Author's note/Disclaimer/All that jazz: Yeah, we all know who Roswell really belongs to, and it's not me (Hi, WB, Jason Katims, Melinda Metz, etc!), so don't bother suing me. It's not worth it.

Takes place in the future arc, between "Birth" and "Belonging," which isn't up yet. *eg*

*****

"Auntie Izzy?" Isabel looked up at her golden-haired niece from the piles of paperwork she was trying to go through.

"Yeah, hon?" At least it was a welcome distraction. The house was too quiet, since Matty and Anna were over at the Guerins with the twins and Molly, and Alex was still out working on a client's computer security system. Her clients were so demanding now. She wondered how her parents stood the tedious side of being lawyers.

Nicole sat down in the armchair opposite of Isabel's. "Can we talk?" Her pixie-faced niece looked serious for once. The fourteen-year old was going through that awkward gangly stage, having inherited her mother's small frame, and her father's height. Isabel hid a smile as Nikki tried to tuck her long legs under her body.

"Sure, Tinkerbell. What's wrong?"

Nikki wore Michael's 'I don't want to do this' face. It was startling, how often Michael's expressions appeared on his daughter's face. For the most part, she looked like Maria, but every look Nicole wore belonged to her father, along with her intense dark eyes. "Stephen's in love again, and Molly and Matty seem to be in love, even though they're cousins and ten years old, and Jamie's getting all weird now," her niece wailed, in typical DeLuca fashion. "And Claudi's no help, since she knows even less about boys than I do!"

Isabel stifled a smile. "Nik, you're fourteen. You don't need to have a boyfriend now. Guys aren't that important."

Nicole sniffled. "Really?"

"Really." Isabel grinned. "There's no race to your first kiss, or your first boyfriend, or your first love." She leaned over and touched Nicole's paint-spattered knee. "Besides, you know someone special's out there waiting for you."

Nicole ran her hands through her messy curls, another gesture Isabel recognized as Michael's. "Is it because of what we are, Auntie Izzy? Because we're Czechoslovakian?"

Isabel stood up and slid into the large armchair beside her niece. She put her arm around the girl's thin shoulder, stroking her niece's blond curls, thinking about that for a while. "Whoever you fall in love with will be special, because he'll have to be someone you can trust." She remembered her own years of loneliness, until Max had forced them all out of their bubble world when he healed Liz. Her voice was soft. "It's really lonely for a very long time, but it'll be worth it, kiddo. I promise."

Nicole smiled, snuggling closer to her aunt. Even though she was almost full-grown, Nikki still took advantage of her position of little girl. She had every bit of her mother's affectionate nature, and leanings towards smacking kisses on the cheeks of those she loved. "But Uncle Max and Auntie Liz fell in love when they were really young. When they were younger than Claudi. And Mom and Daddy even younger than that."

"Max loved Liz for a long time though, Nik. They were always that fairy-tale romance. Even when we were younger."

Nikki laughed. "In Mr. Raddish's class?" The fifth grade teacher had shared quite a few of the more embarrassing moments he'd caught her parents and aunts and uncles in, once he got over his initial fear of her.

"Mr. Raddish's class was the year that I think did us all in--even if we didn't realize it." The love letters, the flowers, the fights...that was the year that made her realize there were others out there that might understand, even if she lost track of them in middle school.

"I'm fourteen already, and a freshman in high school, and I still haven't been kissed. By my age, Mom had already had a boyfriend, and been kissed by Daddy too."

"But that kiss was a dare, Nik. Even if Michael did enjoy it more than he should've." She remembered that day, and the way Michael refused to talk about that kiss for months afterward, no matter how many times she hounded him and threatened to dreamwalk when he fell asleep.

And there was a secretive little smile on Nicole's face--almost a smirk. "There was another kiss that they never told anyone about."

And then it clicked. The camping trip. But a lot had happened on that camping trip... Isabel smiled at her niece. "Your mom and dad always went about things their own way, Nikki. Michael and Maria made their own path. And they were off and on so often until your dad proposed that we never knew what was going on." Which was true. And even now, Michael and Maria made their home in their own way, filling their large, messy house with kids, pets, and enough love to fulfill the lonely childhoods both of them had endured. "Michael and Maria needed each other, I think..."

"But how old were you when you realized you loved Uncle Alex?" Nicole persisted.

How old was she? Was it when she watched him dancing with her in his dream when they were in high school? Or was it that night their freshman year of college, when they were tunneling under Cal Tech in the old steam tunnels, and Alex turned off his maglite to give her their first heated kiss? It wasn't fifth grade, like it had been for Max and Michael. She was the last to fall in love of the three of them--the last, really, to trust their human friends. But she never regretted it.

