Yay Christmas Holidays! FINALLY!

I won't be writing the week of New Year's because I will be in France SKIING! WOO!

Just to give you a heads up. But I am going to try and update as much as possible this week, so that will make up for it, I hope. Hope you enjoy this one.

We're back to Fang again, btw.

As soon as we were out of earshot of the others I leaned down to Max's ear.

"Are you ok?" I could feel her leaning against me despite her efforts to force herself to stand up.

She shrugged and winced a little at the movement.

"I'll live." She said offhandedly and we both ground to a sudden halt. We stared at each other, both thinking the same thing, For Now.

After a moment she smiled sadly and I felt her sag a little.

"Come on; let's get you into the bedroom." I said, walking her carefully in the door and depositing her lightly on the bed. She sat on the edge of the double bed and closed her eyes. I bent down in front of her and started to untie her runners.

"Fang," she laughed. "I can take off my own shoes. I'm not that far gone."

"Oh really?" I teased, lifting my head to cock an eyebrow at her in one of my well-known don't-try-to-fool-me-I-know-everything looks. "So was it just me? Or did you agree to take the Flock to the happiest place on earth?"

"You must be hearing things," she laughed again. "I believe I promised to take them to Disneyland, which is not the happiest place on earth, although it may be the most crowded!"

"So why are we going?" I pointed out mercilessly.

"Well the kids want to and I . . . I figure I owe them." She bit her lip and stared at the jet black carpet.

"Max." I gently lifted her chin with my right hand and forced her to meet my gaze. "You have little over a week before you run out of time. We'd be going to a place that's crowded off-season, never mind the week around Christmas! You hate crowds! Why aren't we going somewhere you want to go?"

"Because there isn't really anywhere I want to go." She blinked. "Of course I want to see Mom, Ella and Jeb and say goodbye, but . . . other than that . . . there's nowhere I would rather be than with you and the Flock."

I thought about what she'd said for a moment before it came to me.

"What about home?" I asked quietly.

"Home?" She repeated sadly. "Where's home? I can't call this home. And being with Mom is nice but it's not home. We don't have a home."

"Colorado was home." I murmured. She stopped for a second and tilted her head on its side, a small frown creasing her forehead.

"Colorado was blown to pieces." She said finally.

"No, that's what they told us happened." I reminded her. "But how do we know it's the truth? They told us that. They've lied to us before."

"Do you really think?" She asked; her eyes wide at the thought of a final return to the place we had all once called home.

"I'm not sure." I cautioned. "I mean, I could be wrong, but think about it. Anyway, even if the house is gone, there are a couple of things that must still be there; a certain cave for example."

"And the sunset would be the same." She practically whispered, the sweetest smile lighting up her face.

"Yes." She said after moment's pause.

"Yes?"

"Yes," She smiled. "I'd like to see it again." I smiled and pulled off her left shoe.

"Fang!" She admonished me. "I don't need you to take off my shoes! I'm perfectly capable of removing my own footwear, thank you very much."

I grinned, tickling her foot and removed her sock. She laughed and made a pathetic attempt to push me away. I smirked at her and reached for her other shoe when she suddenly gasped and grabbed the back of my head.

"What?" I asked quickly. I felt her hands shaking and fear swept through me. "Do I-?"

"NO . . . no . . . you don't . . . I . . . I just thought." She tailed off. "Your hair is so black and it looked like . . . just for a second . . . I thought I could see numbers."

I reached my hands up and grabbed hers, they were shaking uncontrollably.

"Max," I whispered. "It's alright. There isn't anything there."

"Not yet, but soon . . . soon . . . if it was just me, than maybe . . . maybe this wouldn't be so bad, but it's not just me is it? It's you and me and Iggy. Fang within six months we'll all be gone and who's going to look after Nudge, Gazzy and Angel? Who's going to look after Alice and Iggy's son? And when Nudge is eighteen and she leaves Gazzy and Alice to fend for themselves and joins us for her eternal dirt nap! What then? Where do they go? Even worse what happens when Gazzy turns eighteen and Angel is the only one left? What happens when she's the only avian hybrid left on this earth?"

"Max!"

She looked at me, her dark eyes wild, tears threatening to spill down her face and her stance distorted with grief.

"Stop." I said. "Just stop."

She bowed her head and breathed in deep.

"I'm sorry." She whispered. "It's just-"

"I know." I took her hands in mine and leaned my forehead against hers. "But you can't let yourself think about it. You already carry too much on your shoulders."

"I've failed them Fang." She muttered. "I've failed them."

"No." I shook my head. "No never say that. You have done nothing wrong."

"You don't know that." She cried. "You have no idea what I've done!"

She pushed me away and stood up. I saw her wince and suddenly her legs buckled from beneath her. I lunged and caught her just before she would have hit the floor.

"Is there much point in asking you nicely to stop doing that?" I asked.

A small smile crept onto her face and suddenly she was kissing me. It took me a second to switch gear but once I had I threw myself into it.

