Rating: PG?
Category: Other / episode tag
Spoilers: Cry Your Name, vague Skin & Bones and Ask Not references
Disclaimer: I do not own Roswell. If I did, all the kids would be grounded....and Tess would be dating everyone on the show.

~*~*~*~

Nacedo.

When he died, she had felt a nagging sense of something left unresolved. Stories untold, memories buried, questions unanswered.

But she had felt no pain.

Now, as she watches the coffin being lowered into the ground, she understands why.

Nacedo had been smart.

He’d left nothing behind.

He’d spent his life giving out warnings, training, knowledge…But no emotions. So when he was gone, it wasn’t the end of a person, of a life. It was just the end of a container that held answers, a receptacle of the past.

Alex’s death is the end of a life, the end of not only the present, but also a future.

And he’s left far too much behind…

…Or has he taken too much with him?

~*~*~*~

She watches her friends throw roses into the ground.

Even after Nacedo died, there were no reminders, no markers. He was attacked by Skins. He died. The body disintegrated. The End.

There was no tombstone to forever remind the world that someone had once been alive.

She glances at Maria and Liz and Isabel in quick succession as they stand amidst the dirt, each one bearing different expressions of their pain.

Maria suddenly looks small and weak, as though gravity and the weight of death are the only things keeping her from floating away.

Liz’s grief is much more controlled, but anguish still lingers on her face, along with what looks like traces of anger.

She is most disconcerted by Isabel’s grief. She is used to Isabel’s façade of perfection, finds comfort in it even, but today Isabel is more open than she’s ever seen her. Isabel is sobbing, and looks as though she’s been sobbing for two days straight. Perhaps she is purging all the grief and fear in her life in one giant release.

She wonders what it would be like to feel the pain that the three of them are feeling right now. She thinks she is a strong person, but she expects that the pain they are feeling would be too much to bear.

It does not matter, because she is safe. She will never need to feel that much pain, because there is no one she loves. No one that would leave a hole in her life with their absence.

But that is a lie.

She thinks of Max…the Sheriff…Isabel…Kyle, and knows that they are a part of her life now. Pieces that fit together to make her who she is.

She’s only recently discovered that she is a puzzle that needs other pieces…needs these other pieces to lock into her, so she is more than one small piece that can be easily swept away.

Do the others fear being swept away too?

The Sheriff and Kyle. Kyle and herself. Herself and Max. Max and Isabel. Isabel and Michael. Michael and Maria. Maria and Liz.

The tenuous threads holding them all together.

She does not know what will happen if another thread snaps.

~*~*~*~

She suspects that Nacedo’s entire life, and death, was meant to be a lesson to all of them.

She listens to the wind and the tears and the thud of roses against wood, and she fears it is a lesson they will never learn.

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