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.

"So. When were you going to tell me?" Andrea demanded, jabbing a finger into Josh's chest as she frowned up at him.

She and Josh were alone in the backroom of the Crashdown Café after what had turned out to be without a doubt the most incredible day of her life. It had started out as a regular waitressing day for her. Two gunshots later, it had turned into a science fiction melodrama. She shook herself mentally and jabbed him again, thinking as she did so that she had never in her whole life been so forward, but she figured that a boy's healing a bullet wound in her stomach allowed her to take certain liberties with said boy.

"Tell you," he repeated, "about ... being from...?" He pointed his index finger straight up at the ceiling.

"No!" Andrea shook her head violently.

The surprise and confusion on his face was almost comical, so she explained: "I mean, if I'd thought about it long enough, I probably would've figured out eventually that no human guy could have such pretty eyes." She smiled a little when he blushed. Josh Evans really was the shyest boy, she thought; he was completely clueless about his effect on the opposite sex.

To set him at ease, she took his hand and pulled him down to sit on the boxes beside her. "That's why I don't need to know about that right now. Where you're from, I mean. We can talk about that later. I mean, if you want." She swallowed nervously. "But right now, I really need to know when you were going to tell me what your aunt just said ... that I'm the girl of your dreams."

"She said that?" Josh sounded horrified.

Andrea nodded.

Josh groaned and dropped his forehead into his hands. It was a gesture she'd seen him do a million times, but she had never found it so reassuring before. Whatever else had happened that afternoon, Josh was still normal. And like all normal teenagers (herself included), he was occasionally mortified by the adults in his family.

"So?" she prodded.

Sighing, he looked up at her. But before he could say anything, his parents, followed closely by his aunt and uncle, burst through the swinging door.

"Josh!" his mother exclaimed, pulling him up from the boxes and into a tight hug. "Oh my god! Are you okay? Maria called us...."

"I'm fine, Mom. Really. I'm okay. Uncle Michael did a good job on my shoulder."

Josh's parents exchanged concerned glances, then his father, who had been Andrea's pediatrician since she was little, examined Josh's shoulder. After a couple of minutes of poking and maneuvering Josh's arm, Dr. Evans nodded with satisfaction. "Your Uncle Michael *did* do a good job. It's a good thing he grew out of the making-things-explode phase." As Dr. Evans ruffled Josh's hair, Andrea noticed that his eyes seemed to be laughing at Michael Guerin over Josh's head. Dr. Evans and Mr. Guerin had been best friends forever, she remembered, just as Mrs. Evans and Mrs. Guerin had been. "I think your mom and I would have been a little upset if Michael and Maria had exploded you," Dr. Evans said dryly.

Josh laughed. "Dad, your sense of humor is so weird."

"I know. That's what your mom has been saying all these years."

"Not that it did any good," Josh's mother commented, managing a small laugh herself. Andrea thought Mrs. Evans looked less pale and worried now that Dr. Evans had pronounced Josh fine.

Watching Josh with his parents, Andrea realized that Josh was the image of his father. Their eyes were exactly alike. Which meant, she supposed, that Josh and his uncle weren't the only people who weren't from around here, but that Josh had likely inherited his not-from-around-here-ness from his father. Which meant probably that Josh's entire family -- his sister, all his cousins -- were also not from around here. It was simple deductive reasoning, Andrea concluded.

When she realized exactly what she was concluding, Andrea took an involuntary step back from them. How many aliens were wandering around Roswell, anyway? she wondered.

Her step backwards caught Josh's attention. "Dad, you should check out Andrea too," he said. "She got shot first."

Dr. Evans frowned at Josh's uncle and aunt. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"I forgot to tell you," Mr. Guerin shrugged. "He healed her. His brain is filled with her too. Like someone I could name who never thought about anyone else but the girl he had the crush-to-end-all-crushes on. It was the most boring set of visions I've ever had to live through except for the ones in your brain, Max."

"Geez, Uncle Michael," Josh groaned, trying to look anywhere but at Andrea. "Why didn't you just let me bleed to death?"

Mr. Guerin laughed and stabbed a thumb at Dr. Evans. "*His* brain was always crowded with visions of your mom. It was a whole lot worse. Still is. Trust me." He smirked at Josh as if that revelation should have made him feel better.

It obviously didn't because Josh just dropped his head into his hands again.

Josh's father looked like he wasn't far from that reaction himself. "Shut up, Michael," he muttered, "and get out of the way so I can check out Andrea."

