Title: Delusions

Summary: Mid-Eagle Strike. Secrets breed in the dark of the night, secrets that no one must find out about. But then again, since when does Yassen listen to the rules? A midnight visit to a fevered Alex's room leaves him something to think about.

Rating: K+

Characters/Pairing(s): Alex, Yassen, Franco, Raoul

Words: ~1500

Disclaimer: All property pertaining to AR belongs to Anthony Horowitz.

"All the things one has forgotten scream for help in dreams." –Elias Canetti

It was the creak of the door that woke him.

Alex had spent the night locked up tight in a room on board Gregorovich's yacht, left alone to ponder his near demise. As was duly noted, Gregorovich was a contract killer who didn't mind his job, so Alex was sure that some nasty surprise awaited him when they docked. And while the Russian had shown some exemplarily confusing acts of kindness, the boy was disinclined to believe that the older man could harbor any feelings of fondness for him. Well, perhaps to a certain degree. How utterly confusing.

To add to his discomfort, Franco hadn't been able to resist carving a pretty line across his cheek with his sharpest knife. The wound stung, but Alex had faced worse. It might scar, but he wasn't a vain person and a little cut wouldn't hinder him too much. Or at least, he hoped so.

Two hours later, he was forced to admit to himself that the cut was becoming quite bothersome. Without any medical attention (he doubted Gregorovich cared enough), the wound had become infected by the less-than-clean ocean air. Or maybe it was the knife itself; God knew that it was in sorry condition. His left cheek became red and inflamed, and it throbbed painfully with each beat of his heart. He couldn't understand how the cut had become infected so fast. Idly, to distract himself, he wondered if his luck could get any worse.

Apparently, it could.

As night set in, Alex began to feel uncomfortably hot in the stuffy air of the cabin. He would have written it off as the weather, but it was only a mild April night and the sea was decisively cool. Briefly, he thought that Gregorovich had drugged him, but that didn't tie in with the man's behavior.

Any normal child (or adult) would have understood that a fever was coming on, but Alex wasn't quite normal, was he?

Dully, as he grew increasingly warmer, he stumbled to the door and rattled the knob, desperate to escape the smothering confines of the room. In truth, it wasn't the room that was heated, but Alex himself. When trying to break off the knob yielded no desired results, he tripped back to the bed and fell heavily on top of the bare mattress. The gentle rocking of the yacht lulled him into a troubled sleep.

Now, an indeterminable number of hours later, he was half-roused from his slumber by the opening of his cabin door. A large black silhouette was thrown against the wall of the room, just large enough for Alex to attempt to panic. But the fever truly had a hold of him now, and before he could do more than utter a soft whimper, he fell back into the dark recesses of his mind.

Nightmares lurking at the edge of his consciousness pounced as soon as sleep reclaimed him. He thrashed and beat at the bed, screaming and vaguely feeling his throat becoming hoarse from the nonstop shouting.

There was the Portuguese man-of-war, floating near with its deadly tentacles outstretched.

There was Dr. Grief, coming toward him with any number of sharp instruments, a leer on his face and a horde of demon-clones following.

There was General Sarov, standing in front of him about to commit suicide.

There was Ian, his scarred, still-handsome face stretched into a broken smile, two clean bullet holes decorating his stained red chest.

And there were his parents, beckoning to him from across a long, gaping bridge. Alex ran towards them, his heart quickening and his breath coming in ragged gasps, his body unable to get oxygen into his lungs fast enough. As he came to the edge of the sheer gorge that dropped down thousands of feet, separating him from his family, he saw his parents turn around and leave.

"Mum! Dad! No, please wait, please!"

They walked away, arm in arm, their backs resolutely facing him. As he stepped onto the bridge, a large sign labeled WARNING caught his attention. He ignored it.

"Don't leave me!"

Nearing the middle of the bridge, Alex felt desperation prick tears in his eyes. He needed to get to his parents. The raw ache of their loss suddenly hit him, catching up to him fourteen years too late. He had been too young at the time of their death to understand, but now he understood the pain all too well.

