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Lachesis sings of the things that were, Clotho those that are, and Atropus the things that are to be. He's been everywhere and nowhere and now he's back in Roswell. When he was younger, he would have railed against that. His entire life, reduced to a desert town that is mocked for its fascination with everything that he supposedly is. It used to make him uncomfortable--did those who made it so he ended up on Earth know that he would end up in Roswell? Did they know what the town would be? Did they have a glimpse of the future and find it all funny? That thought used to anger him, the thought that his fate could have been a joke to someone, something, somewhere. Ha, ha, guess where those kids ended up? Good one, huh? But apparently time confers maturity on even aliens. He's grown up. He has some gray in his hair now, and he's ok with the fact that maybe it was all a joke. John once told him that the way he figured it, life was pretty much something that you could make what you wanted. There is at least humor in a joke, and it serves a purpose of sorts. He can live with that. Roswell isn't the same. He didn't think it would be but it's even more changed than he expected. The UFO Museum has expanded, mushrooming into the space where The Crashdown used to be. The Evans' house is now owned by a couple that seems to feel that paint is a luxury. The Old Chisholm Trail Trailer Park is now a golf course. He has three stops to make. Which one to make first? All three are important. In the end, he decides to just go in order. Three stops, just three. Three is a number he is familiar with. It seems to have figured prominently in his life--all the patterns of it are clearer to him now that he's lived a larger part of it. Three isn't a bad number or a good number. It's just a number, but it's his number. He almost got a tattoo of it once, but in the end decided that it was already on him in so many ways that marking it wasn't really necessary. Besides, he'd never really liked needles all that much. ** He's lived in three places. Roswell, New Mexico. Rutland, Vermont. Randall, Virginia. Three R's. Always three, isn't it? He left Roswell when he was nineteen. Going overseas or even to Canada or Mexico was never really an option for him--how would he have gotten a passport, gotten across the border? And he still distrusts the government with a cold fear born mostly of dreams that never happened and experiences that weren't his. He traveled around the United States for a few years. His first stop was the West Coast, which seemed to be divided into areas of extreme wealth and grinding poverty. He never found a middle ground, though he supposes there is one. There always is. He just missed it and didn't care to linger long enough to find it. The Midwest, with its brutal summer and winters, was next. Too extreme for him, though he developed a healthy respect for anyone who could live through winters that seemed like they would never end and summers that were mostly full of baked ground and relentless sun. The East Coast was his final stop and he ended up in Vermont by chance. He was on his way to New Hampshire, actually--he was planning on going to see Max, who was in graduate school at Dartmouth. But he never quite got there. He stopped in Vermont for a day and ended up there for six years. He stopped in Rutland, Vermont to get a soda. But his car gave out and the guy at the garage said it would take a day or so to fix. So he resigned himself fairly cheerfully to a brief stop and set out to find a place to stay. All the bed and breakfasts in town were filled up with people who'd journeyed to see fall in Vermont and the guy in the garage felt sorry for him and took him to his mother's house. His mother's name was Pam and she made furniture. She made rocking chairs and only rocking chairs. They were very nice chairs and she believed him when he said he had experience working with wood. He was just telling her a story--he'd gotten good at that over the years, had gotten so he could tell anyone anything and smile at the end. Stories, he'd found, were just about the best means of conversation there were. He embellished the napkin holder story a little--made it many napkin holders instead of one and she told him she was looking for help. He said sure because it seemed like a sign and he figured it would just be a slight delay before he went to see Max. He was always good at delaying. Pam was in her 60s and she had a very calm way about her. He liked that. She had long silver hair that she never wore up and it always had wood shavings in it. He liked that too--she looked like one of those story-book illustrations of a witch. She laughed when he told her that and said "Your idea of flattery is going to keep you single for a long, long time Michael." He told her he supposed it would. He got to be very good at making chairs and even better at selling them. The secret wasn't the chairs themselves, though they were very fine chairs that never creaked and rocked gently. The secret to selling the chairs was selling a dream. Pam lived and worked in a ramshackle old farmhouse full of old-fashioned charm and it sucked the tourists in and spat them out with lighter wallets. He learned that it was the idea of the chair--the idea of a peaceful place to sit; the idea of owning something from an easier, simpler time--that's what appealed to people. Pam nodded when he told her that. "That's right. The past is always held up as an ideal and that's what I'm really selling. It's the notion that once people had time to sit down and rock in a chair for a while. They forget that sometimes that was all you could do." It took him a while to figure out what she meant by that, but when he did, he felt a lot better about his life in general. Idealizing the