FIC: With Intent To Stay

[laniew1]

Title: With Intent To Stay
Author: laniew1
Band(s): The Young Veins, My Chemical Romance, The Academy Is…, Cobra Starship, Empires, Jonas Bros.
Pairing(s): Gen mostly with het pairings of Gerard/Lindsey, Frank/Jamia, Mikey/Alicia, allusions to possible past William/Gabe
Word Count: 13198
Rating: PG – for language
Warnings: supposed character death

Summary: Somewhere on this planet, hidden far away from all of them, might be their crown prince, the last of their royal line. They have no idea where he is and there’s a possibility that he might actually be dead, might never have even made it here.

He’d always thought… but that was insane, because he’s seen baby pictures and he’d had friends growing up and all the facts that they’d been able to find pointed to the fact that their princeling had been murdered before he’d even got to his 1st birthday.

It doesn’t change the fact that Ryan Ross is also the spitting image of their long dead King, Gabe has been telling him for years that everyone has a twin somewhere; apparently their maybe still alive princelings’ is a failed guitar player.

With Intent To Stay

First contact comes at 6:32 pm on a Thursday.

The signal is not first intercepted by the space station still orbiting Earth or by NASA or any of the multitude of countries with similar organizations with different names but the same purposes.

The signal, the transmission that heralds the arrival of visitors from another world, is first heard by an early warning system set in place by the 442 aliens that have called Earth their home for going on 20 years.

*

He gets notified of the signal, he has his own programs set up to run and track anything incoming, there are 442 of them on Earth, 441 of them are known to each other, only 4 people know the identity of all 442.

He sits there, in front of his computer and there’s panic racing through him. It takes him a moment, takes him almost 67 seconds to calm down enough to start formulating a plan.

He has a face that will be known, the documents that he has, the lone image of his father and mother; he’s almost the spitting image of his father, there will be no doubt in anyone’s mind whose child he actually is.

That he’s not dead and that a member of the royal family survived.

He needs to make himself unrecognizable and there’s very few ways to do that within the slim margin of time that he has available to him.

He writes a letter, four paragraphs and leaves it folded on his kitchen table; then he makes three phone calls, two of them are planned for times when he knows they’ll go directly to voice mail, those messages will reach three people and they’re brief.

He indicates that he’s going out of town, that he’ll contact them when he comes back. He doesn’t go into any detail and he’s sure they wouldn’t want to know the details anyway.

The third is just as brief, though that call is planned for a time when he knows that there will be someone on the other end. He just names a time and a place and he looks around his home and bites his lip. Winds his fingers together.

He can’t take anything with him.

There’s a picture beside his bed, they all look so happy in that picture and half of them are still happy, the other half is just paddling along trying to get the edge of happy and cling to it with their fingers and toes so they don’t drown under the despair of getting what they wanted but finding out too late that it actually wasn’t.

He’s alone now; he should probably have been alone all along.

*

It fells Nick first, but that’s mostly because of all of them Nick has the weakest immune system.

He has seventeen pills he has to take on a daily basis, he takes them in a specific order, they don’t have to be taken in any specific order, but Nick is all about systems and order. Kevin thinks he does it by color, lightest pills to darkest pills, smallest to largest.

Kevin is staying with their parents; Danielle got the house and, well, pretty much everything in the split. Kevin’s okay with it, Danielle had lasted longer then he’d thought she would. And as long as Kevin got to keep his family and enough money to maybe start over again he’s counting it as a win.

His mom sits besides Nick’s bed and Kevin hovers in the doorway, Joe isn’t there because their mom sent him out to get Gatorade and flavored ice 20 minutes prior to stop him hovering in the doorway.

“Kevin why don’t you go get me another cool washcloth,” his mom says. She doesn’t make it a question and Kevin knows he’s being sent on an errand to get him out of the way. When he turns his mom is leaning close over Nick, hand pressed to his forehead.

He hopes that they don’t all get whatever illness has obviously befallen Nick, he loves Nick, he does. That doesn’t mean that he wants to be sharing a sickroom with him.

*

William is curled up on his side, he’s trying to not breathe too harshly because it seems to jar something deep within him that sends spirals of acute pain down his back and up through his neck to his head.

Sisky lays a damp cloth over the back of his neck and William makes a noise that he hopes expresses his thanks and gratitude, he’s pretty sure it just sounds like he’s dying and really would love it if someone, anyone, would put him out of his misery.

He doesn’t need to look to know that the rest of his band is hovering in the doorway, he’d send them away but he thinks turning to glare and yell might expend what energy he has left and he kind of doesn’t want to be unconscious at the moment.

He needs to get them out of the room though, needs to get the door closed and figure out where he dropped his cellphone one of the many times that he’d run for the bathroom.

“Are we having a party without me?” he hears Gabe’s voice in the doorway and William closes his eyes, Gabe will send them all away.

Gabe will take care of things.

There’s a quiet hum of talking in the door; Gabe’s voice then Mike’s then back again and William just lays there and tries his best to not look like the pathetic dying lump of a man that he currently feels like.

He hears the click of the door being shut, a few seconds later the bed dips and he can feel the warm press of Gabe’s body against the length of his.

He allows himself a moment to lean back into the warmth and doesn’t snuggle, they don’t do that anymore, though he does relax minutely while he waits for Gabe to say something.

“One of the Jonas brothers is down, couple of the others, you,” Gabe says, his face is pressed into the curve of William’s neck and William can feel the movement of his lips against his skin.

“What do we know?” William asks, he doesn’t close his eyes and he doesn’t jump to conclusions. Just because whatever this is has felled Nick, well he’s the weakest of the brothers… it doesn’t mean anything.

“We think the illness is being caused by a biological agent that was somehow introduced to those of you that got sick, probably trying to force us out into the open; also one of the parents called, early detection picked up a signal,” Gabe’s arm goes over his body, tugging William tighter against him, like he can protect William, protect all of them with his arms and legs and fierce determination that nothing will happen to them while he’s breathing.

“A signal,” William says dully, he can feel dread pooling in the pit of his stomach, it also might be the nausea that’s been his constant companion for the last four hours but he’s pretty sure he can tell the difference between ‘fear for his life’ and ‘run to the bathroom now’.

“Yeah, couple of days out, good visuals on at least two ships, maybe more behind them,” Gabe says.

“Remind the parents that hospitals aren’t an option,” William says, they all know this already, but panic and fear will cause people to do things they know are unwise, it doesn’t hurt anything to reinforce the fact that unless they wanted to be dissected on an operating table…

Gabe nods and William knows that he’s probably already done that.

“It could be just some bug,” Gabe says, he doesn’t sound like he believes it, though he does sound like he’s hoping for it to be the case.

Their parents have run before; William loves his parents, he doesn’t want to be his parents.

And he’s not running, this is his home, this is the only home that he’s ever known and he won’t give it up without a fight.

“Do we have anyone we can send?” William asks. Because first things first, protect their future.

Somewhere on this planet, hidden far away from all of them, might be their crown prince, the last of their royal line. They have no idea where he is and there’s a possibility that he might actually be dead, might never have even made it here.

He’d always thought… but that was insane, because he’s seen baby pictures and he’d had friends growing up and all the facts that they’d been able to find pointed to the fact that their princeling had been murdered before he’d even got to his 1st birthday.

That the transport that he and his guardians had been on had been destroyed prior to making it to their destination.

He’d never been an infant on this planet.

They all have hope though, still.

And it doesn’t change the fact that Ryan Ross is also the spitting image of their long dead King, Gabe has been telling him for years that everyone has a twin somewhere; apparently their maybe still alive princelings’ is a failed guitar player.

Barring finding that their princeling is indeed alive and not ash in space, they’ve always got Kevin.

