'cause when the sun sets, it upsets what's left of my invested interest

[00nothing]

WHO: Alex Rider
WHERE: The fountain
WHEN: 12/12
OPEN TO: Everyone
WARNINGS: slight deep water phobia, reference violence maybe?
STATUS: Open

---

Alex opens his eyes to the all too familiar sensation of drowning in deep water and tries very hard not to panic. This shouldn't be happening. He should be home and safe in Chelsea, or at the very least drowsing wearily on the plane flight back to London, not... not this again. His chest feels tight, and it has nothing to do with needing to breathe.

This isn't fair, he thinks viciously, and his eyes burn. He never asked for any of this and he doesn't want to do this anymore.

Frigid water presses down all around him and Alex squeezes his eyes shut, his hands into fists until his nails cut into his palms. When he opens his eyes again his heart is beating loudly in his ears, but he's clear headed enough to look around and get a fix on the way out. And then he's swimming, long, powerful, slightly desperate strokes to the surface. He's gasping for breath as soon as he clears the water and flinging himself over the edge of the fountain before he even takes a moment to register his surroundings.

Of course, then he does, dragging himself up into a seated position, leaning back on his hands and giving the fountain in front of him a wide, wild eyed look. "What?" Who on Earth was going around leaving him in fountains, of all places? That was hardly an effective way to try and kill someone.

They hadn't even put a shark in there with him or something.

He shrugs the weight of a bag from his shoulders when he registers the pressure, and then pauses in analyzing the contents of the bag when he realizes that the shrug hadn't hurt like it should, no burnt skin pulling uncomfortably tight. With slowly dawning disbelief, Alex reaches up with one hand to press to his shoulders, and feels only the slightly upraised pale pink skin of a new scar.

"What." He says, once more with feeling.

Comments

20th or 21st or thereabouts...

[00nothing]

this happens with Natasha.

[vdova]

His answer is all she needs to know that, even if he has, it's clearly not enough, and she vanishes again, briefly, coming back with a plate of bread, butter and some dried fruit, left over from the feast a month ago. It's not gourmet, and it's certainly not fresh, but they don't have much else. They make do with what they have.

"Here. This will help absorb the alcohol in your stomach."

Whatever chastising tone there is isn't for him getting piss drunk, it's because he hasn't eaten all day. Natasha's been keeping her eye on him for a while, mostly in secret. He's at the inn, like her, and she still can't walk far on her own to get anything done beyond knitting or mending.

She recognizes it, vividly remembers it staring her in the face in the mirror when she was his age, and while she has no idea what gives him that need to be on his own, that haunted expression of 'I don't want to do this anymore'. She feels for him, and she's not going to scold him for doing what he thought would kill it, even just for a little while. She's just going to do her best to mitigate the damage it will do in the morning.

"Do you need to talk?"

[00nothing]

Alex's first instinct is to deny, of course. Deny that there's anything to talk about, deny that it's really anything all that serious, deny, deny, deny. But he's already said too much, already done too much, for any of that to fly, and they both know it.

He sets the cup down and reaches for the bread to buy himself a little time to think, tearing off a small piece and bringing it to his lips, chewing slowly. He's noticed her around, of course. With all of the time he's spent haunting around the inn over the past couple of days, it's hard not to catalog all of its regulars. Something about her though, has always had him skirting around the edges, some inborn instinct telling him not to engage.

The sensation is still tickling at the back of his nerves, even now, but everything's dulled and maybe that's why he hasn't found some reason to leave the room yet but despite everything she's making it easy right now. To stay. Something in her eyes, maybe, though Alex doesn't meet them for long.

He eats more bread, but shreds even more of the bread into little pieces that he leaves scattered in front of him on the table. Stares at them rather than her when he finally answers. "It's... complicated. And I'm finding it exceedingly difficult to trust adults right now with much of anything." Adding with a sigh, "no offense."

