Disclaimer: I don't own Maximum Ride.

Love and Other Abstract Lies
A Maximum Ride Fan Fiction

"Watching, listening, thinking, waiting,
Whispering your name,
Secret yearning, my heart throbbing,
Do you feel the same?

Fall, drowning in a lake of pain,
Twisting, thrashing sea,
Hopeless wanting, holding my breath,
But you can't care for me."

It was insignificant, really. Nothing tangible – he couldn't touch it, couldn't physically test its endurance. Such a small part of his life, he couldn't even see it or hear it. But he could feel it. It was stronger than iron, an army couldn't break it. Taking up no room, it was bigger than the world itself. Its touch was the delicate caress of a falling petal yet the fierce power of mythical beast, crushing his body but not allowing him to die.

It wasn't existent but it was painfully real.

From the very beginning it was his undoing.

And, even after the end, she never knew.

+:+:+:+

"So, which one do you want?" Natalia asked, casually draping herself over her bag and gesturing vaguely to the entirety of the beach, where people had flocked to in the heat of the summer.

Maxwelle lifted her sunhat off her face and squinted up from where she was lying in the sand. "Which one of what?"

She rolled her eyes. "The beautiful, delicious, shirtless men running right in front of you."

The girl with the blonde sun-streaks barely glanced at the group of boys who were indeed running around with their toned bodies showing freely. "None." She put the hat back onto her face.

Reaching over, Natalia snatched the sunhat and tossed it a metre away. "Seriously, Max! Stop being so anti-social and look properly. You can't use the excuse of not being interested, because you're fourteen, and you're supposed to actually notice guys. So I will make it simpler for you: which one do you think is hottest?"

Maxwelle grumbled and sat up, looking properly at the boys. "My answer is the same – none. They are all different."

"That isn't an answer."

One of the boy's girlfriends, or so it seemed, walked over to him in a red bikini. She began to appear uncomfortable, shuffling in her upright position. "They're all very good looking, but I'm honestly not interested.

While Natalia seemed to accept this answer, Maxwelle gazed over at the couple one last time with a slightly confused frown on her face before lying back down.

+:+:+:+

He supposed it all started a long time ago, when they were all younger. Though sometimes it seemed hazy to him – as if it were not only a few years, but a few lifetimes ago when it occurred.

"Fall, drowning in a lake of pain,
Twisting, thrashing sea,
Hopeless wanting, holding my breath,
But you can't care for me.

They, they told me,
Life would answer my cries,
I, I guess it did,
Love and other abstract lies…"

Maxwelle sang quietly, swinging her legs back and forth on the bench. Her voice wasn't sweet and lovely, but she wasn't a bad singer. She wasn't performing for anybody, but perhaps she was – the audience she always wanted to impress was herself.

Nathaniel sat down next to her, tired of sitting on the cold concrete. "What are you singing, Max? It sounded so sad."

Her head snapped up. "Fang! When did you get here?" She visibly collected herself, and started again. "It was a song that I heard the other day. I think it was called Lethal Romance. A busker who is on a street that I take to get to school was playing it."

Frances and Langley were sitting in front of them, explaining to another teacher that no, they weren't twins, they weren't even blood related. Yes, please call them Angel and Gazzy, they preferred their nicknames. The teacher, new and unaccustomed to the school and its students, nodded and walked on. She would soon realise that the group that she had just talked to were so close knit that it didn't matter whether they were blood relatives or not, they were tighter than family.

Nathaniel felt as if he were closer to Maxwelle than the others. He loved them all in a way, but something was different about the girl who sat next to him. When he was around her, he felt warm. It wasn't something physical, but deep inside of him. It wasn't something that he could name.

They were only nine years old.

+:+:+:+

"What's going on? I came as fast as I could."

Maxwelle put down her bag. She was wearing nice clothes – dress pants and a grey suit jacket – as she had just rushed in from work as a graphic designer. With an immaculate bob, she was the very picture of a healthy woman in her twenties. Alex closed the door of the apartment after her, a worried frown on her forehead. "I don't know. He's been different for a long time, but now he won't do anything. He won't eat, won't sleep, won't even get up. I can't talk to him, he won't answer, even if I drone on for hours. It's been like this for three days."

"He hasn't eaten or slept for three days?"

