ROSWELL SUMMER VIGNETTES

Title: Dead Star

Author: purplemud

E-mail: purplewitch10@yahoo.com / mudcandies@hotmail.com

Disclaimers: Roswell does not belong to me. Standard Disclaimers apply

Rating: Mostly PG 13 for language.

Summary: Liz writing on her journal.

Author's Note: Please feel free to leave your reviews, comments, criticisms, flames; you can tell me anything and everything you want. I appreciate them all. Thanks for your time and hope you enjoy reading! Many thanks to Diane who patiently beta-reads for me!


DEAD STARS



Her journal entry was short. Too short actually and Liz Parker wondered if she was indeed having fun.

Having fun.

They were the exact words she had written on her journal. Liz Parker, the journal keeper - woman of few words. She snorted at that. Not her. More like: Liz Parker, the girl who won every Science Award during her middle school days and even as far as her Junior High days. Liz Parker, the one who lived to tell...or not to tell the truth that yes, people of America, the whole world even, they are among us. And she was in love with one of them.

She sighed and tucked a stray brown hair behind her ear. She banished all thoughts about the alien king, tried not to think that it sounded oh, so fairy-tale-ish to her. She reminded herself that she didn't believe in tales of princesses and dragons and wicked stepsisters and magic spells. She believed in atoms and molecular bonds, in friction, gravity, energy and chemical formulas.

She wondered instead on how the inhabitants of Roswell, New Mexico were surviving the summer heat. She wondered if nature was again breathing down its hot fiery breath on the desert floor and air of Roswell. She wondered, if at night, it ever got cold there. She wondered how her parents were doing. She last talked to them an hour ago and they seemed to be quite alright. Happy in fact, they weren't asking her to go home or anything. They had insisted that she have fun. She wondered if the Crashdown Cafe was doing well. She would guess that there would be about a hundred tourists now walking across the oh-so fabled town of theirs. Taking pictures of the front of the UFO Museum, buying postcards that have aliens with green skins wearing bright Hawaiian T-shirts dancing the Hula; maybe some of the tourists are visiting Mrs. DeLuca's store and getting alien key chains and Maria's favorite - the little alien dolls that were just about the size of Voodoo dolls. She sighed, Florida's a beautiful state and all, but it bored her. No jumping off the bridges here. No dodging of FBI agents.

And then with a shrug, she allowed herself to think of Max Evans. And with that another list popped into her head. No late-night kisses on the rooftop, no heavy making out at the Crashdown, no necking in the eraser room...

She sighed and berated herself for thinking of him and of course, automatically bringing misery down upon her. And maybe even regret.

No, no. Regret is such a heavy word, it's so...so painful. Like goodbye. And of course, Destiny.

Before she went away for the summer she had talked to Maria about Destiny and they shared the same passion in hating it. She hated it because she knew that she has to succumb to it. There was no other way to defeat it. She would be fighting against something that was so strong, so final...and because all she ever wanted for Max Evans was for him to find his real home, his real self, she walked away and let him have his Destiny, no matter how painful it was knowing that his past, his future, and now his present lies not with her, but with Tess. Max's Queen.

Maria on the other hand hated Destiny because it was crap, it was a lot of bullsh*t to her and she hated it with passion because Michael believed in it. At least that was what the spiky-haired alien had told Maria, that and I love you and then walking away.

Liz had asked Maria what she would do about Michael and Isabel's destiny. Liz remembered the way Maria thought about it. Long and hard and then, smiling her Maria-smile, she told her that she intended to show Michael what real Destiny means.

And what would that be? She had asked, knowing that Maria, not always that articulate would go on babbling about Destiny lying within the charts of stars and moons and planets...one of which the Pod Squad could actually belong in. Oh, but no one has discovered planet Antar yet. Maybe it even exists in another solar system, she thought idly.

Well that wasn't her problem then. She sighed and remembered Maria's answer. What Maria had said stayed with her. In fact, at times like this, it haunted her and she berated herself for being weak and succumbing to the angry claws of Destiny that tore her away from Max Evans. The guy who saved her life so that she could finally live.

Maria had told her that Destiny, their Destiny, hers, Max's, Michael's, everyone's destiny was made from choices.

It wasn't ordered around, it wasn't planned and it wasn't based on a life two million light years away from earth. What mattered was now...the choices that they will make - that will shape their Destiny. Their real Destiny. Maria had said it with such conviction that at that time, Liz had felt sorry for her. And now, a thousand miles away from home, she felt the exact same way, this time for herself.

She wished she had Maria's courage. She wished she could risk her heart like that. But she couldn't. In a deeper sense, she knew that more than anything it was for her own good. She didn't want to be blamed. She couldn't imagine how it would feel ten years from now with Max Evans standing in front of her, blaming her, hating her for not giving him the freedom to choose. For insisting upon him her feelings, her heart, the Destiny that she wanted them to have.

If she gave in and looked away, it was because she decided that there was no other choice for her.

She wondered if any of the aliens were ever regretting what had happened to them this year. Granted that it had been Max's decision to heal her and tell her the truth, she knew it had been a lot to take for Isabel and Michael, and maybe even for Tess too.

The night before she left Roswell for the summer, being the science-girl that she was, she had looked at the situation in every possible angle to process, to examine and evaluate.

She wrote the pros and cons. Saw to it that in some way she could draw out a conclusion, one that is based on facts, and therefore, could provide her with something logical, something concrete, something to keep her sane. She decided that the best way to deal with the situation was to be logical and probing. And although her experiences from last year were far from being logical, sometimes even defying Science, (at least the Science that she thought she knew so well), she was driven to seek for the scientific explanation for everything. To be detached from everything and everyone. And in that way, she had pounded the truth inside her head: Max has his own Destiny apart from her.

Sometimes, she even wished she wasn't like that.

But she was and that was why she opted to run away. Because despite what she told Max, she knew that she couldn't deal with seeing Max and Tess trying to figure out their Destiny. She also knew that with her hovering about, a silent shadow, Max and Tess would never be able to realize and understand their Destiny.

She understood this much: Max's responsibility, his life, rested within that planet, with his people, beside his wife, his queen. She shouldn't feel betrayed, she shouldn't think of herself, because if she did, then she would be selfish and she would be taking something away from Max. His choice. To choose between her, their love and his Destiny. Max was sure he had already made the choice, that it was the right one. But how can he be sure when he was thinking with his heart and not with his mind? And so she opted to be the one who'd be blind and stubborn or logical, as she would like to call it.

Deep down, she knew it was unfair. For her, for Maria, for Max, at some level maybe even for Tess.

She shook her head and stared at the words scribbled so languidly at her journal:

"I'm having fun."

She didn't feel like she was having fun at all. But she ignored that feeling. If she stopped and let herself feel for that long she would have packed her things and flown home, telling Max Evans that she was wrong and Maria was right. Destiny is in their hands and not written across dead stars.