He Called Her Tessa
by
Disclaimer: I own nothing. Roswell and all associations do not belong to me!
Author's Note: This is my first try at Roswell fanfic, so if you criticize, please be polite. All feedback can be sent to teneljade@netzero.net, and thank you!
Also, this is my own little twisted story, so even though it is otherwise up to date, Valenti is still sheriff.
Rating: PG this chapter.
Chapter Two
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Later that night, or actually, early the next morning, when sleeping arrangements were being discussed, two main ideas came up. They could either all camp out on the Evans' living room floor in sleeping bags, or the girls could sleep in Isabel's room, and the guys in Max's. Most of the hands went up for 'indifferent', so it eventually came down to Kyle, who was pushing the living room idea hard, and Michael, who was pushing separation of the genders.
"What, not sure you'll be able to control yourself in the same room as Maria all night?" Alex jabbed playfully. Everyone laughed, except Maria, who flushed a little and Michael, who threw his hands up in defeat.
"All right! I surrender. Do whatever you want."
Isabel jumped up and headed for her room. "C'mon, girls. Let's go get our stuff." She gave each of the female guests what Kyle supposed was a significant look. They dutifully stood and wandered off, undoubtedly to have a long and fruitful gossip session, Kyle thought.
*****
In Isabel's room, the first thing that happened was that Maria and Isabel each grabbed one of Tess's arms, and sat her down on the bed. They both had a eager, gossip-hungry look on their faces, and leaned in close to her. Liz straddled Isabel's desk chair, and also leaned in closer.
Isabel spoke first, eagerly. "Okay, Tess, spill."
Tess put up her innocent face. "Spill what?"
Maria jumped in this time. "Spill what's going on between you and Kyle, of course!"
Tess pretended to have just figured it out. "Oh! That. It's nothing." She said with a dismissive wave of her hand.
Isabel shook her head slowly. "Nuh-uh. Not good enough, Tessie, you're hiding something. Now, I want to know what it is."
Tess tried to look nonchalant. "Oh, well I guess we have gotten a little closer. I was kind of upset one night," her gaze dropped momentarily, and then she brought them back up, "and he came in and comforted me."
Liz sighed. "That's so romantic. I remember when Max used to..."
Maria waved her hands frantically. "Lizzie! Not the M word! Remember?"
Liz sunk deeper in her chair. "I remember. But--"
Maria shook her head forcefully. "No buts. If you're going to come out of this obsession, somebody's got to keep you in line, right?" She didn't wait for Liz's answer, instead turning back to Tess. "Okay. Now, where were you," She commanded.
Tess was once again the center of attention. "He comforted me, but then I didn't want him to leave, so he kind of...cuddled me all night...and we've kind of been sharing his bed since then."
Maria squealed, and even Liz's interest appeared peaked. "What happened?" Isabel asked commandingly. "Did you...?"
"No!" Tess tried to appear shocked, but didn't succeed. "Kyle has been a complete gentleman."
Maria spoke wryly. "Well, that's a surprise."
Liz defended her ex slightly loudly. "Maria! What's that supposed to mean? Kyle is a good guy. He'd never take advantage of Tess when she was upset."
Maria nodded. "Maybe not. But how many seventeen-year-old's do you know who aren't related, are sharing the same bed, and haven't had sex?"
"Not many, I guess," Liz admitted. She turned back to Tess. "Has he made any moves?" She asked, desperately trying to find something to hold her attention away from her fantasies of making love to Max.
"No. I don't think I could tell you truthfully that we hadn't done anything if he had." Tess admitted.
Isabel was grinning. "Tessie, you want to! You naughty girl," she mock-scolded. "Do you have any special rituals, you know, any pet names or anything?" Maria inquired.
Tess looked down, a little embarrassed. "Well... he calls me Tessa, and he's the only one who does that."
Liz thought of something. "Tess... what does the Sheriff think about this?" She asked.
Tess waved her concerns off. "Oh, he doesn't care. He spied on us lots during the first couple of days, and then he realized that we really weren't doing anything but sleeping and maybe talking a little, and now he barely notices."
Maria sighed wistfully. "Man, Tess, you have got the most awesome guardian. My mom totally flipped when she found Michael in my bed, and that was only one night! And it was the same situation as yours, too, he was upset."
Tess smiled a little. "Yeah, I guess he is pretty cool. But I think I got off the hook mostly because I'm not his daughter, and I'll bet he went to Kyle first. I guess he didn't get to me, probably because Kyle told him we weren't having sex."
Liz had her mouth open to speak when a pounding on the door silenced her. It was Michael. "Are you ever coming out? Some of us would like get a little sleep this morning." He said the last word with a noticeable inflection.
