posted on 20-Dec-2001 5:44:49 PM by Trinity Star1323
Title: Save Tonight
Author: Trinity
Rating: R
Disclaimer: UPN owns Roswell, the characters, and situations. La Jetee belongs to Chris Marker so don’t go stealing it because it really is one of the best movies out there. No infringement intended. Nothing is mine.
Summary: Slight Alternate Universe. Post Departure. Earth lies ruined in the aftermath of a war. The few surviving humans, after figuring out how to travel through time, send their best scientist and most trusted person to save the world. Her journey leads her towards an enigmatic and paradoxical destiny.
Category: Max/Liz
Authors Notes: If you’ve ever seen the newer remake of the original movie, DON’T go blurting out what it is. I will tell at the end, but until then, don’t!



Her eyes were wide open, intently watching in wonder. The sounds of shouting droned in and out of her ears along with the mingling of the other customers. Then came the gun shots. Urgent shouts, running feet, and exclamations reached her ears as well. But all of it was lost, just as she was.

Fewer than five feet away she watched as a brunette lay sprawled out on the café floor, blood oozing from her tacky turquoise waitress uniform. The blood was dark; nothing like the blood the nine-year-old girl had seen in movies. And the young woman was pale, shaking, and dying.

She watched as a young man, about the same age as the woman, wearing an olive green, short-sleeved shirt, rushed to the injured girl. His face was obscured from the young girl’s view, but she continued to watch as he kneeled besides her, ministering to her wound.

Flanked by her parents, the young girl let her parents steer her away. She faintly heard her father say, “Come on, this is no place for us.”

For a moment she resisted as she was mesmerized by the drama. She was intermittently given vision through a confusion of figures rushing about. She watched as the young man touched the cheek of the dying brunette in a gesture of enormous tenderness, a gesture of farewell, all while shouts for help continued.

“Quick, someone get a ambulance, someone, please. Oh god, this is an emergency, Liz…”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“Emergency calling for Elizabeth Parker.

Jolting up from her bunk bed, Liz stared at the room encompassing her. She was in her late thirties and her dark hair cascaded down her back. She blinked in the near dark room while trying to deal with her shaken and disoriented feelings.

As she recovered from her vivid dream she finally took notice of all the commotion around her. In her windowless underground world of eternal night it was an almost colorless reality of blurred edges and echoey sounds. It was more like a dream than her actual dream. But this was reality, this was life.

Flashlights glared into her room and in the half-light, Liz saw a spooky figure moving along the locked bunkrooms. Guards. She turned and search for her friend in the bunk below her.

“Maria! What’s going on?” Maria’s face was almost lost in the shadow. What there was left of it was youthful, but it was easy to see that she was still a scared teenager in the body of a thirty-year-old woman. She watched as Maria rolled over as one of the many menacing guards with a jagged scar running down his cheek loomed close to Liz’s bunk. Maria watched as closely as possible with narrowed eyes.

“Parker, come on,” the guard instructed before grabbing onto Liz’s arm and dragging her off her bed and into the hallway.

A moment later found Liz struggling to get into what looked like a space suit in a room where suits hung like ghosts with blank eyes. She had the torso of the suit on and was now trying to close it.

“All openings must be closed.” The voice came from the PA system. She looked for the source of the voice and only found a tiny grate in the wall. It drifted in and out, but was still clearly heard in Liz’s ears. “If the integrity of the suit is compromised in any way, if the fabric is torn or a zipper not closed, re-admittance will be denied.”

Minutes later, in the eternal night everyone now lived in, Liz found herself wearing the space suit and a helmet with a plastic visor. She stepped into a tiny chamber, a kind of air lock. The heavy door clanged shut behind her, and Liz once again found herself alone. Liz’s breath came quicker now as she sucked oxygen from the air tank on her back.

On the opposite wall was another door with a huge wheel lock. Liz turned the heavy wheel, opening the door and stepping through it. The ascending elevator Liz entered groaned and creaked. All the while Liz looked down at the crudely drawn map she held in her gloved hand. The map showed a series of tunnels and ladders.

A moment later Liz found herself with a flashlight as her only light source as she probed the filthy sewer she was wading through. She watched as a rat fled the sliver of light, scurrying across islands of rusting junk. The flashlight beam finally settled on a ladder mounted to the wall. Reaching the rusted ladder, Liz started to climb, awkwardly.

Moments later, Liz clumsily shoved a heavy man-hole cover, pushing it aside so that she could emerge from below. What she saw made her gasp.

