Remember Me is a Tess / Max fic, with otherwise conventional couples. Spoilers for EOTW only. Strikingly, this is the only fic I've written for Roswell, or Roswell High as it's known in England. Started several years ago, it was incomplete until last month when I got bored and wrote the ending. So:

Other worlds that are not our own penetrate our consciousness and we dream of lives that have never been, loving them all the same. Tess remembers life as an alien, Max doesn't, until one night...
Age rating U, madness rating 1. It's nearly sane, for me.

I disclaim. Can you see the joins?

Chapter 1
He doesn’t care that I love him. He doesn’t care that once we were married. He doesn’t care that once he pledged undying devotion to me. He doesn’t care that once he was my King and I was his Queen. He doesn’t care that once I bore his children. He doesn’t care that together the four of us are invincible. He doesn’t care that the fate of our home planet lies in his hands. He doesn’t care that Kivar is evil and that he is the only one who can stop him, with our help. He doesn’t care that we are aliens and don’t belong here. He doesn’t care that we are meant to be.

He doesn’t care for me.

All he cares about is Elizabeth ‘Liz’ Parker.

And it’s killing me.

He doesn’t understand that what we have is real. He thinks the love of his life is a tan skinned, doe eyed, skinny, flat chested, straight haired brunette. Not a busty, blue eyed, slim, pale skinned, curly haired blonde. I could change my looks. I could make him believe that I was Liz, but that wouldn’t mean that he loved me. That wouldn’t mean that his feelings for me had changed. It would just mean that he was with Liz once more.

She’s worse. He saves her life, and time and again risks it for her, and she comes to the conclusion that their love is destined in the stars.

She doesn’t even know what that means.

The stars to humans are only far away suns, with planets revolving around them. How stupid is that? Who cares about a bunch of rocks and gas in sky? No one.

To me, to Max, to Isabel, to Michael, hell, even to Nasedo, the stars are home. Liz doesn’t understand that. She will never understand that. She can’t. The furthest she will ever get from home is the other side of this planet, and then she’s only a plane ride away.

We’re already on the other side of the universe, and we can’t get home. No one else in the world but us four knows what that is like. We are the Royal Four. We were designed to be together, but I’m the only one that remembers. The only one that feels the pain of a million souls crying out for their leader, and knowing that at that very moment his life blood is seeping out of him because he was betrayed by just one.

Isabel thinks she killed Max in our last life. Vilandra, it’s true, was beautiful and beloved, and she did betray Zan, now Max, to our worst enemy, Kivar, but she doesn’t remember the end. She doesn’t remember him forgiving her and telling her that he loved her with his last breath, or her redemption when she destroyed Kivar’s stronghold from within, dying with it, bringing the war closer to its end that it was since Zan was betrayed and lost his army on the brink of victory. We did not win though. Kivar was too strong, and without Zan’s brilliant leadership, we were doomed.

I remember the last day, when Kivar stormed the palace, and Rath and I were the only ones left of the Royal Four to stand against him. Then we fell. The pain was terrible. Zan and Vilandra’s mother was saved because we had hidden her deep under the palace, along with our maids, women relations and sick. Everyone else was with us, fighting, dying. There was no surrender. We fought for… I suppose you would think of it as ‘democracy’ - there is no word in English for what we had. We did not suffer under a tyrant. Zan came from a line of rulers, all chosen to rule by the people, not by birth or government. He was chosen before he was even born, out of all the children of the world, to be our King - though that word is inadequate to describe what he was to us - because the people could see into his heart, and saw the goodness, the strength and the courage there. Above all, they saw his kindness.

I think I loved that kindness best in him, though now I don’t know if he still has it, so cruelly does he treat me.

Sometimes I think perhaps the others are right, and I should forget, but then I remember those last few days, and the way the people begged me to fight on, to save them, and how I couldn’t, because I had lost Zan and Vilandra, and Rath and I weren’t strong enough alone.

Then I remember a little girl, a perfect combination of her mother and father, of Zan and Ava. Of Max and I. She was our darling. She was our future. She was the next queen of our planet. Now she is Kivar’s bride and he is bound twice to our Kingdom - once by force and once by marriage - and I know, no matter what happens here on Earth, she is more important than anything. She is the reason I cling so tightly to a man who has forgotten that he ever loved me. She is why I can’t give up the fight as the others have and accept my life here. If Zan / Max only remembered her, he would fight too. For now, though, I am the only one who remembers. I must keep the faith, because otherwise, my little girl is lost, and I cannot accept that.

“Tess?” I have been wandering aimlessly for what seems like hours, but as always when I wander aimlessly, I end up at my favourite bench, the one where Max and I sit together and talk about everything without fighting.

“Max,” I can’t think of what to say next. He sitting, slumped over, on our bench and there are tears on his dark cheeks. “Are you OK?”

He doesn’t try to wipe away the tears, but lifts his head to look at me. “No.”

I want to hug him, but I know he’ll only push me away again. Instead I just sit next to him, and feel my heart pound as I feel his side against mine, his leather jacket rubbing against my blouse, almost his skin against mine. “What’s wrong?”

