Reconstructing Madonna - Parts Twelve and Thirteen
Part Eleven here.
Part Twelve
Eileen paces the apartment for awhile after they leave.
Physical activity helps.
Not as much as alcohol or nicotine, maybe; but smoking always makes her feel vaguely guilty, and ever since the doctor at the rehab clinic called her a borderline alcoholic she has made the effort to keep her drinking strictly recreational. (And he can shove his medical terms and his patronizing smile, because after toeing the line for three years she has yet to get drunk.)
She stays away from drugs - not just cocaine, but the whole truckload - completely.
Even though she knows logically that it isn’t the reason Serena was so angry, Eileen still wonders if maybe her sister reacted the way she did partly because Rena was worried she was dipping into the pot she was getting for Liz. And that thought hurts in places that haven’t been touched in awhile, because she likes to think that her sister has more faith in her than that.
(Not that she deserves it, really.)
In Rena’s mind, she should abstain from anything remotely capable of giving her a buzz.
(And she thinks this is probably somewhat sensible, because she’s not the nicest drunk in the world and having a drug dealer on speed dial wouldn’t exactly be smart. Her brain chemistry - or maybe just her personality - has always been on the addictive side.)
Liz has enough foreign components swimming around in her blood already, and adding anything more into the mix could be dangerous or fatal as far as Rena is concerned.
(Serena does get concerned; too much sometimes.)
While she trusts her big sister with her own health care - even though it is her humble opinion that doctors on a whole don’t know shit, Serena is different - she isn’t so quick to agree when it comes to Liz.
Is giving Liz drugs the best idea? Maybe not.
But Serena always seems to forget that for three and a half years Liz functioned on an almost constant chemically induced high and never dealt with so much as a hangover. That Liz drank even more than Eileen when they went out and that she was just as eager with the consumption/inhalation/snorting of various illegal substances but didn’t once suffer a bad reaction.
She also seems to forget that after Tommy died, Liz pretty much snapped her fingers and went cold turkey on everything. She didn’t have withdrawal symptoms, didn’t have cravings; didn’t even suffer the occasional mood swing.
Maybe it’s the alien DNA.
Or maybe Liz is just a lot better at hiding than Lee assumes.
All this walking is winding her up even more.
And she just had to go and think about Tommy. Now her mind, which at rest spins in about a hundred different directions, is reexamining a million dirty and shameful and just all-over depressing memories.
Eileen loves Liz to death, but she’s never envied her her wallowing and isn’t about to emulate it now.
Loves Liz to death. And Rena thinks that that’s what it’s going to come down to - that Liz, who has brought and kept the two of them together and who has always carried that incongruent air of indestructibility, is going to fall apart and just die on them.
Screw being good. Any more thoughts like this and she’s making for the beer.
“Get a hold of yourself,” she mutters.
Stops next to the kitchen counter, leaning forward on her elbows.
Even bearing down on something else, there’s still that niggling weight that refuses to ever fully go away.
She closes her eyes and rests her forehead against her hands.
Serena and Eileen both have their dirty little secrets when it comes to Liz and Maria and the aliens.
Even though Serena will never, ever tell anyone else - Lee suspects she hasn’t even admitted it to herself - some twisted part of her feels responsible for Future Max’s trip through the rabbit hole.
It’s the knowledge of what-might-have-been and what Liz suffered to make it what-hasn’t-been that brought her sister out of her indecision and made her go with psychology instead of physics. It’s this that compels her to be so fucking passive when it comes to Liz.
(Because God forbid she ever has an incident like this afternoon where’s she’s insensitive and mistaken and human; instead she must be perfect in front of everyone else because she’s so flawed in her own head.)
It’s also why she goes along with the completely stupid ‘let’s keep important information from Maria’ plan that Liz enforces so stubbornly.
She knows how Maria feels about the aliens and how Maria feels about Liz. And she knows that the minute Ria learns how closely the two are still intertwined, she will fail to keep the middle ground she’s worked so hard to find - because really, when it comes to Liz’s situation there is no middle ground.
Lee wonders sometimes if her sister is ever going to see herself as clearly as she sees everyone else.
The thing about Eileen’s secret, though, is that it’s much more selfish; or maybe, she thinks, just self-centered.
(And maybe her hatred of Max has more to do with her than with Liz - because, honestly, for a long time she worried that she was the one dragging Liz down. He was just unfortunate enough to prove her wrong and give her a faceless name to project on.)
Her elbow bumps into something. She looks down and sees the velvet-covered book she and Serena rescued from the guts of the sofa. Runs her hands over it for the hundredth time this afternoon.
Feeling wistful and fragile and just a tiny bit stronger by something that should be so insignificant -
but it’s not.
She and this book have quite the history together.
Liz sent it to her when she was in rehab. She’d just gotten through her thirty-day isolation period and she’d been refusing to see Liz and Rena whenever they came to visit. (It took a lot longer than a month to stop being royally pissed at them.)
