Disclaimer: I don't own anything.

Summary: Set after the sixth book. Fang POV. Two figures meet on a cliff surrounded by free flying hawks after twenty long years apart. Two-shot. I'm not telling you if there is Faxness or not – Read and Review and find out!

Note: This is set after the sixth book. In case you don't know what that means, this may have SPOILERS. I've warned you. Don't read if you haven't read the end of Fang. I tried to keep this as in character as I could. I think I did okay-ish. If I have any errors all over the place, please review or pm me and tell me and I'll fix it up as best I can, and please just review me to tell you what you think. It means an awful lot. Enjoy!

Another Note: This was an intended one-shot that turned out epically long, so I had to two-shot it. Please read both chaps and review!

~*~

Fang POV

When I saw her walk down the aisle, looking awkward but gorgeous in her beautiful girly dress and flowers in her hair, I nearly went back on my decision. I was so close to forgetting everything and abandoning the plan I'd spent days agonizing over – to leave or not to leave? Protect Max or be with Max? Abandon the Flock or stay with them, putting them in danger? In the end, I'd gone. Just like that. Just like before. It was the hardest decision I'd ever made in my life, and it had torn me in two. Half of me regretted ever leaving – I was broken without Max – and the other half was relieved. I'd made the right decision. She was safe. I'd made the wrong decision. She was gone. I was right – I was wrong – empty – relieved – grateful – broken. I was torn and everything that I'd ever known as truly right was with Max.

When I'd first left I'd just flown away, going nowhere but yet somewhere. I didn't see where I was going. I just flew blindly through the night. I was too numb. Finally, though, I was shaken from my stupor as the sun rose. What was I doing? I had to leave, go away. Where? I had nowhere to go. Looking down at the city below me I found I didn't know what one it was. I didn't know where I was without Max, internal compass be damned. I headed down towards a park, my wings aching from flying faster then I ever had before – I knew Max could catch me, if she decided to ignore my plea and come after me – so I had to move fast. My legs were numb from cold when I landed uncoordinatedly on the green grass, and I nearly fell, but the thought that I'd never get back up prevented me from doing so. Bringing the ten-dollar bill I'd taken from the Flock's money supply out of my pocket I headed off to grab some food. Idly, the thought occurred to me that I should be on the watch for the usual things that were after us, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. I felt a brief flash of humour as I thought of how Max would've kicked my ass if she saw me on anything other then my constant guard in public, but then gut wrenching sorrow took its place. I'd never have Max yell at me for being lazy and not keeping a good watch, or for being a 'sexist pig,' or for letting the kids pour icing sugar in their cereal with breakfast while she was in the shower again. If this worked the way I'd planned, I wouldn't ever see her again.

At least not for twenty years.

That was the one thought that kept me going, somehow. Even though I knew that scumbag Dylan had probably taken on his intended role as Max's partner by now, I still hoped that somehow Max would somehow resist him. I knew she'd been drawn to him from the moment she laid eyes on him, and it killed me. I knew she didn't like it, and fought desperately against it like only Max could, but I knew it was fruitless. I wondered what she really felt for him. Was she just pushing him away in an attempt to sabotage the scientists plans for us, like she always did, or was she trying to shove him away because she honestly had no feelings for him, and had them for me instead? I hoped so. Although I knew I shouldn't. He was made for Max – Mr. Perfect, she'd once called him, and it had cut me to pieces more then the Thing they had between them ever had.

Like I said in my letter to her, I knew some of the things we'd recently found out were right. That she'd be stronger with him. That we all might have our own Flocks one day, each leading them with our own 'Perfect Match' just like Max and Dylan. Just looking at Angel and what had happened to her was proof of that. She wanted to rule. She was power hungry, willing to go to desperate measures to achieve what she wanted – even betraying the person who'd raised and loved her. The others might go that way in time, too. Max and me, now that we had gotten together together, just weakened the Flock. I desperately wanted it not to be true, but it was just another fact that had been slammed down in front of us, and we'd been forced to label it true, despite what we wanted.

