There was something about the way Philip Evans looked me over that I hadn't noticed before, but in retrospect I was fairly certain he had done to me several times. Max did the same thing. I wondered if they were scanning me. If they were unconsciously checking my status or consciously looking for injuries.
The reason why I noticed this time was probably because of the lingering slowness to Mr. Evans' 'scan'.
Max tensed next to me and I distractedly caught onto his insecure thoughts. He was wondering if his father was seeing something Max had missed. If Max hadn't healed me properly when I had fallen to the floor. Because even if Max hadn't felt allowed to remove my headache earlier, I was grateful that he hadn't been ruled by his self-blame (and not healed me) when my energy had been dangerously low as my limp body had connected with the floor.
Max was now wondering if there was something inside of me that he had not picked up on; something that could be hurting me.
Like a shocked and frightened man, awaiting the test results to his loved one, Max was holding his breath as his father's gaze moved up my body and slowly reached my face.
Mr. Evans frowned, a small barely noticeable twitch in the corner of his eye putting me on edge. I'm sure I wouldn't have noticed that twitch on my own. It was actually Max - who knew his father better - who had picked up on it.
"You're using non-human abilities," Mr. Evans stated slowly, his voice bouncing off the thick hushed anticipation of the room.
I nodded haltingly, still wanting to know why Max was stressing out, and why his father had frowned when he had seen me.
There's something wrong, Max whispered fearfully into my head, making my heart clench. But he's not going to tell us.
If he hadn't been so afraid for my health, Max's primary reaction right now most probably would have been anger. Instead, he reached for my hand and interlaced our fingers.
My eyes were fixed on Mr. Evans' face, enabling me to catch the faint interest in his eyes as he followed his son reaching out to grab my hand. I looked down at Max's and my hands almost expecting to see something fantastic.
But there was nothing odd about our handheld. His skin was darker than mine, his hand so large in comparison, the tightness of the grip visible to the eye as the tips of his fingers were white from the clasp, creating equally light areas of whiteness where the pads of his fingertips pressed into my skin.
"Let's take a seat," Mr. Evans suggested evenly and gestured towards the dining table. We had gathered in the common room of the hostel. Where pieces of exploding bread still covered the wooden floors, along with several puddles of water on the floor from me boiling the water in assorted pans and pots. It looked like the aftermath of the playtime of two under stimulated kids.
I moved forward in accordance with Mr. Evans' suggestion, but Max stood still, tugging me back with our clasped hands.
I looked over my shoulder at him, frowning. "Max?"
The connection was bubbling with his conflicting emotions, making me dizzy and making it impossible for me to read him.
With his strong pull, I stumbled into his body. He wrapped his arms around my waist, the difference in our height making him lift my body to the tip of my toes as he hugged me tightly, his warm lips touching the side of my throat as he pressed his head into the curve of my neck.
Are you okay? he whispered through my head, in a mental voice that told me that he was anything but.
I swallowed, that familiar fear making me feel weak. Too weak to reciprocate his hug. My arms hung at my sides, over his arms, as the pressure of his arms under mine had me float slightly in the air.
What do you see? I whispered, wondering if Max had figured out what Mr. Evans was reacting to (in his mild way of 'reacting').
His grip tightened, making it hard for me to take full breaths. But before I could object, he had realized what his panic was making him do and had eased off on his grip again.
There's something going on with your color field. I didn't think much of it, because you have just been unconscious and you've been drained of energy, but...
His anxious mental rant trailed off and my thoughts filled in, But he's seeing something else.
Moisture from his lips heated the side of my neck as he pressed a kiss there while thinking, You seem okay. I can't-
"Max," Mr. Evans interrupted us.
I had forgotten that we were not alone.
"Let's talk, shall we?" Mr. Evans suggested, his voice defining the concept of neutral.
The reluctance with which Max let me go tore at the very fundamental level of my cells. It was like he was cleaving himself in half by releasing the grip on my body.
I wrapped my hands around his left underarm and tugged him gently forward, towards his father.
"How are you feeling, Elizabeth?" Mr. Evans asked as Max pulled a chair out for me and silently gestured for me to sit.
I was concerned that Mr. Evans' observations of me was making me into a liar, which had my reply waver with uncertainty, "Fine?"
Mr. Evans nodded thoughtfully, before turning his intelligent and observing eyes to Max. "And you, my son? How are you?"
I'm not really sure why (because it could as well just be a father in general asking about his son's current status as means of being polite), but his question sent my stomach to my toes with ice-cold apprehension.
My eyes snapped to my lover's profile and I felt the immediate shock to his father's question be replaced by Max's annoyance. "I'm not the one who just passed out, Dad."
