I'm so glad I finally said it. It was the first thing I thought when I heard that you were gone. I just wish you could hear me say it. I wish I could reach into the ground, rip open whatever sentimental casket Kyle bought for you, and whisper it into your cold ear.

Are you surprised, Tess? Did you think I would say something else to you? I came all the way out here to stand on your grave. And I won't lie to you. Your death doesn't feel like anything. It doesn't feel like anything at all.

You expected sobbing and grief and guilt, didn't you Tess? You thought that we would...what exactly did you think?

I suppose that was always the problem, wasn't it?

*********************************************

Don't need a hand, there's always arms attached.
Oh, don't get behind, I can't fall back.
Why must we trust all these rusted rails?
They don't want no change.
We already have.

*********************************************

Max mourns you. Now. Now that you're gone, now that it doesn't matter. Now when the only person who won't see his pain is the one who really needed to see it. I'll bet you a million dollars that Max wishes he was dead, imagines himself dead. You finally have him. Enjoy.

Isabel mourns you too. Did you know she helped pay for your headstone? I think she's probably been to see you almost every day. I'll bet you she's left you some of these flowers here. You don't mind if I move them aside so I can sit down, do you? It's not like you'll ever see them.

I think you have Isabel now too. But maybe you had her all along. Did you know that we had to "help" her once? She was spending too much time with you, you see. I stood where I was told; I said what I was supposed to. Mostly I was wondering what she saw in you. I never saw anything but need. A bottomless pit of need. I never wanted any part of that. I think even Alex and Liz and Maria mourn you. They feel guilty. All those years of ignoring you. All those years of pushing you away. All those years of making it us vs. you. All those years of watching you with Kyle, all those years of guilt because we couldn't deal with the world you wanted to create.

But I don't feel that way. I never have. I always knew that we treated you like shit. And we didn't do it because we could. We did it because we had too, because that's the way we needed it to be. I don't think you ever saw that.

Did you really think your dreams would come true? You should have lived smaller, Tess. Didn't you learn anything at all about Max before you came to Roswell? Why would the boy who was horrified by my trip to a dome--a dome that didn't mean jack shit, I might add--why would you think that boy would turn his back on everything he knew for you? You were always a fool.

I miss you.

*********************************************

Don't mean to push but I'm being shoved.
Oh, I'm just like you, think we've had enough.
I can't believe a thing they want us to.
Oh, we all got scars-- they should have them too.

*********************************************

See, if you were here now, you would have laughed. "Miss me?" you'd say. "You never even noticed that I was alive."

You know what? You're right. I didn't. Not really. When you first came, I thought you were Nasedo. You weren't. You were Max's. Of course. Max got orbs and a planet and a mother and a sister too. So what were you going to be to me? Another Liz, another big-eyed girl who stared at me with vacant eyes?

Let's face it, Tess. You and I--we got shit. The world we were from ate us up and spit us out and Earth has been a mixed blessing, at best. You never met Hank. He would have liked you.

But I had Maria. I was lucky. You weren't. By the time Kyle found you, you were already gone. You couldn't imagine a life other than the one you'd believed in for so long. You couldn't just live with what you had; you had to dream of what you thought you were supposed to be. You fool.

I miss you, though. I do. I miss the way your desperate dream always made mine seem at least achievable. You wanted to replicate the lives we once had and save a world and...hell, I don't know. What did you dream of, Tess? I never really figured that out.

But see, your dream--your stupid, impossible dream--it kept mine alive. You wanted a complete reversal of it all; you wanted the past and the present to overlap in some time-bending way. All I wanted was to go home. Do you know how Isabel and Max used to pity me for that? And then you came along and my dream didn't seem so outrageous anymore. I wasn't the dreamer anymore. I wasn't "Crazy Michael" anymore.

I don't think I ever thanked you for that.

*********************************************

Don't need a helmet, got a hard hard head.
Don't need a raincoat, I'm already wet.
Don't need a bandage, there's too much blood.
After a while seems to roll right off.

*********************************************

You know who I think misses you, really misses you? Kyle. And you screwed him over royally. You always were a bitch.

He spent years--years!--loving your sorry ass and you go and kill yourself in the bed you shared with him. Did you know that when the police finally came for your body, they had to pull him away from you? He was just sitting there, on the floor, one hand resting in your hair. Sobbing. I see him now, and he looks like he's made of tears.

You know what you should have done? You should have killed yourself in front of Max. You should have cornered him in the Crashdown or somewhere else and made him watch. But you didn't. Instead you spit on the one person who'd ever shown you real kindness. You took all the love he had for you and treated it like it was nothing. You left him and you didn't look back.

I wonder if maybe we were brother and sister. Maybe we were and no one ever mentioned it--maybe it wasn't important enough to remember. That would figure, wouldn't it?

But you're gone now. You've left Kyle. You've left this world.

You fucking coward.

You couldn't handle your destiny, your real destiny.