[vdova]

"None taken," she says easily, reaching for a piece of the bread herself, along with a little of the butter. She spreads it on the bread slowly, taking her own time, not necessarily to think, but mirroring his own wariness. He's acting, more or less, like a spooked animal, and she doesn't want to scare him away, now that she's got his attention.

"A lot of people don't trust me. It kind of comes with the territory." She smiles a little, mostly to herself, at that, but it's still pointed his way a little. Something terrible, she thinks, happened to this boy, and while she can't make it unhappen, she can absolutely try to help him through the aftermath. The nervous gesture of tearing the bread, the fact he won't look at her when he speaks.

"I'm not going to make you do anything you don't want to do." She pauses, tilts her head to the side in acquiescence. "Except eat and drink water so you don't have a hangover tomorrow. There's no aspirin in this village, so you'd be on your own with the headache."

[00nothing]

"I've had worse, I'm sure." Alex says with a diffident, one shoulder shrug, picking up a piece of dried fruit and nibbling at it warily. Not that he's ever experienced anything like a hangover before, but he wonders if it's not altogether unlike coming down from being dosed through his flight out to Africa, and while certainly the detoxing hadn't been enjoyable it was still hardly the worst thing he'd been through.

(He rubs at his chest thoughtlessly in memory of the winner of that very dubious honor before scowling and placing his hands rather pointedly in his lap again.)

'It comes with the territory' is a curious combination of words, but one that Alex in honestly too weary to analyze too deeply right now in any case. Because if he knows he might have to do something about it, and he's been trying to avoid anything like that since he pulled himself from that fountain days ago.

"Sometimes I wonder..." Alex finds himself saying as he pulls the cup close to him again, and he's not even all that sure how he's going to finish the sentence until the words come out of his mouth. "--how much worse things need to get before I actually begin to regret telling Sarov no." Because he's not there yet, not with how wide scale and broad the devastation would have been from allowing Sarov's actions to go unchecked. He can't in right conscience condemn the rest of the world to that, even if he's beginning to think at least a few people might deserve it.

But at least Sarov had been honest about trying to control Alex.

[vdova]

She's about to tell him that having had worse doesn't mean he needs to experience it again (advice that she, ironically, never takes herself) when he continues, and she stops short in buttering her bread, knife hovering over it as she listens. The lack of movement doesn't last long, and Natasha sets down her knife to take a bite, chewing thoughtfully.

She picks up two things from that sentence, the first being that he's probably unaware of how loaded it is. Not careless, mind, he's aware of what he's saying, but she gets the feeling he thinks she won't. Which, for now, she'll allow him. Because while she can't discern the details, like why he told this person no, how bad things have gotten to get him to this point, she can tell that it's bad, and she's been there before. The second is that he's clearly had contact with Russia to the point of someone asking him to do things. He's not Russian himself, and Natasha knows the government of her former homeland all to well, so he was probably useful.

She considers revealing her heritage, and then rejects the idea for now. She has more important things to worry about, like regret and the effects of. The statement is rhetorical, but she answers anyway.

"If you told Sarov no for a good reason, then things will never get bad enough for you to regret it."

[00nothing]

Alex isn't watching her, but there's something so apparent in the sudden cessation of motion (even as short lived as hers was) that it's something he can see all too clearly still from the corner of his eye. And it has him freezing up too, hands wrapped tight around the cup until his fingers are white from the pressure.

He doesn't even know why, and that's almost the worst part, isn't it? That just the slightest suggestion that something he said put her on edge can do exactly the same to him. He wants to stop being paranoid about everything, but what was that saying...?

It's not paranoia if they really are out to get you.

"He wasn't a nice man. But I do think he honestly cared about me." Alex says after a tense minute, shoulders hunched, eyes shadowed. It was more than could be said about a lot of people in his life. "He was just so... sad, I think. And he tried being angry instead." Something Alex could understand all too well, these days. And that? That's what scares Alex the most, honestly.

