Now You Walk With Your Wolves (Like You Got Nothing To Lose)
Day 6 - Alternate Universes/Canon Divergence
#maxride hc prompt week
title cred: the dream's in the ditch by deer tick
Tagging: @maximum-ride
content warnings: canon compliant child neglect / abuse, body horror
Sometimes Max thinks about her Flock. She wonders if they’re happy, or if they’re thriving. She wonders where they’re at, but that’s usually when she shuts the notion down. That’s painful to think about, especially when she’s still stuck in her cage.
She doesn’t even get visits from Jeb anymore, because he’d gone with them. He’d broken them out and left her in the medium-sized dog kennel. At least Ari comes to see her sometimes. Well, when he can get away from his Wranglers. (That’s what they call the interns that have to keep track of him because he’s Jeb’s son and they can’t do what they really want to do which is strangle him.)
Max looks forward to Ari’s visits. He’s the same age that Gaz would be, and it makes her feel weirdly warm inside. It’s not that she’s using Ari to replace Gaz, but it’s still nice. He told her, once, that she’s his sister. Max hasn’t decided whether she believes him or not, but… The proof is there. They have the same hazel eyes and the same dark hair. Their jawlines are the same as well, but Max’s skin is darker than Ari’s.
In the summer, when he’s been playing outside, they could pass as siblings easily. In the winter, when he’s pale and stuck inside, Max can’t see the resemblance as well. That’s when she’s not sure if she can trust him, or if he’s old enough to be under Jeb’s thumb like the rest of the scientists are. In the winter, she stays at the back of her cage, grooming her wings from the strangely-timed molt. (Turns out, when you have lethally low vitamin-d levels and your wings never know what time of year it is because you’re stuck in a temperature-controlled room, your molts happen whenever they want.) It’s in the summer and spring that she ventures toward the bars and watches Ari do whatever he’s brought to do. Sometimes he teaches her about what he’s learning, but most of it goes over her head.
She’s never gone to school before, so she doesn’t know a lot of what he explains. But Ari is smart and the way his eyes light up when he’s explaining fractions or the water cycle is enough for Max to keep her trap shut and let him talk. He’s so passionate and Max isn’t going to be the one to strip that from him. She’s sure that Jeb does a well enough job of that, anyways. She wants Ari to grow up and be healthy, because of all of the kids she’s had the pleasure of knowing he has the best chance.
The longer she’s stuck in the cage with Jeb off somewhere with her Flock, the more she wonders if that’s not true, though. If the Flock is out there somewhere, somehow in school on the down-low with Jeb as their father. If they’re eating right, learning to fly, sleeping in beds. It doesn’t matter, really, because Max knows she’s never going to see them again. It’ll be her and Ari against the world. (Especially when the Wranglers build him a nest of pillows and blankets in the crate next to her and he starts sleeping there. When he wakes up screaming, Max uses the lullabies she created for Angel - the baby that had been in her care for only a few weeks before the escape. Max had named her, and maybe that was why it hurt so much to lose the infant.)
Neither is sure why he’s there, or why he stops learning, but it’s not so bad. Max has forgotten what it’s like to have another sentient being in the room with her. The Whitecoats aren’t really good at creating anything besides bird kids and Erasers that have any sort of longevity and comprehension ability, so Ari is a blessing.
It helps that when year three comes and goes, they bond as brother and sister. Max tells him stupid jokes that she used to share with the Flock. Ari tells him about video games he used to be able to play - before he was stuck in the cage next to her. They talk about Jeb, and what it means to have a father. Sometimes when they do that they have to lay down and not talk for a second because they’re only… Well, they’re kids. Ari is eight by that time and Max is fifteen. (They think. It’s been a long time since either of them has seen a calendar. Time passes differently in the lab without windows.)
Sometimes Ari gets the courage to ask about the Flock. It makes Max stop and bite her lip because he’s not being malicious about it. She looks at his wide, hazel eyes and his skinny fingers sticking through the plastic holes on the side of his cage and her heart hurts. He is so trusting, so young, so naive to the way that being on this side of the lab works.
So she tells him about the Flock. Even when they take him away and bring him back and he’s different, seems darker, she tells him about them. Fang. Iggy. Nudge. Gazzy. Angel. Their names burn her throat to say, but she says them. Even when Ari begins growing too fast, outgrowing cage after cage, he asks about them. The first time Ari doesn’t ask after them is after his surgery. Max watches him get wheeled into the lab and stuffed into a cage. He is bigger than a full-grown man and his hair has grown shaggy and wild. When he snores at night, she can see fangs and extra teeth growing from his gums.
They both know it, but neither speaks it into the air. The Wranglers have made Ari an Eraser. Max wonders if it’s because Jeb is gone that Ari has become a target. She knows that the Erasers could be more potent and dangerous if they could be created after birth - there would be no expiration dates. (She hopes, late at night when the lights go down, tears cresting in her eyes. Max doesn’t believe in God, but she can’t believe that anything would be so cruel to give her a brother to replace the children she lost and then to take him away.)
Two more years come and go. Ari gets stronger. More sullen. He gets more scars and bigger cages. He stops teaching Max things, and she stops telling him old jokes. They both lose track of how many years it’s been since he was able to sit outside of her door and do homework - everything Before Cage is blurry and hidden by everything After Cage.
Sometimes, at night, Max thinks about her Flock. She wonders if they’re happy, or if they’re thriving. She wonders where they’re at, but that’s usually when she shuts the notion down. That’s painful to think about, especially when she’s still stuck in her cage next to her brother.
