What I Never Told You, a Maximum Ride one-shot, October 7th, 2010
Song: Get Up by Barcelona (Listen to it, youtube it! Really) or Love Me by Yiruma (awesome, but Get Up takes priority. If you read slowly, play one after the other. Actually, listen to them both even if you read fast.)
It was cold.
The frozen earth leaked through his jeans, slowly spreading their chill from bone to bone. Even in the small clearing surround by ancient trees, the wind reached him, whipping dark hair in waves around his head. His jacket ruffled.
It was cold.
He wondered how they had ever managed to dig through the hard peat, now that even the leaves had glued to one another as if this could somehow produce body heat.
It was early, and the dew had frosted to the white stone, spiraling in what could have been beautiful patterns. It was fitting, he decided, that something so shining and pure would be the headstone of someone so important.
The wind, howling like children torn from their parents, drowned out his first word. His voice was quiet, cracked with disuse.
"Hey."
There was no response. The trees groaned in pain as the wind continued with renewed force.
"It's your birthday today, Max." Fang whispered, his fingers twitching, nearly numb with cold. His body noticed. His mind didn't.
"Happy sixteenth. Sorry I didn't bring a car. Wouldn't fit in my backpack."
He paused, catching his breath. He was unsure of why he was talking, when he had hardly spoken for two years, when words had rarely meant anything between them, when she couldn't even hear him. Unsure of why he was here when no one had been in this part of the woods for just as long. Unsure of why he still hurt, because wasn't that the point of this visit?
No, he had never been sure of the point.
"I hope it's peaceful, wherever you are." He continued, eyes flickering to the second, unmarked grave, just feet away. A small tree was growing where he imagined a head would be. Fitting. He wondered if they were together again, and didn't begrudge them if they were.
"I hope you don't have to enjoy martyrdom a second time." He told her. "Not when it was your first that saved our world. You deserve some peace. I hope, wherever you are, they recognize you for what you did. I hope you get to fly without people gawking up at you. I hope you're happy.
"The kids are okay. Nudge is thirteen, almost fourteen. Your age. The other day…" His voice broke, but he continued on strongly as if nothing had happened. "The other day, she asked me how you managed to keep us safe if you were only fourteen. She went on as Nudge still does, not that she doesn't miss you, but because you'd have to rip the vocal chords out of the kid to get her to shut up. Anyway, who I am to talk, when I'm rambling away to the air?" Again Fang was forced to stop, the knot in his chest taking his speech for a moment.
"She said she didn't think she would be able to lead. I told her you were one in a million, that's how you did it."
He looked at his hands without really seeing them, and then back again at the pure white rock.
"Angel's nine. Gaz is ten. They've both been quieter since… that day. I s'pose we all have. But you'll either be glad to know Ig and Gazzy aren't too shell-shocked to be themselves and blow up the neighbor's John Deer tractor, or furious.
"Ella's fifteen. She's okay, too. Any day now Iggy will finally get the guts to kiss her, but I know he feels bad about it. Thinks it's just a crush, doesn't want to hurt her. And I think he's still slightly afraid that you'll pop over his shoulder and call him a sexist pig when he does. But in the meantime, they're just good friends. She reads to him from her books and he taught her to cook and hardwire a car, so you could call it a win-win relationship."
He didn't seem to notice that it had started to rain, cold, freezing drops that leeched the warmth away from wherever they hit.
"That first year, the world started to save itself. You started it. You prompted them. You weren't taken… in vain, but we hid out in the woods for a week until… well, until I got my own Voice. Hurt like hell."
Anyone else would have laughed sardonically, but Fang hardly smiled anymore, let alone laughed, even if he did mean it.
"I feel bad for it. It doesn't stick around much. My head's a pretty fucked up place to be. But I guess it comes with being in charge. It told me to go to your mom's. I'd been avoiding it. They didn't know." The stick he twiddled in his fingers broke, his knuckles white with how hard he gripped the pieces.
"But why am I telling you this? If you can hear me here, you can hear me anywhere, right? You can see what's going on… if you're there."
Fang's voice choked off, overcome with the impossible, with what he wouldn't, couldn't, believe. Of course she was listening, wherever she was. Max could talk the fish out of the water, when she put her mind to it. But she could also listen. About some things, she was as stubborn as Fang was quiet, but she had always turned an ear when he needed it.
"I don't know." He whispered to her. "I don't know why I'm here or even what I'm doing half the time. If there were a test on life, I'd be failing. But I thought… thought it was time to come. To talk. To see what the hell is supposed to happen when you talk to the dead. Isn't there supposed to be some whisper in your ear or breath on your shoulder? Some feeling of wholeness? Whoever wrote that was smoking something because everything's still broken. I don't even know if you're listening. Guess I'll have to rely on faith that you'd never truly leave-but you know how well the whole faith thing worked out."
