AN: Well, I was bored and upset about something, so I just started typing. Several hours later, this chapter just exploded into something completely new. I hope you guys like it. And if not, well go hate somewhere else!
This is my first Angel centered story. There are too many Max abuse stories, too many Fax stories. I think Angel deserves a moment in the spotlight, and not as someone trying to tick off Max or take over the flock, but instead as someone truly vulnerable and lost. Not exactly good, but not evil, so I consider it an improvement. What can I say? Dumping my sorry life on other characters is a way to make me feel better. But that doesn't mean I'm heartless...I don't write major character deaths unless I deem it necessary. So far, I haven't. Hopefully this story won't be an exception. If I had to write an Angel funeral, I swear, I'd probably cry. Not with Max's death. Over done. Same with Fang. Boring, been there and done that. This is ANGEL's moment!
Okay enough rambling from me. I'll be surprised if anyone bothered reading that...
Disclaimer: -Sniff- I still don't own Maximum Ride? Why? The injustice of the world! I swear I'll fix this problem!
I tried to kill the pain
But only brought more(so much more)
I lay dying
And I'm pouring crimson regret and betrayal
I'm dying(dying)
Praying(praying)
Bleeding(bleeding)
And screaming
Am I too lost to be saved?
Am I too lost?
- Tourniquet, Evanescence
You will never be good enough!
Cut!
Why are you always such a disappointment?
Cut!
Get out of my sight!
Cut! Do it now! The urge is there!
Go die!
Slice.
You are the bane of my existence.
Blood, dripping down.
You do not deserve to live.
Slice. Again.
Die...
More red, trickling over paleness.
You did it wrong! Start over and do it again!
Salty tears mixed in with the warm gushing blood.
Weak. Why are you always so weak?
A choked sob escaped.
Drama queen. Always complaining.
Need this to survive.
Finally. The voices were gone. Still sobbing. Still bleeding. But the voices were gone. The pain was gone, gone, gone. Numbness remained.
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
Some part of her wanted this to stop. But she knew it never would. Never, never never. Never escaping! Escape. That sounded nice. Escape was impossible. Escape was never there. Escape was for...the weak. She didn't want to be weak. She wanted to be strong, like Max. But that was before. So long before. Years must have passed.
At least, she thought so. It felt like it. Last time she was aware of time at all, was before the madness started. She was nine years old then, the day she finally got adopted. Loving family? On the surface. Max was sad, but knew it was time to let her baby go. So she was left to two perfectly normal people that wanted an unusual daughter. Well, they got it. But she wasn't what they wanted. So that night the abuse started. At first Angel didn't understand what was going on. But as time passed, she got the picture. She had done something wrong. She always did something wrong.
Now, three years later, the only friend she had was the sharp edge of a silver blade and streaming blood that looked almost...beautiful pouring over her pale skin. Pain was beautiful in its own sense. But she never was. Angel stared at her once glorious blonde curls, now hanging limp and dirty over her face.
She hadn't been good enough for a meal or shower tonight. The familiar pangs of hunger stabbed from within but she paid no attention. That was a lesser evil. She crawled into bed, or what she called her bed. It was nothing but a scratchy, old blanket and worn mattress on the floor in a dusty corner of the attic. In the winter, this was torture, but she was never good enough for a new blanket or real bed, so she did her best not to complain.
"Ariel! Get your twisted little butt down here!" She bit her lip to keep herself from screaming. The true nightmare had begun.
"Yes, Eric," she said numbly, getting out of bed. She didn't remember falling asleep or the nighttiime world switching to this glaring reality. Not that it mattered. It never mattered to...them. Not to any of them.
"I told you to scrub this floor till I see my 'flection! Do I see it?"
"No, sir," Angel said dully. "I shall clean it again."
"Damn right you shall!" He spat on the floor in disgust and stomped off into the kitchen. Angel dropped to the floor. The required equipment was placed in front of her. She set to work at once, ignoring aching muscles and any other pains she was forced to hide. Nobody questioned the long sleeves. She needed them anyway to hide the wings she was never allowed to use. She scrubbed and scrubbed until a broken blue eyed girl miserably stared back from the woodwork below her.
