Soldier Boy with Silver Eyes by Starlight Disaster

A/N: Just something to shift writers block; you like this try "Battery Acid"!

I like it, if you do to, hit the button and review!

The end of the world comes in a tangle of blood soaked feathers, the smell of cordite and the scream that tears itself loose from her throat and she can't stop.

Itex? Dead as dust, along with the Director but honestly that doesn't matter.

Jeb? Bad guy turned good but in the end he was so weak. He left his son and then he left her because he's a scientist and in the end he just doesn't understand.

They all cried that day.

Nudge saw the gun concealed in the man's hand and she screamed a warning so loud that it hurt her ears.

But no warning was loud enough, no frantic scream from a child's mouth could travel faster than a bullet. And the metal, the cruel, red-hot shard of fire bit into Max's chest, straight through the heart and there was so much blood. Her eyes widened in shock and Fang screamed her name, his face twisted in pain. He loved her, he loved her, he loved her.

And she fell, dropping like a stone, tumbling through the cool dusk sky, falling head over heels until she crashed to the ground and broke like a discarded child's doll.

The helicopter was blown up by one of Iggy's bombs.

Too bloody late.

The funeral is a quiet affair of the heart.

Black velvet dress. Black plimsolls on her feet. Tears leaking from red-rimmed eyes and splashing onto the hard, hard ground. They shatter like diamonds before sinking into the soil leaving nothing but a tiny droplet clinging to a grass stem, reflecting the world in miniature.

Fang doesn't cry. He's too numb for that. Eyes like ebony, he's so blank. The world could explode and he wouldn't notice. His world's already ended.

Iggy does. His sightless eyes blink desperatly, fighting the wave of emotion that threatens to overwhelm him. Gotta stay strong.

Angel and Gazzy sob and sob and sob, keening like birds, clinging to each other for support.

Nudge cries until she has no tears left and then curls into a ball, trying to hold herself together as the world falls apart around her.

Dusk, twelve days and three hours since the bullet struck.

Fang holds on, mechanically leading the flock because it's his duty.

Iggy takes second-in-command, holding them together, stopping Fang hurling himself over a cliff.

Nudge holds the little ones and tries to stop them hurting.

And little soldier-boy, without a general marches like the lost thing he is.

Nudge has changed.

Max's memory has been split in three.

Fang; the leader, the strong one, the fighter.

Iggy; the glue that holds the flock together.

Nudge; the motherly one. Wendy to the lost boys.

Spreading tawny wings Nudge leaps off the edge of the cliff and flies and flies and flies.

Dusk gathers around her like a shroud and she flies, her wings beating up and down.

Then she sees him, her raptor vision picking him out.

Soldier boy with silver eyes.

Hope comes with the glare of silver, the ill-practised smile of a soldier and the brush of satin against her mouth.

The flock hold together, bound by something beyond friendship and beyond blood. They pull through, they keep going because that is what they do. Iggy finds Ella crying quietly in a corner, mourning for the sister she barely knew. He dries her tears and with them his own. Fang holds the children and realizes what he has, not just what he has lost.

And Nudge finds love with that which was designed to destroy her.

Fingers entertwined, tan and ivory, grey and tawny wings beating together (he has to be the best; the Director gave him flight and died), his mouth against hers, unsure and pure joy. Sitting on a log in some unamed wood, his fingers tangled in her hair and their hearts beating together, he pulls away, breathless, his eyes like starlight and whispers the words that she would die to hear.

"I love you."

And that's all she knows, all she needs to put one foot in front of the other.

"I love you too, Omega."