Unbreakable - A Beautiful Lie · (Roswell Fanfiction) · √

SIXTY-THREE

"I wonder," the Sergeant said slowly on the third day of my deprivation of freedom, "how much your mother really told you of the double life she was leading."

Feeling the need to protect my mother and ascertain that she hadn't belonged to the aliens; that they had killed someone who had actually kept their secret, I answered, "Nothing. I knew nothing of what you exposed her to."

He didn't acknowledge the venom in my voice as he huffed, "Huh," and sat down on the bed. Right where he would normally sit during his visits. "Let me tell you about your mother, Elizabeth."

I barely had time to consider if this should be something to be happy about - getting some more information on my mother - or if it should scare me, before he sent me a vision.

My suspicions about the strength of his abilities were further confirmed as he managed to project images into my mind without even touching me. Without a proper connection.

A young woman was running towards me, a large smile stretched across her lips. She looked a lot like myself, only her eyes were green and her hair was dark auburn. Her curly hair bounced around her open and freckled face. I gasped with the deepest joy as she jumped into my arms.

Mom.

It was mom.

At an age that I hadn't known her. My age. A happy carefree adolescent.

"Hey," she breathed into my neck and I tightened my arms around her. She felt small in my arms - breakable - and I realized that I wasn't only seeing the Sergeant's vision. I was seeing it from his viewpoint. At the moment I was him.

And my mom didn't seem the least afraid of him. No. When she pulled back and placed a gentle kiss on my - his - lips, I could see that she was in love. Very much in love with Steven Carter. In love with the enemy. The monster.

The edges of the memory blurred and shifted from the outside summery setting to the closed indoors. To the white-tiled bathroom with red staining on the floor.

I froze, looking closer at the bright red against the stark white tiles.

Blood.

And in the middle of the pool of blood was a slightly older version of my mom. She was sitting in the color of life, her legs bare, wearing an oversized grey T-shirt, with her red curls free around her face. Crying with the sounds of death.

No. Not just crying.

Screaming.

Making the blood freeze in my veins.

Her head turned towards me, her cheeks flustered and wet, and there was cold hatred in her red-brimmed eyes as she cried, "You did this! You did this!"

I looked at the bundle in her hands, the undeveloped fetus. The child, no larger than a package of butter. A dead child, which was cradled in my mother's bloodied hands.

"No," I heard myself say. But it wasn't my voice. Not my opinion. "This is on you, Nance. You can't even provide me with a child, you worthless whore."

In the present, in the room where I was seated with the Sergeant, I pressed my hands to my head and tried to physically force the visions out of my head. "Stop! Stop it!"

But the visions kept on coming. Loving and even romantic moments between the Sergeant and my mother mixed with the devastation and grief of one miscarriage after the other. He forced me to trace how the pink shimmer of the beginning of their relationship started to wear off. How my mom began to figure out who her boyfriend really was as the facade began to crack. I saw signs of myself in my mom as she grew more tired, constantly plagued by headaches.