Roswell Fic: Flawed Heroes & New Beginnings (CC M/M Adult)

[Majesty]

Tequathisy suggested I post this fic.

Category: Canon (I guess?)
Pairing: M/M
Rating: Mature
Summary: Michael seeks out Max and Liz after a seventeen-year separation filled with unanswered questions and unresolved feelings.
Disclaimer: Roswell is owned by Fox/Katims/whoever. No infringement intended.
Author’s note: A peripheral character plays a part in this tale. I hope that his presence enriches Michael’s story.

If the relationship of father to son could really be reduced to biology, the whole earth would blaze with the glory of fathers and sons.

- James Baldwin-

3 a.m. – Seattle Suburbs

I knew my 3 a.m. entrance into the house was going to set me up for some shit from Max and Liz if I was caught.

But if I was caught, I’d deal.

I guess it didn’t seem to matter all that much. Nothing seemed to matter much, except one date, a day that was still 359 days in the future. That date was June 14, the day I would turn eighteen – the day that Max swore he would pay up, so I could get the hell out of this Podunk town, to begin the life I never had, the one I should have had with him but didn’t, until it was too late to matter.

I hated him for that. I don’t think he could even begin to comprehend how much I hated him.

And Liz?

I pitied her. I thought everything she did was because she was ass over heels in love with Max. I was pretty sure that was why she tried with me, to be nice, to understand me.

She was the one who tried to get Max off my back when I didn’t bother to come home for days at a time. I didn’t know why she bothered.

I couldn’t understand why any woman in their right mind would willingly want to take in a kid of a woman who’d slept with her boyfriend and got pregnant?

It sounded like a made for a Lifetime movie, but in the real world, not so much.

I wanted to ask Liz, “What if my mother came back? What would she do then?”

Why she’d taken Max back all those years ago when he’d cheated on her and got someone else pregnant was beyond my comprehension. It didn’t matter that they were teenagers. People think that young kids have no real concept of what love is. It’s written off as hormones, or teenaged lust.

That’s utter crap, and I knew it from personal experience.

The minute I laid eyes on Abby, I knew that she was the one for me. I knew it deep in my bones. At the time, I believed she was the only good thing that came out of putting up with living with these people for three years. She was the only thing that made it all worth it.

But even so, I knew in my heart that if Abby ever cheated on me, I wouldn’t have been able to forgive her. It would have been over.

The End.

And no amount of apologies or talking about it would have made it right.

I wasn’t like Liz.

But I knew that I didn’t have to worry about that. I knew how much Abby loved me, and it was every bit as much as I loved her. And when the time came, when I was of legal age to walk out, I was going to hold Max to his end of the deal. He was going to cough up the money for me to go to Brown. And Abby was coming with me. We’d already talked about it. We’d been planning it for over a year.

Her grades were as good as mine. We were at the top of our class, despite the rebellious crap I tended to pull at home.

She knew me better than I knew myself.

Max and Liz just didn’t understand my preference in spending time with her over following living in that house, especially when the ultimatum was issued by Max.

It was a little too late to assert his authority over me, and I’d be damned if he was going to tell me what to do when he’d been a hell of a lot more irresponsible than I ever was when he was my age.

I didn’t know what my biological mother was like. I didn’t remember her at all. She disappeared long before memory would have done me any good.

Max never talked much about her, other than to say that she was screwed up, but that she most definitely did love me. But she dumped me on Max and never came back. And he in turn dumped me on a lawyer to be farmed out to a couple who they deemed to be the perfect candidates.

They were mistaken.

As I approached the house, I was relieved to see that the house was dark. Maybe Max had gone to bed. I just needed to get my history paper off my computer, and then I was out, back to Abby’s.

I stopped at the driveway entrance and reached into my pocket for the house key.

My hand came out empty.

Damn.

That meant I had to climb the tree that grew alongside my bedroom window, which was upstairs.

I walked quietly up the driveway toward the back of the house.

The tree was a lot easier to shimmy down, than to climb up. It was the last thing I felt like doing. Right at that moment, I wanted nothing more than to climb into bed with Abby for the few hours I had before we had to get up for school.

But it was the only option I had, unless I went and knocked on the front door, and I sure as hell didn’t want to do that. I did not need another confrontation with Max.

Not tonight.

I reached up and grabbed for the branch over my head.

My hand never caught it. It was yanked behind my back at the same time a powerful arm swung around my neck, tightening until I could barely draw a breath.

“Who the hell are you? You’d better answer me now, or I swear I’ll kill you right here.”

________________________________________________________________________


3 a.m. – The Evans Household (Seattle Suburbs)

“Who are you?” I hissed again.

It was too dark to see much of the guy who was struggling in my arms. But whoever it was, was putting up a good fight.

“Get the hell off of me!”

I tightened my hold on his neck, and attempted to him down for weapons with my free hand.

A sharp, well-placed jab from an elbow into my stomach caused me to lose my focus.

I grunted as the air was knocked out of my lungs.

In retaliation, I tightened my grip around his neck, only to be ambushed again with a set of sharp teeth into my forearm.

“Son of a bitch!” I hissed through my teeth.

I jerked my captor’s hand up behind his back, and the mouth-hold had on me loosened.

The guy cried out as I twisted his arm.

I felt his body shudder and go slack for a moment. From personal experience, I figured he was pretty close to passing out with the painful pressure I was putting on his arm.

“Are you going to answer me now?” I said through gritted teeth.

“Fuck off,” was his strained reply.

I opened my mouth to respond, but that response was quickly forgotten when the guy’s heavy shit-kicker slammed into my knee. I saw stars and felt my knee buckle.

The guy whirled around as I fell to my good knee, slamming his foot into my chest. Even if it hadn’t been too dark to see his face, my eyes were filled with pinpoints of light that clouded everything.

He stood over me, panting, ready to take another shot.

I didn’t give him a chance, kicking my good leg in an arc, cutting his legs out from underneath him.

I had my arm back around his neck before he had a chance to regain his balance.

“Michael! What the hell are you doing?”

Shit.

“Maria, go back to the car,” I asked angrily. She’d told me to wake her when we got to the hotel, and had still been asleep when I’d made my unplanned stop. I had no intentions of getting out, until I’d seen the shadowy figure creeping around the side of the house.

She drew closer, and the guy tensed.

“What the hell’s going on?” she asked.

“Break-in,” I said, keeping my arm tight around the intruder’s neck, careful to make sure I wasn’t leaving myself vulnerable in any area he could reach. I wasn’t taking any chances with Maria here, especially not now.

“Break in? I live here!” the guy spat angrily.

“Bullshit!” I answered.

“Let him go, Michael.”

I froze as a light flipped on over the back porch. The voice was weary, a little accusatory.

Standing at the top of the steps, all I could see was the outline of his form.

Damn.

I hadn’t expected the reunion to happen like this, and I wasn’t prepared for it.

“This guy was getting ready to break in,” I said, unable to disguise the indignation I felt at his tone.

Once again, I felt like I was being blamed for fixing something that he was once again unprepared for.

“He’s my son, Michael. Let him go.”

For a second, I couldn’t move. I was paralyzed.

They’d had a child? No, this was no longer a child, but a young man.

And I’d had no idea. I swallowed against the old anger that swelled in my throat, my irrational anger that was common back in Roswell.

Max and I were perfect foils of each other – well, close enough to perfect for it not to matter; so different that I spent more time as a teen being angry with him, than getting along with him.

But then again, when I was honest with myself, I never completely outgrew being irrational either. I had never had the semblance of a family like he and Isabel had with the Evans, and so on some level I resented this unexpected and unforeseen development.

Maria was as unprepared as I was.

“Son?” I heard her ask quietly behind me.

I didn’t understand what this meant. From everything I knew, it wasn’t supposed to have happened the way it apparently had.

The two of them hadn’t wasted any time. Liz must have gotten pregnant shortly after we all split up, Maria and I heading to Chicago, Isabel and Jesse to New York, and Max and Liz here, in a suburb outside of Seattle.

But what did this mean? This changed everything, and terrified for a moment as I absorbed the implications, and the fact that I was still standing there, with my arm around this kid’s neck.

How was it possible?

I loosened my grip, and my arm was shoved violently away as the kid, as I could now see he was, stumbled away from me and toward his father who stood at the top of the steps. Isabel hadn’t told me they’d had a son. But then, I hadn’t really asked. I’d only asked where to find them.

There was no mistaking the glare on the kid’s face. It matched the one Max used to get when Isabel and I got on his case about Liz.

Wow.

“You know this asshole?” the kid said.

“Yes.”

I still could not see his face, his figure a silhouette in front of the back door light.

“He’s…he’s an old friend.”

“Friend?” the kid retorted. “What the hell kind of friend is hiding out in your backyard in the middle of the night?”

“I could ask the same of you.”

“I live here,” the kid answered angrily.

“Do you?”

The question was posed softly, but even I caught the undertone.

“I don’t need this. I just want my history paper. I’ll be out of your hair in a minute,” the kid said angrily, trudging up the steps and into the house.

“Now? At three a.m.?”

The question hung in the air. The kid was already gone.

Max’s heavy sigh filled the air.

“I’m sorry Michael,” he said, as he came down the stairs, coming to stand a few steps away. It was apparent he did not know how to proceed.

Neither did I.

“It’s good to see you,” he said, shoving his hands in the pockets of his pajama bottoms.

Things had been strained between us for a long time, and there was a big part of me that wished that we could go back to the way things were before our senior year of high school, when everything changed.

But I didn’t know how to bridge that gap anymore, if I ever did. It was amazing how it was still so easy for me to be angry with Max.

“Yeah,” I said in a dry voice.

“Maria,” he said with a smile, reaching for her. “It’s been a long time.”

“Hey Max,” she said, squeezing him hard before stepping back and placing a kiss on his cheek. “Too long.”

Her eyes met mine over his shoulder, silently sending me the encouragement I wouldn’t admit I needed, though she knew otherwise.