I already know the answer. Liz. Only she can do this to him, can make him cry. I wish he’d let me help him. I could make all the pain go away, if he’d just let me love him. Instead, he loves a girl who treats him badly and he won’t love his former wife, no matter what I do.

“Liz,” his voice is halting and the words come slowly, but I make out what has happened, and feel my fists clenching. If I could dream-walk like Isabel, Liz would suffer some very nasty nightmares tonight for doing this to Max. She slept with Kyle. I know that she and Max are on a break, but that didn’t work for Ross and Rachel on Friends and it sure as hell isn’t going to work for them.

I don’t understand how she can choose Clueless Buddha Boy over Romantic Alien King. I know my interest in Kyle has been considered by the others as romantic at times, but it’s never been more than my interest in Max. At one point, I thought I could live as my husband does - with the humans, loving them, being with them, but now I’ve seen what that does to you. It kills the alien inside you, and leaves the shell of the human alone. Max is losing part of himself by being with Liz, a part that I can give him back.

“Max, it’s going to be OK.” I can’t believe how stupid that sounds, even to me.

Max lifts his head from his hands and looks at me, his big brown eyes full of yearning. “You think?”

“Definitely,” I give him a warm smile, which he can’t return, but his tears have stopped. Perhaps there is hope for us yet.

His eyes change suddenly from brown to silver, and he slumps backwards in his seat, his entire body limp.

“Max?” I start shaking his arm, but I get no response. Oh God of all my Fathers, what am I supposed to do now? Max is the one with the healing powers, not me. I don’t even know what’s wrong with him. This isn’t like a cut finger. He’s turning ash grey, and his lips are faintly blue. “Max?” I repeat, but still don’t get a response. At last I start thinking. If I make a connection with him I may know what’s wrong, and the fastest way to connect is to kiss. I lay my lips on his and reach out for him with my mind. I don’t care what we must look like, something’s wrong with him, terribly, terribly wrong. Max is scaring me. For all I know, this is what happens to aliens with broken hearts. They die. Then our world will have to wait for another fifty years for their old, strong, brilliant leader to be born again, and I don’t think it will last that long. Clutching Max in my arms, I pray, Oh, God of All my Fathers, Lord of the earth, sky, stars and oceans, save him.

I can’t live without him.

I can’t.

I reach out, my mind searching for his. At first I’m slammed back. There’s something holding me out. Ignoring the painful headache that’s beginning to set in with a vengeance, I reach again, and this time I see white light. It’s so strong as to be blinding, and I want to close my eyes against it, but they’re already closed, and anyway, I’m not seeing it with my eyes, but with my mind. Then I realise how beautiful it is. It’s warm too. I let my mind slip into it. My body seems to be floating, and then I see Max, but he isn’t Max anymore. It’s Zan, and he is so beautiful.

“Ava?” He’s calling to me, the alien in me, not the human Tess, and I run forwards to him. He holds me in his arms, and I feel so warm, so happy, and so safe.

After a delicious forever of being together, I turn my head and see our palace. It’s home. It’s unlike anywhere else in the universe, because Zan, Vilandra, Rath and I built it from our love, our minds, our imaginations. The colours reflect everything we feel in our minds, our souls even. Our rooms are for us alone. The rooms for the servants and other members of the household are more traditionally decorated, but here, the room reacts to our moods. Colours that the human eye can’t see are flowing around us, patterns are made by light and the very walls sing to us.

Yet I remember this day with sadness, not joy. Today is the last day of our freedom, and in a moment, the old life of happiness and peace will end. In a moment, the betrayal will begin.

My husband is holding my hand, and our daughter, named for our sun, Relia, plays at our feet. I don’t understand if Max is remembering this or if I have somehow drawn Max’s dying soul into my own body and together we dream of a life that had once been.

He is signing papers of State, and as I read over his shoulder, I can feel the room change as he reads a letter from an ambassador from another world.

“Ava,” he says slowly, “do you trust Kivar?”

My body goes cold. Why is he asking me this? I glance down at the paper. It bears the mark of Camero, the most respected ambassador in our part of the galaxy. If he is warning us that Kivar is plotting something, I know he must be. “No, Zan.” I can see him shake his head. He doesn’t want to believe it any more than I do, but like me, he must believe.

“Rath!” He shouts abruptly, causing Relia to jump, then sends a mental shout out in case Rath is further away than two doors down in Vilandra’s room.

His second in command comes running in. Poor Rath, I suspect he was with Vilandra before he came running in here. The walls around him are pulsing with embarrassment.

“You yelled, Oh Great Leader?” Same old Michael, the Tess part of me thinks, but Ava is too worried to laugh.

“Rath, this is serious,” Zan’s aura is dark, worried, turbulent. I want to calm him, but I know that the very turbulence that makes me uneasy makes him a brilliant leader. He’s too scared and fearful to be anything else. “Kivar’s betrayed us. He’s joined with the Nyns, and that means…”

“We’re screwed,” Rath interrupts. Zan nods. Oh God of All my Fathers, I think, save us. If even hot headed Rath thinks we’re in trouble, we must be on the verge of destruction.

“Papa?” It’s Relia, I think we’d all forgotten she was still here.

Zan’s expression softens immediately. “Yes, mahic (my little one)?”