what-ifs is a lot easier than really living, and he'd been a master of imagination. In another world, he mattered. In another world, he had it all. But everybody thought like that. He didn't feel so alienated after he realized this. He told Pam about it and although she looked at him curiously (he was laughing over using the word alienated in a sentence) she agreed and told him everybody needed something to dream about. "That's just human nature." Alien nature too, he thought, and then another couple came into the store and he went to sell them a dream of their own. He was in Vermont for six years and he left the state with sadness. Pam's so-called arthritis got worse--her bones hurt her all the time and no matter what she did or what the doctors said, it never got better. He knew she had cancer--he could tell just by looking at her--but he didn't even consider trying to heal her. Pam was a strong believer in fate and by that time he'd come to respect her. He just tried to make sure that she rested and was happy. He came downstairs one morning and she was sitting at the kitchen table, her hands folded in front of her. She liked to start her day looking out the window at the sun. "Praying to the dawn" is how she always described it and he liked the sound of that. He started the water for coffee and asked her how many orders they had to finish that day. She didn't answer and when he went over to the table he noticed that her eyes were fixed and sightless. There was a smile on her face and he was glad she'd left looking out the window. She always liked the view from the kitchen. He stayed for the funeral and helped her son box up her stuff. She left him all the stock in the shop and he shipped the chairs to New Mexico, to Max. He figured that Max would keep them safe and maybe he'd understand why he'd been so delayed in his visit all those years ago. ** He didn't go back to Roswell, though he thought about it. He called Max and they talked about it and he made vague promises. He went south and thought about life in a southern state--staying somewhere full of deep accents and secrets. He ended up in southern Virginia. The accents in southern Virginia aren't truly Southern--there are none of the endless vowel sounds, just a slight lengthening. He stopped because he'd gotten lost; he didn't think he'd end up staying. He was supposed to go to Williamsburg--Alex was there for a conference and Michael had promised to meet him--but he got lost driving around on the back roads and ended up stopping to ask for directions. Another welcome delay. He didn't get a secret to unravel in Virginia, but he got peace and he figures that's actually better. He stayed for twelve years. Twice the length of Vermont and another number divisible by three. Three is definitely his number. John would say he should play it in the lottery, but he isn't sure if New Mexico even has a lottery and besides, what would money give him? The forest was what drew him to Virginia. He'd stopped at John's house because it reminded him of Pam's--it was old and ramshackle--but also because even from the road he could see that behind the fields was a huge expanse of forest. He loved looking at the forest from the long back lawn of John's house--all that green, so tall, so lasting. John was kind about the forest--he didn't mention that trees are only eternal in the sense that when they are gone, sometimes other trees grow up in the spot where they stood. He never mentioned the paper mill down the road, and Michael always managed to ignore it. After he'd been there a few months, he asked John if he could go out with him when he checked the fields so he could finally go into the forest. John shrugged and they went. The fields were long and shallow and empty of anything except grass and hay and cattle, although later soybeans would be planted and Michael would learn that soybeans, raw soybeans, had almost no taste. The cattle were a surprise--they were slow and they smelled and Michael could find nothing lovable about them. John laughed when Michael said that, told him "I figure no one ever wants to talk about how bad animals stink, Mickey. What would be the fun of that?" John was the only person he'd ever *let* call him Mickey. John had a brother named Michael who'd died in 1976--killed in a motorcycle accident, and Michael knew that John still missed him. He was John's re-born Mickey, in a sense. He didn't mind that. He understood it. And John didn't ask for much. They'd gotten to the end of the fields and there was the forest Michael had stared at every day. Up close, it was dizzying green--endless vistas of forever green. He hopped off the tractor and walked into the forest. It was disappointing. Up close, all the green separated into piles of scrub brush and briars and dead leaves covered with moss. Up close, the trees were fighting for space, their branches tangling with each other as they reached towards the sky. "Up close" John told him, smoking a cigarette, his red shirt glinting dully in the sun. "Up close, nothing is ever quite the way you pictured it. I reckon that's God idea of a joke, don't you think?" Michael nodded and John gave one of his almost-smiles. He had thin lips and his teeth were large and strong, stained yellow by nicotine. Sometimes Michael though about sharing a little of his life with John--of telling him stories of Roswell and his three, but he figured that John wouldn't have been impressed. John was the only person he ever met who didn't want stories. If Michael had wanted to use his powers to fix the broken tractor, John just would have pointed out that there were worse breakages out there, in the world, and it would have been a shame to waste ability on something that just needed to have a bolt tightened. Michael figured he finally understood what that meant, and let John fix