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lady_bug_kay THE EXPLANATION: Did you ever have a guilty pleasure TV show you used to watch, back when you were much younger? And were you ever reminded of that show years later and got a crazy idea to slash it up? Yeah. That's what this is, and I make no apologies for it--either for writing it or for the fact that no one will read it. This is for me. Although if you want to read it, please do. LOL. I'm providing a quick recap/catch-up if you need or want it, though you can probably get by without it.
Title: After the End of the World
Author: ladybugkay
Fandom: Roswell
Pairing: Max/Michael
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1338
Spoilers: entire series, with specific reference to season 2's "The End of the World," and season 3's "Graduation."
Summary: They set out to save the world, but it turns out, they couldn't even save themselves.
Disclaimer: Jason Katims and 20th Century Fox own the rights. No copyright infringement is intended.
RECAP/CATCH-UP: If you want to read this, for whatever reason, but a) you never watched the show or have never even heard of it, or b) you watched it but don't remember a thing, under the cut is a (somewhat) quick recap of all you need to know to read this fic:
**Max, Michael, and Isabel are half-alien, half-human hybrids with certain ‘powers.’ Their ship crashed in
No one else knows about our alien trio, until the day a girl named Liz is shot and Max heals her. Max and Liz fall in love. Maria is Liz’s best friend, and she and Michael fall in love. (Convenient, no?) They all have various adventures fighting enemy aliens and the FBI, and learning about their past lives on another planet. A boy named Alex is also close friends with Liz and Maria, but he is killed (by yet another alien). Kyle is the sheriff’s son who becomes part of the gang and is also healed by Max, after which Kyle becomes a Buddhist and falls in (unrequited) love with Isabel—who gets married to a guy named Jesse, but that’s not important.
Because Max healed her, Liz develops her own powers, one of which is having visions of the future and people in trouble. In the last episode, evil government boys have figured out who/what they are and try to kill them, so Max, Liz, Michael, Maria, Isabel, and Kyle all take off in a van, with the intention of avoiding the law and using Liz’s visions to help people. And Max and Liz get married.
Oh, and in an episode entitled “The End of the World,” we find out that fourteen years in the future, in a big, prolonged battle against their alien enemies, Isabel and Michael die, although Max comes back in time to make certain changes to try to prevent that from happening.
That’s all you need to know. Whew!**
or skip to the fic...
After the End of the World
This time around, it’s Liz who dies first, and it happens much earlier.
A few months after the wedding, they’re out on what is by now a routine rescue and a stray bullet ricochets unexpectedly and lodges itself in her brain. She dies instantly. It’s devastatingly ironic that she never saw it coming, even with her new powers.
Max tries, the way he did with Alex, but like last time, it was never an option. Healing mortal wounds is still a far cry from bringing someone back from the dead, though it’s a lesson he hasn’t yet accepted, and in the end, Michael and Kyle have to knock him out and carry him away.
Isabel disposes of the body, because she has some idea of the lengths to which Max will go to keep trying to bring Liz back, and because she has more experience with getting rid of dead bodies than she ever thought she’d have, back when she was young and shallow.
Maria falls apart and doesn’t stop crying for three days.
Max doesn’t say a word.
He had always tried very hard not to think about the possibility of Liz dying, but in the darkest hours of the night when he couldn’t sleep, when death and discovery were crowding in around him and reality dug in its claws, he always thought she would die in some apocalyptic battle or at the hands of some overwhelming alien threat. He never anticipated a random bullet fired from a stolen gun by a desperate crackhead.
He hates himself for not considering the human angle.
Two weeks later, Maria gets out when they stop for gas and announces she is staying in whatever crappy little town they are in at the moment. She says, in the accusingly bitter voice that belongs only to her, that she has lost her two best friends to this ridiculous excuse of a life, and she’s done. She’s through with all of them. She doesn’t want anything more to do with aliens or special powers, and she certainly doesn’t want to watch anyone else she loves die needlessly.
