CHAPTER 10 – HOME EMPTY HANDED

Fang fingered the seams in his pocket as he stood in the queue, shoulders hunched antisocially. He was waiting to board his second red-eye flight less than 24 hours. Dylan stood just behind and to the left of him, shoe tapping against the dull green carpet, bobbing his head along with the canned music that crackled and fizzed over the speakers.

Fang's skin crawled. He could feel Dylan's curious gaze burn into the side of his neck. Dylan clearly wanted to talk, but Fang was still processing, so he continued to ignore Dylan as he'd done since they left the kennel.

He was playing everything ter Borcht had said on repeat, etching it into his memory so he wouldn't lose any of the details that the filthy whitecoat let slip during his venomous tirade. When the call to board finally interrupted the piped muzak, the queue of baggy-eyed suits and pajama-clad collegiates clutching their Starbucks shifted forward. Fang followed along blindly, barely registering Dylan shuffling along at his heels. Fang's forehead slammed into the lip of the overhead bin as he slipped into the window seat. His fingers flew to the tender skin as Dylan fell into the seat next to him. There was already a lump forming.

Dylan took a dramatic breath and turned towards Fang, jaw fixed resolutely. When he spoke, it was quiet. "I can help. I want to. Please let me help."

Fang finally met Dylan's eyes and watched him coolly. "You don't know what you're talking about."

"I'd know more if you'd just talk to me."

Fang chewed on his tongue, considering the man next to him. Dylan was looking at him like a lost puppy, expression wide open, embarrassingly eager. Fang pushed aside his circular thoughts about ter Borcht to ask the question that had been plaguing him ever since Dylan brought up his Sight.

"Why did you let me See you? Why not Max?"

Dylan drew back slightly, long face looking shamed. He shrugged with a little shake of his head. "I haven't Looked for Her in a long time. It's been at least six years since I had a relapse, if we don't count the CSM shindig last month."

Fang's eyes flicked between Dylan's, listening quietly.

"I knew I had to stop. It wasn't healthy for me. And it wasn't fair to Her, or to you. Like I said the other night," his lips twitched with resigned mirth, "I had to choose, or I would've gone crazy, probably. I had to choose to be more than what Hans wanted me to be. And that meant I had to stop trying to talk to Her, stop thinking about Her, move far away, and stop Looking. To build my own life, apart from the pre-ordained stud service he wanted to force me into." He paused to wet his lips, gaze hardening, conviction lacing his whispered conclusion, "I had to choose."

Fang felt a twinge of nausea at the memory. Gunther-Hagen had actually introduced Dylan as Max's 'perfect mate.' He scowled out the plane window before turning back to Dylan, words coming out rushed and rude, "Question stands. Why me?"

"I figured maybe after I saw you the other night, you might be willing." Dylan shrugged. "It took me a while to find you, but I caught you on your way home and figured out where to Look for you. And then ter Borcht slipped up and left that box lying in plain view." He flashed a grin.

Fang just felt confused. "Wait, so how exactly does your Sight thing work?"

"Oh, man." Dylan's eyes went wide and he took a breath, settling back into his seat, angled toward Fang. "It's taken a long time just to start figuring it out. What my limits are and how far I can Look. It's kind of like...like Professor X, you know, from the comics? I can sort of tap into people's heads and look at what's around them. If their optic nerve picked it up, I can see it. And if I focus really hard, I can sort of flip the connection and let them See me. That's how I showed you where I was. But I can't do that unless I know what direction to Look in the first place."

"So you lost track of Max of purpose," Fang accused.

"Exactly." Dylan smiled brightly. "I couldn't move on until I really decided to let Her go."

Fang's brows knit together, mind back on Max. His thoughts tripped again and again over the anxious pit left in the wake of her disappearance. "Can you find her now?"

Dylan's smile faltered. "You wantme to Look for Her?" He hesitated, eyes going wide. "Wait, back at the kennel, you said... You said she's gone?" He shifted in his seat, leaning closer to Fang, voice dropping to a whisper. "You really don't know where she is, do you? Or Iggy either?"