Angel shakily got to her feet, fighting off a spinning sensation that caused her knees to buckle. It was time to get ready for school. She went into her...er...room, and slipped into a uniform that was thankfully good at hiding those forbidden wings. Not that she could use them. She had forgotten how to fly, in every sense of the word. Maybe, if her grades on today's report card were good enough, she could get something to eat or at least stretch her wings.
The high school loomed ahead. Angel was smart enough to go there, so that was what she did. She was twelve, and a freshman-soon-to-be-sophmore in high school. All everyone saw was a small girl too smart for her own good.
"Freak!" She was shoved into the lockers.
"You belong in that school over there!" They meant the middle school. Her tormenters continued to taunt and tease her with so many names she was used to hearing that they were just faded and numb, just like her insides. Punches rained down on her skin, nails clawed at her face. Finally, they got bored and left her there, crumpled on the sidewalk. Nobody came to help, because nobody cared about a twelve year old that went to high school who had wings. The bell rang, and Angel forced herself offf the ground and tried to look as normal as possible. Another day. She'd get through it, just like all the others. It didn't matter. None of it did. Just like own miserable self. She collapsed into her seat in english.
"Why are you so skinny?" Kiara hissed. "You anorexic or something?" Angel numbly shook her head. This sort of thing happened every single day.
"Alright class!" the teacher cut in sharply. Mrs. Wattica gazed at all of the classmates who were still whispering until they fell silent. She had a way with stares. Angel sometimes tried to glare like her, but always failed. Eric said she just looked even more ugly than before. Ugly. Unpretty. Stupid. Not good enough. Her fingers twitched under the desk, begging for that razor to wonderfully yet painfully cross her skin again until the drops of blood outnumbered the amount of tears about to course down her face.
But this urge had to be hidden, shied away, because no one would understand it. All they would see is someone who never amounted to anything in the world. English was over before she knew it. Next came algebra. Oh, the joys of staring at all those jumbled numbers and equations until they made sense to her. Angel took perfect notes, thanks to the mind reading ability she only used in absolute secret now. Only when it was necessary. The rest of the time, she just blocked off the voices, lost inside herself and the voices drowning out every sound that made sense.
"Angel," Mr. Vade called once class was over. She meekly approached him. She must have done something wrong...very wrong. His face looked quite stern.
"Your last test score perfectly matches someone else's. I want to know if you cheated."
"No! I would never do such a thing!" She cringed as he leaned closer to get a good look at her eyes, a telltale sign of whether someone was lying or not.
"I just wanted to make sure. I'll write you a pass to your next class." At home, she slammed the bathroom door behind her. The razor awaited her.
You will never be good enough!
Ugly!
Unpretty!
Stupid!
Weak!
So weak!
Drama queen!
Complainer!
Slice, slice, and slice again. Angel tasted rivers of salt. Never, ever...but just once more would do the trick. Her head suddenly snapped up. Glassy blue eyes gazed fiercely into the cracked mirror.
"I hate you," she whispered at the reflection. "I hate you!" Her hand came down and struck the mirror. Glass exploded onto the floor, making a tinkling sound as it landed onto the pristine cream tiles.
Clean it up
Still sniffling, she cleaned up her mess. In several minutes, all the bloody glass shards were in the trash can. She cleaned up the mess from the cuts, taking great care that Eric did not hear her. Although, he would not be home for hours, so what did it matter? Angel left the bathroom and went to go find at least something small to eat so she'd get rid of the worst hunger pains that had begun several days ago. She checked the cabinets. Empty. Empty. Empty. All of them, empty. She opened the fridge next. At last, she discovered a rare delicacy: an apple. Something very close to hope shone somewhere deep down inside her. She ate the apple and threw out the core, feeling a little less empty than before.
