She took a shuddering breath, trying once again to distance herself from the vividness of her memory, not for the first time she cursed her perfect recall and wished she was like her father, forgetting things five minutes after they happened. She looked up and saw the others looking at her with concern, the six newcomers tinged with the need to know what had happened.

"I'll tell the next bit." She heard Sean say and squeezed his hand gratefully, closing her eyes and taking comfort in his strong arms around her, feeling the vibrations of his voice through his chest.

"When Winter didn't show up for first period English I was worried, but figured she was just running late, I had kept her up until three in the morning." He paused, exchanging a knowing glance with Kat and Devin. They remembered this day as well as he did and with just as much desire not to. "When she hadn't shown up by lunch I was more than a little worried. I called her cell and when I got no response I called her parents. Her mom told me she had left for school a little after eight that morning. I reassured her that I had probably just missed her and went to find the others. I found Kat and Devin and we searched the school and after we didn't find her we finally thought to check the parking lot, her car wasn't there so we didn't even know if she had made it to school."

He felt Winter's tenseness and after dropping a kiss on her silky black hair continued, knowing the best thing for her was to get this part of their story over with as soon as possible.

"Up until now I hadn't been able to sense her at all, all of us had trained our abilities as much as possible and we could all sense each other, and as we had gotten closer I could, on occasion, sense Winter too, but now, when I needed to most, I hadn't been able to feel a thing. And then, I got one flash, a flash of intense pain and a distorted figure with blond hair."

He saw the flicker of recognition in the others eyes and after a breath continued. "It was then we realized that Desi was missing as well. She had been avoiding us lately so not seeing her around at school wasn't all that uncommon and hadn't triggered anything until then. We assumed that someone, either the government, or someone else with 'otherworldly' tendencies, had taken both of them, and from the pain I felt in the flash, was torturing them. Needless to say I was panicking at that point."

Sean punched his car and then stared unseeingly at the dent it left, ignoring the pain in his hand. Devin grabbed him by the arms and shook him, "Come on man, this isn't helping, you need to focus. Where is Desi?" He just stared at his friend for a moment, not comprehending what he was saying, then reasonable thought penetrated his brain and he almost punched the car again. Of course, he couldn't sense Winter but he could sense Desi, had always been able to. He closed his eyes and sunk inside himself, reaching for that part of him that was different and then pushing out with it, along the bond that all of them shared. His eyes snapped open and before he realized it he was around the other side of the car, his keys in his hand.

"North, by the cave." He saw the instant fear in Kat and Devin's eyes, if whoever it was found the cave...He sat down and started the car, waiting impatiently for Kat and Devin to get in and then taking off quickly enough to leave tire tread on the pavement, turning onto the highway that led towards the fields where he and the others had been found.

He pulled off the road and parked his car behind a stand of trees that would hide it from anyone passing on the road, then, getting out of the car began to jog towards the cave when Devin grabbed his arm to stop him, he and Kat blocking his path. "We need a plan Sean, we can't just go rushing in there, what if there's a lot of them? What if they are like us and they have more powers than we do? We need to think this through." Devin said, causing his friend to glare ferociously at him, he didn't want to plan or think, he just wanted to get Winter out of there, get her away from whoever was causing her so much pain.

Kat laid her hand on his arm, "If we do this wrong they might get hurt more Sean, I want them out of there too but getting ourselves caught or killed won't help them."

He closed his eyes for a moment and sighed, his hands clenched in fists at his side. "I know Kat, I just..." He couldn't finish his sentence, too afraid that voicing his fears would cause them to become reality. "Ok, a plan." He took a deep breath and tried to force his brain to work, trying to ignore the endless chant of 'Winter is in danger and its all your fault' that kept repeating itself in his mind over and over again. "Kat, can you dreamwalk them? As long as their not being blocked by someone like us you should at least be able to reach Desi. Try and see who it is and how many of them there are."

She nodded and closed her eyes, concentrating while the other two stared at her, both tense with worry and their inability to help. Kat remained silent for what felt like forever, then she tensed her body going rigid and her lips moving soundlessly. He and Devin exchanged nervous glances, both feeling helpless to do anything. Kat's eyes snapped open and she stared at both of them with a confused expression on her face.

"Did you reach them? Either of them?"

She shook her head slightly, then nodded. "I couldn't reach Desi but..." She looked back up at them, some clarity apparently coming through the confusion and a hint of anger starting to appear on her beautiful face. "But I reached Winter; it was like she was coming in and out of consciousness."

"Did you see who was hurting her? Who took them, was it the government?"

"No, it was an alien, Sean, I think it was Desi."

He heard the startled intakes of breath of those in the room who had not already lived this and saw the tension in those who had. Winter's hands were trembling and she was trying to hide it, he covered them with his own hands and resumed speaking, trying to repress his own anger.

