What is the Truth?
By Didi
Disclaimers: Do I really need to do this? I mean how many of you would believe me if I did say that I owned them all?
Note: Starts just at the end of Season 2 but I'm writing it my way cause I simply refused to except the way the writer screwed up that storyline. So, here's my take on the end of the episode and what happens afterwards. Forget everything that was on UPN, it didn't happen.
Caution: I can handle creative criticism and all but please no flames of any sort. Oh and if you are a Max/Liz fanatic, I doubt you'll like this story much.
"Spoken," *thoughts*
~~~~~
"He's doing what?!?" Liz bounded to her feet, knocking the liter of soda precariously balanced on the bed to the floor.
"Hey," Maria grabbed the bottle before more could spill. "I thought were going to keep our presence here hush-hush until we get things a little more settled."
Liz began to pace the length of the room. "I can't believe Max would trust her after she..."
"Oh for God sakes Liz, get over yourself!" Alex rolled his eyes and flopped faced first onto the bed. He felt like he has aged a hundred years in the past two days. The stunned silence didn't seem to faze him a bit. "I'm honestly really sick and tired of hearing your rants so could you just for a few minutes, shut the hell up?"
There was no comment from the peanut gallery as they stood there staring. Isabel, after a moment of hesitation, walked over and sat by Alex's prone body. "Is Michael..."
"Playing backup for Max," he muttered into the bedding, mentally realizing that the bed probably wasn't too clean but physically too tired to care. "You didn't think he's leave ole' fearless there alone with the 'lying bitch' as you call her, did you?"
Isabel bit her lip. "Are you all right?"
"Oh I'm fine, just perfectly fine," he said, turning his head enough to see that the rest of the party had gone back to their food and Isabel and him were relatively alone on one side of the room. "Tess may be a tiny little thing but she's strong when she's in pain."
Understanding that, she nodded. "Is she..." he slanted her a look. "Stupid question, she's dying, of course she's not okay." She played with her fingers for a moment, her long blonde hair hiding her face from him. "Are you okay?"
"I'll be better once I know how Tess is going to handle seeing Max again." He sat up slowly, careful not to come too close. *God, she's beautiful. How can anyone be so beautiful and still be so... good.* He was sure that if he touched her, he'd hang on to her and never let go. "How are you doing, Issy?"
She gave a pathetically weak laugh and sighed. "I'm doing okay. How about you?"
He smiled at her. "Okay, that was pretty lame, I know. Seriously though, how are you holding up?"
Tentatively, she reached over to hold his hand. "Better, I'm doing much better now."
He looked at their linked fingers, a small ball of warmth growing in the pit of his stomach. For three years now, since she passed him in the hallways during the first period rush, he's loved her both from up close and afar. The life he had in high school, the status of nerd, he knew he had no chance of her ever looking at him in any way shape or form, not the glamorously beautiful Isabel Evans. He had his dreams to sustain him though those days when all he could hope for was a glimpse of her as she walked pass him. Then one day, his dreams came true and she turned to him with a smile. That was almost two years ago. And even now, as she sat there holding his hand, he still had a hard time believing. "Isabel..."
"I missed you," she said quietly, her head turning toward him. "I missed you a lot." Her eyes watered painfully and her composure threatened to crack. "You don't know how much I hurt thinking that you weren't going to come back. When Max said that he failed..."
"Max didn't fail," Alex murmured back, not daring to look at her yet. The pain in her voice, it tore at his heart. "At least, not really. You can't fix what wasn't broken in the first place."
She offered a smile. "I'm sure he'd be happy to know that."
Alex gave a weak laugh, the first genuine laugh he's been able to offer in a while now and squeezed her hands. Suddenly, the world didn't seem such an alien place.
Maria watched Alex and Isabel with sad eyes. "They look good together," she smiled and opened another bag of potato chips. "Like they were meant to be."
"They are meant to be," Kyle murmured as he watched the sun from the window. "You think Tess is going to freak out when she sees him?"
"Doubt it," Liz sighed and sat down heavily in the only chair in the room. Her heart felt tight as she remembered the way Max looked when he ordered them to leave. His whole focus had been on Tess and the baby, on protecting his wife and child. *His wife and child. I didn't think it was possible.* Her heart ached painfully. All her dreams, the secret fantasies she harbored even after the future Max warned her of the consequences, shattered in her heart. There wasn't going to be a happily ever after, not for her and Max. She saw it in his face as he gazed through the window. *He looked at her and the way he used to look at me, only with more intensity. He loves her.*
"She's going to freak," Maria commented as she poured soda into a cup. "How can she not? I mean, everything she planned and schemed is going to fall apart once she realizes that Alex had told us everything."
