Maximum Ride (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lolwhatfuture) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
insomnis_veritas2013-01-14 05:07 pm
lolwhatfuture) wrote in insomnis_veritas2013-01-14 05:07 pm
Entry tags:
How's your new boy, does he know about me?
"We intend for you to found a dynasty."
You've heard this before. The end of the world is coming, everyone will die, you're expected to lead the survivors. So on and so forth. It's nothing new. But they're hiding something from you. Something your rat bastard father isn't prepared to say.
"And that dynasty will rule society until it has progressed enough to--"
"Overthrow the dynasty in a revolutionary, blood-filled coup!" Iggy cries eagerly. You all stare at him. It's good to know you'll have him backing you up on the whole being queen of the world business. Shit.
"Okay, you lost me," your mother says. "What exactly are you getting at?"
You'd love to know that, too. Your father, Jeb, and his creepy science pal Doctor Hans have something in store for you, and you're a little anxious to find out what it is.
"It's very simple, Dr. Martinez," says Hans. "We want Max to…breed."
Your mouth falls open.
Breed. Like cattle.
"To produce heirs," Hans continues. "Who will govern the world after she dies."
Everyone has fallen silent with shock. But Fang is gone. The only boy you've ever loved took off. Who the hell do they expect you to--
You catch sight of the beautiful blond boy standing silently to the side. Dylan. The cow-eyed, winged mate they designed and sprung on you out of nowhere, whose advances you've rejected vehemently. And violently. You see his discomfort. His guilt.
You're horrified.
"Oh, no."
"It makes sense, Max. You're a perfect match. I'd like you and Dylan to come with me to Germany, where I have a nice home waiting for you."
You can't speak. You're too stunned. Ruling the world, sure, you think you can handle that, but being told you have to have kids now, soon, because "we don't know how long your lifespan will be…"
"You can marry or not, as you wish, and in time produce children, heirs to your dynasty. To carry on your legacy, your leadership."
Your mother's voice pitches in, loud and firm. "Over my dead body, Hans."
The breath rushes from you in relief. "Oh, thank you. So it's not just me."
They really are just fucking insane.
"That's a crazy plan!" your mother shouts. "Max is barely fifteen years old! It's bad enough that you've saddled her with saving the world. Now you want her to do it with a baby on her hip?"
You feel an intense love for her, and gratitude.
They go on arguing for a short while. You barely have ears for it, but you can't help but spare one more glance at Dylan, and you feel your horror flicker back to life at the look of hope in his bright, turquoise eyes.
-------
She doesn't bother suppressing a scream of outrage. It was humiliating enough being seen as a weak thing in a cage, with as much defensive power as a drugged up infant monkey, but this was especially wrong. The foul mess that was her love life and familial relationships were not for public eyes, and the animalistic purpose those men had tried to brand her with was infuriating. For a moment she forgot she had any roommates. It was too satisfying to chuck the Forge across the room with a noisy, crunching clatter as it hit the corner.
The bedroom was cold, empty, and seemed to echo with mocking, as well as detached expectation. Like Hans.
Sighing, a hand running through her hair as Max took a breath to calm herself, she hardly knew what to do, or where to go, and instead stood there staring at the broken Forge while seeing something else entirely.
Whatever, she had to tell herself. Who freaking cares?
It had been up for a while according to the device, broadcasted while she slept. They'd get over it. Maybe even think it was funny. It's not like anyone could blame her for the twisted plan some jerkoff in a coat had come up with.
Except...one very irrational person.
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The child, as can be said quite incorrectly, could live off of the screams of others if he deemed them interesting enough. Creation blooms after destruction, and what better way to watch that birth than to cause it himself? Albedo lived for two things, and two things only.
His brothers; his twin. And the pure and simple fact of distracting himself from the pulsating reminder that all would fall and he would still be alive. Boredom was death, if but only a mental kind, and it was not one that Albedo was willing to risk.
So living with another, in this near-mundane kind of setting, was nothing but a distraction. A new type of lifestyle, a new type of interaction, to keep his mind's movements more ingrained in something other than death.
...The other person, however, had become nothing like a distraction. But that is a different story.
All that needs to be said is that Albedo saw everything, as he always would; that he heard the scream and the crash that came after, and he sat on the torn couch, head cocked to the side in idle thought, eyes hollow, and wondered. Wondered.
