Title: An Understanding (1/1)
Author: Morgan R.
Email: [email protected]
Spoilers: End of the World
Summary: What happens after...
****
Liz walked into Trig with a blinding headache. She was so lonely she would have talked to Tess for comfort, and she felt so guilty that she could have sworn the entire student body had been staring at her all day.
She slid into a desk as far away from Max as possible. If she could just forget, pretend it never happened...
"So, Liz, is it true?" a voice said behind her.
She didn't like the tone.
She turned in her seat to look into Michelle Hawkins' eager face.
"Is what true, Michelle?"
"Oh, come on. You and Kyle- did you guys really...y'know?"
The sound of chattering teenagers wound down into a rasping hiss that hurt her ears, and Liz closed her eyes slowly. She could feel his eyes, angry and hurt and burning, and for a moment she wished he would lose control, his powers would lash out and she wouldn't have to know what the future held.
She opened her eyes with reluctance, and opted for honesty.
"I really don't want to talk about it."
She turned around to face the blackboard, her face flaming, her fingers falling like chips of ice on her oft-carved desk.
****
Kyle sighed as he tossed books into his locker. He was starting to hate his new haircut- people had been giving him funny looks all day.
"Hey, Valenti. So spill- how'd you do it?" Derek leaned up against the lockers with a smirk on his face.
"What are you talking about?"
"Did you get her drunk, or what?"
"Excuse me?"
"Parker, man! Was it good? I bet it was good."
Kyle froze, and for an instant he knew the nirvana of anger as everything chivalrous in him rose up.
"What did you hear?" His words were clipped and cold, like a sheriff struggling to find truth.
"Come on, man, everyone knows. It's all over school."
Kyle would have grimaced, winced, if he hadn't trained himself to be in total control of every muscle in his body.
"From who?"
"That's the kicker, man- her ex! Chris heard him, like, spilling everything to that freak Guerin! In the locker room or something. Did he walk in on you two, or what?"
Kyle remembered that Liz was in Trig, and Max was in Trig, and he clenched his jaw in anger and frustration.
"So come on- we're buds, man- tell me how you managed to do it!"
Kyle slowly put his backpack on, first the right strap, then the left strap.
He shut his locker, twirled the dial, and looked Derek in the eye.
His hand shot out, and Derek's head made a metallic bang as it hit the locker. Kyle's hand around his throat was not exactly friendly, and his eyes were less so.
"Derek, if I ever hear you talk about her that way again- I can't vouch for my behavior."
He let go and stalked off.
From down the hallway, Michael watched.
****
It was in the middle of English class that her strength ran out. 'Liz' can be whispered without being heard, but the K in 'Kyle' explodes from even the most cautious gossiper's mouth.
She stood up slowly with her still-virgin self, her eyes unfocused and distant. She dragged her bag behind her, and didn't seem to hear the teacher's demands to sit down. In the empty hallway, she started running.
She had saved the world, and so skipping class was somehow seeming less important.
****
"Hey, Kyle."
He turned around to see Derek looking at him with nervous eyes.
"Man, I'm sorry about earlier. And, uh, you might want to go find your girlfriend."
"Why?"
"I heard she just got up and left from some class. It freaked everyone out- I guess she seemed upset." With a quick nod, Derek left.
Kyle started looking for her, but he didn't want to ask anyone if they had seen her. The gossip mill had enough about them for one day, anyway.
When Liz had asked him for her bizarre little favor, he had said yes without a qualm. After everything, he still trusted her, and he never imagined this would happen in consequence of their little act.
Was he supposed to be calling himself her boyfriend? How far did the charade carry?
****
He was walking through the school library, avoiding people and trying to spot her brown hair-
She was sitting on the floor in the least used section of the Dewey Decimal books. He crouched down next to her, putting his hand on her arm.
"Why are you here, Liz?"
"Well, most books are classified using Library of Congress call numbers now, so the Deweys seemed safe..." she trailed off.
"Liz."
"That wasn't what you meant, was it?"
He shook his head.
"Liz, I just wanted to make sure that you know I didn't- I mean, I wasn't the one who-"
"Oh, I know. It was Max."
He looked at her in shock. "You knew?"
She laughed without humor. "Process of elimination."
"You know, for a guy whose entire existence depends upon the ability to keep secrets, you'd think he wouldn't be so boneheaded as to let something like this slip."
"Kyle, don't be stupid. He did it on purpose."
"What? Why?"
She shrugged.
"Then how about the other why?"
She shook her head vehemently. "Kyle, you know I can't-"
"Liz, you can't lock it up. Who else can you tell? I'm your partner in lack of crime."
"I promised him I wouldn't-"
"Who?"
She struggled and gave in. In an alternate reality she had already stopped fighting. She had already been weak enough to rediscover happiness. The course of events had changed, but her ability to endure hadn't, not by much.
"Max."
"Liz, you aren't making any sense."
She looked into his eyes, and he saw the truth there.
"Kyle, he came back in time. His love for me brought about freaking Armageddon, so he came back in time to help me break up with him. Apparently, if things had occurred as they did originally, you wouldn't have been the one in my bed last night, and I would have been married before I hit twenty."
