White

Summary: Tess, Michael, and Liz centric, Mi/L, mentions of past M/M and M/L. At the end of Four Aliens and a Baby, what if Liz had voted yes? Years later, Michael and Liz are forced to confront the reality of what they did that night, and to tread the thin line between wrong and right.

AN: The quotes in this chapter are all taken from one of the final scenes in Four Aliens and a Baby. The quotes are out of order and not complete, but hopefully everyone remembers what happened in that episode. If not, it becomes clear in the next chapter anyway.

Chapter One: Cast Your Vote

"All right, Liz. Cast your vote, break the tie."

White. Everything was white.

It burnt his eyes and left him blind, searching his way around the room by feel rather than sight. It was too stark, too bright, too much of it everywhere, and he could barely breathe here at all. He had never expected white to feel so oppressive, but it did. It weighed down on him, filling him with desperation and fear.

His arm throbbed painfully, and he reached up and ran his fingers over the tiny dot of red that signified where the needle had entered. The needle that contained the chemical that had robbed him of his powers, left him helpless against the men who had brought him here, to this place of white and emptiness.

They had been dressed in black. Black clothing matching black coats and black bullet-proof vests and black masks pulled low over their faces, with only thin slight for the eyes. Black gloves on their hands and black shoes on their feet. The contrast of the two colors – black against white and his eyes burning as he tried to fight back, and for what, what reason, what good would it do? – seared an imprint into his mind, one he would never forget. Black shadows and white walls.

He was trapped here.

"Maria!"

She turned, but too late, and his cry of warning, of protest against the inevitable, did not stop the bullets. Did not stop the red that spread out across her clothing as her eyes turned towards him, smiling painfully through tears as though there was any reason at all to hope.

"No… no… no, please, no… Maria…" A whisper. A plea. A prayer. None of it mattered, nothing could be done. It was too late, too late…

"Mr. Guerin," a voice said, and he turned. Turned and stared as the white shifted and gave way to color. To a man standing near the door, to a pair of green eyes focused on him with clinical amusement.

A guttural growl escaped his throat. These men had trapped him here, these men had taken his powers, taken his family, taken Maria…

Animalistic rage rushed through him. He would kill them. He would kill them.

But no movement was fast enough here. Nothing could be done against these men, nothing could stop the green eyes from staring at him with revulsion and contempt. Hands grasped him, fingers wrapping around his arms, nails biting into his skin. He struggled but it was all in vain and the colors blended together, black and green combining and then fading, growing lighter and lighter until everything…

Until everything turned to white.

"Michael?

"Do it. Turn her in."

The lights were off. The darkness turned the room to gray and he stared up at the ceiling. It was calmer now, and the silence no longer filled his mind with pain, the sight of the blank walls no longer bit into his eyes liked acid. The quiet was not oppressive, but it was still somber, and it gave him time to think.

There was something running through his veins, keeping him trapped.

There was something snapping down on his wrists, restraints of some sort, and his head was immobile as when he pushed and pulled something pressed down on his throat – a rope, a cord, a metal bar… did it really matter what it was? – and he couldn't breathe.

"Relax, Mr. Guerin," a voice said, gentle and soft and filled with sympathy that made him squirm and shift and struggle even harder because there was still something so wrong about all of this…

And this voice. He did not trust this voice. This voice that promised comfort and concern and care.

There was no comfort here. These people had taken everything from him, everything that mattered. They gray was soft and gentle and he closed his eyes for a moment, and remembered…

The gray of the dismal sky had covered them all, clouds hiding the sun. Gray that matched the mood, the knowledge of the inevitable. There was nothing he could do, not now. Nothing any of them could do.

Kyle had stumbled to his knees, unable to stand the onslaught, and he had wanted to cry out, wanted to tell the human boy to get back up and fight. But what could be done? They could not win.

Shadows moved in the gray room, and suddenly he longed for white. The white, at least, yielded the truth. It was too bright and so painful and nothing made sense there, but this softness was dangerous and he wanted to return to that terror from before because at least he had known what that was.

"Shh…" the voice whispered, sweet and dripping with honey…

You catch more flies with honey than vinegar, Maria's voice said in his mind.