Killing someone to keep them always seemed so passé, but it had crossed his mind.
Surprisingly, the boy hadn't yet gone to her. He only had remained where he was, legs crossed beneath him, and wondered. Thought and pondered. On what next to do.
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A walk sounded right. Even if it was a few laps around the house, it would blow off steam and energy. She crossed the living room briskly then, saw Albedo sitting there from behind, still as a picture.
"Morning," was all Max could offer at first. It was gruff, throaty with irritation, until she took a drink of water from the kitchen and felt another small portion of weight lift from her chest, which had felt hot and pounding with a righteous fire in the blood.
Albedo, at least, had seemed to be lost in thought. Perhaps he hadn't seen? He'd not moved, anyway. Although...that in itself was odd. Finally she leaned back into the living room, cocked her head and dared, "Albedo? What's up with you?"
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"I was considering," he corrected. "Whether or not to kill you." To keep her. It would kill something in him all the same. Dead was dead--he had no misconceptions on that. But it would cease this kind of--
Pain. He swallowed, expression hardening for a beat. And since when had he given himself over to be hurt by people that weren't blood? Since when had he begun to see someone that he didn't share genetics with as family?
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It was a front she had a feeling he would see through. Still, it was better than no front at all. Her mind was working furiously to recall a time that felt so long ago, with words spoken on a dock and his hand in hers. I won't kill you. Did he remember? Did it matter?
"Oh yeah?" she said, and was pleasantly relieved when her tone was level. "What'd I do? Leave my shoes on the floor? Hog the covers?"
It was his voice that marked the danger. His words she could have taken with a tiny grain of salt, but the way he spoke, and looked, it was like a stamp of authenticity. The real deal in the way of a psychotic meltdown. And the worst part? If he was serious, she doubted he would exhibit the frantic outbreak of someone unhinged. Albedo struck her as someone who drew blood slowly and with precision. Someone who would not make a mistake and let his prey slip through his fingers.
Max shook the thought away. It was some type of joke. If not, her mind mapped the house, searching for an escape route by sheer instinct.
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Albedo sighed, once, then placed a hand over his eyes, lips curling in a silent snarl. "I won't kill you," he amended to his prior statement, angrily-- That more than anything else, was a show of his retreat from a more dangerous state. For one who seemed to live by emotions, it was when Albedo was the most apathetic that he was truly dangerous.
"I'll kill him, though," he bit out, keeping the emotion. His hand dropped from his face and he glared at her, viciously. "He's not one of your 'flock', is he? I'll kill him either way if he was thinking it."
Of scientists, of plans, Albedo yet has no words. A rival, someone to protect family from, that's easier to deal with, simpler to see. And for the moment, it was all he could focus on.
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"I hurt you?" Max nearly cried. "It's not like I dragged him off to some room afterwards!"
She stopped, then; sucked in a breath and decided to take a minute to think. Albedo was hurt. If she were to place her own feelings aside for just a second then she could see it, but it was seeing that caused her eyes to widen slightly and her lips to part. Because there it was: recognition in the misplaced jealousy, a dangerous thing with no direction, irrational and too much for him to handle in any healthy way because his mind had already been compromised.
Shaking her head, Max raked a hand through her hair and shifted uncertainly.
"He's not one of my flock." If nothing else, she had to establish at least that much. "And it's not his fault he thinks that way, he was made to-"
No, that wasn't right. Leave Dylan out of it. Protect him, if only because his naivety pulled some small feeling of obligation from her. What did Albedo expect to do, anyway? They were worlds away.
"Look, I'm not trying to hurt you. It wasn't my decision." Barring that, however… "What'll you do, kill anyone who tries to get close to me like that?"
If that were the case--and it was something Max could hardly contemplate--then she didn't know what to do. He was too precious to leave, as well as too dangerous, and she was too free to be contained. An uneasy feeling began to settle in her, so complicated that her mild recoiled at the idea of having to sort through it.
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Distance. A calculated distance, a backing from a connection, space placed between for safety. Max had explained, spoken in words and emotions both, and for a different person, it would be enough. It would be enough, to drop the pain and complications both, but Albedo--
(For him, it would never be enough.)
His gaze cleared, and what resided there was instead something calculating, considering. The tactician trained, the soldier born: the god-tainted child weighing his options with an experience belied by his years.
