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 It's 13 years since I left Roswell. I've never been back. Walking away was the only thing I could do at the time, that fateful day. I think about it every day, especially on this anniversary date, especially today.
We were too late by the time we got to the pod chamber. As we arrived, the ground shook, the rock face split apart and we saw the Granilith for an instant before it disappeared into the blue. I can't tell you how sick I felt as it spiraled out of sight. When Michael emerged, we were all shocked and in shock. After we told Michael what we discovered, he was never the same. For years, he tried to find a way home, but he never found one. Finally, he gave up, but he always blamed himself. But I could no more help Michael than I could help myself. We all died a little that day, some of us more than others. For it was certain that Tess, who had killed Alex, had turned over Max and Isabel to Kivar, and that they, too, were dead. That's when we found out about the Nasedo pact. That and some other things too ... left among the debris Tess had left behind.
I suppose the only good thing that happened then was that Sheriff Valenti got his job back right after the departure. The city had not been happy that Hanson had spent all that money on the SWAT team for "the unneccesary storming of the UFO Center." It cost him his job and the City Council reelected Valenti. I never went back to the UFO Center again. I know Brody still runs the center, but, as far as I know, Larek never posessed his body again. I take that as a bad sign. Larek, too, must be dead, or else I think Max would have tried to reach Michael through Larek somehow. Somewhere, in intergalactic space, the Antarian Empire must still be jockeying for power or Kivar has consolidated his control and created an alien abyss of another nature with Tess and her son making Kivar's reign legitimate.
I suppose, I, too, am a victim of the "alien abyss", not really in this world and not in the next. There was really nothing left to do, but return to "normal" and pursue dreams that no longer mean anything, but fulfill the expectations of others. Of course, there can never be a "normal" for those of us left behind. We're kind of "stuck" and probably always will be. ... The end of our world stopped in 2001.
 Liz sits at the computer screen, pouring over computerized slides of various blood cells, working on new theories concerning genetic bonding and regeneration. Medical research had come a long way in the last 13 years and it was now possible for the human body to regenerate functioning healthy organs from dying ones, just like the liver does. She spends many hours here, at Harvard, in the molecular lab. She prefers it to her empty third-floor apartment on tree-lined Commonwealth Ave. The lab keeps her from thinking about "other things".
She stifles a yawn and gets up to pour herself another cup of tea while the next slide loads into the computer. When she turns, she stops dead in her tracks and drops the tea cup. It shatters on the hard linoleum floor. What she sees, she never expected EVER to see again. Not since she scraped the cells from Max's pencil in biology class.
Dr. Ethan Caleb, a colleague, who has been watching her through the window, rushes inside. He'd been waiting for her reaction.
"Are you okay?" he asks.
Liz flips quickly through the files by the computer, but can't find a match for this one.
"Where's the file for this?" she asks. "Where did this come from?"
Caleb looks at the screen.
"That's new. It just came in. Isn't it amazing?" he says, handing her the file.
"Who supplied this?"
Caleb studies Liz's paled face. She knows what this is.
"You've seen this before, haven't you?" says Caleb, who straightens with interest. This is the most interest Liz has shown in any of her work.
"Ethan, come on, I need to know where this came from."
"It came from some corpse they found in the Charles River."
"Corpse? In the water?" Her fears about the gandarium crystals begin to surface as she remembers Brody's warning. Did some of the gandarium survive? Had they missed something? Was earth's ecosystem in jeporady?
"The rowing team found it during practise."
"What about the police?"
"They were notified, but they couldn't make heads or tails of the bloodwork.".
"Where is it now?"
"The corpse?"
"Yes," says Liz, exasperated.
"The police turned the body over to us for further medical study. I think it's in the morgue."
Liz heads out the door on her way to the morgue.
Michael looks at a picture he has of Max and Isabel, then another of Maria and himself at the prom. He pours another beer and flips channels till he finds the hockey game, then picks up the pictureof Max and Isabel. It's my fault, he says. I should have seen it coming. I should have been paying more attention. He looks at the picture of Maria and slaps it to the floor. The glass shatters. He stares at it momentarily, then takes a swig of beer. His eyes fuzz over and his falls into a blissful oblivion of nothingness.
In the morgue, Liz pulls out the J. Doe. She not sure what she expects to find. She hesitates, again with that nausea that overtakes her when she thinks of Max and his fate. It's almost as if this is the confirmation she dreads although realistically she knows it's not possible. Max is on Antar, dead by Tess' treachery. She unzips the biohazard body bag and she's taken back 13 years, back to high school. There, looking as pathetic as she did the night she found her sleeping among the garbage lay Ava. Liz sits in the nearest chair and puts her hands to her face.
Caleb sees the recognition in Liz's face.
"Who is she?" asks Ethan.
"Her name is Ava," says Liz, looking at the Jane Doe tag. "Ava, not Jane Doe."
"How do you know her?"
"I met her a long, long time ago ... while I was in high school. She was visiting ... friends," choosing her words cautiously.
"Where she's from?"
An ironic smile creeps on Liz's face. No rational person would believe it.
"New York. She was living in New York."
"Family?"
"I'm not sure they're still alive."
"You know something about the blood, don't you?"
Liz looks up on Caleb. No, she couldn't say even now ... even to this man who once might have been her lover, this person with whom she had tried to share her body, but couldn't -- not her body, not her passion nor her soul. That, even in death, belonged to Max.
Caleb frowns. He knows Liz is not about to tell him, but that's Liz. No one ever gets in. ...ever. He remembers how quickly she broke off their relationship, before it actually got a chance to get started.
"We need to get samples of the water," lies Liz.
"What are you going to do?" asks Caleb.
She looks at Ava, remembering her words, "If Max healed you, then you're different now." She regrets never having pushed Ava for an explanation, but somehow, she has always thought she would meet Ava again ... but not like this.
"I'm going to make sure she gets a proper burial," says Liz, getting up and exiting the morgue.
Caleb rezips the bag and closes the cold storage drawer.
Maria gets up from the piano at Chez Pierre's. She's finished her encore and heads for the back room to change. She's been singing there for almost ten years, ever since the Crashdown closed, when Liz's parents moved to Florida to be near Liz's aunt who has been terminally ill forever. It's a far cry from her dreams of being a top-drawer Vegas nightclub act.
She misses Liz even though they speak by phone often, but Liz never mentions Max, only Michael who now lives in a trailer on the outskirts of town. Sometimes, she sees him at the window at Chez Pierre's, watching her as she sings, but he never comes in. He never approaches her. He blames himself for being too human, falling in love and leaving Max and Isabel to face their deaths. Max and Isabel leaving killed their relationship. And Liz, well, she never comes to Roswell anymore. She worries about her friend every day. Even, after all this time, it's just too painful. Liz, who had been so full of life, drained of life. Nothing makes her happy and even her science, her "dream job" fails her. Maria studies her reflection in the mirror and wonders how they all got so old. But that IS a stupid question.
Back in the lab, Liz continues to stare at the slide of Ava's blood cells. How was she going to explain it? Caleb is sure to tell. He knows it's not earthly. Ethan is many things, but stupid is not one of them. Of course, she hadn't helped much either. She hadn't exactly been discreet in her interest. Ethan knows she knows and that was bad. She picks up Ava's autopsy report and begins to read.
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