Chapter Text
Michael closes his eyes and rests his head against the wall, taking slow and steady breaths. The sound of laughter on the other side of the wall makes its way to his ears and if he listens close enough, he can hear the faint melody of ‘Joy to the World.’ The men outside are celebrating, which means it must be Christmas.
Huh.
He’d been doing his best to keep track of the days, but time has gotten away from him and he’d stopped trying about the time he realized nobody was coming for him.
They don’t give him a window, so he has no natural light to tell if it’s day or night. The fluorescent lights above his head never go off. He’s always brightly lit like the lab rat he is. Early on, he’d been able to count the days by counting his meals, but after one too many torture sessions, his sense of time grew increasingly less accurate. By the time he’d hit what he could only guess was day 50, he realized counting at all was pointless.
Only now, he knows it’s Christmas. Michael has a definitive time stamp to track his time in captivity.
156 days.
He’s been here, living out his worst nightmares for five months and two days.
The first few days after they had taken him, he’d been so confident that somebody would come for him. He’d thought for sure that Max and Isobel would burn the world to the ground to find him. That Alex would hack every system in the world to find his location. He just had to stay strong long enough for the cavalry to arrive.
Even after the first few weeks had passed and some of the worst experiments had taken place, he’d still believed that his family was looking for him. That Isobel was getting into the mind of any and everyone that could know something. That Max was calling in every favor he’d earned from his time as a deputy. That Alex was utilizing his military contacts. That Maria would have a vision. Hell, he’d even believed Liz had been working on leads, even from California.
He doesn’t believe any of those things anymore. He knows better. Nobody is looking for him. Nobody misses him. He’s not even sure anybody has noticed he’s gone. And even if they have, they are all better off without him.
He is going to die in this barren cell. Just like his mom died in Caulfield. And at the rate these so-called scientists are going, he won’t make it a year, much less 70. But what options does he have? He’d tried to escape early on. He’d put his genius brain to work and come up with plan after plan, but they’d all failed and each time they’d brutally tortured him as punishment. He eventually stopped trying. Operant conditioning at its most effective.
The music on the other side of the wall gets louder as that cheesy Mariah Carey song comes on that Michael hates. Isobel always plays it on repeat every year, as if no other Christmas songs exist. She doesn’t understand good music. Won’t even listen to Elvis’ Christmas Album .
God, he misses arguing with Isobel about music. He misses bickering with Max about how to prepare the prime rib on Christmas Eve properly. He misses Sander’s making him hang the single strand of tinsel the shop owns so it’s more festive and then grumbling at him over the sounds of Dolly Parton’s Christmas album. He misses Arturo’s smile as he invites him in for a milkshake each year, telling him nobody should be alone on Christmas Day. He misses Maria sassing him about how he should pay his tab as a Christmas present to her. Or her annoyed sigh when, at some point, something breaks and he refuses to fix it until she clears his tab.
Hell, he even misses Alex’s embarrassed smile and shrug the few Christmases he’d shown up on his doorstep with a six-pack in his hand and an apology on his tongue. It didn’t happen often that Alex got leave over the holidays, but Michael cherished each one they spent together. Even if they’d always eventually ended with a fight and Alex walking away. That decade after high school hadn’t been kind to them, but right about now, Michael would give anything to go back.
His body aches. He can’t find a comfortable position that doesn’t make him want to cry out, but he learned long ago that making any sound won’t end well for him. So instead he grits his teeth and forces his mind to think of other things.
Isobel and Max are probably at their parents’ house baking Christmas cookies, watching some ridiculous Christmas movie, and having a holiday straight out of Leave It to Beaver. Liz would have come home for the holiday and is spending it with Rosa and her dad. Arturo always keeps the diner open for the people who don’t have anywhere to go on Christmas. Maria would have spent the morning with her mother, but had the Pony open by 4pm for one of the busiest nights of the year. She always cleans up well from all the locals who have had about enough family togetherness.
And Alex… Well, he is celebrating Christmas with Forrest, isn’t he? Isn’t that what happy, functioning couples do? He can just picture them cuddled up under a blanket together, listening to Christmas music, and enjoying each other’s company. Maybe they’d even traveled for the holidays? Spent them at Forrest’s parents? They’ll have been together long enough by now for something serious like that.
