FIC: Roswell New Mexico - Lost to Time 6/?
Summary: Time is not unchangeable if someone has the time, patience and drive to make sure history doesn’t repeat itself. Even if it means removing oneself from the equation.
TITLE: Legacies
RATING: R (for language)
CHARACTERS: Alex Manes, Kyle Valenti, Michael Guerin, Max Evans, Isobel Evans, Liz Ortecho, Maria DeLuca, Jim Valenti, Jesse Manes, Mimi DeLuca, Nora Truman, Eugene (Tripp) Manes
PAIRING: Alex/Michael, Kyle/Max
AUTHOR: Melanie
Summary: Time is not unchangeable if someone has the time, patience and drive to make sure history doesn’t repeat itself. Even if it means removing oneself from the equation..
DISCLAIMER: I own nothing.
FEEDBACK: Please?
Lost to Time 6/?
When Alex starts making the same changes three times because he’s so tired his vision is blurring out in front of him he disconnects the pad that Nora had given him and sighs.
They’ve got nothing but time, but it still feels like they’re running up against an invisible clock. He manages to get his feet under him and stand up, shifting uncomfortably until the place where his stump rubs up against the prosthetic settles into a dull ache.
He needs to spend some time not on his feet, he really needs to hobble around on the crutches that Tripp left in the bedroom they’ve been sharing and leave the prosthetic completely off.
Kyle is so many years in the future and yet Alex can still hear him lecturing him. If this works, if he and Tripp can pulls this off he’ll only have those memories.
Nora is curled up on the couch in the living room a mug of something sweet smelling cradled in her hands staring at the fireplace that looks to have already been banked for the night; he glances out the window and can see it’s already dark out.
“Jenna left something on the counter for you to eat,” Nora says and Alex nods but doesn’t head in that direction, instead sitting down in a slouch on the other end of the couch. He tilts his head back and stares at the ceiling.
“Will you tell me about him?” she asks softly.
“Nora…”
“I know what you and Tripp mean to try and do,” she says, she looks at him and there’s a spark in her eyes that looks exactly like a spark that he’s seen in Michael’s. “If you succeed the version of my son that you knew won’t even exist, what harm could it do.”
“You already know his name is Michael,” Alex says. “You could change it to something else, make him somebody else…”
“Michael is a good strong name,” Nora says stubbornly. “Not the one he was born with, but a good one to go forward here with.”
Alex sighs, stares at the fireplace that if this goes on for many more months, they might need to start using to combat the chill that is already in the air.
He wants to beg Nora to make sure that if he doesn’t succeed, if the fragments of plans that him and Tripp have don’t actually come to fruition, that she’ll make sure that Michael stays far away from his family.
He’s hopeful that if he’s not there, that there will be absolutely no reason for Michael to even come within spitting distance of his dad or brothers.
*******************************************************
He doesn’t know if he sleeps, dreams or long forgotten memories running through his thoughts all night.
He resolves to not look at the pictures again, not for a good long while if they’re going to throw him this off mentally.
Michael doesn’t have a boyfriend or girlfriend or any significant other his brain so helpfully throws out there.
He doesn’t understand that, doesn’t understand where they went wrong. Without him there Michael and Maria should have gracefully moved closer and closer together.
Tripp and Abraham are already sitting at the table in the kitchen when he makes his slow way there, there’s a covered plate on the stove that Abraham retrieves for him while he settles into his chair.
There is already a cup of coffee sitting in his spot, made the way he likes it which means Tripp made it since Abraham thinks anything other then black is a sacrilege.
“I booked plane tickets to Roswell,” Tripp says absently, the paper is folded open in front of him so he doesn’t see Alex’s expression.
“When do you leave?” he asks, he smiles gratefully as Abraham sits the plate in front of him. Tries not to think of how oppressive the silence of the house will be with Tripp and likely Abraham gone.
“We leave in two days, I’ve checked your calendar, you’ve got nothing coming up that can’t be done virtually via a WebEx or something like it,” Tripp looks at him and there’s something in the lines of his face that screams that he understands Alex’s reluctance to go back but that he’s also going to make him do it regardless.
“It’s long past time for us to go back to Roswell,” Tripp says softly.
“You know…” Alex starts and Tripp shakes his head.
