Title: On My Knees

Disclaimer: I don't own anything

Summary: Five years, and she's still struggling just to survive.

Author's note: IMPORTANT! PLEASE READ! Have I got your attention? Good. So, here's the deal – there are two epilogues. Or, rather, there is one epilogue, but it is in two parts. This first part officially ends the story. It ties everything together with ribbons and a nice bow. And if you want that kind of ending, stop after you have finished reading it. I won't be upset, I promise. I kind of like this ending better anyway.

Then there is the epilogue, part two. It will be posted in a couple days. It doesn't exactly change the story… it just sets up for the sequel. And yes, there will be a sequel, but it might not be the kind of sequel you are expecting. Unless, of course, you are Magali, in which case you figured out where this was going a long time ago… Anyway, to warn my Rebel readers – you won't like the sequel. It isn't anti-Tess, it just happens to be a very strongly Max/Liz and Maria/Michael focused story, and so you might just want to end with this chapter. You can read the second part of the epilogue, just to see what happens, and then, if you want, disregard it and pretend the story ends here.

Got it? Good.


Epilogue: Get Back Up and Do It Again (part one)

This is what it feels like when you realize you are a murderer. Your heart stops beating and your lungs start burning and everything seems to go into slow motion and speed up at the same time, and the volume rises and falls like an old out-of-tune radio, while the air thickens and you want to start screaming in horror, but you've forgotten how to make any sound at all.

Alex was crumpling at her feet while Kyle stood in the doorway, confused and unsure, and she thought the world might actually stop spinning.


A year passed.

Seasons changed, spring bursting into summer, summer fading into fall, fall rolling into winter, winter melting into spring once more. Some things changed. Some things didn't.

Tess pushed the mug of coffee back and forth between the palms of her hands, eyeing the dark liquid. She had dumped in several tablespoons of sugar, enough sweetener to make her teeth rattle when she took a slow sip. Nick said it was the nearly sacrilegious destruction of a perfectly good cup of coffee.

"Penny for your thoughts?"

She looked up, startled at the sound of Nick's voice. She had not heard him enter the small kitchen, but he stood behind her, leaning against the doorway with a faint smile on his lips.

"I spoke to Liz today," Tess answered casually. It wasn't strange for her to speak to Liz, although the tension and awkwardness of those conversations did leave her a little unsettled. Despite it all, some things could never really be fixed, and she and Liz would never be friends.

"Shiri," Nick corrected automatically, using Liz's pseudonym.

Tess just rolled her eyes. "You guys are insane, you know that? Insisting on calling each other by your fake names when there is no one else around…"

"How is she?" Nick asked, matching her casual tone with his own indifferent reply. It wasn't that he didn't care about Liz, it was simply that he did not need to ask the question to know the answer. She'd started treatments, and she improved a little. But not enough. Not enough to stave off the eventual end. They were still hopeful, but…

"She spent the day with Serena."

Nick rolled his eyes, and Tess bit back a smile. She still had no idea how it had happened, but despite Serena's acrid remarks and snide comments, Liz had persistently stayed in touch with the other woman. Tess' belief was that it was most likely due to Liz's insatiable need to fix things. But eventually Serena had caved, slowly and reluctantly at first, until finally forming some sort of odd friendship with the one-time waitress.

Nick walked past Tess, around the table to the cupboards. He pulled out a mug of his own and poured some coffee into it, swirling the liquid around for a moment.

"I'm taking Alex over to Jason… sorry, Max's… tonight," he said.

Tess nodded. "I know. Alex is excited." She chewed her bottom lip thoughtfully, reflecting on her son. They were still trying to figure out the relationships between each other, fumbling uncertainly in the figurative dark. Max wanted to be part of Alex's life, and Tess could not blame him for that. Nor could she blame him for the obvious hurt he felt whenever Alex turned to her or Nick. But they were trying, all of them, to make this work, and for that she would be eternally grateful.

She could not deprive her son of the chance to know his biological father, a chance to have multiple sets of parents who loved him. Reluctantly, and with ill grace, she had accepted the fact that she simply had to trust Max and Liz. Trust that they loved Alex enough to never do anything to hurt him.

Nick sat down across from her and took a sip of his coffee. He drank it with cream, but no sugar.

She knew how he drank his coffee. Just like she knew what kind of shampoo he used, and that he didn't like raw tomato or cucumber, but would eat them both cooked or processed. He didn't like the color green, at least not in clothing. And he hated butterflies.