They need to make sure that nothing happens to him.

“Kevin’s protected, his parents are part of the old guard, they’ll keep him safe and under wraps,” Gabe says.

“Send someone anyway,” William says.

They can’t afford to take any chances.

*

He wears sunglasses and a hat, a sweatshirt and faded jeans and sneakers that are held together by a wish and a prayer. He has his cellphone in his pocket and it’s been buzzing steadily as those two messages that he left are listened to, then responded to, then responded to again because he’s not called them back as fast as they evidently think he should.

He doesn’t listen to the messages that are left in return, maybe he can in a couple of days, but if they’re screaming at him through voice mail he doesn’t want to hear it right now.

He’s got other things he has to worry about.

He turns off the phone on the plane, curls up in his seat and faces the window. Nobody approaches him. He closes his eyes but he doesn’t sleep, can’t.

His mind is focused on the signal that was picked up and he knows that by now the rest of his people have found it, tracked it, realized that they’ve been found.

He wonders how many of them will run again, will power up ships long since dormant and run to some other planet where they’ll maybe be safe for another generation before they’re found again; how many of them will flee instead of staying and fighting.

When the plane lands he pulls his carry-on from the overhead compartment, makes sure his laptop case is secure. He walks with the bustle of people toward baggage claim and makes his way outside to the line of cabs.

The motel that he named is a run down, mess of a place. But he’s only meeting someone there, not actually staying there.

*

Alicia surprises him, they arrive at the hotel after a show and Gerard goes off by himself, either ignoring or completely oblivious to both Mikey and Frank’s disapproval of his doing that, to meet whoever had called him that morning and Mikey walks into his room to find his wife standing there.

She beams when she sees him and practically flies into his arms, there’s a tingle of foreboding angling its way down his spine though he ignores it, bites his lip and hugs her back.

He hopes the foreboding is for Gerard and whoever he’s meeting, when he pulls away enough so that he can look down at her he sees her eyes flash, going dark then white then normal again and he pushes her away.

She stumbles and he goes for his bag.

“I don’t think so, love,” she murmurs and flies at him again, hands going around his neck. “Where is he?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mikey manages to gasp out, he pulls at her arms, nails raking down bare skin and she snarls at him, “where’s my wife?”

“I’ll give you three guesses,” she leans in close, lips moving against his cheek. “The first two don’t count.”

“I’ll kill you,” he snaps.

“That’ll be interesting to watch seeing as how I’m the one with my hands currently around your neck,” she says sweetly. “I scented him here, did I beat him? Because that would be fucking awesome,” she beams at him, hands tightening around his neck, he can feel his vision fuzzing, black and white and he struggles, kicking out a leg viciously.

He wears the heavy boots for shows because having Frankie stepping all over his feet was getting beyond painful, now they cause her to stagger back and release her hold a bit.

He wheezes in a couple of breathes and pushes at her, then kicks at her legs again, trying to get her down and away. He wants to hit her, hurt her, she’s still wearing his wife’s face though and he couldn’t punch a girl anyway.

“Mikey, what’s all the…” he hears Frank’s voice before he sees him and her head snaps up as the door opens.

It’s a distraction which is what he desperately needed, she goes toward the door and he goes for his bag, it’s on the bed and as she’s pulling Frank into the room he gets the laser in his hand and a shot off before she manages to get him in front of her as a shield.

She makes a noise and falls back against the wall.

He thanks god that Gerard had decided that now would be the time for them to do something road warriorish and that they pack their own bags so no one questions why they’re carrying replicas of their lasers with them.

“Dude,” Frank says, he’s backing away, right into the door, eyes flickering back and forth between Mikey and Alicia. “You just…”

He sounds a little freaked out and Mikey keeps the laser in one hand as he turns her over, he can see the small bracelet on her left wrist, something that his wife has never worn and he runs his fingers over until he finds the controls.

He turns it off and the body wavers and turns from Alicia into a young man, maybe around Mikey’s age. Maybe even younger, they train them up young now.

“What the fuck,” Frank says.

“Shapeshifter,” Mikey says.

“I know that it’s a shapeshifter,” Frank says the, ‘moron’ is unspoken but Mikey hears it anyway, “What the fuck is it doing here?”

“It tracked someone here,” Mikey says, he closes his eyes as it sinks in, presses a hand to his eyes and breathes. He can feel Frank’s hands settle on his shoulders, squeezing once before he tugs on his arm to stand him up and move him away.

If the shapeshifter is here, wearing Alicia’s form, then…

“They could just be holding her,” Frank says softly, he touches the side of Mikey’s face gently.

“How often does that happen,” Mikey says, he can feel tears in his eyes and he presses his fingers against them, keeps them closed because he’s not going to break down.

Not right now, there’s not enough time.

There are only two people on this planet that would be interesting enough to the ship on its way and the shapeshifters that normally precede them. Kevin Jonas is completely protected and if Mikey knows William and Gabe they’ll have additional guards on their way. That only leaves…

“Mikey what’s going on?” Gerard appears in the doorway and right over his shoulder, looking sad and pale and worn and so totally not dead is their crown Prince.

“Gerard why is Ryan Ross standing behind you?” Frank asks, he looks and sounds like he’s forcing himself to stay standing by gritting his teeth and clenching his hands into fists, when Mikey knows that realization of who Ross is, well that’s trying to force him to his knees.

Mikey knows all this because the laser is digging into his hand as he clenches it to try and keep himself on his feet.

Ryan brushes past Gerard and stands over the shapeshifter, Gerard makes a sound of protest when he squats right next to its head.

“It took Alicia,” Mikey says, his voice sounds faraway even to himself and Ryan looks up at him.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” he says and he knows, like Mikey knows, that if this thing took Alicia’s form that Alicia is dead.

“Oh Mikey,” Gerard is there, right in front of him, pulling him into a tight hug and Mikey clings to his big brother, lets the tears fall and tries to muffle the sob that escapes against his shoulder.

*

“Ross is missing,” Gabe says, William’s got his knees drawn up to his chest because he doesn’t feel like throwing up, as much, when he’s curled as close to a fetal position as he can manage.

“Missing?” William breathes out, he uncurls just enough to look up at Gabe as he sits on the edge of the bed, he closes his eyes when Gabe’s hand brushes against his forehead.

“He left a message for Spencer and Brendon and one for Jon Walker, and he left a note on his kitchen table for anyone that decided to come by for a visit.”

“Tommy made it there then,” William says.

“Yesterday afternoon, he was already gone.”

“Do we know where he went?” William asks. It had been his decision to send Tommy to California, appearances being what they were, even if Ross wasn’t their missing princeling, he looked enough like what the young man would look like that those invading alien bastards would shoot first and ask for proof of identity later.

“No,” Gabe answers after a brief pause, William forces his eyes open and looks at him, he looks thoughtful and like he doesn’t like where his thoughts are going all at the same time. “Grapevine says that a new tech just joined My Chem on tour though.”

“That’s…” interesting, William thinks. The Way’s had been older then old school; their parents had been part of the Royal Guard.

Before war had erupted and the Royal family had been assassinated there had been whispers in the air prior to that; rumor had it that the Royal family had hedged their bets, sending their youngest princeling away, replacing him with an infant shapeshifter; supposedly two of the Royal Guard had been sent with him. Those guards had never been seen again, were believed dead and they’d been the only ones that had known, if those rumors were to be believed, where exactly the princeling had been stashed.

It would figure that the Way’s would be the ones that would find him. Though William thinks it gives him points at least that he’s almost always believed that Ross and their missing princeling and now this new tech are all one in the same.

“Send Tommy to them,” William says, he breathes.

“They’ll refuse.”

