Summary: Jeb's curious. Recently after Ari's funeral, he sits down to ask Max a question that he hopes she will never have to answer. "If you were given a choice between saving the world and saving your flock, which would you choose?"

I'm Curious

"Max?"

Max grunted, acknowledging that, Yeah, she'd heard Jeb call her, but she wouldn't at all mind if Jeb would suddenly stop talking to her, so she could pretend that he didn't exist. Out of her peripheral vision, she saw Jeb roll his eyes, a movement that Max very much resented because he'd gotten that from her, and how dare he use her own facial expression against her?

"Don't get mad," Jeb said with almost no impatience, having dealt with Max's impertinence before. "I'm only curious about something. There are no hidden semantics; I'm not trying to imply anything, or dropping you hints. I—"

"What do you want, Jeb?" Max cut him off, shooting him a look that told him to Get to the Point, and Quickly.

"I want to know. If you were given a choice between saving the world and saving your flock, which would you pick?"

Max hadn't been expecting that, but her jaw lingered open for only a brief second before she answered. Without even having to think—except to wonder why the hay Jeb would ask something like that—Max knew her answer.

"Easy. My flock."

She turned to face Jeb now, intrigued despite her initial emotion of irritation. Jeb looked at her with a hint of a smile on his usually expressionless features.

"No hesitation?" he asked.

"Yup," Max agreed with some bitter vehemence. "No hesitation. Angel said…" Max surveyed Jeb with suspicion, but he seemed sincere. Teehee. There's a new one: Jeb Batchelder being sincere. "Angel said that we'd survive when the baddies blow the world out of the sky. Besides"—and here, Max shifted under Jeb's stare. He seemed so interested in her answer that it was a wonder he hadn't extracted a pad of Post-Its and began furiously scribbling notes— "My flock is my world."

Jeb pounced on top of Max's words. "You wouldn't feel guilty about leaving billions of people for dead? You wouldn't regret that you left Earth in the hands of some of the cruelest minds in the world?"

Max narrowed her eyes in annoyance. "It's my flock, Jeb," she said, as though it explained everything. And didn't it? Didn't he understand? Oh. This was Jeb. Of course he didn't. "If I have a choice, I will never be separated from them. Even if they say I don't have a choice, I'm never leaving their side."

"Hm."

Max didn't like that mocking grunt. It sounded as though Jeb was challenging her.

"What? What's the question for? And why the sarcastic grunt?"

"I'm not being sarcastic," Jeb said with all the innocence in the world. Like he hadn't pulled that one over her before.

"Yes, you are!" Max insisted. "You think I'm stupid, don't you? You think that my devotion to my family will end up destroying everything that you've worked so hard for. That I'll be too focused on my family to save the world properly. Well at least—"

"I don't think that, Max. If you'd set aside your hatred for me, you'd actually see that I admire you. I'm jealous of you, actually."

Like Angel, he was, setting his "innocent" brown gaze on her and not giving up for all the snappy comments she threw at him. And, just like with Angel, after a few moments of his persistent stare, Max felt shields inside of her breaking down.

"Uh… uh…" And where was her snappy comeback? Her only weapon tossed to the sidelines, out of her reach, leaving her defenseless to Jeb's seemingly heart-felt words and his affectionate gaze.

"That's right, Maximum. Sometimes, I wish to be you."

"No, Jeb, you really don't." Max's voice held a hint of exasperation, worn out from all of this… this… warmth that Jeb evinced. Was it because Ari's funeral had been yesterday? Did he feel like he had to have a heart to heart with his only kid left? Max felt for him, then. Maybe it was the reminder of Ari's recent death that made her switch lenses, but now it was Jeb who looked worn out. Though his gaze still held that seemingly genuine understanding, behind it was a sense of weariness.

Max shook it off. Feeling sorry for Jeb was not something that she was used to and it made her kind of uncomfortable. She continued with her rant, actually trying not to sound as irked inside as she felt, but failing miserably as her passion for the topic shined through with each second.

