Argh! So sorry for the wait, faithful readers. I've just been so stressed out with schoolwork, plus I've got another couple of oneshots and fics waiting in the wings that I'm gonna post even if it kills me, so suffice it to say, I've got a lot of work nowadays :)

But anyway, at long last, here's the next instalment of Membrane Of Lies. Hope you're all excited!

-Twinleafe

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Sounds.

He had been dependent upon them ever since he was… born, created? What would be more accurate? What was real in his life? A life so full of smoke and mirrors there wasn't room for a skylight to cast that slender, finger of light for risk of exposure. The smoke were lies and the mirrors were Jeb's warnings, erected when he least expected it, so that his deliberately, carefully optimistic happy-go-lucky words, desperately flung like arrows rebounded off the mirrors' many hard, multifaceted edges that cut whenever he let his guard down, whenever he slowed or hesitated in putting on the mask or faltered in a word, as if he didn't already have karma and the deadly, raised stakes against him.

And a world that hurt.

He'd cut himself once.

It was a while back now, far back when the flock had still been living in the E-shaped house that had been like a nest to them, a death-trap for him, a death-trap of whispered warnings at dawn over the table top, sitting in a hard-backed seat opposite Jeb that he could still feel, the spokes pressing hard and wooden against his back. And so, with the back of the chair pressing hard against his covered wings, Max had entered and the questions he had to fight hard to come up with inconspicuous answers to had hurled across the room like knives borne on a fire wind. And so he endured it, running to the bathroom with the pretence of going to the toilet, pressing the mask of lies against him like the shield it was, pressing so hard it hurt, the silver blade of Jeb's old-fashioned razor blade striping his arms and wrists with red. He could still remember it clearly, the red from the wound, dripping into the sink, scrolling across the pristine whiteness of the bathroom tiles. Seeing red even now in the hawk who's blood he bled out amidst the dusky shadows of midnight, the black scarring on his arms more than enough evidence he always passed off as old Eraser claw wounds.

Thank God for the Erasers. The Alibis.

They say freak… when you're singled out… the red… well, it filters through… the song that had resounded from his IPod in the weeks that followed. Even the songs he listened to were masks- he had organized his entire collection in playlists, putting light, happy, explicit pop songs he couldn't stand to the foremost, so many they more than enveloped and hid the small collection of darker albums to the back. It often put him in mind of the stereotypical attic, all the newer, fresher things to the back and the old, worn, treasured memories hidden at the back, forgotten and ignored. The albums he liked would probably feature the most on the IPods of rebellious punks or gothic emos, which was why he had to cover it up. For anything dark that the rest of the flock noticed he listened to often would definitely raise a questions, flurrying like a snowstorm from the younger kids and a slower, hard, directive battering of sea waves from Max and Fang, smashing up against him, wearing him down to breaking point…

No. He had to stop thinking like that. He would never break.

Max entered the kitchen just as he was putting Fang's staple breakfast of pepper-sprinkled fried eggs and dried ham on a plate and Iggy stiffened. Maximum Ride. The chiroptophobiac.

"Hey, you're up." Maybe it was Jeb's presence in the room or Iggy's grudge against her for her rejection of his kind, but he thought he detected the trace of a sniff in her voice. Probably. He had the best ears on the planet. "That's helpful. Now all I have to worry about is getting Gazzy, Nudge and Angel up."

Yeah, tell me about your pain. Iggy thought with a savagery he knew his face would always hide, ripping open a carton of milk with probably more force than was required. I'm riveted.

Aloud, he said, injecting just enough pleasantry in his voice to hide the effects of his reminisces earlier, like the feathers that covered his wings and the fizzing whiteness that hid his thoughts. At all times. "Good luck with that. Gazzy's a killer to get up in the morning."

"Like a bat." Jeb spoke up from the corner, he too with amusement in his voice although Iggy knew that was a charade, just as he knew, without turning around, the Jeb's gaze was drilling into his back.

I'm sure if you just told them… the memory of the whispers that had previously hissed in the corner of the kitchen was brought back to him.

