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*
~~~~~
Michael tiptoed away from the door, hearing nothing from within. He figures he's got at least another hour to waste before Max decides it was time to perform another miracle. The little reservation he had about this whole plan he pushed to the back of his mind. There was no mistaking the look in Max's eyes as he sat there and stared at Tess. The boy wasn't going to be talked out of this even if Michael had any intention to. Even he could not stand there and not be affected by Tess's plight.
Then there was the sliver of memory he caught a glimpse of. Unlike Max, Michael had never had any desire to try to retrieve his past life. He was no king, didn't need to know what had happened. He was just.... He was just Michael.
But now, now that he's got a little taste of what his last lifetime was like, he was curious to know more. What he saw, what he felt, it had been terrible. Max had been in pain; he saw it in the express on the man's face. And Tess....what the hell was a pregnant queen doing in armor? The question nagged him as he sat down and stared at the blank door.
"Hey!" Maria whispered from the window. "Coast clear?"
He nodded his head; sorry for the interruption as he tried to remember... he wasn't sure what he was trying to remember. "What are you doing here? I thought Max told everyone to stay together until one of us come and get you."
"He did," pushing the surprisingly silent-hinged door open. "But I kind of got tired of staring at the wall and..." She peered at him. "What's up? You look funny."
"Nothing," he dismissed it with a wave and got up to go to the kitchen area, six steps away. "You want something to eat?"
"Not really," she sat down in his vacated seat and glanced at the door to the bedroom. "Max in there with her?"
"Where else?" Michael answered with a sigh, pulling frozen food from the freezer. He frowned as frozen greens and ice cream was pulled out. "Alex's choice of food needs some serious rethinking." He rummaged around for pizza or hamburger patties; maybe even some frozen cut fries would be nice. "It's all health food in here."
Maria grinned suddenly. "Tess is pregnant. Of course Alex is going to feed her nothing but good stuff."
"She needs fats and things she's going to want to put in her mouth. It's no wonder she's so skinny." Michael countered, shutting the freezer with his hand lightly, so not to make too much noise. "And keep your voice down, I don't want them to hear."
For a moment, they both stared at the door, as if they could hear the words being spoken from within. "Kyle thinks she's going to freak out the minute she sees Max," Maria commented after a moment.
Michael shook his head, feeling something ache in the region of his heart. This was all too familiar to him. "Wouldn't surprise me one bit."
~~~~~~~~~~
The words caught in her throat as she stared, eyes wide. Tess was sure, so damn sure, she was still asleep and having a wonderful dream-or a terrible nightmare. Her heart threatened to explode in her heart chest as it pounded faster and faster in fear and ... in wonderful, sweet, torturous hope.
Max watched the hundreds of painful needling emotions pass through her eyes. There was so much fear in them, so much fear that he could have cursed himself for putting it there. The questions that had formed in his mind over the past hour that he's sat there just watching her, melted away to two simple words. "Hi Tess."
Her bottom lip trembled as she opened her mouth to speak. But no word emerged. No sound was emanated. It was like a flawless picture, so delicately perfect that she was afraid to shatter it with any small movement on her part. She didn't even notice as the tear slide down her cheek.
His heart gave a painful twist as he watched her try but fail to believe. Reaching out, he touched the tear that seemed to leave a scar on her cheek. "Sh..." fingers to her lips. He traced her face his fingertips, lightly memorizing her features all over again with his touch. "Beautiful."
Tess jerked herself away, curling into a ball as she crouched in the corner of the bed. She began to cry in earnest as she murmured to herself, "Wake up, Tess. Just wake up."
Max shook his head and crawled to her, baiting back the hurt as she jerked again at his touch. He tried to wrap his arms around her, tried to hold her, to comfort her, but she struggled against him.
"God, just wake up." She tried to pull herself way as strong arms held her tight against a chest the held the strong beating heart pressed against her ears. "Alex! Alex, help me. I can't wake up from this nightmare!"
"Sh...." He felt his own tears burn as he pressed a kiss into her hair. "It's okay, Tess. It's me. It's Max."
She shook her head, unwilling to believe. "No, no, no. Oh god, I'm losing my mind. Please just let me die."