"Actually, Alex didn't." Jim Valenti pointed out mildly. "He gave us enough to draw the right conclusions but never really gave us the exact answers. So, the short of it is, he didn't betray Tess's confidence in him."
"While still managing to play the hero," Maria shook her head. "Sheesh, that guy certainly does get around, doesn't he?"
"Sunsets in three hours," Kyle commented as he turned to her father. "Tess never liked the dark very much. Always said that it reminded her to her time with Nasado, running from the Skins."
Valenti nodded his head soberly. "She's got Max and Michael there to protect her from anyone that so much as thinks to hurt her."
Kyle gave of snort of irony. Not a week ago, Michael and Max were ready to kill her on sight. Now, they were there to protect her. He didn't believe it for a moment, people don't turn around that quickly. "And who's going to protect her from them?"
~~~~~~~~~~
The stones were smooth, etched only on one side and cool to the touch. Had he not seen the magnificence and power of the healing stones, he would not have believed it himself. Shifting it from hand to hand, he looked up to watch the woman that slept fitfully in bed.
She was like a blonde angel, gracefully beautiful and delicate. But Tess Harding was not a helpless damsel in distress, though she was definitely in distress at the moment. Brows furrowed with pain, even in sleep, she whimpered every once in a while. Alex had assured him that it was normal that she never sleeps well and never long enough.
It was hard for him to sit there and think of all the bad things he had in his mind for the past days. Even harder for him to reconcile was the fact that he had been wrong, so very wrong about her. *Is that guilt you feel there?*
He turned from her as the door was nudged open with a toe. Max came in with a tray of tea. Shrugging his shoulders, Max set it down as Michael vacated the seat he had been occupying while keeping a watch on Tess. "Mom says that a hot cup of tea cures every ailment in the world."
"What about the ailment that are out of this world?" Michael asked, his hand reaching out to touch as Tess jerked in bed. "I keep expecting her to wake up any second."
"And she probably will," Max answered, his eyes on her once more. The beads of sweat were forming on her forehead once more and he moved to get the towel.
"Maxwell," Michael cleared his throat uncomfortably for a moment. "She really would have gone through with it, won't she?"
"You mean die?" touching the soft towel to her forehead, careful not to apply too much pressure. From everything he's observed, Tess gets very little sleep as is. There was no need to deprive her of any more unnecessarily. "Yeah, it's safe to assume that she probably would have done so."
Michael sat on the floor and watched the scene before him for a moment. There was something touchingly familiar about the way Max watched her, touched her gently, and leaned his body forward as if to shield her from.... Michael blinked.
The scene wasn't just familiar, it was eerily so. For a split second there, Michael saw a ghost of a memory. He saw Max, dressed in silver and black armor, his imperial symbol imprinted on every piece of equipment he wore. He saw Tess, dress in the same silver and black armor, obviously pregnant, obviously in pain. She reached out to Max, he bent toward her, dropping his weapon by his side, cradling his wife in obvious anguish.
Then it was gone, as if merely a fragment from some unseen source.
"Michael?" Max asked, his eyes filled with concern. "What's the matter?"
For a moment, his eyes narrowed toward the blonde in bed. But he quickly reprimanded himself silently. *For god sakes, man. The woman is dying and you think she's playing mind games with you?* But old habits died hard. "Nothing, I just thought that I..."
"What?" Max asked, his brows furrowed with anxiety. "What was it? You had the oddest look on your face."
"I..." He frowned, not sure of his own thoughts. "I thought I saw..."
"What?" coming off the chair, obviously disturbed by his friend's uncertainty.
Closing his eyes, he tried to envision what had just flashed in his mind. "Max, when you and Tess tried to access your memories of your past life, did you ever get actual memories? I mean, events and people?"
Max nodded his head slowly. "At first they were just vague sensations and places that I think I remember but everything was hazy. Then more like something I saw in a movie, flashes of recognition but nothing solid. It wasn't until the incident at Brody's that..." he nodded to himself and glanced over his shoulders at Tess. "I hurt her so badly that night, denying that there was anything between us."
"You had to," Michael murmured hurting for him as he watched the pain flash in Max's eyes. "Brody couldn't know."
"I know," Max stared at the slight frowned that tugged on Tess's lips. *They say that one is most at peace in their sleep, but even here, you find no peace, do you Tess?* Even now, he could see the look of hurt in her eyes as he turned from her, denying ever feeling love for her. "But you should have seen her, I thought she was going to cry."