It’s good. Alex deserves that. He deserves more than some hastily cooked meal in his airstream. The only decor: a single strand of Christmas lights hung up, half of the bulbs burnt out. It’s better that he’s gone. Alex can move on without the memory of him hanging around.
The world without Michael in it is better.
The military can go on assuming that they've found the last of his kind in him, and his family can live in peace. Free from fear and persecution. He’s nearly positive these idiots believe his sob story of being left alone in the desert as a child, living alone his entire life.
He lays down and pulls his knees to his body for warmth. They don’t give him things like blankets anymore. Not since that one doctor evaluated him and determined he couldn’t be trusted with anything in his cell… Whatever that means. It’s not like he could suffocate a doctor or something with a pillow, they never open his cell without drugging him first. And it’s not like he has any energy these days to hurt himself. Even if he tried, they’d see what he was doing and stop him before he ever got anywhere.
Michael isn’t suicidal, though he probably should be in a place like this.
If his mom survived 70 years in captivity, he can take a few months. Besides, as long as they are focused on him, they aren’t focused on finding others like him. His family can live their lives. Isn’t that the way it’s supposed to be?
He crosses his arms and rubs them, trying to get warm, but it’s futile. He closes his eyes and prays for sleep to come.
****
Michael wakes up to the feeling of somebody shaking him. It’s not a new feeling. He’s used to being manhandled. Nobody here treats him like he’s a person, they all poke and prod at him like he’s an object. It doesn’t matter that he looks like them, he’s not one of them. Therefore, he doesn’t deserve any kind of compassion.
What is new, is that he doesn’t feel the drugs slowly moving through his system, paralyzing him. They never open his cell without subduing him first. He’s too dangerous otherwise, even without his powers. At least that’s what the lead scientist had said. He’d called Michael a weapon of mass destruction. It’s laughable. Without his telekinesis, he’s no better or stronger than the next guy.
Still, he doesn’t argue it. Being a WMD benefits him in some ways. It keeps the guards from doing anything more than verbally harassing him when they get bored. He can only imagine the things they would do to him if they weren’t so scared of him.
Hands shake at his shoulders again.
“Michael,” a familiar voice whispers in his ear. He squeezes his eyes shut tighter.
Hallucinations.
He’s grown used to them. They set in when the pain he’s experiencing grows beyond the point of being bearable, but not so horrible that he passes out. He cannot count the number of times he’s hallucinated his mother holding him and promising him that everything will be okay. Or the times he’s woken up to the smell of eggs cooking and the feeling of sofa springs poking at his back and Sander’s dog drooling into his neck. Many times, his brain takes him back to the airstream, waking up to Alex kissing his way down his chest, smiling up at him brightly when he realizes that he’s awake.
Then there are the rescue fantasies. Time might have gotten away from him here, but if he was a guessing man, he’d say that at least four times a week his brain feeds him elaborate escape fantasies. He hallucinates Alex showing up in a blaze of gunfire to rescue him. Isobel throws open the doors of his cell while Max fights off the guards behind her with bolts of lightning.
They are always vivid and feel so real. That’s the beauty of the brain. It has the tremendous ability to protect itself when reality is too much. And all too often these days, reality is too much. Pain is too great.
“Mikey, wake up,” the voice whispers again, sounding frantic.
It’s odd. He’s had a lot of rescue fantasies, but never is Liz the one breaking him out. It’s an interesting choice for his brain to land on. He cracks his eyes open and sees Liz crouched beside him, dressed in a white lab coat, a blonde wig, and thick glasses. He’s not sure what his mind has in store for him tonight, but he’s not in the mood for it.
Hope is for suckers.
“You’re not real.”
He rolls over so he’s facing the wall. It places his back to the door, which isn’t great for defense, but he’s hoping the Christmas party going on is enough to have earned him a night off from their experimenting.
“We don’t have a lot of time, I need you to get up.” Liz pulls on his shoulder and rolls him over onto his back. He hisses as one of the more painful bruises makes itself known.
