A/N: For starters, this story started as a note on my iPhone and essentially wrote itself in less than three hours.
Here's my little take on what the beginning of SOF would look like if it were Max that Ari had torn up, not Fang. This isn't an exact swap—I took some artistic liberty with changing things as I saw fit, and used some direct quotes from SOF when I felt it was appropriate; plus, I work in medicine, so the verbiage may be a bit more intense than JP originally wrote—but this is something I'm proud of, so I hope you enjoy!
"Yo," Fang said quietly, flying up to Max, who'd been flying awkwardly for the better half of ten minutes. It wasn't unlike the older kids to suck it up until they could find somewhere safe to land, but he couldn't remember the last time he'd seen her so out of sorts. "What's up?"
Max was gritting her teeth. When she spoke, it was through them. "Nothing."
Yes, Fang thought. And I'm the queen of England.
Giving her a quick once over, he felt his eyes widen when he saw her shirt beneath her windbreaker. "Jesus, Max, your arm," said Fang. His heart clenched with urgency as he reached his hands out to assess the damage.
The flock had caught up to them now, each looking confused. Iggy advanced on them immediately. "What's going on? I smell blood."
"Nothing," Max muttered.
But then her eyes fluttered shut, her wings folded, and she dropped through the cloud cover like a stone.
Fang dove with precision, mind completely blank from the icy fear pumping through his vasculature. "Max!" he called, but he got no response. "Max!"
Somehow, he managed to situate himself beneath her. Her body fell like a sack of flour into his waiting arms, limp and cold.
Fang folded his wings in and let himself drop, throwing them back open when he was ten feet or so from the ground. He hadn't factored in Max's extra weight and his wings strained painfully against the fall, but it was water under the bridge at this point. He picked the clearest patch of sand he could find and lowered her to the ground. Every inch of him wilted with dread.
The rest of the flock landed a millisecond later. "What happened?" Iggy asked urgently, dropping to the ground beside them.
It wasn't her arm at all, Fang realized. It was her side. "She's bleeding," Fang said, pulling Max's shirt up to her ribcage. "A lot. Ari must've…"
But he didn't finish his thought. Instead, he sucked in a deep, horrified breath at what Ari had done. He could barely see the gashes because of all the blood. His hands hovered above her uselessly. He didn't even know where to begin.
Iggy had lowered his hands to brush over the wound, unaware of how much blood she was losing. When his fingers brushed against the lacerations, his face screwed up into worry. "Oh, shit," he muttered, quietly enough that only Fang could hear him. "Fang…"
He could hear the kids gasping behind him. He turned quickly and met each of their panicked eyes. "Rip something up. Anything. A shirt, pants, socks, I don't care. Make strips."
None of them moved.
"Go!" Fang snapped. He'd never raised his voice to the kids before—had really only ever raised it to Max—but this was not the time for friendliness.
Nudge blinked and then broke out of the state of shock that had gripped her, gripped them all. "Uh, yeah. Come on, guys. I have an extra shirt here… and I got a knife…"
"This feels really bad," Iggy said lowly. "How much blood has she lost?"
Fang could barely hear him over the rush of his pulse in his ears. "Too much."
"'M fine," Max mumbled. Her eyes opened a fraction, but they rolled around uselessly in her sockets before closing again.
"You idiot," Fang barked. A harrowing mixture of rage, hysteria, and worry colored his usually calm voice. "Why didn't you tell me you were hurt?"
But she was gone, gone, gone—eyes shut and unmoving.
"Where're those strips?" Iggy yelled urgently. Nudge materialized at Fang's side, pressing them into his waiting hands.
Fang wadded them up as thickly as he could and pressed them over the wounds. It was useless—blood seeped through his fingers. He could see the muscles of her oblique. Bile rose in his throat.
"No, no, no," said Fang under his breath. Across from him, Iggy looked grim. "You idiot," he repeated at Max's lifeless form.
"What do we do?" Iggy whispered at him. "Fang, we can't handle this, this is too much blood—if we don't get her help she's going to—"
But Fang never found out what she was going to do, because that was when a man jogged up to them, whipped out his phone, and dialed 911.
Unsurprisingly, the doctor that approached them looked like he'd been clobbered over the head with a baseball bat. He spoke to Fang in a strange, nervous voice. "Uh—sir? Could you come with me? Right now?"
Sir. That was a new one.
Fang tapped the back of Iggy's hand twice and rose from his chair, feeling very much like he'd do just about anything to get a do-over on this day.