He held on tight as she cried in his arms, begging for it to end. Each cry was a small dagger in his conscience. *How could I have done this to her? How could I have killed her hope so thoroughly?* He was at a lost at to what to do. All he knew for sure was that he was going to make this up to her somehow.
Michael poked his head in for a moment and at the glare from Max, retreated without a word. It really didn't take Max's threats to make him run for the hills. He was no better at dealing with crying women.
"Tess," Max whispered against her ear, waiting for the storm of tears to subside. "Please don't cry anymore." Running a soothing hand down her back, feeling the sharp jagged breaths being taken. "Sh..." rocking back and forth as he had seen Alex do for her.
The heart wrenching sobs abated and her hiccupping jolts reduced. And after what seemed like a lifetime, Tess calmed and relaxed in Max's arms. His relief was palpable and he was reluctant to break the peace just yet. So, he simply held her, resting his cheek against her curls until he realized her breathing had become steady and soft. "Tess?"
She had fallen asleep from exhaustion.
Shifting her gently, Max propped himself up against the wall and settled her into the curve of his body. Cradling her, he was reminded of how small and delicate she was in comparison to the rest of the motley crew that he called family. She was a tiny fairy queen compared to the tall statuesque Isabel and lanky Michael. Heck, he himself was almost a foot taller than her.
The hint of floral fragrance whiffed through the air, tantalizing his sense of smell. She always seemed to remind him of another world, somewhere mysterious and wonderful. Perhaps it was her link to his past that did it. Or perhaps it was the way she never quite allowed herself to be free. Unlike the rest of them, she alone shouldered the weight of Nasado's pact and promises. She alone knew too much for her own peace of mind. And she had decided to be alone for their sake.
Max smoothed back a lock of curl that fell on her cheek and stared at her calm face for a moment. *I asked you in New York what I ever did to deserve your loyalty, and you said that it was because I had been a very good husband to you in our past life. So what did you do in your last life that made you deserve the louse that I am today?*
Shaking his head at his own musing, he decided that whatever was going to happen will happen and there was no need for him to hurry it along. One thing is for certain; the universe isn't through with him or her yet. And therefore, she had to live. Now if only he could convince her to let him save her.
~~~~~~~~~~
"Tell me about her?" Isabel asked as she settled her head on Alex's shoulder. The two of them shared the bed with their back against the headboard as the others gathered around for some quiet time.
"Her?" Alex asked, his head tilted just enough to rest his cheek on her head. She smelled like Calvin Klein and Lever 2000 soap. This was a moment he never thought he would ever have, not with her.
"Tess," she murmured softly, watching Liz's eyes shift away. "Tell me about her cause I obviously don't know her at all."
For a moment, Alex was silent. "The first time I got to know her, and I don't mean when everything blew up in your faces after the whole kidnapping Max thing, was at Nasado's grave site." He shifted slightly, letting his arm rest causally over Isabel's shoulder. "It was the middle of the night and I was... I don't remember why I was out that night, just that I was. She was sitting by the hillside, where the grave was, leaning up against a big rock. I doubt she saw me or she wouldn't have said any of it out loud."
"What?" Kyle asked, impatient as ever, but was hushed by a stern look from his father.
Jim Valenti could see that the events would go a long ways to explain what they've all been dying to know: How did Alex end up team up Tess? "Go on Alex."
He nodded and stared out the window at the setting sun. "She was crying. I don't think I ever thought of her as the crying type, she always seemed so cold, so sure of herself and what she was suppose to be doing. But she was crying that night, blaming Nasado for all the hurt he had caused and will cause in the future." Alex shook his head. "I didn't know until that night how lonely she was and how easily she accepted that she was going to be alone."
"Is that when you approached her?" Kyle asked, sorry that he hadn't been more supportive in the beginning. Hell, if anything, he had resented the fact that Tess came into his world and disrupted everything there was about it. Would it have been him in Alex's place had he been more in tuned to Tess's hurt and isolation?
"No," he made a face. "Like the rest of you, I didn't trust her. I thought for a moment that she might have been playing me but..."
"What happened?" Liz asked, curious despite herself.
