So. I finished the last chapter and I was like, WOOT, now I don't have to be stuck anymore on intense battle scenes and the whole fic will be downhill from here and the last two chapters will be so easy.
And then I was like, whoa. Two chapters left. Maybe I could stretch that out a bit. Maybe it could be three. Or four. Or twenty. Not that I'll actually stretch it out much. It's just that I've been writing this series for YEARS, and now it's sort of over, so, what next?
It's sort of bittersweet. Minus the sweet. Hmm.
Iggy POV
So, dying. It's not really all that awful. I mean, sure, there's the pain in your gut and the blood everywhere, which is pretty disgusting, but other than that, with Max holding me and screaming something I couldn't quite hear, it was pretty nice.
For me, the first part was sort of like falling asleep. I mean, my hearing went first. I guess if I wasn't blind, it would have been different. You know, tunnel-vision and everything going black and stuff. But I was blind. So it was just my hearing. And my sense of smell.
It was sort of scary, yeah, when I had first thought "Holy shit, I'm dying." A thick humming filled my ears and my mouth felt like it was full of cotton. I sort of heard Max talking, but all I really wanted was for her to hug me. Yeah, me, six-foot-four, sixteen-year-old dad, and all I wanted while I was dying was a hug. Sue me. When you're dying, you sort of don't care about keeping up your manly image. Not that I was very manly in the first place. Probably not manly at all.
I think I said something, and finally, Max's arms were wrapped around me and my face was pressed into her chest. Hmm. Was it wrong that I was dying, and all I could think about for a few minutes was "Boobs touching my face"? I mean, I was dying, so it would probably be the last time I would ever…
That's when my mind turned away from Max's breasts and more towards the fact that I was dying and this was the last time I would ever anything. I mean, like, the last time breathing, last time touching Max, last time sitting on the floor, last time wearing jeans, last time thinking about last times…
It's amazing how off-topic your brain can get while you're dying. The important things are what you were supposed to think of.
Important, like Max and Fang and Nudge and Gazzy and Angel and Meagan and Anthony and Buford and Dr. Martinez and Ella and… oh yeah. There was a baby. That was pretty important too.
Whatever. Max and Fang could raise my baby and be freaking fantastic parents. See if I cared. They could do all of the getting up at midnight to stop its crying and feed it and change poopy diapers and kiss it and hug it and talk to it and watch its first steps and hear its first words and read to it and sing to it and take it to its first day of school and…
It. Huh. Did Max ever say if my baby was a boy or a girl? I couldn't remember. I hoped it was a girl. Boys… men are mean. I mean, Fang and Gazzy are okay, and Anthony and Buford and stuff, but men…
I didn't really care anymore. I could feel my mind slowing down and thought, "This is it. I'm dying now. Nearly done." Now that it was happening, it seemed silly that people spent their whole lives being scared of dying. It wasn't that bad. I know I'd wanted to die before, but it wasn't like I ever actually wanted death, exactly, or thought it would be nice or anything. I wanted an escape, and death was an easy option. Now, I actually sort of wanted to live. But I was dying anyway. And it wasn't really awful. It was just sort of… draining.
When I stopped to think about it, it wasn't like going to sleep at all. It was like… like everything slowed down and then stopped, one at a time. I could feel my seconds tick away almost physically, my last moment getting closer and closer…
Hey.
I almost ignored it and just sort of let dying happen, but then the voice spoke again.
Hey. Iggy. What are you doing?
Trying to die in peace, I thought, slightly annoyed.
You freaking jackass. You realize what you're doing, right?
It was J. I could tell. J being the obnoxious prick he always was.
Your family risked a lot to save you, and a fat lot of thanks you give them, just letting yourself die like this.
I bet he was just upset that I was dying, so he was going to die too. Well, suck it, J. I was dying and he couldn't stop me.
I'm not trying to stop you. It's not like it would help me any if you didn't die.
Ha, I thought. Yeah, right.
