AN: I thought that Fang's reason for leaving at the end of FANG was really crappy, so I decided to write a story about the real reason he left. And I felt like making Dylan the bad guy in one of my fics. I mean, I kill him enough times in another story. And no, I'm not going to kill Dylan in this story. I think I've killed him enough times. This is going to be a two-shot. It takes place about 3 months after Fang left Max.

Disclaimer: I don't own Maximum Ride. If I did, I wouldn't have put so many fanfiction clichés in FANG.

The flock was so easy to manipulate. All he had to do was act innocent and helpless and like a pretty boy and he had them in the palm of his hand. Dylan smiled, looking at his reflection in the mirror. It was easy to play the pretty boy. He definitely had the looks.

Little did the flock know that he was definitely not a pretty boy.

He had girls tripping over him. They fell for him quickly, easily. There was only one girl he hadn't gotten to fall for him yet. And that was Max. But she would be his soon. They belonged together. Were made for each other. She just didn't know that yet.

They thought Fang had left because he and Max couldn't concentrate around each other. Ha! Dylan had made that up on a whim. He couldn't believe when Max fell or it. It was a crappy reason. Fang loved Max too much to leave her even if it was for an extremely good reason. Oh, if only Max knew Dylan had made that "extremely" good reason up. But now Max was in pieces, exactly what Dylan had hoped for. But he didn't actually have to hope for it. He had expected it. A weak Max was crucial to his plans.

A plan that he could fully begin to put into action now that Fang was safely locked away somewhere and Max was only a ghost of her former self.

Dylan had been put in Fang's room when Fang had left. Max hadn't originally wanted anyone in that room—she never truly gave up hope that Fang would one day come back to her. Dylan snickered. He'd definitely want to come back to her, but he was…occupied with other problems. Eventually, Max had relented and said that Dylan could have Fang's old room because the room he and Iggy had been sharing was too small for the both of them.

So Dylan had gotten Fang's old room. He thought it was funny that many of the members of the flock kind of expected Dylan to replace Fang as the second-in-command. Many of them had already started looking up to him and asking him for his opinions and letting him make some minor decisions. It was mostly the younger kids, who needed a parental figure to look up to, especially since Max was always her room mourning. What they didn't know was that Dylan planned to do far more than just replace Fang.

But first he had to put the first part of his plan into action: get Max to trust him.

He walked to her room, knocking on the door to see if he would be allowed admittance. He didn't do it because he respected her personal space. He only wanted her to think he respected her personal space.

A muffled voice came from the room. "Who is it?"

Dylan forced himself to make his voice sad, as if he gave a damn that Fang was gone. "It's me, Dylan. I just want to talk, Max."

There was silence as Max considered whether to let Dylan in or not. Finally, she said, "Okay."

Dylan opened the door and peered in, preparing himself to act better than he had ever had to act before. The room was dark, the lights were out and the curtains were covering the window, letting no light in. The room was a mess, as if someone had ransacked it in a violent rage. Pieces of loose-leaf lined notebook paper were strewn around the room, some blank, some with illegible words scribbled upon them. Dylan stood in the doorway, surveying the mess. A shelf of books had been knocked over, and the books were scattered all over the room, some with random pen scribbling on the cover and pages torn out.

Dylan spied a piece of notebooks paper lying near his feet. He picked it up, trying to make out what had been written on it. The words were messy; they had been scribbled on the page in a rush. There were tear stains on the page, which made the ink run and the words even less legible.

Dylan didn't dare turn on the light in the room, so he held the piece of notebook paper up to the light in the hallway. Eventually, he could tell what had been written on the page:

Dear Fang,

No, you don't even deserve a "dear" anymore. You're a (there were multiple tear stains here, so Dylan couldn't tell what had been written) asshole! You promised we'd stay together. Then you left me. Nothing's going to be able to heal my wounds, Fang. Nothing. I hate you, I hate you, I hate you! But that's the thing. I don't hate you. Not really. I want you to be back here with me, by my side. No one can ever replace you. Not Dylan, though he's tried. The flock is trying to be strong, but I can tell they're hurt too. I haven't even tried to hide how hurt and broken I was after you left. Maybe I should, for the flock. But I can't. It's too hard. I can't hide behind a wall that would shield all of my emotions from the world like I used to. I broke down those walls when I accepted how I felt about you, Fang. I had to break them in order to love you. And now you've gone away, and I can't rebuild those walls. The sad thing is…this is going to sound pathetic, but…I love

The writing ended there. Dylan held the letter in his hand, looking at the words. Apparently, Max had been writing drafts of a letter she wanted to give to Fang in response to his goodbye letter. Dylan had to admit that it was a good way for her to vent her feelings, even if she could never give the letter to Fang. But she only thought Fang had written the goodbye letter. If she really wanted to write a response to the letter she had found, she could just give it to the boy standing in her doorway.

