Four years, six months, and two days later...
They were what could only describe as free. The two of them were away from the clutches of the School, the Facility, Whitecoats, Jeb, Erasers, even the ever so helpful Voice was gone. There was no longer an E-Shaped house, no longer a building they could call home, and no staying in one place for more than six months (if only out of paranoia as opposed to actual danger). No more of Max's nagging or Fang's apathy. No more flatulence from Gazzy and laughter from Angel. No one but each other. But here in the sky, what they were doing could only be expressed as freedom.
Two days previously...
When the young couple moved in next door, Mary Beth's mother warned her not to talk to them.
"That young harlot is livin' in sin and I don't want her to be givin' you any ideas." So despite her thoughts on unmarried men and women living together, Mary Beth complied. So for the first few weeks and her neighbors remained an inconsequential presence in her life. She never talked to them and she hardly ever saw them, not even at Church which made her mother scowl and call them heathens under her breath.
She shouldn't have even been near the house, but the Church was hosting a fair and she felt that even if the rest of the neighbors looked down on them, they at least had the right to be aware of what was going on in town.
But standing outside that open door (part of a sad attempt at keeping out the heat she could only guess), the only identifying marks of who was speaking was the soft lit that was distinctively female followed by the low tone of a man's voice.
Words filtered through her ears, there but not quite understood or retained as she stood listening in. She couldn't have been standing there for very long before both voices abruptly stopped and the man and woman stared at her. Their gazes unnerving and quite rattling before she collected her wits and stammered out a reason, an excuse, as to why she had been eavesdropping on what was probably an intimate conversation.
"Can I help you?" the dark, especially for this part of the country, young woman asked. The man just sat there, looking in her direction yet not quite at her.
"Oh yes," Mary Beth started. "The Church, it's holding a fair this weekend and I thought you would like to know." Giving a slightly crumple, disgustingly cheerful flyer to the woman.
"It's a lot of fun and I don't think it's something you'd want to miss out on Miss…"
"Ride. Monique Ride, and thank you. See you around" And with that obvious dismissal Mary Beth left.
Two Days Later
Mary Beth was just about to leave the fair when she realize the mysterious duo hadn't come, not that she actually expected them to. She just thought it was her duty as a citizen of the great state of Alabama to let them know.
It was that night, walking across the edge of town after the fair that she saw them. Too high up to really see their faces, but close enough to see their wings. Two angels; with wings longer and taller than the ones on the statues in church, a male and a female whose bodies shook with laughter and joy.
And Mary Beth stood there feeling like a child caught up in something so wonderfully make believe that it couldn't be real.
Nudge:
It had been more than a year since we had gone flying. More than a year since I had been able to spread my wings and practice those moves from the eagles I learned all those years ago. During a time when even if things were not right, there was at least hope for a better tomorrow. After Max was killed, I quickly learned that hope could be paralyzing, especially when you have so many reasons to doubt the truth; even if you knew it was exactly just that, the truth.
With Max gone, Fang took over. He was a mess, we were all a mess. Max had always been our mother; even though she wasn't the one who always knew what to do next. Even if she didn't, she constantly assured us that everything would be okay, even if it wouldn't. We took Max for granted and when she fell, so did we.
Fang wasn't good at giving comfort, especially because he needed it himself. He gave us everything at face value and as much as he tried to pretend he did, Fang had no idea what to do. He had never been the one who wiped our tears or give us hugs. Truth be told, it really wasn't right for us, for every single one of us to give him all that responsibility. He was only fourteen, he had no idea what to do, and eventually the strain became too much for him to handle.
We buried him next to Max hours later when we found him dead. The pain from their deaths was so raw and once again I went into denial. I figured maybe, just maybe it was a trick from the school into making us think he was dead. But the truth was Fang was dead and we were the ones who killed him.
For days I was so angry, so vengeful, and so full with hurt that it burned my very core. We had never planned to lose both of them. Death was in fact a very real possibility for all of us, but it had never been so close since we left the school and when I was still a big-eyed little girl. Even then the flock had been untouchable. Anyone of us dying meant that a white coat would lose his life. As pleasing as that would have been, we were worth so much more than their pathetic existences.
The next excursion, a bombing of the school under the guise of an Eco-terrorist organization, cost Gazzy his life. White noise should have warned Gazzy thirty seconds before the detonation of the bomb. The timer had been set to three seconds before.
"No flying," that was the first rule Iggy told us in the dingy hotel room we were in the night Gazzy died. We didn't even have enough of his body left to give him a proper burial. No using your powers, nothing that will make us stand out, and most importantly no flying. That kept them off our trail for a few months before we were on the run again. This time, we planned on ending it. But the Feds got there first; the government had caught a whiff of what was going on and only a handful of Erasers were able to escape. And they still had a final mission to complete, the capture and execution of experiment AN456XT (known to the other avian-human hybrids as the "angel experiment"). They succeeded.
We hunted down every single son of a female-dog out there; moving on for weeks without stopping to do anything but plan our vengeance. It wasn't until Iggy passed out on a subway and was taken to a local hospital (which I broke him out of) that we both realized we couldn't do it anymore. That we had to move on, because the Earth was still spinning even if our family was dead, it didn't mean that we were.
So we settled down in a sparsely populated town in the Deep South, essentially isolated from the rest of the world. Hiding in big cities had never worked, so maybe it was time to try small towns.
After a few weeks in a duller than gray God-fearing town in Alabama, I couldn't stand it anymore. It had been more than a year since I'd felt so, so, free. So with that I brought the idea up with Iggy and we bitterly argued for days. For so long neither of us had had anything to be happy about, and when I finally thought of something that could give them that, that small spark of joy that would make us feel something again, he denied it. But as much as he tried to hide it, the seed had been planted and he would cave soon. It was only a matter of time.
So when we came to a cliff (just like the one Max used to tell us about), I jumped head first into the dark abyss before my wings snapped out, moments before I hit the ground, and pulled myself up. My flight filled me with a rush of adrenaline coursing through my veins. The happiness I had not felt since Max's death three years ago warmed my body. And tears, tears of laughter and enlightenment formed streaks down my cheeks. And looking over at Iggy I knew he felt the same elation.
Finally, for the first time in our lives, we were truly free.