AN: On Wednesday, I got FANG in the mail. I started reading at about 4PM and I finished just after 10PM. I don't think I've ever read that fast before. I mean, 300+ pages in six hours? It's official: I have no life. Overall, I liked the book (I'm currently rereading it(:). It made me laugh it made me "Awwwww", and I spent the last fifty pages or so bawling like I've never bawled before (curse you, Jose, for making me such a sap!). (Slight spoilers follow.) I found out that my theory on Angel havin a Voice was correct, though it does not come into play for this fic (check out Silver Linings for that, or Kina Kalamari's Angelic Tyranny). I also found myself hating the oxymoronical (is that a word? Whatever. You know what I mean.) little brat even more. I even began to regret making her the narrator of this story because that means that I don't really get to come up with a gruesome way to kill her. Now, for Fang, around whom much of the drama centers: I am sooo glad I get to kill him. I was pacing around my room, thinking up bloodier ways to kill him than I had originally planned, because it just wasn't painful enough. I wrote his death in my calculus class on Thursday, and, now satisfied, I will settle for leaving hate comments on his Max-Dan-Wiz profile. (x Oh, what an evil author I am...
Now, the chapter. Enough of my ranting. Enjoy!!
If Only…
Summary: It's been exactly seven years since a terrible battle involving the flock played out in a forlorn forest clearing. But what really happened on that day can only be told by revisiting the bloody past and unlocking the secrets of the flock's sole surviving member…
Chapter Eleven: Running Never Felt So Good
The trees became our domain that night. We each picked one, or shared, and got as comfortable as we dared. Iggy took first watch, not wanting to close his eyes now that they could see.
Not surprisingly, no one wanted to share a tree with me. I really needed to explain the situation to them some time soon, and tell them everything that had happened. No more secrets. I would tell them everything.
Okay, maybe not so much about how far I went with Darcy. Or about the drugs. Or the alcohol. Maybe just the essentials. You know, just about being captured and what the Director said. I'd leave Darcy and Lucas and the rest of them out of it. And the fight with Total, too. For good measure.
No, no, no. Just tell them the whole damn story for once. Don't lie, don't withhold information. Their lives could be at stake here, Angel, I admonished myself.
I sighed in exasperation and turned myself over on the branch of the tree I had chosen. Iggy looked over at me. I closed my eyes, heard a whoosh through the air, and opened my eyes to see Iggy perched on the branch next to mine.
"Hey," he said.
"Hi, Iggy," I mumbled sleepily.
"Why'd you do it, Angel?" Iggy was obviously in a no-nonsense mood, getting straight to the point. "Why did you betray us?"
I looked him straight in the eye, knowing he could see the sincerity there. "It's not what it looks like, Ig. Not at all."
"How can you say that? You freaking disappear, then once you're back, you bring the School with you. The Director was talking to you outside. It was obviously a setup."
"Yeah, a setup to frame me and make it look like I had betrayed you, which I hadn't." I almost had. But there's a solid difference. Okay, maybe not that solid, but there's still a difference.
Iggy looked at me dubiously.
I sighed. "Look, I know it looks really bad for me, but just remember that I was suffering alongside you guys. Even if I did betray you, they turned their backs on me, so it just about evens thing out."
"That's not the problem."
"Then what is?"
His fathomless blue eyes looked straight into mine. "How're we supposed to trust you, Angel, if we think you're gonna betray us or hold things back from us?"
I didn't know what to say. He had a point. A damn good one at that.
I turned away from him, too ashamed. "Maybe it is my fault, Iggs, but I didn't mean for it to happen. Please know that."
I could tell that he was very doubtful and cautious. It would take a while to earn back their trust. Maybe forever.
"Did you know?" Iggy asked me.
I turned back to look at him. "Know what, Iggy?"
He pointed to his eyes. "That they were gonna fix it?"
I shook my head. "I had no idea until you took off the bandage and your first thought was about the clear water and the radiant sunset, then surprise that you could actually see it."
He ran his hand through his hair. "Yeah, it was amazing. I haven't seen anything but darkness and whiteness since I was five years old, and before that everything I saw was terrible. Death. Blood. Fear. That's all there was at the School. And now, after all these years, I open my eyes and I see the sun setting over a little lake. It's just…breathtaking. I never realized there was so much to see in the world, so much…detail. All I knew was darkness, and now I can see everything."
"I guess wishes can some true, huh? Years and years of the same birthday wish and it finally happened," I whispered.
