Yoyoyo,, I still feel motivated from last chappie so Ima try and give you guys a faster update. I know you waited for ages last time bc I had trips and exams and drama and stuff,, so thanks for not completely giving up on me.

I love you!1!1!1!1!

And so here, the moment I've been building up to;

Alex sees Yassen again after years, and of course, his 'Lynx' cover gets a lil bit blown here. But probs not in the way you're thinking.

Also I see some of you are curious as to Yassen knowing the Queen. Really, I was thinking up ways that Yassen could be not,, like,, arrested/sniped on sight (and believable ways, not like he was secretly '6 the whole time or he was just let go like nah fam),, and this came to me. And I'll tell you now, bc overall it's not too important:: he was snoopin around Scorpias old files, found a plan to hide a bomb in the floor under a super important meeting the Queen had with another world leader, and was like 'oh shit, I gotta pull a Rider' and like, stormed into the room, but before anyone could even do anything he like threw away the loose tile that was covering the bomb, and cut it all dramatic n Mission Impossible like.

And even after being told no by her advisors, the Queen gave him a Royal Pardon for his old crimes and shit bc Yassen is just that charming haha, and also bc like he saved two members of royalty lol, and gave him connections to set up a new identity under Witness Protection (bc Liz is one tough gal and she does not care what u think susan shut up and get her some muthafukin doggies to pet)

They have tea parties, like fancy tea and stuff. Bc Yassen would so do that, and so would the Queen.

But yah.

Anyway, here's the chappie. Alex finally slips up.

Considering how shit he was at undercoverness in book 1, I like to think 2 weeks is pretty decent for him.

Great job. Gold star. U tried.

-tolboi haha jk tolbean

"Lynx!" Alex leans back on instinct when Panther thrusts an arm out of the bars, but walks to him once he realises the older man is waving him over. It takes him a few seconds, embarrassingly. Alex hopes his mild concussion isn't worse than he likes to think it is. That would just be inconvenient and totally his luck.

His cheek feels a little crusty with the drying blood on it, and the other is throbbing dully with pain. He's certain that he's pulled at the scabs over his burn, and that the blood is leaking down his back, but it's all fairly easy to hide.

He's not even sure why he's still bothering to hide it, now that Croc already knows about his old injury (vaguely, but he still knows) and they're all doubtlessly going to be flown straight to the nearest Hospital, but...Habits, Alex supposes.

Panther grips Alex's arm tightly, warmly, when he gets close enough, leaving Alex's other arm free to shuffle through all the stupid cliché keys for the right one. "Lynx, you fucking idiot," he says, but he's also grinning so wide Alex doesn't really know what to do. "You-you've- there were 14 of them and you're, like, shit, what?" Alex doesn't know what he's asking, he's too busy turning the key in the lock. When the gate is pulled back, arms are immediately around each side of his waist, but Alex grips the biceps of the two holding him before they sling his arms around their shoulders. That would be agony.

Croc's ranting at him on his left, fortunately too determined on getting them all out of there and back to the chopper to actually try and give him a physical right there and then. Alex can't believe they're all so angry at him for rescuing them, but he supposes that it might really just be them expressing their concern. They'd probably thought he was going to die. To be fair, so did Alex, but it's not a new feeling. Besides, he's not afraid of it anymore.

Alex is almost immediately aware that their hostage is lurking behind them, but he doesn't think much about it. He'd acknowledged that there was another person with B-Unit in that cell, but he hadn't really felt it prudent to give the person any attention. He gets curious when they're actually standing - or in Alex's case, laid down in the grass like he's broken both his legs - at their pick-up point. His brain feels a lot slower than it had earlier, because he doesn't quite remember how he got to be laying down, but whatever. The grass is slightly wet and some coldness bleeds through his shirt, and it's soothing on his burn.

He squints against the dim sun in his eyes, turning his head to look at the three men sitting down beside him. Panther is standing, talking with their pilot about their situation in Techie-Army-jargon, and Alex is too exhausted to decipher any of it. Croc berates him almost immediately when he sees him move, going on at him about head injuries and what not, but Alex is too busy staring slack-jawed and disbelieving at Yassen fucking Gregorovitch.

"-Lynx!" Croc slides his hands behind Alex's ears, trying to look at his pupils and keep him still, but freezes when Alex flinches. Badly.

"Ya-..." Alex swallows through the dryness of his throat, which suddenly feels tight and soar and choked, and his fingers twitch in the man's direction. He blinks hard enough to make his head start throbbing, but when he opens his eyes Yassen is still there and still breathing.

Fuck, he hopes he's not hallucinating this. He doesn't think he's hit his head hard enough to be seeing dead people yet.

Croc registers just what - who - he's staring at quickly, and is quite obviously a little baffled. But he doesn't object when Yassen slowly moves by Alex's side with a mumbled, "He knows me, it's okay," and even stands up to check on Panther. Bear lurks near them but not too close, just far enough from them to see if Alex is still breathing. He can't hear them, because though the field is quiet, the tension in the air is too loud.

