Title: Max
Author: Maggie
E-mail: dmclapp@strato.net
Rating: PG-13
Category: M/L
Disclaimer: Roswell is owned by 20th Century Fox, Jason Katims and the rest of TPTB, and Melinda Metz. Dont sue me please.
MAX
He sat quietly, as he always did when it rained, watching the drops
as they ran helter skelter down the glass, merging, splitting, sometimes staying, mostly dancing away. Max Evans had a thing about the rain. It seemed to him that the most important events of his life had been decided in the rain. Rain on window panes…..windows, always separating him from what he wanted; what he needed to be human. And that’s all he’d ever wanted, just to be human.
Looking back, he remembered wanting to shatter the glass, flail his fists against it until his hands bled. But, as always, intellect won out over emotion and he has just stood, defeated and alone, watching his world fall apart through the glass.
He had stood outside the Crashdown, staring through the glass. Staring at what he wanted, like a kid at the candystore, knowing it was forbidden, making it all the more tantalizing. Her face, her smile, the body offering to make him real. Going through the door never helped. It just made him realize that he could never have the one thing he craved,
Everytime he hurt; everytime he was afraid; everytime he had no answer, he ran to her, to the glass. She always let him in. She told him the same thing, everytime. "You aren’t God, Max. You can’t fix it because it doesn’t need to be fixed. It’s out of your hands, Max." He heard her. She was right, but he always felt the need to try. He saved people’s lives but he couldn’t save his own.
He had gone to her in the rain one night. The night he now thought of as the beginning of the end. Told her she was the one he was supposed to be with, that it was fate they were together. He had promised her, sworn there would never be anyone else; that he would never be with anyone else. He told her that Tess meant nothing; that he felt nothing, less than nothing for her.
And then, had gone out into the rain, that damn rain and kissed her. Kissed the one thing that could drive them apart. He had hugged Liz one minute and then kissed Tess the next. What was wrong with him? He wanted to run back inside and hold Liz, tell her what had happened but he knew even the rain couldn’t wash away the guilt. He had gone to Michael and it had been the beginning of the end of their tenuous relationship. Michael never really trusted him again. Tess was ruining them all.
They had taken him, done unspeakable things to his body, things he would never tell, but she had kept him alive, the thought of her kept him from going insane as they probed and tortured his body, tried to slither into his mind. "Maybe we’ll start with Liz," Pierce had murmured. She was all he had
as he fought to stay alive.
When they found him, when they dragged him out and she helped him run, he had tried to tell her, tried to make her understand that she was everything to him; that no matter how long he lived, she was his destiny; that he only wanted to be with her.
The day in the cave, the day he knew in his soul that he had lost her; the day he had to look at Tess, it hadn’t been raining anywhere but in his heart. Tess? He didn’t want Tess. He would never want her. There was no comparison……..it was like a sick joke.
He tried his best, but his best wasn’t good enough. He tried to will her back by the pure strength of his love, his wanting but she just fought him. He screamed at her in the dead of night in the middle of the street. "Has everything I’ve felt been a lie?" She didn’t answer.
He had stood outside her window, watched her naked, the look on her face tearing out his heart. He had wanted to crawl through the window, scream at them, rail about betrayal, but he hadn’t. She had told him to leave her alone.
He hadn’t, couldn’t believe it……..not til that moment when the world crashed around his feet. She was his world……….he, apparently, was not hers.
Tess had come to him, as he had tried to think of ways to kill himself. She had touched his shoulder hesitantly. "Do you want me to go?" He tried to focus his eyes and all he could feel was pain. "No," he had mumbled. He didn’t care what she did. But he needed to talk to someone and the one person he needed was in bed with Kyle.
He wanted nothing. He felt nothing. Everytime it rained, he stood out in it, hoping it would wash away the pain. Confusion became his way of life. He mouth said one thing and yet her eyes screamed something absolutely different. She killed him everytime she sighed, "Yes, Max, I did that," and then her eyes, her face, seemed to whisper, "Love me, Max." He wanted to grab her and shake the truth from her. He knew it was there, shimmering just below the surface but why would she lie? She never lied to him. He had to believe that she was saying the truth. But Kyle? Of all people….Kyle?