Andrea submitted to the same prodding and maneuvering that Josh had gone through until Dr. Evans pronounced her equally fine. Looking her in the eye, he asked gently, "Should we call your foster parents, Andrea?"

Andrea squirmed under his compassionate gaze. "They're at work. They wouldn't like to be interrupted for something like this."

"You were just shot! How could your parents not care?" Mrs. Guerin exclaimed. There was a funny note of recognition in her voice, as if she had heard something like this before, didn't believe it then, and didn't want to believe it this time either.

Feeling more and more uncomfortable, Andrea said nothing. She stared at her sneakers, thinking about how much she hated it when people found out about her home life. It wasn't that her foster parents were bad or abusive; they just didn't care about her all that much.

Andrea jumped when she felt a hand on her arm. She looked up to see Mrs. Guerin smiling at her sympathetically. "That's okay, Andrea. We can bring them up to date on the situation after they get home from work. The important thing is that you're okay."

"We're both okay, Aunt Maria," Josh said. He looked around at all the adults in the room. "So, um, can you guys go away? I mean, don't take this the wrong way or anything, but we were in the middle of a conversation."

Josh's mother bit her bottom lip. "You're sure you're all right?"

"Yeah, Mom. Stop worrying."

"Okay then. We'll wait for you in the dining room." Josh's mother turned to leave, then stopped and turned back. Smiling at Andrea, she offered, "If you like, Andrea, we could always sit down sometime and talk for a bit?" She glanced at Dr. Evans mischievously. "You probably don't know this, but I've been in your shoes. So I think I know how you're feeling right now." Mrs. Evans smiled again, then stood on tiptoe to kiss Dr. Evans. He smiled back, and for a second they looked like they had drifted into their own little world. Andrea fought back a strange, almost envious feeling as she watched Mrs. Evans take Dr. Evans' arm and tug him with her through the swinging door.

"C'mon, cheesehead," Mr. Guerin said as he tweaked one of Mrs. Guerin's still-blonde curls. "That's our cue to get out of here too." Mrs. Guerin laughed and wrapped her arm around her husband's waist as they followed Josh's parents out of the Crashdown's backroom.

Andrea stared after them in amazement. She had never seen such openly affectionate adults before. Her foster parents definitely weren't like that.

Josh was staring after his family too, although his face was more exasperated than awed. Once the door had swung shut behind them, he turned to face Andrea, who was sitting on the boxes again. "Okay. Let's get this over with. So where were we?"

"Are they always like that?" she asked, ignoring his question for the moment.

Clearly confused, Josh sat down. "Like what?"

"So PDA."

"PDA?"

"Public Displays of Affection."

Josh laughed. "That's a good name for it. Yeah, they've always been like that. My whole family's like that. It's a Czechoslovakian thing, I think."

"Czechoslovakian?" Andrea repeated, feeling confused herself. Unless she was forgetting her world geography, she seemed to remember that Czechoslovakia had been dissolved into the Czech Republic and Slovakia a long time ago.

Josh smiled a little. "Yeah. That's what we, um, call ourselves. We don't really know much about where we're from, but Aunt Maria called Dad, Uncle Michael, and Aunt Isabel Czechoslovakians when she first found out about them, and it stuck. She's sort of into code words and stuff."

"Ah, cheesehead and spaceboy," Andrea said, her voice full of wonder. "I get it now."

Josh smiled a little wider this time. "You don't know half of the disgusting names Uncle Michael and Aunt Maria used to call each other when they were little. Cheesehead and spaceboy are just the tip of the ice berg."

"Really?" Andrea laughed. "Somehow I can believe it. So--" she tilted her head at him-- "tell me something. Is your uncle always covered in paint?"

Josh grinned. "You should see my cousin Nikki. She's even worse. She just cleans up better than he does when she goes out in public."

They both laughed at the thought of his paint-splattered relatives until Andrea sobered, remembering the thread of their earlier conversation. "Being Czechoslovakian doesn't get you out of answering my question, Josh."

"I was hoping you'd forgotten."

"I'm like an elephant about stuff like that. I mean, finding out that someone thinks I'm the girl of his dreams doesn't happen every day. I'm not going to let that one go easily. Even though I forget other stuff all the time. Carmina could probably tell you stories about that in fact, like the time when I was ten that I started to strip down to my bathing suit at the beach and almost realized too late that I'd forgotten to put on my bathing suit underneath...."

Andrea stopped mid-sentence when she realized that Josh was looking at her strangely. "Your bathing suit had flowers on it, didn't it, when that happened?" he asked. She noticed that his voice sounded strange too.

