Title: This Brilliant Dance

Disclaimer: I don't own anything

Author's Note: This is sort of a short chapter, but I promise the next one will be longer. Also, as it was pointed out to me, Topolsky's first name on the show is Kathleen, and in my story, it is Julia. I didn't know her name at the time I was writing the story, so I made it up. For the sake of the story, whatever first name I give her, Topolsky is Topolsky.

Fears, Unfounded or Proven

"Liz?" Mrs. Parker asked, knocking on the door of her daughter's room and letting herself in. "You were out quite late last night, your father and I didn't hear you come in."

"Max and I were hanging out," Liz replied, glancing over at her mother as she hunted through her dresser, looking for the clothes she wanted to wear today. It was late in the morning on a beautiful and sunny Saturday, and she had plans to go shopping with Maria.

"Just hanging out?" Mrs. Parker asked in a would-be casual voice.

"Yeah," Liz answered shortly. Well, no, it had been much more than just "hanging out." Although the evening had been slightly ruined by the brutal and graphic flashes Liz had seen…She did not want to be forced to watch a war every time she kissed her boyfriend.

"Are you alright, Lizzie?" Mrs. Parker asked, taking a seat on her daughter's bed. "You seem upset." She watched her daughter appraisingly, noting the slightly concerned look in the teenager's eyes. "We haven't really talked in a while, you know, and I just… I just wanted you to know that you could come to me with anything."

Liz smiled at her mother and nodded. "I know, Mom. I know I can tell you anything." Except this. Except Max.

"I mean, you didn't even tell me when you broke up with Kyle." Again, Mrs. Parker's tone was casual on the surface, but her eyes were trained intently on Liz, watching for the reaction.

Liz paused, swallowing nervously, and looking back at her dresser. She finally pulled out a dark red shirt and blue jeans and tossed the clothes onto her bed. At last, she turned to face her mother fully, and said sincerely, "My breakup with Kyle was…hard. I wasn't really ready to talk about it."

"Well, you moved on pretty quickly," Mrs. Parker commented, thinking about Max. She was more than a little concerned about how rapidly Liz had switched boyfriends. Liz had never talked about this Max Evans before a couple of weeks ago. Had she even known him for more than a few days before dating him?

"So did Kyle," Liz answered, her tone slightly bitter. There was an uncomfortable silence, then Liz said, "I need to change."

"Right…" Mrs. Parker stood up and walked over to the door. "Just remember, if there is anything you need to talk about…"

"I know, Mom," Liz replied quickly, a little too quickly. "I know." She watched as her mother left the room, closing the door behind her, then turned and grabbed the shirt and jeans from the bed. As she changed, she thought back to the last set of visions she had seen. They were beautiful visions, filled with blinking stars and dancing light in a mass of inky blackness, but they always ended with the same images.

War.

She carefully adjusted the neckline of her shirt and glanced at her reflection in the mirror. Then she turned away and walked over to her desk, intent on writing a few sentences in her journal about the night before.

But her journal was not in her desk.

"I'm telling you, Max," Isabel said, pacing the room, "there was something seriously off with Deputy Hannigan."

"Have you ever felt that way around him before?" Max questioned, sitting cross-legged on his bed. He was watching as his sister paced, noting the anxiety in his face. This, coupled with Tess' statement a few weeks ago that she though something bad was going to happen… Well, it worried him.

On the other hand, he didn't want to make a mountain out of a molehill. This could simply be his sister being paranoid.

"No," Isabel admitted reluctantly. "No…all the other times I've seen him, he's felt… normal."

Max raised an eyebrow and asked, "Then where exactly does that leave us, Izzy?"

Isabel shrugged and slid to the floor, leaning back against the wall by the door to support herself. "I don't know, Max. But something is wrong. I'm telling you, something is very wrong."

