"Want another cherry cola?"

Maria Guerin leaned a hip against the counter and studied the dark-haired boy sitting in front of her. Her nephew seemed to be completely absorbed in his biology notes. Well, *almost* completely absorbed, Maria corrected herself as she watched him sneak a glance at pretty little Andrea Jamison, who was one of the regular waitresses at the Crashdown Café.

Maria watched with amusement as Josh ducked his head and pretended not to be staring at Andrea as she placed two steaming entrées in front of a couple of tourists. Stifling a laugh, Maria snapped her fingers under his nose. "Hey! Joshua Alexander Evans! Do you want a refill?"

Startled, Josh blinked then stared up her. "Sorry, Aunt Maria. I wasn’t paying attention. Sure, I’ll go for a refill. Thanks."

Seeing the faint blush staining his cheekbones, Maria smiled at him. She thought that he had never looked so much like his father than at that moment, with that shyly adoring but completely clueless expression on his face. Cluelessness was a genetic flaw in Czechoslovakian males, she decided.

Maria stepped over to the soda machine to fill a glass with cherry cola. Over the hum of the machine, she could hear Andrea talking with her best friend, Carmina Roderiguez, who was the other waitress working that night.

"I can’t believe you showed them that stupid fake-alien photo again," Carmina was saying. "You are so bad, girl."

Maria could hear Andrea’s sheepish giggle, then Carmina’s teasing voice: "Oh, and Josh Evans is staring at you again."

Andrea’s response was immediate denial, but Maria recognized something underneath the denial, something that sounded suspiciously like excited wonder.

"No way. That is so in your imagination, Carm. I mean, why would he stare at me? I mean, Josh Evans?"

"Why wouldn’t he? With your cheeks! Preciosita tan linda!"

There was more laughter, then a quiet protest from Andrea after she got her breath back: "Carmina! He’s not, okay."

"Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed him doing that all the time?"

"He doesn’t, Carm."

"You haven’t noticed him?"

"How could I not notice him? I’m not blind. Tall, dark, and handsome. The quietest boy in our class who is almost certain to be valedictorian. My lab partner. But that doesn’t mean he stares at me."

"Ah, you *noticed* him."

"Carm--" Andrea’s voice sounded very firm-- "I think table four needs a refill on their coffee."

Maria’s eavesdropping was interrupted by the jangling of the door to the Crashdown. She looked up to see her husband walk in; her breath caught in her throat just looking at him. Even after all these years, she still got butterflies in her stomach whenever she saw Michael Guerin, paint-splattered and spiky-haired as he was. She waved. He smirked in response and made his way to where Josh was sitting. Maria joined them a moment later.

Leaning over the counter to drop a kiss on Michael’s lips, Maria murmured, "I missed you, spaceboy."

"Missed you too," he said as he tried to deepen their kiss.

Josh groaned and dropped his forehead into his hands. "It’s bad enough with Mom and Dad doing that all the time. Have some pity on a poor guy who’s just trying to study, okay?"

Maria exchanged a speaking look with Michael. Josh hadn’t realized yet that their being this way with each other was yet another of those inherited Czechoslovakian traits. With a wicked grin, Maria decided to exercise her prerogative as his aunt -- the best and oldest friend of his mother -- to help him see the light.

"So," she began as she placed the glass of cherry cola in front of him. "I couldn’t help overhearing a conversation just now.... You’re causing quite a stir amongst my wait staff, Josh. Are you going to do anything about it?"

Josh’s head jerked up again. "Aunt Maria!" His blush deepened, and his eyes looked wary. "I’m just trying to study here. Give me a break."

"Maybe you should ask her out."

"Ask who out?" Michael asked, sounding genuinely curious.

"Josh should ask Andrea out."

Michael gave Josh a sympathetic look. "Leave him alone, Maria. He’ll ask the girl out when he’s ready to." Michael paused as if something had just occurred to him. "Who’s Andrea, anyway?"

Maria shook her head. "You Czechoslovakian males are all hopeless. Especially when you stick together. I just thought--" But the rest of her sentence was cut off by loud voices.

