A/N: Hey folks, I know it's been ages since I posted anything, but I've been wanting to write this one for a while and I had a spare couple of hours. I feel like I might be a wee bit rusty, but I had fun with it all the same!

This one looks at Nudge's thoughts on her paralysis and how it feels to be learning to fly all over again. Hope you like it. :D

Come on, Nudge. You're really close now. Try again. You can do it.

The air was still as Nudge looked out across the garden from where she sat, perched on the edge of Dr Martinez's roof. It was getting into the evening – which means I've been at this for, what, six hours now? – and streaks of pink were starting to make their way across the sky as the sun sank lower towards the tops of the trees that lined the horizon. Despite the lack of breeze, it was still chilly, and Nudge shivered slightly in her T-shirt, goosebumps rising on her arms.

'Go again!' Gazzy called from the ground, his eyebrows raised in a way that suggested this was all kind of fun and exciting, that they hadn't been doing this for the better part of a day, that it wasn't humiliating and painful and endlessly frustrating.

'We're here if you need us, Nudge.' Max's voice made its way up to her, and Nudge gritted her teeth at how patient everyone was being, her hands gripping the edge of the roof tightly – was she the only one who was tired of this? Probably not, she thought. They're probably all sick of standing out here, waiting to catch me every time I fail again. They just think that if they show it then I'll go all nutty and give up.

No one thinks that. Angel's words sounded in Nudge's head and she looked over to where the younger girl was sitting on the grass, arms wrapped around her knees. It had been over a week since they'd arrived back in Oregon and she still hadn't said anything out loud except for that one time when she said Gazzy's name, but after the first few days her voice had started appearing in people's heads as she rediscovered her own way of talking to them.

Everything had changed. Ever since they'd gone back to the School for that last time, things were different wherever Nudge looked. Not that it was all bad – Max and Fang were all happy and together and stuff, Dr Martinez was back and not brainwashed anymore, Angel was alive and with them – but they'd all been damaged by the experience. Max had started getting those nightmares, and Holden wouldn't go near an open flame anymore, and Dr M would just stop what she was doing every so often and close her eyes and let out a deep breath as memories of the things she'd done as The General came back to her. They all still carried the weight of the things they'd seen and done and been put through in that place.

Except for me I guess the word 'weight' means something a bit different, Nudge thought, looking down at her feet where they dangled uselessly off the side of the house. Her legs were already starting to look skinny, the muscles wasting away from lack of use, and her pants were kind of baggy around her thighs, loose around her hips. That got her; it seemed really dumb to complain about clothes after all the stuff the flock had gone through, but fashion had always been her thing, and the thought of having to get rid of her cute jeans and go searching for some pants that would actually fit legs that were way too skinny for their length kind of made her want to cry.

She was going to have giraffe legs, all scrawny and long and weird. How did giraffes even walk on those things? Surely they couldn't be strong enough to hold their entire weight, especially with those massive long necks. And how did their necks get so long in the first place, anyway? Did they start out as horses or-?

Stop that. Nudge shook her head. You're letting your thoughts run away with you again. No one cares about giraffes. I mean, they're kind of cute in a stretchy way… But that's completely not important right now. Focus. This is lame. You're lame. Literally. The least you can do is learn how to fly again.

'Okay, ready?' she called down to the waiting flock.

'Ready.'

Drawing in a deep breath, Nudge braced her hands against the edge of the roof and pushed herself forwards. Her wings snapped out as she dropped into open space, and for a second they caught air and she was gliding, then her dead legs swung down beneath her, their bulk pulling her suddenly towards the ground. Her whole body jolted and lurched as Nudge tried to regain control, tried to adjust to the new distribution of weight; working her wings as hard as she could, she managed two awkward flaps before the wild swinging of her legs got the better of her and she plummeted down.

Max and Fang raced forwards to catch her, but her knees still slammed into the ground as she landed, their hands the only things stopping her from face-planting.

'You okay?' Max asked, wrapping an arm around Nudge's back to keep her held upright.

'I don't know,' Nudge replied dully. ''S not like I can feel any pain there.'

There was an uncomfortable silence as the rest of the group shot glances at each other, unsure how to respond.

'You're looking way better than before, Nudge,' said Kate uneasily. 'You'll probably get it in the next few tries.'

'Can you get me my chair?'

Max winced.

'You're really close, sweetie, don't give up just n-'

'I want my chair.'