She is looking worried, and oh so innocent. I want to protect my child’s innocence for ever, but I know that I won’t be able to. War is coming, and in war, all innocence is lost. “Has Kivar done something wrong?”

“Yes, Relia.” Zan and I long ago agreed never to lie to our children, no matter how young they were or how bad the truth was. “He’s hurt a lot of people, and now we have to go to war to stop him from hurting many more. Do you understand?”

“No,” Relia looks calm, “but I trust you, rhia (a term of affection for which there is no English equivalent, but darling is close).”

My poor Relia. My heart breaks for her. So innocent, so young, and doomed. All because her aunt fell in lust with the wrong man.

“I know, child,” Zan looks so sad. He knows lives must be lost in this coming war, and he is a healer, not a killer. He longs to mend their bodies, not destroy them.

“Zan,” it is Rath the friend, not the military commander, that speaks to my husband now. “We have to do this, there is no other choice. Kivar wants your throne, and you must defend it.” His own aura is almost as clouded as Zan’s. A ripple of darkness runs through it. “Imagine what it will be like if we don’t…”

That particular thought does not need to be finished. It is quite bad enough as it is. Worse, as I know what will happen when we don’t stop him, and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.

Then my lover looks past us all and shouts, mentally and physically, without warning.

“Kivar!”

Chapter Two

“Zan.” Our enemy says the word so calmly. He is not afraid.

I watch from my own, my human, body as Max turns from an average, though more gorgeous than average, teenage boy, into the King of a planet and member of a confederation bearing the weight of a billion souls on his shoulders.

“It’s been a long time.” Kivar’s words come to us not directly from him, but from the alien possessed body of our friend Brody. The man is one of the few on earth prepared for interstellar communications technology, and this must be why our enemies as well as our friends use him. “The last time I saw you,” Kivar / Brody goes on, “you were dead. I had your body cremated, you know. The funeral was a very moving ceremony.”

Lies, all of them. The last time he saw Zan, he was alive and fighting. Cremation is for criminals only, but how can Max know all of that? He must believe I let Kivar kill a part of his essence.

“And the last time I saw you, Kivar,” Zan says so coolly in his Max voice that I can barely hear where the King ends and the boy begins, “you were watching your lover leave you, my sister return to me, and half of your army desert you with her.”

Brody’s face shows Kivar’s displeasure, and if Max wasn’t behaving as my King, I would be afraid for us all.

***

Kivar. He will haunt us forever, I fear. Relia is clinging to my leg and she is not the only who is afraid. Her father, her Rhia, my Zan, faces his worst enemy in the middle of the palace where our last battlefield lies. He wants to stop the bloodshed, the war, and the horror. He ran from the room when he heard the first agonised screams of our loyal soldiers, locking us in when I tried to follow him.

So many people have died since then, their bodies lying broken on the ground where they once danced.

Kivar thrives on the pain, and it is killing Zan.

Despite the suffering, I must believe we are winning, but it so hard. Vilandra, her mother, Relia and I wait with fearful hearts, a furious Rath guarding the last doors against insurgents. This is our last stronghold and I fear it will fall when the rebels reach us en masse. We are watching the leaders from a forced distance. I want to be by Zan’s side, but he couldn’t bear it, so I’m left here to watch him suffer and kill or die. Even if he survives this fight, if he kills Kivar he will kill a part of himself. The alternative is too horrible to contemplate and I force my thoughts to the present again.

The only word Tess knows for the image before us is hologram, but that doesn’t come close to describing the Tyria. It is a perfect recreation of what is happening in the palace courtyard below, every sense perfectly transferred. I can smell my lover’s skin, hear the slight catch in his breath, see his aura pulse with the weariness that I know is soul deep, and I can feel the treachery that dances in Kivar’s mind.

Vilandra is serene, a small smile playing over her beautiful face, and I can’t smile back. The Tess part of me knows that Vilandra thinks she will win either way – her lover or her brother will rule. She believes she will stay powerful whatever happens. I know that even on Earth she rules, even if she has been reduced from a planet’s princess to high school royalty.

Ava knows only that Vilandra is hiding something

“Zan,” husband, lover, soul-mate for all my lives, I fear for you almost as much as for our daughter. “Please. Don’t.”

He can’t smile at me. His eyes are dulling with the pain of all those around him. I can only hear them scream, he can feel them. I know what he is doing is right, but, oh God of all my Fathers, why does it have to hurt so much?

“I challenge you, Kivar.”

The words seal all our fates.

The duel between King and insurgent is begun and can only end in one of their deaths. Zan is the better fighter, but Kivar will never let him win. What I have always feared has come about. I am about to lose my lover, my world, my life.

***

Zan / Max goes on, “I remember, at the time, you offered a truce for two jilknes” (a jilknes is the equivalent of 3.27 earth weeks) “on the conditions that I wed Relia to you when she was full grown and gave her to you now as an insurance policy, as well as half the planet, the line of my succession without reference to the old laws, and the deaths of the men you termed ‘rebels’ and I termed ‘citizens loyal to me’.”

“You refused then, Zan,” Kivar spits the words out angrily, Brody’s face contorted into an expression of vile hatred, “and it lost you the war.”

