A.N. Hey, guys! So I've been working on a couple Forever Epilogue-centered one shots that have been stuck in my head since directly after I've read the last book (I know, it's kinda' sad how much I'm addicted to it). And I loooooved that book, especially the epilogues because they were so freakin' cute! But it also left my imagination running wild about different deleted scenes that could have been in the books because there's so much of a time span between the ending of the book and the epilogues.
I think this collection is mostly going to be centered around the time the flock spent at the base; I have a different story in mind for when they find their new home in Peru that I've gotten a couple chappies done for too.
But I'm so motivated to write this story that I've actually been able to suppress my writer's block for awhile, which is great! No one likes writer's block, just like no one puts Baby in the corner.
And speaking of 'Baby', there's gonna' be a lot of family fluff in this one, with Max and Fang and baby Phoenix (who is so adorable in the epilogues that it's not even funny!). I'm really excited to describe her as a toddler. Because reasons (I just love that saying). I'm also going to try and include songs that I feel go along with the story because I love it when people do that and I thought I'd give it a try!

So I hope you all enjoy this story, and if you have any ideas of scenes you want me to write, I'll gladly give it a shot!

Disclaimer: All rights go to James Patterson.

This chapter was inspired by an awesome prompt from kateflowerchild13 to write the moment when Max tells Fang she's pregnant. I loved this scene in Forever (I re-read it a ton because I was still traumatized by the heart-wrenching rollercoaster of emotions from the book and needed to embrace the Fax moment), and this is just an expansion of the scene! Some things may not be completely right - I don't have my copy of the book because I lent it out to a friend - but hopefully it's similar! Thanks, kateflowerchild13! :)

~*~ "Ashes of Eden" - Breaking Benjamin ~*~

Chapter 1: Max Tells Fang

"YOU READY FOR this, hot shot?" I asked, turning to look at the tall dark figure looming behind me.

"Take me out of here," Fang joked, flashing his heart-stopping lopsided grin. Fang. I took in his features, so familiar and heart wrenchingly beautiful, for probably the billionth time in the past five days. Sometimes I still felt like I was dreaming when I looked at him. Like fate was playing a cruel joke on me - as per usual - and I'd wake up only to find him gone. But this wasn't a dream and fate was on my side for the moment. He really was here for good. Fang wasn't going anywhere, and we could finally spend forever together.

I took his hand. He immediately entwined his fingers with mine, enveloping my hand in his strong calloused one. "Whatever you want," I said, smiling. His dark eyes softened, making those gorgeous gold flecks stand out. I gave his hand a reassuring squeeze and tugged him forwards, leading him out the giant metal door that separated Himmel from the outside world.

Once we stepped over the threshold I was hit by the chilly temperature. I mean, it was Russia, so I shouldn't have expected a tropical breeze and ninety degree weather. But the country had become warmer since the apocalypse messed up some of the world's climate zones. But now the temperature was falling every day; the reason we'd been franticly stocking supplies into the facility since the moment the war ended.

Winter was coming. And not a normal snowman-and-hot-cocoa winter, but a nuclear winter. One where you'd turn into an instant human popsicle if you got caught out in it. Our only chance at survival was to seal ourselves underground. For how long, we weren't sure, and frankly, I was a little scared to know. But for now, Fang was with me, and we were headed out on one of the last flights we'd be able to take in more than a couple years. It was bittersweet.

'But still sweet,' I thought, watching Fang gaze longingly at the sky, the golden afternoon sun glowing against his olive toned skin. The clearing we were standing on spread around us in a large uneven rectangle, bordered by a line of thick, ginormous pines. The ground was still littered with broken metallic robot bodies, decaying corpses of cryenas, and orangey mangled M-Geeks. We'd salvaged some of the scrap metal from the robots and left the rest. It would forever stand as a monument to the battle where we'd won our freedom and saved the world.

"Good thing you made us bring jackets," Fang commented, rubbing my fingers with his thumb. The movement spread tingles of heat across my skin and I smirked up at him.

"Y'know me. I always think ahead." I shivered as another bitter breeze blew threw me. I pulled my own brown leather jacket that I'd stolen from a room's empty wardrobe tighter around me, trying to will the cold away.

"Most of the time."

"All the time," I corrected. He rolled his eyes, a content smile on his face, and I stepped around him. "Before we take off, I want to look at your wing again."

