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Congregation

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"Michael?" Maria dashed into her house. Finding the living room and kitchen unoccupied, she hurried up the stairs and practically fell through her bedroom door.

Michael sat on the floor, his back pressed into the side of her bed, his legs sprawled across the carpet, and his head dropped down against his chest. She watched him as he tried to calm his rasping breaths. He must have run all the way from the Crashdown.

"Michael, Max said-" She stopped speaking when he raised his head and she saw his reddened tear-filled eyes. "Oh, Michael." Sinking down to the floor beside him, she encircled him in her arms, not understanding why he was so upset but determined to comfort him.

They stayed wrapped in one another's arms, listening to the rain patter against the window and the thunder roll across the desert as his tears soaked what little dry cloth was still present on her shirt. No words disturbed the calm of her bedroom, dim in the hazy light that filtered in through the window.

Maria just sat in amazement. Michael never cried. Well, there was that one time just before he got his emancipation, but she considered that to be an extreme circumstance. What other excessive incident could bring him to such a level she didn't know. She was aware that nothing she could ever say or do could manage it; she'd tried that theory out more times than she was actually willing to admit and had gotten very negative results. Even when he had lost some of his respect for Max and had found out about the whole Vilandra/Isabel past life thing he had been angry, not tearful. She didn't understand it but was determined to help him if she could.

"Maria-"

"Shh… It's okay. You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to." She continued to hold him, gently rocking back and forth the way her mother always had when Maria had been a little girl and had come home from school in tears because all the other kids had fathers who were a part of their lives and she didn't even know where hers was, certain that she had been the reason he had abandoned them.

"Maria?"

"What is it?" she whispered into his hair. If he wanted to talk, she wasn't about to let the golden opportunity slip by a second time.

"Was he right?"

Taken aback by the question, she leaned her head back to try to see Michael's face. "Was who right, Michael?"

"Hank. Was he right when he said I was a freak?"

Her eyes grew huge at the implication. Since when did Michael listen to anything his lousy drunk of a foster father had ever said? It had been almost a year since anyone had seen or heard of Hank. But Michael sounded so lost and in need of assurance.

"God, Michael, Hank wasn't ever right about anything in the miserable existence he called a life. He certainly didn't know anything about who or what you were. No, you aren't a freak, a little unconventional maybe, but these days who isn't? You'd do well to remember who it is you're speaking to. You know me, aromatherapy and alien communions and all, a mother who's completely wigged out most of the time and when she isn't she's at some psychic fair or UFO trinket do-jiggy convention, and while I do have a great deal of fashion sense and flair, I'm not considered to be the most stable person in Roswell. You're just like the rest of us, a little crazy sometimes but most definitely not a freak." She couldn't stop the rambling of her tongue; it sometimes seemed to have a life of its own, running on without any actual input from her brain. At times like this, she was grateful of it. Sounding completely foolish often helped lighten the atmosphere, almost as much as her coveted Cyprus oil.

Michael surprised her by responding, she hadn't even been sure he was listening to her.

