A/N: Well, hello there! It's been a while, I know, but these bonus chapters aren't really on any kind of schedule. I have no plan for when they come or if they come or whatever, it's just that every so often a thought will hit me about something else I want to explore from the After Angel story, and that's when bonus chapters are born.

This time, it's all about Dylan and what happened to him after he left the flock, and the full title should actually have been 'Something Like a Journey of Self-Discovery', but I wasn't able to fit such a long chapter title into the box thingy. It comes from his talk with Max just before he leaves:

Max says 'so, what, you're going on some kind of journey of self-discovery?', and Dylan replies with 'something like that'.

Since I finished writing the main story, I've had Dylan floating around in the back of my mind and from time to time I'd ask myself what I thought happened to him on this journey of his. Now I've finally put it down in words. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about my writing in this piece, given that I was trying to focus on his journey through life as a whole rather than going into a lot of detail about one specific thing, so there are a lot of time jumps where stuff just gets kind of skimmed over and I'm not convinced I handled that very well. But here we are!

Something Like a Journey of Self-Discovery

As he gained altitude, Max becoming just a small speck barely visible through the rain in his eyes, Dylan felt kind of… hollow. Satisfied that he'd done the right thing, yes, but still hollow. Did that even make any sense?

I guess so, he thought as he flew higher still, bracing himself for the extra chill as he broke through the dense layer of rainclouds and emerged into a clear, starry night sky. Everything was quiet as he flew on, wings slicing through air that was saturated with moonlight and almost icy against his wet skin and clothes.

But somehow the cold wasn't bothering him as much as it should; he was too deep in thought, focussed too completely on trying to sort through the tangle of emotions that was bundled up inside him. Up here it was as if he was cut off from the rest of the world, insulated by the thick carpet of clouds that lay below him, and the still of the night made thinking a little easier than it had been back in the house.

He'd lost her. Or given her up, really. Dylan had loved – still loved – Max, and he'd given her up. And it hurt, and it confused him, and on some level it felt horribly, terribly wrong, because all he'd ever been created for was loving her and having her and being with her. The programming in him couldn't comprehend what he'd done, and it was screaming at him to turn around, go back to the house, get back in the fight. He clenched his jaw against it all and pushed on.

He'd done what needed doing, Dylan knew that; he didn't see how it could have gone any other way, what with Max being so obviously still in love with Fang and so obviously not in love with him. He couldn't have stayed.

So he did what Fang had done back in that white, seemingly-impenetrable holding cell: he let go. And maybe that was what loving someone meant; not doggedly fighting for what you wanted, not swearing never to stop until you won, but finding the drive to let them win even if it meant you lost.

Fang had taught him that. Not on purpose, maybe, but he had.

And, Dylan thought, if he could learn from that experience, grow from it, then surely he could learn from other ones too.

Which was another reason why leaving was the only option that made sense. He was still a baby, really, not even two years out of the lab where he'd been made, so was it any wonder that he didn't quite get some things? The feelings he'd been given were programmed and superficial, yes, but they were all that he had, so was it any wonder that he clung to them, fought for them? No matter how much he knew that all the things he felt were implanted into him by people in white coats, no matter how much he'd told himself that over and over again in his head whilst lying awake at night, he couldn't make them any less there, couldn't make them feel any less real in his head or his heart or his gut.

But what he could do, he had realised, was leave. He could set out alone and see the world without the lens of the flock and Max to look through. He could meet new people, do new things, and maybe along the way he would build on the foundation the whitecoats had given him. Maybe he could learn how to feel things for real, in that deep, aching, true way he'd seen the others do.

I am more than my programming, he thought to himself. I've already proved that, just by leaving. I'm more than what they made me. I'm what I make me, the same as anyone else.

So Dylan flew on through the night, on and on and into the morning as Max and Fang found their way back to being Max-and-Fang again, and as Nudge's body twisted in sleep above the motionless, dragging weight of her legs, and as Holden dreamt of heat and smoke and flames. So he flew on through the night and into the morning, back towards the School which lay blackened and broken and surrounded by Intelligence vehicles and agents, reporters buzzing around the outer edges of the scene as the institution was dismantled piece by piece: equipment extracted from the remains and noted and carted off; what was left of files sent away for analysis; records logged to make sure that every scrap of evidence and intelligence was recognised, preserved, and studied.

He was spotted as he coasted down to his landing, coming out of the air and stepping straight into a crowd of eager reporters desperate for his side, his story. But that wasn't what he was there for, so he pushed through them, being careful not to hurt anyone, and made his way towards the person who looked most in charge; the man stood within the confines of the tape which cordoned off the area surrounding the School, other agents coming and going from his presence offering findings and reports on progress. His eyes turned on Dylan with a quick flash of recognition as he approached.

'You know who I am,' Dylan stated.

'I do. It's my job to know.'

As nondescript as the man looked, his voice held the same air of control and authority that Dylan had seen in the way he stood, the set of his jaw.

'Then you'll know how to get to where I want to go.'

Their conversation only lasted a couple of minutes, and before long Dylan was running into his take-off again, soaring up above the crowd of reporters and their shouts and their camera flashes, heading east just as the man had told him to. The flight took him almost a full day, but eventually he reached the place he'd been looking for – one of the rehabilitation centres that had been set up to help reintroduce the subjects who had been saved from the School into normal life.

He figured that if he wanted a purpose, this was as good a one as any, right?

