Hold On

Author: Bennie
Rating: PG
Character Focus: M/L, Max POV
Disclaimer: I own nothing Roswell.
Author's Note/Summary: Max thinks about what Liz means to him. No spoilers past Viva Las Vegas. "Hold On" is by Limp Bizkit, and I absolutely recommend it, even if you don't care for their other material.

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You keep your distance, I can´t deny you
I´ve got the feeling, I can satisfy you
I´ve got your picture on the wall
I´ve got the picture long gone

You keep your wishes, I´ll keep my feelings
There goes another one that kept me breathing
I´m waiting for you, I´m never leaving
I´ll still adore you, you´ll never need me

Hold on, I´ll find another way to let you go away
Hold on, you´ll find another way to bleed my soul away

The things you told me, to hear you speak
I´m burning slowly, I´m growing weak
You bring me closer to yesterday
Yesterday´s a million miles away

Why can´t you hear me, why can´t I sleep
And I don´t understand what keeps me breathing
I´m waiting for you, I know you´re leaving
I´ll still adore you, you´ll never need me

Hold on, I´ll find another way to let you go away
Hold on, you´ll find another way to bleed my soul away

Hold on ...

I got it, Liz. I got the message loud and clear. You can´t be with me.

As you wish.

Still, sometimes I see this look in your eyes. You look at me, or something on my arm, or my hand, and I can practically feel the temperature in the room spike. It´s confusing as hell, Liz, but I swear that desire comes off you in waves. What I don´t know is whether you can feel it coming off of me too.

But I can´t ask you. And your picture doesn´t answer.

I still have it, you know. The school picture you gave me, the one where you wrote … what you wrote … on the back. Every now and then I take it out of my sock drawer and put it up on the wall. And I look into your eyes, and I try to figure out just where it all went wrong.

The logical part of me says it was last year, when Tess showed up. And I suppose that would make sense. But … I don´t believe it. Last summer before you left, you avoided me so we wouldn´t be together, which let me think that if we could get together, then we could *be* together. When you came back, you went out of your way to let me know you weren´t jealous or upset by any time I spent with her, which made me think that maybe you were. Both were frustrating as hell, but I could deal. I could hope.

But ever since last October … you go out of your way to tell me we can´t be together. Not “shouldn´t”, not “won´t”, but “can´t”.

It´s a whole different vibe, Liz. And I don´t get it.

~*~

I realized once that despite everything, you really have no idea how impossible it is to live without you. Without worrying about you, thinking about you, dreaming about you.

Obsessing about you.

Don´t worry; I won´t keep pushing. I´ve seen what lengths you go to when I do. And I don´t think I could take being set up like that again.

That´s right; I said “set up”. I bet Kyle never told you about coming over to my house the day after I got back from New York, did he? I damn near killed him for having the nerve to show up, but something in his expression stopped me. And he told me.

And the thing is: it helped, Liz. For some twisted reason that I can´t understand, I feel better knowing that you went out of your way to lie to me in the most painful way imaginable rather than sleep with someone, with him, so casually. It allowed me to think that maybe I do know you.

Because it occurred to me that I am – have been – will always be – willing to risk capture if it means saving you. I know this; I´ve always known this. Then during your speech, you know the one, when you basically told me that you loved me but I was everything you weren´t looking for? I realized something else. I realized that it *was* a speech, and it was for my benefit.

You were trying too hard, Liz. And there´s a logical explanation why you might do that. I just don´t know what it is yet.

~*~

I told you once that you were a part of the group, part of our lives, and nothing you did and nowhere you went would change that. I meant it.

But what I didn´t say was that it works another way. You´re a part of me, part of my life, part of what and who I am, and nothing and no one can change that.

Even you.

When I promised to come for you, I meant that too. The thing is, Liz, I already have. I´m just waiting for you to come to me now.

~*~

So I have this ongoing conversation with myself. I ask myself what it means to love, and how do I know what it is, or whether it´s as true a love if it´s not returned, or whether it can survive not being returned. Or how to know if it´s being returned or not.

I know you´re not as dependent on me as I am on you. You´ve already proven it. You can live without me, smile without me, make new friends that have nothing to do with me.

But for me … there´ll never be another you. No matter how angry, how depressed, how frustrated I get, there´s always a little part of me that can´t help admire everything about you. Isabel used to tease me about putting you on a pedestal, and it was true.

I still do, Liz.

You give me strength. I could never have told you that it was okay to follow your dreams if I hadn´t been touching you. I could never have encouraged you to do what you have to if I hadn´t been able to hold you, even if only for a moment.

I could give you freedom, if you asked me for it. I would give you up a million times if it meant I could hold you again.

~*~

It´s a bittersweet triumph, I know. Every time you leave my sight without that little look that promises you´ll be back soon, back in my embrace soon, a little part of me dies.

We´re soulmates, Liz. You have a part of my soul. I can feel the loss, and despite the pain, I think it would hurt worse if you gave it back.

No, the only way to make the pain go away would be for you to come back and share it with me.

It hurts when we´re apart, Liz. It hurts in ways that defy description.

