Title: Dimensionality

Disclaimer: I don’t own anything

Author’s note: Okay, so this ended up being a long chapter. And it was supposed to be longer, but I realized I had to divide it in two because I simply could not get through everything I wanted otherwise.

Summary: How many more time could he screw this up, he wondered, and just how many more until he finally got it right?

The Eleventh Dimension: Continuum

Faith is a continuum, and we each fall on that line where we may. By attempting to rigidly classify ethereal concepts like faith, we end up debating semantics to the point where we entirely miss the obvious… that we’re all trying to decipher life's big mysteries.”

- Dan Brown

Max drew a slow breath, trying to organize his thoughts. The silence was almost oppressive, the tension in the room simmering in the air between them. Tess was leaning against the wall, arms folded over her chest, blue eyes filled with frustration and anger that could have been directed at almost anyone in the room. Michael mimicked her posture, but he was leaning against the back of the sofa instead of the wall, and his gaze kept moving to Maria, who sat perched on the cushions below him.

Max looked over at Courtney. She was sitting stiffly at the edge of a hardback chair, but despite the awkwardness of her stance, despite the fact that all eyes were fixed on her, she seemed to be the most relaxed of anyone in the room.

“So… let me get this straight,” Michael said finally, his words hard and guttural, “you mind-warped Max into thinking that the other Max was in trouble, then you broke into my apartment and mind-raped him, went through his memories, and now… now you want us to trust you?”

Courtney nodded. “Yes, that’s right.” She met Max’s gaze for a moment, then turned back to Michael. “Can you really blame me for being a little bit suspicious of a man who claims to be from the future? I was just trying to make sure you hadn’t put your faith in the wrong person.”

“We can make our own decisions, thank you,” Maria retorted angrily.

Courtney smirked. “Can you, really? Because you haven’t actually managed it yet.”

Max looked away from Courtney, his gaze returning to the window. She had already explained repeatedly that she had only wanted to look through his memories to confirm that he was really who he said he was, and that she had not meant to cause any lasting harm. In her own twisted way, she had been trying to protect the others – Michael, in particular – from Khivar.

The problem was that he had trusted her once. He had trusted her, and then she’d attacked him, and now, despite all her reassurances, despite everything she said, he couldn’t bring himself to trust her again.

“Look, it was a two-fold test,” Courtney said, sounding frustrated at their refusal to believe her. “I wanted to know how Max would respond if he thought his past self was in danger. A skin would do nothing, just let the Max from this time get hurt. But he,” she gestured towards the still brooding Max, “didn’t do nothing. He alerted Michael. So it seemed likely that he was on your side.”

“And yet you still broke into Michael’s apartment and attacked Max,” Maria drawled with a huff of impatience. To Michael, she asked, “Why are we still listening to her?”

“I went into the apartment because I needed to see into his mind, I needed confirmation,” Courtney said firmly, sending a withering look towards the blonde human. “That was the second part of the test. And he passed. So why are you all sitting around here wasting your time with pointless questions?”

“Because you haven’t passed our test,” Michael answered sharply.

Max continued to stare out the window, letting the tension roll over him in great waves. He felt anxious, worried… and he didn’t like it. Courtney’s snide comments and mocking gaze only served to further increase his own insecurities about this mission, and he didn’t want to consider what would happen if he failed.

“Yo, Maxwell, you with us?”

Max frowned at Michael, but nodded. “Yeah.” He glanced over at Courtney, then questioned quietly, “Why should we believe you?”

“You believed me yesterday,” Courtney replied. “You trusted me yesterday. What changed?”

“You attacked me,” Max snapped.

Courtney rolled her pretty eyes and leaned back in the seat, watching him with an unreadable stare. “I told you what I was doing and why. It’s not like you were left with any lasting effects.” She squinted at him for a moment, then added, “By the way, that headache will eventually fade.”

Max didn’t answer right away. He didn’t know what he would even say to her. Just yesterday, he’d seen the hurt and betrayal in Isabel’s eyes at the fact that he could so easily share information with Courtney. At the time, he’d been so convinced in the rebel skin’s loyalty that he had dismissed Isabel’s concerns. Now… now he just didn’t know.