But in twenty years, things may be extremely different.

We – no, not we anymore – Max and the others might have saved the world. In saving the world, they might've eliminated any threat towards us. Hah, unlikely. But things, I hoped, would be quieter for them. Safer for them. They were still on the radar. So was I, in a way, but on the public radar I was non-existent. Occasionally I checked my blog as a visitor, and the responses from my fans crushed me. The uproar that occurred when they figured out I'd bolted from Max, abandoning something they called 'Faxness' –which I figured out was some type of Max and Fang togetherness– was horrible. They also thought I'd abandoned them, giving up on saving the word, dooming them. But it was never my place. Max had to save the world, not the rest of us. We were just the sidekicks that she needed to help her do it. Without her, it wasn't accomplishable. The rest of us were, well, disposable, to a certain extent. I realised that, truly, when the scientists didn't try to get me back – to hard, nor very often. Of course, I'd had to fight off plenty of different things, mainly the Erasers that have miraculously returned from the dead, but they weren't around every corner like they used to be. They weren't springing up on me twenty-four seven like they did before – because it was all about Max and she wasn't with me. It was unnerving to realise that the whole world was focused on her, and not just my own. She was crucial to everyone's survival, not just mine.

So, with this newfound knowledge that I wasn't as important to the scientists anymore, I decided to use it to my advantage. Never before had I been so grateful that the one power I'd been gifted with was invisibility. Unseen, I could go anywhere. Of course, I knew they tracked me from within by microchips and blood samples and whatnot, but to the naked eye I did really, truly, fall from the map.

For twenty years, I'd been invisible.

With this newfound chink in my cage, I helped Max. When Erasers and M-Geeks and robots and assassins went after the Flock, I got to most of them before they could get to her and the kids and disposed of them. It was at a great risk to myself that I was doing this, I knew, but most of the time the enemies hadn't been informed of my presence by the higher ups that knew where I was at all times, and by the time they did it was too late to do them any good.

Only once in my acts of protection did I see Max, ten years after I left, and it broke me inside yet again. I wanted to see her desperately – I needed to be with her – but I was torn between flying over to her, dissolving my cloak of invisibility, or flying away and hoping never to see her again as to not be tempted to return to her and the others, and put them in unnecessary danger. Unable to make a decision quickly, I'd frozen, all my limbs – including my wings – locking down from impact. I'd started to fall, fast. Never tearing my eyes from her sunlit form, I made sure to hover so I could watch her, only letting my wings beat fractionally as to not make a loud noise. She was fighting the few Erasers I hadn't been able to take care of not far from me. I was so close. I could just fly over there, take her in my arms again. . . Unbidden, I started to fly towards her, snarled by her like I always had been. She finished with the last Eraser and it dropped down, down, down landing with a thud on the hard ground below. Max's eyes scanned the perimeter, passing over me where I softly flew towards her invisibly, searching for any other dangers.

"Max," I whispered, heart thudding erratically. She still looked very much the same – only older. Ten years had passed, after all. Ten years of nothing by brokenness, for me, and I have no idea what for her. She was still just as beautiful as I remembered, maybe more so, in a battered pair of jeans and a black singlet top. Her hair was the same as before, maybe a bit blonder and longer, and I itched to knot my hands in it and pull her to me like I always used to. Her wings were wide and beautiful, a mixture of browns, tans, whites and blacks. Her face had lost any trace of youth, and it was all woman, sharp and beautiful. But she looked so, so, so different at the same time. She'd lost some of her beauty, too. She was thinner. Her eyes had little rings of shadows around them, and those lips I'd kissed countless times had turned down at the corners, like she didn't smile often anymore. Her forehead had slight creases in it, probably from stress, and her beautiful long hair just sort of hung. She mightn't have washed her hair very often before, but it had a certain shine to it no matter what it went through. That was gone now. We'd never been the cleanest, or the healthiest, but Max looked sick in a different way to me, and it chilled me to the core.