"Go away, Spaceboy! This is sacred girl-talk time!" Maria yelled. Then, as an afterthought, "Which we don't get much of, mostly because we're too busy chasing aliens, trying to save your ass, I might add!" Maria yelled in the general direction of the door, and turned back to the girls. "You were going to say, Liz?" She prompted.
Isabel grinned, not bothering to hide it. She held up her hand, and Maria slapped it with a high five. "Nice one, Maria," She complimented. "What do you do, lie away at night, thinking of all the things Michael is liable to say, and then coming up with retaliatory quips?"
"No. What I do is watch lots of television. You'd be surprised how much you can improve your vocabulary of quips and quick comebacks by watching Dawson's Creek and Buffy the Vampire Slayer."
The girls all laughed, and then heard another knock on the door. Maria prepared to yell at Michael again, but the voice that came through was Kyle's, and teasing. "We're making ice cream sundaes...but there isn't very much ice cream, and we're going to eat it all!" He threatened playfully. Within seconds, the door was slammed open, and the four girls stampeded down the stairs, heading for the kitchen.
Kyle slipped surreptitiously next to Michael. "See, you've got to know what motivates them," He said knowingly. "And as much as they're always whining and complaining about their weight, good food will get you pretty darn far with mostly any girl."
Michael shot him a glare which Kyle was mostly immune to by now. "I'll leave the manipulating to you, thanks very much."
Kyle shrugged. "Suit yourself."
*****
After the sundaes were served and eaten, the guys pushed the furniture out of the way, and all eight teenagers spread their sleeping bags on the now-empty floor. Tess and Kyle were halfway across the floor from each other, but neither anticipated a problem. Both of them had slept alone for the better part of their lives, and they didn't think that a few weeks of company would have changed anything.
The lights went out, and the chatter lit the darkness for a good half an hour, but slowly, it died down, as one by one, they drifted off to sleep. By three in the morning, they were all dead to the world.
At six-forty-five, the sun had not yet risen above the horizon, and the early morning was bathed in a dull gray light. The Evans' children and their guests lay peacefully in their sleeping bags on the floor, and Michael, Kyle and Alex were snoring, the latter two rather softly.
Suddenly, Tess sat upright in her sleeping bag, her face a mask of complete terror, and shrieked a single name. "Kyle!"
*****
Kyle was enjoying a nice dream in which there was a beach, and sunshine, and babes who wanted to date him right left and center when a piercing shriek drove through the fog on his brain and snapped him awake.
"What's going on?" He mumbled sleepily as he sat up, taking a moment to collect his bearing. Evans' living room, that's right, he remembered. Twisting around in the sleeping bag, he turned to see what the commotion was, since no one had answered him.
Tess was sitting in her sleeping bag, terror written over her entire face, and Isabel and Liz, on either side of her, were trying to calm her down. Michael had woken up, looked over, and gone back to sleep. Max had slept through the whole thing, and Alex was gone, probably in the bathroom, dealing with the aftereffects of drinking four cans of soda in a six-hour period, Kyle decided. Maria hadn't completely awoken, but she had rolled over and mumbled "Do you mind?" before crashing again. Kyle smiled a little at that.
But the smile fell from his face when he glimpsed Tess again. She was completely rigid, and wasn't responding to Isabel and Liz. Something was really wrong, and Kyle was getting worried. He started to slip on his pants, still covered with the sleeping bag.
"Kyle!" Isabel called. He looked over, still fussing with his pants.
"Yeah?"
"She called for you when she first woke up. Come over here, maybe you can help somehow."
Kyle abandoned any attempt to put on his pants, and left the sleeping bag in his boxers. Only Isabel and Maria hadn't yet seen him in only his underwear, and Maria was asleep. He doubted Isabel would care, or even notice, given the current situation. And Max, Michael and Alex, had probably seen him in less, changing in the boys locker room.
He scooted over to where the three girls sat, and Maria slept, having to step over a semi-conscious Michael and a now lightly snoring Max to get there. He crouched on Alex's empty sleeping bag, on the other side of Liz, and grasped Tess's arm. "Tessa? I'm here. What can I do?"
Isabel was looking seriously worried. "Just stay with her for now. I've got to get Max and Michael up, something's really wrong."
Starting to get upset now, Kyle walked behind Liz and took Isabel's place on Tess's other side. He continued to talk to her, asking her what was wrong, and what he could do, and reassuring her that there was nothing to be frightened of anymore. But Tess didn't respond, merely staring straight forward, her eyes wide and glassy, her mouth open a little, as thought the start of a scream.