Finally, he said, “Suppose we do believe you. What can you actually offer us that might be worthwhile?”

“What? Max, are you insane?” Maria hissed, turning towards him with an incredulous look. “You can’t actually trust her after everything she did?”

“I can tell you that you keep screwing up,” Courtney answered calmly, locking eyes with Max. “You haven’t gotten anywhere. You keep trying to save the world, but you fail. Over and over.”

“We already know that,” Michael said under his breath, and Max flinched at the comment. He knew it wasn’t meant as an insult, but it still stung to hear those words fall so easily from his best friend’s lips.

“I can help you,” Courtney argued. “I can show you how to fix this.”

“You have the answer?” Mari scoffed, shaking her head as she rose to her feet and stepped away from Courtney. “How very convenient for you.”

“Even I don’t believe that,” Max added quietly, “and I’m the one who actually thinks you might be trustworthy.”

“I’ve got ideas,” Courtney answered. “And you obviously don’t.” She, too, rose to her feet. Michael took a threatening step towards her, and she lifted one eyebrow, as though daring him to tell her to sit back down. He remained silent, studying her with a scrutinizing stare, and she let a small smirk tug at her lips.

“We don’t care about your ideas,” Maria said icily.

“Hmm… pity. Well, if you change your mind, I’m sure you can figure out how to find me,” Courtney answered sardonically. Then, without waiting for a reply from anyone in the room, she turned and walked briskly through the door, disappearing from sight.

Maria and Michael both took involuntary steps as though to chase her down, but Max said, “Let her go. We’ve gotten everything we need for now.”

“You don’t actually trust her?” Maria growled, disbelief and suspicion still shining brightly in her eyes. “Can’t you tell that she’s playing you? She’s playing all of us.”

“Oh, I won’t deny that she has another agenda,” Max answered readily enough. “She always had another agenda.” He slanted a quick look at Michael, ignoring Maria’s muttered protests at those words, then added, “But I do think she was telling the truth about her motives in this particular case. She was just trying to determine if I really was from the future.”

“So now what?” Michael asked before Maria had a chance to say anything. “We don’t have much in the way of answers, we don’t know if we can trust Courtney, and we don’t know how to stop the end of the world. Not exactly the most helpful, is it?”

There was a silence as each person in the room digested that statement. It was true, all of it, and Max knew he still didn’t have the answers. What could he offer them besides guesses that probably wouldn’t pan out to be anything?

Then Maria asked in a thoughtful tone, “Do you remember enough of the other timelines to be able to sort them out in your head?” Max nodded slowly, fairly certain that he could do what she wanted, and she continued, “So that is where we start.”

“What do you mean?” Max questioned.

“Look, we all agreed that we need to know what made one timeline different from another.” Maria sent a mistrustful and rather acrimonious stare towards Tess as she added pointedly, “We were going to start with Tess, remember? Figure out why she became a murderer in some futures?”

Tess stiffened and returned the glare with her own furious glower, but she remained silent.

“I don’t remember enough to know everything,” Max said quickly, jumping in before an argument could break out again.

“So there might be gaps in your story. It’s still better than nothing.”

Max nodded again, seeing the truth in her words. “Alright,” he acquiesced, a little reluctant, but knowing that this could provide useful information.

As the four of them walked from the building, Max realized with growing trepidation that Tess had not said an entire word throughout the exchange with Courtney or the discussion that followed. He looked at her, but she wasn’t looking at him, and he couldn’t read her expression.

For reasons he couldn’t explain, his unease began to grow.

The floor was littered with scraps of paper, notes Max had jotted down in an effort to organize the memories in his muddled mind. From beyond the closed door, he heard the rise and fall of voices. He knew the others were probably talking about him, or about Courtney, or about the entire mess.

He sighed and leaned back, running a hand through his hair. It was getting close to night now, and it was weird to think that it had only been two nights since he had arrived, two nights since he had hid in the shadows outside Isabel’s window.