She shook her head, closed her eyes, opened them again, and looked right at me. I froze again, but this time I remembered to stay in the air. I was torn, once again. I was scared of what would happen if she did see me, if we did communicate, because I knew I'd go back to her and the Flock – if she'd let me. I'd put her in danger, and the thought petrified me. But I was selfish, too, and that selfish side of me was trying to clutch desperately at this moment and turn it into what the other part of me feared.

"Fang?" Max replied, and her gaze left me, sliding around the air from side to side, searching for my invisible form. "Oh, god. Please, if you're there, answer me. Don't let me be imagining this, too," she pleaded. I was frozen. I wanted to answer her – but I couldn't. Moments passed. "Fang?" her voice was so weak this time I hardly heard it. The look of utter pain on her face was unbearable, and just as I was about to shed my invisibility and reveal myself to her, a voice rang out.

"Max?" Dylan called, speeding across the skies horizon towards her, a look of panic and fear and something else on his face. My blood boiled. "You're okay! I was so worried, and I came as quickly as I could when I heard about the Erasers, but … Thank God you're safe." He gave her a relieved grin, but Max didn't see it. She was still looking around her – looking for me. The thought made me smile marginally, and I took a grim pleasure in the fact that, for this split second in time, it was me she was after and not him. "Max, what's wrong?" Dylan asked, shifting into a defensive stance next to her, scanning the area for a threat, finally taking note of her mood.

Max shook her head. "I – it's –" she stopped, looking like she was unable to continue, and took a deep breath. Dylan looked over at her, at her pain wretched expression, and started shooting questions at her as I watched, frozen emotionally and physically. "Dyl, I'm fine. Leave it," Max snapped finally, sounding like her old self again. I smiled sadly. She was still the same. "Let's just go back." With that, she shot off, too fast for either of us to follow. Dylan sighed and flew off after her, and I watched, frozen, until both of them were out of sight.

I never stopped playing over that meeting in my mind, never stopped thinking of how things could have been different. I still loved Max so much it hurt, and to know that I'd been so close to her but unable to do anything, unable to even have her look at me properly, was torture. I analysed everything she'd said over and over. One thing she'd said pained me and confused me to no end: don't let me be imagining this, too. Was Max . . . unwell? No. Of course not. I'd known her my whole life, and she had never been mentally – deranged or anything close. She'd always been so strong and sure, and . . . but what else was she possibly imagining? I recalled Max freaking out once before over something like this – she'd seen herself as an Eraser in the mirror, and she had made me promise to take her down if she became one. It turned out to be nothing in the end, or at least it was the last I ever heard of it. The whole thing made the urge to go to her and comfort her and just be with her – Faxness, as the bloggers would say – was over whelming. To complete myself again.

Five more years passed after that, in which I nearly died twice. Both times I thought it had been it, Angel's prophecy come true, but I had pulled through with the thought that if I passed on, I couldn't protect Max. I loved her so much, and both times I nearly died, the thought terrorized me that this could be her one day, lying on her deathbed, if I wasn't there to stop it. So I survived, while dead inside, somehow, for her. Always for her.

Time passed slowly. I watched the news, watched the Flock through the publics eye, watched as Nudge grew up, and Gazzy and Angel entered their teen years. I was in my twenties now, same with Iggy and Max – and Dylan – and I'd never felt older. Each day apart from Max, and even the others, was tortuously slow but when I looked back at the years that had gone past apart from them, they seemed like days. It felt like yesterday that I was going for secret midnight flies with Max, just a week ago that we were all in the E-house, living happily, bickering over who had to wash the dishes after our meals.

Fifteen years apart.

Sixteen years.

Seventeen.