Kyle was begging now. "Tessa? Please? Please come back to me, Tessa!"
Michael and Max were at his sides all of a sudden, Max with a deep red mark on his cheek from sleeping on his hand, and Michael rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, but both quite alert. "What's going on?" Max asked.
Kyle and Liz shook their heads. "I don't know," Liz answered. "She woke up, sat up real fast, and screamed for Kyle. Then she went rigid, and she's been like this since then."
Max nodded, then crouched quietly for a moment, as if assessing the situation. When he had made his conclusion, he turned around and started issuing orders in a soft, but urgent tone.
"Alex, get on the computer, and see if you can find anything, anything at all. Isabel, try to scan her. If you don't find anything, try to dreamwalk her. Maybe the state of consciousness she's in can be accessed as a dream." He stopped to look around, and his eyes settled back on his second-in-command. "Michael, I'll connect to her, and see if I can get something that way. You...think. Think about anything, anything at all that could relate to this situation. I'm sure you've got some information stored in that head of yours that Alex would be hard-pressed to find on the Net."
Everyone nodded, and Alex ran towards the nearest computer. Isabel moved over and straddled Tess's legs, facing her. She held out a hand, which began to glow a cool blue, and closed her eyes. Beginning at Tess's head and sweeping downward until she reached her toes, Isabel concentrated hard. Then the glow on her hand receded, and she opened her eyes, having slid out of range of Tess's toes. She shook her head. "Nothing."
Michael looked like he was wracking his brain for something, but finding nothing. He shuddered in defeat, and swore neatly under his breath. "Damn it! I know something. But I can't quite remember!"
Max gave him a terse look, back in full leader mode. "Keep trying." He turned to his sister. "Iz, try to dreamwalk her."
Isabel nodded, and wordlessly took the picture of Tess that Max fished out of his back pocket without comment. Maria noticed the hurt look on Liz's face, and sent her a sympathetic smile, but gave no other sign that she had even noticed.
Isabel lay back on her sleeping bag, touched the photo, and closed her eyes. She seemed asleep, dead to the world, for a long while, although it was probably only five minutes. When she came back, she shook her head, frustrated. "She's not dreaming. There are a whole bunch of colors just...flitting around her consciousness, but she's not dreaming."
Max nodded, and gave it his own try, reaching out his hands and placing them on either side of Tess's face. He stared deep into her eyes, and for a moment, it felt to Michael as if the power was being sapped, as if what Max was doing was working. But then he felt the flash that meant that the power was rejected, and he sighed.
Max shook his head to clear it, and then shook it again, this time slower, to tell them it didn't work. "I got rejected. I don't know what happened. There was like...this stone wall, and I couldn't get in."
All of a sudden, Tess collapsed. Her eyelids flicked, and then she blinked. Kyle had caught her on the way down, and now lay her head on his lap. She licked her lips as though they were sticky, and asked softly, "Water?"
Isabel nodded. "Of course." She jumped up and came back in a moment with a cup, which she held to Tess's lips. The alien girl took several small sips, and then lay back again. Kyle stroked her hair, and wondered at the cool temperature of her skin.
"Now..." Tess breathed. "I don't have... much time. Sick... the Saramichi... coma is a healing trance... don't try to connect... you'll get it too... if I don't wake up in three weeks...I'm dead." That said, she lapsed back into unconsciousness, only this time, it was a normal loss, her eyes closed and her body limp.
Max called across the room. "Alex! Find something called the Saramichi. It's an illness, or a possession, or something."
Alex nodded, and saluted. "Aye, aye sir!" He turned back to the keyboard, and began to type so fast that his hands were a blur.
Kyle's hands shook as he smoothed Tess's hair as Maria voiced the question that was floating around in the front of his mind. "So what do we do now?"
Max went back into what Michael called 'Fearless Leader' mode. "Well, I've heard about healing trances before. She'll breath on her own, and basically, will seem to be unconscious. Which means that she'll need a round the clock vigil and someone to be her nursemaid. We'll need an intravenous tap, and something to feed her through it, especially fluids.
"We'll need to turn her to keep her from getting bedsores, and change her, and do all the things a nurse would for a patient in a coma."
*****
Hours later, when Alex had found all he could about the illness, they all sat around the table, except Maria, who was with Tess. Max had said it was imperative that all the aliens knew what was going on, exactly, because should the need arise, they were the ones who could possibly help her.
Alex had center stage, and was sitting tall in his seat, sharing his research. "It's a vicious parasite. Were she in the hospital, she'd be only the seventeenth case of infection on record. Seeing as she's here, it's not on record, or anything, but that means her chances of getting it were practically nil. Which in turn means..."