all the equipment. There was magic in that, itself. ** Sometimes tourists came by the house. Not often--John lived in the part of the state that was near precisely nothing, and the only tourists they got were the lost kind. Bewildered, confused by the network of unmarked back roads that wound around in circles and looped past tiny houses surrounded by large fields. They always wanted to get away and Michael figured it was because John's world didn't come wrapped in a pretty dream like Pam's did. There was work in John's world, work and a rhythm that was a little too close to the Earth for most people. Two months before he left, they'd gotten a typical visit. A family, lost. "We're trying to find Williamsburg?" Michael smiled and they looked vaguely alarmed--a man in a plaid shirt and old jeans, just smiling--what does he know that we don't? They were reassured by John who could always assume the air that everyone not from the South thinks that Southerners have--polite, deferential, a little slow. John drew a map for them and made all those endless back roads accessible, knowable. Drivable. The couple nodded and thanked and made polite comments about the weather. They had a little girl with them and she looked out at the fields, which were stubbled with soybeans and cows in the back pasture, which was fallow for a while to let the soil heal. The mother asked, hesitantly, if they could go and take a picture of the cows because their daughter wanted them to and John said sure and went to put on his work boots. The adults stared at the boots--surprised perhaps by all the mud on them. But the soil in southern Virginia has a lot of clay in it and clay makes excellent mud. Michael learned the hard way to actually lace and tie his shoes. Mud soaking into your shoes while you are out in the fields is no fun. The family and John marched off into the fields and Michael went inside to call Myrtle, who lived down the street and was expecting John to show up and take her to town for her doctor's visit. Myrtle was a cousin of some sort--the family ties in the area were complex and thick and Michael could never keep track of John's endless array of mostly elderly cousins who all made Jell-O dishes thick with marshmallows and complained softly. The father and mother's faces were both wan when they got back up to the house. All the grass and dirt and smell of the Earth--a heavy smell that can be overwhelming--it was sometimes a shock to people who'd only seen nature in a carefully manicured suburban or park setting. The little girl was smiling though and Michael heard her ask John, "Don't the cows get bored out there all day? What do they do?" He heard John's slow reply, which was the cows were happy to do what they were supposed to do and that they really just wanted food to eat and water to drink and the little girl nodded, satisfied. The parents looked less impressed but Michael figured that was typical. When he was younger he wouldn't have understood either, but he'd learned a lot over the years. If the cows had been clean and shiny and suitable for postcards, they would have been a dream, and the parents would have been happy. What they wanted was for the cows to want their dream too. But the little girl was still young enough to see that dreams are whatever you want them to be and sometimes, some dreams are a little different. The family got back in their car, a large shiny sports utility vehicle that gleamed with care and wax, and drove off. "Hope they wiped their feet off before they got in that car of theirs" John muttered. "It'd be a damn shame to get mud all over it." Michael sighed and went to get a glass of water and let John worry properly about the car. It was John's way, to care about the little things that no one else ever noticed. He came in after a few minutes and they went to get Myrtle. It turned out that her hip wasn't healing properly and the doctor wanted to admit her to the hospital. Michael went and called all the church ladies for her and greeted them when they came to visit. They brought sturdy green plants and stayed to visit with Myrtle for a few minutes while he and John hovered and listened and waited to sign forms. That was his time in Virginia. It was gentle and slow and he liked it. It wasn't a dream you could sell, but it was a dream with its own gentle rhythm. He got the call in October and he'd known it was coming. He could feel it coming; he could almost hear Roswell calling him, waiting for him. John answered the phone and handed it to him silently. He listened while Max spoke and knew it was time for him to go back. John drove him to the airport and dropped him off out front. He shook Michael's hand with grave solemnity and Michael actually wanted to hug him. But he didn't want to embarrass John so he told him to tell Myrtle that he was sorry he'd miss seeing her come home from the hospital and that he was pretty sure he'd left the tractor key on the table next to the phone. He flew to Chicago and got off the plane to wait for the one that would take him to Albuquerque where a rental car that Max had paid for would be waiting. He felt the pull of the city--the pull of another place--who would he meet if he stayed and what would he learn? It was tempting, but in the end, the pull of Roswell was stronger and he boarded the plane to New Mexico. When he landed, the air in New Mexico was a shock--it wasn't as weightless and clean as he thought it would be, as he remembered; but the car was as generic and as unadorned as he'd expected so he figured it all balanced out. And now he is in Roswell and he has three stops to make. Then the rest of his life will unfold. It always does and he doesn't worry about that anymore. ** Isabel-- Lachesis Isabel was the one he loved first. She was his first memory, really. Her and Max, waiting for him in