The last thing your freak of a dad did was spite me. I'm being deleted as we speak.
There wasn't any shock. Maybe a weird flash of jealousy. The last thing he'd done was spite J? What about me? I was his son, but I didn't matter enough to be the last person he spited?
He shot you, J pointed out. You're dying.
I would be, if J would let me.
You don't want to die. You're just giving up. If you tried, maybe you could remember that you don't want to die.
What about J? He should try harder if he didn't want to die. I was just fine with it, thanks very much.
I don't care. I thought maybe if we got out sooner, if your ass of a dad had actually made me a body, I could have a life… with Anne. But if your baby is born, that means that Anne's dead. I don't have anything to live for.
Stuff to live for. My mind chugged away, trying to look for something important.
You have things to live for. Lots of things.
There was a pain in my chest and my stomach and everywhere. It was really slight, like a faint bruise or something. But it was getting heavier, as though I was lying under a huge weight that was slowly, slowly being lowered onto me.
Like what? What did I have to live for? I could hardly remember anything except for dying.
You said it all before. Don't you remember?
Remember what?
Your family.
The weight was crushing my chest.
What about… who was it? Ella? Dr. Martinez?
The weight was suffocating.
Buford, Anthony…
My ribs, I swear they were crumbling.
Meagan…
My heart throbbed painfully in my chest.
Angel and Gazzy, and Nudge and Fang, and Max…
Suffocating. The weight was suffocating. My lungs were on fire.
And don't forget your baby.
I gasped and my eyes flashed open, sending spikes of pain through my skull as though the light I couldn't see was burning my retinas. All of the pain that I had felt before was now concentrated on one point in my stomach. When it wasn't saturating every fiber of my being and was only in one place, it hurt about a gazillion times more.
It took a few moments to collect myself and my thoughts, to make note of each individual muscle in my body. Then I realized that Max was no longer with me. She had left.
I felt like crying because I didn't want to die anymore, especially not alone, and not in so much pain.
Then a needle pressed into the flesh at the crook of my elbow and I could feel sleep clawing at the edges of my senses. I tried to fight it, tried to call for Max, but nothing worked. The weight from before was back, but instead of crushing me, it was blanketing me in a thick, heavy silence.
As I slipped into unconsciousness, J spoke to me one last time.
Bye.
Max POV
Maybe it would have been heartwarming/breaking or romantic or something if Iggy had died in my arms, leaving his little baby girl for us to love in his place. We could have named her Iggella, or Iggi or something, and then there'd be, like, a flash-forward where we were huddling around a little six-year-old girl with Iggy's eyes and telling her stories about how awesome her daddy was and how much he loved her and we loved him. Then we'd end in a Disney moment when Fang and I locked eyes and communicated all of our heart and soul to each other silently, then kissed passionately and did the whole "We love him, but now he's gone, and we're okay" thing.
In reality, him dying in my arms was sort of gross, because there was blood everywhere and also he drooled all down my shirt and I think that a bit of digested food and/or stomach acid may or may not have leaked out of his stomach wound onto my pants. Not to mention the fact that we were sitting next to the dead body of his childhood tormentor/beloved father, with the unmoving figure of a really nasty Eraser lying just behind us. And also I was crying, so there was snot all down the front of my face.
Plus, South Park taught me that apparently the last thing people do before they die is crap their pants, and if the smell from Professor Jordouche was any indication, they weren't mistaken.
Oh, but also, the him-dying-in-my-arms thing never happened, because some Erasers heard me screaming for help and managed to find us and bring Iggy to a medical room before he could, you know, die.
I mean, I guess it could have been a bit more dramatic. Like maybe Iggy stopped breathing and I gave him mouth-to-mouth, intermittently breathing into his lungs and crying for him to wake up. Or maybe his heart could have given out at some point and we could have had to do that shock-thing or something like that. But in reality, it was a couple of Erasers peeling Iggy off of me (his blood had dried and stuck him to my clothes) and carrying him down to an operation room with me trailing after them, wiping my nose with my sleeve and picking gummy blood out of my shirt.