Was there something wrong with Max? I tried to swallow around the dry lump of frantic fear in my chest. Was Mr. Evans seeing something in Max?
I found myself wishing that I could scan him, see his color field (and know how to interpret it), so that I could tell if something was wrong.
I'm fine, Max spoke clearly in my head. But he failed to conceal his defensiveness and the wobbling insecurity.
"No, you didn't pass out, Max," Mr. Evans agreed. "But you two are bonded. What happens to her," he hitched his head meaningfully towards me, "happens to you."
My eyes shot to Max's face. I thought about feeling the knife go into my chest by Sean's hand. I thought about Max feeling my menstrual cramps. I thought about feeling the freezing coldness in his body when he was being kept half-naked in an ice-cold basement.
My heart was beating wildly in my chest as I asked Mr. Evans with a whisper, "What's wrong with us?" while still keeping my eyes on Max's profile.
Max's thoughts were matching mine. While I was going through memories of feeling whispers of his pain, he was sharing my nightmares, feeling my anxiety, soaking in my tears of grief from the death of my mother.
I was holding my breath as I watched his presence visit me in the shower, right back to a time when I thought I had imagined his presence, brushing it away with rationality. Before I knew he was an alien. At the very beginning of the best and worst period of my life.
Of course, I had unconsciously known for some time now that we had been sharing pain, not just emotional but also physical. Nevertheless, to hear Max's father say it made it frighteningly real. Did it mean that a sickness of mine, a fatal injury of mine, could kill Max? Was that why I had passed out when Max had been stabbed? Had I actually been injured too?
But Max had told Michael that we were not physically linked. Which I had interpreted as our life forces not being linked. The sustaining of our lives didn't depend on the other.
But how would Max know that? Could he know that? No one seemed to know that much about our type of connection.
The thoughts rushing through my mind were so quick, almost frantic, that not more than two seconds had passed when Mr. Evans' reply put a halt to my thoughts, "I'm not sure."
I had turned my eyes to Mr. Evans at his reply, but my attention was quickly returned towards Max as his sudden anger hit me right in the chest, threatening to send my heart rate off into a wild goose chase after my feelings.
He bolted up from his seat, making the chair topple over behind him with a loud clatter. I jumped in anticipation of the loud voice that would match the fury inside of him, but my body did a sudden 180 degree turnaround at the cold collectiveness of his question, covering me in shivering goosebumps. "How the fuck do you not know?"
My wide eyes stared at Mr. Evans, hoping for everyone's sake that he had an answer, and watched Mr. Evans' face harden, his eyes become unreadable, as he opened his mouth to reply.
But Max beat him to it. "You come in here and scare Liz to death by throwing around warnings about our health and then you don't even have a fucking explanation for it?" He was growling, forcibly pushing the words out through clenched teeth.
His whole body was tense while I was burning up with his anger. I curled my fingernails into the top of my thighs, forcing myself to take a deep breath. Trying to find solace, coolness, in the midst of the burning inferno of his relentless protectiveness towards me.
His tension was working itself into my body and I shifted uncomfortably in my seat, pressing my thighs together as my stomach coiled and tingles spread out to my fingers and toes.
"Watch your language, Max," Mr. Evans warned coldly while a wave of heat flushed over me, making my eyes shut while my back arched and my head dipped backwards.
I gasped loudly at the sensation, at the tearing of my insides. It was not necessarily painful, but horribly uncomfortable. As if someone was cooling me down while heating me up. As if every cell of my existence was sharpening with freezing crystallization while melting with unbearable heat.
"She's-" I heard Mr. Evans say, but Max interrupted him with a sharp, "I can see it."
His hands were moving over my body, his face leaning over my tilted head. I moaned (with desire?) as his hands fluttered over my body in response to his desperate thoughts to try and ground me to something. To pull me back from wherever I seemed to have gone.
"Fuck, Dad. What's-"
"There's nothing I can do," Mr. Evans said as my head lolled forward and my eyes opened. "I can't access her."
My breathing was harsh in my ears as I felt myself gravitating towards Max. My neck tightened to support my head as I looked up at him. I brushed his dark eyes to the side to quickly grab his neck with my shaking hands and crash my mouth to his.
I had a fleeting thought that this was inappropriate behavior. That I shouldn't yank Max down on top of me (as possible as that scenario was with me sitting on a chair) in front of his father, making Max almost lose his balance with the strength of my pull, grabbing tightly onto the edges of the chair, pressing the insides of his wrists against the outsides of my thighs, to prevent the chair from falling over with both of us.
