Title: When Times Collide
Disclaimer: I don't own anything
Author's note: This is the last chapter, though there will be an epilogue after it. And the epilogue will be happy, I promise. It should be up in a couple days.
Summary: When Max and Liz's daughter comes to the past seeking help, two times collide in a desperate race to save the future.
Chapter Twenty-One: The Past Is Calling
So here they were.
The jagged pieces of their fragmented lives would soon be mere memories, memories that faded into nothing, an entire timeline disappearing. In a way, it was bittersweet. They had a chance to start over, to start fresh, to create a world that was not as dark and dangerous as this one, a place where their children could grow up and live in relative peace and security. But in exchange, they had to give up everything that they had experienced, everything that they had known, everything that had shaped their lives for the past many, many years.
Everything that made them who they were.
"Are you sure this will work?" Liz asked for what must have been the thousandth time.
Serena rolled her eyes. "It was your plan, Liz," she pointed out, her tone slightly sarcastic. It wasn't that she didn't understand Liz's apprehension, but rather that it made it much more difficult for her to accept this plan when even the architect of the plan was having doubts.
Liz gave her an unreadable look, then said, "I meant harnessing the power of the Granolith. I know the rest of the plan will work."
And if there was the slightest tremor in her voice, like a reminder that things were quite far from clear-cut, Serena ignored it. She had been informed of the plan, and as far as she knew, she was the only human to learn the truth of what the aliens intended. It left her with a feeling of fear and discontent in her chest, though she knew it was the right decision. But she had to believe that Max and Liz knew what they were doing, that they were not scared by any of this, because otherwise…
Otherwise her own resolve would quickly crumble.
They made their way through the ruins of the pod chamber, stepping over chunks of rock and twisted shards of metal and stone. and past the tangled strips of membrane that once housed four pods, through the narrow opening that lead to the larger chamber. The sun beat down on them, long shafts of light coming in through the cracks and fissures in the remains of the partially-destroyed cave ceiling.
The circular base of the Granolith remained, although it was covered with dust and fragments of stone. It was warm to the touch, and all around it the air hummed with an intense electricity.
"Do you have the stones?" Serena asked, watching as Michael quickly withdrew the alien artifacts from the bag slung over his shoulder. "Good. Place them around the Granolith. One at each corner. Alex, connect them with the wires. I'll set up the rest of the power-structure."
She'd been a little cautious about this, given how little anyone knew about alien technology. Combing the technology from Antar with things from Earth was both tricky and delicate, but they needed both for this to work.
She kept an eye on Alex as she worked. He was the only one she trusted to do anything, the only one she had agreed to let help her with the planning. And even his knowledge hadn't been quite enough, and she'd spent the entire night pouring over books and manuals and notes from various physics classes she had taken.
The basic idea was simple enough. The energy from the Granolith existed in the air all around them as heat. Energy could not be created or destroyed. But it could be converted. So all that was really required was a conversation of the thermal energy into kinetic energy, and then that energy had to be trapped within the confines of the Granolith.
Which, of course, was so much easier said than done.
As she deftly hooked up the circuit and flipped the switch on the generator that would create a magnetic field within the perimeter created by the alien orbs, she wondered idly what the world would be like in the future. Not this future, but the one that Max and Liz thought they could create. A new future, different and distinct. And hopefully so much better.
Well, she mused thoughtfully, she wasn't sure how things could get much worse.
"Ready," Alex said after a few moments of tense silence.
She nodded and stepped away from the others. "Okay. All of you, move back." And she waited, watching them all closely, as they slowly obeyed her order. Max and Liz were holding hands, while Michael surveyed everything with his arms folded over his chest. Maria was close to his side, looking anxious and concerned. Alex stood on one side of Michael, and Kyle stood on the other side of Max and Liz, both impassive and quiet.
She could almost feel the tension that existed in the group. She didn't know what it was, or why it was there, and they had been less than forthcoming with the details. She supposed she couldn't blame them for wanting to keep their own secrets, given that everyone other part of their lives was made public knowledge, but it still bothered her. Because she could not remember another time when she had seen them this tense, this fractured. What could have possibly happened to drive them so far apart?