Isabel was still with present-Max, but how much longer could she hold him off? He wanted her to be here, to hear what he was going to tell them, to listen to the stories he had managed to string together. It wasn’t much, what he knew, but it was enough.

Still, Liz was probably back by now, as was Alex. Kyle might have even joined the group, along with Jim. They’d all want to hear…

He sighed and climbed slowly to his feet, thinking. Courtney’s words continued to echo in his mind. Would she be able to help them? Had he been a fool for letting her leave when she might have had answers? Or was he just kidding himself, was she really the enemy? He didn’t believe that, but…

He didn’t really know what he believed anymore.

Gathering the papers together and folding them carefully in his hands, he turned his attention towards the door, ready to face the others. They’d left him alone for now, because the only one who could actually help him pull out memories was Isabel, and she was too busy worrying about his other self.

With a groan, he walked to the door and pushed it open, ready to face the others.

It started with an argument. Angry words, bitter comments, harsh insults. It started with an argument, and when Tess left the Crashdown, no one bothered to stop her.

They’d regret that later, of course, when they learned of her death.

He wasn’t entirely sure what had happened. He thought perhaps Nicolas was behind the attack. A strange fire had erupted, burning the entire building, and taking Tess’ life.

Then it was hazy. A fog that was only punctuated by a few sharp memories. Kyle leaving after graduation, and not once bothering to look back, to wonder about all of them. Max and Liz eloping, the soft rustle of Liz’s hair as she brushed it out her eyes and whispered “I do.” Isabel’s frantic screams as she awoke from the first nightmare, the dreams that would not stop until Khivar drove her to insanity. An outbreak of some alien virus in New York City, the FBI getting involved again. And the skins attacking, always attacking…

Maria’s death. It was hard and sharp, a memory that seared itself into his mind and did not let go. A memory that haunted him, taunted him. He’d failed to protect her, and when she’d died, it seemed as though the world had fallen apart.

Michael had certainly crumbled in her absence.

There were gaps in his memory. He had no idea how they went from Maria’s death to Isabel’s demise. Several years passed in that interim, but the memories of this timeline did not reappear until that fateful night that Isabel, unable to take it any longer, had left the safety of their hideout and gone to face Khivar on her own.

He’d killed her.

And the FBI killed Kyle’s wife. That, too, was a blank in his mind. He hadn’t even known Kyle was married in this timeline, except for the one distinct memory he had of interacting with the one-time football jock. Of throwing him against a wall, threatening to kill him… because Kyle had given the FBI the location of the pod chamber in a bid to save his daughter from the same fate as her luckless mother.

More fog, more vague memories, impressions and emotions. Alex had died, he knew, though he was not sure how. He had no memory of Serena either, though she must have played a roll in everything given that the idea to travel to the past had originated from her. But by and large, he remembered very little after the argument with Kyle.

Until he and Liz were at the pod chamber, and Michael was dying outside, holding off the skins so that they could succeed at their plan, they could change the past, and thereby change the future.

“Let me get this straight,” Maria said coolly, eyebrows lifted. “The world was falling apart because Tess had left and you no longer had the Four Square. So you convinced Liz to pretend to sleep with Kyle to push you towards your past-wife?”

“Um… yeah, I think so,” Max answered with a weary nod.

“That’s the stupidest plan I’ve ever heard,” she said incredulously. “Why didn’t you just tell Tess that she couldn’t leave?”

Max shrugged, unable to answer. Ever since he had first figured out the details of that particular plan, he, too, could not quite believe that he had managed to come up with that ridiculous of an idea. But hearing Maria say it aloud just made everything sound even more absurd. He wasn’t sure what the other version of himself had hoped to accomplish, besides making himself and Liz both miserable.

“So did it work?” Alex asked, interjecting his question before anyone else had a chance to comment.

Max frowned. “Obviously not,” he said pointedly, “given that I kept having to come back and try to fix it all again.” Had Alex actually somehow managed to miss the entire point of his trip to the past?

