Bound
Chapter 4
Fang's shoulder was killing him. After his fight with Max, Fang got into a physical fight with a guard when they came to get him for testing. As Fang was so weak now, that only resulted in him being slammed up against a wall multiple times. It felt like his shoulder was on fire.
Now, he was strapped onto a gurney, falling in and out of consciousness. Belinda had been there previously, but now she was gone now, after blowing him again. Some guy was in here now, doing some sort of surgery on him. Fang ignored his pain to the best of his ability, but it was hard. He had been getting so weak recently.
The next time he was in his cell, Max was there, but he walked in at a very bad time.
"Great," his guard mumbled as Fang was lifted and chained. "Nice. Puke your fucking brains out."
Max retched again, completely miserable. Fang forced himself not to look, if only because he would feel compelled to worry about her. If Max didn't care for his needs, why should Fang care for hers?
"Must be that medication they have you on," the scientist that followed Fang in mumbled to Max. "Though, you have been puking up most things these days.
"She has a virus," Fang finally said, fed up with listening to the other guy speak. "Don't you damn scientists share that stuff with each other? She's not getting any better either. She's fucking sick. Fix her."
Fang felt Max's eyes on him, but still wouldn't look at her. The guard gave Fang a sharp hook to the stomach, knocking the wind out of him. Then the other two people were gone, leaving Max with Fang.
"You okay over there?" That was his customary line when pertaining to Max's wellbeing. It was so cold these days, the way he said it. Max nodded numbly, collapsing to the ground next to her own vomit. Fang finally looked at her now that she would have no idea, taking a few moments to stare at his, well, his Max. There were really no other words to describe her now.
"Where's Hector, huh? Shouldn't he be giving you something for your puking?"
Max didn't answer, which only pissed Fang off. What? She didn't want to talk to him? Fine. He didn't want to talk to her.
Being in and out of consciousness, Max hardly heard Fang two hours later when he called out for her to get him water. Eventually she did get up and hold one of the water bowls to his lips. Fang was worried that she would vomit on him, but she seemed to have nothing left in her stomach.
"Thank you," Fang mumbled as Max removed the bowl from his lips. Then she just sat there on her knees, staring up at him. "What?"
Still, she just stared, as if memorizing him for a test. Then, without a word, she laid down on the ground, curling into a ball. Fang cleared his throat before spitting on the ground. It was so boring, being on the wall. Hell, it was boring just being here. You had so much time to spend with only your mind that it was almost impossible to not go crazy. Then again, even if Fang did have something productive to do rather than just sit around and think, the torture would probably still contribute to his insanity.
"You know, Max, if you have something to fucking say, it's best if you just say it. You sure were saying enough when you asked me to kill you."
Still, she was silent. Fang spit again, this time his snot coming out with blood.
"You could always just kill yourself, you know. Do it. Come, you coward."
She wouldn't give him the rise that Fang wanted. That only angered him more.
"Come on, Max. Yell at me. Do something! Since apparently I don't love you anymore, right? Right?"
She spoke, but he couldn't see her lips, could only hear some faint whisper.
"What the fuck did you say?"
She sat up suddenly, startling him. It was so easy for Fang to be harsh to her when she was just another nameless woman. Could be Max, could be Belinda, could be anyone. Now though, seeing her face, he couldn't speak.
"I said that I never said that, Fang."
"Hell yeah you did," he said after his voice found him. "That's exactly what you said."
"No."
"Well, it's what you meant!"
"Who are you to tell me what I mean? I don't even know what I mean anymore! I don't know anything. My life is worthless now."
"Then why don't you ever fight back? Why don't you try to get out of here?"
"So what? So I can be out there again? Out in the open, always looking over my shoulder." Max looked at the ground, but she was speaking so loudly now that Fang could hear her without reading her lips. "We can't be normal again, Fang. I couldn't be with you, not after all that's happened. Outside of here, you'd just be another man. I can't…I couldn't trust you. You couldn't trust me. They've bred us to be soulless. Now we are."
He swallowed hard. "I have a soul, Max."
"No, you have a conscience. There's a difference."
"What? What is the difference?"
"The difference is…"
"What?"
She looked up now; she was whispering again, so he relied on his lip reading skills. Taking a deep breath, she started again.
"The difference is, Fang, that you can't let me go. You'd feel guilty. Your soul though, it's gone. The only thing you think about, day and night, is survival. That's no life. We're not living. If we're not living, what are we? We can't live again, so let me just end it. Please."
