A/N: Happy Monday, everyone!

O

Like Gunpoint, Oakris was a resort town deep in the canyon of the Colorado mountains. Instead of catering to the whims of the wealthy, however, Oakris was frequented more often by state locals frustrated with the sky high prices and crowding of the more popular resorts. Situated at a somewhat lower elevation than most, the slopes were far less robust but still worthwhile to the average skier or snowboarder. Given the unusually warm and dry season, only a handful of inches of snow clung to the mountainsides, threatening to melt at any minute. Thus, the already small town was filled to less than half capacity as those willing to risk the weather's whims turned towards the more popular resorts. Some buildings had already given up and shut down for the season.

It was perfect.

Renting a small, private cabin on the edge of the town was simple considering how last minute the arrangement was and the crux of the holiday season. If anything, the older gentleman that the lodging office put him in touch with was grateful for the chance to fill it at all. He certainly didn't question Yassen's insistence that he pay in cash or not know for certain how long he would be staying. Without much ceremony, the man handed over the key and told him not to mind the cat.

Alex waited for him in the front seat, unmoving. Yassen caught himself frowning as he returned to the car. Normally, the kid was chomping at the bit to stretch his legs, but since they'd left Grand Junction mere hours ago, he'd been staring off into the distance with an empty look.

Helping was probably beyond his capabilities anyway. Obviously, Alex was upset but about what specific part of their conversation was a mystery to him. Were it a hallucination, Yassen would have known how to approach it. If Alex was seething or throwing things, Yassen could have stepped in. This hopeless silence was almost impossible to broach without understanding the source. He'd tried once or twice over the last hour to coax him into speaking, but Alex had only shrugged listlessly and grunted out one word replies.

The sight of the cabin didn't elicit as much of a reaction as Yassen had hoped for either. It was a quaint little thing, two stories tall and covered in stonework and topped with an angled, bright green roof. The interior was nothing special: the main living area was open concept and flowed directly into the kitchen. Large floor to ceiling windows made up the far wall of the room, spanning two stories in places and opening onto a neat wooden balcony that looked over the dense aspens and pines lining the mountainside. The leather furniture was clearly worn but sturdy, outfitted with all the usual fare for travelers staying anywhere from one night to several weeks. Unlike their motel rooms previous, a new-ish desktop computer perched atop a desk in the main living area (with what Yassen had been assured was high speed internet) across from a PlayStation. The upper floor was smaller and almost loft-like, but somehow managed to squeeze in two small bedrooms and a bath.

Alex took one cursory glance around before heading immediately upstairs. A few seconds later, Yassen heard a door shut.

Trying not to roll his eyes, Yassen dropped his own duffel bag on the couch and immediately switched on the computer. It would take awhile to download everything he'd need to browse the internet anonymously and establish connections to the right servers without showing up in anyone else's system. His own knowledge of these things was rudimentary, thus getting lazy and skipping steps to save time would almost certainly result in discovery.

While the computer powered on, Yassen quickly glanced around the kitchen. It was doubtful that any surveillance had been planted, but old habits died hard. He found nothing of interest. Some emergency candles and matches. Dead batteries. A few boxes of crackers and a pack of paper plates had been left in one of the cupboards by the last guests.

The freezer offered an unexpected gift: a half bottle of chilled premium vodka.

His liquor of choice.

Yassen held it by the neck, considering it. It might be nice to have a drink or two before-

No. Not again. Yassen unscrewed the lid sharply with a muttered curse. Turning towards the sink, he poured the vodka directly down the drain. Forced himself to ignore the way the smell awakened his senses.

"Your turn," he murmured, throwing the bottle in the trash.

Within the hour, his computer setup was ready and he was free to explore. One of the many benefits to working for so many clients over the years meant that through them, Yassen had met a number of other independent contractors with unusual skill sets. Luka had been a partier with the nasty habit of showing up to work high on MDMA, but was an otherwise proficient hacker. Yassen might have put his gun to the young man's head to impress upon him the importance of sobriety in the workplace, but he'd also covered the idiot's ass when his dealer showed up to demand payment and nearly discovered their operation. The hacker's gratitude had certainly been worth the inconvenience: Luka had rather enthusiastically showed Yassen around the dark web and explained how to access it securely in layman's terms. Finding a few choice websites and forums had been straightforward enough from there. Most importantly however, was that Scorpia was unaware of Yassen's knowledge of the dark web. They were more likely to assume he'd stick to his compromised Scorpia contacts.

