Hiya. Well, I didn't think I'd be able to start writing until, like, a while… but here I am. Well, without further ado, a chapter that is NOT a filler! There you go, pandorad24, now you're happy, right?

Max POV

Iggy had been asleep for a long while. He was a cutie when he slept, he really was… except for maybe now, since he was sleeping sitting up, and therefore his mouth was ajar. He was drooling.

Huh. Who knew a sixteen-year-old bird-boy could actually look like a cutie while he drooled?

"Max," Gazzy whined. "Please? Please? Please?"

The kid had been begging for the past twenty minutes for me to allow him to explore the train. He was utterly convinced that there would be an arcade somewhere along it, although I steadfastly continued to tell him that, no, there was most likely not an arcade on the train. Sigh. Gasser just wouldn't listen to reason. Like with him thinking the baby would be a boy… I mean, hey, it's fifty-fifty, but still.

"Ugh!" Fang exclaimed, exasperated by the consistent complaining. "Okay! I'll take you! That's fine, right, Max?"

Fang turned to look at me with such an expression of pleading that I couldn't deny it. I mean, what choice did I have? Fang would be with him, and besides, I didn't want to sit through any more of that whining either.

"Okay," I relinquished. "Explore the train. Take Nudge and Angel with you. Meagan? You wanna go?"

"Nah," she said, waving them off. "I'll stay and look after my drooling boyfriend."

Fang muffled a laugh with his hand and stood, stretching.

"Right then. Off we go, kiddos. And Nudge."

"Gee, I hope we find the arcade super fast!" Gazzy cheered, jumping up and following Fang out the door so close that his face was almost in Fang's butt. You know, if Fang had been a little taller, or Gazzy a little shorter. As it was, the tip of Gazzy's nose was digging into Fang's lower back. I'm not quite sure he enjoyed the sensation. Fang, that is.

"Yeah, that would be pretty cool if there was actually an arcade!" Nudge agreed. "Although…"

"Don't jinx us!" Angel said, smiling, and following close behind. A minute later, the sliding door to the apartment had shut, and my flock's voices were disappearing down the little hall.

I leaned back and closed my eyes, trying to fall asleep like Iggy, and failing.

"Hmm…" Meagan said after a while, and I opened my eyes lazily.

"Yeah?" I answered.

"It's just… Nudge has hair-thingies in her pack, right? Like, hair-ties and barrettes and stuff?

I shrugged. "I guess so."

"Well… I was just sitting here and thinking… Iggy's hair's gotten awfully long, and it's all in his eyes… maybe we could help him out a bit."

I turned and looked across Iggy at my clone, only to see my own trademark devious grin stretching across her face. An identical expression spread across mine.

"That's quite a good idea."

Five minutes later, we had dumped a pile of brightly-colored hair-ties and barrettes into Iggy's lap, and I was brushing his hair with a plastic pink one of Nudge's. Iggy's hair was silky and barely tangled, though – I honestly don't know how he does it. He takes showers so much less than the rest of us, and I doubt he uses shampoo. I guess it's just a modern miracle or something.

"So," Meagan said, trying to start up a conversation. "Um… what's up?"

I looked at her with a raised eyebrow, putting down the pink brush and starting to gather half of Iggy's hair into a pigtail.

"Honestly?" I asked. "Honestly?"

Meagan blushed.

"I guess," she replied meekly.

I turned back to my complicated work and thought for a moment. There really was such a terrible lot 'up'.

"Well…" I started softly. "It's freaky, you know? I mean, it was only a few weeks ago that I even learned about all this terrible stuff that went on in Iggy's past. With his… dad and everything. And now, all of a sudden he's got to take care of a baby. I mean," I said hurriedly, because I'd just seen Meagan open her mouth to object, "I know we'll all be helping him and everything. But… I guess it seems selfish to say it, but this is all too fast. It's gonna be so hard. I mean, he's only fourt – I mean sixteen. And the flock doesn't need a baby. It's going to change everything."

Meagan nodded thoughtfully as she pulled up Iggy's hair into a pigtail on her side. She had a pink hair-tie clutched between her teeth, and she took it out to tie up his hair. Iggy stirred a bit, but didn't wake, of course.

"I know what you mean," she said. "But, you know, I'm not sure it's going to change anything. If anything, I bet it will make it happier." She saw my disbelieving expression and smiled. "I mean, a baby. Someone that cute and innocent who needs to be taken care of is only going to bring us all together. I mean, look at me. I wasn't a part of the flock until just a little while ago. But it really hasn't changed the flock at all, has it? You're all still happy around each other, and from what I heard Fang was quiet a lot, but now he's a right chatter-box. You know?"

I drew my hands away from Iggy's hair to admire my handiwork. The pigtail I'd done was sloppy, with stray hairs sticking out and his bangs still hanging in his eyes. I took two clips from the pile on Iggy's lap, one with a flower pattern, and one with a heart pattern, and used them to pin Iggy's bangs behind his ear. Meagan did the same with a large heart-shaped clip on the other side.

"You're right," I said. "I guess I'm just over-thinking it."