"That it's probably an alien parasite, and the other guys all had some connection to aliens." Michael finished. Alex nodded grimly, and continued.
"It attacks the consciousness, basically subjecting the patient to an endless series of nightmares. It didn't appear to spread at all, making it non-contagious, but Tess seemed to think it could be spread through alien connections and dreamwalking and the such, which would make sense since it feeds off the consciousness, instead of an actual physical part.
"It appears to die after 14 to 16 days if the victim doesn't return to consciousness. If it dies before the victim returns to consciousness, the victim won't remember anything, and will recover. If the victim returns to consciousness while the creature is still alive, they will remember the dreams and more than likely go insane. The creature will then continue to feed on their insanity until they die."
The room was silent. Finally, Michael spoke. "So all we have to do is keep Tess unconscious for three weeks?"
Alex nodded. "Supposedly."
Max held up a hand in warning. "But let's not jump to conclusions. The others were all human, and we don't know how it will affect Tess."
They nodded in agreement, and Liz went to join Maria and give her the news. When Maria joined them moments later, Liz having taken her place at Tess's side, Max started to figure out that they had another problem.
"We can't keep Tess here because of our parents. And neither can Maria, Liz, or Alex, because of their parents. I guess we can move her back and forth from the Sheriff's place to Michael's place, if the Sheriff agrees."
Kyle shook his head. "I'm sure my dad will agree, but it's too risky to move her all the time, both for her health, and because we might get found out. She can stay at my place full time."
Max scrutinized him carefully. Then, apparently passing him, he nodded slowly. "All right. But what are you going to do about school?"
Kyle shrugged. "Maybe my dad can come up with something. If one of you can bring me my homework every day, I can keep up with the class while I'm watching her."
Maria jumped in. "I think between all of us, at least one of us is in all your classes. You get your dad to make up the story, and we can get your work."
Kyle nodded. "Thanks."
Isabel shook her head. "No, Kyle. Thank you."
*****
Calling his father and explaining had proved time-consuming, and Kyle didn't leave the Evans' house until nearly noon. Isabel had gone to the hospital to steal an intravenous drip and the fluids and nutrients they would need to keep Tess alive for three weeks, and Liz and Maria had both left, apologizing profusely for their previously made commitments.
Isabel had earlier brought up the subject no one had wanted to breach, as always, cutting straight to the point. Wouldn't Tess be more comfortable with a female nursemaid?
Kyle had shook his head, the expression on his face tight, and told her that Tess would just have to deal with the psychological problems later. Liz, Maria and Isabel couldn't possibly spend enough time at his house to do all the embarrassing things for three weeks. They had reluctantly agreed.
A knock on the door went almost unnoticed as they all scurried around, fixing things up in case it wasn't the Sheriff. Luckily, when Max opened the door, Jim Valenti stood on the doorstep, his 'cop' face in place. "Where is she?" He asked quickly. Max pointed wordlessly at the living room.
Sheriff Valenti entered the Evans' large living room at a brisk clip. He immediately spotted his son, his clothes rumpled and his expression worried. He cradled an unconscious Tess's head in his lap, and barely glanced up when his father entered the room. "Oh, hey Dad."
"Kyle. What's wrong?" He asked. He had most of the story from over the phone, but it was garbled and he wasn't quite able to piece it together. "What happened?"
Kyle gestured towards the kitchen. "Max is in there. He'll fill you in better than I ever could."
Kyle seemed to have dismissed him, so Sheriff Valenti hurried into the kitchen, and let Max explain what had happened. After hesitantly giving his consent to tell the school that Kyle had mono, he opened his car and allowed the girls to load all of Tess's things into the trunk.
Kyle refused to let anyone but himself carry Tess, and no one protested. He slid into the backseat, her unconscious form cradled in his arms, and hoped the tinting on the windows was dark enough that no one would notice anything odd. He buckled himself in while allowing Max to cradle her cautiously, as though she were a bomb on countdown, then took her back and propped her up beside him on the seat, and buckled her in too. Her heavy head fell on his shoulder, and her entire body was supported by Kyle and the seatbelt, but she was in.
"Okay, Dad, she's in. You can drive now."
Max nodded as the Sheriff started the car's engine. "I'll send Isabel by with the I.V. and the stuff later. She knows what to do with it, and she's show you how to take care of Tess. Then one of us will come by every day, and I'll make sure that you can reach someone on Isabel or Maria's cell phone numbers all the time."
Kyle nodded, and clasped Max's hand, shaking it firmly. "Thanks, man. I'll take good care of her."
"I know you will."
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