that i might see

Max used to tell me that there was nothing that could ever get in the way of us, of the love that we had for each other. I used to tell him that he was wrong. I told him that what we thought was love was an illusion. A chimera that we created when we needed an explanation for the bond we felt after he saved my life.

He would argue that he had always loved me. Long before he even knew what his feelings meant, he'd had them.

I would tell him that he was lying to himself. I told him that I never loved him the way that he thought that he loved me.

There was nothing more that I wanted than to feel him in my arms, our heated skin pressed against each other's and that moment of completion when he finally sunk inside me. I wanted to make love to him, with him. I wanted to share everything with him.

When I dress and go downstairs to open the restaurant, my hands are shaking from lack of sleep and my eyes are heavy. But I'm not tired. The memories are keeping me awake.

I've tried for so long to not remember; facing the recall doesn't feel any better. Michael has faced his retrospection, where has it gotten him? Michael has made his memories part of him, mine fight to leave me.

I try not to think about Isabel's voice in the flashes, the way that she screamed for Michael. The way that all of their voices melded into one that sounded like hers but separated in shards of each of them. I try to forget that Alex howled her name as he watched her go first.

Max must have known something was wrong when he called everyone together that day. Before that, we had all slowly -- teeny inch by teeny inch -- begun to pull away from each other. It was exactly what we needed.

But he still so desperately loved me. Those days, it was Max I would hear on my rooftop some nights while I slept. And Max's eyes that I would feel searing into the back of my head as I flitted around the Crashdown like I do today. Like I do everyday.

They say love conquers all, but I know how wrong they are. Love conquers nothing. Unless you count the Earth. Or was it the entire Universe? I don't remember anymore.

I used to love the summer. I loved the windless air and the longer days and the way nobody had to wear sweaters and coats. I would put on a tank top and shorts and sit on my roof and watch the heat rise off the black tar street.

The summer air is thick. She looks around furtively before ducking into the blazing hot kitchen and moving close to him. His senses aren't tuned to her, he doesn't listen for her footsteps, he doesn't feel her near him.

Behind him, so close, she watches a drop of sweat ease its way down the back of his neck. Her hands are bolder than her heart. She traces it with her fingertip and he turns around, catches her with his hand. She steps closer.

She whispers his name so even he has to strain to hear her. She wets her lips.

He glances over his shoulder, through the order window, out into the cafe. No one is watching.

"You have to stop this, Liz. What if Maria..." He looks back again. No one is watching. Why would anyone watch?

"I don't care." But she looks too, and no one is watching. And she does care. But she knows what's more important.

She's not going to let him get by her this easily. It's getting easier. She's getting easier. He's making it easier.

"No, you don't." She's playing a little game with him, hoping that he'll play along. She thinks he likes it. She's watched the same cat and mouse thing between he and Maria for years. He likes to be chased and he likes to be caught. Like the scientist inside her, she has done her research and hypothesized and charted and planned.

The sweat drips again and she stands up on tip toes and snatches it from his skin with the tip of her tongue in a flash of pink. She feigns that she has any idea what she's doing. She pretends that the embarrassment isn't flushed hot in her cheeks. He doesn't move, his eyes plastered on the dining room. She reaches around him and presses her thumb and the side of her palm into his chest slowly, slight pressure increasing.

"Stop, Liz. Please." Her other hand presses against his thigh easing downward. They both watch over the dining room, eyes scanning the floor. Maria pays no attention to the kitchen. Why would she?

"No one's watching, Michael." She whispers into his ear and lashes her tongue out again. "No one can see."

"Yes." Yes. Completely. And entirely sane and entirely calculating and entirely screwed.

And she pulls back and away with a twirl and recedes to the floor. Her customers are waiting.

Another day, another few feet towards the grave. That's what we're all waiting for, right?

For some reason, even working can't seem to take over my thoughts today and I hate it. I'm used to coming down here and having nothing in there but air and orders and numbered tables. And I prefer it that way.

