. He certainly couldn't deny what she'd said, not now. "Umm... I didn't intend to hurt you," he mumbled, aware of how lame it sounded.
"Yeah, well... that doesn't matter now, does it?" She mumbled. "It's done. You should go."
#
Liz rushed into the cafe's dining room at a sprinter's pace, looked around, and saw a familiar head of dark hair at the counter. "Alex! Hey, are you almost done your breakfast?"
He turned and smiled at her. "I just have half a waffle to go. What, are you in a hurry?"
"Kind of - you don't mind, do you?"
"I'll chew as fast as safety allows," he told her.
"Right..." Liz was ruffling through her backpack, trying to verify all of its contents. "Umm... ooh, geography book! I'll be back in a few minutes."
Once she had found the prodigal textbook and put it with the others, Alex was pushing his plate back across the counter and finishing his glass of juice. "Thanks for the lift," Liz mentioned as they walked out of the Crashdown.
"Hey, not a problem," Alex insisted. "So... may I ask if the reason you want to get to school early has anything to do with our Mister Evans?"
"Since when is he 'our' Mister Evans?" Liz laughed, getting into the car. "But yeah... I really need to talk with him as soon as possible, and there's a good chance he'll be in the school library, working on that trig assignment." Alex nodded as he pulled out.
"By the way, have you heard from Isabel at all?" Liz asked after half a minute.
"Nope." Alex shook his head. "Maybe I should just stop waiting for something to change. She's made it pretty clear where she stands."
Liz sighed. "I can't really tell you what to do, but if I were you... I wouldn't give up hope. Okay?"
Alex smiled at her vaguely without really saying anything. "Umm... any idea what you're going to do until classes start?" she said.
He grinned and spared one hand from the steering wheel to show her a paperback book from between the seats. "I'm going to hang in the courtyard and brush up on my 'wheel of time.' The new one's coming out in hardcover next week, and I'm second on the library's waiting list." Liz laughed softly.
#
Liz found Max at a study carrel at the back of the library, with two heavy math textbooks and a dozen sheets of scrap paper scattered around the area. The tired frustration on his face melted instantly into delight the second she cleared her throat... and then he visibly 'caught' himself and forced a demeanour of polite calm. Liz had to fight down a surge of nervous giggles, but a few escaped, and she was actually glad of them. They sounded kind of flirty, which was no bad thing just now.
"Hi, Max, glad I caught you," she said. "I'm really sorry to not get back to you until the last minute, but - Gomez? I'd love to go with you, if the offer's still open."
Max let a broad grin take over his face. "It's definitely still open for you. And thanks for coming."
"Hey, I'm looking forward to it." Liz couldn't even hear the name Gomez without thinking of that night on the balcony, just after the heat wave broke... when Max kissed her for the first time. 'We haven't turned around' was playing on the little boom box. It was their song - well, one of their songs, at least.
"It's a long drive up to Santa Fe, and there may be traffic," Max said. "I was thinking of getting on the road after sixth period... if that's okay."
Liz smiled. "I think I can afford to ditch two classes, yeah."
"Ohh - on the way home, we need to pick up Isabel," he added. "I promised I'd save her having to take the greyhound. Not to mention having to get someone to drive her to the bus station, in the next town over."
Liz nodded again. "Well, as much as I was looking forward to a romantic drive home with you after the concert - it'll be nice to see her again. Meet you in the parking lot?"
"Yes darling," Max said immediately. For some reason both of them broke up laughing at that point, and soon they had to go their separate ways and get ready for first period.
It was after lunch that Liz spotted Kyle hurrying down the hall away from her, and tried to catch him, just to mention that she didn't need a favour any more, (and find out if his dad was bugging him about a missing Beretta fifty-two.) But it wasn't easy to gain ground through the crowd of students all on their way from one place to the next, and Kyle seemed to be hurrying along at a good clip himself. It was all that Liz could do to follow him...
Until he slipped open the door of the administrative records room and closed it behind him. What was he doing in there? Only one thing came to mind, and it wasn't anything that actually had to do with the files inside. Slowly, Liz wandered over towards the door, trying not to attract any attention, and she peered through the distorting window, trying to make out any details.
Yeah, a couple was making out inside, though she couldn't even tell Kyle from looking through the window. It wasn't until she had taken nine or ten paces away from the door that something else sunk in. It was hard to be sure... but Liz thought she had recognized the sweep of pale blonde hair that had belonged to one of the participants.
No longer worried if people noticed anything odd about her behaviour, Liz spun around and hurried back to the room. Slowly and carefully, she turned the door handle, taking care not to make a sound, and opened it just enough to peer inside.
There could be no doubt. It was Kyle, and it was Tess. French kissing like there was no tomorrow. One of his hands was tangled up in that blonde hair, and the other was cupped firmly around her butt, squeezing through the relaxed fit jeans. Tess' own hands were, respectively, wrapped around the middle of Kyle's back for support, and undoing the buttons running down the front of his light blue shirt.
For a second, Liz couldn't look away. That was all the time it took for Kyle to start attending to Tess' smooth throat with kiss after kiss, and Liz pulled the door shut, (not as quietly as she might have,) and hurried away.
Only one thought made its way through her confused mind... maybe Tess had a new reason to stay in Roswell now, one that had nothing to do with Max!
#
Liz looked from the desert horizon back to Max, and sighed. They'd been two hours on the road, only a third of the trip to Santa Fe, and neither had said much to the other. Liz really did want to start over with Max, but she wasn't sure how to get back that rapport that they had a year ago.
