When Iggy woke up, his head hurt. Horribly.

He moaned, his eyelashes fluttering, lids opening partway; underneath them, his eyes were still rolled back in his head.

Iggy's lips parted slightly as he struggled to form coherent words, but he seemed to have lost all control over his motor functions. He could barely even move his fingers, and couldn't even move his arms to examine the two lumps on his head which were most possibly bleeding.

Finally, Iggy managed to move a little; only to discover that his arms were bound behind his back with chain, to some sort of tall metal pole. He sighed and inwardly cursed; great, just great. So now he was trapped somewhere, and Max and the others weren't even coming back from vacation for a week. Just his luck.

Then, Iggy heard a noise; a sort of shuffling sound, coming from just ahead of him. He frowned, trying to concentrate.

It was the same sound he had heard from the alley, just before…

And then it all came flooding back. Going to investigate the mysterious noise. Then the tall man, hitting him twice in the head with the bat… and poor Total… he wondered worriedly if Total had been terribly injured.

"Um, if you'll excuse me, do you think you could possibly inform me as to where I am and who you are?" Iggy spoke up to the shuffling noise, and it stopped suddenly. Then he heard muttering.

"Won't even be quiet… talking out of turn… just keeps talking out of turn…"

"Uh, hello? I'm waiting. Come on, don't leave me hanging. Blind guy here. I need to be told this stuff." Iggy waited curiously for the answer; this man, judging by the nearly nonsensical murmuring, appeared to be… well, crazy.

There was a paused, frozen silence, and then the man answered. Well, talked again, anyway.

"Think he'd know his place by now… think he'd know his place… after all that… I beat some sense into him, I did… and now he doesn't even know his place…"

"Uh, what the heck are you talking about?"

But the man didn't answer, just approached Iggy with a limping gait. Iggy was growing vaguely worried; after all, not just any man can kidnap a mutant bird-kid. This guy must be either really strong, or completely and totally insane. Either way, he could be dangerous. And a blind boy stuck in who-knows-where with his arms chained behind his back isn't much help in defending himself. Tough luck.

"Maybe this will teach him to watch his mouth," the man spoke up, and suddenly he was bending over Iggy, and all Iggy could picture was an Eraser baring down on him with outstretched claws…

Iggy kicked out with his long legs, and managed to hit the man squarely in his stomach, knocking the wind out of him. The man stumbled backwards, choking slightly on the air, suddenly lacking the proper amount of oxygen. Taking a couple of breaths, the man spoke again.

"Think you can just run away like that, and you can stay away from me? I said I'd catch you, I said I did, and now I have, and now you're all mine…" there was a maniacal laugh, and Iggy began to grow nervous.

"I think you've got the wrong guy," Iggy said cautiously, laughing nervously. "I've never met you before in my life. Let's just be a little rational here and look at the facts…"

The man suddenly lunged forward, and Iggy had no choice but to kick out again. Except this time, instead of his foot colliding with the man's stomach, it was impaled by a sharp object; a knife. The silver blade sliced right through the sole of Iggy's shoe and up through his foot, coming out all the way through the top of his sneaker, now stained red with his blood. Iggy let out a scream of pain, trying to yank his foot back; the knife was pulled out of the man's hand and came with him.

Iggy's face was scrunched in pain now, and he was trying hard not to cry. Blood now fully soaked his sock and the inside of his shoe was sloshy with the red stuff; it trickled out the freshly cut hole through the rubber sole and dripped onto the filthy concrete floor of wherever Iggy was being kept.

"Didn't think you could just run away… you're staying with me now, never running out on us again… worried your mother half to death…"

Iggy, his arms incapacitated, had no way to nurse his severely injured foot. He let out a small mini-scream as he felt another wave of the biting pain, then turned his gaze up to his captor.

"You're… crazy… I've never heard you before in my life… I don't have any parents…"

"QUIET!"

The man shouted furiously, and then suddenly his hand reached out and grabbed the handle of the silver knife lodged in Iggy's foot, tugging it out furiously. Iggy let out another scream, and fresh blood flowed out of the wound. There was a pause as the man appeared to look at the blood puddle slowly forming under Iggy's shoe, and then he pulled off Iggy's sneaker and blood-soaked sock; a moment later, he had retreated for a few precious moments, leaving Iggy with his confusion and pain.

But a minute later, he was back, muttering again.

