Crumbling Walls
Dust drifted in the air as Max stood still under the early desert sun. Twenty-three years was a long time to come back to the place that had marked a before and after in his life. A long time to seek closure.
A long time that didn’t feel long at all.
The Eagle Rock Base remained standing like a reminder of everything that could go wrong with the world. Only ghosts walked in its halls now, echoes of unheard screams and buried memories that he should leave alone. Nothing but fear and pain lingered in those walls.
He felt the surge of power under his fingertips, making him flex his hands. He was both eager and oddly hesitant about his intentions today. Facing demons, even if they resided in the past, was hardly something to look forward to.
“Your Majesty, we’ve confirmed the place and the surroundings are empty.”
He nodded in acknowledgement, his eyes never leaving the dull gray of the concrete walls standing some one-hundred feet away.
If Eagle Rock Base was the before and after of living wondering about them and finding the terrible truth about who they were exactly, Antar was the before and after of his life itself. As much as he’d tried, he’d never been able to outrun his own destiny, the mark of a king stenciled in his very own brain never allowing him to live a normal life.
And he was tired of running—at least tired of running from this place.
The base looked deceptively small from the surface, but plenty of corridors and sublevels were hidden below the dusty earth. He clearly remembered the stairs where he’d been rushed, the endless halls, the awful smell of the gurney he’d been pressed down to as they took him into a living nightmare.
The earth shook slightly beneath him, and his Royal Guards tensed behind him.
“Maybe you should step further behind,” Max said out loud.
“Her Majesty made it clear we’re not to leave your side for any reason,” his Captain said, ever the braver man for staying knowing what was coming.
He chuckled. Leave it to Liz to make sure he wasn’t alone. She hadn’t insisted on coming. For all their love had conquered, this was something he needed to do alone—or as alone as both his Captain of the Royal Guard and Michael had allowed, anyway.
Ironically, Max had asked for Eagle Rock Base as a token of good faith from the US government two months ago. As the King of Antar in official treaty talks and their only link to the richness of Antar and its four sister planets, there was little Max couldn’t ask by this point. If they had been surprised, they hadn’t shown it. Instead, they had diligently taken out any remaining materials and handed the base to the Antarian State without fanfare. They would not taint a lucrative alien-human alliance and were most likely hoping Max wouldn’t hold this place against them either.
He wouldn’t. Yet there always was, at the back of his mind, a terrible idea that if things went wrong, he would be thrown back at this place, never to see the sun again.
That as long as Eagle Rock Base stood, Max would never be free.
He expanded his awareness, seeking the structures below the earth. Metal was easy to sense, but seeking the right columns to crush first would take a little bit of finesse. He had time, though, so he didn’t rush it.
Antar had been an unexpected learning field. It was surprising how quickly wars could be won when the King could use his flashes to see enemy plans by entering a room they had long vacated—and the Queen had refined her visions to accurately predict the usurper’s moves.
It took a few months, and certainly too many close calls, but by the time Max had earned his place as the King of Antar, he’d finally felt like he belonged. And Antar—Antar was beautiful.
He had never gained but glimpses of Zan’s life, but he hoped that his predecessor would approve of how Max handled things nowadays. The world he was rebuilding was not prone to change, but they were trying. And Max…well, Max had been thinking too much about his past life’s mistake: doing too much, too soon.
Yet all he wanted to do today was doing and not thinking.
In his mind, he could still hear the desperate sounds of his fists hitting the white walls of his captivity. He’d been there less than twenty-four hours, and yet this place still haunted him. It taunted him with needles and drugs and scalpels that felt too real on his suddenly sensitive skin.
As he surveyed the task ahead, he realized that Eagle Rock was bigger than he’d thought. Sparks eagerly jumped between his fingers, making them tingle. He shouldn’t be holding back so much for too long, so he centered on the path they had taken him back then; where the eagle emblem passed below him, where the door with the scan still remained, dusty and forgotten by now.
A drop of sweat rolled down his neck that had little to do with the sun above. He’d unleash energy before, but never at this scale.