He grimaced at his computer screen. Finding an unaffiliated identity broker would have been a wise starting point in retrospect, but he'd underestimated the amount of trouble Scorpia was willing to go through to capture him. Still. The risk of approaching someone new now was the same now as it had been in Spain. Ferri had at least a history of quality to his work. Already out the quarter million, the last thing Yassen wanted to do was be ripped off by a fraud. They had little choice, however, so there was no use in bemoaning the fact that he'd have to go searching and hope to get lucky.

A few more hours passed without significant progress. Cracking his neck, Yassen stood and realized it had been some time since they'd eaten. The sun had nearly vanished from the mountain ridges and the air had cooled with the promise of night. In the silence, all he could make out was the humming of the fridge and the wind rustling through the forest surrounding them. Now that he thought about it, they hadn't brought anything with them either. Delivery might be too much to ask of such a small resort, so with a sigh, Yassen realized they'd have to go out.

The second landing was perfectly quiet when Yassen dragged his duffel bag upstairs, depositing it in the only bedroom with it's door open. He didn't bother examining the room with more than cursory attention. Crossing the hallway, Yassen knocked twice on the opposite door before pushing it open. "All I saw on the drive in were pizza places, so your little system-"

Alex shoved his closed fist into his pocket with a snarl. "Jesus christ, Yassen. You should wait after you knock."

Yassen's strode forward. "What did you steal this time?" he demanded, grabbing Alex's arm.

Alex tried to wiggle away. "Nothing."

"Don't lie. You were holding your fist to your mouth," Yassen snapped, forcing Alex's palm out of his pocket despite the boy's effort to shove him off. What could Alex possibly want to take by the handful? "You have to tell me what it is you're taking. If you overdose because-"

"I'm not lying! I didn't take anything." Alex stepped back and crossed his arms as Yassen clawed his way into the boy's pocket.

Yassen held out the little oval pill. It was white, like so many other pills, but he didn't recognize any of the markings. "What is this?"

"I didn't take any," Alex repeated, glaring at the window, then at the floor. Anywhere but at Yassen. "I wasn't going to either."

Yassen felt the energy drain from him. Fantastic. Another episode of tangled emotional instability that he was utterly unprepared to deal with. Had Alex developed new addiction? How? When? Maybe he should have kept the vodka. "So what were you doing then?"

"Nothing." Alex shook his head, apparently realizing that there was no chance in hell that Yassen was going to drop it. Or let the idiot out of his sight again. He fidgeted, his body clearly looking for some outlet for his tension. "It's just a thing I do sometimes. I don't swallow them."

Yassen gestured to the boy's pocket, obviously full of more pills. "What are they? How often?"

Alex scowled, risking a quick glance at Yassen before looking away again. "I used to do it between missions when I was at home. This is the first time since, but it's not a big deal. You're making it be a big deal and it's not. I wasn't going to take any of them. It's about knowing that I can if I have to."

Yassen's stomach hollowed out.

Alex wasn't getting high.

He pinched the bridge of his nose, holding up the pill with his other hand. The boy had to say it. Yassen was almost certain he knew but Alex had to say it. "Tell me what this is. If you don't, I'll go downstairs and look up what this is and draw my own conclusions."

Alex dropped his arms, voice thick with frustration. "Sleeping pills."

"Give them to me. All of them."

"No." Alex rounded on him. "I'm not going to kill myself."

"Not tonight."

Alex didn't deny it. "They're mine and I need them," he insisted, already backing away.

Clenching his fists, Yassen only just managed to keep himself from realizing Alex's obvious fears. His instincts howled at him to force Alex to surrender the pills, to take them by whatever means necessary and discard them. To lock Alex in a room under lock and key where he couldn't possibly pose a threat to himself. To shake the little brat and tell him what an idiot he was being until something got through. To demand, over and over again, to know what Yassen was doing wrong so that he could fix it.