She didn't know any of those things about Max.

"Sometimes," Tess murmured, "I can't quite believe that it is over."

"But it is over," Nick answered. "It was a high price to pay, but… you did save the world."

Tess nodded thoughtfully. They hadn't saved Antar, and at this point, she was not entirely sure that they ever would. But they had prevented the skins from destroying Earth, and that was something to be proud of.

"Do you ever think about the future?" Nick asked curiously, quietly.

Tess blinked, then shrugged. "Not really," she admitted. She'd spent ten years with Nasedo, and in those ten years, all she ever thought about was the future. A future with Max by her side, a future where they returned to Antar and triumphantly destroyed Khivar and saved the planet. She knew now that she had been naïve, a fool to think it would ever be that simple. But at the time, she had dwelt so much more on the future that she'd nearly forgotten the present or the past.

Then everything had changed. For the last six years, since her forced departure from Earth, she had thought about the past. She'd never been able to forget it, never been able to push away the memories of Alex Whitman's terrified face as he collapsed to the ground. The horror stayed with her, and she remembered it, never letting go, never moving past it. She tore it apart in her mind, studying every angle, always wondering if there was something, anything, she could have done differently.

She had spent far too long living in the past and in the future. For the moment, she was content to think about the present.

"I used to think that we could do this without losing anyone," Tess confided after a moment. "I used to think… that it would be easy. I forgot… or maybe I just never really knew… what war was like. I should have known it wasn't that easy."

"Nothing worth having ever comes easy," Nick muttered, and Tess gave a faint smile of reply.

It was ironic, though, how things had worked out for them. Despite the horrors she had seen and endured on Antar, her life had turned out… well, not particularly pleasant, but still… she hadn't died. And neither had Nick or Alex.

The others had not been as lucky.

Michael, she knew, was still drifting about, lost with Maria to guide him. Sometimes she wondered vaguely to herself how he had ever survived before he'd met Maria. Of course, he'd had Isabel then, but Tess knew that it wasn't the same thing.

"Why did you ask about the future?" Tess questioned finally.

Nick shrugged in response. "I guess I just wondered where you see yourself in twenty years."

Tess pulled idly at a strand of hair, then frowned. She was not used to having straight hair, even after a full year of looking like this. The brown strands hung loosely around her face, and though most mornings she did not mind the fact that it took only a minute or two to style her hair, every now and then she missed the blonde curls.

She missed looking like herself. She missed being Tess Harding.

She'd been a lot of other people before. Ten years with Nasedo, and she had assumed every identity he had wanted her to become, every disguise he'd given her. But she'd been Tess the longest, and she missed it.

She pushed the coffee mug away from herself and rose to her feet, glancing towards the window. In Seattle, it had almost always been gray and overcast, a drizzling rain that fell from the sky and covered everything in soggy dampness. Here in California, the sun shone bright, illuminating every corner of the room, pushing away the shadows.

She missed Seattle.

"I don't know," she answered at long last, her thoughts coming around to Nick's previous question once more. "Twenty years from now… who knows? Things will be different, I suppose."

"Maybe. Maybe not."

She accepted his answer in silence. Twenty years from now… it was a long time. How could she possibly expect to know what it would be like then?

Still, there was one thing she hoped would not change. "Twenty years from now," she said softly, "I see myself with you."


This is what it feels like when you realize you are lost. The world still turns, sometimes speeding up so that everything moves in a blur, like a VCR or DVD player continually stuck on fast-forward, and life rushes past while you are stuck, sinking deeper and deeper into the quicksand, disappearing a little bit more every day, and no one even notices becomes no matter how much you want to cry out, you cannot make any sound at all.

Maria was gone, her eyes glazing over in death as she crumpled across the bed, and Michael felt as though someone had ripped his heart right out of his chest.


He never did start seeing Isabel.

Michael wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not. Maria continued to haunt him, although the frequency of her visits slowly lessened until she came only a few times a month, and always only when he was thinking about her. But Isabel he did not see, and her absence was both a relief and a torment.

He could not stand seeing visions of yet another person he had lost. It would have torn him apart, and his fragile grip on sanity was already starting to fade as the others settled into their routines.

Stop sulking, Space Boy. You're not that cute when you're sullen.

He sat on his sofa, legs propped up on the coffee table, and stared across the room at the phantom. She was leaning against the wall, her eyes narrowed slightly, a mischievous smirk touching the corners of her lips.

It was Saturday.

