AN: So I skipped my chem homework a couple of nights to write and I have two and a half more chapters written for this fic, on top of the one after this. Phew. Now I don't have to worry about falling behind on updates.(: Lucky for you guys.

Thanks for reviewing. As always, it's much appreciated. =D

Now, if I remember correctly, this chapter isn't as bloody and gory and violent as the others. I always tear up reading it through though. )': I hope it brings forth the desired emotion in you guys. In other words, I hope you enjoy it.

If Only…

Summary: It's been exactly seven years since a terrible battle involving the flock played out in a forlorn forest clearing. But what really happened on that day can only be told by revisiting the bloody past and unlocking the secrets of the flock's sole surviving member…

Chapter Twenty-One: Severed Ties: Dreams of Pyromania

Gazzy was fruitlessly searching for a way out. He was sure there had to be a weak link in this hellhole. Yet everywhere he turned was death and confusion and chaos. Nothing was familiar. He had never been so scared in his life, I could tell.

I watched my brother in his search and he seemed to sense my gaze. Gazzy looked into my eyes, saw the fear shining in them too, and decided that sometimes courage is more important than fear. And he decided that this was one of those times.

Gazzy had been with Nudge in some of her last moments, when she was desperate. He had seen her lose herself to the many Voices preying on her mind without any idea of what was happening, any idea of what to do. And then he had watched her run, seen Nudge fall, a bullet gone through her skull. And it hurt him to think he had just been by her side…

Trying to focus on the task at hand and not his fallen comrade, Gazzy looked back at me, our twin eyes meeting, and thought: I'll get us out, Angel. I swear I will.

Before I could object and tell him to just get himself out of harm's way, he ran the other way, to where he saw that Iggy was desperately struggling to hold off three Erasers and a pair of whitecoats. Even with his sight gone again, Iggy still knew how to fight. In fact, maybe he was a better fighter without the burden of his eyes overloading his brain. The Gasman ran to him with incredible speed. If Gazzy was going to do some saving and be saved, he would be sure to pull his best friend along.

By sheer luck, Iggy narrowly dodged a dagger for his heart and it scraped the side of his chest instead, tearing his shirt. I didn't know how Iggy could've possibly moved away from the weapon after his life, as it came from behind, wielded by a silent, now dead, assailant. But there had always been mountains of secrets for survival in his blind mind. Secrets I will never know. Gazzy came up behind an Eraser, stabbed it through the heart with the knife he had picked up from one of the dead, and muttered, "Take that, you furry-assed bastard." As the Eraser fell to the ground, Gazzy spat on its bloodied, razor-sharp fur. Gazzy's hand was bleeding from its contact with the Eraser's fur.

"Gazzy?" Iggy asked cautiously. The last thing he needed was another enemy to face.

"That's me, my man," Gazzy answered, then he looked more closely at Iggy, his eyebrows raising and his eyes widening. "Oh my God. What the hell did they do to you, Iggs?"

Iggy shrugged, trying to look nonchalant, like nothing in the world could bother him, despite that he was burning with rage inside. "I'm not exactly sure. But it feels like they might've sewn my eyes shut."

Gazzy's face twisted into a mask of disgust and anger. He plunged his knife into a whitecoat's chest with much more force than required. "I swear, I'm gonna effing kill them for that, Iggy. I'm gonna kill them and then I'm gonna get us outta here."

"All of us?" Iggy asked, keeping an Eraser at bay with his bloodied dagger.

Reluctantly, Gazzy decided to tell him the truth of the matter, the terrible reality of the situation. "No. It's too late for that. It's too late for some of us."

Iggy froze, almost paying for the shock with his life. Gazzy took the Eraser off his hands. "Who?"

Gazzy gulped, knowing that saying the words would only make it all that much realer. Saying the words would solidify the actuality of it all. But courage was more important than fear at that time. And courage won out. "Fang and Nudge are dead. Fang lost his head and Nudge got shot. I don't know where Max is; she's killing these guys off like a machine, like she's been trained for it her whole life. Angel got injured really bad; I saw her lying in the snow, but she's not dead. And then there's you and me. We can do this. We can get out of here alive. I know we can."