"She fell asleep on the grave." He shrugged his shoulder, unwilling or unable to tell them why such a simple, thoughtless action had touched him so much. "She cried and then she passed out, right there where no man would dare to tread." Tess had awoken two hours later next to Alex, using the simple non descript headstone as a rest. "We talked afterwards and it took some doing," it had taken more than some doing for Alex to talk Tess around to confiding in him. And had she not been so frighteningly alone, he was sure she would never have included him. "But Tess finally decided that we could be partners in crime together."
There was silence as the words were absorbed in slowly, replacing the questions and assumptions in each mind.
Isabel cleared her throat and looked at him. "Was she good to you?"
"Good?" he frowned at her. "I'm not sure how that applies in this case. Tess tried the entire time to talk me around. Gave me every opportunity to back away..." He remembered a horrible fight with Tess, just after the prom when she had seen how happy he was with Isabel. She even threatened to mind wipe him; but Alex knew better than be to taken in by her angry words. He held his ground and she finally conceded to following the carefully laid out plan they had spent months putting into place. "But everything worked out exactly as it should at the end."
"Except some reporter accidentally caught Tess with a camera," Kyle pointed out with a smile, enjoying the ironies of life. "And Michael caught the picture in his eyes."
"Yes," Alex grinned at that. Everything had been planned to a T, including how to get Tess away from the landing site. But neither one could have counted on all the small factors that led to their discovery. "Life has a funny way of messing things up."
"Well I'm glad it did," Valenti commented as he stood up slowly, rubbing his shoulders. "Else we would have never known the truth. And that above all is what's most important."
"But what is the truth?" Alex softly. "It the truth what you believed in a week ago when you thought Tess capable of killing for no reason? That was what you all believed in and what was the truth for you. Or is the truth what you know now? But then I could be holding things back from you that you will never know again. The truth is what a person makes of it. And that may not always be the same."
For a moment, the others stared at Alex.
He shrugged. "The library has a rather impressive collection on philosophy. And I had a lot of time on my hands waiting for Tess to show up."
Kyle rolled his eyes. "Figures."
TBC...
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*
~~~~~
Michael tiptoed away from the door, hearing nothing from within. He figures he's got at least another hour to waste before Max decides it was time to perform another miracle. The little reservation he had about this whole plan he pushed to the back of his mind. There was no mistaking the look in Max's eyes as he sat there and stared at Tess. The boy wasn't going to be talked out of this even if Michael had any intention to. Even he could not stand there and not be affected by Tess's plight.
Then there was the sliver of memory he caught a glimpse of. Unlike Max, Michael had never had any desire to try to retrieve his past life. He was no king, didn't need to know what had happened. He was just.... He was just Michael.
But now, now that he's got a little taste of what his last lifetime was like, he was curious to know more. What he saw, what he felt, it had been terrible. Max had been in pain; he saw it in the express on the man's face. And Tess....what the hell was a pregnant queen doing in armor? The question nagged him as he sat down and stared at the blank door.
"Hey!" Maria whispered from the window. "Coast clear?"
He nodded his head; sorry for the interruption as he tried to remember... he wasn't sure what he was trying to remember. "What are you doing here? I thought Max told everyone to stay together until one of us come and get you."
"He did," pushing the surprisingly silent-hinged door open. "But I kind of got tired of staring at the wall and..." She peered at him. "What's up? You look funny."
"Nothing," he dismissed it with a wave and got up to go to the kitchen area, six steps away. "You want something to eat?"
"Not really," she sat down in his vacated seat and glanced at the door to the bedroom. "Max in there with her?"
"Where else?" Michael answered with a sigh, pulling frozen food from the freezer. He frowned as frozen greens and ice cream was pulled out. "Alex's choice of food needs some serious rethinking." He rummaged around for pizza or hamburger patties; maybe even some frozen cut fries would be nice. "It's all health food in here."
Maria grinned suddenly. "Tess is pregnant. Of course Alex is going to feed her nothing but good stuff."
"She needs fats and things she's going to want to put in her mouth. It's no wonder she's so skinny." Michael countered, shutting the freezer with his hand lightly, so not to make too much noise. "And keep your voice down, I don't want them to hear."
