"I told you," whispered Tess, confused, " At that moment I kinda felt that there was something else. Not me. Could it really have been that dork?"

* Maria is not A DORK! * Michael wanted to scream into the empty restaurant. The teenage girls with the colas would have been fascinated. It would have made their night, as his only audience. But he didn't scream, just held Tess's gaze with cold, infathomable eyes.

*Maria! I've just met a girl called Maria! * Diane Evans was singing in his head again and he didn't like it - or want it either.

He spoke somewhat coldly to Tess. There were limits in listening to contempt about Maria. " Who knows, Tess? I didn't figure Kyle as the type to hero-worship, unless it involved bowing and chanting a mantra to a photograph of himself in the front row of the football team. Why would he dream it up? The guy's so inflated with hyper-ego tonight I could almost believe him. "

Take me to our fearless leader! Michael would go, given the chance.

He knew, then, that Max had known - that Liz had told him and that Max had chosen not to tell him. That hurt. There were so many divisions between them all now. Secrets and private lusts tore them all apart. There was only one certainty - with her - and he had blown that away without even using his powers. It had been more solid than the elemental rock and now there was wipe out.

The alien clock on the wall chimed ten and Michael signalled languidly to the giggling girls that he was closing up. They rose in unison, chastened, and scurried for the door.

"Listen, Tess. Time for me to lock up. You'd better ravage your man for the car keys and get him home. I'll help you load him."

Tess started to fumble with Kyle's pockets but the big guy was too heavy to move. Michael grabbed both arms and hefted a lumpless form over his shoulders.

Tess took the opportunity to search and found the keys. She rushed ahead to open the door. Kyle was soundlessly installed and started to snore lustily as Michael dumped him without ceremony in the passenger seat.

"Sweet dreams, Valenti!"

He turned to Tess. "Will you manage him the other end? His father will throw him behind bars if he discovers him in this state!" Michael was familiar with those bars.

"Don't worry. I'll manage. Thanks, Michael. I'm real sorry we didn't make the late-night movie."

Michael gave a curt nod to indicate he had heard, then opened the driver's door for Tess.

"Another night. There's plenty available." Courtney was wiped out and Maria was melting away.

That word again - sorry. No-one could understand it with as much meaning as he did at that moment.

ADVANCED SCIENCE. That's what she had been reading; he didn't need to be Sherlock Holmes to know that every drunken crowing of achievement from Kyle's lips had been true. And she had not said a word to him. And why didn't he realize that Maria was their fearless leader? She definitely had been his, anyway.

He waved the jeep away and turned with some reluctance to the empty Crashdown Café. Thinking himself alone, he was surprised to see a tousled head at the doorway to the back room, the body swathed in a tartan dressing gown. The slippers were particularly horrible.

"Mr Parker?"

"Hi, Michael. Closing up? Quiet night, huh? Sorry that you missed Alex's night of celebration. Big thing for little Maria. Who'd have guessed? I can remember her this high," Mr Parker gestured somewhere around his tartan midriff, " sitting on that stool over there…singing her heart out. Tore me up, then. She was a soft-centred chocolate, ya know? Apply a little heat and she melted. Melted me up, too. "

He shook his head in a bewildered way as if the world was changing and leaving him behind, in his faded tartan gown and his tousled hair, with a frown at one end of his torso and the slippers at the other.

Michael looked across at the empty chair and could picture a childish Maria, banging out time on the glass cake stand, timpani with a fork on the counter and a voice like liquid gold. Blonde curls dancing and green eyes challenging the audience to laugh at her. If she had materialized at that moment she would have kept him spellbound. But there was just an empty chair and the slow buzz of defective neon above his head and the robotic red flashing of the Crashdown sign outside the window.

"You'll lock up, then? Maria or Liz usually do it. Need some help?" Mr Parker sounded tired and listless. He was still in a time-warp in another galaxy, a place where Liz and Maria were ten years old and sang a lot.

"It's fine, Mr Parker. I'll finish here. I'll come early to clean up." Needless to say, Jose had not made an appearance; he was holed up somewhere for a better burn-up than the Crashdown Café kitchen could ever offer. Michael was envious.

The tousled head disappeared and Michael straightened the stools, tidied and cleaned the counter and pushed the broom around the floor. He might not have closed up before but he had watched Maria do it often enough from the corner across the street. He was the world's expert.

There was finality as he closed the door and turned the key, then slid the security door across with a satisfying thud. It was like closing a chapter on his life, really. A Crash- down- and- burn day that had no other equal: not white room, not destiny, not the scourge of the Skins. Just an 'orninary' human day which had brought little disasters, bit by bit, to destroy the Earth as he knew it. His life was like plaster off a wall, falling into a drain.

