Title: Come Undone

Author: Caelan

Disclaimer: No copyright infringement intended and no profits generated. I'm just trying to clean up the mess that Jason Katims & friends made.

Rating: PG13

Feedback: Most appreciated.

Summary: M / L

"End of the World," always bothered me. Up until the last part of season two, Max and Liz were always portrayed as two very rational people. The problem I have then is what could have made them think that their relationship was out fault. So this is my attempt to answer that.

Nine years after their wedding in Las Vegas, Khivar has launched a full scale assault on Earth. With the dreaded parasite scion, he is transforming people into his own elite killing force known as the death walker. As Max and Liz try to find a way to defeat this new foe, they fail to see the reemergence of an old enemy.

Chapter One: The Land of the Dead

"Lost in a snow filled sky we'll make it alright to come undone now

We'll try to stay blind to the hope and fear outside

Hey child stay wilder than the wind and blow me in to cry."

~ Duran Duran

A mob of crows flew overhead laughing harshly at the scene. Every now again one of them would swoop down and carry away a piece of flesh from the victims. At first they had tried to scare them off, but there had been just too many birds and too few of them. With a scientific detachment that would have made Darwin proud, Liz moved from body to body looking for scions. Her mind filtered out the human aspects. She willed it only to see clean or infected throats. Details like man and woman, young and old, never registered. After six years of fighting, she couldn't let it.

An eerie silence fell over the tenement as the crows having no one to chase after them gave up and had glided away. A part of Liz wished for them to come back. Their cackles of life offset the images of death that surrounded her. Nervously, she started tapping her fingers against her notepad just to make noise. To remind herself that there indeed was another human alive in this area that the death walkers had thoroughly demolished. That's when she saw them. A toddler cradled in his mother's arms lying underneath a pile of brush. They seemed to be asleep, but Liz knew better. No one escaped when Khivar set his sights on them. Carefully, Liz pried the boy away from his mother's rigid grasp. A white scion cyst lay attached to his throat. Another child lost she thought silently. She could feel a bit of wetness begin to form in her eyes. Roughly, her fingers wiped at it. She was getting too close to this. A sort of emotional distance needed to be maintained. Immediately, she began to repeat the containment process. Getting lost in the white and blackness of science, a place where the moral ambiguities never strayed. She had one choice. Protocol called for the infected to be dismembered to prevent the rejuvenation process. All she had to do was to mark the body with a red chip. Then she would walk away and forget all about this little boy and his dead mother. As she placed the marker on the boy's forehead, a gust of wind began to blow a lock of the boy's hair back and forth. Over and over the golden strand danced on top of his head. Until the wind died away, the hair fell limply over the boy's left eye. Liz felt her heart constricted. She could remember when her, own son, Ben had been that age. A feeling of empathy washed over her hardened emotions. She knew it was wrong, dangerous even, but as she looked down at the bodies of mother and child a clear certainty awakened. She couldn't separate them in death like they had been separated in life. Her eyes looked for the others. Michael appeared to be busy checking another body, and Max had disappeared into the city's command center.

She looked up to the sky watching as the sun drifted behind the clouds escaping momentarily from the carnage down below. "At least you still have a place to hide," she muttered to the retreating light as a large shadow fell over her. She could feel the little hair on the back of her neck stand up. Whipping around, she surveyed the scene once again. Bodies lay everywhere. Their face forever etched with panic while dark plumes of smoke still hovered around the rubble, but she couldn't shake the feeling that someone was watching her. It was official. She was losing it. Taking a knife out of her pack, she slipped the blade underneath the cyst. The child's eyes opened and stared at her. In the back of her mind, she knew this was bad, very bad. Green energy began to burn in her fingers ready to defend herself, but she couldn't seem to move her hands.

Sitting up the boy cocked his head at her awkwardly. "Will you be my mommy?"

Liz could feel an immediate pressure pushing on her head and compelling her mouth to form one word "Yes."

"Take off the scarf," the voice ordered growing deeper in need.

Unwinding the knot at the base of her throat, Liz felt the scarf drop to her feet.

"Come down here."