For a moment, they both stared at the door, as if they could hear the words being spoken from within. "Kyle thinks she's going to freak out the minute she sees Max," Maria commented after a moment.
Michael shook his head, feeling something ache in the region of his heart. This was all too familiar to him. "Wouldn't surprise me one bit."
~~~~~~~~~~
The words caught in her throat as she stared, eyes wide. Tess was sure, so damn sure, she was still asleep and having a wonderful dream-or a terrible nightmare. Her heart threatened to explode in her heart chest as it pounded faster and faster in fear and ... in wonderful, sweet, torturous hope.
Max watched the hundreds of painful needling emotions pass through her eyes. There was so much fear in them, so much fear that he could have cursed himself for putting it there. The questions that had formed in his mind over the past hour that he's sat there just watching her, melted away to two simple words. "Hi Tess."
Her bottom lip trembled as she opened her mouth to speak. But no word emerged. No sound was emanated. It was like a flawless picture, so delicately perfect that she was afraid to shatter it with any small movement on her part. She didn't even notice as the tear slide down her cheek.
His heart gave a painful twist as he watched her try but fail to believe. Reaching out, he touched the tear that seemed to leave a scar on her cheek. "Sh..." fingers to her lips. He traced her face his fingertips, lightly memorizing her features all over again with his touch. "Beautiful."
Tess jerked herself away, curling into a ball as she crouched in the corner of the bed. She began to cry in earnest as she murmured to herself, "Wake up, Tess. Just wake up."
Max shook his head and crawled to her, baiting back the hurt as she jerked again at his touch. He tried to wrap his arms around her, tried to hold her, to comfort her, but she struggled against him.
"God, just wake up." She tried to pull herself way as strong arms held her tight against a chest the held the strong beating heart pressed against her ears. "Alex! Alex, help me. I can't wake up from this nightmare!"
"Sh...." He felt his own tears burn as he pressed a kiss into her hair. "It's okay, Tess. It's me. It's Max."
She shook her head, unwilling to believe. "No, no, no. Oh god, I'm losing my mind. Please just let me die."
He held on tight as she cried in his arms, begging for it to end. Each cry was a small dagger in his conscience. *How could I have done this to her? How could I have killed her hope so thoroughly?* He was at a lost at to what to do. All he knew for sure was that he was going to make this up to her somehow.
Michael poked his head in for a moment and at the glare from Max, retreated without a word. It really didn't take Max's threats to make him run for the hills. He was no better at dealing with crying women.
"Tess," Max whispered against her ear, waiting for the storm of tears to subside. "Please don't cry anymore." Running a soothing hand down her back, feeling the sharp jagged breaths being taken. "Sh..." rocking back and forth as he had seen Alex do for her.
The heart wrenching sobs abated and her hiccupping jolts reduced. And after what seemed like a lifetime, Tess calmed and relaxed in Max's arms. His relief was palpable and he was reluctant to break the peace just yet. So, he simply held her, resting his cheek against her curls until he realized her breathing had become steady and soft. "Tess?"
She had fallen asleep from exhaustion.
Shifting her gently, Max propped himself up against the wall and settled her into the curve of his body. Cradling her, he was reminded of how small and delicate she was in comparison to the rest of the motley crew that he called family. She was a tiny fairy queen compared to the tall statuesque Isabel and lanky Michael. Heck, he himself was almost a foot taller than her.
The hint of floral fragrance whiffed through the air, tantalizing his sense of smell. She always seemed to remind him of another world, somewhere mysterious and wonderful. Perhaps it was her link to his past that did it. Or perhaps it was the way she never quite allowed herself to be free. Unlike the rest of them, she alone shouldered the weight of Nasado's pact and promises. She alone knew too much for her own peace of mind. And she had decided to be alone for their sake.
Max smoothed back a lock of curl that fell on her cheek and stared at her calm face for a moment. *I asked you in New York what I ever did to deserve your loyalty, and you said that it was because I had been a very good husband to you in our past life. So what did you do in your last life that made you deserve the louse that I am today?*
Shaking his head at his own musing, he decided that whatever was going to happen will happen and there was no need for him to hurry it along. One thing is for certain; the universe isn't through with him or her yet. And therefore, she had to live. Now if only he could convince her to let him save her.