Sean's fists were clenched again and he was barely able to see where he was going through the red haze over his vision as he climbed the rocks that led to the cave. Devin and Kat were oddly silent as they followed him up the hill and he had a feeling that they were having a conversation even though no sound was passing their lips. He couldn't bring himself to really be curious however, he was completely focused on getting to that cave, getting Winter out of there and finding out what the hell was going on with Desi. They reached the mouth of the cave and he paused for a moment, looking back at the two who were following him. "We go in fast and get her away from Winter, that's our first priority, then we can figure out what the hell is going on and what we're going to do about it." They both nodded though once again he had the feeling that they were communicating on a different wavelength and that they had their own plan, and as long as it involved getting Winter out of there he just didn't care.

He pressed his hand against the blank rock wall, less than a second later it disappeared and they entered the cave and seeing nothing in the first small chamber, followed the faintly curving tunnel towards the inner cavern where the pods resided. Inside it a horrific sight met their eyes; Winter was kneeling on the floor of the cave, her eyes tightly shut and her mouth open wide as if she was screaming but no sound was coming out, she was bleeding from several places, the blood forming small pools on the stony cave floor. Desi was standing several feet away from her, one hand outstretched towards Winter's huddled body, palm out, the other pointing at Sean and the others as they stopped, horrified, in the entrance way.

"Hello guys." Desi said, her voice mocking and her usually pretty face twisted into a cruel mask. "How's it going?" Sean let out a barely intelligible snarl of rage and ran forward, coming to a sudden halt about five feet from the two girls, unable to move any closer. "Uhuhuh" Desi said, shaking her finger at him, "No closer lover boy, she's mine."

She eyed Kat and Devin as they stepped up next to Sean, neither of them able to pass that point either. "Well isn't this just best reunion ever!" She cooed with a slightly demented smile, "We have the guests," she waved her hand at the three of them, "We have the entertainment," She made no visible motion with her other hand but Winter suddenly flinched, trying to curl tighter into herself, "And of course, our lovely hostess, me." She smiled sweetly at them and added, "We really should do this more often."

Sean suddenly felt Kat's hand in his and knew without looking that Devin was holding her other hand. Desi had time to give them one suspicious look before they raised their linked hands and smashed her and her barrier out of the way, Desi falling to the floor, her hands raised over her head in a defensive gesture.

Sean raced to Winter, now curled in a fetal position on the floor and bending down next to her, failed to notice Desi rising to her feet again, her hand now pointing at both of them. "You never should have loved her Sean! You were supposed to be mine!"

Sean turned his head towards her, fury radiating from his face as he said, "I never would have been yours Desi, never!"

She made a sound like an angry, wounded cat and then seemed to come to some decision, her hand shaking slightly as she opened so the palm was facing the two huddled figures on the ground. "Fine, you want to be with her? You will, forever!"

Her hand started to glow and Sean raised his own hand in what he knew was a futile attempt to shield them when suddenly her face went blank, her eyes showing her surprise as she toppled to the floor, Devin and Kat standing a few feet away from her prone figure, hands raised.

The room was completely silent when he looked up, pausing in his story long enough to give everyone a moment to process it, and those who had lived through it a moment to recover. Kat and Devin were wrapped tightly around each other, remembered guilt visible in their eyes, and he was surprised to see that Isabel and Michael were exchanging empathetic looks with each of them respectively. Winter had turned her head so that her face was hidden in his chest and he began to stroke her back, his own gaze locked with that of his double.

Max was shocked by the account they had just heard. Tess was certainly not his favorite person and she had done horrible things but, he didn't think she had been capable of torturing someone in cold blood. No matter how much she had hated Liz she had never tried to hurt her, physically anyways. And from what Liz had told him about Ava, it didn't seem like she was capable of it either, in fact she and Liz had even become friends in the short time Ava had been in Roswell.

As for the others, they too were all in various states of shock. Liz was mostly concerned about Winter, she had seen the expression on her face before she hid it and she was wondering if exchanging their stories was such a good thing, maybe none of them was really prepared to relive the events of their lives since they had entered the 'alien abyss'.

Isabel and Michael were both reliving their own guilt, the memories of Pierce and Whittaker still haunting them.

Maria was feeling shocked but also vindicated, she had always been the loudest voice against Tess and the fact that in another incarnation she had been evil as well proved to Maria that she had been right, and that her and Max had never been meant to be together, no matter what their names were or where they lived.

Kyle was simply trying to process the fact that while they had been dealing with all their alien crap for the past three years, they hadn't been the only ones, that wherever these four had been, they had been dealing with just as much crap, it kind of put things in perspective for him.