Eighteen years. In two more years, I'd meet Max at the cliff with the hawks. If she'd come. I may know Max as well as I know myself, but I wasn't sure in this. She'd either show up to kick my ass . . . or she'd not show up . . . or she'd show up and beat me black and blue . . . or I had no clue what she'd do. I may have loved Max for years before we were together, but we were only partners for nearly a year before I'd left. Still getting used to it, still getting to know each other on that level. I didn't – hadn't gotten – to know her well enough in that way to predict her actions. If she even still felt that way about me. Dylan and Max getting together was a serious possibility. But even without that fact – did I seriously just expect her to open her arms after twenty years of no contact whatsoever and welcome me home, love and heart still intact? I mean, this is Max we're talking about here. Besides, I knew we'd both grown up a lot in our time apart. All of us had in the Flock. We were adults now, well, at leats Max, Iggy and I were, and had all matured. I knew better then to hope for a fairy tale ending.

Things seemed to brighten up for me, at least a little. Instead of being washed about in a current of endless numbness, I found myself with a little, tiny, small bite of life in me. Something to look forward to when I woke up. I counted the months, days, hours, until I'd be standing out there on that cliff top, waiting for Max. I'd be there a couple of days before the appointment just to be sure that I'd actually get there. I didn't want to take any chances – none at all. And I'd wait for as long as I could afterwards, too. She might decide not to come to the meeting, and then want to come later, or she might get caught up in something and may not be able to make it for a little while . . . the possibilities were endless, but one thing I was sure of: I'd be there.

A year away from the meeting, things got bad. The Flock was falling apart, worse then ever before. Angel had gone off again, taking Iggy with her. Gazzy was lost without his best mate. Nudge was, from what I could tell from my safe distance away from them, so un-Nudge like it was like a clone had taken her place. Dylan was still Dylan, running after Max. Max was still Max, trying desperately to patch the leaks in her dam walls even as torrents of water exploded from them. Always trying to hold things together. She wasn't just trying to save the world, I realised. She was trying to save the Flock. Her family. And we'd all fallen apart, nearly beyond repair. I needed to be there, to help her, but I just couldn't, not yet. I'd made myself, and her, a promise. I'd keep her safe. Twenty years was the mark I'd set to see her again, and I was going to stick by it, no matter how hard my heart pleaded with me to go to her now.

Only six months left. I wondered if I could even become visible anymore. I'd stuck with invisibility since the day I'd left. Sometimes it hindered me; sometimes it helped me. Either way, I didn't change it. I couldn't. Not until I saw Max again.

Five months to go.

Four months left to wait.

Three months of painful nothingness left.

Two months of waiting.

One month, six days, twelve hours to go. I was second doubting everything I'd decided, everything I'd come to and made my mind up on. It was pointless going, really. Max wouldn't want to see me after all these years. I was just going to pain myself unnecessarily by hoping of things could go back to the way things were just before I left – me and Max, together. But just in case, I'd go, but – shaking my head, I told myself to shut up. I was torn, again. Just like in the beginning. To stay or to go; to hope or not to hope; go back to the Flock –well, the remains of it– and put them in danger or just keep my distance. For once, that selfish side of me one out. I would hope things between Max and me were still strong, even though the logical side of my brain was telling me not to. I would go; of course I would. Even after all these years it was just as hard staying away from Max as it was at the very beginning. I needed to see her, even if things weren't the same. I couldn't live in this numbness forever.

A fortnight.

Eight days.

A week.

Ninety-six hours.

With three days to go until the meeting, I flew over to the cave with the hawks and set up my camp in a familiar cave. I brang a sleeping bag stuffed with food which had been awful to lug up here and my new laptop. Basically all I owned was the computer. The rest I got from breaking into old cabins since I found it hard to shop invisible. That was another thing I was torn over: the object of my visibility. I didn't want to be visible until I saw Max, because, really, being invisible just felt like a self-inflicted punishment that I'd put myself under for twenty years. It didn't feel right to let myself off that punishment until I saw Max, and it was officially over. Invisibility without Max was a representation of me without Max: nothing. It seemed like the right thing to me, to become visible again when I was with her again, no longer a shell. She may not let me back in, and I prayed that wouldn't happen, or she might do so – unlikely, I know. Either way, I wanted this numbness and invisibility over with. It was killing me. I needed to be whole again.

Two days.

Twenty-four hours since I'd walked out of Flock.