Natasha's sentiments are well-intentioned, he's sure, but it's hardly her fault that she's missing a few things. Like the fact that in some ways, he'd regretted the words the moment Sarov pulled the trigger. Or at least, regretted being the reason Sarov had. Alex has seen so many people die since the MI6 pulled him into this mess, had even been at least indirectly responsible for some of them (alright, maybe more than some), but Sarov's death was one of his biggest regrets, in the end.

There are some things you just can't come back from.

[vdova]

He's not a relative, this Sarov. He wouldn't be referring to him by surname if he was, but Natasha can't pinpoint what he was. Some kind of caretaker, a superior, but he's too young to be military, even with the way he moves, wary and paranoid. She'd really rather not consider that he might be to him what Madame was to her, but the possibility is there. He's got the haunted look of someone who's seen a lot of death; the question is whether or not it was at his hands or someone else's.

"Anger's easy," she says finally, leaning back in her chair. "It's harder to live with sadness, but anger, now that you can use." She says it almost distantly, like she's thinking of something or someone, but her attention is back on Alex soon enough.

"It doesn't mean you should use it. And you don't look angry to me." She pauses, expression becoming a little more discerning.

"That's what you're scared of, right? Becoming angry?"

[00nothing]

"I'm tired." Alex says in answer, almost as an explanation. Or maybe an excuse. He pushes away everything in front of him on the table until he has the space to curl his arms up on the table, slumping down to rest his chin on them and staring straight ahead at the wall. Eyes unfocused. "Which is almost scarier."

Because he shouldn't feel this way, not so young, he at least knows enough about the world to know that. And because it feels like that means he's giving up, when giving up is honestly one of the last things he can afford to do.

Not here, not back home. Especially not back home.

Alex lets his head tip to one side just enough to hide the shape of his mouth behind one arm (it's a shallow sort of protection, and he's never been any good at hiding what he's feeling in his eyes anyway, but this way at least he almost feels like he isn't even lying), slants a look at Natasha under the fall of his fringe. "I've been angry." He admits, words slightly muffled by his arm.

"I don't like how I get when I'm angry." How destructive he gets, how careless. It's so hard to care about anything at all, when he gets like that. And when he doesn't care, how does he figure out where to draw the line? How does he stop from destroying himself entirely, all on his own?

(Who needs the bad guys to hurt you when you have yourself?)

"Ever since Yassen died..." Alex stops himself abruptly, squeezes his eyes shut and shakes his head, terrified of revealing too much when he clearly has so little control over what he's saying. This is why he should have never touched that bottle of alcohol, this is why he can't afford to be so careless.

How could he have forgotten?

[71st_victor]

"What, what?" Johanna retorts, chewing on some of the dried meat from where she's perched in one of the low-hanging branches watching the fountain for any clues. She hadn't seen anyone come around until suddenly the kid hauled himself over the lip and for a second, the blond hair makes her think of Peeta, but it doesn't take very long at all before she figures out that it's not him.

Raising a brow, she looks at the way he's acting, remembering how she'd reacted like that, too, when she should have been bleeding and badly injured. "Is everything still in the same place?" she mocks.

[00nothing]

Alex's head jolts up so fast it's a wonder he doesn't get whiplash, staring at Johanna in her perch with wide eyes and a rapidly beating heart. He scrambles to his knees, then freezes again, awkwardly, half in a crouch as he registers a distinct lack of twinging pain in his ankle, nearly tripping over the bag he shed earlier as he finally pushes his way fully to his feet.

All of this takes an embarrassingly long stretch of time (nearly a full minute!), and the fact that Johanna hasn't tried attacking him in the interim manages to ratchet Alex's alarm firmly down from 'fight or flight' to merely 'on edge'.

"The same place, yes, I suppose." He answers finally, words hesitant and softly accented. "Just not... in the same shape as I last remember them, really."

[71st_victor]

"Let me guess, you were oblong before." She doesn't really move so much as stay in the same position as she eyes him and watches the way he reacts to the situation. She doesn't have a weapon, not the way she'd like, so she has to make sure to keep her distance with people until she really knows what they're all about. "Don't worry," she says, relenting from her stance of keeping on edge and making sure that he doesn't relax either. "Not being in the same shape is pretty normal, especially when you're climbing out of that thing."

