Part 5 - Liz POV - Trust

Somewhere deep inside me
I hold a picture of a time long gone
A time of ease and simple pleasures
And days in shadows not so long
Now with my mind I'm struggling
Holding on to what I believe
Listen to the fragments of my thoughts
That leave me broken and deceived
Cause I don't know the way
He said "I can take you there,
I can show you places where time has no ware"
And as we walked the plains
The skies they opened wide
Revealing all the shame for what's been lost inside us all.

It's a day in the life
In my mind I've seen it all
Sometime soon for all to see
The walls are slowly breaking down
In my mind I've seen it all
And someday we'll be free.

We're searching for a message
Or so I thought but so it seems
The ignorance in the myths of others
Is easier to redeem
I've never questioned the answers given
To find the faith that's been lost within
Cause where I lay my trust in others
Where it lies the ground is thin
Cause I don' t know the way
He said "I can take you there,
I can show you places where time has no ware"
And as we walked the plains
The skies they opened wide
Revealing all the shame for what's been lost inside us all.

I know you say you love me
If what you say is true
So show me something that's not deceiving
Cause I wouldn't lie to you.

It's a day in the life
In my mind I've seen it all
Sometime soon for all to see
The walls are slowly breaking down
In my mind I've seen it all
And someday we'll be free.

Sarah McLachlan

"Max! Catch her!" I shriek, but he is already moving, grabbing Jennifer Coleman before she melts to the floor.

Jennifer's suite-mate comes running out of her room. "What did you do to her?" She demands, watching Max sweep the girl we know as Leanna up into his arms. She follows him as he moves into the room, depositing Jennifer gently on the couch. She is already coming around, her eyelashes beginning to flutter.

Max looks back at me, his expression terrified. I don't blame him. Who the heck is this girl and how did she know Max's real name? But we can't say any of this in front of the suite-mate, who looks about ready to pick up the phone to call campus security.

"It's all a terrible mistake. We gave her some bad news and she just collapsed." I know I am babbling, but we need to talk to Leanna alone and we need to get rid of the other girl. "I'm Liz, this is Max." I do the introductions quickly, hoping to put the other girl at ease. "We know Jennifer from back home."

The suite-mate does not look convinced. "From Phoenix?" She asks suspiciously.

"Right. From Phoenix." Max says, glancing at me and shrugging slightly. He is perched on a chair beside Jennifer, whose eyes are beginning to open.

"We're friends of Ray." I improvise. The girl seems to recognize the name that Alex went by when he was staying here.

"Where is Ray?" The girl asks. "We haven't seen him in months. He and Jenn spent all this time together last Fall and then he just disappeared."

"We have bad news." I swallow hard. It is hard to say it even though its true. I am never going to adjust to saying it. Alex! "Ray passed away. Its why we're here. To tell Jennifer."

Max is eyeing me with concern. I think he can tell that talking about Alex's death, even in the guise of an excuse is putting me on edge.

The suite-mate's eyes widen in horror. "Oh that's so sad. I mean, he was kind of a weird guy, real quiet and stuff, but I am so sorry." She pauses, glances at Jennifer. "Is that why Jenn fainted?" She asks.

I can't speak, emotion still clogging my throat.

"Yes." Max replies simply. "We're sorry. We really need a few minutes alone with her. Can you excuse us..." He trails off, clearly hoping that she will give us her name.

"Melissa." She inserts. "Are you sure you don't want me to stay? She must be pretty upset if she fainted."

"It's okay. We've known Jenn for a while." Max tells her. "But thanks."

I can tell that Melissa is beginning to warm up to him. His eyes - they are reflecting the gentleness that I always used to see in them, before it all happened. He is giving off that Max aura, the one that says that he can be trusted. It is wrapping itself around ME like a warm blanket, even though I know that he is capable of being a monster too.

But Melissa doesn't know this and she looks like she is falling under a spell.

It is making me supremely uncomfortable because I am beginning to realize how very easy it might be for me to fall under his spell again too. He put a force on me once. I know that it is only a matter of time until he does it again.