Alex shifted and ran a hand through her cropped hair. "Yes. Out of all of us, you two were the closest, so I thought I'd call you. Maybe you can get a response. If you can't, I'm calling the hospital again and demanding their immediate attention."

"It's going to be okay, Iggy." Maxwelle patted her friend's shoulder sympathetically and she let out a gust of air.

Quietly, Maxwelle walked to the door at the end of the short hall. In the typical fashion it was painted black, yet unusually it was closed. Tentatively she reached out and let herself in.

"Fang?" The room had no lights on, but the half closed shutters let in medium light. While it was not messy, the room looked lived in. Nathaniel lay on his back on his bed, on top of the covers, staring at the ceiling. His black hair was in disarray but his clothes were relatively unwrinkled, as if he had not moved in them in a long time. There were formidable dark bags under his eyes but he didn't look as if he were close to sleep.

Distantly, Maxwelle could hear Alex follow her into the room and close the door. Her entire attention was on the ruins of her best friend. "Hey, Fang," she whispered softly, breaking the oppressing silence, "How are you going? What is up?"

For a moment she thought that he would ignore her, as he had done for Alex so many times. After a moment though, he turned his eyes away from the ceiling and moved his head so that he was facing her. She almost gasped at the sight of his obsidian eyes – she was sure that she hadn't seen them before, so twisted were they with a seething hatred.

"Go. Away. Get out of my life and don't ever come back."

The venom that laced his voice shocked her, as did the vicious hate in his words. She almost stumbled out of the room, the fatal attack pushing her almost physically. She would not recover.

As she made her way out, she saw an empty packet with the name Adapin on it. It did not register in her mind, and she did not remember it afterwards.

+:+:+:+

Alexander made his announcement just before the group left high school.

They were all sitting in the park, still wearing their school uniforms, reading or looking at notes for the final and most crucial exams that they would ever take for school. Natalia was lying down on her stomach, her feet in the air, and Nathaniel and Maxwelle were sitting back to back.

"Guys, I've come to a decision."

They all looked to him, half paying their attention half still caught up in their notes. "Yes, Iggy?" Frances asked, leaning into Langley.

"I want to get sex change after we leave school."

A momentary quiet followed while the words processed. The six friends looked at each other, testing the situation and trying to form words to voice their startled thoughts. "Iggy," Langley started, straightening his back, "Are you sure you've thought this through? It's a huge change."

Self-consciously Alexander crossed his arms. "I have thought about it. I've been thinking about it for years. I've been considering it since I knew it existed. You know, I've always said that I don't feel right. That something is utterly wrong. And now I know what to do about it. I'll still be the same person," he added worriedly, "I won't even look that different."

It was clear that he was dead serious. When the others thought about it, they did see how it could be possible that their friend could be transsexual. "Have you told your parents yet?"

"Err…no, not yet. I wanted to tell you guys first before I tried to tell them. I'm sure that they'll support me, but I felt more comfortable with letting you all know first."

Nathaniel spoke, breaking his usual quietness. His tone was curious yet non-invasive. "What is it like? To know you're not the person who you are? You don't have to answer if it's too personal."

"No, it's okay," Alexander said as he brought his eyebrows together in concentration. Finally he let out a breath. "It is kind of hard to explain. Try…try to imagine that one day, when you woke up, you were a member of the opposite sex. You know that it's not you. It feels completely wrong. But all the memories you have of yourself are in that body, and everybody around you tells you that you have always been that way. Whenever you try to ignore it, it continually reminds you. Wouldn't you try to change back to the way that you're supposed to be?"

There were murmurs of agreement and support around the circle. "I knew that this would happen."

Eyes turned to Natalia. "What?" she asked, putting down her book. "I was obvious to me."

"Anyway," Maxwelle said, closing off what would be a wave of pointless questions, "That doesn't matter. We support you, Iggy. As you said, you'd still be the same person. And that's all that matters."

"Thank you, this means a lot to me." A few 'no worries' went around before the group settled down, back to studying. The sky was near to darkening, but they would still have another half an hour before they had to pack up.

"Does anybody else have ground-breaking news that they would like to share?"

They all sighed with a smile, closing their books, resigning themselves to the fact that they wouldn't be able to get back to work. A few chuckled at the ridiculous question.