"At least I'm in good company."

~~~

Jordan stayed at the diner long after his breakfast was finished. He couldn't drag his eyes from the six people who continued to occupy the booth across the restaurant from him. It had taken him a moment, but he'd sorted out who was human and who was… more than just human.

He and Renata had long ago given up trying to find a term they could agree on to describe their particular genetic make-up, choosing instead to be an nonspecific as possible. Hybrid always reminded him of roses and Renata of the nut trees she had grown up hating. Alien only brought to mind cartoonish images of green skinned, bug-eyed, top-heavy creatures that looked nothing like they did and were always determined to destroy the world. 'Not of this world/planet/solar system' sounded like they had stepped out of some B grade sci-fi flick, just a bit too 'The Man Who Fell To Earth' for their tastes. Hybrid clones was even worse than just hybrids, recalling cloned sheep and cows and such, resplendent with branches and thorns grown through hybridization. And so they had abandoned their search for a fitting term and just claimed to be a little more than human.

He wasn't surprised they hadn't recognized him. When Renata had said that one of them had approached her, he was a bit concerned. But of course no one ever remembered the rest of The Tempest, Renata's voice wouldn't let them. Her voice wasn't exactly a special power, it was magical all on its own. He was only able to concentrate on his keyboard when she sang because of years of practice.

The humans seemed to blend well with the rest and he wondered how many of them, if any at all, knew. After all Sayer had no clue about either him or Renata, and they'd been together for four years. It was possible, although improbable given how teenagers liked to talk so much, that the humans had no idea. The other three, two girls and one boy, looked happy and at ease in the clichéd surroundings of the cheerful diner. This was obviously one of their haunts. He wondered fleetingly what they thought of their alien surroundings.

A flash of lightning illuminated a dark, wet head on the other side of the diner's front window. He watched curiously as the figure entered the diner, taken off guard that she would feign to enter the place again after the fiasco their lunch had been the previous day. His eyes stayed trained on her as she stood hesitantly just inside the door.

Renata looked around the restaurant, at last finding Jordan seated at the counter. She didn't look further as she walked over and joined him.

Jordan noticed the wary looks that took the place of the teenagers' grins when they saw her walk in. Nervously, they followed her movements across the floor, breathing a collective sigh of relief when she passed them by without a glance.

"Rena, my dear, what brings you out in this storm? And at," he glanced down at his watch, "the ungodly hour of ten in the morning!" He beamed at her, half expecting his cup of coffee to be emptied over his head.

"I'm hungry," her tone was once again cold and self-assured. The Renata he knew was back and ready to take on anything. Maybe even her destiny. "And somehow the coffee I requested earlier dematerialized from the room."

"Is the alien theme beginning to grow on you then?" he teased, just to see what her reaction would be.

"I have discovered that if I plan to eat while we're here, I'll just have to ignore it. You would think that some poor soul would have the sense to open a diner that's just another disgusting greasy spoon. What is it about this God forsaken town that causes everyone to feel the need to entrepreneurialize on a defective weather balloon that landed in some field over half a century ago?" She picked up a menu and buried her face in it. "But tell me, Jordan, what demented psychotic fit made you and Sayer think that peppered beef jerky and tootsie rolls added up to a decent breakfast?"

"Did you wake up on the wrong side of the bed, my dear?" Jordan just grinned at her foolishly, relishing the fact that he had her back with all her bristles and crudeness. "You told us to bring back something lacking in alien themes, that did leave us a bit in a bind."

"Yeah, and all you could possibly find was jerky and candy, I believe that." She glared at the menu, determinedly ignoring the names of the items listed and instead reading their descriptions.

~~~

"What is she doing here?!" Tess hissed at Max, one look at the expressions of the others had cued her in to who the stranger was.

Max shrugged and shook his head. "I don't know."

"Well, Michael picked a terrific time to clam up," Kyle muttered, trying to watch the pair at the counter without looking like he was watching them. He ended up looking like he was trying to turn into an owl by rotating his head all the way around. First one way, then the other until Tess reached out and grabbed hold of his ear, making him stop.

"You looked like you were having a seizure," she explained, quickly removing her hands from his head and placing them on the table, staring at them mutely.

"Alex, who's that she's with?" Liz asked softly.

"I didn't even see him come in. It's Jordan, the keyboardist. You don't think that he's…" Alex felt a cold wave of disquiet fill him as he considered the consequences of having another group of aliens in town. Things hadn't gone so well the last time, and while Ava had turned out to not be so bad, the others had. What would Renata and the rest of them do?

"Max, what should we do?" Isabel leaned back in the bench, pressing into Alex's shoulder.

"Nothing, at least not until we talk to Michael and see what happened this morning."

"He won't be able to tell you anything."

While they had been talking no one had noticed Renata approach the booth. Her voice startled them and someone knocked over a glass, spilling its contents across the tabletop.

Feeling a need to clarify one thing at least and not caring how much the humans of the little group did or didn't know, Renata stepped closer to the table and surreptitiously looked around to assure that no one was watching. "Here, let me," she murmured, sweeping her hand over the spill and leaving the surface free of ice and liquid. Satisfied that she had their undivided attention, she made eye contact with Max. "From the stunt your little friend pulled earlier, I would imagine you have questions." These people scared her, she couldn't help but remember their parts in the war, but she suddenly wanted to end the subterfuge. She would answer their piddling questions and demand to gain their cooperation to leave her alone.

Max nodded dumbly, this was not what he had expected. He wasn't sure what he had expected exactly but this was most definitely not it.

"But we're not going to talk here. One hour from now and you name a location where we won't be disturbed." Jordan placed his hands on Renata's shoulders, gently pulling her back from the table and the six distressed children.

Max looked across at Isabel; their house was off limits because their parents were there. The sheriff would surely be home as well, and although he was just as informed as the rest of them, Renata and Jordan might not like dragging any more people into this discussion than was absolutely necessary. There was no way Michael would be willing to gather at his apartment not to mention that they wouldn't all be able to fit in it anyway. That only left Maria's house. With her mother still out of town, her home would be free from prying eyes and she was already there with Michael.

Liz watched Max, coming to the same conclusion that he had. "She's not going to like it," she interjected, "but she'll agree to it." She quickly scrawled directions on a paper napkin and handed it to Jordan. "An hour?"

"We'll be there."