The back door opened.

“Max, what’s going on?”

I looked up to see Liz standing at the door with a frown on her face. She still looked the same after all these years. Not for the first time I wondered how those years had treated them.

“Nothing,” he responded, turning toward her. “We’ve got visitors.”

I saw her still when she saw me, her eyes filling with tears.

“Michael,” she said, walking down the steps, moving to stand in front of me. A sad smile flitted across her lips.

“My God, you look just the same,” she said, lifting her hand as if to touch my face, but thought better of it. “You look good. Really, really good.”

“You too,” I replied. As many times as I had envisioned this reunion, this was so far off from anything I’d dreamed up.

She looked at Max, and something unspoken passed between them.

“Liz,” Maria said, stepping around Max.

“Maria,” Liz answered, as if she couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing.

They fell into a hug, talking over each other.

“I can’t believe it! What…what are you doing here?”

“I can’t believe I’m here!”

“I’m so happy you’re here!”

“You look great. I’ve so missed you. You have no idea!”

“Come on, let’s all go inside,” Liz said, looping her arm through Maria’s. “We can talk. It’s been long overdue.”

“We’ll be right in,” Max said.

Liz nodded, and the two of them disappeared into the house, leaving Max and I in the yard.

“Is everything all right?” Max asked with a furrowed brow.

Always the concerned leader, I thought dryly.

“Yeah, fine,” I answered.

“Are you sure?” he asked, and I felt myself getting defensive again.

“I said so, didn’t I?” I asked.

Max looked away and then back at me.

“It’s just…it’s been what? Almost seventeen years?” he asked. “We haven’t heard from you. Not even a phone call.”

“Yeah, well…” I said, letting it trail off, because I didn’t know what to say, or where to begin.

“How did you find us?” he asked.

“Isabel. Dream walking,” I answered.

“She didn’t tell me,” Max said, frowning

I nodded.

“I asked her not to,” I answered.

“Why?” he asked.

“Because I didn’t know if I was going to come. And she thought that if I decided not to, then you wouldn’t be any the wiser,” I answered.

It was the truth. Only an hour ago, I’d thought for the thousandth time about turning the car around.

Still, there was no way to miss the wounded look on his face, but to his credit, he didn’t come back at me.

“She tried to contact you for a long time. You blocked her,” he said. His voice was almost accusing, and I guess I couldn’t blame him for that.

I nodded again, but didn’t offer any further explanation. Despite all of the feelings that had been running around my head for years, the anger I had carried, I didn’t think I needed to give him an explanation that would hurt him any more than he’d been already.

Was this a sign of maturity?

Hell if I knew.

“So what changed?” he asked.

“Lots of things,” I said, shrugging. “And maybe nothing. I don’t know.”

And I really didn’t. My feelings about Max were all screwed up, and had been for a long time.

“Michael, we have a lot to talk about. There are things I’ve wanted…no, needed to say to you for a long time,” he said.

I kept my eyes focused on the ground.

“Yeah, I’ve got some things I want to talk to you about, too,” I said.

The back door opened.

“Max, he’s getting ready to go. Did you want to talk to him?” she asked.

He nodded, and then looked at me.

“Come inside,” he said, motioning at the upstairs windows. “I just need to...”

I nodded.

He turned and walked up the stairs and opened the door. He paused with it open, waiting for me, and I followed him up the stairs.

The door led into the kitchen, and Max walked through it into another part of the house. Maria was sitting at the table, while Liz leaned against the bar in the middle of the kitchen, dressed in a robe, her arms wrapped pensively around her waist.

In the light, I could see the little lines that were beginning to form around her eyes; eyes that looked like they held a lifetime of worries. Her hair was pulled back from her face.

She smiled at me, and suddenly she looked like the seventeen year-old I remembered.

“Michael,” she said, putting aside the reticence she must have been feeling outside, rising onto her toes to kiss my cheek. “It’s so good to see you.”

“Sorry it’s so late,” I said gruffly.

She shook her head.

“No, I’m so glad you and Maria are here,” she said. “We’ve…we’ve missed you.”

Did they? Was this still as weird for them as it was for me? What did she see when she looked at me? I didn’t know. That was the main reason I was there.

After being so sure that I needed to come here, I wasn’t sure now that I could go through it, to ask the questions that I needed to know.

I looked over at Maria. I could see the tears forming in her eyes, and it hit me just how happy she was to be here. I knew how hard it was for her to leave the only friend who knew our secret, the only woman who she could openly talk to about her life, about our lives. Seeing that happiness, I knew in that moment that no matter what came out of this, I was glad we came, for her.

She pushed her long blonde hair behind her ear, her eyes telling me everything that didn’t need to be said, that she loved me, that she was mine, that I was hers, no matter what.

I think I loved her more in that moment than I ever thought possible. She’d stood by me, hadn’t let me push her away. She’d put up with my baggage, my insecurities. When I said I needed to leave, to get away from the others, she’d gone with me. No fights, no trying to convince me otherwise. She’d known what I needed, and she’d held my hand and stepped into the unknown with me, leaving everything she knew and loved behind. I could no more live without her now than I could stop breathing. She was my reason for living, my center.

My family.

“Thanks,” I said to Liz. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her that I missed them. It wasn’t that I didn’t, but those feelings were tied up in a whole lot of other shit that had hung over my head for a long time. It was hard to separate the feelings of being handed the shit end of the stick with those other feelings I had for two people who had at one time had been two of my closest friends.

“Can I get you anything to eat? Drink?” she asked, and I shook my head.

It was then that I heard the raised voices, muffled by the ceiling above us. Liz looked upward, a weary and worried frown on her face.

“I gather they don’t get along,” Maria said to her and Liz shook her head.

“It’s not for lack of trying on Max’s part,” Liz sighed. “Sometimes I think that too much has happened, and Zan’s just…shut down. I don’t know.”

It took my mind a minute to comprehend what Liz just said.

“Wait, Zan? You named your son after…” I trailed off, realizing what a loaded question that was for Liz. But I just couldn’t imagine Liz naming her own son after…

“No, he’s not named after Zan,” Liz said wearily. “That is Zan.”

Isabel hadn’t told me. I supposed I didn’t blame her since there was a lot of things that had been kept from her at one time.

I looked at Maria, who apparently had already heard the news. Her eyes softened, knowing exactly what was going through my mind.

It explained so much.

“It’s good that you didn’t use your powers outside. He doesn’t know about you are, what Max is,” Liz said softly. “Max decided not to tell him, since he hasn’t shown any signs of manifesting any abilities, and his cells so far appear normal, human. We figured it would be safer that way. There hasn’t been anyone following us since we left Roswell.”

“How do you know? That they’re…human?” I asked.

“I’m a geneticist, so it’s been pretty easy to do the test,” she said, her eyes pinning mine. I knew she knew what I was thinking.

I wanted to ask her, but didn’t know how.

“How did you find him? I thought Mr. Evans made sure that Max could never find out where he was.”

“He did,” Liz said. “But Max…he did something the day they took Zan away. He gave him…”

She shook her head.

“Never mind. But what he did gave him a way to find him. Six years ago, he just…he felt him, and knew he was in trouble. And for the first time, he felt a real connection to him. It was so strong it was almost like a beacon. Max was able to find him in New York, and got him away from the couple that had him. They were…”

She bit her lip, her eyes looked haunted.

“Max’s father was assured they were the perfect family; that they’d take care of him. Turns out appearances can be deceiving.”

She didn’t finish, but I knew. I knew because I had lived with a Hank. And I sensed on some level that the family Zan had been left with had to have been just as bad, if not worse.

“Do you really think it’s a good idea to keep the truth from him?” I asked, and she looked at me, a little shocked at my question.

That question, coming from me, the one who had always argued against letting anyone in on our secret, probably seemed out of character. But things had changed.

“I don’t know. At the time, it seemed like the right thing to do, but lately, we both are wondering if we were wrong,” she said slowly.

More shouting came from the other room, and she rubbed her temples wearily before looking at me again.

I could tell that there were things she wanted to say to me too, things she didn’t know if she dared voice. I didn’t blame her, after what had happened right before we all split up all those years ago.

Raised voices from the other room caught her attention.

“How many times do we have to go over this? I don’t ask much from you…”

She broke eye contact, her attention turning to the room beyond. She walked toward it, and I followed, Maria behind me. Her hand fell upon my shoulder, silently giving me her support, and I clasped her fingers, needing the contact between us.

Liz was at the foot of the staircase.

“Oh please,” Zan said, throwing a disdainful glance behind him at Max as he came down the stairs.

“Hold it,” Max said in a hard voice, and Zan turned toward him.

“This is going to stop,” Max said, “tonight.”

“Don’t you get it?” Zan spat. “I don’t want to be here. I can’t wait to get the hell out of this house, out of this town. You’re lucky I haven’t cut my losses and left already, so just cut me a little slack, would you? I wasn’t out drinking or drugging. I was with Abby.”

“I don’t care who you were with. It’s 3 a.m. on a school night,” Max countered angrily. “You’ve been over there more than you’re home!”

“So shoot me! I prefer the company of my girlfriend over you and your wife,” Zan returned angrily.

Max’s eyes darkened in anger and then seemed to rein it in, taking a deep breath.

“Look, I understand you’re angry with me, but Liz hasn’t done a damned thing to you. She’s been worried about you.”

“So what?” Zan said. “What the hell is she worrying about me for anyway? She’s not my mother.”

I thought I’d gotten a handle on my temper for the most part, a long time ago, but that comment made me see red. I could feel my fingers clenching into fists.

Max grabbed Zan’s arm, forcing him to turn around.

“You take that back,” Max growled.

“Screw you, Dad,” Zan sneered. “Why can’t you two just leave me the hell alone? I hate the both of you! Don’t you get it? This concerned parent thing isn’t going to work! You can’t take back the fact that you abandoned me.”

