A/N It is four in the bloody morning. I should not be awake. Appreciate this.

Cut to one of the most awkward silences ever. Everyone sat in the living room, the two groups positioned opposite each other, and the expressions on their faces ranged from nervous smiles (Nudge and Kate), to boredom (Star and Ratchet), to discomfort, to distaste, to apprehension. We're talking a seriously awkward silence, here. The two groups meeting in Paris had been surreal enough, but that was on neutral territory; here, in our house, the strangeness was one hundred times more concentrated. I leaned against the wall, watching them all with my eyebrows raised. When the silence got so much that it seemed to have a buzz of its own, I rolled my eyes, sighed, and pushed myself off the wall, taking a couple of strides into the middle of the room.

'Really? Guys, I know that this has all been pretty sudden, and the circumstances are a little bizarre, but we're not that different. We've all been through the same shit, and we're all fighting for the same thing. It should not be this difficult to find a way to relate to each other.' I looked from side to side, my hands spread like 'come on'. When all I got was people shifting uncomfortably in their seats, I looked up at the ceiling as if some higher power might help me out by slapping them all in their mutant faces. When that didn't work, I clapped my hands, rubbing the palms together, and gave a sharp nod. Let's do this.

'Okay. Kate, do you like fashion?' She looked up abruptly, surprised at being singled out.

'Um, sure,' she said hesitantly, uncertain as to where I was headed.

'Great. Nudge loves it. Go wild. Iggy, you like making things explode as loudly as possible? I'm sure that Ratchet, what with his crazy sensitive hearing and all, will have something to say about that little hobby of yours. Star, you eat insane amounts of food? Meet Gazzy. Holden, you can heal yourself? So can Dylan. How's about that?' No one moved. I gave them my best glare and curled my hands into fists, and when I spoke I sounded pretty damn dangerous, if I do say so myself. 'They're called icebreakers, people. Use them or so help me, so much ass will be kicked that none of you will be sitting down for the next week. Now go!'

Slowly, and with varying degrees of enthusiasm, the two sides of the room started to merge, and self-conscious conversation began. I plonked myself down on the couch, surveying my handiwork, and then a quiet voice sounded to my right:

'Impressive.'

I kept my eyes trained ahead, not turning to look at Fang as I answered.

'Like I said, we're not that different.'

'So does that leave us talking with each other?' he asked, and this time I did look around at him. His dark eyes scrutinised me, his face impassive, and for a moment I flashed back to the way he'd looked the day before; so open, leaving himself completely unguarded.

'You can go talk to Total. Get reacquainted,' I said, then hauled myself off the couch and went over to join Ratchet and Iggy, who were starting to work themselves into what looked like a fairly heated debate about the pros and cons of explosions.

By evening, the two groups were beginning to interact without me having to threaten them with bruised behinds. Everything was still said with an air of cautiousness, and you could see that they all preferred to be with the people from their own crowd, but for the most part things were going as smoothly as I could have expected. Only a few blips remained:

First off, Fang and Dylan still couldn't seem to get along. I'd thought that they'd kind of made their peace in France, but it apparently that had only held true under the assumption that they were never going to see each other again. Now that they were living in the same space, the tension between them was as substantial as always, but I wasn't going to break my back trying to smooth things over; they were big boys, they could work out their own issues. Besides, I suspected that getting involved probably wouldn't help any.

The second hitch was Star. She seemed way less inclined to mingle than the others, and as soon as the extra bedrooms had been made up she'd shut herself in one of them for the rest of the afternoon, only coming out periodically to get food. When she disappeared again after eating what seemed like half the dinner table, I followed her upstairs a few minutes later. I gave a couple of cursory knocks, waited a few seconds with no response, then opened the door into her room to see her lying flat out on the bed, eyes closed. She wasn't in the uniform that she'd been wearing last time we met, but she was sporting a green polo and khaki pants; I guess the preppy look just spoke to her.

'Why bother knocking if you're gonna come in anyway?' she muttered caustically.

I shrugged.

'Trying to be polite.'

'Well, that failed.'

'It's never been a strong point of mine.' At that she opened her eyes and turned her head to look at me standing in the doorway.

'If you're here to drag me downstairs then I'd like to see you try.'

I shook my head, moving a little into the room.

'No dragging. Just wondered if you wanted hot chocolate. The others are making some.'

She regarded me warily through narrowed eyes, as if trying to figure out what my ulterior motive was, then shook her head. I nodded and went to leave, but her voice rang out after me.

'Why'd you bother asking?' I turned back to see her sitting up, looking at me with suspicion. 'I'm not a part of your flock. None of us are. Why are you being so… Nice?' She grimaced like the word left a bad taste in her mouth.

I dug my hands into my pockets and my eyes wandered around the room as I thought about my answer. Check me out, thinking before I speak. That right there is a little thing called progress.

'I don't know. I wouldn't have before.'

'You didn't before.'

I nodded in concession.

