Hi everyone! I'm so sorry for leaving you like this and not updating in aaages, but I'm back now and I can instead update with a lot of chapters at once, so that you'll have something to read :-)

Thank you all so much for your support, understanding and for leaving feedback. It's good to know that I still have some faithful readers left. Thank you!!

Hugs,

Jo

Chapter 22

The mind is a dangerous thing. It can tear you down or it can build you up. Your own mind can turn on you and turn you into something you're not. But is that really its intention? Isn't the mind trying to fight you just because it wants to save you? To help you see things that you've missed, but have been right in front of you the whole time?

Memories.

Thoughts.

Feelings.

All bundled up into a confusing and fearful mixture, playing through your head over and over again. If it gets to be too much, would you be able to handle it? Would you be able to withstand its power? Or would you succumb?

It was the hardest decision known to mankind that was haunting his mind that night: the decision between life and death. He was panicking, but at the same time trying to distance himself. He was trying to make lists, but the lists were destroyed by items that weren't following the system. He was trying to find the facts, what he knew, and then come to a decision. But what he had already known from the beginning was that he would never be able to make a decision. Because there was nothing he could do to make things better.

Facts.

The only thing he knew with certainty was that something was happening to Liz. He had healed her completely. He had checked on her so many times. Checked every single cell until he was teetering on the brink of deadly exhaustion. There was nothing wrong with her. Nothing physical. What he couldn't get out of his mind was Liz swaying on her legs with her eyes closed, her face pale and her hand reaching out for him to support her. Asking him for his help. What he couldn't forget was how she had been shivering and sweating in bed earlier that same night. Even though there was nothing physically wrong with her, nothing wrong with her body, there was something working inside of her that was slowly destroying her.

"But if it's a power, why is it hurting her?"
"It's probably due to the fact that she is human, and her body can't handle the power."
"But a power is supposed to help you, to protect you."
"In an alien body, where the powers are integrated into the DNA, they do."
"But in a human body the powers are treated like a virus, and thus act like a virus."

The memories invaded his mind. They had always been lurking at the back of his head, but when Emma had been taken, he had pushed them away, because Liz had seemed better.

"The one thing I could resemble it to would be the human disease HIV. As the powers are progressing and are starting to become stronger or more rooted in your system, your body will not be able to control it and the immune system will break down, just like in the last stages of HIV-"

All he could think about was Liz's pregnancy. He loved those children inside of her already. It would be so physically easy to move his hand to her stomach and end the children's existence. But the ease with which his hand could move towards her stomach didn't equal the difficulty he would have actually doing it. How was he supposed to choose between his children and the love of his life? He knew, deep inside of him, that the babies were harming her. He knew that, just because they were alien, they were eating away at her body from the inside out, just like Emma had. But Emma was just one person. Now Liz was carrying two.

Either Liz would die or he would have to kill the lives inside of her. It was not an obvious decision. Not at all.

His eyes closed against the darkness of the night, reaching for the darkness inside his mind. Not for the first time, and probably not for the last time, he cursed his own faith. He cursed the fact that he was not human and that he had put Liz in such great peril. If only he had been able to control himself and stay away, she wouldn't had been on another planet in another solar system, with one apathetic child and two alien children harming her body while she was carrying them in her womb.

Fighting against the deep dark hole inside of him, which was flooded with acidic guilt, he turned towards her and buried his head in the crook of her neck, feeling the soft texture of her hair against his cheek, and breathed her in. His hand slowly, almost guiltily for what he had been thinking, came to rest on her stomach, resting on the lives which were unintentionally harming her.
"I'm so sorry, Liz," he whispered. "I'm so sorry."

When Max's breathing evened out into a troublesome sleep, Liz's eyes opened and she swallowed back the fear and the tears. His guilt-ridden words were echoing in her ears and she pulled him closer to her. Things were falling apart around her. Max and her connection, Emma… Max. Like Max had mentioned before; they had to go back. Back to Earth. Back to Roswell. Otherwise they wouldn't survive.

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":..would like to present to you, your new king…"

"…leaving. My home is on a planet called Earth…"

"…with my mate and my children. There will be means to contact me, but if I were you, I would put my faith in Aldonis and Serena's hands. They are good people and they…"

"…do just fine, Serena. I trust you and Aldonis. You are the right people for…"

"…with Liz? Is she sick? She looks pale…"

"…leaving tomorrow…"

"…communicators. This is how we will be able to stay in touch with each other. Just in case…"

"…let them feel again. Your society isn't worth much without feelings…"

"Thank you, Max and Liz, for everything."

"…take care of her, Max. She doesn't look well."