….. …… ……. …….

He fell asleep in front of a burping black and white T.V. Normally this was average veg-out for Michael. Tonight it was like death.

It was the tapping that woke him up…a slow, hesitant but insistent tapping on his front door. For a moment it invaded his dream: of tapping on Maria's window and waiting impatiently for the sash to be drawn up so that he could plunge through and grab her, drown himself in soft flesh and the soft-centred chocolate of her heart.

He lifted his head groggily to become aware of a re-run of 'I Love Lucy' droning in front of him in black and white and the slow, insistent tapping at the door. This was real. He prayed that his wish would be granted as he lumbered his frame to his feet and staggered to the door.

His prayer was answered and he wondered if this was dream-state as his unfocused eyes drank in the picture of Maria in a strappy black dress he had never seen before; a sophisticated Maria, with tumbling blonde hair which stirred gently against her face, the familiar smell of strawberries and lips that were burned into his consciousness forever.

"You." Was all he said.

"Way to go, Michael. You pass this test. Congratulations." She stood there, refusing to ask admittance, with red lips slightly compressed, and her arms folded protectively in front of her.

"What time is it?" He fumbled for his watch, not really wanting to know the time. He had been dozing through 'I Love Lucy' and she …she had obviously been having a good time. * Christ! * As he moved his arm he caught the whiff of hamburgers.

" Do you wanna come in?" He wanted her to say yes so badly but turned away, as if to give the impression that she was still his to command. A delusion. She stood resolutely in the doorway and did not move.

"I'm not stopping. You're tired. And I must finish packing, change and be on my way to the airport. I'll sleep on the 'plane. I just came by…" She fizzled out, and shuffled her feet in the black strappy sandals. Pink toenails gleamed in the dark.

"You just came by. REALLY? I'm so… flattered." * Cruelty, thy name is Michael. *

"Yep. I'm big on mistakes. They say one learns from them. I'm a retard…hence the remedial science." She yelped a laugh and turned to go.

"Don't." The agony and the anguish were compressed into that one word. It was probably such a word she had come to hear. She had never had anything better.

" It's cold out there. Come in, just for a moment. Then I'll run you home."

He was killing the T.V. with the remote a he uttered those words in a low voice. 'I Love Lucy' died in an instant.

She moved inside but did not close the door and she stood poised for flight at the first new cruelty from him.

"I'm sorry that Alex didn't invite you…I wanted him to but…"

"Don't say that word!" Michael shouted at her as a red blur converged in front of his eyes. It drowned her out, in her slimming black dress, bare long legs and all that blonde hair into which he had never ever plunged his face. Last time he had held her, breathing quickly, she had short hair, framing a pixie face of innocence and trust.

"I'm sorr….whoops! O.K. I won't. I just wanted to tell you that I WANTED you there. I hate the way we're all split up now. There's no trust and no giving. It's sad. But Alex is still mad with you about…" She let the thought drift away. The last time she was here, Courtney came and then Maria left, a dead thing. She didn't want to think of it anymore. That was another life which belonged in Mr Parker's galaxy when kids could sing at the Crashdown counter and feel good about themselves until the lights were switched off for the night. Courtney had switched off the lights for Maria.

She was feeling good about herself now. She wanted that feeling to last. One single day and her life was transformed. She wasn't singing at the Crashdown counter but she was still singing. She had managed to cling on to that. But she was sad to leave Michael behind, in the dark world where nobody sang, least of all him. He was behind in the Crashdown Café, plunged into the dark.

She was bursting to tell him about the singing contract, about her song, and about her amazing courage and endurance the day before. In reality, she was bursting with pride. Didn't need her name in headlines; didn't need a presidential medal. All she wanted was to hear Michael say with some sincerity, "You're great, you know that? A real little soldier. A saviour. You saved me…forget Roswell and the human race. You saved me."

But when she gazed at him cautiously and carefully she knew it wasn't true. She hadn't saved him. She had failed. He was standing there, reeking of grease and hamburger, and his hair, longer now, was flattened on the top of his head - no more jaunty spikiness. And his big frame showed defeat and hatred. She might as well have been Hank standing there in front of him. He was crumpled and cautious, as if she were invading his lair with the intention to steal from him. What was to steal? His heart had gone…maybe with Courtney…maybe vaporized by the Skins…maybe electrocuted by her. She did not know anymore.

