summary: There can be beauty in tragedy, if you knew where to look. —Max runs, and the rest of the world keeps turning.
notes: An obligatory note of 'not dead' goes here I suppose. Canon divergence, post Angel, disregards Nevermore and Forever.
She's never minded packing.
The whole thing is a well-practiced routine: she has her suitcase on her bed, small stacks of clothing piled here and there, socks sorted by color and toiletries stuffed into the outlandishly bright neon pink and green pouch Nudge had given to her as a gag gift on her birthday, saying, you need a little more color to brighten up your life, Max.
Max mentally divides the the suitcase into different compartments to divide her clothes—shirts in the right corner, pants in the left and socks could go in-between. Things meticulously put away with shaky hands that knew what to do even when her mind was miles away.
It's the timing that always gets her, here, when she's zipping up the nearly bulging blue suitcase and when her hands find nothing else to occupy her.
Max glances at red unblinking numbers on her nightstand.
She's always packed too quickly. Force of habit, maybe. Or more likely, a shadow of a former necessity.
In one corner of of her mind, Max thinks that she's being silly. There was no need to rush when she has nearly two hours before she has to leave and she should check to see if she'd forgotten anything.
(But in another life, she wouldn't have time—seconds, maybe, if the world was feeling generous—and her hands would be focused and steady. She'd separate items into necessities and frivolities. Whatever could fit into a backpack and wouldn't weigh her down on long flights. She'd tie her hair back and do the same to five others, counting under her breath.
She'd treated every day like it was war. Like there wasn't enough time to gather up everything she'd like to take with her. Like it was some sort of challenge in not leaving something behind.
Like the world could end right there and then and she wasn't quite ready to save it.)
So when Max finishes zipping up her suitcase, she blocks out that thought and heaves it from her bed, slightly dragging the striped lavender and cream bedspread down. Something tells her to fix it when she makes her way to the door, something tells her to turn around when fingers curl around the doorknob, but she leaves behind shaky hands and a shadow of a former life behind when the door clicks shut with something like a note of finality.
(In all her times packing, she has never forgotten a thing.)
She tries to be quiet.
But god, it's just so hard when the stars are wooden and freshly waxed too; Max spends more effort clinging to the banister than dragging the suitcase down so it's no surprise that it eventually just tumbles down and down until it lands unceremoniously at the foot of the stairs.
She hears Dr. Martinez shout her name from somewhere in the kitchen, but whatever she says next is drowned out by the clanging of pots and pans.
"I'm okay, Mom!" she calls, and takes the stairs two at a time until she reaches the bottom, setting her suitcase upright when her mother greets her in the hallway, taking in her slightly frazzled state, arching an eyebrow.
"My suitcase decided not to wait for me," Max says as a way of explanation and stuffs her hands into the pockets of her windbreaker, waiting for the reprimand of Max, honey, try to please be more careful.
But it never comes.
Instead, she's drawn into a bone-crushing embrace and then her mother is stroking her hair, telling her to please call and did you pack enough jackets because the rest of the world isn't as warm as Arizona.
And then, more softly, Come back soon, alright?
A part of her wants her mom wants to put of a fight, wants her mother to argue and wake the whole Flock up like that night two weeks ago, when she'd first broken the news that she'd taken CSM's offer on being a temporary rep for conventions. A part of her wants her mother to cry and beg her to stay because she's never had anyone care for like this and anyone that said that they would fight for her in the past could never meet her halfway.
A part of her wants to say please don't let me go because she'd tired of people leaving and being left behind.
But that's not why she's standing under bright kitchen lights hugging her mom like it's the first step of a treacherous journey. It's not why her mother is slowly pulling away, blinking rapidly.
It's on the tip of her tongue: I'll stay. Just for dinner, Mom.
But in this lifetime, she wipes her eyes and walks to the door, dragging her suitcase and swiping her messenger bag from its place in the hall closet.
In this one, she walks out without looking back, closing the door softly and lets out the breath she wasn't aware she was holding, face bathed in the dying light of another day.
Her car is the last one in the driveway, an old red chevy camaro she'd gotten for her eighteenth birthday. She hadn't originally planned to get one—Iggy had rolled his eyes and questioned her judgement (Max, we have wings, or have you forgotten?) and Gazzy still doubted her driving skills, even after she'd gotten her license—but she'd seen it parked across from her neighbor's house with a For Sale sign and she knew that she wanted it right there and then.
(The air conditioner was lukewarm at best and the passenger door had problems locking correctly; she had to lean over the clutch to manually lock it but hey, it's something to call hers so she's not complaining.)
Max throws her suitcase in the trunk and slides into the car, adjusting the rearview mirror and squints at the sunset, deciding that she'll be best off with her sunglasses. She reaches for her messenger bag she'd thrown in the passenger seat and her throat closes up when fingers close around a ziploc bag and hears the telltale crunch of cookies.
In another life, in another time and place, she could go running back into the brightly lit house and tell her mom one last goodbye.
Instead, she whips out her aviators and turns the keys in the ignition. Sets the radio to play some mood music and revs the engine. Places steady hands on the wheel, puts her foot down and goes.
So in the end—
(It's not called giving up, or running away, or hasta la vista, maybe. It's not called watching the sunset bleed into a sea of red, driving with the windows down and we'll be looking for sunlight, or the headlights till our wide eyes burn blind blasting out in open air, imaginary compass pointing west. It's not called watching red fading into evening blue and black with streetlights blurring into streaks of hazy yellow. It's not called watching her phone light up in the passenger seat in periodic intervals, time after time heading straight to voicemail.)
—it's called packing up the remains of one life, and picking up the pieces of another.