When I wake up, Fang has left the room, and it is not yet dawn. Still pitch-black outside. I hear the same agonizing infant cries that I had heard when I woke up earlier, and it makes me cringe. Somehow, I just know that this time, they want something more than just me, myself and I. So I drag myself out of bed and into the nursery, dimming the light on but low, so as not to traumatize them even more. I pick Maximus up from the crib with the penguin and polar bear mobile and bounce him a bit, trying to calm him. I sniff him, but he doesn't smell and he's not wet. By the power of deduction, I realize something simple yet terrifying all the same.
He's hungry.
So, picking up Kane and Aidan and trying to quiet them down a bit, I sit down in the rocking chair, nestling all three of them in my lap. Shaking, I gently pick up Maximus, but now, bring him up under the shirt I'm wearing, which is a plain dark blue t-shirt of Fang's, in the hopes that my son finds what he's looking for. When he does, it startles me, because I'm not used to the feeling. I'll save you the graphic details. After a while, though, I relax and gently caress the infants on my lap, who are impatiently waiting their turns. They squirm a bit and whimper, but otherwise, they are calm.
After a few minutes, it seems that Maximus has finished, because he's squirming and trying to get out of my shirt. I make him trade places with his sister and complete the same ritual with her, and then, after a few long and slightly uncomfortable minutes, do the same with Kane. Once they've all had their fill, I put each one of them back in their crib, grab my half of the baby monitor, and turn off the light. When I get out the door, gently closing it behind me, my mother laughs softly and startles me. I jump nearly six feet in the air. All I can see of her through the darkness is her eyes, which are a warm, chocolate brown, like me.
For a moment, it seems like her chocolate has hardened.
"Be ready to get up in about two hours. You'll have to do that again," she says, and she laughs again. I start to stalk off into the dark, now angry at her, not only for startling me, but for watching me. But when I reach my bed and realize that Fang is still missing from it, I collapse and begin to weep almost inaudibly, shuddering.
I hear someone crawling into the bed with me, but then it's not Fang coming with mercy and a warm, comfortable embrace, but my mother, coming without her laughs this time.
"What do you want? I've already had such a great start to my night, why don't you just top it off!" I practically shout at her. She shushes me, nodding at the door to the nursery across the hall, and I nod back, biting my lip to put a stopper to my tear ducts.
"I'm sorry, sweetie," she says softly, pulling me into the embrace I had wanted from Fang. The stopper pops off with the efforts of holding back my waterfall. I cry into my mother's shoulder.
After a long time, without even realizing it, I'm crying into Fang's shoulder.
Sleep does not come for me within those two hours.
Mercy, does, yes.
But not sleep.
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Maximum Ride: Picking Up the Pieces (A Maximum Ride Fanfic)
FanfictionThey took her away two and a half years ago. As far as the flock could tell, Max had disappeared. But now, Max has returned to the flock with A LOT on her hands - more than just trying to rejoin the flock and move on from her past. What happens now...
