This pairing is wonderful. Iggy was kept to a minimum here, to avoid a fangirl moment, but I still think he makes his point pretty well.

Point: ambiguous study, pain study.

Time: This takes place sometime after the published books. The Doctor is a random scientist who has captured the Flock.

Summary: Nudge was on her side, eyes glazed, cuts pressed on skin, smile silly, face pretty.

DEFECT

by Skadi 2. Marchking

Things were dark in the lab, edged with some silvery light from the experiment next door. It came, leaking in and lining things, harsh and sort of bitter.

Nudge could feel the light searing along her cuts, raw and tender and shiny. Her eyelids were heavy and her head spun against the cold metal floor, but every time she shut her eyes, the world began to buzz and spin and drown her out.

She tried to stay awake.

Her wing felt broken.

Doctor was still angry at them.

"Wrong, wrong, wrong" he said, and kicked Gazzy's cage with his hard boot.

Gazzy gasped in weak pain. The cage jarred his splinters.

"Too short, too small, too weak, too slow, too childish," Doctor beat the cage with each defect. "You are a stupid child, messing up our experiments. Damn you! No wonder you turned out as you did. You can hardly blame your defects on us. You were rotten from the start. How were we supposed to work with someone like you?"

"Stop," moaned Angel. "Don't. Gazzy's a-"

Brave Angel. Little bloody Angel.

"Shut the hell up, you glitched little beast," yelled Doctor, and threw his clipboard at her cage. It hit the bars and clanged into the wet night.

Nudge waited for Max to retaliate.

Doctor didn't bother. "And you," he began. "What do you have to say, savior? What can you do now?"

The weird silver light made the tear streaks on her cheeks luminous like snail trails.

"You're the worst of the lot," hissed Doctor. "And we tried so hard on you. Worked so much. Spent so much. I can't believe you were such a brat. So ignorant, disobedient. You went and ruined everything, for you and your friends. You can't blame us for your punishment. Our science and money can't fix a rotten child. It was coming to you. "

Doctor grinned, eyes bloodshot, and took a pen out of his pocket. He chucked it through the bars of Max's cage.

Max screamed as it struck her raw back.

"No," growled Fang. "Stop. You won't-"

"I can do the same to you," shot Doctor. "I'd like to see you try and fight for her life with one wing. You can hardly fly as it is. You were stubborn as a child, too impetuous. It's your own fault that you're such a burden and a setback to this astonishingly poorly-paired team. You'll be the first to die, mark my words. And you won't be missed, not by anyone with any sense."

Nudge starred up at the ceiling, eyes glazed over, every few seconds her eyelids dropping, sending her into a world of swirling colors and screaming bees, and then dragging her eyes open again as if they were made of sandbags.

She could hear Doctor's boots.

She heard them squeak slightly as he stood next to her cage.

"Hello, Nudge," he said.

Nudge was silent, spread out on the floor, her silver cuts pretty against her skin.

"You're rather quiet, aren't you?"

Nudge was quiet.

The light reminded her of the moon.

Her eyes closed again, and she was pitched into a screaming kaleidoscope.

"Nudge, dear," said Doctor. "Do you have anything to say to me?"

Nudge forced herself to look back up at the grimy, blood speckled bars of her cage.

"Nothing to say to your father?"

This was not her father.

But Nudge's mouth was broken, dribbling blood out onto her neck and shot with a poison so it would not numb.

"Defect!" Doctor screamed, and beat her cage with his hand. It shook around her, rattling, bursting her head. "Defect! That's all you are! Feeling ashamed now, are you, Monique, that you didn't follow orders? That you were a disobedient little bitch who thought more of her own happiness than of the people who made her, brought her to life?"

Nudge imagined that the silver light was moon light, and the darkness was the velvety smooth black of a mountain sky.

"I designed you," hissed Doctor, hitting her cage again. "You were perfect. No flaws. Engineered with precision. And. What. Do. You. Do?" He hit the cage for each word.