Before, I could measure the day in the steps that it took me to get from table to table, mentally trying to beat my own best and rerouting for the lesser count. Numbers flying through my brain and keeping it occupied. Today, the numbers and mathematics have failed me. Just when I need their comfort most.

Order up in the window. Deliver pie to table six, burger and chicken salad to twelve. Shortest distance between the two? Maria's twisted face and the way her vocal chords warbled when she screamed. How it almost sounded like singing when all of their voices meshed.

Michael described it as the most horrible sound he'd ever heard -- ever imagined hearing -- next to the sound of the granolith dying. Strange how I remember thinking that it was beautiful.

He blames us both. He's written it in exactly those words. But we had nothing to do with what happened. The only fault that is ours is that we weren't there and that we were too late to save them. Had we been able to save them at all.

If he wants to lay blame, he should blame Max for beginning without us. Without Michael. I don't want anyone's blame anymore, it's not mine to have. I was just trying to save the world.

Table ten needs more coffee. Mrs. Kingley needs her order taken. I need to go upstairs and lie down; my head is throbbing. The lunch rush will be over soon.

I've thought it all through now and I've made some decisions based on my memories and the glimpse I've had into Michael's. We couldn't have done anything. Had we been there, standing beside them in a circle around the stone, we would have surely been sliced to burnt bits too much like bacon right along with them.

They couldn't have avoided it; we couldn't have either. It's silly to think otherwise. I am not a superhero and, as much as he would like to think otherwise, neither is Michael.

For two hours before I came down here I sat on the edge of my bed and fingered the soft, torn edges of a page that Michael didn't want me to see. I wondered what he thought he needed to hold back. Handing over everything inside him that he could put down on thick paper, there was still something that he wanted to keep to secret for only himself.

With everything else that he's given me, I can't stop thinking about whatever it was that he kept. My selfishness makes whatever the missing detail is the most important thing. The one thing that could save both of us. Because nothing else here makes me think otherwise.

Two years ago tomorrow. Two years ago tomorrow. Two years ago tomorrow. Two years ago tomorrow. Two years ago tomorrow. Two years ago tomorrow. Two years ago tomorrow.

I skipped my appointment today. Really just didn't want to talk and there would have been too much to say. My caring doctor has left six messages.

She waits on his stairs knowing he'll be home soon and that he'll be alone. The manager in her knows how to grease the schedules, knows exactly where he will be and where Maria won't.

He slides up onto the curb and parks his bike beside the building, his helmet shielding his peripheral vision so he doesn't see her. But she knows that he's expecting her. After the amount of harassment she's been giving him, the not-so-subtle innuendo she's been floating his way and the way that she's taken every opportunity to touch him, there's no where else she would be.

His facade has cracked wide open. In a way, she thinks he's almost happy that she wants him. That he thinks she wants him.

He chains the helmet to his bike pretending to still not see her there, maybe working out whatever he's got to to see his way through this. She watches his slow movements, his hands winding the links around the wheel spokes and through the helmet's visor.

When he turns to face the building, he finally acknowledges her presence. It's not a frown, but it ain't no smile either. She feels her nervousness rise again.

She stands as he approaches, a sheepish smile on her apprehensive lips. This has become a neurotic game to her and she can only imagine what goes through his mind. Has he finally decided to want her? Has he realized that he has no choice?

When reaches her, he says nothing and opens the door holding it for her to enter. She keeps her mouth closed as well, glad that the words she prepared don't have to be used. She can save them up for later if she still needs them. Better to save up as much as possible.

She leads him to his own apartment and moves aside when they reach his door. His hand to the lock, the red glow as it snaps open. Veins standing out on the back of his palm betraying his calm. He never really looks at her. Over her and occasionally through her, but hardly at.

When the door is closed behind her and he leans his back against it, deep breaths rising his chest, she steps to him. One hand on each side of his face.

Michael has always been beautiful but that doesn't make any of this easier. Certainly doesn't make it right. There is no right here. But she lifts herself closer to him and touches her lips lightly to his feeling them part beneath her weight. He does nothing to encourage her but nothing to stop her.