The days passed in a flash of confusion for Max and Liz. Max was trying to make sure that he wasn't leaving Antar to the universe's mercy by leaving too soon. He had meetings every day, came home to Liz in the night and collapsed out of fatigue on the bed. Liz was trying to keep his hopes up by pretending that she was okay, even though the connection between them was slowly getting weaker and Emma's condition wasn't improving. Emma was still an empty shell, like her soul had escaped her. She wasn't responding to anything and she was asleep most of the time. Liz had constructed something similar to diapers and put on Emma, because she wouldn't go to the toilet. They had to force her to eat and it was mostly something similar to soup, because the task of just getting her to eat was strenuous enough. Getting her to chew was close to impossible.

It was Michael, Serena and Isabel who were keeping everyone going. Without their discreet support, Max and Liz probably wouldn't have made it. Michael was helping Max as much as he could, trying to ease the heavy burden of responsibility weighing down on his shoulders. Isabel was assisting Liz with Emma as much as she could. She had gotten Liz to promise not to lift Emma on her own, since she was pregnant.

It was with deep relief that they stepped onto the ship that would take them back to Earth that day. They were all worn and exhausted, like soldiers coming home from several years of war. But it wasn't their bodies that had battled, it was their hearts; their souls. Memories, which would never completely disappear, had been engraved into their minds as a constant reminder of what had happened. The questions of their origin had been answered, but the answers hadn't been satisfactory. Nevertheless, the whole experience had made them look upon Earth in another way. It was their home and they never wanted to leave it again. They were finally going home.

---------------------------------------------------

Earth, The United States of America, New Mexico

He never thought he would be here again. The last months he had spent on Antar he had actually started to believe that he would never return. But he was so close now. He was so close to her. To his home. He had never understood the true meaning of belonging somewhere until he met Maria. Even though he had thought for a long time that Max and Isabel were the only ones who ever could understand him, they never could. They had what he was missing. They had a family who loved them. They were accepted. They never had to be ashamed of their background. They had something to fall back on. He had had nothing until Maria came along. She was just what he needed. Even though he was resistant at the beginning, god was he resistant, she didn't give up. She fought for him, but she never let him know that she was fighting for him. If she had let him know just how much she cared for him and how much she wanted to be a part of his life, he would have run away so fast that she wouldn't have even been able to see the dust in his wake.

He kept letting her down. He kept hurting her, yelling at her, turning his back on her, but for some reason she always came back. Maybe it was just the competitive streak in her that never would allow him to win and to get his way, or maybe she actually had some feelings for him. It wasn't until he had left with Max, to help him as his second in command, that he realized how much she had come to mean to him too. Life on Antar would have been so much easier to endure if she had been by his side. He had lain awake at night, longing to bicker with her. He woke up in the morning with the memory of her kiss tingling on the surface of his lips.

But then he looked at Liz and Max and what they were going through, and he was happy that Maria was only with him on Antar in his dreams and memories. He didn't want anything to break that spirit inside of her and Antar might have been the force to kill it as it had almost done with Max and Liz. His eyes drifted away from the road and he looked in the rearview window at Max and Liz in the backseat.

Liz was sick.

It wasn't just the pregnancy. Liz might have been able to fool them in the beginning, but anyone could see by now that the pale pallor of her skin and the dark circles under her eyes wasn't a consequence of a normal pregnancy. She was asleep; her body curled up next to Max's. To the outside observer, Max could've been taken for being asleep as well, but Michael knew that he wasn't. He was resting, but he wasn't asleep. He hadn't slept for days and it was the worry for Liz and Emma that was keeping him up. Michael had known Max for a long time and didn't take him long to figure out that something was gnawing on Max's conscience. It wasn't just about Liz's health anymore, there was something else. Like a decision hung heavily on his shoulders.

Emma wasn't any better.

She was curled up against the door in the backseat. At first, when Liz had been awake, Liz had held her close, but as Liz had drifted off to sleep, Emma had curled up away from her parents. As if she couldn't handle their presence.

Michael caught the tightening of Max's arm around Liz even before she moaned quietly. The incident that had occurred as they had stepped off of the ship was something he never wanted to experience again. Liz had gone into some state of shock, choking and her lips turning blue as she tried to breathe. Michael had felt the change in the atmospheric pressure as well. The composition of oxygen and carbon dioxide was a little bit different on Antar in comparison with the composition on Earth. But even though Michael had felt a little light-headed, it wasn't even close to the reaction Liz had. It could have been an alien thing, and that's why Emma didn't react either. But it scared Max. Michael had seen the raw fear in Max's eyes and in that exact moment, when looking into his old friend's eyes, he had understood what Max was going through. He had understood his fear, the panic and the feeling that he couldn't do anything to prevent whatever was happening from happening.

