Hi guys!
So this chapter is on time, technically, even though it's like ten on a Sunday night. I kind of like this chapter. It's not great, but it isn't god awful either. I have mixed feelings. There's really nothing to say in this AN, so I'm just going to say read and review!
Max is frozen. She doubts she could move even if she wanted to. Her eyes can't seem to leave her target's. She isn't even sure she can blink. At least she's frozen with her gun in the air. If she had dropped it like her shock had almost made her to, she'd be dead.
"How do you know that name?" she manages to choke out after a few minutes.
Fang's smirk deepens into a smile. He knows he's caught her. "I never give away a good secret."
Her resolve should be hardening. She should want to shoot him even more. That name should make her angry, furious. But it doesn't. It makes her want to curl into the fetal position and cry. It makes her want to scream, not shoot somebody. But she needs to shoot somebody. Unless she wants to die.
Tightening her grip on the gun, Max fingers the trigger. All she needs to do is press down. It'll only take a few muscles and a few seconds. So why can't she do it?
She tries taking a deep breath, counting to three, and even recalling the time when this man harassed her. But nothing works. She can't bring herself to shoot him.
"Trouble?" Fang asks after a minute, tilting his head to the side.
Max doesn't reply. All that she can think about is her name and who she used to be. Faces, names, old memories are all floating through her mind, making her even weaker than she already is. They're breaking down the wall she put up between Maximum Ride and Maxine Rider. And if that wall breaks, so does Max.
It's silent while she thinks. She still hasn't move besides the one time she spoke. Neither has Fang. They both just stand there, aiming their weapons at the other person's head.
How long has she been standing here? Max asks herself this question every few minutes or so, but then her mind just returns to slowly cracking into a million pieces. After the thirteenth time the thought crosses her mind, she speaks again. "Why haven't you killed me yet?"
"I could ask you the same question," Fang replies, his facial never changing from the smug smirk. "I mean, you are being paid to do so."
For a second, Max is surprised he knows this. But it isn't difficult to figure out how he discovered this. He might have heard it from one of Max's former colleagues. He might have just seen Max with his file. But Max doesn't really care how he knows that she's supposed to kill him. She just cares about how he knows who she really is. Nobody is supposed to know about that.
"I'm having an inner crisis at the moment," Max spits sarcastically. At least she hasn't broken enough to lose her automatic sarcasm.
Finally, the smugness drops off of Fang's face. It's replaced by confusion. "All I said was your name," he says, and for the first time since the two met, Max is seeing his face without its confidence. He's just genuinely confused.
"For someone like me, that's enough," this is said softly. Her resolve is weakening as she continues to look at him. Her thoughts are wandering too far into the dark corners of her mind, the corners that had been abandoned since he had left her. The corners that tell her that life isn't really worth it.
Fang doesn't look like the cocky asshole that hit on her in the bar. He looks like a confused little kid that's never seen somebody in a vulnerable position like this. He looks like a boy watching his father cry. "What happened to you?" he questions softly. His voice is almost kind, despite the gun that he still holds to Max's head.
Max scoffs. "You really think you deserve my backstory?" she lets out a bitter chuckle. "You're most likely going to be the man that ends my life, and you want to listen to my sob story."
Fang shrugs. "Well, when you say it like that, it sounds ridiculous."
Both guns aren't held as tightly, but neither person seems to notice. They just stare at each other, both trying to decipher what the other is thinking. The conversation had been dropped.
After a minute, Max snaps out of it. "If you're going to kill me, could you please just get on with it?"
Surprise colors Fang's face for a moment, as if he forgot that they were supposed to kill each other. His eyes flicker down to his gun, and then up to Max. She can practically hear the gears whirring around in his head. But what is there to think about? It's either kill or be killed.
"What if I don't kill you?" he says slowly, as if the idea was still forming in his head.
Laughter bubbles out of Max's mouth. The idea was just so ridiculous. That's never been an option in Max's life. It's literally her line of work to murder. And it's his, too. So why would he even consider asking the question? And anyways, even if he doesn't kill her, somebody else will. "Then you and I both know what happens to me."
Even if Fang isn't the one to kill Max, she will die. Every assassin that has entered Jeb's bar knows about his policy. It's pretty simple: if you fail to complete a job, Jeb puts thirty thousand dollars on your corpse. This is because he hates it when rich, angry, eager to pay clients are chased away because one person failed to do their job. So to make sure nobody loses a client, he makes sure everybody tries their hardest not to screw up.
Fang is silent. Of course he knows. "Can't you just leave? Run away and hide for the rest of your life?"
Max looks at him as if he's stupid. "You can only hide for so long when there are multiple trained assassins looking for you."
Neither person speaks for a little while. They just stand there as their arms tire from holding up their weapons. But then Max feels the need to break the silence, because her mind is still tearing itself apart, and she needs the distraction. "Why don't you just finish the damn job?"
Fang answers immediately, "Why don't you?"
She knows the answer to the question, but she doesn't want to say it out loud. What is she supposed to say, anyways? That she's broken? That all it took was her damn name to make her unable to do her job? No, she can't say that. So she settles for, "It's a long story. And you?"
For the first time, genuine emotion shows in Fang's eyes. "I can't pull the trigger."