Her heart thumps in her chest, her hands shake, her tongue slides into his mouth and moves slowly against his. She sees Maria's fiery eyes stare back at her behind her eyelids. She sees the hurt in Max's entire being.

Michael's body responds to her. She can feel that he tries to hold back but eventually his arms are around her waist and he presses his mouth harder against hers, their teeth fight an angry battle.

She remembers his words, so long ago. 'Thanks for giving me another reason to envy Max Evans.' She knew she could play that. She knew it would work. She knew that Michael always wanted everything Max had. Max has never really had everything.

When they break for air, she holds her hands out to him and leads him to the couch, backing him into it.

"Don't Michael. Don't ruin it." She eases herself onto his lap and crushes her lips to his again. It is hot. Desperation fosters passion. Fear urges forward motion.

She scratches and she bites careful to only leave light marks. Marks that will fade before she leaves him.

His eyes never lose the question. His hands travel her back, grip tight on the back of her neck. When the phone rings, he ignores it. When Maria's voice travels through the small apartment, that unmistakable lilt of conscious sexiness filling the air around them, they both pretend not to hear.

She's winning. She will save the Earth. Max will understand, years later, that she did love him and she did everything that she did, is doing, all for him. He will know that she hurt herself far more than he was ever hurt.

This saddens her, because he should be more than carrion for her teeth. He's not a bad person and he's never deserved this level of deception. But he's there for the slaughter, has left himself open for it.

And he's Max's best friend, almost his brother. The one and only person who can make Max really see, really see that she ultimately does not love him.

And if that means that she has to give Michael what Max should have been given, then so be it.

It was this hot that night two years ago and I didn't sleep that night either. But then I wasn't reliving old memories and letting the ghosts taunt me. Then I was making the ghosts. But not mine.

I've gotten through most of Michael's agitated scribblings. Each time I attempt to put them down, I pick them back up again. And my fingers go back to the torn away pages and I read on again, hoping that whatever he's kept hidden is alluded to somewhere else in the text.

It's better that he's left. I need to be alone tonight. All alone. With my thoughts, with his, with everything and nothing else.

With her eyes closed she can pretend that Michael is Max, but it doesn't work. Their skin feels different under the pads of her fingers. Their hair different as it scratches at her face as he bends his lips to her throat. Her responses are different, too.

When it had been Max, she knew what she was supposed to feel. Her responses were never planned, but they never shocked her. They were precisely as they should be. Her nipples peaking to the slide of his fingers across the silken wisp of her bra. That moisture between her legs as he cupped her face in his hands and lapped at her lips.

She had put so much planning and in-front-of-the-mirror rehearsal into this night and Michael was throwing everything off with... what? Passion? No, not passion. Never passion. Michael's lips move almost mechanically, as if he wants it over with as badly as she does.

But he doesn't know anything and, increasingly, neither does she. She lets her hands move less awkwardly over his shoulders and grasps the back of his neck pulling him harder closer deeper. Into her. She wants him as close as possible, her eyes crushed so tight that she can block him out. Pretend. Pretend. Pretend.

"Don't Liz. Don't ruin it." So he does know it's her. He doesn't pretend. She thinks?

She moves slightly back and takes his hand, rough fingers, under her shirt leading them blindly to her breast. To the clasp of her bra. Guiding his fingers to open it for her, her fingers laced through his and helping. Actually helping. Not Max. Michael. She knows it's wrong, but it's becoming more right. And it bothers her.

Her top bunches and wrinkles beside them after she takes it off. The bra hits the floor.

As his hands close over her and she settles harder into his lap, she tries her damnedest not to think of anything at all.

It will all be over soon, she thinks. But she doesn't know how right she is about that.

It's my turn to sit outside my own window and stare inside my empty room. My parents are asleep, Michael is where ever Michael goes and the rest of them are all dead and buried.

There were never any autopsies. Sheriff Valenti had made sure of it. After we had moved the bodies to Max's jeep and sent it at seventy miles an hour crashing through the side of the Supermarket, Michael and I disappeared back to his house and pretended for all the world that we had seen nothing.