Fang protested like I knew he would. "It's fine," he insisted. "Let's just go." But he extended his wings, letting me inspect them anyway. When Fang had… fallen… he had been in an intense battle with three horsemen: aka assassins made almost unbeatable by Fang's DNA. Fang had somehow gotten them in a headlock and had rolled off a cliff to defeat them. I had watched it all happen in a recorded tape transmitted by Dylan's - my heart gave a painful pang at his name - watch. My eyes had been glued to the video, waiting for Fang to fly back up. He hadn't. It wasn't until something big, black, and feathered was dragged in front of the camera that I realized what had happened and my heart had stopped: his wing. His screams of pain from before - screams that will haunt me for the rest of my life - had suddenly made sense, and it was in that moment when I realized that Fang had fallen to his death.

Swallowing down the bile and tears that still came with the memory, I placed my hands against his feathers and smoothed them down.

And I have nightmares, y'know, of it happening. Sometimes I wake up in a cold sweat. Sometimes I wake up crying and I can't stop. Angel says I have PTSD. And the weird thing is, I don't entirely not believe her. Fang doesn't know about it yet, but I'm pretty sure he'll find out soon. After today he'll be moved out of the hospital room and into my room, where we'll share it for however long we're stuck underground. Us being bunkmates will be news to him too. We've been filling him in on everything that had happened since he'd woken up, but he still has a lot of catching up to do.

Shaking off the painful memories, I refocused on the task at hand. It was hard to believe that his left wing was artificial. It was identical to the other, down to the feather placement, and it felt the same as before. His feathers were just as silky and long as those on his right wing. He stood patiently as I inspected his wing muscles, his feathers ruffling in the wind. They were beautiful - such a dark black that they almost shone blue in the light of the sun - and I pet them down, bringing my palms to the beginning of his wing. I moved it side to side, up and down, experimentally to make sure the muscles and bones were working the way they should. Because hey: we definitely did not want him to take any more falls in his life, nothankyou.

"Any pain?" I asked.

"No," was my immediate answer.

I extended his wing further, stretching it as I repeated the process. "What about now? Any pulling feeling?"

"Nope," he repeated. I stepped back, extending his wing as far as it would go, which was almost a whopping eight feet. I put light pressure on the top and bottom of his wings, the last test Holden told me Fang had to pass painlessly before I could let him fly.

"How does that feel?"

"Will you be my nurse for awhile?" He asked coyly, looking at me sideways.

"Are you avoiding the question?" I retorted, a blush coating my cheeks.

He grinned impishly, shrugged one shoulder. "Feels fine. Let's go."

I huffed at his infuriatingly short sentences, but I knew I wasn't really irritated. Truth was, I had missed them. Even though they could frustrate me to no end, it was still a part of him that I'd needed and had to go without for a few months. I needed him now, that was for sure, and I wasn't the only one. Thoughts moved to my swollen belly, growing bigger and bigger each day. There was another reason why I had been anticipating this flight with Fang with both excitement and gut-wrenching terror.

I came to stand by his side. My eyes found his again and the nurse question repeated itself in my head. A year ago, if he would have said that I'd have called him a sexist pig and pummeled him to a crisp. But now things were different. Now I was fighting the urge to smile and he knew it.

My face ended up betraying me and I looked away, trying to smother my grin to no avail. Fang laughed, rubbing in between my wings. "Should we take to the skies, then?" I asked him.

"Mmhmm," He hummed, guiding my shoulder, turning me around to face him. "But first," he murmured, his eyes alight with a bit of mischief. God, I loved him. He leaned down and placed his soft lips against mine. Instantly, I closed my eyes and wrapped my arms around his neck. The kiss wasn't a long one, but it was comforting, sweet, and exhilarating all at the same time. It warmed me from my head to my toes and I forgot about the biting cold for a moment. A sense of peace and love washed over me that only Fang could bring, one that was gradually repairing the damage in my cracked heart.

Too soon, his lips separated from my own but he still kept me close. "U&A?" I murmured, for old times sake. He smiled and kissed me again. And then he stepped back, fanning his wings out, and jumped into the air. I shielded my eyes from the sun and watched from below as he rose powerfully, making sure his wings held him aloft. After he was about ten stories up, he paused in the air and looked down at me.

"Join me?" He asked, cupping his mouth so I could hear him over the wind. He cocked his chin at the sun above in invitation.

He didn't have to ask me twice. I spread my tan and brown speckled wings to their full fifteen foot wingspan, jumping upwards. Within the next minute we were wheeling through the sky. Our wings were in perfect sync and he was above me, reaching down so we could hold hands.

