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Late for the Sky	By : ibshafer Category: M through R > Roswell Views: 1840 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Roswell, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

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Title: Late for the Sky

Chapter: 1/4

Author: ibshafer

Category: Max/Liz (with some great Michael/Maria thrown in!)

Rating: R (light)

Summary: Heavy AU future fic. This story was written between seasons 1

and 2, before the Skins, before Tess's betrayal, before Michael and Isabel

lost respect for Max. It was written with Liz's sacrifice -- Max's destiny

over her own happiness -- in mind. Most of the characters are involved

(including Friggin' Eddie!), but I am a Dreamer first and foremost. . .

Though not originally intended, the story has a pretty strong Candy

storyline, as well. Maria just wouldn't be ignored or down played. <g>

Author's Note: This story appeared in the first issue of the Roswell

fanzine, Late for the Sky. [© 2000 MadSeasonPress]

Now the words had all been spoken

And somehow the feeling still wasn't right

And still we continued on through the night

Tracing our steps from the beginning

Until they vanished into the air

Trying to understand

How our lives had lead us there
Looking hard into your eyes

There was nobody I'd ever known

Such an empty surprise

To feel so alone

— Jackson Browne, Late for the Sky
*
The end came, not with a bang, not with a whimper, but with the tortured sound of tires squealing
on wet pavement and the frantic tattoo of a semi’s horn cutting the silence of the New Mexican
night. . .
*
Max was heading back from covering a brush fire just south of Albuquerque, when the garbled
message from Isabel came in over the Cherokee’s on-board computer. He winced at the transmission
noise and made a mental note to have the techs at the reservation lab take another look at it. The unit
was still pretty buggy and at this point in the Confrontation, he needed to be able to depend on his
communications system more than ever.
It had been ten years since they’d gone into hiding. Ten years since their first interactions with the
Others. And while they knew Max and his people were in New Mexico, they couldn’t get a bead on
where.
That anonymity was due, in no small part, to the work of the team they’d assembled. He, Isabel and
Michael owed the Apache a rather large debt of gratitude.
Max heard his stomach growl, instantly sorry he’d passed by that roadside stand outside of Mesa
twenty minutes ago. Popping a piece of gum in his mouth to stave off the pangs, he stifled a yawn.
Man, am I tired.
Forcing his eyes open wider, he cranked down the window in the ancient 4x4, hoping the blast of
cool night air would revive him. He massaged his forehead with a free hand, sparing a few moments
to reflect on the challenge of his life.
The whole dual-existence thing had worn thin years ago. Working. Fighting. If he could have gotten
his editor to take him off this fire story or quit his job entirely, he would have.
Before Nasedo had been killed (in the end, it turned out he could die), he’d managed to stockpile a
fair amount of money for them. It hadn’t lasted long, but at least it had helped them establish their
base on the Mesaliko. Max’s press pass had gained him access to all sorts of useful information and
spared him from having to explain his interest. Somehow he’d managed these past 10 years (God,
was it 10 years already?) to hold down a job and fight for his very life.
They all had.
They’d had no choice.
And it would all be over soon. One way or the other.
A signal from the com let him know when the decryption was done. Punching up the translate filter,
he waited for the audio, then froze when it came through.
“—get there as soon as you can, Max!” Isabel’s normally smooth tones were stressed, not just from
the connection. “. . .I tried to stop him --- --- know how he is --- --- took off before --- could get a
message to you.”

A map popped up on the tiny monitor, showing a flashing marker, outside of Roswell. He was just
north of town now, heading south on 285.

Flooring the accelerator, Max one-hand-typed a quick note back to Isabel telling her he’d meet her
there in thirty minutes. . .