I think I remember everything you´ve ever said to me. I relive the words in my mind, slowly, savouring them. I pull out old answering machine tapes, listening for your voice – like the time you called when your grandmother was in the hospital. At the time it scared me, how much you needed me. Now, I dream of the day I hear it in your voice.

Not the pain; the want.

The need.

~*~

I watch the sun set a lot. Something about the colours soothes me, burns hot against my skin until the cool evening breeze pushes the warmth away. It´s a ritual that makes me think of you.

I´m patient, Liz. I can be patient forever, if I have to.

But I feel myself aging. I look in the mirror sometimes and I don´t see a boy anymore. I don´t see a man, not yet, but he´s there. I can´t stop time, Liz, and I wish you could see how important it is to use the time we have now, because who knows what´s in the future?

I feel the time slipping away. Sometimes I can feel the strength leaving me too, and I work extra hard to fight it, to build the muscles that can slow it down. But I can´t stop it.

I wonder what you see when you look at me.

~*~

Everything about you reminds me of everything that makes my life worth living – both my lives.

My humanity begins with you, grows to encompass my family and friends, and ends with you. It always comes back to you somehow, always. I ask myself what you would think about a decision, whether you´d agree or argue, and I hear your voice in my head, telling me to look at the problem another way.

Don´t you know how much my alien side depends on you? If nothing else, then to show me that I´m still me no matter what my cells look like, to remind me of my obligations when I want nothing more than to run away. With you to give me perspective, I can *be* alien, Liz.

Forget that I wouldn´t have found the orbs, or where they took Pierce´s bones, or the alien parasite, without you. Forget that my awakening began with you, with my love for you, as I know it did.

You keep me anchored in reality even as you inspire me to dream. Or maybe it´s not you – maybe it´s the way I see you, or how I feel about you, or how I like myself better when you smile at me.

Maybe it´s all the same.

~*~

Sometimes I forget that part of me comes from another galaxy – probably. We don´t actually know where we´re from. But I can´t get away from that sense of age, from feeling ancient.

In some ways I like the continuity, the knowledge that the things we do live on after us – and before us. And all around us. But more often I want to feel the present, to know that I´m not a spectator in my own life, that I can make a difference in the here and now.

Clichéd? Hell, yeah. But also true.

And when I look at you, I feel alive *now *. I can put the past behind me and think about the future without that sick feeling in my gut and the voices that whisper to me in the night to tell me all my fears are real. The world rights itself, somehow, allowing gravity to reassert and reassure me that some things are constant.

Maybe not eternal, but constant. It´s a crucial difference, I think.

Don´t you feel these things too? I know you did once. I felt them, and your certainty of them, in your soul. In the very essence of what makes you, ‘you´.

Or can´t you feel them anymore? Something changed. I don´t know what, and I´m not exactly sure when, but I know there´s something missing now. Or maybe there´s something there that shouldn´t be, something that´s come between us.

Is it wrong, or cowardly, or weak that I lie in bed, unable to sleep because I don´t have the answers to these questions? Is it that I *do* know the answers, and just can´t bring myself to see them, to accept them?

I do know that there are clues all around us, and I can´t help but think that if I can just choose the right moments to look at, to relive, than I can figure it out.

And I can dream.

~*~

I´ve read about it in books, that scene when the character – maybe the hero, maybe not – reaches a point where it´s all too much. Where he just feels like every reason for going on, for not giving up, has just been knocked right out of him. And you know, I could never understand it before.

I understand it now.

I would rather understand you.

You are my life. You are what keeps me alive. It´s as simple, and as complicated, as that.

I can feel you pulling away from me. I can. I know this, and I know you feel it too.

But can you feel – something – pulling you back, too? Something stretching but also straining, growing tighter and less giving, and threatening to jerk one or both ends back together?

Or to snap. That happens too. I wonder if you think it´s already happened, and I wish I could explain to you that I know it hasn´t.

But I think you´re going to have to learn it the hard way. And I only hope you let it pull you back before it reaches that point.

The breaking point.

So I´ll watch you walk away, and I´ll feel something tug at me the further you go. And I´ll relish that feeling, because it means you´re not gone yet.

Not quite yet.

And since I can´t say it in words, or in song, or in writing, anymore, I´ll say it in much subtler ways.

I´ll do my homework in the diner to watch over you.

I´ll reassure you that it´s okay not to get dragged down with the rest of us, with me.

I´ll stand by while you flirt with other guys.

I´ll come to you when you need to be needed.

I´ll never tell you how I want you to come to me, to *me*, without hesitation or fear or secrets, so much it hurts.

I´ll let you leave, Liz.

And I´ll be here when you come back.

I´ll help you any way I can, Liz.

If it´s so important to find yourself away from me, I can give you the space to do that.

I can let you go, for now.

And you´ll take the chance, I think. I can see the way you look at me sometimes, like you´re memorizing my face. Like you think you´re coming to a point where the memory is all you´ll ever have.

You have so much more, Liz.

You have me. You always have. And you´re the one person who can truly damage me.

You already have. It´s not permanent, but it´s there, and it´s not going away.

You are.

~*~

Please come back.

Please.

(End)