Disclaimer: They aren’t mine. They belong to Melinda Metz, Jason Katims, the WB/UPN (who knows who owns what). My point being – please don’t sue me. Trust me, you’ll get squat.
Author’s Note: Thanks to some of the favourable feedback I received, I’ve decided to turn what was supposed to be a single story into the ‘Forever series.’ This is the second story, and takes place 5 years after the first instalment, ‘Forever Ends.’ It might make a bit more sense if you read that one first. **Also, if you want more, you’re going to have to tell me. I have more in me, just dying to come out, but I’m not going to bother putting it on paper unless I know someone else wants to hear more about Kyle and Izzy** vardy_jennifer@hotmail.com
Summary: Part two in the ‘Forever series.’ Takes place approximately 5 years after ‘Departure’ and is the continuing story of Isabel and Kyle’s reaction to Tess’ betrayal. (Not recommended for Tess-lovers).
Part 1 - Isabel
I still dream about him. It’s been five years, and I still dream about the love that was stolen from me.
I don’t cry when I wake up, though – not anymore. For the first two years, I cried every morning, and I feared going to sleep at night, because I would wake up and forget he was gone and it would all come back to me again. Now? Enough time has finally passed that I can find peace in my dreams. I even look forward to them. Because dreams are the only place I can still be with Alex.
Kyle understands the dreams. I wake up every morning, cradled in his arms, protected from any residual pain. Loving Alex doesn’t make me love Kyle any less; he loved Alex, too. I love them both – just differently.
Alex and I – we were young. It was first love, and you know what they say about first loves. That it’s never the same again.
It isn’t, and I wouldn’t want it to be. They’re both special. If Alex hadn’t died, I never would have fallen for Kyle. I can’t change the past, as much as I might wish I could sometimes, but at least one good thing came from so much pain and suffering.
My relationship with Kyle is based on years of friendship, support, and mutual interests. People have an easier time understanding us than they did when I was with Alex. But that doesn’t make what I had with Alex any less important or any less real. I loved him very much. More than I ever knew – I realize just how much as time goes by. Alex gave me something special. He thought me how to love, how to let someone in. And he made it possible for me to love again.
Kyle picked up where Alex left off, in a way. After Alex died, he became my support, my security blanket, the only person I could count on in a world gone mad. He taught me about a different kind of love. A love born of pain that led to passion. He swore he’d never leave me. I told him not to promise me something he can’t control. He swore we’d be together forever. I told him I didn’t believe in forever anymore, that forever always ends. But like Alex, Kyle taught me something important, too. Kyle taught me that forever can begin again, too. Eventually, he became my friend, then my love, and finally my lover.
It’s strange, actually – Kyle and I bonded, all those years ago, in our mutual hatred for Alex’s murderer. I still can’t bring myself to say her name without shuddering or breaking into tears, so I avoid it as much as possible. But from our hatred came love. Like phoenix rising from the ashes, as Kyle likes to say.
The murdering blonde tramp is still breathing, as much as I wish she wasn’t. Some days, it eats away at me, that she’s still here, and Alex isn’t. And neither is Max’s son. Max is still working on a plan to get his little boy back, but as much as I hate to admit it, I’m beginning to think that he’ll just have to accept defeat. Jimmy – she named him for the sheriff, I discovered during one of my dream-hauntings – doesn’t know his father, and I’m not sure Max will ever be able to make up for so many lost years, even if he finds a way to get Jimmy back tomorrow.
I hate to think of my sweet little nephew with her. I keep picturing Max, the way he looked when we came out of the pods. I just know that Jimmy looks like he did, with stuck-out ears and messy brown hair. And I know the tramp is poisoning his mind against his family. It breaks my heart that he doesn’t know he has a family somewhere that loves him and thinks about him every day. That he has a daddy and a step-mommy who have a room ready and waiting for him. That he has an aunt and a soon-to-be uncle who buys him Christmas and birthday presents every year. That he has an almost-uncle and aunt who want to hug him more than anything else in the world.
