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It takes a few weeks for the dust to settle after Jones’s defeat. Maria spends that time visiting with her mom, keeping things going at the bar, and visiting Liz and Kyle for her medical treatments, settling into something of a routine in the aftermath of so much chaos. She’s been spending a lot of time with Isobel, getting to know Anatsa a bit, having girl’s nights with Liz, grabbing coffee with Kyle here and there.
She hasn’t been seeing a lot of Alex and Michael.
This isn’t calculated, there’s no real reason for it, no resentment or even really discomfort with the idea of the two of them. It’s just… she sees them together, the way they make each other smile, the way Alex’s face practically glows whenever Michael kisses him, how Michael cannot keep his eyes away from Alex whenever they’re in a room together.
She sees all of this and she’s genuinely happy for them, and she also thinks, god, Michael and I never had the slightest chance, did we? She’s… embarrassed, is maybe the right word. Embarrassed that she didn’t see the obvious rightness of the two of them right before her eyes. Ashamed that she’d thought she could be what Michael needed. And frustrated, too, about the time she spent agonizing over the potential of that relationship, when it was doomed before it had even begun.
Probably she should talk to someone about it. Tell Liz how she’s feeling. She doesn’t, and the weeks go by. Michael and Alex hang out at the Pony, and they say hi to her, they ask after her visions and her health and her mom and whatever else, and Maria senses the wall she’s put up between them, wishes she knew how to knock it down.
Alex, predictably, is the one to show up with a metaphorical sledgehammer, break his way through her defenses, and try to bring them back to what they once were. He invites her over, and they spend a night watching movies and eating popcorn and talking like the good old days, and even as it’s happening, Maria knows for a fact that the good old days are over. That even though there’s no resentment or anger between them, even though Alex is with the person he’s meant to be with, and Maria loves how happy they both are…
Their friendship has not survived intact. There was a closeness once between them, and it’s never going back to the way it had been. How is Alex ever supposed to look at Maria now without remembering that she’d been the reason he and Michael had been apart? She knows it wasn’t only her, that things had been complicated for them for all sorts of reasons stretching back to their high school days and all the way through Alex’s decade away. But she was a factor there, for a while, and being a factor is enough to change the dynamic permanently. Dating Michael Guerin, Maria reflects bitterly as she closes up at the bar one night, probably wasn’t worth the loss.
Still, Alex is her friend. So is Michael. Maybe in time they’ll build something new together, some new form of closeness that won’t be the same as it once was, but will have its own strengths and gifts to offer. She focuses on the future spilling out ahead of her, all the time she’s going to have now that her alien powers aren’t killing her. All the days, months, years she’s going to get the gift of having Alex Manes in her life.
When you spend any amount of time knowing you’ll die young, you lose perspective on the mortality of others. Maria had not entirely resigned herself to her fate when she’d realized the way her powers were hurting her. Of course she hadn’t. She’d wanted to fight like hell to keep the powers that defined her, and the life she wanted to live. But still, she had started to assume, without meaning to, that all of her loved ones would outlive her.
And now here she is. Cured. Healthy as can be. Her mother is dead, and Maria is still numb from it. And Alex is…
She stands there in the Crashdown, looking at Liz, the ringing of the bell behind them still echoing in the air.
“We don’t know that he’s dead,” Liz says, but her voice is wobbling like she doesn’t believe the words.
“We don’t,” Maria agrees mechanically. “I don’t even have my abilities anymore, Liz. How is he… how could he be reaching out? Where—”
Liz turns around, presses a hand to her mouth like she’s trying to hold something back, then turns back to Maria, eyes shining with the beginnings of tears. “We’ve got to call Michael.”
Across the room is the booth where, just a couple of weeks ago, Maria had come by for some fries at lunchtime and had seen Michael and Alex sitting together, heads bent over the table, holding hands, laughing softly. The whole world was encompassed in that little pocket of space, in the air between the two men, the way the push-pull of their energy reverberated between them and then out into the rest of the diner, infecting everyone with their obvious, simple joy.
Maria remembers paying for her food and then turning to look at them for a moment, deciding not to go over and interrupt their date. Her heart had squeezed in her chest and she’d recognized the sensation as contentment, and pride, and a subtle longing. She wanted what they had. She didn’t want it with Michael anymore, wasn’t sure if she wanted it with Gregory Manes. Tried to imagine herself in such a state, with someone who wanted nothing more in the world than to hold her hand and look into her eyes. And then she’d had one of those crystalizing moments of certainty: not a vision, but something that felt just as real. I’m going to have that, too. We’re all going to get to be so happy, at last.
“I don’t think I can,” Maria says now, shaking her head and turning back to Liz. “I don’t think I can call Michael on the phone and tell him Alex is gone.”
Liz stands up straighter, a familiar determined crease in her brow, jaw clenched and chin tilted up. “So then we gather more data. We figure out where he might be. We—get some answers, to bring to Michael, instead of just questions.”
Such a Liz thing to say, but Maria can’t help but be grateful. Somewhere deep in her gut, she has the queasy feeling that Alex might be beyond their help. But she’s not ready to deliver that news to the person it will hurt the most. And she’s certainly not ready to admit defeat. She owes Alex a hell of a lot more than that.