Title: Necessity (1/1)
Author: Morgan R.
Email: [email protected]
Rating: PG
Summary: Some almost abstract Liz POV
Spoilers: The Departure
Feedback: Does Maria love Scooby?
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She stops in the hallway, several yards ahead of him.
She remembers the last time she was in this hallway at night, getting caught with Sean. Sean, who gave her space when she asked for it and was always willing to follow her lead. He didn't have a planet to save and she didn't have to lie to him to save her own world and- she forgot to put the microscope away.
"I forgot to put the microscope away," she says in a voice that sounds smooth and hardsharp like glass.
The worst part about turning around and retracing her steps is that she has to look at him. She has to see his face and his slouch and this moment is lasting longer, longer and she has more time to remember this horrible instance that should never have happened. Didn't happen, in one world, where things were right until the end instead of postponing the end through being so wrong it makes her throat hurt.
Her hands don't shake, which she finds odd. She stuffs the bloody tissue back in her pocket and it doesn't bother her that a stranger's blood is rubbing against the lining of her coat, it doesn't frighten her that Max almost killed someone because he had to think everything was settled before he left. He has to focus on his new responsibility of fatherhood and kingship and he would certainly be able to do that with less nightmares if a girl was dead. Liz has spent so long hating her for the sake of some manufactured images that she wonders if that relates to Max's new dislike of herself. This girl was superimposed into the crook of Alex's arm just as Liz was into Kyle's, and she's sure there is something similar if she could just clear her head...
She washes the slides meticulously, knowing that she could do it hastily if she were in a real hurry. But she isn't the one leaving at sunrise, and the one who is stayed out in the hallway, so she can slowly run her fingers over the glass as Leanna's blood flows down the drain. Human blood, washing away, but the aliens are the ones who are really leaving.
She even coils up the microscope cord like she should, wrapping it around the base. As a model science student, it always irritates her that no one else cares enough to put away the equipment properly. She feels no need to cause that same problem for someone else, just because there is royalty shuffling his feet in the hallway. She won't sink to that level, won't consider herself more important than some C-level biology student just because her ex-boyfriend is flying away in a spaceship in a few hours.
Every student deserves the same amount of consideration. She can't expect everyone to find science as fascinating as she always has. With the lab finally restored to order, she has won a small victory. If anyone notices anything odd, it will only be that cord, almost lovingly replaced without a kink or a bend. She could have justified a sloppy job, but she didn't, and that makes her something else. She saved Leanna's life (that name is hers forever, false though it might be), and she saved someone the bother of untangling a cord, and she will be proud of that tomorrow night, when the sun has risen and set and the phone starts ringing. The Evanses will want to know what happened, Mrs. Deluca will want to know why Maria is crying so hard, and they will all be scandalized that the Sheriff is dealing with it so well. After all, Tess had lived with him for months.
Don't think that name, Liz thought, closing the cupboard door. Don't think of her. Think of the victory in knowing you were right all along about the cause of your friend's death, and the secret exultation when Max finally admitted it. Think of the work to be done so that Alex would be honored.
Work to be done.
She walks out the door. Max is leaning against a locker, his eyes on the floor.
"That was fast," he says, not looking up until she had already walked past him.
At his words, that too familiar thought again runs through her mind. It has been there for a year now, beginning with the moment she heard that Tess was Max's ultimate destiny.
'There must be some sort of mistake.'
Mistaken that Tess belonged, mistaken that Alex was dead, mistaken that the responsibility of altering the future had fallen on her all too human shoulders, mistaken that Max could look at her with eyes so cold. Mistaken that she had been quick, because she was sure that she had taken as long as was humanly possible to put the equipment away.
She has a bitter smile lurking at the edges of her mouth as she buckles her seatbelt, because the phrase strikes her as funny. Long as humanly possible. What does it really mean, after all? Can he endure more, for a longer time, this dark king driving her home? If that is the case, then should his hands really be shaking?
She sees the lights of the Crashdown several blocks before they reach it. The flashing colors blur in her dry, unfocused eyes, and it strikes her as funny that they are so similar to the real colors of that detested machine buried deep in a rock. The reds and blues float in the air, whispering their hues into the darkness. Blending into purple, but she needs to forget that, forget about royalty and its colors and prerogatives. Royalty that crashed down like her father's tourist trap claims, crashed down decades before she was born.
One more crash as the jeep stops, because every ending is painted with some kind of destruction. The wheels stop turning slowly because that is how Max drives (if he had been piloting the ship, it would have landed on time and in the correct location), but the crashing is inside her head, roaring in her ears and tinted red and blue. And for one last time, before Max speaks, she thinks the thought:
'There must be some kind of mistake.'
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finis
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