Well, it's been a little while, but I'm briefly back to the fandom which is kind of my second home.

This is a little series that picks up where we left off after Louder than Words. I haven't done a 5+1 for a while, so I figured I might as well apply it to Max.

Enjoy!

#1: Bea and Felix

"That was definitely worth seeing in theaters!" Felix crowed. "All the whoosh and the kaPOW and the zzzzzhht!"

"I'm not sure about all that." Bea shook her head fondly. "But I loved the detail in the CGI. And the music! Can't get that from TV speakers." She glanced to the side. "What did you think, Max?"

"It was great!" Max said, tossing his half-eaten bucket of popcorn. Well, half-eaten and one-quarter-spilled-when-Bea-latched-onto-his-arm-in-surprise bucket of popcorn, anyway. "But it'll take them a couple of years to do a sequel. That's the price of such awesomeness on the first go, I guess."

As the three friends broke out into the cool air of the early evening and the crowd of movie-goers around them started to disperse, Bea stopped and spun. She narrowed her eyes and looked at Max. Both boys nearly collided with her before realizing she wasn't still walking.

"What's up?" Felix asked.

She ignored Felix and kept staring. "Max, are you okay?"

"Sure. I'm good."

"No, you aren't." Bea hated that the Cap's bill was casting a shadow across his face; the light from the setting sun wasn't reaching his eyes. "You haven't been anything like yourself for a couple of months. Ever since…"

"Ever since Toyama." Max lifted his chin slightly, revealing a frown.

"Well, yeah."

"Dude, he was all, you know, busy." Felix jumped to defend his best friend. "He saved the whole world again! And, like, everybody saw it! Well, I mean, they didn't see Max exactly, but everybody knows something big went down!"

"Yes, I think that's the problem," Bea said, matching Max's glare with one of her own. "Something big went down." She crossed her arms. "And for once in your life, Max, you didn't come home and rush to tell us about it. You always tell us about your adventures. Usually glossing over the embarrassing parts. But this time – nothing. And I want to know why."

Max broke their eye-contact. "It doesn't matter."

"I think it does."

"Bea," Felix's voice went uncommonly diplomatic, "leave him alone." She looked at him in surprise and he shrugged. "You know what we all saw on the news. This was a really big, really bad deal. If he doesn't want to talk about it, you shouldn't make him. He's probably got a good reason."

"But…"

"Look." Max straightened his shoulders and raised his head, tipping the Cap back far enough that Bea could finally see his whole face; she was surprised at the calmness in it. "Thanks for being worried. I know I probably scared both of you with what happened in Hong Kong and I'm sorry about that. But this is one time I don't want you to know all the details. Okay?"

Bea was gearing up to argue, but something in Max's eyes stopped her. She'd known Max a long time, since the first day of second grade; he'd put glue on their teacher's chair and hidden under her desk and she hadn't tattled on him. She knew his moods, his jokes, his bravado. She knew when to poke him and when to let him slide out of whatever it was. She'd even seen him save the world a few times.

But Bea had never before seen the emotion that hovered in Max's eyes now. And some of it was totally understandable – it had only been a few months since Max had nearly died in a rooftop pool in Hong Kong (and almost certainly a few other times she didn't know about given everything that had happened afterwards), since an entire city had nearly been taken over by monsters. Even Max, who saved the world on a monthly basis, had obviously needed a little extra time to bounce back.

But this wasn't that. There was something in Max's eyes she'd almost never seen in him, not when snarking at a teacher or charging an alien robot empty-handed or trying to slither out of homework.

Something that didn't have easy words but she could feel down to the roots of her soul.

"Okay." She took a gulp and tried to smile. "Okay. Just…remember you can always tell us stuff if you need to. Right?"

"Any time." Felix nodded.

"Thanks, guys." A certain tension drained out of Max and he smiled for real.

Just before his phone rang.

Max answered without hesitation. "Virg? What's up?"

As he listened to whatever the Lemurian was telling him on the other end of the line, Felix and Bea watched a change come over him. Where his shoulders had been level they now rose and his chin came up high and proud. Where there had been tension in his limbs like strings wound too tight, now his arms and legs seemed loose. Relaxed. Relieved.

"Okay. I'll meet you there." He hung up and tucked the phone back in his pocket. "Sorry guys. Looks like I'm on the clock tonight. Can you take my bike home for me? Mom already knows."

"Sure," Felix said, giving a half-shrug.

"Thanks."

"Max," Bea said as he started to walk away from her. She knew him well enough to know he probably didn't want to turn around, but he was rarely rude like that to her. He paused and faced her. Whatever she had been about to say deserted her, so she sighed and said, "Be careful, okay?"

"I will. Thanks, Bea."

Bea and Felix stood together, watching their friend head out into the lot, carefully picking his way through cars at an angle towards a running path that vanished into the nearby park system. When he was finally out of sight, swallowed by the long shadows of dusk, Bea suppressed a shiver. Wordlessly and with a half-smile, Felix dropped his jacket over her shoulders. Bea shot him a grateful look and he grinned – he was as dense as they came, but he was still a good friend.

"I've said it before," Felix commented, "but I'm really, really glad he's the one with the Cap."

Bea looked at the trees which had closed on her friend. She reached with one hand to touch the place on her leg, hidden by her jeans but not unfelt, where she still bore the marks of a wound from the attack in Hong Kong. It was healing, but slowly. And she wondered what wounds hadn't been made to Max's body but might be still open, still healing, too. Those kinds of wounds seemed so much worse, and so much harder to bear.

"The world should be glad Max is the Cap-Bearer," Bea said a little sadly, "but right now I'm sure not."