Nudge's world was spinning, buzzing, howling. Her head smiled. The two silver cuts along her cheek were like silver bandaids, silver whiskers. Pretty.

"What went wrong with you, Nudge?" wailed Doctor. "We had you down to tone of voice, fingernail growth. You were perfect for him. What did you do?"

Nudge blinked, eyelashes soft, crusted with blood.

"Useless," said Doctor coldly, getting to his feet. "Useless." He kicked her cage. It slid and shook and Nudge opened her eyes and mouth in shock as the whole world danced and screamed and pressed and banged against her. Oh.

"We were monitoring him from day one," yelled Doctor. "Every preference, every show of emotion was cataloged. We had a database on him filled with three years worth of favorites when we made you. It wasn't our fault you went wrong! Not ours at all! All you! You and your spoiled DNA, your messed up core. You, you bitch, getting me fired! I am not failure! It's you."

Kick kick kick kickkickkickickick.

Nudge gasped as one of her splintered bones was knocked.

"Hurt?" asked Doctor, and kicked the bone again.

Nudge was gone.

"How can you live with yourself, deformed and impossible?" raged Doctor. "Why aren't you dead, if you cannot do your purpose? Why haven't you killed yourself? Why aren't you like Dylan?"

"Perfect me," said Dylan wryly from the corner.

Doctor spun and threw a glass at him. It shattered and flew, sparkling across the darkness, silvered and slippery and falling…

Doctor turned back to Nudge as fast as breathing. "I didn't need a test round. You weren't my test round, you were my final product. Now tell me: why doesn't he love you?"

Nudge watched the glass shard next to her. The silver edges wobbled, like water. Her lips cracked, dry.

"Nudge?" whispered Gazzy. "What does-?"

"So you kept it a secret, did you?" snarled Doctor. "Is it shameful to be a work of art, you ungrateful bitch? You're supposed to be displeased, that you didn't do what you were made to do. But you're not! You're fine pretending you're perfect, unflawed, when all you are is spiteful and rotten to the core. You disobedient child, I will punish you so hard you won't have any bones left inside of you."

Then Nudge would be jello, and all this achy feeling would throb away and be soft.

"And! And!" Doctor sounded thrilled, cracking into a high note of insanity. "I know how best to do it. It doesn't matter wether he loves you or not- you must have some personality defect, be a brat, or a whiner, or a looser, or a mooch, or stupid or lazy or mean or slow or shallow- that wasn't my fault. But I don't care if he loves you any more, because he is going to die."

Nudge took in breath as sharp as if it was a knife. A knife made out of the silver light tickling the salty, bloody, crisp night air.

"At least you're smart enough to have fallen in love with him," said Doctor. "I will kill him in front of you, before your eyes. No one makes a fool out of me!"

Doctor was in a towering rage now. "All they talk about it Dylan! Dylan the success, Dylan the first edition! Dylan, the first Perfect Half! But they're liars! You are the first Perfect Half, and it's not my fault you're…unloved."

Nudge shook her head a little, trying to get the swarming sound out of her head, but it just roared louder.

"Face it, he doesn't love you back! He's just as defected as you are. Ugly, disabled, dependent. I don't know what you've been doing all these years when you were supposed to be working your way around him, but you've done miserably. I wouldn't be surprised if he'd be happy to see you dead, see his annoying little sister dead. Isn't that something, Nudge? You're so stupid and messed up, the boy you were made for- born for, created for, constructed DNA strand by DNA strand for- hates you. Imagine that, Nudge! You must be awful."

Nudge rolled her eyes around in their sockets, loose and wet with the blood flowing around them.

"No one loves you!" screamed Doctor. "Do you understand that, Nudge? Your only purpose for being alive is to be loved, and he does not love you back."

Nudge was on her side, eyes glazed, cuts pressed on skin, smile silly, face pretty.

"He does not love you."

Iggy's hair was white in the darkness, silver-edged and bright.

"Actually, sir, I think you'll find that, once again, you're fucking wrong."

Nudge smiled and laughed lightly into the blood around her mouth.