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Disclaimer: I don't own the story, the characters and Roswell.

"Spoken" *thoughts*

Chapter 5: The Confrontation

"He looks pretty good for a dead man," Minho commented as he stood leaning against the wall of the motel room they had rented. "Good colors, good tone, good breathing patterns..."

"Will you stop that?" Amber snapped in a quiet hiss as she touched Alex's head with a moist towel. "And was it really necessary to knock him out like that?"

"A sleeper hold was the nicest way to put him out of commission for a while, Amber," Minho said with a grim smile. "It would have been a lot worse had I simply knocked him over the head with a rock. Which I'm still tempted to do for his boneheaded decision to team up with Luna."

"And what was that all about anyways? I only caught half of the conversation and it didn't make any sense to me." Krystal asked, her eyes never leaving Key's sleeping face.

"They were in cohorts to pull something fast on us all," Minjong replied, his eyes on the sleeping boy. "Someone call Jonghyun and make sure he and Sulli are all right watching Luna."

"They're fine," Taemin murmured sitting in the only chair in the room. "Luna is too weak to do anything more than sit up, we all saw that." He had been watching Key for the past hour now, replaying the conversation he had overheard over and over again in his head. *She hadn't betrayed me, not really. But why did she lie? And why did Key let her pretend to kill him? So many questions and only one way to get the answers to them all.*

Reaching over to pull Amber away, he glanced up at Minho and looked pointed toward Key.

Reaching over, Minho shook the slighter boy's shoulder firmly but not roughly, he was still having a hard time believing that Key was alive. "Yo, Sleeping Beauty! Time to wake up." *And answer some questions that's burning holes in our heads.*

Groaning, Key rubbed his forehead for a moment, trying to orient himself to the unfamiliar surroundings. He tried his best not to react to the sight of Minho and Taemin, who stood side by side in front of him, stern looks gracing their youthful faces. *Calm down, they don't know anything yet and they're not going to. Luna needs you to pull this off for her, not to mention Amber. You can do this, Key!* Trampling down the sudden panic, he shook his head. "What the heck is this?"

"That's a good question, kid. That's what we'd all like to know." Minjong murmured softly but still managed to startle Key as the boy whipped around to stare at him... no at the girl standing next to him.

Amber's eyes held all her doubts, all her fears... all her pains. "Hello Key."

Steeling himself for the toughest battle of his life, he turned his back on her. *It's easier if I don't look at her. Now I know how Luna felt. God, all I had to do was die but she had face them all for... stop thinking about that now. Just get through this!* "Look, you do know that K and R is a federal offense?"

"K and R?" Krystal asked her voice floating from somewhere behind Minho. "What's that?"

Key raised one brow arrogantly. "Kidnap and Ransom. And it has twenty to life jail sentence attached to it. But I'm a generous guy, you let me go now and we'll forget this ever happened."

Minho laughed. "Can't charge us for kidnapping a dead man."

Knowing that it was true, Key played along anyways. "You're threatening to kill me now?"

"Key..."

"Why do you people keep calling me Key?" He asked, hoping he was as convincing as Luna obviously had been. "My name is Colin."

"Key, I think the game is over. Let's just get to the truth and sort this whole mess out." Minjong advised in his usual quiet dignity. He felt bad for the boy, from the look in the kid's eyes, he's scared.

"Who's playing games?" Key leaned forward and stared at Max, the only one that seemed to be perfectly calm. "I don't know who you people think you are, but you're going to be spending the rest of your lives in..."

"Cut the crap, Key," Minho growled.

"Key, why are you doing this?" Amber asked, stepping forward to reach out, to touch. *God please, don't take him from me again.*

He swallowed the lump in his throat and restrained himself from going to her; to ease the pain he could hear in her voice. The desperation tore at his heart. "Look, I think you people probably have me confused with someone else. So in light of that, I think I'll just be going now." He got up but found himself toe to toe with Lee Taemin.

Max didn't know exactly what he wanted to do, needed to do but knew that he needed the truth. "You tell us what we want to know or I walk over to that nice little cabin by the woods and shake it out of Luna." He saw the concern in Key's eyes. If nothing else, it would appear that Key cared a great deal for the blonde beauty. "In her condition, I doubt she'd last more than few minutes."

"That's what you think." Sitting down again, Key crossed his arm over his chest and stared at Taemin, as if gauging his reaction. "Ask away."

There was a pause of silence as each of the three aliens struggle to ask.

Krystal, impatient by nature, threw up her hands and sighed. "Okay, I'll go first." She marched up at Key and asked point blank, "Why the hell did you help that lying ?"

"Krystal, with all due respect to you anger and misunderstandings of the situation at the moment," Key began with quiet dignity and all the regal starch of a white knight on the defense, "Don't start labeling people until you get all your facts straight. It makes a person look small and vindictive in the process."