*

Less than half an hour later, he hit traffic piling up on Route 285. Sitting behind a dump truck with
bad exhaust, Max sat chewing the cuticles of his left hand and trying not to panic. Something felt
bad here. In the pit of his stomach, something felt very, very bad. . .
He was about to take a walk up ahead to see what the delay was, when he saw Isabel run past him
on the shoulder.
“Izzy!” he called out the window after her, but she was too far ahead and didn’t hear him. Taking
a second to grab his press pass, he jumped from the truck and followed the line of cars south. Once
away from the noise of the idling dump truck, he could hear the troopers’ radios. Then the telltale
flashing blue lights came into view and the stone cold feeling went from bad to worse.
It’s just an accident, he told himself, at a full-out run now. People have accidents all the time. It
doesn’t mean it’s him.
Nearer to the accident scene, he got glimpses, through the rescue workers and their machinery, of
the drama unfolding ahead—glimpses that told him nobody was walking away from this one.
The ache in his belly suddenly became more tangible, doubling him over abruptly. It traveled on to
his head where it threatened to explode his skull.
Shit. Shit. Shit. . . This is not good. . . The throbbing in his head had him on his knees, one hand out
to steady himself. It could be him. . . He would have been here by now. He could be—
The pain was like a huge, hungry animal, all teeth and hot breath. It grabbed him around the middle,
holding him in a death grip. In his mind’s eye, he saw the blood pouring to the ground, saw his
insides now outside. Saw it all over. . .
With his eyes screwed shut against the agony, he didn’t see the State Trooper until he was at his side.
“Hey, buddy, you all right? You catch some exhaust?”
There was a hand on his shoulder now and it seemed to draw him back from the brink of whatever
it was, forcing the beast to unclamp its jaws and step away. The throbbing began to ease up, as if the
animal had changed its mind about its meal and was moving back down the road, towards the
accident and the noise and the obvious death there.
When Max opened his eyes it was to a familiar face regarding him intently, recognition blooming
there almost instantly.
“Ken Clark! You covering this territory again?” the trooper said, stooping to help him up. “You all
right? What happened?”
“Just a migraine,” Max mumbled, forcing a pained smile onto his face and still massaging his
temple. The pseudonym was so deeply ingrained that he hadn’t even flinched. “Wayne Roscoe,” he
said with as much normalcy as he could muster, offering his free hand to the man. “Haven’t seen you
in a while. How are you?”
The trooper grimaced. “Had better nights, let me tell you.” He nodded behind him to the accident
scene. “Not a pretty sight back there.”
“Any ID yet on the victims?” Max asked, trying to keep the edge out of his voice. To support the
reporter-on-the-beat ruse, he fished out his mini-recorder and switched it on.
Roscoe shook his head. “Not yet . . . I think it’s gonna take dentals, though, if you ask me. The fire
was pretty hot. That Mercedes ain’t nothin’ but slag now. . .”
Max blinked in surprise, covered quickly. “Did you say it was a Mercedes?”
“Yup. Big mother, too. Diesel SUV, M series. Nice ride.” He shrugged. “Didn’t stand a chance
against that semi, though.” Roscoe’s radio sparked to life. He answered it briefly in clipped
tones, then excused himself to return to the accident site.

Max shivered, pulling his jacket closer around him.
A Mercedes 400 ML.
Hell, lots of people drove Mercedes. Not so many of them out here in the New Mexican wilderness,
but people with money were always passing through on their way to other places. Reno. Las Vegas.
Los Angeles.
Still, a Mercedes SUV.
There had been reports over the last few weeks of Marcus and his three aids getting closer to them.
Trying to pick up their “scent.” In a black Mercedes SUV. Searching. . . . And then Michael had run
off after they’d gotten word tonight. Max knew that everyone in the com center would have tried to
convince him to wait. Wait until they could all be together. To face them together.
They were stronger together.
While the pain in his head had miraculously disappeared, the cold hard feeling in his gut was back.
Michael had been here. He was sure of it. Was he here when it happened? Was he. . .
He looked up and saw Isabel frantically hanging back in the crowd of on-lookers, clearly in agony
and he took off running, at her side in seconds. “Iz,” he whispered as she fell into his arms.

She clung to him, distraught, breathless. “He wouldn’t listen to me! I kept telling him this was just
what Marcus wanted. To hit us when we were apart. When you weren’t here.” She wiped at her face,
at the tears already streaking her cheeks. “He was convinced they were heading straight for us. To
the rez. And he said he could stop them.” She spared a look over her shoulder to the fire, still
burning, barely under control. Softly, she swore, something Max had noticed she’d learned to do
since this had all begun. “I can’t see anything in there. . . I can’t see if his bike is. . . . If it’s. . .” She
nodded at Roscoe. “Did Wayne mention a . . . a motorcycle involved in the accident?”
“No, he didn’t.” He squeezed her arm. “Stay here. I’ll go ask—”
“Wait! What’s that on the shoulder?” She was pointing now, up on her toes, trying to see around
the chaos. “Is that a Harley?”
But Max was already gone. And she wasn’t far behind.
They found Michael sitting on the pavement next to his bike, rocking back and forth slowly as he
watched the flames, his gaze fixed and intent.