I didn't care about how this might look. I didn't care that my boyfriend's father was right there. I was reacting to a strong pull inside of me. A strong pull to have Max close.
He was pulling me up from the chair by his hands under my arms, his tongue moving heatedly against mine, his gasps mingling with mine and our moans filling the stunned air. My legs naturally locked around his waist and my body pressed tightly up against his chest. Yes, my body did, not necessarily on a command by my mind. Because it felt as if it was moving by its own force.
I had no control.
The explanation hit us both at the same time. Cut through the thick desire that was threatening to implode inside of us, and had our lips separate with a breathless gasp. I'm sure the frantic expression in my eyes matched his as Max got out, "The connection-"
"-is doing this," I filled in, my body trembling from me denying it to fuse my lips with Max again.
Mr. Evans' voice caused us both to freeze and all heat that was swirling through my body rushed to my cheeks as the real world knocked, bearing gifts of chagrin and self-awareness. "Your fields are improving."
I should be used to it by now, but it was still odd to hear the complete absence of nuances to Mr. Evans' voice as he stated his observation as a mere scientific discovery. I wasn't sure if I would have been less or more embarrassed if he'd had the more normal parental reaction to seeing his 16-year-old son basically having his way with his girlfriend right in front of him.
The eyes of that aforementioned 16-year-old never left mine and his arms were tight around my upper body, supporting my weight and matching my trembles.
His thoughts were so loud in my head that it would be impossible to miss his next step.
Without acknowledging his father, Max told him, "Excuse us for five minutes."
Mr. Evans didn't object and I barely noticed his silence as Max nudged me to slide my feet down the back of his legs and make contact with the floor. My body brushing against his with the movement had me almost rupturing from pleasure.
I already knew what was happening.
If Max's suspicions were correct, that is.
Something had happened to me when I had used all that energy to 'play' with my newborn abilities. My energy hadn't been brought back into balance. I might have even shifted the balance within the bond itself.
Now it was guiding us. Guiding us on how to refuel.
I giggled at the thought (refuel ) as Max pulled on my hand and rushed me across the common room and towards the corridor.
"Max," I breathed, feeling weak, exhilarated, frightened, out of control and ridiculously turned on, as I tried to keep up with his minor race to the bathroom. "What about your father?"
"He doesn't want to see this," Max replied hurriedly, the desire in his body pounding through mine, making that two-faced concoction of pain and relief crumble up my cells and I stumbled as laughter bubbled up in me at Max's reply. At the deadpanned delivery.
But also... This was ridiculous. What was the bond doing to me? Who in their right mind interrupted a meeting with a grown-up (with a parental figure) to have-
Max barged through the bathroom door, spun my body around the doorframe to the inside by a tug on my hand, making my back impact abruptly with the tiled wall. His hand shot out towards the door and it slammed shut next to me. A brief glowing yellow light flared when he locked us in, before his mouth attacked mine.
I melted against his lips, my knees melting right along; his body pressing me up against the wall the only thing keeping me on my feet. He easily pulled me upwards, coaxing my legs to wrap around the top of his hips, as his teeth grazed my already swollen lips and his hands moved restlessly to my waist to push underneath my sweater.
My hands were shamelessly fumbling with the front of his sweatpants, my heels digging into the top of his firm ass as my feet worked to push his pants down.
The tiled wall was slippery, making me lose the support of my body, until Max pressed me further up against the wall, most likely bruising my back with the contact. Neither Max nor I cared. I didn't even flinch when my head impacted with the hard wall as I threw it backwards in response to the desire erupting from Max attaching his burning lips to the side of my neck.
I noticed the brief pause in Max's assault, of his consciousness making an attempt at swimming up through the thick desire, towards the awareness of my unacknowledged pain, but by then I had gotten his sweatpants down his thighs and was reaching inside the front of his boxers.
All thoughts left his mind as I wrapped my shaking fingers around him and his right hand momentarily stilled against my breast, unconsciously giving it a squeeze as his attention was brought to the actions of my hand.
It was the feeling of slow motion. Of that scene in a movie when water droplets would move so slowly through the air that they would become visible as crystal clear small balls of water. When strands of hair would billow softly from the breaths from a person that it looked like the gentle wings of some exotic bird. When eyes would blink so slowly that they seemed to be struggling against the weight of the eyelashes.
In that moment of suspended stillness, we slowly fell into the consuming darkness of each other's dilated pupils, as our bodies thrummed turbulently with building energy.
In realtime, it was a second before Max agitatedly dropped me to my feet to pull my pants down my legs. They conveniently dropped to the floor and was abandoned in a pile as I was hauled back up along his body, having me naturally clench my now naked thighs around the heated skin of his hips.