~~~~~~~~~~
"Tell me about her?" Isabel asked as she settled her head on Alex's shoulder. The two of them shared the bed with their back against the headboard as the others gathered around for some quiet time.
"Her?" Alex asked, his head tilted just enough to rest his cheek on her head. She smelled like Calvin Klein and Lever 2000 soap. This was a moment he never thought he would ever have, not with her.
"Tess," she murmured softly, watching Liz's eyes shift away. "Tell me about her cause I obviously don't know her at all."
For a moment, Alex was silent. "The first time I got to know her, and I don't mean when everything blew up in your faces after the whole kidnapping Max thing, was at Nasado's grave site." He shifted slightly, letting his arm rest causally over Isabel's shoulder. "It was the middle of the night and I was... I don't remember why I was out that night, just that I was. She was sitting by the hillside, where the grave was, leaning up against a big rock. I doubt she saw me or she wouldn't have said any of it out loud."
"What?" Kyle asked, impatient as ever, but was hushed by a stern look from his father.
Jim Valenti could see that the events would go a long ways to explain what they've all been dying to know: How did Alex end up team up Tess? "Go on Alex."
He nodded and stared out the window at the setting sun. "She was crying. I don't think I ever thought of her as the crying type, she always seemed so cold, so sure of herself and what she was suppose to be doing. But she was crying that night, blaming Nasado for all the hurt he had caused and will cause in the future." Alex shook his head. "I didn't know until that night how lonely she was and how easily she accepted that she was going to be alone."
"Is that when you approached her?" Kyle asked, sorry that he hadn't been more supportive in the beginning. Hell, if anything, he had resented the fact that Tess came into his world and disrupted everything there was about it. Would it have been him in Alex's place had he been more in tuned to Tess's hurt and isolation?
"No," he made a face. "Like the rest of you, I didn't trust her. I thought for a moment that she might have been playing me but..."
"What happened?" Liz asked, curious despite herself.
"She fell asleep on the grave." He shrugged his shoulder, unwilling or unable to tell them why such a simple, thoughtless action had touched him so much. "She cried and then she passed out, right there where no man would dare to tread." Tess had awoken two hours later next to Alex, using the simple non descript headstone as a rest. "We talked afterwards and it took some doing," it had taken more than some doing for Alex to talk Tess around to confiding in him. And had she not been so frighteningly alone, he was sure she would never have included him. "But Tess finally decided that we could be partners in crime together."
There was silence as the words were absorbed in slowly, replacing the questions and assumptions in each mind.
Isabel cleared her throat and looked at him. "Was she good to you?"
"Good?" he frowned at her. "I'm not sure how that applies in this case. Tess tried the entire time to talk me around. Gave me every opportunity to back away..." He remembered a horrible fight with Tess, just after the prom when she had seen how happy he was with Isabel. She even threatened to mind wipe him; but Alex knew better than be to taken in by her angry words. He held his ground and she finally conceded to following the carefully laid out plan they had spent months putting into place. "But everything worked out exactly as it should at the end."
"Except some reporter accidentally caught Tess with a camera," Kyle pointed out with a smile, enjoying the ironies of life. "And Michael caught the picture in his eyes."
"Yes," Alex grinned at that. Everything had been planned to a T, including how to get Tess away from the landing site. But neither one could have counted on all the small factors that led to their discovery. "Life has a funny way of messing things up."
"Well I'm glad it did," Valenti commented as he stood up slowly, rubbing his shoulders. "Else we would have never known the truth. And that above all is what's most important."
"But what is the truth?" Alex softly. "It the truth what you believed in a week ago when you thought Tess capable of killing for no reason? That was what you all believed in and what was the truth for you. Or is the truth what you know now? But then I could be holding things back from you that you will never know again. The truth is what a person makes of it. And that may not always be the same."
For a moment, the others stared at Alex.
He shrugged. "The library has a rather impressive collection on philosophy. And I had a lot of time on my hands waiting for Tess to show up."
Kyle rolled his eyes. "Figures."
TBC...