"Blue and yellow daisies," she said, nodding. "What are you talking about, Josh?" She squinted at him suspiciously. "How did you know about my bathing suit from when I was ten? I'm definitely sure I never went swimming with you."

Josh's cheeks reddened. "I saw it. When I healed you. I mean, I saw that moment. And I knew that it was the single, most embarrassing moment of your life. You wanted to crawl under a rock."

"Oh my god. You *saw* things when you healed me? And you knew how I felt about them?" Andrea could barely keep the shocked dismay out of her voice. She was afraid that he'd seen how she felt about her foster parents; if he had, she thought, he probably wouldn't think she was a very nice person. After all, they had given her a home; they hadn't needed to. And it wasn't their fault that they were so busy with everything else that they left her on her own most of the time....

"I didn't see anything important," Josh assured her. "Just that bathing suit and how you felt about it. And your first day of school when you were little." His beautiful dark eyes filled with pained sympathy. "And the orphanage. Stuff like that."

Afraid that he wasn't telling her everything, she jumped up and started pacing around the room. "You had no right to look into my brain."

"I didn't do it on purpose. It just happened."

Andrea glared at him. "I don't care. You had no right."

At first, Josh looked like contrite. After a couple of minutes though, when her attitude didn't change, he began to look ticked off. "Fine," he snapped, and she was completely surprised to hear calm, even-tempered Josh Evans use even a remotely angry tone of voice. "I had no right. Sue me."

Immediately Andrea felt bad. He had just saved her life, and she was being horrible to him. She stopped pacing and sat down beside him again. Placing her hand on his arm, she said softly, "Josh, I'm sorry I'm being such a jerk."

He studied her hand for a minute before replying. "That's okay. It *was* kind of an invasion of privacy. Although there wasn't really time for me to ask you first...." Josh's voice trailed off, and he seemed unable to meet her eyes again.

Andrea smiled, thinking it was kind of sweet that Josh was so shy.

Still not looking at her, he said, "I've never tried this before, but maybe I can make the connection go the other way. So you wouldn't feel like I got to see into your head without you being able to see into mine." He looked up then, straight into her eyes. "Is it okay if...? I mean, I have to touch you."

Andrea nodded, and Josh put his hands on either side of her face. "Now just take deep breaths," he murmured, "and try to let your mind blank out."

Andrea hardly heard him. She was entranced by his warm, golden-brown eyes. She should have realized before, she kept thinking, that no human boy could have such beautiful eyes.

As her mind blanked out, that thought faded and was replaced by a rush of images. Andrea saw a very young Josh, wearing a cape and curled up on a bed between his parents, being read to from a dog-eared copy of "Where The Wild Things Are." She saw Josh, a little older, being bitten by a fox. Then Josh, looking proud that he was finally old enough to play Monopoly with his cousins, and cards with his father and his uncles. Then Josh, not knowing how to comfort his sister when her husband died. And finally Josh, watching Andrea laughing with Carmina in the halls at their high school, watching her studying in the library, watching her waitressing at the Crashdown, watching her sitting quietly and just observing the world.

And Andrea realized that she could feel everything he was feeling. She could feel his loneliness. She realized that for the first time, she was really seeing Josh Evans. And she saw herself as he saw her. She saw that, in his eyes, she was beautiful.

She was awestruck. She was going to ask him if what she had seen was really true, but before she could get the words out, Carmina skidded through the swinging door and into the backroom, talking a mile a minute. "Hey, Andrea? Are you okay back here? The sheriff wants to ask you some questions...." She stopped when she saw Josh and Andrea standing so close together, Josh with his hands on Andrea's face. "Oh my god!" she shrieked. "What're you doing to her? Why are your hands glowing?"

Josh jerked away, leaving Andrea feeling colder and lonelier than she had ever felt in her whole life. She already missed his closeness. But she knew she needed to calm down her best friend before Carmina did or said something truly wacky. Grabbing Carmina's hands, Andrea said as soothingly as she could, "Carmina! Relax. Don't freak out. I can explain everything."

Josh sighed. "My parents are going to kill me."

"No, they won't, Josh."

"Yeah, they will."

"Look, trust me, okay?" Andrea smiled at him, willing him to not worry. She could only handle one freaking-out person at a time. When he gave her a small smile and a nod, she returned the nod and turned back to her best friend. "Carmina, you have to promise me that you will not freak out."

"Look, this is me. I don't freak out. What's going on? Why were his hands glowing? What did he do to you before?" Carmina's voice started to rise hysterically again. "You weren't really shot, were you?"