Catching my eyes, he kept looking into the depths of my soul as he vigorously captured my lips and, without even the whisper of a pause, thrust inside me. Even though I had known what would happen - could trace his thoughts even through the haze of lust - his movement was so sudden that my gasp bordered on a scream. His mouth inhaled the sounds of my pleasure as he moved inside of me. My back repeatedly slid up and down the wall, the hoodie I was still wearing offering no restraining friction against the slippery smoothness of the tiled wall. My nails raked down his back, dug into his strong back muscles, and my legs trembled with exertion around his hips.
I felt the tightening of the muscles of his behind against my shaking heels, and I knew that he was close. That realization ignited the tingles of the beginning of my own release, heat concentrating at the bottom of my spine and swirling around my pelvis, down my legs and into my toes. Spreading across the point of physical connection between us and seeping into our mental bond.
His pace picked up and he bit down into the top of my exposed shoulder as he searched my hands out, removing them from his back and bringing them up above my head. The consequent stretch of my upper body had me lose the footing on the build-up of gratifying tension inside my very being and I tumbled over the edge.
The screamed expression of his name mingled with his groaned utterance of my name on repeat as he poured into me.
Our release spread like a wildfire inside of us, making it impossible for him to stop moving, to stop making love to me. Together our movements rode out the wave, letting the energy swirl into our systems for several minutes before his hips gradually slowed down against mine and my legs lost their hold on his hips and started to slide down his legs.
But instead of wanting to sink to the floor in sated fatigue, in the after-effect of our intense mutual climax, my body was thrumming with strength and power.
He slowly slid out of me before my feet reached the floor. I took a step forward and pressed our bodies together while I wrapped my arms around his waist and buried my face in the softness of his T-shirt.
It felt weird. It felt odd to be naked from the waist down but restrained by clothes from the waist up. Still floating on the feelings of our joined orgasm, I was hit with the longing to feel the full expanse of his naked skin against mine.
My breaths were too fast, my heart still pumping ferociously from our 'quickie'. I smiled into his chest at the thought. Quickie. Another first. Something normal couples did.
Even if I was well aware of whatever had just happened wasn't normal. We had been directed like puppets in a show; the bond being our almighty puppet-master.
"Fuck," Max mumbled above me and I instinctively moved away from my post-coital happiness and tuned into his thoughts.
What I saw made me go ice-cold.
"I didn't think," Max continued, knowing that I had taken notice of his thoughts, "Fuck. I didn't think." His palms, warm and slightly damp, cradled my cheeks, angling my eyes up to his and his amber pools of emotions were tortured as they pierced into my chilled soul. "I'm so sorry. I should have thought. I lost control." He squeezed his eyes tightly closed and pressed his heated forehead against mine. "I can't believe I lost control around you."
"Max," I whispered through lips dry as sandpaper, moving my hands up underneath his T-shirt again. Needing to feel his skin against mine.
"Are you hurt? Are you okay?" he whispered in hurried anguish, mentally briefly stepping back from the most glaring issue which had plowed itself invasively between us.
But I needed his attention back on the pink elephant in the room. He already knew that I was okay. He already knew that I was more than just okay.
"Can't you check if something..." I blushed, "....happened? Like you did last time?"
Something starting with a 'B' and ending in 'aby'.
We were right back to that. Right back to what had happened the other night. Right back to losing the control over ourselves and not using protection.
How could we be this careless?
Max snapped his hands back from my face and turned away from me so quickly that I stumbled, my body having been leaning into his. He roughly pulled his boxers up over his hips before his hands flew to his head, threading angrily through his hair. The air was thick with the obvious struggle within him to not lose his temper around me. He didn't want to scare me.
If I hadn't been there, he would have slammed his fist into the rock-hard wall.
That fucking connection.
The thought was a scream through my head and I trembled. He started pacing the floor as he thought about the connection as a living person. As someone to blame. As if the connection was an evil manipulator who had set us up for this. Who had made us careless. Who probably wanted us to get pregnant so that the alien future was ensured. Or maybe even, to use the babies of our powerful connection as further weapons into some sick dominance over planet Earth.
With his relentless tirade burning through my body, I retrieved my pants from the floor and pulled them back on with trembling hands.
I wasn't even aware of doing it, but my mind tuned his out to be able to form my own thoughts. To make room for my own speculations. Was it true? Was the connection aiming to make us procreate? Was our need to refuel or energies, balance our bodies and strengthen the bond not the sole reason to our insatiable desire for each other? Was the connection actually trying to have us create a baby?