"--you ask me to give you another day!? You’re running out of time." Two men were arguing at a table towards the back of the Crashdown. One of the men jumped to his feet and sent all the dishes on his table crashing to the floor.

"Look," the man shouted, "I want the money today -- *not* tomorrow!"

The other man stood up too, looking just as furious as the first man. He pulled a gun out of his jacket pocket and waved it menacingly.

Everyone in the restaurant froze.

Maria couldn’t stop thinking that this was happening again, that she was reliving one of the worst days of her life.

When the two men began struggling over the gun, Maria looked at Michael, who responded to her unspoken request by shouting at everyone to get down. Before Maria knew what had hit her, Michael had vaulted over the counter and pushed her to the floor beneath him.

A gunshot ripped apart the eerie stillness in the Crashdown. Maria shoved up against Michael so she could get up to see what was going on. She heard a scream and a thump. Then there was a second gunshot. And running feet. Maria pushed up again. "Get off me, cheesehead."

"Just sit still, all right," Michael snapped.

"Look. I appreciate all this macho protectiveness, but I have to check to make sure everyone is all right. Get off me."

"Fine." As Michael helped Maria to her feet, he looked around at the shell-shocked faces of the Crashdown’s customers. "Is everyone okay?"

Carmina screamed, "Oh my god! Andrea!"

Josh was already working his way towards the fallen girl when Michael grabbed his arm to stop him. "Josh! What are you going to do?"

"I’m going to help her. Let me go, Uncle Michael."

Michael stared at Josh with a funny look of recognition on his face. Maria guessed that Michael recognized the fierce expression in his nephew’s dark eyes as identical to the fierce expression in another sixteen-year old boy’s eyes on a day exactly like this one a long time ago. Because she recognized everything too, Maria was unsurprised when Michael let go of his nephew’s arm and automatically began shooing away interested spectators.

Seeing that Michael had the rest of the customers under control, Maria ran towards Andrea and Josh, thinking that there might be some way she could help.

She hovered nervously, watching as Josh fell to his knees beside Andrea and tore her waitress uniform open to reveal blood gushing out of an ugly hole in her abdomen, two inches below her ribs. Maria heard Josh whisper, "Andrea. It’s gonna be okay. *Andrea!* You have to look at me. You have to look at me."

Weakly, Andrea opened her eyes. Josh put his hand over the bullet wound. After a couple of minutes, Josh sighed and removed his hand from the girl’s now-intact stomach.

Maria could tell her nephew was exhausted. He nearly toppled over on Andrea as he whispered, "You’re all right now. You’re all right."

History had such a funny way of repeating itself, Maria thought as she reached up to the shelf above Josh for a ketchup bottle and handed it to him. "You know what to do," she said softly.

He gave her a grateful look and nodded. Then he broke the ketchup bottle against a chair leg, and poured the ketchup over Andrea. "You broke a bottle when you fell," Josh whispered urgently. "You spilled ketchup on yourself. Don’t say anything ... please."

"Andrea!" Carmina cried as she tried to push past Maria to see her best friend. "Are you okay?"

Andrea didn’t answer right away. She seemed unable to stop staring at Josh. Finally she tore here eyes away from him to focus on Carmina, and said in a quiet, faraway voice: "I spilled ketchup, Carm. I’m fine."

That was when Maria realized that Josh looked like he was about to faint. She reached out to steady him, but when she touched his shoulder, she felt an odd stickiness. She yanked her hand away and stared at it in horror. "Oh my god, Josh! You’re bleeding!"

"What did you just say?" demanded Michael, practically shouting across the Crashdown from where he was holding all the interested spectators at bay.

"There must have been two shots."

"You’re kidding. I heard only one."

Maria shook her head, still staring at her hand. "I heard two."

"There were definitely two," Carmina said helpfully. She cast a confused glance at her best friend. "One that I guess missed Andrea. And one--" Carmina pointed to Josh’s blood-soaked sweater-- "that I guess hit Josh."

Michael was at Maria’s side in an instant. "Move out of the way," he said, shoving past Carmina. "Maria? How bad is it?"

Maria had already figured out that the wound was clean, but Josh had lost a lot of blood. She tugged Michael’s head down so she could whisper in his ear: "You’d better heal your nephew before Max and Liz kill us for allowing their only son to bleed to death."

