Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the characters. Just borrowing them. :)

Category: Michael and Maria

Rating:PG

Summery: While spending yet another sleepless night in the summer before his junior year, Michael Guerin decides to test out a power he’s never really used before – dreamwalking.

Warning: Spoilers to Destiny. Not Finished!! Hopefully it will be soon . . .

Roswell, New Mexico -- July 2000

At midnight, the small town of Roswell, New Mexico was eerily quiet. The moon was full overhead as Michael Guerin wandered through the silent streets, his footsteps echoing behind him. Loose wisps of clouds were caught in the circle of glowing white that surrounding the cratered orb. The wind carried a welcome chill, and Michael pulled his jacket tighter around his shoulders as he walked, oblivious to the direction his feet carried him as he was caught up in his thoughts.

It wasn’t just the cool night air that brought him out that night. Ever since school let out, he’d been plagued with insomnia that seemed to get worse as summer wore on. No, that wasn’t true, Michael amended. It got worse the longer he was away from her. It had been a month since Michael had walked away from Maria with no more of an explanation than this: He loved her too much. It had seemed like the right decision at the time, shaken as he was from the experience of killing a man. He’d felt like a ticking bomb that might go off any second and hurt her, which was the last thing in the world he’d ever want to do. Yet he’d done that anyway. He could see it in her eyes. Sometimes the truth hurt. And the truth was he needed her, more than he ever knew, and that was why he had to stay away from her. He couldn’t need her this much. He couldn’t. He didn’t need her. He didn’t! Maybe if he told himself that enough times one day he would believe it. Michael squeezed his eyes shut, and fought the emotion that made his throat ache and his heart tighten in his chest. And why is that Michael? a voice in his head asked him. Why? He loved her too much. He didn’t know it was possible to love someone that much. And that’s what scared him more than anything else.

He longed to forget what he knew he could not. He’d felt something with her that he’d never known before. Something that endangered him from the intense emotions she had awaken in him, dragging him fighting to a place that he never wanted to leave, a paradise that seemed as though it was balanced on the tip of a pin, captured in the silences of words unspoken. A place that might disappear at any given moment and prove to him once more that such strange and wonderful things as this love just don’t happen to people like him, reckless and scarred orphans who didn’t belong on this earth, who’d never known before what it was like to be held in the arms of someone who loved them.

He should have known better than that, Michael berated himself as he looked at where he now found himself. Of course he would end up right in front of her house. His feet knew where to go, even if the rest of him couldn’t figure it out. He would always find his way back to her, no matter how hard he tried to push her away.

Her green eyes didn’t stare back at him though the curtain of sparkling beads this time, but a dim light, a desk lamp, glowed through the darkness, and Michael saw movement inside. Despite himself, Michael moved closer. Maria was standing with her back to him, fingering something thoughtfully, but her slender body blocked his sight of the object she was staring at. Then she visibly stiffened, picking up the object and moving across to her dresser. She yanked open a top drawer and threw the object inside. She slammed it shut with a resounding thud. But that quick motion was enough for Michael to see what she had been looking at. It had been a napkin holder. Maria threw herself down on her bed, and Michael could swear he saw her shoulders quiver slightly. For a moment he was torn, but the old stonewall and fear of connections made him turn away, however reluctantly.

An hour later found him pacing across the living room floor in his apartment. The sleeplessness and agitation that had caused him to take that walk through the town had not yet left him. In fact, it was made worse by seeing Maria again, and the knowledge that she was unhappy because of him. His eyes fell upon a simple wooden frame that rested on a small table by the door. Beneath the glass was a picture of Max, Izzie and himself some carefree day last summer before all hell broke loose in more ways than one with the firing of a gun in a small café. But the image of his brother and sister weren’t what held his attention. Tucked in the very corner of the frame was a small wallet size picture of Maria. Michael doubted Maria even knew that he had a copy. They weren’t exactly friends the day that school pictures were being exchanged last year. Not that they were really friends now. Michael decided that their relationship was permanently stuck on ‘undefined.’

But still, the small image of Maria stared back at him, grinning broadly, green eyes sparkling. He picked it up. And then an idea came to him. So ridiculous that at first he laughed out loud. Maxwell and Izzie were the ones with all the skills when it came to using their powers, not Michael. Never Michael. He had been practicing with Nasedo and Tess for that last month . . . but that didn’t mean anything, Michael told himself fiercely. A month’s practice isn’t going to make him ready to dreamwalk, and that wasn’t going to help him with the impossible task of forgetting Maria. He laid the picture down again.

He went to the kitchen and pulled a cherry coke from the refrigerator. He pulled the tab on the can while reaching for a bottle of tabasco sauce. He shook the bottle a few times over the can and took a small swallow of the drink. He made a face. Still too sweet. He added some more tabasco sauce, and took another taste. Perfect. Clutching his coke in one hand and the bottle of tabasco sauce, just in case, in the other, Michael headed back to the living room.

He passed the photo.

Michael took a deep breath. “No,” he told himself sternly, and then felt like an idiot for talking to himself.

He plopped down on the couch and flipped on the television. Soon, he was surfing through the channels on his TV, trying to find something, anything, that would take his mind off Maria. His eyes strayed once more to the framed picture with the small photo in the corner. He shook his head and forced his eyes back on the television. A few seconds later he flipped it off. The small apartment was once more as silent as a tomb, and Michael couldn’t stand it.

A few strides took him to the table with the photograph. Just one try, he promised himself, reaching for Maria’s picture. He took it back to the couch and sat down.

Michael took a few deep breath as he clutched the picture and stared hard at it. Then, he held his breath, focusing every molecule of his body on Maria’s face and willing himself to get into her dreams. Nothing. With an audible whoosh, Michael let go of the breath he’d been holding.

“Damn it, this isn’t working!” Michael grumbled. How did Isabel do it? he wondered, thinking back on every conversation he’d ever had with Isabel about that power, but his mind wasn’t functioning from the lack of sleep he’d had lately. Michael yawned. How did Izzie do it?

Not one to give up easily, Michael tried again, forgetting his earlier promise to himself. He would do this. He would. Just . . . got to . . . focus. Michael yawned again. He rubbed his eyes, and ran his fingers through his hair. Okay. Maria. Maria sleeping. Maria’s dreams. Me with Maria. Michael squeezed his eyes shut for a moment as Maria’s face came in and out of focus. He stifled yet another yawn. Maria . . . sleeping . . . His eyes felt heavy, and he closed them before he could see the image of Maria rippling beneath his fingers. His head nodded over to the side.

To be continued . . .