I want to go home, if for no other reason than to kick Kivar’s and the blonde hussy’s ass across Antar and back. I still want to make them pay for what they did to Alex. I owe him that, and more. I still want to see my brother’s face when he holds his son for the first time. And I still want to make her feel the way I did when I realized that forever ends.
I’ve changed, in the years since it happened. I’m quieter, more cautious, guarded. I don’t laugh as much. I grew up, I guess. I lost my innocence. I found out the world isn’t always a nice place to live, and that the fairytale endings don’t always happen. But I still hope for them anyway.
I’m happy, despite it all. I live with my fiancé, Kyle, and wake up each morning to see his smiling face. I fall asleep each night and visit my lost love, who swears he’s watching over us and waiting for the day that we’ll all be together again. And I get to spend my days at a dream job: teaching a group of the cutest five-year-olds on earth kindergarten at Roswell Elementary.
But I still have this need. This empty space inside of me. The fury I felt after he died has faded, and the pain isn’t as sharp anymore, but I still want to make the blonde bimbo pay. I feel so guilty for thinking this way sometimes.
And then I tell Kyle. He kisses me and strokes my hair and tells me he understands.
Part 2 – Kyle
Isabel tortures herself sometimes.
And so do I.
Izzy dreams about Alex.
I know this, and I don’t care. She loves him, and she always will. But I love her, more than anything else in the universe, and even if she loves me just a little, it’s enough.
I still don’t know how it happened. One minute, I was throwing another one of Tess’ slutty little shirts on the fire, and the next, all I could think about was how gorgeous Isabel looked with the firelight reflecting off her face. I tried to fight it; I knew it would never work. And I didn’t want to get mixed up with another alien anyway. I’d already lost Liz to an alien, and my ‘sister’ turned out to be the evil bitch from hell. If I was smart, I would’ve run, screaming, into the desert, and never be heard from again.
But like the Valenti men before me, I succumbed to the proud tradition of worshipping aliens. Only I was the lucky one. I got a beautiful woman in my bed and in my heart that loves me unconditionally.
I use to worry that she didn’t really love me - that she couldn’t love me - because she was still in love with Alex. I use to worry that she’d leave me, the way my mother left my father and me. I use to worry that she’d see through the act I put on for the world - strong, confident, all-star jock of West Roswell High – and see the real me and be disgusted.
I couldn’t have been more wrong. She saw me, the real me, from the very beginning. I should have known better than to hide something from the woman of my dreams that can really make an appearance in my dreams. But she didn’t care if I was into Buddhism or if my secret favourite movie is “The Breakfast Club.” She didn’t care if I still missed my mother or resented her brother for taking my father’s attention away from me.
Isabel understands everything. She comforts me when I get scared, she laughs at me when I freak out, and she cheers me up when I get depressed. She accepts me for who I am, quirks and all, and asks for very little in return. Just a kiss every morning and help hanging the stockings on Christmas Eve – because no one is allowed to not celebrate Christmas in our house while the Christmas Nazi is alive and kicking, Buddhist or not. And I couldn’t be happier.
Isabel dreams about her dead love. So what do I dream about?
I dream about killing Tess.
Does that make me a bad person? Probably. Do I care? Nope.
I have a good life now. I have a woman who loves me, who actually agreed to be my wife, who makes me happier than I ever thought possible. I have a good relationship with my father – thanks mostly to my fiancée, whom he adores – and I am about to become a part of the real family, the Evans family, who treats me like a long-lost son. I have great friends, and a job I really like – as my dad’s deputy, believe it or not. And I get to be envied by every guy over twelve in Roswell because Isabel loves me.
But my life isn’t perfect. Not yet. Isabel still whispers his name as she sleeps, and my heart aches for her. For both of us, really, and for Alex, my best friend who left us all far too soon. The boy who never got the chance to grow up, to go to college, to get married, to have kids. He would’ve done wonderful things, I know. I wish I could’ve seen it. I wouldn’t have had Isabel if he had lived, but that doesn’t stop me from wishing every day that he was here. If getting him back meant losing Izzy forever, as much as I love her, I’d do it in a heartbeat.
