AN: I am so very very very sorry that it took me so long to update! Feel free to run at me with pitch forks screaming for revenge.

Disclaimer: Hmm.. nope, I don't think my name is Anthony Horowitz... let me check my birth certificate... nope, it says right here... White. Black. Truth. Lies... Oh, well...

Grounded

Needless to say, Alex Rider was not happy. After his little... 'accident' where he had lost his temper and attacked Harvey Robinson, a boy in his year who loved making his life hell, his life has been... well, hell. Jack had been murderous. The school had called her as soon as one of the cafeteria staff had managed to break up the fight, if it could be called a fight, does one kid pummelling another into the ground count as a fight? And told her what had happened. The way Jack saw it, her trust has been broken and Alex had been a stupid idiot. She reasoned that since Alex was so much more intelligent and so much stronger then Harvey, he should have been able to stop himself and not resort to brutal, uncalled for, down right childish actions to make the bully stop. She had sentenced him to three months of high security grounding. He went to school, came home from school and went straight to his room. She took his phone, his laptop, his Ipod and all the communications devices Smithers had ever given to him that MI6 let him keep, or didn't know about. He slept, ate, did his homework and went to school.

And as if his home life wasn't bad enough now. His little freak out had made him even more of an outcast then normal. People moved out of his way in the halls, some of the kids in younger years actually turned around and walked away from him if he went any where near them. The whispers turned into glares and the only person, teacher and students included, that would talk to him was Tom, and Alex could see even his best friend, only friend, was disappointed in him. He felt like crap. It would have been fine if he had been right, he would have been able to run on the anger he would have felt at having been unfairly punished, but he knew what he had done was stupid and wrong. He knew that Jack was right and that he should never have put a hand on Harvey, he knew that he deserved to see Tom's disappointment every time he looked at his friend, he knew that he had lost control and that, more then anything, scared him. He had lost control. He had lost control at school, and he had hurt another human being, another teenager, somebody who was the same age as he was, someone who was weaker and smaller then he was. Some one who had been defenceless and by the end of everything, scared of him.

So, instead he drowned himself in self-pity. And, with no one there to comfort him he felt more and more depressed everyday. He couldn't believe he had done something so, so, disgusting! He moped around, not really noticing anything for weeks, and when Harvey came back to school, sporting many bruises and cuts and a broken arm, Alex put up with the glares he received and the hissed threats from Harveys' friends and tried not to feel worse when he noticed the slight edge of fear in Harveys' eyes when Alex walked into the room, or passed him in the corridor. He tried not to feel like a beast, or like one of the people he had fought to capture and stop in the last year. He tried not to feel anything and just focused on the fact that he was grounded and that if no one had stopped him it may have been something much worse then grounding he had to go through and Harvey may not have been there to glare and gloat anymore. And he thanked God that he was only grounded.

AN: Did this make any sense at all? Once again, I am sorry this took so long to be updated.