Yassen's hands - calloused, warm, gentle, familiar - cradle the sides of his head like he's supporting a baby's neck. Alex keeps blinking at him, lost and exhausted and tearful, and the dead man pulls one of his preciously rare minute smiles for him. "You know me, little Alex." He can't tell if it's Russian or English the man is murmuring to him in; the foreign feeling of fingers brushing comfortingly through his hair and the pain in his head screwing up his senses. "I'm here. I'm not going to hurt you, Alex."

Alex shuts his eyes, his whole body shaking. This is Yassen.

Yassen wanted him to live a normal life, Yassen killed Ian, Yassen saved him, Yassen almost killed him, Yassen loved him, Yassen died, and it was Alex's fault, and-

"You're dead." Alex mumbles, hysterical in his pain and shock. He says it in a whisper, over and over and over and over until Yassen takes Alex's hand - smaller and more delicate than his, but just as calloused - and holds it over his chest, his heart. It thumps steadily, strong and real, warming his fingertips.

"No. I'm not. I'm here." He repeats it when Alex scrunches his face in denial, staring down at him neutrally with icy blue eyes that are cracking with warmth and...

Alex tries to sit up, to check for - something, anything, nothing, whatever - but Yassen's fingers spread across his chest, pushing down firmly. "No, little Alex, lie down."

And Alex wants to laugh, because he is being cradled and coddled by a not-dead assassin, and everything feels fuzzy except the hand still cradling his head. He feels every ridge and pad of Yassen's fingers with crystal clarity.

Alex's hand, still over Yassen's chest, grips onto his shirt tightly. Like a toddler fisting his fragile little fingers in his parent's shirt. He doesn't say anything else, but he hopes Yassen understands his message. Stay.

The chopping breeze of a helicopter pulses through the grass in time with Alex's pulsing head, and the loud motor increasing in volume makes him bite down on his teeth. Yassen rubs a thumb into his jaw to ease the tension, to make sure Alex doesn't crack his gums wide open. Alex thinks he's saying something to him, either 'I'm sorry,' or 'Don't be sorry,'. He wants to tell Yassen that he can't hear him, but Alex is too disgruntled by the helicopter and the fuss that he he can't pull his lips apart and unlock his teeth.

Then there's a lot of shouting and codes and stress, and Yassen and Croc are shifting him onto one of those air-lift stretchers, verbally throwing his pain around in words above him like 'concussion' and 'blood loss' and much longer sentences in medical terms that Alex didn't learn in biology at school.

The noise and excitement keeps him awake, along with Yassen's (he's here and he's sorry, he's said, and he's not going to hurt him or die, he's said, and Alex doesn't know wether to put hope in any of it) hand still cradling his head. His forefinger and thumb massage away the tightness at the top of his neck, and it's too good to fall asleep to.

Sometimes he feels other hands (in gloves), wiping wet and cold things on his face to clean the blood and dried sweat, and fingers and lights around his eyes, but Alex squirms when they reach to check his pulse on his neck. They use his wrist instead.

Then things become more disjointed, and Alex is completely out of it, but he's aware - right until he feels a sterile-smelling mask settle over his mouth and nose - always of Yassen.

He feels alive, even as he blacks out, because he has something. He didn't have anything before - no parents, no friends, no Jack, no Tom, no Ian, no control - but now he's got Yassen.

It's more than good enough for him.

Yassen finds it painful, staring at the 14 year old boy laying dazed in the long grass, head propped uncomfortably on his bullet proof jacket. He knew the child was out of it - a nasty head injury, most likely from the butt of a handgun to his temple - when the leader of the unit was able to remove the thing from Alex without protest. Even as he was being laid down he seemed only sweetly disgruntled, mind not connecting properly to what's going on.

And then there is the fact that Alex hasn't seen him yet. Yassen is anxious for both what that says about his head injury, and his reaction to seeing a dead man. A dead man that he'd watched die.

He doesn't have the highest hopes, but Alex has always managed to surprise him, so he isn't completely ruling out the option that the child won't try to shoot him on sight. With how little friends his Alex has - or anyone, really - Yassen knows that it could either be a reasonably happy reunion, or no reunion at all.

But Yassen had been in the hospital room with John and Helen, standing awkwardly near a nurse as Alex was born, and he will never in his lifetime forget how it felt to have little pink wormy fingers brush his chest and get caught in his shirt. Even if Alex ends up a psychotic killer hell-bent on murdering him, Yassen will never be able to bring a glassy, frozen sheen to the maple-brown eyes that he'd watched darken from baby-blues. Yassen will not spill a child's blood, and would pour out his own before any could fall from Alex.

Yassen will never kill Alex Rider. He will not fail the child again.