The death certificates would show that the bodies were near unrecognizable. Near.

Phone records would show, if anyone looked, that the Sheriff had called to notify us. Him.

Phone records would also show a call from the Evans house, one hour and twenty-five minutes before the actual time of death. We hadn't heard the telephone; I had turned off the ringer and the sound on Michael's machine. So maybe it was my fault. I really don't care anymore.

I wasn't home to receive my call, but he left a message there as well. I still have the tape. The quality is worn and sounds pale and scratched, but you can still hear the despondency and anxiety in Max's voice calling me to the desert, to the chamber where they were born. He needed us.

What is the long run? I've always wondered about colloquialisms like that. They never make any sense. In the long run.

It's late. Later than she thought it would be. Almost midnight.

She gets caught up in the feeling of hands on her body, hands in places where only her own had ever been. She gets caught up in her own shame. And she remembers, distinctly, why she's there as her first orgasm with someone else in the room builds to a shivering crest.

They remain together though; legs entwined on his couch, the rough weave scraping her bare skin. And Michael's eyes, when they're open, scan everything except her.

They both feel the thickness in the air of everything she's not saying and everything that he's ignoring, and she knows it. She can taste his anger with himself on the back of her tongue.

But neither of them says anything and when it seems that the moment is going to come when one of them will break the silence, she leans in and kisses him again. It's better to just try and get through it. It's easier that way. And she's sparing him.

When will the door lock click open and one of the others will walk in on them? When will Michael fall so deeply into her trap that he has to tell someone? She hasn't thought it out this far, she realizes now.

The greatest betrayal is to make love to the man that is the love of your life's best friend. She's not ready for that just yet though.

But she's getting closer. And she's already given so much of herself to Michael that she should have saved for herself.

Should anyone's life really be filled with this type of over-dramatic science non-fiction?

He pulls away from her and looks back towards the room in question and she can't tell what he's thinking. That's painful in and of itself. Does he weigh her offer in terms of what's important to him or can he think with his nether regions like the rest of the world? Maybe if he stops thinking entirely, she can get them past this.

She leans into him once more, her lips softly brushing his and her tongue slipping between them to beat at his teeth. A low hum from deep in her chest tells him what she wants. She reiterates with her hand traveling his thigh and rubbing hard against the crotch of his pants.

"What's there to know about? I want you, Michael. Forget about everything else." It sounds straight from the pages of a cheap romance novel. It probably is.

Self-loathing is lovely. Self-loathing coats the roof of your mouth with sheer, viscous everything bad. Self-loathing rises and takes Michael's hand and pulls him up to standing. She leads him to his own room knowing she'll have no idea what to do once they get there.

They pass the telephone table and she catches him as he notices the blinking "2".

"Two messages?" He mumbles, dropping her hand. A cold draft wafts over her skin and she trembles; her skin rises up in goosebumps. Now aware of her toplessness, her almost bottomlessness.

The mechanical voice cuts through them both, Michael's finger on the volume dial.

--ou have two messages:
*beep*
"Michael. Where are you? We need to be at the pod chamber, all of us, together. Damnit. Where are you? I'm going to call Liz and Tess and then head out there with Isabel. Get there as soon as possible. Immediately. Michael... This is really important. Shit. Where are you?"

Michael looks at her then with something near tears in his eyes. Reads as guilt.

All she can think is how easy it's always been for Max to say her name and Tess' in one breath. It should have been harder. But then, if it was, she'd be at home nestled in her bed and not seducing Michael to save the world. And he would be with Tess. And everything would be fine. Or something.

"Let's go. It's only been twenty minutes since the call came. What can we tell them?" Michael paces, picking up bits of clothing and throwing them back on. Tossing her bits at her feet. "Come on. Shit."

"Maybe we shouldn't arrive together?" Her voice has a lilt to it. She pushes him.

"No, we'll think of something. I'll think of... something. Come on. Get dressed, damnit." Michael's voice is angry and agitated, his eyes flitting around the room and ignoring hers. He's put himself back together and looks as if his clothes were never wrinkled under him on the couch.