the desert. "Come on, come with us. Michael, I'll wait. I'll remember." He didn't go with them of course, and that haunted him for a while. But he went with them later and even found the courage to go off on his own. He thinks Isabel was proud of him for that. He'd always loved her. As a boy, he'd loved her with a fierce worship. She was his protector--when he first came to school she stood up for him and listened as he recited real and imagined slights. She always gave him birthday presents and clucked over all his hurts. She listened to his dreams of home and never embroidered her own onto them, never did more than let him see that his dreams weren't her own. As he got older his love for her shifted a little. He still loved her for her fierce protection but he also loved her because she was always the voice of reason. He didn't always listen--he rarely did in fact, but he still loved her for trying. He loved her because she was as radiant and as glowing inside as she was on the outside and because her desire to keep him safe was the only mothering he'd ever known. Then he began to dream of what they had been to each other and it rounded out his love for her. Once, he was a different Michael and the Michael he had been had loved the Isabel she had been with a passion that risked a life he had never had for her. The discovery of that past love frightened them. What were they supposed to do when their past selves clamored for something that had never really been an issue for their present selves? Once, he decided that he wanted to understand who he was. He kissed her as his real self and discovered that he loved her still. And she kissed him back and loved him. Being with her was memory--past ghosts living in them and remembering. He knew what she wanted without asking and the times he had with her were memories. A glimpse of who he'd been and sometimes, who he thought he wanted to be. After a while, they both realized that who they used to be, as important as it was, was nothing compared to who they were then. He took her out into the desert and they bid farewell to the past. He touched the girl he loved and the shadow of the woman he'd worshipped and imprinted himself onto her soul. She'd done the same and he felt the tug of it for years. A vision of her skin under his mouth. The memory of the scent of her hair. A dream of a child; their child. In another world, it was all he wanted. In this one, a few shining moments and the memories were enough for both of them. She cried when he left, but more out of worry than anything else. She, of all of them, his three; she knew how reckless he could be. It meant a lot to him that she still loved him anyway. He finds the house and parks his beige boring car. He knocks on the door and waits. Alex opens it and smiles at him. "Hey Michael." Michael returns the greeting and Alex invites him inside. "I'll call her down. Hold on a second. Diane!" There is silence and Alex tries again. "Diane!" There is more silence and then an exasperated noise. "Daddy! I'm on the phone!" Alex walks upstairs and Michael smiles. It will be nice to see Isabel's legacy. Diane comes rolling downstairs, all the exuberance of her youth expressed in the quick stomp of her feet on the stairs. She is a part of Isabel that he has never seen--she was born well after he was gone and Isabel didn't live long enough to see her grow, so he felt that he had to wait till he was called. She doesn't look much like Isabel until she smiles and then he is reminded, strongly of her. "Is this Uncle Michael?" Alex has followed Diane downstairs and nods. She sits down and tells him hello and tells him that Alex has spoken of him. He tells her a few stories and watches her responses. She looks nothing like Alex, but then, how could she? Isabel was always one for surprises and Michael wonders how Alex coped with the fact that the child she died giving birth to wasn't his. Diane leaves after thirty minutes--she's young and assumes that Michael will be back, later. And when he isn't, it won't bother her. The memory of her mother is always with her, Michael is sure of that. Isabel chose well with Alex. He could understand everything Isabel did, even the things that she didn't understand and he will love her forever, without hesitation. "Does she know?" he asks Alex. Alex smiles at Michael. "Of course she does. She was turning walls red when she was mad even as a baby." Michael nods because he has the answer to his question. Diane has the blue eyes of her father, and Michael wonders if Jim Valenti died knowing that he'd left a part of himself behind. Probably not. Isabel, out of all of them, had a heart that was hidden and guarded well, and he has a feeling that Jim probably never knew quite how much she loved him, never knew quite how much Isabel felt she owed him. He talks to Alex for a while and meets his wife. Her name is Angela and she has a radiant smile and clearly adores her husband. Michael is happy to see that, and tells Alex he'll be back. Alex smiles at him and Michael knows Alex is aware that he won't be back and has already forgiven him for his lie. "She always told me you'd come back," he tells Michael when they are walking out to Michael's car. Michael nods at that. Alex looks up at the sky for a moment and then at Michael. "I'm glad you got to meet Diane." "I am too." And he is glad. Glad that Alex and Isabel's love created a world safe for Diane to grow up in, glad that Isabel loved wisely enough in the end. Glad that his love for her and hers for him was only part of her life and that she spun herself a world without him in it. Isabel always loved him and he always loved her, and it was a smooth kind of love and it was a celebration of the past that carried over into the present in a way that gifted both of them. He has to get going. There are two more