He finally catches Alex's eyes, fuzzy and softer in their pain and slight delirium, and almost holds his breath. Alex's mouth falls open, and his tired eye lids move apart as much as they can in their heaviness, and Yassen nearly smiles. It's a precious expression, childish, and Alex should like this more. Always.

But the boy moves around too much, jostles his head against the jacket, slips his skull into the grass instead and the leader - probably the one with most medical training - rushes to steady his head.

Lynx.

Yassen thinks Cub had suited him more, because Alex is young, and Lynx is too...old.

John would be furious.

"Ya-..." He hears a weak mumble come from Alex, and the little spy looks like he's going to try and move over to him, so Yassen saves the boy the trouble and comes to crouch by him.

"It's okay," he says as the soldier - just about taller than him, handsome and athletic and a little bruised like the rest of his unit - shifts his body in front of Alex, even if he's realised they both know each other. "He knows me," Yassen looks pointedly at the brown eyes blinking hard at him. The man shifts around so Yassen can kneel beside him, but doesn't leave them until Yassen cradles Alex's head softly to push the hard edge of his jacket away, and to keep dirt out of any cut on his head. "It's okay." He repeats, looking directly into the man's eyes - an odd shade of green - until the man moves to see how much longer their ride is going to take.

Alex looks confused at him when he speaks it in English, so he switches to his mother tongue on a whim and hopes it brings him a reaction. "You know me, little Alex." There's a spark there. Alex, the poor child, is in a state of tired hysteria and Yassen finds him self soothing the child in Russian. It's a pleasant surprise - he feels unrightfully proud - when Alex talks back to him in Russian. The syllables are slurred because of his currently slow thought process, but the accent sounds just like Yassen's and it's wonderful.

Because Alex is leaning into his hands, even if he's denying his existence, he seems to be taking it alright enough that Yassen brings the child's hand to rest over his chest. He needs to calm him down, but also Alex's hand feels just as delicate and small against his heart as when it was newborn and soft. He finds himself smiling, wider than he has since he'd made a new and clean identity for himself, and feels oddly emotional when the boy doesn't let his shirt go. Alex's chest feels hard with both muscle and bone under his own hands, and that makes him frustrated, but it's something he'll fix soon.

Alex might be mortified if he ever finds out how out of it he is as they fly to the closest available place for immediate medical attention, especially seeing as he lets his Italian teammate - whom Yassen deduces must have children - pat his forehead with a cloth and doesn't protest as the more muscled man of the whole group keeps his fingers over his pulse-point the whole trip.

"How do you know Lynx?" The leader talks into his ear over the bustle and whirring noises, and Yassen briefly thinks on trying to guess and keep up Alex's cover. But he needs the real Alex back because he's selfish and wants to finally fill his desire of looking after John and Helen's baby boy, and so he doesn't pause much in his answer.

"I was good friends with his father." Yassen has to raise his voice into the man's ear, because neither of them had bothered putting on the heavy headset. They'd just stuffed some plugs into their ears to stop any damage. They can still hear quite a lot of noise, though, but at least it won't make them go deaf. Yassen doesn't mind it. So far, these men had proved great competence in looking after his Alex. They're already in his good books.

The man doesn't ask much more questions for the sake of professionalism, but when they finally get to the readily waiting paramedics in front of a private hospital (and after Alex is rushed out of sight), Yassen answers the question he knows the man is thinking - and had been for a while - when he is left in Yassen's overnight room with the beginnings of a report. The man says that Yassen could call him Croc, because that is the name the SAS gave him. Yassen introduces himself as just Yassen, and there is of course no recognition, so he carries on without pause.

"He thought I was dead." He says to Croc as the man aims another heavy gaze to the door of Yassen's temporary room. He is only going to sleep for 6-8 hours in here, with an IV pumping him nutrients to give him back some energy, but for now he has to stay separate from Alex while the doctors do their jobs.

Croc doesn't startle, nor does he look too surprised, and in Yassen's good book he moves up a few people. "Why?" Is all the man says, as he seats himself into a reasonably comfortable chair, putting his half-done report at the foot of Yassen's bed.

Yassen looks away, to the door of his room. It hurts sometimes to think about how much trouble he'd managed to cause for Alex, how derailed his plan had gone; to fake his death thoroughly and collect Hunter's son and keep him safe. He ended up doing the opposite, and it makes him feel heavy.

"He saw a bullet go through my chest." He says quietly, mindful not to say it too loud to be blunt, or too quiet to be meek, and to the man's ever growing credit; Croc just nods.

Yassen shuts his eyes and pretends to sleep for 47 minutes before he trusts that Croc isn't going to harm in his rest, and then drifts off.

He thinks of Alex as he falls into slumber, and dreams pleasantly of baby fists wrapped around his fingers, of soft downy strings of blonde hair brushing the crook of his arm, and of a little smile he will kill to see once again.

I am so fucking proud of this chappie, guys. Pls review. Tank tank. Hope you liked it!