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

ONE ONE TWO

It was barely a second. Just long enough for him to growl "Bitch". Then the world tilted on its axis. The ceiling became a wall to my left, the floor a wall to my right.

The white corridor disappeared, its dead bodies melting away. Max - and his dark unrecognizable eyes - vanished and Isabel went up in smoke.

Instead the girl was there again. With the grimy blonde hair and the turned down face. She was seated in the space between the walls and it took my shocked mind a second to figure it out; The feel of the unrelenting ground pressing into the right side of my face, the darkness of the unfamiliar room, the unfamiliar smell, and the girl seated just a couple of feet in front of me.

Seconds ago, I had been standing up, certain that the love of my life would hurt me - badly - and now I was lying down, my perspective changed in the blink of an eye.

I felt my perception of reality teeter and shift, my mind aching from quickly trying to orient myself. How could I be somewhere else? Where was I? What was happening?

My mind was pounding from a resonating headache. I didn't let my gaze leave the girl. There was something familiar about her.

Slowly, she started moving her head, raising her face, until drained blue eyes unsteadily met mine.

Tess was alive. Tess was sitting in front of me, her body drenched in sweat, her eyes bloodshot and her hair sticking to her damp, dirty forehead.

Tiredly, managing a weak wobbly smile, she slurred, "You kicked me out."

Instantly, I understood what she meant and what had happened. Immediately, my stomach knotted painfully, tightening in on itself, freezing my next string of breaths.

She had been in my head this whole time. Tess had been in my head. How long? What had been real? What had been false?

"Is she out?"

I jumped at the sudden voice, exploding from the dark shadows. The demanding, forceful voice that brought back a much too recent - and horrible - ordeal.

Forcing my head off the ground, wincing at how the movement intensified my headache, I searched into the darkness, making out only the dark shadow with the shape similar to him.

He had just called me 'bitch'.

I swallowed back the acid of my prompt nausea, mentally shaking my head to clear my thoughts. No, no. It hadn't been real. It couldn't have been.

"Liz?" he barked, the sharpness to his voice making me doubt that I had returned to reality and that he wasn't planning to hurt me. "Is she out?"

My gaze quickly flickered to Tess. To the girl whose skin color was that of watery milk and who had fresh sweat droplets trailing slowly through the sheen of dirt on her face. Her eyes met mine, the color of her irises appearing washed out, adopting the same paleness as the rest of her. A blood vessel or something had popped in her left eye, making the white sclera red. But even the color of the blood reddening her eye was faded.

She was lacking an expression. Her dry lips were slightly open, most likely due to the lack of muscle strength, and there was a faint repetitive bob to her head.

I didn't have to ask him what he meant by his question. Tess was obviously out for the count, but I don't think Max was being quite that literal.

He needed to know if she was out of my mind.

"Yes," I whispered, my voice dry and unused. "She's out."

The right corner of Tess' mouth rose in a wobbly half-grin. Her voice sounded like an old lady as she warned Max, "Don't try anything, my love. I can still-"