It doesn't make sense, but Max still understands. After all, she can't either.
"Well, you have to."
The man shakes his head angrily. "I'm trying, goddammit!"
Another humorless laugh comes from Max. "Looks like we're in the same boat."
The anger vanishes from Fang as quickly as it had come. He nods, but doesn't speak, so Max continues. "This is probably the stupidest thing I've ever done, but I'm going to drop my gun now."
Slowly, she lets her grip loosen until she's holding the barrel of her pistol towards the ground. Fang continues to aim his weapon at Max. She isn't proud to admit it, but for a second she hopes that he pulls the trigger.
He doesn't, of course. After Max's gun is on the ground, he drops his, too.
Never taking her eyes off of Fang, Max goes and takes a seat on the couch. She angles herself so that she can still see him, though. Just because she's too stupid and too broken to shoot the man doesn't mean she's just going drop her guard completely. It's not in her nature to let go of her paranoia.
"So, what now?" Fang asks after a few moments of silence.
Max nearly rolls her eyes. "I have no damn clue," she abstains from spitting out the words, "I didn't plan this all out, sorry."
Sighing, Fang comes to sit on the couch too. He ignores how Max immediately scoots away from him and towards the end of the couch closest to the exit. "I thought you were the best. Shouldn't you be able to think on your feet?"
The death glare Max sends his way is enough to make him want to take back his words. "Just because I didn't kill you before does not mean I won't lose my temper and kill you now," Max hisses. It's an empty threat, she's still focusing mainly on not screaming and cursing out everybody who has ever hurt her, but Fang doesn't have to know that.
Fang doesn't react to her words. He just says, "That would be one way to solve this problem."
"And another would be?"
Max watches as an idea obviously enters Fang's mind. His eyes widen for a second before he narrows them, deep in thought. Then, slowly, he speaks, "We could kill Jeb."
An explosion occurs immediately in Max's head. Her mind splits into two sides, one arguing that his idea actually makes sense, while the other screams that his idea is easily the stupidest thing that has ever been suggested.
She listens to both of them, trying to ignore the fact that they're voices in her head. One points out that it would stop Max from being killed, while the other reminds Max that Jeb is the boss for a reason. Killing him would be no cake walk. She tries not to bring up her past into the argument, and just look at the simple reasons, but her brain doesn't seem to want to listen. It begins to dredge up her past, so she shuts it down. She has to decide based on the present, not on her stupid decisions that happened years ago.
"And how would we do that?" Max asks very slowly.
Fang shrugs. "I didn't plan this all out either," he quotes.
"Well, I'm not going to agree to that idea unless you have an actual plan."
The same I-have-an-idea look crosses Fang's face. "We could plan it together."
Max snorts. "Right, because I totally want to work with the asshole that harassed me in a bar and might be the reason that Jeb sends out the message to kill me."
"Harassed you?" Fang is totally taken back. "I was just flirting."
"Work on your flirting then," Max suggests a bit snidely, "It comes off as creepy and annoying."
The look Fang shoots her isn't exactly a glare, but it certainly isn't friendly. "I'm not going to argue with you right now," he says.
Max bites the inside of her cheek to keep from retorting. He's right. If this is something that's going to happen, wanting to kill or scream at each other every minute isn't going to help. Even if he is a self-centered dick.
"Fine."
The room falls silent as Max runs over her options again. It's either leave now and try her best to stay alive from whoever feels like making thirty thousand dollars from Jeb, or try her best to kill Jeb so she doesn't have to fight for her life until somebody succeeds.
She doesn't want to die. Well, she wouldn't be too sad if she happened to get shot, but she isn't going to bring her own death upon herself. She's going to avoid it until there's no other option left.
So that's her decision. She's going to fight.
"We'll need a plan," Max says, breaking the silence.
Fang cracks an almost-smile. "So that's a yes?"
Max sighs. "Yea, I guess."
The almost-smile grows into an actual grin. The first one Max has seen that hasn't been arrogant or smug. "We can work now," Fang offers.
With a shake of her head, Max stands. "I'd like to go home and pretend I didn't just make a stupid decision," she declares before slowly bending down and picking up her gun. Loosely, she holds it in her hand as she backs out of the room. She makes sure to face him the entire time. Trust is not something she shares with that man yet.
"Wait!" Fang says as she reaches the door. Max nearly raises her weapon, but restrains herself. "Can I have your number, so I can get in contact with you?"
Pretending like that didn't sound like a middle school boy asking for her phone number, Max quickly keys the number into the phone Fang offers her. "Tomorrow, we'll talk," she promises before leaving as quickly as she can.
Her mind screams at her as she walks out of the building. Part of it is still breaking down, reminding her of him and what he did to her. Another section is reprimanding her for not just killing Fang, and then the rest is asking her why the hell she wants to kill Jeb. All in all, Max does not like where her thoughts are at the moment.
The whirlwind in her mind doesn't stop even when she reaches her apartment. They don't stop until she enters her bathroom and opens the medicine cabinet. They don't stop until she reaches for the pills that she hasn't touched in a long time. They're the painkillers that she got right after what he did.
She taps two into her hand before swallowing them dry. Then, as her mind finally quiets, she lies down and falls asleep.