The sticks were thrown across the clearing, the tattered backpack pulled to his knees. His fingers clenched around the straps as if the flimsy fabric would somehow keep him steady.
"I guess the real reason why I'm here is… I found your manuscript, Max. The one you sent to that Patterson friend of Dr. Ms but wouldn't let us read a word of."
Was it irrational to fear that the only response he would get was anger?
"It wasn't that I was looking through your things. I've been carrying your backpack around-now its in the guestroom at the Martinez's-but the papers fell out the other day. I used to wonder what made it so heavy. Seriously, it probably amounted to novels, you even named them. I figured this was what you were always scribbling down, so I found the first page. You called it "The Angel Experiment." Figured you wouldn't name a diary, so I started."
The pages, scraps and sheets and battered notebooks, shook with his hands. Nudge had asked why he wasn't coming down for breakfast, and he had said he was sick so he could see her familiar scrawl, feel the paper her hands brushed against without interruption… he swore they almost smelled like her. It was indefinable, sweat and love and tears mixed with a healthy does of fresh air and heady trees… something no other person would be able to mimic. He had thought the scent was lost with her, but then he'd found her sweatshirt and those words.
"Eventually, after I finished the first, I decided that I would try to stagger it out, so I wouldn't have to let you go again. But it didn't work."
His voice broke, a creak not far off from those of the trees, shifting in the wind. He held the papers close to his chest, not wanting to let the rain wash the ink away.
"And you know what?" He whispered to her. "You know what the goddamn hardest part was? Reading what you wrote about me. Like here," heart thumping wildly, fingers dysfunctional with cold, he ruffled to the memorized page and read aloud: "'…He turned to me and grinned, lighting up my world.' I mean, how could you say something like that? Your smile lit up my world, Max. Your laugh, the way you looked whenever we had downtime, even if it was just the second you relaxed to smile at Angel and that ratty old bear or Iggy when he made cupcakes the first time without help.
"Your eyes-I knew them better than my own. I loved whenever you would look up at me and your eyes would flicker with recognition and sometimes something else. There was nothing stronger than your eyes, whether they were glaring or sparkling or gleaming with pain. Except for maybe your voice.
"I still have dreams where I hear your voice, you know. Even though I forget the exact freckles on your face and the pictures in my sketchbook look more and more like each other and less like you, I remember your voice. I love the way you would say my name-even if you were pissed-and the way you would mouth off to authority and when you hummed along with the radio when you thought no one was listening.
"I see you every night, whether in a nightmare or dream. The best, which always turn out to be the worst because of how I have to wake up and lose you all over again, are when we're together. Sometimes we fly, sometimes we sit, and we talk. I don't remember what about, exactly, when I wake up, but I remember your voice, and during the dream, I remember you exactly. Every freckle and all."
Fang gulped for air, his chest tight and breathing hard after this gush of speech, the cold air, and the weight pressing down on his very being as he spoke all that had been on his mind.
"That's one of the worst things in your books." Fang told her, not caring that his voice was no longer steady, but shook and cracked. "How you just didn't get it for so long. And now I'm in love with a dead person, which you would laugh about if you were here, but that's the thing, isn't it? If we were still laughing together, if I could still talk to you and hear your opinion and watch you fly and just be with you, then I wouldn't be in love with a dead person."
The pain in his chest was almost too much, but he knew he had to finish.
"Because I'm freaking in love with you, Max. I have always loved you and I always will be in love with you. And… and…" His eyes were streaming, and not because of the wind. His throat ached, and not because of the icy air he inhaled.
"I promised I would never leave you, and I meant it, but didn't it work the other way? I always thought… I would be the first to go, because you'd be the one in front of the bullet and I would jump in front of it so you could lead on. Those bastards didn't give me much of a choice, did they? I don't know if they realized that when they murdered you, they killed a part of me, too. Probably considered it an added bonus.
"And I'm selfish enough to be here whining about the pain I'm in, when the reason for my existence is dead. I love you, Max. Wherever you are. I love you. I love you. Max."
The sobs were lost among the crying trees, wind, and steady rain, but the one whispered name seemed to echo around the clearing, even if there were no physical beings to listen. It was a simple litany, just one word. The name of the girl who lit up his world.
The real kind of love is irreplaceable, imperfect. It can't be bought or sold. It doesn't fade with time or death. You feel invincible, invulnerable. But I will ask you this:
What happens to the heart when the other stops beating?
-Sara Fleischer