I wrapped my arms tightly around my middle. If it hadn't been for the energy simmering beneath my skin, my body would have sunk to the floor and I most likely would have started crying. I didn't really want to admit it, but Max's reaction was tearing me in all different directions, digging a horrible aching hole in the pit of my stomach.
We were both rational and intelligent people. We knew it wasn't a good idea to become teenage parents. Especially not in our situation. Max's confession to wanting to have children with me (in the future) was still fresh and very much alive in my memory and this should comfort me to not take his poorly restrained aggravation personally.
I wanted to wait just as much as he did. The idea of having a baby right now was as ludicrous as it was foreign and frightening.
But to see him so upset over having possibly impregnated me sought out my deepest insecurities and turned his frustration in sharp bullets aimed at the sense of security which had been placed over our relationship.
He was frustrated to a point of being completely blind to my emotional state. While struggling to get his feelings under control, focusing on not triggering any latent traumatized feelings in me, he barely glanced at me as his strained body bent down to pick up his pants and pull them up over his boxers.
"Come," he said shortly and grabbed my hand, unlocking the door with light glowing from his free hand before the grip of his other hand around mine persuaded me forward.
There was so much I wanted to say to him. I wanted us to talk about this. But his mind was cloaked in a black veil and I doubted that I could reach him.
"Please... Max..." I mumbled, not finding the right words. Not really knowing what to say.
My pleading gained the response of his harsh breathing and we had almost reached the common room as I sharply tugged on our connected hands, causing a flicker of awareness in his mind and his furious steps to slow.
My voice was sharp this time. "Max."
He came to a reluctant stop, his head bent forward with his eyes closed as his shoulders moved slowly up and down with his forcibly controlled breaths.
"Talk to me," I demanded.
His whole body was strained, even his voice. "Not now, Liz."
I frowned. "Yes. Now." Before we got back into the room with his father. Before we started to avoid what had happened. Before we sunk into some kind of state of denial.
"I'm too angry right now," he said, his tone warning. My mood was infected with his anger the second he started to pull his hand away from mine.
Biting my lips together, I tightened my fingers around his, preventing his withdrawal, and walked around his stiff frame to face him.
"Liz..." he cautioned slowly, his barely restrained mood making his voice tremble.
But he didn't scare me. He might think that he had the power to scare me. That I would be afraid that he would hurt me. But I knew differently.
"Whatever you did last time," I breathed, my aggravation making my chest rise and fall quickly with my breaths, "to check that there was no chance of a baby... Why are you not doing that now?"
I couldn't stop the tremble that rushed through me as he lifted his head and connected black eyes with mine. My mouth turned dry and my hands damp.
"Because last time it was a question of checking if I had-" he interrupted himself, a grimace of torment flickering over his face before he raised a finger and slowly traced it down my cheek. His touch was so soft compared to the danger in his eyes.
"It's using us," he said slowly, fire burning from his body into mine. "It's manipulating us. Dragging us along and getting us to follow its lead."
My breath was still in my chest as I listened to the bitter wrath soaked in betrayal coming out of his mouth.
"It's happening all over again." His jaw muscles clenched. "Just like with Sean. With Sarge." His body shuddered as I could feel the rage boiling with the intent to explode inside of him. "It's removing our free will. We're still not free." He tried to inhale a calming breath, but it only caused him to exhale harshly. "From one fucking prison to the next." He pulled his hand out of mine with a snap - the fear brought about from his monologue making me loosen my grip on him - and took one step back from me, as he bit out between clenched teeth. "We will never be free. Don't you see? We will never own the rights to our own lives."
He turned around and breathed tightly, "Fuck," as he threaded his hands through his hair. "Even our children will be manufactured. Born with a predetermined destiny."
I was having trouble breathing as I watched him fall apart in front of me, felt him crush my hopes and fuel a briefly forgotten misery over my role in the alien society.
"It protected us," I whispered. "It protected me against Sean." I pulled in a shaky breath, my fingernails pressing painfully into the palms of my fisted hands. "It has made it possible for me to share your feelings, your thoughts..." I swallowed as I watched the stillness of his back, facing me. "It's helped us with our memories, with our nightmares." I didn't want to fall into his despair. I couldn't. The connection couldn't be a bad thing. It couldn't.
I shook my head slowly and croaked, "It's given me strength that I've never-"
He sighed. The sound so abrupt that it cut off what I was about to say.
I was anticipating him to start speaking, but when he didn't say anything I licked my lips and softly added, "Connections aren't bad. You told me so yourself. You told me that connections are the link between aliens to connect them, to make them feel and care. You told me it was your race's equivalent of love. How can that be bad? Or manipulative? Or a trap?"