Mouth hanging open like a gutted fish, Krystal sputtered for a moment before getting a hold of herself. "Okay, let me try this again. Why did you help Luna?" She smiled at him with clinched teeth, letting him know of her displeasures.

"Cause I trusted her."

"TRUSTED HER!" Krystal exploded, her face infused with disbelief. "How can you trust that witch?!? She's evil. She killed..." that stopped the tirade rather abruptly.

"Me?" Key suggested helpfully.

Crossing her arms, Krystal sat down on the bed with a huff. "Oh shut up!"

"And here I thought you wanted me to talk," Key mused ironically.

Minho sat down on the bed and pulled Krystal against him to calm her. "Why did you trust her? Especially when the rest of us..."

"She made a convincing argument," Key said quietly, remembering the long conversation they had just before she gave him the alien book for translation. There was actually very little he had to do, Luna had already deciphered most of the journal with the fragments of memories she had recovered. All had to do was set up everything else for the others to find.

"Why you?" Amber asked, her eyes full of question. "Why did she approach you but not any of..."

"And did you ever think that maybe I was the only one willing to listen to what she may have to say?" Key asked quietly, looked at her truly for the first time. He wanted her to understand. "You've never made it a secret that you didn't trust her, Amber. None of you did."

"I trusted her," Taemin said as he turned to stare at the window.

"Did you, Taemin?" Key asked, shaking his head in disbelief. He couldn't get the image of Luna crying herself to sleep at night; those heart-wrenching sobs of agony that broke his heart to hear. "Did you really? If you did, you won't have been so quick to assume that..."

"I didn't," he answered, watching the sky. The sky was gray, not the kind is looks like it was about to rain, just a very unhappy gray. "I didn't want to believe but she said..."

"What did she say?" Key's eyes searched his. "I mean, what did she really say to you?"

"She said that she killed you!" Taemin spat out in anger for his own disgust with himself. *How could I have believed her? How could I have believed that she was capable of murder? Was it cause no matter what, she was always Changmin's child? Not to be trusted no matter how hard she's worked to prove her loyalty only to you?* He shut his eyes against the vile taste in his throat. "She said..." Then he paused, playing those last moments in the cavern with her over and over again in his head. "She didn't answer me."

"She told you want Changmin's plans had been," Key cleared for him. "She told you want you need to hear to believe. But she never said the words, did she?"

The others all looked at Taemin, who stared at Key. "No, she didn't."

"But you chose to believe," Key was grime and shook his head again. "And you wonder why she didn't come to any of you for help? Why it was so easy for her to make you believe? You wanted to believe. You needed someone to be angry at for all the that you went through, and she's the outsider, so you chose her."

There was a heavy silence as the others run it through their minds. Minho cleared the discomfort in his throat. "Why did she..."

"Have to lie?"

He nodded. "Yeah. We'd like to know now."

"Changmin's plan was to have Luna return with Taemin's child and deliver Taemin, you and Amber to Kris. Luna and Changmin would get safe passage back to the home planet. With Taemin's child safely in his possession to be raised as his own, the people would accept him as King."

Minjong nodded his head in understand. "Then there would be no need for Taemin to be around."

Key smiled at the former sheriff. "That's right, Taemin would die once the child was born. Kris needed one or the other to keep the people in line."

Minho shook his head, trying to clear the idea. "So she lied about killing you to make Taemin stay here on Earth, where he would be safe?" The theory had holes big enough to drive semis through. "What would keep Kris from sending an army to kill Taemin once the baby was born on Antar?"

Surprise appeared on Key's face. "Wow, Luna was right. You're a lot sharper than most people give you credit for."

Michael was tempted to sock him one.

"Answer to that: nothing. But notice that Luna isn't on Antar." Key turned to Taemin, who was watching him with an intensity that was almost frightening. "Luna knew that she couldn't go to Antar, not when Taemin's life would be in danger and Kris ready to take her child away from her. But she did send the message beacon on to inform Kris of her impending childbirth."

Krystal shook her head. "I don't get it, if Blondie wasn't going to go home, why would she send an announcement?"

"So that Kris knows that she's got a child," Taemin answered, everything making since now. "She needed Kris to know that there's a child out there with my DNA that the people of Antar will accept as heir to the throne. But going to Antar means that Kris would kill me, so Luna doesn't leave Earth." He sat down suddenly on the hardback chair, his legs no longer willing to support him. "Kris can't kill me without an heir to present to the people. I would get on with my life without danger. And with Luna and the baby dead, Kris would never know."

Key watched with some sympathy for the tortured man. "Give the man a cigar," he said dryly but not unkindly. "He got it."