They were interrupted by the saccharine smile of the flight attendant, wanting to know if they'd like a complimentary beverage. Fang asked dully for a Coke, no ice. Dylan turned the full glory of his turquoise blues towards the unsuspecting woman, flashing his teeth in exchange for a ruby can of cran-apple juice and a simpering giggle.

As soon as she moved to the next row, Dylan turned back to prod Fang. "How long, man?"

"Max hasn't been seen since Monday. And Iggy disappeared on Wednesday."

Dylan's troubled gaze shifted blankly onto Fang's right ear, eyes narrowing in confusion. He probably didn't even know exactly how long he'd been in that kennel.

Fang took pity on him, bridging the gap. "It'll be Saturday morning when we land."

Dylan's eyes bugged. "She's been gone five days and you still don't know where She is?" His raised voice pierced the hum of the cabin, making Fang cringe.

"I thought she was with you at ter Borcht's," Fang growled.

"Oh, I get it," Dylan scoffed, pulling away from Fang, words bitter. "No wonder you looked so pissed when you showed up at the kennel and found me all cold and alone."

Fang's eyes blazed and his feathers bristled on raised hackles under his t-shirt. The next moment, the flight attendant was hovering over them, clearing her throat and scowling down her nose. "Is there a problem here, gentlemen?"

Fang shook his head 'no' and turned to stare sullenly out the window. He had no problem letting Dylan handle it with his sweltering charisma.

When the flight attendance was gone again, Dylan turned back to Fang, his lips pursed in an apologetic frown. "Sorry, man," he mumbled and thumped his head back against his seat. "Your wife is missing. That's gotta be terrifying."

Fang's stomach churned. "I'm doing what I have to." He felt Dylan's pitifully sympathetic stare burn a hole in the side of his head. He hated it.

"Well, what about the others? Nudge? Gazzy and Angel?"

Fang's glare hardened. "They're fine."

Dylan looked unconvinced. "How do you know? Ter Borcht said he was after all of you. That he was blackmailing Hans into going after the Flock. And that slip about freezing assets, what do you think that's about?"

"He crippled the CSM. The computers are all bricked, no money, no information. No support."

"Oh." Dylan looked down at his lap, brows furrowed.

Fang took the last sip of his coke, stuffing the little bit of napkin inside and putting it on the table Dylan had pulled down. Maybe Nudge would be able to get somewhere with her coding if she knew where the virus came from. Then again, maybe she'd already figured it out. Maybe the CSM would be up and running by the time they got there and finding Max would be a cinch. Maybe.

Dylan looked up at him, lips stretched across his teeth in a worried grimace. "I don't know what Hans has been up to, but he's very capable, and very dangerous. If he doesn't have the whole Flock by now, I'll be surprised."

Fang bristled defensively. "They're fine. Nudge is basically living at CSM headquarters, and Gazzy and Angel are at school, with different names and everything." The smooth denial tasted bitter on his lips. He could talk all he wanted, but Dylan's doubt settled thick over his thoughts. It mixed sickeningly with the fear that had already taken root.

Nudge should be fine at the CSM. The kids were virtually off the radar at the big university.

They were fine.

But what if they weren't?

What if Gunther-Hagen tracked them down? Fang could have kicked himself for dumping that task onto Nudge. He should have called them himself. Could have, should have, but he didn't. He had been so focused on getting to Max as quickly as he could. Shoving the job off to the nearest Flock member was just easier.

Then again... He pulled his phone out of his pocket and woke the screen. No missed calls, no new messages. Nudge would have let him know right away if anything was wrong. He tried to let himself breathe, tried to thaw the icy fear that made his chest tight. They were fine, and once he knew where to find Gunther-Hagen, he'd make sure of it himself before he even bought the plane ticket. Besides, Max would kill him if he didn't.

He knew he was going to owe Nudge a massive apology.

Dylan persisted. He just wasn't going to drop it. "But howdo you know if they're fine?"