Fang spit on the ground, but some of it got caught in his teeth. It always amazed him that he still had teeth. He thought that they should have rotted by now.
"I can't. I don't care if you think I'm soulless. I don't care if you think I'm evil. I don't care if you think that I'm fucking raping you half the time. I know what I have to do and that's get us out of here. That's what I came here to do."
Max swallowed. "So it's not about me, then, is it? It's not about my happiness. You don't want to make me happy. You just want to finish mission. If that doesn't scream soulless, what does?"
Fang pulled against chains, but it yielded no results. Max laughed humorlessly at this, making Fang's blood boil.
"Soulless," she told before laying down again. At that moment, Fang could have killed Max. Not for her own wishes and not even for laughing at him, but making him feel so…worthless. The way she spoke…it was like he didn't try hard enough. Like she blamed him. Did she blame him? Probably. After all, he blamed him.
"I hate your guts, Max," he whispered, but she heard it. She looked up at him for a moment, what was once her fallen guardian angel, now hung from his wrists. It would have been even more poetic, had he been hung like Christ, but reality was never that funny.
"Yeah," she whispered, but for some reason he heard it perfectly. "I know."
Fang didn't see Max again for a long time. After their fight, Hector came for her. Fang was sure that he was taking good care of her. It was kind funny. Hector took good care of Max, even though he raped and beat her. Fang never did anything he wasn't forced to do to her, yet she thought that he was the evil one. It was fucking hilarious.
It hurt his stomach to think about her. He tried his hardest not to. It had been so long, that Fang lost track of the days. He would have thought her dead, maybe even wished it, had he not heard her tag name mentioned in passing between guards. Belinda taunted him with her too. She told him that the reason Max wasn't back was because she had told Hector that she didn't want to come back. Apparently, she was safe and sound in Hector's quarters, kept away from him.
It was for the better, or so Fang told himself. They had spent the past five years or so together. They had both been holding out some sort of hope, but there was no hope. Not here, not now. Not in this forsaken place. Maybe Fang had never loved Max, not here anyways. There could be no love, not without hope. Yes, Max was right, Fang didn't love her anymore. Souls loved. Animals just acted how animals were supposed to. Soulless.
Belinda didn't mess with him much these days. It didn't make sense at first, but then it did. Slowly. Fang remembered those guards talking, about how Belinda would pick a man, keep him for awhile, and then kill him. Slowly, but surely, Belinda had killed him. Now, the nail in the coffin was that Max had chosen Hector, the man who raped and beat her, over him. Fang was dead.
Fang always thought that he was getting the worse treatment he ever could, be he slowly found out that without Hector keeping Max happy by not hurting Fang too badly, he was open game. He took more beatings than he ever had. Where as before, Belinda almost always got Fang, now other people did too. There was no pleasure to be had from that, oh no. None what so ever.
This was his life though now. Where ever Max was, whatever she was doing, wasn't his problem. Not anymore. She had given up, not him. She had decided that they were nothing to each other, not him. She did that. Now she could suffer for it. Fang would get out of here and leave her behind. He'd never come back for her. He'd tell the flock, if he found them, that Max was dead. Because Max was dead. Maximum Ride was dead. That thing that had inhabited her body was just that. A despicable, malevolent thing that only wished for Fang's torment.
There was blood in his mouth. Fang didn't mind it much. These days, it almost tasted good. Ha. Blood. Good. Those never went into the same sentence. Well, almost never. He had bitten down too hard on his cheek, which had started the bleeding. He didn't even mean to do it, but now it was done. Oh well.
It had to have been months without Max now. Fang was no longer being kept in his own room. Oh no. Now, he was being moved around a lot, having to catch sleep where he could. It wasn't fun, but nothing about his life was fun now. Even Belinda had left him alone. From what he'd heard, she'd found a new guy. The guards gave the new guy about six months before he was dead.
Right now, Fang was locked in a room with a woman. She was shorter than Max was, but had about the same complexion. As Max was mixed, he wondered briefly if she was too. It didn't matter much though. She was about to die.
Fang didn't tell her that though. She was stalking around the room, yelling. She was new around here. From what Fang had heard the guards say in passing, she was a trespasser. That only meant one thing.
"I think you'll want to see this," the scientist that came into the room with Fang a few minutes later said, having another guard unchain him. The other had restrained the woman, which wasn't hard.
"I'm just here for my son. You took my son. Give me back my son."