He smirked. "I guess you would know about that. But yeah, every year, every second of every day, I would wish that I could see, even if it was only for two seconds. Now I can. Maybe for the rest of my life."
"I sure hope so, Iggy. I sure hope so."
{[(/*\)]}
The first rays of dawn hit my closed eyes, causing bright shapes to dance across my eyelids. I felt my shoulder moving. I reluctantly opened my eyes and found Gazzy there, shaking me. His face was as blank as a crisp new piece of paper, so I knew nothing was wrong.
"Angel, you take last watch," he said to me. His eyes betrayed no emotion and his mind was blocked, so I knew that he was still convinced that I was a bad guy.
I nodded, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. He flew away as I sat up, trying to busy my mind with trivial matters so that I wouldn't fall asleep—and so that I wouldn't think about the bigger matters at hand.
Needless to say, I ended up thinking on the big, important matters, the ones that were staring me in the face:
The Director had betrayed me. She had released me, letting me think I was off the hook for a while, but she had really just tracked me to the safe house.
We had been captured. We hadn't heard from the School or Itex or any of those guys in years, and they suddenly popped up, and they had connections. They had used others to get to us, and I was afraid their puppets were in for much more than they had bargained for.
Itex was obviously not dead. It had been thriving like cockroaches hidden under a rock, multiplying, growing stronger right underneath our noses. They had come back at us full-force, when we had least expected it.
We had come full circle in our lives. We'd had some years of peace in the E-shaped house, been found, captured, gone on the run, calmed down a bit, and permanently settled. Then we'd been found, captured…
And now we were on the run again.
We were in deep trouble. We were once again on the "Must Eliminate" list of too many people. Our heads were pretty much on the chopping block, and there was no one to save our necks anymore, now that Jeb was dead.
Iggy could see again. For some bizarre, unknown reason, the School had chosen to experiment on Iggy's sight seventeen years ago, leaving him totally blind. Then they did something that allowed him to see things on a white background, but nothing more. Now, they had returned his sight to him. Fully, completely, totally. Iggy could see again, probably better than the rest of us. He had wished for this every birthday since he had lost his vision, and apparently most every day.
Max was keeping secrets. Itex had tried to convert her to their cause, Jeb had wanted her to save the world, but she wasn't going to share any of this vital information with us anytime soon.
Max was a murderer. Well, I guess, we all kind of were. We had all killed Erasers, Flyboys, and M-Geeks in our time, but this was different. Max had killed actual people. She had murdered Jeb, her own father, and with him any chances we had of surviving. She had set fire to a building which resulted in the deaths of most of the whitecoats in that School and the majority of the experiments being housed there. And all the while she hadn't even bothered to take down the biggest threat: the Director.
Another thing I had noticed: the Director was in bad condition. Though her DNA, particularly the DNA concerning health and lifespan, had been fused with that of a Galapagos tortoise, which can live more than a hundred years, her lifeline was quickly running out. More of the tortoise's DNA was becoming prominent, causing the exaggerated wrinkles and saggy skin on her face. Her hair had lost its color and was falling out plentifully. She had very broad shoulders and they almost seemed like a shell, as though at any moment her head would sink in and hide her ugly face. Even tortoises die. The Director's days were numbered.
All these things ran through my mind. I was pretty sure there were strings attaching some of these events, some of these ideas, but I just couldn't see them. It all had to be connected somehow, didn't it? But the strings and wires were all jumbled up, reminding me of those games in coloring books for little kids. This one was just a lot sicker and lives, our lives, depended on finding the connections.
Even with my mind in a mess over all this, I couldn't help but feel this deep sense of calm. It was the bird in me coming out, I suppose. I was back in my natural habitat: freedom. And it never felt better. Yeah, my life was in danger. Yeah, I had screwed up big time. Yeah, everyone I had ever loved was in jeopardy.
But I still felt great. I was on the run, and I felt more alive than I had in years.
AN: Yes, I admit this one was pretty much a filler/summary of the events thus far. But you see? That's why I love Iggy so much: he's caring, calm, reliable, a good friend, open-minded, and he doesn't put the flock (or me, for that matter) through half the crap Fang manages to put them (and me) through in aforementioned fifty pages. I LOVE YOU, IGGY!! Which is exactly why I must kill you...horribly...sorry.
I have a oneshot in the works. And, yes. Book six was inspiring. I may be spewing out more multi-chapter MR fics in the future. I'm going to finish writing this one first, though. Which won't take much longer. (:
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