"It kind of sucks being me, actually, which you should know by now seeing as how you're the one who made my life so crappy. But then, I guess that you can't know how hard it is to have to make decisions that will affect not only your life but the world's."

"That's where you're wrong, Maximum. I know exactly how that feels."

"And—" Max continued as though she hadn't heard him because now she was fired up. Jeb should have known not to get her fired up. "Now I have to make sure that the people I love are safe all the while creepy mad-scientists are trying to tear us apart? You don't understand, Jeb, because you've never had that happen to you. You're a whitecoat, sitting in your comfortable La-Z-Boy, watching me run around doing your dirty work. What that you love have you possibly had to give up or sacrifice? Do you even know how to love anymore? Did you ever?"

Silence.

Erm, perhaps Max had gone a tad too far.

Jeb lost his understanding look and gained his usual impression of a mirror. In which Max saw herself and how she had taken it too far. In which Max saw the guilt that now scratched uncertainly at her insides. In which Max saw too much, and had to shift her gaze to somewhere above his left shoulder.

Finally, Jeb spoke. Contradicting his blank expression, his voice was heavy with emotion and vehemence.

"You forget, Maximum, that I love you. And I loved Ari."

Just after Ari's funeral. Something like sorrow caught Max's chest and constricted it. She didn't tear her gaze away from Jeb, though. This was rare. So incredibly rare and so never going to happen again that Max wanted to catch everything.

"I envy you, Max, because for you, the decision is simple. The people you love, over the world, every time. You say that I can never know a hundredth of what you feel because I've never had to make a sacrifice like the ones I force you to make every day. Untrue. I had to make a decision and a sacrifice. This is why I am jealous of you, Max. You chose the people you love. I chose the world.

"I was so convinced that if I left him there, at the School, that it would be okay. After all, I was doing my part in setting up for saving the world. I thought that in taking you six away I was leaving Itex behind, but I carried with me in that decision one of their most hypnotizing, and dangerous ideals. 'It's All for the Greater Good'. I somehow managed to convince myself that leaving Ari, letting Ari be subjected to what I was saving you six from, was for the Greater Good. That it would all work out.

"This conviction stayed with me, that I could keep doing horrible things to Ari, or step to the sidelines and watch horrible things being done to him, and think stupidly that It Was All Right, because It Wasn't About Me, or Ari, or anything so small. It was so much bigger than me. Bigger than Ari, and I let that attitude shroud any paternal instincts I had. For instance, when he was three, and I was about to sneak off with you six to the mountains. My gut told me to run off with Ari, too. I'd stolen you six, why couldn't I take him as well?

"Why didn't I take him as well?

"Now, it's the day after my son's funeral. He is only seven years old. And I can't help but feel like I've killed him."

Jeb looked in Max's eyes, and she was partly afraid, but partly awed. Jeb was shaking. For once he was showing emotion. Max didn't know what to do with that, so she waited .

"I have been wrong about this one, Maximum. The Director and everyone who has spoken against it has been wrong. Love is the most important thing. I can't honestly say what I would do if I had to make the choice over again, but I can help you on this one. If it's between Love and the World, choose Love, Max. For your little brother, choose Love."

A/N: I'm not saying that Jeb's decision is "right". I'm saying that Jeb is desperate. His son just died, and with the background that I've laid out for Jeb, he believes that it's his fault. Yes, Jeb is OOC, and okay, maybe Max is too. But I had two issues I wanted to deal with.

1) What if Max was faced with that proposition? Her Flock or the world? Which would she choose? I chose her flock because that's the way I needed this story to swing in order to deal with the second issue

2) Jeb's regret and feelings of guilt about Ari's death. This is how I think it would be, anyway.

Thing is, I'm not entirely sure that Max WOULD choose her Flock. NOW she can say that she would. But if faced with the actual question, what would her answer really be, I wonder?