“Then force the issue, your parents were Royal Guard too,” William mutters. “Ross needs to be behind a barrier of guards and next to My Chem’s stage is just not going to work. That’ll be the first place they go.”

*

Ryan’s a really awful tech; he can admit it, if only to himself. But it was the only position that would keep him stage side when the band itself was on stage.

Gerard doesn’t like the thought of Ryan wandering around by himself and there’s still enough of the little fanboy in him that standing side stage and watching My Chem on-stage still gives him a thrill.

He wants to snap pictures and e-mail Spencer and he wants…

He wants things that he can’t have. He bites his lip and focuses on winding wire.

“Ross,” he hears from behind him and he stiffens slightly but doesn’t turn.

That’s not his name, his name is Jeremy Drake and he releases a breath, he has a distorter like the ones that the shapeshifters use around his wrist and when and if he turns to acknowledge the fact that Tommy Conrad is standing behind him he knows that he won’t look anything like Ryan Ross.

*

“Conrad’s here,” Mikey breathes into Gerard’s ear.

“What? Why?” Gerard is on his feet and moving out of the bus before he even thinks about it. Conrad could only be there for one reason and that’s because William and or Gabe don’t believe that Gerard can handle this.

He can handle this, he’s been handling this. He’s kept Ross safe and alive since he found out about him. Gabe and William hadn’t even been looking for him.

“My guess, they don’t believe that Ryan standing side stage is in actuality protecting him,” Mikey says. He’s right behind him.

“Well he wouldn’t let me shove him into a safety deposit box so we’re doing what we need to do for the moment.”

*

Frank’s the one that finds him; probably in the first place that they should have looked once they found out Conrad had left without Ryan in tow.

He’s curled up in the corner of the couch and he’s got a book that Frank recognizes as one of his own in his hands. He’s not reading it; he’s just turning it around in his hands.

He sends off a quick text to Mikey; got him, and then slides his phone back in his pocket.

“How’d you get Conrad to back off?” he asks, he stands in the doorway, hands gripping the sides. It’s the only thing that’s keeping him from going to his knees and he’s been in rooms with Ross before he knew who he was; he’s not sure what’s different now, except for the fact the he knows, and he wonders if just the knowing is enough for him to want to bow his head and fall to his knees, when he hasn’t ever wanted to before.

“I convinced him I wasn’t the droid he was looking for,” Ryan says, he doesn’t look up from the book and Frank can’t tell if he’s serious or being sarcastic. Having Ryan and Mikey on the same bus is going to be awesome amounts of not knowing what the hell either one of them is feeling or thinking at any given time.

“You have some freaky Jedi mind powers going on that we don’t know about?”

Ryan snorts and looks up, there’s a quirk to his lip that Frank takes to mean that he’s amused.

“If I had freaky Jedi mind powers don’t you think I would have used them so that I wouldn’t lose all my friends when it became apparent how things were going to play out?”

“You could have been saving them for a rainy day,” Frank says, he manages to force one hand to uncurl from the doorway and flexes his fingers. His hand hurts now.

“I’m just like you, and Mikey and Gerard and the other 438 of us that managed to find homes here.”

“Not really, I mean we’re all from the same place but you’re not exactly like the rest of us.”

Ryan hmms at him and bites his lip.

“You don’t have to stand in the doorway,” Ryan says, Frank still can’t tell from his voice if he’s amused or anything, but his eyebrows are arching.

“I kind of don’t want to end up on my knees again,” Frank admits and Ryan looks at him for a moment before he flushes a bright shade of red.

“Why didn’t you say so, I didn’t… Mikey and Gerard weren’t having any problems so I thought…” Ryan’s eyes close for a moment and the… whatever… eases up and the need to be on his needs and prostrating himself on the floor before his Prince sort of pulls back, it doesn’t disappear, just kind of fades so Frank can still feel the idea buzzing around in the back of his mind.

He could go to his knees if he wanted to, but he doesn’t need to.

It’s kind of relief to know that he’s not going to look stage left and make eye contact with Ryan and end up outing their Prince to their enemies.

*

“Tommy,” William is actually sitting up in the bed which he counts as a win at this point. He was able to move around for 37 minutes this morning before he had to run for the bathroom.

“They’ve got a distorter around his wrist,” Tommy says. No pleasantries or how you doings or nothing, straight to the point.

“And you think that’ll be enough?” William asks, he tilts his head back and stares at the ceiling.

“No, but it’s enough for now, no one besides us is looking for him. I badgered at him for almost an hour and he never broke cover. If it hadn’t been for the clamoring at the back of my head demanding I go to my knees I probably would have thought you were nuts.”

William releases a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. He looks over at the doorway and Tommy is standing there, arms crossed over his chest.

“Are you going back?” William asks, he raises an eyebrow at him and Tommy rolls his eyes.

“I’d kind of like to not get my ass kicked by 3/4 of My Chemical Romance if it’s all the same to you,” Tommy mutters. “Gerard is in mother-hen mode and he’s not going to let anyone or anything at Ryan unless Ryan says its okay.”

“I still think…” William starts.

“He went to them,” Tommy says, he comes in through the doorway, stands at the end of William’s bed and bites his lip. “He didn’t come to any of us, hell he didn’t trust any of us to even tell us who he was to us. He told Gerard or Gerard found out on his own and confronted him, Mikey knows but that’s probably because Gerard knows and Frank Iero knows probably for the same reason.”

“They’re not protecting him,” William says stubbornly. “He’s standing to the side of the stage and anyone could get to him while they’re on stage. It’s not enough.”

He needs to have guards surrounding him and possibly be locked somewhere with no windows or doors or access to anyone besides them.

“So you want me to go back.”

“Just… we have one shot at this,” William says. “If we lose him we’ve got Kevin but Kevin’s not, he would have been like seventeenth in line for the throne, his parents haven’t even given him any of the basic knowledge he would need to lead us.”

“I’m charging you for the hospital visit, and you’re paying for my therapy,” Tommy grumbles.

“While you’re there find out why he’s not answering his cell phone or returning any phone calls.”

*

The techs don’t really let him do anything. Whether they think he’s accident prone or stupid or both he’s not sure. He makes a good show of trying though, he’s kind of bored and it’s different being on someone else’s tour then being on tour himself. He’s not doing it again if he can help it.

None of the techs are one of them, but they all know that there’s something off about him.

They probably think he’s fucking one of the guys in the band.

He’s waiting, he’s sure at some point someone is going to say something or confront him. He figures it’ll be one of the other tech’s, instead Ray corners him after a show.

“They’re all married,” he says and Ryan blinks at him.

“Happily married,” Ray stresses and Ryan nods.

“Yes, I’m aware,” he doesn’t mention the fact that Alicia is most likely dead. “The wedding bands mostly gave it away.”

Ray’s not one of them. He’s trying to protect his friends and his friends’ happiness and Ryan finds that kind of loyalty commendable. At some point in the not so distant future he might even be able to do something about that loyalty.

But now…

“Okay,” Ray nods and Ryan leaves it at that, watches Ray go rejoin his band and he suddenly, violently misses Spencer (and Brendon and Jon). There would have been a time that Spencer and Brendon would have protected him like that, but not since he ruined things.

He pulls his phone out of his hoodie pocket, he’s been traveling with My Chem for almost two weeks now and he thinks he’s maybe; finally ready to listen to whatever messages the others had left for him.

He fiddles with the controls and presses in his security code and almost drops his phone when he hears the ‘you have no new voice messages’.

They’re not here yet, they’ve still got at least a week before the advance party shows up and why they would be interested in voice mails any way is beyond him.

*

“Look, it’s not that we don’t think you can protect him,” a voice says when he walks through the door; he has his laser out as soon as hears the first uttered syllable.

