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Here we're starting with my very few 2019's fics. I wrote his one before season 2 of Roswell, New Mexico, so it's only canon-compliant up to that point.
Title: kissing death.
Fandom: Roswell, New Mexico.
Character/Pairing: Rosa Ortecho.
Rating/Warnings: M, none.
Summary: Rosa's presence lingers over Roswell; that's not a metaphor.
Word count: 1.2k.
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The only thing Rosa knows is that, sometimes, she isn't.
Her consciousness comes and goes, looming without following any discernible pattern. She ceases to exist and comes back over and over and over, in an endless loop. At first, she doesn't quite understand what's happening to her. And then, one day, she suddenly understands all too well.
She is dead, and it sucks.
And it hurts.
And it angers her.
She doesn't have a voice with which to scream to the assholes desecrating her memorial; she doesn't have hands to pick up a pen, or even a fucking Ouija board, and write down the truth about the two girls she didn't kill; she doesn't have supernatural powers that allow her to hunt down everyone who ever hurt her and make them pay.
So all in all, being dead is good for nothing. She could have guessed that.
Death means that even when Rosa sees, she misses pieces. Somehow, never pieces she'd rather miss.
She doesn't miss the comments people make about her, or how they insult and terrorize her father (not-really-her-father?).
She doesn't miss Jim Valenti's (her father?) murder.
Rosa tries to shake the door, to scream herself hoarse, to affect change. But she's less solid than air, a mere presence that can't even exteriorize the agonizing screams that constantly cripple her soul. She wants to rip Manes' skin off, to tear his eyes out, to melt his bones. She wants to destroy everything he loves.
(She wants to applaud when Alex does.)
She doesn't miss the sheriff's rapid disease, or his death. She hopes in vain that she'll see him, feel him, when it's over. But if he becomes another ghost, he doesn't soothe her solitude.
(She doesn't miss his funeral either, and that the first thing in her non-life she's grateful for. Kyle stays until everyone else has already left, standing up in front of the grave for what feels like hours; until he falls on his knees, his hands covering his face, trying to hide his ugly sobs. Rosa tries to get closer, to put an arm around his shoulders, to seek and give comfort —and it's a gut-punch, knowing it's something she wouldn't know how to do even if she was alive; she never had that much interest in Kyle, before. Her attempts do nothing for him, but one day, hopefully many decades from now, she might get the chance to tell Kyle she found some vague comfort on their shared pain, for a minute.)
(Rosa is so proud of him, when she watches as he puts Manes down like the animal he is. She thinks she would have killed him, in Kyle's place. But she'll take any vindication she can get.)
Rosa hates many people in death; even more than she did as she lived.
But she isn't capable of hating Isobel, and it aggravates her.
It's not because Isobel wasn't truly responsible, or because one day, he appears to stage a meeting to catch her in his web.
(That last part terrifies her, and she loses count of how many times she tries to give her a warning. Her last try is at their wedding, when she can't take it anymore and just. Gives up. On ever finding some semblance of justice for herself.)
It's because, despite knowing it was him all along, she can't help but feel that Isobel is just another person that forgot her and moved along.
And she craves remembrance.
Maria is the only person who can still bring some joy into Rosa's gray existence.
It doesn't happen often, but sometimes Rosa will get to be at the bar. She tries to dance, even if she has no feet. She tries to caress Maria's hair when she cries alone at night for her mother. She spends hours trying to change the bottles' places just for the hell of it, sadly to no avail.
She knows that, though Maria tries her best to be happy, and often achieves it, she's probably the only person in the world that still remembers her full of fondness, with no resentment. Being around her is a balm on her spirit.
Until Michael Guerin becomes a regular, and regularly flirts with her. He doesn't even have the decency to squirm under her side-eyed (no-eyed) glares.
But Rosa is certain that Maria would rip him a new one if she knew about his role in the cover-up, and that feels good enough. For now.
(Rosa never sees her mother. She doesn't know what that means.)
Rosa loves Liz. She does. She's so proud of her.
It's just that sometimes—
But she is.
She likes that she gets to travel with her, from city to city. So far, she's only being able to follow her and Kyle outside of Roswell (her two siblings; her two siblings who fucked each other. If she had a mouth to cackle with, this would be the moment), and it's amazing.
Rosa watches as Liz enters and leaves one unsuccessful relationship after the other, and wants to comfort her. She listens to Liz's lies when she's asked if she has siblings (sometimes Liz says she doesn't; others, she neglects to mention Rosa isn't alive), and she wants to haunt her nightmares.
When Liz returns, she can tell right away that everything is about to change. There's something different in the air around her, and it's the closest to a physical sensation she's had in years. Seeing how intent Liz is on figuring it all out almost makes her feel like she could actually jump of joy.
She can't help her sense of disillusionment when her sister gets close to Max. She knows, as soon as Liz pushes him away, that this one time it won't take. That Liz will come back.
She thinks she should try and be understanding, but she just feels a bitter taste on the back of her throat.
(Why can she feel that?)
She hates a lot of people in ways that seem to do more harm than good to her, so hating Noah Bracken actually feels like a breath of fresh air.
It's simple. He's her killer. He manipulated her. He violated her and scarred her in every way he could have, and she hopes his ghost will stick around (after, preferably, his incredible violent demise), just so she can taunt him for all eternity.
Max Evans.
The way she hates him is everything but simple.
But oh, she does hate him. In all his pathetic self-pity and his annoying self-righteousness.
And then, he saves Liz (and yet, an ugly part inside her can't help but judge that it works this time when it didn't for her.)
And then, he kills Noah (almost as harmfully as he deserves.)
And then, he gives his life for hers (except it's never been about Rosa.)
And Liz loves him. Liz loves him so much.
Rosa can't forget, let alone forgive, how he ruined her after her death. She blames him for every little piece of suffering that came from his lies. But she guesses she can chalk his sacrifice as karma, and maybe even let go of a piece of resentment for once in her life.
She wonders if he can see her; if he's like her now.
As she ponders whether to afford him the kindness he denied her and close his eyes, she hears Liz's voice screaming for him.
She walks over his corpse to get out of the cave, and the sun over her skin feels so good she wants to cry. To feel the wet liquid pouring down her cheeks, taste its salty flavor with her tongue.
She just wants to live.