And maybe she had done that, too. Maybe her happiness had been more his undoing than Hank's cruelty ever had. Hank was a known, predictable factor. She had proved to be quite unpredictable: no more whining, no more jealous jibes and dogging him with Courtney, no more anything. Flying away to a better future than Roswell. * No skin off my nose,* she had jibed at him.

She stood fluttering by the door. She had run out of words and feelings, too. This whole thing with Michael…too exhausting…and where was she? No further along the 285S than the nookie motel. He wasn't even quoting ULYSSES at her now. Their relationship had been a long ride, mostly in her mother's battered Jetta but the car was in a better state than she was…and she was tired of being re-conditioned for another stretch of bad road and bad driving.

"I came to say goodbye, Michael, because I still care about you. No matter. Whatever. I don't think that I have EVER come to this door and been dragged inside because you were glad to see me…or wanted me… no matter. I wanted to come and so here I am. And now I'm going, Michael, and I don't know if I'll ever be banging on this door again. Do you understand me?"

She held on to the doorjamb as if she had developed a pain in her groin. In truth, she had but it wasn't a nagging appendicitis. Her heart had got lost somehow, maybe yesterday, maybe months ago, maybe years. Maybe…her father had it somewhere, in a tin, along with an ageing photograph. Whatever. She had lost her heart and had a pain in the groin. Illogical.

He lifted his face to her then and showed his agony - just for a brief moment, before the glacier slid into place to freeze all signs of human feeling.

"A threat? Or a promise? You're free to choose." He dropped the remote and fell onto the couch in its wake. He became a remote.

Maria was always capable of the big gesture. She had come too far along that road with Michael to accept it was a dead end, a one-way street to no-where. Her strength had always been the optimism to know that you could always turn around and drive somewhere else. She walked slowly towards the rigid form and the head thrown back on the couch in despair. She saw his eyes were closed, a blueness round his mouth. He needed a shave.

He felt her fingers move slowly through his hair and then her lips pressed warmly to his forehead. * God, Maria…you make me feel so good…you make me feel so bad…but you do make me feel something. * He really wanted to say those words but they choked in his throat. He uttered a groan.

He opened his eyes to drown in the big green ones, looking down on him with great compassion. He could not help himself. He grabbed her hand; it was warm and responded easily to the pressure of his.

"I want to tell you about Courtney. I don't know why I wanted it. I'm not proud of it…of what I did to you. I can't explain it…even to myself. I'm kinda sorting it all out. But I AM sorry, Maria; I know I HURT you and I didn't want to do that…it just kinda happened. I'm not worth it. I know that. Go to New York."

My god, he had used that word he hated so much and it slipped out through his lips without pain and without regret. He had wanted to say it to her and he felt cleaner for doing so.

" Explanations are a waste of time, Michael. I was with you all the way. I knew. It doesn't really matter now. " She pulled her hand away, then bent down to kiss him on the lips. Nothing passionate; almost platonic really.

"Go easy, spaceboy. And keep out of trouble by the skin of your teeth."

He gave a mock groan, then laughed with her, shared the tawdry joke. "Are you going to pun that idea for the rest of my life?"

"Nope. You gotta admit that I always knew when a joke was dead! . Moving on. We all must do that. Right, Michael? I MUST go. I've got half an hour now before the flight. Look after yourself."

He wanted to pull her down on top of him, on that tattered couch which had witnessed their intimacy in that other world. But now he pulled himself to his feet and walked with her to the door.

There was so much that she still had not told him, things that he wanted to feel privileged to know. Now he would get it second-hand from the others - Kyle, Max, Liz. Her comment that a joke was dead wrangled around in his brain.

He was no hero as he leaned against the doorjamb in his crumpled shirt and tracksuit pants and held her face framed gently in his one big hand.

"Look after yourself, Maria. And good luck. Maybe, when you get back…" A world of hope was compressed into that 'maybe'.

She cut him off, as she so often did when he was trying to verbalise intensity.

"Maybe, Michael."

And then she was flying down the hallway, black sandals tripping lightly, hair flying, racing for the stairwell. She stopped at the end and looked back at him, half expecting him to be gone, retreated inside the grimy apartment and the dark world of his life.

But he was still there, face inscrutable, watching her intently. He raised a hand. She did too.

They looked at each other for a long moment. There were no words. No expectations. He did not know Brody was waiting in the car outside. He did not know that Rath would be waiting at Kennedy Airport for her, either. For that matter, neither did she at that point.

There were no certainties in his life now, except the Crashdown Café at the crack of dawn. Crash down. If Michael had ever felt blackness about his life on Earth, he felt it now.