I was just talking to my friend on Twitter this morning about how perfect these two are for each other... And then I find this with rationalthinking!Fang and leaderly!Max and couldn't help it. It makes more sense than JP's (-cough-ghostwritermuch-cough-) new books. Seriously? Give Angel a camera, and then have it staged that she dies but she really doesn't and is being held captive? You're totally ripping off Echoes Of War;) I'm on to you! Haha

Disclaimer:Obviously I don't own. The last three books, or whenever he started the Global Warming spiel, would be totally different and address actual issues. Like Iggy's blindness, Gazzy not being noticed or nobody listening to Nudge or Max losing her grip. -Sigh-

Maybe he had always loved her. Maybe there was no maybe in the equation.

Fang had always loved Max. He had tried to convince himself otherwise, and had, for a few short years, fooled himself into believinghe didn't care for her as anything more than a friend. And then all his carefully constructed beliefs, theories, and ideas came tumbling down around him in what Ella and Nudge would call a 'hot mess'.

Which leads him here, two years after his break down, watching her help a seventeen year old Nudge with complicated schematics for a super computer. Her hair is longer, blonde, and wavy, her milk chocolate eyes are warm. She's positively glowing and looks happier than he ever remembers seeing her.

Max was a woman now, taking care of them having given her the greatest potential to grow, but her physical appearances had finally caught up sometime in the past year. The leader had gone from a scruffy teenager to a capable, normal looking young woman. It amazed Fang, really.

As if feeling his eyes on her, Max looked over her shoulder at him, eyes locking with his. The world freezes and both of the twenty-or-so-olds get lost in each other's eyes momentarily, before both jolt slightly, and look quickly away.

He's loved her as long as he's known her, since she was dragged into the room he was held in, kicking and screaming, so small but still a force to be reckoned with. He'd had his oppurtunity at her too, but he blew it with denial and insecurity. Now he was starting over, back at home, waiting to swing his bat at the first chance. And this time? He was going to do it right.