He worked a dead-end job in a dead-end factory, but it had decent pay and benefits and money was not really the issue anyway. He just needed to spend his time doing something, interacting with other people, so that the ghosts of his past would leave him alone.

Of course, on the weekends, he did not have that distraction.

Are you going to get up any time soon? You look like a slob.

"You know," he answered dryly, "Isabel at least would have been nicer to me."

It's your head, Michael. If you want to see her… well, it's not my fault you're stuck seeing me.

He closed his eyes, a memory coming to the forefront of his mind, playing across the backs of his eyelids.

"I have to work tonight, Maria," he snapped, exasperated. "I can't just ask for a night off every time it suits you."

"This is not some small, insignificant thing," Maria hissed in reply, anger making her voice rise in its pitch. "This is our anniversary."

"You say it like it's a wedding anniversary," Michael replied with a roll of his eyes. "It's the two year anniversary of dating, and it isn't a big deal."

"You don't get it at all, do you?" Maria nearly shrieked before turning and stalking from the room.

He showed up three hours later under her window with a bouquet of roses and a reservation at the fanciest restaurant in town. It was as close to an apology as he would ever make, and Maria knew it.

Despite his faults, she loved him. Despite her faults, he loved her. And they were happy.

Were happy.

Past tense.

The sun is setting, the phantom commented casually, glancing towards the window. The sky lit up red and orange, the horizon a hazy purple. And every shade of yellow you could possibly imagine.

Michael grimaced.

Oh, right. You don't like yellow. That comment was accompanied by laughter, soft and mocking.

"It's an ugly color," Michael replied, but he glanced towards the window all the same, staring through it at the sky, at the distant sinking sun. "Who would ever want to wear something that looked like that?"

I think it's pretty.

"Well, you never did have good fashion sense," he sniped.

Oh, please. Like you're one to talk. You wouldn't have worn anything other than ripped jeans and the same black t-shirt if I hadn't made you change.

"God, you were so controlling." Michael rose to his feet, striding away from her, away from the living room, in a huff of frustration.

Her voice followed him, echoing in his wake.

Come on, you know you miss me.

He paused at he doorway to his bedroom, unable to fight off the truth of those words. "Yeah," he whispered. "I do."


This is what it feels like when you realize you will be left behind. The entire world fades to nothing, slipping through your fingers, and every time you reach out to grab something, you find you can't feel it at all. You're running a race and there is no end, no finish line, nothing at all, and your legs are aching and you gasp for breath but you can't stop sprinting because then the world really will end.

Liz is turning away from him, following her doctor through the hallways of the hospital, and for a moment he thinks he's forgotten how to breathe.


Liz sat on the floor of their family room, stacking the uniform blocks into the tallest tower she could manage. Alex, his brilliantly blue eyes aglow with delight, jumped up in down in excitement, waiting for her to finish so that he could destroy the tower, sending all the blocks scattering to the ground.

Max watched from the doorway to the kitchen, a faint smile gracing his features.

Alex still looked so much like him. Or, rather, like what Max had looked like before he had changed his appearance. He had the same face-structure, the same dark hair, the same expressions. But still Tess' eyes. The rest of them had changed, hiding their past behind their painful reconstructive powers, but Alex would forever remain a mesh of the past of his two parents.

Liz finished, pulled back, and the blocks went flying, tumbling to the ground amidst Alex's laughter.

With a look of mock outrage, Liz said, "You knocked them all down!"

Max turned and walked back into the kitchen, listening to the sounds of the two floating on the air.

His son.

Even after all this time, he could not wrap his mind around the fact that he had a son. Alex was six, and so he had known for a long time that he had a son. Had known for over six years, since the moment he had placed his hand on Tess' stomach and felt the child moving within, reaching out to him. But to actually see that child now, to watch him as he grew…

It made him think of miracles.

A miracle he doubted he would ever have with Liz.

She had been to a doctor, started treatments, and now it was just a waiting game, waiting to see what would happen… But in the mean time, her body was so destroyed she would never be able to carry a child. They could adopt, but given how much the cancer had sucked from their lives, it was doubtful they would have the energy to take care of another child.

So much time lost to this disease…

A moment later, he head the soft thud of footsteps and Liz came to his side, a grin on her tired face. "Alex kicked me out of the room," she confided. "He wants to build a giant tower, and it has to be a surprise. I promised I wouldn't peak."