Now to start on her homework. Algebra, English, science, social studies. The basic courses. Lifetimes ago school wouldn't even have mattered to her. Now it was all she had. But, even then, there was no one she could converse to about this. Her eyes drifted to the report card that needed to be signed. Hopefully Eric wouldn't be too drunk when he came home today. Maybe he'll be remembering his dead wife a little less today. Yeah. And maybe she was a perfectly happy-go-lucky normal girl with no problems. The world had no happy endings. At long last she understood what Max meant by that.
"I'm home," Eric called, stalking into the dark hell that was her home. "I hope you behaved yourself in school today." Angel thought it a good idea to keep the cheating incident to herself. He would only misinterpret it.
"I got my report card," Angel said, holding out the folded up sheet of paper that she hadn't bothered to read yet. She was not allowed to do such things without permission. And she rarely ever got permission...that was even more rare than a decent meal. Eirc huffed a sigh; a mingle of acohol and cigarettes blowing into her face.
"Hand it over, you evil witch." That was one of his nicer nicknames for her. He always called her 'Ariel' or bad names. She wasn't worthy enough to be called by her real name here at home is what he said after she had showed him her wings. She obeyed orders, not even daring to hope if her grades were good enough, merely anticipating punishment or criticism of some sort.
"Let's see...A, A, A, A, A, A, B plus. Oh so close. Better luck next time, you worthless child." The paper fell to the floor, dirty and crumpled. Angel picked it up with shaking hands and skittered off to the bathroom. Once again, her report card wasn't getting signed. She brought the razor up to her finger and carefully dragged it across. Blood beaded up on her finger. Very carefully, she began to forge the signature, making sure the blood looked more like very dark pen.
"So sorry," she whispered. The tears wouldn't come. Not this time. She was spent. She weakly crawled up to her makeshift bedroom. The sun was setting. She had a wonderful view of it that never went appreciated. What use was that, when it just meant another day like this one was about to begin? She quietly sat there, staring at every self created scar as the minutes turned into hours.
Tomorrow was another day. Another day of fear, pain, and being shoved into oblivion. Permenant blackness. She contemplated it once, but eventually she realized this pain was deserved, and silently went through it all alone. Alone. That was the first time in a long while she had even considered the word. But it made sense. She was alone. Surprisingly, that wasn't the source of her pain. No, soemthing much worse than loneliness raged in every inch of her mind and body. She curled up against the wall, the warmest part of the attic. She tried to think of absolutely nothing, eventually dropping off into a restless sleep filled with nightmares and screaming that nobody heard.
"Wake up!" Angel groggily opened her eyes. That was her daily alarm clock. Eric. Always. Every day. She blearily stared into his constantly angry and disappointed gray eyes, slowly coming to her senses. He pulled her up before that could happen. Eric was always an impatient man. She just learned to deal with it, like everything else.
"What are my duties for today?" she asked formally.
"Child protective services is checking on us again. Make the place look normal. You know what to do. I will be back in an hour, after I'm sobered enough and with fresh enough breath for them." Angel nodded, but didn't dare pose an argument. He always found a way to make himself seem like the perfect father, and her the constant wrong doer. Maybe, there was a tiny, slim chance that she'd get out of here.
No. There was never a chance of that. She would always be dragged back here for another beating. She would always be here...slowly dying. She double, triple, quadrouple checked every square inch of the house to make sure it looked perfect and new. Next, she raided the late Bethany's make-up kit and started using coverup on her scars, bruises, and fresh cuts. Bethany had died mysteriously shortly after she had gotten adopted. Eric never told her what happened. She never bothered to ask. He would only hurt her for being insolent.
"Is the house ready?"
"Yes." This was the only time Eric ever bothered being nice to her. Once a month, Child protection services came to check on the houes after getting calls from the neighbors about screams and slaps and thumps occuring in the late hour. The door swung open, and Dr. Valencia Martinez stepped into the room. Once a veternarian, she quit the profession after Angel had gotten adopted, becoming part of social services just a few short months later.
"Hello, Angel," Ms. Martinez said cheerfully, peering into the girl's eyes. Angel instantly brightened, a rare smile flashing across her face. The front was easy to put up in front of Max's mother.
"How are you today, sweetie?"
"I'm great! I almost got straight A's this quarter!"
