Clichés

Author: Debbie
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I do not harbor any delusions about who truly owns Roswell.
Distribution: Guilty Pleasures, if you want it. All others please ask first.
Author's Note/Summary: I think most of you know I'm not really a Rebel. But I recently finished a book that had a horribly heartrending finale, and I *had* to spill my angst out into a fic somewhere. This is the result. I hope it pleases the Rebels out there - I'm not really sure what you look for in a fic about them. This is post-Departure, Max POV.
A million thanks to Bennie for going waaayyy beyond the call of duty to beta this for me.
Feedback: Yes please. Even short notes mean a lot to me. I accept constructive as well as positive remarks.

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There's an ache in my chest that won't go away. A hole in my heart. "How cliché," Isabel said, the one time I tried to talk to her about it. I suppose she's right. But it's also true. A monstrous empty feeling, and a constant pull, as if a black hole is sucking out even what little is left. It's like I can feel her speeding away from me, farther and farther, and I wonder if there will come a time when either the bond will snap and shatter my heart, or if it will just keep pulling my soul out through my chest until I'm turned inside out.

"You never realize what you have until it's gone." Another cliché, but, again, one which happens to be true. I didn't realize. I didn't value it. I saw her as a thorn in my side, someone who disrupted my life - my life, which was gaining it's first-ever sense of normalcy. I was told I had to be with her -- well, just because that's how it had to be. And I hated it. I hated her. And even when I stopped hating her, I resented that insistent voice in the back of my mind that said I had to give up my plans for Earthly normalcy in order to fulfill my former responsibilities.

Even after I spent time with her and remembered her and kissed her and held her naked beneath me, I still didn't realize what I had. I did it all automatically, because I knew there was no use fighting it any more. And besides, Liz had left me. I had lost all excuses, no more reason to avoid my royal responsibilities.

But now she's gone, a million miles from me - hundreds of millions probably - and the increasing pain in my heart tells me she's moving farther away with each tick of the clock. Tick. Tick. Tick. Oh, God. Isn't it ironic? I've sought a love like this all my life, and now that it's happened, it's for someone I'll likely never see again. Is my love really worth something? Does it have a value without a recipient? I mean, I love a real person, and plenty of long-distance relationships have survived, I'm sure. But never something so far - and for so long.

At first I thought the pain I felt was the fear of losing Liz again. She came back to me after … after the Granolith left, and said she wanted to try once more. She told me the truth about the previous year, and we each apologized for the hurts we'd inflicted upon each other. But the ache got worse and worse throughout the summer, and I quickly recognized Liz wasn't the cause at all. And that's when the real pain began, because I understood what I had lost, and knew there was no way to get it back.

As for Liz -- brace yourself, it's another cliché - I've learned you really can't go back again. What I once thought of as a soul bond -- well, it isn't. Now that I've felt what one really is like, I know that this isn't it. I still like Liz - she's a good person. But our relationship lacks the depth of a previous life. The memories I have of Tess from Antar -- our life, our marriage -- even though they were only just beginning to come back to me, they still lent a complex quality to the bond we had this time around. It was like - even though I was just getting to know Tess, I already knew her. It was almost subconscious, and yet I knew it was there, in the back of my mind. I knew Tess. I'd loved her long ago, in another life, and my heart remembered her, even when my head initially rebelled.

The fact that she's the mother of my child makes my feelings for her that much stronger. I never knew a love like the one I feel for my son, and I've never even met him except through an amniotic wall. But the fact that Tess and I created him - he is part of both of us - well, the idea blew me away. It magnified everything I thought I could ever describe as love, and that included my feelings for Tess. Only - only now she's gone. And my heart went with her. All the love I didn't give her here is now streaming away from me at the speed of light and I'm not sure how much longer I'll be able to function before my body collapses like an insubstantial house of cards. The pain of loss is so great sometimes, I'm surprised it hasn't happened already.

Would anyone notice if it did happen? I know the others all hate Tess because of Alex, and so I've had to keep my anguish to myself. No one wants to hear how much I'm hurting, how I'll never be whole again without her. They don't want to acknowledge that she was just an innocent pawn in someone else's game. I recognize that all my hopes and dreams and desires are devoted to a person who killed someone else. It was an accident, I know, but it was still a death. Michael intentionally killed Pierce last year, but Pierce deserved it. Alex -- he was one of our first allies. He was always more Liz and Maria's friend, and Isabel's … something … than mine, but I still understood his importance to our group. And yet, once I got over my initial shock, I realized I still didn't blame her. She was trapped by a bargain someone else made without her consent. And Alex's death *was* truly an accident. But still - one of our first allies also became our first loss, and I know it's been very hard on the others.

I always thought that pain shared was pain halved -- but her pain of forced "betrayal" seems to grow more every day, a sharp pain stabbing me every time I breathe. Not only do I not blame her, but I hurt for her, for the burden she had to carry against her will. Am I sharing her pain? Or have I just taken it all on myself in her absence?

Absence. "Absence makes the heart grow fonder," they say. "Fond" doesn't even begin to cover what I'm feeling now. It's a need that grows more desperate every day, as my soul pursues its missing half and the hole in my heart grows subsequently ever-larger. So many facets to my relationship with Tess, and every one of them is causing me pain. I don't know how much longer I can survive this.

Clichés may be, well, cliché, but those tired phrases came about because they were true.

So now I'm wondering … maybe it *is* possible to die of a broken heart.

(End)