“I would have won no battles by giving you what you wanted then,” Zan is still as cool as ever, but now I see his aura pulsing slightly with his subdued anger. I wonder if Brody’s eyes are sensitive enough to convey the effect to Kivar, but when he responds I know he can’t see Zan’s hidden fury.

“You might have lived,” Kivar turns Brody’s expression to one of distaste, playing with the human features like a doll. “You can not tell me that this half life, half memory is what you enjoy. Your human body feels nothing of what once was so glorious to you. Your human powers are insignificant to the power you once wielded as King.”

“But the emotions are the same, Kivar,” Zan has quelled his wrath, his aura is calmer now, peaceful even. “I feel what I once did, I love as I once did…”

He glances at me, and sees both Tess and Ava for the first time. My heart, both alien and human, leaps. He knows me now. He loves me now. Liz Parker is not forgotten, but she is no longer the entire universe to him. Zan had a heart as big as the sky, and finally I have a place in Max’s.

***

Did Vilandra realise that Kivar would betray her as well as his King, that as faithless a subject as he was, he would be worse as a lover? The Tess part of me thinks no, the Ava half thinks yes. Vilandra’s royal person is inviolable of course, but that didn’t stop me slapping her hard when I saw she was helping our enemy. If Zan wins – no, I must believe when Zan wins – there will be a price to pay for her treachery, but neither Rath nor I can bear to send her away when so much hangs in the balance.

“She’s mine.” This is no war of words, but spirits. I can only imagine what Kivar is showing Zan, the images of his sister and his enemy entwined in bed, the way she looks with love at the man who is destroying our world. This is a pattern that will repeat, I realise, when Max is betrayed again, this time by Liz and Kyle. The pain will remain the same though.

“I’ve had her every way, any way, all ways.”

Zan grunts and I know he has nothing to combat this with. The connection that threads between them is cruel. He is weakened from helping so many victims, healing all those he can, and Kivar is strong. He has spent his days conserving his strength. I love my husband, but I fear he won’t be strong enough to win this fight.

Vilandra’s betrayal is eating into him like the juice of the toxic jubi-jubi plant. He is weak and growing weaker. My love seeks him out, supporting him, and for the first time I see Vilandra look torn. She has been holding her head regally high until now, but at last she is beginning to crack as she sees her brother’s pain.

Rath is furious, but his fury will do Zan no good. None of this is their fault. Rath isn’t powerful enough for Vilandra; Zan is too good to understand Kivar. Between them, the world is lost. Max wonders why as Tess I am so cynical, so likely to suspect people, but I carry memories of this day when he does not.

My Relia is crying and I hand her to her grandmother, ordering them both away. How can I let my only daughter, my mahic watch her Father be murdered at her Aunt’s lover’s hand?

“Come on, Zan,” Rath is growling, “Hit him harder than that.”

Zan is slipping away though. Vilandra has shown her lover the way to defeat him and Kivar is exploiting his advantage to the full. Kivar is projecting all the pain and terror he has ever inflicted on his billions of victims back onto Zan’s conscious. My King can feel it all and his face is losing colour. His breaths are coming faster and I can feel the horror of it all echo through our connection. He’s keeping the worst from me, but what I see is bad enough.

If Kivar kills Zan, there won’t be a planet far enough for him to hide on when Rath and I go after him.

Something breaks inside Vilandra then and for a moment I see what Alex will love so much in Isabel. She is learning all that her lover has done and she sees him with clear eyes at last.

“No.”

At last, I want to scream, she is seeing what Kivar is showing Zan and she can’t bear it any more than he can. Kivar is imagining our world if we lose and he wins, the things he will do, and Vilandra at last understands the nature of evil.

Her beautiful eyes close and I feel a new source of power join us and slip away from Kivar.

For the first time since the fight began, I think we can win.

***

“This is no half life,” Zan has never looked more calm. “This is my next existence.”

And I understand our leadership system at last, why Kivar will never be accepted without Zan. Zan is our first leader, the one who brought our civilisation peace, and every time he dies, he is reborn. Max’s essence isn’t a clone of Zan’s - it is Zan’s. We don’t chose a new leader, the old leader is returned to us, each life increasing his wisdom as he learns more and passes it on to his next incarnation. Kivar’s revolt was doomed from the beginning. There is no throne for him to take, only Zan’s spirit to hold as an emblem of power. He chased us here to Earth not only for Vilandra, the woman he once claimed to love, but for Zan. He needs him, and Max knows it.

Kivar is scornful. “This? This poor existence? This limited presence in the universe?”

He does not understand, cannot believe that what we have found here is worth anything. He is a fool, and Zan will prove him so.

“I am not the one who is limited, Kivar,” Zan is smiling now. “I suggest you leave Brody’s body before I prove it.”

“You threaten me?” Kivar is laughing.

“No,” Max’s smile is feral. He has never looked more dangerous. I am proud to be his mate. “I’m promising you. You stay here, you threaten any one of my friends, you so much as touch their footprints, and you will find out what it means to be hurt.”

Kivar laughs again, and Brody’s eyes are turning dark. “You cannot touch me.”

“Not physically perhaps,” Max is still smiling. “But I can touch Nicholas.”

