Afraid of her, of their relationship, of his feelings. He’s not afraid of anything.

Bullshit.

It’s utter bullshit, but he pretends he doesn’t know it.

He walks around with this devil-may-care look on his face and a scowl at anyone who might attempt to be nice to him.

It’s totally ridiculous. No one is *that* uncaring. But it’s his wall, his defense mechanism. He’s goddamned petrified.

But, instead of showing it and making himself vulnerable, he hides any shred of humanity he might have acquired from his life-long Earth-bound “vacation.”

It’s almost enough to make her laugh because she can see straight through him, read him like a book. She’s always been able to do that, since the day he abducted her and she got him to talk about “The View” and Ulysses and just how much they both wanted to leave Roswell.

Some of his stone wall had chipped, if not cracked, then. He hadn’t even realized it at the time but over time he’s learned to be more aware of it when it happens.

It’s happening again, now, he thinks as she smiles at him. It’s not a lusty grin or a sarcastic, embittered smirk. It’s a genuinely affectionate, caring smile. And it reaches her eyes as she looks at him.

He can practically hear the good-old stone wall crack under the weight of her stare.

Why the hell she’s staring at him with a caring smile while he’s being his usual jackass self, trying to avoid his feelings and the public humiliation of attempting to dance in one fell swoop, he has no idea.

But she is.

It doesn’t matter. There’s no way he’s going to some stupid dance.

He walks away from her without a word, feeling terrible for every second of it, and he doesn’t look back. But somehow he knows she’s still standing there, smiling.

~~~

He watches her through the window in their backyard as she sings along with something playing on the radio while wearing nothing but her bathrobe. He can’t hear the words, but he watches as she dances around to the beat using her hairbrush as a microphone.

He’s always loved to hear her sing, even if he never told her so. He used to make absolutely sure he was in their bedroom whenever she took a shower so that he could hear her melodic rendition of whatever poppy love song was in style at the time.

He watches her now, wondering how they ever got to where they are. He doesn’t really remember when they moved in together or why. He thinks it has something to do with rent money, but suspects it was a poor excuse.

He has no idea when he got so attached to her. It’s not like he needs her, even now, but he sure does like her a lot and is really pretty confused as to how that happened.

But, he doesn’t need her and she doesn’t need him, he tells himself.

She’d promised him that years ago in the Crashdown and he still believes it.

She’ll be fine without him, he thinks as he looks at his watch and realizes he’s supposed to meet Isabel and Max in twenty minutes.

Sure, she’d miss him and he’d miss her… some… but they’d both survive.

It’s not like he’ll be gone that long anyhow. In fact, he’ll probably be back later that month.

It’s not like he’s never coming back, he tells himself.

He knows he needs to leave, but the blonde through the window still entrances him. He takes special care to make sure he remembers her exactly like this before he grabs his knapsack and leaves, but he’s not sure why.

After all, she’ll look the same when he comes back next month.

~~~

He waits impatiently with Max and Tess in Isabel’s study just outside their bedroom, his and Isabel’s. Isabel has been in labor for over six hours and Max is starting to worry. Max worries about a lot of things, he thinks.

He’s not worried though, not at all. He is a little surprised that they didn’t get back to Earth before the twins' birth. He’d really hoped that Isabel would have Alex through all this. But, he’s sure it won’t be too long before they are back and it won’t be too hard to help Izzy out until then.

And, in the mean time, he’ll have a family, sort of. He’ll have his arranged-marriage wife and her two kids, an instant family. Just what he’s always wanted. Everyone on his planet assumes they’re his kids anyhow.

The doctor finally emerges from Isabel’s room and announces that she has borne two daughters. He says Isabel is resting and asks Michael, Max and Tess if they’d like to see the girls.

Max lets out a tremendous sigh of relief and Michael nods as the three of them follow the doctor to Isabel’s bedside.

She looks ragged, completely worn, Michael thinks as he squeezes her hand in comfort and Max leans over and kisses her on the cheek.

The girls’ names, she tells them all as she hands one to Michael and one to Max, are Alexia and Whitney.

Michael’s not really sure what to do with the baby he’s holding. It’s really something of a mystery to him. That’s okay. It’s nothing something he really has to understand. It’s not like it’s really his kid anyhow. And they’ll be home soon, back on Earth where he can look on as an Uncle to the girls with Maria at his side and Alex helping Isabel out.