Max smiled, but the smile did not reach his eyes. He was glad Liz and Alex got a long so well. At first, he had been a little worried about it. After all, how would Liz take to playing stepmother to her rival's son? But the fact that Tess was Alex's mother had not been enough to change Liz's opinion of the boy.

After all, she had told Max once, he's your son, too. And I love you, so I love him.

"Penny for your thoughts?" Liz asked gently.

Max rubbed his eyes with one hand. "Remember what it was like before all this?"

"No," Liz answered honestly. "Was there a before?"

Max blinked, accepting that in silence. The war had raged since long before he had hatched, and hadn't his life always revolved around being half-alien? There were always secrets to keep and enemies to fight and people to fear. Nothing had changed in that regard.

"I mean, before the skins found us. Sophomore year of high school."

"We still had the FBI to worry about," Liz pointed out logically. "And anyway, that was a long time ago."

Max nodded slowly, hesitantly. "What about before I healed you? Before you knew who we were? Do you remember that?"

It took Liz a moment to answer, and during the time she remained silent, Max found he could not read the expressions that flickered through her eyes. She pulled at her hair, now a pale brown with blonde highlights, and finally said, "A little. But not much. When I think about it… I think about them…" She trailed off, but Max knew who she meant.

Maria and Alex. Her two best friends, killed by a war that wasn't even theirs in the first place.

"I'm sorry," he whispered.

Liz nodded vaguely. "Yeah. Me, too."

Max ran his hand over her hair, smoothing down a few wayward tresses. It was odd, seeing her in a form that he barely recognized. Even after a full year of their disguises, he did double-take when he passed himself in the mirror, unused to the reflection that was staring back at him. He wasn't sure he would ever get used to having to call her Shiri in public, to having to respond to the name Jason.

But underneath it all, she was still Liz. It wasn't the looks or the name that the had fallen in love with, and they were minor changes to make if they would save all their lives.

"I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow," Liz said abruptly.

Max nodded, a little distractedly. She always had appointments.

Neither of them said it, but the truth lingered in the air between them. They didn't know what would happen with Liz's cancer, didn't know if she would live for a hundred years or die tomorrow. There were just too many unknowns, too many confusing variables that made it impossible to determine anything at all.

But Liz always had doctor's appointments. She always had classes or support groups or something to go to. And while Max did his best to share her burden, it wasn't the same thing. Even if she lived longer than him, she was still drifting away from, leaving him behind. She was always walking, each day a step further, into a world he could not understand, could never be part of.

The world of the chronically ill.

"Okay! Okay!" Alex came tearing into the room, grabbing Liz's hand in excitement, his little face glowing. "You can see now, Liz! You can see now."

Liz laughed and ruffled his hair, and allowed herself to be dragged behind him towards the family room.

And Max watched, once again, as Liz was pulled away from him.


This is what it feels like when you realize you are a family. Nothing ever really stops hurting, nothing gets easier, and the pain and problems and fears are still there, but someone it is so much more bearable. Bearable enough that you can keep moving, keep struggling through a never-ending cycle of confusion and hurt. You fall, you get knocked down and pushed around and somehow…

You get back up, and you do it all again.


"Mommy! Mommy! Mommy, Mommy!"

The adults were talking again. And Alex was not happy. Why weren't they paying attention to him? He'd made them a drawing!

Finally, the woman he knew was his Mommy turned and looked down at him, smiling. She didn't look like his Mommy, not anymore. Her hair was dark and straight, her eyes brown instead of the sparkling blue that looked like the sky. They weren't his eyes anymore, and sometimes that made him sad.

He wanted to share his eyes with his Mommy.

So she didn't look like his Mommy… but she still felt like her. And that was how he knew that, despite the different appearance, that woman was his Mommy.

"Yes?" she asked in that tone she used when she was Very Tired.

He held out the drawing proudly. "I made a drawing for you!"

She took it, eyed widening slightly. "Thank you, sweetheart," she said gently. "It is beautiful."

Daddy came to stand next to Mommy. He looked at the picture as well, and smiled. "Great job, Buddy," he said. "Can you draw a picture for me too?"

Alex rolled his eyes and put one hand on his waist. "I already did, Daddy!" he said, and with his other hand he held out the second drawing. Silly adults, not understanding. Of course he had made a picture for Daddy also.

"Oh… thank you," Daddy said in his Surprised Tone.

But Alex couldn't tell if it was a Good Surprise or a Bad Surprise tone. It wasn't the Really Really Bad Surprise Tone, like Daddy had used a year ago when Mommy had gone after the Bad People. And it wasn't the Really Really Good Surprised Tone, like Mommy used when Daddy gave her flowers or other presents.