She came very near to trashing it on the spot. Instead she read it and found that in that odd, semi-freaky way best friends do, Liz had known exactly what she needed.
She knows that she’s probably placing more credit on this book than it deserves - that in reality, things like time and healing and the once-unthinkable idea of growing up were really what brought about all the good things she got from rehabilitation - but in her mind this unassuming journal served as a bridge of sorts, both between her and the outside world and between her and Liz.
Maybe she feels this way because this is the first real glimpse into Liz that she ever got.
Her fingers run against a protruding piece of paper. Carefully she flips through the book in search of the disturbance, mindful not to rip the yellowed pages. Spidery handwriting smiles up at her like an old friend.
A single piece of stationery, significantly newer than its hiding place, falls to the counter.
Eileen takes one look at the writing and has to bite her bottom lip against tears.
Remembering the first time she read this. It feels like a lifetime, but it’s really only been four years.
(Some days this hits closer to home than others.)
Her eyes scan the text. She tries to skim it quickly; but like there’s some maximum-strength emotional force controlling her, her eyes are pulled back to certain words and phrases until she’s slowly reading the whole letter.
Dear Lee,
I know you hate me right now. I hate myself, too - not for getting you help but for being such a big part of the problem for so long.
You should know that I thought a lot about sending you this. Every time I’ve tried to come down for visits you won’t see me. I understand, even if I think it’s stupid. It’s selfish, too - Serena cries every time we come back without seeing you, and she isn’t even the one who arranged the intervention. But if you won’t let us - let me - be with you, hopefully you’ll at least accept this.
You’re probably wondering right about now just what ‘this’ is. I guess the best way to explain would be to remind you of a conversation we had our senior year at Winnaman - our second senior year, I mean. We were talking about grandparents, and you mentioned that yours was a ‘fascist old bat only concerned with the family reputation,’ and that you wished you’d just had a normal grandmother. I think that you were probably mostly joking (it’s hard to tell with you sometimes), but I thought that right now maybe a grandmother was what you really needed.
When Grandma Claudia died I was devastated. She was the person I told the secrets of my heart to; before Max, I thought she was the closest I’d ever come to a soul mate, if one of a completely different kind.
A week after the funeral my parents went to the reading of her will and brought me back the number to a safety deposit box. She left me quite a few things, but this journal was and remains the thing that I treasure the most.
My grandmother was the most joyful person I knew - so full of life that when she died it seemed liked the universe had broken some chief rule. Like it couldn’t possibly be true that this person with so much to give was really gone. I was happy to have this piece of her, of the bright and funny person that I’d know my whole life. I guess I naively believed that I wouldn’t find anything that strayed from the picture of her I had in my mind.
The odd thing about this journal, though, is that reading it I felt like I was hearing the thoughts of a complete stranger. Most of the pages here are filled with her talking about the darkest moments in her life (and there were quite a few of those). Maybe not at first, but eventually, I came to be grateful for finding out about this side of her, even if it meant that I had to change the way that I viewed her. Some of the glimmer may be gone, but now her memory feels a little more touchable.
The truth is, Lee, you remind of her a lot. I’ve never met anyone as fearless - or as reckless - as you. And you, along with Maria and Alex and Serena, are one of the best friends I’ve ever had.
I know you probably don’t always feel it, but I love you. So much.
I’m not going to apologize for telling your mother what was going on. I hope you can forgive me for that eventually.
Even if you don’t, though, please just do me a favor - read the journal? I promise there’s a happy ending.
Love,
Lizzie-Beth
She hasn’t called Liz Lizzie-Beth in years.
(Probably because in the past, every time she convinced Liz to go along with some drug-involved or just plain crazy-ass scheme she prefaced it with, “Lizzie-Beth, I’ve been thinking…”)
Eileen wonders if that’s really what happened. If she was always introducing Liz to things she wasn’t ready for and convincing her to do something dangerous and stupid.
But she remembers so clearly that sometimes it was Liz doing the suggesting, and that they worked off each other when it came to the drugs and the alcohol, as if they were always trying to see who could do more shit and walk away in one piece.
To most people it would probably be astonishing that they’re still friends.
She knows better than that, though.
Knows that even if she comes with problems, they are all human-sized problems.
That Liz has given her more than a hundred years of selfless friendship could even start to repay.
It was while reading Claudia Parker’s journal, becoming acquainted with and grieving for a woman whose life she had missed, that Eileen began to really mourn herself.
It was between Liz’s visits and the tapes of Maria’s music that she passed on that something inside Lee broke/mended until she was someone fresh and almost unrecognizable, with only traces of the old mold showing in the new.
And then, as Liz realized that she could extend a hand without being bitten, Eileen finally got to know the girl she’d been sharing her rooms and bad habits with for the past two years.