Like the boyfriend he wasn't, he gathered her up in his arms, feeling a physical ache with each one of her sobs.
"So, Kyle, I guess now we have something else in common," she whispered.
"And what might that be?"
"We're the only two people I know who have saved the world from total destruction by showing a little skin."
He chuckled.
"Of course, we destroyed our reputations in the process..."
"Just yours, actually," he reminded her. "I think it's improved mine."
"Are you kidding?"
"Liz, you represented the untouchable girl to this school. That's the only reason everybody cares so much. It was almost like you wore a hat that said 'Max's property.'"
She convulsed against his chest. Laughing? Crying?
"You're still wearing that hat, aren't you?"
"I don't know how to take it off," she whispered.
****
He walked through the library on tiptoe, aching to feel a sharper pain. He wasn't sneaking up on an enemy, he was feeding his addiction.
He could smell her. He would find her, and she would tell him it didn't really happen. It had been evil shapeshifters, pretending to be her and Kyle while the real Liz was tied up in the closet. Or maybe- maybe it had been Tess. Of course, Tess had planted that horrible image in his brain and then had the gall to try and comfort him. Poor Liz probably had no idea why everyone in school was talking about her, and it was all his fault that everyone thought-
He heard her crying. She was crying and he was to blame.
But he heard Kyle telling her she would be okay, and he knew that he had outgrown fairy tales.
Yet he stayed. He hid himself behind a bookshelf and he stayed, hoping to hear and indulge himself in a surfeit of jealousy. He wanted to hear their pet names, their words of endearment, even their kisses. He wanted to hear her say-
"Kyle, I love him. I can't stop. I told him that. I love him, I love him so much that I broke his heart. Just because he asked."
Was she joking? Was this how she mocked him?
"I know you love him. That's what gets me about all of this- if he had any idea what you had really done, why you did it, he would love you even more. I just can't believe he was cruel enough to let everyone find out."
What she had really done...
What was going on? He shook his head, then backed away. He was going to find Tess, and she was going to tell him exactly what she knew.
****
"Well, Kyle," Liz responded, "if he knew what you had really done, he'd have a lot of respect for you too."
"Yeah, right."
"I'm serious. He told me you were turning out to be a great guy, and that maybe it would be better for me to be with you."
Kyle laughed. "So a thirty-one year old Max Evans thought we should hook up? Will wonders never cease."
"Apparently not." There was still a hitch in her voice, but she was smiling as she stood up.
He followed suit, asking, "So, Liz, do you want me to be your boyfriend? You know, publicly. For form's sake."
She shook her head. "Kyle, I don't want to sentence you to having a fake relationship with your ex-girlfriend-"
"Liz, I want to help. If I fall in love, we can break up. For now, let me make an honest woman of you. You know, in the sense that it's all fake."
Her hand reached out to touch the books softly. Their bindings were cracked with age, their words were almost weary with reading, as if their voices were too tired to continue.
She felt the same way.
****
"What do you know?"
Tess looked up from her math book with an apprehensive expression. The last time Max had looked so bewildered and furious, she had ended up being thrown down onto the rocky desert floor.
"What do you mean?"
His eyes grew wilder. "Don't toy with me, Tess. What's going on? Why did Liz try to set us up? How did you know where to find me late at night in the park? How did you know I'd be upset? How did you know that Liz and Kyle- that she- that they-"
"I didn't, Max, they didn't tell me anything. Liz told me she wanted to help me get together with you, that's all. She told me where in the park you'd probably go if you were upset- and that you would be upset. That's it, I swear."
For once, she seemed natural in her manufactured face, and he believed her against his will.
"You'll have to understand her before you'll ever be able to even see me, Tess."
"I get it."
A nod. An understanding.
****
It was fairly simple, in the end. She was sitting on the school steps with Kyle, smiling at something he had said. In the din of school's ending, she couldn't feel Max's presence too clearly, and he approached without her noticing.
His hand trembled as it reached out, finally succeeding with that one brush against exposed skin.
She flinched away from the all-too-familiar touch against her neck with a gasp, but Max wasn't looking at her. His eyes were seeing something else, hearing the words, feeling the sick overwhelming horror...
The images were dim and shadowed, but Liz's anguish was sharp and blinding.
He saw the future, he saw his forbidden happy ending. He heard music and the screams of the dying. He understood Liz's sacrificial nobility unchanging through decades. And through it all, one phrase ran like an electrical current. It seemed relatively innocuous compared to images of Michael dying, the sound of Isabel begging for mercy. But it had damaged Liz's psyche in a way its speaker could never have imagined.
"If Max doesn't come around on his own, he can...he can go to hell for all I care."
Those words shredded her further with every heartbeat, every breath. The guilt in her eyes was not from infidelity, it was from the knowledge that she was abandoning him to someone who was trained to despise love.
He was breathing hard once he could finally see the world around him again.
"Liz...Kyle-"
They both looked at him in concern tinged with terror.
"You make me proud to be half human."
His eyes held no threat of pursuance, but they were warm and full of promise.
A whisper.
"We create our own destiny."
****
finis