Wings: A Maximum Ride Fanfiction

This is it guys, we've reached the end - get ready for a long one.

*

I woke up to bright sunlight shinning through my window and into my eyes. Squeezing them shut I stretch luxuriously, enjoying the feeling of the mattress beneath me. Hugging my blanket closer, I breathe in the smell of wood and the gentle aroma of coffee that drifts up from downstairs.

When was the last time I had a real bed to sleep in?

Yawning, I force myself awake and slide out of bed, stumbling bleary-eyed down the stairs and wincing at my still aching muscles.

"Morning, sleepyhead," Iggy teased from the kitchen where he was expertly cooking scrambled eggs in a pan. A smile played at my lips at the image - not to mention the thought of some real hot food. "Help yourself to some coffee."

"What time is it?" I ask, pouring myself a fairly big portion.

"Nine," Max responded, walking in from outside with Angel. "It's beautiful up here, by the way." She turned towards my mom, who I realized was seated at the kitchen table. "Thank you for letting us stay here." Then she turned her attention to me. "Everyone else is still sleeping. I thought sleeping in late was a luxury we all deserve."

I nod in agreement, padding over to the window and taking in the view that I'd been seeing my whole life, although not for the last year, since we last came up. Situated high up on a mountain, the house overlooked a sprawling valley flooded with water for a reservoir. When I was a kid, my absolute favorite thing was to come up here and finally take flight, away from the constraints of the city, and soar above the dense green forest and golden fields and into the low hanging clouds. After a nostalgic moment, I turn back inside.

My mom held a cup of tea between her hands, running her fingers up and down the smooth ceramic sides. She smiled at me. Her eyes still held that dull, exhausted look, but it was much better now. It was our fourth day after our escape from Itex, but we'd only just arrived here last night; there were more than a few things we'd had to figure out before we could relax.

As soon as we'd escaped, we were the subjects of a huge manhunt. This meant, unfortunately, that we couldn't stop flying for another couple hours. Added onto our own wounds and the weight of carrying my mom and one of the more damaged eraser children, it was excruciating. But we couldn't risk anything less. Luckily, we seem to have caused enough damage that at least a portion of Itex's attention were on the simple task of seeing to their own injuries and broken facility.

We'd reached a small town in Arizona in the middle of the night and checked into a crappy motel with the last of the cash I'd had on me. There, we assessed our wounds (nothing too bad) and my mom. Although obviously still out of it, she'd already regained some of her strength - surprisingly, Itex seemed to have dealt with whatever wounds they'd inflicted on her, probably in an effort to keep her alive. Most of the damage we'd seen rescuing her had come from recently being drugged, which we decided would be best dealt with by giving her time to recuperate - she was already snapping out of it. Besides, we wanted to avoid hospitals as best we could.

The next thing to do was decide what to do with the eraser children. In the end, they decided for themselves that they wanted to go off on their own - the oldest of them turned out to be around 13, and seeing as Max was around that age when she started caring for her flock it didn't seem too unlikely that they could survive on their own, and they were very obviously uncomfortable in our presence. For some reason.