'Touché. But I realised something, like, yesterday: there's really no point in making a decision and not following through on it properly. Seems like it would be pretty stupid to invite you guys to join us and then not treat you like you were a part of the group. It wouldn't get us anywhere. Why choose to do something and then not give it everything I've got?'

Star flopped back down and rolled her eyes, but I thought that maybe it was done with a bit less bitterness than I'd been feeling from her before.

'Sounds like some kind of cheesy proverb.'

'Yeah, I don't know what happened to me. It's like all of a sudden I'm wise or something. Must be getting old.' I quipped, and this time she gave a hint of a grudging smile. I studied her from where I stood. 'So are you just not in favour of this merging or what?'

Star scowled and rubbed at her eyes with the heels of her hands.

'I'm not a people person. People are loud and stupid and annoying. No offence,' she said, not really sounding as if she cared whether I was offended or not.

'None taken.'

'Plus, I burn energy really fast. Sitting around talking and stuff just takes up effort that I could be using to do other things.'

I didn't reply, and we just stayed like that for a bit, her frowning at the ceiling and me standing between the bed and the door.

'Was it weird for you, hearing about Maya?' she asked suddenly. I raised my eyebrows; that wasn't a question I'd been expecting. Star looked at me and I saw genuine attentiveness in her face.

'Um… I guess I haven't really given myself the chance to work out how I feel about it,' I said slowly. 'Things have been on the go since I heard; hasn't really been a spare moment for me to stop and think about it.'

She nodded, not meeting my gaze.

'It must be strange. 'Cause you didn't know her very well, and when you first met her she was trying to kill you and all, but you're the same. Or the same but different, anyway. You had the same DNA. So she was kind of a part of you. And now she's gone.'

I frowned.

'Yeah, it's a strange kind of loss, I guess. You seem to have a good handle on how it feels.' I watched her as she breathed in deeply, linking her fingers together and stretching her arms out into the air above her so that her knuckles cracked.

'I suppose I do. I had a twin. An identical one. Our parents split up when we were babies, too young to remember. But our mom took her and left me with our dad. I never met her after that, but about a year before I was taken I heard news that she'd died. Drug overdose.'

'That sucks.' I got the feeling she wasn't the kind of person who would take well to 'I'm sorry'.

Neither of us spoke for a while. Then she looked at me, sighed, and rolled off the bed.

'Okay, I'll go down for a bit,' she said, walking past me and out into the hall. 'Might as well. I was wanting to get more food anyway; need to keep stocked up in case those bloody Erasers show up again.'

I turned around so fast I nearly fell over.

I eventually found Fang sitting outside, where he'd been leaning, unmoving, against the wall of the house facing into the backyard, staring at the sky which was getting darker by the minute as night fell. He looked up when I opened the door, breaking his stillness and causing him to become visible again.

'Erasers. Ari. Explain,' I seethed, glaring down at him.

He blinked.

'We fought Erasers. One of them looked like Ari.'

I gave a slight growl of frustration.

'I know that, but why didn't you tell me?'

'Didn't get all that much of a chance to,' he said quietly. 'You've been avoiding talking to me since we got here.' I flushed. 'Besides, it didn't seem all that important; just another mad scientist trying to mess with our minds.'

I hated the fact that he was probably right.

'You still should've said something,' I muttered, folding my arms in front of me and glancing out across the yard, automatically scanning for any shapes in the bushes.

'Why was this in Gazzy's wardrobe?'

I looked down at Fang, who was holding out a rumpled, black sweatshirt. My eyebrows went way up, my mouth opened in surprise, and I took a step closer in spite of myself.

'Wow, I'd forgotten…' I trailed off, blinking. It was one of Fang's old hoodies, one I'd taken a couple of months ago when we were still together. 'The guys from the CSM brought a bunch of stuff over from Mom's house for us. They must've picked it up from the bottom of my wardrobe and gotten it mixed in with Gazzy's things.'

Our eyes met and I could see him struggling with something. Apparently he lost.

'You kept it?'

My face screwed up briefly and I rubbed at my forehead.

'I wanted to get rid of it. Ella convinced me not to; she said that I'd regret it.' A wave of guilt and worry washed over me – I should have been out looking for my sister, and instead I was doo-dallying around playing mediator for a bunch of genetically-enhanced kids. 'Said that if I didn't want to see it anymore then I should stuff it away somewhere I could forget it existed, but if I threw it away then one day I would wish that I hadn't.'

'Would you?'

I swallowed hard.

'There's no point talking about how things might have turned out, Fang,' I said in a low voice.

He watched me for a moment, and I felt myself squirming under his gaze. Finally, he spoke:

'You've changed.'

I laughed a little at that, looking at him with a sad smile.

'What exactly were you expecting?'

Our eyes found each other's again, and this time we held the connection for longer. Then I drew in a long breath, took a few steps across the decking, and sat myself down next to him.

We didn't talk anymore. We just stayed like for a while; sitting, not touching, not speaking, both of us just looking out into the night.