Another silence. Then Gazzy gave a half-hearted shrug and walked away from them to the spot where the wheelchair had been left, his old sneakers scuffing along the ground. Max slipped her other arm behind Nudge's legs and lifted her smoothly into the seat as Gazzy brought it to a stop in front of them. Then the group stood back, their apprehensive faces looking down at her where she sat. She hated that, the quiet. She'd never liked silence but now that it was because of her it was even worse. It was as if they thought she was a bomb, ticking, just waiting to go off, ready to go at the first trigger, and none of them knew how to diffuse her. Iggy and Gazzy were useless here.

'I don't want to do this anymore,' Nudge muttered, looking down at her hands where they lay on her unfeeling lap. She heard the others shifting uncomfortably but kept her eyes trained resolutely downwards.

'You don't want to keep trying?' Max clarified, her voice careful, slow. Nudge shook her head.

'It's not working.'

'But that doesn't mean it's not going to work. If you just keep trying-'

'I have been trying. We've been out here for hours, and I keep throwing myself off the roof and I keep not flying.'

'What's going on?'

Nudge lifted her head to see Jeb striding across the lawn, his glasses glinting in what was left of the day's light.

'You said I could still fly. You said I could and I've been trying and nothing's happening.' She could feel tears starting, the pressure in her head and the prickling in her eyes. It wasn't fair; she was born to fly. Flying was the reason she existed, why she was alive, what she'd been made for. And now she couldn't do it.

Jeb stood motionless for a moment, then glanced around at the others and made a slight shooing motion with his hands. They backed off, moving away from her and towards the house. Nudge watched Max and Fang's fingers intertwine as they walked across the grass, then her gaze was pulled back to Jeb's face as he cleared his throat and crouched down in front of her.

'Yes, I said you'd fly again. And you will. But you have to learn, just like you did when you were young, and that's going to take some time. More than the three days you've been trying this for, at any rate.'

He sighed when Nudge didn't respond, tilting his head back to look up at the darkening sky.

'Do you remember when you learned the first time?'

Nudge blinked as he looked back at her.

'How many times did you hit the ground before you managed to miss it?'

'Um… A bunch?'

'Exactly.' Jeb smiled, his eyes going all small and crinkly like they used to do when they were living with him in Colorado. 'I think that this isn't about to learning to fly so much as it's about learning to fall. Right now the fear and embarrassment of not succeeding are weighing you down; your head's all filled with worry and it's keeping you from getting your rhythms right. Let it go. If you crash, that's okay, and it doesn't mean that you're failing – it means you're trying, and eventually you'll stop falling and start flying again.'

There was quiet for a moment as Nudge stared at him. Then she nodded.

'Okay.'

Jeb grinned at her and laid a hand on her shoulder as he stood up, turning towards the house and calling Fang over so that he could fly Nudge back to the roof.

Once she was sat safely up there, Fang dropped down and he and Max took their positions on the ground, ready to try and break her fall.

'Don't.' Nudge called down. 'Move out of the way.'

The two of them stared up at her and then turned their gazes towards Jeb as if to ask 'what did you say to her?' His eyes had widened and there were deep creases along his forehead.

'Um, Nudge? When I said you need to learn how to fall again, this wasn't exactly what I meant.'

Nudge shrugged.

'Why not, though? That's how we did it when we were younger, and that worked even if we did end up with a whole bunch of cuts and bruises and stuff. And if you think about it then that doesn't really matter that much anyway because we heal really fast and it's not as if I can do much more damage to myself than what's already been done. I mean, I broke my back. What else do I have to lose?'

'Not a lot since it looks as though you've already lost your mind,' Iggy quipped from his spot on the ground.

'Seriously, move back. It's okay.'

Max and Fang looked at each other for a moment, their faces flitting through multiple expressions as they conversed silently. Max frowned, her eyes skipping back up to Nudge for a moment before moving back to Fang; he shrugged slightly and her face rearranged itself into a scowl. Nudge could hear her exasperated huff from her perch, and as the two older flock members moved out of the landing zone, she could have sworn that Fang shot her a fleeting, barely-there wink.

Okay, here goes. She thought to herself. Now this is real. Come on.

And she pushed herself off the roof.

Crashing hurt. Her arms flew up to try and break the fall, and when she hit the ground the impact sent a jarring spasm through her whole body, making her feel as though she'd just been jolted by a few thousand volts of electricity (which, you know, she could say because it had actually happened to her before – she knew how it felt).