“Michael?” Max whispered, shaking him gently when he got no response. He knelt at Michael’s side.
“Michael? What happened here? Was it. . .”
“It’s all over, Maxwell,” Michael said, his voice so soft they could barely hear him.
Max shot a glance to Isabel, whose eyes widened as she nodded.
“Didn’t you feel it? Don’t you know?” Michael was smiling now, but his eyes never left the fire.
“It’s done. It’s over. . .” He finally looked away from the wreckage. “You know, don’t you?” He
turned to Isabel. “Izzy? I saw you—it almost knocked you to the ground.”
Isabel was nodding. “The pain. . .” she whispered.
In shock, Max dropped to the shoulder beside Michael, his expression blank. “I. . . I thought it was.
. . I thought it was you.”
Michael smiled now, with a growing ease. “You haven’t been there for as many of them as I have.
That’s what it feels like when they die. The energy sticks around for a lot longer, too. Like it can’t
leave until it hits everyone.” He shivered, perhaps remembering something. Max suspected he was
thinking about Tess. “We . . . we feel different. Bad, but not as. . .”
“Michael, what happened here?” Isabel was studying his face intently. “Did you . . . did you?” She
motioned with her head towards the wreckage.
“Didn’t have to,” Michael said, softly. “That semi beat me to it. . .” His smile grew faintly ironic.
“Sort of anti-climatic, don’t you think?”
Max blinked at the chaos, seeing the vain efforts of the fire fighters, knowing that not even dentals
would help identify what would be left when the fire was all out.
The information refused to sink in. This war they had been fighting had begun before any of them
had been born—this time anyway. It had been raging for so long, it was like a thing that would
always just Be, a thing they’d never really believed would ever end. And now it had.

With no one left to fight there would be no war. At least, not here on Earth. . .
Inside, in that place in his gut where the beast had grabbed him, Max knew that it was true. He
closed his eyes and searched elsewhere—for the subtle vibrations that set them and their enemies
apart from the rest of Earth’s population. He felt only Isabel’s warmth and Michael’s barely
contained energy. Nothing more.
He looked to his sister and to his friend—to his family—and he knew the barely registering
understanding he saw there echoed his own. At the corners of mouths and eyes he could see a hint
of the relief starting to blossom. Grabbing the nearest hand (Michael’s) and giving it a knowing
squeeze, he watched that ease begin to grow. He caught his sister’s eye, holding her gaze and
smiling. Nodded in understanding.
It was over.
*

Eddie and the others were waiting when they returned to the reservation. A bonfire was lit in the
main compound and drums beat out an insistent song of celebration. Had River Dog still been with
them, he would no doubt have been leading a chant in the sweat lodge. After so many years of
fighting and hardship, the relief and the joy they all now felt was a palpable thing, like fragrant
smoke drifting through the cool night air.

Breathless from the dance, Eddie met them as they drove up. “You’re sure of this?” he asked, and
when Isabel nodded, he grabbed her in a fierce hug and spun her around the parking lot.

Max smiled at the freedom in her laughter. It was a sound he hadn’t heard since they’d been children.
Before realization and reality had set in. Before she’d lost Alex to the Confrontation. And their
parents. Before so many other painful and devastating things had happened.

He let his gaze linger until Eddie carried his sister into the shadows, then he headed towards camp.

Allowing himself to be drawn into the circle of celebrants, Max exchanged smiles and relieved hugs
with everyone around him. These people had taken them in, made this fight their own and, in the
end, become family. He, Isabel and Michael owed the tribe a debt that could never be repaid.

Through the haze of smoke, Max could just see Michael, sitting outside the crush of dancers, staring
intently into the burning column of logs and scrap wood, a look of slowly dawning wonder on his
face. He was only alone for a moment, though, before a pack of his young art students, flushed and
breathless, rushed over and dragged him, only mildly resisting, back into the celebration, each
holding a hand or a shirt tail. Michael hefted the smallest of them onto his shoulder while another
attached himself to Michael’s leg.

Max watched in amusement as the Michael/kid creature made its lumbering way into the circle,
watched the joy and abandon reflected in Michael’s face and too, saw the genuine warmth and relief
he shared openly with the tribe—all brought to wondrous, glowing life by the dancing flames.

So many changes in Michael.

So many changes in them all. . .

The celebration at his back, Max found his way to an empty picnic table and sat silently, trying to
take it all in.