I stared at his broad stiff back, the seconds of silence stretching painfully around us.
"Please, say something," I said quietly.
There was another couple of long seconds before he actually spoke. "I hate this." His voice was low and resigned. "I hate that the only thing I had that would help you - that would keep you safe - is a lie."
I took a step towards him, raising my arms in front of me with the intention of placing them on his back. "It's not a-"
But he turned around before I could touch him. A tear rolled unhindered down my cheek at the torment in his eyes. At the wetness of frustration on his cheeks. At the tightness to his mouth and the lines of worry on his forehead. At the dark and haunted expression in his tired eyes.
He slowly reached forward and took my clenched hands, collecting them in both of his. Pulling the bundle of our hands to his lips, he placed a gentle kiss to the top of my knuckles, his eyes never leaving mine, as he whispered, "I need you to tell me the truth."
I searched his eyes for an explanation behind his words, but his mind was still in an upheaval, making it impossible for me to translate his thoughts. "Of course."
He struggled to get the words out, but once they passed his lips they were even and controlled. "Do you want me to let you go?"
I was stunned into momentary silence as I stared at him. It was the increasing fear in his eyes that startled me out of my stupefaction and I stuttered in a mixture of confusion and rawness, "Wh-what?"
"Do you want me to break the connection? To free you of it?"
I felt my whole body grow ice-cold under his probing eyes, my stomach twisting while my heart turned dark with fear.
"There's no need for it any longer," Max continued in the absence of my reply. "At least it won't be. Not after we have brought down Command."
I couldn't answer him. Not when it felt like I was dying.
"There's no Sean. No Sergeant. Soon the traditional rules will be changed. No one is standing in line to use your powers as a gaea."
I couldn't even cry. The tears were frozen in my eyes. My mouth was hanging open, my gaze drying as I forgot to blink. The sound of my slow heartbeat echoed loudly in the hollowness of my chest.
"I'll make sure that you're left alone. That you'll be left to live out your life in peace. A normal human life. I can remove your memories of this whole fucking mess if you-"
My quiet whisper cut him off. "How dare you?"
He pushed his lips tightly together and slowly let our joined hands drift downwards between us. His eyes were closing off at the shocked betrayal he (apparently) could read in mine.
"So just because the connection is removing your control," I uttered throatily, feeling empty and lifeless, "you're willing to just throw all of this away?" I tasted a fresh tear on my lip. "To throw me away?"
"That's not-" he started, anger darkening his features yet again.
But I wasn't done. I inhaled shakily, shaking my head slowly, tears blurring my vision, "I don't even know what to say. I'm..."
I felt so confused. So hurt. This was worse than seeing the look of enjoyment in Sean's eyes as he had tried to rape me.
The one constant in my life, through this 'whole fucking mess' as he had called it, was Max. And now he was pushing me away? After everything? All the torture, every pain felt and endured, every nightmare, every taunt, every whisper, every confession, every secret, every soft caress, every piece of exploding joy, every detail of unconditional love, every look, every glance, every brush of hands, every thought.
Every. Single. Moment.
"I want you to be happy," Max said, cutting into my heart further.
He wanted to turn it into nothing? Non-existent. As if it had never happened. As if the past couple of weeks of feeling the worst and best were to be erased like some kind of mistake.
"And you think this is making me happy?" I demanded, frustratedly wiping tears from my eyes and cheeks. "Do I look happy to you right now?!"
His body was so tense I thought he might snap in two as he whispered, his eyes closed off, "Liz..."
I took a step back, pulling my hands from his, and said hotly, "You want me to tell you the truth?"
He stared at me, not realizing until a second later that I actually needed an answer. Slowly, with a clenched jaw, he nodded.
I fiercely worried my bottom lip, searching for the words. "You are the most important person in my life."
Unexpected heat brushed the walls around his heart and my blurry vision didn't miss the tremble that raced through his taut frame.
"You're the love of my life." I brushed at more tears heating my cheeks. "You're the only thing that keeps me going. Without you..." Pain exploded in my chest at the thought, my whole body assaulted by painful tingles. "I will die without you."
His walls were crumbling in front of me, even when he was struggling to stay collected. Even when he was attempting to provide me with a damn free choice and his fucked up opinion on what was best for me.
"Baby..." he murmured, trying to close the physical gap between us.
His advance was met with my retreat.
"And for you to even suggest to remove my memories..." I whispered, my voice breaking in all the wrong places.
All those beautiful memories. Of him and me. Of us.
"I-" He was fumbling for the words, fumbling to regain control over the situation.
"Do you want to break the connection?" I fired at him, crossing my arms defensively across my aching chest.
