Author's Note: Absence makes the heart grow fonder, right? If that's the case you people are probably really really fond of this story by now. I keep getting writer's block every time I try to write on this story and it's really exhausting to keep hitting my head against a brick wall that just kind of sits there. It would be ok if the damned thing would go "nah nah na boo boo" at me or something. But it doesn't it just sits there and looks at me. It looks at me with those eyes that just look and crap. ::sighs:: it's very unsettling. As you can imagine. Well, here is the next chapter that I know you've all been waiting so patiently for.

Review, the writing gods demand their sacrifice in reviews!

Secret Life

Chapter 10: Puzzle pieces

~*~

I wanna be locked in a cage

I wanna be strapped in a chair

I wanna be where you are

If my insanity comes

Wrapped up inside your...

I wanna break my legs

In case a thought to escape

Keep the hammer out of my reach

If my pounding impulse comes

Wrapped up inside your arms

Locked up inside you

Hold me down cause I want to know you

You bring calm to my rage

You are life and I'm thirsting for you

Hold me; hold me locked in a cage

~ Skillet, "Locked in a cage"

~*~

The door slammed open and Max and Zack threw themselves out of each other's arms. Max couldn't figure out what was happening, her senses too dulled by Zack's kisses that she couldn't focus on any one thing. Original Cindy stood there with an open mouth and a bag of groceries. "Original Cindy didn't interrupt anything did she?"

"Um…I…we were…no, you didn't." She managed to get out as she grabbed her shirt and ran a hand through her hair and forced a smile onto her face, ignoring the look of disappointment on Zack's face. The shirt was over her head before she went on. "What you got there, boo?"

"Just some food I managed to get with the money you gave me from pool. It's a feast." She said slowly with a raised brow, her eyes trailing over to Zack who was pulling his shirt on to cover his chest.

"I provide the cash and you provide the food, perfect match."

"I'll say." Cindy flashed a smile and waved a loaf of bread around. "O.C's got herself some skills."

"No ones doubtin.'" Max laughed and made her way into the cubby for the kitchen and grabbed some food away from her roommate to help put away. She shot a look over her shoulder at Zack who stood in the spot she had left him watching her. "If you want you can crash here tonight. Take my bed, I won't be needing it."

"Thanks," he grunted and headed into her room without a backward glance.

"Hasn't changed much, has he?" Cindy said pursing her lips.

"He has, he's just a little put out at the moment."

"So Original Cindy saw." Max just glared at her unhappily as she put milk into the refrigerator.

~*~

He woke with a start crying out in the haze of sleep, some unseen monster plaguing his dreams. Sun poured through his window as his searched around him, trying to remember where he was. "Max," he whispered softly into the air, almost afraid that if he said her name out loud that the events of the night before would never have happened. His door opened and Max's head came into view slowly.

She smiled at him, "are you ok? I thought I heard you."

He opened his mouth to answer her before snapping it shut and shaking his head trying his best to turn away from her. She opened the door just enough so she could come in and walk over to his bed, making no noise. Max crouched down next to the bed careful to catch his eyes. "Just leave me alone," he growled under his breath and rolled his eyes.

"No," she said softly and reached a hand out to touch his hair. "Why did I hear you in the living room?"

"I had a nightmare, if you gotta know." He pulled back away from her and almost growled again when he saw the look of shock on her face. Zack, the strong big brother, had a nightmare. It meant that there was something he was afraid of.

"What…what was it about?" She asked softly.

"Nothing," he pushed himself out of her bed, unconcerned by the fact that all he was wearing was his boxers. He couldn't help be angry that she was ignoring the events of the last night. It was something he had wanted for so long, even when he couldn't remember the name that went with the face he had wanted her to look at him the way he looked at her. For a short time he had it and he was angry it had been taken away, that and the shock written across her face. He got to be scared sometimes too. But with that thought the anger that he was so accustomed to burned out and he sighed. No, he didn't get to be afraid, something whispered in the back of his mind. A remnant of the man he used to be. "Nothing," he repeated hollowly to his hands.

"It didn't sound like nothing, it sounded like a something," she pressed reaching her hand out to touch his, thought better of it, and pulled back before she could once again feel the soft skin.

"Well, it was nothing, despite what it sounded like." He shook his head and walked to the window, his jaw clenched. "Sorry if I disturbed you for nothing."

She sat down on her bed and sighed as his smell rose her meet her, she thought distantly that it wasn't a good idea to have him sleep in her bed. I would be forever before she could get that amazing smell out of her sheets. "I don't exactly sleep, so you didn't wake me up or anything."

He turned to blink at her slowly, "oh." His brows pulled together as memories boiled under the surface. Visions of another girl who never slept, sitting on a bar dancing to music and smiling down at him, 'Dane with me, dahling, dance.' "Shark DNA?" he asked quietly.

"That's what we used to always say." She smiled up at him, her full lips stretching sweetly.

"We?"

"Me and Jondy." He repeated the name to himself, labeling the laughing girl by her name. Max looked down at her hands sadly; "maybe you don't remember her."

"I do…sort of." He shook his head slowly and walked back over to the bed and sat down. "I have glimpses of things I can't really remember or explain." He dropped his head into his hands. "It's so…"

"Frustrating?" she supplied quietly.

"Confusing," he finished and glanced at her with a smile. "It's frustrating too."

She touched his hair softly, letting her fingers run through the golden mass of it. "I'll help you remember," she told him, her voice a loud whisper in the room.

"Is that all?" He asked not looking at her, afraid that she would turn away from him if he did.