“Caulfield and Shepherd are long buried. Your father doesn’t even have the first clue that they even existed in the first place let alone had their specters shaping whatever man they would become…”
“My dad didn’t attack Michael because he thought he thought he was an alien, he did it because of me,” Alex says, there’s a small twinge in the back of his mind that screams that he did this, that he convinced his mom to leave his dad right after they had Flint for absolutely no reason.
That closing Shepherd down, emptying out Caulfield; making sure those two things weren’t a part of any Manes legacy was enough.
But he couldn’t take that chance, not with Michael. Not with Max or Isobel, or Nora who actually got to raise her son as well as Max and Isobel.
“I don’t think this is a good idea,” Alex says finally when Tripp doesn’t say anything in response, just arches an eyebrow at him.
Abraham is silent on the other side of the table, just drinking his coffee and watching them.
He doesn’t need to say anything, Alex already knows what Abraham thinks, he thinks that both him and Tripp are idiots. But they are, unfortunately for him, idiots that he’s claimed as family so he feels it necessary to follow along behind them cleaning up what he can and sighing loudly at them when he thinks they’re being more stupid and self-sacrificing then the situations actually call for.
*******************************************************
He has a bi-weekly scheduled conference calls with two of his teams on alternating Monday’s. The one he’s lead on is the one that he’s most excited about, alternative vehicles designed to be used in atmospheres not currently found on Earth.
No one says the words space travel or talks about other planets that they might possibly end up on if they can make things work in real world instead of just in virtual computer models.
Michael also hasn’t been lowkey trying to figure out the logistics of how he might be able to travel to space or one of those other planets; he’s an alien he kind of thinks he should have first dibs on stepping foot on a planet other than Earth.
“So I think our timeline is still good,” Troy says on the other end of the phone, it’s not a video call so he’s leaned back in his chair tossing a ball against the wall using his telekinesis. It’s one of the exercises his mom made him do over and over again when he was a kid fresh out of his pod.
He couldn’t even speak yet, but his mom had him bouncing balls and balancing cups and honing his gifts until he could manage words.
“Should be, just waiting on Emory and Val to finish up with fuel sources,” Michael says, Troy hmms on the other end of the phone. He’s not muted so Michael can hear the faint hum of conversations on the other end.
“You work out of the San Francisco office pretty exclusively…” Michael starts and he doesn’t need to be psychic to know that the silence (besides the hum of voices around him) on the other end is Troy confused.
“Yeah…” Troy drawls slowly, dragging the one word out so it sounds like five syllables and is probably wracking his brain to figure out where Michael is going with this.
“I’m looking for someone,” and he pauses, holding his hand up like Troy can see him through the phone line, which he knows he can’t but Michael still does it, “saw him last time I was there and I have a first name but I looked on the org charts and couldn’t find him…”
“He might be a contractor,” Troy says slowly.
“He was wearing a company lanyard not one of the visitors passes,” Michael says. “His name is Alex, didn’t get a last name and it looked like he worked in IT maybe, or at least with computers… why are you laughing at me?”
“Only you Truman,” Troy snorts, “he won’t be on any of the org charts, not at any level you have access to anyway; Alex Manes is like one of the founders grandsons, he only comes in and works for IT sometimes because he gets bored I guess, guy certainly doesn’t need to from what I’ve heard.”
Michael taps his fingers against his desk, ball hanging in the air between his desk and the wall before he lets it fall gently to the floor where it rolls a few inches before coming to a rest next to one of the chair legs on the other side of his desk.
“So probably not going to be able to meet him at a random project completion…” Michael says.
“Not likely, I think I’ve only ever seen him myself a handful of times, and when he does work on stuff it’s projects a bit higher up on the tier then we do,” Troy says, he sounds apologetic as they say their goodbyes.
Michael makes a face as he disconnects, his computer has already gone to sleep and he absently taps the mouse to wake it up.
He thinks if he made an overture, or an attempt at an overture that Alex would probably be amenable. There’s the little voice in the back of his head that sounds a lot like Max that says would he? in a very sarcastic manner.
He doesn’t have enough information to make that move, not yet anyway.
*******************************************************
Once she doesn’t have Kyle watching her every move she starts writing. Documenting every little piece of information that she remembers about Alex Manes and their original timeline they came from.