"If you want me to, I-"
I interrupted him, my voice growing loud and strong, "No. That's not what I asked. What do you want, Max? You talk of free will; now's your time to use it. Do you want to be free of the connection and free of me?"
My voice tripped on those last three words and my arms tightened around myself. Trying to keep myself together. I tried to tune in to what Isabel had taught me in our yoga exercises. I tried to find my breath and let it calm me down.
"No," was his reply. A simple 'no'.
But it was anything but simple. It was a vehement quiet scream. Squeezed from his deepest and rawest emotions. Ripped from the deepest parts of his being.
Before I had a chance to react, he had closed the distance between us and fused our lips together. I sobbed into his mouth, my tears falling freely as the pressure over my heart eased off. I pulled my arms out from between our bodies and pressed my fingers into his back, flushing our fronts together, needing him close. Needing to make sure that he wouldn't let me go.
The connection, having been dimmed by Max, flared to life like a silent explosion in our bodies and minds, causing Max to pull back. I tightened my grip against his shoulder blades, warning him to get too far away, as he stilled and slowly started wiping the tears off my cheeks.
"Don't ever do that to me again," I warned him, a frightening coldness to my vulnerability.
He looked at me closely, contemplatively, before saying, "We need to know more about this connection."
He hadn't promised. He hadn't assured me that he wouldn't repeat what he had just asked of me.
"Max?" I demanded, boring my eyes into his.
"I won't leave you," he said with firmness. "As long as you want me around, I'll be around."
As if I would ever not want him around. It bothered me that he was still doing this on my premises. That he was not sticking up for himself. I wished he could have demanded that he wanted me around, instead of needing my permission. He was still so afraid to force me and to push life choices on me that I might not want. His fear of limiting my freedom in any way similar to how his society had done was setting him up for a ridiculously careful decision making.
He was still treating me like a China doll. Like I was breakable. Like I wasn't an equal part of a powerful connection.
Looking deeply into his dark eyes, I realized that we could never win this 'war' we were up against as long as he was weighed down by my fragility as a human.
I knew that he could hear my musings, which is why I purposely held his eyes, stating my silent challenge for him to loosen his control and let me stand on my own two feet. But I also knew that he was not ready for that discussion right now. I had already tried it just half an hour ago, so he knew what my opinions were.
For the time being - considering how close he was to exploding - I needed to back off. Give him the space he had given me on more than one occasion.
But before that, I had to point out that he should "Never again suggest that we should break the connect-", but him placing a silencing index finger to the center of my mouth silenced the end to my request.
"We are true even without the connection. It doesn't make us who we are. It doesn't have anything to do with our love. So if I find out that it's somehow hurting us, hurting you, I will do everything in my power to remove it."
I tried to swallow past the dry lump in my throat. I couldn't really argue with that. "Okay."
Max's jaw tensed again, hard-set determination in his eyes. "And I'm sure that dad knows more about this than he's been telling us."
"About...?"
"The connection," Max filled in. He brushed his fingers through my hair, tucking it behind my ears, before adding, "And he's going to tell us."
I silently nodded, hoping that Mr. Evans would tell us. Because I was afraid of what Max might do to him if he didn't.
Max entwined our fingers, the pressure of his palm against mine reassuring, as we walked towards the common room.
Mr. Evans' expression was collected, not diverging from the general impression I had of him, as we walked into the open-spaced room. I'm sure that he had heard our conversation in the hallway. I'm sure that he knew what we had done in the short time we had been away from the room.
But being the alien that he was, cool and lacking that natural string to his emotions, it didn't seem to bother him. If it did, he didn't let it show.
His only comment upon our arrival was, "Your force fields are intact."
Max's fingers flexed around my hand. "Of course they are. We have the connection to thank for that."
Mr. Evans didn't show any reaction to the loathing dripping off the word 'connection', instead leaning back against the backrest of the wooden pin chair and slowly folding his hands over his stomach.
"That is most likely correct," he concurred, causing Max to grow stiff with heated annoyance.
"I'm done with your bullshit," Max seethed and I automatically squeezed his hand, begging him to calm down.
Don't pick a fight with him, my mind warned him. He might not be so willing to answer our questions then.
Max scoffed. "I don't care if he's not willing."
I looked up at his profile, saw the coldness etched into the sharp lines of his jaw, and swallowed nervously.
"We're stronger than him, remember?" he was answering me, but his eyes never left the man who had fathered him. "Thanks to the connection, we are stronger than everyone."
