A/N Hey guys! Long time no see! I am so sorry about that, I've been drowning in homework and make up work and illnesses Dx

But enough of my excuses, on with (extra long) chapter! :D

Disclaimer: I don't own MR :(

Chapter 5: And The Plot Thickens

"So. Your house."

Fang peered at Max quizzically, not understanding what she was she was getting at. She sighed in frustration.

"Your house. It's like, huge."

He seemed to think about this before giving her a one-shouldered shrug by way of response.

She pursed her lips in thought, trying to get more of a reaction out of him. Usually, Max was very good at getting people to react, using whatever methods she had at her disposal. (Annoyance just-so-happened to be her favorite. But for some reason, she didn't think that it would have any effect on him.) The silent treatment never worked on her, not with anyone else at least. Fang was different. She had a sudden mental image of him as a robot. Or a drone. Fang2-D2. (A/N Catch the reference?) She held back a snicker. "Well… your mom is really nice."

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. She flopped onto the couch and sighed in defeat. "Alright, fine. We should probably get started on this project. Where's your computer?"

He held up his index finger, signaling for her to wait. Disappearing for a few seconds, he quickly came back with a sleek, black laptop. It looked expensive. Very expensive. As in, the kind of expensive that usually ended up irreparable after being in Max's hands. Electronics and Max just didn't get along. She eyed it warily, and then raised her eyebrows at Fang. "Are you sure your mom will let us use her laptop?"

A smirk flitted across his features as he set the laptop down on the coffee table. It's mine, he signed to her.

Luckily, Max had gotten a hold of her facial features and was able to stop herself from showing any reaction to his statement. She wouldn't give him that satisfaction, stubborn as she was. She nodded once and turned on the laptop, going to the internet search engine. "Alright… so your last name is Allgood. What-"

He quickly cut her off, shaking his head. "What?" she asked.

His face was expressionless by anyone else's standards, but Max could see in the way that his jaw was slightly clenched, and the slight crease in between his eyebrows, that this subject was something that pained him. She didn't know how she could tell, as she'd only known him for a couple weeks and wasn't the most observant person in the world, but she could. My last name is not Allgood, he signed to her, looking everywhere except at her.

She leaned back, her eyebrows knit together in confusion. "But your mother's last name-"

He shook his head again, slowly. She's not my mother, he signed, and sighed gently. Hesitantly, onyx eyes looked up and met her brown ones. The rest of his face showed no emotion, but his eyes… Max suddenly understood why people called them "windows to the soul." She could almost feel the pain roiling around in those black depths.

"So then… Who is she?"

There was that classic one-shouldered shrug again. Foster mother. Three months. Any emotion that Max thought she saw disappeared as Fang seemed to mentally change the topic. My last name is Ektoras. And yours is… was it Martinez?

She jolted back, wondering why the name "Martinez" caused such a reaction in her. Her heart pounded in her chest, and her breath caught in her throat. Her thoughts raced. Martinez, Martinez... What was so important about that name?

"No, not Martinez"-the name felt oddly familiar on her lips-"it's Rivera."

His dark eyebrows scrunched together in confusion, obviously not believing looked at her questioningly and she opened her mouth to reply with a sarcastic comment (of course she was sure about her own last name!), but Fang cut her off. Sorry, he signed. I just don't usually forget… anything.

Max nodded, still looking at him weirdly. "Well… we should probably start on the project…"

He nodded once and sat down next to her.

"I think Ektoras is Greek…"

Fang didn't know what had gotten into him, telling her all of that. To most people, it didn't seem like much, but he never opened up to anyone at all. For him to even admit that he was in foster care was…well, a big deal for him. Than again, he usually didn't stay in a foster home long enough for him to make any friends to admit too.

And he'd been sure that her last name was Martinez. He didn't forget things very easily- his mind was almost photographic. He suspected that there was something she hadn't told him though-her reaction to the name was too obvious.

He turned his attention back to the project. They'd found that his last name, Ektoras, was Greek for "resolute" or "strong". He liked that. They'd yet to find out what Rivera meant.

The name sent a slight shiver down his spine, and he tried to shake it off, rolling his shoulders uncomfortably. He didn't know what it was about that name, but it left a bitter taste in his mouth. It was just a name, right?

"Hah!" Max suddenly punched the air, her face triumphant. Fang rolled his eyes at her over-the-top enthusiasm, but hid a smile nonetheless.

"I thought Rivera was Hispanic, but it wasn't showing up on any of the name databases. But, after hours of searching, I finally found it." She smirked smugly. (Say that five times fast.)

He smirked back at her. In reality, it had only been around twenty minutes. But then, she had been dubbed the queen of over-reactions and exaggeration for a reason.

Fang looked at her questioningly, one eyebrow raised, and she got the message. "See, right here. It says, 'Rivera is a common Hispanic surname bestowed on a person who lived on a riverbank.'" She paused, and her face fell dramatically as her shoulders slumped. "Well, that's just great. I come from a line of river dwellers. I have river blood in me. That's…gross." The mental image of having "river blood" inside of her made Max's face scrunch up in disgust.

It started as a small, unavoidable smirk. From there, it slowly grew into a smile, and then a grin, and then a chuckle as this new bit of information, combined with Max's reaction, hit Fang as unbelievably funny. Soon he was full-on laughing, real belly laughs, purely because of how good it felt. It probably wasn't really all that funny, but he couldn't remember how long it had been since he'd last laughed.

Finally, he noticed Max staring at him in shock. She hesitantly reached over and poked his side, confirming that he was real. "It…it makes noise." Her jaw dropped.

He glared at her, his laughter dying out. She stuck her tongue out at him. "Sorry, I just didn't think it was possible."