She’s terrified that she’s going to forget him before he ever reappears in their lives.
So it’s half a safety net, to write it all down so as to not forget but also an exercise as to what’s different.
She fills half the notebook, shaking out a cramping hand as she flips back through.
Her phone startles her when it rings, CAM flashing across the screen and she fumbles for it before she accepts the call.
“Hello?” she says and hates the bit of desperation she can hear in her voice.
“Hey Jenna,” Alex’s voice is familiar in that way that she almost sags in her seat, hand covering her eyes as she breathes. For months Alex, Mimi, Nora, Tripp and Louise were the only voices she heard. The only people she saw.
“You fucking bastard,” she says and Alex laughs like she startled him.
“It worked though, didn’t it? I mean Michael and Max and Isobel have all had really great lives, opportunities they would never had. They got to grow up with a mom that loved them and never had to wonder where they came from because she probably never hid the truth from them,” Alex says.
“You could have given them all that and not erased yourself out of creation,” Jenna says. “I knew you and Tripp had some big plan to shut down Shepherd, how did you suddenly not being born become a part of that?”
Alex is silent on the other end, for long enough that Jenna thinks that maybe he hung up though when she pulls the phone away from her ear she can still see it’s connected.
“You know my dad didn’t go after Michael because he thought he was alien, right?” he asks slowly. “My dad went after Michael because of me… removing myself from the situation meant that Michael was never in my dad’s crosshairs, because he had no reason to be.”
“He doesn’t seem to have any problem with Kyle or Max,” Jenna says, because she feels like it needs to be.
“Neither one of them is his kid,” Alex says. “He doesn’t need to care about them or what they get up to… though…”
“Didn’t see that one coming?” she grins, because she hadn’t either. She’d fucked around with Max and she’d had a passing flirtation with Kyle before things went to shit, but they neither one of them had seemed all the interested in anything but women in the entire time she knew them… before… in the other timeline she came from.
“No,” Alex says, he pauses for a second and if she strains she can hear the soft tapping of his fingers on a keyboard. “I couldn’t take the chance, Jenna. I couldn’t… let history repeat itself, not if I could change it.”
*******************************************************
TITLE: Legacies
RATING: R (for language)
CHARACTERS: Alex Manes, Kyle Valenti, Michael Guerin, Max Evans, Isobel Evans, Liz Ortecho, Maria DeLuca, Jim Valenti, Jesse Manes, Mimi DeLuca, Nora Truman, Eugene (Tripp) Manes
PAIRING: Alex/Michael, Kyle/Max
AUTHOR: Melanie
Summary: Time is not unchangeable if someone has the time, patience and drive to make sure history doesn’t repeat itself. Even if it means removing oneself from the equation..
DISCLAIMER: I own nothing.
FEEDBACK: Please?
Lost to Time 6/?
When Alex starts making the same changes three times because he’s so tired his vision is blurring out in front of him he disconnects the pad that Nora had given him and sighs.
They’ve got nothing but time, but it still feels like they’re running up against an invisible clock. He manages to get his feet under him and stand up, shifting uncomfortably until the place where his stump rubs up against the prosthetic settles into a dull ache.
He needs to spend some time not on his feet, he really needs to hobble around on the crutches that Tripp left in the bedroom they’ve been sharing and leave the prosthetic completely off.
Kyle is so many years in the future and yet Alex can still hear him lecturing him. If this works, if he and Tripp can pulls this off he’ll only have those memories.
Nora is curled up on the couch in the living room a mug of something sweet smelling cradled in her hands staring at the fireplace that looks to have already been banked for the night; he glances out the window and can see it’s already dark out.
“Jenna left something on the counter for you to eat,” Nora says and Alex nods but doesn’t head in that direction, instead sitting down in a slouch on the other end of the couch. He tilts his head back and stares at the ceiling.
“Will you tell me about him?” she asks softly.
“Nora…”
“I know what you and Tripp mean to try and do,” she says, she looks at him and there’s a spark in her eyes that looks exactly like a spark that he’s seen in Michael’s. “If you succeed the version of my son that you knew won’t even exist, what harm could it do.”