It was as if the pristine, white walls were crashing in on him. Fang had been in his fair share of life-threatening, heart-pounding situations, but this was unlike anything he was prepared to deal with. They got their asses kicked all the time. They'd suffered more injuries than he could count. But they were never supposed to die.
The ambulance ride had been, potentially, the worst experience of his life. The paramedics had looked petrified, which was as good of an indicator as any that Max was in some seriously deep shit. Idiot, he thought again. If she died, it had been preventable. If she died, he would never forgive her. If she died, what the hell were they going to do?
What was he going to do?
In summary, Fang was going to snap. He wasn't sure exactly when, or what would prompt it, but it was coming—he felt it in his freakish, hollow bird bones.
"How well do you know her?" the doctor asked. He was escorting Fang back to the trauma bay, where they were, quote, 'trying to stabilize' Max. Not the most reassuring collection of words to hear from a surgeon.
"She's my sister."
The surgeon seemed to give him a bit of a once over, no doubt comparing his angular, obviously Mediterranean features to Max's soft, fair ones. It wasn't quite often that an obsidian-eyed, black-haired kid had a blonde-haired, brown-eyed sister with freckles to boot.
If they were going to start pointing out anomalies, though, it would be an even longer morning than it was already shaping up to be.
"Are you... like her?" the doctor asked quietly.
Fang was certain he could never possibly hate anything more than he hated this moment, this day. He unlocked his jaw a fraction to growl out, "Yes." It was a warning.
The surgeon, to his credit, looked nothing but relieved. "You'll be able to help us, then. Because I'm not understanding any of this."
They were close, Fang knew. The smell of sterility and betadine and Max had slammed him about fifty feet ago.
"Is she going to be okay?" he asked.
The doctor said nothing as he pushed open the doors.
Max was on a stretcher, pale as a ghost and unmoving. There was a tube down her throat that was attached to a machine that appeared to be breathing for her. Three different IVs poked out of her arms, each with a different bag pumping into it. The floor was littered with gauze wrappers and a bunch of other associated debris Fang couldn't identify.
Or didn't care to. Because all he could look at was the puddle of blood that had pooled on the floor.
They had removed her shirt. Different wires that Fang recognized as heart monitor leads were stuck to her chest and abdomen. A myriad of other machines beeped around the room. A bright light shone over her. He wished they'd cover her up, leave her a shred of dignity, protect her from the distinctive chill of the room.
A nurse was at her side, peeling back the saturated dressing to reveal the wounds, at least two inches wide and impossibly deep. Blood flowed freely, but the nurse worked quickly, dumping what smelled like saline over her abdomen before mopping it dry and placing another thick pressure dressing over it. A flurry of various other medical personnel that Fang couldn't distinguish zipped about the room. Max didn't move once.
Oh, my God, he thought. She's going to die.
"We only intubated her for airway protection," the doctor said, as if Fang had any clue at all what that meant or knew whether or not it was a good thing. "We'll be taking it out shortly as long as she stabilizes. She hasn't arrested, which greatly improves her odds."
He almost didn't want to ask, but he did. "Is she going to live?"
The surgeon puffed out a massive breath. "If we can clear a few things up, I think," he said. Fang eyed his badge. Dr. Adam Phillips. "Her heart rate is sustaining in the two hundreds despite attempts at cardioversion and several doses of adenosine, although she seems to be perfusing adequately—"
"Our heart rates run high. But only that fast if we're stressed or dehydrated." Fang forced out. He snapped his fingers in a quick succession. "We're different. Our bones. Blood. Everything."
"And you have... wings?"
Fang nodded once, deciding that perhaps it wasn't just this moment or this day that he hated, but this life.
Shockingly, the doctor looked unruffled. "What about thermoregulation?"
"Over one hundred is a normal temperature for us. Hundred two, hundred three."
He raised his stethoscope tentatively in Fang's direction, nervous eyebrows popped up into a question. "Can I...?"
Wordlessly, Fang stepped forward, feeling ready to implode at any second. This is for Max, he repeated to himself as the surgeon listened to his heart and his lungs.
"Why do I hear air moving down here?" he said as he listened to Fang's abdomen.
"Air sacs."
Dr. Phillips looked fascinated, but also relieved as he stepped back. "Your baseline assessment is consistent with the early indicators of septic shock in a... normal person. An infection," he clarified. "Her lab work and clinical presentation were not reflective of that, so this makes a lot more sense. We're only dealing with hypovolemic shock, which is much easier to correct. At first, we were nervous she may have a perfed bowel, or even a hemothorax, but the air sacs sort of explain—"
This was still not the answer Fang wanted, largely because he didn't understand why this physician was speaking to him as if he had any freaking idea what was going on.