I would have followed them right into the operating room and held his hand all through it, but unfortunately things don't work that way, and I ended up in the hallway with the words "He'll be fine, come back in an hour" echoing in my ears.
How was I supposed to just come back in an hour when Iggy was lying unconscious on an operating table having his guts stitched shut?
But then I thought about Fang, and the evil Eraser's voice echoed through my head. Without his legs, he can go back to being the scared little boy I remember so fondly. "Without his legs" could mean lots of things. I mean, it could mean, like, uh…
It could mean Fang's legs were torn off or crushed or sliced to ribbons or skinned or, or burned or…
Paralyzed, said Angel's voice in my head. I sat up and looked to either side, but the hallway was empty. Where was she?
Sorry, Max, Angel continued. We're a couple minutes away still. But Fang is paralyzed and I thought you should know before you see him.
Still a couple minutes away. I leaned back against the wall. Then I stood and brushed off my butt.
My mouth felt unnaturally dry. I rubbed my hands against the front of my shirt and little flakes of blood, Iggy's blood, floated to the floor.
Paralyzed.
I tried to look on the bright side, to be optimistic. The unfortunate thing was that there was no bright side.
I probably just stared at the wall for the small amount of time before the rest of my flock rounded a corner, but I don't actually remember doing anything until Angel raced up and gave me a hug around the waist. Gazzy was right behind her, and the first thing he said was "Where's Iggy?"
"He's getting surgery," I told him. "He got shot."
Gazzy started spouting questions about "Who shot him" and "What about that evil professor guy" and "Did anyone kill Kenneth".
"Who's Kenneth?" I asked.
"He's this Eraser who was, like, super evil, and he had this voice like, like… like smooth, but not as pretty as Buford's."
"He's the one who hurt Fang," Angel told me. A knot formed in my throat at the mention of Fang.
"His name was Kenneth?" I asked. Gazzy nodded. "It was me. I killed Kenneth."
"You killed Kenneth?" Gazzy asked, sounding impressed.
"You bastard," joked Fang, and I looked up to see a tall, middle-aged man pushing Fang towards us. Fang was sitting in a wheelchair, holding Iggy's baby, and looking at me with a wry smile that didn't reach his eyes.
I lightly pushed Angel and Gazzy away from me and walked towards him. It felt weird because I was usually looking up at him, even if it was just slightly. Now, he was looking up at me.
I pulled the baby out of his hands, and held it out to the man who had been pushing Fang's wheelchair.
"Take the baby," I told him, and with a slightly dubious expression he reached out and took the infant with a gentleness that I didn't have.
"Why give Buford the baby?" Fang asked, but I just put my hands on either side of his face and leaned down to kiss him.
I heard Gazzy making gagging noises behind me but I ignored him. Fang was tense at first, but then he leaned towards me and reached up to brush my hair behind my ears. I felt a tear drip onto my hand and used my thumb to wipe the tear track off of his cheek.
"So we finally take down the School and the first thing you do is make out?" I heard from down the hallway. I pulled away and looked over Fang to see Nudge and some curly-haired man walking towards us. "Wait, never mind, now that I think about it, making out with someone first thing makes sense." Nudge smiled at me.
"Where's Iggy?" the curly-haired man asked anxiously, looking around the hallway. I raised my eyebrows.
"Who's asking for him?" I asked. The man shot me a glare, and there was something in it that I remembered.
"According to you, Ugly," he growled at me. I stared a second, then smirked. The Eraser from before. Anthony.
"Well, if it makes you happier, you're not nearly as ugly as I'd thought," I told him. He scowled.
Nudge sighed and rolled her eyes. "And Iggy?" she asked again for him.
I pointed over my shoulder. "He's in the operating room. He got shot by Professor Jordan."
Anthony looked stricken. "I knew I should have followed him," he muttered.