She pushed those thoughts from her mind and focused instead on the contraption before her. Then she held her breath, sent a quick prayer to whatever deity was listening, and jump-started the circuit.
There was a flash of brilliant light, and a wave of heat knocked her backwards. She stumbled and fell, lifting a hand to cover her eyes as the light momentarily blinded her. The wind was knocked out of her body, and her ears began to ring…
And then it was over. She blinked several times and climbed back to her feet. All around her, the aliens were doing the same, and they were staring at each other, at her, and at the Granolith with eyes wide and filled with wonder.
Because there, in front of them, was a circling, inverted cone of pure energy, flickering and shimmering with an eerie blue light…
"It worked," Liz breathed.
Serena smiled. "Yes," she agreed readily. "It did. Now…" she looked over at Max and Liz, "I guess it is time for you two to go."
Several years in the past…
The heat of the desert sun scorched the sand-and-rock ground, and there was little shade to protect from its unmerciful blaze. The cliff rose steeply on one side, jagged near the top. On the other, the land sloped downwards and rolled away towards the distant horizon.
In front of them, the pod chamber stood silent.
"Are you sure this is right?" Liz asked worriedly, tucking a few strands of dark hair behind one ear.
Max nodded, glancing over his shoulder towards the road that twisted out of sight in the distance. He could just now glimpse the outline of a car, and he knew what was about to happen. At any moment, it would screech to a halt, an a stunned Diane and Philip Evans would find themselves staring at two children.
Sure enough, even as he watched, the car stopped moving. It was too far away to see anything clearly, but he didn't need to watch it. He remembered this moment with such clarity, such vivid detail – the gentle smile on Philip's lips as he spoke to the children, the worry and horror in Diane's eyes when she realized they were all alone in the desert without anyone to take care of them, the warmth of the two soon-to-be-his-parents' hands as they whispered reassuringly and pulled the children into the car.
That had been the tricky part. They'd had to time it exactly right, because Max couldn't risk coming in contact with his past self. So it had to be after Isabel and Max had left, and perhaps even after Michael had hatched and torn his way through the membrane to face the world alone… but before Tess broke free.
Liz looked in the opposite direction, searching for signs of Michael. He'd left a while ago, his small frame blending into the desert. She couldn't see him anymore, and she sighed. She didn't like knowing that he would end up in foster care again, end up with Hank. She had wanted to prevent that, to fix it, but Michael – the future Michael – had been adamantly opposed.
"We can't risk changing too much," Michael said as he paced back and forth across the floor of the room. "And if that means I end up with Hank , then fine."
Maria frowned. "I don't know, Michael..." she argued. "If we have the chance to fix this, to save you all the frustration of growing up with him, why wouldn't we go ahead and do that?"
"Because we don't know what other kinds of effects it might have on all of us," Michael explained. "Maybe I got some benefit from living with Hank. Maybe I actually learned something. Either way, I don't want to mess with things too much."
"He's right," Alex said with a nod. "We have to focus on the main goal of this. We can't let all the other things distract us. I'd love to completely rewrite the past if I could, but we simply can't. It's too risky."
Liz didn't really know what Michael thought he could have gotten from living with Hank. Self-reliance, maybe? Or just the determination to not ever end up the way Hank had, a bitter, lonely drunk.
"So now we just wait?" Liz murmured, and Max nodded. Now, all they could do was bide their time, waiting and watching for the opportune moment.
Eventually, something moved, a small speck of darkness, a silhouette against the bright sun. Max turned towards it, eyes narrowed, and said in a low voice, "That could be…"
Liz nodded. "Yes. We should…" She didn't finish the sentence. She'd meant to say that they should hide, but the words faded as she continued to stare the distant figure.
She didn't need to finish the sentence, however, because Max knew what she was suggesting and had agreed with it anyway. He quickly drew her backwards, away from the pod chamber so that they were well hidden behind a curve in the cliffs. From within the crevice, they watched with abated breath, hardly daring to move. It felt like hours, though it might have only been a few minutes, and then the figure was before them, looking around with suspicious eyes.
Liz gave Max a look, a question in her eyes, and he nodded slowly. He could do this. He had to do this.