Albedo's head tilted, he watched her. Carefully. Closely. "I would and will," he responded finally. "I'll kill any soul who seeks to take you."
Didn't you know... what you were getting into?
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She pushed slowly from the wall, jaw tight and fists clenched, and while it should have been the first step out the door and far away Max stood her ground. It was their home, temporary and lacking extravagance as it was, and she'd made a promise several times over. Albedo could push if he wanted. Words alone were not yet enough to send her fleeing for the hills, despite instinct, even with the sensation of being picked apart and measured by some unfathomable entity that looked at her through him now.
Was that the thing that had touched him, and was there even a distinction between the two? The way he looked at her certainly wasn't familiar, and it was at that point she realized that maybe she'd been wrong. Thus far Max assumed she'd taken him in and nurtured him with time, attention, affection; everything that had eventually come naturally in responding to his companionship. And in turn, had his inclination been to wrap her in his possession and construct walls around them, to fend off all others and guard against some pain he already knew? She felt then that he would shut the box around them if she were passive enough to allow it.
If there were one flaw Max did not have, though, it was passivity. Body language invited confrontation, sensible or destructive. There was no running, only pushing back.
"No one takes or gives me away, I decide where I go!" she snarled. "And can we please get off the killing kick? You can't just do in anyone who glances at us the wrong way, we'll have a pile of stiffs at the door in no time."
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As if wondering how she will reject him. As if wondering how he would teach her to not do so again.
"And you'll decide," he continued, as if there hadn't been any pause. "You'll decide that a man is what you want, and you'll be charmed by a stranger or a friend, and the time we spend will lessen. In increments at first, barely noticeable, but still there. Moments and time slipping away, and eventually it will be days, weeks, more and more until he is the one you touch with fondness, and he is the one you go to and sit beside."
The monologue held another meaning altogether. Albedo has never spoke on their affection, has never acknowledged when he's cried and she held him. But here, he would call to affection, to habit, to need, and place it before her in uneven strides. Place it before her like she needed to adjust when even he knew--
How this seemed. How it was coming off. He was insane, not crazy. He could follow the trails of instability back to the source.
"You started this," he said, and it seemed almost sad. "I told you I had never had a friend, and you replied with an offer. To be as much a friend as I was to you. No one had ever offered that, Max!"
He hadn't planned to yell, and it showed, the surprise apparent on his face. He touched his mouth as if in shock; all that Albedo said and did was carefully planned, and yet--
His face crumbled, he tried to hold it together through anger. "You'll decide to leave me, in one way or the other, and I can't. Not anymore." He looked up at her, pleading in his gaze. "I can't let go."
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Either way, he's never exhibited such emotion around her before. Not like this, with a loss of control and a passion he can hardly hold in, so that when he's silent she has nothing. Only a stunned stillness. A boyfriend. That was his fear, was that she might fall prone to some stranger's wiles someday and gradually shut Albedo away. It was insulting on some level, that he should fear her to be so shallow, so ready to be whisked away by the one thing that always, without a doubt, caused trouble. Men.
"It's too late for that, isn't it?" Max finally sputtered. "I never heard you complaining that day on the docks, or any time afterwards, so now you've got me, and I'm not leaving, you're not leaving, and I sure as hell am not ditching you for some bundle of trouble with nice hair and a cute smile!"
Albedo may have been shocked by his outburst, but Max felt no shame in yelling. It was almost a habit after so many years of browbeating the younger ones, but now her voice grew steadily louder, eyes wilder, stance more imposing. One thing was certain, and that was that she had no shortage of feelings when it came to this subject.
"When have you ever seen me bat my eyes at some guy on the street? I've come back to this house, to you, every day, because I choose to! Don't you get it?"
The words were choked down. She seemed to realize the extent to which her voice had been raised. It would have been too easy to let it all spill out, to scream and beat it into him, that he was precious, important, that she took for granted that he would always be there and didn't know what she would do if someday he wasn't. So with some difficulty Max straightened and turned her face to the ceiling, eyes closed while she counted to ten. The need in his eyes had become too much. Emotions, feelings, none of it was her strongpoint, and the look on Albedo's face stirred something she couldn't put eloquently. It was too hard. She wanted to give into base comfort, to wrap him in her arms and push away the doubt, but he had to understand. He had to carry the words with him when she couldn't be there to offer some sort of touch.