"Yeah, I know, it's weird," Max said, making Liz laugh at how in this respect, he knew exactly what she was thinking. "We may need to take a little time together before things get comfortable again." He didn't seem to doubt that spending the time would be worth it, or that they'd both have the patience to follow through. "Want to grab some drive-through at Blackie's?"
Liz thought about that. "I could eat... I'm not terribly hungry, but I could go for a light snack. What's 'Blackie's' though? I mean, what kind of food do they have?"
"You've never been to Blackie's in Ramon?" Max asked. "Well, I guess you're not a big fan of cruising the desert highways, like me." He laughed slightly. "It's a drive-through only grill joint right at the side of the highway. Blackie as in burnt black, but the food isn't really - it's more like a running joke. They have an oversized grill set up to just pour thick clouds of smoke up into the sky, and a huge billboard facing north with a middle-aged father putting some crisply burnt food onto a picnic table, with the family all around him staring in disbelief. But their bar-b-q bacon burgers are amazing, and they have these cheese-grilled potatoes that you've simply got to try."
"Okay," Liz agreed. "How long does it take? We're not exactly doing great on time."
"I won't stop if there's more than four cars in the line-up already," Max said. "Any less and we should be fine."
There were only two cars ahead of them in the northbound line when Max pulled off to go into the drive, and despite Liz's assurances that she would only be able to eat 'a tiny snack,' he ordered a huge amount of food to go: "Double Decker deluxe banquet burger, hot lady with everything going for her, pig's tail, two large cheddar taters, and a small fries. Oh, and two cherry coke slakers."
"I'm really sorry sir; the cherry coke isn't available at the moment."
Max looked really disappointed. Liz had opened her mouth to suggest some other drink, (though she wasn't exactly sure what,) when there was a snort of laughter from the speaker. "Just yanking your chain, Max," the guy said. "First window."
Once they had picked up their edibles, paid, and barrelled back onto the open road, Max passed Liz a small package wrapped in wax paper. "That's yours."
"A hot lady with everything going for her?" Liz repeated the order as she started to unwrap it... and to giggle.
If Max picked up on the double meaning, he gave no sign. "I hope it's not too spicy for you... I thought it'd be good because it's smaller than most of their burgers, but not so tiny that you can scarf it up in two bites. Three ounces, if I remember right." He paused a second. "Try the cheese taters."
Liz did, finding them unfamiliar and yet an intriguing blend of savoury flavours... and took a long swallow from her 'quencher.' "I'm not completely sure I want to know... but what the heck is the pig's tail?"
Max laughed. "I'm not quite sure why they insist on calling it that - it's a thin pork sausage; drizzled with a delicate sweet and sour sauce, and cradled in a soft honey pastry... you have to try a bit of it." He snagged some spuds, and then cleared his throat softly. "Um, could you unwrap my burger for me? It takes two hands."
Liz smiled and fished the larger cylindrical package out of the drive-through bag. "So, when did you discover Blackie's? They seem to know you pretty well."
Max laughed. "Well, I'm not sure I can claim any credit for 'discovering' it. My folks used to stop there on family road trips, when I was just a wee little guy." He laughed.
Liz nodded, and thought about that a little more. "Why'd you take so many road trips up this way? Were you going to Santa Fe too?"
Max laughed. "Not really. There's a campground in Alamosa, across the state border into Colorado, where they'd take us to meet my mom's brother and his family. They lived... um, I'm not quite sure, but somewhere north, either north Colorado or whatever's past there." He sighed. "When I was twelve... you know what I mean - they moved to Vermont, and I don't think I've seen them since." Liz smiled with a little sympathy. "Once I got my driver's license and the Jeep, the spring before we really met, Michael was on this kick about searching the desert near the reported crash site for a secret hangar where the wreckage was kept. We started exploring well north of town, and Ramon was a convenient rest stop. So we ate a lot of barbecue."
"I've got to ask," Liz saod. "What would you have done if you'd found something out in the desert?"
Max shrugged. "I'm not sure. In retrospect, it's probably a blessing that the question didn't come up." He sighed. "And since then, when things get frustrating, it's nice to just drive around without going anywhere in particular."
Liz smiled, and they drove along in silence for a while. "Hey, mind if I grab some of the fries?"
"Help yourself!" Max insisted.
#
"So, any idea what you're going to have, Tess?" Jim Valenti asked her over their menus.
"Not sure," she mumbled. "I kind of feel like something... hot. How spicy is the sausage they put on the pie here, really?"
"Pretty damn hot," Kyle said. "Put them together with the jalapeno peppers and the red onions, and I don't think you'll be complaining... except that nobody will want to smell your breath for a week."
"Oh, I'm not so sure about that," Tess replied, a little smile on her face. "Think I might do without the onions though, not so wild about them. What else sounds good?"
"Well, I'm glad the two of you are getting along well lately," Mister Valenti said. Kyle and Tess immediately froze and shared a nervous glance. "Well, aren't you?" he continued, a little surprised by the reaction. "I've noticed a distinct lack of sniping back and forth over the breakfast table in the mornings."
"Maybe I just haven't had the energy to be bitchy lately," Tess said. "That could change soon." Jim shrugged, and went back to considering the menu for himself.
"What about you dad?" Kyle blurted out. "You haven't been around much lately... is something going on down at work?"
"Not really," Jim said, keeping his voice low. "Two calls came in from people in Whittaker's apartment building, complaining about suspicious noises. I went in and took a look around this morning, but nothing seemed out of place." He sighed. "It feels weird to be sitting on what I know about her disappearance, but the least suspicious course is to not give anything away until someone else brings up the fact that she's disappeared."
"I may try one of the calzones," Tess decided, startling Mister Valenti with the change of subject. "Are they good here?"