Got to learn the insecurities and stubbornness. Saw that underneath that constant, firm persona was someone too lost in the past and their own head to move forward in anything more than baby steps without threatening to collapse.
It was also during this time that Eileen really met Maria.
First with just a few scribbled notes about some song lyrics she’d liked. Then there were phone calls and letters until, finally, Maria was making almost as many monthly visits as Lizzie and Rena.
Somehow, during the most wrenching time in her life, Lee stumbled upon the treasure of a best friend.
(And it is a credit to Maria that when Eileen was too immersed in her own resentment and pain to appreciate was a treasure she was dealing with, the other woman hung on anyway.)
Liz gave her two friends - one a living, breathing human being and the other the echo of someone from the pages of a diary.
She’s given Eileen support whenever things are too difficult to deal with alone.
In a strange way, she’s also given her her sister.
(Then there’s the small, pesky fact that she may very well owe Liz her life.)
But Eileen likes to think that even if Liz had just given herself, it would have been enough.
-
Liz whips through the door like a compressed tornado.
Her movements aren’t loud or exaggerated. That, she thinks, would be better.
Because all of the rage glimmering just beneath the surface of Liz’s eyes is being tightly compressed into tensed muscles and clipped steps, and sooner or later it’s bound to come out all at once.
“Did you tell her?” Eileen asks Serena.
Serena is wearing that neutral expression, the one that makes it so hard to decipher a damn thing she’s thinking. “Yes,” she says. Quiet. Not quite shameful, but deeply tired.
“You didn’t know, right?” Liz bursts out. She is standing in the corner of the apartment, her arms banded across her stomach. Some intimidating stew of emotions is brewing in her eyes, and the effect makes her look like a crazed animal.
“I only found out a few hours before you did,” she answers. Against her will her voice comes out sounding slightly defensive.
Serena sends her a look that clearly says ‘thanks for the help’ and she resists the urge to glare at her sister. She’s not going to take partial blame for a lie she had no part in.
“Of course you didn’t know,” Liz fumes.
Eileen watches in fascination as Liz gets increasingly worked up - temper tantrums are usually her forte. It’s strangely compelling watching Liz wear her anger like a weapon.
There’s a foreign slant to her face: bitten lips swollen and turned down, eyes trying to narrow and widen at the same time and eyebrows not quite making it into a frown.
Liz looks more alive than she has in weeks.
“Liz -” Serena says.
“No. No, you know what? Don’t talk to me right now. Just - just don’t talk to me. I’m still trying to figure out if I’m more furious that you did what I specifically asked you not to or that you lied to me about it,” she interrupts. Draws herself up to all of her five-foot-two glory and tries to pierce Rena with her eyes.
Apparently Liz has forgotten that that tactic never works on a Burrows. (If anything, it only makes them angry.)
“Liz, don’t try to tell me you wouldn’t have done the same, because you would. You are doing the same thing with Maria.”
Liz’s eyebrows raise, her lips curling in a sarcastic smile. “Oh, okay. We’re going to bring Maria into this? Then why don’t you tell me this, Serena: why haven’t you told her that Michael is ‘dead’? And better yet, why would either of us have to? She talks to Kyle, so why didn’t he tell her?”
“So you’re saying that if someone doesn’t want to know it’s okay? Well, I hate to be the one to remind you, Liz, but you haven’t wanted to hear anything about Max in years!” Serena replies. Rakes a hand through her out-of-control hair.
And just like that, all the fight is gone.
Eileen curses as she sees Liz go limp with guilt, now hugging her middle in an effort to curl in on herself.
She notices belatedly that green sparks are crackling at Liz’s fingertips.
Liz notices the direction of her stare and catches her eye. Communicates a silent request.
She coughs uncomfortably. “Liz… the weed is gone.”
She stiffens. “What do you mean, gone?”
Serena takes over now. She is to-the-point and firm, all business as usual. “We flushed it while you were gone. And if you try to get anymore it’s all going to go the same way.”
Liz steps forward, clearly bent on being confrontational. “What I do in my home on my time is none of your business!”
“Actually, Liz, it is very much my business. You aren’t paying me to hold your hand and offer up tissues.” Serena is steely, her mouth showing faint traces of frustration.
Eileen thinks she sees the beginning of tears in her eyes; but when she blinks it is gone and she thinks it must have just been the lighting.
“We’ve talked about this, remember? You may not see any short-term effects, but we have no idea what kind of damage foreign substances will do to your brain in the long run. It wouldn’t surprise me if part of the reason you have so little control over your powers and your emotions is because of all the junk you’ve taken into your body in the past.”
There isn’t an answering argument.
Liz is pinching the bridge of her nose. Her forehead creases in pain as a small whimper escapes her mouth, and Eileen and Serena are moving toward her even before she stumbles back against the wall.
“What’s wrong?” Lee asks urgently. “Liz, what’s -”
She stops as she sees the blood trickling from her left nostril.
