Here it is. My first attempt at Maximum Ride fanfiction and I like it :) Also, IF YOU HAVEN'T READ FANG YET, READ NO FURTHER. There, now you can't say that I ruined the book for you.

DISCLAIMER: Neither do I own nor will I ever own the Maximum Ride series. If I did, I would die of happiness.

Enjoy! :D

"But here it is, they don't have long

The night before life goes on.

Yeah that's what my momma told me, and just like those kids

I didn't want to listen to no one.

There's nothing you can do, there's nothing you can say,

'Cause I know how it feels when a love goes away."

-Carrie Underwood, The Night Before (Life Goes On)

I can't remember the last few days. I don't remember getting up this morning or going through the motions. Yet here I was, breaking down in the safety of my room again. I had it down to a science by now. Or at least I should.

Fang was gone. By now I had fully realized that. But I still fell asleep every night and dreamed of him. I would wake up crying, expecting him to be there to comfort me. Every night he wasn't and it just made me cry more. I haven't gotten a full night's sleep in... I can't remember when. That's my point – a life without is a life not worth remembering. The moments I had with him, I had taken for granted. I had never thought once that he would leave me. Fang was as much a part of me as my left arm is. Probably more. I would die to save him and I knew he would die to save me too.

Literally and technically, he had once. But then he ended up being okay.

I can't say the others know what I'm going through. None of them have felt his lips on theirs so passionately, seen so many of his radiant, sun-shining smiles, or met his intense gazes and immediately felt so loved. I have. And I remember that every second of every day.

Dylan has kept his distance. So no, I haven't shown him that letter yet. I will...eventually. I also haven't touched my letter since the night I found it. There it is, placed haphazardly on my dresser. Yet each word is engrained into my memory. Raptor memorizing skills? I think not.

I've tried writing my own letter back to him. Obviously he would never get it, but I thought I would feel better if I got it all out. I was wrong. Every time I end up sobbing myself to sleep and the notebook goes untouched.

Nudge has taken up her own blog since Fang hasn't updated his. Her posts, however, lack his quiet humor and edge. She tends to drone on about unimportant things and skip over what's more interesting. I've written a couple entries for the blog, but I've never shown her. Why? Because they're all about Fang. Apparently I could write about him but not to him. I hated it.

Gazzy and Iggy have been working on something involving a baseball bat, a toothpick, and a ballpoint pen. I asked them about it once an ended up more confused than before. I think they said you could use the ink as a fuel to set the hat on fire and the toothpick as a match. Something like that. I kinda zoned out at one point, wondering where the heck they learned that. Internet probably. Curse technology.

Angel has set about making a place for Total and Akila. The news? Akila's pregnant! Mom had done an ultrasound and everything. It was one of the few times I've smiled since Fang left. I can't remember the feeling of it anymore but at the time it was nice. Pleasant. The whole ordeal has been something to take away the feeling that something, someone, was missing from the flock. So… yay to impracticality, and to puppies will probably never be able to stay with us.

It stung when I first realized the fact that we always left those who couldn't fly.

Dylan and Jeb are here a lot but they technically live at a house the CSM built a quarter mile away. The privacy was nice. I realized I needed to talk to Dylan about a couple things. Not today, though. Show him that letter, tell him that while I will never stop loving Fang, I wasn't going to just completely lose sight of the reason he's here. Was I even able to find feelings for anyone else? Probably not. It made me feel guilty.

And what have I been doing besides moping? I've taking up fictional writing. I have at least a dozen different scenarios where I find Fang or he finds me or we meet twenty years from now. I'll keep them all and give them to him if-no, when we end up together.

Oh and for the record, I never take off the ring. Ever. It was one of the few things I had of him that reminded me that he was real. My love for him and his in return, it was all real.

I missed him so, so much.

But life has to go on despite the pain.

He looked up into the dark night sky. Where ever Max was, she could look up and see the same stars, the same moon. It didn't matter what bad things came his way - that thought made him feel... whole.

Part of him wished he had added that in the letter, the looking up in the sky part. Another part, a larger part, was glad he didn't. If he had, she would never have the chance to get over him.

The thought of her loving someone else, Dylan perhaps, made his blood run cold and tears start to form in his eyes. He was Fang – he never cried. Yet it was the one thing he couldn't bear. He loved her. And where did it get him? A life of self-exile, of life on the run. A life of slowly forgetting her voice and her smile and everything he loved about her. It would never go away completely but he knew it would fade a little.

A part of him knew he would see her again, long before the twenty years he had specified in the letter. It would be very soon. Soulmates, as he had accepted they were, always ran back into each other. Rekindled a flame of a forgotten candle, left to burn all night. Maybe that one girl was right: maybe he should write poetry. Something for Max, in the likely chance that he died before he saw her again.

No, he couldn't do that to her.

He held on to the best memories he had of her. The sunlight in her hair, her breathtaking wings, the way she felt in his arms, and something fuzzy he couldn't exactly place.

Three words that he know she had never said to her, yet it was there. Maybe Dr. G-H had implanted it in him. But it didn't matter. It was Max, his Maximum Ride. The one he loved so much it hurt.

Her voice murmuring the sentence: "I love you."