So he became a part of the team there, however unofficially: he wasn't trained, wasn't qualified, but he understood the subjects that they were working with, knew their confusions and their doubts. With his influence, it wasn't long before some of the older, more stable subjects were brought on board with the work as well: there was Louis, the fourteen-year-old who had been abducted three years ago straight out of his family home in Idaho, and been given muscles and skin and organs that could withstand fifty times the strain of a normal human's; Echo and Amy, twin sixteen-year-olds who had been experimented on before they'd even been born, and come out with the ability to disintegrate their own bodies and reassemble them somewhere else an insane form of high-speed transport that they called 'jumping'; Zeus, the oldest subject at the centre at seventeen years old, who could generate so much static energy through his skin that he was capable of stopping or restarting a human heart, whichever was necessary.

Together, they formed a small but quickly close-knit group who worked with the younger, more vulnerable subjects at the centre, eventually becoming accepted as staff on an official level and being sent out as a team to the other bases that were scattered across the continent, helping those rescued from the various institutions that had been shut down after the fall of the School.

And Dylan felt at home there, with them. With the flock, he'd always been too focussed on Max to really, you know, bond with the others all that much, and because of that he'd always felt like he didn't quite belong, always one step behind the memory of Fang even after the guy had left them for the hundredth time. But here he had a kind of home, a job, a purpose that actually felt real and felt good because he'd chosen it, not been roped into it by some lame scientists and the jacked-up programming in his head.

It wasn't until months later – when that sick, roiling feeling he got between his breastbone and his navel in Amy's presence suddenly made sense, when he realised that even when she was pissing him off to no end he still wanted to be around her, when he got nervous and shaky on his way to work every morning as he approached the door that he knew she was behind – that it hit him. And God, did it hit him.

Oh, Jesus. Holy… So this is what Max was talking about?

He kept it close to his chest this time, not wanting to shout about it like he had with Max. This was his to hold for a while, to examine and explore until he could actually understand exactly what was going on.

And besides, jumping straight in hadn't worked out so well for him the last time.

So he stayed quiet, watching for the moments in her laugh and movements that made him breathe deeper, and maybe possibly perhaps trying to figure out whether she found the same moments in him. Even once he realised that she did, even then he didn't say anything; it became a game of secret smiles and sparkling eyes as each one tried to outlast, outplay the other. And it delighted him, every day.

Until the one day when Echo misjudged a jump and ended up in front of an oncoming truck.

Just like that, she was gone, and with her went Amy, vanished into the sorrow of losing a half of herself. It was only a few weeks after that day that she told Dylan she was leaving, setting out to find their parents. He offered to go with her, help her, but no: she wanted to go on her own, find the people that she and her twin had come from.

So he let her go, and it rang in his mind that she and Echo had been the first real, honest losses that he'd ever experienced.

It didn't kill him. But he felt dead all the same.

Another lesson, helping him grow, helping him learn, showing him what it was like to feel pain so heavy that it forced the breath from his lungs and stole the strength from his hands.

Somehow he wasn't even sure he wanted to learn anymore. Not if it hurt like that.

But, somehow, the lessons kept on following him through life, showing him flashes of joy that bubbled through his gut like spring water, loneliness, sickening anger, and all these things that he'd thought he understood but that he was shown over and over again that he didn't, not really.

Then, years later once all the moving had stopped and he'd settled down into a small house in a small city somewhere – once his big, new, exciting lessons had matured and tapered down into smaller, more modest everyday occurrences – he went to Kate's 35th birthday party and started talking to this woman he'd never met before. And, suddenly, he felt his heart pounding as if to remind him that after all this time it was still there, still beating, felt his ribs squeezing as if to say wait, this is something, there's something here'.

It started slow at first, him and her.

Coffee.

Drinks.

Dinner.

And the feeling didn't go away, and didn't go away, until – without him even noticing – two years had passed and it was still there.

'Marry me,' he said quietly one evening as she was curled against him on the sofa. Her head turned up towards him, and she smiled he saw the same thing in her face that he felt in his chest.

'Okay.'

Another year passed like that, with late nights spent watching TV and letting his heartbeat play for her as she leaned against him, with standing beside her as the two of them brushed their teeth in the morning, with learning every day more and more that love wasn't big or grand or polished, but quiet and unassuming. Warm. Beautiful, just like her.

Then one day he got the call that come quick, they're taking her to the hospital now. So he ran, flew, raced there, praying that he would get there in time, feeling as though he could almost pass out from the fear and the anticipation and the promises and oh God could he face this?

There was blood, and she was crying and gasping, and her grip was tighter on his hand than the hold of whatever fist was clutching at his heart, but only just. Machines bleeped. Shiny instruments were passed from doctor to doctor. Words that he couldn't quite make out were exchanged.

New cries filled the room.

Dylan tried to focus, tried to watch what was happening and secure the moment in his mind, but his eyes were misting up and his thoughts had stalled, so it was all he could do to hold out his arms as his son was handed to him.

Love, or joy, or peace, or something rushed through him, pushing against his skin and finding its way out through every pore in his body. He must have been glowing, he thought; glowing with emotion over this small, sticky, loud creature that he was holding in shaking hands and the woman, lying exhausted in front of him, who had brought it into the world.

He'd done what needed doing when he'd flown away from Max all those years ago; this one, single, shining moment was all he would ever need to convince himself of that.

As it turned out, life was a pretty good teacher.

And his was a pretty good life.

A/N: I wanted his ending (or at least the point where we left him) to be happy. It felt as though he deserved it. Do let me know what you thought! :)