Liz’s voice is drowsy, as if she is fighting the pull of sleep. “It feels… it feels like someone’s been chinking away at my head with a pickax all day. I can’t -” She inhales sharply. Blindly stretches out one of her hands.
Serena grasps it quickly. Her eyes are narrowed, and Eileen tries to calm herself as she sees her sister quickly running through some mental checklist in her head.
“How bad is your headache? Is it a pressing sensation or a sharp pain?”
“It’s not - it’s not that bad,” Liz says. But she hisses in pain and tries to stifle a series of small cries. “It’s not really either. More like a… probe?”
Something about this catches Rena’s attention, but she soldiers on without comment. “Have you had any other symptoms? Low energy, trouble moving limbs or walking in a straight line? Have you had difficulty breathing? Did your heart rate lower or increase a lot when you were by yourself earlier?”
“No. None of that. I just…”
Her eyes fill with tears.
Eileen swallows thickly at the sight of them.
“… I can’t let him in. Not now.” Liz’s whimpers have escalated into full-out sobs.
Rena’s eyebrows raise and she glances at the floor, a frown puckering her forehead. When her head rises she is reluctant but determined. “Liz, if Max is trying to reach you…”
“No, it’s not -”
Then the strangest thing happens.
Liz smiles.
Her face relaxes completely. Eyelids fluttering shut; a smile that is for once genuine playing at her lips. Breathing in deeply, and she is at rest as she leans against the wall and slides to the floor. A stray tear trails down her cheek.
“Okay,” she whispers. Eileen wonders who she’s talking to, because it certainly isn’t either of them. “Okay, okay,” she reaffirms, her voice soft.
Her whole demeanor - the tone of her voice, her expression, even her posture - is heartbreakingly tender.
Liz looks as though resting in her hands is the most precious thing in the world.
Lee is scared to tread on this moment. It feels near-sacred, and she dreads seeing Liz’s smile disappear as she remembers herself. But even though the bleeding has mostly stopped, all she can see are the circular maroon stains decorating Liz’s t-shirt.
“Liz?”
She is too late anyway, though, because Liz’s head has lolled to the side; and as she inhales, her breathing follows the steady pattern of sleep.
-
Liz has been sleeping for over two hours when Maria calls.
Eileen feels a burst of relief. Even with the half-truths and the distance and the always-unspoken questions hanging between them, Maria DeLuca has always had the rare ability to make her smile no matter what the situation.
“Ria!”
Her voice is excited. Maria hasn’t had time to call for a few weeks, between crazy studio hours and promotional photo shoots for her upcoming album. Lee is every inch a kid in a candy store.
“Hey, Lee.”
Just like that, her good mood drops.
Maybe it’s the way her voice leans more toward scratchy than sultry, or the peculiar speed at which she speaks the words - drawing each one out as if afraid to get to the next - but underneath her forced cheer Eileen detects that something is very, very wrong.
“What’s going on? What happened?”
Maria doesn’t question her intuitiveness. “I - I just…”
She can hear the floodgates break through phone line.
“I got a call from Isabel today. She said that she dreamwalked Max, and that Liz got pulled into it, and she’s worried about her. And she said these things to me, and I just can’t… I don’t…” Sobbing filters through the receiver.
Damn it.
This is happening too fast, and now that Maria is being dragged into it too she feels terrible for lying to her and hopeless because Liz will feel guilty too and see it as one more thing she has done wrong and, Christ, she is completely out of her league here.
“Maria, it’s okay. It’s okay,” she says, floundering hopelessly as she attempts for the second time in the space of twenty-four hours to soothe someone who appears inconsolable.
“No, it’s not. Because she thinks that I would just leave Liz to deal with this on her own instead of coming to them if she needed help, and I would never do that. Not even after Michael. God, why would she even think that?”
And this burns. After all, isn’t she herself guilty of doing exactly what Isabel accused Maria of?
Serena needs to stop watching Liz sleep and get the hell out here already.
Rena’s always been the one in charge of cleaning up the messes, and Eileen thinks that if she tries to handle this on her own she will just make the problem worse.
(Because isn’t that what always happens with her?)
For once the sister ESP seems to kick in when it’s needed. Serena exits Liz’s room, shutting the door softly behind her, and turns to find Eileen’s desperate face boring holes in her.
She mouths ‘Maria,’ and her sister’s shoulders slump in exhaustion.
Maria is still talking. “I just… please tell me that she’s alright. That if she wasn’t, one of you would tell me.”
Serena looks at her expectantly. Maria waits tensely on the line.
Eileen decides that even if the hole gets larger, having another person to help dig them out is in everyone’s best interest. Especially when the person in question knows Lizzie better than anyone.
“I think you should come out,” she says quietly. “Liz has been having a hard time lately. I don’t know - I don’t know how serious it is. But I think that if you have the time, she could really use her other best friend.”
