The Disbanded: Divided We Stand-Chapter 18
By MyNameIsCAB
---Fang's POV---
I wasn't asleep yet when Max said she didn't want to lose me. Now only if she realized that I felt the same thing too. It was the reason I had told her that there would always be me and her. It was the reason I wasn't angry at her.
---Max's POV---
We went through a drive thru at some fast food restaurant a couple hours later. Fang had woken up and asked for a hamburger with fries. Messina insisted on paying, so now I owed him another meal.
"Fang, are you sure you're okay?" I asked as we ate. Cal was back in the front with Messina.
"Stop worrying about me," Fang said. "I'll be okay."
"Why aren't you angry at me?" I said.
He thought for a moment. "Because being angry at you is pointless. I don't want to lose you either."
"So you weren't asleep," I said with a smile.
He nodded and gave me a rare smile back. Somehow, that smile seemed to take a lot of weight off my shoulders.
---Fang's POV---
Chicago, the Windy City. Home to the Chicago Cubs, the original Chicago team, so you can forget the White Sox.
We arrived at headquarters that looked a lot like the one Max and Ted worked at. Max started to pull my wheelchair out.
"No, it's okay, I'll use crutches," I insisted.
"You don't look like you could even stay standing with crutches," Cal commented.
"Yea, Fang," Max agreed.
She was probably right. I don't any of my pain had gotten better, so I got into the wheelchair and let her push me in.
"Hey, Ted!" The guy had to be at least twenty. He was definitely older than us.
Ted smiled and greeted the guy like an old friend. He probably was an old friend. "Mike, how've you been, man?"
"Great, great," Mike smiled. "So, who do we have here today?"
Ted introduced all of us.
"Well, bring your things in because I'm not making you go to a hotel. You can sleep in the soldiers' quarters. Well, I actually put nicer beds in because those cots are hard. There's no one here but me and Ted, you know Eli," Mike said.
Mike propped the door open for us before going inside. "I'll be back."
Smiling, Ted turned to us. "Okay, so we've got a place to stay. Max, why don't you bring Fang in and Cal and I will get the stuff from the car."
"We just need our backpacks," Max said, pushing me up the ramp.
"Okay, I'll get them," Cal offered and she started back to the car.
Getting inside, Mike pointed us towards the bedrooms before rushing outside to go help Ted and Cal. We encountered stairs. Just great.
"Jesus," Max frowned at the stairs.
I pulled out on of the crutches and grabbed onto the railing of the stairs with my other free arm.
"Fang, what are you doing?" Max asked, grabbing my arm to steady me. "You can barely stand."
I realized that my legs were shaking. If she didn't grab me, I probably would have tumbled down the stairs.
Max took the crutch from me and slung my arm over her shoulder and we made our way down slowly.
---Max's POV---
We found an empty bedroom and I got Fang onto the bed. It looked like Mike wasn't kidding when he said that he had changed out all the beds because here was a twin bed. I was pretty sure soldiers wouldn't get those kinds of beds.
"Thanks for getting me down here," Fang said.
"Well, I wasn't going to leave you up there because there will be no one to keep the bed warm," I smiled.
It was a good thing that the mess hall was downstairs. Fang had insisted on wheeling himself, but I wasn't going to let him. Now that he was tired, it was probably easier to raise his heart rate. I glanced at his monitor after we got down the stairs and it had gone up to 110.
"So, you two are the infamous winged kids," Mike said as we reached the table. "Ted has told me about you Max, but who's he?"
"This is Fang," I answered.
"So can he fly too?" Mike asked.
"Yes, all of us can," I said pulling out the picture of the entire flock from my desk back at headquarters or what had been headquarters.
"You still have that picture…" Fang whispered.
I nodded.
"I still have mine too," he added before he started eating.
Mike examined the picture. "Man, you guys are amazing."
"Thanks," I said, not really knowing what else to say.
"But I can't image what you've been put through." Mike gave me back the picture.
Almost in harmony, Fang and I said, "You have no idea."
