Finding Your Heart
Summary: Fang has seen a lot in his life. When he is 25, he returns back home. OneShot.
Warnings: None… I guess… Of course this is not going to happen since Fang will return much earlier. But let's pretend it could.
Set: story-unrelated, future-fic
Disclaimer: Standards apply. Since we still have to wait two months at least, let's have a little fun.
Fang has seen a lot in his life.
He has lived in a cage until he was eleven. He has fought Erasers at the age of fourteen. He has travelled the world with fifteen; he has left his home at sixteen and has lead his own flock since then. He has seen poverty, sickness, danger, war, murder, abandonment and anything there was to see. But he also has seen happiness, love, the feeling of protection a family can grant and the elevation of flying in the sky, high above the white clouds and all fears and sorrows of humanity.
He returns home when he is twenty-five.
Nudge saw him and her eyes grew wide until he feared they'd plop right out of her face. As wide as dishes. Wide with surprise and disbelief and, finally, with realization. With happiness.
"FANG!" She squealed – screamed – and threw herself at him, almost knocking him over. "Fang! Fang! Fang! Fang!"
His name was a whole symphony of feelings, emotions and happiness. Wincing at the pain in his shoulder when she crushed his arms to his body, he still managed to smile and pat her head. She still was light and petite, he noticed. She hadn't changed at all.
"Fang! You're back!"
"Yeah."
So much for an intelligent comment.
Gazzy grinned without any surprise, as though walking through the door of their house and seeing a brother who had been missing for the last ten years sitting at the table was the most normal thing in the world.
"Yo! Fang, good to see you!"
Fang stared at him in amazement, although amazement meant he slightly lifted his brows.
"When have you outgrown me?"
Gazzy scratched his head in a mirror image of the little boy he had been when they last had seen each other. "I don't know, but I like it!"
He really was taller than Fang, although only by centimeters. Gazzy flunked down on a chair next to him, causing Nudge to shriek in fury when she saw he had carelessly thrown a few magazines to the floor.
"So you finally decided to come home, did you?"
"Iggy! Iggy! Guess who's there!"
Nudge had grabbed the blind man's hand as soon as he had entered the kitchen. "You'll never guess!"
"Well, where's the point in you asking me who is there if I'll never guess?" Iggy muttered and grinned into the kitchen.
"Hey, Fang! Finally decided to leave your flock and come back?"
While Nudge pouted at her spoilt surprise, Iggy came round and slapped Fang on the back accurately. Fang's brows rose again, but he only said "You sure have developed your sensing skills."
"I sure have," Iggy snickered and pulled Nudge's ponytail. "It's been a while since you showed up last. What happened? Have you decided to come back?"
"Jep."
A wide grin from three faces.
"Welcome home."
"What's he doing here!"
The woman facing him had short, blond hair and incredibly blue eyes, and Fang almost gasped.
"Angel?"
"Of course, you moron, and I asked you a question! Don't bother, I already know the answer. So you actually think after leaving us like that and living your own precious life for ten years you could just come back like that, thinking we still have a place for you?"
Fang stared at her, knowing she was reading his mind. And because she was reading his mind, she knew he had been asking himself the same question over and over again, fearing the answer, fearing their reaction, fearing…
The little girl that wasn't a little girl any more snorted in contempt.
"Bah. Stupid idiot. First you leave and then you expect us to welcome you with open arms…"
"Angel!" Nudge, Gazzy and Iggy protested. "Fang's…"
"I know," she interrupted them and stepped closer. She wasn't even eye to eye with him, and yet he felt like she was staring down at him.
"He's an idiot for doubting in the first place. Of course he's welcome."
And she broke out in a huge grin that reminded him of the little girl she had been when he had left.
"Hey, I'm back… Oh."
The man that entered the kitchen when they had almost finished the dinner Angel and Nudge had prepared froze in the door. He was – even Fang had to admit – strikingly handsome, with his dark, brown hair and his brown eyes, and his features seemed to be cut right out of a girl's dreams. Because he knew whose dream it was, it still hurt. Hell. The man stared at Fang, the smile fading from his face.
"Dylan," Fang said carefully.
"Fang," Dylan greeted him silently and seemed to be fighting himself. Fang sat still and waited for the man to react. He had been the second flock leader, after all, for the last ten years, and Fang would submit to his orders – he'd do anything if it meant he was allowed to stay.
Suddenly, Dylan moved, a black flash crossing the kitchen within seconds and landing a direct punch on Fang's cheek. Almost - but not quite - caught by surprise, Fang was able to avert his face but still took the large part of the blow. His head flew back and he crashed to the floor. Dylan shook his fist and stared down at him grimly.
"You bastard deserved that."
"I know."
It still felt strange, talking to Dylan, knowing for what purpose – for whom – he had been created. Knowing he'd give anything to be like him, to do what Dylan had been doing the last years, feeling the envy and the anger and…
"Hey," Dylan said, suddenly grinning and extending a hand to help him up. "After I've done what I wanted to do for ten years... It's good to see you."