I am fighting it with every ounce of my being. I cannot let him in that way again. It almost killed me once and that was when I was still the most important person in his life.

Now I'm not. That spot has been taken by a baby that has not even been born yet.

I can't give in.

I knew helping him was going to be a mistake because with every passing minute I spend with him, I want to give in.

I force my eyes away from his face.

I move back against the wall of the living room, need its hard reassurance to keep my back-bone in place. Max is looking at me again. He frowns slightly at the expression on my face, which is likely a cross between a scowl and a grimace.

"Well, okay." Melissa finally says. "I'll be in my room. Call me if you need me." She backs into her room, shutting the door behind her.

"Liz, are you okay?" Max demands urgently. He is glancing between me and Jennifer, who is now beginning to sit up. She still seems slightly out of it. "You look..."

"I'm okay." I snap. He blinks at my harsh tone, but nods. I move closer, kneel on the floor beside him. We both turn to look at Leanna.

Her face seems to finally clear and she focuses on Max's face immediately, gasps again, moving back against the couch in shock. "I thought I was dreaming. How can it really be you? How can you be real?" She starts muttering to herself. "Am I going crazy?"

"Max, you'd better leave for a minute." I say. I can tell that we are not going to get any sense out of this girl while he is in the room. She doesn't seem to be scared of him, but I think she thinks she is crazy for some reason.

"Liz, I'm not leaving you alone." Max insists. I sigh. I can tell by that tone that I am not going to win this argument easily and I don't want to get into a huge discussion about it in front of Jennifer.

She is still staring at him, her head slightly tilted. "You are real, aren't you? Your name is Max?"

Max nods. "Why did you call me Zan?" He asks gently.

"Because he looks like you." She replies. "At least the pictures I've seen of him."

I barely suppress a gasp. She can't be talking about the REAL Zan - Max's dupe, who is supposed to be dead? Max looks just as shocked as I do.

"Pictures?" I press her.

"The drawings Ray showed me." Jennifer elaborates. "For the game."

Max and I exchange a confused glance. "The game?"

"The computer game Ray was writing." She continues. "But he told me it wasn't real."

Um. Okay. This is getting a little too weird. We'll get back to that in a moment. First things first...

I pull a picture of Alex and her out of my purse, show it to her. It obviously isn't the one in which he had torn out his own face, but another one I found in his room after the funeral. "Is this Ray?" I ask quietly.

She nods, taking the picture from my hands, stares at it in confusion. "Where did you get this?" She is frowning. "I don't remember having it taken."

"Ray gave it to me." I pause. "Did you hear what I said to Melissa? You heard that Ray is gone?"

Tears fill her eyes. "I'm not surprised. He told me when he left that he didn't think that he would see me again. They didn't want the game finished. That's what he told me."

"Who didn't?" Max inquires. "What is this game?"

"The Four Square game." Jennifer tells us. "The one about the Royal Four and Antar. He was creating the code and the story behind the game while he lived here." She sighs. "He needed my help with some of the computer work. I was interested in the whole concept. He told me all about Zan and Vilandra and the Royal Four." She eyes us for a minute. "You do know about this don't you? You're the model for Zan." She nods towards Max. "He showed me a picture of you that he drew. You must be his friend."

"Maybe you should tell us everything." Max replies evenly, not wanting to give away too much. He is clearly just as confused as I am but it is beginning to sound like Jennifer thinks that everything Alex told her was all fiction, which is actually a big relief.

"Well, Zan is an alien king, stranded on Earth, trapped in a teenage human's body." Jennifer explains. "He is in love with a human, but he can't be with her. His destiny is to marry Ava, his queen from another life. But the whole game revolves around Zan trying to find a way to be with his human love and still save his people."

I don't even dare to look at Max. I know that I might start laughing hysterically if I do. Told this way, it does all sound like a crazy, fantastic story.

But this is my life. It is Max's life. No wonder neither of us know whether we are coming or going.