“No, I meant…” Alex hesitated, sending an apologetic look towards Liz, before saying, “Did Liz push you away? Did you end up with Tess?”

Max sighed heavily. “No. Not that time,” he said.

That time, it started with a death.

He remembered Alex’s death vividly, just like he remembered the feeling of nearly uncontrollable pain and betrayal that had slammed into him when he realized just who had been behind it. That, coupled with the loss of his son, had left him nearly broken. He’d pulled himself together because he knew he wasn’t the only one hurting, and with the truth about Tess coming out into the open, he needed to lead.

She’d returned, sacrificed herself to the government to protect her son, and disappeared from their lives once more. And they’d fled, he remembered that, too. Fled after graduation, spending their time on the road.

Then what?

Isabel had married someone else, a man named Jesse that he had never met, at least not in his timeline. But she’d married him, and they’d seemed happy, but… but she’d left him behind. She’d fled, living with the others, running from the FBI, and Jesse… what had he done? He’d gone somewhere… Boston, maybe?

Max couldn’t remember.

Then Kyle had met Jenni, who was in the process of escaping a horrible divorce, and the two had fallen in love. Kyle had been happy, for a time. His wedding had been simple, a quick ceremony at a judge’s office, because they couldn’t take the chance of staying in one place for too long, of having the skins find them. They’d used fake names, of course, to avoid being found by the FBI. Max was sure he was wanted in more than one state.

Of course, the skins had been them, and the FBI… The FBI had found Jesse.

The FBI had come after him, probably because of his connection to Isabel. He’d fled, and Serena, who was a friend of his at the time, had tried to help him, and ended up getting sucked into this mess as well. Jesse had been killed – Isabel screaming in horror at his broken, bloodied body, while Michael tried to hold her, tried to tell her that everything would be okay even though they both knew that wasn’t true – but Serena had joined the others, become friends with Liz.

Maria was already dead at that point, had been dead for a while. Max didn’t know why, didn’t remember… but he remembered Michael’s growing anger, his nearly uncontrollable temper, and Liz’s tears that she bravely tried to hide when she thought anyone might be watching.

And then the dreams. In that timeline, too, Khivar had tormented Isabel through her dreams.

“So, I uh… I end up with this Jenni a lot,” Kyle said, arching one eyebrow at Max. “Is she hot?”

Maria rolled her eyes. “We’re trying to figure out how to save the world, Kyle,” she drawled. “How can you actually be thinking about your future wife’s looks?”

“What, like you wouldn’t be asking the exact same thing if you were in my position,” Kyle shot back. He looked over at Max again, and then shook his head and folded his arms over his chest. “This is weird. Creepy. You guys sure he’s really Max?”

“We’re sure,” Liz said tiredly, “just like we told you the last twenty times you asked.”

“What?” Kyle said defensively, gesturing towards Max. “It is weird. You’ll have to forgive me if I’m not as used to alien stuff as you are. I’m new to your little clique.”

“Doesn’t seem a whole lot different from the other timeline,” Michael said gruffly, breaking into the conversation before the argument could continue. He leaned forward and gave Max a scrutinizing stare as he said, “Tess is still gone, although for a different reason. Isabel still dies the same way. Maria… she dies also… Kyle marries Jenni and apparently has a happy life and doesn’t care about the rest of us…”

“Stuff it, Guerin.”

“…and then you come back in time and try to save us all.” With a sardonic smile, Michael added dryly, “Nice job.”

“Give him a break, he’s trying,” Liz said softly, and Max answered her comment with a faint smile.

“Do you know what your brilliant plan was that time? Did you have Liz pretend to sleep with someone else? Michael, maybe, or Alex?” Maria questioned sarcastically.

Max looked at Liz for a moment, then gave a heavy sigh. “Yeah… yeah, I remember what the plan that time. And no, it didn’t involve Liz sleeping with anyone else.”

“So what was it?” Maria demanded.

“You have to turn her in,” Max said firmly.

“Look, Max, I want Tess to pay as much as you do. Maybe more,” Liz said, staring at him with reluctant, disbelieving eyes. “But to turn her over to the Army… you can’t seriously think that is the right thing to do.”