The war is going well, he thinks. They’ll be back home by next month.

~~~

He’d been in the war room with Max when the bombs hit the palace early that morning.

It turned out to be one of the longest days of his life.

As the bombs rocked the palace and much of the rest of the capital city, he ordered the royal guards to get Max to safety and they’d listened despite the King’s profound objections.

He’d reasoned with Max for a moment, promising to make sure Tess, Isabel, Alexia and Whitney got out safely as an appeasement, if he’d go. As soon as Max was sort of convinced, he took off running to his family’s wing of the palace.

He found Tess, dead, along the way. She’d been hit full force with a wall as it crumbled.

But he didn’t take the time to mourn his sister’s death. He had to find his family.

He had known that his wife and daughters were still sleeping. He’d also known that they’d be fine. They had to be. They were home and they were, therefore, safe.

He found Alexia first, crying and clinging to a palace guard who’d managed to calm her down only slightly. The fourteen-year-old melodramatic brunette flung herself into his arms crying the word ‘Daddy’ and telling him she didn’t know where her Mom or sister was.

He’d held her tightly as he heard another warplane pass overhead and braced for the impending bomb.

It shattered the windows, sent things flying and collapsed some walls in its path.

That was when he’d heard the scream. He’d told Alexia to stay with the guard and that he’d be right back before entering what had once been Whitney’s room.

Following the screams, he found Whitney crying, crouched over Isabel right near the door.

Unconscious due to a vicious blow to the head from flying debris and her side full of jagged cuts from flying glass, Isabel looked terrible.

He grabbed his daughter’s hand and instructed her to wait with her sister and the guard in the hall. She hadn’t wanted to leave her mother’s side, but Michael nearly pushed her out the door telling her to go comfort her sister. Whitney had always been the stubborn one.

He’d then turned his attention to his wife. He placed his hand on her side and focused all of his energy on healing her. Even after he was finished he wasn’t sure how much good he had done, she was still unconscious, but he’d picked her up and run with her and his daughters from the palace to a safer area.

As it turned out, Isabel was going to survive, the girls would recover and Max would rebuild his palace and his life.

Whitney and Alexia were terrified. The war was never been real to them before. It was something they were used to hearing about, an event on some far off land or one of the moons. Never has it been so close to home before.

He tells them to help him search through the rubble for anything they can salvage to keep their minds busy despite the protest of the guards that it was not work royalty should be doing.

After an hour or so, Alexia comes up to him with a tattered photo in her hand that she says she found near his and Isabel’s room. She asks him who it is.

He looks at the photo he’d forgotten he had and feels his hands start to shake.

She’s no one, he tells her, just an old friend of his and her mother’s from the planet he grew up on. He says it was another lifetime and it really doesn’t matter anymore, but he takes the picture in his shaking hands and puts it carefully in his pocket before telling her to keep looking.

It’s been nearly fifteen years since they left Earth, he thinks. Surely it won’t be long before they go back. Isabel isn’t well enough for travel now, but soon.

Soon they’ll go home.

~~~

The war is over and they’ve won, just like he always said would happen.

They’re finally going home, all of them.

Whitney and Alexia are frightened of the journey, of the life they’ll find, but he tells them they’ll love it. It will be a wonderful experience for them.

They know he’s not their real father and that maybe they can meet their biological Dad. They seem a little excited and scared by that prospect, but Michael knows everything will be fine.

His girls are going to meet Alex. It’s as simple as that to him. He’s accepted them as his daughters over the years, by necessity more than by choice, and if he looks closely he can almost imagine that Whitney has his eyes and Alexia his smile.

Though he’d never admit it, he also thinks Whitney’s hair looks a lot like Maria’s and Alexia’s nose looks like hers, too.

Isabel puts her arm around his waist and leans on him some as they enter the ship. She’s been tired lately, he’s noticed, and she seems a little out of breath but he’s not worried about it. They can’t get sick and even if they could, they’re going home so everything will be fine.

He half-listens as she tries to tell the girls why it will take them over a month to reach Earth even though it only takes a few days to go the other way. Something about stellar winds, she says.

He doesn’t care. He’s not really listening. He’s going home to Maria.

He pulls out the old tattered picture of his Maria and stares at it for a moment thinking about how wonderful it will be to run his fingers through her long blonde hair and see that beautiful smile of hers again.

It never occurs to him that she probably doesn’t look like that picture anymore, twenty-two, carefree and so vibrant. He doesn’t even really remember that he never said good-bye to her.

What he does remember is her singing into a hairbrush in their room wearing nothing but a bathrobe.

He hasn’t really thought beyond that. But that’s okay.