Chapter 3: New Scars

More graphic stuff, also this mentions a bombing, surgery, and like always take cursing as a given. Ready for angst? I'm not and I'm the one writing.

The universe really had it out for Max today.

So naturally, Max woke up in the middle of his surgery.

It was definitely startling, no one wants to wake up with a numb body on an operating table, seeing only your own blood. Max just lay there, watching the surgeons cut into him and trying to make sense of all of it. Well, he definitely couldn't. Probably because of the combined numbing drugs and the blood loss. He was high as shit. Max smirked.

Nice.

But one thing that seeing his own blood, seeing others looming over him, feeling so powerless, it all brought him back to how it was-

No. He was NOT thinking about that. Not now.

Fuck it.

Max let his mind wander to those nights. The nights he spent alone, left to fend for himself in this cruel hell we call "home".

Three rules, Max thought to himself. Just three rules here.

Don't trust anyone

Always be prepared to run

Never go out unarmed after sunset

"Simple enough…" Max muttered to himself, sprinting down the alley, gripping the handle of his knife, watching his black curls bounce in rhythm with Max's footfalls. When he finally arrived at his apartment, he ran the usual routine. Close the window blinds, lock all doors and windows, keep all lights turned on.

Once his paranoid checking and double-checking were complete, Max sat down and sighed. His parents came here illegally, of course leading them to live in only the worst neighborhood in the worst, shit-stained apartment. They were too busy trying to make an honest living to provide Max with any sort of support, but it's not like he needed them to. "I'm fine," he muttered to himself, repeating the same false promise that he knew wasn't true, "everything's fine.."

And although for now, that false truth may be, Max never knew when one night his parents wouldn't come home, and he would truly be alone. Lazily getting up, Max heard a knock on the door. But it wasn't his parents. He didn't hear a loud argument at the front door, nor was the knock angry and violent.

No, this wasn't them.

Cautiously looking through the peephole in his door, Max's eyes widened.

A police officer.

Opening the door with a look of jaw-dropping fear and surprise, Max carefully eyed the officer. "Umm... Hi?" Max said, with his watchful eyes scanning the other man attentively, as if they were reading a book.

"I-" The officer cuts himself off. "Are you the child of Alexis and Sahil Bhatia?" Max nodded. The official was slow to respond. "I'm… I'm so sorry." Max's face dropped, and he felt his brows tighten as his eyes filled with water, like a dam about to break.

"..What do you mean?" Max said weakly, trying to swallow his increasing panic.

"Your parents were one of the many casualties in a bombing on Central Street today. I-" the policeman paused. "I'm sorry, but there's no easy way to put it."

Max felt his knees give out. He saw intense pity and guilt overrun the officer's face, and Max was soon being guided into a squad car, where Max was taken to the police station to go over the details, who got what possessions, and where Max would stay. Big surprise, he was being flung into the foster system like just another orphan with the same tragic backstory, and little 12-year-old Max was thrown from home to home like a stray cat, never "fitting" with any family. Eventually, he was sick of it and ran. Max was able to beg his way to get back the apartment that he and his parents owned.

Sickeningly enough, being an orphan has its perks.

Unfortunately for Max, however, those his age had no mercy.

At school, Max was no longer just the "curry kid with major anger issues" he was now "the little brown orphaned shit".

"Hey, dipshit." Richman Smith, Max's official least favorite person. "I thought you were gonna be driving my taxi, you orphans always needing money." The smugger he looked, the more Max wanted to eviscerate him.

"What Richman? Not getting enough attention from your pa-" Why did he say that? Soon Max found himself slammed up against a locker.

"At least I have parents." He found a fist fresh on his face, and Max's resolve dropped. "Look me in the face shit-for-brains! You are below me. I can get your sorry ass expelled so fast your head will spin, and don't think I'll stop there." Richman spits on him before letting Max retreat into the growing crowd. This is the night Max started collecting blackmail. He was going to send Richman to juvie and was determined to stop any other people like him from growing too powerful.

Three months later, Richman was sent to juvie for drug use, assault and battery, as well as a variety of other charges. Soon, people knew that it was Max who tipped off the police, and nobody fucked with him for a while, in fear that they would be next if they ever crossed paths with him. The few that did become close to Max were only friends because they're oblivious enough to think that if they became close to him, then they would be safe. At least, that's how it started.

The nurse finally noticed how awake Max was and grabbed a needle. "Sleep?" she stated simply, and Max nodded graciously, unable to see his own blood any longer. The needle poked into his IV, and Max submitted to the heaviness of his eyelids.

WOOP WOOP BACKSTORY AM I RIGHT! Sorry that this chapter was so much later than the other ones, school is a bitch like 88% of the time.