"The night I fell was the night your dad had was dying, and we all had to bring him back from the dreamplane. And your uncle Alex was the first one to volunteer to help." She smiled softly at the memory. "But I didn't realize it until college." Those weekends she'd spent away from the pettiness of USC and the pre-law program, lying on Alex's mattress on the floor of his Hell single in Blacker House at Cal Tech, falling asleep in his arms and realizing how safe she felt there. Was it then that she realized? "It never came like lightening, like it did with Max or Liz, or even your mom and dad. It was little things that made me realize..."

They sat in silence for a while, Isabel's fingers stroking Nicole's hair. "Why all the questions, Nik?"

"Jamie's been acting weird lately. He doesn't want to talk to me anymore, and since he's been looking at girls lately. Like other girls. And talking about their boobs." She glared down at her own still small chest. "And I'm the last girl in the world without them."

Isabel chuckled. "Be glad. I was the first to get them, and all the guys did was stare at my chest until we graduated high school." She remembered how Maria had glared at her, that first day of fifth grade, when Isabel walked in, flaunting her attributes for all to see. She hadn't known any better. Isabel had still been the shy little girl locked in the ice princess cage. It had taken Alex, Maria, and Liz years to melt it. But it meant that she could sit beside her niece today, helping another alien teenage girl to understand.

"Honey, why don't you talk to your mom about this? Wouldn't she be better at it?"

Nicole looked miserable. "Mama's great, and I love her more than anything but Daddy, but she's...human, Auntie Izzy. And I'm...not."

Nicole, out of all the children, was the first to develop her powers. Isabel had watched the toy truck explode when three year old Nikki got angry at it, and remembered all the times her niece flashed things by touching people. Nikki was also the most like her, because she experimented, and was the one that had to be watched the most carefully. She was totally and completely Michael's child--impulsive, passionate, and feeling everything in extremes. She was quick to anger, but quick to forgive. A vibrator. And for a young alien who was still coming into her powers, that was hard.

"You know if you need any help practicing...especially when your period hits..."

Nicole smiled, her mother's demented pixie grin creasing her round face. "Thanks, Auntie Izzy." Her arms came around Isabel's neck for a tight hug.

"But with Jamie, hon...how do you feel about Jamie?" She couldn't pinpoint it exactly, but something about what Nicole said...

And her niece blushed. Isabel laughed. "Nikki! You like him!" She grinned, tickling Nicole. "You like like him."

"I do not, Auntie Izzy!" She shrieked. "Stop tickling me!" There was one difference between Nicole as a child, and Michael as a child. Michael had never laughed this much. Maybe it was the future's way of righting the past.

They still sat there laughing when Isabel heard the door open, and two male voices coming from the front of the house. "We're in here, Alex!" she called, sharing a smile with her niece. "Did that help any, Nik?

And that vulnerable smile that Isabel recognized as Michael's--the one few people ever got to see. "Thanks, Auntie Izzy." And Isabel felt a soft kiss on her cheek.

"Did we interrupt something?" Alex's familiar crooked grin appeared on his face as he walked into the room. Isabel gently untangled herself from Nicole and slipped into her husband's arms. "I missed you," he murmured against her neck, running his hands through her hair and kissing from her lips to her ear.

"You guys are almost as bad as Mama and Daddy," Nicole giggled.

"They're worse than my parents," said another young male voice from the doorway.

Nicole hopped to her feet, smoothing down her flyaway curls and wiping at her eyes. "Jamie! What are you doing here?"

Jamie Valenti grinned, his blue eyes dancing as his father's never did. "Your dad told me you were here, and your uncle saw me walking over, so he gave me a ride." His face sobered for a minute. "Can we...talk?"

Nicole shot her aunt a glance, and Isabel smiled. Her niece's face relaxed into a grin. "Yeah, sure. Walk me home." And the two smiled shyly at each other.

"Night, Uncle Alex, Auntie Izzy." Nikki hugged her aunt and uncle hard, sharing a secret grin with her aunt, before turning back to the boy in front of her.

And when Jamie Valenti held out a hand to Nicole, the golden-haired fairy child slid her hand into his just as easily as if he had been her father or uncle or aunt--someone she could trust. And for a moment, as the two hands met, Isabel swore that they glowed with a soft light.

And as Alex pulled her upstairs into their bedroom, his hands already promising to show her how much he missed her, she couldn't help wondering if there was some human who vibrated just right for every Czechoslovakian--someone to make them realize that they were home, and just as human as those born on earth.

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