The voice forced her to her knees. Vaguely, she noticed the cyst of the boy's throat growing larger. The white sack practically obscured his slender neck. A little tongue began to protrude from it.

Her heart seemed to be beating double time in her chest. She tried to string together some form of thought, but her mind could grasp on to nothing tangible. Instead, it drifted in an ocean of darkness that crashed over any image of Ben and Max that tried to surface.

"Wouldn't you just like it all to be over," the voice wrapped seductively around. "No more fighting a war you know you can't win."

"Yes," she sighed knowing all to well how their battle with Khivar would play out in the end. Out of all the gifts Max's healing had bestowed on her, it was the foresight she hated the most. A Pandora's Box she would never be able to close again. With ever vision, it had always been the same: an image of Earth from outer space. Its blue and green coloring sparkled with life. In one flash of brilliant light, a chorus of screams erupted. The planet exploded into a million fragments floating freely in the void of space. It had become her little dirty secret. Something she didn't even she share with Max. Tucked warmly in the arms of hope's hypnotic embrace, he still listened to its half truths and false promises. He still believed firmly that victory was inevitable, and after that life would go one. It was a potent narcotic she couldn't take away from him. She had learned long ago that the people she saved in one battle would be the first to die in the next. Her reward for having meddle in a sphere she had not right to be in. After all, she was only human.

"I could give you rest from all of that," the voice sounded.

She felt a slight pinprick at her throat.

"I need to hear you say it Liz," the entity ordered.

"I…" but something held her back.

"You'll fail them. You're too weak. All it took was a little child to capture you. Just give up now." The presence intensified in her head into all out roar. "YOU CAN'T WIN."

"I can't w…" Liz began to repeat. A beam of energy shot through the air hitting the toddler. The body fell to the ground. Liz heard a high pitch scream as a small yellow flame engulfed the scion. Looking at the parasite fighting for its life, it hit her. She had almost invited it in. It had made her forgot about Max and her son. What the hell was wrong her? Her legs started running pass Michael, whose face was steady mix of shock and confusion, pass the stench of rotting corpses and the white flies mingling around them. She just needed to run to feel the burn in her legs. Finding a clump of tree, she sank down beside it savoring the hard trunk behind her back. It was strong and alive.

Five minutes later she heard his voice, "You ok?" quite and tentative as he sat down beside her. Immediately, a feeling of warmth shot through her body. God, she loved his voice, but it wasn't enough to ward of the cold. Like an addict crashing back down to reality, the numbness soon returned.

"I'm fine," she answered. Fine. Fine. Fine. For years she had been fine. She had been fine when she had discovered her parents' mangled bodies. Their lifeless eyes forever etched in a look of unadulterated terror, and not the tranquility of someone who had passed peacefully on into the next world. Greedily, guilt began to sink its greedy fangs into her soul as she wondered for the hundredth time why hadn't seen it. She had failed her parents, no killed them, but she was still fine. With an absolute certainty, she knew the Earth was going to be blown up into a million pieces and her son along with it, but she was fine. A little boy was never going to see his third birthday, but she had to be fine. There was no other thing she could be.

She felt Max lace his finger through hers. Glancing down, she marveled how her hand fit in his, a creation of perfection in a world that had gone terribly awry. A world she couldn't even recognize anymore.

His hand wrapped around her shoulder and brought her body flush with his own.

"I need you to talk to me," his chest vibrated against her shoulder as he talked.

She buried her head against his chest. What was there say? Well, honey I almost became a death walker today. It appears I might have some suicidal tendencies. He had so many obligations. People depended on him. The last thing he needed was to have to worry about her. He needed her to be strong, and she couldn't even do that anymore. Her mouth felt suddenly dry as she tried to speak. Then it came out, the first lie she had ever told him, "The boy he was so young and…I just wanted to spare him the process, and the thing attacked me." Immediately, she wished she could take it back.

His brown eyes stared at her for a long time. "Liz," his voice seemed almost pained.

She had to get away from this. "We need to get back to the caves. The others are probably looking for you," she said disentangling herself from his grasp.

His hands stopped her. "When we get back you are going to talk me, really talk to me," Max stressed.

She shook her head. The funny thing was she couldn't remember how.