Andrea gently shook her best friend. "Carm. Don't freak out on me. You said you wouldn't. I'm going to explain everything." She took a deep breath. "Okay, this is the explanation. Josh and his family are not from around here. They're from somewhere else."

Carmina looked at her blankly. "So? I don't get it." She transferred her puzzled gaze to Josh. "So you're not from around here. What's the big deal? What does that have to do with your glowing hands? And what happened before? I mean, the world is filled with immigrants. Even a hick desert town like Roswell, New Mexico, has them. So what's the big deal about where you're from, Josh?"

Josh grimaced. "My family isn't from anywhere you would know, Carmina. We're not even from this solar system. We're, uh, from...." He pointed up.

"Ha, ha. Funny," Carmina said sarcastically. "So, like, are you from up north or something? Your family is Canadian?"

Josh shook his head, a perplexed expression on his face. "Why does everyone assume that? It's peculiar." He pondered the question for a moment before shaking his head again. "Carmina, we're aliens. From the 1947 crash. That's why my hands were glowing. That's why I was able to heal Andrea's gunshot wound."

"This isn't funny, Joshua Evans. That was a weather balloon. And you're too young anyway." Carmina glared at him. "I have no idea how someone who obviously sucks at basic math will become our class valedictorian."

"Carmina!" Andrea exclaimed, slapping her friend's arm.

Josh tried again. "Carmina, listen to me. My father, my Aunt Isabel, and my Uncle Michael were all in the 1947 crash. They were in these pods...."

Carmina stared at him. "You're delusional. You know that, right?" She looked from Josh to Andrea then back to Josh. Something in their faces must have convinced her to be a little more open-minded, because she relented. "Fine. Let's say for the sake of argument that I believe you. Prove it."

Josh sighed. "Okay. What color do you want your hair to be?"

"Purple."

"Fine." Josh reached a hand towards Carmina, and magically Carmina's hair turned from black to deep violet.

"Did you do it?" Carmina demanded, obviously not believing that he could.

Andrea knew she was standing there with her mouth hanging open, so she snapped it shut and handed Carmina a shiny metal frying pan from one of the shelves behind her. "Look for yourself."

Carmina stared at her reflection, then screamed. "Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god! You're an alien!" She dropped the frying pan and ran out of the backroom as if the horsemen of the Apocalypse were chasing her.

Josh and Andrea ran after her, both of them hoping that only Josh's family and the sheriff were still in the Crashdown to witness Carmina's hair-color transformation. On the other side of the swinging door, they stopped dead. Everyone's eyes were trained on them, filled with varying degrees of reproach and dismay.

"Nice dye-job," Josh's Uncle Michael remarked, arching a sardonic eyebrow in Carmina's direction. Carmina was cowering in the arms of Josh's Aunt Maria, who was trying to get her to sniff from her ever-present bottle of cedar oil.

"I think maybe you should change her hair back, sport," Sheriff Valenti said dryly. "And avoid a career as a hair stylist at all costs."

Josh cringed and stole a quick glance at his parents, prompting Andrea to glance at them too. Dr. and Mrs. Evans looked nonplussed ... and a tiny bit amused.

Catching the warning glint lurking under the amusement in his father's eyes, a warning that even Andrea could recognize, Josh moved rapidly towards Carmina and touched her hair, turning it back to its original color.

A muffled "thank you" came from the shivering bundle in Mrs. Guerin's arms.

And Josh sighed for the umpteenth time that afternoon. "What a day. Remind me not to study here anymore," he said to no one in particular.

Andrea grabbed his arm. "Are you kidding? I am so glad you studied here today, Josh. You saved my life. I didn't even thank you yet."

Josh blushed. "You don't have to. It wasn't a big deal."

"You're weird, Josh Evans. Of course it was a big deal." Andrea shook her head at him. "You're definitely weird."

Glancing at his father, Josh laughed. "That's probably true. Everyone always says I'm like my father. He has such a weird sense of humor, and this whole day has kinda been like that day...." He stopped and glanced again at his father, who winked at him. There was a strange light in Josh's eyes when he returned his gaze to Andrea. "I guess we're just weirdos from outer space," he said thoughtfully. "No wonder Carmina freaked."

Everyone in the Crashdown Café -- the sheriff, the Guerins, Josh's parents, Josh, Andrea, even Carmina -- cracked up at his conclusion.

"I was right," Andrea said when she got her breath back. "You *are* totally weird, Josh Evans."

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