She wakes up and the sound still lingers in her ears. Shhhh...It's a soothing word, a quiet word, a nothing word. It's nothing.

But something is wrong. What? She doesn't know, she can't remember even though a remnant of whatever it was lingers - she can taste it in her mouth, sense it in her throat, and she suddenly feels as if there are icy tentacles crawling inside her, searching, looking...and then resting.

Her heart pounds madly in her chest and she opens her eyes, staring blindly at the dark corners of her room. There is something - she tries to grab for it, she looks for the idea, the connection, the memory, but it slides away, slips into the corners of her sleep-filled mind. Maybe I'm not ready to see it, she thinks. She shakes her head. No. That's not it. What else could there be? Haven't I seen enough already?

It was nothing, she tells herself again. Nothing. I've got a lot on my mind. Why waste time thinking about something I won't remember anyway? It was just a dream; it's no big deal. It's already faded now. I'm just tired. I just need some sleep.

Her eyelids start to close. She's ok. She's fine, just fine. Her heart has slowed its mad race and she doesn't feel anything now except the call of slumber.

It comes again as she hovers on the edge, waiting for sleep to wrap its arms around her.

"Shhhhhh..."

**

"You did what?"

"I told you, I had to! We needed to find Nasedo. Tess said..."

Max makes a face and she sighs. His resentment of Tess is something she understands. She feels it too -Tess came and everything has changed and even though she occasionally feels a connection with Tess, an understanding, mostly she just resents her. Tess is happy about their destiny. Tess is happy to have found them. Tess hasn't had to give anything up though, has she?

"It was just for a moment or two," she offers up hesitantly. "I didn't see anything about what happened to you..."

He turns his face away from her and she falls silent, swallows hard. It hurts, to see how he still suffers. He's lost Liz, he's facing a future that is enormous in its uncertainty, and he still has scars from his encounter with Pierce. She looks over at Michael, who is staring out the window. She wonders if he's thinking about Maria, and knows he could be. Is she jealous? She doesn't want to be, but she's afraid she is.

Her feelings for Michael scare her. She's known him forever; she's loved him forever. Her feelings for him, her love for him, it has always been simple and uncomplicated and she liked that because she already had so many worries to contend with. But now she can't classify her feelings for him, she can't categorize her love as friendly or familiar - her feelings are colored by her dreams, by what she's learned about her past, and by what she fears are her own secret hopes. She looks at Tess, who is pretending that she isn't staring at Max. Does she look at Michael the way Tess looks at Max?

"I'm sorry," she tells Max, and she means it. She had doubts from the start: was rescuing Nasedo the right thing to do? Did she really want to go inside Pierce's head? And sometimes...sometimes she thinks that if she'd known what was to come - if she'd known that she'd see the information they needed so easily, if she'd known that they'd resurrect Nasedo and discover things about themselves that would be so difficult to face, if she'd known that she would learn that she had a responsibility to a world she's never known -would she have done any of it? Would she have closed her eyes and walked into another's open, waking mind? Would she have let Pierce show her what she didn't want to know?

"Shhhhhh...."

A chill slides up her spine and skates around her nerves, raising a trail of goosebumps in its wake. She looks down at her arms dumbly, noting the raised flesh, wondering... "Did you say something?" she asks Max.

He looks at her. She sees something flash in his eyes - fear, perhaps. Yet another thing she doesn't wish to pursue. She knows she should - he has suffered and he needs to talk about what happened to him in that white room - but she is afraid to find out, afraid to know more than she already does.

"No," he finally tells her. "I didn't hear anything. And I don't really want to talk about this anymore."

**

She puts down the magazine she is reading and stretches, looks around at her familiar and beloved room. The quilt she made with her grandmother when she was twelve sits on her bed. The teddy bear that her father won for her at a carnival when she was nine sits on her shelf, nestled in with her books and magazine and pictures. Soon her mother will be home and she will go downstairs and help fix dinner. She thinks of the stranger whose face peered at her from across space; imploring her, needing her, loving her, and she feels a hollow ache at the thought that someone misses her, loves her the way her mother does, and a twinge of sorrow because she can not, will not love that person the way she should.

She looks at her hands, wondering if she has enough time to paint her nails before her mother comes home. She smiles and touches her fingernail, watches as it turns a deep, dark shade of blue. She always has time.

"It looks very nice."

The chill is back. It creeps across her skin again and she stiffens. He smiles down at her and she blinks once, then again. He isn't real. He isn't here. He's dead.

His eyes are merry and he looks awake and alert and very much alive. He sits down on her bed and she watches as the quilt shifts, accepting his weight. "You aren't real." she accuses. "You're dead. I saw you die."

He is brushing his hands across his pant legs, pausing to pick at a piece of lint that only he can see. "I'm all yours," he says and he turns, smiles at her. "Isn't this where you wanted me? Inside your head? Don't you want to know what I'm thinking?"

"No," she says, scooting back on her bed, away from him. "You didn't know I was there. You didn't notice me."