In his memories, the corridor had been impossible long. His heart had been beating in his ears so fast, fear paralyzing his thoughts on the dark things that awaited him once he reached his destination. Hands, strong and uncaring, had wrapped like claws around his arms as they moved him, from the van to the gurney, from the gurney to the room, and then—
The earth rumbled once more, menacing and longer this time, as he methodically tore every molecule apart as if he could wipe out those memories along with their physical reality. The entrance collapsed immediately, and below it, the eagle cracked in two as twin spidery lines started to take the place apart. Metal twisted and groaned as it was no match to Max’s energy, the fissures on the concrete walls growing wider by the second.
Behind him, his guards remained in place, silently bearing witness to how destructive their King could be. Not that they blamed him—they had wanted to tear it apart way before he’d forbidden them.
I can take you apart…piece by piece…
The tiles that had once contained his terrified sixteen-year-old self were easy to find. Although he could not see it, the gleaming white of the walls, ceiling, and floor was seared in his mind. It was the color of his nightmares, the texture of his fears. This room had been too bright and too cold back then, so it was fitting that now it would remain buried and dark for the rest of eternity.
I can’t tell you what I don’t know… I can’t tell you what I don’t know!
He paid close attention to those tiles. Cracking them, dissolving them, fussing their molecules to the metal and concrete that was already collapsing all around them. Sweat rolled down his back and neck unnoticed, as all his concentration was on destroying those memories once and for all.
Stooooooooop!
He was the King of Antar. No one could touch him now.
Columns cracked and fell, taking with them the foundations of the entire base. The ground trembled with Max’s anger as a sinkhole opened at the center of it all. The sound grew deafening as he scorched the entire place, heating the metal until it combusted into a ball of fire reaching for the sky.
We didn’t kill her. I just wanted to show you what can happen. What will happen.
He screamed. He screamed for the boy who’d been taken there with no hope of ever escaping. He screamed for the pain he suffered, for the fears it left behind, for the threat to all those he loved. He screamed to let go of the anger that had remained within him, the scars that had been carved in his skin, the crippling paralysis of wanting to hide to never be seen again.
He screamed until his voice was hoarse and the earth had stopped shaking, and all that was left was a crumbled mess of metal and concrete where not a single ghost would ever remain.
He couldn’t scream anymore as fatigue took him to his knees while the fire burnt the remaining rubble in front of him. He hadn’t noticed when tears had started falling, he could barely hear his own ragged breathing, still lost in memories of white tiles and icy blue eyes of a man who was asking questions he would never be able to answer. Facing these memories now, allowing himself to feel that fear and helplessness again yet knowing he was out and free finally crumbled the walls inside his own mind.
Pierce was gone; the Unit was gone. Even Kivar was but a fading memory now. And Max was not a defenseless small-town boy anymore either.
He was exhausted, but for the first time in two decades, he truly felt fearless.
His guards remained by his side, ready to help him when he was finally ready to leave, finally ready to close this chapter of his life, this symbol of hatred that had held him once prisoner so long ago. He’d come to bury the last bit of his past that had still held him down, so now was time to move on to brighter days, a brighter future.
He didn’t even look back when he finally left. At long last, he knew that he would sleep soundly from now on, knowing that Eagle Rock Base was no more.
That no matter what this place had once done to him, Max Evans was finally walking free.
The End
AN: Max was definitely in need of therapy by the beginning of season 2 (not that it was any help when he was lying all the time), but aside from his words in ARCC about choosing to protect himself over saving the xmas guy, we never really heard anything about this. And Max is the type of bottling things up. I can see him avoiding thinking about his experience at Pierce's hands since he had so much else to think about, but in the quiet moments of his life, this would definitely haunt him. And he needs somewhere safe to let out all these fear-anger feelings.
So I gave him an outlet
Thanks to dreamon for giving me the prompt. I'm sure it's nowhere near what she had in mind, but I still hope she enjoys it
Any thoughts on this fic itself would be very appreciated, too 