"Now see what you've done, you're not supposed to do that… that's not good… no hurting, not unless I say so…"

He approached Iggy, but Iggy wasn't about to let him touch him again; he scowled through his pain and launched out with his feet again, just barely missing his captor.

"Silence. You don't want to get hurt…"

Then the sound of something heavy being lifted, and suddenly the same metal baseball bat as before collided once again with his head. As Iggy slowly, reluctantly drifted off into unconsciousness, he felt bandages begin to be wrapped around his foot by rough hands.

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

Iggy didn't know how much time it took for him to wake up; all he knew is that, once he did, it was as if waking from a drugged sleep. And then he felt what was recognizable a tiny sting in the crook of his forearm; obviously the spot where he had been injected with something akin to dope.

Moaning, Iggy shook his head; and then, not only the horrible pain in his injured foot, but a new, slicing pain met his senses. He suddenly noticed the rub of bandages against his skin, and the fact that his shirt had been cut away. And under that rub of bandages, was the unmistakable biting agony of cuts, so many different cuts and slices…

"Augh!" Iggy exclaimed, unable to hold his silence. There were cuts completely covering his chest and arms. He felt them open and close like tiny mouths every time he moved just the slightest inch, every time he breathed, every time he let a single, smallest sound exit his mouth…

He felt incredibly dizzy, and suddenly thought that perhaps that drugged sleep he had been in was so, so much preferable to pain like this…

"See? Didn't I tell him, he shouldn't have run away, not from me… run away from his house, from his own family… we were supposed to be perfect… a happy, smiling family… always smiling…" he let out a laugh, but Iggy couldn't even respond with one of his witty remarks, not this time, not with all this pain he was in.

So instead, Iggy settled for leaning his head against the wall in a careful way so as not to jar his numerous injuries any more than he had to. Then Iggy lay there, just wishing that he could drift to sleep. And he almost did, too.

"No sleeping, not unless I say," the crazy man snapped, and a harsh blow was felt smashing into Iggy's mouth. It was a rough, hard object that had been used to hit him; the corner of said object. And Iggy supposed that said object was a brick, because it most certainly felt as hard as stone.

Immediately, blood welled from his newly split lip, and Iggy wretched, struggling not to choke on it. He felt a couple small, pebble-like objects swimming in his mouth amidst the blood, and felt sick as he spit them out. He used his tongue to sense the damage done to his jaw – three missing teeth.

Spitting out more blood lest he choked, Iggy suddenly felt very, very afraid. He was stuck here with an injured foot, cuts all over his torso nearly incapacitating him, his arms bound behind his back, and a man who seemed quite unafraid to do any harm to him. And he was utterly alone.

And there was a familiar, empty feeling in his stomach as well; Iggy was hungry.

"Please," Iggy choked desperately to the man. "Please, just let me go…"

"Ha!" the man laughed. It was a horrible, lifeless sound. "He thinks I'll just let him go! Never again, never again, I'll never let him go again, not after he ran away… you're never running again, you hear?"

The man's tone had risen until he was nearly yelling; his words hurried and slurred, an urgent, desperate tone in his voice. But Iggy didn't care. He just wanted to get out of this horrible place, to get back home.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Iggy tried to protest. "I never ran away from you. I've never met you before. I just want to go home."

The man bent slowly down to Iggy's level, and Iggy could feel eyes staring into his own blind ones. Horrid, rank air was breathed onto his face, stinging his injured lip.

"You are home. You're home. You're here with your family, your happy, smiling family…"

There was a pause, as if the air itself had frozen, and Iggy was scared of what was about to happen…

"Why aren't you smiling? Smile. Smile. SMILE."

Rough hands reached out to grab at the corners of Iggy's mouth and pull; Iggy let out a pained gasp as the touch jerked both his injured mouth and the cuts on his torso.

But the gasp just made the crazy man tug harder, as if he hoped the forced smile would somehow stick, and Iggy would be permanently in that position.

To get him to stop, Iggy tried to smile – but he couldn't, he simply couldn't. There was too much fear, too much anticipation, too much pain that he couldn't force his face into that happy expression.

"Smile, damn you! We're a happy family! Smile! Happy, smiling family! If we're smiling, you won't run away, and your mother can get better…"

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I can't, I can't," Iggy choked through the man's fingers, blood trickling out of his mouth and down his chin, dripping onto the bandages around his chest.

"Then I'll make you… I'll make you, and then we'll all be happy and smiling…"

The man's fingers were suddenly gone, and Iggy feared what was going to happen next. He didn't like this one bit.

