-Blind Faith-
-ElvenHope-
A/N: This story is post 'Maximum Ride' because I haven't read the whole of the first book yet, and I didn't want everything to seem out-dated so no flying Erasers and all that. It's also AU probably, I wouldn't honestly know. And just to get this the right way around I love Iggy ever since he first turned up in the book and did a face-plant into the sofa :)
I apologise for the shortness of this chapter, the next one will be longer, this is just the prologue.
Prologue:
"One should rather die than be betrayed. There is no deceit in death. It delivers precisely what it has promised. Betrayal, though ... betrayal is the willful slaughter of hope." - Steven Deitz.
It wasn't all that hard to understand really, when one thought about it, when one thought long and hard about it. She could understand why he had done it, she knew his motives and knew that Erasers could wrap anyone around their little finger. She just never thought that it would happen to him. In all her fourteen years Max had never thought that something like this would happen to the flock - it was even more devastating than when Jeb had left two years ago.
Her hand reached out tentatively stroking a lock of blond hair out of Iggy's bruised face. The bandage wrapped tightly around his forehead was stained with blood, the bandage would need to be changed soon.
Someone put a hand on her shoulder and she would have jumped had she not been used to it by now.
"Fang," Her voice nearly broke but she held it. Max was good at being strong, that was her job wasn't it?
The dark haired boy pulled up a chair and sat down next to her, seeing that for once in her life Max was close to tears.
"He doesn't deserve your pity, you know that," Fang said his voice tight as he glared down at Iggy's pale face. He just wished that the boy would wake up so that he could beat the living tar out of him.
"Doesn't he?" Max asked quietly. "Think about it Fang, put yourself in his situation for one second.
"I don't care," Fang muttered darkly. "He doesn't deserve this we should have just left him there."
Max didn't respond. She understood why Fang was so angry, she understood that Iggy had deserved everything he got, but she couldn't have left him at the school like that, she just couldn't. She'd have to watch Fang, she knew that he'd take every chance he got to kill Iggy the moment he woke up.
"Where are the others?"
"Sleeping," Fang answered. "Nudge is getting better I think, she managed to keep more of her food down anyway."
Max sighed. That was good she guessed. Her mind was too muddled to think straight and her stomach hurt like someone had kicked her - hard. She was too anxious to sleep and she daren't leave Iggy for fear that Fang would go through with his many gruesome threats. She had always known that Fang could have a temper on him when he was provoked, but she had never known how fierce it could be. It frightened her if she was honest with herself, more than she's like to admit.
At the moment though she wasn't really concentrated on that, her mind was too full of questions - she wondered if this was what Nudge felt like all the time. What would happen when Iggy woke up? Would he want to talk to them? Would he run away? Would Fang actually go through with his threat and throw him out the window? Would the others ever accept him again? Would their family ever be fixed, be back to normal like it had been before?
Like always - like she had done one thousand times before that night and the day before that she started again from the beginning…
Reviews will be kept close to the heart. Next update soon hopefully :)
-ElvenHope