Mr. Evans didn't move an inch. He sat perfectly still, looking almost peaceful. This only fueled Max's anger, which surprised me. I had known Max to be the cool one. The one that would face adversaries in the exact same collected way that Mr. Evans was doing now. I guess this is where Max got his control from. From his father.
But the Max I was feeling now was losing his control. That impressive control was cracking violently at the seams, threatening to do irreparable damage if completely unhinged.
The one thing that Max had counted on had been the connection. It had tied Max and I together. It had protected me when Max had been unable to. It had made Max feel closer to me, making me a part of his world, of his alienness. Oddly enough, it had made him feel more human.
Which is why his anger right now was not his typical anger. This anger was the result of a deep acidic betrayal. Of feeling tricked and fooled by the one thing that was supposed to be on his side. The one good thing to come out of his heritage.
He was struggling to control this deception, not knowing how to react to it. It was unfamiliar territory. A territory that had even momentarily made him try to push me away just now in order to protect me. Making him believe that I would be better off without him.
It was messing with his head, even messing with the connection itself. The thoughts I was getting from him were no longer clear-cut. They were jumbled and blurry, like looking through ripples of water. I had trouble reading him. I still had not truly gotten used to doing so, but this was different. This must be the connection reacting to Max's animosity towards it. Him turning against it.
"So try and fight us," Max challenged his father darkly. "Go ahead. Refuse us. I'm sure we can break into your mind any way and find out exactly what you've been hiding."
"Max," I gasped, horrified at his threat. He was taking this too far. This was getting out of hand.
But Mr. Evans didn't look upset. He didn't look...anything. Instead he minutely lifted his chin towards the chairs opposite him and said, "Take a seat. I'll show you what I know."
Max hadn't anticipated that. I could tell from the confusion that was making his body lose its tension and how his anger felt interrupted and suddenly misplaced.
"I'm assuming that you are much better at reading her mind than she is at reading yours," Mr. Evans said as we drifted towards the chairs.
Max was suspicious. "Yeah?"
Mr. Evans slowly rose from his chair, lifting it off the floor and placing it next to the one I had just sat down on. Seated next to me, the residing heat from Max's anger was billowing off his body and we both tensed when Mr. Evans came close.
Max's father looked me in the eyes as he took a seat opposite me, our knees almost touching, and I could actually trace how his gaze gradually softened. As if he was putting it on for my benefit, knowing that his defaulted neutral expression would most likely agitate me.
"I will form a superficial connection to you, Liz," Mr. Evans said, his voice matching the gentleness in his eyes. "And Max will be able to view what I'm showing you through your bond."
My heart rate was increasing, the beat growing louder and louder. Sean's and the Sergeant's faces were burning through the retina of my inner eye and I unconsciously reached out and dug my fingers around the top of Max's knee.
Mr. Evans flittered his eyes to Max and Max's voice was dry and tight as he warned, "If you hurt her..."
Mr. Evans held his son's eyes for a second before looking back at my anxious face, leaning in slightly, "I know what they did to you. I know that they put horrible images into your mind. And I can't undo that for you, I'm sorry."
I bit the inside of my cheek while Max pried my fingers away from his knee and transferred my tight grip to his hand.
"I will show you my memories," Mr. Evans continued. "And some of them might be uncomfortable for you, but most are predominately informative. It will, perhaps, help you and Max understand the connection. Maybe it will help you put some pieces together that I myself haven't been able to."
I knew that he wouldn't hurt me. I was more certain of this than Max was, because I would forever remember the strength and the soothing of my pain supplied by him when tending to me in captivity, right after I had hurt Sean. I had seen another side of Philip Evans then and my trust for him had deepened.
It was not Mr. Evans that frightened me. It was the reminder of someone forcing their memories of the torment of my loved ones onto me.
"Will that be okay?" Mr. Evans asked when I remained silent.
"Yes," I gulped, extremely aware of Max's conflicting opinions about this whole thing.
"Why can't you just tell us?" Max asked tensely.
Mr. Evans reached for my free hand, his eyes silently asking for permission to take it, as he answered his son, "I think it's important for you to see it. Experience it. A lot of the details are difficult to describe with words."
I lifted my hand in permission for him to take it. His hand was dry, marked by time and possibly the continuous scrubbing with soap due to the hygienic needs of a doctor. But his pressure against my hand was just as even and secure as Max's.
Being held by both Evans men, I looked at Mr. Evans and gave him a simple nod.
"Okay," Mr. Evans acknowledged.
Gently, he initiated the feeding of the first memory he wanted to show us into our joined minds.
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A/N: Phew, that was a long chapter ;-) I tried to cut it somewhere in the middle, but thought that would be unfair to you.
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Thank you for reading!!