She looks at his scrubs and raises a brow. Red, like hers. She's not sure what that means, but if Finnick being in red is any indication, it could be a marker. Maybe it means that he's dangerous. "You're probably cold, huh," she says, a little even as she now has to decide if she's going to help or just send him on his way.

[00nothing]

"More like a gordian knot, actually." Alex says with something approaching wry humor, taking a moment to scan his surroundings a bit while also making sure to keep Johanna in his periphery at all times. "Or maybe some sort of mobius strip." The way he twisted back in on himself and always seemed to be repeating all of his past mistakes with no respite, it seemed as apt a shape as any.

He spares the briefest half second of taking his eyes off Johanna entirely to glance back over his shoulder at the fountain that seems to loom behind him and he can't but shiver as he looks away again, the memory of being trapped under all that water leaving his breathless all over again and much colder than the surrounding temperature has managed thus far. "Is this a regular occurrence then?" Alex asks, shoulders hunching. "Leaving people in that fountain?

"Y-yes." He adds a second later, almost as an after thought. "A bit cold." Understatement, he was becoming quite good at it. Ian would have been proud. Maybe.

[71st_victor]

He's clever. Well, isn't that just a fun new kind of dangerous that she doesn't want to really deal with. At the same time, clever means interesting ands he has been a little bored lately. "It's not so much leaving as you come up out of it," she clarifies, seeing as she's done it herself (though with a lot more guarded wariness and a sharp weapon, to boot). She looks him up and down and decides that clever or not, she probably shouldn't leave him to freeze. It might be seen as some kind of murder. Sighing, she finishes the meat with a large rip of it with her teeth, swallowing it down, and hopping out of the tree.

"Come on," she coaxes, sounding more bored than anything despite the fact that she's about to help someone. "I'll show you where you can go so you don't freeze to death." She guesses she owes this, seeing as people had helped her when she'd come out of that thing. So she'll pay it forward, just this once, and maybe it'll pay off or maybe it'll come back to hurt her. Still, if he turns out to be someone here to hurt her, Johanna's more than happy to welcome the challenge. It's been a while since she's been allowed to throw a punch and she's feeling more than a little pent up.

[00nothing]

Her explanation about the fountain doesn't manage to explain much of anything, but Alex hardly expects anything less. People only ever bother to simply hand him the answer when it fits their narrative, and when that happens he knows better than to trust it.

At least this girl doesn't appear to have any personal stock in the fountain.

(Not that this helps him relax around her any, there's something blatantly dangerous about her, sharp, like jagged glass. In some ways, focused destruction was much easier to deal with.)

Alex does his best to appear mild mannered and unassuming when he smiles at her, but it's hard, because he hardly remembers what a normal boy his age is even supposed to feel like. More frightened, probably. Which, it isn't that he's not scared, he's just spent so much of the past year feeling that way that it's all turned into a sort of white noise in his head instead.

"I would appreciate that, thank you." Alex tells her as he steps forward to follow, making sure to stoop down long enough to catch a strap of the bag on the ground in one hand.

Whatever is in there, it can't possibly hurt to take it with him, and he's going to need every single advantage he can get, he's sure.

[71st_victor]

Soon, Johanna's going to have to stop perching in trees to observe the people around her when the cold gets too biting that even her District Seven inured tolerances fade away, but this gives her the opportunity to scope out who's coming, who's dangerous, and who she ought to form alliances with, just in case. She glances at him taking the bag, gesturing to it with her fingers. "You're definitely going to want that," she guarantees. "The only coat you're going to get in this place is in there," she says, tweaking the collar of hers as if to show off the fashion show of what it looks like.

"Unfortunately, whoever packed didn't exactly think that food or tools is necessary," she says sharply, annoyed that her survival has been reduced to clothes and not the necessary things like food and weapons that you'd actually need.