For just a moment in time, he had seen her soften. Las Vegas had been a tiny crack in the wall. He had held her hand, danced with her and she had almost told him something……..almost given up a secret. He should have pushed. He should have demanded an answer, but he wasn’t sure he wanted the truth anymore.
The next few months were a blur, an agony of memories. She told him to leave her alone; that he was suffocating her. He was hurting her? HE was hurting HER??? God, all these months he was being eaten up inside and
now he was suffocating her? "Go to Tess," she said. "It’s what you’re supposed to do, Max." And so, he found himself sitting on the couch, trying to make sense of his world and found himself lured into a kiss. A kiss he had yet to understand. Where was Liz’s smell? Her touch? Her warm lips? This is what she wanted for him? Just for a moment, he pretended it was her. He caressed the face, softened the kiss, but it wasn’t Liz. Drawing back, he knew this would never be Liz.
Alex died. Liz didn’t trust him anymore. Her eyes grew tight; her face shut to him. She actually thought one of them had killed Alex. God, Liz! I’d never hurt Alex. He was my friend.
Slowly, they all turned against him. Isabel, who had been his anchor all their growing up years; had held him when he cried. He lashed out the only way he knew. His words were damaging, non refundable. He lashed out at Liz, the pain of the last months finally surfacing in anger.
And so, the last step was taken. A step he regretted the instant it was done.
He hated himself and what he had done. He was trapped now. Trapped in a web of his own making and all he had ever wanted was Liz. Instead, he had lost the one thing that he could give her on the dirty floor. He wanted to blame her, cry out that it was all her fault for pushing him away and yet keeping him on a slender silver thread. But, in the end, it was his decision, his own body that had betrayed him.
Tess had murdered Alex. Liz had been right all along. God, was she ever wrong about anything? Had she been wrong to love him? Had she been wrong to force him to this place?
His obsession with Liz flowed over into a desperate attempt to find his son..a child conceived in nothingness, a child who needed to know that someone loved him, a child who should never go through life as he had, alone.
Liz actually seemed to forgive him his transgression. Funny part was, he never forgave himself. What he had lost could never be retrieved. He could never look at her and say "You’re the only one, Liz. I only want to be with you, There will never be anyone else" because there had been someone, the one person who could drive a wedge so thick that they never made it through.
On the surface, they were together, but he knew it wasn’t solid. Not as long as he followed his instincts and kept trying to find a way to that lonely child.
And she had begun to change, to doubt what they had. To doubt that he was enough for her, that there was even a life for her with him. Again, it seemed like all he ever did was crawl up onto that balcony to have his heart ripped out, she told him she was afraid of him, of what he was doing to her. He stood in the rain, that damned rain, and cried. Cried for all the time wasted, all the love he had always wanted to give her, had always just wanted to love her. But, he wasn’t good enough. Never had been. He had tried to make her see that in the girl’s locker room so long ago. No one ever thought he was special, no one ever thought of him at all. He didn’t know what to say, didn’t know how to get her to see him. They just stared at each other through the rain. As he backed away, toward the ladder, his eyes locked on hers, he knew he had lost her. "I love you" he whispered. Her eyes closed at his words. The rain washed away the tears on his cheeks but not the ones slicing through his heart.
She wrote him a note, a horrible short note. He had it crumbled in his pocket. She needed normal? She has to be away from me to find a normalcy in her life? Yeah, I guess she does. I’m not normal. She told me that long ago in my bedroom. Normal guys, normal children, normal life. Not with me, Liz….. never with me. She was afraid when we saved Michael, she was afraid that I would die a horrid death, she is afraid she will become like me now. I know one time she said she would go with me if I had to go home, but I knew then she wouldn’t. "I love you more than you can ever know," she wrote. I know how much I love you, Liz. Is it more than that?