“Ay dios mio, what have they done to you?”
Her fingers run through his hair, gently detangling what must be a complete mess. It feels good. It’s been so long since anyone touched him in kindness. She feels real, but then again, they always do.
“Why you?” he asks, figuring if his brain is going to keep up with this fantasy of Liz Ortecho showing up instead of the person he most wants to see, then his brain can at least explain why.
“Because it’s Christmas and I’m not showing up to the party empty-handed.” She smiles, but he can see the stress in her face. Another odd choice for his brain to make. “Now let’s go.”
Michael shakes his head. The moment his brain starts to play out this rescue is the moment the stopwatch starts. She’ll take his hands and pull him to his feet. His brain will let him believe she got the cell door open. They’ll run down the hall together, dodging security and doctors along the way. He may even regain the use of his powers and be able to use them to knock out some guards. The moment they exit the building, the hallucination will fade away and he’ll be right back where he started. Alone in his cell. Or even worse, strapped down to a table while scientists run another test.
He doesn’t want that. Not tonight. Not while he can still hear the Christmas music and laughter on the other side of the wall, and he’s feeling more lonely than he’s felt in weeks.
“Just sit with me,” he says instead. “I don’t want to be alone at Christmas.”
Liz isn’t his first choice of company, but she’s a good friend. One of his best friends, in fact. He enjoys being around her. And while he’d rather be able to talk to Alex or Isobel and Max, if she is who his brain is giving him, he’ll take it. Anything to distract him from reality.
“You won’t be,” she assures him. “But first we have to get you out of here before anybody notices what’s happening.”
She grabs onto his wrists until he’s sitting up, his body protesting the movement. How kind of his hallucination to provide him with realistic aches… Really make it feel real.
“I’m not strong enough to carry you, so I need you to help me,” she says.
Michael snorts. “You’re a result of my sensory cortex going into overload and my frontal lobe shutting down because of trauma, and yet you can’t carry me in this made up scenario?”
“You think you’re hallucinating.” She’s looking at him like he’s some puzzle to solve.
“Don’t make me one of your science experiments, Ortecho. I get enough of that in here.”
She looks like she wants to say more, but doesn’t. Instead, she pulls on his wrists until he’s standing, then puts one of his arms over her shoulder and walks him towards the open cell door. Each step is painful. His spine is a mess from all the testing they’ve done. His legs ache. He hasn’t moved enough in the last few months to be in shape. The simple movements have him winded, lungs expanding in a search for air, irritating what he’s sure are cracked ribs.
“You’ve got this,” she says. “I’m getting you out of here and we’re going home.”
Home. It’s a nice dream.
****
Alarms blare above them, making his ears ring and his head pound. Liz grips his hand tightly as they crowd together in a supply closet. Her other hand types away at her phone frantically. He doesn’t have the energy to look at who she’s texting. It wouldn’t matter. None of this is real anyways, and he’s so drained he can barely hold his own head up.
There’s shouting outside as the guards search for him. People run up and down the hall on the other side of the door. Everyone is yelling about finding Prisoner Zero. That’s Michael. Prisoner Zero. He wonders how long it will take for them to get caught and when they do, when this hallucination will fade away and he’ll have to face the reality of whatever experiment they’ve currently got him going through that has his lungs burning.
“I’m going to get you out of here,” Liz whispers so quietly that he almost doesn’t hear her.
“It’s okay,” he tells her as the world fades into black.
“Michael? Michael—”
****
When Michael wakes up, he’s surprised to find himself in the middle of a gunfight in a sunny parking lot. Typically, his rescue fantasies start out slow and build up to the action, but this one has him thrown right into the center of it.
There’s a man that looks vaguely familiar holding him up while shooting at the guards. Liz is fumbling with keys, trying to get a car unlocked.
There are bullets flying and people yelling.
Then there’s blood and screaming.
Michael uses every ounce of energy he has in his body to draw on his power, praying he’s far enough away from the building for the yellow powder to no longer incapacitate him. It takes everything in him to stop the bullets, freezing them in their spot, inches from Liz’s body. His own body protests. It feels like somebody is clawing at his brain. He trembles, but he continues to hold the bullets back. Liz gets the car open and they all climb inside the car just as his power wanes. The bullets hit the car, but they are already speeding off. He gathers just enough energy to blow the tires of every remaining car in the lot before he passes out.