She walks away without even once looking back, and Michael lets her go with a face that isn’t nearly as blank as he would want it to be. It’s a whimper of an ending to a relationship that was all about volatility.
And they are four, again. A different four, but four all the same, the way it seems they are destined to be.
Four sides of a square.
Until
Isabel is captured.
Max and Michael get her back without too much difficulty, but it isn’t until they are two states away that they realize that it wasn’t just easy, it was too easy. There is something in her blood, some infection or toxin or who the hell knows what, and it’s killing her. Max tries to heal her, a hundred different ways, again and again, without any effect. It leaves him weak and trembling each time, dying a little himself at losing someone else. Except that this time, it’s Isabel, and it’s worse than it was when he lost Liz, because Isabel is family and home in the kind of core-deep way that Liz never could be, in spite of all his grand poetic claims.
Michael hovers in the background, cursing and pacing, kicking walls and dragging his hands through his hair. Energy and motion with no place to go.
Kyle cries quietly and holds her hand, and Isabel dies with her head in Max’s lap.
Two days later, the national news reports a mysterious explosion in a government facility and the death of five federal agents; and two states away, the citizens of three counties are still huddled indoors hiding from the electrical storm raging outside, lightning arcing wildly across the sky.
They’re down to three and the alien invasion hasn’t even happened, yet.
Three blind mice.
Michael drives, now, making frequent checks in the rearview mirror to reassure himself that Max is still taking oxygen in and letting it out. He makes an executive decision to return to the desert, and they cross into
The first night back in the desert, they sleep under the stars. Max turns on his side, his back to both of them, still not speaking a word. Kyle sits with his arms around his knees and stares at the fire all through the night. He doesn’t say anything when Michael lies down behind Max and wraps his arms around him. When the sun rises, when the fire is nothing but ashes and Max has turned in his sleep and is clinging tightly to Michael, Kyle is still awake.
When Michael wakes, he smoothes his hand down the length of Max’s back before opening his eyes all the way and fixing Kyle with a glare.
Kyle raises both hands, half in innocence, half in self-defense, before muttering something about Buddha and tolerance, then painfully stretching his legs out in front of him.
Max sleeps on, for the first time in months, and Michael keeps his arms around him. After a while, Kyle stands and moves toward the car they traded the van in for months ago. He walks back with two bottles of water and a handful of granola bars, leaves them on the ground beside Michael, and starts walking. He has no idea where he’s going, but he needs to move, and there is something happening here that is necessary, but which requires no witness. He walks.
Max wakes slowly. He can see the sun behind his closed eyelids, but the first thing he sees when he opens his eyes is Michael’s face. It’s closer than he expected. It’s closer to him than anyone has been in months, in almost a year—a year since Liz’s heart stopped and he felt like his had, too.
Michael looks at him, easy and familiar the way he’s always been. He is Michael, and he is Max’s best and oldest friend, and he has always been there. His eyes are warm and calm, absent of any judgment or accusation. Max doesn’t remember when the expectation in them went away; when the last time was that Michael and everyone else trusted him to know what to do, to make all the right decisions and take all the responsibility. All he knows is that it isn’t there, now.
That isn’t what Max sees in the eyes staring back at him, now.
He has lost so many people he loves, so many people who meant home to him, and he has never felt safe, not once since he crawled out of that pod all those years ago. He’s been running and hiding and fighting, and it never stops. He’s been the one in charge of it all, the leader, the king, the voice of reason; the one who stepped up and stood firm, holding back the tide to let everyone else get away.
But lying here, now, he feels safe. Tangled up in the arms of the one person who is still here after all this time, who loves him and looks after him and will never walk away from him, Max Evans feels safe.
He closes his eyes against the bright light of day, wrap his arms tighter around the person he loves best in all the world, and lets everything else fall away.
“Michael.”
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