"You are smart for your age, aren't you?" She still occasionally spoke to Angel like she was still seven, but she didn't mind. It was better than no attention at all.
"Yes, I always tell her to do her best," Eric said, smiling and nodding. "But she gets so upset if the slightest thing goes wrong...I think she has OCD." Dr. Martinez gazed at Angel. She could detect a hint of something that she'd dismissed several times before.
"You might want to get that checked out at the doctor," the former vetenarian suggested. There it was again. Something in her eyes. Those once cheerful, innocent baby blue eyes held some other emotion than plastic cheerfulness that was easy to produce.
"I'm going to the store soon, so could you please come back another time? I'm sure we can talk later." Eric seemed to be getting anxious about something. Dr. Martinez thought she could smell cigarettes under all of that Febreeze. Her eyes drifted to the coffee table. There was a shard of tan colored glass. Did that belong to a beer bottle, or was it just part of a broken mosaic? She shook her head. There was no way. Eric made a perfect father for Angel. He treated her with such kindness, a tenderness that she rarely saw in the world. But something didn't feel right. Something about all of this felt so fake that she could hardly breathe. Dr. Martinez left the house, deep in thought.
Meanwhile, Angel was rewarded a piece of bread for her good behavior. It was slightly moldy, but at least she wasn't going to completely starve tonight. She gave a quiet thanks and devoured the stale bread within a minute or two. Finally. She was allowed to be alone. But, she wasn't allowed to do very much up in her cramped corner of the attic. Angel picked up the children's book she had read so many times. The Wizard of Oz.
She loved the cute little tale, even though she was much too old for fairy tales and happy endings. She definitely wasn't in Kansas, and never was. And she wasn't getting what she wanted from the Wizard. But, at least in the story, she could pretend. She could close her eyes and...pretend. It was the only thing she had left.
Angel was startled into wakefulness. She had fallen asleep with the book over her face. At least she had woken up before Eric had. What woke her up, though? The creak of a stair? The quiet closing of a door? She stiffened, listening to her surroundings. Silence. She glanced at the clock. Midnight. She sighed. Of course. It must have been her imagination. She allowed her eyes to slide shut again.
Not good enough!
Never good enough!
Disappointment!
No food for you, evil child!
You don't deserve your true name!
Wings? What is this? Some kind of prank? Are you trying to be funny here? No. No...weirdness allowed here. I don't want to see that, okay? Not even a feather.
Sleep was a thing of the past now. Angel clamped her hands over her ears, trying to shut out the voices. Well, it was actually one voice. Eric's. Over and over and over and over and over again. It never stopped, unless she released the pain. She had to purge it through the razor. It was the only way. Finally, there was complete silence and nothingness as she nearly lost consciousness. She had done too much this time. Her stomach churned from the dizziness. She weakly cleaned herself up and stumbled back into bed. Another day. Over. Gone. Nothing ever seemed to change.
She opened her eyes. Got dressed. She had no reason to believe that today would be different from any other. She walked to school and ignored the bullies. Four classes passed in their normal fashion. So did lunch. It wasn't until fifth period, social studies, that something significant happened. Or at least something significant enough to catch her attention.
"Today, we are going to be studying child abuse," Mr. Gergagery said as the class settled down. "I had Dr. Martinez come in today so she could speak with all of you. It has to do with our new unit called Family Problems. This means no bookwork tonight." The class cheered. Dr. Martinez walked into the room, smiling at all the students. Her eyes finally rested on Angel. Her surprise, if it showed at all, was very brief and scarecely noticed by anyone, Angel in particular.
"Thank you, Mark. My name is Valencia Martinez. I've been in the business of handling affairs dealing with child abuse and neglect for over three years now. Now, every child will get disciplined. That is normal. It's to teach children right from wrong at a young age so that they fully understand when thye are older.
"However, there is a point where I draw the line. If the child is being physically harmed in any way, it is considered child abuse. Well, phsyical abuse anyway. There are also other forms of abuse. Emotional, where the child's self esteem is constantly torn down with displeasure and ridicule. Sexual, in which the child is raped or molested. And...neglect, where the child's needs are not met or ignored entirely." Someone raised their hand.
