Title: Bitter ( Destiny part four )
Timeline: Sexual Healing.
Perspective: Isabel
Spoilers: Second season stuff.
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters or anything affiliated with these characters, if you plan on suing, plan again.
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Of all places to find herself at 7:30 — 7:31 — in the morning, Alex's house is last on the list. It is simply not the place she usually finds herself. It's like she's slumming, visiting lesser beings, a boy of a lower social status and yet she always finds herself compelled to be near him. At first she thought it was obligation because at first there was that dream of his that just made her see him in this completely different way, completely against her will, too because she did not want to see him like that. It's like Alex Whitman has an unforeseen charm about him that makes her attracted to him. She is, in some unexplainable way, addicted to him. It is a horrible thought. What's even more horrible is that she even had the chance to become attracted to him. And it is all Liz' fault.
Liz Parker, the reason behind all of Isabel's misfortunes. If she thinks about it logically and without bias she'll find that it is actually Max' fault, but instead she thinks about it this way. If it hadn't have been for Liz getting in the way of that bullet, Max wouldn't have had to save her. No, scratch that. Fast forward. Max saves Liz, Max tells Liz and then what does she do, instead of keeping the big alien secret to herself like a good girl, she goes and tells Maria Deluca. Liz was right about one thing, though, Maria is the Fort Knox of friends because she hasn't told a soul. Whoop tee doo, one point for Liz and about a hundred against her — okay, one against her. Not only did she tell Maria, she let Kyle Valenti see the handprint. And then she told Alex, trusted Topolsky, and last but not least she broke Max' heart. Isabel's not really sure about the last one but it seems like it.
One for Liz, five against her. To add to her complete and utter wreckage of Isabel's life, it is all her fault that the humans hung around what Maria calls the "Pod Squad" now. All her fault that Max is silently pining, being a complete bore all the time. All her fault that Michael is now missing with Maria and all her fault that Isabel is in the nerd part of town on Alex Whitman's doorstep. Slumming. HER! Isabel frickin Evans, in Nerdville, New Mexico ringing the doorbell to talk to Alex frickin Whitman. She really wants to blow something up but figures doing so in broad daylight with so many credible witnesses around is a bad idea. Still, she wants to blow something up and maybe she wants it to be Liz Parker's head.
"Isabel." The door swings open before she can think of what to say, think of how exactly she can go about saying "We think Michael kidnapped Maria again, or actually, Liz thinks so. I don't think so, but Max agrees with her, and she says Michael is a loose cannon and probably took her back to Marathon or something, God, they better be wrong. And you know whatever Liz says must be the truth because she's THE single most perfect person in the world" but it's too late to think about how to say that because she just said it. Exactly like that. "Kidnapped her. Okay, um, let me, um... Let me get the keys to my car. All right? We can go and find them."
She nods, didn't expect that sort of reaction, that sort of help, and pushes her hands in her pockets to occupy herself. "So why do you think Liz is perfect? I mean, no one's perfect." he calls from inside. Isabel pushes the door wider open and takes a step inside — oh no, she's standing in his house! — and yells back in no particular direction because she doesn't know where he is, "I don't. It's Max. She's nothing close to perfect."
When he comes back out, he has also changed which makes her think maybe he's the fourth alien or maybe girls just take longer than guys to change. Heaven knows Michel doesn't take long to change, but Maria is right about him. Sometimes his hygiene worries Isabel. "Maybe his alien hormones react differently to Earth girls." Alex shrugs and stutters when he talks alien, Isabel silently laughs at him. "You never know, I mean take Michael and Maria. Didn't they hate each other a few weeks ago?"
She thinks about it — logically — for a moment and then laughs. Alex was actually right about something. As much as she tries, Isabel just can't understand the relationship between those two. It's like one second he hates her and she wants him to drop dead in a ditch somewhere and the next they're making out in the eraser room unable to detach their mouths from each other. It was disturbing to even think about. "Isabel, you're phone's ringing." Alex motions toward her pocket and she realizes that in her state of thinking, she lost partial consciousness. Not the first time that's happened. She smiles weakly, a bit embarrassed, and picks up the phone. A moment later she's sighing and hanging up.
"It's Max. Let's go." Alex gives her a rather incredulous look and she really has no time to explain. "Something about a rock that glows and Michael not kidnapping Maria, can we go now, I'm going to need a ride to those stupid rocks Max and Michael are obsessed with." Obediently, Alex nods follows her to his car. They get in, take off and she rolls down the window to let the breeze rush through her hair. "Take the long way."