"He's not dying or anything," I told him. "I was there, anyway. I took care of it."
"If you had taken care of it, he wouldn't have been shot," Anthony hissed, and I heard Fang make a contemptuous sound in the back of his throat. I looked down at him. Fang rolled his eyes.
"I swear the guy's in love with him," he whispered to me. Anthony must have heard him, because his cheeks glowed crimson. He clenched his fists at his side.
"Who told..! I m-mean, what did he tell you..?"
Fang shot a smirk at Anthony over his shoulder. "He didn't tell me anything."
I smiled at Fang. "You don't like him much either?" I whispered to him.
Fang shook his head. "He's interfering with my and Iggy's bromance," he deadpanned.
"And he did threaten to rape Iggy, you know, before they apparently got all chummy," I nodded.
"People change," Anthony said, sounding like a kicked puppy.
Fang and I snickered, and Nudge rolled her eyes and pulled Anthony towards us.
"You guys could be a little nicer. He's not a bad guy. I mean, pretty much all the Erasers have switched sides and everything. It wasn't Anthony's fault that he did all the stuff the School forced him to do."
I ignored them and settled back to worry about how to treat Fang, who was being very obviously paralyzed with his limp legs and his wheelchair and also I had noticed that his hot-pink skinny-jeans were gone and I wondered why he'd had to change his pants and came up with a theory that I didn't like very much.
And how was I supposed to act? Normally I'd probably be settling beside him with his arm around my shoulders and we'd be joking because hey, we'd finally done it, and we were free from everything, and shouldn't we be celebrating?
But I'd known that one of us would probably be injured, I mean, it was like the "ultimate showdown," and I'd known it was possible. But I had thought, you know, the usual. Broken bones, dislocated shoulders, gunshots (Iggy filled that space), a couple claw wounds. Not paralysis. And not Fang.
I finally decided that I couldn't take hovering over him awkwardly anymore and sat down on his lap, laying my head on his shoulder and putting my hand on his arm. He was startled, and I think a part of that was because he hadn't felt me sit down, but another part was embarrassment, and another part hesitation, but then he finally relaxed into it and wrapped his arm around my shoulders and I felt a little better.
"Can I hold the baby?" Nudge asked Buford, and he handed it to her with a little smile. She took the infant over to Gazzy and Angel and they all sat down against the wall and started cooing at it.
"Are you okay?" I whispered to Fang, because he wasn't okay but it was an ice-breaker.
"I'll be alright. Are you?"
Anthony had stood hesitantly away from us, but he moved towards Buford who grinned and pulled him into a hug, ruffling his hair.
"I'm fine."
We sat together in silence until, thirty minutes later, the door opened and one of the Erasers stepped out and looked around at us. His gaze finally landed on me.
"He's been asking for Max," he said.
I stood up awkwardly from Fang's lap, and gave him a small smile before following the Eraser into the hospital room, wondering how to tell Iggy that a paralyzed Fang and his daughter were outside waiting for him.
Iggy was lying on a white hospital bed, dressed in a white hospital robe. His eye and hand had been re-stitched and bandaged as needed, and there was an IV tube in his wrist connected to a plastic bag that held my blood, which I had donated before the surgery to the Keep Iggy Alive Foundation. He looked woozy, but when I took his hand he smiled at me and gave mine a squeeze.
"Hey, Max," he said weakly. "We did it. No casualties, either." He heard my silence and then looked panicked, struggling to sit up a bit. "There weren't any casualties, right?"
I put my hand on his shoulder and shoved him back down. "No casualties. But Fang's hurt pretty bad."
Iggy settled back and looked at me. Then he turned his face away. "Yeah. Angel told me." He looked like he wanted to say something, but he didn't open his mouth again. I didn't ask.
Iggy gazed off at the opposite wall pensively for a while.
"Things are going to be really different," he said. He started messing with the IV needle in his wrist. "Fang, and the baby. And I think… I think J's gone," he said softly. I raised my eyebrows.