Max looked as if he’d just taken one in the gut. And when his eyes met mine, I saw the anguish he’d lived with for more than half his life. In his eyes, he had failed, twice.

“Fine,” Max said quietly. “I can’t do this anymore. I’m done telling you that we love you, that we want you here, because you’re our son. You do what you need to do, Zan. I can’t fight with you anymore.”

I saw something on Zan’s face when Max turned and walked up the stairs. The kid was in just as much pain as his father was.

“How could you do that to him?” Liz asked Zan, tears in her eyes.

The kid’s impassive mask dropped over his face again, and he stepped off the stairs.

Liz moved to stand in front of him and rested her hand on his forearm, forced to look up into his face due to his height.

“I know you hate me,” she said, “and I can’t help that. But he’s your father, and he loves you. We love you. Why can’t you realize that?”

Zan yanked his arm out of her grasp.

“You don’t love me. You just pretend to because you can’t have your own,” he spat.

Liz looked stricken, and the kid did too for a minute, as if he couldn’t believe he’d said it.

I was torn, unable on one hand to believe I’d heard what I just did, because it didn’t make any sense - but then I knew that there had been plenty of times in the past when I’d lashed out just like that. When I’d been unable or unwilling to think about the effect my words had on the people around me.

Coming from someone else, I saw the effects firsthand, and it made me furious and broke my heart all at the same time.

“Shit,” the kid said under his breath. “I didn’t….I-”

And then suddenly, Zan’s breathing became more erratic, and a sweat broke out over his forehead, his face reddening noticeably. His hands clenched and unclenched in spasms.

And then I noticed the sparks popping from his finger tips.

“Oh my God,” Maria whispered.

Liz’s eyes widened.

“Zan,” she said softly.

Zan looked down and then raised his shaking hands, fear filling his eyes at the sight of his glowing fingers.

“Zan, it’s ok,” Liz said, turning her head toward the stairs.

“Max!” she called.

Zan backed toward the door, his eyes locked on his hands.

“Zan, it’s ok,” Liz said in a calming voice. “Please…”

She laid her hand on his arm, careful to avoid his hands, and stilled. I could see something was happening with the way that her eyes widened in fear.

Zan pulled away from her, shaking his head. He backed toward the door, reaching for the knob, his hand snapping back from the sparks that flew from his fingers when his skin touched the metal. He reached for it again and turned the knob quickly, disappearing out the door before any of us could think to stop him.

“Max!” Maria called up the stairs as Liz ran out the open doorway.

“Zan! Come back! Please!” she cried.

But even as I got to the doorway, I could see that he was already halfway down the street.

“Oh my God. Michael,” Maria whispered, and I turned toward her, but her eyes were focused on the doorknob, which had been melted into a misshapen blob.

Liz’s legs seem to collapse upon themselves, and she dropped to the porch step, dissolving into tears.

“Liz?”

Max’s tone was almost frantic as he practically jumped down the stairs and out the door to get to her.

I wanted to offer her some kind of comforting words, but I didn’t know how.

Max instead, crouched beside her, taking her into his arms.

“What happened?” he asked.

“Max, I saw…his hands…it was exactly like what happened to me in high school. I don’t understand how this could be,” Liz answered, her voice shaking

Max looked over Liz’s shoulder at me for confirmation of what she was saying.

I nodded.

“Looks like he hit the alien version of puberty,” I said in a dry voice.

“That’s not possible!” Liz said. “His cells are human.”

“Hon, you should know better than to say anything’s not possible,” Maria said in a dry voice.

“Oh God,” she said, shaking her head.

“I remember when it happened to me. I was so scared,” Liz said, stricken.

“I’ll go after him,” Max said, moving to stand, but Liz grabbed his arm.

“No!” she said. “You can’t!”

“Liz,” Max started, but she interrupted him.

“You can’t Max! If we go after him, he’s going to die. I saw it; he doesn’t want to hear what we have to say. He’s going to run from us, into the street, and there will be a van. It’s going too fast to stop, and....”

She broke off, her eyes falling closed, tears slipping from her under lids.

I hadn’t thought about Liz’s ability to see into the future in a long time. I’d almost forgotten about it, in fact.

“Liz, what am I supposed to do? We need to explain this to him. He doesn’t understand,” Max said.

“I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore,” Liz said, digging her hands into her hair.

“Everything we’ve tried to do has been wrong. Nothing we’ve done has been right since…” she and turned to look at me with desolate eyes.

Max sighed, closing his eyes.

Yeah, I didn’t know how to a handle this. I was there because I needed to settle things so that I could get on with the rest of my life, once and for all.

But that wasn’t as easy as it seemed.

“Let Michael do it,” Maria blurted.

And then everyone was looking at me.

She didn’t even flinch at my glare.

My first reaction was to tell her to shut up. It wasn’t my business to get involved. Or was it? This wasn’t even close to the reason I’d decided to track Max and Liz down. In fact, this was way beyond what I thought would happen when I got here.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Maria,” Max said slowly.

“I think it is,” she said meeting my stare.

“Maria,” I said in a warning voice.

“Michael, why are we here?” she asked quietly.

I had to give it to her. She knew the questions to ask. She always had.

Because on the surface, this had nothing to do with the reason had decided to come here after all these years. But I could see it in her eyes. She believed that in helping Zan, I’d be helping myself. I didn’t know if she was right. But I knew she loved me. I knew that she knew that the separation from Max and Liz had been eating at me for years. I also knew that although she loved me, and I came first with her always, she was still worried for Max and Liz as well as Zan.

And as much as I loved her, that was a good enough reason for me. If she thought that I could make this better and that I wouldn’t fuck up the situation more than it already was, then that was good enough for me.

I had learned a long time ago that with her, it didn’t matter whether I tried and failed, as long as I tried.

“You understand what he’s been through and what he’s going through now more than anyone. He doesn’t know you, and maybe right now, that isn’t such a bad thing,” she said.

I didn’t know the kid’s story, and now wasn’t the time for a recap. But I had a pretty good idea from what Liz didn’t say in the kitchen, that his previous digs weren’t on par with “Living en el Casa de Evans”, like Isabel and Max had.

I knew all too well how the other side of the coin lived growing up with Hank.

If I could help Zan, maybe it would prove to Maria that I could handle whatever came our way. That what we had was just as special as what Max and Liz had.

But who was I kidding? Maria didn’t need me to prove that. She knew it. I had to prove it to myself - that I wasn’t that screwed up kid that I was back in Roswell - that I could be someone different. I could be whoever I wanted to be, and to hell with what everyone back there had thought of me. I didn’t need to have had the perfect family to want something more.

But it was weird to see the reality of Max and Liz’s life here.

All those years, I just assumed that they were living in bliss. I could see how wrong I’d been about that. For a long time I resented the connection the two of them had. Things had kept them apart, but when they were together, it always had seemed too easy for them, whereas with Maria, it was work.

I realized much later that my own upbringing and my insistence on shutting people out was the root of why it always seemed so hard for me to relate to people even as friends. But more than anyone that was important to me, it killed me that I could never seem to do anything right when it came to Maria. Against all my attempts to tell myself I didn’t care about her, I had loved her.

It didn’t matter that I didn’t want to feel the way I did about her.

Back then, I was always trying and failing. Max knew what to say to Liz, where to take her, what to give her to make her feel special.

I had no friggin’ clue.

And now, it was obvious that the tables had turned, because Max had no clue how to handle his kid. It shouldn’t have been a surprise to me. Zan was a lot like me, and Max never really knew how to relate to me either. In the end, I think that was one of the reasons all of us didn’t fight separating when the time came.

I suddenly realized how screwed up everything had turned out.

We never had a chance as kids. And now, as adults, living lives separate from each other, none of us were any better off, were we?

I realized that I knew nothing about their lives. And they knew nothing about mine of Maria’s.

Was this what everything had come to? Everything we’d fought for? Everything we’d tried to do to keep everyone safe? It all became so clear to me, how it had split all of us apart. The things we’d done, and the things that were done to us when we were nothing more than kids, had changed our lives in ways that we could never take back.

We couldn’t change what had already happened, but I would be damned if things didn’t start changing now.

“Where is he?” I asked in a low voice.

Max looked at me, and I could tell he was torn about letting me go in his place. Max had always tried to be the peacemaker, the problem solver. I could see that it was killing him that he couldn’t go after him.

He looked at Liz for a long moment, and she nodded.

“In the park, about five blocks down,” she said.

I nodded, leaned over to kiss Maria.

“I believe in you, Michael. I always have,” she said, her fingers tracing my cheek.

“I know,” I answered with a soft kiss.

“Michael,” Max said as I started down the porch stairs.

I turned to face him, noting the pained expression on his face. It was a lot like old times. As if he was afraid I was going to fuck the whole thing up, but wanting to trust I’d do the right thing.

“Yeah?” I said.

“I trust you,” he said finally. “You say what you need to say to make it right. Just…”

“Don’t worry, Maxwell,” I said dryly, with a smile. “I won’t smear you too bad.”

Max’s lips tightened.

“I’m kidding,” I said, rolling my eyes.

“Thank you, Michael,” Liz said, standing and reaching up to kiss my cheek.

With one last lingering look at Maria, who was nervously chewing her lip, I turned and started down the block.

I walked quickly, remembering the park we’d passed when we’d driven into the neighborhood.

I spotted the kid leaning against a tree on the periphery, his hands clenching and unclenching, though thankfully they weren’t glowing any more.

Zan spotted me and started into the park.

“Wait up, kid,” I called.

I broke into a jog after him, wincing at the throbbing in my knee where he’d kicked me earlier.

I’d thought that being an alien meant that we were less susceptible to this kind of crap, but as I’ve gotten older, I realized that even having the power to blow shit up didn’t preclude us from the aging process. Alien or human, it sucked getting older.

Zan turned around, threw a “go to hell” over his shoulder and kept walking.

Yeah, hurting or not, he was an obnoxious little shit. He reminded me a lot of Tess at that moment.

I grabbed his shoulder, stopping him.