Fang ignored him. "Tell me about Gunther-Hagen."

Dylan's face soured. "I'd rather not." He squirmed under Fang's unrelenting stare. Finally, he sighed and pressed his head back against the headrest. He opened his mouth, but it was another moment until the words came.

"Growing up with Hans sucked. Hyper-accelerated maturation was a bitch and none of my memories go back more than a decade. From the beginning, he told me exactly what I was supposed to be. He made me intelligent, he made me durable, and he made me want Her. But he never exposed me to anything abstract, like what it meant to die, or what it meant to be good. What it meant to actually love someone. For those first eight months, the only things I knew were the things he told me." Dylan laughed humorlessly. "It only took three weeks with the Flock to realize there was a serious gap in my education."

Fang huffed quietly. "I could have told you that."

Dylan sent him a long-suffering stare from the corner of his eye. The corners of his lips tensed before he continued.

"I was never just an experiment to him, but when I went back, his obsession took over. I told him I wanted to find a job and he went ballistic. I was 'ungrateful.' A 'disappointment.'" He shot Fang a wry glance. "He blamed you, you know. For our dysfunctional relationship. For keeping Her from me. He called you a monster, kept saying how terrible you were for Her, that She should have been mine. It made me so angry, all the time."

He paused to shift in his seat and shrugged self-consciously. "So I started Watching Her. I told myself it was noble, that I was protecting Her or something. I saw a lot of you in the process - not on purpose, dude, stop glaring - and you were always there. For the longest time it made me sick, I was so jealous. Of everything. Every touch, every smile, every kiss. Hans kept pushing me to hate you, telling me you were dangerous, you were too rough, you were hurting Her by staying with Her."

Fang spoke quietly, "You told me that, too." He had almost listened. Almost left. He was fifteen and stupid and in a new relationship, him and Max against the world. Dylan's nagging almost had him convinced to high tail it out of there. But then he saw Max in that white dress at the dog's wedding and he couldn't do it.

"I know. I shouldn't have, I know, believe me, but that was what he taught me." Dylan shook his head with a scoff and went on. "The longer I Watched, I couldn't keep pretending you weren't good for Her. You kept Her safe, and She always looked happy. But Hans was so sick. He couldn't see past his own demented vision of the future, this made-up utopia where She was with me."

Dylan's hand twitched against his thigh and his lips pursed, a purposeful gleam in his eye. "That was when I chose."

Fang turned to really look at him. "To give up?"

Dylan shook his head and took a sip of his juice, the condensation dripping onto the collar of his filthy t-shirt and onto the folding table as he set it back down. "To change. I wasn't going to be this lovesick freak he said I was. I quit cold turkey, stopped using my Sight, tried to figure out how to move on." He pressed his fingers to the little napkin square, leaving damp fingerprints behind, and tried to wipe up the drips.

"It took two years for me to finally move out, and when I did, I saw how bad Hans screwed me over. No one would hire me for more than mowing lawns without a social security number. It didn't take long before Hans was full-out stalking me, showing up where I was couch surfing, getting me fired from my cruddy jobs. So when the CSM showed up, asking if I wanted a job with the relief organization they were starting overseas, I jumped on it. They said they'd hide me from Hans, and I don't know what they did, but it worked. I haven't heard from him in... Man, it's gotta be six years now." He laughed humorlessly and settled against the backrest with a resigned groan, head flopping from side to side. "And now we're going on a manhunt for the guy."

Fang ground his jaw, processing. "And you really don't know how to find him?"

Dylan pursed his lips in grim confirmation. "He could be in Aruba for all I know. I've avoided him like the plague. I can try Looking for him in the lab in Canada where he... You know," he waved his hand around in limp-wristed circles, "where he made me. And I'll check out the one in Malibu."

He looked away quickly, looking a little pale and blanching further when the stewardess jostled his shoulder with the cart as she came by. Fang hardly noticed. He was tripping clumsily through old memories, playing through the morbid soundtrack of 'immortal blood,' 'greater mutations,' and 'personal evolution.'