"Is she going to live?" he ground out again, cutting off the gibberish spilling out of the doctor's mouth.
"So long as we can get the bleeding under control and provide enough volume resuscitation, she should be fine. She's young, healthy. I think we're out of the woods."
Fang felt his entire body uncoil at once. The dizziness that overtook him was debilitating; he reached an arm out to steady himself.
She would be fine.
The doctor was rattling something off about blood substitute and transfusions. The nurse was hanging a bag of blood on an IV pole, pulling Fang to the surface.
"No!" he forced out sharply. The nurse's head whipped around, hands frozen on the bag of blood. The doctor looked at Fang questioningly. "Our red cells have nuclei," he managed, hating how his voice trembled. "You can't give her regular blood."
"Get ready to donate, then," said the doctor. Fang decided he trusted him.
About as much as he could trust anyone in a white coat, that was.
A half hour later, Fang was trying not to pass out from the two and a half pints of blood he'd donated. In the chair next to him, Iggy was faring a bit better after only giving one pint, but was still a shade paler than his normally already ghostly complexion.
"No more," the nurse had said after the second pint, preparing to remove the IV from Fang's arm.
"More," Fang had said, jerking his arm away.
"This is already a third of your total circulating blood volume, buddy," the nurse had said with folded eyebrows. "It's borderline dangerous that the doc let me take even this much."
Borderline dangerous, Fang thought. Donating too much blood in a hospital. What an interesting interpretation of danger.
When she moved to remove the IV again, the friendly surgeon had appeared from behind them. "How much did you take?"
"Two pints, Adam."
Dr. Phillips had eyeballed Fang. "How are you feeling?"
"Our cells have a faster regenerative rate than yours. Tenfold."
The nurse looked confused, but Dr. Phillips nodded. "Take another half unit," he'd instructed.
"Go find my brother."
Dr. Phillips' eyes had nearly hit the ceiling. "There are more of you?"
Fang had to admit, the shock factor was a bit entertaining.
Now, the five of them were in a special family waiting room. What they were waiting for, nobody was entirely sure.
"What do you think's going to happen?" Nudge asked for the umpteenth time. Her knee bounced nervously, and Fang resisted the urge to reach out and hold it down. "They didn't take her, did they? They're not going to split us up, or put her in a cage, or put us in a cage—"
Fang felt entirely too tired to speak, so he was relieved when Iggy took over.
"Nudge. She's in critical condition. This wasn't a scraped knee or a broken bone."
"But they know about the wings," Gazzy whispered. "They're not just gonna ignore them."
"Doctor didn't seem to care," Fang grunted. "Probably have to call the feds. But their job is to make her better. Once she's okay enough to be moved, we bust out."
"I don't know, Fang," said Iggy. "She's in bad shape, even for us. If we run she can get an infection or start bleeding again or..."
Fang closed his eyes and stopped listening. All of this was too much, too fast, and he felt liable to fall over at any minute.
Angel's voice, delicate and soft, came from his right. "Here," she said. When he opened his eyes, he was handed six little cups of orange juice. He couldn't bring himself to care where she'd gotten them from. "At least to get some sugar in you, until we can get to the cafeteria."
Fang had just drained the last juice when the door opened. He rocketed to his feet, steadying himself with a hand on Iggy's shoulder when he nearly pitched forward from the sudden change in positioning.
Dr. Phillips stood in the doorway, looking exhausted. "She's going to be fine."
Fang felt himself unwind and let out a giant sigh of relief. Behind him, the rest of the flock cheered loudly. Nudge and Angel both burst into tears. "Thank you," said Iggy lowly.
"She earned herself over a hundred stitches, and even with all the blood you gave, she's still a bit anemic and dehydrated. Considering your..." he swallowed, "...uh, the circumstances, I'm confident that she'll replenish her own volume faster than we'd expect. We had to take her into surgery to cauterize a major arterial bleed and repair a perforated, uh, air sac. She's still recovering and needs to rest, so no visitors until—"
"Take me to see her."
The surgeon opened his mouth to say something but closed it when he saw the look on Fang's face. "This is a tough situation for you guys, huh?" he said softly. Was that compassion Fang saw on his features?
Iggy snorted. "Understatement of the year."
After a moment, Dr. Phillips nodded, eyeballing Fang again. "Okay. Come with me."
Just then, the door banged open, revealing a petite blonde in a pantsuit. She looked about as FBI as a human being could possibly look.
Gazzy groaned loudly.
"Here we go," muttered Nudge.
In lieu of an introduction, the woman began barking orders, which was typically an easy way to get on Fang's bad side.