"For now," she swallowed past a lump in her throat as she smiled over at him. "Both of us are confused, right now, and I don't want us to do something that…"

"How I feel about you is the one thing I'm not confused about, Maxie." As her nickname fell from his lips images bombarded him.

"Maxie, you can't do that." He said in a harsh whisper pulling his little sister away from a door that lead into medical facilities. She looked up at him with wide brown eyes that brimmed with tears that she wouldn't let fall.

"I saw Jack," she said simply, her voice rough and unhappy.

"You saw him?" he asked quietly already leading her down the hall, her small hand in his.

"Yeah, the nomlies got him." He turned to meet her eyes and ran his hand softly over her shaved head. She looked up at him trustingly and he wanted to yell in his frustration. He would protect his family no matter what happened.

"They won't get you, Maxie." He promised his face hardening, such intensity for one so young. "They'll never get you."

"I never kept any of my promises, did I?" He asked bending his head in defeat.

"What do you mean?" she asked putting a hand under his chin.

"They got you. I couldn't stop them," he explained trying not to look at her. It was impossible though, eyes were drawn to Max like magnets and nothing could be done about it.

"Oh, Zack," she sounded like she wanted to cry and he turned so that he was facing her, his body turned to hers. "You have done so much, and there was no way you could ever have done more. You saved my life." She reached for his hand and brought it to rest over her heart. "I've said this before, that's you in there. That's you beating in my chest."

His mouth hung open as he looked where his hand rested. She had told him so earlier and he had replied that it was where it belonged and now he believed it more than ever. His heart in her chest, no man could ever come closer. His eye rose to meet hers, "but I failed."

"No, you didn't. You made us all proud that you were ours. You never failed," she stuck her chin out as her lips drew together in a tight line. "You were always the rock, Zack, you were the reason we survived in that hell hole. Our savior when the world was against us." She closed her eyes remember Alec's words of earlier. "No one could have or would have done more."

Zack blinked slowly at her, before closing his own eyes and bowing his head. "I wanted to do more."

"Ben, what do you think you're doing?" He tried not to yell at the boy who looked up at him with wide blue green eyes. Eyes that were painfully vacant of human emotion or sanity.

"I want her to see me again," the boy answered simply, kneeling down infront of the altar of the Virgin Mary.

"She isn't real," Zack sat down next to him, staring up into the face of the icon that they had twisted into their own Manticore mold.

"She's real…she has to be. She has to see me." His voice was hollow as he looked at Zack, his full lips pulling into a frown. And then a mask slipped into place as they lifted in a smile, "I don't know what I'm doing, big brother, I'm just sad sometimes."

"Ben, you can't go on like this."

"Like what?" Owl eyes blinked at him innocently.

"Running from church to church. I heard what happened in Cleveland." Zack touch the back of Ben's head, a full head of soft downy hair met his fingertips. It had been years since the escape and he didn't cut it often.

"What did you hear?" the mask slipped slightly, showing fear in those eyes.

"That you hurt a priest; broke his arm and almost killed him."

"But I didn't," he said in a small child-like voice, at odds with the body of the teenager that sat before him. "I didn't kill him, I stopped before…anything happened."

"You can't do things like that, it'll bring Lydecker down on you in a second." Zack hissed, not wanting to go soft like something inside him cried to. He pushed down the voice that said to take him into his arms and not to let go, be the physical anchor that he couldn't be mentally.

"I stopped…" Ben said meekly looking into Zack's blue eyes. Zack's breath caught in his throat as he looked into the void, he was going to loose his brother and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

He did hug him then, bringing the slender body into his arms and fighting back tears. "I know you stopped, I know."

"Zack?" Max's hand brushed against his cheek and he jumped, seeing for a second, memories lying like a shroud over her face.

He shook himself and blinked at her. "I'm sorry. I can't exactly control the flash backs."

"That's ok." She smiled. "It's good that you're having them. It means you'll get better."

He swallowed, "Some of the things…that I remember make me not want to. Get better that is. I went through so much that hurt, and now every wound is fresh." Fresh and bleeding he thought distantly, not meeting her eyes.

"I know what you mean," she said softly and touched his hair like he had touched Ben's and hers when she had been nine-years-old. It was a painful reminder of how the tables had turned. "Our life hasn't exactly been an easy one."

"Buck it up, babe." Jondy smiled showing of pearly white teeth as she pulled a blue lollipop out of her mouth. "It sucks, true, but that's life. Not just a magazine."

He narrowed his eyes at her and tugged a lock of blonde hair that hung at her shoulders. "Not just a magazine?"

"Yup." She shrugged when he lifted an eyebrow at her. "It sucks. We're so small and they're so big and we're just trying to keep our heads about water." She smiled and punched his shoulder lightly; bright red nails the color of blood flashed in the sun, causing glints of color to shine against her ridiculously blue eyes. "That's the important thing, though, that we keep kicking."

"Kicking?" he smiled down at her and watched as she rolled her eyes with a huff

"Kicking…you know that thing you have to do to swim? It goes with the keeping our heads above water part of the lecture."

"Oh, right."

She glared at him; her lips pressed together as she frowned at him, then a smile lifted the corners of her mouth mischievously. "Tell me something…"

"What?"

"Is my tongue blue?" She stuck her tongue out at him with a 'bleah,' getting the laugh she had so craved.

"I just gotta keep kicking," he said into his hands as he rubbed his face.

"I guess," she said with a laugh. "Interesting choice of words."

"They aren't mine," he answered distantly, looking off into the distance. "You're going to help me remember, right?" he asked in a small voice.

"Of course," she looked down at her hands. "I owe you that much."

He turned to her with wide blue eyes as his brow furrowed; "You don't own me anything, Maxie."