Disclaimer: For the last time, I do not own Maximum Ride.
EPILOGUE
The next day, Fang and I found a nearby town. Our wounds healed up for the most part. Now they were just red marks.
It turned out that we were somewhere in eastern Colorado. The town we were in was called Timber. We got some breakfast in a small diner using the credit card.
Then we took off for Dr. Martinez's. It was a happy reunion, but not as much as we wanted it to be.
First, there was the good news. That we defeated Anne and saw the Facility burn to the ground.
But then everyone else had the bad news for us. It turned out when Anne had fired at us from the helicopter, some of the bullets went through the rift. Iggy caught two in the arm and Gazzy caught one in the shoulder blade. Angel and Nudge managed to get away all right. But Lily wasn't so lucky.
She caught a bullet on the right side of her forehead. Dr. Martinez was able to get the bullet out, but now Lily, the only surviving member of Counter-Breed, was in a coma.
Dr. Martinez had her on a bed in her office. She didn't need a life support machine, but she had a food drip pump that went into her stomach. Dr. Martinez said that there was no way to tell when she might wake up.
We all settled into Dr. Martinez's house, and she just welcomed us in with open arms. We tried celebrating that we stopped Re-evolution. But we couldn't get as excited as we wanted to. We couldn't help but feel bad about Lily and Asch.
The next day we came up with the idea to build graves for the members of Counter-Breed who were gone. Since we couldn't get their bodies, we decided to get things that belonged to them to bury. Dr. Martinez said we could use her backyard near the woods.
The six of us went to the remains of the Counter-Breed home to find some things that had survived. I found Calypso's necklace and used that. Nudge found that Sebastian's sword had survived the explosion and would use that for his grave. Gazzy found some of Conrad's movie posters in a canister. Then I found something perfect for Asch's grave. I found a part of his keyboard had managed to survive.
Then I found something else. It was the two pictures that Asch had from when we were at ShawCorp, the one with the whole group, including me, and the one of the two of us. The frames they were in were broken and burned, but the pictures were still good for the most part. I picked them up and pulled them out of the frames. I figured I could put them with the graves.
Rather than use headstones, we used logs and stuck them in the ground and carved their names in them. We buried the items, not too deep though. Only about half a foot. Dr. Martinez got new frames for the pictures and I put them next to the graves.
I think I finally understood praying to God. It was too bad Asch had to die to have me understand it.
So we went through the next couple of days trying to move on. It was summer, so there was no school. But it would be starting in a couple of weeks and Dr. Martinez was thinking about enrolling us.
It was about five days after we came back from the Facility. It was sunset. I was sitting on the roof of the house. It reminded me of the day before I was kidnapped by Itex, when I was with Asch.
I was up there for a little while when Fang came up. He landed next to me and sat down. "Oh, here you are," he said.
"Is there something wrong?" I asked.
"No, I was just looking for you."
Fang looked a little sunk. Something was up. He wanted to talk to me about something. And Fang never talks about anything.
"So what's up?"
Fang let out a sigh. "Do you remember the day… before your memories got erased?"
I thought about it for a minute. The last couple of days I spent with the flock were a haze. Then my head started to hurt again. I think this was the only memory I hadn't tried to recall yet.
Then the haze cleared and my head stopped hurting. I suddenly realized what it was he was talking about.
The day before everything went blank, the flock and I were camping out in the woods in northern California. That night, me and Fang were talking, one thing led to another and we ended up telling each other that we loved each other. Then we ended up kissing, and doing… other things. No, we didn't have sex, but it got pretty intense.
Then the next day, I had no memory. And I ran away in my panic.
"Yeah, I do remember," I said. "What about it?"
Fang still seemed a little depressed. "Well, when you disappeared, I thought the reason was because of that night."
"Oh, oh, Fang."
"Of course, I know that's not the reason now, but I was convinced that was the reason then. I was so determined to find you, to see if it was my fault you left, because I told you I loved you. I thought that might have scared you. Later, I couldn't stand it anymore and I went off on my own to find you. I didn't want the others to figure out what I was thinking about."
"So you were worried that I didn't love you? Even after I said I did?"
"Pretty much."
"Fang, I meant it when I said it. Just like I know you meant it."
Fang let out a smile, his depression melting away. It was great to see him smile again. It was the first one I had seen in a while. And I can't believe it came from Fang.
"I do love you, Max," he said.
"I love you too," I said.
Then we leaned in to each other and shared a kiss. I missed him so much. I missed his face. I missed his touch. I missed his lips.
When we shared that kiss, suddenly I knew everything was going to be all right. We were going to get through this. Now that Re-evolution was stopped, we could try being normal. One day Lily would wake up though, and we would have to tell her what happened to Asch.
But we would get through that as well.
Everything was going to be just fine, someday.
Thank you to all of my readers for staying with this story. I really hope you enjoyed it. It was my first fanfic and I'm glad all who reviewed, or just read, liked it.
Once again, thank you.
By the way, keep an eye out for my sequel, One-Winged Angel… coming soon.