It was a city bathed in moonlight. A surreal image of abandoned buildings. No people- anywhere. The only sounds were the wind and Liz’s breathing.

Winding her way through the streets, Liz periodically flashed her light on passing heaps of junk. One such time revealed an abandoned, vine-covered automobile. Moving towards the car, Liz searched through the vines for something. Anything. And soon, she found it.

An insect.

Liz took the bug in her gloved hand and she clumsily inserted it into a collection tube. However something made her turn. She stared at the street just across from her. There was something hiding in the dark. Something alive.

Liz pointed her flashlight and revealed, a cat. Startled by the light, the animal hissed and arched its back, preparing to attack. For a moment, Liz merely stared in wide-eyed wonder. However, her amazement was short lived as the cat sank down to its original stance, trying to avoid the artificial light as it padded quickly down the street.

Above, a giant owl sat perched on an overhead traffic light. It raised it wings and lifted off, rising higher and higher into the brightening sky. Below, on the street, Liz trudged along, passing deserted buildings. The windows were broken and the rusted signs were dangling.

Finally, Liz reached a store. She shined the light, only to reveal a spider web just inside the store. A large spider tries to hide from the light, but was unable to. Reacting quickly, Liz reached carefully into the web and plucked the spider and put it into one of her specimen tubes. Next she shined her light all around the once elegant store.

There was nothing but aisle after aisle of moldering consumer goods.

Exiting the store, Liz smiled to herself as she saw the first rays of sun hit the forsaken buildings. She stopped and squinted into the light through her visor. That’s when she saw it.

Spray painted on the wall a long time ago was a stenciled logo of the Antarian seal of royalty. Over it was written, “We did it!”

Tbc? Ok, so I had huge writers block when it came to She's the One a while back (not anymore thank god!) so I started this. Low and behold its done, so I thought I might as well post it. If you want me to continue just say so, otherwise I don't. And please don't blurt out what movie this is related to right now because I want to keep it a surprise for those who don't know! ANd don't worry I'm almost done with the next part of She's the One. It will be out by tomorrow night.

[ edited 3 time(s), last at 9-Feb-2002 12:51:50 AM ]
posted on 8-Feb-2002 11:29:21 AM by Trinity Star1323
Ok, I'm going to be continuing this one...
posted on 9-Feb-2002 12:48:49 AM by Trinity Star1323

Chapter 2

Roaring water could be heard throughout the compound. The powerful torrents gushed from a bunch of nozzles that hung limply from the wall, pummeling a still-suited Liz.

An hour later found Liz stark naked and shivering as she was scrubbed with brushes on long poles wielded by two hulking figures in bulky decontamination suits. Their personas were lost in their windowed masks. It was a grim scene in a grim cement room with damp, dripping walls.

Suddenly, from an unseen source, an amplified voice came through.

“Raise your arms above your head.” Liz shuddered as she lifted her arms, letting the figures scrub her armpits.

Sometimes she couldn’t even remember how things had come to this. She had done everything she knew to prevent the end of the world, and yet still it had come. Somehow, despite her hard work and the heartache which accompanied it, the world had still been destroyed.

Alex was still dead.

Maria was a shell of her old self.

The world was dead.

Still naked, Liz was lead into a tiny room, where she was seated on a stool while a masked technician in a less elaborate, less bulky decontamination outfit drew blood from Liz’s arm with an old-fashioned hypodermic needle.

Supplies were running low and Liz was grateful to at least have the needle.

She glanced toward a single, nearly opaque window of thick plastic in the rusty iron wall. Vague figures seemed to lurk behind the translucent aperture, studying her.

Once finished the technician slipped the blood sample through a slot in the wall.

Ushered by two guards, Liz looked around. Old headlines, articles, maps, and charts hid the wails for help. A blackboard was covered with elaborate, sophisticated formulae. Surfaces were heaped with cracked monitors. Gerry-rigged computers were held together with string. Lasers were lost in tangles of cable. And ancient tube amplifiers, a dilapidated cardboard reconstruction of a city, stacks of moldering books and tattered computer printouts littered the surrounding area.

Seated at a long conference table, staring at Liz was six scientist; her peers and elders. They had taught her everything they knew while she had attended Harvard, before the world ended.

Together they represented a “modern” science where brilliant new ideas interfaced with crude, outdated, patched-together technologies.

“Elizabeth Parker. Cleared from quarantine,” one of the guards stated.

