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

SEVENTY-SIX

Alex and I would have long talks about our childhood. At first it had been excruciatingly painful to talk about my mom, but (with my permission) Alex had lead me through the emotions, taking off the edge with the magical help of his ability, and gradually I stumbled upon the need to talk about my mom.

I thirsted for whatever stories Alex might have about her. Stories of events that I had never witnessed; instances when Alex had met my mother without me being around. It was amazing to see her through Alex's eyes. Hear the admiration in his voice as he described her and laugh along with him when he retold some clumsy thing that my mom had done. She'd always had a tendency to get herself into the funniest situations.

Later on, I started talking to my dad about mom as well. He needed just as much healing as me, which bled into the conversations making them loaded with grief and anger. Anger about how she had been treated - without our knowledge - and grief about the beautiful person we had lost far too soon. But it felt good to talk about it. Even though we cried a lot, we also laughed a lot.

I'm not so sure that Max had planned for Isabel to bring yoga mats to the house, but that's what she did. At first, she only instructed me. I was a bit against it at first, but she told me that yoga would help me focus. Help me connect with myself and ground me to the earth. It would calm me down and give me tools to get out of stressful situations, when my mind might work against me and lock me up in an unwanted thinking pattern.

Like my anxiety attacks.

Hence, I started doing yoga sessions with Isabel. In the beginning, it frustrated me. I would look at Isabel's long legs, her feminine curves and the natural grace to her movements - when she moved from one pose to the next - and I would feel like a clumsy elephant next to her. My joints felt stiff, my back ached... I couldn't even reach my toes.

I cried a lot during those first sessions. I screamed a lot. Every day I told her that I wouldn't do it again. I couldn't understand how yoga could be peaceful. All it did was make me upset.

But Isabel was just as stubborn as her brother. Somehow she got me to continue, and slowly my body started to soften. The fear that was tightening my back, the grief I held in my joints, started to be released. I understood then why it had made me really upset at the beginning. The movements had wanted me to appreciate my body, to like my body. But I wasn't prepared for that. In the self-hating position I had been in, it was hard to get my mind to reroute, to let go.

While I did yoga, Max did push-ups, crunches, pull-ups, jumped up and down off chairs. Usually in the same room. Usually at the same time.

Isabel put up with it for about three days before she exploded on him. He just looked at her calmly as she jumped out of her cross-legged position of 'relaxation' and screamed at him to "Go somewhere else!" and "Can't you see that we are relaxing here?!" and so on.

Max didn't say a word in response. He raised a silent eyebrow at his twin-sister, before throwing me a wink, and left to take a shower.

The next day he sat down on the floor with his phone, scrolling through it while Isabel and I rolled out our yoga mats. But even though he was always looking down at his phone every time I looked over at him, I could feel his eyes caressing my legs and his warm gaze burning on my behind. I could feel the heat through the connection and hear his oh-so-not-pure thoughts in my mind.

Apparently, some yoga poses left very little to the imagination.

It didn't take long before lights were flickering and Isabel was ready to explode (again). She glared angrily at Max, telling him to join or disappear. No ogling of Liz while she was doing yoga.