Moving Forward

Lost and Found (43)

First seeing Kyle die, then losing his family, almost drowning, and then saying goodbye to a fake Kyle - after all that, Max could only supposed that he should have expected to be wandering around this goddamn forest like he'd never been here before. It should have been familiar, but there were none of the scents he was used to. No claw marks in the trees that marked his territory. No gentle breeze that brought the smell of fresh water from the lake. 

Tree after tree after - they all looked the same. It was frustrating. Max had come here with the purpose of finding his family. Maybe a yellow brick road would be too obvious, but as he rubbed at the raw skin under his eyes once more, he found himself sneering. 

Was it fair? Was any of this right? Max's family might not even be here, and yet here was where he was, wondering with no direction because everything looked the same and he had yet to hear so much as a sigh from the forest. Where the birds? The rabbits, the foxes whose scents permeated the forest deeper than even the wolves?

Everything about the forest felt dead, but the leaves were vibrant and green, the ground damp as if it had just rained. Sun shone between the trees, but there was no warmth. 

Max wasn't the type to talk to himself but in the emptiness of this place, he was getting close to it. Just as he opened his mouth to mumble a complaint to himself, he snapped his jaw shut. Something wasn't right. The bushes moved... but there was no sound to it. A chill brushed skin, as if carried on a wind, and the trees shifted, but no rustling alerted him to it. 

If he spoke... Max knew that if he spoke, this place would take his voice and keep it. The sound of his clothes brushing up against him, the thump of his footsteps... they'd already been taken. His instincts screamed at him. This was all wrong. Even the beat of his heart was silent, no rush of blood in his ears. That was bad. 

What else could he do, though? Turning back wasn't an option. If he went back to the fake Kyle, Max knew he'd never leave again. Even if that had been a possibility, there was no way Max could have found his way back there. All the trees and bushes looked different enough to not be the same as the tree next to it, but none were distinct enough to provide direction. For all Max knew, he was walking in circles. Going nowhere.

The realisation seemed to take everything out of him. His legs ached, and his eyes felt as if they'd been open for days on end. Withdrawing from his conscious mind, he sat. Yes, that felt right. He needed to rest. Just for a little while. He wouldn't sleep, but he could rest. Couldn't he? That was fine.

Max's eyes slid shut.

He was woken with a shove. Bleary eyed, Max looked around for the culprit, but there was nothing there. Still, there had to have been something because Max could feel the echo of the shove on his arm. 

As Max rubbed the sleep from his eyes, he noticed his skin no longer felt raw. As if he hadn't been crying just hours earlier. And standing, his legs didn't so much as complain. Max took a step - just to move differently and make sure that it wasn't just offset muscle pain - but as he did so... he was shoved again. This time from behind. And as he threw his arms out to catch himself, the ground disappeared.

Max fell - his own rendition of Alice in Wonderland. Turning and tumbling midair for what felt like miles, air rushing past his ears, and then he hit the floor. The impact forced the breath from him, lungs seizing in pain. Max was left wheezing, trying to inhale for long seconds before his body restored its composure, noticed that he wasn't dying, and let him breathe normally again.

The more time he spent in this hellscape, the more Max had to question why the fuck Lara had though that this was where he was supposed to be. And why the fuck he had even thought she was right in the first place. Something in her had cracked when Max killed Gillespie. There was every possibility that was just her way of getting revenge: send him to some other world where he could confront everything that pained him while slowly turning him insane.

Honestly, Max was probably already insane. He hoped he was insane. That all of this was just some PTSD brought on hallucination that he'd wake up from at some point and find that Kyle was still alive and he could forget all about it like a dream.

Taking a deep breath, Max finally took note of his surroundings, and was almost left breathless again when he saw the marble floor. The River Mansion. Bitterness creeped into Max's mind like a bad smell. Whatever rules this place might've had - why wouldn't it just let Max walk here? Why did it make him suffer through the silent forest and fall through the hole in ground? 

That was when he heard the voices. They were coming from the main hall. The room where Amelia had initially declared their intent to get rid of Gillespie's brainwashed wolves.

Peering his head around the corner, Max found them - all of them. Blake, Amelia, Finn. Duke, and Lola, and Manny. Some were in wolf form, while some maintained their human form, but all of them were facing the dais, listening intently to the man and woman stood upon it.

Again and again and again, Max had been thrown through a loop. And he was getting sick of it. All of the twists and turns that he'd been through since even before being sent here - none of them had made any sense before. But now, seeing the pair stood upon the dais, events became a little clearer.

Max sighed.

Gillespie and Lara. 

A-fucking-gain.