"Really? Why?"
Iggy was silent again for a moment. "He's not in my head anymore. I think… I think my… I think P-professor Jordan killed him." He turned to me. "I mean, I don't think he ever really intended for J to stay in my brain, past Anne giving birth. Maybe there was, I don't know, a timer or something. But J's not here anymore. I can feel it."
We shared a silence. "Is… is that good?" I asked him. Iggy looked away from me again. He shrugged his shoulders.
"He wasn't so bad," he said softly. "I mean, he was annoying, but he wasn't a bad person. And… I think it was him, that gave me the strength to fight back, against my father, and Kenneth."
Iggy's face darkened when he said the Eraser's name. There had seemed to be something deeper between them than experiment and guard. It was like he was another bad memory from Iggy's past. I didn't really want to know how.
"What, you mean he threw the first punch, or something?" I asked him. Iggy shook his head.
"No, it was more like… like he stifled my fear or something. He helped me find the strength to punch Kenneth. I don't think I would have done that, if he hadn't helped." He looked down at his hands. "And, I was dying, but he gave me the will to live. I think it was the last thing he did, before he was deleted."
I placed my hand on his arm in quiet comfort. That was all I could think to do.
I never liked J. He had almost killed Iggy by having him hang himself, he had made Iggy sleep deprived, taken over Iggy's consciousness and hit Fang over the head with a suitcase, and tricked us all for a long while during our confinement in the School. And besides that, he had been an all-around douchebag.
But really, he hadn't been a bad person. I wasn't sad that he was dead, but I was sorry for it.
I watched Iggy stare into nothing, in deep thought. My mind strayed to Meagan. My clone. Iggy's girlfriend. She had had her memories wiped and she was living a new life somewhere, with no knowledge that she had left a kind, smart, handsome boyfriend behind. I wondered if they had left her wings intact. I doubted it, somehow. It would be hard for a bird-kid with no memories of the School to live a normal life with wings. She'd have been made into a freak show already.
My hand drifted up and ran through Iggy's strawberry hair. He turned his face to me and grinned, lifting his own hand to run his fingers through mine. I laughed.
"You wanna meet your daughter?" I asked him. His face fell. He hesitated. I frowned. "What's up?"
Iggy sighed and picked at the threads in his hospital gown. "What if she doesn't like me?" he whispered.
"She's a baby," I told him. "She doesn't even know what a bird is. What does it matter whether or not she likes you? Even if she doesn't, after a couple days of you feeding her and changing her diaper, you'll get some unconditional love stuff going on."
Iggy smiled weakly. "I've always loved your pep talks."
I stood and walked over to the door. "I give the best ones." I opened the door and stepped into the hallway, gesturing to the flock. "Come on," I told them. "Iggy wants to hold his baby for the first time."
Nudge, Angel, and Gazzy walked in. Fang waved Buford away and wheeled himself in, using his hands and the wheels for the first time.
When Anthony tried to follow, I held up a hand. "You and Buford can wait," I told him. "Family time first."
Anthony pouted as I shut the door and moved back to my place at Iggy's bedside. Nudge was standing on the other side of the bed, holding the baby and trying to convince Iggy that he wasn't going to drop her.
"Take your baby, daddy," she said, and Iggy gingerly held out his arms for Nudge, who gave the baby to him.
The baby started crying the second it left Nudge's arms, and Iggy started crying too a little bit, so it was sort of funny but also not really.
"How do I make her stop?" Iggy begged, looking to be on the verge of a mental breakdown.
"You just sort of rock her and talk to her until she stops," Nudge told him. "I mean, there's not, like, a mute button or anything."
Iggy tried to hand the baby back to Nudge, who wouldn't accept. "She sounds so sad," he said heartbrokenly.
"So cheer her up," Angel told him. "Just talk to her. She'll like that."