But that’s not an option. Not even King Max, leader of the alien Shangri-la, can turn back time. A few weeks ago, I had to pick my best man for our wedding, and the first person I thought of was Alex. How’s that for irony? If he was alive, there wouldn’t be a wedding. That doesn’t stop me from wishing he could be standing next to me when I promised to love Isabel forever. He would’ve been here, if not for Tess. I asked my dad to be my best man instead.
Isabel doesn’t know about the hatred that still simmers in me. She asked me, before she would accept my ring, what I would do if Max told her she had to leave someday. I said I would go with her - that I was going to hold on tight to her and never let her go. That we really could have forever. Then she smiled at me and told me yes.
When I told her that, it was the truth. It is the truth. I love her with all my heart and soul. She made forever begin again for me, after Tess did her best to destroy us all. But I had another reason, one I’m not proud of, one I will never tell her. I hope she can go home one day, and that I can go with her. Because I swore, the night I first kissed her and got flashes of all the love and pain inside her, that I would kill my sister for hurting her, for hurting me, and for hurting Alex. I will, if it’s the last thing I do.
No one makes Isabel cry and gets away with it.
Part 3 – Isabel
He thinks I don’t know, but I do.
I know he still hates her. I know he’s still furious at what she did. I know he still blames himself, for not seeing who she really was soon enough. I know he feels guilty when he holds me as I fall asleep, because he thinks I should have been with Alex, not him. And that guilt eats away at the peace I bring him.
He is tortured at night. I’ve seen his dreams, and I know he wants to destroy her. He wants to hurt her like she hurt us.
Some nights, I’ll join Kyle in his dreams and help him. Other nights, I’ll hold him tight, like he’ll disappear somehow, kiss him with all of the love and the passion that’s in my heart, and cry for the kids we used to be. But the worse nights are the ones when I sleep through Kyle’s nightmares and wake up to see the dead look in his eyes, the look that she put there. The look of betrayal, of hatred, of fury. The look I saw in the mirror for so long, the look that went away when I let Kyle into my heart all the way.
She did more than kill Alex five years ago. She stole our innocence, Kyle’s and mine. She made us realize, far too early, that everything is not always as it seems. That you can’t always trust your friends and family. That forever ends, far too soon.
It’s a lesson we would have learned eventually, I know. Maybe it’s a lesson I deserve, after all of the damage I did in my first life. But it’s not something Kyle should have ever had to face. He shouldn’t have that haunted look in his eyes. He deserves so much more. He deserves all the love and happiness in the world. I hope I can give him that someday.
He’s become my whole world. I wish he could understand just how much I love him.
Because I know he thinks I’ll leave him if I knew how much he wanted to make her pay.
I’ll never leave him. I wish he could believe that, but the two women he trusted and loved most in this world – his mother and the blonde tramp from hell – have already abandoned him and damaged his trust. Deep down, he’s still the little boy who thinks no one will ever really love him.
I wish I could help the boy he was. I can’t; that hurt happened too long ago, before I even knew him. But I can try to heal the man he is today.
I love him. He picked me up and made me strong again, after Alex died. And he made me love him, need him, depend on him, in a way I would never have believed possible. He made me whole again.
I hate her, too. And I would destroy her, if I was given the chance, for Alex, but also for Kyle. He loved her, in his own way, both as a sister, a friend, and an almost-girlfriend. He didn’t deserve to have her hurt him. Neither did Alex, but I can’t help him anymore. I can only love him and remember him and smile at the picture of him that’s on our mantle.
But Kyle?
He feels so much guilt, like he’s stolen his best friend’s girlfriend. He didn’t. Alex would want us both to be happy. I like to think that Alex and I would’ve gotten married, if he had lived. But if we did, I wouldn’t have gotten to know Kyle. I wouldn’t have loved Kyle.
I would never be thankful Alex is dead. And I will always wish he was still here. But I will never regret loving Kyle, either. He’s my rainbow, the bright shining reward after the storm.
Tess – there, I said the bitch’s name – taught me something. That forever can be taken away from you with no warning. That’s why I’m going to hang on tight to Kyle and try to chase away his demons.
