A/N- Hey everyone, I hope you enjoy this. I worked super hard editing and re-editing, trying to make this chapter all it could be, and I love it. So hopefully you will too. :) Just so you know, this chapter is again from Maria's point of view because I saw no other way to be able to get all the information out without another Maria chapter. Please, please, please review- it helps immensely especially when I'm this close to the end of a story. Thank you!


"I might feel defeated, and I might hang my head. I might be barely breathing, but I'm not dead. Tomorrow's another day, and I am not afraid, so bring on the rain..."

Jo Dee Messina, Bring on the Rain

I walked the quiet street, the only noise coming from the scuff of my sandals as they hit the rough pavement. The sun peaked lightly below the horizon as the day turned slowly to night; the darkness again taking over our world.

It had been a few days since we'd come home, and already we'd begun to find our places again. Liz was happy; I could see it in her eyes. It was the kind of happy I hadn't seen in her for years- the kind of happy I'd only dreamed to see again in her eyes. I watched her as she laughed earlier that day, and I knew she'd needed home again. I'd left her. I would always feel remorse over the year I'd left Liz alone- remorse for her loneliness, and remorse for the things I'd done in her absence.

I stopped, looking toward the sky. The moon hung and shined briefly, before the dark clouds covered it up. The wind was blowing and I knew that a storm would soon be upon us. You can always feel a summer storm in Roswell hours in advance. The moisture hangs in the air; the clouds threatening to break and rain thick drops down on the earth. When I was little, I used to live for the rains. I loved watching the drops fall from the sky, knowing that the rain came from somewhere so far above us on earth. As I grew older I began to forget what I found so special in the storms. As everyone grows older, life begins to lose its luster, for me it just came so much sooner and now my youth was over. Youth had left me that early morning two years ago. The morning that Liz and I fled into the streets, the rain pouring heavily on us as we ran from Roswell and ran from everything that was weighing us down. As the clouds broke with its thick tears, we broke with guilt from this town.

I felt my feet guiding me down the abandoned street. The threat of rain and the coming nightfall had emptied the sidewalks, and I sensed the all too familiar feeling of being alone as it settled over me. Thunder rolled through the dark sky as I approached the building. I stood quietly looking up at the structure, unsure of why I had come here again. There were so many memories in that building. This whole town was drenched with our memories, but that building held more than I ever wanted to remember.

I shook my head slowly, fighting back the tears begging to break free. I looked up into the dark sky once more before quickly turning around, and walking back in the direction I'd come.

"Maria!" My heart jumped when I heard my name, and I spun around to meet his gaze. Of course he'd seen me, he always did. "Maria?" He said again, this time his voice rising into the question we both wanted an answer to. Why was I here? He looked deep into my eyes, searching for the answers I couldn't comprehend.

Thunder broke, sending a chill down my spine as it rolled slowly through the sky. Michael looked up and shook his head, "it's going to rain. We should go inside," he said, slowly stretching his hand out for me to take. I looked down at it before shaking my head.

"I- I don't deserve you Michael." My voice broke from the tears struggling to fall. His hand slowly fell as he looked at me, shaking his head.

"I don't understand, Maria." He said, a question in his eyes. The wind whipped up around us, blowing his loose hair in his face and sending mine up in a spiral around me.

"I'm so ashamed, Michael. I don't deserve you; you're too good for me." I felt one lone tear travel slowly down my face as I looked slowly to the ground. "I've done so many terrible things that you wouldn't ever imagine."

"Maria," he took a step closer, our bodies only inches from touching. "What is it? What happened to you when you left Liz? What is it that makes your eyes so sad when you look toward the ground?" His eyes were full of questions, some I knew he would never voice.

I took a breath, before slowly beginning. "You- you can't understand it, Michael. You can't understand what it feels like to feel the emptiness and hunger eating away at your body and knowing that you'll never be able to satisfy it. What I had for money was gone within a month. I couldn't get a job because all of the things I needed for a legitimate job I'd left behind with Liz. I was stuck. I was so terribly alone, so terribly sad. There was no way out," my body shook as I slowly remembered. "There was no other way, I had to eat. I- I began to sell myself, Michael. I began to sink into sadness. I dyed my hair to cover up anything I remembered of myself, because I didn't want to remember who I'd been. If I remembered the Maria I used to be, I would remember everything I'd lost.

"I am so ashamed, so terribly ashamed of everything I've done since I've left you. The city was so dangerous and the men- the men were not always nice. They didn't always pay me, and I didn't always agree to the terrible things that they did to me." I felt the tears now, falling slowly, one by one hitting the pavement below my feet. One tear for every sin that now forever darkened my soul.

I looked up into Michael's eyes and saw the sadness I knew would be there. He was disappointed in me, just as I was disappointed in myself. "You see Michael?" I asked, my voice rising into a high shrill. "I don't deserve you! I might have deserved you before, but the day I left Roswell was the day I stopped deserving anything you've given me. Just forget about me, Michael. Forget. I will leave again and you can finally get back to the way things should be. You're so much better without me." I felt the tear in my heart as I spoke the words hiding deep within my heart.

I spun around quickly and began to run, looking back only briefly to see Michael's hunched form standing on the sidewalk. I ran quickly, my fading black hair whipping behind me as the building passed by me in a blur. A huge boom of thunder tore through the sky, and the clouds broke with sad and violent raindrops, mixing slowly with the tears streaming from my tired eyes. I knew I had to leave, because I couldn't keep pulling Michael down.

I felt a hand wrap around my arm, jerking me back so quickly that I stumbled and fell against the strong body behind me. His chest was muscular and safe as his arms wrapped slowly around me. He took his index finger and lifted my chin. I looked up into Michael's gray eyes and I saw him smile.

"Oh Maria," he sighed looking down at me. "You'll never understand how much I love you." He dipped his head, engulfing my mouth in a kiss, hungrily taking me in as the rain saturated the parched desert floor. He pulled away and smiled at me as lighting raced through the sky. "No matter where you've been or where you go, what you've done or what you'll do, I will always love you, Maria DeLuca."

I smiled as I looked up at him. "I love you Michael," I said and wrapped my arms around his neck, leaning my head against his drenched chest. There we stood, embraced tightly in the middle of the deserted Roswell street, as the rain quenched the thirst of the earth, and we quenched the thirst in our hearts.