Iggy turned back to the baby, rocking her awkwardly with a panicked expression on his face. "Um, uh," he started. "Uh, hi there, baby." The baby wailed louder. "No, ssh, be quiet, that's right," he muttered, bouncing her. He winced because he still had a stomach wound.
The baby's face was all scrunched up and red and she sounded like a monkey. Iggy looked around at all of us and disjointedly tried to comfort her by rubbing her head.
Fang chuckled into his hand and Gazzy was grinning. Iggy softly ran his fingers through the baby's whitish-blond hair. Almost unconsciously, his fingers drifted down to the baby's face and started mapping out her little features. His expression changed from terrified to stricken, then to slightly awed, and the baby actually started quieting, as though her daddy learning what she looked like was calming.
Iggy hadn't even realized that she had stopped crying when he started talking to her. His voice was quiet, but all of us immediately fell silent to listen.
"Hey," he whispered. "I know this is the first time you've ever met me, but I'm your dad." There was a pause. "I know I'm not the coolest guy in the world. And – and I look sort of scary, I guess. I'll probably be the embarrassing dad with his shirts buttoned wrong and his hair messed up and… well. The point is that I don't care if you get embarrassed by me or anything, I'll always, always love you."
Gazzy wasn't smiling anymore and Fang wasn't laughing. Angel and Gasser were holding hands. I beaconed Nudge towards me and put my arm around her shoulders. She smiled up at me.
"And I'll be a good dad," Iggy continued. "I won't be mean. I mean, I'll have to punish you if you get in trouble, but I won't punish you like that." He paused. "Actually, you know what? I'll leave the punishing to Max. She's good at that." I raised my eyebrows. "Wait. No, then that will undermine my authority and you'll never listen to me. I'll do the punishing, but if it's something really bad, like… never mind, we can work that out when you learn how to talk."
Nudge giggled fondly and laid her head on my shoulder. Fang shot me a grin and I took his hand.
"Anyway, I'll be nice, and I'll hug you every day and tell you I love you all the time. So you'll know I care about you. I'll get a job or something sometime and buy you toys, and clothes, so you can have fun and feel normal. And you'll get to go to school, the real one, and start with kindergarten and make normal friends. I'll even let you go on play-dates and I'll only have small panic attacks." He laughed. "That was a joke," he told the baby. "I forgot you don't have a sense of humor yet." He waved it off. "It wasn't a very good one anyway."
The baby was quiet, all trace of its crying gone. Its face was no longer scrunched up and red, but plump, tired, and maybe a bit blotchy and pimply. Do babies get acne? This baby had acne.
"And when you get older, I'll tell you all about puberty, so you're informed, and when things start happening you won't lock yourself in the bathroom because Fang told you that you must be mutating and you're probably dying."
Fang snorted at that and I sent him an inquiring look that he shook his head at.
"And unless Max or Fang or someone tells me that they think your clothes are inappropriate, you'll never have to worry about me telling you that you need to change. So there's one plus to having a blind dad." He smiled. "Oh, and we'll have been training you to fight all your life and I'll know your strength, so you won't have an overprotective dad making you carry Mace in your purse or anything. I swear I won't be one of those overreacting parents."
We were all quiet for a few moments, and Iggy's hand went to hold his daughter's tiny one. Then he started panicking again.
"Oh my god, she's missing fingers!" He had held her left hand, the one missing the pinkie and ring finger. He shifted her and started feeling around on the bed. "Did they fall off? Tell me it wasn't me. Is she bleeding?" He started hyperventilating and Nudge quickly stepped forward to take the baby. "Who did it? She's dying, oh my god, I've killed her…"
"Iggy, Iggy, relax," I said, grabbing his shoulder. "She's fine. It's a birth defect. She was born like that. She's not bleeding. You didn't kill her."
Nudge laughed as she rocked the baby, who had started whimpering again. "I thought he wasn't going to be an overreacting dad?" she whispered.
Okay. I'm done. Not quite satisfied, but I felt it was long enough.