I only know one thing. This is the weirdest thing I have ever heard. Was this all an elaborate ruse that Alex had made up in order to get Leanna to help him without giving away Max and Michael and Isabel's secret? Or is there more to it than that? And what did Tess have to do with it?

"Anyway, Ray got the concept from some guy he knew back in Roswell. Where he's from." She adds. "He had this book that he needed to translate, which gave the basic outline of the concept. We worked on translating it together. We rented some space in an old warehouse." She frowns. "I never understood why he was so paranoid that someone was going to try and take the game away from him, but he would work on it in his room and e-mail me the new parts in the warehouse. He was trying to keep it a secret. Finally he left the dorm altogether and went to stay in the warehouse. He said they were on to him." She tears up again. "I just thought he was a little bit crazy, like a lot of computer geeks." She pauses. "He was murdered, wasn't he? He was right?"

"He died in a car accident." I tell her. Whether she notices that I don't dispute the point about whether he was murdered or not, I don't know.

"Why is a computer game so important?" Jennifer asks. "I never got it."

I glance at Max. "That's what I'd like to know." He says. "Do you have any of the stuff Ray was working on?"

She swallows. I can tell she is still unsure whether to trust us. "I..."

I take her hand. She glances down, then looks up, stares right into my eyes. "Ray's real name was Alex." I tell her. "He became my best friend in the fifth grade. You're right. He was murdered. And we..." I indicate Max and myself. "We're going to find out why."

I see Jennifer's eyes widen. "I'll tell you everything I know." She tells me quietly. "I owe him that much." She looks ashamed suddenly. "Because I think I might have led them right to him. They seemed so normal though..."

I feel Max beside me, listening just as intently as I am. "Who?" He asks urgently.

"There were two of them. A guy and a girl. She was kind of short, with blonde curly hair and way too much lip gloss." I press my lips together. That HAD to be Tess. "He was tall, blond too." Jennifer continues. "They didn't look dangerous. She said she was Ray's sister, that he had run away from home." Tears fill her eyes. She swallows heavily. "I believed her."

"You're not the only one." I murmur to myself, not even looking at Max. He is crouched on the floor beside me. I can feel him tensing during the talk about Tess. Hearing the story of how she had used Alex, how she HAD been responsible for his death...it was hard on ME. I can't even imagine what it is doing to Max, who often has a guilt complex that could pave the route to his planet and back - twice.

No one had been closer to her than he had. It makes me sick, but there it is. Twice, in less than a year, girls that Max loved had seemingly betrayed him. He knew now that I hadn't, but it still didn't dull the pain of the last few months. He had committed to Tess even further than he ever had with me, despite all his protestations of regretting it immediately. Her betrayal was, of course, a million times worse because, not only had she murdered one of the people Max had trusted, the thing he most feared, she had put him in a position where he had had no choice but to abandon his own child.

She was pure evil. I wish now that I had had the chance to say all the things to her that I longed to, that I had done so long before any of this had happened. I had NEVER trusted her. But I had been the martyr, walking away from Max, going along with Future Max's plan, believing that my own gut instinct was only the result of jealousy, when "following my heart," as my grandmother had told me to do, had never failed me to that point.

My heart had told me to fight for Max, not to trust Tess and I had ignored it.

It had killed Alex.

I close my eyes briefly, before reaching into my purse and pulling out the picture of all of us that had been taken the night of the prom. I hand it to Jennifer, not even saying anything.

She stares at it, nodding. "That's her." She acknowledges. Because there she is, in her ice blue prom dress, standing with all of us, right beside me as a matter of fact, smiling as though she cares about us, seemingly unconcerned by the fact that Max and I are there together, knowing that she has the upper hand, that it will only be a matter of hours before she manipulates all of us on the road to Alex's destruction.

I pull myself up off the floor, sit down on the couch beside her, feel a lump in my throat as I look at the picture with her. I never saw Alex as happy as he was that night. Both he and Isabel are practically glowing in the photo, finally recognizing how much they meant to each other, and they never even got a chance to move forward with it.

It was completely unfair. If anyone deserved to be happy, it was Alex. I miss him so much.