“I said wait,” I growled.

The kid whipped around, throwing my hand off his shoulder.

“Leave me alone!” he sneered.

I don’t know what came over me, whether it was the look of derision on the kid’s face, or the pain on Max and Liz’s before I left, but I snapped.

I grabbed the kid by the hair, pushing him toward the park.

“Hey! What do you think you’re doing, man?” he said angrily.

“We’re going to have a talk,” I said angrily.

“I don’t even know you. Why don’t you just stay out of it!” he retorted. “You’d better back off. I might electrocute you or something.”

The shaking in his voice betrayed the fear he was trying like hell to hide.

“You may not know me, but I remember you,” I said shoving him onto a bench. “And you’re gonna listen to what I have to say, especially about what’s going on with your hands.”

The kid fought my grip.

“Look, I know things seem pretty screwed up right now, but you’re not alone,” I said.
“You’ll never be alone again.”

“Oh yeah? You got electric fingers too?” he asked.

I stared into his eyes for a moment, judging his ability to be able to handle all of it, the truth, and then decided he needed to know whether he was ready or not.

I raised my hand, palm facing up; concentrating until a small, blue, glowing energy orb appeared above it, floating in the air before the kid’s eyes. His mouth opened and closed several times, maybe because he’d wanted to say something, but thought better of it. The light made his eyes glow an electric blue, so much like his mother’s.

“Jesus Christ,” the kid whispered, his eyes widening. “So…so, I’m like you?”

I shrugged.

“You’re like your father,” I answered quietly.

I could see the kid’s emotions playing in his eyes, and I knew them well. I had told him otherwise, but he was probably more like me than anyone else on the planet.

“Bullshit,” Zan said. “I’ve not once seen him…”

“He hid it from you,” I said.

For a minute, Zan tensed like he was going to bolt, and then his shoulders slumped.

The kid snorted, looking up at the sky.

“Yeah, come to think of it, that makes so much sense on so many levels,” he muttered, fighting back the tears that were pooling in his eyes. In profile, he looked just like the Max I remembered from seventeen years ago.

“They had good reasons,” I said.

“I don’t want to hear this shit. This is just the icing on the fucking cake, you know? He knew about this, and he just…just gave me away? Nice,” he said, trying to get to his feet, until I pushed him to the wood again.

“What if this happened when I was younger? What if I hurt someone?” he said angrily, his hands clenching, his eyes taking on a faraway look. I knew he was thinking about his past.

“Don’t tell me you aren’t wondering if it hadn’t have happened sooner, that might have come in handy,” I said in a low voice.

His head snapped toward me.

“What do you know about it?” he sneered.

“More than you think,” I said. “But it didn’t, and I’m not here to talk to you about that. You need to know the truth about what happened, and why Max gave you up.”

“Whatever,” the kid said.

“No, not whatever,” I answered. “You think you know everything, but you don’t.”

It was hard for me to sit there with him, trying to make him understand, when I had so many things in my own past that I hadn’t resolved with Max. But it wasn’t about me.

“Do you have any idea what they went through to make sure that you were safe? Any idea how destroyed Max was when they left with you?” I asked.

“Then maybe he shouldn’t have given me up,” Zan said. “Look, you don’t know what you’re talking about, and you have no idea what my life was like, or what it is now, so I‘m gonna suggest you just stay out of it.”

“You think I don’t know what probably happened to you? Guess again,” I said, watching him try to get up again.

“You’d best keep your ass on that bench if you know what’s good for you. I’ve got no reservations against kicking your ass, believe me. Especially after what you did to my knee. And I’ve got more practice than you with blowing shit up.”

The kid looked up at me, sizing me up, and seeing I was serious, slumped against the bench. I sat down next to him.

“So say what you have to say,” he grumbled.

There was a lot I knew I should say, and plenty that I knew I should keep to myself, but I also knew that this kid needed to know it, all of it.

I just didn’t know where to begin.

“I’m going to tell you everything, what you are, what’s going on with your hands, but you need to know something. If you don’t believe anything else, you need to believe that your father loves you,” I said finally.

“Oh yeah? Why is that?” Zan asked. “What? I’m supposed to be so grateful that he rescued me from that hellhole I grew up in? Am I supposed to let bygones be bygones and play happy family because that’s what will make it easy for him? When he lied to me? I’m a damned freak!”

“You think it was easy for him? Kid, you’re lucky he loved you as much as he did, considering what your mother pulled on him. I’m not so sure that I would have been able to look past that. It was because of her, and you, that he almost lost Liz. And he loves her so much he would have died for her. And he’d die for you too.”

“Yeah? Well maybe he should have stepped in when the guy who bought me was beating the crap out of me because I mistakenly left his plasma on and it got burn-in. Or when he told me that I was the reason that he was having problems with his wife. And maybe she realized that having a kid was more work than she thought it was going to be. See, they all thought that because they had money, I'd have this great life. They were wrong. Maybe if my father hadn’t run my mother off, she would have come back for me.”

I laughed.

“You think you would have been better off with your mother? Well, you couldn’t be more wrong about that. If you’d stayed with your mother, you’d probably be dead,” I said.

Zan’s face contorted in anger.

“What do you know about my mother? And why would I believe you anyway? Come on, don’t tell me you don’t hate her because she took my father away from his precious Liz,” Zan said.

I shook my head.

“I’m not saying it was all your mother’s fault. Max was…he’d pretty much cut himself off from everyone,” I said.

I sighed.

“You want the truth? He was being a jackass. I don’t know what was going through his head when he was with your mother, but knowing him, he was probably having a major pity party for himself, and she was in the right place at the right time. I’ll be the last person to tell you he’s perfect, believe me. I used to get into it all the time with him over things that I thought he did that were completely friggin’ stupid. But Tess? Your mother? She didn’t love him. She seduced him to get what she wanted,” I said.

Zan’s face reddened.

“Oh yeah? And what was that? ‘Cause it obviously wasn’t me,” he retorted, his voice breaking. “And it all worked out for him anyway, didn’t it? Liz took him back. He dumped me off on another family. I’d say he made out pretty well under the circumstances.”

I looked over, seeing him swiping angrily at his eyes.

Man, I couldn’t believe that Max would have rather let him believe this, than to know the truth.

“He had a good reason for giving you up. There were things going on back then, things that would have put you in danger. He did what he thought was best for you, but believe me, it wasn’t what he wanted,” I said.

“That’s bullshit,” Zan said. “What he wanted was Liz, and without my mother there, I was just in the way.”

I could see why he was angry. He had no idea what went on back then. He didn’t realize the danger all of us were in. I had to stop and remind myself of that, before I said something I’d regret.

“No, not exactly. I mean, yes, your father wanted Liz. He wasn’t in love with your mother. I’m not going to lie about that,” I said.

“So you concede my point,” Zan said, crossing his arms over his chest.

“It’s not that simple, Zan. Your father liked Tess. She was a close part of their group. And he thought she was there for him when everything fell apart with Liz, with our whole group. But Tess betrayed all of us,” I said.

I could see him closing off.

“Don’t give me this bullshit. It’s bad enough that she just up and left me. Now you’re telling me she screwed all of you over? Come on. I get it. Your Max’s friend, so you’re going to stick up for him,” he said.

“Zan, she killed one of us!” I said angrily. “She killed Alex Whitman, Liz and Maria’s closest friend.”

I watched Zan’s face pale under the halogen light above our heads.

“You’re lying. He died in a car accident,” Zan said.

Where had he found out about that? Maybe Max underestimated him.

“How do you know that?” I asked.

He shrugged.

“I found Liz’s yearbook in the attic. I wanted to see what my mother looked like back then. There was a three page memorial for him in the book, and the articles from the paper. Some guy in a truck lost control and hit his car.”

“She killed him,” I said, more forceful this time. “And she did it to get to your father, because she wanted him.”

“So what are you trying to tell me, that my mom was psychotic?” Zan asked angrily.

“No, she wasn’t crazy. She was driven,” I answered truthfully. “She said she felt bad about it afterward, when we found out what she’d done. She said she did what she had to do.”

“But…whatever she did, in the end she did what she had to, because she loved you,” I said. “She did what was right. To save you.”

“Is she in jail?” Zan asked in a small voice. “My father said she isn’t coming back. How do I know he’s not telling me that’s just because he hates her so much?”

“She’s not coming back, Zan. She’s dead,” I said. “She sacrificed herself to save you.”

“What do you mean, sacrificed? Did all of you kill her? Is that what happened? Did you do it to get back at her? To get rid of her?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “We didn’t kill her. I’m not going to tell you that some of us weren’t thinking about it, but we were outvoted.”

“What?” Zan said, standing up.

“Zan, I know it’s not going to be easy for you to hear this, so I’m just gonna come out and say it. Max, and your mom…they weren’t from here. Your father is technically the leader of a planet called Antar. Your mother was the queen,” I said, hating the way it sounded. I knew how ridiculous it would sound to the kid.

His laugh proved me right.

“You have got to be kidding me, man,” he said. “I don’t know what I was expecting, but…aliens? Come on!”

“It’s true,” I said in a low voice. “We’re hybrids, half human, and half Antarian. And apparently, so are you.”

“You’re crazy,” Zan said, shaking his head.

“I can prove it,” I said.

“You’re insane,” Zan scoffed.

Oh, how I wish I was.

“Give me your hand,” I said.

“No way,” Zan said, shaking his head, sliding away from me across the bench.

I reached out and grabbed his wrist. Our eyes locked, and I concentrated on his pupils, expanding and contracting, willing my own brain to let him see the truth as it happened.

The kid should have been told a long time ago. I let the images and memories flow. He needed to know the truth, and granted, it would be the truth through my eyes, but it was a start.

I let him see how it all began, the three of us emerging from our pods. How we got separated, they to the Evans, and me to Hank. But we found each other again.

We were safe until the day that Max healed Liz after she’d been shot at the Crashdown.

Everything changed after that.

