Tattered Wings

Home

Max flew, and flew, and flew, hoping that JARVIS had kept his word and let her have an hours head start, because she really didn't want to be followed. She couldn't go back, and play happy families for Dylan to ruin it and have it taken from her again. It wasn't fair. She had lost two families already because of that poor excuse for a living being, she didn't need to lose a third. She lost track of how far she had flown until she realised that she had been subconsciously making her way to the old meeting point of the flock, where they would fly with the hawks, and learnt new tricks to aid their flight, almost smiling as she remembered how this had caused Nudge to become vegetarian after watching the hawks eat the rats, how graceful Fang had looked, swooping in and out of the swarm of birds, as silent as he always was. To this day, Max was certain that he was part shadow. Was. The fact that he was dead, along with the rest of her flock, once again came crashing down on her, weighing on her shoulders like ten tonnes of rocks, forcing her to find the small cave that the flock had holed up in once, reunited as a family. It was as they had left it all those years ago, and though it was freezing outside, the bitter kind of cold that seeped into your bones and made you feel like you would never be warm again, Max curled up, making herself as small as possible, and couldn't help but feel like she belonged here. She belonged here, alone. They were all safer without her anyway. Everyone she loved ended up dead, or left. She was better off alone. Or at least....that's what she kept telling herself. 

They had already been searching for hours for Max before JARVIS was able to get the location on Max, and when he did, Tony brought Steve up on the comms, realising that he would never get his motorbike to where she was, and honestly, how did she get there so fast?

"Steve?"

"Where is she Tony? You found her, right?" Tony knew that Steve was still on the road, because the noise of the engine was evident over the earpieces.

"You're not going to be able to get there Steve. She's in a canyon somewhere. No way will your motorbike get over there, not hundreds of miles away a few states over. I'll bring her home, I promise."

There was a moment of silence on Steve's behalf, before an almost silent sigh of resignation came, and the squealing of motorbike tires was heard.

"I'll head back to the tower. Make sure Peter is alright and that Dylan is safely contained until we can get him to S.H.I.E.L.D. Just....bring her home, Tones. Be careful."

"I always am." Tony cut the connection, continuing to fly in the direction of where Max's GPS signal was coming from. Now he just had to get there first before whoever was after her found her. Godammit. There wasn't much on paper about where Max had come from, but Tony, being the amazing genius that he was, managed to hack into some very very very private government files that weren't supposed to exist, and found out about the whole angel experiment, and how the babies were taken from their mothers, and how Max, poor little Max, had been forced to grow up and take care of five others at such a young age, making sure they all made it through the horrendous tortures that they were all subjected to. And how every family she had ever had always disappeared. But not this one. Tony was not going to let Max lose this family because of one dickhead and his mad scientist father; she deserved more than that.

Eventually, Tony managed to find Max tucked away in a tiny crevice, shivering, with glassy, glazed over eyes, and damn, that was not a good sign at all. He shed the suit on the thin ledge of rock that jutted out, and managed to fit himself inside the cave, which was a lot bigger than it looked from the outside.

"Max?" He asked delicately, gently shaking her shoulder and keeping his distance in case she lashed out in fear. For a moment, there was no reaction, and Tony feared that he was too late, and that they had already lost her, yet just as he gave up hope, Max closed her eyes, and opened them shortly afterwards, leaving them a lot more clear than they had previously been. "Max?" Tony asked again, edging closer to the shivering girl, giving a warm smile of encouragement, not knowing what else to do. Damn, he was not good in situations like this.

"T....Tony? Why....why 're y...you he-re?" The whispered reply almost made Tony cry in relief, except, Starks didn't cry, so he didn't, instead choosing to brush Max's hair out of her face, keeping his smile on his face.

"Why do you think I'm here? I've come to get you, silly, I've come to take you home."

"N....no."

"What do you mean no?" The refusal wasn't something that he had been expecting, though in hindsight, he probably should have. Max had run away, after all.

"You....you a...all ha....hate me, now." Max tried to explain through chattering teeth, and Tony cursed himself for not trying to warm her up before, taking off his jacket and laying it across her, laying himself bare to the cold elements outside their little crevice.

"Oh, Max, no, we don't hate you, none of us hate you. What on Earth made you think that we hate you?"

"Dyl.....Dylan....he t....told P...Peter. He....he t...told him......I kill.....i killed m....my brother. It....it was an accident. But....but he d....died. And....and then....then died again.....and.....I....I couldn't s...save him. Just li....like m...my flock." Tears began falling from Max's eyes, and she didn't even move to wipe them away. This was her accepting that it was her fault that Ari died, and that her flock died, and that she was such a failure that she was unable to save them. She couldn't let the same thing happen to her new family. It just wasn't fair.

Tony's face almost, almost, crumpled at the brutal honestly Max was showing, and even though he didn't know all that much about his adoptive daughter, there was one thing he did know for certain; none of this was her fault. Now all he had to do was try to convince her of that. "Max. It wasn't your fault that your brother died. It wasn't your fault that Dylan became a crazy psycho and murdered your flock. There was nothing that you could have done to prevent either of those things from happening. And you know what? I'm not letting him ruin this for you. We are your family now. We are your home, and we are going to protect you with everything we have, because we are an awesome, badass, superhero team, you got that?"

"You'll le....leave." Max wheezed out, closing her eyes against her tears, so that she could pretend they weren't falling and showing her weaknesses. "Mom...mom and Ella left. Dyl....Dylan con-vinced them.....that i was working f...for the sch....school. Th....they left."

"Well we're not going to. We're going to stay by your side, alright, we won't leave. I promise."

Tony held his breath, waiting, and hoping that Max would believe him, that she would agree to come home with him. Minutes went by in silence, until a minuscule movement of Max's head nodding assent broke the spell.

"Come on then, little bird. Let's get you home."