Hey ladies I´m back and I hope you enjoy this chapter as much as the others before. Special Thanks to RedJewel2662, pingan89 and Scorpio6.

Chapter 3

The highly annoyed person camed to a halt when it was very apparent that they weren´t alone and that they had a small group of spectactors. Glancing at the people having stood up from their seats the color disappeared from the face and the shock was visible to everyone in the room. For a few moment´s it looked like there would be an emotional outburst, but that went away as soon as it got obvious that the said person had regained the composure again. Stepping closer to Rath to get a nice distance there was a beat of silence before the bomb detonated.

" What the hell is going on here?".

Rath had already expected such a reaction from his second in command and immediately was at the side of his mate, preventing a nasty confrontation. He knew how tightly wound the person besides him could be and that it wouldn´t take much to let everything blow up. " Maria, babe calm down. We´ve got guests and I thought you would want to welcome them properly".

Maria eyed these people standing in front of her correctly and she had to admit they were looking real. But she had been told that they had died on Antar and that they would never come back. She had accepted it, after a long process of raging with the knowledge to have lost so many people she loved and now she had pulled herself through. " How can you let them in? They´re shapeshifters. How can you let them near Xander and Cordelia?"

" They´re not shapeshifters, they´re real. You know I would never let anything harm the squirts", Rath took her face in his hands, glancing deep in her eyes to show her that he meant what he said. He knew how much she had suffered when she heard about the death of her friends and how long it taken her to get over the pain, he would never willingly hurt her and she had to know that by now.

Maria shook her head, not able to believe it yet. She had given up on dreaming about them coming home and everything would be alright again. But damn, she had never stopped wishing them to be alive and finding a way to contact them one way or another. " How...But...but Khivar told us that he killed them".

Rath grinned at her stubborn nature, knowing that it was her survival instinct kicking in. Since the day she had witnessed her mother and Jim burning in some cottage, she had hardened herself and the innocent part of her had died. She was a fighter, but a small part of the old girl was still somewhere and he was glad about the fact. " Shocking, he lied to us".

" That means they´re real", Maria felt tears filling her eyes, but this time they were happy tears. Pushing herself away from Rath she turned to the group and faced them, trying to read their expression. As soon as she saw the concerned gaze of Michael, the confused one from Max and the happy from Isabel on her all of her restrains broke. Without giving anyone a warning she stormed towards them and threw her arms around everyone. " I´m so glad that you´re alive. I´ve missed you so much".

Rath kept in the background and glanced at the small picture on his desk to avoid seeing the happiness in their expressions. The picture was of him, Maria, Xander and Cordelia at their third birthday. They had been having a huge yellow cake with pink unicorns and blue racing cars. Before the kiddies had been able to blow out the candles a food fight had broken out. In the end he and Maria had been smeared from head to toe in cake while Xander and Cordelia had been hiding under the table to avoid getting hit. The camera had captured the moment the children showed their amusement about the grown ups covered in food pretty good. But this would be over now and he was okay with it. This thing with Maria hadn´t been anything steady anyway, the only thing keeping them together had been sex and their work, nothing else. Great, now he was lying to himself already. Of course he wasn´t okay to lose her to his dupe, having developed deep feelings for her and for him that meant a lot because he usually didn´t care about anyone else. But the things they had went through, the things they had seen had bound them together very tightly. He respected her opinion and she was the only person able to bear his grumpy mood without flinching like everyone else. " Hey Tinkerbell, I have to be at the war room right now. Can you handle them alone?".

Maria whirled around and glared at him the moment he had uttered that name, which she hated. It made her feel small, defenceless and childish. She didn´t know why he called her that, but he thought it was fitting her. She hadn´t ask why he thought that, because she didn´t want to know it. " Would you stop calling me that, Grumpy bear. And yes I can handle them alone".

" Be careful and we´ll see each other later at the dining hall", Rath was aware that he shouldn´t do it, but he couldn´t control himself. Walking towards her he gave her a short kiss with a little tongue before disappearing with a wide grin on his face.

Maria watched after him with an amused expression, shaking her head at his kind of humor. That guy was attracting trouble like the light the moth. Strangly she didn´t know if she would have surived the last few years without him at her side, picking her up when worry and fear threatened to crush her. He was her best friend and her confident. " Don´t mind him, I haven´t managed to train him completely, I´m still working at the ankles right now".

Michael didn´t like the fact that Maria was so close to his dupe and that they seemed more intimate than he was comfortable with, even if the greeting had been warmer than he had thought. " Uh, do you mind telling us what´s going on here?".

" Didn´t Rath tell you already about Khivar and his great attack?".

Michael hadn´t been talking about the war going on at the surface or that the town he had grown up in was just gone. He was talking about the fact that someone looking like him was too cozy with the woman he loved. " Yes, we got that. But what I want to know is why are you and Rath so couply. I mean the last time the guy had tried to kill Max".

Maria had waited for that question to pop up, but she had thought it would come from another person. Rolling her eyes she wasn´t in the mood to warm up old things that were so long in the past that it felt like it had happened in another life. " I lot had been going on since then, people change and so do lifes, you of all people should know that".

" Hey before you two start your weird bickering fetish again, I want to know where the others are", Isabel was glad to see that her brother and Maria were back in their old roles, but she needed to find out what happened to the rest of their friends and their parents. Of course she needed to know if Jesse was still alive.

Maria had forgotten that she wasn´t alone with Michael in the room and so she was a little startled when another voice penetrated her ear. Smiling sheepishly at the tall blonde, she tried to remember that she wasn´t the sixteen year old teenager with her crush for the bad boy in school anymore. " I think Jesse is negotiating contracts with the military from the east coast right now. Kyle is at the weapon training with Ava, Sean and Laurie are probably annyoing the staff with their constant fighting and Brody is taking charge of the computer program".