Max stared at his sister's drawn expression, at her pale face and exhausted eyes, and nodded slowly. "Alright," he said. "Then we had better figure out what it is that is wrong." He glanced over at the clock on his dresser, noting the time. It was quarter after eleven, which meant that both Tess and Michael would be up now, but probably still at their respective houses. "You talk to Michael, and I'll talk to Tess. We'll see if either of them knows anything."

Liz tore down the steps and pushed through the hallway into the back on the Crashdown. She shoved the door to the dining area opened and stepped through, her eyes instantly scanning for Maria or Alex. She needed to tell them that the journal was gone. She needed them to help her figure out what to do next.

As she walked purposefully into the room, however, she was arrested by the sight of Kyle walking towards the front door. The Crashdown was almost empty, Saturday morning never being a high traffic time, and it was unusual to see a jock at this time.

"Kyle?" Liz asked, pausing. "What are you doing here?"

Kyle glanced over at Liz, unsure of what to say. "I just wanted to talk…" he muttered. Liz said nothing, and an uncomfortable silence fell over the two. Finally, he shrugged and looked down at his shoes. "I missed you," he said at last.

"You appeared to be having a great time with Trudy last night," Liz snapped waspishly, her anger getting the better of her.

Kyle's eyes snapped up to her face, and he glared at her. "And you were having a great time with Max." He spat the name 'Max' out, as though it was mud. As though he could barely bring himself to say it.

Liz flushed scarlet and looked away. "What do you want?" she repeated, her voice less accusatory this time.

"I want to be friends again," Kyle replied honestly. "I at least want us to be able to talk civilly to each other." He ran a hand through his hair. "I came over last night to talk to you, but you were still out with Max then…I thought you'd be here now and maybe we could…"

But Liz had stopped listening. "You were overhear last night?" she demanded. "Were you in my room?"

Kyle frowned, clearly unsure why she was asking these questions, and shook his head. "No, your mother said that you were still out, so I left."

"Right…" Liz looked at Kyle appraisingly for a moment, trying to decide whether or not she believed him. Had he seen her journal? Had he looked at what she had written? Did he know the secret?

Liz sighed and shook her head. If he knew, he would have told his father by now, and Max and the others would be in custody.

"Look, I just wanted to talk, okay? Nothing big, I just…last night I realized that I missed having your friendship. You weren't just a girl that I decided to date, you were someone I actually cared about," Kyle muttered, his words drawing Liz from her reverie. "I didn't want to lose that… " He closed his eyes for a moment, then drew a breath and said, "I just need to know why? Why did you do this?"

Liz bit her lip and weighed her options. Lie to him or…or what? Telling him the truth was out of the question. "Kyle, I never meant to hurt you. I just…things happened so quickly…I just…" Just what? Liz blinked rapidly, trying to come up with a proper response.

She was saved from having to come up with an answer, however, as Kyle's cell phone began to ring. He opened it, glanced down at the number, and said abruptly, "I've got to go, Liz. I'll talk to you later, okay?" And he turned and walked away, answering the cell phone as he did so.

Liz drummed her fingers carelessly on the table and thoughtfully watched Kyle go. As the Sheriff's son pushed the door to the Crashdown open, however, Liz caught a few of his words and she felt her blood run cold.

"Yeah, I just talked to Liz…Yes, it's all taken care of…I told her exactly what you said I should…No, I don't think she suspected…Of course, I understand…"

Liz turned and hurried towards the back of the diner again, her thoughts in a whirl. Had Kyle been talking to his father? Had he been sent here to find out about Max from her? Had he been the one to take her diary?

And most importantly, did he know?

Outside on the street, Kyle felt his face flush slightly as he held the cell phone against his ear, listening to his girlfriend berated him soundly for his lack of tact or sympathy.

"What do you mean, you said exactly what I told you to? I gave you guidelines of things to say, Kyle, but you were supposed to speak from your heart. You're the one who said that you where sorry you had lost the friendship with Liz, and all I was saying was that it was fine with me if you tried to patch things up with her, and that I trusted you, but I wasn't actually trying to force you into this, or to give you notes of what to say. You have to come up with it yourself."