"Yes?"
"How do we recognize the signs of these types of abuse?" William asked, a boy who wasn't as mean to Angel as the others.
"I am about to tell you, young man. Physical abuse is usually the easiest to detect. Consistent bruises on the skin. The child will usually be afraid of their attacker, and any strangers in the home. But they will have retained most of their innocence, because they haven't experienced the worst evils out there yet. As for emotional abuse, that gets a little harder. Lots of kids are naturally shy or unsure of themselves.
"But if it is extreme to the point that they're constantly doubting themselves, chances are they've been emotionally abused. Neglect is another easy one to find. The child is normally very thin and wearing clothes much too small for them. The house will be in shambles and very unkept. Sexual abuse, however...this one is the toughest to prove, and the easiest to deny. More so-called parents get away with this than any other form of abuse." The entire class gaped at her in silence.
"Have you ever caught anyone?" Shelby inquired. She was one of the quiet girls who never teased Angel, but didn't help her either.
"Several people, yes. But other people in trial were allowed to walk, because there wasn't enough substantial evidence." Her eyes hovered on Angel for the briefest moment as she said this, as if she were trying to communicate something to her.
"Now, I'm bringing someone who will tell her story about her own fair share of abuse. My daughter, Maximum Ride, has been tortured by adults for most of her life. Only now does she have the courage to speak about it. Max, honey? Come in here." A very familiar face looked out at the crowd just seconds later. Angel felt she couldn't breathe.
Max, oh Max...three years had done so much to her face. Max would be about twenty right now. An adult. Fully grown. She didn't hear a word Max said, but her blue eyes didn't leave those brown ones for a single second. For the briefest of seconds, Angel felt hope. But as class came to an end, that hope was instantly stifled.
All her classmates were starting to leave. Soon, she was the only one still sitting there. Dr. Martinez left, thanking the teacher once again for letting her come in today. Max looked up, preparing to follow. But then those eyes, which Angel knew missed nothing, finally found her, sitting in the back corner of the classroom in complete silence. Max only mouthed one word, but she could tell from here what it happened to be.
"Angel."
"Max, you're going to make me late!" Dr. Martinez called from out in the hallway. Max snapped out of it and followed her mother out. Angel didn't need to be a mind reader to know exactly what the incredible Maximum Ride was thinking in that moment. The remainder of her day was a complete blur.
She couldn't stop thinking about Max and the look on her face when she had finally noticed the former youngest member of the flock who had tried to save the world all those years ago, and succeeded. But, by the time she was home, she completely forgot about it, thinking there was no way this would effect her in the long run. She couldn't have been more wrong.
The next day was Friday. It was the best, and yet the worst day of the week. The beatings were always so bad that she'd be late for school. At this point her teachers did not question it. They just chalked it up to be a crazy weekly schedule at home.
Angel stumbled into fifth period that afternoon, feeling spent already. The class came to an end much sooner than she thought possible. But, then, as she hobbled toward the doorway, an unusually gentle hand came down on her shoulder. She flinched and looked up to see...Max.
"What are you doing here?" Well that wasn't how she wanted to greet Max after all this time.
"I came to rescue you." Angel never thought she'd be so happy to hear those five words in her entire life. Rescue? I'm being saved? But am I good enough to be saved? She stared and stared. But Max didn't snatch away the promise. She just patiently waited.
"How?" was all Angel managed to say. "How did you know?"
"Mom realized that things were not all as it seemed with your foster family and talked to me about it last night. I told her my suspicions, and she believed me. Now you are being rescued. Come on, Angel."
AN: Do you guys like this length of chapters, or should I continue with my usual length? Let me know what you think, the good the bad and the extremely ugly! Or maybe not. MAYBE just maybe my story was actually...good? Maybe it acutally impressed someone from the getgo? I'll never know if you don't review! So, I HIGHLY reccomend reviewing. No there is no reward. Unless you count a super special smile from me a reward. But you'll never see it, so...I'll just shut up and hope for the best.
Fly on, readers.