stops he will make and they are calling him. Alex surprises him by hugging him and Michael gets a quick wash of Alex's contentment, the aura of peace that surrounds him. He gets in his car and heads off towards his second stop, which waits just down the road. He wonders if she is expecting him and suspects that she probably is. ** Liz-- Clotho Liz was the one he loved the most intensely. When he was younger, he hated her role in his life. He wanted it to be reserved for Tess. He wanted Tess to be one of the most important people in his life; he wanted her to shape his destiny. But Tess, as much as he cared for her--she never had the impact that Liz did. He hated Liz and he loved her. He hated her because she started a string of events that changed Max's life and Isabel's life and even his life. He hated her because she was kind and gentle and had a way about her that made it impossible to keep her out. He loved her because she offered him a sweetness that no one else ever did. She offered an understanding that no one else ever gave him, she asked for nothing of him. She wormed her way into his life and his heart so easily. He used to hate her for that too. But his hate for her was really a shell and he suspects that she probably always knew that. She had a way about her. A way of calm quiet and easy acceptance that irritated him and fascinated him. At first, his relationship with her was defined by Max. Max loved her so Michael looked out for her as best he could. But his emotions--when he was younger, they were ragged and sore and he could never keep them in--sometimes they would spill over, change; grow. His fear at her growing role in his life, in Max's life; it let him to do things, say things, and his feelings for her bloomed. He used to be ashamed of what he felt for her, which was another sign of how much he was drawn to her. His love for her was messy and complicated and it never fit into the neat category of "acquaintance" that he wanted it to be. When Max tried to find his own way, when Max turned his back on his love for her, Michael wasn't sure if he was happy or sad. He was still working in the Crashdown at the time--he was still in high school, and Liz was a fixed part of his life. He thought it was just because of work, and it was only later that he was able to admit to himself that he could have gotten another job. Maria would have understood. It was just that he worried that Liz wouldn't. There were three times with Liz. It was those three times that made him sure that she was one of his three. Three again. He felt it should have been Tess--wasn't she family, after all? But he wasn't that sorry about it, and he isn't sorry at all now. Who is he to say what love is or should be? The first time with Liz, the first time he had an inkling of the love he had for her, of the role she would play in making him who he is--it was when Max was on a "destiny" kick. He had them once in a while. Max always felt an obligation to someone or something and it took him years to learn that the only obligation he needed to fulfill was the one to himself. It was fall and Max was gone and Liz was being stoic and brave and she was bothering Michael. He wished she would just get angry and get over it, but she never did. She probably always knew that Max would come back to her. But one night--it was in October; a month that is surely his as well--and the two of them were closing the Crashdown. He'd finished cleaning the grill and was watching her scrub the counters. She was rubbing her back and she looked a little sad, like she almost always did. He went and helped her clean the counters and she thanked him. They went in the back--he wanted to get his coat, and she was going upstairs--and she told him "Goodnight" in that solemn owl voice of hers. He touched her without thinking, sliding his hand around the back of her neck, cupping the skin there gently. Her belief in herself, in Max--it was so strong. He didn't ever want her to lose that. He kissed her quietly and loved her a little more than he did before. She tasted like soda and apples and her hand was cold when it rested against his face. It was over in a moment, but he thought about it for weeks, years afterwards. Liz had a way about her. The second time, which is when he learned that she was as human as he could be, was in the summer. She and Max were together again and that moment in October was something he thought she'd long forgotten. It was August; sticky and moist and the heat had turned the kitchen of the Crashdown into an oven. He was standing there, in the back, sweating and hoping that he wouldn't have to cook any more food and she came into the back. Max was out in the restaurant, waiting for her. She was leaving early to go to the movies with him or something. He'd seen her out front, with Max, right before. Max kissed her and she'd leaned into him, all her love for him reflected in the way her arms rested around him lightly, knowingly. She pulled away and smiled at Max, and Michael had watched entranced, as she came into the back. She went to put her headband down on the counter and he watched the smile on her face, the swing of her hair, the way her nipples pressed against the front of her uniform. She was a promise then, a promise of love and want and happy endings and Michael wanted her so badly that he imagined going to her and supplicating himself, asking for a little of the bliss she carried with her. She noticed him as she was heading back out to Max and the look in her eye--that clear, joyful desire--she let him share that look, she showed him that love could be a satisfying thing. And for that, he loved her a little more. The third time, and the time that sealed her role in his life, was in the spring. They were all supposedly going to graduate soon. Michael never actually graduated, but