“She’ll turn herself in anyway,” Max answered. “She’ll do it of her own accord when we vote to protect her. She’ll die, she’ll let herself die, because it is the only way to protect Zan.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Of course I do!” Max countered, throwing his hands up in the air. “I’m from the future, remember? This is exactly the sort of thing I know.” Liz still did not acquiesce, and he continued almost desperately, “Liz, listen to me. When Tess blows up the base, the FBI get suspicious. They take the tape my Mom made of Isabel using her powers. They use that as proof. Liz, that can’t happen. If we can prevent that, then we won’t have to flee at graduation. We won’t leave Roswell unprotected. My Mom won’t die, Amy DeLuca won’t die, the FBI won’t be pursuing us. We can stay together, we can protect Jesse. We can save Maria, too, because we’ll be better able to protect ourselves when the skins attack.”

“I’m not a murderer, Max,” Liz said, rubbing her forehead. “God, this is like sleeping with Kyle all over again.”

“Except that this time the plan will work,” Max answered. Liz looked at him questioningly, and he said, “You told me. In the future, you explain why you did what you did. Of course, it didn’t do us any good given what Tess turned out to be…” He looked away and let out a slow breath.

“Max, I can’t do this,” Liz whispered. “I can’t be the reason Tess dies. That will make me no better than her.”

“Then convince Tess to turn herself in earlier,” Max pleaded. “Convince her to do it at the beginning, before the Army comes to our house, before the find the tape of Isabel.”

“How can you be okay with killing her?”

“Do you have any idea how many skins I’ve killed?” Max retorted fiercely, eyes blazing. “Do you have any idea how many enemies have died at my hands? I’ve been fighting a war for years, Liz. I’ve killed, and I’ve seen people I love killed.” He blinked, swallowed back his tears. “Alex, Maria, Jesse, Isabel, Michael… you…” He drew a breath and said, “Please, Liz. You have to save us.”

“Did she?” Maria asked curiously.

Max shook his head wordlessly, glancing at Tess out of the corner of his eye. They hadn’t spoken since she had seen the flash of his conversation with Liz, since she had witnessed just how lousy of a husband he had been to her. She was silent, but her expression was stormy, her blue eyes dark and angry.

“Then what happened?” Maria pressed.

“She left,” Max said, looking back at her. Then he turned his attention to Liz and continued, “I asked her to do something she just couldn’t. She hadn’t been through war yet, she wasn’t a killer… she refused to do what I asked. She couldn’t take it, so she… she left.”

That time, his world ended long before anyone else’s did. It crumbled to pieces, leaving him alone and hurt, wallowing in self-pity and denial, unable to comprehend. That time, when the world fell apart, it started with a letter.

The other version of himself had visited Liz only days before her powers started to show, and that had been the final push over the edge for her. She could not take the combination of having a boyfriend who had cheated on her, a future boyfriend who was telling her she had to be a killer or the world would end, and inexplicable aliens powers bursting uncontrollably from her. She’d decided to leave Roswell, to go to boarding school, and she never once looked back.

All she had left him was a letter, telling him that she loved him, but she needed to do what was right for her.

And so Liz had ironically ended up doing exactly what that future version of Max had wanted. Max, so pained by her loss, so furious at Tess for driving a wedge in between them, voted to turn Tess over to the Army. It would have made no difference to Tess, given that she died at the army base in both timelines, but it made a difference to Max. It was a slippery slope, and he had let his desire for revenge guide his actions. He had done what he wanted, not what was right.

From there, it was all downhill.

He had very few memories of what had happened in between when Liz had come to boarding school and when she had walked so unexpectedly back into his life. Maria had died, trying to protect Liz from a group of human rebels. Trying to protect Liz, who didn’t even know she was in danger. It had made Michael furious, and Michael, who had never forgiven Liz for leaving them all, would have killed the brunette had she been there.