"You do realize what you are suggesting, right?" Isabel asked, watching Max cautiously. He looked at her quickly, and she gave a little sigh. "This isn't fighting in the heat of a battle. This isn't shooting a person to keep them from killing you. This is lying in wait, killing someone in cold blood. Are you sure you can do that?"
"I don't really have a choice, do I?" he countered with a shrug.
But Isabel didn't look reassured. Instead, she murmured, "Max, you don't understand. You don't know what that does to a person." She looked away, dropping her gaze even as the tears of self-disgust pooled in her tawny eyes, "You don't know what it feels like to be a murderer."
That gave Max pause, and he looked at her for a moment. Then, slowly, he nodded. "I suppose I don't," he agreed. He had been in part responsible for Khivar's death, but it wasn't the same thing, and he knew it.
Still…
"But I'm still willing to make that sacrifice," he said, waiting until Isabel looked at him before adding, "because Liz and I will cease to exist. We'll fade away, get erased by our own actions. And then a different version of us will have a chance at a happier future, one where we don't need to make these kinds of choices. So I am willing to become a murderer if that means that no one else has to."
Max stepped out from behind the cliff wall, his expression blank, his eyes narrowed, his gaze firm. "Hello, Nasedo."
The shape-shifter started and looked at Max cautiously. He was wearing the same form that he would wear several years in the future when he met Max for the first time – that of Ed Harding. But, whereas Max had first viewed Ed as enigmatic and cold, but still an ally, he knew better now.
"Who are you?" Nasedo asked sharply, lifting a hand as though to attack Max. He didn't, though, and the confused and suspicious expression on his wary features was enough to tell Max that he waiting to determine if they were friend or foe.
But Max wasn't going to just stand there and wait for Nasedo to figure it out. He couldn't take the chance that the shape-shifter would gain the upper-hand and win. Nasedo was still very powerful, probably more powerful than anyone had realized until it was far too late to stop him. Max had the element of surprise at the moment, and he intended to use it.
He had a job to do. A world to save.
And without warning, he moved forward and slammed his right hand onto Nasedo's chest with all the strength he could muster. His fingers began to glow an eerie blue-green, and an overwhelming burst of energy rushed through his body and poured out of his palm, flowing into the shape-shifter.
Nasedo's eyes went wide with shock as he realized, too late, the danger that he was in, the threat that he faced.
A moment before his eyes glazed with death, the traitorous shape-shifter heard the strange alien boy whisper, "I'm someone you should have never tried to destroy."
Then Nasedo's world went dark, and he collapsed to the desert floor, lifeless and still.
Max swallowed, his throat suddenly dry. He hadn't fully appreciated Isabel's warning until that moment, until he felt the heart beating in Nasedo's chest give out beneath his fingers. Everything seemed a little distant, then, as though the world was separated from him by a thick blanket of fog, and all he could see was the shape-shifter's blank, unseeing eyes.
Then he felt Liz's hand on his arm, and forced himself to look at her, to ignore the chill that ran down his spine and seeped into his fingers and toes.
"Is he… is he not coming back?" Liz asked delicately. After all, they'd been able to revive him when he was shot while helping the Max escape from the white room.
"No," Max said. "He can't come back from this." Gunshot wounds were different from those inflicted by an alien's powers. Nasedo didn't have the ability to heal himself now. He was truly gone. Dead.
Dead. It was so permanent, so final. So…
Max shivered and looked away.
Then he ran a hand through his hair and looked down at the body once more. "Tess will be coming soon."
Liz nodded. Nasedo's body had started to disintegrate before their very eyes, rather like the way the skin's husks would turn into dust after they were killed. She supposed that was good, she did not want the scared, lonely six-year-old Tess to see a dead body when she first emerged into the world.
"We should go," she murmured.
"I don't like this part of the plan, though," Michael said after a moment. "I mean, after will get rid of Nasedo, we're just going to let Tess wander around in the desert?"
"That's what you did. That's what Max and Isabel did," Liz pointed out. "For all we know, that is also what Maria, Alex, Kyle, and I did as well." Michael still looked skeptical, and she supposed she couldn't blame him. She was, after all, suggesting that they abandon a family member – a six-year-old family member – in the middle of a scorching desert.
But she was sure about this, was sure it would work.