Iggy shrugged, unsure about Gazzy's ideas. Slowly, tasting the words, he said, "It's not that I doubt your abilities, Gaz. It's just that they seem hell-bent on keeping us here until we die."

Frowning, Gazzy responded, "Well then, we'll just have to kill them all." He looked to where he should have been able to see Iggy's eyes, clear or cloudy, blind or looking out on the world, but all that Gazzy could see was blood pooled on Iggy's eyelids, the stains running down his pale cheeks. The horrifying sight of it.

"I don't know, Gaz…"

"We can do it, Iggs. I know we can," Gazzy said, his voice fierce with determination.

Iggy turned to Gazzy, perhaps mentally searching the Gasman's face. I sifted through their thoughts, their futile dreams. Their hope broke my heart.

And so I just watched them, plotting to kill the whitecoats and save themselves, fantasizing of freedom, survival, life. Things they would never again taste on their tongues.

They were so caught up in their dreams, their whisperings of the impossible, that they couldn't see anything clearly, most especially the tragic reality staring them in the face. Or rather, creeping up behind them.

With a powerful surge of strength, a whitecoat plunged a splintered wooden rod into Gazzy's back. Iggy had been unable to warn him, naturally. There had been no noise he could hear besides the two of them conversing. And then the Gasman wasn't talking anymore. Apparently Iggy's blind secrets of survival only applied to himself.

But Iggy did hear the silence, clear as a bell.

"Gazzy?" Iggy mumbled into the cold air, realizing that his best friend had fallen into the snow. "Gazzy!" he wailed, dropping his weapon and crouching beside the Gasman. Blood trickled out of my brother's mouth, his troubled blue eyes staring up at the sky, blinking rapidly. He wasn't dead yet, but close enough. Iggy's hands groped the snow, trying to find something, anything, of comfort in the cold, callous ice. There was none.

As Iggy wept over his friend's dying body, his sobs echoing in the air around him, another whitecoat came up behind him just as quietly as the first, and dumped a container of gasoline on Iggy. Iggy instinctively began to shiver, the liquid only making the cold air harsher on his mostly bare skin. Then he smelled it: the unmistakable scent of petroleum.

He gave a frightened little yell as he immediately stood up, trying to shake as much as he could off of him. Iggy was unsuccessful, for the moment he was on his feet, he felt the unnatural heat close by. And the lighted match made contact with his skin.

You know the whole "stop, drop, and roll" thing they teach you in elementary school? Well if you're actually on fire, chances are that you'll be too busy panicking to remember what your first grade teacher told you.

Even Iggy, the pyromaniac supreme, didn't remember this most basic rule of playing with fire. Because when you're on fire, your every instinct, your mind, the very essence of your being, screams at you: run. You always run from your enemies when you're not powerful enough to take on them. You run from your problems when you don't want to face them. Who really is power enough to face fire head on and come away victorious? No one.

So you run.

And that's exactly what Iggy did.

And his instincts, the instincts that he had trusted all his life, ended up costing Iggy his life in one of the most painful deaths imaginable.

AN: Let me clarify something: this was Iggy's chapter. Gazzy is still alive and his chapter is next. The last death chapter... And then things take a very, very interesting turn. Unexpected to me and hopefully to you guys, the readers.

Okay, well here in SoCal, there's like three weeks of school left. I'm super excited for summer! I have two chapters to finish, though it might turn into three, and then I'll probably start another fic. I have a couple of ides lying around for PJO and the Gemma Doyle trilogy. And that's pretty much all I want to do this summer: WRITE. Hope you guys all have an awesome time.(:

So, I just finished reading JP's Witch & Wizard. It was pretty good, I must say. But there's one thing in particular that made me crack up. You see, the two main characters had been captured by the enemy, blah blah blah, and were fantasizing ways to get out. The brother then says that maybe they'll grow wings and just fly away. In response, the sister scoffs and says something like, "Kids with wings? Like that'll ever happen." Maybe it's just me, but I find this extremely funny coming out of the mouth of one of James Patterson's characters.

On the subject of jokes, REVIEWS are very much like them. They both bring a smile to my face.(: So REVIEW!