he never minded about that. They were all out in the desert one day, talking about the future and their plans and he'd sat silently as everyone recited what they wanted to do, what they hoped they'd do. He sat silent and terrified because he realized he had come to expect a certain pattern to his life, to his days, and they were going to change. Liz noticed that. She came to see him that night, at his apartment. She didn't pretend that she was there about Max or anything else. She just came and told him that he would always be with them, no matter where they went or what they did. He shouted at her and said terrible things. She listened to him and let him snarl and rage and when he was done she took his hand in hers and told him that she was glad that she was a part of his life. No one had ever said that to him before. He sat on the sofa that Mr. Evans had given to him the day he'd been given the freedom and responsibility to make his own way in the world and she wrapped her arms around him. She held him and there was a wave of emotions coming off her--tangled, sticky and so human, and he opened himself up to all of them, to all that she offered him. She gave him the strength he needed to face the changes that were coming, and he will love her forever because of it. He stops his car at a stucco house on a block filled with stucco houses. This is Max's dream. A nice house in a nice neighborhood on a quiet street. It's a dream that a lot of humans have, and Michael is finally able to realize that for Max, this life is his dream. He is able to accept that--that Max's dreams aren't the same as his. He is able to understand. Max comes out of the house first and Michael gets out of the car. They look at each other in silence for a moment. "Michael." "Max." "How are you?" "Ok. How are you?" "Fine" Silence. Max shifts a little, uneasy. When he was younger, this would have been Michael's nightmare. He and Max with nothing to say to each other, nothing to argue about. Max was the person he depended on. Max was, he thought, the key to finding out who he was. Now he knows that he simply has something in common with Max, a fluke of the universe and alien genetics and a shared past. Max is not who he is, and he doesn't have to try to be him. He can just be Michael. "Where are all the chairs I sent you? Don't tell me you gave them all away." Max smiles at that and Michael relaxes. Max understands too. "Come on inside" Max tells him. "Let me show you around." He doesn't see Liz until the end of the house tour. The house is nice--quiet and soothing and full of tiny loving touches. They have no children and he suspects that the lack of them is the only grief in Max and Liz's life. But he knows they are both strong enough to cope with it. Max smiles at Liz when she walks into the living room and Michael watches as she stretches up on tiptoe to kiss Max's cheek. "Tim called about that proposal. Sounded important." Max excuses himself to go make a call; a business call. Max's dream, Michael thinks--to be utterly normal, utterly human. Max has found what he always wanted. He smiles at Liz. She sits down next to him on the sofa, leans over and takes his hand in hers. She smiles at him. "I'm glad you came." she tells him. He squeezes her hand and lets himself feel the love she has for Max, for him, for the world. He leans over and kisses her cheek; allowing the scent of her skin wash over him. "So am I," he whispers to her. They sit in quiet, comfortable silence for a few minutes until he is ready, until he has gathered his courage for his final stop. She walks him to the door and tells him that Main Street has been blocked off because of construction. He gives her a hug and whispers his love to her. "Does Max know how lucky he is?" There are tears in her eyes when he pulls away and gets in his car but she merely says, "Drive safely." He waves to her after he backs down the driveway and watches her standing in the driveway from his rearview mirror. He looks forward, at the road ahead of him, when he can't see her in the distance anymore. One stop left. It won't take him long to get there. ** Maria-- Atropus Maria was the one he loved too much. He fell in love with her in a motel off Route 285 and he didn't expect it. He didn't ever expect to find someone that he could love, really love. He loved Isabel and Liz for reasons; he loved them for ideas and principles and for complicated things that he sometimes puzzled over. But he loved Maria just because she was Maria and it terrified him. His love for her had no definition, no reason. It just was. And he loved her endlessly for that alone; he loved her just because he could, because he did. He thought that he would never find someone who could understand his dreams of what he wanted; he never thought he could find someone who would want him enough to put up with him. But Maria did. She loved him. She loved him too much, because she put her dreams of what she wanted on hold for him. She wanted--oh, she wanted them to be a pair, she wanted them to be something like Max and Liz. She wanted them to have meaningful glances and shared memories and little jokes that all couples had. He wanted that too, but he had no idea how to give her that. And more than her dreams, he wanted his own. And when he was younger, his dream was only to find out where he was from and to return there. He saw no future on Earth because he didn't want one. But he loved Maria too much to let her go, so he held onto his dreams and tried to give her hers. He tried in a hundred different ways, he tried and he usually failed. It upset him, that he could never give her exactly what she wanted. It hurt him that she stayed anyway because he always felt that she knew she could do better. He knew she stayed because she loved him so much that she put her dreams on hold for