"Look," she said finally, "the seven of us ended up in Roswell, right? We all came at different points, but we all got there soon after we… hatched." Even now, even when she fully believed that she was an alien, when she had accepted what she had been told and what she had seen of the past as the complete truth, it still felt odd to refer to her hatching.
She still wanted to call it a birth.
"But Tess didn't," she continued. "Probably because Nasedo found her. And he needed time to screw up her head. But if he hadn't found her, if she'd been left on her own, she probably would have ended up in Roswell pretty quickly, too. It's just the way it was fated to happen."
"You're putting all our lives in the hands of fate?" Kyle muttered. "It could just be a coincidence, you know…"
Liz looked at him. "Seven people, Kyle. Seven people ended up in Roswell. That's not a coincidence."
Max gave her a quick look and took her hand, squeezing it. "You sure about this?" he asked gently.
She nodded. She wasn't sure how she could explain it, but she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that this was the right thing to do. "I'm sure," she said.
They stood in the alleyway, looking up at the house that rose above them. The window on the second floor was partially open, and the curtain rustled slightly in the light breeze. The Parkers clearly hadn't thought there daughter would be in any danger – it was Roswell, after all, and who would actually climb up to break into a little girl's room?
Liz glanced at Max and said, "I guess it isn't really breaking and entering if the window is open."
"Hm… yeah. Still, it feels a little weird to go in there without your permission. Usually you're the one inviting me in."
"But I am giving you permission," Liz argued. "Just… you know, not the me from this time. Future me is giving you permission to climb into the room of past me. Or… um, I guess maybe she's really current me, since we are in her time."
Max found he really had no desire to spend much time thinking about the details of time travel. That was something better left to the scientists in the group, and he had to focus on the job before him. They didn't have a whole lot of time, and he didn't know how long it would be before they simply disappeared, their timeline erased by their actions here in the past.
"There is one other thing we should do," Alex said after a moment or two of thinking. "We should let us four – Liz, Maria, Kyle, and I – know that we are aliens."
"I agree," Maria said thoughtfully. "Just… you know… so we're more prepared. So that we know this at the beginning, and not several years later. Not after we've spent so much time thinking we're human."
Liz, for rather obvious reasons, hadn't been able to come. So it was just Max who climbed through the window leading into little Liz's room and sat down at the edge of her bed, watching her sleep. The moonlight fell through the window, cascading over her face and hair. He felt a little creepy, sitting there and staring at her.
Still…
He also found himself enjoying the moment, staring at her. Just watching her sleep, a peaceful expression on her face. He hadn't seen Liz looking that relaxed in a very long time, and he missed it. He hated the fact that there lives had gotten so strange, so completely messed up, that she had not once been able to relax around him. Not for a long time.
He rested his hand on her shoulder. "Liz? Liz? Wake up."
She opened her eyes blearily, blinking away the vestiges of sleep. It was clear that she was not fully awake, but instead caught somewhere between reality and the land of dreams. Brown eyes focused on him, and there was no fear there. Instead, she just stared, as though it was not at all strange to find a man sitting on her bed, smiling at her, in the middle of the night.
"Who are you?" she asked, her voice slurred with sleep.
"A friend," Max answered, smiling a little. "I need to tell you something really important, okay?"
She nodded sleepily. "Mm… okay."
"Have you ever noticed that you can do things that other people can't? Things that make you different… special?" It felt ridiculous to explain it like this, but Max doubted she would have understood anything if he asked the young Liz if she ever noticed that she was a half-alien, half-human hybrid.
She bit her lip, eyes clouding with confusion, and stifled a yawn. "Mommy says I'm special," she remarked, looking at him as though needing confirmation of that fact.
Max nodded. "Well… this is a little different, Liz. You're special in a different way from what your Mommy says."
That simply puzzled Liz, and she blinked at him several times, her expression uncomprehending.
"If we're going to tell them… us… our past selves… that we're alien… wouldn't it make more sense to just find us right after we hatch?" Kyle argued, glancing around at the others.
"But we don't know when or where we hatch," Maria pointed out logically, easily spotting the one logistical problem of that plan. "And we don't really know how we ended up in Roswell, or why our parents didn't tell us we were adopted."
Max frowned and suggested, "They probably didn't know." He'd spent a lot of time over the past several days thinking about this, and it was the only possibility that really made sense to him. But the others were looking at him with bewilderment and surprise, and he reasoned that it clearly did not make sense to them.