Some of the crew is making fun of the fact that he doesn’t go anywhere without it, but the lasers are the only thing that they know that will take down a shifter and with Ryan here…

“I think we’re doing a fine job of it,” Gerard says, Tommy Conrad is sitting on the couch, knees drawn up to his chest.

“You’ve already been tracked by one shapeshifter, you think as soon as the advance ship gets here that more aren’t going to be following in its footsteps?” Tommy shrugs at him. “They’ve got his scent; it’s only a matter of time.”

“So what do you want us to do? He won’t let us lock him away anywhere, we’ve tried. We’ve asked and begged and ordered, Mikey even pulled out the sad doe eyes that makes us hand over the last of the coffee… he won’t hide and he won’t run and he refuses to have guards following his every move…” Gerard wonders if he sounds as frustrated as he feels.

He’s on tour; the last thing he wants to be worrying about is if he’s going to manage to let his Prince get assassinated while he’s on stage.

“It’s just me, he knows me, I can put a shifter bracelet on and no one will be the wiser, at least that way someone is with him side stage instead of him standing off there by himself with a big old fucking target painted on his back.”

Gerard sighs and opens his mouth, then closes it again when the door behind him opens. His mind is racing trying to come up with a plausible explanation as to why Tom is on their bus.

When he turns Ryan is standing there, bracelet still on so the only reasons that he knows that it’s Ryan is because he knows what Ryan’s shifted form looks like and because there’s a little, tiny spark at the back of his mind demanding that he pay homage to his Prince.

For his part Ryan does nothing more then blink, then holds out his phone, Gerard looks at it then back at him with what he’s hoping is a questioning expression and not a completely confused one.

“There’s something wrong with it,” Ryan says, waving it back and forth. “There should be messages from…” his eyes dart over to Tom and back to Gerard. “And they’re gone, nothing, nada, and my address book is blank and…”

“I changed out your phone,” Mikey says, he touches Ryan’s back and Ryan shifts, allowing Mikey and Frank in.

Frank closes the door behind him, seals the lock and secures it.

“What? Why would you…?” Ryan shakes his head at him.

“Your phone had a bug, I changed it out with a different one that looked the same, but I didn’t have time to transfer your address book.”

“I should still be able to access my voicemails.”

Mikey shakes his head. “The phone was bugged,” he repeats. “I had the other one turned off, and got you a new one,” he waves a hand at the phone in Ryan’s hand.

“I had messages,” Ryan says. “Ones that I hadn’t listened to yet.”

“Trust me,” Mikey says, he sits on the corner of the couch that Conrad is sitting on. “You didn’t want to listen to them.”

Ryan looks at him, then down at the phone before sighing and shoving it into a pocket. “They were mad?”

“Mad is probably an understatement,” Mikey says.

Ryan nods, the expression on his face indicates that he’d really expected nothing less, though Gerard thinks that he’d probably hoped for something else.

“Don’t do it again,” he says and Mikey arches an eyebrow at him, “I had contact numbers on there that had nothing to do with them that I’ll need to recreate from memory now.”

“I can…” Mikey starts and Ryan shakes his head. He looks at Conrad and then back at Gerard.

“I don’t need a babysitter,” he says.

“No, you need a bodyguard,” Conrad answers. “It’s good, I’ll give you that, he actually looks slightly shorter then he does in real life, a little heavier too.”

“Are you saying I look fat?” Ryan glares, hands going to his hips.

Conrad blinks at him. “Um, no?” He doesn’t sound sure and his eyes fly to Gerard, who’s studying the ceiling intently, then to Frank, who’s running a finger over a tattoo on his arm like he’s never seen it before, over to Mikey who’s rolling his eyes and tapping his fingers on the arm of the couch.

“I’m going to get something to eat,” Ryan states. “So I can apparently manage to look even fatter.”

Frank gets the door unsealed and open before Ryan just storms through it.

“I didn’t…” Conrad looks completely baffled but he still gets himself off the couch and darts after him.

“Did you really listen to his messages?” Frank asks, “because dude, that’s kind of…”

“I didn’t listen to his messages,” Mikey shakes his head and looks at Frank; he’s twisting his wedding ring around his finger, Gerard doesn’t think he’s even aware that he’s doing it. “He had it secured down like he had government secrets on it,” he looks at the door. “It’s kind of gratifying that he thinks that I’m good enough that I could though.”

“Well then, we’ll be sure to not tell him about the time that you blew up the toaster oven.”

*

William gets daily updates from Tommy on Ross’ status.

The revolving theme seems to be that Ross is alive and that he’s getting really, fucking tired of having Tommy follow him around.

“Tell him to suck it up,” William advises, Gabe is sitting on the end of the bed. His phone is turned off and sitting on the dresser, he has one hand wrapped around William’s ankle. “At least he’s alive.”

“He’s frustrated,” Tommy says. “And he has his own alert system built into his laptop so he can see how close they are and he knows that we don’t have the first idea of a plan.”

“Keep Ross alive,” William says. “Don’t manage to get any of us killed in the process.”

“A shifter took Alicia’s form,” Tommy says. “Mikey’s holding it together for the moment, having Ryan to worry about is good for him but it’s going to hit eventually that his wife is more then likely dead and we might want to think about having another guard in place for when it does.”

“I could send Gabe,” William says, Gabe arches an eyebrow at him. “Whatever they poisoned us with seems to be wearing off now that we’re not in direct contact with it.”

He wonders how they knew who to target, or if they just put it somewhere in the water or food supply so that it couldn’t be missed.

“I’ll broach the subject,” Tommy says. “But I think if we introduce anymore new people to this tour there’s going to be talking and we can’t afford to have anyone talking.”

“People will just assume that he’s there to fuck with Mikey or maybe Gerard, can never tell how the fan bases will react.”

“Do you really want Pete to go crazy and kill Gabe? Because you know that he called dibs years ago and its pretty much only Alicia and Ashlee that have kept him from doing anything about it.”

*

They get daily alerts as to how close the ships are, Gerard’s been scanning the news, waiting for the moment when someone, somewhere is going to notice them.

So far it hasn’t come and it’s setting them all on edge. There’s the possibility, and it’s not even a slim one, that there’s an advance party here already.

That they’re keeping things quiet while they wait for the moment when the ships will float into Earth’s orbit and keeping things quiet will no longer be an option.

Seventeen spaceships, all roughly the size of Texas, are going to be pretty fucking hard to hand wave away.

Ross goes more and more quiet and regardless of what he says and how frustrated he sounds when he says it, he sticks fairly close to Tommy or Mikey or Gerard or him.

He’s not voiced it, but Frank thinks that Ross is terrified.

He’s the last surviving member of the royal family. And if he’s found here, if those aliens coming in their seventeen huge ass spaceships realize that he’s here, he’s worse then dead.

They’ll torture him and then if he’s lucky they’ll only make an example of him.

Tommy is making his daily not so secret call to William and Gabe to advise them on the current situation and their status; Gerard, Mikey and Ray had an interview that Frank had begged off of. There’s high odds that it’ll end up leading to a rumor that he’s leaving the band or dying, it’s a crapshoot sometime and entirely dependent on what reason Gerard uses as to why he’s not there as well as his body language when he says it.

“Is your family safe?” Ross asks, he’s twisting his shifter bracelet around his wrist absently. He never turns it off anymore; Frank thinks he’s scared to.

Frank nods. “As safe as we can make them,” he says, Jamia had fought him, but the thought of something happening to one of his girls, he needs them to be safe and alive and there for him to come home to.

They’re in hiding with Lindsey and Bandit, and they’re as cloaked to detection as Mikey could make them.