"Right." Michael began to crouch down beside Josh, then stopped. He tilted his head in Carmina’s direction.

Taking the hint, Maria pulled the dark-haired girl to the side. "Carmina, call 911. And can you keep everyone away? Josh needs some space."

After Carmina rushed off, Michael crouched down beside Josh. Using his body as a shield from prying eyes, Michael placed his hand over the bullet wound in Josh’s shoulder and closed his eyes. After a couple of minutes, the bleeding stopped.

Sitting back on his heels, Michael glanced up at Maria, then at Andrea, then back at Josh. He smirked. "So. You couldn’t ask her out on a date like a normal kid, huh?"

"Nope," Maria replied for Josh as she crouched down beside Michael. She stroked Josh’s hair off his forehead, relieved that his color seemed to be coming back. "He has to see the girl of his dreams get shot before he finds the courage to act. Sound like someone we know?"

Michael shook his head wryly. "Too much."

"What’re you guys talking about?" Josh asked, and Maria and Michael both smiled at the confusion in his voice.

"Old times, Josh. Old times," Michael explained as he ruffled Josh’s hair, a gesture that Maria knew Josh had outgrown a long time ago, but one which everyone in the family still used on the youngest Czechoslovakian. After a couple of minutes, Michael put his arm around Josh’s shoulders and helped him to his feet. Both Michael and Josh helped Andrea up.

The four of them stood staring at each other in the ensuing silence. When that silence was broken by the wail of sirens, Maria remarked, "I hope Kyle decides to come himself instead of sending a deputy."

Michael nodded. "Tell me about it. At least with Kyle here we have a chance of getting out of this without the entire world finding out that there’s a hell of a lot of truth to Roswell’s most famous rumor."

Maria arched an questioning eyebrow at Michael’s openness in front of Andrea. And Mr. Paranoid himself had the temerity to laugh at her. "You think she won’t force him to tell her everything? It’s water under the bridge already. He healed her. She knows he healed her. She saw me heal him."

It took a second for the truth of what Michael was saying to sink in, but when it did, Maria laughed too.

While she was laughing, she noticed out of the corner of her eye that Josh and Andrea were still staring silently at each other. They needed to talk, Maria decided; sooner, rather than later. So she nodded towards the back of the Crashdown and said, "You kids need to get your stories straight." She looked pointedly at her nephew. "You should talk before the police get here, Josh."

As she watched the two teenagers disappear through the swinging door, Maria slipped an arm around Michael’s waist. She leaned her head against his chest to listen to his reassuringly strong heartbeat. "I’m glad no one was hurt," she said, feeling the bone-deep relief wash over her once more. "It’s funny, isn’t it, how history seemed to repeat itself."

"Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it," Michael said solemnly. Maria lifted her head away from his chest to gape at him. "Santayana? You turning into a philosopher in your old age, spaceboy?"

Michael squinted at her. "What?"

It was such a typical Michael response that Maria laughed again. "I guess that makes me your doom?"

"I prefer the term destiny," Michael said seriously.

"Wow, cheesehead. Max is rubbing off on you finally."

He glared at her, but she could see a small smile tugging at the corners of his lips. So she pulled his face down towards her and kissed him. "Aren’t you glad, though?"

"About what?"

"About everything."

"You know I am."

"And you agree that everything that has happened -- even today -- was meant."

"Of course. It’s a good thing Max couldn’t keep a promise to save his life."

Maria laughed and tweaked his hair. "No, cheesehead. Max couldn’t keep your stupid promise because he needed to save a life. Liz’s. And therefore his, and ours, and Alex and Izzy’s, and all the kids.’"

"Who are you calling a cheesehead?"

"You. The dove too, cheesehead."

"I love you too, Maria."

Maria’s jaw dropped. "Wow, Michael. Max really *is* rubbing off on you."

"Don’t rub it in. Come on," he said, tugging her along with him as he walked towards the back of the Crashdown and the swinging door through which Josh and Andrea had disappeared earlier. "Let’s go check on the next generation."

Back to Area 51 (Section I)