Isabel's always been somewhat of a mediator. Max and Michael disagree on something and she has to choose a side. It was like that with telling Alex and Marathon, Texas and, hell, everything. And she hates it, wants them to stop and just grow up. God, can't they ever just grow up? In some ways, Michael is more grown up than them all. Yeah, he's impulsive and he acts on those impulses and gets them all in trouble, but he knows what it's like to live. He's been really living for the past ten years, trying to figure things out. Max and Isabel have been covering up their pain and their questions with a fake existence and parents who have no clue just how imperfect they really are. How imperfect Isabel really is. She sometimes wonders what it would have been like if she and Max hadn't found the Evans' or if Michael found them. If Michael and Max found them. If she was left alone in the desert to be found and stuffed in a foster home with someone like Hank.
She hasn't seen Michael since the previous day and Max said he had to go down to the police station. But Liz said Maria said she asked her mom to clear things up and then they just disappeared, just vanished, and now they were in the desert with a shiny rock? Why would Maria's mom have to clear things up anyway? What did her mom have to do with anything? Isabel thought logically again and came to the conclusion that Michael must have been at Maria's when he left Max and her after going off on Hank. She wishes Michael could just ask her father for help, could ask anyone for help even. She wishes he wasn't so stubborn, but she understands why he is. Still, she wants to help. And for some reason she thinks no one can help Michael. No one can help Isabel, either, and in that way they are more alike than she will ever admit.
There are so many reasons why she needs help in the first place, but they're complicated and stupid and she's never let anyone know. She's the mediator, right, and the mediator can't be torn between the two. She has to choose. It's like she can't have issues because how will they choose sides if she has to mediate? She has to know what she's doing, can't be conflicted, can't have problems. But she does. She really, really does.
-
It's been nearly fifteen minutes and neither she nor Alex have said a word. Boy, he really is taking the long way. At least she can clear her mind, get all these thoughts and frustrations out before they get there and she blows up at someone — but if she does blow up at someone, she'll think up some reason to make it Liz. Isabel's not entirely clear on when her hatred for everything Liz Parker picked up speed, but she knows that it came fast, probably around the time her brother began to include the insufferable know it all in every aspect of his life thus forcing her to become part of Isabel's. Isabel likes to think that Max had a moment of drunken clarity during which he decided that no matter how much he likes Liz Parker, they are better off apart. Really, now. Alien/human relations aren't meant to be had. Of course, Michael and Maria are an exception because Deluca is a strange girl, strange enough to cope with the alien happenings and Michael is so disconnected from, well, the world that they just work. But Parker has a wounded, damsel part that she loves to play and Max has a hero complex. The two usually go perfect with each other, but when you put different species into the mix, it's just wrong.
Maybe it's because nobody pays attention to her anymore, except Alex, and she's not exactly vying for his attention. Michael has always been off in his own little world so naturally, it's been up to her brother to give her the attention she so rightfully deserves. And now, with Liz Parker and her human existence interrupting, Isabel is being pushed to the side. She thinks, in a past life, she must have been a princess. Michael quotes that book, what is it? Eulogy? He quotes it and says "something, something, past lives and other planets, something else boring and pointless." Book quotes are hardly her cup of tea, but it applies. At least, she thinks it applies. She'll have to ask him about it when they get to the rocks. Which, by the way, is taking forever.
"You know, I said take the long way, not take a detour through every side street you see." She sounds bitter, cold, and doesn't really care. Aside from Michael and Maria being missing and returning with a glowing rock — She still has no idea what that is about — she has a massive paper due on Monday and is currently sitting in a beat up old car with the King of the Dorks on the way to see Liz Parker when she could be improving her grades and ignoring the pitfalls of human existence. Oh the wonders of it. Isabel would really like to vomit now at the thought of seeing Liz but she'll respect Alex's parents' car and not.
"Uh, uh, sorry. I'll, um, speed up, then, I guess." She likes it when Alex stutters, it reminds her of a mouse trapped in a corner about to be eaten for dinner. Oh, what a lovely picture to paint. They pass the houses on Walnut Street and Isabel lets her eyes close, lets her thoughts drift to something other than how she's being ignored and how she wants to kill Liz and how she has a paper due that she'll never get done if Alex doesn't drive faster! She lets her thoughts wander to the prospect of being a princess and she can see it clearly, herself on a throne with a tiara.
That's not all she sees, though, and she settles into the cushions and just drifts. Orange sky and red water that surrounds an island on top of which stands the most magnificent palace she's ever imagined. It's like a painting, drawn with someone's mind and not their hands, brought to life with the moving images of herself, hair blowing in the breeze, and someone else who has just entered the room. It's clear now that she's not on a throne, but a very large and expensive looking chair that sits on a terrace overlooking a city. Everything looks a mix of blue and red with fading orange lingering behind. There appears to be no sun in this city, but two moons are shining brightly in the sky. "Vilandra." She doesn't turn her body to see, because she listens and she can hear the voice of a girl — no, a woman — quite clearly. "Your mother is looking for you."