Suddenly, the large amount of blood he had recently swallowed involuntarily reacted with his stomach, and leaning over as far as he could with his arms bound, he retched and threw up.

Bile and blood rose into his mouth and poured onto the ground; luckily, Iggy had managed not to puke on himself. But still. He was now alone, frightened, in pain, and had a totally empty stomach to boot. He wasn't going to last through much more. He figured he'd either black out from the pain or the hunger, or the crazy man would simply kill him.

And then footsteps appeared back in the room, and Iggy flinched away from the source; nonetheless, the man continued forward, until he was back in front of Iggy. He didn't even avoid the pool of Iggy's sick, his heavy shoes stepping right in it.

"Open up," the man said, and Iggy, once more, felt his rough hands on his face, wrenching his mouth open. Iggy didn't care anymore; he opened as wide as he could. Maybe it would appease the man, and he would just leave him alone.

But just as suddenly as this naïve, hopeful thought had occurred, there was the coldness of a blade at the corner of his mouth, and Iggy let out a scream as the knife sliced from the side of his mouth through his cheek in a curving, upward motion. Blood gushed down the side of Iggy's face and into his mouth; he choked on the red stuff.

But it wasn't over, as the crazy man took the knife and proceeded to do the same painful thing to the other side of Iggy's mouth.

Finally, Iggy allowed himself to cry – or rather, his body forced itself too. Tears streamed down his cheeks to enter the new gashes on his face, causing them to sting and perhaps be even more painful than before, mingling with the blood.

The crazy man had, indeed, forced Iggy to smile. In the sickest of ways. Screams and sobs exited through Iggy's mouth, which remained open, and, due to the injuries was now much, much wider than it should have been.

"There, much better now." The man's voice was barely audible over Iggy's screams and sobs. "Now we're smiling. Such a happy, smiling family…"

Then he frowned and gazed intently with his insane, flickering eyes at the blood continuing to flow unceasingly down Iggy's mutilated face. Too much blood.

"There's blood… it needs to stop… I'll be right back, son, be right back… it's okay, you'll be fine… just keep smiling…"

Before he left, the man procured a small, rectangular box from inside a large pocket in the coat he wore and pulled from it a blue syringe containing a gross-looking liquid.

Henry Terry walked around to where Iggy's arms were bound and reached down to stab the needle deep into the crook of Iggy's elbow. He slowly pressed down on the edge of the syringe until all of the drug was in Iggy's bloodstream, and unhurriedly pulled it out. Iggy didn't even notice the needle, too focused instead on his pain and his blood.

But in a matter of moments, his sobs had lessened, his screams had stopped, and Iggy noticed the drowsy feeling coming over him; he knew he had been drugged and was about to go to sleep. Thank you, he muttered silently in his head as he finally slipped into welcomed unconsciousness.

While Iggy was sleeping, his captor swiftly walked out of the room with his constant limping gait. He had to stop the blood so his son could get better. Then they'd all be a smiling, happy family again.

In the room outside of Iggy's cell, there was nothing much. An old, rotting table that housed all of his items. His knives. His drugs. And the needle and wire.

The wire was thin, and quite malleable, more like string than anything. It was woven from metal fibers that allowed it to work well in the stitching process.

Henry Terry took the large needle and the wire in hand and loped back in to the room and to his 'son', whom he immediately attended.

Iggy's chest was slowly rising and falling as he breathed. Blood was still gushing from his mouth. Blood was also beginning to stain his bandages from the numerous cuts on his torso; they would have to be changed soon.

The man threaded the needle with the wire, and once it was ready, sank it into Iggy's bottom lip.

Iggy twitched, and blood continued to flow from the mutilation. But the man just continued to stitch the wounds back together with wide, uneven, yet thorough stitches. It certainly helped to stop the bleeding. But the wire would cause problems in the end; it would, most likely, inevitably cause infection. Plus, if Iggy's skin healed around the wire, that would certainly pose future problems.

But Iggy was alone, and for all anyone knew, he was going to remain alone for a long time yet. What happened to him didn't matter, because the only person who would see it was the afflicter.

So Iggy slept, and his insane captor retrieved water and a dirty towel to wipe the blood from his face. And it would stay that way for a while yet.

"Now he's smiling, always smiling," Henry Terry murmured as he nursed his 'son'. "Smiling. Happy family." Then he frowned. "But he can still run away. I have to make sure he can't. I have to make sure he can't open the door, can't turn the knob…"