Part 21 - Freedom

Max kept walking until he could no longer see the lights from Dagmar's ranch house, until the only lights he could see were those of the stars shining down on him. Then, trusting that he was far enough away from everyone, he stopped and looked up at the heavens.

You can't see Antar from here, but it's up there, he thought to himself, trying to regain some calm objectivity. It's that way. I remember the direction from the starmaps Kivar and I used to argue over. Think about that - remember the maps, the plans. Don't think about the rest. Don't remember what it felt like to watch as Tymrath killed Vilandra. Don't remember Aveen's death. Just think about the stars and calm down. You have to get control........

His meditation stopped abruptly as he heard a scream of primal pain echo across the desert. A shiver ran down his spine as he dealt with the sudden panic. Run. Every instinct was calling out to him. He just wasn't sure which direction he wanted to run - toward the cry or away from it. Because Max knew what that sound was. He'd heard it before, long ago in another time and place. It was the sound Tymrath had made when he found Aveen's lifeless body. And Max knew that Michael, who had never screamed when Hank hit him or when Nicholas tried to kill him, was screaming now. Nothing life on Earth threw at him could break Michael. But this could. These memories of their past life could destroy him.

And what about you, Max? he wondered to himself. Will this break you, too? And do you even care if it does?

Max crouched down on the ground. Absently, he picked up a handful of sand from the desert floor and let it trickle through his fingers as he stared up at the stars, looking to spot his ancient home. He could remember his best friend's voice, laced with hate and scorn: "The great king never cried. You didn't cry for your father and you didn't cry for Aveen."

"And I didn't cry for either of you," he whispered. "I didn't have the right to cry for you." He didn't think they would understand that, either of them.

He tensed as he heard the sounds of approaching footsteps. It couldn't be Michael - he had been further away, to the south from the sounds of his cries. Perhaps Dagmar or Valenti? But as the sounds grew closer, Max realized from the hesitant quality of the steps that it must be Liz. Wonderful.

Closing his eyes, he asked, "What is it, Liz?" He tried to keep his voice calm and even. When he lost control, he made mistakes. When he made mistakes, people got hurt. That was one of the few lessons from his past life he had managed to remember in this one.

Liz walked over and sat next to Max. "We're all worried about you." The hesitation in her voice matched the way she had walked up to him. "Did you hear that noise?" Now there was fear in her voice as well.

Max nodded. "Michael," he said simply.

"That was Michael?" she whispered in disbelief. "Wow. Maria went after him."

A small smile touched his lips. "She would," he murmured. "I hope things go okay for her."

"You don't think he'd hurt her, do you?" she asked. At the disbelieving look he gave her, she went on defensively. "I know that the Michael we know would never hurt her, but all that stuff we heard about Tymrath....." she trailed off.

"No, Liz. I don't think Michael would hurt her. Not physically anyway." He looked back at the stars. "I really need to be alone right now."

"Actually, I think that's the last thing you need right now." Liz moved so that she was sitting directly in front of Max. He found it harder to avoid her now. "I know you, Max, and I know that right now you're thinking about how all this is your responsibility and you have to figure out a way to fix it."

He gave a cold, tired laugh. "Well, you're partially right, Liz. This is my responsibility." He looked her directly in the eye. Liz tried to be glad for the partial victory. If only his eyes looked like the ones he remembered, soft and gentle. These were as cold as ice and as hard as his voice had become. "Tymrath followed my orders. That's all. He trusted me totally, and I did my very best to destroy him at the end. And I succeeded. And now it might destroy Michael, too." He shrugged. "But you're wrong about the figuring out a way to fix it part. I can't fix this. Nobody can."

Liz reached out her hand to touch his arm, but stopped at the look in his eyes. "Don't touch me," he said calmly.

"Max, this isn't like you."

"You don't know me as well as you think, Liz," he went on. "You can leave now. You don't need to stay here with me. I'm not going to do anything stupid."

She shook her head. "I don't want to leave. Max, we decided to be friends. I think you need a friend now."