"I know, but I figured it would be better to say what you said because you said it so well. If I tried to say something, I'd just butcher it all," Kyle protested, trying to defend himself.

"Better to butcher the words that you actually mean than to sprout flowery phrases that someone else said. I can't believe you! Look, I think mending things with Liz is a good thing since you obviously cared about her, and we've been dating for almost three weeks now, so I trust you and I know that you have moved on and all, but you've got to admit that just repeating what I say won't help the situation because it doesn't mean as much. Honestly, Tess wasn't kidding when she said you were clueless about relationships…"

Whoever thought Trudy was a sweet and quiet girl had never seen or heard her when she was like this.

"Come on, Max, this is just Isabel being paranoid," Tess said quietly as she leaned out of her bedroom window and stared at Max. Max was pacing back and forth through the dirt below her sill, his eyes glowering angrily.

"What is it isn't, Tess?" Max snapped back. "What if she is right, and something is wrong with Hannigan?"

Tess glanced around the yard suspiciously. Her bedroom was fortunately situated at the side of the house, and a set of tall rhododendron bushes blocked Max from the neighbors view, but it concerned her to have him standing in plain sight nonetheless. "Can't you at least come in?" she said angrily.

Max rolled his eyes at Tess. Her bedroom was the only one on this side of the house, and her window was the only one that opened into the yard. No one would see him here, and he was probably a lot safer out in the yard then in her room, since Kyle and Valenti could walk in any moment.

Ignoring Tess' request, Max asked, "How have you been? I haven't seen you in a while."

"You see me every day at school," Tess shot back bitingly.

"I haven't spoken to you in a while," Max amended.

"I saw you and Liz last night," Tess remarked, changing the subject and not answering Max's question, unwilling to admit that she had missed the other aliens in the past few weeks. "You looked pretty cozy," she continued, giving Max a wicked smirk.

Max glared at her and replied, "What of it?"

"Has Liz discovered anything else about our home planet yet?" Tess asked.

Max shook his head. "Nothing," he replied grimly. "At least, nothing that we didn't figure out at the first flash."

"War?" Tess sighed and turned away, glancing back at her bedroom door. "Figures we wouldn't get anymore answers," she grumbled, disappointed. She shot a look at Max over her shoulder as she stepped away from the window. "I've got to go, Max. Don't sweat it. This is just Isabel being…well, Isabel."

"Let me know if Valenti says anything about Hannigan," Max ordered, watching Tess walk away. He paused, then an idea occurred to him and he said, "See if you can lead the conversation that way. Mention that you saw Hannigan patrolling last night and he was acting funny… You know, get Valenti to talk."

Tess nodded curtly, unnerved that she was automatically accepting Max's order. He really was becoming a leader…how much longer until she wasn't needed anymore?

The landlord eyed the woman in front of him somewhat suspiciously. She was dressed in a perfectly pressed back suit jacket and skirt, and a red silk blouse. Her hair was swept out of her face into a loose bun, a few tendrils falling at the nape of her neck. It have her a no-nonsense look, but one that was slightly coupled with feminine charm.

"You want to rent this place for how long?" the landlord asked. He was an older man, balding and short, with failing eyesight, and partially deaf in one ear. The year had been slow for him, not many people still looking to rent an apartment. He would gladly take whatever this woman offered him, but still… It just seemed so off that a woman who was clearly quite well-to-do would want to rent an apartment in this part of town.

"Indefinitely," the woman replied smoothly, smiling a little too brightly at the landlord.

The landlord glanced down at the name on the renter's form in his hand and nodded. "Aright, Ms…Topolsky. How would you like to pay? Cash or check?"

"Check," Ms. Topolsky replied crisply, reaching into her purse and pulling out her checkbook.

Next Chapter: Circling

Due: Tuesday 1/2 (2006!)