“You already know his name is Michael,” Alex says. “You could change it to something else, make him somebody else…”
“Michael is a good strong name,” Nora says stubbornly. “Not the one he was born with, but a good one to go forward here with.”
Alex sighs, stares at the fireplace that if this goes on for many more months, they might need to start using to combat the chill that is already in the air.
He wants to beg Nora to make sure that if he doesn’t succeed, if the fragments of plans that him and Tripp have don’t actually come to fruition, that she’ll make sure that Michael stays far away from his family.
He’s hopeful that if he’s not there, that there will be absolutely no reason for Michael to even come within spitting distance of his dad or brothers.
*******************************************************
He doesn’t know if he sleeps, dreams or long forgotten memories running through his thoughts all night.
He resolves to not look at the pictures again, not for a good long while if they’re going to throw him this off mentally.
Michael doesn’t have a boyfriend or girlfriend or any significant other his brain so helpfully throws out there.
He doesn’t understand that, doesn’t understand where they went wrong. Without him there Michael and Maria should have gracefully moved closer and closer together.
Tripp and Abraham are already sitting at the table in the kitchen when he makes his slow way there, there’s a covered plate on the stove that Abraham retrieves for him while he settles into his chair.
There is already a cup of coffee sitting in his spot, made the way he likes it which means Tripp made it since Abraham thinks anything other then black is a sacrilege.
“I booked plane tickets to Roswell,” Tripp says absently, the paper is folded open in front of him so he doesn’t see Alex’s expression.
“When do you leave?” he asks, he smiles gratefully as Abraham sits the plate in front of him. Tries not to think of how oppressive the silence of the house will be with Tripp and likely Abraham gone.
“We leave in two days, I’ve checked your calendar, you’ve got nothing coming up that can’t be done virtually via a WebEx or something like it,” Tripp looks at him and there’s something in the lines of his face that screams that he understands Alex’s reluctance to go back but that he’s also going to make him do it regardless.
“It’s long past time for us to go back to Roswell,” Tripp says softly.
“You know…” Alex starts and Tripp shakes his head.
“Caulfield and Shepherd are long buried. Your father doesn’t even have the first clue that they even existed in the first place let alone had their specters shaping whatever man they would become…”
“My dad didn’t attack Michael because he thought he thought he was an alien, he did it because of me,” Alex says, there’s a small twinge in the back of his mind that screams that he did this, that he convinced his mom to leave his dad right after they had Flint for absolutely no reason.
That closing Shepherd down, emptying out Caulfield; making sure those two things weren’t a part of any Manes legacy was enough.
But he couldn’t take that chance, not with Michael. Not with Max or Isobel, or Nora who actually got to raise her son as well as Max and Isobel.
“I don’t think this is a good idea,” Alex says finally when Tripp doesn’t say anything in response, just arches an eyebrow at him.
Abraham is silent on the other side of the table, just drinking his coffee and watching them.
He doesn’t need to say anything, Alex already knows what Abraham thinks, he thinks that both him and Tripp are idiots. But they are, unfortunately for him, idiots that he’s claimed as family so he feels it necessary to follow along behind them cleaning up what he can and sighing loudly at them when he thinks they’re being more stupid and self-sacrificing then the situations actually call for.
*******************************************************
He has a bi-weekly scheduled conference calls with two of his teams on alternating Monday’s. The one he’s lead on is the one that he’s most excited about, alternative vehicles designed to be used in atmospheres not currently found on Earth.
No one says the words space travel or talks about other planets that they might possibly end up on if they can make things work in real world instead of just in virtual computer models.
Michael also hasn’t been lowkey trying to figure out the logistics of how he might be able to travel to space or one of those other planets; he’s an alien he kind of thinks he should have first dibs on stepping foot on a planet other than Earth.
“So I think our timeline is still good,” Troy says on the other end of the phone, it’s not a video call so he’s leaned back in his chair tossing a ball against the wall using his telekinesis. It’s one of the exercises his mom made him do over and over again when he was a kid fresh out of his pod.
He couldn’t even speak yet, but his mom had him bouncing balls and balancing cups and honing his gifts until he could manage words.
“Should be, just waiting on Emory and Val to finish up with fuel sources,” Michael says, Troy hmms on the other end of the phone. He’s not muted so Michael can hear the faint hum of conversations on the other end.