'Just like heaven,' I thought as we set out across the sky together.

"They were poisonous berries?" I giggled, glancing over at Fang. He was flying at my right, midnight hair whipping in all different directions. He looked extremely adorable, and that paired with the carefree look in his eyes made him seem more relaxed than... well, then I'd ever seen him.

"I was hallucinating for three days," he said nonchalantly. I snorted out more laughter, the first time I had really laughed in who knows when. "I swear I saw a giant pink cat at one point."

"No unicorns or three-headed dogs, though?" I snickered, swiping some hair away from my eyes. "Sasquatch?"

Fang chuckled, his eyes crinkling as he grinned. He batted my wing with his own playfully. "No, unfortunately."

"Oh, dang."

A sudden gust of brisk, cold air blew against my skin, so chilly it was almost numbing. If only it could numb my growing nerves, too. Fang and I had been flying for a good hour now and the golden afternoon had turned into a gorgeous pink sunset.
This flight had been so nice. Fang and I had continued to catch up and swap stories, getting to spend some much needed time with each other. But, since darkness was looming on the horizon, we were on our way back to the base and had only a couple more miles to go before we reached Himmel.

And the thing was, I still had yet to tell him my secret. For some reason I was incredibly nervous. And I knew I was being stupid because I knew Fang, and I knew he loved me more than anything. He wouldn't run from me, he wouldn't run from being a father. He loved me. He'd love our baby too.

But I was just so... so anxious. What if it wasn't the right time to tell him? What if he still needed time to recover? I mean, he'd only been alive for five days since he'd taken his fall weeks ago. Add the knowledge of us having a baby in a little over half a year...

"Max?" Fang asked suddenly from beside me, making me jump. He noticed - of course - and brushed his wingtip against mine comfortingly. "Something worrying you?" He knew me too well. And then I realized he'd been telling me another story of one of his adventures exploring post-apocalyptic America and I had been completely zoning him out. Sorry, Fang.

"No," I said a little too quickly. He looked at me sideways, giving me the I-don't-buy-it-you're-obviously-hiding-something look. I internally face-palmed. Smooth, Max. Smoooth.

"What's wrong?" He asked, soothing and protective. Just as always, he was the steady rock to my whirling tornado of emotions.

"Nothing's wrong," I admitted. I watched the triangular tops of hundred foot tall pines pass under us as we flew over a thick forest. "It's actually a good thing."

'Here comes the talk,' I thought. My blood was pumping fast through my veins and my lungs felt like they were being compressed. But despite all the anticipation and the nervousness, I was excited. My secret wouldn't just be mine anymore. It would be ours, and soon it wouldn't be a secret at all. I wanted him to know. But why was it so freaking hard to tell him?!

"If it's good, why are you so stressed?" He questioned oh-so eloquently.

"Because it's a good kind of stress."

I had debated how to tell him over the past couple days. Before he... fell, I had came up with a bunch of ways on how I would do it. Most of the ways involved me kicking his butt for leaving me that night and then dropping the bombshell. Others involved us locked in a tearful embrace, and I'd put his hand on my stomach like they do in those cheesy romance movies, and then he'd know - Okay, okay; that one was a lot too sappy. Totally not my style. I blame it on the pregnancy hormones.
But after I found out what had happened to him, I spent countless nights crying over the fact that he died without knowing he was going to be a father. And now here we were, flying side by side. He was alive and healthy and we had both been given a second chance at a life together.

I could see the gears turning in his head. He looked up at me, curiosity in his beautiful brown eyes. "Is good stress even possible with you?"

I was losing my patience, fast. "It is with this." I had been up all last night trying to figure out how I was going to go about this, the perfect way to let him know. I had finally decided on breaking the news to him gently. After all, he was still recovering. And it was such a big thing...

He looked at me, confusion in his eyes. "So you're excited about this?" He guessed. Bingo, Romeo.

"Incredibly." Elated, nervous, scared out of my mind, but so, so excited.

He cocked his head, not coming up with anything. "Something with the flock?"

"Kind of... Not really."

"The base?"

"No."

"... Food?"

I looked at him weirdly. "No."

Now he was frustrated. "Max, just tell me what-"

"We're having a baby," I declared suddenly.

It was like time screeched to a halt. Fang wobbled in the air as he tried to remain aloft, his eyes growing wide as he looked at me in surprise. "A what?" Oops. So much for breaking the news gently. 'Well, there goes all last night's planning,' I thought begrudgingly to myself.