I can feel Max's eyes on me. I know that he knows what is going through my mind. And even though I am not looking at him, I can almost feel his desire to do something to comfort me. But now is not the time.

I force myself to take the picture from Jennifer, place it gently back where it came from. "What about the guy?" I ask urgently, at this point, only answers capable of keeping my tears at bay.

"She called him Lazar." Jennifer shrugs. "He didn't say much. She did all the talking. I got the impression that he was in charge though."

"Is there anything else you can tell us?" Max asks, getting to his feet. He seems frustrated suddenly. I glance at him as he shoves his hands roughly into the pockets of his khakis, his entire body radiating tension.

"Just that I told them where his room was - actually I took them there." Jennifer replies. "They messed around on his computer. I knew I shouldn't have let them, but they seemed to know their way around so well, I didn't say anything. Anyway, the blonde girl took a disk out of the hard drive and then the guy pulled the whole computer out of the wall and took it with them." She pauses, closes her eyes briefly. "And then I told them how to find the warehouse where he was hiding." She begins to sob again. "I am so sorry."

I take her hand, squeeze it. "It wasn't your fault." I tell her, meaning it. She had had no idea what she was really dealing with. I knew better than anyone what a great actress Tess Harding had turned out to be and I had known what she really was. "Thank you." I pull the picture of Alex and Leanna out of my purse again, glance at Max, who is watching me closely, and hand it to her. "He would want you to have this."

She takes it, smiles. "Thanks. He was a really great guy. I missed him when he was gone."

I impulsively reach out and hug her. "Trust me. I know how that feels." I feel a moment of close connection with this girl - one who had ended up in a situation that she couldn't control and didn't understand - one that had ended in tragedy.

Did I ever know how that felt.

After leaving Jennifer, Max and I are back in his parent's car before either of us says anything.

I feel numb. I never realized how much looking into what had happened to Alex was going to hurt. When I had done it before, right after the funeral, it had helped, had made the pain less, because at least I had felt like I was doing something to show Alex how much I had loved him.

Now I just felt, more and more, with every single step forward we took, that his death was my fault.

I had known what she was and I had let her close to him - to all of us. How could I have been so stupid?

The ridiculous thing is that I know that Max, sitting right beside me, staring unseeing out the front windshield, is thinking the exactly the same thing I am.

And, in that moment, I know I want him to. Because it is something that we have always shared, this complete feeling of responsibility for the safety of our friends. If guilt has to be the only think bonding us now, it is better than nothing.

It's sick, but I am willing to take what I can get. If I can't have Max, then at least I can understand him, can still have that connection with him.

Finally, he speaks. "Liz, are you okay?"

"I will be." I reply, knowing that I sound cold. I wonder if he thinks that I am mad at him again because of it. But I have to stay frozen or I won't be able to move forward. All the grief and pain that I have felt over Alex's death is threatening to come back in great waves if I let even one inch of my control go.

But Max knows this. He knows me. "Okay. Where to now?" He asks, sounding strangely upbeat, in that way that people do when they are trying to ignore what's really going on under the surface. I, of course, basically just told him to, but I am still irritated.

"We need to find out who that guy was." I tell him evenly, although of course he knows this. I look over at him. "Have you been through any of Tess's stuff yet?"

He grimaces. "No. I didn't want to bug the Sheriff. He's not doing so hot."

I feel a pang for the man who had done so much for us. Maria had been convinced that he would be all right, but I knew better. He had grown to love Tess like a daughter. That she had turned out to be one of those evil aliens he had so feared when he had still be chasing Max - it was the supreme irony. The Sheriff was not a cold man. He would be hurt and angry and would feel stupid too.

Of course, he couldn't feel any more stupid than the rest of us. Tess had done a number on all of us that it was going to take a very long time to get over, if ever. It was going to be virtually impossible to let anyone new into our small band of seven. We would always remember her, remember how we had let her in and how she had killed the best and brightest of us, how she had almost killed Michael and Isabel, how she had stolen Max's innocence and had broken my heart in the process.