He laughs and a corner of her room shifts. She sees herself in the Jeep, leaning forward to smile at someone. "You know, you're so right, officer. And we promise never to do it again."

Pierce stares back at her. His voice is different: softer, slower. "Good enough, this time. But I'll be watching."

The Jeep leaves and Pierce stares after them, after her. The corner shifts back, turning into the familiar, making her room whole again.

"I think I noticed you," he tells her.

**

After the orbs reveal their message, after she learns that she has a duty to a world she's never known and an obligation she isn't sure she can fulfill, they go back to Roswell. They get in the Jeep, look at each other for a moment, and go right back to where they've always lived, go right back to where they've always been. Where else could they go?

Michael sits beside her on the ride back and he doesn't talk. She isn't sure what to say to him and she feels awkward and lost and she hates it. She's had dreams of course, and Tess has talked endlessly of destiny and how they were all "meant to be together" but she hadn't really listened, she hadn't really thought that it could matter.

She wants to put who she was and what she owes aside, she wants to go home, sit in the living room and forget that she isn't human, that she is just a replica of someone or something created only to serve, to save.

But looking at Michael, she knows it does matter. It frightens her, how much it all matters. It is terrifying and bewildering and the worst part of all is that she wants it. More than she wants to forget, she wants to find out who she was, she wants to find out what she was, she wants to find out what she meant on this world she's never seen.

Michael speaks suddenly, his words tumbling out in a rush. "Nasedo can take on someone's form if they're alive. Like he did with that FBI agent. Remember?"

Her eyes fill with tears. "Michael..."

"No, Isabel, wait. Maybe he didn't die and Valenti just didn't want us to worry. He told me that he was going to take care of Pierce."

Max's voice reaches back from the front of the Jeep. "He's dead, Michael. Pierce is dead. He can't hurt us anymore."

Michael's face falls and Isabel wants to reach forward and slap Tess, wants to strike her for making Max take all his worry and pain and shove it down deep just so he can stumble through whatever is next. She wants to hit Max for not seeing or not caring that Michael is still reeling from the fact that he killed someone.

She leans over and touches Michael's hand. It's an innocent gesture, a comforting gesture, and she watches, horrified, as Michael blushes. She feels an answering heat in her own face and she knows they are both remembering their dreams. Their bodies touching everywhere and their hands clasped together, creating. How happy they both were--how right it all felt. The way they felt when they thought she was pregnant. "I'm sorry, Michael. He's gone. I'm so sorry."

Michael's hand tightens around her own. She saw Pierce die, she saw Michael kill him. She knows Michael worries about that - she knows that Michael worries about what lies within himself and she doesn't tell him that she will love him no matter what he did, no matter what he does. She will love him forever, no matter who or what he becomes. He isn't ready to hear that, and she isn't ready to tell him.

"He hurt Max," Michael says, and he is whispering now. He doesn't want anyone else to hear what he has to say and she is glad, she is glad that he just wants to share his feelings with her and no one else. She thinks of Maria, of the hurt look on her face when they all left. She think of Alex who just held his arms open for her and hugged her. It hurts, those memories. It hurts because she knows her feelings will hurt Maria and Alex and herself and she still has them anyway. She nods at Michael and whispers, "He did."

"What did you see..." Michael trails off and then leans in closer. She has never been this close to him before, has never noticed him this much before. Up close, his eyes are multicolored and she could reach out, run her hand down his nose, rest her thumb against his mouth. Something breaks open inside her and she leans forward, waiting. "What did you see inside Pierce's head?"

The moment is broken and she leans back, surprised by how hurt she feels, surprised that Michael wants an accounting of what she saw. "I just saw where Nasedo was," she whispers back to him. "That's all."

Michael looks at her for a moment and then looks away. She wants that moment back, she wants to have him lean in again, and she wants the moment to be changed, rearranged. She wants him to kiss her; she wants him to have asked a different question. She wants....

She moves away from Michael and leans back against the seat, tilting her face up towards the sun. She closes her eyes because the light is so bright and the shadow that forms against her eyelids is one she is afraid she will always carry with her.

**

He leans back on her bed, resting his head on the pillows. "I'm not going to bite you."

His voice is teasing and there is a drawl in it. "That's your Fisher voice," she says disdainfully. "You didn't fool anyone, you know. And that accent is so fake."

He shrugs. "If you say so."

She closes her eyes and wishes. She opens her eyes again. He is still there and now he is giving her a bemused look. "I used to do that too," he tells her, and his voice is his own now.

She closes her eyes again and shakes her head. She doesn't have anything in common with him. And she isn't going to listen to him. She hears the bed squeak as he sits up and leans forward. She doesn't have to open her eyes to know that he is sitting there, his suit neatly pressed, his hair perfectly combed. He would open doors for her and stick a knife in her back when she walked through them. If she didn't know who he was, if she didn't know what he'd done, she would have found him attractive. That knowledge goes into the farthest, darkest corner of her soul. She hopes he will not see it, that he will overlook it.

