He’s gone now.

He’s... died.

Every dream, every hope and wish I’ve ever had for the future, for me. It’s gone with him.

I have no way to describe how that feels.

Hurt is such a funny word. It’s so small and simple. Four letters for such a vast, unboundless thing. I’ve hurt him and myself so badly. So deeply. I know I won’t recover. But how can I say I’m ‘hurt’? Wounded. Decimated. Destroyed.

Our destinies are what we make them, right?

He said that to me. And tonight he said it again. Across fourteen years and so much living that we’ll never do. He remembered the one thing… the *one* thing that kept niggling all summer. He used his own argument to convince me of what shouldn’t be.

I don’t know how I’ll ever face him again. How can I? His face… his eyes. I told him I wouldn’t die for him. That I didn’t want to. But I did. He’ll never know it, but I did. He asked me for his trust and even if he never knows it, it was because of that that I did what I did.

This summer… All three months I thought and breathed nothing but him. Two thousand miles away, I knew nothing but Max Evans. He was in my thoughts, and dreams, and mind. It’s a wonder I did anything but whimper the entire time.

I want to go back to summer. It didn’t feel like *this*.

I lost a life. A husband. A future. All because he knew... *I* knew it was doomed.

I can’t help but mourn that.

Oh, god… how am I going to go to school on tomorrow? Knowing this? Feeling this? Missing this part of myself that he asked me to give up?

But I gave it to him. Because he asked.

The look in his eyes, when he did it. I think that’s the reason I did. I know he loved me. Loved me beyond reason. I could see it, along with the pain.

I know I wasn’t dead yet. Not when he left. I didn’t see what I felt reflected in his eyes. I know he was hoping and praying that I… the future I… was happy and alive. He didn’t see me die there. I know that.

I want to go away now. I want to leave Roswell. This place that has held and sheltered me for the last seventeen years of my life. The place I was born… and the place I have died.

I want to walk into the desert, past the rock faces and scrub brush and lizards. I want to keep walking and moving until this shell, this empty thing dies. Or until I can no longer feel the ground beneath me, or the sky above. Until all that’s left is the plodding of my feet and the sound of my heart.

I want to die so that I can be with him.

But I can’t.

Because whether he meant it or not, he gave me a duty. In my hands he placed the security and the unity of the group. By asking me to get him and Tess together… He changed my destiny. He took me in his arms and started a dance with me. A bittersweet, impossible dance. He tied me to him in the only way left. A dance of survival and protection. It’s the only thing I can do, the only thing allowed for me to do to show him how much I love him. Our dance.

A remembrance.

To him.

And me.

He is dead now. And I am the only one who knows. Who knows what could have been. What was. I have to remember because if I don’t...

So instead, a song will always make me cry and November third will always be my day of mourning.