It left him a little confused. Why was Daddy surprised? Didn't his Daddy know everything?

The man that Alex knew was his second Daddy came to look at the pictures. He didn't really know his second Daddy… no, that was confusing, he decided, and he would start thinking of his second Daddy and his Papa. He didn't really know his Papa, or his Step-Mommy. They were new, just like his Uncle Brennan, and he wasn't entirely sure where they had come from.

He also didn't understand why his Mommy sometimes called his Uncle Brennan by the name Michael instead.

Adults, he decided, were weird.

But his Mommy had said that he was lucky to have a Daddy and a Papa. After all, most kids only had one, and some kids didn't have any. He had two!

"Can you make a drawing for me?" his Papa asked.

He nodded happily. "I can make lots of drawings!" he announced, and scurried back to the crayons. As he settled on the floor of the kitchen, spreading the paper out before him, he let the snippets of conversation pass over his head, only catching a few phrases here and there.

"…not insane, Michael. It's just your way of grieving…"

He drew a large blue circle. He wasn't sure what grieving meant, but he thought it might have been like the Very Sad look Mommy and Daddy had worn after Auntie Kate had gone away. Mommy had said she'd gone to heaven. He didn't know what heaven was like, but Mommy said it was really nice.

He wondered if it had ice cream. He liked ice cream. Chocolate was the best.

"…wait until you start talking to dead people, Nick. Or until they start talking back to you. Then you can tell me you feel perfectly normal…"

"…feels weird. I guess I just… don't know how…I really miss her."

"I know. I miss her, too."

He gave the blue circle a head and some legs. He'd make an elephant, he decided, like the one in the book that his Step-Mommy had read to him yesterday. His Papa would like that.

He looked up, glancing at the five adults. His Mommy was leaning against his Daddy, resting her head on his chest. His Daddy was playing with the ends of his Mommy's hair, one arm wrapped around her shoulders. His Papa was standing at the stove, stirring something, and his Step-Mommy was seated at the table, resting her head on her hands. His Uncle Michel was standing across the room, watching his Step-Mommy and his Papa with a look of Great Concern.

He knew Bad Things had happened a while ago. He remembered it, very vaguely. He remembered some Bad People, and Mommy being Really Scared. And even though he was only Six (which was so much older than the Five that he was when all the Bad Things happened), he could pick up on the interactions between the others.

Every now and then, his Mommy would get a look in her eyes, like she wasn't seeing anything around her. He knew that look, and knew it meant she was thinking of Auntie Kate, or of the other people that he didn't remember. It was Remembering Look. It was a Sad Look.

Sometimes, if his Mommy was late getting home, his Daddy would stare at the door. Times like those, Daddy wore his Scared Look. And Alex didn't really know why or what had happened all that time ago, but that Scared Look meant that Daddy was remembering the times when he thought Mommy wasn't coming home ever.

And then there were days when his Step-Mommy didn't have any looks. She'd be confused, or disconnected, and he'd try to talk to her but could see that she wasn't listening. He knew those days were Doctor Days, although he didn't really understand what that meant. He just knew that he had to wait a few hours before his Step-Mommy would be able to play with him again.

On Doctor Days, his Papa get Very Scared also. He was scared for Step-Mommy, although again, Alex did not understand why. On Doctor Days, Papa would sometimes tell him about Aunt Isabel, who had gone to join Auntie Kate in heaven. He didn't remember Auntie Isabel, but his Papa had said that she liked chocolate ice cream also, so Alex figured that she must have been nice.

And then there was Uncle Brennan. Uncle Brennan talked to a Ghost. It wasn't happy talking, and Alex didn't remember Maria at all, so he didn't know why Uncle Brennan talked to her so much. But whenever Uncle Brennan talked to her – or about her – he got a Remembering Look on his face also. And Like Mommy's Remembering Look, it was Not Happy.

Alex bit his lip and stared at his picture. He didn't quite get his Uncle Brennan, but he thought it was cool that he could talk to Ghosts. Even if it was only Maria.

"Almost done!" he announced to the room, and as one, all the adults turned to look at him. They were all wearing Not Happy Looks, but he grinned at them, and they began to smile in reply, the tiredness fading from their faces.

He liked it when they smiled.

"Can we see?" Mommy asked.

Alex nodded, put the finishing touches on his elephant, and around him, his family came together.