Chapter Text
Alex has always wanted to see an alien planet. Even before he knew he'd fallen in love with an actual alien from another world, he'd loved science fiction and fantasy, the idea of space travel and wormholes, starships and intergalactic exploration. The endless possibilities.
This isn't exactly what he'd had in mind.
He’s not sure where he is, but it's probably not another planet—the town of Roswell looks both the same and different, familiar buildings with unfamiliar signs for businesses long since replaced or redesigned. The vehicles, the weapons and supplies he’s found, all of it points to an era not long after the original ‘47 crash. He's home but not, off balance and out of his time. For a while he wonders if the quicksand somehow sent him back in time for real, but he doesn't think so. It's like a bland version of the Mirrorverse in Star Trek, except completely deserted, like a movie set long abandoned. He hasn't seen anyone at all, let alone an alternate version of himself.
Whatever this place is, it's definitely not healthy for him. The air itself feels wrong, the sky dark and foreboding, his every step feeling heavier and heavier along with his labored breaths. The sick churning in his stomach hasn't stopped since he arrived, not even with the gas mask firmly in place to try and filter out whatever alien toxins he's inhaling. His captor (kidnapper? executioner?) hasn’t reappeared, making him think he’s been forgotten. Maybe he’s just a pawn taken out of the game early on, something simple and devastating in its ease.
It's been a week alone with his thoughts and fears, and he's losing what remains of his hope. He's left messages, tried to connect with those he loves back home and even sort of managed that in little ways—it’s unsettling to think he's nothing more than a ghost to them, rattling his chains from the great beyond in the vain hope that someone might notice and understand. So far, Michael hasn't heard him.
He's so tired of not being heard.
Then, all of a sudden, a breakthrough—Liz and Maria finally make sense of the signals he's been so desperately trying to send, though they don't share the discovery like he'd wanted, more of the same infuriating withholding of information their group is so prone to doing. It would be enough to have him send something else crashing off the wall in response if the efforts to make the goddamn milkshake hadn't exhausted him so completely. He'd only been able to ring the bell on the counter out of pure pissed-off frustration. Alex loves his friends, he really does, but they still haven't learned to communicate properly with each other when it's important.
It's a miracle he manages to rest enough to make final contact, to sit down at the keyboard in the hauntingly empty version of the bar that exists here and play something Michael will recognize. More ghostly energy pushed across dimensions, fueled by love and desperation.
Once his message is received, once he knows Michael will be coming for him, Alex crashes a little. He curls up in an cold, unfamiliar bed that’s still all too familiar and tries to sleep despite how sick and worn down he feels, how difficult it is to adjust to not having the things he needs for his leg, his medication and mobility aids, his creature comforts. It's been a long time since he's roughed it like this.
He's so tired.
The spidery black lines on his chest are crawling up towards his neck now, worryingly painful to the touch. Whatever dark alien energy or quirk of nature is causing them, he knows it's bad. The environment itself is steadily poisoning him, as if hammering home the message that this place wasn't meant for him. Humans shouldn't be here.
He can't help wondering if Oasis is the same. If Michael finds a way home, will Alex be able to go with him? He promised to carry Michael's hopes and dreams, always, and to share them. But maybe this is a dream he can't have, can't share. Maybe he and Michael are doomed to remain starcrossed and tragic forever, that this brief happiness is all they're owed. Maybe…
No. Fuck that. He's tired, and sick, and maybe even dying, his body irrevocably contaminated by alien radioactive energy or something in the atmosphere or the water. He's not sure which and not sure it matters. All he knows is that he's so fucking tired of having to struggle for every little bit of joy. But he's not giving up. Not today.
The next morning, Alex checks the perimeter once again, just like he has every morning since he arrived. He makes sure the messages he scrawled are still there, his traps still in place just in case there are any hostiles to worry about, supplies left neatly where they can be found by any new arrivals.
Then he waits.
Michael is coming for him.