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

SIXTY-NINE

He swallowed. "I looked into that frightened face of yours and asked you to promise me something."

I was hanging on to his every word, holding my breath, because I already knew how this story went, but I wanted desperately for him to finish it correctly. To prove that he was my father.

"That if you were ever to move away again, that you would take your mother and me with you." He swallowed, looked both scared and guilty as he added, "And you told me that me and mom were allowed to come, but not the bad men in your room."

A chill ran down my spine.

I knew every detail of this story, because my father had told it to me so many times. But he had never mentioned that added requirement made by the five-year-old me. Still, I could remember it clearly now. I could remember wanting my father to promise that we would be moving alone. Only mom, dad and I.

Hot tears rolled down my cheeks and it was a miracle that my father could even discern my words as I whispered through tears and sobs, "Is it really you?"

"Yes," he whispered back, his tears mimicking mine as he put his arms around me and pulled me into a hug.

I felt the tug on my hand as I wrapped my arms tightly around him, but the uncomfortable sensation was forgotten in lieu of being encased in his warmth. I buried my forehead against his neck and breathed in that familiar smell. That's what finally confirmed it for me. That it was really him. I had learnt from the experience with Sean portraying Max that the personal smell a body emits could not be replicated.

But even in his arms I couldn't really let myself relax. My mind was on high alert, sharply in tune with my surroundings. To always be prepared for any possible sudden threats.

I thought that I would feel safe being with my dad. My parents had always represented safety to me. A girl's father could do anything. Make anything possible. Defend her against all the monsters under her bed and in the darkest unexplored corners of her closet.

But not anymore. The foreign 'visitors' to Earth had robbed me of that innocent feeling of safety.

That realization turned my sobs harder and more desolated, as loneliness and pain twisted my heart.

I cried for me. For Max.

Max.

The shock of seeing my father had completely side-tracked me from what had happened just before I had passed out. I tensed in my father's embrace as I started searching through my head for him. Panic was flooding me, making it hard for me to breathe, as I snapped my head up from dad's shoulder and found Isabel's eyes.

"Where's Max?"

Isabel tried to smile at me, but the insecurity in her eyes betrayed her. "He's fine."

I pulled back from my dad, feeling his concerned eyes on my teary face as I straightened in fear. "No. No. I can't feel him." I could hear my voice raising, turning discordant with my growing panic. My nails were digging into the palms of my hands as my voice bordered on shrill as I squeezed out between limited breaths, "I can't feel him."

Isabel's eyes had turned wider and wider at my response, and she turned and yelled, "Alex!" over her shoulder before she crossed the meager distance to my bed and tried to take my hand.

I pulled it away from her, "No," pressing it to my chest as the painful hyperventilation of anxiety and panic ripped through me. "He's dead." I threw my head back, closing my eyes against the ceiling, with wheezing breathing and sobbed, "He's dead, isn't he?"

I can't feel him. I can't feel him.

"He's sedated," Isabel rushed to say, but my mind wasn't letting her words in. It was blocking everything out. My assumed truth had become the real truth and I wanted to be alone in my grief. I wanted to be left alone.