"A baby," I repeated. He forgot to flap and fell a few feet. I slowed to a hover and waited for him to fly back up, taking in the orangey-pink clouds around us.

He joined me again in seconds, shocked. "Like, a baby?"

"I believe that is what they're called, yes," I stated calmly.

"You're sure?" He asked, his eyebrows furrowing, all seriousness.

I rolled my eyes. "It's kicking me. From the inside." Fang continued to look at me, shock still on his face. It took a few seconds, but when it finally registered that he was going to be a dad he grinned wider than I'd ever seen him grin before. His eyes glittered brightly, and the elation on his face was enough to get me through the winter, I knew it. 'He knows now,' I sighed happily in my head. I felt myself grinning too.

"A baby," Fang breathed in disbelief and delight, reaching out to me. "We're having a baby!"

I nodded, beaming at him. He synchronized our wings, pulling me closer so he could take me into his arms. Since it's hard to fly when we were hovering as close as we were, Fang scooped me up, holding me bridal style. He cradled me, hugging me close with the newfound knowledge that I was carrying his child. Normally I wasn't the type to be held like this, but this was Fang. And under the circumstances... "Yep. Our little bundle of joy, safe in my belly." I patted my stomach and he looked at the swell intently, finally registering the bulge.

"This is... amazing," He murmured, laughing incredulously. He leaned down to kiss me gently out of pure exhilaration, warming me up to my toes. I don't know what it was: the mixture of Fang's excitement, finally telling him, or just the fact that I had him back.. or pregnancy hormones, probably... but I sniffed, happy tears welling up in my eyes.

"Yeah it is," I agreed when he pulled back, stroking his jawline. His face softened as he noticed the tears trace their way down my cheeks and he wiped them away with his thumb."I didn't think I was ever gonna' get to tell you," I whispered thickly. "I didn't think you'd ever know."

He held me tighter. "I'm sorry," he said into my hair, pain in his voice. "Max, I'm so sorry."

"I wanted to tell you so badly, Fang," I murmured, swallowing down the lump in my throat. The words were spilling out and I couldn't stop them."And I tried to find you, to tell you and-"

"Shhh... I know," He said, trying to calm me down. "It's okay."

"And I didn't think you were going to be here, and I just-"

"I'm here, Max," he hushed, "I'm not going anywhere."

"I'm just so glad you're here," I whimpered, burying my face into his shoulder. He kissed my hairline lightly, the gentle sway of the up and down motion of his wings lulling me. I shakily breathed in his scent, the antiseptic smell almost washed away by the bitter wind. But I could still detect that pleasant dark scent of mountain pines and warm earth, something that could only be described as him. I closed my eyes, letting Fang envelop and take care of me.

"I'm glad I'm here too," He confessed, his voice surprisingly hoarse with emotion. "God, I'm glad I'm here."

"You have to stay here," I whispered. I pulled back, wiping some tears from my eyes, willing him to understand. "You can't ever leave again," I commanded, though my voice came out weak. "Ever again." He opened his mouth to say something but I interrupted. "Not if Angel gets another vision, or you think I would be safer if you flew to a new country without me, or if you want to be macho and... and... I don't know! Save endangered species in Zimbabwe alone or something!" My breathing was coming fast and I probably looked like a crazy person.

I made myself take a breath and I looked at him, letting my eyes bore into his. Feeling the most vulnerable I've ever felt before, I confessed my number one fear to the person I loved most. "I couldn't bear it if you left again, Fang."

He gazed at me softly, obsidian eyes pained by the fear in mine. But beneath that, his were content and warm, filled with more happiness than I'd ever see them. And I knew he was telling the absolute truth when he whispered the words I've dreamed of hearing for so long: "I won't leave you. Not ever again, Max. I promise."

The relief that hit me would have probably been enough to topple me out of the sky if Fang wasn't holding me already. "Good," I sighed, sniffing. "Because we're going to need you." I patted my stomach again. The baby kicked lightly against my palm as if in agreement and I smiled.

"Good," Fang repeated tenderly, looking at me like I was everything. "Because I'm gonna' need you guys too."

A.N. R&R, friends! And thanks for reading!
P.S. Chapter ideas are very welcome - I love getting writing prompts!

Also, if you haven't heard the song I listed at the beginning yet ("Ashes of Eden" by Breaking Benjamin), you should definitely look it up - it describes the post-apocalyptic almost-losing-each-other relationship between Max and Fang so perfectly well that it's beautiful!
Peace out, homesliiiice! Foshizzle! ;)