Disclaimer: I do not own Maximum Ride, and no matter how much I pretend to it is simply never going to be true… darn.
Angel is dead. The ground beneath my feet shakes, my head is too light for my shoulders and it sinks forward on them, at once I think of everything but at the same time nothing. The ground seems to rise up, pebbles and debris fitting it with a fine new coat, through a haze I am able to make out the voice of several members of my flock… the members that are still alive. Not a word of what they are saying is strong enough to break through the force field; it is made up of one thought and one thought alone. My baby cannot be dead. I raised that girl and she cannot be dead. She cannot be.
What I do not understand is why everybody is looking at me as they are. Why everybody's faces are drawn and their eyes emulate concern. There is nothing to be concerned about, because Angel isn't gone. She just isn't. Any moment now she is going to walk out, maybe even fly out to greet us. She's an excellent flyer; she'll probably fly out from behind some rock and yell gotcha! They'll see, she'll fly from behind a rock, she'll laugh and yell at us and at first we'll be angry but then we will all go home and have pizza… we will all forgive her… She just has to fly out.
All she has to do is fly out, I brace myself for that moment; I wonder why the others aren't doing the same. Surely they understand that she just has to fly out? Surely they understand that? I'm not the only one that understands that… I can't be… I can't be the only one that understands that… I can't be. In a moment of pure reality I feel something wet touch down on the bridge above my lip. My nose has run, when I go to wipe it I find that my eyes have been running too, rivers.
My vision is blurred but that hardly matters, with my eyes closed and my shoulders bent I feel a body come up behind mine, familiar arms wrap around my waist. Without thought I turn into him, feel my arms wrap around his neck and my head seek the hollow place there; the place where I can create a barricade of sorts, distance myself from the outside world. Stay hidden until my baby is back… all I want is to have my baby back.
Fang strokes my hair but he doesn't say anything; his fingers are rough as they tuck a lock of hair behind my ear, when I scream he only tightens his grip. He doesn't try to feed my bullshit about how it's okay, about how everything is going to be okay, about how my baby is going to be okay. He doesn't talk at all, just rocks me back and forth as he strokes my hair, rocks me and doesn't say anything. This is why I loved him, why I still do.
Footsteps approach us, I hear their crunch on the gravel, bury my head deeper into the shoulder blade of this strange, silent boy. The arms around me tense and just like that I am aware of who has the grand idea to take center stage, the boy that I was supposed to run to, the one who is supposed to be a part of my future, who I am supposed to get married to and have children with; Dylan.
"Leave!" Fang shouts, his voice hoarse and breaking, "Leave! You have no right to be here!" In a whisper he continues to repeat it, back and forth, the way I did in my head. "No right… no right…"
With difficulty I look up, and for the first time I am aware that he is pain. That his cheeks aren't any less damp than mine, that they are streaked just as mine must be, that his eyes are dark and there is a sorrow reflected in them that I have never in my wildest nightmares thought to see mixed in with this color of black and golden flecks. He looks down at me but he doesn't say anything, he doesn't make an attempt at wiping away the tears that fall free from his lids, so I do it for him. When he doesn't respond I pull him to me, remind myself that Angel was his darling too, that I wasn't the only one who had a part in raising her. That he had cause to love her too, I remind myself of that and I hold him tighter, make an attempt at easing his burden as he has eased mine.
The others move away and we stand there for forty more minutes, a mess of heaving chests and shaking shoulders, tears that soak shirts and snot that joins it, but there are only two of us. No little girls appear out from behind the rock piles, and when we leave we carry with of us the last piece of my baby that we have left. One pink tennis shoe.
A/N: So I am reposting this, because, as I feel about a lot of my old work, I can simply write it better now. I hope this chapter touched you and I hope that you will find it in your hearts to review, until such a time as next chapter is posted… fly on.