A/N: Happy Monday everyone! ^^ This chapter is just sort of a reaction one, so I might add a second later today just so you guys get a little more action for your patience.

O

Yassen stared at his two latest purchases, tucked into the paper bag alongside his now typical staples of pop-tarts and candy bars. The pack of cigarettes and small bottle of vodka stared back at him, promising him something that reeked of both relief and defeat.

He started. When had he left the room? Was Alex still tied up?

Fuzzy memories limped sluggishly to attention, of Alex finally settling down into a fitful doze while Yassen shut his eyes and failed to sleep. He couldn't quite remember the decision to come down to the shop, but perhaps he'd just been desperate to escape the frustrated, wet eyes glaring at him as the boy tried to get comfortable. That was a losing battle- Yassen's restraints had been designed to be thorough, not gentle.

How long could Alex's withdrawal last?

Yassen stared down at his bag. He couldn't do this. Could barely persuade himself to go back up to the room now, much less deal with this indefinitely. Why had he thought he could handle this? What had possessed him to confidently assume he could look after Alex with his many, many problems? It was painfully ironic how much less free he felt outside of prison.

The cashier handed him his change, jarring him. She nodded to the cigarettes and gave him a sympathetic smile. "Family drama?" she asked, a faint trace of Colombian accent tugging at her vowels.

"You could say that," Yassen murmured, turning to leave. What mad impulse had driven him to buy the damn things? He hadn't smoked since he was fourteen and living on the streets of Moscow. Cardio was un-shockingly important for an assassin and he'd gone out of his way to ensure his lungs would never fail him. He'd even refused celebratory cigars from clients, much to their ire. Maybe it was some random connection in his brain, some memory that compared his memories of misery trying to survive on the streets with Dima with the hell on earth his life was now.

Bozhe, he just needed to sleep. Even for an hour.

"Don't worry," she said, waving a hand at the promenade. "It's a big ship. Lots of places to hide and keep busy. Most people never use the gym, though our internet cafe and library is another quiet place-"

Yassen blinked and turned back to her. "Where is the internet cafe?"

Ten minutes later, Yassen found himself opening every link the search engine spat out. Nurse Scalia's insistence that he be so involved in Alex's care meant that Yassen recalled the names of his medications and a rough estimation of his dosages.

What he found was a bizarre combination of terrifying and reassuring. Alex was definitely withdrawing from all the sedatives and anti-psychotics. Aside from his hallucinations, his symptoms weren't even unusual, if somewhat severe, but even that seemed relatively common for the chemicals Alex had been prescribed. In an ideal world, a doctor would have been able to taper the boy's enormous dosages, but Alex had been forced to stop cold turkey. According to a handful of sites, many people voluntarily checked into rehab clinics for the duration of their detoxes. Apart from being a notoriously painful experience, suicides were apparently common due to the severity of the disorientation and the relative misery of the side effects.

It would pass in about two weeks, the bloggers and doctors and clinicians assured their readers. With small flare ups for the next few months. The most important thing was to keep the patient calm and comfortable while they adjusted to their doctor's new regimen of pills.

Yassen scrubbed his eyes with his hands, probing at the stubble that had erupted on his face over the last two days which he'd been too apathetic to shave. His fingers already twitched in anticipation of a small, white cylinder of nicotine.

Make him comfortable, keep him calm.

Proklyat'ye. Of only two things he could reasonably be expected to do, he was failing at even those.

There was nothing he could do about it! If he took Alex to the ship's doctor, it would take all of five minutes before they determined he needed an actual hospital or the boy hallucinated something concerning enough to earn Yassen a separate locked room while the authorities could be summoned. San Luca's passports wouldn't stand up to close, prolonged scrutiny. Returning to prison, a worse prison than the Gibraltar compound, was almost a guarantee. Trapped on the cruise ship, Yassen couldn't even find some sort of doctor or clinic he could carefully select and bribe to take Alex off his hands for the next few weeks.

Alex could die detoxing. It wasn't necessarily likely, but it was certainly possible. Somehow, incredibly, Yassen had become responsible for Alex's life. Indefinitely.

His stomach squirmed. How the hell had that happened? Yassen was perfectly comfortable dispensing death- had gotten exceptionally good at it- but being completely responsible for another, far more helpless life than his own? With no team? To be the one person expected to ensure the brat's daily survival?

It was terrifying. All parents on the planet were either idiots or lunatics.

What had he done to deserve this? He'd intervened in Alex's care because it was easy, because it served the both of their interests, and because he still felt like he owed Hunter for everything he had done to help Yassen when no one in the world owed him anything or cared about the lonely Russian teen with nowhere else to go. When had babysitting morphed into this shitshow? When had he lost the ability to walk away when the task demanded too much of him?

Probably around the same he'd decided to betray Scorpia to keep them from being separated. Yassen ran his hands through his hair before roughly forcing himself to stop. He knew something in him had changed, had consciously accepted whatever it was as a tolerable weakness, but he hadn't thought it was this bad.

What a nightmare.

As mired in something shockingly close to self-pity as he was, Yassen decided he'd just have to do what he always did when things got difficult: push forward until someone died. Maybe it would even be himself this time. Or both of them, in this case. Yassen already felt like he'd lost his mind, so he wasn't entirely willing to dismiss the idea of a soothing murder-suicide to round out the afternoon.

Resigned, he stood and grabbed his bag from where he'd set it next to the bank of desktop computers. Maybe it would be kinder if he threw them both off the balcony and into the ocean. Solve all their collective problems in one move. Snorting, he thought he was beginning to understand why Alex had such a fondness for the idea of being dead.