No longer was our secret our own. I let him see how the Sheriff came after us, and later Topolsky. And how we became a group, and then couples. Max, Liz; Me, Maria; Isabel, Alex.

Things in my own life were screwed up. Hank was getting worse, and I was coming to school with shiners. One night I left and couldn’t go home, and I went to Maria and she took me in. And then Hank disappeared and I was a suspect. Mr. Evans helped me become emancipated.

And then there was the arrival of Tess and Nasedo, which caused all kinds of havoc with the group – memories, her insistence on our destinies. And then Max was caught by the FBI, and Agent Pierce. I let Zan see how we found them, what they had done to him. I let him see that Liz was the one who took care of him. He needed to see that.

I let him see how Max healed Kyle, gaining us an ally in the sheriff.

Then Pierce was dead at Nasedo’s hand, and our destiny was revealed in the pod chamber. I let Maria go, as did Isabel with Alex, and Liz left Roswell, leaving Max to what she thought was his destiny.

When Liz came back, things were different, distant. We discovered the Granolith. We found out she was working for a Skin. Nasedo was killed at the hands of one of them. We found out where they were and barely made it out alive, captured by Nicholas. Max left soon after for a summit in New York after we met our duplicates, minus Zan, Max’s duplicate, who they had killed. Liz saved his life on that street where they were going to kill him.

Alex left for Sweden, or so we thought. And things got better for a little while.

We found our human donors through Laurie Dupree. And then Alex was dead, and Max and Liz were growing further apart. He distanced himself from everyone, including me. And then he slept with Tess, and she was pregnant, and Zan was going to die unless they left Earth. I spent one last night with Maria, and went to the Granolith chamber to tell Max that I wasn’t going with him, or Tess and Isabel. Kyle, Maria and Liz had found out the truth, that Tess had mind warped Alex to decode the book from the chamber, and had also mind-warped Kyle into disposing of his body.

Tess said that she had tricked Max into sleeping with her to get her pregnant, and that it was hers and Nasedo’s intention all along to return with him to Antar so that Khivar could take over the throne.

She escaped in the Granolith.

Max continued to search for Zan, his son. He and Liz got arrested trying to find a way to Antar, and it was then Mr. Evans began to suspect something was amiss, and Jeff Parker forbid Liz from seeing Max.

Max found Kal Langley, and everything went to hell when the ship wouldn’t move. His chance was lost.

I let him see Isabel and Khivar, and how we had followed her on her honeymoon with Jesse, where Khivar planned to take her back. We won, sending him back into the wormhole.

I let him see how Liz developed her powers, how hard it was for her to forgive Max, and how Max had been captured and had become Clayton Wheeler. How he fought against him, how he had died at the boarding school where Liz had run, in order to save her life.

And she brought him back.

But I had inherited Max’s seal.

I had become out of control until Max took it back.

There was so much more, but right then wasn’t the time, so I concentrated further into the future.

There was the crash and Tess was back, with Zan. She’d lied about him not being able to survive in the Earth’s atmosphere. He was completely human, or so they thought, and she had barely escaped Antar when Khivar realized this, as well as the fact that she came without Max. The FBI was after her, and we hid her for a time, but in the end, she sacrificed herself to save Zan.

Max realized that if Zan stayed with them, he’d never have a normal life. His son was human. He deserved a chance at a family that would love him and give Zan the life that Max had always longed for – a life without fear of being exposed, of being chased, of being killed. And so he gave Zan up in the hope that he would have everything that he himself wanted to give him, but couldn’t.

And then there was graduation, when the FBI came after us for the last time.

I broke the connection, knowing that there was a lot that I’d left out, but it was enough for now.

Zan blinked at the tears in his eyes and turned away, wiping at his eyes.

“Like I said, he wanted you to be safe,” I said, leaning forward, resting my elbows on my knees.

“I can see my mother now, vaguely, and him…back then. I don’t know if it’s because of what you just did, but…”

“Do you get it now?” I asked.

He nodded after a moment.

“Yeah, I get it, but I don’t know if I can forgive him for it,” he muttered.

I sighed.

I understood that - or more to the point, the kid that I was seventeen years ago did.

It was hard to turn the other cheek when you’re given up to a life of hell. But it can also consume you, if you let it. I’d almost let it consume me.

“You gotta let it go,” I said. “What happened can’t be changed, but Max did come for you. He came back. That’s got to count for something.”

We were quiet for a few minutes. I didn’t press him, wanting to give him the time to let it all sink in.

He turned to look at me finally.

“Why do you care what I think?” Zan asked. “What’s it to you?”

He shifted on the bench.

“He supposedly loved you too, didn’t he? You were his brother, if not by blood, than in every other way it matters. He treated you like crap - and he and…is it…Isabel? Yet another family member I haven’t met…” he said derisively. “They both went on living the good life with that family while you rotted in that trailer. He’s a screw up. A selfish screw up.”

“We all screwed up, Zan! We were kids! No older than you are now. Can you imagine having to make the kind of decisions we did, to do the things that we did, now, at your age? Could you have done any better?”

I turned to face him.

“Do you want to know why I care?” I asked. “I care because I don’t want to see you throw away the chance to have your father. Max. I never had that chance with him.”

“What do you mean?” the kid asked with an angry frown.

There was no other way to do this than to just come out and say it.

“You’re my brother. Your parents are Max and Tess, and mine are Max and Liz,” I said glancing at him. “And yeah, before you say it, I know it sounds impossible. But it’s the truth. I am Max and Liz’s son from an alternate future.”

Brother.

It sounded so weird coming out of my mouth. It wasn’t as if I’d never thought about Zan and how we were related. It just seemed so…I don’t know, out of reach. He was gone. Max had given him up, to save him. I would never have sought him out, and yet here we sat, together. Which was a hell of a lot better than what I was thinking earlier. Because my first thought when Max said that Zan was his son, was that Zan was me. The me that was supposed to have been born in this timeline, and I was surprised that we didn’t cease to exist, according to the theory that the future version of Max told Liz, because she had said that one could not occupy the same space as one’s self.

I should have known better.

“Do you know how absolutely crazy that sounds?” Zan asked.

I nodded.

“Yeah. But it’s no more crazy than the fact that aliens are real,” I said dryly.

“How can you be my brother when you and my father are the same age?” he asked.

The answer wasn’t so simple.

“I guess the only way to explain it is to start from the beginning,” I said. “There are some things I didn’t show you.”

I took a deep breath.

“Liz gave Max up the fall after she came back after the whole destiny thing. Your mother was insisting was that she and Max were meant to be together, that it was their job to save their world.”

“Max didn’t believe it, and he was hell-bent on letting Liz know that he wasn’t accepting some crap that they weren’t meant to be together. He fought for her, until she made him believe she betrayed him,” I said.

“None of us knew why she did what she did. Then she told us that some future version of Max came back and told her that if she and Max stayed together, the world was going to end fourteen years in the future. She tried to push Max toward Tess, thinking that if he followed his destiny, that it would change things enough so that the world wouldn’t end. Max wasn’t having any of it, so she staged it so he would find her in bed with Kyle Valenti.”

“Nothing happened between them, but what Max saw must have looked pretty bad. It damned near destroyed him. He was off-balance after that, and your mother took advantage of it. Eventually, she wore him down. She’d split all of us up with Alex’s death, driving a wedge between everyone in the group.”

“But even after that, even when he knew he’d made the worst mistake in his life, he stood by your mother when she told him she was pregnant. He never once left her, and when she told him you were going to die unless she left the planet, he knew what he had to do. The thought of leaving Liz tore him apart. He’d come so close to leaving with her, and he would have been dead if he had.”

“He never stopped looking for you. He put Liz’s life in danger in order to find a way to get you back. They got arrested. He went after a psychotic alien to hitch a ride back to Antar to save you. He said you were calling out to him. I don’t know if that’s true, but what I do know is that whatever bad feelings he had for your mother, he never gave up on you, never stopped loving you.”

“I remember now…that memory he put in my head. I remember it,” Zan said, sniffling. “It was a memory of him and how much he...”

“Yeah,” I said, “ he did.”

“And my mother,” he started.

“Loved you,” I interrupted. “And don’t ever think otherwise. Whatever horrible things she did, and for whatever other reasons we hated her, she did everything she could to protect you. She was just screwed up.”

Truthfully, I didn’t know if that was actually the case. But I didn’t see any harm in letting the kid believe it now. She was gone, and she couldn’t hurt anyone anymore. And she did die to save his life.

“This is so fucked up,” Zan said, shaking his head.

I smiled.

“Welcome to the abyss. No going back now, kid,” I said with a sigh.

I glanced over at him.

“Why aren’t you freaking out about the whole thing, the alien thing, all of it?” I asked, honestly wanting to know.

He shrugged.

“I don’t know. Maybe because this is easier to swallow than thinking he just didn’t give a shit, I guess,” Zan said quietly. “Maybe I understand the why of it, even though it still sucks. It’s gonna take me awhile to get my head around the fact that my mother was a murdering alien, though.”

I let out a deep breath.

“I don’t know what to tell you about that. All I can say is that I learned the hard way that humans can be just as bad,” I said.

“Yeah,” Zan said darkly. “I know.”

I nodded, because I knew too.

“My foster father Hank used to beat the ever-living hell out of me. It got to the point where I seriously thought about just running away from Roswell and never coming back. But then I would have really been alone. All I had was Isabel and Max. They were as close to a family to me as anyone could be. But there was this part of me that resented them and the life they had with the Evans,” I said.

“I resented a lot of things back then. We knew we were different, and we couldn’t trust humans with the truth of what we were, and the only exposure I had on a daily basis to one was a raging drunk who liked to use me as a punching bag when he went on his benders. He didn’t give a crap about me. All he cared about was the money that the state gave him to put me up,” I said. “I felt like I couldn’t talk to Max and Isabel about it. I was alone. All I had to hang on to was the secret between us, and when Max healed Liz, I felt like my only real tie to them, the secret of what we were, was in danger of being thrown aside for this human girl.”