"No matter what world we're in," Max said, as slowly she opened her eyes again to return his gaze, "I'll find you. I'll track you down, and don't you ever doubt that. Don't you ever doubt me."
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Don't you ever doubt me.
The boy gave a sound between a moan and a sob, and clenched his teeth, squeezed his hands into wrists, and he would rather have yelling, violence, emotions, if he could only understand--
"I don't get it!" he repeated, heated and small. "I don't understand any of it at all!"
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Some instinctual part of her nearly backed away when he advanced. Just barely, though, she managed to stay. There's something incredibly human in him then that's stunning, scary, but thrilling and honest and so priceless she can't help but feed off his fear and frustration until the house is filled with their shouting.
"You're such a genius, you're so flipping smart, but you don't even get what's right in front of you. Why do you have to think so much?" Her hands clench as if itching to strangle or shake him. Maybe both. "You're-"
The words catch somewhere in her chest. Max wants to shove him, knock him around, rough him up for causing so much strife inside her, but her hands are kept at her sides and her voice comes out in a flurry as if it's all built up in the span of a moment.
"You're freaking important, okay? You matter--to me--and you don't just turn your back on someone who matters! I like being around you. I like being here, even if you are totally crazy and unpredictable. I don't want to leave!"
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And then, tell him that she cared.
Tell him that everyone in his world had been wrong. That you don't walk away from the people you bonded to.
He had made himself believe that. Made himself believe that everyone would walk away, because then it was easier, then it was less painful-- Because if everyone would always leave, then the fact that Rubedo did so was something that always would have happened, no matter what Albedo did, no matter how things played out. There was nothing he could have done to stop it. In every reality, Albedo would have clung crying to his twin's hand, and Rubedo still would have pulled away. There was nothing he could have done.
(Not with Sakura or 623 or the Conflict or anything else--)
And here, she would tell him otherwise. Rip his world asunder and declare him important in the same breath. He finally realized he was crying, giant, sobbing breaths that made him seem younger than he was, and he hated it, he had stopped crying a long time ago, and that this girl could make him cry like this--!
"Are you stupid?! Don't you understand anything?!" He wiped a hand roughly across his face, then flung it out to the side, arms wide. "I'm the villain here, Maximum Ride! I'm the one you should be running from! I'm the one who wouldn't have cared an ounce if the 'sheep' in my tale fell to nothing!" A callback to their first meeting, an example with a fatal flaw that even he hadn't noticed. "I could kill you--!"
His eyes widened in fear--he remembered Nigredo, remembered pummeling his baby brother's form from the rush of U-DO in his system, remembered Nigredo lashing out to rend him, kill him dead, but Albedo still. Still remembered the feel of Nigredo beneath him.
Albedo's lower jaw quivered. He drew up a hand to cover his mouth, gave his last words in a whisper. "...I could really hurt you." So leave. Just go. Run far away. Make it easier so he doesn't have to accept her words.
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She'd always figured that he would not seek to harm her without intending to, maybe in response to whatever he perceived to be betrayal, yet now his every move and sob testified to some doubt in his ability to stop himself should he feel an inkling to harm. If Albedo still entertained thoughts of her murder and doubted his self-control...
"What do you mean?"
The simple question sounded hard and demanding. With her knowlegde of his past too limited to assume a reason herself, Max could only think of all the time they'd spent in each other's presence, of every teasing jest and comforting touch passed between. If it meant nothing, and every moment spent holding her hand was cut with a barely suppressed urge to maim--she resented the pang in her chest at the thought of it.
She couldn't remember at what point she'd allowed herself to become so vulnerable to him. Like an idiot. And she felt like an idiot, standing there with her arms hanging uselessly at her sides, numb with the near-undeniable compulsion to reach out and sooth Albedo until he was calm again. But she could not afford that kind of trigger compassion, not just yet, no matter how inclined she was towards him.
The next words came out sounding thicker. "Is that what you think about in your free time? Hurting me?"
It couldn't be. Not after everything. Max tried to push the hand away from his mouth and force him to bear the truth of his terror. He couldn't hide from himself now that he'd already blurted so much, and as Max spoke she became angrier, her nails raking against the skin of his wrist as she fumbled under the pressure of what he'd said.
"Bullcrap. We've been around each other this long and nothing's happened! Why would you do it now? Are you trying to scare me off?"