Isabel had been taken by the skins. He didn’t know what had become of her. Had she died? Or was she still alive, being tormented by Khivar? Or had she given in to Vilandra, had she become the enemy? He did not know, and he supposed he should be grateful for that.

Losing Isabel had been nearly impossible, but having to face her as his enemy? He would never have survived that.

Kyle, too, disappeared. He did not know how or why, only that the jock was gone. It was all hazy, memories not vivid enough to provide any insight. Even the memories he did have were vague, and did not given all the details, did not offer him enough clues to find the answers. It was muddy, cloudy, entangled…

Until the crystal clear memory of finding Liz.

Liz, who had been horrified at what he had become. Liz, who kept trying to change him, who didn’t seem to realize that he was beyond saving. She could not accept the person he was, and he could not forgive her for what she had done. He did not know why she had left, and he had never asked. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that she had missed too much of all their lives to think she could be welcomed back into the group.

He did not know how Serena had come into the picture. He had no memory of her at all, but she must have been a friend of his, or else how would he have known anything about time travel?

That time, it was Michael who had come up with the suggestion for what to change in the past. Max had gone back with one plan – eliminate the threats before they had a chance to do any harm. He’d miss-timed it, however, and while he had planned to go back far enough so that he could track down Nasedo and Tess and kill them both before they even reached Roswell, he’d turned up around the same time that they were all discovering the truth about their past lives.

That time, he hadn’t gone to Liz at all.

He’d gone to Tess and threatened to kill her – nearly murdered Nasedo – but his harsh, uncompromising actions had had such a sudden, forceful effect on how future events would play out, that he had ended up fading from existence before he could actually kill either of them.

“Well… I guess that’s good,” Alex said. “I mean… Tess isn’t evil… right? So you not getting the chance to kill her is good.”

“You know, you’re awfully forgiving of the girl who kills you,” Maria muttered.

Alex shot her an annoyed look.

Tess said nothing.

“What happened?” Jim pressed, moving a little closer to the blonde hybrid Queen. Max inwardly marveled at the Sheriff’s determination to protect a girl he had not even known existed a year ago. But throughout the entire discussion, he had stood at her side, and now he was stepping even closer to her, as though his steady, supportive presence could protect her from the ire of the others in the room.

“Yeah. Why did you fade away?”

Max looked at Tess. “I was furious. I was yelling at Tess as I tried to kill her and Nasedo. About how she had ruined all our lives, how I had lost everything because of her. How we would have accepted her, how we did accept her, trusted her even, and look what she turned out to be…? I think she freaked. I think she realized that she cared enough about us not to want the world I was describing.”

“So she made a decision right then that she wouldn’t let it happen, wouldn’t let it come to pass,” Kyle said with dawning realization, “and that was all it took to change the future, to get you to disappear.” He gave Tess a broad smile, and some of the anger faded from her sapphire eyes.

Max nodded. “That’s my assumption, but I don’t think we will ever know the full story. Only that Tess will know exactly what she was thinking, and she’s gone.”

“So then what happened?” Michael prompted. “What was the next future like?”

Max chewed his lip thoughtfully. “We were all unhappy, but it wasn’t just the skins or the FBI. In that future, we did a lot of the damage ourselves.”

It started with a conversation.

Tess had tried harder to be supportive of Max. So when he caught Liz supposedly sleeping with Kyle, she offered him a shoulder to cry on, but didn’t push towards a relationship. They just talked... and she told him she was sorry for what he was feeling, that she knew how much he loved Liz, that she didn't like seeing him hurt. They talked, and she never once mentioned destiny.

Maybe that was why he fell for her, because she started pulling back, and after losing Liz, he needed something to hold onto. Or maybe he had just been kidding himself, fooling himself into thinking she could replace was Liz had ripped out of his heart.

Whatever the reason, they’d ended up together. Married. With a son.

Alex hadn’t died. They hadn’t been forced to flee after graduation. Life had simply gone on like normal. Except that Max was married to someone he did not truly love. Not like he loved Liz.

That was all it took for Maria to refuse to speak to him for ages. It had placed a strain on his friendship with Michael, because how could he continued spending time with his best friend when the love of Michael’s life hated him?