"…you'll be here for a long time."

"Wait, let me get this straight. If the baby doesn't need you to survive, then we can kill you."

"Michael…"

"We could. But the Air Force would still be looking for an alien. Looking for us."

"Where are the others?"

He saw the red of blood spilling out across the floor – was it his? Did it matter? Would it stain the floor red, would it ever wash out? – and heard the question repeated again and again. But there was a fog in his mind and nothing made sense. He was disoriented and the words washed over him and faded into nothing as he continued to stare at the red.

Isabel's shirt had been stained with red and her eyes had looked up at him and he'd wanted to say he was sorry.

"Where are they?"

He was cold and he tasted something metallic in his mouth and the figure standing over him had only a hazy outline and then the black…

Black gloves, black clothes, black shoes, black socks.

…and the cold green eyes that demanded answers he didn't have to questions he didn't understand.

"Mr. Guerin, answer me. I can make the pain stop if you just answer."

His fingers were covered in red and he looked down and saw the outline of his hand on the floor. A bloody print against the too bright white of this too sterile room.

Would they clean up the blood when they were done?

Isabel's eyes had fixed on his face and not left, not wavered, not even once. She'd reached out her hand and he'd taken her fingers and he'd watched as she stared at him, continued to stare at him through the pain and the fear and then…

"Where are they?"

"Dead," he spat. "You killed them. You killed them."

"Maybe you will be more cooperative tomorrow," the voice said, and then the green eyes disappeared and pain exploded through every part of his body.

"No. They would throw her in a white room and study her like a lab rat for the rest of her life. I've been there. I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy."

"What do you want from me?"

There was nothing he would tell them, nothing he could tell them. And what did any of it matter? Didn't they know, didn't they understand?

They were gone. Everyone he had ever cared about was gone.

His body hurt, a slow steady ache, icy cold and burning heat, sensations that traveled through every part of him and left him gasping for breath. There were no windows in the all the white, and no clocks. No way to tell the passing of time, nothing to connect him to the outside world. If the outside world existed at all.

The prick of needles on his skin, the electricity that jumped from the cables to his worn body, the burning of fire and the taste of blood. Didn't they know that none of it could hurt him more than his own memories?

"Michael! Look out!"

Something hit him hard, knocking him out of the way. Max stood above him for a moment, just a split-second, and then the explosion happened. The burst of yellow and orange and the sudden reverberation of noise and power and energy and Max was falling…

"Where are the rest of your kind, Mr. Guerin," the voice said, so cold and so calculating so clinically amused. Green eyes stared at him, waiting for an answer.

"I'm not the enemy," he snarled, the words catching in his throat. He forced them out, forced himself to talk, even though he knew it would do no good.

Max had been here once, and they all knew what had happened then. There was no reasoning with these people, there was no way out of this room. Certainly not by their grace, and not even by his own strength and his own wits. There was no escape, not this time.

He was alone.

His throat was raw from yelling, from the screams of pain and fury and rage that ripped from his throat every time they drew near. And his skin was covered in blood – red, always red, didn't they see that he bled just as they did? – and his hair was matted with sweat and he knew… he knew…

This is what the white room was. This is what the people here did. It was wrong, all wrong, and he wanted – needed – a moment to breathe, to think, to sleep.

"You'll tell us, Mr. Guerin. In the end, you'll break. But I can be patient. Time is on my side, after all."

"If the Air Force wants an alien, then why don't we just give them one?"

"What? Turn her in?"

"Yeah, then they won't be looking for an alien and they'll leave us alone."

He felt himself dragged from the room and forced open his eyes to confront the faint cream-colored walls and flesh colored hands that held him – no gloves, not now, not this time – and the reflection of his own haggard face in the pristine surface of the mahogany brown floor.

He was tossed roughly into another room – dark, too dark to see anything – and the door slammed shut behind him. Taking away the white walls and the gray shadows and the green eyes and the black clothes.

Something shuffled across the floor.

A pair of blue eyes focused on him. "Michael?" the voice whispered, rough from lack of use and yet so incredibly familiar.

"Tess?"

"All right, Liz. Cast your vote, break the tie."

"I vote 'yes'."