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.

Two days after the shooting in the Crashdown Café, Max was sitting in his backyard, sipping a glass of lemonade and proofreading the latest draft of Liz's next book, when his son dropped down on the grass beside his lawn chair.

Staring up at the cloudless blue sky, Josh asked in a too-casual tone of voice, "Can we talk?"

Max put down the draft. "About what?"

"About what happens now."

"Josh, you're being cryptic. What do you mean?"

"I don't know what I mean," Josh admitted. He sounded uncomfortable.

Something about the way Josh was concentrating on the sky made Max look up too, just to reassure himself that the sky still looked the same. It did.

Josh's voice drew his attention back to earth. "After you healed Mom, what happened?"

Max stifled a smile. It was unlike Josh to ask to hear about ancient history. "You're kidding, right?"

"No, I really want to know."

Max waited for Josh to continue.

"How did you know you and Mom were meant to be together? Was it when you healed her?" Josh asked.

"It was when I kissed someone else, actually," Max said quietly.

Josh cringed. "Gross, Dad. Too much detail."

"You said you wanted to know," Max reminded him.

"Yeah, but I didn't want to know gross stuff about you kissing someone who wasn't Mom."

"It wasn't something I had much control over."

Josh rolled over on the grass so that he was lying on his stomach. He buried his head in his crossed arms, which effectively muffled his complaint. "Too much detail, Dad. Way too personal."

Max reached out to ruffle Josh's dark hair. "Josh. Listen to me. There are things about us Czechoslovakians that you should know. One of them is that when one of us finds our soulmate, we mate for life. The other thing is that your mother wasn't supposed to be my soulmate. Someone else was."

Josh lifted his head off his arms and stared at Max. "Okay, Dad. I'm totally not liking this conversation. I'm sorry I brought this whole thing up. I was just looking for some simple answers to some simple questions. I wasn't looking for this, whatever *this* is." Josh rolled over again and got up from the grass, ready to leave.

Frowning up at him, Max realized for the first time how tall his son had grown. "Sit down again, Josh. It's long overdue that we talked about this stuff."

"If I stay standing, will this talk happen faster?" Josh stuffed his hands into the front pockets of his jeans, unconsciously duplicating Max's own nervous habit.

Max told himself not to smile. Instead, he swung his legs off the end of the lawn chair, and patted the space he'd just cleared. "Sit."

"Fine," Josh grumbled as he sat down. "So someone else was supposed to be your soulmate."

Max nodded. "Her name was Tess. She was as different from your mother as it was possible to get. And she was Czechoslovakian." Max studied Josh's face, trying to guess his thoughts. "Tess and I were destined for each other the way your Uncle Michael and Aunt Izzy were destined for each other."

Josh turned green. "I don't want to hear this. Does that count for anything?"

"You need to hear this, Josh."

"Fine. Whatever. Continue. I'll hurl later."

"Watch the attitude, buddy," Max snapped. "Okay, where was I? When things starting getting scary and dangerous for us, which means not long after I healed your mother, Tess and her father came to town. Not long after Tess came to Roswell, all four of us Czechoslovakians started having visions and dreams of each other as couples."

Josh groaned. "Oh, god. Please can we not have this talk?"

"Josh...." Max's voice held a warning that Josh couldn't miss. "This is the Czechoslovakian equivalent of a birds-and-the-bees talk, so deal."

"Okay, okay. I'm listening."

Max shifted awkwardly, all of a sudden uncertain about how he should tell his son what he needed to tell him. "Josh, this is really hard to talk about. That's why none of us talk about it ever. You know we came out of the pods, right? We were in pods because all of us were bioengineered. Apparently, we were created for each other so that we would mate and propagate our species."

Josh stared down at the grass and fidgeted. "Okay. I thought this conversation couldn't get worse, but it just did. So I'm not related to E.T. as much as I'm related to Data. Great. Just great."

Max laughed in spite of himself. "It's a good thing you watch so much old television, Josh. At least we share a frame of reference." Then Max sighed, knowing he needed to return to the weightier topic at hand. "I know this is a lot to take in all at once--"

"Ye-ah. To put it mildly. I liked it better when I was just E.T., Dad."