“I would have said you were crazy if you told me back then that it was the best thing that could have happened to us, revealing ourselves. Maria, my wife, was Liz’s best friend. When Liz told her, she freaked out. She was afraid of all of us, but then…suddenly she wasn’t. Turns out she was the best thing that ever happened to me, only I didn’t know it at the time,” I said with a wry grin.

“I didn’t really even know who she was before Max spilled our secret. I didn’t know anyone at school, by choice. And they didn’t want to know me, an anti-social kid from the wrong side of the tracks with a chip on his shoulder.”

“The thing about Maria was, she got under my skin. I wasn’t too happy when we’d gotten partnered up on this project with all of the personal questions in school. I’d kind of forced her to give me a ride in her mom’s car, thinking that I could dump her off at the gas station, but it didn’t work out that way. And then she started asking me all of these personal questions in the car, and it made me uncomfortable. But when the car broke down and we were stuck in that motel and she kept asking, I started to realize that she wasn’t asking out of fear, she really wanted to know. And when we talked I started to realize that maybe we weren’t so different after all in a lot of ways.”

“Then there was the fact that I got off on making her flustered. At first I thought it was funny. Then it became something totally different.”

“Maria was there for me through that whole thing with Hank. She took me in when I felt like I had nowhere to go. She stood by me even when I pushed her away. I’m not saying we didn’t have our problems. But, I don’t know, I just couldn’t stay away from her.”

“I didn’t know why she’d want to be with someone like me. At first I couldn’t believe it, and then I guess I started to take it for granted. And then she dumped me, and I woke up and realized exactly what I was losing.”

“Yeah, the love of a good woman can get you through anything,” I said.

And then I laughed.

“What?” Zan asked.

“Nothing. Just sometimes I can’t believe that there are things that Max and I have in common,” I said.

“I never in a million years would have thought – let’s just say thinking of Max as a brother was pushing it. Finding out the truth was, well, it couldn’t have come at a worse time, and I didn’t handle it well.”

“I was always the one that had to be the bad guy, though in the beginning at least, Isabel was behind me.”

“While Max was pining over Liz before she got shot, he was manageable. But once he healed her, he stopped caring about the safety of the group, and put her before everyone. And yeah, I resented that.”

“When Max died at that boarding school, I inherited his seal, which meant I was technically king. I didn’t handle that well either, throwing my weight around, fighting with Max and Isabel; I even kicked Maria out of her own car and left her on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere, in the dead of night,” I said, wincing at the memory.

No matter how long ago it happened, it still made me ashamed.

“Max took it back by force,” I said, “He basically beat the crap out of me to get it back. And I was mad as hell at him for it. I felt like I deserved that seal, because deep down I didn’t believe that Max was fit to be a king.”

“You know, when we found out whom and what we were, I sort of got this idea in my head that I was supposed to protect Max and Isabel. They were the royals, and I was second in command. And it sort of just…I don’t know, fit. All my life, I had always had to defend myself, so it sort of came as second nature when the Max and Isabel’s Antarian mom revealed who we were in that other life.”

“For the first time I felt like I had a purpose. And it felt good. That maybe we were finally going to have answers – that we were finally going to go home, and wouldn’t have to hide what we were.”

“Man was I stupid,” I snorted. “Dreaming of a new life, when the only one that mattered was right there in front of me, and I was about to throw it away.”

I glanced toward Zan.

“You got a girl?” I asked.

Zan nodded.

“You love her?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“This changes everything though,” he said, looking down at his hands in disgust.

“It doesn’t have to, if she loves you and believes in you enough,” I said. “Being what you are isn’t going to hurt her or anything. Maria’s completely human.”

“I don’t know how she’d handle this,” Zan said miserably.

“If she loves you, she’ll handle it fine. And if she does, just don’t do anything stupid enough to lose her. That’s all I can tell you,” I said.

I looked up at the stars.

“I pushed Maria away so many times, and for reasons I’m still grateful for, she was always there for me, always took me in, always forgave me.”

“Abby, my girlfriend, did the same thing with me,” Zan said. “When I met her I was all screwed up. She straightened me out. I don’t know what I would have done if I didn’t have her.”

Funny how history repeats itself, I thought.

I wondered if he was as head over heels about this Abby, as Max had been about Liz. My money was on the answer being a “yes”. I guess maybe I inherited that too, though it took me a long time to realize it.

“I’m not going to tell you that any of this alien crap is easy,” I said. “After the whole thing with the seal, I needed to get away from Max. Truthfully I was pissed off, and not a little ashamed for the way I’d acted. I felt like I’d been set adrift again.”

“I went to the pod chamber, where it all began for us. I sat in front of my pod, and just stared at it for the longest time, wondering what kind of fucked up cosmic joke had landed me on this rock. Wondering what my purpose was when it seemed like everything that happened to me turned into an epic fail. My powers were out of control, I was on the outs with Maria, I’d basically turned into an alien Pol Pot when had the seal. I felt like a failure, and felt really, really alone.”

“I don’t know what made me reach out and touch the pod…”

***

I told Zan the relevant parts of how I discovered who I was, but the part I left out was how I found my way home, finally.

I’d not been back to the chamber in a long time. It held a lot of bad memories, for so many reasons.

The pods were the beginning. When we’d broken out of them, we’d been separated, and it began the life I shortly grew to hate with Hank.

The empty space where the Granolith once stood reminded me of Tess’ betrayal, and Alex’s murder.

But after I lost the seal, I was drawn to it. It was the only place that tied me to who I was. I went there to be alone. I never thought that anyone would think to look for me there, so it was safe.

I sat looking at the torn skins of the pods for a long time, wondering what it would have been like if we’d gone back to Antar. The logical part of me knew that I’d most likely be dead, but there was some small part of me that wondered if even that would have been worth it, just to see my true home just once.

I felt like there was nothing left for me, and a lot of that was my own fault. I’d most likely ruined any chance I had left with Maria, and Max and Isabel would probably never trust me again after what I pulled with the seal.

I felt tears running down my cheeks. It didn’t matter, because there was no one there to see them.

I knew that there was no chance of me ever seeing Antar. I was stuck here on Earth.

But I didn’t have to be stuck in Roswell. It was long past time for me to leave. I probably should have kept going the first time I’d tried two years before.

I didn’t have to be stuck in my own mistakes. I could go somewhere else. Start out fresh, where no one knew me or knew about the colossal fuck-ups I’d committed. But if I was leaving, I would have to leave this chamber, this piece of my past, knowing that I might not be back for a long time, if ever.

It didn’t matter, I thought as I stood up.

I reached out to touch my pod that had nourished me for over forty years. My hand rested on its curved top, and I wanted to remember what it felt like, this artificial womb, the alien parent that had nourished me until I broke free of its confines.

My eyes were shut, so the first thing I felt was warmth beneath my fingers. I barely had time to open my eyes to register the blue glowing disc that had raised the skin of the pod beneath my palm, before I was thrown into a flash that would change my life forever.

A shaky image appeared in my mind, a bearded version of myself standing in front of the pod, older, injured, and weary. In his arms was a small bundle. Four pods were lined up against the cave wall, inside them small, shadowy figures.

He walked over to them and reached out with his free hand, placing a small, clear disc on top of what I could see was my pod, and it absorbed into its skin. He held his hand over the skin, and it began to glow.

“Kid,” he said, “I was wrong, and your dad was right. I can’t change what happened, but I can try to stop what’s going to happen about 65 years from now. I can only hope you’ll somehow find this disc, so you’ll know the truth.”

He breathed deeply, and then coughed, and I could see blood staining the cloth wrapped bundle in his arms. He was injured, and it looked bad.

He pulled the cloth aside, revealing an infant.

He smiled down at the child.

“I’m giving you the chance to make a difference. My world is gone. I barely made it here. Khivar has destroyed everything. They’re all dead, and it was my fault. I wanted to believe that we could go back, that we could negotiate. I wanted to see Antar so badly that I sacrificed everything and everyone that I loved. I betrayed them. I didn’t mean to, but I did. So I’m giving up my chance, my life, so that you can know your mother and father. They are good people. Better than I ever was. I’m going to put you in my pod, and when I do, I won’t exist any longer,” he said.

“The pod will make you look like me, and give you Rath’s memories, but you are more than that. You are the son of a King and one of the best women I know. You are the son of Max Evans, Zan, King of Antar, and Liz Parker,” he said.

“I’m not going to tell you your given name from my world. They will know you as Michael, so it will mean nothing, to you or to them. Your life, at least in the beginning, isn’t going to be easy, but you have to know, because it’s going to matter to you, that your parents loved you more than anything. They loved you enough to sacrifice themselves to save you. They left you with me, and I am giving you back to them. Don’t make the same mistakes I did. Trust the humans. I didn’t, and it was the cause of our downfall. Make a life for yourself, kid. Don’t waste it.”

He used his powers to open the pod’s lining.

He kissed the infant’s head, and then placed it inside of the pod, pulling out another child. His hands and the child began to glow, and he drew the baby to his chest, cradling it as the light grew brighter, and then blinding, and then they were gone, the chamber darkening as the pod resealed itself.

I stumbled back from the pod, unable to believe what I had just seen.

As that Michael spoke, I remembered the words myself, as if it had been a distant dream. But it had happened.

How could it be true? But there was no mistaking what I had seen, the faint memories that lingered in the back of my mind of those words, of those moments.

I slumped to the chamber floor, wrapping my arms tightly around my knees, rocking forward and back.

All my life I had wished I could have known my real parents. And now I knew who they were, and I couldn’t wrap my head around it, couldn’t un-know what I now knew.

Max and Liz.

My parents.

I wanted to run, but I couldn’t move. I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t get beyond the numbness.

What did this mean?

The Roswell version of Rath no longer existed, never existed in this timeline, though I had his residual memories.

I was the son of a King. The son of Max, a hybrid.

