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He finds himself sitting awkwardly against the Crashdown sign on the rooftop, crutch forgotten somewhere by the booth he fled from what feels like hours ago. He couldn’t stomach the sight of Michael and Maria walking around hand in hand, even if both of them had the decency to look ashamed when they saw him sitting on his own, milkshake and fries promptly forgotten in front of him.
He had to walk away, just like he always does with the past that comes haunting him in his sleep.
So he’s here now, looking up at the bluest sky he’s seen in years – and he’s been to half the deserts of the world, where there are no clouds to offer him refuge from his own thoughts. The metallic sound of the door behind him creaking open and then closed should startle him, but he’s been expecting her to come to him for some time now.
Rosa flops down by his side, uniform a bit askew around her cleavage. She tries fixing it but it’s to no avail, the scars peeking up from the last button. “So,” she says as a manner of greeting. “Wanted to be on your own for a while?”
He doesn’t reply immediately, instead closing his eyes against the warm sun rays bathing them both now. When she hoffs by his side, he sighs loudly. “Yeah, that was the whole point of getting up here.”
“Shame that I can feel you’re needing a friend more than you need alone time right now,” Rosa replies softly. “It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it. I get it.”
Alex wants to turn to her and say that she probably really doesn’t, but he bites his tongue. Rosa’s going through a lot worse than he is – she’s come back from death ten years after having been burnt in a bonfire of guilt and pain, and she’s dealing with that at the same time as she’s been denied the chance of recovering her identity because she still looks like the nineteen-year-old who tried to escape from Roswell. She’s had to settle for impersonating a long lost cousin who looks like the spitting image of the Rosa Ortecho everyone despised ten years before.
“I’m not really sure about that,” he settles for saying, fidgeting slightly in his spot. He doesn’t open his eyes.
“I know a thing or two about feeling like you don’t fit in,” the sharp edge of her voice softens, turning into a soothing note that carries out to him. “I know about wanting to go away so bad that you can feel in your bones, but your feet are stuck to the ground.”
Alex shakes his head. He can already sense where this conversation is going, and he’s not ready to have it. He’s been avoiding everyone for a reason – he doesn’t want to deal with the pity he sees in Isobel’s eyes, or the pain laced with guilt Liz shoots his way whenever they cross paths around town. He’s done a good job hiding in the cabin, where only Kyle has been able to reach him, but otherwise he’s been on his own. But a man has social needs. He’s felt that he was safe out into town on a Tuesday, at a time when he thought everyone else would be too busy at their own jobs to actually notice him. He didn’t even remember that Michael and Maria work odd hours.
“So this is about Michael and Maria,” Rosa muses, and that’s when he realizes he’s spelled his thoughts out. “I wouldn’t have pegged your type to be a cowboy.”
“You don’t even know the first thing about it,” he retorts sourly. “Anyway, it was over before it really started. I killed it so I don’t have any right to ask him for anything.”
“Don’t you have the right to ask for your heart to be returned to you?” That shakes him inside, making him shiver. How could she know? “Alex, honey, I may be stuck at nineteen, but even back when you were still in high school I knew something was going on between you two, I just didn’t take it for what it was. I was mistaken.”
“I told you, it’s over.”
“Nothing’s really ever over,” she laughs mirthlessly. “Even the dead come back.”
Alex nods slightly. In the weeks that have passed since Max revived her, they have learned to grow almost as close as they were during their teenage years. Rosa never really trusted anyone when she was alive the first time around, but they both need a friend in these times of confusion.
“What happened?” she asks. “I was too dead to make it to the first episodes of this soap opera, just humor me.”
So he does – he relates his life from the moment his father forced him to enlist, leaving out the night a hammer changed it all for the worse. His shenanigans in far lands. His fears and his hopes. How he kept pushing Michael away thinking it was for his own good even when walking away meant more damage to his soul than it did to his missing leg. He kept fighting Michael; he kept running from the good in them before he even managed to learn how to walk on this life's tightrope all over again.
"What did you say you do for a living again?" Rosa asks, and it doesn’t sound as the joke Alex is sure she was aiming for. "Because that’s some poetry you have going on there."
Alex wants to laugh but the sound that comes out of his throat is a strangled welp. "I guess I just need time to adjust. I thought, when I came back, that everything would be the same. I wasn't counting on the fact that it was me whoI wasn't the same."
"Well, some things never really change," she says, reaching out and pulling him into a loose embrace where he is half leaning against her frame in an uncomfortable position.
He doesn’t complain.
"We have to live with what we're given," she keeps on. "Even if our cards aren't the best hand we could have. Alex, I know it sounds like empty words, but there's no point in pining over him while he's moving on. You deserve to live. You deserve to be happy. No seas tonto," the Spanish drawls some smoothness to her words. "I know it hurts, because you feel it is a double treason. The love of your life and your best friend? It fucking hurts like hell, and I won't even try to understand that."
Although his head is on her shoulder, awkward gesture guaranteeing a sore neck, he doesn’t want to look up at her. He knows he'll end up crying the tears he's been struggling to keep inside for the longest part of his life.
"But it'll get better, you know it. You'll get over it, and it won't hurt that much. Just don't sit around mourning a love that's not completely dead. Live. Find someone to love, someone who loves you back, or don't. But be happy. We have enough bad things going around. Let's focus on the good ones."
"When did you get so wise?" he marvels.
"Ten years half dead do that to a soul," she jokes. "I have to go back to work. Care to come with me? I'm off in about an hour, maybe we could do something fun for once."
Rosa smacks a chaste kiss on his cheek, smearing a bit of lipstick. She reaches out to wipe it, only to make it worse. Laughing softly, he shakes his head and stands up to follow her when she walks towards the door. Maybe he doesn’t know what the future holds for him, but he’s already found a soul ready to shoulder his pain just as he is ready to fight through it.
A true friend is not something he can turn down these days, so he’ll cling onto the feeling for as long as Rosa remains the beacon in his sea of darkness.