[00nothing]

Alex still long enough to get the top of the bag open and pull out said coat, dragging on with stiff, frozen fingers and then immediately shoving his hands into the pockets to shiver heavily in an attempt to build up his body heat again. The steady drops of water from his hair sliding down his neck past the collar of the coat are not helping the matter any, of course, and his shivers are set off all over again every time.

Still, he manages to zero in on her complaint and the information present in it with little trouble, eyes narrowing and mouth thinning at the implication. "Whoever?" He asks, widening his eyes a moment later in an attempt to look curiously disturbed, or at the very least, more surprised than he currently is about some shadowy large scale plot that he has once again managed to get caught in the middle of.

"How many people has this happened to?" Alex doesn't have to work very hard to get a little bit of horror into his voice this time when he speaks. It's all so very genuine.

[repressings]

'What?' the other says, and then a second time, and Credence is left staring at the boy in the fountain--and then out of the fountain--with absolute surprise not able to quite wipe off of his own face.

Is that what he looked like, fumbling out of the fountain? Is that what Annie Cresta had saved him from? This one is certainly more put together than he is--and young. That's what bothers him about this. The other is so very young. Chastity's age, sopping wet and worse for wear.

Credence himself is in his peacoat, safe and warm and dry. The extremely wet confused boy in front of him, though, not so much.

It takes him a few more moments to blink profusely at such a strange sight, and his gaze moves not to the other but to the left of the fountain. It's much easier to talk like this.

"It's warm at the inn."

[00nothing]

Alex hadn't even noticed the cold when he first pulled himself from the fountain, far too preoccupied by trying to figure out where he was, what had happened to bring him here, and how long did it happen for, for him to be all healed up from his time in Africa?

When Credence speaks up though, a few things happen in order. One, Alex tenses instantly and turns to get a look at him, sliding into a crouch in one quick, fluid motion. Two, Alex studies Credence carefully, takes note of his body language and the way the man won't even meet his eyes, and he relaxes slightly, pushing himself the rest of the way up until he's standing. Three, Credence's words actually register and the cold washes over him like a wave, sinking deep into his bones.

He almost collapses back down to the ground again when it hits him, only manages to avoid it by locking his knees and gritting his teeth against the feeling. Shivering furiously, Alex wraps his hands around himself in a desperate but mostly pointless bid to conserve what little body heat he can and nods his head weakly.

"That... might be a good idea, thank you."

[repressings]

Credence nods, still unsure after all this time how to handle someone thanking him, and realizes that not only is the other improperly dressed, but he's also wet. Not good.

He remembers someone having to fish him out of the well, a girl with pretty eyes and a stern but gentle voice. He feels guilty about it, because this one tumbles out like he's ready and raring to go, just like this. Like it's nothing. He's a little jealous, too, but he'll never admit that out loud.

Instead, Credence takes a few steps back and towards the inn.

"Your backpack, it has a coat. Like this one," He shrugs his shoulders. "

[00nothing]

'Ready and raring to go' was probably a bit of an exaggeration in Alex's case, but it was the illusion he was attempting to portray, in any case and apparently he had succeeded. In situations like this he has to prioritize.

Getting warm is definitely first on his list though, and he glances curiously down at the bag at his feet before crouching down to retrieve it, working it open with stiff fingers and discovering a thick, and most importantly, dry pea coat folded in on top. He pulls it out with no small measure of relief and then pauses briefly to consider his options.

Presumably the Inn Credence is talking about isn't too far away, but if he just pulls the coat on over wet clothes all he's going to be doing is trapping the cold against his skin and that... well, even five minutes like that could have significant effects on his health, he's already been exposed to the cold without protection for far too long as it is. But there's another set of dry clothes folded down under the coat, and that's undeniably an option as well.

A pity there's no where particularly private to change.

Alex settles on a compromise, pulling out just the shirt and holding it up to show Credence with a slightly shaky smile and a proffered, "I won't be a minute," before turning his back on the man and stripping off his soaked shirt, quickly pulling the dry one on in its stead. There's not much he can do about the fresh pink burn scars along his shoulders or the long thin scar wrapping around his lower back, but at least by turning away he can avoid any uncomfortable conversations about the bullet scar on his chest.