"Friends," he sighed. "What do you want me to say, Liz? Do you want to know what it's like to remember two lives? It's incredibly confusing. I have two sets of memories floating around in my mind."

"What do you remember, exactly?" she asked gently.

"Sitting on the throne, watching her die. I wanted them both to suffer. I couldn't imagine life without Aveen. Tymrath was supposed to protect her and he didn't. So I wanted to take from him what I had taken from me. I wanted him to hurt as much." He laughed bitterly. "Not exactly kingly behavior, is it, Liz?"

She ached to be able to comfort him. "Max, you were in so much pain at the time, and the situation was so confusing. You thought Vilandra betrayed you. I mean, she was still fighting you two, even at the end. You had just lost someone you loved very much." It hurt to think about Max loving someone else, but she had to be realistic. Obviously, his previous incarnation as Zandar had loved Aveen as completely as Max had once loved her. Denying it wouldn't accomplish much.

He nodded. "I lost my mind," he said matter-of-factly. "Michael's right about that, too. I lost control. I try to never lose control. You know that, right? You called me a control freak once, and you were right." Liz opened her mouth to interrupt, but he kept going. "No, you were right. I have to keep control, because when I lose it, then I really lose it. And I'm responsible for Michael and Isabel. I failed them the last time, and I'm not going to fail them again. I have to keep them safe."

His voice started to crack. "I have myself for what I did, Liz. It makes me sick to think of it."

This time he didn't pull away from Liz's hand. They just sat there in silence, as Max finally broke down and started to cry. She held his hand as tightly as she could, heart aching to see how much pain he was in. She would give anything to be able to help him heal, but all she could do was sit there and give him a lifeline to hold onto, and be ready to listen when he was ready to talk.

Liz never knew how long they sat there, her holding his hand as he sobbed. She knew that Alex would say this as a good thing - that Max needed the catharsis of letting his emotions out. For so long, he'd been holding in all his pain and fear, trying to be the leader, trying somehow to make up for mistakes made in another life that he couldn't even remember consciously. So now Max cried out his pain from two lifetimes. And Liz stayed by him as he did.

Eventually, Max stopped crying and looked at her. Tears still shone in his pain-filled eyes. "I'm not much of a leader, am I, Liz? I don't have any idea of how to be what they want, what they need me to be."

She shook her head quickly. "Max, all they need from you is for you to be their friend. That's all."

"No, they need more than that. They need a king who knows what the hell he's doing. Who can keep us from being captured and killed. I'll just fail them again, because I don't know what to do!" Max got up and started to pace around her. "What do they want from me? I can remember a little of that life, but I don't know how to keep us safe here. The only think I know how to do is hide, and that's not an option anymore. I don't know how to fight. And how can I ask Michael to do that, to become who he was before?" He looked down at her. "He's so afraid of becoming that again, Liz. He doesn't want to have anything to do with fighting now." His voice lowered to a whisper. "And I hit him, Liz. I can't believe I did that. Wasn't hurting him in one lifetime enough?"

"Max," she started, but he went on.

"I hit him. I was so angry that he was upsetting the control I had on the situation. Michael always does that - rushes into things recklessly. It got me so angry. But he wasn't the big danger. I was." He went on quickly, overriding her objections. "Yes, Liz. I was more of a threat than Michael ever could be. Liz, I had him kill her! How can they forgive me for that? How can I live with that?" He turned away from her. "No wonder everyone's left me. Michael always thought that he was the monster, but he was wrong. It wasn't him - it was me."

Suddenly, Liz remembered something, a conversation she had with Max over a year ago. They had been standing in the girl's locker room, discussing a fantasy she'd had about him that he had accidentally seen in a flash. "I never thought anyone could really ever feel that way about me." Max's voice as he said those words had been so filled with gratitude and disbelief. He found it so hard to believe that he was worthy of anyone's love. Had he been walking around all these years, his entire life on Earth, feeling subconscious guilt for something he didn't even remember doing?