Sean cleared his throat and after making sure he had everyone's attention, spoke again. "We...took care of the body. And I did my best to heal Winter but, her wounds seemed oddly resistant to my powers. She was really out of it and so we took her to Kat and I's house, her parents couldn't see her in this state. Luckily it was Friday so we had Kat call her house and say that she had been invited to stay with her for the weekend. I stayed with Winter to continue to try and heal her and Kat and Devin snuck into Desi's house and packed a bag of her things, making it clear that things were missing from her room. They came back to our house and we destroyed the bag. No one had seen her at school that day, just as no one had seen Winter and we were trying to make it look like she had run away."

"If anyone thought it was suspicious that Winter had been missing that day too we had a cover story prepared that she had been visiting her estranged grandmother, she wouldn't have told her parents because they didn't want her to visit the woman and as her grandmother wasn't all there, she wasn't likely to deny the visit. Devin went home, no need to bring suspicion on the rest of us and when our parents came home Kat told them that her and Winter were having a sleep over and had already ordered pizza so they wouldn't be down for dinner or anything."

"I suffered through about a half an hour of family time before claiming massive amounts of homework and fleeing upstairs. We were up all that night trying to heal her, her physical wounds were mostly gone by morning, though..."

He paused and looked down at Winter who had shifted so she was facing the rest of the room of the again. She pulled up the sleeves of her shirt, revealing the silvery scar lines on her wrists and forearms and spoke "That's when we found out that aliens cause more permanent damage than humans do", she shook her sleeves back down and leaned back against Sean though she continued watching the rest of the room. He hugged her closer to him, glad that she seemed to be feeling better.

"We had taken care of her wounds, as much as possible any way but mentally, we didn't know what exactly Desi had done but she hadn't come out of it yet; we weren't able to get any sort of response out of her. We finally had Kat try dreamwalking again, to see if she could get in and figure out what was going on."

Sean stared down at Winter, her head was cradled in his lap and her eyes were open but blank, she wasn't there and he didn't know where she'd gone or how to get her back. Kat was sitting across from him on the floor, her eyes closed and an intent expression on her face. He could tell the moment she made contact because her whole body went from relaxed to rigid and a line appeared between her eyes, a frown of concentration taking over her features. She remained like that for quite sometime, almost half an hour of looking between her and Winter and the clock, glad that their parents weren't up yet and so weren't likely to come looking in on them.

Suddenly Winter gasped and he looked down, their eyes meeting, hers filling with tears. "You're ok." She said, voice shaking as she reached up a hand towards his face.

"Of course I'm ok, but, you, are you ok?" He asked, joy and confusion and worry all warring within him, why was she worried about him? She tried to sit up but couldn't quite make it on her own, he helped her to lean against the bed and slid over next to her, her fingers locked with his as if she was never going to let go.

Kat, now returned from wherever they both had been and watching both of them with concern, her eyes warning him that whatever she had seen, it had been bad, really bad.

"I saw...I saw things, I saw you, you were..." She didn't finish her sentence, the tears still trickling down her face each one feeling like a knife being stabbed into his heart. He cradled her to him and exchanged a glance with Kat, his sister shaking her head, telling not to ask.

"Sshh, it's ok, I'm ok and so are you, we're all going to be ok." He said, rocking her back and forth.

"Desi had made her see all sorts of things I learned later, when she had recovered enough to talk about it, all of us being found by the government or other aliens, tortured, especially me, and that it was her fault, that they had been found because I healed her. Kat had barely been able to get through to her, everything in her mind was distorted and all these images." He shook his head, fighting back a surge of anger

"By Monday it was all over school, that Desi had run away, a few of the rumors did mention me and Winter since we hadn't been the only ones to notice how much she had been unhappy with the two of us being together but though we were both questioned, nothing more ever came of it, the runaway story was accepted and after a month or so it was old news, everyone just assuming that she was never coming back."

"However outside our small town someone did take notice. It was after that we all felt watched, felt like we were being followed and that our lives were no longer as safe and obscure as they had been before, just another legacy she left us."

"We did our best to live our lives as normally as possible, going to school, Winter worked at her mom's giftshop and Kat and I both found part time jobs. Devin worked occasionally at his father's company. We followed our normal routines, basketball, cheerleading, hanging out with our friends, mostly each other but we made sure to maintain our place in other social circles as well, trying not to appear as such a tight group."

He saw the nods of recognition and understanding in the other teens and knew that they understood in a way that no one else would, understood just how important and elusive 'normal' could be. Winter straightened slightly and looked up at him, "I think I can take over again, the next part is about me." She said, smiling slightly to let him know she was ok and planting a light kiss on his chin. He nodded and relaxed slightly, retreating back to being just an observer, a position he much preferred.