His already stiffened muscles tensed up so much they hurt, the old scars crossing his arms aching with the memory of phantom pain just as flames blasted his already licked body like a furnace. He answered, sliding and casually putting another couple feet of kitchen bench between him and Jeb as he served the eggs onto their respective plates, fumbling with the crockery and cursing the tapestry of shadows and whiteness that layered his sight. "Oh no. I'd say he was more like an owl." The emphasis on the words served as a reminder, a quick, hot, angry glance into the corner where Jeb stood, his tone heated with enough false accusation to fool the listening Max and Fang.

Iggy's grip tightened on the plate, glaring so hard it would have looked conspicuous had the entire flock not had a good reason to detest Jeb.

Do not. Tell them, Jeb.

The ex-scientist's gaze was just as intense, the unspoken message riding the back of his blue eyes like a plague ship in a cold sea. Tell them, Iggy.

He tore his gaze away and for a second blinked, disorientated as the world spun and flew around him in a dizzying swarm of white and black shadow before his vision cleared and focused on the eggs congealing on the plate in front of him. Iggy carried them over to Max's vague form seated at the table, head tilted as she talked to Fang.

"Okay," there was a hint of laughter in Max's voice as he handed the plate over, or was it mockery? "Thanks for sticking up for me there, Ig."

He grinned over at her and instantly felt odd, uncomfortable, like his lips weren't covering his teeth enough. He checked, quickly pressing them together. It was how he always smiled, tight, cautious, not wanting to slip up and look guilty. "Well, I hope you enjoyed it, 'cause I am never doing it again. You're getting soft." Soft. Soft teasing, gentle flirting to cover up the dislike while Fang's black eyes stared pointedly at him from across the table, not quite a glare but not quite less enough to be passed off as normal.

Max snorted, clearly noticing nothing out of the ordinary with Fang's behaviour, as she finished her breakfast and rose from the table. "Soft, my eye. I'm going to get the others up."

Iggy smirked, anticipating the day-by-day irritated shouting and groans that resounded from the Gasman's corner of the house every morning when Max went to wake him up, as he gathered the plates into his arms. "Good luck with that!" he called up the stairs, hearing Max's slow, determined footsteps thumping against the carpet. He was just loading the dirty plates into the sink to be washed by an ever-fussing Dr. Martinez, which she inevitably would once entering the room to find the majority of the house already up and the Igster slaving over a hot stove.

A coward and a drama king, now, a very Jeb-like comment breathed to life, a whisper in the back of his mind. Iggy twitched, and a spoon slipped from his grasp as the scars tingled.

So preoccupied, Iggy failed to notice Fang's attempt to gain his attention until the black-clad shadow at the back of his peripheral let loose a cough that Iggy had to fight not to let his ears automatically rotate towards. Although it wasn't obvious to the rest of the flock, Iggy's ears were slightly bigger and more protruding than any normal person or bird kid's, and special muscles allowed him to turn and rotate them in different directions.

He covered that up too.

"You all right there, Fang?" Iggy asked loudly, splashing water against a dish with a wet slosh Iggy always liked the sound of.

"Don't flirt with Max, alright? She's…" A sigh, a hand passed over a face that looked like it had seen too much already. A "mask of death" Iggy referred it as in one of his more rebellious days. Not a "mask of feathers" but a mask of death. Nice.

"I know, I get it, dude." Iggy tried to spare Fang the awkwardness, splashing water across the plain white circles, the water riding up his wrists and onto the scars that tingled. He kept his eyes adverted. "Hands off, okay, sure, I can do that." He was babbling. Like he would want to play lover boy to a chiroptophobiac who had basically crushed any chances of a real life from the beginning.

Back to the razor-blade.

Realizing his sigh had been a little too loud; he balanced it with a cheery "Dang. That's what you get for hoping."

Fang smiled unconvincingly and rose to help him with the dishes.

Jeb still hadn't moved.

Well, that was… random. Oh well. That's what you get for speedtyping an entire chapter in the middle of lunchtime while listening to Nickleback :) I wasn't originally intending for Iggy to go so far as to cut himself, but I dunno, it sorta… spiralled out of my control :( You all know the feeling, I'm sure.

Remember to review! :)

-Twinleafe