She couldn't bear this anymore. "Max, you are one of the kindest, best people I've ever met. You saved my life, Max. I wouldn't even be here if it wasn't for you. You risked your own life for me, and I know how hard that was for you. And you have always been there for me when I needed you." Putting her hands on his arms, she turned him until he was looking at her. "You did more than just heal me, Max. You brought me to life. Before you, I was just sleepwalking through things. I didn't live until that day at the Crashdown. You could never lose me, just like you could never lose Michael and Isabel. They love you too much to ever leave you, not matter what you might have done back on Antar." She paused, gathering her courage. "And I love you too much to ever turn away from you, Max. No matter what, I knew my destiny from that moment in the Crashdown. My destiny is you."

"Then why did you sleep with Kyle?" he asked in despair.

Liz hesitated, taken aback. He turned away. "Thanks for trying to help, Liz, but it's okay. I understand why you don't want to be with me. I'd want to be as far away from me as possible if I had the chance, myself."

She made the decision. "Max, I didn't sleep with Kyle." He looked back at her in shock. "You knew the truth all along, didn't you? Deep down, you knew that I would never do that, that I could never go from you to him. I didn't sleep with him."

"You didn't sleep with Kyle?" She shook her head quickly. "Then why? Why would you do that? Did you want to get rid of me that badly?" Okay, that wasn't the response she was hoping for. He looked even closer to the edge now.

"It wasn't like that at all." He was just staring at her. The look in his eyes made her hurt. "I had to do it. I thought you needed to be with Tess or the world would end."

"What?"

Liz was starting to panic herself. "I can't explain it right." Her eyes lit up as she had an idea. "Kiss me."

"Liz, what are you talking about?"

"Kiss me!" When he didn't seem inclined to do as ordered, she grabbed his face, leaned up, and kissed him.

The connection formed instantly. Max was overwhelmed by the number of flashes that came flooding over him. He saw the whole thing - everything from the moment when his future self came through Liz's window up until she spun around and saw that she was dancing alone. Slowly, he drew away from her.

"Did it work?" she asked eagerly. "Did you see?"

He nodded slowly. "You broke up with me because you thought it was the only way to save everybody."

"It was the hardest thing I've ever had to do, Max. It was like dying all over again, only this time you couldn't save me. I had to keep you away. But Max, he told me about how Michael and Isabel died. I couldn't let that happen." She looked up at him pleadingly. "Please tell me you understand."

He looked dazed. "That's how you knew about the Granolith. You warned me not to let the Dupes have it." She nodded. "And that's why I had a vision of us being married in Vegas."

"That's where he, I mean you, said that we went to be married. An Elvis chapel in Vegas." She smiled at the thought.

"All this just to keep Tess from leaving town," he went on slowly. "Because otherwise I would have been so horrible to her that she would have run off to get away."

"Apparently, our future selves thought that Tess's powers were necessary to fight off the aliens. But Max, this is important. He said that from now on, the future is ours to create. Our destiny..."

"Is what we make it," he finished for her.

"Exactly."

Max looked up at the stars for a long time. "I always told you that, Liz. But you didn't believe it."

"I do now," she said with total certainty. "The only destiny we have is the one we make for ourselves. You are my destiny, Max Evans. And I'm yours."

He smiled at her, the first real smile she'd had from him in weeks. "And we can find a place in our group for Tess, even without having her for my bride, don't you think?"

"Definitely."

He seemed to be thinking. "Maybe I can fix this, after all." Then he shook his head. "No, maybe we can fix this. All of us. Together. We don't have to make the same mistakes this time around as we did before." Max walked over and pushed back her hair, lightly caressing her cheek. "And one mistake I'm not going to make is losing the person I love. Do you think you can handle that, Liz Parker?"

"I definitely think I can handle being loved by you, Max," she said gently.

He leaned down and kissed her, a long kiss filled with all the love he hadn't been able to show for so long. As she wrapped her arms around him and returned the kiss, Liz knew that she was finally back where she belonged, free from all the lies and doubts.

And then she saw stars.

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