"How could they not know?"
"Look, we know Khivar went to a lot of trouble to get Tess out of the group. We know he desperately wanted to keep the eight of us apart. He probably had something to do with this. After all, what better way to keep eight aliens apart than to convince four of them that they are actually human?"
"If you're parents don't tell you that you are adopted… if the don't know that you are adopted… you'll never question the idea that you have to be human," Michael agreed after a moment of thinking about this. "It's just… that would be the only thing that makes sense to you."
"It would also explain why we didn't use our powers," Maria mused. "We didn't know we had them, so we never tried to cal on them. The four of you… you always knew you were alien, so you knew that you could do these things…"
"It makes sense. After all, the only way we actually even discovered that we had powers was when they spiraled out of control and burst into our lives without us doing anything to try to use them," Alex agreed.
Max sighed and ran a hand through his hair, searching for a different way to explain this to Liz, to make her understand what it meant to be an alien. He had to convince her that it was important, that using her powers was something she needed to practice, and that it was something she needed to keep secret. From everyone, except Maria, Alex, and Kyle.
After a minute of thinking, he came the conclusion that there was only one thing to do. He'd have to explain by example.
He looked around quickly until his gaze landed on a crayon lying on the ground near the bed. He slid off the bed for a moment and picked it up, holding it in the palm of his hand. Then he turned back to Liz and said softly, "Here. Watch this."
And, in the center of the palm of his hand, the crayon began to slowly rearrange itself until it resembled a wax flower, a rose with delicate petals and a thin, thorny stem.
Liz stared in wonder, and reached out tentatively for the rose. Her fingers hovered in the air, just inches above Max's hand, but she did not take the wax flower. Instead, she let her hand drop back to the sheets and blinked a few times, sleep threatening to overtake her.
"I can do that?" she whispered.
"Yes," Max agreed. "And you're not the only one. Your friends can do it, too."
"Maria and Alex?"
Max nodded. "And Kyle Valenti." He doubted Liz interacted with Kyle much at this point, but perhaps this would prompt them to form a bond now, at a young age. They were best friends in their past life, and they had obviously grown so close in the disastrous future before she had died. It would be good for Kyle to be pulled into the group now, to feel like he belonged.
Liz chewed her lip as she nodded. The six-year-old's features wore a slightly bewildered expression, but she didn't ask any questions. She was rapidly losing the battle against sleep, and Max could see her about to drift away at any moment.
"But you can't tell anyone else, okay?" Max said, rushing on, knowing he had to make her understand this before she fell back asleep. He couldn't risk her naïve, young self accidently exposing the truth. She had to understand the importance of this secret.
Fortunately, Liz just nodded again, apparently deciding to believe anything he said.
"Won't tell," she promised, her eyes closing tiredly.
"And Liz? There are others out there. Others like you. And like Maria, and, Alex, and Kyle. You'll meet them soon, but it might be a while before you really get to know them."
Liz snuggled deeper into the blankets, wrapping them around her small frame. Her face was mashed into the pillow, and it puffed out on either side of her cheek, hiding part of her face. Her eyes were drifting shut, and she yawned, eyebrows coming together.
"Liz?" Max pressed, "did you hear me?"
"Mm… heard you. Others like me… won't meet them yet…"
"I wish we could tell them more. Tell them everything." Kyle looked quickly at Michael, then added, "It seems so unfair to withhold information. We're going to have to go through it again, searching for the answers, not knowing who to trust…"
"They will know who to trust," Max answered. "They… we… will know to trust each other." He paused for a moment, thinking, then said, "I'll tell Liz. Past Liz. I'll tell her that there are others out there. Others like her and Alex and Maria and Kyle. I won't tell her anything else, but if I tell her that… she'll know she can trust us when she meets us."
"That could work," Michael conceded reluctantly, giving a brief nod. "We can't tell them anything else, though. Just this. And if we combine that knowledge with Liz's power of premonitions… next time she and Max meet, she might even know who he is. Or, at least, that he is someone important to her."
"If we're going to tell her all that, why can't we just tell her everything?" Kyle grumbled.