Isabel opens her eyes and blinks several times before she sits up straight and just stares. There is no logical explanation for her imagination at this point. No reason she has just seen what she has seen. And yet it is all too familiar. The sky, the water, that voice. She stares out the window and as they pass a particular house something in her mind just wakes up. "Ava?" She cranes her neck, keeps looking until the house is far out of sight, and looks at Alex who is staring at her like she's grown antennae.
"Who's Ava?" he so Alexly inquires and she shrugs, doesn't know, doesn't care except for the fact that she does care. But Isabel Evans would never, ever let anyone know that she cares. About anything. She just blinks, shrugs again and leans back into the seat. "Alex, just take the 380 and then take 8th, you should know where to go by now." She closes her eyes and hopes for more dreams of this Ava, but none come. Just darkness and worry and a sadness that is all too familiar.
-
"Michael, what is that quote from that book that you say all the time? The one about other planets and past lives?" she asks when they finally arrive. It took Alex forty five minutes to find the right path and she's barely out the door and asking ridiculous questions. She stands with her hands on her hips and her eyebrows raised, awaiting an answer. The princess in her does not like to wait. "Why is James Joyce relevant to anything? Granted, it's James Joyce and Ulysses is relevant to everything, but why now, Is?" Her patience is running out and she wants to see the glowing rock, but for now she wants to hear the quote because it's annoying her to not know. "Who's James Joyce?" He gives her that look, that Tell Me You're Joking look and she gives him a look in return, a Tell Me Or Die look, and he does after a rather unnecessary, exaggerated sigh.
"Some people believe that we go on living in another body after death, that we lived before. They call it reincarnation. That we all lived before on the earth thousands of years ago or some other planet. They say we have forgotten it. Some say they remember their past lives." It's times like these Isabel thinks Michael is some sort of alien idiot savant. Maria grins up at him — my, she's small — and Isabel is suddenly aware of the order of things. Michael and Maria are standing together, hand in hand, in this cutesy so in love way that their fingers link together like they're never going to let go, while Max and Liz are a hundred feet apart staring in opposite directions. The world is right again, she supposes, and glances at Alex for some sort of reassurance before launching back into alien princess mode.
"Thank you, Michael. Now, back to this rock business, and where were you two?" she gestures toward the inseparable love birds and kind of wants to hit them for smiling so much. Max and Liz move closer to the crowd — though they could hardly be called a crowd, it being just six of them — and Michael begins the story. By the way things look, the former love birds haven't heard the story yet. Isabel is both surprised and barely listening.
"You see, uh, Maria had this flash two nights ago of something being buried over near the radio tower—" He points in the direction of the structure and Isabel wonders why he would need to do that, it's not like it's hidden or small. But that's Michael for you, always pointing out the obvious. "—And so we came to see what it was and we found this. It glowed, it was really weird, and then it stopped glowing so we've just been playing catch with it but Maria broke a nail so we stopped." He must realize talk of playing catch is irrelevant because he stops talking about it and Maria, Fort Knox of Friends, chimes in.
"It's the symbol from the cave painting, too, and I didn't just see this, I saw other things. Stars and pods?" She looks to Michael for reassurance to continue and Isabel is actually listening now. Pods. She saw pods. How many, where, when, how and doing what? "There were eight of them, in this ship, it seemed, and it was crashing. I think I saw the crash."
Max is at a loss for words, it seems, and Liz has sat down and isn't listening at all but staring out into nowhere, which Isabel really couldn't care less about. Alex is leaning against his car and Michael and Maria are just standing, together, squeezing each other's hands and awaiting a response from someone. From anyone. It dawns on Isabel that none of them have ever had so called flashes before and she laughs out loud. "What were you guys doing when these flashes happened?" She pushes aside the thought of eight pods — EIGHT PODS — and stars and the crash and just lets herself laugh. It's been a while since she's laughed. She crosses her arms over her chest and watches both Michael and Maria blush bright red and start to stutter. "Save that story for another time, I suppose? Let's see that rock, shall we?"
Maria hands it over all too quickly, eager for the change of subject, and lets go of Michael's hand so they can both stare at the sky and whistle tunelessly. Isabel is the only one interested in the glowing rock, which she doesn't understand because Max should get his ass over here and be interested with her, but he's not being interested with her because he's boring. And brooding, can't forget brooding. It doesn't glow, just sits there in her hands, smooth against her skin. It's not very entertaining, kind of boring actually. Like Max in his current state.
"What is it?" she finally asks, and the love birds shrug. "Well, it's definitely alien, so there's no way to research it. I suppose we'll just hang on to it until we die of old age." No one is really listening, except for Alex, and again she's not exactly vying for his attention. She just sighs heavily and rolls her eyes. "Maybe we should ask Ava, whoever the hell she is." Michael furrows his eyebrows in that confused Michael way and Maria and Alex both throw up their hands and ask, "Who the hell is Ava?"