The son of Liz, a human who I had wished many times would disappear.

“Michael?”

I heard her voice behind me, but I couldn’t turn my head, couldn’t stop rocking.

“Michael,” Maria said again, and I felt the warm pressure of her hand on my shoulder.

She knelt before me, looking into my eyes, and I just…lost it.

I couldn’t stop violent sobs that burst from my throat, the hot tears that streamed down my face.

“Michael, what is it?” she asked.

I shook my head, unable to speak at first, unable to believe that after all I had done to her, she was there.

“I’m sorry,” I said finally. “I’m so sorry.”

She didn’t say anything, she just wrapped her arms around me, her soft lips fanning kisses over my face.

I clung tightly to her for a long while. She had always been the one who had loved me, had turned the other cheek when I tried to push her away. It had always been Maria.

She had taken me in when I had nowhere else to go.

I never knew what real family meant, and now I’d found out I had one, but all I could think of was the one person who had been family to me when it mattered most.

“I love you,” I said, my voice muffled, my face pressed into her hair. “I love you, and I swear to God I’m going to spend the rest of my life trying to prove it to you.”

“I love you too,” she said softly, pulling away to look into my eyes.

“Tell me what’s going on, Michael,” she said, brushing my hair away from my face.

I didn’t know where to begin. I had no words to tell her.

“Put your hand on the top of my pod,” I said. I had no idea if it would work, but it would be a hell of a lot easier if she saw it, than for me to explain it.

She frowned, that little wrinkle between her eyebrows so familiar to me.

“Do it, please,” I said in a cracked voice.

She stood up and walked over to the pod, looking at me for confirmation.

I nodded.

She reached out, her fingers touching the top of it, and the disc rose, and began to glow.

Her body shuddered, and then she was still for a long moment.

I saw her mouth fall open in a silent gasp, her eyes widening, as she made the same discovery I did.

“Oh my God,” she whispered.

As she removed her hand, the disc faded into the skin once more, it’s glow fading.

She walked over to me and slumped to the chamber floor beside me.

“Michael…that’s…Max and Liz, your parents?” she said in disbelief. “What did he mean by another timeline? Is that even possible?”

“I don’t know, but it happened. I remember it,” I said.

She turned toward me.

“Michael, you need to tell them. They need to see it for themselves. This changes everything,” she said.

“It changes nothing,” I answered.

“Michael, you can’t keep this from them. You’re their son,” she whispered.

I knew she was right, but I was afraid, and angry. Angry because my family life up until that point had been shit, and finding out this latest revelation didn’t make it any better.

But it wasn’t their fault, I knew, just as it wasn’t mine. It was too overwhelming. I wanted to take Maria’s hand and run away, just the two of us, where I didn’t have to think about it. She was all I needed. She was all I ever needed, and I had been too stupid to see it. But I wasn’t about to make the same mistake again.

“I can’t deal with it right now,” I said, burying my hands in my hair. “I can’t. Let’s just go. Let’s get out of Roswell. Just you and me. We can start over somewhere else. You said you wanted to get out of here, to get away from the alien stuff. We can do that. I’m ready.”

“No Michael, you have to tell them,” Maria said, reaching for me. “They have a right to know.”

“No,” I said, “not now. Right now, all I need is you.”

“Michael,” she said, but I cut off whatever she was about to voice with my lips.

I hadn’t kissed her in a while, and it was like coming home. I never tired of it, of her, the way her arms wrapped around my neck, the way her lush lips fit against mine. Her body’s curves and valleys matched mine perfectly. Her slight form made me feel strong. I wanted to feel every inch of her against my skin. I wanted her fingers twined in my hair, her legs wrapped around my waist. I wanted to be hers in every way that I could, to give her the gift she had so willingly given me.

I wanted her to see all of me, not just the parts I let her glimpse.

We didn’t even get our clothes off. She fingers were at the waist of my pants as mine were under her skirt, removing the barrier between us.

As I entered her, I let my mind open to her fully, and she gasped against my lips.

I knew I was laying myself bare to her, but for the first time, I didn’t care. I wanted her to know what she was getting in choosing me, the good and the bad. My pain, solitude, and uncertainty flowed out of me like a flood, but it was mixed with the power of the love I felt for her.

Tears slid from her eyes as we moved together, becoming one, both our bodies and our minds.

It was the most beautiful thing I had ever experienced.

I felt no recrimination, no accusations from her, just love, and it filled my heart until I thought it would burst.

Everything we had felt for each other, the things we had alternately hidden from each other was laid bare, and I knew that I was never, ever going to love anyone the way that I loved her.

We lay quiet together for a long while, our bodies entwined, our hearts beating the same erratic song.

My head reeled, my confusion over the revelation of the disc, and my love for the woman lying in my arms vying for my attention.

I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t even know where to begin.

She turned toward me, resting her head on her hand.

“I love you, Michael, you know that, right?” she asked softly.

“I love you too,” I said, my voice sounding gritty to my ears.

“You have to tell them. You know I’m right. If you’re ever going to straighten any of this out inside,” she said, jabbing my chest with her finger, “you can’t run away from it. Tell them, and if you want to go after that, I’ll go with you. Wherever you want. But it’s your chance to have something real. It might be…unconventional, but I can’t think of two better people to call your family.”

I knew she was right, but the thought of seeing their faces when they found out, and what the hell I was going to say to them afterward, freaked me out. But Maria was right. I couldn’t run from this. I had to do it, and let the chips fall where they may.

“Fine,” I said finally.

“I’ll call Liz,” she said, reaching for her phone.

I heard her make the call, but her words weren’t registering with me. I thought of Liz, the girl who I had initially mistrusted; I had stolen her journal, certain I would expose her. That I would find out what she really thought of us.

But I was wrong about everything. She’d accepted us for what we were, and had kept our secret. She was kind, and smart, and loyal. Was that such a bad quality in a mother? But even as I thought that, I thought about the fact that we were the same age. So was Max.

The whole thing was so fucked up.

Maria ended the call, and leaned over for a slow kiss.

“I don’t think I’ve ever loved you more than I do right now,” she said.

It felt good to hear that. I needed to hear it.

We got up, straightening our clothes, waiting for them to show up.

Isabel was with Jesse, and Liz was going to try to reach her, but Max had tried earlier, and her phone had gone to voicemail.

It was odd to have those memories of Rath and Vilondra, knowing now that Isabel was my aunt. But it was only one of the many uncomfortable things running through my head.

There were so many questions I didn’t know the answers to. Had that Michael that had sacrificed himself so that I could live, been in love with Maria? I didn’t like the thought of it.

What had that world been like? And would the end come again, just like it did in that timeline?

And where did that leave all of us?

It took them almost an hour to make it to the chamber, and by then I’d almost been ready to leave before I had to face them.

It was only Maria’s presence that kept me there. I didn’t want to disappoint her. I wanted to be the person she imagined me to be.

They entered the chamber hand in hand, as they always were. It was unusual for them not to be touching each other in some way when they were together. It was that love, that intimacy that was the reason I was in existence.

“What’s going on, Michael?” Max asked cautiously. I knew that after the fight we’d had over the seal, he was still uneasy around me.

What was I supposed to say?

Hi, Max. By the way, I’m your son?

I couldn’t think.

I couldn’t find any words.

“Max, Liz, there’s something you need to see,” Maria said.

It was Maria who led them over to the pod and placed their hands on the disc.

I watched their faces, saw the shock and the disbelief registering in their expressions. I saw the tears fill Liz’s eyes. I saw the color drain from Max’s face.

Liz ripped her hand away from the disc.

“It can’t be true!” she said, stumbling back from the pod. “He would have told me if we’d had a child! I would have never…I would never have done what I did if there was a child!”

What the hell was she saying? Everything was getting more complicated by the moment. And if she was saying what I thought she was…

“Liz,” Max said, taking her hands. “What are you talking about?”

“How could you have kept that from me? How could you do that?” she asked tearfully.

“Liz, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, turning to look at me, and then quickly looking away.

He didn’t know how to deal with this any more than I did.

“The future version of you,” she said, shaking her head. “You told me the world was going to end! You told me I had to. But a child, I can’t believe he would be that cruel.”

Her knees buckled, and Max caught her as she started to fall to the floor.

“Liz, I don’t know what you’re saying,” Max said.

She began to talk, to tell us a story of a Max from the future, who came back to this time to tell her that if she and Max stayed together, the world would end. She told us about the deception she’d planned with Kyle.

When it had happened, I couldn’t believe she had slept with Kyle. I thought I hadn’t known her at all like I thought I had.

I had called her a bitch, a traitor, and a host of other horrible things. And now that I knew the whole story, I saw what she’d sacrificed, what she’d almost lost.

“He’s our son, Max,” she said, looking at Max.

And she turned looked at me, and I couldn’t look away, this young girl, barely even a woman, my mother, who had sacrificed her heart, her own happiness so that the world could be saved.

“I don’t know what to say, Michael,” Max said. “This…I don’t know, you’ve always been like a brother to me, and now…”

He looked completely freaked out, not only by the revelation that he was my father, but also that another version of himself had tried to kill what was between him and Liz.

“Yeah, I know,” I said in a quiet voice.

“What are we supposed to do with this?” he asked. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel about this, or what I’m supposed to do.”

This was not going to go well, and I knew it. None of us, Liz, Max, or me were ready to deal with it. I made a quick decision.

“Nothing,” I said. “The two of you needed to know, because we need to figure out what we’re supposed to do differently to stop what’s going to happen in the future. It’s way too late for anything else. It’s too weird.”

“Michael!” Maria said, and I squeezed her hand, willing her into silence.

“That’s not what I meant, Michael,” Max said, stepping toward me, and I took a step back.

“No really. Believe me, it’s weird for me too,” I said. “It is what it is. Let’s just…let it go.”

“That’s not what we want, Michael,” Liz said. “We just…we all need a little time to let it sink in.”