“He’s nowhere near here,” Kivar looks slightly disturbed now, Brody’s face expresses the faintest trace of worry and his aura, half blocked in its flow by Kivar’s presence, is distressed.

Max’s smile fades to slight bemusement. “Why would that matter?”

I haven’t said a word yet. This is not my fight. It’s theirs. Now I’m wondering if I should intervene. I don’t know how far Max’s powers extend. There is so little that we do know.

“Do you know what I’m doing to him now, Kivar?” Zan’s voice is slow and cool. “No?”

“Zan,” Kivar thinks he’s joking, but I can feel the energy surge out of Max’s body. “There is no point in continuing this ridiculous…”

His words trail off as he finally senses what Zan / Max is doing to his faithful lieutenant. “What have you done?”

“Shown him the error of his ways,” Zan isn’t smiling any more. Max’s deep brown eyes are serious.

I speak at last. “Zan, what did you do?”

“Ava,” Kivar hisses. “I didn’t know you and Maxie were so close!”

“Freeze in Jhawn, Kivar,” I spit back, hell being a weak word for Jhawn and all of its tortures.

***

Zan has won. The four of us, Vilandra at last fully with us, have turned the tide and now Kivar is the one who trembles, who fears for what is about to happen.

Kivar lowers his hand. He knows the battle is lost. “You win, Zan. Have mercy on me.”

Zan is merciful. He sentences Kivar to life-long exile, not death. He thinks there has been too much spilt today.

I want to rip Kivar into pieces and I know Rath and Vilandra feel the same, but Zan can’t bear to take another life when so many are dead.

He doesn’t turn his back on Kivar throughout the negotiations, he’s benevolent, not stupid.

We’ve won. I look over to Vilandra only to see that she is still concentrating. She has sent her essence away and with all of her power, she is tumbling Kivar’s rival stronghold. In the middle of it is the power source of the palace and it is there that she is sending herself to expand, shattering the crystal heart of the generator. The shards fly away and Kivar’s defeat is almost complete.

I’m crying but the tears are happy; joyous, even.

Relia comes back, and I turn my head to greet her, and in that moment, a scream pierces my soul.

It is Vilandra. After all she has done, first betraying and then saving us, her end has come without warning. A spy, someone we would never have suspected but Tess knows as Nicholas, has murdered her. Ironically it is for her betrayal of Kivar, not Zan, that he kills her.

Zan’s attention is distracted and at that moment Kivar takes advantage, and then both the King and the Princess are bleeding on the floor. My attention is all on my lover, as Rath’s is on his, but there is nothing either of us can do.

Tess’s Nicholas slips away and Kivar stands triumphant. He has cheated, but he has won. It’s not fair, but then neither is Max loving Liz and not me on Earth.

Tears fill our eyes and Relia is silent beside me, terrified into speechlessness.

This is the end.

***

The air around us grows colder. Kivar is trying to send his power from our home world across space to Earth, where he intends to smite us as we stand here.

Max is smiling again.

Brody shrieks in pain, his cries echoing through the park.

Max isn’t in control of himself any more. This is King Zan, and he wants vengeance for everything that was done to him, to us, to our people. I think he’s remembering what agent Pierce did to Max in the white room and he’s using it against Kivar now. Brody is twitching now, his face contorted, and I lay my hand on Max’s shoulder, trying to get him to stop this, but for once he does not respond to me.

“Let me show you,” he says in our old language, biting the words out. “Let me remind you what you did.”

A connection snaps into being between us and I see what he’s showing Kivar. No wonder Brody is twitching and shaking. He’s showing him everything that happened in the war, all the pain and suffering, all of the death and despair, everything that Zan felt responsible for because he trusted Kivar, compressed into a burning moment of agony. I don’t feel it. Zan or Max, I don’t know which personality but one of them, protects me from that. I can’t help but be grateful. At last, I break through and see what he is doing. Kivar still takes the brunt of it. All of us see the worst of the war. The moment when the betrayal committed by Vilandra / Isabel is revealed, and she breaks down from a regal being into a weeping child. I feel Kivar’s contempt for her, but also his disturbance at her lack of control. She has been his lover, and now she rejects him. I know that pain, but mine, unlike his, was an innocent one.

Oh, God of all my Fathers, I see Relia, the images flowing back now from Kivar to Zan and I. She is so beautiful. She has grown, become an adult, but she misses us dreadfully. My child, I want to cry out, my child, give her back to me.

Zan pulls back at last. He is hurt too. He does not understand the last image, the one of Relia grown tall and strong like her Aunt, with the deep rooted patience and goodness of her father, and my temper, hated by Kivar because of all of those qualities. Her eyes are closed in sleep, and I fear it is forever.

“What did you do to my child?” If Zan has ever sounded angrier, I can’t remember it. Max’s fists are clenched, his jaw thrust a forward and his eyes are burning with a silver light. If he was anyone but Zan, I would be afraid.

“Relia?” Kivar is still shaking from the mental battering Zan inflicted upon him. “She’s safe, for now.”

If he’s lying, I can’t imagine what Zan won’t do to him. Family, blood, loyalty, these make up the fibres of his very being. If Relia is hurt, Kivar will feel it a thousand times worse. If, oh, God of all my Fathers, my little Relia, my starbeam, my hope, my child, is dead - no. I must not think it. She is no more dead than I am. I must believe that or perish.