The bridge creaked ominously and then it disappeared from underneath his feet. As he fell, Alex caught one last sight of his parents, shrouded in mist.

"Mum! Dad! Please!"

He fell and fell, the bottom never seeming any closer. Then suddenly, there it was, and he hit the ground with enough force to jostle his entire body. His mind felt shattered. He might've been crying; he wasn't sure. He might've been repeating "Mum, Dad" over and over again; he wasn't sure about that either.

A cool hand on his forehead. A deep, almost-familiar voice whispered, "It's okay, Alex. I'm here."

"D-Dad?" It couldn't be. The last time he had heard his father's voice, he had been too young to remember it. Yet he recognised it instantly, almost instinctively. It was soft and gentle, a little rough, perhaps the tiniest bit deeper than Ian's, but otherwise identical to his uncle's voice.

"Shh. I'm here. Don't cry."

So he was crying. He hadn't realised. "D-Dad…you're here…"

"Hush, Alex. Sleep. I've always been here. I love you."

Was he awake? Or was he asleep? He felt as if he were suspended between waking and dreaming. He was confused, but his father's tender voice helped calm him down.

"Go back to sleep, Alex. I'll always be here…"

Nodding to himself, Alex fell into a deep, dreamless sleep, borne on his father's soft words.

The next morning, when he woke up, he was aware of an aching in his throat and a coating of dried tears crusting the corners of his eyes. Sitting up, he noticed only a slight pain in his cheek, but was overall feeling rather jolly, considering the fact that the day before had been hellish. Someone had thrown a rough blanket over him sometime during the night, and Alex had a feeling that the 'someone' was Raoul. After all, the man had shown some pity for him the day before.

Sure enough, the door opened not too long after and Raoul stepped in, bearing a simple breakfast on a nondescript wooden tray. Closely following him was none other than Yassen Gregorovich.

"Breakfast," Raoul said, setting the tray on Alex's knees. It was probably the most English the man could get away with.

In between wondering if the food was drugged and keeping an eye on the still-open door, Alex was aware of Gregorovich's eyes trained on him like a hawk on a particularly delicious rabbit. He shifted uncomfortably under the burning blue gaze and dropped his eyes to the food – bread and an orange.

"You had a fever last night, no?"

Startled, Alex nearly knocked his glass of water over. "…Yes," he replied, unsure of where the conversation was fated to go.

Gregorovich remained next to the door, arms crossed, leaning casually yet threateningly against the jamb. He didn't move when Raoul, all too eager to escape the room, slipped past him. "Were you aware that you talked in your sleep?"

"Uhm."

Ignoring the boy's eloquent remark, the assassin went on. "You seem to miss your parents very much, little Alex. Especially your father. I was unaware of this."

"I do." He wasn't sure what crazy urge told him to be truthful, but it was too late to retract the statement. He only hoped Gregorovich would ignore that as well.

"You called out to him a few times in your sleep. Might I ask why? Were you perhaps asking his assistance in warding off the nightmares?"

Gregorovich was mocking him. Annoyance and irritation welled up inside of Alex. "He came to me last night," he fired back.

A strange half-smile crossed the Russian's face. "I see."

Then he left before the boy could outright question his sanity. Alex was left staring after the man, torn between staying in bed and ignoring the conversation, and running after him to ask exactly what he had 'seen.' Perhaps Gregorovich had discovered Alex's deep-seated abandonment issues. No, he thought. No one knows about that.

In the end, he simply picked up the bread and began to eat. Drugged or not, Alex was a teenage boy, and teenage boys tended to enjoy their food.

-AR-

As he strode over to the bow of the boat, Cossack silently congratulated himself. Voice-acting, he decided, had to be included to his list of many talents.

A/N – My apologies if it's confusing. If you've got any questions, feel free to ask in a review. And according to my medic of a sister, it is possible for an infection to occur within a few hours of a cut being administered, and it is also possible for a fever to appear and then break within a night.

I woke up this morning and came up with the idea. Finished writing it in two hours. I'm impressed with myself. It was meant to be from Yassen's POV, but somehow that didn't work, so it ended up being from Alex's.