It’s hard to tell if Maria’s cry is one of panic, relief, or both. “Just give me a few days to get everything with the album wrapped up. I’ll see if the Idol deal is still on the table and if I can pass the whole thing off as a business trip.”
Thank God.
Serena is giving her that strange, indecipherable stare that she hates. The one where she’s never really sure if she’s being found wanting or being given approval. Still, she says nothing as Maria and Eileen talk in rushed sentences for a few more minutes.
“Lee, I’ve gotta go. But Kevin wants to talk to you. Something about a book he was going to ship you?”
She vaguely remembers her librarian friend promising to ship her a book written by one of her favorite British authors that has yet to be published in the States. That conversation seems a million years away from here and now.
“Oh, okay.”
“Give Liz and Rena my love,” Maria says. Even with the added layer of anxiousness, her voice sounds somehow relieved.
“Sure thing,” Eileen chirps. Tries her best to sound like she is not in the middle of a hellish situation.
Her trademark smirk, the security blanket that always worms its way onto her face when she’s amused or unsure or just trying to fake her way through, is out in full force.
“And I love you too.”
Her tone is teasing. Affectionate. The smallest bit chiding, as if she’d known her friend had some irrational fear that she would be left out.
Eileen feels empty as the urge to hug Maria fills her and she remembers the miles between them.
“You know I love you,” she replies, her voice bored. She knows Maria is picturing her rolling her eyes exasperatedly.
The line crackles and the phone shifts hands.
“Hey, Kev!”
There is silence for a long moment, and she wonders if they have been disconnected. Then she hears a door shut and Kevin is whispering, his voice almost unrecognizable with fury and panic.
“What the hell is going on?”
“W-what?”
She falters. Sounds (and feels) like an idiot.
Serena moves toward her, gesturing for the phone. She clings to it stubbornly.
“I’d just like to know if my best friend’s going to be coming back to me in a body bag, hey? Bloody hell, what exactly is she going to find when she gets out there?”
“What are you talking about?!”
She’s mad now, too. How could Maria tell him and not even give them a heads-up, and how dare Kevin have the nerve to act so high and mighty when he doesn’t have the slightest idea what it’s been like for them?
“You know what I’m talking about, Eileen. Don’t fuck around with me. Is this about the - the thing that happened when the three of you came to visit? Is Liz sick?” Even fired up like she has never heard him, Kevin still manages to sound concerned for their mutual friend.
Serena, who has been angling closer the entire time, finally snatches the phone from her hand. “Listen, Kevin, Liz is having trouble with the - with what we talked about before. I don’t really feel comfortable talking about it over the phone.”
She can’t make out the high exclamations in the background, but she senses Serena growing more and more impatient. “Yes, I know. But Eileen already told her to come, and it’s too late to change that now. When she gets here we’ll see how she’s feeling about it and then decide where to go from there.”
Kevin says something else, and it makes Serena’s nostrils flare. “Don’t talk to me about Michael. You have no idea, and neither does Maria. And frankly, I couldn’t give two shits about what he has to say, either. Maria is a big girl, and if the two of them want to hash everything out then that’s her decision to make.”
There’s another pause, and then Rena murmurs a goodbye and disconnects the call.
It takes her awhile to find her voice.
“Kevin knows?”
Serena nods. “When we went to see them right before moving out here, Liz had a pretty bad night. He walked in on her burning straight through the hotel sheets.” She pauses, takes a deep breath. “Maria doesn’t know that he knows.”
Eileen is suddenly overwhelmingly bitter. “So who convinced him to keep his mouth shut: you or Liz? Or was it a joint effort?”
Her sister is suitably stung.
“It wasn’t like that. Liz begged him not to say anything, but she didn’t… it wasn’t like that. He came to me for advice and I told him that I couldn’t get involved.”
“This is such bullshit! And what are we doing here, Serena, about to transport Liz right back to the source of this mess?! How is she possibly going to get better that way?” Eileen bursts out.
If she can’t say anything to Liz, she will damn well say it to Rena. Rena, who should know better.
…Rena, who looks like she’s about to be the second person today to faint.
It’s impossible to stay mad in the face of her sister’s insecurity.
They hear the piercing scream at the same time.
Four years of habit go out the window and they are both racing each other to the door, footsteps pounding the wood until the sound echoes through hallway.
Pulse throbbing in her ears, Eileen is the one to throw open the door. Her eyes search the room frantically for Liz.
Calling her name in a high, frightened voice. Shouting for Serena to do something, to help, because the screaming has stopped and because -
because Liz isn’t anywhere in the room.
Part Thirteen
When Liz wakes up she is in the White Room.
Her hands and feet are held down by metal brackets, and flimsy material suspiciously similar to that of a hospital gown clings to her sweat-soaked skin.
She has the peculiar sensation of unreality - as if this is a dream within a dream within a dream.
Her mind struggles to work out the specifics, but she finds it is too foggy to accomplish much.
