Severed Strings

Summary: Angel slips up for a brief second, but that's all it takes for Max to notice that something's wrong. Max's puppet strings have finally been cut, revealing Angel's direct role in the progress of the Fang/Max relationship for the past two years. Manipulative!Angel

A/N: I got this idea from Hic-Up-Apple-Nod's story "Puppets". Her control-freak-Angel is pretty awesome and totally made me believe that Angel could rule the world. Starting, of course, with her Flock.

"Max."

She collapsed onto the chair. Her hands were shaking, her mouth was gaping, and her eyes were fuzzy… or maybe they had just finally been de-fuzzed, cleared to see what had been taken from her and she just wasn't used to this kind of freedom.

Angel reached out to take her leader's hand, but Max quickly jerked away.

Max had never had to be scared of her baby girl before. She didn't like the feeling.

"Angel. What have you done?"

"I didn't—Max, listen to me!"

Max gripped her head with sweaty palms. She clamped her eyes shut, preferring the image of stars rather than the littlest Flock member at that moment. No, no, no. This isn't happening. This can't be… No.

"This is sick, Angel. This is just wrong."

Max opened her eyes to look at her little sister—really look at her—for the first time in… How long?

"How long, Angel?"

"Max, if you'd listen to my side of the story—"

"Stop it, Angel." But instead of the iconic Maximum-Force that felled countless evils, her words were weak, coming out like a low moan. "You've manipulated us for years. We've been living a lie. No, we haven't been living at all. I just—I don't know what to do with you."

Angel stood up, her face scrunched together in frustration. She tugged at her blond locks and grunted in frustration. "'Do with me?!' I saved you! You and Fang were gonna kill each other! Nudge and Iggy were going crazy trying to be your in betweens and Gazzy, who hated to see the both of you at each others' throats, was getting more and more depressed all the time! Did you know? Or were you too caught up in your romance-slash-hatred to pay any kind of attention to what you were doing to the people around you?"

Max stood up, slowly, defying the weight that Angel had deposited on her heart. She looked down on Angel and was glad that even though Angel had been pulling her strings for the past however-long, Max still had the advantage of height, still managed to look like she had some control even if, inside, all hell was breaking loose. "That wasn't your call, Angel! Did anyone else know about this?"

Angel pouted and crossed her arms. "No. It was just me. Although I'm sure the rest of the Flock would have agreed with—"

"No, Angel, they wouldn't have. Or if they did, then they're not the kids I know. They're not… I'm so confused. I just…"

Max felt isolated. As though all the threads that had ever tied her to anyone had suddenly been severed. She was glad that her puppet strings were being clipped, but with them went the trust that Max relied on to get by every day. If she couldn't even trust Angel, how could she look anyone in the eye anymore? Nudge… Iggy… Gazzy… That her Flock, the only sense of stability for her entire life, had become unstable, variable, was so awful that Max suddenly couldn't feel the ground underneath her feet.

Max's knees gave way and she fell back into her chair. Angel remained standing with a look of total self-righteousness.

"I'm sorry, Max. I won't do it anymore." Angel sounded so insincere that Max wanted to puke. She held her hand to her throat, wanting to relieve herself of all the bad emotions wreaking havoc in her stomach.

"I just don't know what to do with you."

"I promise, Max."

Max laughed. She laughed because she couldn't cry, couldn't let Angel see her powerless.

The façade of power shouldn't have mattered anymore seeing as how for the past few years Max's free will had been undermined by a child. But somehow that made it especially important for Max to play the role of Fearless Leader. Her crudely etched smile made her seem brave. She balled her hands into fists, so they wouldn't shake, and she counted to three before speaking, lest the tremor in her voice give away how freaked she was.

"That's not going to work this time, Angel."

Angel looked annoyed. Why was Max suddenly all calm? That Angel seemed irritated at Max's ability to control herself only made the leader more determined. She sat up straighter and blinked less. No tears to fight back now.

"You promised before that you'd never use your powers against us, and here we are. I can't trust you anymore, Angel. I don't even know you anymore. And I can't… you can't be here if I can't trust you."

"Max." Now Angel looked scared. "You're not going to send me away?" Her large blue eyes began to water. "Max! You can't send me away!"

"Don't you dare get into my head, Angel!"

"You don't need me in your head in order to see that this is a bad idea! Max!" Angel reached across the table and her small, but very powerful fingers closed around one of Max's fists.

Max's skin prickled, her anger flamed and she wanted nothing more than to take Angel's small form into her arms, run her hands through Angel's soft blond hair and murmur assurances that everything was going to be all right.

Wait. That wasn't right.

"Out of my head, Angel!"

Max pried Angel's fingers from her hand and stood up abruptly. Without the veneer Angel had set into place, Max could clearly see what she needed to do to guarantee freedom from the Puppet Master.

She turned to leave the room, ignoring the pleas of her youngest.

"But I'm your baby girl!"

Angel kicked her legs back and forth under the chair. "So you're here to take me away?"

Jeb nodded. "That's the plan."

Angel gripped Celeste with all the fury that she wished she could use on Max but couldn't because she had to give off the impression that she was a stable child. Which she was, which they would see if Max would only give Angel the chance to explain! Unfortunately she and Fang and the rest of the Flock had spun out of control and wouldn't even look in her direction. Even Total refused to acknowledge that she existed. Her own brother only shook his head, constantly asking with a disappointed look, How could you, Angel?