***

He’s dying. Oh God of all my Fathers, my King is dying and I can do nothing. That penitent traitor Vilandra has done what no other could do. Rath is furious, but when I look into her tear-filled eyes I can see that this hurts her even more than it does us, and I can’t find it in my heart to be angry with her.

Not when she tries to comfort Relia even as she lies dying.

The walls are darkest purple. I know that when Zan breathes his last on this terrible battlefield they will turn black and never lighten again.

And Max imagines I could live as a human after all I’ve seen. Veins of red spin around me as I see our future and know that I am losing him not only in this life but also in the next.

He looks at me. All I see is him, all I feel is him.

The Ava part of me is screaming. He can’t die. Not here, not now, not like this, but Tess knows better.

Kivar has betrayed us all. He has won.

Zan’s last words will haunt me forever. “Zahiyt ojji.”

The human translation is so inadequate it tears at my soul. How can it only be ‘Remember me’ when what Zan means is so much more?

I’m losing him and I feel as if I am being torn apart from the inside out.

Their mother is weeping, copious great sobs and even Rath is moist-eyed as he clasps his faithless lover and tells her he loves her, no matter what.

There are no tears to cry now.

The war is over. Without Zan and Vilandra, we are all lost.

***

“I know what you want, Kivar, but I’m not giving to you.” Can Zan do it again? Could he sacrifice all that is most important to him to the greater good? I have watched him give and give until the lifeblood flows from his heart, and still give more because it is never enough. He could rule now. The power that surrounds him is an aura of light in these dark times, but human things tie him to this world as well. It is not without a fight that Max Evans can give up his Liz Parker, no matter how much the thought chokes me.

Kivar has mistaken Zan’s fortitude for stupidity. He thinks he’s winning, and even as his walls go up around the memories of that war, he smiles through Brody’s eyes. “You will.”

Brody slumps as Kivar departs his human host. There is a smell of burning and I realise that Zan forcibly expelled the alien’s parasitic spirit. The glow of silver leaves Max’s brown eyes and I see my human companion in them once again. Zan has retreated, exhausted by the efforts against Kivar and, I suspect from the way Max’s aura is fluctuating, deeply upset by the sight of our only child lying as if dead in our enemy’s power.

“Tess?” Max’s voice, a moment ago powerful and full of regal authority, sounds hoarse now. He reaches out an arm to me, and I move under it to support him, only to find he is holding me closer. He stares at me as if he hasn’t seen me in years, and, like a blind man, reaches his fingers out for my face. “Ava…” he whispers, and I realise Zan is still in him, but now the two parts, alien and human, are both conscious.

Our auras meld, pulse, feed off one another and become stronger, and I feel a connection form between us. Love, oh God of all my Fathers, love is flooding into me from him. Not the brotherly affection for Michael and Isabel, our fellow aliens, nor the friendly feeling he holds for Maria who I see moving through his memories like a roller skating pixie, but the love he previously reserved for Liz alone on this planet.

His fingers weave into my hair and I giggle as I see his memory of another time like this, soon after we found each other, and his comparison between the two. I no longer look like Lady Ava, daughter of an hundred Earls, future Queen of our planet, or the child I was then, young and carefree and so happy when chosen by the man I had loved for my entire life. Then, as we walked through the Royal Gardens, whispering secrets to each other, his hand had touched my waist length locks and slipped under them, their glory hiding the way he was holding me too close for regal dignity, until Rath and Vilandra, themselves a courting couple, had come upon us suddenly. We had all jumped apart too quickly not to betray our interrupted intimacy, and Vilandra and I had laughed at each other while the boys scowled.

Across the humming silver line of our connection, I toss back another memory. It was later in our time together, when we had been building the private rooms of the palace from our imaginations, and he and I had built ourselves a secret chamber, connecting to the Great Hall of State beneath by a long and winding passageway. We often hid there, when Rath was in a temper or Vilandra and he had fought, or when the duties of being King were tiresome without importance, and there he had kissed me so many times. As we made it from our minds, we had let the power run free between us, deepening our connection until we no longer knew from whom each part sprung. Like earth children painting, we had played as we worked and it showed in the happiness that exuded from us both. We want to go back, we want to go home, and our spirits sing with joint longing and love.

Max’s lips curl into a smile, and then I feel his human body reach for me.

There is nothing to which I can compare that moment, nothing that comes close. Human passion, alien love, too many years of separation, all fuelled the fire of my love. At last, he knew me as Ava, his bride, his wife, his lover.

Perfection is inhuman, however, and when no more than a millimetre separated our lips, even as the sweet scent of his breath mingles with mine, he stops. His body arches back, his eyes filled with pain. There is someone else here and I turn to see where he is staring.

The growl of a tigress crosses my lips and I stand defensively in front of my lover, alien and human, as I faced our enemy.

“Liz.”

Chapter 3

Everything is different now. I’m different, Max is different, Nicholas is very different, and Liz is going to find out just how much we’ve all changed.

She can’t have him again, not now, not ever. Max is mine now, as Zan always was.