Max had given Liz mouth-to-mouth, because even if the air was there, she couldn't get enough of it into her for some reason. It had been six terrifying minutes before Liz took a deep breath and started breathing on her own again. Michael had gotten them a rental car and they had only spent two minutes in the car before Liz had fallen asleep.

Isabel was sitting in the passenger seat. Her eyes were following the white line on the road, but her gaze was unseeing. Mentally, she wasn't here in this car. Michael knew where she was: in Roswell. With her parents and Alex. Going to Antar had been tough on her, of that Michael was sure. But she wasn't the kind of person to let anyone know that, if there were other things that were more important. That's where the nickname "Ice Queen" came from back in high school: she never showed any emotions. It was only with Max that she was truly open. And Alex. But on Antar, she had been alone. Max had been struggling with his own demons and everything had been turned upside down. He had tried to help her, to support her, but talking was never one of his strong suites. So she had been on her own. She had been forced to keep her head high and prevent herself from feeling. Michael wondered what was going through her mind right now. She was so close to getting home.

For him, it was different. He had always been prepared to leave. Had always lived to avoid getting tied down. But he never would have imagined that coming back to Earth would feel this good. He had always thought that Antar was his home, where he belonged. He had been wrong.

He heard Isabel shift in her seat when the sign Welcome to Roswell came into view. They were here. They were finally back home.

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"Nancy! Wait!"
Nancy turned around in the hallway, her hand resting on the doorknob. Jeff came up, placing a letter in her hand.
"Could you mail this for me?"
"Sure," Nancy said with a smile and turned the doorknob. The next thing she knew, she was falling back against her husband, her legs suddenly having turned into jelly.
"Oh my God," Jeff whispered, absently supporting Nancy with a firm grip around her upper arms, his gaze fixed upon the apparition crossing the street outside the restaurant. Their daughter, their baby girl who they hadn't seen for almost six years, was walking towards them. At first glance, they didn't notice the paleness of her skin or how carefully she walked. They barely noticed Max walking beside her or the little girl in his arms. But after the initial shock had worn off, they reacted. Nancy inhaled sharply before shakily stuttering towards Liz and pulling her into her arms. Jeff gave Max a quick glance before embracing both his wife and his daughter.
"Oh my God oh my God," Nancy whispered over and over again, tears streaming down her face.
"I never thought I would see you again," Jeff said, his voice strained with barely controlled tears.
"I'm so sorry," Liz whispered in response, her body gradually weakening with the flow of her tears. "I've missed you so much."
"You're alive," Nancy sobbed, planting kisses over Liz's face. Then she pulled back, as the haggardness of Liz's appearance suddenly became visible to her. "God Liz. You look sick. How are you feeling?" Easily drifting back into her mother role, she pressed a palm against Liz's forehead to feel her temperature. "Liz, you're burning up."
"I'm fine," Liz said weakly.
"She needs to rest."

The soft and tired voice from behind them, made them aware of the fact that there were two other persons standing next to them. It wasn't until then that Jeff noticed that Liz's hand was still holding the young man's, not even letting it go to hug her parents. A lot of different feelings exploded inside him at once and he turned towards Max.
"What did you do to her?!"
Max swallowed, guilt evident in his eyes.
"You did something to her," Jeff whispered, the hardness in his voice slicing through Max; feeding his insecurities and guilt-ridden thoughts.
"Is that…" Nancy gasped behind her husband, "Is that…Emma?" The name of their granddaughter was spoken with breathless wonder which made Jeff's accusing eyes shift from Max to the girl he was holding protectively in his arms.
"Yes," Liz answered softly and walked up to Max's side, clearly stating her place next to Max.
"Oh my," Nancy breathed and walked up to Max. She brushed the hair away from Emma's face, which was hidden in Max's shirt, trying to get a peek of her grandchild. Emma didn't turn away, but she didn't turn towards Nancy's touch either. She just remained still, not responding.
"Is everything...okay?" Nancy asked, her eyes turning worried. Fear was grating at her heart. Her daughter looked like a living dead and their grandchild seemed…closed off. Like she wasn't even in this world.
"Emma is…She's…" Liz bit her lip to prevent the tremors in her voice.
"Has…uhm… someone talked to you? How did you know Emma's name?" Max asked tentatively.
"Maria told us," Jeff answered, his suspicious eyes once again back to Max.
Max felt the air whoosh out of his lungs. "Did she tell you about me being-"
"Alien," Jeff interrupted. "Yes, she did."
His voice was cold, his eyes boring into Max. Max nodded. Being at war, fighting against aliens with powers he could barely begin to understand, never prepared him for this battle.
"She also told us that you healed Liz," Nancy whispered. "Thank you."