"You'll be coming with me, before anything else," Ms. FBI said sternly.
"Oh, will we?" Iggy asked politely. "Can we stop for froyo on the way?"
"Ooh, or what about bubble tea?" gushed Gazzy seriously. "Golly, I'd just love a bubble tea."
"I have plans," Nudge lamented. "Wish I could. Sorry!"
"You're not getting out of this one," said Ms. FBI sharply. Her nametag read Charlotte and she'd had multiple plastic surgeries, if Fang had to guess. He took her for the type that rode the elliptical while watching the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show and bought only the most organic, gluten-free, and vegan of groceries.
"We will be talking to you," she said. As if she had any control over what Fang would and would not be doing.
Fang had to bite back a snort. Yeah, this chick would stand a fantastic chance against a genetically altered, Eraser-ass-kicking, overprotective Fang with a chip on his shoulder. And fourteen-foot wings. Plus the rest of the flock.
Wait until she met Max.
But busting out of here now would mean leaving Max, who wouldn't be flying for several days, maybe weeks. And that wasn't an option.
"I see her first," Fang said, narrowing his eyes. It was the no-nonsense tone he used to combat Angel's puppy dog eyes, although it never worked for him in that scenario. "I want proof that she's alive, that she's here. I will talk with her for as long as I feel I need to. And then after, if I decide I want to, I will talk to you."
"The doctors have banned visitors for the time being," she said curtly.
"Uh—" Dr. Phillips opened his mouth to protest, but Charlotte raised a finger. Fang spoke anyway.
"Well, I guess you'll have to arrange something, Charlotte."
Charlotte set her perfectly lined lips into a frown. "I'll see what I can do. In the meantime—"
"I don't talk until I see her."
"We'll start with your siblings, then."
At this, Fang cracked a half-smile, even barked a laugh. As if the flock would utter a peep without the okay from him or Max. He didn't even need to turn to see their faces.
Good luck, Char, he thought, and he followed Dr. Phillips out of the room.
When he opened the door, she was asleep. Her sun-streaked hair formed an ash-blonde halo around her head. The only time he saw her this at ease, this peaceful, was when she was asleep, and he felt his anger melt away a bit.
With a sigh, he dropped into the chair at her bedside, dusting his hand lightly over her forearm. The rhythmic rise and fall of her chest filled Fang with such relief that it could've brought him to his knees.
But he was Fang. So it didn't.
He studied her cheekbones, thinking of the way they blushed when she smiled at something he said. Her jaw and the knot it formed when she set it stubbornly. Her hands, small and calloused, powerful enough to throw a punch that would shatter the skull of the strongest of men, but delicate enough to braid Angel's hair, bandage Gazzy's skinned knees, subtly guide Iggy through unknown places.
They'd almost lost all of that, because she'd thought she could handle not one, not two, but four two-inch-wide, eight-inch-long lacerations caused by Ari's razor-sharp claws without thinking to mention it to anyone. The doctor had said he'd seen nothing like it in his ten years of practicing medicine in inner city Baltimore.
And it had been so, so close to killing her.
That was enough to bring the rage back.
To hell with letting her sleep, to hell with admiring how peaceful and gentle and whatever she looked. A bandage was taped over her right eyebrow, another minor wound she'd sustained during the battle that had definitely already healed.
So Fang stood and ripped it off.
She awoke with a violent gasp, hands flailing at the side rails before shoving against the scratchy sheets in an attempt to sit upright. Fang could practically hear the adrenaline singing in her blood.
"You didn't tell us you were hurt, Max? Seriously?" His voice was low and powerful it thundered through the room. "What the hell is wrong with you?"
She was still gasping, her terrified eyes searching the room. Finally, she turned to him, looking like she could 1) have a panic attack, 2) burst into tears, or 3) collapse with relief knowing he was there with her.
Fang knew it was cruel not to comfort her, but he couldn't bring himself to touch her.
"You're at the hospital," he said softly. "In Maryland. Ari—"
"Kicked the crap out of me, yeah," she said breathlessly, pain written across her face. "I remember."
She was struggling to sit up, so Fang swallowed his anger and stepped forward, placing a hand on her back. Her hospital gown was open in the back, showing where her wings folded tightly into their ridges. She was absolutely freezing.
He fumbled with the settings on the bed for a minute, finally figuring out how to sit the head up before crossing the room and grabbing an extra blanket to drape over her shoulders and back. She cast him a wordless thank you.
"Answer the question."
She sighed, leaning back against the mattress. "Which one? The rhetorical one, or 'what the hell is wrong with me?' Because we've all been asking that for fourteen years, not sure why we'd have an answer now," she cracked bitterly.
