Disclaimer - Not mine. It IS almost Christmas, though...


Alex is hidden behind a stack of wooden crates. If he had to have taken a guess on what filled them, he would say some kind of drug or explosive.

"Come out, come out, little Alex."

He goes hot and cold in turns, seemingly at random.

"Come out to play."

Alex wants to run, but can't.

The man, who really should've been more polite and given his name before trying to kill him, stalks around, giving off his location clearly.

"I'll find you eventually."

Normally, Alex would have run, but in these circumstances, he can't even get up from where he's laid out.

There's a loud crash.

There is a weird, sticky wetness surrounding him. When did that happen?

Hysterical laughter, followed by a sing song, "You know you want to."

The child-like speech suddenly strikes Alex like a blow to the chest. He has always said that the people he fought on missions were insane, but in all actuality, they were just greedy. Greedy for revenge, for fame, for money.

This man, this drug lord who had killed who knows how many people, most really just children, was insane in the truest form of the word.

"I just want to play."

Alex suddenly notices how… disconnected he feels. Is that normal?

"Please."

Many people, including Alex himself, he knows, equate insanity with evil, with death, with destruction. But all it really means is to be broken. To be so shattered, so impossibly traumatized, that your mind had to adapt.

To change.

To break.

To become completely disconnected from reality like this man, so impossibly childlike.

A sob.

Alex feels faintly sad.

The man had probably started out just like most of his other enemies, careless for anybody but himself, and probably money. But maybe he saw a death, probably caused, or even ordered, by himself, that caused this. But it didn't really matter, Alex supposes, as the man was this way, and nothing could ever change that.

"Just come play with me."

Everything was oddly cold, and Alex wonders, distantly, how long it takes to die from a bullet wound to the chest.


Thanks to wolfergirl and Mrs. Frank Hardy for reviewing!