She sits behind him on the back of his dirtbike, her arms wrapped around his waist and her head buried in the crook of his neck. She's scared of the wind and the speed.

One, bright headlamp illuminating the dark back road to the desert, no one else around them.

She whispers into the rushing air, thin, mascara-ed tears running down her face and whooshing behind her. "I'm sorry..." And she is. Sorry.

They pull off the tarred road and head deeper into the desert. She lets her face dry in the cooling air rushing past her. He's mumbling into it, she can't make out the words.

"What are you doing?" She brushes her hair from her face and tucks it back under the helmet. Her eyes dart stealthily towards the area where the chamber is hidden and back towards his.

"Look. I just want to make something completely clear." His voice shakes and betrays the countenance he tries to hold tight. "Nothing happened between us. Nothing is going to happen between us and the only reason we're together is because you came over to help me with something. We're not going to explain anything to anyone and no one is going to ask any questions. Because everything is normal and it's not so strange that we're together. Got it?"

"Sure." She smirks at him and leans tighter into him on the small seat clutching him tighter with her thighs. "Nothing. Right."

She wants them to all know, she thinks that she couldn't have planned this any better. The marks from his teeth on her neck are dark and visible. And they will be, even in the dim light of the chamber. She'll tip her neck to them just to make sure that they see. She'll tip her body towards his and they'll know just where the bites came from.

Then, they'll know. Max will know. And he'll finally, finally, finally stop loving her because she betrayed him. She's stopped caring what it means to Michael's relationship with Max. They're practically brothers; Max will eventually get over it. They all will.

Maybe not Maria, but she hopes. And soon she'll finally leave Roswell and go to college and move on with her life putting all talk and memory of aliens behind her. The applications are stamped and ready and piled on her desk. It's only a matter of time. Not so much time.

When they creep through, there is just a split second. The look of both relief and confusion on Max's face as they start to enter, Isabel's smile as she sees us arrive. Then, the flash. And the beam cutting through the room, slicing through everything in its path in a circle around the granolith.

She's beneath Michael on the ground. And it's over. There's only smoke and stench and the memories of screams. It takes only a moment, but it seems like a lifetime. In slow motion.

She had seen all of their faces. She had heard the cacophony that was their voices in terror and pain. She had watched it all.

I had hoped that I would be able to sleep through the exact minute that would be their anniversary. I still remember how I got through this last year. Last year, I drank a bottle of my father's scotch and passed out in my bed. Missed it completely and hardly remembered the next day.

Fourteen steps back inside my bedroom and onto my bed. Pillows drown out nothing when everything is inside your head. No matter how tightly you clasp them to your ears.

And it's not about fault and it's not about blame and it's not about love. It's about life. And sometimes life just has to end. A scientist could tell you that, that some things just have a life expectancy of a certain amount of time. It goes no further than that. Some live a little longer, some a little shorter.

The life expectancy for a Liz Parker is surprisingly short. The life expectancy for a Liz Parker is twenty-one years.

It should be dramatic though, don't you think? It should be done with a certain amount of cinematic flair worthy of the melodrama I've put everyone around me through over the past two years minus two and a half hours.

I still have his knife. The one that I gave him that he gave back to me. The blade is still just sharp enough. Inscribed for him. Poetic, almost.

It should hurt, but it doesn't. Numb for so long. I slice in the correct direction, one wrist then the next and lie back on my bed; my head hits the pillow with a soft thud.

Surreal swirls of color and I can almost stop thinking of them. I forgive them. I forgive everything. I'll be forgiven.

The weakness in my body is the first sign that I've done anything at all. Words hard to form on my tongue bright bulb lamp drip drip darker bedroom better squinted through Venetian eyelashes. The roof is still lit with fairy lights burning candle.

It's soft. Not soft like a kitten. Soft like lips swallowing pressing breathing. I can feel it move. I can feel it breathe. Soon. Sticky.

My mind imagines Michael out past my window, his eyes sad and broken the way that they were when we watched the granolith self-destruct. Self-destruct. Self. Destruct. I plead with the image to let me go.