And if I can’t, I’ll just hold him forever.
Part 4 – Kyle
Isabel is so beautiful. Not just physically, but emotionally and intellectually, too. I never thought she’d be willing to debate Buddhism or play football in the rain. I never thought she could spend a night watching cheesy eighties movies and eating entire tubs of ice cream or go with me to visit my grandpa in the nursing home. I never thought she could forge a peace between me and Dad that finally laid to rest all of the old hurts. But she does all of that, not necessarily because she likes it all of it, but because she loves me.
I don’t deserve her, but I’ll spend every day for the rest of my life thanking her for choosing me. Me! Out of all of the guys in the world, she chose me!
I never would have believed that she could love me someday. When we first got together, everyone was surprised, to say the least. We were both on this downward spiral as we reacted to the pain of losing Alex and discovering that Tess had betrayed us all. It was our way of coping, but everyone else was convinced we’d self-destruct. And so they objected.
Max and Michael – they didn’t understand us, not really. They didn’t want me with their sister. They knew I wasn’t good enough for her. She’d already been hurt once, they told me, and if I hurt her, too, I would have to answer to them. Don’t they know I would never hurt her intentionally? Liz and Maria – they were confused, and felt a little betrayed, on Alex’s behalf, I guess, and worried because they thought we’d crash and burn eventually. Dad – he asked me why. He loves Isabel like a daughter, now, but he knew how freaked out I was by the whole aliens-in-Roswell thing back then. And especially after our time with Tess, I guess he thought I would have run as far as I could away from them.
The only place I’d run is into her arms.
Isabel asked me, last night, if I was looking forward to the wedding. I grinned at her and kissed her, and she forgot about the question. That’s good, because I’m not sure she’d like the answer.
I want to marry her more than anything else. But I don’t want to, at the same time. I swore I’d never hurt her, and I’m afraid that marrying me would bring her nothing but a world of pain and hurt.
I’ve never quite been able to shake the demon of Tess from my brain. She haunts me, as much as if she were still here. I hear her in my dreams, whispering to me that I’ll never be happy. That she’ll come back to me. That I’m hers, and Isabel can never have me.
Sometimes, Isabel appears in my dreams, and she helps me destroy Tess. Sometimes, I kill her myself, and I feel Izzy’s arms wrapped around me and her lips lighting fires on my skin. But some nights, the worse nights, I welcome Tess back with open arms.
Those are the nights that scare me the most.
Isabel finds peace in her dreams. She talks to Alex, about life, about work, about our friends, about me. I know she really believes that somehow, it really is him, and that he’s happy where he is, and watching over us. She says he’s happy we’ve found each other. Some days, the mornings I wake up after dreaming that Tess is dead, I believe it, too. But on the mornings I wake up after giving in to Tess, I pray that Alex is a figment of her imagination. Because if dream Alex is real, then maybe dream Tess is real, too. And that thought scares me more than anything else.
I don’t want Tess. I don’t love her, and I’ve never loved her the way I love Isabel. But I can’t let go. Not yet. I won’t find any peace until I hurt her the way she hurt us.
Part 5 – Isabel
Max came to me today and told me he’d finally found a way home. A way that we can finally save his little boy. Larek’s sending a ship for us secretly, and he’s guaranteed our safety – at least until we confront Kivar and the blonde bitch from hell.
I’m scared. I don’t know how many times I’ve said that I wanted to kill Tess for what she’s done – to Alex, to Kyle, to Max, to our friends, to me – but now I don’t know if I can do it. Maybe I’m not as strong as I thought I was. I always said that I wouldn’t hesitate if I got the chance.
I’m having second thoughts. Doesn’t killing someone, even someone like Tess, make me just as bad as she is? Could I live with myself? Could I smile at Kyle every morning? Could I hold my baby and look down at her innocent little face and love her the way she deserves to be loved?
I’m pregnant. I wasn’t planning on telling Kyle until after the wedding. The wedding…it’s tomorrow. Max promised me I could still have my wedding, that we wouldn’t leave until after the ceremony, and that Kyle could come with us.