****
There’s an argument happening outside of his cell. He can’t make out the words yet, but the tone is clear. If his captors are arguing over him, it’s never a good sign. It means somebody has an ethical concern and is about to get fired. And if one of these sick fucks has an ethical concern, then whatever they have planned for the day has to be exceptionally awful.
“I still don’t understand why you refuse to let me take you to a hospital?”
“Because we can’t show up at a hospital without alerting the world to our location.”
“You’re bleeding.”
“It’s just a scratch, I’m fine.”
That voice sounds like Liz, which is odd. This would be the first time one of his hallucinations went on for so long. His mind must be well and truly fucked at this point.
“They shot you!”
“It grazed me.”
Michael can’t place the other voice that she’s talking to, which is odd. If his mind is making up some alternate reality for him to escape into, it can only really pull from people he’s met before. He opens his eyes and is surprised to see that he’s in the back seat of a car. He can’t say this is a favorite hallucination of his. He’d much rather have woken up in the airstream next to a naked and smiling Alex. Or on Isobel’s couch as she flips through cheesy Hallmark movies.
“Are we really splitting hairs here? A bullet hit you and that is why you won’t stop bleeding.”
Bleeding? He’s momentarily confused before he remembers Liz got shot in his last hallucination. With great effort, he sits up, groaning along the way. Neither party standing outside the car notices.
“It’s not serious. It didn’t hit any major arteries and I have hours before I’m even at risk for bleeding out,” she says.
The man laughs, though he clearly finds no humor in the situation. “Well, that’s a relief.”
Diego? Michael thinks the man is Diego, Liz’s ex-fiance from Denver. The one who made her the job offer of a lifetime in California, prompting her to leave them all behind. He’s only seen the guy in pictures over social media. Ones Isobel showed him early on when they’d still been trying to run Liz out of town. Ones Max has shoved in his face as he cried into his beer about Liz running off to California with her ex.
“I’m fine. Once I get to Roswell, I’ll let Kyle stitch me up,” she says. “But we have to get Michael back home. We can’t afford to be intercepted. We can’t fight them off again if they find us. We need backup.”
“At least let me go with you.”
“You’re the decoy. As long as they are looking for you and your car, they won’t be looking for us.”
This right here is the crack team his brain wants him to believe broke him out of an underground, government run facility. It’s amusing.
He knocks on the window, prompting both of them to turn and look at him. He rolls down the window and lays his head back against the headrest, barely able to keep it up. He feels like he could sleep for a thousand years and it would never be enough.
“If you two are done, I’d like to get home before this fantasy fades,” he says. The effort of talking causes his lungs to feel like they are on fire.
Maybe if he’s lucky, this dream of his will hold out long enough to get a genuine hug from his siblings. To crawl into bed with Alex and let him hold him as he cries.
“Of course,” Liz says, opening the door for him. “Come on, we’re switching cars.”
Michael attempts to crawl out of the back seat, but the moment he moves to stand, his vision swims and his legs give out. The last thing he sees is Liz’s concerned face as Diego catches him.
****
Michael slowly drifts back into consciousness, processing the gentle rocking of a car along with the sound of 90s alt rock. His brain is still foggy and refusing to follow orders in a timely fashion. It takes some time, but he finally pries his eyes open. Liz is driving in the front seat. It’s dark outside, she’s just barely illuminated from the lights of the highway.
He gathers his energy and pushes himself up into a seated position, biting down on the inside of his cheek against the pain the movement sends through his spine and the ever present burning as his ribs push painfully against his ribs making it hard to breathe normally.
“Hey,” Liz says softly, looking at him through the rear-view mirror. “You’re up.”
He doesn’t respond. There’s no point. Liz is a figment of his imagination and thus, she can read his mind and know exactly what he’s thinking. Why strain himself?