"Did she?"
"No," Max smiled gently. "No, Tess knew how to keep her head. No matter what her feelings are, she always pulls through for me." He shook the memories of his trip to New York with her off. "Ahem.... Why did you ask about the memory retrieval sessions?"
"I thought that I saw... I saw you and Tess, in the middle of something and..." Michael shook his head and dragged his hand through his hair. "I don't know what I saw. I just know that I didn't like it."
"What were they? Tell me about...." He turned as a soft moan filtered through his thoughts. Tess was coming around.
Michael saw the look in Max's eyes and knew that the man was a goner. *And I thought seeing him with Liz Parker was going to make me hurl.* Pointing toward the door, Michael left his friend with fond wishes and luck. *Tess, no matter what I thought about you in the past, you've always been good to Max and me. Thank you for trying to protect us all.* He paused briefly with his hands on the knob. *Hum... I wonder if she's like some fries later?*
Moving slowly, so as not to startle her, Max resumed his seat by the bed as she shifted in the bed, slowly pulling herself out of slumber. He reached over and touched her face with the towel again, noting that she was still uncommonly pale. She was growing weaker, the baby using more of her energy to gain each breath from within. *I'll protect you, protect you both, the way you tried to protect me.*
"Alex, you didn't need to watch over me like this, I'm pretty capable for waking up in one piece without your eagle eyes on alert, " her eyes still closed, she sighed then groaned as the muscles across her back pulled from the stiffness. "Oh, my stars and garters, I so need to get out of this bed more."
He reached over and slowly shifted her up to a sitting position, watching with amusement as she stubbornly kept her eyes shut, as if trying to catch a few more moments of physical sleep while her mind was already functioning. Sitting on the bed, he cradled her for a moment rubbing her back.
She whimpered as he slowly worked some of the stiff muscles on her shoulders and back. "Geeze Alex, where did you learn to do that? Keeping me secrets from me now?" she smiled lazily and turned to hug him. "Hey, you've been working out?" she teased before turning her face up and opening her eyes.
For a moment, Max was afraid she was going to open her mouth and scream. But she didn't. Instead, she seemed to have been frozen in place, arms still wrapped around him, eyes wide with astonishment. "Hi Tess."
TBC....
~~~~~~~~~~
I'm almost done with the story, I swear it.
By Didi
Disclaimers: Do I really need to do this? I mean how many of you would believe me if I did say that I owned them all?
Note: Starts just at the end of Season 2 but I'm writing it my way cause I simply refused to except the way the writer screwed up that storyline. So, here's my take on the end of the episode and what happens afterwards. Forget everything that was on UPN, it didn't happen.
Caution: I can handle creative criticism and all but please no flames of any sort. Oh and if you are a Max/Liz fanatic, I doubt you'll like this story much.
"Spoken," *thoughts*
~~~~~
"He's doing what?!?" Liz bounded to her feet, knocking the liter of soda precariously balanced on the bed to the floor.
"Hey," Maria grabbed the bottle before more could spill. "I thought were going to keep our presence here hush-hush until we get things a little more settled."
Liz began to pace the length of the room. "I can't believe Max would trust her after she..."
"Oh for God sakes Liz, get over yourself!" Alex rolled his eyes and flopped faced first onto the bed. He felt like he has aged a hundred years in the past two days. The stunned silence didn't seem to faze him a bit. "I'm honestly really sick and tired of hearing your rants so could you just for a few minutes, shut the hell up?"
There was no comment from the peanut gallery as they stood there staring. Isabel, after a moment of hesitation, walked over and sat by Alex's prone body. "Is Michael..."
"Playing backup for Max," he muttered into the bedding, mentally realizing that the bed probably wasn't too clean but physically too tired to care. "You didn't think he's leave ole' fearless there alone with the 'lying bitch' as you call her, did you?"
Isabel bit her lip. "Are you all right?"
"Oh I'm fine, just perfectly fine," he said, turning his head enough to see that the rest of the party had gone back to their food and Isabel and him were relatively alone on one side of the room. "Tess may be a tiny little thing but she's strong when she's in pain."
Understanding that, she nodded. "Is she..." he slanted her a look. "Stupid question, she's dying, of course she's not okay." She played with her fingers for a moment, her long blonde hair hiding her face from him. "Are you okay?"
"I'll be better once I know how Tess is going to handle seeing Max again." He sat up slowly, careful not to come too close. *God, she's beautiful. How can anyone be so beautiful and still be so... good.* He was sure that if he touched her, he'd hang on to her and never let go. "How are you doing, Issy?"