Marcus and his aides were dead. He, Isabel and Michael had felt them die. Felt it and understood it,
both in a way no human being could. The shift in energy, the painful release, the irreversible
movement of spirit from earth to sky. Like the soul’s passage to heaven, Max mused, feeling both
the influence of his Apache brethren and his Christian upbringing.

More like its banishment to Hell. . .

His people had no concept of Heaven and Hell, at least not as Nasedo had taught it, but Max was as
much human as he was alien and his morality worked from human models of right and wrong, sin
and retribution. If there was a controlling Being in this Universe, if there was any justice at
all—Marcus and his minions were in Hell right now. For what they’d done to his people. For the
deaths, both human and alien, they’d brought about here on Earth.

May they roast in Hell.

May they return to the Sun.

Amen.

With that “return,” the Confrontation was over.

They'd come to call it that early on, when it became apparent that these others had no interest in talk
or peace or of allowing them their lives here. The Others' only purpose was to search them out and
destroy them. And so he, Isabel, Michael and Tess, as unprepared as they'd been in the beginning,
had had no other choice but to do the same. With Nasedo's help, and later, the help of the Apache
on the Mesaliko, they'd grown stronger and smarter and sadly, more and more skilled at this business
of war.
Not without their losses, though. Not without their deaths.
It had begun nearly ten years ago, with a singular and devastating event that had woken them from
the false sense of security their presumed anonymity had given them.
It had begun, and Max noted the irony here, with a fire. . .
He and Isabel were attending NMU, both studying journalism; he print, she photo. A press pass and
a nom de plume. Too open an invitation to pass up, Max said. Legitimate and justifiable reason for
asking questions. For traveling around the country. For following leads. For, hopefully, gathering
information that would help them find the Others.
Home on Spring Break, they’d spent a desolate evening at the Crashdown with Alex, who had tried
to organize a sort of reunion. Sadly, things had not gone as planned and definitely not as Max had
hoped; it had just been the three of them. Michael, working over Break, was still in Colorado. Liz
was home, but not feeling well and Maria had stayed upstairs to take care of her. They’d eaten a half-hearted meal, Max had wasted his time with Mr. Parker and made a pointless trip to Liz’s balcony,
and then they’d left.
They didn’t hear the sirens until they got closer to home. And when they turned onto their street and
saw the fire engines and ambulances, there was no question in either's mind where the fire was.

There were no coincidences in their lives.
Frantic, they rushed the road block, desperate to find their parents alive and well and standing
outside watching the blaze that was consuming their home. The thick smoke, the night's darkness,
and the crush of machinery and men obscured their view of the blaze, but they knew what lay beyond
that hellish, almost purple glow; the one place that had truly been home to them and the man and
woman who had stepped forward to become the only parents they had ever known.
Once Isabel spotted the Lincoln County Coroner’s van, their desperation to find their parents, to find
them alive, became extreme. About to make a dash through an opening line of firefighters, they were
stopped by Jim Valenti who seemed just as frantic to stop them from getting any nearer the scene.
Not to shield them from the sight, devastating though it was.
To shield them from being seen.
Jim had managed to drag them toward his truck and something about the intensity in his eyes, and
a pain on his face that seemed to echo their own, made them get inside and listen to what he had to
say. That blaze had been set to kill them, he said, and for them to get away safely, for them to survive
to fight another day, they must remain “dead.”
Valenti had gone on to explain how he’d arrived on the scene first, how he’d noticed a strangeness
to the blaze—the way it seemed to have consumed only one room, at first anyway, leaving the rest
of the house untouched. There was something odd about the fire itself. Brighter than he’d ever seen.
And the color of it; blueish red. An eery shade of purple. The firefighters hadn’t noticed, they were
too busy trying to put it out, but to Jim Valenti, it sent up all sorts of warning flags.
It wasn't natural. . .
Knowing what he knew, it took him only moments to put the pieces together. He saw the Jeep in the
driveway and his heart sank. The Others had found Max and Isabel; learned their true identities.
They’d located the house the two lived in and known they'd be home on Spring Break. Seeing Max's
Jeep in the driveway and believing that meant he and Isabel were in the house, they’d set the blaze
thinking to kill them in one.
And until Jim had seen them desperately trying to break through the line of firefighters, he’d
believed they’d succeeded. Because he was ignorant of the same single fact that the Others had been.
They had not seen the dead starter in the Jeep. The one that had forced Max and Isabel to take their
mother's car into town.
Max fought back a familiar wave of guilt at the memory of another fire, a kitchen fire, and of his
mother begging him to tell her something, anything, because on some level she’d known. She’d
known there was something unusual and possibly frightening about her quiet, sensitive son. And
he’d refused her. Begged her to understand his silence. Promised that it wasn’t anything bad. Then
he’d gone back to Isabel and stuck to his conviction that their parents remain in the dark. He’d
comforted her and reassured himself that this silence was for the best. That it was safer for all of
them if their parents never knew the truth.
And now they were dead.
Something they’d known nothing about had killed them. Something he and Isabel might have been
able to protect them from if they’d had the foresight. If they’d just trusted their parents to love them
enough. If only they’d believed in the reality of the threat. If only. . .
That day began a lifetime of “if only’s.”
Like Tess. Max had failed her, too.