Tomorrow. All of my dreams were supposed to come true tomorrow. And now I’ve lost the normalcy I’ve worked so hard to get.
I’m going to visit Alex’s grave tonight, and tell him goodbye, and that I love him, just in case something happens. Then I’m going to come home and tell Kyle about the baby. If he doesn’t want to go, then I’ll tell Max no.
But I know Kyle better than that. He’ll want to go. It’s what he’s been wanting for years. He’ll do what I don’t want to do. He won’t hesitate. He’ll kill her.
He’ll say he’s doing it for Alex, for me, for our baby. But he’ll really be doing it for himself. Because she haunts him. She makes him doubt. Doubt his love for me, and my love for him.
And then he’ll be tortured with the knowledge that he killed his sister. I know he still thinks of her like that, even after all these years, even after all she’s said and done. He still blames himself for not knowing, for not seeing her for what she really was.
It’s not his fault. It never has been, and it never will be. If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine, for letting her get near us at all.
I still hate her, more than anything else in the world. But I realized, when Max told me we could go home, that I can’t be the kind of wife or mother or friend or daughter that I want to be while I hold on to this vendetta. I’ll never wish her well, I’ll never forgive her, I’ll never understand her, and I’ll hate her forever, but I want peace more than I want her dead. Peace for both of us, Kyle and me.
But Kyle won’t have any peace, ever again, if I let him kill her. I won’t let it come to that. I won’t let him sacrifice his peace for mine. It’s the greatest gift I can give him, and Alex, and even our baby. I’ll do it, if it comes to that. I’ll kill her.
And maybe, just maybe, someday I can find my peace again. And then forever can continue.
Part 6 – Kyle
Isabel is going to have my baby. She swears it’s a girl. I asked Izzy if we could name her Alexis Isabel. Alexis after Alex, of course, and Isabel for the most important woman in my life.
We’re going to get Max’s son back, after I make Isabel an honest woman, of course. And while we’re there, I’m going to protect my family the only way I know how. I’m going to banish her ghost from our lives for good. Extinguish her life like she did to Alex.
Isabel told me we could stay here, on Earth, if I wanted. She says she can’t be the person I love and the mother she wants to be if she’s obsessed with making Tess pay. She says Alex wouldn’t want us to hold on to all of this anger and rage and hate, but I know he’d understand. No one hurts Isabel and gets away with it, and Alex would feel the same way. I’ve chased away her demons as best I can, but mine are still plaguing me. And they won’t leave until I’ve eased the fury that still flows through my veins.
Justice calls me. It whispers to me as I watch the woman I love more than life itself sleep. It demands to be served. It promises satisfaction. Forgiveness doesn’t apply here. It shouldn’t, and I won’t let it. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t make her pay.
Isabel begged me to let it go. She told me I would regret it, that it would haunt me more than Tess does. But I can’t. I would rather live with the knowledge that I killed my sister then knowing I let her get away with it.
I asked Izzy if she remembered what she said, that summer – the summer that everything changed, the summer that Alex died, that Tess betrayed us, that I fell in love with her. She looked confused. “You said, ‘Tess made forever end. He promised me forever, and she made forever end. I hate her for that. Doesn’t she know how it feels when forever ends?’ I have to make her realize that she can’t hurt whoever she wants. She has to realize that other people matter, too,” I told her.
She smiled at me then, that brilliant, beautiful, sexy, Isabel Evans-soon-to-be-Valenti smile. The smile that I love, the smile that greets me every morning when I wake up. The smile that Tess nearly took away from me forever. “Then you made forever begin again, Kyle. I love you. Forever. Nothing else matters.”
But something else does matter. When we burned everything she touched, when we burned her in effigy, it wasn’t enough for me. If she burns in the pits of hell for all eternity, it still won’t be enough. It still wouldn’t atone for all she’s done. It still won’t atone for making me carry my best friend’s body.
I’m going to make her understand what she did. I’m going to show her how it feels when forever ends.
And then, maybe forever can continue, with Isabel and our baby.