He looks out the window, taking in the stars. God, how he misses the stars. Misses laying in the back of his truck in the middle of the desert, far away from all the light pollution that blocks the infinite beauty of the night sky.
He catches sight of the billboard for Peppers Grill & Bar, and his heart skips a beat. He’s driven US-70 often enough working the tow for Sanders. They are 17 minutes outside of town. He’s not sure why his brain can’t just fast forward this part and let him be home already.
“How are you feeling?” Liz asks.
Michael doesn’t answer her. She should know that he feels like shit. She wouldn’t be here if he wasn’t in severe pain and working hard to block it out.
“Right, stupid question,” she says. “We’ll be home soon. Kyle is already on his way over to check you out.”
Home. He’s not sure he even knows what that is anymore. An empty Airstream now tainted by the memory of being dragged out of it under the cover of night?
Liz turns off the main road before they make it into the main part of town, and Michael knows instantly where she’s taking him. The only person who lives on this side of town is Alex. His heart tightens in his chest and his eyes water. He bites the inside of his cheeks as emotion overwhelms him. He prays his brain will hold out long enough to lay eyes on Alex. Even if it’s not real, he just wants to see him before passing out from whatever torture they are inflicting on him leading to such a prolonged hallucination.
Liz turns onto Alex’s street. The houses are all brightly lit with colorful Christmas lights, but when they pull up to Alex’s place, he’s surprised to find it dark apart from the porch light. He holds his breath and his stomach twists in knots as they park. Alex’s car is in the driveway right next to Isobel’s. Liz turns off the car and looks back at him.
“You ready?”
She doesn’t wait for an answer. She steps out of the car and comes around the side to open his door. The air is icy and he shivers. He looks down to see that he’s still in his dirty old prison uniform. Liz shrugs out of her coat and puts it around his shoulders, which only serves to make him feel even more vulnerable.
She holds out her hand for him, but he can’t take it. Even though he knows this entire thing isn’t real, somehow he still feels nervous. Embarrassed. He doesn’t want to be seen like this. He doesn’t want to interrupt. It’s Christmas, what if everyone is busy celebrating? What if they aren’t happy to see him?
“Come on,” Liz says with an understanding smile. “Everyone will be relieved to see you.”
She reaches for his hand and tugs gently until he follows her willingly. It takes some time, and he has to lean heavily against the car afterwards, but he gets out of the backseat. She places his arm around her shoulder and grabs onto his waist for support as they slowly make their way up the driveway and towards the front door. His body aches, but it’s drowned out by the butterflies growing in his stomach.
They make it up the driveway painstakingly slow, but by the time they are stepping onto Alex’s front patio, he can’t do it anymore. His lungs are on fire and his back is screaming at him. His legs can’t support him and neither can Liz. He slides against the wall and into a pile of firewood.
Liz tries to get him to move, but he waves her on, needing more than a moment. He lays back against the wood and closes his eyes, trying to will his body to stop feeling pain, though it’s pointless. These hallucinations of his are a pleasant distraction from whatever those assholes are doing to him, but they can’t overpower reality and the genuine pain he’s in.
“Don’t move,” she instructs him, as if he’s in any danger of that. They are sitting here because he can’t move.
He listens to her walk away and knock on the front door. He can’t make out what’s being said, but it doesn’t sound good. Alex sounds angry, and Michael should have known better than to just show up here unannounced. Even in his dreams, he’s not good enough for Alex.
Michael hears a shocked gasp and opens his eyes just in time to see Alex moving towards him. Alex’s arms go around him and the touch shocks his system. It takes a moment to process it. The arms around him, hands grasping desperately at his shirt… The nose buried in his curls while his breath tickles his ear… It’s all so real. More real than any of his hallucinations have ever been before.
He takes a big, shuddering breath as reality sinks in. His arms move around Alex, clinging to him for dear life, terrified that he’s going to slip away. That he’ll evaporate into thin air. That he’s going to wake up in his cell and this will have all been a dream.
“Oh my god,” Isobel says, gasping in shock. She’s instantly at his back, clinging to him.
With both of them holding him close, protecting him from the world, he can’t help but cry as the trauma of the last five months hits him. This is real. He’s free.
He’s home.