I know it's been a while… A long while… But I revisited it and I have decided to start it up again… So, so, so, so sorry for the wait and it will never be this long again, I promise… but back to what you all want to read!
-xXx-
Iggy's POV
How? Just…How? How is this fair? We finally get out of years and years of misery, a personal hell… We get out for years, and then the one who lead us out is sent back. Back, to all of that. How in the world is that fair?
Gazzy held my hand in his tight eight year old grip, pulling me along to Max's room. The whole place rank of antiseptic and I could feel the florescent lights on my skin, sharp and irritating. Of course this would send Max back to the School, the whole place rank of it.
I could hear the nurses giving patients medication, and I could hear families laughing and crying, comforting and joking. Everyone was constantly moving, buzzing around like bees in a hive. I could hear the swish of the carts on their wheels, the rattling of pills in their bottles, and most of all the annoyingly persistent beeping of the machines.
Everyone was in a constant motion of either getting better or getting worse. And then there was Max… doing neither of those things… physically getting better and mentally getting worse. Who knows though right?
Out of all of the noises in the hospital there was only one whimper, and that's how I knew we were in Max's room. Gazzy's grip on my hand tightened at the same time I heard him sniffle quietly. He was crying. I felt my own eyes prickling like they do right before the tears spill out. It's like how the dam cracks before it breaks down completely. I tried to push the tears away but I could tell that they were the persistent kind, like last year when me and Gazzy made this bomb with just about every chemical available around the house and we threw it in Max's closet but when we remembered we put too much chlorine in it and we tried to stop it, but it was too far into the process. It blew down the closet door. What I'm trying to say is basically it was too late to stop the tears. My own personal eye bombs were going to go off, like it or not.
Nudge was strangely quiet, I didn't hear a peep out of her the entire way there and of course you could just tell that Fang, hand in hand with Angel, were having their own private telepathic conversation in the back.
I immediately knew that someone else was in the room with Max, a woman by the smell of perfume and the unmistakable grumble of a man… the Doctor from hell.
-xXx-
Cuddy's POV
I tried to comfort the girl with wings, Max. I rubbed her back, slow strokes right in between her wings. She didn't cry much, just a few tears now and then. She told me about how she missed Fang, whoever that was; House said that it was a nickname or something for Nick. Max talked about how she had planned on getting out of the School or something and about how she couldn't believe she was already out.
"Max, did the people from that School give you your…umm…" I tried to get the words out, uncomfortable as she stared at me with her brown eyes, seeming so much more innocent than before.
"Wings? Yeah… they gave us all wings. Stuck us in dog kennels and left us to rot like science experiments," Max said, poking at her jell-o. Her face changed then, like she had a revelation or something.
"You know," She started, looking back up at me, straight in the face, her expression like she was sucking on lemons, "I still feel all cramped up, like we're still in those stupid crates."
I couldn't believe what I was hearing, who could do these things to kids?
-xXx-
Fang's POV
I walked straight in, letting Angel's hand go and watched as everyone in our family's eyes tear up as they saw Max, lying there seeming so broken and innocent. I walked over and sat beside her on her hospital bed, grabbing her hand, even though she still thought she was nine.
"You know," she started, already sounding more athoritive, "I'm starting to remember things, how things are now." She smiled up at me, that smile that I loved so much.
"That's fantastic, but we still need to know what the problem is," House said from his place by the door. As much as I hate to admit it, he had a point.
"That's great Max," I smiled anyway.
"So, you are getting better?" Iggy asked from the foot of the hospital bed. Gazzy and Nudge staying quiet, on either side of Iggy as Angel paced in front of the good Dr. Cuddy, who stood very professionally beside House. She stayed quiet, almost observing how we interacted. Stupid scientists are all the same.
"Yeah," Max nodded at Iggy as House took a deep breathe to contradict her.
"Yes, well we still don't know what was wrong in the first place," House grumbled from his place beside Cuddy. He picked up his cane and started swinging it around the air in front of him, "Normally problems don't just go poof, children."
-xXx-
Max's POV
During those three days I was back at the school. I don't know what I was doing there, but I was there. I wasn't nine years old anymore there either, I was 16, but nine was the last time I was conscious. I was the only one awake. The others were sleeping, not really sleeping but… not awake.
I woke up because they forgot to update the drugs I was on or something, I have no idea, but for three days I was awake. And now I'm not.
My room was dark as I called to Fang, I knew he was right there beside me, when we were awake and when we weren't, his crate was still right beside mine.
In seconds he was right there, holding my hand, squeezing it in a way that almost made me question reality, not this reality, but the real one. The one where we never left. The one where this was all just a simulcast version of how we would have done on our own, after all, during the three days of being awake, I did learn that we were obsolete… new versions of us were out slowly "improving" the world, while we stayed behind to play biology class.
"Fang?" I asked into the darkness, I couldn't even see his face.
"Max? What is it?" He asked sounding panicked.
"It's a lie Fang… All this, it's a dream. Fang, we really never left… They have us hooked up to drugs and machines. We are still there. We are still trapped in dog crates, being experimented on. Fang, we're still in hell."