They could already have tails though, could already be known to their enemies.

“Do you remember before?” Ross asks.

“Barely,” Frank says, he flops down on the couch next to him. “Sometimes I have dreams, I think. I’m not actually sure if they’re real dreams or just what my brain imagines our world would have looked like from the stories that Gerard tells.”

“I don’t remember anything,” Ross says.

“You were just a baby, if you remembered anything I’d be really surprised.”

*

The ships are maybe a week out. There’s still nothing coming from the leaders of the various countries, it lends credence to Ryan’s thought that though they have to know that the ships are coming they’re not going to make a statement until they’re visible to the people of this world.

By then it’ll be too late.

He’s heard the stories, the whispers from his people that remember the invasion of their own world. They’d tried a peaceful solution and had been slaughtered.

Peace is not an option for those coming.

He wants to call people; wants to call those that he’d called friends. Wants to talk to Spencer and have him tell him what he should be doing, wants to warn him and tell him to hide, run, don’t look back.

Then he remembers that Spencer and the others had left messages on his phone that had been awful enough that Mikey had thought it wiser to not allow him access to them.

He has no one but those that he surrounds himself with. His guards, his keepers.

He lives now for those moments when someone has to step away; Tom is on the other side of the truck, giving William an update on his status, sometimes Frank will do the same to talk to Jamia privately. When he’s alone, utterly and completely he can forget for brief seconds that there are 441 of his people that are waiting for him to take up the crown and lead them.

“Where’s your guards?” he hears from behind him and he turns, blinking, thinking that a tech is joking with him when they more frequently ignore him.

He opens his mouth and sees the shifter bracelet on the wrist of a teen-age boy. His eyes widen and he turns, flee, run, hide, scream, scream, scream echoing in his head.

An arm goes around his neck from behind and he struggles, gasping for the breath to scream as a hand slaps against his mouth.

Then nothing.

*

Tom comes running, breathless and pissed.

“Have you seen him?” he gasps, bent over at the waist, hands on his knees.

“What?” Gerard comes to his feet, across the room he can see Mikey and Frank pushing themselves away from the table. He doesn’t need to ask who. There’s only one person on this tour that would have Tom like this.

“He was,” Tommy coughs, “he was waiting for me, William called for his update and I went around the truck ‘cause he hates it when I stand right there talking about him, and when I came back he was gone.”

*

No one saw anything, heard anything. There are no signs of a struggle, there’s just… there’s nothing.

It’s like Ryan was never there, and he was, Mikey knows this. They all know this.

Gerard makes the call, he’s the oldest of them, the expression on his face says that he would cede this responsibility to anyone else that wanted to take it.

*

He wakes up in a room that smells like death. Or what he would imagine death smelling like.

It’s dark and he’s not chained to the metal table that he’s laying on, he thanks god for small mercies. It would be pretty fucking hard to figure out a way to escape if he had to first figure out a way to get free of restraints.

He takes stock of his surroundings as rolls to his side, he’s dizzy, the room spinning in the way that it used to when he drank a bit more then his body liked.

When the room stops spinning and his stomach stops protesting the fact that he’s moving and settles slightly he slides off the table and stands there, supporting himself on the table while he waits to see if his legs will support him.

He takes careful steps to what he imagines is the door, runs fingers down the seam, tries the handle and is not surprised to find it locked and sealed.

Now that they have their prize they’re not going to risk him escaping.

Except he has no intention of being a prisoner of either the shifters or those that are coming in the ships they’re most likely flying to meet.

He scans the room, then walks in, looking for anything that could be used as a weapon. He’s not staying here, but first he has to get out of the room.

There’s a metal stool sitting to one side of the table that he’d been laying on, he wonders if they’d come in and stared at him. He doesn’t feel the weight of the shifter bracelet on his wrist and he doesn’t need a mirror to know that he’s himself right now.

He goes to pick up the stool, praying that it’s not fastened to the floor in some way. He’s not Mikey; he doesn’t think that he can construct a cutting tool from the parts in the room.

It’s not fastened down and he lifts it to bring back to the door, he stills when he hears the locks clicking.

There’s six it sounds like, he has the stool in his hands and doesn’t know if he’s hoping for both of the shifters that grabbed him or just one, or if it even matters.

The door opens and there’s a shadow as someone walks in, Ryan doesn’t wait, doesn’t hesitate, just swings the stool with all his might and when the shadow stumbles back he swings again.

The shadow crumples to the floor and Ryan drops the stool with a loud clang, turns the body of the shifter over, he’s just a kid, younger then the one that had come to Mikey with Alicia’s stolen face and body. He finds the laser on his hip, sealed into his holster and it takes way too many seconds for him to get it unsealed and the laser out.

By the time he has it in his hand and is coming back to his feet with the help of the wall he hears footsteps.

“What was all that noise?” he hears before he sees the shadow.

He fires the laser without thinking and has his finger ready to fire it again when he hears the thud, when he peers out in the hallway he sees the other shifter.

They normally work in pairs; hopefully even with these two being as young as they are that’s still the case.

He shoves the laser into the back of his pants, it’s uncomfortable but he’s unwilling to put it down on the ground while he drags the shifter in the hallway into the cell he’d been confined in.

He presses the locking mechanism into place and heaves an almost relieved breath, then pulls the laser back into his hand and starts down the hallway.

He hears the voice, mumbling to itself before he ever sees anyone, he starts peeking into the rooms, the voice is soft, weak, he thinks whoever it is has been drugged and that means that the shifters have someone else, maybe even someone human, on this ship that they’ve kept alive.

He finds her in the third room on the left, she’s in a shifter holding tank, the orange liquid in the tank is a sedative that’s absorbed through the skin. They must have taken her out at some point, for some reason and then not stayed until she was all the way under, because she’s clinging to the side with the fingers of her left hand and the mumbling that he’s been following is her trying to talk herself into pulling herself out.

“Can do it, you can do it, can do it,” she’s repeating over and over again.

He touches her fingers to let her know that he’s there and scans the room, there’s a pair of long vinyl gloves on the console in one corner and when he goes to get them he finds they come up almost to his shoulders when he pulls them on.

He latches onto her arms and pulls, the liquid trying to pull her back down and he thinks the only reason they manage to get her out is she somehow gets her legs pulled up underneath her, something has to give and the liquid finally does. He goes stumbling back, still gripping her arms as he gets her fully out of the tank, they end up in a pile on the floor together.

She’s breathing and making sounds of relief and he rolls her slightly to the side so he can pull the gloves off and come to a sitting position.

“Are you okay?” he asks as he flings the gloves aside. Once she answers that, his next question is going to be about why they’d left her alive. Normally shifters killed those that they took to get their forms.

“Tired,” she mumbles, she blinks at him and he gets a good look at her and doesn’t have to wonder if the startled look that’s crossing her face is identical to the one on his.

Because he knows that it is.

“Alicia?”

*

There’s more of their elders in the room then Gerard feels comfortable with. None of them are assigning blame or pointing fingers but he thinks that’s only because 3/4 of them had assumed that their Prince had never made it here and hadn’t even thought to be assigning people to look for him.

The finger pointing will happen eventually.

William is grumbling beside him.

“So I guess we should talk about our options,” one of the elders says. Gerard thinks that his name is Alan; he’s never actually met most of these people before.

“We get him back,” Gabe says, Gerard nods in agreement.

“How do we even know this boy is our prince, he could be an imposter, a shifter in the guise of what we imagine our prince to look like.”

“When you see him you’ll know,” Frank says, his eyes glitter.

“Yes, well none of us actually got to see him, did we? We just have your word that he’s alive. You kept him secreted away like you thought one of us would betray him, like we weren’t trustworthy enough to know he was alive,” the woman speaking is an older woman, Gerard thinks that she might have been a nanny for one of Ryan’s older brothers.