The hair on the back of Iggy's neck was too short to fit into the pigtails we'd done, so I tried to pin them up with some skinny bobby-pins I'd found in the pile. But when I lifted his strawberry-blond hair, I noticed scars.

I couldn't really see what they were – at the angle I was at, they looked like a blob of skinny, scarry lines – but they looked purposeful. I skimmed my finger over them, and Iggy's expression changed as he let out a small whimper. Meagan looked curiously at what I was doing, but I put the hair back down over Iggy's neck and put the bobby-pins away. I wasn't going to pry. When Iggy wanted to tell me, he'd tell me.

Meagan and I both pulled away to look at our handiwork. Iggy's hair was now in two sloppy pigtails, sticking out just below each ear, and his bangs were pinned back with a colorful array of pink, purple and yellow barrettes. We grinned.

"One last thing," I said, and turned to rummage about in my pack. I emerged a moment later with my black sharpie… the same one I'd used oh-so-long ago to play connect-the-dots on Iggy's stomach in the helicopter as we'd flown back from the School.

I pulled the cap off the marker and leaned close to Iggy, narrowing my eyes and putting my tongue between my teeth as I drew a small heart at the corner of his right eye – the one with the scar from when he'd slit his lid.

"There!" I finished with a flourish, capping the marker once again. Meagan laughed and clapped.

"Oh!" she said, wiping a tear of mirth from her eye. "Oh, gosh! What a dummy." Then, she smiled fondly and tucked one of Iggy's stray hairs behind his ear. "He's a dope, but I love him anyway."

Then, I felt the urge. To ask a question, one that had been wriggling at the back of my mind for some time.

"Um… Meagan?" I asked. "Why did you fall in love with Iggy?"

I sort of expected her to brush off my question, or answer with a joke of some kind. But instead, she pondered it thoughtfully.

"I think," she started, "that the more accurate question is… Why didn't you fall in love with him?"

I stared at her, mouth agape for a moment.

"Why is that the more accurate question?" I asked breathlessly.

"Well," Meagan began, "It's just… I mean, I love him… and Nudge loves him… and it looked like Ella had a crush on him for a while there… so, really, the only girl of age who doesn't love him, like, romantically, is you. So it's weirder for you to not be in love with him."

I realized, with a start, that Meagan was totally right. Nudge had confessed her love a little while ago, and I guess Ella had sort of followed him around like a little lovesick puppy for a while. That is, before she heard about his past.

Was Ella really that shallow..?

"But, I think I know why," Meagan continued, interrupting my reverie. "Why you're not in love with him, that is."

"Oh, yeah?" said, feeling a bit dazed. "Why is that?"

"Well, see, it's because he's blind," she said. I stared at her, dumbfounded.

"I'm not like that!" I objected. "I wouldn't not like him just because he's blind!"

"Well, that's not what I meant," Meagan said hastily. "I mean, it's sort of true… you don't like him because he's blind. But it's more than that." She looked at my confused expression and sighed. "What I mean is," she said, "He went blind when you guys were little, right? So, ever since you were five, you've had to pretty much teach him everything, you know? You really had to act like his older sister. So, you felt like it. It's like how Fang helped to, so he feels like Iggy's older brother. But, see, Gazzy and Nudge and Angel are younger than Iggy. They didn't have to help him do stuff. So all they saw was a kid who was nice and stuff, helping them out. I mean, Angel feels like Iggy is her daddy, right? It's because he raised her. It's the same with Gazzy, feeling like Iggs is his best friend. You raised Iggy, so when you look at him, you see a little brother, not a boy."

"I guess," I said. To tell the truth, I could sort of see what she was getting at. And it was totally true. Of course I'd wondered before now why I hadn't fallen in love with Iggy – ever since I'd found out he was in love with me, in fact – but it had never occurred to me that it could possibly be because he was blind. But Meagan was right.

"I mean," Meagan said, laughing slightly. "Look at him. He's gorgeous, he's beautiful, he's handsome, he's cute, he's hot, whatever you want to say. He's kind and nice, and he's generous and selfless. He's not sexist, either. Pretty much, he's your ideal boy, if you think about it."

And I did think about it. Meagan was right, of course – Iggy's gorgeous, hot, whatever else she said. And he's incredibly kind and selfless. But, I guess I did sort of think of him as my little brother… all I could think about that was that I was proud, in a sisterly way.

And it could very well be because Iggy was blind.

It didn't take much time of me pondering this new revelation for Fang to return with Angel, Gazzy and Nudge. Gazzy was pouting because the train did not, indeed, have an arcade. Nudge and Angel were just glad to have stretched their legs a bit, and Fang looked relieved that there hadn't been any whining for a while.

"What'd you two do to Ig while we were gone?" he said, eyeing Iggy's new hairdo pointedly and flopping on the bench across from me. "Torture him?"

"Just a little," Meagan replied airily.

Ooh. Have any of you ever watched the musical 'Chicago'? You can find it on Netflix instant queue. It's amazing! I wrote this whole chapter while listening to the songs on YouTube. My particular favorites are 'When You're Good to Mama', 'Cell Block Tango' and 'We Both Reached for the Gun'. Please watch it!

Review, perhaps? It will make me happy. And you want me to be happy. Or it's possible I won't update…