Max dropped his eyes. The ideal situation would be that he would feel good about Mrs. Parker's gratitude, if it hadn't been for the fact that her eyes were betraying her words.
"Max sacrificed himself to save me," Liz said, seeing the look pass in her mother's eyes.
"So Maria said," Jeff said.
"Dad please," Liz said.
"Baby, I love you and I'm trying to protect you," Jeff said, his voice softening as he looked at his daughter, "but don't you see the problem here? You cannot be with an," his voice lowered into a low hiss, "alien."
Liz's heart dropped. Not because of her father's words, because she had been expecting his reaction, but because Max took a step back, his fingers loosening their grip on her hand. She quickly tightened her grip on his hand, putting a stop to his withdrawal, or at least his physical withdrawal.
"Could I hold her?" Nancy asked, her eyes fixed on the motionless girl in Max's arms.
"I don't know if-" Liz started, but Max interrupted her.
"Okay."
Liz looked up at Max. "Max, we don't know what her reaction will be."
"It's their granddaughter, Liz," Max said quietly, failing to completely meet her eyes.
Liz looked at him a long second, missing the weakening connection between them more than ever as she was trying to understand what was going through his mind.
"I just want to hold her," Nancy said. Her forehead was creased and she was looking back and forth between Max and Liz, wondering why it seemed such a big deal that she wanted to hold her granddaughter.
Liz gave her a weak smile, the corners of her mouth quivering with insecurity and she gently took Emma from Max's arms and placed her in the arms of her mother.

Nancy looked down at the child in her arms. She was beautiful. The most beautiful girl she could ever ask for as a grandchild. But something was obviously wrong with her. She was so stiff in her arms, didn't even move. Jeff looked at the girl a long time, before turning towards Max.
"I want you to leave," he said coldly.
Liz's eyes widened. "No. Dad, you can't-"
"I can understand that this must all be a shock for you, Mr. Parker, but I can't leave Liz."
"Oh yes you can."
Liz's burning eyes centered on her father and she grounded out, "I'm not a girl anymore, dad! I'm making my own decisions. I've been doing that for a while now. Max and Emma are my family, and where they go I go."
Her chin rose in defiance as she stubbornly forced down the urge to vomit. She felt light-headed and a wave of dizzying exhaustion flooded her. There wasn't one outside sign of her faltering though, but Max knew by the tightening of her hand around his and the wave of nausea suddenly spilling over the connection. The fear he had barely been able to control since she had almost suffocated when they had landed, returned with full force.
"Liz, you need to lie down," he whispered. The plea wasn't intended for anyone else to hear, but the silence surrounding them was so deafening that if someone had dropped a pin, it would've been heard.
"What's wrong?" Jeff demanded.
"I'm fine," Liz answered Max. She turned to her worried parents and repeated, "I'm fine. Just a headache."
"Liz," Max begged, his hand tightening almost painfully around her fingers. When Liz didn't move in either direction, Max pulled Emma out of Mrs. Parker's arms, earning a gasp of surprise from Mrs. Parker.

Max cradled Emma close to his body and wrapped his other arm around Liz's waist. "We have to go."
"No!" Jeff said forcefully and caught Liz by the elbow. "You are not taking her away."
Liz, sensing that things were dangerously close to spinning out of control, put a calm hand over the hand Max had wrapped around her waist, putting a stop to his movements.
"Max, I haven't seen them in six years. I need to talk to them. They need to know what's going on and what has been going on."
Max's head lowered towards her, his worried eyes locking with hers. "Honey, you are not well. You cannot have a discussion like that tonight."
Nancy couldn't help but overhear their conversation and she stepped closer to Max, "Please Max. We just want her with us one night. We don't have to talk tonight."
Liz shifted her eyes from her mother to Max, silently asking him what he wanted to do. His eyes traced her grayish features, the fatigue in her eyes and the darkness under her eyes. He wanted to say no. He wanted to take her to his apartment and give her something to eat and take her to his bed and curl up next to her and give her the first sleep in a human bed for ages. On the other hand, he could understand her need to be with her parents. He wanted to meet his parents as well. But that would have to wait. He wasn't leaving Liz's side.
"I'm staying with her," Max said.
Jeff opened his mouth to protest, but Nancy, understanding that that was probably the only way she would have her daughter staying, beat him to it.
"Okay."
"Thanks mom," Liz whispered.
"I'm just going to tell Michael and Isabel," Max said softly and bent down and placed a kiss on Liz's forehead.
"Let me take Emma," Nancy offered, not sure as to if Liz would actually be able to carry Emma. But something told her that Max hadn't even been considering giving Emma to Liz. He would have taken Emma back to the car rather than having Liz carry anything.
Max agreed with a silent nod and gently lifted Emma into Nancy's arms.
"I love you," he whispered to Liz, she gave him a weak smile, and then he raced towards the car.
"Okay," Jeff sighed. "Let's go inside."

TBC...