Fang stood with his arms crossed. When he spoke, it was harsh. "I'm not laughing."
She sighed again, still looking close to tears. "I felt okay. I thought I could manage a couple of miles." Her voice was raspy, probably from the breathing tube they'd crammed down her throat when she'd first arrived. Fang's eyes narrowed even more.
"You were wrong."
"No shit, Fang. I get it. I feel like hell. I don't need a lecture."
"Do you know how close you were to dying?" His voice was louder this time, not quite a yell but sharper than his normal conversing tone.
"We needed to get out of there!" Max shouted. One of her hands found her forehead and she squeezed her eyes shut. "If we hadn't gotten as far as we did, they could've come back, they could've gotten the kids, or all of us—"
"At least we would've been together! At least we would've been alive!"
"I am alive!"
"Do you know how barely, Max?"
They were screaming. He knew his deep voice carried, so he wasn't surprised when the door opened behind him and a nurse poked her head in, looking unhappy.
"My patient is trying to recover in here," she said tightly. "I'm going to need to ask you to leave if you don't keep it down, sir."
There it was again. Sir. Homeless, chronically underfed, and forever hiding from everyone but the flock, yet here, he was sir.
"Mr. Ride?"
Oh, for Christ's sake.
Fang felt his body threatening to explode with rage. He sat down in the chair by Max's bed and rested his right elbow on his knee, pressing his hand to his forehead and forcing himself to take deep breaths. Shattering the window or breaking the bedside table would not bode well in this situation, but if this woman said another word—
"We're okay," Max said sweetly. "I'm sorry—you know how fighting can get between siblings."
"If it happens again, he's out."
The door shut with a soft click.
He pulled his hand from his head and leaned back in the chair, feeling impossibly tense and on edge. Max followed his movements with her eyes.
"Fang," she began, but he didn't let her continue.
"Don't."
A beat.
"I'm sorry," she forced out quickly, dropping her angry facade. The vulnerability and guilt on her face was palpable.
Too bad, Fang thought. This had been a stupid move, and she wasn't getting off that easy.
"That is the closest we've ever come to losing one of us. Ever. And it was you. It can't be you, Max—you're their mother. You're the only one who keeps this flock together."
He knew what she was thinking, and he knew she knew that he knew what she was thinking—that no matter what, every time, Max would sacrifice herself for any member of the flock without a second thought. Because that's who she was. Loyal, hard-headed, loving. Like a mom. But that didn't mean she needed to be a moron about it.
"Protecting them doesn't mean letting yourself bleed out thousands of feet in the freaking air, Max. Quit martyring yourself because you're too proud or too stubborn to admit that you're hurting!"
Max snorted, face twisted back up in a frustrated mask. "You're one to talk. If it were you, we wouldn't have known anything was wrong until you dropped dead!"
"Well, it wasn't me. And no matter what, it's different." Memories of the morning flashed through his mind, and he shut his eyes, forcing them away like he'd trained himself to do with thoughts of the School. "You didn't see their faces, Max. I've never seen the Gasman so terrified in my life. Angel was beside herself. Nudge could barely help Iggy and I try to stop the bleeding, she was so messed up."
Her expression had flashed back to guilt and embarrassment. She wouldn't to look at him.
"They refused to go. I told them to hide, that I'd meet up with them when I could. When they told me no, I ordered them. And they wouldn't do it. They thought you were going to die and they'd never see you again."
She looked up at Fang, those walnut brown eyes of hers swimming with tears. And just like that, he softened. Leaning forward, he folded his arms on the edge of her bed and dropped his head on them, forcing himself to breathe deeply.
One of Max's hands—those same hands that shattered skulls and braided hair and bandaged knees—found his unruly hair, fingers combing gently through the curls and tangles they found there. It was the first time in a long time he'd let his guard completely down, the first time they'd shared a moment as intimate as this. He felt his tight muscles unlock.
"I'm sorry for scaring you," she whispered delicately. Sincerity weaved its way through her voice. A genuine apology. Fang felt something warm and wet drop on the back of his knuckles. A tear. "I'm sorry for being an idiot."
But because Fang would not forgive her for jeopardizing her own life, all he could say was, "I know."
And for now, it was enough.
A/N: I always found it interesting that Max wasn't bullshit with Fang for trying to be stoic while he was actively dying while flying over the coast of Maryland. Like, hello? What an idiot move.
Since Fang deals with his fear by getting angry, that became sort of the focus here.
Thanks for reading! Please review, it encourages me to write more :)