Alex, too, had been angry, but he had not expressed it as vehemently as Maria had. Still, he shied away from interacting with Max, and hardly said anything to Tess unless absolutely necessary. He was polite, civil, but overly formal. The distance grew between all of them, and when Isabel married Alex, the ceremony was less than collegial.

Kyle had been furious at Maria and Alex for their treatment of Tess. He had turned a blind eye to Tess’ treatment of Maria, even though Maria ended up as his step-sister. Jim was not able to do the same, given that he had married Maria’s mother, and so he was stuck with a step-daughter and adopted daughter who hated each other, a son who hated his step-daughter and his new wife, and a wife who couldn’t figure out why he wouldn’t automatically take his step-daughter’s side.

It was a mess.

So Maria, Alex, and Liz remained friends. Max, Isabel, Michael, and Tess remained friends. Tess and Kyle remained friends. And every time they all got together, which grew rarer and rarer as time progressed, they came close to killing each other.

And that was before the skins attacked.

The skins attached Liz, Maria died instead. The police had questioned Liz, believing her to be involved in the murder. Max had tried to protect Liz, offered her safety in his house, and then ended up kissing her. An act that was witnessed by his son.

He didn’t remember many of the details. He had almost no recollections of actual battles with the skins or the FBI. What he remembered were the arguments. Their arguments.

After Maria’s death, Michael had been furious that Max would not interrogate the distraught Liz, would not force her to relive the nightmare over and over, looking for answers.

When Isabel started having nightmares, Alex was furious that Max would not lead the others to attack Khivar, even though they both knew it was a suicide mission.

When Max kissed Liz, Kyle was furious at Liz for letting it happen, Tess was furious at Max for doing it, and Michael was furious at both of them because it was distracting from their mission to find and kill whoever had murdered Maria.

So much pain, so much suffering… somehow, they had forgotten that they were all on the same side.

But Liz figured it out. Liz, who had watched her soul mate marry someone else, who had watched her best friend die before her very eyes… Liz had been the one to suggest that maybe if Max went back in time, he should remind the others that they were all in this together.

And he did.

“That’s good,” Alex said, looking hopeful. “Shouldn’t that have worked? I mean… shouldn’t we have… shouldn’t we have been able to save the world if we just…”

“This isn’t an afterschool special on teamwork,” Michael grumbled. “I don’t think it is that simple.”

“Apparently not,” Max agreed. “I went back in time, visited Liz, told her that she needed to remember that we were in this together… She’d already pretended to sleep with Kyle, but she made an effort to be friendly to me, even though… even though I was so angry at her.”

“So why didn’t it work?” Kyle demanded.

“It did, actually. To some extent. Most of us stayed together, despite everything.” Max ran a hand through his hair, thinking. “Unlike the previous timelines, we stayed together and we didn’t have to flee Roswell.”

“And let me guess,” Maria said dryly, “when you say most of us stayed together, you mean everyone except Alex and Tess.”

Max shrugged and nodded. “I don’t know why this time turned out different from the last timeline. Maybe in the last time line, Tess and I were already getting so close – and I mean emotionally close, not just physically,” he watched in some amusement as Maria gagged and Alex hit her lightly on the arm, “that the skins decided they wouldn’t be able to get to her. Whatever the reason, they didn’t go after her in that timeline.”

“And what about in the next one? The one you created when you told Liz to try to keep the group together?”

Max’s expression darkened. “In that timeline… in that one, Tess wasn’t so lucky.”

It started with a threat. Tess had refused to help the skins, had informed them that she would not go through on Nasedo’s deal… and they had not been happy. They'd told her if she wasn't going to help them willingly, they'd force her to do it against her will.

Congresswoman Whitaker had showed Tess that she could control the blonde, could make her do things she really didn’t want to do. And she could prevent her from ever being able to tell anyone, to call out for help. Isabel had killed the congresswoman, and Tess had been free.

Until New York.