He turns back around as he shrugs into the coat, and smiles a bit more steadily at how much warmer he instantly feels for his effort, even with his wet pants still sticking to his legs. "That's much better, thank you." He says, stepping forward to follow. "Now where is this Inn at?"

Second priority? Figure out just what the hell is going on. And an Inn is probably as good a place to start as any with that.

[repressings]

Oh--Oh, this is--he's doing this now.

Okay. Credence's hands immediately fling towards his face and he spins around, but not before catching a glimpse of pink and scars, skin not exactly raised but marked, on the other's back.

It's all too recognizable and Credence is seriously considering if this is a special sort of purgatory, one for people who have been hurt in a myriad of horrible but similar ways when Alex announces he's done and snaps him out of his incredibly brief reverie.

It would make sense, though.Everything would. How many people in this village have had something terrible done to them? How many people here have had to claw through adversary to get where they are?

How many people, Credence wonders, have killed? Has this one?

"It's not that far." he confirms Alex's thought, and spares a glance over since he seems to be done.

"Maybe there's some soup left. Miss Kelly's a very good cook."

[00nothing]

Alex had caught the blur of motion from the corner of his eye while he was changing, and turning back around confirms for him that Credence had also turned away. Which is... a little silly honestly, considering, but altogether harmless. Less than harmless, even, because this way there's even less of a chance of anyone asking Too Many Questions about his scars.

One question is too many even, and if Alex never has to talk about any of this it will still be too soon.

He picks up his pace a bit at the man's comment about their destination, drawing up even with Credence but a step behind to let him lead. The coat is helping a bit, but he'll be happy to be out of this weather regardless. And hopefully a bit closer to some answers as well. "Miss Kelly?" Alex asks, instantly wary until he forces himself to take a breath to ease the tension from his body, shaking his head like he's shaking it off.

If only it was that easy.

"Sorry, I should have asked before, but, ah. Where exactly are we?" And most importantly, perhaps... "Why am I here?" At the very least, he needs to figure out if this is MI6's doing or SCORPIA's.

[repressings]

They're walking, at least, after that dizzying ordeal. He supposes he should be used to people doing strange, unbecoming things, but Alex is his first arrival. They're figuring this out together, the both of them, even if Credence isn't sure he'd be the other's first choice, considering.

When he walks, it's his usual gait--clipped and small, curling in on himself, even if his words don't quite match the posture.

"I don't know," he confesses, and which question he's asking is unclear. "The truth is, I haven't been here for very long, but others--like Miss Kelly, she runs the inn--they've been here so long they've set up a settlement."

He wonders if that's a terrifying or daunting thing to hear to the boy with the scar.

[00nothing]

It's hardly the best answer Alex could have received under the circumstances, and the idea that anyone has been here long enough to settle in is concerning to say the least. And he's not sure what to do about that. Not yet, at least.

Credence's gait makes it easy enough to keep pace without putting too much thought into it, and Alex takes advantage of that in order to think, staring vaguely ahead of them and mouth turned down. His fingers play idly with the strap of his waterproof bag, silent for a moment before turning to his guide again.

"And what happens here? After people pull themselves out of the fountain, I mean. Does anyone know--" Alex's breath catches. Anxiously, his fingers tighten against the strap and he stops short abruptly, glaring down at the ground until he can get his breathing evened out again.

(He's so tired, normally he at least gets a couple weeks between missions to recover, he's not sure he has it in him to do this again so soon...)

All told it takes him roughly 30 seconds, but that's 30 seconds he can't really afford in an unknown place like this, and he's sighing heavily before he's raising his head again, looking faintly embarrassed. "Sorry, you said you haven't bee here for long, right? But have you noticed... aside from leaving us here in the first place, what have our captors done?"

There should be more immediate dangers than simply the possibility of drowning or frostbite, shouldn't there? What were they planning?