(And that isn't right. She should be alert, aware, begging -)
Her body is trapped head to toe in a second skin. It is deceptively convincing, but as she shifts and stretches it becomes apparent and confining.
Body hollowed out. She is the only real thing, lurking somewhere below. Air is hard to breathe in, and the extra mass is suffocating her.
Mind, willpower, and strength all fight together to bring her to the forefront and strip off the prison of her body twice over.
For some reason she can’t seem to break the surface.
She’s so tired now. Wishes she could fall asleep, but finds herself stuck in this strange waking twilight.
Words are lost to her, but she can still make out voices; one of them is disconcertingly familiar. It is wrong, somehow, but with her clouded head and weighted eyelids it is too great a struggle to examine why.
Even in its unevenness it is comforting. It washes over her in waves, making her forget the pain in her head and the blood soaking the corner of her mouth. Her neck cranes to bring her closer to the sound.
Resistance comes in the form of metal brackets, and with surprise Liz feels a shock of damp hair pressed against the length of her forehead, cheek, neck. Although she knows it should not be here she finds herself merely accepting it. Too much else competes for her attention.
There are cries - awful, shrill, and high-pitched - that she recognizes as her own. But as her heart struggles to beat a steady rhythm and dizziness rolls over her in waves she doesn’t feel the sound passing through her throat or the sobs contracting her stomach. She knows it must be her, but the emotions and actions of this other person are merely faint echoes in her head.
It is disconcerting to not be entirely responsible for her actions.
Her eyes crack open into thin slights; and as they do, she wonders for the first time how she knew her location before seeing it.
With sight comes heightened hearing, and she has almost gotten a grasp on the still-wrong voice in the background when blurred figures in white atmospheric suits are swarming her.
Logic indicates that struggling is useless, but the second skin - and she can feel it more extensively now, is more deeply intermingled with it than ever - fights against the metal restraints encasing her wrists, ankles, and stomach.
Needles approach her arm, and for the first time Liz feels real panic.
She opens her mouth to speak, but that other mouth is still too busy screaming to cooperate with her efforts.
This is not me, she thinks, and is cognizant that this thought should be calming her, not upsetting her further.
Anger builds up in her as multiple hands brush against her body.
“Stop it! Stop it, damn you! She’s not part of this! Don’t touch her!”
It is this, the voice she knows so well, that drags her into some semblance of coherency.
And as she listens, she finally realizes that there is nothing wrong with it. She just couldn’t make herself listen before.
Couldn’t bear to hear the overwhelming rage and anguish, stripping his voice until it’s all just raw sounds tumbling from his chest. Couldn’t face the tears she hears in it so clearly now.
(If she faces him, she will have to face herself as well.)
Ragefearadrenaline rushing her until she has no choice but to look. To see once and for all if, outside of nightmares and dark corners, this is still what he looks like.
Max and Pierce are both at the opposite end of the room. It is dream-distance, stretched out longer than is feasible.
This is a dream, she thinks/remembers, and is somehow made more afraid for Max than if it was real.
He doesn’t have any need to keep in his emotions here. Doesn’t have anything holding him back.
And it is wounded that he does the most damage.
“Ma -”
Her throat is too dry to properly form the word - probably from all the screaming, she thinks. Liz coughs violently and their heads turn together to look at her.
Pierce is at once considering and delighted. Happy, like always, to find a new toy.
Her eyes skim his face carefully, looking for a monster but seeing only the remnants of a human being.
She knows that he will be hurting her soon.
Knows that he has already hurt Max.
In the end, this is what has her seeking out the other prisoner with her eyes.
It is second nature to her: as if it hasn’t been years since she followed his every move carefully, always noticing the slightest nuances in every shade/emotion/change when their gaze met. Also, strangely, as if it is the very first time that she is actually seeing him.
Deathly pale and exhausted, but he is still more beautiful than she'd remembered.
Even with sleep taunting her and drugs being pushed into her veins and hands still poking, prodding, hurting her, the noticeable and familiar charge fills the air when they lock eyes.
He looks at/through her, and she realizes she’d forgotten how terrifying and good it once made her feel to be the one necessary constant in his world.
A distant memory of some connection to him built on flashes and shared emotions and whispers of air teases her memory. Liz can’t place where it’s from, and as she sees him broken but furious it seems far gone and utterly unimportant.
This is the Max that is real.
This is the Max that she can touch.
“Liz.”
And it’s just a whisper, not even really her name - but somehow it stretches across the distance and makes the gap seem bridgeable.
She opens her mouth once more to speak. Can’t draw in the necessary air.
Tears fill his eyes.
Her heart throbs madly in her chest, strange and full with a million dark and wonderful emotions. There is so much she wants to say.
I love you I need you None of this is real I’m trying to find you just hold on Please don’t make yourself watch if they hurt me -
Max sees this all in her eyes and, because it is him, understands.