Dylan looked around the room, but he couldn't see any sign of Max. He walked into the room, pieces of paper crunching under his feet. Now he could see that the other pieces of paper were letters that Max had started but never finished.

Then, Dylan saw a lump on the bed. It was covered by blankets and wasn't moving. It could just be a pile of pillows covered by a blanket. Or it could be Max. Dylan hoped it was the latter as he walked over to the mass and patted it with his hand gently.

Suddenly, a head poked out of the pile of blankets. It was Max, but a very different Max from the Max she had been when Dylan had first met the flock. Her hair was a mess and there were uncountable tangles in it. Nudge would have a conniption if she saw it. There were bags under Max's eyes and her eyes seemed duller. Her skin was pale and she was skinny, probably because the only food she ever ate was what the flock members brought to her bedroom. They always brought her a lot of food, but she never ate all of it. In fact, there was the smell of rotten food in Max's room.

Max's eyes landed on Dylan, appraising him. "What so you want?" she said wearily. Dylan could tell that Max tried to make her tone steely, but she just sounded like someone who had suffered so much that she didn't really care about anything anymore.

"The flock wants their leader back." Dylan made no physical contact with Max in case she pushed him away, a likely possibility. He knew he had to take this slow.

"I was never gone," Max said, now with some of her old stubbornness and fire back in her voice. Dylan started panicking internally. He couldn't let Max become strong enough to become the flock leader again!

Dylan gestured to Max's disheveled appearance. "They don't want this."

Now Max looked slightly ashamed. "But I miss him." She curled up into a ball on the bed, as if wanting to hide from the world.

"I'll always be there for you, Max," Dylan said softly, hoping that statement wouldn't scare Max away.

Max looked at him in surprise. "But you know I can't love anyone ever again. You know that, right?"

Dylan sighed dramatically. "Max, I'm not asking for love. I'm just asking you that if you need a friend to talk to, I'm here."

Max's eyes looked sad. "I can't trust you Dylan, I'm sorry." She suddenly took an interest in her blanket and began picking at a loose thread.

Dylan began to stroke Max's hair gently. Surprisingly, she didn't pull away. Maybe she craved human (or at least part-human) contact more than he thought she did. No one, not even Max, would want to suffer completely alone. Dylan had been right. Max was weak now. She wanted someone to comfort her. And if the first person who cam to her was Dylan…

"Maybe I can take over the flock for you for a little bit? I won't be the official leader, but since you want to wait a little before facing them again, I can help keep order. Iggy will help me. I want to help you, Max." Dylan said this soothingly, hoping she would buy his lie. He crossed his fingers behind his back. It all depended on whether Max trusted him or not.

Max was already drifting off to sleep. The mere act of talking to someone tired her out. She didn't seem like she was in a good state of mind to make decisions right then. But that was what Dylan had wanted. "Okay," Max said sleepily, buying Dylan's lie. She was just glad someone would be willing to take the responsibility of leading the flock off her shoulders.

Dylan smiled crookedly. He had gotten what he wanted.

The School

Fang hurt all over. Not that he would ever admit that to anyone. He had been stabbed with needles, prodded with "scientific instruments", and made to run around a maze with a burning hot floor for countless of hours. And that was just that day. He didn't want to relive what had been done to him the first few days he had been brought here. He had forgotten that being experimented on hurt so much. They did this all "in the name of science".

Yeah, what a load of bullshit.

But what hurt the most were the videos that they had shown him a few weeks into his stay here. They were horrible. Each and every one of them featured Max and Dylan. Together. They were always kissing or cuddling or doing other things couples did. They had gotten together. Max had forgotten about Fang. Heck, she wasn't even trying to rescue him. And that hurt more than all his physical pain combined.

He wanted to go back and tell Max how much of an asshole Dylan was. He wanted to tell Max that Dylan had been the one to give the orders for the School to capture Fang. Fang tried not to think about the fact that Max might not care about that. She might want to be with Dylan anyway. She might want Fang out of her life. And judging from how passionately Max had been kissing Dylan in one of the videos Fang had been shown, that could very well be true.

But Max had to know the truth about her new boyfriend anyway. She deserved that, at least. And maybe, just maybe, she would hate him and she and Fang would be able to live happily ever after in some kind of perfect, fairy tale ending.

Yeah, when pigs fly.

But Fang desperately needed to tell Max those three words that he had always been too cowardly to say to her in person.

Fang began to devise a plan.

AN: I don't think Fang ever told Max he loved her in FANG. I don't remember much of that book. I'm trying to suppress most of my memories of reading it. It was one fanfiction cliché after another. It wasn't bad, just not good. Oh, the videos that were shown to Fang are obviously not the truth.

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