"Actually…"

Head snapped up to Natalia, who was looking nervous – which she rarely was.

"Actually, I'm bi."

+:+:+:+

Nathaniel hid.

There was nothing specific that he hid from, but the world in general. He concealed himself from his peers, his family, his friends, himself. It wasn't a form of paranoia, nor was it a show of strength. It was, in fact, a deep display of his weakness that nobody could see. It wasn't a deliberate shutting out of other people – it was a last pitch for survival, a last resort that should be avoided until there was nothing else left.

So he retreated, deep within, taking the feelings, memories and thoughts that he couldn't handle down with him. He locked them away and suppressed them.

But when one pushes away one part of themselves, it doesn't stay away. It wants to be with the rest of them. That is why it always shows up again, bounces back.

If it doesn't do that, it takes the rest with it.

So while he stifled his pain, he stifled himself. His world lost its colour, and all he saw were dreary greys, leaving the only splashes of light that he didn't want to see. One emotion gone, the rest left him hollow and feeling nothing but a blank wall.

But it wasn't enough.

What would he do when he had pitched in his last effort and it wasn't enough to keep him taped together?

That is why he hid. He never let his friends ever know that he took anti-depressants.

+:+:+:+

"Promise. Promise me, Fang."

Maxwelle's brown eyes were wide, begging Nathaniel to comply. He knew that he wouldn't be able to resist her, but he held on long enough to glean as much information as he could. "I don't understand. What am I supposed to promise you?"

Her hands gripped the collar of his school uniform tighter, but she released some of the pressure that she had him in up against the brick wall. "Please. Promise me that no matter what happens today, you'll still be my best friend."

Gently, with a confused expression, he pushed her off of him so that they were standing side by side in the nearly empty hallway. She still had a worried look and jerkily smoothed down her uniform. Though it was still a while before school started, people were giving them strange looks.

"Of course I'll still be your best friend, Max. It goes without saying. I don't care if you blew up a building and killed a hundred people, I would still be by your side. I promise."

With a relieved sigh Maxwelle stepped back into a more natural pose, though the tension in her neck remained. Condolingly Nathaniel put his arm around her shoulders and they began to walk with their books to the homeroom that they shared. Her eyes darted everywhere, cataloguing the building and looking critically for changes.

"So," he commented, not-so-sneakily trying to discover what had her so concerned, "What brought this up?"

A bark of jittery laughter escaped her mouth. "Oh, you'll find out soon enough," she replied darkly. "I suspect that the whole school will know by lunchtime. I don't even know how they found out. But this is going to force me to do something that I will either regret or be satisfied with for the rest of the foreseeable future."

It was more than he had hoped and he knew that he wouldn't learn any more than that. However, by first break, he found out exactly what she was talking about.

The words 'Maxwelle Ride is a faggot' were written in red all over the school. On lockers, walls, doors – there was no place to look where anybody could not see scarlet script in the corner of their eyes.

Maxwelle's face paled, but did not otherwise change when she saw the damage. "I didn't think that they'd go to such an extent – especially during classes," she murmured, her voice faint. She sounded as if she was going to be sick. When she saw lipstick smearing the windows, she turned her head down. "I have to get out of here, Fang. I – I can't breathe. I need to get out."

Numb, Nathaniel followed her quickly into the outside area and waited as she kneeled on the floor and gulped in air as if she had been held under water until she was on the very verge of drowning. Interested eyes passing through on their way to their lockers glanced over curiously, though they couldn't see who it was through the hair and his glares deterred them. By the time she finally stood back up, he was the one who was feeling sick.

"Max? Are you okay?"

She twisted a lock behind her ear with a shaking hand and nodded.

"Is…what they said…is it true?"

Sadness brimmed in her eyes though they stayed dry, and when he thought back, he wondered why they were that way. "Yeah," she whispered, avoiding his gaze, "It's true."

+:+:+:+

"They, they told me,
Life would answer my cries,
I, I guess it did,
Love and other abstract lies.

Keep, keep holding on,
I'm grasping onto smoke,
And, and I'm fading,
From this dream I never woke."

Frances and Langley declared themselves an official couple at the beginning of their final year. More than adorable, most found it amusing.

"You know, when you first said that you were going out, I thought you were joking."