He cares that I love him. He cares that once we were married. He cares that once he pledged undying devotion to me. He cares that once he was my King and I was his Queen. He cares that once I bore his children. He cares that together the four of us are invincible. He cares that the fate of our home planet lies in his hands. He cares that Kivar is evil and that he is the only one who can stop him, with our help. He cares that we are aliens and don’t belong here. He cares that we are meant to be.

He cares for me.

All he used to care about was Elizabeth ‘Liz’ Parker.

Then she betrayed him with another human and now she looks at him like he is the only one in the world for her. I don’t know how she can, the slut. Not after what she did to him with Kyle. She thinks he’s the same person, but he’s not. He’s changed.

Like I said, everything is different now.

He understands that what we had and have again is real. He knows the love of his life is a busty, blue eyed, slim, pale skinned, curly haired blonde and not a tan skinned, doe eyed, skinny, flat chested, straight haired brunette. I don’t have to change for him because he knows who we really are, who she can never be. We’re aliens, Ava and Zan in new bodies. Our love is destined in the stars.

She doesn’t even know what that means.

So I’m going to show her.

“Tess, Max.” She looks shocked, but I don’t know why. She’s the one who cheated on him, broke his heart. I’m the one fixing what should never have been damaged in the first place.

“Liz.”

My lover’s hand is still in mine. I can feel Max’s distress and our connection sings between us. How could she ever imagine she could compete with a love that stretches across lifetimes and the universe? We are the Royal Four. We were designed to be together.

After everything she’s done to my Max, Liz is going down.

Sensing what I’m thinking – getting Isabel to give that idiot brunette bitch nightmares for years for breaking our Max’s heart – he smoothes a hand down my arm and I calm. He’s forgiving her, not because she deserves it, but because if she hadn’t slept with Clueless Buddha Boy, tonight wouldn’t have happened and he wouldn’t remember us. He’d still be in love with her and I’d still be the sad, lonely girl I was earlier tonight. He sends a wave of compassion across our kindness and the cold feeling leaves me. I think I love that kindness best in him, and I love him more now than ever before because I see it again, transmuted through his human body, but still as pure as ever.

“Max, I...” Liz trails off, looking confused.

I guess she expects him to look a lot more upset than he does. I mean, she did just sleep with someone else – not just any someone else, either, but Kyle – and break his heart a few hours ago. She’s probably expecting him to be sobbing his heart out, or cursing the day she was born or even just planning to murder Kyle. Instead he’s holding the hand of the girl she hates most in the world and looking at her calmly with eyes that silver in the moonlight.

“Let me guess,” there are echoes of Zan in his voice, which is level and mild. “You’re sorry.”

“Yes, I didn’t mean to hurt you, Max.” I nearly say ‘Really? Because that’s not what it looks like from here.’ What did she expect, that he’d not care when she didn’t just reject him but she parted those dimpled knees of hers for the guy who Max used to hate more than anyone else?

Was it only an hour ago that he was crying on this bench, sobbing because the girl he loved and trusted and placed on a pedestal hadn’t just had feet of clay but a heart of stone? It’s taking all of the joy of knowing that Max remembers me as Ava and loves me as Tess to stop myself from slapping her, as I once slapped Vilandra for a similar betrayal of Zan. If Isabel was here, I’m sure Liz would be holding a smarting cheek right now.

He squeezes my hand. He knows what I’m thinking but that doesn’t bother him. There’s still a lot of pain in his heart. He might remember life as Zan but he’s still Max, the boy who’s been in love with Liz since he was six, the man who risked his life to save hers, the alien whose connection with her was the first one with a human he’d ever made. There’s a lot of history for all of us. He’s angry, he has a right to be, but he’s never found violence appealing in his anger before and he isn’t starting now.

How could they ever imagine I could love Kyle when I knew Max? Humans, I just don’t understand the way their minds work. I realise Liz is staring at me, not just the joined hands, but at my face. She thinks I’ll be mad because Kyle and I are friends, but I’m angry enough on Max’s behalf not to show any sign to her. I just hope she didn’t throw Kyle off his path to spiritual enlightenment; he meditates too loudly as it is.

“I just,” Liz is looking up at him with those big doe-eyes and I know that part of him still wants to protect her, because that’s the kind of girl she is helpless.

Useless is more like it.

“You don’t have to explain, Liz.” He keeps hold of my hand as he moves towards her. He’s different now; his very walk is more regal than it used to be. He doesn’t dip his head so much and his step falls more firmly on the ground. She flinches in fear and I think how stupid she is. As if Max would ever, could ever, hurt her. She can’t know him at all if she imagines that a little betrayal would make him do anything rash.

Now me she should be scared of.

Max nudges me out of my fantasies of what I’d do to her if he’d only let me and shake my curls back and give her a smile. “Really, Liz, you don’t have to explain anything.”

She looks relieved, but goes on anyway, “Please, let me try. It’s just you and I can’t ever be together, Max, it’s all too complicated for that, and, well, Kyle was there and…”

“You felt screwed up so you screwed him.” Oh, God of all my Fathers did that feel good.

Her expressions is shocked, those doe-eyes of hers looking teary now. I don’t think anyone’s ever talked to her like that before, but there is a nightingale in my soul that is filling me with song and I can’t care about her hurt feelings. Not tonight, anyway.

