Disclaimer: Roswell, its characters and situations, are owned by the WB. No infringement intended.

Author's Note: This story is the part of an evolving future storyline. All the stories currently in this storyline are included in order on the Future Arc page.

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

"It’s in the eyes," Michael remarked as he sat down in the chair beside Max.

Startled out of his thoughts, Max stared at him. "What?"

"It’s in the eyes," Michael repeated, nodding at Maria who was sitting beside Alex on the other side of the hospital waiting room. "What sucks you in. It’s in the eyes. Neither of us ever stood a chance."

Max shook his head. "I’m not following you, Michael."

"Trust me, Maxwell. It’s in the eyes."

Later, in Liz’s room in the maternity ward, looking into Liz’s dark eyes, Max remembered his conversation with Michael.

What was it about a woman’s eyes? he wondered. The darkness of Liz’s eyes had a language all its own. Her eyes spoke of love, hope, desire, fear, pain, joy -- the gamut of human emotion.

He had once told her that his life was in her hands, but he had been only partly right. It had been in her eyes too.

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

Sitting beside her bed in the maternity ward, wrapped in the scent of roses clinging to her skin, he also remembered another conversation, one he had had with his mother in the park after the fire.

His mother had been afraid that he would never open up because he had never been able to open up with her. She had suggested that maybe he just needed the right person to talk to. She had implied that his birth parents were the right people.

But the right person had been Liz. His first and only love.

He had always known, even before he’d been forced into admitting everything to her, that he could and would tell her everything about himself. Who he was, where he was from, what he could do.

He had always known that the secret that could cost him his life, and his sister’s and his best friend’s, was safe in her hands.

With a gentle look and gentler hands, she had reassured him that he could be completely open with her, that she would protect his secrets.

A lifetime of keeping secrets and protecting the others around him faded into the certainty of knowing that he couldn’t and didn’t need to keep any secrets from her.

He had once joked that he had no secrets about himself left to tell her. But it had been true.

or if your wish be to close me,i and
my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

Sitting beside her bed in the maternity ward, offering her the reassurance of his presence even though he couldn’t take her pain away, he remembered his relief that he could heal her that long-ago day in the Crashdown Café. His being there that day had been fate.

And he remembered her asking him about fate after they’d spent that night in the desert, after the flurry of passion and desire that had turned their lives upside down that spring. She asked him what he thought her destiny was. And he had hesitated; he’d almost told her then and there that he was her destiny. But he’d controlled his instinctive sappiness and told her instead that he only knew the part of her destiny that he was hoping for.

Being with her had always been the only destiny that he had ever hoped for.

Except he wished that there were something he could do now to take away her fear and pain, something that would ensure that their daughter’s entrance into the world was uneventful if not easy.

Somehow he didn’t think that she necessarily liked the painful labor part of her destiny.

He smiled to himself and touched her arm to remind her that he was there. And immediately he felt their connection, as always almost frightening in its intensity.

And his momentary fear reminded him of the time in the desert when he had held her and been unable to stop himself from kissing her. He had said that he couldn’t not touch her.

That had been true too. He had always needed to touch her. If nothing else, it reassured him that she needed him as much as he needed her.

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

Holding her hand during labor, he remembered a conversation he’d had with the obstetrician, his friend and schoolmate from medical school, right before they had entered the delivery room.

"Women are incredibly strong at a time like this," his obstetrician friend had assured him. "Let me tell you: if men were the ones who had to push babies out into the world after carrying them for nine months, the human race would be extinct by now."

And his obstetrician friend had laughed at the startled, unnerved expression on his face. "She’ll be fine. You’re a doctor, too," his obstetrician friend had chided him. "You should know better than this. Quit worrying so much."

He’d given his obstetrician friend a weak smile, unable to tell him what was really worrying him. He had said something mundane instead, something not unexpected of a nervous husband and father-to-be: "Yeah, I’m a doctor. But I’ve never been a father before."

Later, after the doctor had disappeared through the swinging doors to prep for the delivery, Max had turned to Michael who had been listening too.

"He’s right, you know," Michael had told him quietly. "And you did make the right decision, Maximilian. Now get in there." And Michael, who of all them had always had the greatest fear of connecting with people, had pushed him through the swinging doors after the doctor and towards his wife.

Tightening his hand around hers as another contraction hit, Max thought she had never looked so beautiful.

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

A long time later; after the labor was over; after she had fallen asleep, exhausted; after the nurses had come and gone; after their baby daughter had been tucked by those same nurses into a cradle in the hospital nursery, healthy and normal and surprisingly brown-eyed; after all those things had happened, he sat beside her again in her room in the maternity ward. He watched her sleep, his elbows resting on the bed, his chin resting on the prop of his clasped hands.

He remembered what he’d felt as he stood outside the nursery, looking through the window at his daughter. His daughter’s tiny starfish hands seemed to be glowing, almost translucent. She was a miracle, a genetic improbability whose existence defied scientific understanding.

Max had shaken his head, still amazed that she was real, painfully relieved that Liz was fine. He had murmured more to himself than to Michael, who had been standing beside him once more: "Such small hands. She has such small hands."

"They all have the same hands," Michael had agreed.

And now, sitting beside Liz’s bed, Max understood what Michael had been trying to tell him all day. The women they loved all had the same small hands.

He studied Liz’s hand, which looked tiny and dainty against the white coverlet, amazingly like their daughter’s tiny starfish hands. He took her hand in his and turned it over, tracing the delicate lines across her palm.

"My life is in your hands," he had told her when she had first learned his secret. It always had been -- literally and figuratively. He needed her.

He needed her but not just in the way she looked at him, with passion in her face that made the bottom of his stomach drop out, and with fingertips that echoed that look, trailing fire across his body wherever she touched.

He needed her but not just in the way she held him and comforted him, the way she always reassured him that everything was going to be fine.

He needed her but not just in the way she laughed and shoved him playfully into being less serious.

He needed her but not just in the way she smiled, with unconditional love in her eyes.

He needed all of those things, but he also just needed her.

Because it was her.

As if she’d heard his thoughts, her lashes fluttered open, and her eyes told him in a voice deeper than all roses that she loved him.

"I love you, too," he said with his eyes, not trusting his vocal cords to say something so important. And he knew beyond a doubt that those words had always been at the heart of their soulful stares, the googly-eyes their friends had always teased them about.

Liz nodded and closed her eyes, a small smile touching her lips. Her small hand tightened around his as she said softly, "I know, Max. I’ve always known."

Author’s Note:

This "poem fic" is the second of two stories I’ve written that use e.e.cummings’ poetry to describe events before, during, and after Claudia’s birth (i.e., at the beginning of the Future Arc). Note that cummings did not usually title his poems, but this one is frequently referred to as "somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond." The poem is copyrighted to e.e.cummings. No infringement intended.

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