Alright, this is entirely SPYforYOU's fault. SfY reviewed Roses & Thorn Bushes a second time and got me thinking (again) about how messed up the Flock would really be if JP was more realistic in his portrayal of the School. I.e., if JP had been writing Maximum Ride as an adult series instead of a YA series.
Story notes: They were 4 years at the E House. Max is 14 at the beginning of AE. So she was roughly ten when they escaped. This takes place E House era, a few weeks after escaping.
Other note: this is unedited/un-beta-ed. Some of it might read strangely and there may/probably are multiple mistakes.
Edited on 3/2/13. Kudos to Slytherin Sadist Angel.
"It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men." -Frederick Douglass
Even after a week, each night was terrifying. "Freedom" was such a foreign concept. It was uncertain, painted and swathed in dark and spooky colors. It was a gloomy thing, dreamed about but never touched for fear it would evaporate.
My room was empty. There was no rustle of wings or scales nearby, no quiet crying in the dark that told me I wasn't alone, no icy and steady bars against my bony back. The softness of the bed seemed to swallow me, so unused to not leaning against bars to sleep I was.
I sat in the corner of my bed. My knees were drawn to my chest tightly, trying to make my body as still as possible. The bedroom was shades of chill moonlight and shadow. Every shadow loomed in the corners, slowly leaning in. I couldn't look away from the room before me, eyes wide and heart stuttering in my chest.
I was alone and the shadows were swallowing me. I wanted my cage that I knew so well, I wanted… I wanted to not be alone. The whitecoats were always there, never failing to come every morning and night, until there was no day and night and only their visits.
The house - the "E House" the whitecoat who freed us had called it - groaned around me. The creaking was an almost frightening noise, breaking the stillness easily. Ever noise seemed magnified. I was alone in this room and house and world, and the shadows still leaned in. A shadow in the corner moved silently, taking form and coming at me on quiet feet -
I was alone I don't want to be alone please I can't do this want this I don't want to be free -
My hands and arms tingled. My breath quickened but I still couldn't get enough oxygen. Shadows filled my sight. This had happened once before -
"Hyperventilation," the whitecoat remarked and wrote it down.
- but the whitecoats had slid a cold needle in me and I drifted away.
If this was freedom, I didn't want it. If this was freedom, I hated it.
The whitecoat who freed us, calling himself Jeb, said this word many times while taking us. He said we'd be "free," over and over in such a way it must be good. So we didn't fight and we told no one what he was doing.
But now I was alone and there were no bars around me and no other half human, half animal children like me to keep me company in the night and -
The door creaked open. A shadow from within a shadow pulled away and darted towards me. It passed through patches of moonlight, black on white. Dichromatic.
A whimper half tore from my throat before the figure reached me. A familiar scent of open air and dark pine trees hit me, and my body relaxed before my brain formed his name.
"Fang," I breathed. "Fang, you're here."
I'm not alone.
He perched on the edge of my bed, eyes glinting in the moonlight briefly as he stared at me. After a moment, he crawled over my bed to sit next to me, wrapping his arms tightly around me and almost curling his body about me like a cocoon. He was shivering, even though it was summer.
"You're real," was all I heard him murmur once, almost like a prayer, before falling silent.
Sitting with Fang, Fang so warm and alive and here, my breathing slowed. I finally moved my tingly arms from around my knees. I wrapped my arms around Fang until our bodies were tangled and my fingers twisted comfortingly in his black feathers. Fang was here and wouldn't hurt me.
I wasn't alone in the shadows anymore.
"Fang?" I asked in a hushed voice, careful not to disturb any shadows in my room.
I could count three of our heartbeats together with his head pressed to my chest.
"Yeah?"
"Here's… here's better, right?"
He knew what I meant more than I did.
"Yeah," he said.
"We'll be ok?"
"We're together."
I relaxed at his answer. He was right, of course. We were together. Of course we'd be ok.
"Fang?" I asked.
He turned his head, dark hair brushing my nose until he faced me.
"Yeah?"
"I know the others seem to be ok with this but… Is - is freedom safe?"
"I think so."
With Fang's head buried at my chest, my arms wrapped around him, I looked at the shadows almost detachedly now. I was no longer alone. The shadows could not touch me. The Erasers could never get us as easily when we were together. At the School when I was with Fang, I knew they couldn't come close without a fight. A fight we would always fail, but at least we were together. At least we had each other.
"Max?"
His voice was so soft, I almost didn't hear it. "Yes?"
"You're real, right?"
"Yes."
"Good."
His breathing evened out after some time. Time enough for the moonlight to shift across the floor, start to burn gold at the corners with the rising down. Moonlight turned to sunlight. Shadow to light.
I was watching the light chase away the dark when the door eased open. Gazzy, Iggy, Nudge and Angel slipped in, Angel gripping Gazzy's hand tightly. They climbed up onto the bed and pressed in until we were one group. Until we could feel each other's skin and knew we weren't alone. Fang's eyes slit open enough to wrap an arm around Angel as she wriggled closer. Their weight against me was a comfort.
The sun had almost burned away shadow and moonlight, leaving the room feeling empty, when the door opened again.
I looked towards it wordlessly. Jeb looked back but said nothing. For a moment he simply observed us clumped together and pressing against each other, then he quietly shut the door.
Despite what Fang had said, I wasn't sure this "freedom" Jeb had given us was any better. I wasn't sure if I would be able to forgive him if "freedom" meant being alone most of the time.
Before you start crying foul at the way Max's thoughts are and how she basically misses the School... The idea behind Max's thought process in this came from thinking about the victims of physical, emotional or psychological abuse. From what I've heard, the victim would protect their abuser even as the police took the abuser away. The Flock and friends grew up in cages, so they grew up not knowing anything better. Abuse/torture, cages and experiments were all they knew. Max was 14 in the start of TAE. They had about four years until the School kidnapped Angel. So Max had lived in a cage and been experimented on up until she was roughly ten, yes? The amount of scarring that does to you psychologically alone made me wonder if, during the beginning of those four years of freedom, she had ever felt confused about, well, everything and if it was wrong to be "free" and out of a cage. A cage is all they knew. We know what they went through was horrible, but growing up with it and knowing nothing else, would they think of it as horrible?
In this, Max was struggling with being alone and without any of the normal noises of the School - imagine hearing experiments struggling to breathe, crying or screaming constantly - about her. Her tingly arms are from hyperventilation/lack of oxygen. She was imagining shadows leaning in and she's alone in the shadow world. Fang was feeling more of "is this real?" surreality/numbness. Hence their conversation. However, I'm not a doctor or versed in psychology in any way, so this is all conjecture.
... One day I'll write a really fluffy MR piece, I'm sure. One day. Also, in case you were wondering: I thought the quote at the top was fitting considering the Flock and what I vaguely remember about pretty much every MR adult.
R&R, if it pleases you!
~SS