She gave a pathetically weak laugh and sighed. "I'm doing okay. How about you?"
He smiled at her. "Okay, that was pretty lame, I know. Seriously though, how are you holding up?"
Tentatively, she reached over to hold his hand. "Better, I'm doing much better now."
He looked at their linked fingers, a small ball of warmth growing in the pit of his stomach. For three years now, since she passed him in the hallways during the first period rush, he's loved her both from up close and afar. The life he had in high school, the status of nerd, he knew he had no chance of her ever looking at him in any way shape or form, not the glamorously beautiful Isabel Evans. He had his dreams to sustain him though those days when all he could hope for was a glimpse of her as she walked pass him. Then one day, his dreams came true and she turned to him with a smile. That was almost two years ago. And even now, as she sat there holding his hand, he still had a hard time believing. "Isabel..."
"I missed you," she said quietly, her head turning toward him. "I missed you a lot." Her eyes watered painfully and her composure threatened to crack. "You don't know how much I hurt thinking that you weren't going to come back. When Max said that he failed..."
"Max didn't fail," Alex murmured back, not daring to look at her yet. The pain in her voice, it tore at his heart. "At least, not really. You can't fix what wasn't broken in the first place."
She offered a smile. "I'm sure he'd be happy to know that."
Alex gave a weak laugh, the first genuine laugh he's been able to offer in a while now and squeezed her hands. Suddenly, the world didn't seem such an alien place.
Maria watched Alex and Isabel with sad eyes. "They look good together," she smiled and opened another bag of potato chips. "Like they were meant to be."
"They are meant to be," Kyle murmured as he watched the sun from the window. "You think Tess is going to freak out when she sees him?"
"Doubt it," Liz sighed and sat down heavily in the only chair in the room. Her heart felt tight as she remembered the way Max looked when he ordered them to leave. His whole focus had been on Tess and the baby, on protecting his wife and child. *His wife and child. I didn't think it was possible.* Her heart ached painfully. All her dreams, the secret fantasies she harbored even after the future Max warned her of the consequences, shattered in her heart. There wasn't going to be a happily ever after, not for her and Max. She saw it in his face as he gazed through the window. *He looked at her and the way he used to look at me, only with more intensity. He loves her.*
"She's going to freak," Maria commented as she poured soda into a cup. "How can she not? I mean, everything she planned and schemed is going to fall apart once she realizes that Alex had told us everything."
"Actually, Alex didn't." Jim Valenti pointed out mildly. "He gave us enough to draw the right conclusions but never really gave us the exact answers. So, the short of it is, he didn't betray Tess's confidence in him."
"While still managing to play the hero," Maria shook her head. "Sheesh, that guy certainly does get around, doesn't he?"
"Sunsets in three hours," Kyle commented as he turned to her father. "Tess never liked the dark very much. Always said that it reminded her to her time with Nasado, running from the Skins."
Valenti nodded his head soberly. "She's got Max and Michael there to protect her from anyone that so much as thinks to hurt her."
Kyle gave of snort of irony. Not a week ago, Michael and Max were ready to kill her on sight. Now, they were there to protect her. He didn't believe it for a moment, people don't turn around that quickly. "And who's going to protect her from them?"
~~~~~~~~~~
The stones were smooth, etched only on one side and cool to the touch. Had he not seen the magnificence and power of the healing stones, he would not have believed it himself. Shifting it from hand to hand, he looked up to watch the woman that slept fitfully in bed.
She was like a blonde angel, gracefully beautiful and delicate. But Tess Harding was not a helpless damsel in distress, though she was definitely in distress at the moment. Brows furrowed with pain, even in sleep, she whimpered every once in a while. Alex had assured him that it was normal that she never sleeps well and never long enough.
It was hard for him to sit there and think of all the bad things he had in his mind for the past days. Even harder for him to reconcile was the fact that he had been wrong, so very wrong about her. *Is that guilt you feel there?*
He turned from her as the door was nudged open with a toe. Max came in with a tray of tea. Shrugging his shoulders, Max set it down as Michael vacated the seat he had been occupying while keeping a watch on Tess. "Mom says that a hot cup of tea cures every ailment in the world."
"What about the ailment that are out of this world?" Michael asked, his hand reaching out to touch as Tess jerked in bed. "I keep expecting her to wake up any second."
"And she probably will," Max answered, his eyes on her once more. The beads of sweat were forming on her forehead once more and he moved to get the towel.
"Maxwell," Michael cleared his throat uncomfortably for a moment. "She really would have gone through with it, won't she?"
