Merry early Christmas to all of my lovely readers! I wanted to put this up on Christmas day, but I'm too impatient for everyone's wonderful reviews. ^^" I really do love them, though, guys. They make me want to keep writing, so keep 'em comming! I want to let you know that I probably won't be able to get the next chapter up untill after New Year's. Sorry, but I'm going to visit family in Colorado, so I'm gunna be a little slow on my writing. But, I promise to get it up soon! I might have been a little OOC with Fang in this chapter; I don't know. If you think so, than please forgive me. I only know a few things that are for sure going to happen in future chapters, so if anyone has any ideas, I would love to hear them, they are more than welcome to be posted! Once again, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwannza, Happy New Year, Happy Holidays; take your pick! I love you all!

The next morning, I woke up to the sun shining through my window and the little annoying birdies singing from the tree outside. Okay, that's a lie. I actually woke up to the much more pleasant sound of Iggy pounding on my door and yelling that breakfast was ready. Please note the sarcasm. I pulled myself out of bed, left the room in my pajamas, and saw that he was still waiting outside.

"So what happened last night?" he asked, looking in my general direction.

"What do you mean?" I asked, hiding the alarm from my voice, even though I knew exactly what he was talking about and I had known that he was going to bring it up.

"You spent a long time in Fang's room last night," he pressed.

"I…uh…just wanted to make sure that he was okay," I told him. We both knew that it was just about the lamest lie since the missionary story, but Ig dropped the subject for now anyway.

"Well, like I said, breakfast is ready. We've got muffins," he said, knowing how much I liked them. What can I say? They're like puffy cookies!

I got to the kitchen, grabbed a muffin and walked over to the couch where I saw Fang was already settled into a chair munching on a muffin of his own. He looked over and sent me a small smile that overwhelmed me with happiness. This was probably the first smile that he had given any of us since before he was taken. I gave him a smile of my own as Angel walked into the room. Seeing her reminded me that I needed to be careful of what I thought about or the others would find out about Fang speaking again because of Angel's little gift.

The day went by pretty easily and soon the young ones were already headed to bed. We had spent the day sitting around the house and even played a few games like candy land. I would like to meet the person who invented this game, because whoever can come up with an entire world of junk food defiantly deserves a high five in my book. Angel gave me a look as she left for her room, a look that she and Iggy both had been giving me all day. After a while, Fang got up and left too. Finally, Iggy turned to me and brought up what I knew he would.

"So, all the bull aside, what happened last night?" he asked and I sighed deeply.

"Ig, I really don't want to talk about it," I told him. That was half true; I didn't want to betray Fang and break my end of the deal. Iggy scowled at me and dropped his head in a quick defeat before getting up and heading to bed.

" Whatever. See ya tomorrow," he muttered on his way out while I stood up as well. There was no point in staying up when no one else was. I got to my room, threw on a night gown, dived into my bed and fell asleep soon after.

Sometime in the ungodly hours of the morning, I heard Fang in his room. The screams were there but I noticed that they weren't as harsh as they had been on all the other nights. I quickly made my way to his room to find him thrashing around under his sheets which were thrown in every direction. I got to the edge of his bed and shook his shoulder as his eyes flew open. His breathing steadied when he looked at me and remembered that it was just a dream.

"Hey, you alright now?" I asked, the worry must have been obvious on my face while he nodded. I put my hand on top of his, which was shaking like a leaf, to say that I was there for him. Finally he relaxed and leaned against the bed frame with his hand still in mine.

"So," he started. My face lit up as he spoke, holding up his end of the deal. "I was thinking today," he told me.

"That's a dangerous hobby for you, isn't it?" I teased.

"Yeah, it's almost as dangerous as you trying to cook," he threw back. "What I was gunna say was that I don't really what to have to tell you everything all at once and I know that you are going to be about as patient as Gazzy and Nudge at an all-you-can-eat buffet when it comes to getting the story out of me, so I thought that, when we're talking like this, I could tell you a little bit of what happened each night," he offered. His voice was stronger than last night; it wasn't breaking, to say the least.

"That sounds good," I said, nodding. "What will we talk about tonight?" I asked.

"I don't know. What kind of things did you want to know?" he asked. "Except for that," he added, knowing that I would know what he meant.

I thought for a moment before speaking again, asking what all of us had been wondering. "How did you escape from the school?"

He hesitated for a moment. I didn't know if he didn't want to answer or if he was just trying to decide where to start. I guessed that it was the latter when he spoke up again, not quite at the point of his little tale. "Well, while I was at the school, they weren't doing any physical tests at the time. They…they wanted to learn more about the way we've all been mutating, you know, developing powers. They made this room where they could make me see…things…nightmares…illusions. They wanted to know whether or not we would mutate faster when we were under a lot of stress," he told me. I kept quiet and let him have the floor while he explained what had happened. "Each time that they did the experiment, the illusions would get more and more horrifying… I can't remember how many times I had watch erasers slaughter the flock in that goddamn room," he whispered, his eyes starting to water and his hand starting to shake.

"Fang, you don't have to…" I started to say before he cut me off.

"Yes, I do," he said. It was strange for me to see him like this, weak and vulnerable. For so many years, the rest of the flock and I had only seen him show his emotions a handful of times, and now it seemed like he was doing it on a daily basis. I didn't want him to force himself to relive the things that the school had done to him, but it looked like he was going to anyways.

"There was one test that I couldn't handle. The illusion was too much; all I could think about was being anywhere else but that room. The next thing I knew, I was in some file storage room in another part of the building. There were some papers left on the table in there from a file about me. I didn't have much time to look at them, but I saw an address somewhere on one of the pages. The whitecoats found me after that and put me back in my cage," he said with disgust at the thought of keeping a kid in such a place. "They had the results they wanted; I had developed another power. But, they still put me back in that room the next day. The illusion was worse than the one before, just like always. Again, all I could think about what getting away. I thought about the address that I had seen in the file, and, suddenly, there was fresh air around me, blue skies and all that happy shit. I was out, free. I had escaped," Fang said, looking away.

"I'm sorry, Max. If I had gotten better at my power faster, that I could have gotten back to you guys weeks sooner than I did. I don't even remember where that place was, the address that I went to the first time," he told me.

"Don't worry about that, Fang," I told him when I remembered something. I looked over at him suspiciously as I asked a new question. "If…if the school didn't do any physical tests, then how did you get so many injuries?" I asked him, remembering how beat up he had been the night he had made his way back to my mom's house.

Fang's eyes widened and his hand tightened around mine as he started shaking again. He took a deep breath before looking at me again to reply. "Next time," he whispered, his voice shaking. "I'll tell you next time we talk," he told me and I nodded.

"I think that's enough for now," I said after a moment. He had already said a lot; I couldn't imagine how hard just that must have been for him. He nodded and slipped back under the blankets. I stood up and turned to leave when Fang's voice came again.

"What? I don't get a goodnight kiss?" he called out.

I laughed, turned around again, and leaned down to meet his lips to mine. It wasn't like last night, intense and desperate; it was much softer this time. Fang brought his hand under my chin and leaned my head back a bit while he tilted his to the side to deepen the kiss. We didn't stay like this for long before it was broken by the need for air and the desire to not get caught by others.

"Goodnight, Fang," I said and left the room while he had already fallen asleep again by the time I shut the door. I turned to go back to my own room only to find Iggy leaning against the wall.