"Until you can learn to use your powers responsibly, you're my charge," Jeb said.

Angel glared and squeezed Celeste tighter now because she had a new target. Jeb Batchelder of the blank mind. Of course Max would call him, the only person impervious to Angel Control.

It's not that she couldn't get in. It's just that nothing was there. She couldn't focus her mental grippers on anything. Jeb's thoughts left her scrambling for something to hold onto. Angel hated that lost feeling, hated that there was nothing she could grasp to steer things back to their right course.

"None of you understand!" Angel said. "I had to! If I didn't, the Flock wouldn't even be here now! Max and Fang would have torn us apart!"

Jeb drummed his fingers on the table; his calm face and flat tone revealed nothing. "You hate being out of control, don't you?"

She really did.

"It's not about control! It's about what's right."

Jeb sat down at the chair opposite Angel's. He shook his head. "You sacrificed your family's free will so that you could have everything exactly the way you wanted it. A control issue. Nothing more."

"What are you going to do with me?"

"Nothing so horrible. Trust me. Max does now. Thanks to you, I assume."

Angel shrugged. "It made things easier if she just got over that."

Jeb's dark eyes centered in on Angel. A grim humor quirked the ends of his mouth a bit. "And you don't see anything wrong with that, do you?"

Angel put her head on the table and sighed.

"No one understands."

"So… hey."

Max couldn't cry in front of Angel, but she wasn't sure what the protocol was for Fang. After all, their relationship had a solid four years under its belt, right? Except half that time was a lie. And now that lie was exposed. And all Max could do was stare at Fang who sprawled over the couch, looking at nothing in particular, seeming for all the world like today was completely ordinary.

"Hey."

Max sat on the couch next to Fang's and leaned on the side. She looked at his expression that any bystander would have characterized it as emotionless, but that she knew to be troubled. A soft crease between the eyebrows. The thin line of his lips.

"This is pretty… scary."

"Yeah."

Max knew there was something more in there, she saw the turmoil, she wasn't blind, and it sucked that his voice was so passive. Say something. Give me a hint that I'm not in this alone, something more than a stupid suggestion in your face.

But he was silent. His eyes remained unfocused, still staring at nothing, refusing to break from reverie to deal with the problem. To deal with Max.

"Remember last Valentine's Day?" Max tried. "When you gave me that necklace and apologized and we…" Her breaths shortened as she remembered. "Was that you? Or Angel?"

The mention of that night snapped Fang back into reality. As he turned to face Max, his expression gained a feeling of confusion. Vagueness. Unsure of how to feel. Unsure of who the person sitting in front of him was.

So I'm not alone, Max thought.

"… I don't know." His voice was heavy.

"So what do we do now?"

Fang exhaled. "We could start over?"

Max shook her head. "We can't just forget that the past two years never happened. That everything was a lie. How can we move forward like that?"

"I'm not saying it won't be hard."

"Everything that happened…" Max's mind played Reminiscence. She thought back to their final battle, with insults thrown and feelings flung, aimed to pierce hearts. A blowout that huge promised the end of things. But then all was forgiven and the two signed a peace treaty for the next few years. "When I decided to give it another shot. That wasn't me or you. It was Angel."

Fang's expression hardened, solidified into something like anger. "You don't know that."

"Don't tell me you're fine with what she did!"

"I'm not."

"Well, you're sitting there, calm as anything, all serene like a freaking monk!"

Fang sat up slowly, moving as though he'd aged seventy years in a day. His hands, shaking as though afflicted with arthritis, were really just burdened with a nasty case of pent up rage. And his eyes, through which Max gained a peak into his emotions, were suddenly engulfed in flames. "Because the only alternative is to break something or someone and if I do show you how utterly messed up in the head I am right now, it'd probably scare you."

"I'm already scared. I'm terrified."

Maybe the slight softening of Fang's expression meant I am, too.

"But we have to deal," he insisted. "And we have to move forward."

How could he be so…? So certain. So sure. Max's own voice was so unsure. "You heard Angel. We were screwing things up all by ourselves until she… interfered. And if she hadn't? It was bad, Fang."

"That was before. We're different people now."

"No. We're not." Max tried to make herself as small as possible, burrowing into her chair. She drew her knees to her chest, wrapped her arms around herself and closed her eyes. "We didn't have the chance to grow up, to change. We're the same messed-up that we were two years ago."

A hand on her head, fingers running through her hair. She opened her eyes and looked up to meet someone she hadn't seen in years. His hand fell from her head and lingered a few inches in front of her, palm upward, inviting. His gaze met hers and held it.

"Now we have the chance. I'm willing."

He wasn't asking her or begging her. He never begged. Max was given a choice. To be defeated by worries and fears. Or to take his hand, start over, and try this messy business without the aid of a ten-year-old telepath.

A thread formed, weak, but with the promise of potential strength, as Max accepted his hand.

A/N: I have an idea for a sort-of sequel to this dealing with Angel and how the Flock rebuilds after this. I've written a broad outline and am really excited about it. Who wants to see Angel go to psychic rehab?