“It was his wishes that we followed, his decision to make,” Gerard says.

“Scans show that a ship took off shortly after the time that he was taken,” one of the female elders says. “Do we really think that he’s still alive? Maybe we should be thinking of finally crowning our King and sending a statement.”

They all look over at where Kevin is sitting sandwiched between his parents, his brothers behind them. Kevin looks small and young.

“I don’t want to be King,” he says, his voice is soft, quiet, it’s still easily heard.

“Kevin…” his mother starts, she lays a hand on his leg.

“No, he’s alive, still and I don’t, I never did… and it never mattered before, not having a crowned King, why does it matter now?”

“They won’t take an offer of surrender from anyone else,” his mother says.

“We’re not surrendering,” Gabe snarls. His hands are clenched into fists at his side.

Gerard leans forward in his chair, hands laced together he opens his mouth to say… something, he’s not sure what when his phone ringing interrupts him.

“We’re supposed to turn our phones off in meetings,” someone mutters in an annoyed tone. Gerard ignores it, fumbles in his pocket while the phone rings again and again.

There’s a number that he doesn’t recognize on the display and he pauses for just a second before he presses the button to take the call.

“Hello?”

“Gerard?” The voice is familiar and he almost drops the phone when he realizes who it is.

“Ryan?”

The room explodes into pandemonium.

*

Ryan can hear stuff on the other end but he’s trying to focus on Gerard’s questions.

“Where are you, we’ll send someone to get you,” Gerard says. There’s a flurry of sound then nothing, Ryan assumes that Gerard got tired of trying to yell over the voices to be heard on his own phone and went to a different room.

He can still hear a quiet hum, so he assumes that Gerard was followed by at least one person, hopefully Mikey.

“What exactly did Mikey do to my phone?” he asks, he can see black outside the window, and he’s a lot closer to the moon then he ever thought he’d be.

“What do you mean?”

“Well I’m pretty sure I’m not paying for ‘other side of the moon to Earth coverage’ and if I am someone else is paying for it because the roaming charges must be astronomical and I really don’t have a job anymore so…”

There’s silence for a moment, he knows that the phone didn’t get hung up because he can still hear the quiet hum of voices.

“Other side of the moon?” Gerard asks carefully.

“Did I not mention that we’re on a ship,” Ryan says, they’re in what he’s assuming is the cockpit, there’s a lot of screens and things that he doesn’t understand, he really should have pushed the whole ‘learn how to fly a space ship’ part of his bucket list, but he’d thought he had plenty of time.

Alicia is slouched over in a seat in the back of the cockpit, when he twists to look at her she’s almost always looking back at him.

She has questions, and he doesn’t have the time to give her answers at the moment.

“No,” Gerard says, “no, you didn’t mention that you were on a ship,” there’s the sound of someone muttering; “Gabe would like to know why you’re referring to yourself with the royal ‘we’.”

“No royal we, I’m not alone,” he looks back at Alicia, she waggles fingers at him and stares at the screen that shows, in rather prominent detail, the fact that they’re not on Earth anymore, her eyes are a little wide, he thinks she might be in shock.

“You’re not alone,” Gerard says.

“No, and I don’t believe she’s inclined to kill me though she could be lulling me into a false sense of security,” Ryan says, Alicia manages to arch an eyebrow and quirk her lips at him.

“So is Mikey there, because I need someone who knows how to fly a spaceship and that is unfortunately not me.”

“Ryan?” Mikey is there, his voice is slightly more faraway then Gerard’s.

“Did you put me on speaker?” Ryan asks. He hates talking on speaker phone.

“Yes, and you’re gonna need both hands so you should put us on speaker as well,” Mikey says.

“Okay,” Ryan says, he takes the phone away from his ear and fiddles with the buttons. “Can you hear me?”

“Yeah,” Mikey’s voice comes through the phone speaker and Alicia makes a noise, hand flying to her mouth to muffle it. Ryan turns back to the console so he doesn’t see the tears in her eyes; he sets the phone down on the top of one panel and crosses his arms over his chest.

He senses Alicia move up next to him and looks over at her, her eyes are bright but there’s something like hope in them.

“Okay, this is really easy, flying a ship is just like driving a car,” Mikey says, Ryan and Alicia sort of stare at each other in disbelief and Ryan makes a noise that he hopes reflects that exact emotion.

“I’m not sure what kind of whacked out car from the future you’re driving,” Ryan says slowly. “But mine has a gas pedal and a brake and a steering wheel and a fucking dashboard.”

“Ships have the same thing.”

“No, Mikey, they don’t. There’s a seat and like eight screens, there’s no gas pedal or brake or steering wheel or fucking dashboard.”

“The screens all control a different aspect of the ships motion; you said that you have someone there with you?”

“Yeah,” Ryan says.

“Good, is she conscious? Because you need someone to shut off the auto pilot while you actually fly the ship.”

“And why do we need to turn off the auto pilot? It’s kind of keeping us flying at the moment.”

“Because I’m 99% sure that the auto pilot is taking you directly where you don’t want to go,” Mikey says reasonably. “We need to get auto pilot off and you turned back around, and we have to do it quick because otherwise we’re gonna have to launch a rescue and it’ll take a year for the other room to come to a consensus as to how we’re gonna do that.”

“Alright,” Ryan makes a motion with his head and Alicia makes a face as she settles herself gingerly into the seat on the right, the arms come up as soon as she sits down and when Ryan sits in the seat on the left the same thing happens.

“Your co-pilot should have two screens in front of her…”

*

While Mikey is giving Ryan a verbal hands-on lesson in how to fly a spaceship Gerard, Gabe and William crowd around his laptop looking for somewhere to land them.

“It needs to be someplace deserted,” William says, “just in case they come in hot.”

Gerard nods, he remembers the first flying lesson he had, they’d almost crashed, he’s really glad that Mikey is the one talking Ryan through how to do this. Although it would be nice if Ryan had already had at least one hands on flying lesson with Mikey or one of the others there to help him out.

Gerard’s going to make sure they do that as soon as they get him back. Just in case this happens again. It won’t, but probably because it’ll be really hard for Ryan to get snatched again if he’s locked up in Fort Knox.

“Here,” Gabe says, pointing at the screen. Gerard nods his agreements and uses a sharpie he found in his pocket to write the coordinates on the back of his hand.

*

“Fuck,” Alicia mutters, Ryan hears the silence on the other end, the silence that says that Mikey heard her. She’s been mostly silent since he called Gerard, folded in on herself in a way that Ryan doesn’t think is normal.

“What?” he asks, he ignores the silence on the other end of the phone, worry about it later his brain screams at him.

“We’re the blue dot, right?” Alicia says softly, “I mean, we were the only dot there a few minutes ago and it was blue and now…” Ryan leans over and he sees what she sees, a yellow dot coming up fast on their blue dot.

“Fuck.”

“I know, right,” Alicia nods. “What do we do?”

“Mikey, do shifter ships have weapons attached?”

“Um.”

“Mikey! Weapons or not?” Ryan asks sharply.

“There’s weapons controls in your set of screens, bottom left panel, there should be two buttons, the one on the right is to power up the guns, the one on the right is to fire them.”

“You don’t have to aim them?” Alicia asks curiously and Ryan hears Mikey’s indrawn breath.

“No,” he says after a second delay, “they have auto detect, they’ll aim themselves at the nearest available target. How far away are they?”

Ryan peers at the screen. “I don’t know, the screen shows them about an inch, maybe an inch and a half away.”