“No, it’s cool, really,” I said. “The two of you should just…talk about it. I’ve got to get to work.”

“Michael,” Maria hissed.

“Let’s go, Maria,” I said pointedly.

“Michael, don’t leave,” Liz said.

“I’ve really got to jet. I’m running late as it is. I’ll catch up with you guys later,” I said, dragging Maria behind me.

To her credit, she didn’t say anything on the ride back into town. I wouldn’t have known what to say if she had. The whole scene had been unbelievably awkward, though logically I knew it couldn’t have gone any other way.

Still, some part of me mourned the loss of a family I had only known about for hours. It could never work out.

I avoided the two of them for the next few days, and then Liz got the vision of the FBI coming into town, and everyone just focused on that.

I saved Max’s ass at graduation, and we all split apart after that. I could remember the last time I saw them as if it were yesterday.

“Michael, you and Maria should come with us,” Liz said.

“You should, Michael,” Max added.

I knew that though we hadn’t spoken about it, it had been on both of their minds.

“It’s better if we go our separate ways. It will be safer for all of us,” I said, putting my arm around Maria.

And though that was true, there was so much more behind my reasons for breaking away. I didn’t know how to handle it. The relationship between Max and I had been strained before he’d found out the truth, and now, it was stretched to the breaking point.

I could see it in his eyes that he needed the same space that I did. But I couldn’t say the same for Liz.

There were tears in her eyes as she said goodbye to us, and when she hugged me, she held on for a long moment.

The last thing I remember was the two of them wrapped in each other’s arms as Maria and I drove away.

We stayed away for seventeen years.

****

Zan was staring pensively out into the darkness when I finished talking.

“You were going to die tonight, did you realize that?” I asked.

“Excuse me?” Zan asked, turning toward me.

“Liz got a vision,” I said.

“She and Max were supposed to come after you. All of you would have fought. You would have been run down in the street by a van,” Michael said. “She saved you when I came instead.”

“It still could have happened,” Zan muttered.

“Max wouldn’t have manhandled you like I did,” I returned.

“He’s a good man, Zan, for all his faults,” I said. “I sometimes wish that things would have been different. That I would have been born in this timeline and had the opportunity to be their son, for real. My life would have been a hell of a lot different. But then I know I wouldn’t have Maria, so I can’t really regret it.”

“Don’t think that because you aren’t her blood, that Liz doesn’t love you,” I said. “She cares about you, and I can tell she thinks of you as her son. And the fact that she can do that after what your mother put her through says a lot about who she is.”

Zan nodded slowly.

“I didn’t know it was like that…that things were that hard for her. And the things I said to her tonight, to both of them,” he said in a pained voice.

“She’ll forgive you. That’s just who she is,” I said with a small smile. “And Max? He loves you. He’ll get over it, if you will.”

“Yeah,” Zan said in a small voice, and then he looked up and froze.

I turned to see what he was staring at.

Max stood a short distance away.

Zan stood slowly, taking a few steps toward him, his face impassive for a moment.

I could see the uncertainty, the pain that Max carried with him shining in his eyes.

There was a long moment of silence, and suddenly, Zan was in Max’s arms.

Max’s eyes closed in joy and relief, a tear sliding down his cheek.

“I’m sorry,” Zan said, his voice catching. “I didn’t know.”

“You couldn’t have known. It was my fault. I shouldn’t have kept it from you. I just wanted you to have a normal life. I didn’t want you to know the truth of it. Because none of it changes the way I feel about you. You’re my son, and I love you.”

Zan stepped away, wiping at his eyes.

“I should…I should go and apologize to Liz,” he said.

“That would be nice,” Max said softly.

Zan turned toward me.

“Thanks, Michael,” he said.

“No problem, kid,” I said gruffly.

“Are you going to be around?” Zan asked.

“I don’t know. We’ll see what happens,” I said.

Zan nodded.

He looked at his father for a long moment, and then turned, jogging into the darkness, toward home, his home.

I leaned back against the bench, staring at my locked fingers, because I couldn’t look at Max.

I sensed him sitting down next to me on the bench, but I couldn’t bring myself to look up.

“How long were you standing there?” I asked.

“Long enough,” he said in a quiet voice. “Thank you, Michael, for what you did.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I shrugged. “I don’t know if it changed much. I think he’s still pissed off at you.”

“It’s a start,” Max answered.

We sat in uncomfortable silence for long moments.

“Michael, those last weeks in Roswell, I handled really badly,” he said.

“No more than I did,” I answered.

“No,” Max said. “I should have come and talked to you. I should have told you that it changed everything for me. I just…I didn’t know how to start. You were my brother my whole life, and you always looked out for me, when I should have been looking out for you.”

“You didn’t know,” I answered. “None of us did. And I was a fuck-up, Max. If it weren’t for Maria…”

“You weren’t a fuck-up Michael,” Max said. “You did the best that you could in a bad situation. If we had known earlier we would have done something.”

“Well I didn’t tell you,” I said.

“To think that you went through that with Hank, my son…” he said, his voice cracking.

It felt good to hear him say it.

“I was ashamed,” Max said. “That’s all I could think about when we found out. I had screwed up twice, first with Zan and then you.”

I looked over at him finally.

“Max, you can’t save the world,” I said. “I know you want to. Hell, we all knew it, but it’s just not possible. We all did the best that we could.”

“Well, the world didn’t end yet,” Max said dryly, and I laughed.

No, it hadn’t. Not yet, at least. There had been no sign of Khivar so far. Maybe it was Tess going back to Antar. Maybe there’d been some intergalactic war up there. There was no way for any of us to know, and we hadn’t been contacted by any members of the summit.

An uneasy silence fell between us.

“Is it too late?” he asked, and I looked away, knowing what he meant.

“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “Things…they worked between us before we found out. And then suddenly, nothing worked.”

He didn’t say anything for a moment, and I wondered if I should just get up and head back.

“Why did you come back, Michael? Why now?” he asked.

I paused, trying to find the right words.

“Maria’s pregnant,” I said finally.

“Congratulations, Michael,” he said.

“Thanks,” I said.

“That’s the reason I came back,” I said. “I just…I didn’t have a father until it was too late, and now I’m going to be one myself. And it scares the shit out of me. I don’t want to screw this up.”

“You won’t screw it up, Michael,” Max said with a soft laugh.

“How do you know?” I asked, my voice accusatory.

“Because, as strange as it sounds, you were the one who looked after us, who questioned everything. You protected us, Michael. And even though I hated you for that sometimes, we might not be sitting here if you hadn’t,” he said.

“I did things without thinking them through,” I said.

“You always had our best interest at heart,” he countered.

“I got pissed off over everything,” I said.

“You were right to be, most of the time,” Max said.

“I pushed everyone away,” I said.

“You let Maria in,” he pointed out.

“Yeah, I did,” I answered softly.

“Any child that winds up with you as a father is lucky,” Max said, putting his hand on my shoulder.

“Yeah, how’s that?” I asked skeptically.

“Because you know more than any of us what a child needs in a father,” Max said.

I nodded, blinking back tears.

“Yeah, maybe I do,” I said.

“Come on, let’s go back to the house,” he said, standing up.

“I’ll be along in a minute,” I said. “I just want a couple of minutes alone.”

Max nodded.

He started to walk away, and then turned.

“I’m really glad you’re here, Michael,” he said.

“Yeah, I’m glad I came,” I answered.

I watched him walk off, still trying to get my head around everything that had happened.

Maybe he was right. Maybe I could be a good father.

For the first time, I really believed it, because I knew, as imperfect as my own father was, he never stopped loving his children.

And maybe that was enough.

I sat on that bench for a long time before I headed back to the house. Dawn was just beginning to break over the horizon when I crossed the lawn.

Liz was sitting on the front porch.

“Hey,” I said, sitting down next to her.

“Maria’s asleep in the guest room,” she said softly, looking out over the lawn.

“What are you still doing up?” I asked.

She smiled.

“I was waiting for you,” she said simply.

“What for?” I asked.

“To say thank you for what you said to Zan,” she said. “And because I wanted to tell you that I’m glad you came.”

“Me too,” I said.

“Good,” she said, wrapping her arms around herself.

We listened to the first calls of the birds with the rising sun.

“Liz,” I said finally, “I’m sorry that you couldn’t have had your son in this lifetime.”

She turned toward me.

“But I do,” she said, leaning into my shoulder. “And I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Those simple words meant more to me than anything she could have said before or after that moment.

For the first time, I was at peace with things – myself, my life, and my family.

“Just one thing,” she said.

“Yeah?” I asked.

“Your baby is going to call me Liz, ok? I’m too young to be a grandmother,” she said.

The two of us laughed.

“Whatever,” I shrugged.

“Let’s go in and get some sleep,” she said, nudging me, and I followed her into the house.

She ushered me upstairs, leaving me at the door of the guestroom, bidding me goodnight with a quick hug.

I shut the door behind me, leaning against it, just watching Maria, curled up in the blankets, the early morning sun casting a golden glow on her features.

My lover, my wife, the mother of my child.

I crawled into bed beside her, fitting my body to hers, and she pulled my arm over her waist, wrapping it within hers.

“I love you,” I whispered.

“I love you too,” she answered sleepily, before sliding my hand down to her belly.

I could feel the stirrings of that tiny life, my daughter, tucked safely in her mother’s belly.

Life was good.

- End -

[nibbles2]

When Tequathisy told me that you were writing this fic I was so excited to see what you wrote. I think that her challenge was one of the best I've ever read. There's so many possibilties and ways the challenge could be explored.

I love what you did. I love the way Michael told his story to Zan. And what a story.

Thank you Tequathisy for sharing and thank you Majesty for writing this.

[tequathisy]

You already know that I think this fic rocks, but I just want to put it out there publically. Thank you for a wonderful fic. I love it.

[RhondaAnn]

This was a very well written story. The subject matter was kinda strange..., but very well written.

[insidious heart]

What a strangely brilliant story, thank you for sharing it with us.