“Thank you. You two wait outside,” the microbiologist instructed. The two guards nodded before leaving. “Why don’t you sit down, Ms. Parker.”

Shrugging, Liz moved toward an empty chair at the conference table and sat down.

“We want you to tell us about last night,” the astrophysicist insisted enthusiastically.

“I went to the surface and I collected specimens like I was told,” Liz informed. She kept everything she said short and simple. Time was of essence. To waste time was to waste another life.

Five billion had already died.

One more could mean the end completely.

The scientist didn’t say a word. Instead they just studied her carefully.

“I broke a leg of the spiders, didn’t I?” Liz asked worriedly.

“We’ll get to the spider later, Ms. Parker. Right now, we to know everything that you saw,” the microbiologist said keenly. He smiled endearing at Liz, letting her know it was alright.

An hour later, Liz started to look very tired as she stood at a blackboard, sketching a detailed map of exactly where she was the night before.

“Where you collected sample number 4, what street was that?” The astrophysicist queried.

“I-uh…” Liz was caught. She wracked her mind trying to figure out where she had collected the sample.

“It’s important to observe everything,” the botanist reminded her sweetly.

“I think it was… no, I’m sure it was 3rd Street,” Liz answered a moment later.

The scientists started to whisper animatedly among themselves while Liz’s eyes drifted across the newspaper clippings that were taped to the wall. One headline screamed, “Virus Mutating!” Another featured a photo of an old man and the words, “It’s too Late for Cure.”

“Close you eyes, Liz,” the astrophysicist insisted a moment later. Startled, Liz closed her eyes obediently.

Complete blackness took over. It was so much like the present world that Liz could hardly differentiate it from her current life.

“Tell us in detail what you’ve seen in this room?” The engineer asked softly.

They were testing her, and Liz knew it.

“Uh, in this room? Uh…” Liz choked. She hadn’t expected this.

“How many of us are there?” The microbiologist asked.

“Six. Seven, if you count me,” Liz answered. Her eyes were still closed.

“Tell us about the pictures on the wall…”

“You mean the newspapers?” Liz asked, confused.

“Tell us about the newspapers. Can you hear my voice? What do I look like? What does he looked like, the man who just spoke?” a number of voices suddenly said. Their voices overlapped and soon Liz couldn’t understand a word they were saying. “How old were you when you left the surface?”

The voices blurred into a cacophony and Liz covered her ears, trying to block everything and everyone. And suddenly she was thrown back into time.

Flanked by her parents, whose faces were out of view, the young girl watched the waitress run around the small café.

“Liz, order’s up!”

Suddenly a shout followed by a raised voiced interrupted the cook’s monotonous voice. The small child turned to see what was going on.

Two men were fighting. One had a gun drawn.

It was pointed right at her.

“Watch it!” A man yelled as he pushed the small girl aside, effectively shoving her to the ground before the men could shoot her. His face was averted as he hurried past her, running out the door before she or anyone else could even see him.

The little girl could see little more than the gaudy pants, the leather jacket, and cropped hair as he rushed down the street.

Just then, a teenager’s scream cried out.

“Liz!”

The girl turned back around toward the front counter just as patrons scattered madly, some diving to the floor, others running. A terrified woman hit the floor close to the small girl as she looked up at her with panicky eyes.

When the woman spoke, her voice was shaky. “Just exactly why did you volunteer?”


Liz jolted abruptly awake. Seated now, she faced the scientist.

“Wake up, Liz.”

“I-uh, I’m sorry. I didn’t hear the…”

“I asked you, why did you volunteer?” The microbiologist asked as she tapped a pencil on the table.

“Well, the guard woke me up. He told me I volunteered,” Liz admitted truthfully. The scientists mumbled amongst themselves, whispering urgently.

Liz started to nod off again, then came awake with a start as the engineer spoke to her.

“We appreciate you volunteering. You’re a very good observer, Liz,” the engineer said endearingly.

“Uh, thank you.”

“Now, we have a very advanced program. Something very different. It requires very skilled people,” the botanist explained.

“It is an opportunity to help you climb the ladder to success,” the microbiologist mused.

“And possible play an important role in the returning of the human race to the surface of the earth,” the zoologist insisted a moment later.

All the while Liz merely nodded. It was all she could do. She lived in a box and had no choice. So instead, she stared at the tapping pencil and fixated her mind at her new task at hand.

For her mission was clear. It was her job to save the world, again.