“Fire weapons now,” Mikey says abruptly, Ryan presses the buttons in quick succession, hopes that there doesn’t have to be a delay between powering up the weapons and firing them for them to work, because he can hear the panic in Mikey’s voice and that means they’re completely screwed.

“I’m transmitting coordinates to you for landing,” Gerard says, his voice sounds rushed and breathless, and Ryan very calmly thinks, we’re out of fucking time.

This is so not how he thought he’d die.

Gerard is talking and out of the corner of his eye he can that Alicia is pressing things on her screen, though Ryan can’t really tear his eyes away from the weapons control that are showing two red streaks almost joining the yellow and blue dots together.

He bites his lip and Alicia makes a sound, he chances a glance over at her and can see that her eyes are wide and her hands are shaking.

The ship jolts as he hears an explosion come from what he hopes is the other ship being destroyed and not their ship being hit.

“Mikey?” Ryan says. He’s not sure what his question is, he just wants to make sure that someone is still there on the other end. Helping them, guiding them, just breathing so that they know that they’re still alive to hear it.

There’s no answer and when he takes one of his hands off the controls to pick up the phone he sees that not only is the call disconnected it looks like his phone can’t make a connection.

“To be fair it was probably cheating that we were even able to call them anyway,” Alicia says.

Ryan nods.

“Did we get the coordinates before it shut off?” Ryan asks.

“Yeah, but what do we do with them, I mean Gerard had me punch them into a screen but he stopped talking before he could tell me what we do with them after, do we put it back on auto pilot and let the ship guide us in or do we fly ourselves or…” Alicia’s mouth snaps shut.

“Alicia?”

“I just… can’t believe that I just said all that and it’s not a role-playing game or something,” Alicia laughs harshly.

Ryan snorts in agreement. “At least I have something the other guys haven’t done yet,” Alicia looks at him questioningly. “Been to outerspace; it was on my bucket list.”

“Flew a spaceship,” Alicia says, they grin at each other. “So auto pilot or fly ourselves?”

Ryan looks at the controls, looks at where Earth is starting to take up a fairly significant portion of their screen.

“I’ve got no fucking idea.”

*

Gabe is driving like he’s training for NASCAR, there’s two cars behind them and Mikey has his laptop open across his legs.

“How about you not kill us before we get there,” Gerard suggests; William, Frank and he are packed into the backseat of the tiny ass compact like sardines.

Gabe bares his teeth.

“Anything?” he says after a minute, he’s trying to scan the sky with one eye and keep an eye on the road with the other.

“No,” Mikey says, his eyes are glued to the laptop screen, hunting for the tiniest signal from the ship. Any sign that would show that the ship hadn’t burned up in orbit and they’ve sent themselves on a wild goose chase.

“What’s that?” William says from the backseat, Gabe glances in the rear view mirror and sees William, with his head tilted at an awkward angle staring out the back window.

He doesn’t see anything, he scans the sky and he still doesn’t see anything, though he hears the high pitched squealing of a ships engines being pushed to their limits and then it hurtles past them, bright orange flames coming from the back of it and flying way too low if they’re hoping for a landing instead of a crash.

“Go,” Mikey says, Gabe slams his foot down on the gas and they go.

*

The ship isn’t burning, there’s flames coming from the back end of it but Frank thinks that might be because before the ship crash-landed it was being pushed to its limits.

There are no signs of life, nobody climbing from the wreckage whether it be Ryan and Alicia or the shifters that took them in the first place.

Mikey is still moving forward, picking slowly through the pieces of the ship that had broken off at impact, eyes only on the ship and Gerard is following him. Hand on his back when he stumbles.

The other cars are stopping, people spilling out of them and swarming around the ship. Lifting pieces away, trying to make a door or a pathway so that they can get in.

He sees the movement in a section that the others aren’t even working on and he moves forward, Gabe behind him and they pull and push debris out of the way, he finds a hand and he clutches it, squeezes while Gabe keeps pulling things out of the way and Frank starts pulling. It’s not Alicia’s hand, he recognizes Ryan’s long fingers and Ryan is squeezing back, Frank knows that inside he’s scrabbling for purchase, trying to help as much as possible and another hand breaks through the debris and that one is Alicia’s.

He keeps hold of both of them, pulling and squeezing their fingers so they know that someone’s there, Gabe working around him.

“I’ve got them,” he yells, “they’re over here.”

Mikey’s there in a second and Frank wraps both hands around Ryan’s, while Mikey keeps a grip on Alicia’s and the others move around them trying to make a hole big enough for them to squeeze through.

Ryan lets go, yanking his hand away and Frank is too stunned to say anything when his hand disappears back into the debris, then his eyes widen as he realizes that he can see more of Alicia’s arm and then her other hand. He realizes suddenly that Ryan let go because inside the ship he’s trying to push Alicia up and out of the wreckage.

He grabs hold of her other hand and he and Mikey start pulling together, there’s her arms and her shoulders and her head and suddenly she’s out and Mikey is wrapping her up tight in his arms and Gerard is pulling them out of the way as Gabe goes down onto his stomach, reaching down in the hole that Alicia’s body had made trying to get Ryan through before the hole collapses in on itself.

Others are there and they’re shifting the larger pieces of debris out of the way; Ryan’s hands and arms appear, Gabe gets his hands hooked under his armpits pulling.

And then he’s there, stumbling away with Gabe’s arms still wrapped around him, keeping him pulled tight against his side.

It’s eerily quiet, all Frank can hear is Ryan’s hitching breaths and Alicia sobbing against Mikey’s shoulder and then shifting of the wreckage as the hole that Ryan had just appeared through collapses in on itself.

He realizes that he’s on his knees when he looks around and sees that everyone else is as well. They’re all staring at Ryan, eyes wide and awestruck and he wonders if most of them thought that this day would never come.

*

Mikey’s still got his arm over Alicia’s shoulder; he hasn’t let her move very far away from him since they pulled her from the remains of the ship. She sits curled up in his lap in the car, head on his shoulder and Gerard bites his tongue.

Because she can go to a hospital and she probably should. But she’s already said no and Mikey’s not pushing anything, he’s just letting her cling to him.

Gerard thinks that if it were him and it had been Lindsey that had been taken he’d be doing the same exact thing.

Ryan has his arms wrapped around himself, his breathing is still funny and Gerard is pretty sure that he probably has cracked ribs, if not broken ones.

They’ve got healers that will look at him once they reach their destination, if they every reach their destination; they’re not the car leading the pack now, there’s a car in front of them and car behind them and every person in those cars is on high alert and certainly not driving like Gabe had been.

When they stop in front of the meeting place again, Ryan has his hand on the door before they’re even stopped. Gerard pushes his way out of the car and opens it for him, offering his arm for him to lean on and Ryan makes a face at him.

“I’m fine,” he says, voice soft. His eyes are still dazed, there’s pain in them as well. Gerard bites his tongue again.

He’d been all for going to a hotel, calling the healer to them and letting Ryan be treated, letting him get cleaned up and sleep for a little bit.

Ryan had been the one that said that he needed to be seen first, he needs the others to know that he’s real and alive.

Gabe is helping Alicia out of the car, letting her hold on to him as Mikey climbs out, then transferring her grip to him.

He’s pretty sure that however his brother had thought about telling Alicia the truth, her getting kidnapped by shifters, rescued by their prince and then crash-landing in a spaceship had not been among the scenarios that he’d envisioned.

Ryan leads them in, how he knows where to go, Gerard doesn’t know. But he’s heading right towards the large conference room.

He stops right outside the closed doors though, doesn’t enter, just turns to look at them and then he holds out an arm, gesturing towards the closed the door. He makes eye contact with Alicia and when she smiles a watery smile at him he nods once.

She’s tucked under Mikey’s arm when they walk in, William to the left of them, a couple of the others trailing behind.