Her tongue remains thick and useless in her mouth.
So, even as they lay pinned to identical hospital beds with no voices but plenty of words resting between them, some part of him reaches out to her and a twin part of her responds in kind.
She struggles to hang on for him.
It's all just fragments now. Fear and sleep both threaten to pull her away from him.
Unreality and vertigo and exhaustion and then, suddenly, those twin halves are finding each other and this is truer than anything she’s ever felt. More than worth the pain required to reach it.
His eyes, still holding hers, widen.
The stretched-too-tight shell starts to fall apart.
Then the White Room and Pierce and Max are gone, and, howling in frustration, Liz finds herself facing Tess in the granolith chamber.
-
Tess, as always, is having open season on her.
Unlike always, she’s also using powers.
Liz is pinned up against the wall, being suffocated in small increments by an invisible vice closed around her throat.
And Liz is almost frightened, because for once she is utterly unaffected. For once this seems like such an incredibly old nightmare that she wonders why she should even be invested in the outcome.
“You stupid bitch,” Tess sneers. “You won’t even try to fight back.”
Chest burning. Electricity skittering up and down her arms, too weak to be very useful.
Her heart is back with Max.
Max, who, in all probability, is most likely still stuck in that room. Being held by Pierce and immobilized by a million small, cutting memories he’s chosen to shove down until they make themselves known this way. While she has found some way out, even if only to this, he is trapped by his own unhealed wounds.
She closes her eyes and none of this is real.
Then they are back in the observatory.
Max pressing small, intimate kisses to Tess’s wrists and her groaning in approval - and Liz finds that the old anger is back, thick and heavy as ever.
She has been trying to move past this since she was seventeen. To forgive Max and to remind herself that her hand was just as prominent in everything as his; that really, it doesn’t even require forgiveness in the first place.
Some part of her will always die when she thinks about it. Wonder how he didn’t know.
Why he couldn’t bend just a little further when that’s all she had been doing for months.
Jaw flexing wildly. Hot, angry tears and pin-pricks of pain in her hands. There’s a building pressure in her chest, and it won’t recede even as she closes her eyes and turns away.
Liz has become accustomed to the hot rage that comes with seeing this.
But for the first time, it has not been preceded by a Max who has been killed or tortured because of her. It has not come after so many layers of anguish and remorse have been piled on that it can’t come close to making a mark of its own.
She is weaker for seeing him, touching some part of him in that room just now. But she is also stronger.
Her face settles and she takes a deep breath.
This is no longer about Max. It is no longer about her heartbreak/wrongs/guilt.
It is only about Tess, who she has given so much power over her, exerting the crippling blow once more.
And Liz is so fucking sick of laying back and taking it like it is simply her due.
Her mind is made up.
Instantly she goes from the controlled to the controller, her hand shooting up and emitting a forceful blast. The green energy, for once in agreement with her, snakes along her skin in fluid tendrils before shooting out and sending Tess to the floor. The smaller woman is knocked on her back.
Seeing her coughing and vulnerable only increases Liz’s anger. Reminds her of the false weakness Tess played on so often to garner sympathy from Max, Isabel, and Michael.
(From Kyle. From Alex. And even, sometimes, from her.)
Her voice is high and biting.
“How dare you? How dare you call me stupid? I knew from the beginning exactly what you were. I told him when you first came to town.”
“And he didn’t listen. Because he loved me even then!” Tess spits.
That other Tess and Max appear once more, and Liz feels herself falter as the words hit their mark.
Wasn’t it this that was running through her mind when she left the cave, putting as many miles as possible between Max and herself and all of it? Wasn’t this what she thought every time that Max treated her like someone who deserved less than all of him during that last year together?
(That maybe Tess was even more of a victim than she was. That maybe the one disrupting the great love story was - had always been - Liz. And that maybe in some back corner of his mind that was what Max thought, too.)
These insecurities should cut away at the metallic rage lining her throat. Instead they only serve to feed it.
Another blast and Tess is flying across the room. Her body lands limply, limbs strewn out like a rag doll’s.
Liz is quick and harsh, not wanting Tess’s voice or her own internal ones to silence her before she speaks. “Maybe he did. But even if he loved you - even if he loved you more - in the end he chose me. You have no one to blame for that but yourself.” Tess’s form remains still. Liz draws in a shuddering breath. “I lost him. That was my fault. But for all the times you manipulated him, for all the ways you betrayed him and took advantage of his pain, how could you even think that I would ever be jealous of you?”
Her wheat colored hair, now grimy with soot and dirt, rearranges itself against her shoulders as she meets Liz’s challenging stare. That small grimace of a smile is firmly in place. “I was the first. In our last lives and in these, I was the first. All he’ll ever see you as is second best.”
That much, at least, is the truth.
Liz tries to ignore the tears stinging her eyes. It is harder to ignore the internal rupture caused by the words.
