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When Michael was ten years old, shortly before he got sent back to Roswell and reunited with Max and Isobel, he spent two weeks in a group home in Albuquerque. It was one of those situations where they had nowhere to put him so they stuck him with a bunch of kids as an interim measure, until the next fucking bullshit disaster foster parents came along to see if they could squeeze a bit of extra cash out of having him around.
But unlike so much of that time in his life, where he’s blocked out the specifics of the people he’d met and the things he’d gone through, he remembers this group home. It’s where he’d met Gwen.
Everyone else in the home was younger than Michael, a gaggle of five and six-year-olds running around, all of them looking too small for their age. Then Michael, ten, and Gwen, twelve. Practically an adult, by Michael’s standards. World-weary, another foster system lifer. She looked mean and scary and Michael had noticed her right away, with every intention of steering clear. But then she’d caught him crying in the bathroom.
It had been a Sunday night. He remembers this because he’d been absolutely petrified of going to school the next morning. It was just so exhausting, going somewhere new. People staring at him. People writing him off before they’d even spoken to him, as dangerous, damaged, no damn good. At this point in his life, Michael believed this about himself, that he wasn’t worth shit. But it still hurt to have the confirmatory evidence of it stacking up wherever he went. People looked at him and they thought they had him all figured out, and what else was he supposed to do but meet that hostility head-on? It was exhausting, having to always be ready for a fight.
He’d looked up at the older, meaner, tougher girl standing in the doorway to the bathroom, and gritted his teeth, ready to spring if she took a step towards him.
But Gwen took one look at him, at his puffy eyes and tear-stained skin, tilted her head to the side, and said: “You’re sick. You’re running a fever.”
Michael had blinked at her. He’d wanted to explain that he’d never been sick before, that his skin was always hotter to the touch than expected, but then he realized that she hadn’t even touched him. “What are you talking about?”
“You don’t want to go to school tomorrow, so you’re sick.”
The next morning, Gwen had told the lady who ran the group home, and Michael had been allowed to stay in bed. He’d been given soup, and tissues, and allowed to watch TV in the living room when he came downstairs later in the day. Despite the fact that he felt entirely fine in body, it was a relief, to lie around all day and know he wasn’t going to be yelled at. A reprieve, a reset, something he hadn’t thought would actually help. But he realized lying there that he’d been on the verge of something. That if he’d gone to school or been made to undergo meeting new people in a new place, he might have done something he couldn’t take back. His fear, his anger, it was his own worst enemy. People got hurt if they got too close, and Michael, despite what most people seemed to believe about him, had never actually wanted to hurt anyone.
When Gwen had gotten home from school, she’d come to see him, asked him how his day as an invalid had gone. “You’ve got to be sparing about it. If you’re sick too often, they’ll stop believing it’s true.”
“Thanks,” Michael had said slowly. “I needed—not to go to school today.”
“It’s not even really a lie,” Gwen said, pinning him with serious eyes. “Sometimes the sickness isn’t in the body. Doesn’t mean you don’t need the rest.”
Not long after, he got sent somewhere else and the newest round of anxieties and nightmares began. He never saw Gwen again, but he never forgot her either.
Lying here now, sick and angry and feeling all sense of himself and his identity stripped away from him, he wishes she were here. It’s stupid and it makes no sense; he has no idea what happened to that girl, or if she’d even remember him now. He’s surrounded by people who care about him, he’s got Maria giving him soup and Dallas checking up on him, he’s got worried, overprotective Max handing him tissues to blow his nose.
Maybe he’s just selfish, to look at the people around him, caring for him, trying to be there for him in his time of loss, and to only be able to think about all the people he wants who aren’t here.
Isobel, who would make him feel better just by being indignant and angry on his behalf.
Alex, who would scratch his fingers through Michael’s hair and sit with him until he fell asleep.
Hell, he’d even take some tough love from Sanders right about now, but he’s trying to keep the old man as far away from these latest alien dramas as he can.
Michael’s scared. He’s scared in a way he hasn’t been since he was small, and always alone and surrounded by strangers. He feels adrift, like he can’t find himself. His muscles ache, his head is pounding, and he’d been aware that people must feel like crap when they got sick but he’s never known it firsthand like this. Lying there on the couch, alone for the first time all day, he closes his eyes and he commits this feeling to memory. The weakness, the helpless fear.
He hopes Bonnie is lying, or wrong, that there’s some way for him to get his powers back. He hopes that he’ll get better and never have to feel this way again. It takes him away from what makes him special, what makes him who he is. Aliens don’t get sick. Aliens have powers. Aliens are from Oasis.
He’s an alien.
He’s never had any choice about that. He never asked to be here, to be what he is, to grow up the way he grew up, but it’s who he is. He can’t lose that without losing everything else he knows about himself. Without losing the very definition of himself.
Miserable, bored, scared and angry, Michael picks up his phone for the ten thousandth time that day, and texts Alex, and asks him to come home. He badly needs a reminder of what else in this world defines him.
Alex doesn’t text back.