Oh, God, Tess. I’m so sorry. . .

On nights when he couldn’t sleep, hers was often the story that tortured him.

She’d come to them lost, her only wishes to find a place to belong and to reclaim what she believed
was already hers; his love. His soul. When she found him, though, his soul already belonged to Liz.
It was irrevocably, achingly, perhaps disastrously melded to hers. To Liz. Try though Tess might, in
word and deed, to remind him of their former selves, their former claims to one another, she could
not change what had already been changed inside of him. He simply belonged to someone else now.
Even when Liz stepped aside, in the name of his destiny, his devotion to her would never waver.
Even as the years passed.
Tess never gave up trying to prove, to remind, to convince him she was all that he needed. And when
the enemy was close at hand and she saw her chance at last, she set off to fight alone, to protect the
people she’d come to love—to perform an act meant to show, once and for all, her true value. An
act that would make him realize and finally understand her love for him. To make him love her. To
make them all love her. But she failed.
The Others had killed her, instead. Michael, who had followed her to Carlsbad where the Others
were camping, saw to it they paid for her death.
In all else, though, she had succeeded
He knew her value. Had, in fact, always known it. Resourceful and dedicated, her single-minded
devotion to their fight, unencumbered by earthly ties, made her the perfect warrior. Her training by
Nasedo, ten years greater than theirs, showed her command of her powers to be smooth and intuitive.
And he did know that she loved him. Though he fought that love and fought against the
predetermination of it, the blind and mindless acceptance that was expected of him, he did
understand it. And he did love her—as a member of his team, as a member of his family—which was
not as she wanted.
Her presence was, through no fault of her own, a reminder of what his life could not be. Of what,
of whom, he could not have.
Liz. . .
And though he knew it was futile and he’d tried to fight it, to section her away in a dusty part of his
memory, he had no doubt that the void in his heart and his tacit and reluctant acceptance of why,
colored his every interaction with Tess.
She died believing her life had somehow robbed him of his.
Michael had said he’d held her as she’d passed on. He heard her last confessions of love and regret
and he made promises to let her go that night. To make no attempt at rebirth, as would have been
their custom. Tess had begged Michael not to consign her to another life without Max’s love. She
begged him to let it end.

Michael had rocked her gently as her life had ebbed from this existence. After she’d died, after the
gut-wrenching pain that marked her passing had released its hold on him, he had dug a hole in the
hard New Mexican soil, lowered her gently into it, and after saying Grace, the only prayer he knew,
he covered her with dirt.

It was several days before Michael returned to the reservation and even more before he related all
that had happened. Max and Isabel had been so relieved to see him ride into the compound, dusty
from the highway and far more quiet than usual, they’d let him go without pressing him too hard.
He’d radioed from the road that Tess was gone. The rest would come soon, in endless sessions
around similar fires, the broad expanse of the universe dark and shimmering above them. . .

That was over eight years ago and the memory and the pain had neither dimmed nor dulled for any
of them. That bitter chapter of their lives was ending and a new one was about to begin. Would it
be any less difficult? What was there left for them to sacrifice?
From his picnic table vantage point, Max searched out Michael, dancing breathlessly with a group
of young men. It took him a moment longer to spot Isabel. In spite of the drums’ insistent rhythms,
she and Eddie were holding each other close, moving gently in a slow dance. Even from this
distance, Max could see what they were feeling written in their body language. Their eyes were
locked together and Eddie’s hands were woven into Isabel’s hair. He knew exactly what they were
doing.
They were memorizing each other’s faces.
For the day was coming. Very soon. The day when he, Michael and Isabel would be leaving.
There was still a war to be fought.
At home.

- tbc…
- 1
- 2
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Late for the Sky