She reached for my shirt and I paused for a few seconds, but then it was gone and I was left wondering what was happening. How had we gotten here?

I placed my hand under her back and she gasped in pain. I froze.

"Max I-?"

"No, keep going." She ground out.

"But Max-"

"No. I told Angel-" Her breath caught. "Oh Good Lord! Angel! She can't see . . . we can't do this!"

"That's not the only reason we can't do this Max." I hissed. "What is wrong with your back?"

She balked. "Nothing I-"

"With you," I snarled; turning her over. "It's never nothing."

"Fang-" She whimpered

"Max, for once in your life don't fight me." I pleaded. I reached under her shirt and lifted it slightly, I felt her entire body tense and my stomach flipped. What was it she didn't want me to see? Then I saw it.

It started on the left bottom hand corner of her back, just on the rim of her jeans, and it travelled diagonally up her back in three twisting lines. The first took a sharp turn at her wings and twisted up along her ribcage towards her shoulder where it curled into a twisted red ball. The second came to the same junction as the first but then continued along her right wing leaving jagged marks in its wake. I remembered seeing this scar the day before when we'd gone flying.

Flashback

Max pulled me out of the back door and into the garden. She did a 360 checking for witnesses, then unfurled her wings. I gasped and she winced. I caught a glimpse of a scar streaking along her right wing before she turned to face me.

"How?" I asked.

She shrugged. "I slipped." I knew she was lying but had hoped I wouldn't notice. I wanted an explanation. I frowned for a few seconds, studying her face, and I was about to say something, to ask for the real story, but then I shrugged. It could wait. We had forever together now that I was back.

"Ouch." I said.

"Yeah," She grimaced. "I was just lucky Angel was there."

End Flashback

She hadn't slipped, I knew that much, but what did Angel have to do with it? I traced the third scar with my fingers. It travelled to the same junction as the other three and then it continued almost exactly along her spine, ending just under the curl at the end of the first. Just from looking at the scars I could see she shouldn't have survived, that the damage to her spine should have killed her. So how had she endured? I could feel her tension, as she held back the small cries of pain that were threatening to slip from her overexerted body. I could sense her trepidation of what my reaction would be to her biggest secret so far. I closed my eyes and sighed, wondering if I would ever know all of her secrets.

"I'm so sorry." She whispered, her body trembling slightly.

I pulled down the back of her shirt and heaved her up into a sitting position. Standing up, I walked to her window.

"Fang?" She asked carefully.

I ignored her, keeping my back to her. I needed to think. I reached for the latch on her window and began to haul it open.

"Fang wait!" She cried. "Please . . . we need to talk."

A SMALL BASE SOMEWHERE NEAR DUBLIN, TEXAS

"Alright Hartman, there's a lot of work gone into this, so don't you dare screw it up!"

"Don't you worry Sir. I've been practicing a long time."

"That's exactly what I wanted to hear m'boy."

The young man stepped into the thin tube in the middle of the room and slid the door shut behind him. He nodded to the superior officer, who sealed the door and pressed the button that began the experiment. Hartman smiled and closed his eyes, preparing to become the first man ever to be teleported. Suddenly he felt an excruciating pain in his right leg, he bit his lip, assuming it was part of the experiment, it made sense that he should be suffering a little bit of pain, after all, his molecules were being separated and rearranged in another space in time. His left leg was searing now and he couldn't hold back the scream that burst from him. His fists were clenched tightly and he was sweating and trembling. He stared down at his legs, they weren't disappearing. In fact, they were bending and cracking, as if every bone in his body was breaking, it was unbearable. He glanced at the people around him and tried to call out to them. He started to bang his hands on the glass when his torso began to crumple in on itself, bursting his organs and leaving him gasping for breath. He couldn't scream anymore, his lungs were gone, why hadn't someone stopped the experiment? Why hadn't someone turned off the machines? Why were they all nodding and smiling as he writhed in pain on the floor of his tube? He began to black out and he welcomed the dulling of the pain. A picture of his brother, David, floated before him in his mind. He hadn't seen him in 2 years because he'd been too busy. He reached out for him and then, he felt himself die.

The Director watched the experiment from her office as the cranium finally shattered splattering the young man's brains against the sides of the tube. She picked up the phone and dialled the Texas base.

"Perfect." She said simply. "I want copies for every base in America by the 24th and one on every other continent by the 25th. We don't have long, so do not disappoint me. I want to be prepared no matter where we apprehend her."

The officer in Texas made clear his understanding and she returned the phone to its receiver. She turned to the small girl in the luminous glass cage beside her. The girl was staring at the woman in disgust.

"Someday," the Director enunciated, "You will understand what it is to be incredibly powerful and incredibly good at your job. Because I'm not going to kill you mercilessly, I'm going to let you take over my job for a day." She laughed evilly. "A clue? NO!"

Sorry for taking so long. Merry Christmas, to all who celebrate it. I'm an atheist, so I only celebrate because my family does, but just thought I'd wish it to you all anyway! Thanks for reading today's exciting instalment! Cat