“She shouldn’t be here,” he hears from inside and he scowls at the door, when he looks back he can see Ryan’s eyes narrowed.

“She’s not one of us, who are you to bring her here without authorization.”

Ryan makes a noise that sounds angry and pulls the door open.

“I gave her permission to be here,” he says, his voice sounds cool and angry and Gerard takes two steps so he’s right behind him, the others that have remained out in the hallway arranging themselves in positions long since forgotten.

Some things are ingrained from birth though.

Some things you just know how to do.

When Ryan walks through the door Gerard is half a step behind him to the right, on his left Gabe is mirroring him.

He sees the exact moment when it hits the room who is standing before them, and the second after when they all go to their knees.

Gerard is on his feet, Gabe beside him as well. Of those that had been in the room when they entered only Alicia is still on her feet, though Mikey is tugging on her arm like he’s trying to pull her down.

One of the elders bows his head lower, “Your highness,” he says, softly, reverently.

“She has permission to be here,” Ryan says, softly, he doesn’t raise his voice, he doesn’t need to, there’s not a sound to be heard other then his voice.

“She risked her life to help me get back here, she didn’t ask any questions, she just helped, she has every right to be here and she would have those rights even if she weren’t married to one of my Guard.”

“Of course your highness,” the elder says, the words sound stiff and formal. “Your will of course.”

“My will,” Ryan nods. “My will dictates that you all rise, because we have things to do and a very short time span in which to do them.”

*

He stands by the door, there’s a sheaf of papers in his hands, the last seven designs for the crown that will be placed on their King’s head.

Gerard thinks that Ryan would be happier with no crown, or possibly one made of pink plastic, Frank had actually bought one in jest though for some reason it had ended up on Ray’s head and with Pedicone calling him his pretty Princess.

Gerard thinks he’s better off just not knowing.

Ryan’s on the floor in the middle of the room, there are comfortable chairs and a bed, every time he comes into this room though; Ryan is sitting cross-legged in the middle of the floor.

The bed is kind of made, it’s the only sign that he has that Ryan actually sleeps in the bed and not curled up in the middle of the floor with a blanket pulled around him.

Ryan calls it his cell, Gerard calls it safe keeping. And as far as cells go it isn’t so bad.

There are two TV’s on, nothing about spaceships just barely out of the Earth’s orbit; Ryan’s not looking at them though, he’s tapping away at the laptop sitting open on the coffee table.

“Are you going to hover in the doorway?” Ryan asks, he doesn’t look up and he doesn’t stop tapping away at his keys.

“I didn’t want to interrupt,” Gerard says, he shuts the door behind him and crosses the room. Ryan looks up and away from the laptop. His fingers hover just over the keys, like he could start typing again any second.

“More designs for the crown?” he makes a gesture at the paper in Gerard’s hand.

“Yeah,” he holds them out and when Ryan doesn’t take them sits them in a pile next to Ryan’s cellphone.

“Is there anything in there that doesn’t scream I am King, let me show you how big my dick is by shoving this big pile of metal on my head?”

Gerard bites back a grin and a snort.

“There’s two at the top that I think are good,” he says instead.

Ryan moves his fingers over the top of the paper, shifting the top sheet over so he can see the top two side by side. He pushes the second one down toward Gerard with the tip of his pointer finger.

“That one,” he says.

“You’re sure?”

“At least I know I won’t tip over because I’m top heavy,” Ryan says, a half smile crosses his lips and then fades away when his phone starts vibrating.

They both stare at it and Gerard can see ‘Spencer’ flashing across the screen.

“Are you ever going to talk to them?” he asks, he picks up the paper that Ryan had pushed at him, he doesn’t need it, the minute that he saw the new selections he’d known this one would be the one that Ryan chose.

“No,” Ryan says, he turns his attention back to his laptop, he doesn’t start typing until his phone beeps and indicates that he has a new voice message.

Spencer’s the only one that’s called since Ryan left the message stating that he’d changed his number, Gerard wonders if the others are waiting for Spencer to actually make contact. He wonders how many times this makes it that Spencer has called and Ryan has let it go to voice mail that he doesn’t listen to. He wonders if Spencer will give up or if Ryan will finally answer the phone before he does.

He wonders.

“I can hear you thinking,” Ryan says, his focus is back on his laptop.

“Are you waiting for him to give up, or are you mad about the messages that they left originally? Because you know Mikey…”

“I know Mikey didn’t listen to them,” Ryan says. He hits the backspace button a few times and begins typing again. “I’ve got other things, more important things to worry about at the moment. Spencer will still be there when things calm down and if he’s not,” Ryan shrugs, “well it’s not like we were actually talking before anyway.”

“When will the crown be done?” he asks, Gerard looks down at him and there’s a ghost of a smile over Ryan’s lips.

“Day after tomorrow, William and the Jonas’ are putting together the ceremony now.”

“Hmmm… maybe we’ll even manage to get me crowned before the ships show up and they kill us all.”

*

The ceremony is quiet, Mikey knew it would be, he’d spoken to Gerard about it, about how the ceremony’s of old were conducted and that’s what he’d said.

They were quiet, full of solemn faces and no talking; just the sound of breaths being taken; just the hum of excitement.

It takes them 32 minutes to get all 441 of them situated around the platform where their oldest elder will place the new crown on Ryan’s head, a new crown for a new King.

Kevin is behind Ryan when he walks through the door; he’ll get his own crown, will replace Ryan as Prince and he’s already been very firmly declared second in line to the throne of a non-existent world.

He clutches Alicia’s hand tightly. She’s the only outsider here, Ryan had insisted that she be here and the Council of Elders couldn’t say no, she’d risked her life to help Ryan get back.

They wouldn’t allow any other spouses, not at this ceremony. Mikey knows that if Ryan has his way that the barriers between those 442 survivors of a destroyed world and the rest of this world that they now dwell on will be crumbling soon.

*

He’s alone in his room, there’s a crown on his head and even though it’s smaller then the ones they tried to make him choose it still feels heavy with the weight of responsibility’s that he never thought he’d be the one that had to shoulder.

He’s sent the message, the warning that this planet is theirs, that these people are theirs… the ships that were days away from entering the Earth’s orbit, days away from being visible to the naked eye have stopped moving.

They haven’t left, they have to know that they don’t have any weapons here, but that doesn’t mean the Earth is without defenses and if it means unshadowing themselves, making themselves known to the leaders of this world they will.

He’s already got plans in the works to do just that, he’s not looking forward to it. To the explanations that are sure to be demanded from those he probably should have told the truth to a long time ago.

He’d thought of doing that, but he’s not alone here, he’d had some leeway as their Prince, he has slightly more as their King, but if he’d said a word even just as Prince he would have lifted the veil of secrecy long before they were ready for it to be lifted.

They’re not ready for it to be lifted now, but now they have really no other options.

His phone buzzes beside his hand and he glances down at it.

Spencer.

He’s been writing out what he’s going to say for three days, and he’s still not sure if the words are right or not. He’s never second guessed his words, normally they go on paper the same way that they sound in his head and he gives them to Brendon or Jon and it’s fine. But there are things that he wants to say, truths that he wants to tell and he can’t.

Not yet.

He can talk to him though, to them about things that don’t have anything to do with the alien races and alien wars and anything alien in general.

His phone continues to buzz and he hesitates, hand hovering over it before he draws a breath and picks it up, cradles it in his hand.

He knows what he has to say, what he can say, at least to start, the rest will come in time he’s sure; so he presses a button and the phone stops ringing.

“Hi Spencer.”

Comments

[risha]

I really liked this! But it feels like it ended before the story ended. Are you planning a sequel?