"When I first joined the Bureau..." His voice is smooth and precise and she hears an echo of the memories she saw in his head, the neat and ordered way they were laid out, the way he left what she needed on the surface. Did he know she was coming? She sometimes stops lying to herself and admits that she knows that he did. "I used to sit in my office and close my eyes. I would wish that I was someone important, that I was someone that mattered. Is that what you wished for?"

"You know what I wished for," she tells him, and her voice is sharper than she wants it to be. There is movement and then his thumbs rest against her closed eyes, a gentle caress, and she jerks back, opening her eyes. "I didn't see anything," she says, and she hates her voice, hates the pleading tone that has crept into it. "I wasn't in your mind long enough. There wasn't any sort of connection."

He shrugs and leans back against the pillows again. "Did you know my first name is Alexander?"

She laughs before she can stop herself. "No, it isn't. It's Trevor."

He is looking up at her ceiling, but his gaze rests on her when she finishes speaking. Her laughter fades.

"That's nothing," she tells him. "You can't haunt me for that."

**

"What's it like?" Tess' voice is hesitant.

"What's what like?" She is tired of Tess and her questions. But they are better than Tess' predictions; they are better than the knowledge that Tess drops like bombshells, scattering annihilation with just a word or two.

"Being inside someone's mind."

She is sitting on the floor and she draws her knees up towards her chest, considering the question. "Strange. Everything is usually all surreal and I can't really do anything. I can just watch."

"Do they know you are there?"

"Not unless I tell them."

"Wow. So you can just get a peek into anyone's head and they never knew you were there?"

"I guess."

Tess nods and looks down at the floor. "Do you ever think that maybe the connection goes both ways? That maybe when you see part of them they see part of you?"

She thinks about Maria, who wasn't as afraid of her after she walked through her dream. She thinks about Alex, who called her on her manipulations after she visited his mind.

"No." she tells Tess. "I don't think about that at all. Have you seen Max recently?"

Tess' faces crumples and Isabel tries not to think about how happy that makes her.

**

"This isn't so bad, is it? I could get used to an eternity of this. How about you?"

He is sitting next to her now and his right arm rests around her. She can feel the weight of it and she looks down at it, looks at the neat pinstripes that march across his suit. Her hair is down, and the ends of it curl around her arms, circle around his wrist.

She shoves at his arm and he pulls it away. A mock look of hurt falls across his face. "I guess you can't. What do you see in your eternity, Isabel? What would you like it to be?"

"Don't" she whispers, even though she knows the word is useless.

The corner of her room fades again and she sees his memories of what happened to the body that was Nasedo, sees him loading the body of the agent into a truck, watches herself open her eyes and hesitate, then tell the others what she saw.

"Is that all you saw?"

"Yes."

"You lie much better than your brother does," he says pleasantly and the images shift, uncovering themselves. She closes her eyes.

"Fine" she says tightly. "I might have seen a little more than that. But it wasn't anything important. I swear to you."

"Oh, you can open your eyes now. You know, you keep your eyes closed so often they might as well be sewn shut. Hmmm...."

She opens her eyes because she doesn't want to give him any ideas.

He grins at her. "Much better." She grits her teeth and turns away, looks at the images that sit where the corner of her room was, watch as they flow outward, absorbing her. She sees herself, sees her dreams that she shared with Michael. Herself and Michael, laughing, holding a baby. Happy. Then there is another shift and she is out in the desert, and Michael reaches out his hand towards her.

"You and I..." Michael whispers, and then he fades, becomes someone taller, slimmer. Someone with dark hair and bright eyes who wraps his arms around her with a gentle menace. She looks at her dream self, who doesn't see that Michael is gone and that that everything is all wrong, watches as she turns and rises up on her tiptoes, reaching for him. "You and I have forever" he tells her.

The words rest against her ear and then fall down, inward, burrowing into her mind. Everything changes again--she huddles in a white room, alone and terrified, and a hand soothes her, rests against her forehead, holds her still and delivers agony. Then the images shift and she stands out in the desert, lifting her arms up, waiting for the touch of her destiny as he stands by watching, waiting. A third shift, a final shift, and she is in her room, her familiar and comforting room, and Pierce's hand rests on her chest, covering her heart.

She turns and stares at him, willing him to disappear. Instead of vanishing, he moves in closer, and his other hand slides into the curve of her waist. He lowers his head towards her, his eyes twinkling, his smile joyous. "Don't worry," he whispers. "I swear, I'll take care of you."

She opens her mouth to scream and nothing emerges. She shakes head frantically. She is mute now, she has no say in what happens. Her life is not her own, her mind is not her own. She fears her soul is not her own anymore. Was it ever?

"Shhhhhh...." he whispers and he moves in closer still, his mouth hovering over hers. "I'll give you some time. I understand that destiny can take some getting used to. I just wanted to show you what can happen. What will happen. You and I, we'll be together forever. Shhhh..."