The Missing
By K4Reader of the xsorbit4 rebelfic board.
Disclaimer: I take no credit in this story it was created by K4Reader, who does not own Roswell.
Part I
She's crying again.
That's all I think, as I hear the weeping begin. In the beginning, I would rush in, shake her awake from her nightmares and comfort her. Four, five times a night for months. I was losing so much sleep myself, that my husband, Philip, got sleeping pills. He gave them to me at night, and promised to wake our sweet little Isabel as soon as she began to cry.
He didn't, as I learned later. It was Max, our son. Max woke his sister when her dreams turned to nightmares. But he never showed how tired it must've made him. I think on some nights, that disturbing Guerin boy, who doesn't seem like a little boy at all most of the time, woke her and held her.
None of us ever dared to discuss it. Isabel hates to be weak. She is in the body of a child, but her soul is so much older…
I wonder sometimes, what kind of person would, no, could give up two such perfect children as mine. They are beautiful, they are dazzling intelligent, they are strong, they have never been sick and they are genuinely good and kind and sweet. Max is wise beyond his years, and Isabel is strong and mature beyond hers.
The Guerin boy is over here a lot. I don't see Max's wisdom or Isabel's sweetness in him. I see a sullen and suspicious boy. But he cares. He shocks me sometimes with little insights. He does things without being asked, or even told that they need to be done. He just observes, and acts. He never asks for thanks, or even tells me that he has done these little tasks. He gets embarrassed when I try to acknowledge what he has done. So I've stopped trying. Overtly that is. I leave little presents for him, where I know he'll find them. Isabel helps me, and Max does in his own way.
It's almost Christmas time, and all three of them are in the living room with the tree. Isabel was lecturing them about the way to tie the perfect bow on a Christmas present. The boys pretended to listen, but Michael made fun of her every time she turned her back.
It's good to see the boys laugh. They are both entirely too serious. Especially for Christmas. I longed to go in and share the joke with them, but my presence would spoil it entirely. I silently deposited a plate of Christmas cookies at the door and sneaked away.
It is two hours later. I finished the cookies and have moved on to pies. The laughter stopped an hour ago, and I peaked in to see them all asleep.
Isabel is crying, but before I can wake her, Michael, the Guerin boy, gets up and touches her shoulder. She awakens instantly. "I dreamt about her again." I hear my daughter whisper.
"Her?" Michael whispers back. "Vilandra or the fourth?"
Vilandra. What an alien word. A word I only heard once before, one night when I was trying to do as Philip and the doctors said. They told me she wept for the attention and that her night terrors were not real. They told me it would stop if I stopped going in to comfort her. I lasted forty-five minutes in my bedroom, listening to her sobs. I broke, and went in, to Philip's stern disapproval. Isabel was hysterical that night. She wailed that she was Vilandra, that she was a curse, that I must not love her, that I must send her away. Eventually I calmed her and she dropped to exhausted slumber. I never let her cry long into the night again.
Isabel and I never discussed that night, or any of the nights I woke her from her dreams. She tries to pretend during the day that the night is not a haunted time for her. But I am her mother. I know that she fears the night. I've talked to Philip about bringing her to see someone professional, but he persists in denying that there is a problem we can not handle.
I missed Isabel's answer by being caught in my own thoughts, but I think that tonight she dreamt of something else, something I have never heard about.
"Where is she? What's her life like?" Michael has asked.
The fourth. I think. Who or what could that be?
"She is looking for us. She's so lonely, and we abandoned her all alone in the world. A man came for her, and he wants to come for us too. She's so glad we got away from him. She wants to be away from him too. She tastes snow, but it isn't magic for her. Nothing tastes right to her. They're always running and hiding, but when she finds us, when she finds us we'll know."
The answer is so garbled it means nothing to me…except that Isabel said we. And the fourth… Is it possible that Max and Isabel see Michael as a part of them, a part of where they come from?
I listen again, as Michael says. "But she's okay?"
Isabel nods. "I think so." Her voice is a little wobbly.
"Then we'll find her. Someday Izzy, someday I'll be so big that no one'll ever hurt you or me or her or Max again."
"I know. And you're here now."
"Not for long. Your parents won't like it if I stay too late and maybe they'll say I can't see you or Max at all."
"They won't." Isabel says, and her faith is touching. "They're good. Mama and Daddy are good, and I love them, and I love you, so they'll love you. Besides, I feel safe when you are here."
I see Michael blush. "You have Max." He says, scorning emotion the way boys that age so often do.
"I need you and Max." She says, grabbing his hand. "Stay, please?"
No boy can say 'no' to Isabel, not even Philip. No man is safe from her wiles, but she doesn't realize it yet. That's part of her charm, at this point.
But Michael stayed. Later, when they were all sleeping again, I covered them with blankets. And for the first time since Isabel's night terrors began, she did not have another that night.
It was the greatest Christmas present I could ask for, even with the added burden of wondering how Michael is connected to my children…and wondering about this mystery girl Isabel cries for.