Not being able to trust anyone new meant that we were irretrievably stuck with each other - for better and for worse. We no longer had any other options.

Max once told me that I would always be a part of the group. It had comforted me then. Now it was beginning to feel like a prison because the one person I most wanted to be stuck with, Max himself, was lost to me.

All because of Tess and the baby Max was driven to find.

"I don't think she would have left anything incriminating around there anyway. Someone might have stumbled on it." I tell Max a few minutes later as he pulled out on to the highway. I pause, thinking. "The lease on that house Nasedo rented is still good, isn't it?"

Max nods. "He told Tess that it was hers, in her name. He paid two years rent when he leased it."

I frown. "Ironic that she ended up in the Sheriff's house because you thought she was in danger from the Skins there." I shake my head. "She wasn't ever in any danger. I bet she used that place all the time."

"Let's check it out." Max agrees. "I haven't been anywhere near it since that night."

As we drove, I thought about Tess and Nasedo and the deal they had made with Khivar. The more I thought about it, the stranger it seemed. If Nicholas was Khivar's right hand man, his representative on Earth, then why had the Skins killed Nasedo, with whom Khivar had a deal? It didn't make any sense. I voice this to Max.

He just shakes his head. "I've thought about that Liz. I don't get it either. I wondered if maybe Nasedo decided to renege on the deal once he found us, that he thought we would get him back there anyway and that he didn't need to betray us, but that he never got a chance to tell Tess."

Tess. It all comes back to her. Why was she willing to betray the three she was supposed to be most loyal to? How could getting back to the planet be so important that she was willing to completely disregard her purpose of existence, which was to save her people as a member of the Royal Four? How could she have turned out so badly?

I remember Ava, remember how nice she was, how easily I got along with her. She would have fit in with Max and Isabel and Michael far better than Tess ever did. She was good. I know she was.

So what had gone so wrong with Tess?

But, deep down, I know what it was. It was me and the way Max felt about me. She hated me so much, for taking the place in his heart that she felt rightfully belonged to her, she was willing to kill him rather than let me have him.

Loving me had almost killed him.

And now she is gone, but the memory of her and the disaster she left behind is still with us. She is still winning.

I can feel myself beginning to seethe with rage. I was still letting her win, letting her come between us.

I know that Max wants to be with me, know that I am the only one standing in the way of it - me and my pride.

I wonder if pride is worth it. If my pride is worth letting her win.

I realize that Max and I have been driving in complete silence for quite a while. We are on the outskirts of Roswell already.

I glance over at him. He is staring straight ahead, his jaw clenched, clearly deep in thought. I can feel the barely harnessed combination of pain and guilt and anger that is lingering beneath the surface of the teenage guy who saved my life. The one I lied for, broke the law for, jumped off bridges for...the one I was willing to give up to save the world, to save HIS world.

The love I have for him is so mixed up with hate at this point, all I want to do is to end it, take the plunge back into the alien abyss once and for all and accept that I am never going to be able to let go of what we once had. I am never going to be able to let go of the sweet, loving, brave boy I fell in love with. The one SHE destroyed.

"Max." He glances over at me, blinking at the hard edge to my voice. "Pull over."

"Liz, what's wrong?"

"Pull over." I repeat. "Now."

He slowly pulls the car off the highway and onto the shoulder. He is already turning in his seat to see what's wrong before the car stops rolling.

"Liz..."

But he never gets a chance to say anything. I have my seat belt off and I am already moving towards him. I see one instant of complete astonishment on his face before I bring my lips down onto his.

The surprise of it does not stop him from responding eagerly. His hands plunge into my hair, bringing me closer. Through a haze of grief and hate and love I can hear him saying my name. "Liz! Oh God. I love you so much."

I don't say anything, just continue to kiss him, to revel in the fact that he's really there, that he isn't off on some distant planet, on the verge of execution.

It is in that instant that the connection flares to life. And as the flashes begin, it is in then that I remember why this is going to be the last time that I will ever kiss the love of my life.

To be continued...