"You mean die?" touching the soft towel to her forehead, careful not to apply too much pressure. From everything he's observed, Tess gets very little sleep as is. There was no need to deprive her of any more unnecessarily. "Yeah, it's safe to assume that she probably would have done so."
Michael sat on the floor and watched the scene before him for a moment. There was something touchingly familiar about the way Max watched her, touched her gently, and leaned his body forward as if to shield her from.... Michael blinked.
The scene wasn't just familiar, it was eerily so. For a split second there, Michael saw a ghost of a memory. He saw Max, dressed in silver and black armor, his imperial symbol imprinted on every piece of equipment he wore. He saw Tess, dress in the same silver and black armor, obviously pregnant, obviously in pain. She reached out to Max, he bent toward her, dropping his weapon by his side, cradling his wife in obvious anguish.
Then it was gone, as if merely a fragment from some unseen source.
"Michael?" Max asked, his eyes filled with concern. "What's the matter?"
For a moment, his eyes narrowed toward the blonde in bed. But he quickly reprimanded himself silently. *For god sakes, man. The woman is dying and you think she's playing mind games with you?* But old habits died hard. "Nothing, I just thought that I..."
"What?" Max asked, his brows furrowed with anxiety. "What was it? You had the oddest look on your face."
"I..." He frowned, not sure of his own thoughts. "I thought I saw..."
"What?" coming off the chair, obviously disturbed by his friend's uncertainty.
Closing his eyes, he tried to envision what had just flashed in his mind. "Max, when you and Tess tried to access your memories of your past life, did you ever get actual memories? I mean, events and people?"
Max nodded his head slowly. "At first they were just vague sensations and places that I think I remember but everything was hazy. Then more like something I saw in a movie, flashes of recognition but nothing solid. It wasn't until the incident at Brody's that..." he nodded to himself and glanced over his shoulders at Tess. "I hurt her so badly that night, denying that there was anything between us."
"You had to," Michael murmured hurting for him as he watched the pain flash in Max's eyes. "Brody couldn't know."
"I know," Max stared at the slight frowned that tugged on Tess's lips. *They say that one is most at peace in their sleep, but even here, you find no peace, do you Tess?* Even now, he could see the look of hurt in her eyes as he turned from her, denying ever feeling love for her. "But you should have seen her, I thought she was going to cry."
"Did she?"
"No," Max smiled gently. "No, Tess knew how to keep her head. No matter what her feelings are, she always pulls through for me." He shook the memories of his trip to New York with her off. "Ahem.... Why did you ask about the memory retrieval sessions?"
"I thought that I saw... I saw you and Tess, in the middle of something and..." Michael shook his head and dragged his hand through his hair. "I don't know what I saw. I just know that I didn't like it."
"What were they? Tell me about...." He turned as a soft moan filtered through his thoughts. Tess was coming around.
Michael saw the look in Max's eyes and knew that the man was a goner. *And I thought seeing him with Liz Parker was going to make me hurl.* Pointing toward the door, Michael left his friend with fond wishes and luck. *Tess, no matter what I thought about you in the past, you've always been good to Max and me. Thank you for trying to protect us all.* He paused briefly with his hands on the knob. *Hum... I wonder if she's like some fries later?*
Moving slowly, so as not to startle her, Max resumed his seat by the bed as she shifted in the bed, slowly pulling herself out of slumber. He reached over and touched her face with the towel again, noting that she was still uncommonly pale. She was growing weaker, the baby using more of her energy to gain each breath from within. *I'll protect you, protect you both, the way you tried to protect me.*
"Alex, you didn't need to watch over me like this, I'm pretty capable for waking up in one piece without your eagle eyes on alert, " her eyes still closed, she sighed then groaned as the muscles across her back pulled from the stiffness. "Oh, my stars and garters, I so need to get out of this bed more."
He reached over and slowly shifted her up to a sitting position, watching with amusement as she stubbornly kept her eyes shut, as if trying to catch a few more moments of physical sleep while her mind was already functioning. Sitting on the bed, he cradled her for a moment rubbing her back.
She whimpered as he slowly worked some of the stiff muscles on her shoulders and back. "Geeze Alex, where did you learn to do that? Keeping me secrets from me now?" she smiled lazily and turned to hug him. "Hey, you've been working out?" she teased before turning her face up and opening her eyes.
For a moment, Max was afraid she was going to open her mouth and scream. But she didn't. Instead, she seemed to have been frozen in place, arms still wrapped around him, eyes wide with astonishment. "Hi Tess."
TBC....
~~~~~~~~~~
I'm almost done with the story, I swear it.