This time it was Maria who replied, "Too risky. Besides… it doesn't work like that. These aren't things we can just be told. Sometimes… sometimes we have to learn something for ourselves. The hard way, if it comes to that. Because life isn't easy, and you don't get handed all the answers on a silver platter. And that struggle is what makes us who we are."
"I still… I'm still worried," Alex confided after a moment of silence. "I don't like this. I don't like that everything is resting on 'maybe this will happen…' or 'this should work out the right way…' It just seems so…"
"Risky?" Kyle suggested with a slight drawl and a roll of his eyes.
"Have a little faith, Alex," Liz murmured.
"Faith in what?" Alex questioned pointedly, giving her a hard, inquiring look.
"In us," was Liz's simple reply. "Have faith in us, in our ability to survive. To come together, to stand strong. To live."
Liz had fallen asleep. Max stared at her for a moment, watching the rise and fall of her chest as she drew steady, even breaths. Then he leaned over and pressed a quick, chaste kiss into her hair.
"See you in ten years, Liz," he murmured before slipping from the room, quiet as a shadow disappearing into the dark.
Liz rolled over in her sleep as the moonlight continued to filter through the window and the curtain rustled in the breeze. She would wake up the next day with know memory of the strange man who had visited her in the middle of the night, no recollection of the conversation that had passed between them…
But she would wake with the oddest sensation that she needed to stay friends with Maria and Alex and Kyle. With the feeling that she was special, somehow, and that she could only tell the other three her secret. And with the barest flickering of a thought, buried deep in her subconscious, telling her that there were others out there, others like her. Special, unique, full of secrets…
A family.
Her family.
They stood in the desert, waiting.
The sun was slowly rising over the horizon, causing the sky to turn a fiery orange and red. It wasn't hot yet, but it wasn't cool either. The arm was warm and damp with an odd humidity that seemed so out of place in the usually dry desert heat. The moon was fading, but the brief outline could still be seen against the pale blue-white of the sky.
Max inhaled a slow breath, and said, "How long do you think it will take?"
Liz shrugged. "Hopefully not that long," she said a little nervously. "I don't think it would be a good idea for us to hang out in the desert forever, waiting to fade away."
Max nodded, and tried not to think about the details of what she had said, about the fact that they would soon be fading into nothing, ceasing to exist.
"I wonder what it will feel like," Liz said softly. "I wonder if we will feel anything at all." She wasn't looking at Max, but instead she let her gaze wander towards the rest of the desert, to the sand-and-rock land that rose and fell all around them. She called Roswell home for years, and she knew this desert well.
"Probably not," Max replied. He did not have Liz's scientific mind, and he did not wish to linger that long on all the possibilities of what could happen. They would fade away, and they would be gone, and once that happened… who would be left to care what it felt like?
Liz bit her lip and gave a frustrated sigh. "We changed things. I know we did. We got rid of Nasedo and saved Tess, we told little me about our powers… why are we still here? Why hasn't our timeline disappeared yet?"
"Liz." Max's voice, suddenly sharp, caught her attention, and she looked at him. Or, rather, she looked through him. He was translucent, his body slowly vanishing before her very eyes.
She looked down at her own hands, and realized that they were transparent as well.
"It's working," she breathed.
Max reached towards her, his fingers brushing against the skin of her hand. They did not make contact, but rather passed harmlessly through the air as though she were a ghost. But she felt a spark, a jump of electricity that passed between them even though they could no longer touch.
"I love you," Max said.
She smiled faintly. "I love you, too," she murmured. "Always have, always will."
He knew he was almost gone. Liz was holding on just a little bit longer than he was, and in a way, he was absurdly grateful for that, for the fact that he would not have to watch her disappear. He didn't particularly like the fact that she would have to watch him as he faded away, either, but there was nothing else to be done.
He felt light. He was floating…
The vivid colors of the landscape blurred and blended together, and he looked at Liz one last time.
Then he was gone.
Liz, translucent and shimmering, had only a moment to stay there, staring at the spot that he had once been, before she too was drifting away. "See you soon, Max…" she whispered, a promise she knew would be kept. She would see him again, in ten years. And this time, she would know that they were meant to be together.
And then she, too, was gone, and nothing remained of their presence except for two tracks of footprints in the sand.