Fang took the offered hand and let his lips show a tiny grin.
A crash announced the arrival of the last member of his old flock. The arrival of the most important person of all, of…
A crash, loud and horrible and somewhat like a bell ringing in a new round. Red liquid flooded the hall and leaked into the living-room; red color soaked the carped and stained the walls. Green glass littered the floor where Max had let go of the two bottles of red wine she obviously had carried. No, Fang noticed with a surge of fear, she hadn't let them drop, she had crushed them, gripping them so hard they shattered. She stared through the open door, into the brightly lit living-room, and Fang stared right back.
"Max!" Angel and Nudge yelled simultaneously – nobody had heard her coming, when had she become so stealthy? – and rushed to her side. Nudge immediately wrapped her handkerchief around her bleeding hand – and Angel grabbed her other one and started leading her away, only stopping to throw Fang an angry, angry look.
Max didn't say a word, just let herself be taken away. But her head turned and her eyes never once left his eyes. Fang gulped. Dylan elbowed him, harder than necessary, and made a short gesture with his head. Fang understood and nodded, getting to his feet and following the trail of blood to the bathroom.
Angel was talking, quietly and quickly.
"No, you're not, Max, stop that! Nothing is wrong with your head or your eyes – oh, come on! It's been years since you saw stuff like that, why should it return now? It's really Fang, he's back, and…"
Max saw him.
Fang stared back.
There was something in her eyes, something he couldn't read – which made his heart constrict violently, because he always had been able to read her completely and entirely. She had grown into a beautiful woman – even more beautiful than he had imagined. Her hair fell on her shoulders in soft waves, her eyes were warm and brown and her face was sharp but beautiful. Suddenly, Angel grabbed Nudge and tagged her away. "We'll get something else for you to wear!" She called back.
They left them alone.
And Max still hadn't said a word.
She was covered in red wine and red blood, and her face was bloodless, but she was the most beautiful sight he'd seen for a long, long time. He carefully edged nearer, as if approaching a wounded animal.
"Max."
She found her voice again surprisingly, in the same, heartbreakingly familiar way she'd always managed to surprise him.
"What the hell are you thinking!" She shrieked, her voice so high he shrank back. "You can't just come back after ten years and sit there and talk and laugh with Iggy and Gazzy and the others as if nothing has happened! You never even visited us! You never even called! You didn't even sent an e-mail, you bastard, and that's supposed to be the thing you're so freakin' great at!"
Her eyes were blazing.
"Do you know what I've been through since you left? Do you know how much Nudge cried? And Gazzy and Iggy started blowing up random things in public because you left, and Angel started to have nightmares about you dying, and Dylan tried to track you down for three years, and all those stupid fan girls of yours kept whining and pestering about when you'd come back and about how I made you leave, and you didn't even bother to sent a letter for Christmas or some other event, and you didn't care we were attacked a few hundred times and that this stupid world still can't decide whether it wants to see us as heroes or criminals and there's the million times I had to swear you weren't on a rampage to destroy the world just because you left the flock and everyone kept going like it was a threat to have a bird kid around going unsupervised, and I had to tell them you freakin' left because you were able to live without us and wanted to do something good and I even had to vow I'd find you if you did something stupid and either get your sorry ass back here or… Or… Or kill you!"
Her voice rose to a shriek. Fang stood there and let himself be targeted by her anger.
"And you never were here when we needed you, like when Angel almost went mad with this voice in her head, or when I started seeing Erasers in everyone again, or when Nudge fell in love with a human and wanted to leave us and then he went and betrayed her and she wanted to die, or when Iggy and Ella got together and we went for a trip to Australia and had a great week at the beach, or when Gazzy was hired by one of this great companies and bought a car and a new house for us, or when…"
"Max."
She glared at him.
"What?"
"I don't expect you to welcome me with open arms. I don't expect it to be as if I never left. But…"
"What?"
"You could give me a chance, couldn't you?"
She turned away, her shoulders stiff and rejecting.
"A chance," she snorted. "A chance, he says!"
She closed her eyes.
"You'd better use it well," she whispered, her voice dangerously soft. Her eyes were hard when she opened them again. He merely nodded, hurt by the cold glint but knowing he deserved it. He turned and left the bathroom, moving down the hall a few steps and then stopping, sinking against the cool wall and closing his eyes.
She was right – he had left. He didn't deserve a second chance. He…
He listened carefully. And then he turned and went back into the bathroom, and this time he didn't stop a few meters from her. He leaned over and wrapped his arms around her, and she crumpled in his arms, her face a mask of tears. He wrapped his arms around her and held her and Max buried her face in his T-shirt and cried as if she hadn't cried for the last ten years – which, regarding the fact that it was Max he was thinking about – probably was quite true.
"Ssshh," he whispered, his voice hoarse. It felt so good to hold her again, to smell her hair, see her face, to feel her body again.
"Shhh. It's okay, Max. I'm not leaving again, I promise."
Two people found their heart again that day.