When Dylan spoke again, it was strained. "Every time I remember what happened in that lab, when he kidnapped you and made up that crap about your blood being some sort of miracle cure, I want to puke. He had himself so completely convinced about it that he killed you just to see what would happen. And then I was halfway to killing him before I did it to myself." He swallowed thickly, Adam's apple bobbing. "I literally had no concept of what I was doing. What it meant."

Fang couldn't help the eye roll. "And eight years later, you have it all figured out?"

"Hell, no," Dylan scoffed. "You just have to understand how crazy he is. I'm seriously surprised he hasn't been committed somewhere." He turned his piercing eyes on Fang. "Honestly, I'm worried about what we'll find. He blames Her for a lot of what happened."

Outwardly, Fang was stoic as ever. But Dylan's words sat uncomfortably, making it harder to breathe. He shoved it down, refusing to think about it. He couldn't be distracted by fear when he still had to find Max. He could be afraid after he found her. He sat rigid while Dylan resettled in his seat, lapsing into a welcome silence.

Fang managed to doze in and out, finally fading under the weight of Switzerland. A few hours passed before he was pulled back from the sleepy haze by a screaming child. It was quickly silenced with a pacifier and a gentle shush, but Fang was more conscious than not and couldn't find sleep again.

Eventually, he looked over at Dylan to see him Staring through the floor a few seats ahead with a formidable intensity in his Seeing eyes. He gave up after a while and slumped in his seat, fixing Fang with a withering glance before facing front. The dull resignation in his gaze sent disappointment like a heavy fog settling over Fang.

Dylan must have been looking for Gunther-Hagen. Or Max. It didn't matter, really. He had come up short.

Fang wanted to urge Dylan to keep Looking, but he figured that if he really didn't know where to Look, it was like searching for a single grain of sand on a whole freaking beach. Maybe. He didn't actually get all the ins and outs of Dylan's Sight yet. He'd just have to find Gunther-Hagen the old fashioned way, like he did with ter Borcht.

Eventually, Dylan sighed and turned to Fang. "So?"

Fang stared back. He glanced down at Dylan's fingers drumming on his thighs and then back up to his bright eyes. "So what?"

Dylan looked at him obviously. "Where are we going to start? We've got to find your missing persons."

"We aren't going to find anyone. We are going to the CSM so that they can take care of you and I can get info on Dr. God. Then my Flock and I are going to rescue the others, whether or not you can find Gunther-Hagen first."

Dylan drew back, lips curling with offense. "Are you serious?"

Fang shrugged unsympathetically. "I saw you Looking. You don't know where to find him." He fixed Dylan with a patronizing stare. "I get that you've made an effort to change. That's great. Good for you. But I don't know you. This is myfamily. We'll handle it ourselves."

"Bu-"

"On our own."

Dylan glared at Fang with everything he had. His eyes searched Fang's stony face, hunting for a chink in the armor. He eventually spat, "Fine," and shifted around to face front, glaring daggers at the dull blue vinyl covering the seat in front of him. He glanced up when the intercom crackled to announce the final hour, but otherwise, he didn't budge for the rest of the flight

Fang just about withered with relief when the announcement came on. He was so done being stuck in inaction. He was itching to get off the plane as soon as it hit the earth.

It wouldn't take long to fly over to the CSM where he could drop Dylan off. Then, if the computers were up, he'd just search for Dr. G-H's name, and if not, he'd bother Val for the paper files again.

Then he'd check in with the kids. He wasn't going to make that mistake again.

And then he and Nudge could go on a real rescue mission.

Author's Note: Just a quick one today. I went with friends to the Renaissance festival all day and I am bone tired. Thank you thank you thank you to EVERYONE who has taken the time to review. I sincerely hope that my writing gets better with each chapter - I'm working so hard at this! I'm a little anxious about the wordiness of this chapter, but hopefully the background on Dylan and the revealed information about his Sight is interesting enough to make up for it. *crossed fingers*