Lonnie and Rath, too, had been able to control her. And then Nicolas. She’d tried to fight it off, but couldn’t. She had tried to ask for help, but the words would not leave her mouth. And she had been unable to do anything, to stop her enemies, as they forced her to mind-warp Alex into translating the book…

Until he died.

She’d left in the Granolith, left with all of them thinking she was a murderer.

Max remembered absolutely nothing, not even vague emotions or feelings, not anything at all, until five years after that, when he had stumbled across her in Seattle. But he remembered every detail of that first meeting.

It had been in downtown Seattle. He could still see the glistening water of the Puget Sound, could still hear the roar of cars speeding by, could still smell the scent of coffee from the Starbucks…

And she had been there.

A nightmare that would not leave him alone for five years. A mistake that haunted him, a child that he had never known.

He remembered everything about that moment when he had met her blue eyes and realized just who was standing in front of him.

The truth had come out. Slowly, bit by bit… they’d nearly had to drag it out of her. She was dating someone, a man named Nick, and she had two other friends… one of which was Serena’s sister. Those three humans had been more revealing when it came to recounting the past five years, but Tess had almost completely refused to speak to them.

She’d been on earth for almost five years and hadn’t told anyone. It had taken a long time to realize that she hadn’t done to hurt them, she had done it because she was terrified of the past, too afraid to confront what had happened to her, what she had done.

He did not remember much about that timeline, and all his memories focused on Tess. He knew the others had died – Maria, first, and then Jesse, followed later by one of Tess’ friends and Isabel, and then Liz. He didn’t remember their deaths, he just knew that they had died.

“Tess was happy with Nick. I mean, really happy,” Max explained. “I think that was what gave me the idea. I knew that if we could just protect her from the skins, it could work out for us. We could all be together, be a group. The Four Square would be complete, but…but it didn’t have to get in the way of our relationships with everyone else. It didn’t need to drive us apart. We could be happier… stronger.”

“What did you do?”

“I told Tess,” Max replied, turning his eyes to Jim as he answered the Sheriff’s question. “I went back in time and I showed her a memory I had of watching her with Nick… And I warned her to be careful, that the skins were after her. She didn’t say anything, but… She got really close to the rest of us. She became friends with Liz and Maria, and practically sisters with Isabel. I think that was what kept her safe. The skins must have realized that we would notice if she started acting out of character. In the other timeline, we didn’t know her as well, and we didn’t notice when she started acting strange. In this one, we would have.”

“So did she find Nick again?” Kyle asked.

Even Tess looked interested in the answer to that question.

Max shook his head. “No. That was the last of the timelines… except for mine. My future.” With a grin, he added, “And we know what happened with Tess in that one.”

Michael chuckled and glanced at Kyle.

“Wait, who did Tess end up with?” Kyle asked in confusion, looking at the others.

Maria quirked a smile. “Didn’t she tell you when she was explaining about Max last night?” she asked.

Kyle frowned. “No…”

“She gets a nice happy family, complete with a child,” Maria said, leaning forward conspiratorially. “Only this time, the kid doesn’t belong to Max.”

“Huh?” Kyle asked, still not understanding.

“She end up with you,” Michael stated bluntly.

“What?” Kyle practically screeched.

And Tess, speaking up for the first time since the confrontation with Courtney, commented sarcastically, “Well you don’t have to sound so horrified about it.”

As Kyle gaped, opening and closing his mouth while not making any sound, Max continued somberly, “Anyway, I’m not going through my future again. I’ve told most of you bits and pieces of it, and if you want more, you can ask Isabel. I told her pretty much everything… and I don’t want to repeat it.”

The memories were vivid enough. And the nightmares were worse.

“Uh… Max?” Liz said suddenly, looking at him in shock.

“What? What’s wrong?” he asked worriedly, noting that everyone else was suddenly staring at him in silence.

“Look at yourself,” she said faintly.

Max looked down at his hands and realized in surprise and fear that he was looking through his palms. They were transparent.

He was fading away.

Author’s note: Don’t worry, I am nowhere near done with this story. I promise. Things are just about to get a little bit more complicated is all…