“What’s going on?” Isabel is behind us, and I turn to see Michael with her. Something in Max hums and I realise that this is the first time the Zan part of him has seen his sister and best friend in their new bodies. He smirks, which is such an un-Max like expression that Isabel raises an eyebrow and Michael follows suit.

“Maxwell,” Michael looks even more confused than Liz does. He has no idea what’s gone on tonight. I can’t wait to tell him. He’s almost as not fond of Liz as I am. “What are you doing?”

He still has my hand. He’s making sure that I know he’s never letting go of me again. The connection sings out to me and I return it renewed a thousand fold. His brown eyes close and when they open again they’re silver. Max is Zan, or rather that half-and-half mixture of Max and Zan – Zax? – and he’s looking at his old friend with new eyes.

“Rath. It’s been a long time.” He nods a little to his sister and I hear Liz’s sharp intake of breath. “Hey, ’Landra.”

As if a switch has been thrown, I see their eyes silver too. Isabel runs forwards and throws her arms around Max’s neck, sobbing.

“I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry…”

“It’s OK, ’Landra,” again he calls her by her nickname. “I forgave you before and there’s nothing to forgive anymore.”

He’s got one hand around her and the other one still holds mine.

“Zan,” Rath’s eyes are wet. “I should have protected her better. It’s my fault Re’s in that bastard’s power.”

At last Zan drops my hand and Isabel too. He grips Rath’s shoulder. “None of it was your fault, Rath, none of it. You can’t believe it was.”

They remember everything. At last I’m not alone. I could dance all the way home. He may not be physically holding my hand anymore but Max hasn’t forgotten me. The days of the three of them and one of me are over. It’s the four of us together again, as it always should have been.

The relief on Michael’s face is evident. Guilt is heavy, and I think Rath had the weight of an entire planet on his shoulders, a weight Zan has just lifted. As if it was physical rather than metaphysical weight, the muscles in his arms tense.

Hey, just because I’m an alien doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the fineness of the human figure, especially when it looks like Max.

Liz has backed up away from us all and only now does it occur to any of us that we’ve been speaking in the old language, not English, and that she can’t have understood a word we’ve said.

Max’s love must be having an effect. I care enough to turn to her and say in English, “It’s OK. We’re not about to kill you or anything.”

Max shoots me a look as Liz flinches again and I shrug. I never said I liked her and I’m Nasedo’s child after all. Human tact is learned, alien honesty is instinctive. She’s just lucky that Isabel doesn’t know about Kyle or she’d be doing a lot more than flinching a little.

“We’re going home.” Zan says it and I wait for Michael and Isabel to argue, but they don’t. They remember too. The image of my daughter appears before us and I smile. My baby’s not going to be alone for much longer.

Max takes another step towards her, his hands held out in a way that in a human would be placating but with Max’s powers is a little bit threatening. I can’t hide my grin at her expression. Is it wrong to enjoy her fear when she’s made Max so unhappy and afraid for so long?

Liz is freaking out. Not that I blame her, but still, you would think that after all she’s done tonight she would understand why Max might want to leave.

“But we’ll be back.”

Right after we kill Kivar, resume control of our Kingdom, rescue our daughter from whatever horrible fate he’s subjected her to and eaten some of the alien food I’ve been craving for the past 16 years. Tabasco sauce on waffles with strawberry jelly and whipped cream just can’t compare

Isabel and Michael have stopped hugging Max now and we all just look at each other, faces shining with happiness. Liz is gone, probably to cry in her room or write in that damn diary. I can see it now ‘Dear Diary, I’m Liz Parker’ No, really? You’re not Carmen Electra? Could have fooled me. ‘And tonight I slept with my ex-boyfriend, broke the heart of the boy who loved me more than anything in the world and got teary-eyed and scared when he remembered that he wasn’t of this world and went back to his alien wife. I just don’t know what to do.’

Somehow I don’t think any teen agony aunt is going to have a solution for that one.

“Oh my God.” Classic Maria, she’s already worked out exactly why Max is holding my hand and Liz is walking away. “She did it. She finally mind-warped you all.”

Or maybe not.

“Maria,” Michael has never been a man of many words and now he seems to skip any idea of them. He just starts kissing her and even Alex, who’s talking quietly to Isabel, can see the connection open between them.

“Oh.” Maria sighs when he lets her go. “I get it. Come back soon, Rath, or you might find I’ve found myself another alien lover to get lost in space with.”

She doesn’t have anything to worry about on his side. Just because Max and I are together doesn’t mean that Isabel and Michael want to be too. Maybe one day, but for now, they love their humans. I hear Michael’s thoughts about Maria, and know that Isabel is no substitute for the blonde pixie in his heart. Vilandra’s betrayal still cuts, and it will be a while before Rath can look at her without seeing Kivar too.

As for Isabel, well, let’s just say that Alex is a little too devoted for her to want to trade him in for Michael’s sarcasm and unpredictability. She’s always liked being worshipped.

Zan / Max is smiling and I see the suns of our home world dance in his eyes.

I think I love him more now than I ever have before.

I can’t live without him.

I can’t.

So it’s a good thing I don’t have to, not anymore.

The End.

For now at least.