I hadn't slept since I got here, afraid that while I was asleep Max would come, wouldn't see me, and would leave without my knowing. I was so tired I could barely see straight, but I knew I had to hang on. She'd be here soon. She had to be. Briefly, I wondered what I'd do if Max didn't come. Would I go looking for her? Go find out where Angel and Iggy had disappeared to a little over a year ago? If I couldn't find the Flock, which I always had been able to, somehow, over these twenty odd years when I was protecting them, then I could go to Dr. Martinez. She would know. If she would help me, though, was another matter entirely. I wouldn't blame her. I'd ruined her daughter's life, after all.

Twenty-three hours.

Twenty.

Eighteen.

Sixteen.

I was scanning the skies like there was no tomorrow. In the dim early morning light all I could see was a few wisps of clouds and the sun rising. The hawks all around me were up and about all ready. Their young were squawking for food, and the parents flew about on powerful wings to go and hunt for the little ones. Watching as they flew around, I remember sitting here with Nudge, all those years ago, and learning flying tips off them. I felt a pang of loss. I missed all of them so, so, so much. Even little shifty Angel. Max would've had her hands full with her these last couple of years, and I was just regretful that I hadn't been able to help her.

Twelve hours to go.

My heart was beating so fast it felt like I'd just flown a Flock-sized marathon. Despite the adrenaline pumping in my veins, I sat shock still, watching, barely moving to breathe. I hardly wanted to blink for fear of missing her – or their arrival. I wondered if the others would come. It would be horrible if Dylan came and I think I might lose it if he did. But I had no claim over Max, not anymore, and it was not my right to kick his ass if things had gone on between them. It was totally justified, and likely. She wasn't mine like she used to be, despite the fact that I was, and always would be, hers.

Ten hours.

Nine hours.

Eight hours since the exact time when I'd walked out of Max's life.

Seven.

Six.

Still scanning the horizon, ignoring the noises of bird life going on around me from the hawks, I finally saw something. Coming in from the west was a little fast moving spec. And, if I looked close enough, I could just make out wings beating, so it couldn't be a plane. My gaze was locked on whoever – or whatever – it was flying at me. It well could be a hawk, but something told me it wasn't. It could be any other bird kid, but I was half positive it was Max. From this distance it was hard to tell, but I thought I could just make out the way she flew. Two massive wing beats, a little glide, a wing beat, glide, repeat. Yes. It was her. I could only just make out the pattern of her flying, but I knew it was Max, somewhere deep inside of me was sure. Suddenly, I was really nervous. I wiped my hands on my dark jeans, and suddenly wished I'd taken a shower in the last month and a half. I swallowed.

She was just close enough now for me to make out her tattered jeans and dirty bloodstained blue top. She had dirt streaks all over her face and arms and a cut ran half the length of her jaw line, from the bottom of her ear to the corner of her mouth. Her hair still hadn't recovered its old shine, and she had become even thinner since the last time I chanced upon seeing her. She looked unhealthy, still. It made me sad. Some part of me hoped that I could make it better. Hah. Like she'd let me after all of this. I rubbed my hands over my face, swallowed, and returned to watching her as she flew closer.

With a grunt she landed on the cliff ledge to the left of me. She kept her wings out, too cool down no doubt, and she paced the length of the ledge, hands on hips, scanning the skies. She ignored the hawks around her and they ignored her too since they were used to me being here. Up close, she looked even worse for wear. Some part of me was screaming, You did this; you did this to Max! and it cut me to the core. I heaved a great sigh, and Max spun to face the empty ledge where I was sitting. Her eyes narrowed dangerously as she scanned it up and down, up and down, her gaze never once coming to stop on me where I stood invisible to the side.

Slowly, I shook off my invisibility, eyes never leaving her face.

~*~

Note: Wow. Okay. This is strange. I actually like that. Normally I'm iffy and uncertain about my work. Review and tell me, dear reader, if yooouuuu liked it as much as I did. The second part may be harder, though. Those two don't seem like the type to kiss and make up.

The more reviews I receive, the quicker the second chapter goes up!

Over and Out,
Dozey212