Hide. Get away, as far from here as possible before he destroys you completely.
It’s all coming to the front again, and that person she has just now stopped hiding behind is at her side, whispering in her ear; telling her that, as always, they are safer accepting it, safer not trying to fight it -
No.
Not now, and not ever again.
She directs a powerful arc of energy straight at Tess’s chest. Her aim is perfect.
It is as Tess is trembling and doing her best to squirm away from Liz that she notices the faint glow encasing her abdomen.
The world tilts on its axis.
Heart pounding. The breathing too loud, mangified, and the colors too harsh even in the dark.
Tess has noticed her gaze. “Liz,” she says, voice urgent, “You can’t kill me. If you kill me then you kill him, too. This is Max’s son. You can’t.”
This isn’t happening. None of this is real, she tells herself, and is even more strongly aware that this is just a dream and millions of others like it have never produced anything but damaged furniture and bouts of nausea.
Her heart lurches as she watches the tiny glowing hand.
Then -
“Do it.”
She whips around, not caring in the slightest that she is leaving herself open to another attack. She stares in disbelief at the familiar face.
“Max?”
His expression is stony. He grabs her arm, and she is struck by the realization that whoever this is, it is most definitely not the man she left hours ago.
“Protect him,” he hisses fiercely. “Kill the mother to protect the heir. It’s the only way.”
She rips out of his hold.
Backing up swiftly. Tripping over her feet as sobs bubble up in her throat.
This is all getting twisted somehow in her mind. Tess isn't pregnant anymore. Max is not here - not the one in front of her and not the Max from before.
Liz cranes her neck and surveys Tess struggling into a sitting position. Her hand is curled protectively around her stomach.
She stiffens at the gesture.
Her eyes are drawn back to that hand, and the lackluster glow beneath it, and she is hit with an overwhelming wave of protectiveness. Even if Tess isn't, the baby is something pure and innocent. Something worth saving.
She turns to him, this Max-but-not-Max, and places herself in front of the other woman. “No,” she says hoarsely. “I won’t let you hurt him.”
“You fool! She’s poisoning him. Don’t you know why he’s dying? She’s killing him intentionally!” Eyes both furious and empty bore into hers. “She will kill both of you.”
Panic and bile rise in her throat. She turns her head, frantic as she sees that the glowing has dimmed even more. She is helpless in between the three of them.
“The heir is in danger.” His voice is a series of staccato words, running over each other so quickly they are almost indecipherable. “Kill her or let him die.”
“He’s lying,” Tess sobs.
Liz’s head goes back and forth frantically, between the tiny hand Tess uses to shield her eyes and the luminous one the other alien now holds up.
She has to make a decision. Even if it’s the wrong one. Even if it gets them both killed.
She takes another step.
Brings up her hand.
“You won’t hurt him,” she promises.
An ugly smirk transforms his mouth and she fights the urge to look away.
Then before she has had a chance to react he is grabbing her, surrounding her, forcing her into a violating kiss.
Suddenly everything is a wasteland. Dead bodies everywhere. No light or color, and the sky is clouded.
The storm growing closer, lightening flashing -
Liz hears the thud of a body hitting the ground.
She pulls away, a broken cry ripping from her lips. It abruptly turns into a whimper.
The person looking at her is unremorseful.
“I told you,” that eerily familiar voice says.
Tears and dust mix on her face.
Liz stands, horrified, and stares numbly into emotionless eyes.
“No. You’re not -”
“I am.”
Then she is being pulled from the dream. Only one last moment, and she is not ready, can’t leave until she understands why and how.
Darkness and light war to dominate her field of vision. There is ringing in her ears and the faint sound of footsteps. She feels detached from this, a heavy and painful knot at the top of her neck the only proof that it is happening at all.
In one final moment of desperation Liz grips the edges of the dream and pulls it toward her. Her sight clears once more, leaving her with one last, perfect view of her own face.
-
Then she is in her room once more, bleeding and breathing heavily and not completely herself.
Her grasp on the situation flickers in and out, and as the thudding of near-identical footfalls grows closer something ugly and foreign wipes out all emotion.
There is only the unforgiving knowledge of the White Room and of green edging her arms and that, somewhere out there, two people will die if she does.
Think. Thinkthinkthinkthink think, dammit!
A terrifyingly prominent voice suggests that she kill the intruders upon entrance.
Liz recognizes Serena’s high-pitched gasp and rails. Tries to extract herself from the nightmare that seemed so much farther away when she was in it.
She is safe. She is safe and they are friends and she is not Tess, not that other her. She won’t kill them.
Energy is already racing unbidden to her palm.
Panic overwhelms her.
Oh God no.
She flinches with each inch they gain.
The second skin wraps around her in an insidious stranglehold.
The door swings open.
I won’t do it. I won’t, I won’t, I -
In one last, futile attempt, Liz folds in on herself completely.