This Is What I Brought You, This You Can Keep

"This is what I brought you, this you can keep.

This is why I thought you may forget me,

I promised you my heart, just promise one thing,

Kiss my eyes and lay me to sleep..."

Iggy loosened the buds out of his ears, the slender wire of the Ipod limp and dangling, brushing against his skin and delivering the color white to his brain. Iggy's eyes closed as if he could somehow blot out the music he could hear buzzing from the buds that lay on the thin cotton sheets, the lyrics painfully close to what he experienced day after day after day.

He had gotten back to the Martinez residence before the flock had awoken... but not before Jeb had. Jeb, whom he had always thought as his guardian, his saviour, who had hidden his true self before the strain of keeping it in the open had overwhelmed him, attended to his needs as a bat hybrid behind the flock's back, ensuring him nightly flies and making excuses when Iggy slept through the day and only awoke at dusk, true to his nocturnal issues. Being on the run without him had been hard, but Iggy had just continued the sacrifice-like transferal of feathers Jeb had taught him to do and he was fine. Jeb was his carer, his keeper.

Or, so Iggy had thought. But that was before he had spoken to Jeb last night and heard him suggest the thing he feared and hated most, the thing that would send every part of him, the mask of lies and pyromania, crashing down and open so the world could scream again.

Jeb had suggested he show his true self to the others. Well, Jeb could delude himself to his heart's content, but there was no way Iggy was even going to consider the notion. If they ever found out...

"You are an accident! You were never supposed to be here!"

"Bats. I hate bats."

"How could you have gotten through the maze first?"

And later at the E-shaped house, nights of returning home from flights and sitting at the kitchen table with Jeb and a mug of hot chocolate until the flock woke up, listening while the radiator gurgled and Jeb voiced growing concerns and doubts that gnawed at him even now.

"We can't keep this up forever, Iggy..."

"Maximum is strong, smart. She'll figure it out. And you'll have to watch yourself around Angel."

"What happens if your bat side accidentally shows when I'm not around to make excuses?"

"I know you're dead set on not taking any blame for your difference, but I'm sure if you talked, Max would listen..."

And then him, countering and double-countering the concerns, dancing around the doubts, feeling himself slowly break inside as Jeb''s voice droned on over the gurgle of the radiator.

"You didn't hear Max after that test. She really blew it. Still keeps me awake at night." the truth spoken through a mask of carelessness, a mask of oh-yeah-it's-troubling-but-I'm-such-a-happy-go-lucky-fool-you-can't-tell-how-serious-it-really-is.

"Sure we can keep this up forever. I've complete faith in you." a laugh dredged up through layers of doubt and uncertainty, the smashing pieces of him that would soon all be hidden under the mask. "Not to pile on the pressure or anything."

"And I will watch myself around Angel. Can you teach me? How to hide my thoughts?" And so, he had learned to smother his inner thoughts in fizzing white blankness, blankness that threatened to drive him insane when around the flock but he knew he had to keep it up, otherwise...

"How could you have gotten through the maze first?" Max to him.

And him to Jeb.

"You owe me, Jeb." As an autodictated eleven year old, he hadn't known what that line had meant but had always felt immensely warm and comforted when Jeb had replied, always with that line...

"This is what I brought you, this you can keep..."

"Urgh!" Iggy groped beside him for the Ipod and fumbled for the off switch, the metal cool and blue against his fingertips. The buzzing, incessant whine was cut off abruptly and Iggy was left with the loud silence of a sleeping house, a house-before-eight-o'clock which seemed to be the majority of the flock's wake-up time.

It was now quarter past two in the morning. Iggy clicked his tongue lightly, not resorting to his loud "real" echolocation and listened to the echoes as they shattered and bounced back off the furniture of Iggy's room in the attic in the west wing of the Martinez house. The first thing Jeb had done when Max had made the decision to stay with the Martinez's was to go out and buy Iggy an alarm clock, one of those old-fashioned analog ones with the glass face off and the numbers raised metal blocks, so that Iggy could echolocate the time. The fact Iggy's alarm remained stubbornly pointed to nine o'clock at night was a fact Jeb had yet to smooth over with the others. But if the flock asked Iggy, he would just laugh and say he was taking sleeping in to a whole new level.

"You're weird." Thirteen-year-old Max laughed and he stayed silent, a grin pasted woodenly onto his face, a nod making his hair fall into his eyes. He wished Max hadn't said that. Weird? More than she knew.

A part of him, the dark, brooding, Fang-like part that was forced to the back of his mind when around the flock wondered what would the flock's reactions be if they ever did find out. But always, before the little voice could go further, Iggy had shut it off, palms sweating, body shaking, not listening to Nudge as she chattered on about how graceful hawks were in flight. As if he needed any more reminders about how statistically different birds and bats were, he and the flock was.

Iggy sighed and shook himself vigorously, scrubbing his face with his hands and grimacing to discover leftover blood and tears from last night's sacrifice. His whispered argument with Jeb- don't let the flock find out... I'm sure if you just talked to them- had sent him straight to his room afterwards, without his usual trip to the shower after the transferal.

Shutting down the portion of his brain that kept returning with vicious memories and conclusions he didn't want to face, he made his way to the en suite bathroom, passing his bedside table cluttered with the remains of a bomb he was pretending to enjoy making. His true self hated bombs. They were too bright. Contrary to the flock's beliefs, he wasn't blind. Not entirely. Iggy saw everything in misty, fragmented areas of light and dark.

The darkness that sometimes, just sometimes, threatened to overwhelm him.

Hmm. Surprising. I thought I had millions of chapters waiting to be posted, but it turns out I only had two. Oh well. More work for me, then.

To anyone who's curious; yes, it is intentional that Iggy's OOC. If my fic was true, he'd be OOC all the time. Which brings us to the disclaimer: I don't own anything. Capiche?