The shouts of the others rang in her ears, slightly fuzzy through the pounding in her head, but she was laughing. Laughing because suddenly she was back in Colorado, falling off that big rock they used to use when they were learning how to fly. There was something strangely nostalgic about the pain of hitting the ground, the scrapes along her arms, the tentatively moving each part of her body one after the other to see if anything was broken. By the time Max reached her, Nudge was propping herself up on one bruised and bleeding arm and grinning at the rest of the flock.

'Is she laughing or crying?' Iggy questioned.

'Laughing,' replied Gazzy with a strange mix of concern, perturbation, and amusement on his face.

Iggy's eyebrows rose and he drew in a breath.

'Well, that's it, then. We all knew it was gonna happen someday. Nudge has cracked.'

'Perhaps,' she replied, laughter still in her voice, 'but I think I've got it now.'

'Nudge, are you kidding me, you basically just threw yourself off the roof! Are you okay, is anything broken?'

'I'm fine, Max. I mean, I don't know about my legs 'cause I can't feel them and all that – it's really strange knowing that you've hit something but not being able to feel it, you know? Like, what you're seeing and what you're feeling don't match up. It's the same as in those movies where the dubbing's really bad and the words don't come out at the same time the people's mouths move an-'

'Jeez, she's okay.' Ratchet's irritated voice came from inside the house. 'Just shut her up already.'

Nudge snorted then looked up at Max's perplexed face.

'So yeah, I don't know about my legs but the rest of me's fine. And I'm going to do it again.'

Max's eyes practically bugged out of her head.

'You're not serious. No. No, you're not doing it again.'

'Yes, I am.

'No, you-'

'She should do it again.'

Fang's face was impassive as Max turned to look at him, her expression incredulous and heated.

'What?' she demanded.

Dark eyes trained themselves on Nudge as Fang replied.

'She should do it again. She's the only one who knows what it feels like to fly the way she's flying. We can stand here and say that she's getting close all we want, but she's the only one who can actually feel it. If she thinks that this is the way to get airborne again then we should trust her.'

When Max spoke next it was through a clenched jaw; Nudge could see the muscles squeezing in at the sides of her face.

'That was a nice little speech Fang, but I am not going to say that this is alright.'

'I'm going to do it again anyway,' Nudge piped up from the ground, and Max threw her arms up in frustration.

'God, does no one listen to me anymore?' Her hands moved to cover her face and she took a few deep breaths before looking up, eyes flicking between Nudge and Fang, expression morphing from anger into anxiety. 'I am not comfortable with this.' Her voice was almost – almost – pleading. Neither of them responded, both continuing to watch her as she fought some kind of internal battle, then eventually her stare fixed itself on Fang and a hardness came into her face. A hand moved up and her next words were accompanied by a couple of hard pokes to his chest. 'If she gets hurt I am holding you responsible.'

Fang's eyes gleamed as his hand met Max's against his chest and there was a quirk in the corner of his mouth as he dipped his head a little.

'Whatever you say,' he said, an exaggerated placating tone behind his words.

Max scowled at him momentarily before letting out a deep sigh and dropping her head down so that her chin was almost touching her chest. Nudge heard her muttering under her breath in a way that sounded suspiciously as though she were cursing the boy in front of her, then she lifted her head, eyes closed, and waved the hand Fang wasn't holding sharply as if to say 'well, get on with it, then'.

Nudge grinned as Fang stepped back from Max and bent down to lift her from the ground. A short run-up gave him the momentum he needed to launch himself into the air and fly the two of them up to the roof for what felt like the hundredth time that day.

'Thanks,' Nudge whispered as he got her settled on the ledge that she'd been using. Fang didn't respond, but she noticed that his eyes were crinkled slightly at the corners when he turned to join the others back on the ground, leaving Nudge sitting on her own.

Good luck, said Angel's voice in her head.

Not gonna need it, she replied. This time when I hit the ground it's going to be on my terms. It's going to be a landing, not a crash.

Her wings twitched behind her. Despite the dark sky visibility was good, and a little wind had picked up. Perfect conditions. She was so ready to fly again.

Nudge gripped the edge of the roof, took a deep breath, and closed her eyes.

Then she let herself fall forwards into the open air.

A/N: Let me know what you thought! :)