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Max could only look on in silence as the messages had come in, horrific 140-character tales of tangled bloodlines, zombie fetuses, and male pregnancies. He passed through curiosity, disgust, and paranoia at a breakneck pace, and as he usually did when the world got to be too much, he slept. He refused to eat. If living on this island could get guys pregnant, he didn't want to know what it did to the food. Nevermind that he'd been eating the stuff for a month and a half now. Once he had gotten it into his head that it was dangerous, he was determined to never again take a single bite.

It was a shame that he had grown used to comfort before the Delta apocalypse. Starvation wasn't something he had put up with since his moodier teenage years, and having a creature in his head who was so concerned for his well being that she whimpered every time his stomach growled didn't help matters. Max subsisted for two days on a pair of Snapples he'd purchased when he'd gone Christmas shopping. He emerged from his room at one in the morning after admitting defeat, hurrying to the cafeteria and rummaging through the cereal and soup cans, sniffing at each one like he had any idea what danger smelled like.

They were nothing more than generic saltines he had pulled from the back of some random cabinet, but right now they tasted like something forbidden and decadent. Max had stacked five of them in a miniature tower and taken a bite, their thundering crunch reverberating through his head. He could hear nothing of the real world beyond the din, so it was a bit of a surprise when Caper announced that they were no longer alone.

DIANA!

A crackery grin spread across Max's face as he turned, though he soon closed his lips around the expression when he realized how stupid he probably looked. He had meant to contact her before this, but time had slipped through his fingers since she had awakened, and thoughts of catching up properly were continuously put on hold.

"It's just me," he said, voice low so as not to attract any more attention. "How've you been?" Unable to help himself, he took one of the half-bitten crackers off of the top of the pile and stuck it in his mouth, chewing and swallowing before he spoke again. "I hope things went all right after after the weapon stuff? No one trying to kill you yet?" If there was one thing he had learned here, it was that at any moment something could burst in and murder them all. He kind of didn't believe it.

"Yeah, I..."

I didn't eat anything for two days because I couldn't shake the feeling that someone was going to poison me. It sounded just a little insane.

"I couldn't sleep. And I guess I haven't eaten a whole lot today." Max was about to comment on his time in the prison and maybe even admit he missed it a little too, but the moment Caper heard her name she responded as if she could be heard, as if she was jabbering with friends instead of stuck inside a ring. He had to question why she did it though, since she was very clearly aware that no one could hear her, which was why she shouted loudly enough to wake the undying.

Hello! I am good! How are you?

He could barely hear anything outside of his mind when she used up his attention like that, but as soon as she was silent, Max worked on regaining himself in the wake of Hurricane Hoga. It got a little easier every time he did it.

"Caper's fine." He cleared his throat. "Akali? Hey. I'm Max." There he went with the Max stuff again. This whole new life thing wasn't working out quite how he had planned. As he placed the rest of his open crackers on the counter with the ones that were still wrapped up, Max gave Diana a bit of a once over. Considering his own TMNT t-shirt and sweatpants ensemble, it wasn't her nighttime attire he thought to comment on first. It was her hair.

"Did you go to some salon for Christmas?" He smirked. "It's all bright again."

Somewhere along the way, Max's mind took a brief tangent as he tried to compare the life of a hunter with a whole house to herself and hair dye to spare with his own windowless cell and four t-shirt wardrobe. He might have been about to devolve into complaint when Diana pressed her hand to his forehead and drew his attention out of his grumpy slump. He smiled at her faint flush, moving on without comment.

"I feel okay." Moments like this made him wonder what kind of person she had been before they had bumped into one another. While it was true that she had seemed a little abrasive when they had first met, he had never been able to picture her deliberately taking anything from anyone, even then. "Tired. And I might have latched onto some crazy idea that everyone around here was out to poison me. You know, the usual." When he said it out loud, it all sounded pretty ludicrous.

"Between that Life labs guy and the pregnancy stuff the other night... I guess I felt weird eating the food?" Max chuckled. He might have added that Caper's manic influence hadn't helped matters, but he didn't want to offend her. To be fair, he doubted she would notice. The monster was currently filled with all-encompassing delight as a result of Diana's attention, the world beyond that of little importance. "But I'm over it, I think. I never realized how hard it is to keep up a hunger strike without any sort of strong conviction. I mean, I've been eating here for a month now..." He stuck another couple of crackers in his mouth, chewing and swallowing quickly.

"So," he said, hoping he was crumb free. "You're mostly okay, right? You just can't sleep these days without a crowd?"