“You work out of the San Francisco office pretty exclusively…” Michael starts and he doesn’t need to be psychic to know that the silence (besides the hum of voices around him) on the other end is Troy confused.
“Yeah…” Troy drawls slowly, dragging the one word out so it sounds like five syllables and is probably wracking his brain to figure out where Michael is going with this.
“I’m looking for someone,” and he pauses, holding his hand up like Troy can see him through the phone line, which he knows he can’t but Michael still does it, “saw him last time I was there and I have a first name but I looked on the org charts and couldn’t find him…”
“He might be a contractor,” Troy says slowly.
“He was wearing a company lanyard not one of the visitors passes,” Michael says. “His name is Alex, didn’t get a last name and it looked like he worked in IT maybe, or at least with computers… why are you laughing at me?”
“Only you Truman,” Troy snorts, “he won’t be on any of the org charts, not at any level you have access to anyway; Alex Manes is like one of the founders grandsons, he only comes in and works for IT sometimes because he gets bored I guess, guy certainly doesn’t need to from what I’ve heard.”
Michael taps his fingers against his desk, ball hanging in the air between his desk and the wall before he lets it fall gently to the floor where it rolls a few inches before coming to a rest next to one of the chair legs on the other side of his desk.
“So probably not going to be able to meet him at a random project completion…” Michael says.
“Not likely, I think I’ve only ever seen him myself a handful of times, and when he does work on stuff it’s projects a bit higher up on the tier then we do,” Troy says, he sounds apologetic as they say their goodbyes.
Michael makes a face as he disconnects, his computer has already gone to sleep and he absently taps the mouse to wake it up.
He thinks if he made an overture, or an attempt at an overture that Alex would probably be amenable. There’s the little voice in the back of his head that sounds a lot like Max that says would he? in a very sarcastic manner.
He doesn’t have enough information to make that move, not yet anyway.
*******************************************************
Once she doesn’t have Kyle watching her every move she starts writing. Documenting every little piece of information that she remembers about Alex Manes and their original timeline they came from.
She’s terrified that she’s going to forget him before he ever reappears in their lives.
So it’s half a safety net, to write it all down so as to not forget but also an exercise as to what’s different.
She fills half the notebook, shaking out a cramping hand as she flips back through.
Her phone startles her when it rings, CAM flashing across the screen and she fumbles for it before she accepts the call.
“Hello?” she says and hates the bit of desperation she can hear in her voice.
“Hey Jenna,” Alex’s voice is familiar in that way that she almost sags in her seat, hand covering her eyes as she breathes. For months Alex, Mimi, Nora, Tripp and Louise were the only voices she heard. The only people she saw.
“You fucking bastard,” she says and Alex laughs like she startled him.
“It worked though, didn’t it? I mean Michael and Max and Isobel have all had really great lives, opportunities they would never had. They got to grow up with a mom that loved them and never had to wonder where they came from because she probably never hid the truth from them,” Alex says.
“You could have given them all that and not erased yourself out of creation,” Jenna says. “I knew you and Tripp had some big plan to shut down Shepherd, how did you suddenly not being born become a part of that?”
Alex is silent on the other end, for long enough that Jenna thinks that maybe he hung up though when she pulls the phone away from her ear she can still see it’s connected.
“You know my dad didn’t go after Michael because he thought he was alien, right?” he asks slowly. “My dad went after Michael because of me… removing myself from the situation meant that Michael was never in my dad’s crosshairs, because he had no reason to be.”
“He doesn’t seem to have any problem with Kyle or Max,” Jenna says, because she feels like it needs to be.
“Neither one of them is his kid,” Alex says. “He doesn’t need to care about them or what they get up to… though…”
“Didn’t see that one coming?” she grins, because she hadn’t either. She’d fucked around with Max and she’d had a passing flirtation with Kyle before things went to shit, but they neither one of them had seemed all the interested in anything but women in the entire time she knew them… before… in the other timeline she came from.
“No,” Alex says, he pauses for a second and if she strains she can hear the soft tapping of his fingers on a keyboard. “I couldn’t take the chance, Jenna. I couldn’t… let history repeat itself, not if I could change it.”
*******************************************************