his and he was young enough to be glad because of that. One October morning--high school was over, and Maria was living with him--he woke up and realized he was killing her. She was going to college and working and she was tired all the time and she seemed sad sometimes. He would come home from work or a day spent searching for more clues to who he was and where he was from and he find her sitting at the kitchen table staring at her hands. She would look up and smile but what was in her eyes scared him. He woke up one morning, one October morning, and looked at her while she slept. She used to fall asleep with a smile on her face and wake up bouncing and joyous and content. Now he was no longer sure what she looked like when she fell asleep (when did he start taking those smiles for granted?) and in the morning her steps were slower and her smile never quite reached her eyes. His dream wasn't hers, but she stayed anyway. She knew that what she wanted wasn't what he wanted and she put her wishes on hold because she loved him. He looked at her that morning, looked at her drawn face, noticed that there was a sad cast to her mouth, that she slept with her hands curled into fists and her body drawn up tight and he thought he was killing her. He loved her too much, and he was ruining her life because he wasn't letting her live it. He reached over and touched her hair. She shifted and looked at him sleepily. "What is it?" She always knew when change was coming. "Maria," he told her, and he couldn't look at her why he spoke; he knew that if he did, he would stop and he would take her in his arms and she would welcome him and he would let her and the light in her eyes would dim more as she forgot her dreams and just lived for his. And how could he do that to her? What kind of love would he be giving her? "You deserve more than this, than me. You deserve to be happy. You should get what you want instead of waiting for me to find what I want. I'm leaving Roswell, today. And I don't want you to come with me." He turned and looked at her then and she cried and told him she loved him and that she didn't understand why he didn't believe in them more. And if he'd listened to her words he might have cracked and stayed and broken her open more. But he looked into her eyes instead and he saw a glimmer of something there. It might have been hope, it might have been fear. But it was hers, and he wanted her to have it. He said good-bye to everyone, gave and received hugs, wiped Isabel's tears away, told Liz he'd be careful. He held Maria and told he loved her and that when he came back, he wanted to see her happy. And then he left Roswell and went to find his dream. ** Maria lives outside Roswell. Not too far out of town, just on the edges of it. She lives in a strange house; a hodgepodge of windows and wood and he can see that it was built with care and love and he guesses that her husband probably had it built just for her, that he sat down with her and listened and built what she wanted because he loves her and he wanted her to have her dream. He parks his car on the street and walks up the driveway. He looks for a doorbell and realizes there isn't one. Instead there's a knocker, a strange bronze piece that looks like it was made by an amateur metal-smith. He smiles. Amy DeLuca must have another hobby. He knocks on the door and waits. After a moment, it opens and Michael is face to face with the man who has given Maria her dream. "We just came home from the hospital a few days ago." Kyle tells him. "But I guess you probably knew that." No hello, no greeting. Michael smiles. Kyle is as guarded and as prickly as he always was and he feels a shadow of resentment that he carried for the boy that Kyle once was, the sheriff's son. He never wanted Kyle to be a part of their group but he yet ended up in it anyway. "Hello, Kyle." Kyle snorts. "Whatever. Maria is in the back." He opens the door and Michael walks inside. "She's down the hall. Last door on the right." Michael starts to walk down the hallway. "Hey. Michael." He turns back to look at Kyle. "She'll be glad to see you." Kyle offers up hesitantly. A peace offering. A recognition of the role Michael once played in Maria's life. He smiles at Kyle and the shadow he carries flees. Kyle loves Maria, he has given her the dream she wanted, and it is what Michael has wanted for her, what he could never give her. "Thanks." Maria is sitting in a rocking chair. It is one of the chairs that he made at Pam's, years ago, when he first started really working with wood. He can tell because one of the rockers tilts a little. She doesn't look surprised to see him at all. She just smiles at him. "Hello, Michael." "Hey." "This is Janet," she tells him. She lifts the baby up towards him, and Michael hold out his arms, takes Janet cautiously, carefully. The baby is red and tiny and its eyes are closed. He sees nothing of Maria or Kyle in her but he looks at Maria's tired and radiant face and says, "She has your nose." Maria laughs. "You've gotten a lot better at being polite, Michael. A couple of people have said that to me. But you know what? I don't think she looks like Kyle or me. I think she just looks like Janet." He grins at her. "Ok, yeah." She stands up he hands Janet to her. She bends and presses a kiss to her daughter's forehead and puts her in a crib. Maria motions for him to follow her, and they leave the room. He sneaks a quick look at Janet right before the door closes. He sees a tiny hand resting against a blanket and he feels a surge of love for someone he doesn't even know, someone who will always carry a little piece of Maria inside her. Maria taps him on the shoulder and he looks at her. "I have something for you. Hold on a second." He stands there, in the hallway outside Janet's room, looking at the carpeting on the floor, marveling