"Shut up," one of the guards ordered her, but the scientist stopped him.
"Let her talk," he said offhandedly. "Get stuff off her chest before it's over, ya know?"
Fang moved along silently, wishing that he didn't have to witness what was coming. He had before and it wasn't fun.
They came to a room, where the woman was forcibly strapped down to a operating table. Fang was chained to a chair, watching silently as the guards took their place by the door. The younger of the guards, the one that had taken the woman, was visibly ill at the thought of what was going to happen. The woman, still oblivious, was crying.
"It'll all be over soon. Maybe too soon," the scientist told her as he pulled out a knife. Her screams were deafening, though Fang's hearing was already shot anyways. It didn't matter much. He turned his head as she was carved up. Not because it made him sick to look at, but because it made him sick to think about how he didn't feel sick. He really was soulless. Wow.
A cage was brought in. It held some sort of reptile experiment. Fang couldn't help but watch as the butchered woman's bleeding flesh was shaved to feed the beast. This was the worse part. This did cause him feeling. None of it showed on his face though. Wherever Max was, at least she was still making sure that this didn't happen to him.
Sometimes Fang thought about what it would be like to be dead. He wasn't much of a spiritual believer, but he hoped that if God was real, he'd overlook that, if only due to the shitty life he had dealt him. And it wasn't like Fang was an out right atheist either. He was pretty damn open, if you asked him. As long as he didn't come back as a cockroach, he was up for anything.
He wondered sometimes, though, that if ghosts were real, if he'd be doomed to haunt this place. Some said that ghost walk the place of their death, but Fang had also heard that it was the most traumatic place that held them. He wasn't sure which, but if it was the latter, there was always the chance that it would be his old school he was condemned to. Where he met Max and Ig…Man he missed Iggy. He missed the way that they could just be alone and talk about shit he never could with anyone else. Like girls and stuff. Girls. Ha. Fang found that he didn't have much enjoyment of those anymore. Belinda had ruined him on that.
He missed the others too though. He missed Nudge's talking. True, most of the time he had just tuned her out, but sometimes, when they were alone, he'd sometimes actually talk to her. She wasn't a complete boy crazy idiot either. She was actually pretty damn philosophical when you listened to her, rambling all. She told once that she was actually glad for everything they had gone through together, back when they were in the School and even after when they were fighting for their lives. When he asked why, she told him that it just made it that much easier to let go. That she knew that they couldn't be together forever, the whole flock. Eventually, they'd all go their separate ways, but she'd be able to reason that together, all they had felt was pain anyways, and be able to move on. Fang tried to rely on that now, but it seemed to be failing for him.
He missed the younger two too. As much as he hated to admit it back then, Gazzy was pretty funny. He made him laugh, if not outwardly then inwardly. And Angel…man, if she wasn't stronger than all of them. He loved the two of them, so much more than he thought he ever would. Now, if he ever got out, he was almost afraid to face them, if only because they'd be grown up now, older, more mature. It scared him.
Of course, you could always question his feelings for Total, which were honestly very slim, to say the least. The damn dog. God, if he didn't just want to rip his throat out half the time. Still, as much hate for him as he had, Fang knew that Angel loved the damn thing, so he'd have never hurt him. Plus…Total was kind of funny…in a sardonic kind of way…
Right now, Fang was in a room alone. He wasn't chained, but it wouldn't have mattered if he was or he wasn't. His arms were killing him, his neck felt permanently bent, and his wings practically were begging to be cut off. He'd gladly grant them that wish, had he not needed them to get out of here. Yes, Fang was going to leave. Soon, if he could help it.
Fuck Max.
She had left him. She was getting everything that she deserved. Fang snorted, spitting on the ground for what felt like the millionth time. There was no blood this time, which was a plus, he guessed. How much blood could Fang lose? It seemed that he should have already drained all there was in his body. Of course, he didn't really understand the human body anyways. Did he replenish blood on its own? He hoped so. Wouldn't it suck now, him dying of blood loss? After everything that's happened, him dying would be hilarious. He'd go into his coffin with a smile on his face, if only because that proved there was a God. No way the universe on it's own could be so freaking funny.
Fang finally just laid down the ground, watching the darkness around him. It felt so much colder without Max. No matter if she betrayed him or not, he still wished that she was there right then, if only to keep him warm. Maybe she'd laugh at what he'd thought too. She was, after all, a jokester now, right? Poor Max. Fang closed his eyes, shaking his head a little bit. Poor, poor Max.