They were sitting in the classroom before class, waiting for the bell to ring and the teacher to walk in. Natalia and Maxwelle didn't share their homeroom, they were more spread out than the year before, where the whole group had been concentrated to two classrooms.

Frances looked over her shoulder and shot Alexander a charming smile from where she stood, arm in arm with her boyfriend. "Now," she asked in a sweet voice with underlying mischief, "Why would you think that?"

Alexander stretched out, arching his back over his chair to shake off his early morning tiredness. "Well, there are several reasons." He held up three fingers and ticked them off. "For starters, both of you, Angel in particular, like to mess with people's minds. And sometimes you just act so much like siblings. But most of all, you seem to get too much of a kick out of kissing in public places and have people think it's incest. Or twincest."

"It's all part of the game, Iggy," Langley chimed in.

Nathaniel used the distraction of their laughter to dry swallow the pill that he had forgotten to take in the morning.

+:+:+:+

Loud chatter and gossip echoed in the busy walkways as people pointed to the graffiti and teachers, flustered, tried to organise clean-up teams to remove the vandalism. With an expression like a brick Maxwelle made her way directly to her locker, ignoring the stares. In the lunch room several minutes later, talk increased when she entered.

But when she walked up to the nearest free table and climbed onto it, the room turned completely silent.

"You know what?" she shouted, making sure that she was heard by every single person, "My name is Maxwelle. Maxwelle Ride. And yeah, an idiot wrote over the whole school that I'm gay. You really want to know if it's true? Well yeah, it is. I'm a lesbian. Get over it. I thought that we were through with homophobia in the nineties. Thank you, have a nice day."

She stepped down purposefully and walked over to the table that Nathaniel, Natalia and Frances were seated at. Nobody talked at that table, while ordinary talk in the lunchroom resumed.

"That was…unexpected," stated Natalia as she began to move again and opened her popper. Alexander, who had just walked in, nodded in agreement. "But I saw the writing. Do you know who did it?"

With forced calmness Maxwelle placed her forehead on the cool bench in front of her. "Yes, I do. It was Mikayla, with the help of her group." She paused, taking a deep breath. "Is she happy now? Has she achieved what she wanted?" she continued bitterly. "I know I didn't have to shout out what was private information until now, but it will blow over quicker if I don't keep it ambiguous."

The day continued with difficulty. But for Nathaniel, time had stopped altogether.

+:+:+:+

A muffled sniffle came over the phone. "Is it okay if I spend the night at your house?"

She sounds like she's been crying, Nathaniel thought, cradling the receiver as if it were the cure for AIDS. He wished that he could reach through and hug her, and also that he didn't care so much.

He made himself think it through. "Why? What happened?"

"My parents…they found out, Fang. They saw Lissa and I kissing at the park…"

He remembered the first time he met Lissa, Maxwelle's girlfriend. She was a short, quick and witty girl only older than them by a year, with glossy red hair and an easy smile. Though he had only seen her a few times, he decided that he liked her and that she was a person worth knowing. One thing that stood out about her was her adoration for her partner.

Vaguely, he recalled that Maxwelle had a rather old fashioned family, who were very religious. They were the reason why she had been so confused and uncertain of her sexuality before.

"Then what happened?" Nathaniel asked softly, thawing.

"They kicked me out for the next few days, at least."

Wanting so badly to say no, she couldn't come, he replied. "Of course you can stay."

He could almost see her grateful smile. "Thank you, Fang. I can always count on you."

After hanging up, he threw the phone violently at the wall. He couldn't say no to her, and he was painfully aware of the fact. Because every time he tried to think, she always came up. She was like the air he breathed. He needed her. But every time she so much as crossed his mind, hurt feelings rose to the surface.

What are you doing to me? He thought, though he already knew the answer. It was ruin.

+:+:+:+

It tore him to pieces, though it was untouchable. He could not escape, because there were no bonds that could be cut. He was in a dark place.

And in the end it was meaningless.

Because he was in love with the girl who could never love him back, and she never knew.

Don't try and find the song. It's non-existent. I wrote it for this story, and it's more of a poem, really. The full version is up on my DeviantART. Find the link to that on my profile.

This story is dedicated to the lovely, fantastic Tokoloshe Monster because it is her birthday. *huggles*

Review, s'il vous plaît?