at the world that Maria and Kyle have created for themselves. "This is yours," she tells him, and he looks at her, a little startled. "I thought you might want it someday, so I saved it." It's the communicator. Its surface is smooth and polished and he once felt that who he was rested inside it, he once felt that it held all the answers he needed. He runs his hand along the orb and realizes that the only secret it guards is all that is left of the boy he once was. The sphere is silent; it has no messages, no answers for him anymore. "Thanks," he tells her. Kyle comes into the hallway and walks over to Maria. He looks at her for a moment and what he sees in her face reassures him, relaxes him. "She's sleeping?" Maria nods. "Yep. Finally." Kyle sighs and reaches out, touches her shoulder. "I gotta finish working on the car. Call me if you need anything, ok. And don't lift anything or pick up anything or..." "Honey," Maria says. "I'll be careful, I promise. But I'll take you up on that offer when the bathrooms need to be cleaned." Kyle laughs and walks back down the hallway, whistling a little. Maria looks over at Michael. "Come on in the kitchen" she tells him. "I think we have food. The neighbors brought over a ton of stuff because they all know that Kyle can't cook." "I heard that!" Kyle's voice floats down the hallway and Maria grins. Michael sees her smile and remembers the girl she once was. He is glad to see that girl's smile again. ** In the kitchen, Maria tells him to sit down and he does, watches her as she fixes a plate of food and brings it over to him. He starts to eat and she snaps her fingers. "Wait! I almost forgot." He looks at her and she goes over to the counter and comes back with a bottle of Tabasco sauce. She smiles at him and he takes the bottle from her, dumps some of the sauce on his food. "Thanks." They talk while he eats. She teaches music at the elementary school and Michael listens, fascinated, as she tells him stories about her students and her life. He tells her about Pam and John and his flight to New Mexico. He finishes eating and she leans over and touches his hand. For a moment, time falls away and he's a boy again, sitting in his apartment, waiting for her to speak as they eat cereal together in the morning. What will she ask him? What will she want? Will he be able to do what she asks or will he only try a little because it will keep her with him and he can't let her go? "Are you happy Michael?" She used to ask him that question once in a while. He sometimes said no, he sometimes said maybe, and towards the end, he always said yes and never felt that he meant it. "Yes," he tells her, and he smiles because for the first time ever, he means it. He finally sees that she only wants his happiness and nothing more. She looks down at their hands for a moment and then back up at him. "You were right, you know. What you said all those years ago--about how I deserved more, about how I deserved to be happy. About how I deserved to get what I wanted instead of following you while you tried to figure out what you wanted. I just thought you should know that." He curls his fingers around hers and leans in. Up close, age has started its march across her features. There is a little gray in her hair, and there are tiny lines radiating out from the corner of her eyes. She isn't the girl she was, and he isn't the boy he used to be. "Thank you." Once he loved her too much, and she loved him too much. But he's lucky--she's found what she's wanted and he can see her dream reflected in her eyes, he can smell it in the warmth of this home, her home. He can see it in the way she looks at her husband, who has just come back into the kitchen. Kyle looks at their hands and smiles. "Thank God someone is finally eating that casserole that Mrs. Davis brought over." Michael laughs and tells them that he's got to go. Kyle says, "Glad you stopped by" and Michael thinks he actually means it. He shakes Kyle's hand and the three of them walk to the door. Maria walks down the driveway with him and stops at her mailbox. "Michael?" He turns to look at her. She smiles at him, hesitantly. "You forgot something." She holds her hand out and the orb blinks up at him. He takes it and looks at it for a moment. "Thanks." She nods and looks at his car. "Ugh! This is terrible. Let me guess, Max rented it for you." He laughs and she grins at him. He gets in his car and drives away, watching her in the rearview mirror. Kyle comes down the driveway and reaches his hand out towards her. She takes it and the two of them walk back to the house, their house, where their daughter sleeps. ** He drives out into the desert. It used to be his favorite place. It was his first memory, and it was, he thought, his only connection to his home, his real home. His only connection to his dream. He used to picture himself in the desert, waiting for an armada of spaceships to arrive, and then farewell to the sand, to the Earth, and then, finally, a journey to where he was supposed to be. He parks his car and walks out into the desert. The sand is more slippery than he expected--he is used to the firm soil in Virginia and the desert is not as familiar as it once was. He smiles at the thought. He places the orb on the sand and looks at it for a moment. He raises his hand a little and the sand shifts, stirs. It moves over the orb, sinks it into the ground. Maybe one day someone who needs it will find it. Maybe it will just lie there, resting in silence forever. Maybe...maybe it doesn't matter. He sits down on the ground, the warmth of the sand soaking into his body. He listens to all the quiet of the Earth. Its arms are open to him, and it calls to him, whispers "home." It is home. He is home. It is his dream and he finally realizes it. He finally sees it. He finally understands. THE END |