"You're still E.T., Josh, just differently adapted to this atmosphere and this environment than you would've been on our home planet."

"*Not* making me feel better here, Dad," Josh complained.

Max grinned. "The fact that you're here at all should make you feel better, kiddo. Because the fact that you and Claudia and all your cousins exist is proof that the bioengineering worked. Just not in the way it was intended to work. We not only adapted to the physical realities of this earth, we also adapted to its cultural realities. We were raised as humans, so we accepted the notion of free choice. We exercised our right to choose our own fates and broke away from our prescribed destinies." Max studied Josh's face. "In other words, in a burst of pure free will, I chose your mother over Tess, Michael chose Maria, and Isabel chose Alex. And we denied our intended destinies because your mother and Maria and Alex had the courage to choose us and defy those destinies with us."

"Despite the high sappiness factor, I think I'm understanding what you're saying, Dad."

"Thank you," Max said dryly.

"So how does this answer my question, though?" Josh asked.

"Josh, it was two-way."

"Which means?"

"I told you that our species mates monogamously for life. To do so, there needs to be a two-way connection. When I kissed Tess, even though I was having visions of her and me together--"

"Please, Dad," Josh groaned, covering his face with his hands. "Can you not bring up that part anymore?"

Max tried not to laugh. "As I was saying, when I kissed Tess, I realized that I'd already made a connection with your mother. That, despite the physical urges, Tess didn't touch my soul."

"Dad! Stop with the physical urges part. That's just disgusting."

"That's my point, Josh. My urges for Tess were disgusting to me too. When I had those feelings and urges for her, I didn't know who I was. I had been in love with your mother since the third grade. Thoughts about another woman besides her were upsetting and alien to me. I didn't understand what was going on, and that confusion pushed me to recognize that I had already made my choice. I had chosen my destiny. And I recognized that something about my physical and emotional relationship with your mother had changed both of us, your mother and me, so that Tess was no longer an appropriate biological choice for species mating. Not in the way your mother was. I chose your mother with my heart and soul first, but my body confirmed the choice when I kissed Tess."

Josh looked thoughtful for a couple of minutes. Then he shook his head as if to clear it. "So how does this relate to my question again?" he asked.

Max gave him an equally thoughtful look, and said quietly, "You chose, Josh."

Josh jumped to his feet, took two steps towards the house, then changed his mind, whirling around again to stare at Max. "Excuse me? When did I choose?"

"In the Crashdown two days ago, Josh. When you healed Andrea, you connected with her. Afterwards in the backroom, you reversed the connection, didn't you?"

Josh's jaw dropped. "How did you know?"

Max winked at him. "Fathers know these things, Josh. And you and I are a lot alike. I'm sure you thought it would make her feel better about the fact that you had inadvertently seen her memories and feelings."

Josh nodded, still looking shocked.

"I did that too," Max explained seriously. "That was when I chose."

"So that's it? I've chosen my life's mate? This is crazy! I'm sixteen!"

"So was I."

"No shit."

"Hey, what's with the language today?" Max chided.

"Sorry." Josh threw a quick apologetic glance at Max. "So I've chosen my destiny. Great. Just peachy." He flung his hands wide and looked up at the sky. "So what do I do now?"

Watching his son's melodramatics, Max laughed. "You may have chosen, Josh. But I didn't say she did. So ... I'd say what you have to do now is convince her."

"You're kidding."

"Nope."

"Oh god," Josh groaned as he buried his head in his hands once more.

Author's Note:

Credit for a large part of the spoiler speculation in this story goes to various posters on the FanForum Spoiler Board, but especially to LSS for a listing of possible events that would allow Max and Liz to persevere as a couple beyond Tess. I quote the pertinent part of LSS's post, dated 4/5/2000:

1) Tess dies thus removing the possibility of her as Max's mate, or

2) Max and Tess, in a burst of pure free will break from their prescribed destiny to see one of their own making, or

3) There is a biological element in their species mating that Max has already altered by his physical and emotional relationship with Liz thus making Tess no longer an appropriate biological choice for Max.

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