Isabel´s expression brightened instantly when she heard the name of her husband, relieved to know that he was indeed alive and so close to her. But the joy wasn´t for long, because she remembered that she just disappeared on him without warning him beforehand and then he got told that she was dead. She wondered how he would react to her appearance. " Is Jesse seeing someone?".

" Don´t worry, he´s still wearing his wedding band and he sleeps with your wedding picture, so I think he will be delighted to see you. If you want I can bring you to him, I have to go in that direction anyway", Maria had to release Sean and Laurie from their babysitting, knowing that the kids could be a handful and especially with those two. Xander played a lot with his powers while Cordelia just watched fascinated. They both were like brother and sister, even though they weren´t blood related. Kyle already thought the two of them would date someday when they were much older.

Max finally realized that she had forgotten to mention a few names and he feared that it didn´t mean anything good. But he had to find out what happened to the other people she had missed to say. " What about the others? Jim, our parents, your mother. Liz".

Maria´s eyes immediately turned a shade darker and bad memories were clouding her mind. She still mourned the losses they had suffered, even after all the time passing and it was still painful to talk about concrete things, especially knowing that she had been there when they died. " Diane and Jeff are in the dining hall preparing dinner for tonight. Everyone else is dead".

" I´m so sorry", Michael saw the unshed tears glistening in her eyes and he took her arm to pull her towards him. Embracing her tightly he felt her pain pouring onto him for a moment before it stopped. Stroking her back softly he was stunned to notice that it still felt right to have her in his arms, that nothing had changed between them and that she obviously felt the same.

Max hit the knowledge that his father and Liz were dead pretty hard. Struggling with the thought to never see them again, he felt regret for all the things he had said to his father or the time he let himself be pushed away from Liz. They both had wanted to marry as soon as they were finished with College. He couldn´t believe that this wasn´t possible any longer. Sitting down he broke down, the many hits he had taken over the years were finally taking its toll on him. Isabel was immediately at his side, her own tears blurring her vision when she thought about her father and the fights she had been having with him because of her wedding. And even if she hadn´t been having such a tight connection with Liz, she felt her death deeply.

Maria released herself from her comfortable embrace when she heard the sobs. Seeing the siblings crying in each others arms she felt sympathy towards them, because she knew how it felt to lose someone. Deciding to give them a little time to grief she turned her attention back to Michael. Halfway she finally noticed the quiet man a little offside and his eyes were seeminly studying her. " Uh, who are you? I don´t think we´ve met".

" Oh yes we have, even if it wasn´t exactly eye to eye or personal", he stood up and offered her his hand, which she took without hesistation. " I´m Larek". He smiled at the woman he knew so much about through Brody and he had to admit that the human guy hadn´t exaggerated in that area. She was the most beautiful sight he ever saw, even if her beauty wasn´t just about appearance.

Maria chuckled amused, wondering how Brody would react to the news that the alien having possessed him a few times was under the same roof as him. She couldn´t wait to introduce those two and see what would happen. " Nice to finally have a face to the name".

Michael was just in the process to let out some snappish comment about all those men circling around Maria like some vultures over dead meat, when the door opened with a loud bang, startling everyone in the room and two small children stormed inside.

" Mummy, Mummy. Uncle Sean is mean. He said that I wasn´t allowed to play outside", the young boy went to Maria, stretching his arms out to get picked up from his mother. Smiling she lifted the little guy and hefted him on her hips.

Maria should have known that she shouldn´t have left her cousin to take care of the kids. But she had thought with Laurie there and all they would manage. Obviously she had been wrong about that. " Sweetie, we talked about this already. You can´t go outside, not yet. It´s too dangerous and I don´t want you to get hurt".

The boy pouted, his brown eyes sparkling sadly, making it hard for his mother to resist. He was looking like his father and he knew how he should play his cards right to get what he wanted, a trait that wasn´t from either of his parents. " I know. But I want to see the sky and get dirty".

" Honey please. I promise you that one day I will make it up to you, but today you have to listen to me", Maria hated to be the one keeping the boy from a normal life. But he wasn´t exactly a normal child and so they had to be special careful with him. Besides he was too precious for them to take the risk of him getting killed, hurt or kidnapped.

The girl at her feet started to laugh at the behaviour from Xandar, thinking that he was acting like a baby. And she hated to have the attention drawn away from her, she was after all the only fairy here. " Stop whining. I told you she wouldn´t allow us to go up".

Maria put the small guy back on his feet, because he was getting too heavy for her before glancing at the younger version of herself, well the blue eyed and brown haired version that was. She couldn´t believe that she even had to the same attitude. " Cordy stop treating him like that".

" Mummy? Who are they?", Xander finally registered the added people in the room and he immediately hid behind Maria´s legs, peeking his head out from time to time to eye the guests a littler better. He had never seen them and he was scared of strangers.

Maria kneeled between the children to give them the full view on the group of people they didn´t know. It was so weird to introduce her friends to her small family and vice versa. " Guys, this is my son Xander and my sister Cordelia", after she received a few winks from the adults and a nodding from the children, she pointed at the mention person. " This is uncle Larek, aunt Isabel, uncle Michael and uncle Max", turning her attention complete on the boy she knew that it would be a shock for everyone. " Xander, do you remember the talk we had about your real father, the one in the stars?".

Xander nodded his head before his eyes settled on the surprised faces from the two younger men staring at him. He knew that one of them had to be his father, his mother had told him everything and he couldn´t wait to find out which one of them was his daddy. " Yeah, you said he wasn´t able to come back".

" Yes, but he found a way", Maria took the little boys hand and walked with him in the direction of her friends. Feeling bad for the hopeful glance in Michael´s eyes she looked at Max. " Max, meet your son".

TBC