He shrugged, and then nodded towards the laptop, indicating that they should keep working. She sighed, conceding.

Mrs. Allgood picked that moment to walk out into the living room, armed with a plate full of hot, fresh-from-the-oven chocolate chip cookies. Upon seeing the woman again, Max immediately wondered why she hadn't made the connection. They obviously were not related, and were complete polar opposites. Fang was tall and thin, as if he could take flight at any moment, while Mrs. Allgood was more on the short and curvy side. He had black hair, almost black eyes, and a tan complexion; she was blue-eyed, blonde-haired and was white enough to convince people that her skin had never seen sunlight, Or, at least, she could if it weren't for the light freckles dotting her skin.

Then Max saw the cookies, and all thoughts of relations, foster care, and school projects flew out of her mind.

"The book club is meeting here this week, so why don't you two move up into Fang's room? Leave the door open, and no funny business," she looked at Fang and Max sternly, but with a hint of a twinkle in her eyes. "Just remember that I can check in on you two at any moment. And the stairs don't creak; you'll never hear me coming."

Max nodded quickly and said, "Yes ma'am!" before grabbing her backpack and lugging it over to the stairs. She looked back to see Fang peering at her questioningly, the plate of cookies in his hand, and she read the question in his eyes. If she were to stop and think about it, it was almost weird how well she knew Fang after only two weeks.

He was asking her how she knew his room would be upstairs. She shrugged and tossed a "Lucky guess" over her shoulder before heading up the staircase. Honestly, it wasn't so much a lucky guess as it was an educated one. She saw something in Fang that she recognized in herself-a desire to escape, to fly away. So she figured that his room was probably as close to the sky as one could get.

And she was right. His room was at the top of the house, on the third floor (which meant that she pretty much fulfilled her excersize quota for the next month), and it had a balcony. Not one of those mini, cheap ones, but a real, fancy, fairytale balcony.

The rest of his room was mostly black though, which didn't surprise Max, considering that that was the only color Fang ever wore. He had very few furnishings; just a large bed, a dresser, a TV and a TV stand, and a desk with a bunch of papers strewn across it.

Then Max saw the walls. Tons of papers were pinned there, each with a different drawing. The older ones mostly were of two people, a man and a woman that closely resembled Fang. She guessed that they were probably his parents. As the drawings were done in pencil, she could only guess at the color of their eyes or hair, but she could see that the woman was beautiful, with a sweet smile. The man was a bit rugged and gruff looking, someone that you might be afraid of in an alley, but even through a drawing you could see the kind twinkle in his eyes that gave him away as a large teddy bear. Fang had gotten all of his tallness and dark complexion from his father, and his thin lankiness from his mother.

The newer, more recent ones were all of a little girl, though. She was portrayed in all sorts of different situations; laughing, crying, obviously angry… the child had a killer death glare. She felt a jolt as she looked at those pictures, positive that she knew this little girl. She just couldn't place her.

Then Max saw a picture of the girl standing next to a boy. They had their arms thrown carelessly around each other's shoulders, and both were smiling wide, gap-toothed smiles. They couldn't have been more than seven. Max's head started to hurt as she stared at the picture, and she gasped as her vision went black and turned inwards.

The girl was seven years old today, and she was very excited because her best friend would not turn seven for four more months. She loved to tease him about that.

She raced over to the swing set, dirty blonde hair flying out behind her, and looked down at the dark-eyed boy sitting on the swing. He raised an eyebrow at her; even as a six-almost-seven year old he was very quiet and reserved. Only the girl could ever get him to open up.

"Hey," she said, grinning widely. "Know what today is?"

He put his hand to his chin, stroking his imaginary beard. "Uhhh… Friday?" He replied, teasing her.

The girl sighed. "Well, yeah, but it's also my birthday silly! Know how old I am?"

He threw her a sarcastic look, throwing his arms in he air. "No Max, I don't. We've only been best friends for forever!"

"Well, come on! My mom wants to take pictures of us before I open presents and eat cake. I don't see what the point is, but oh well. And Alex, please don't blow out my candles this year?"

He grinned at her and slung his arm around her thin shoulders. "But it's so much fun!"

When her vision cleared, Max found herself sitting upright on Fang's bed, her head in her hands and her breaths coming in gasps. She looked up to see Fang staring at her worriedly, his hair standing on end, as if he'd been running his hands through it and pulling at it like he always did when he was really upset about something.

How did she know that?

Max pushed that thought to the back of her mind, unable to handle any more confusing things. She watched as he signed to her. Are you okay? What was that about? He "said". "I'm okay," she answered with a reassuring smile that she didn't feel, before hurriedly standing up, grabbing onto Fang's arm to steady herself as her vision got spotty again. She grabbed her backpack. "You can come over tomorrow and we'll work on the project a bit more. But I'm going home now, I don't feel very well."

Fang nodded, understanding. He signed a question to her, asking if she wanted him to walk her home.

Max smiled, but shook her head. "No, I'll make it. Thanks though."

Fang nodded again, slowly.

Truthfully, Max hadn't wanted Fang to come along because she needed to think about this… vision…she'd just experienced. She remembered it in vivid detail. Especially the part where the boy called the girl Max, and Max called the boy Alex. Last she knew, Alex was Fang's real name.

What did all of this mean? Could all of this be connected to her dreams/nightmares? To Angel, whoever she was?

What was happening to her?

A/N Dun dun duuuuuuun!

What'd you guys think? Pretty okay? I've got the whole story up until chapter 11ish figured out now, so chapters should be coming faster :D

Story rec for this week: Dancing on Icicles by Kimsa Ki-Lurria.

REMEMBER: Reviews=Inspiration, Inspiration=Updates! :D