A very thin, fragile thread of better judgement held him back.

Alex was still alive, suggesting his insistence that he wasn't trying to commit suicide was accurate- despite how much it looked like otherwise. Taking away his pills wouldn't necessarily stop him, not for long; unless Yassen was willing to torpedo what hard-earned trust they'd built by chaining Alex to a radiator, the boy would undoubtedly find more. Whatever this weird little ritual he'd interrupted was, it obviously predated their time in prison. If Alex was telling the truth and tonight was the first night in a long time that he'd done it, then something had changed between now and then.

It didn't matter how unprepared Yassen was to handle it, he had to get to the bottom of whatever had set him off. Undoubtedly it had to do with his painful realizations of his time at Gunpoint. The timing was too close to be coincidence. Why was that so upsetting, though? It was awful, yes, but not new. Alex had already realized that his life had been laid out for him, that an unnatural amount of manipulation had been behind his decisions, that most of his childhood holidays had been missions to further Ian's spy career.

What was so unbearable about it this time?

Yassen folded his arms and blocked the door with his own frame. He wasn't going to forcibly take Alex's pills, but he wanted to make it abundantly clear that this conversation was not optional. "So you need sleeping pills that you have but don't swallow. How does that help exactly?"

Alex shrugged, fingers digging into his arms. The floor might as well have been a gateway to another dimension as it seemed to arrest the boy's complete attention. "It just makes me feel better. Not to take them, but to know that I can if things get too hard. It's easier to decide I want to be around for tomorrow if I only have to make the choice a day at a time."

Yassen studied him. "I believe you. Why now?"

Alex shrugged again, now poking at his bed frame with his foot. "I forgot for a while. That I'm not real."

Yassen stomach shrank. "You're not dead. Neither of us is-"

Alex shot him a glare. "I know that! I'm not crazy. I just meant that I'm someone else's idea of who I should be and not mine. Real people don't have their personalities picked out for them."

"You're your own person, Alex. You just are. It's impossible to be otherwise."

Alex shook his head. "Not for me. I did everything they wanted me to every time. Every time. It didn't matter how much I didn't want to or tried not to. They accounted for that too. I'm everything they expected me to be and I still would be if I hadn't gotten addicted to percocet. That just knocked me out of orbit, but I didn't even choose to do that."

"And realizing that Gunpoint was a test reminded you of that."

Alex nodded.

He should have listened to that damned idiot woman more. Briar had told him that Alex was panicking over identity and uncertainty and personal value. Had told him what needed to be fixed even if she wasn't entirely sure how to do it. It had seemed odd and deeply rooted in emotional realms Yassen wasn't comfortable operating in. He had tried, but he obviously not hard enough. And what did they get because Yassen hadn't done more? Alex self-soothing by play-acting suicide.

Was it almost too late?

Yassen had to pick his words very carefully. "I agree that your uncle raised you to have certain traits. To be a certain way. But he didn't pick all of you. It's impossible, for one. People are far more complicated than you give them credit for. Than you give yourself credit for."

Alex snorted and gave him a flat look. "I'm not complicated. I'm dead simple. I'm a broken action figure who can't save the world anymore. If Ian could have chosen the rest of me, he would have. Maybe he didn't care. Maybe he and Blunt just didn't bother because they never thought I would fail as a spy without dying, so it wouldn't matter if I liked playing video games when I wasn't saving the world."

"I disagree. You are a lot of things neither of them planned on, both in the field and out of it. You overestimate how much of your personality revolves around being a spy." Yassen gave him a small, thin smile. "If anything, more of you runs counter to to the job than you think."

Alex finally made eye contact. Some of his anger had faded; now he just looked doubtful. At least Yassen had one hundred percent of his attention. "Like what?"

"Where do I start?" Yassen leaned back against the doorframe. "You're not blindly loyal, for one. That's not a great trait for an operative when you need them to protect your interests and only your interests. In fact, you were so unwilling to trust them that you developed an opiate addiction to avoid it. I'm sure they were thrilled to find that out. You also question everything whether it's convenient to them or not. I'm quite certain your uncle never intended for you to learn about your father and Scorpia's history, at least not without MI6's spin on the tale. Certainly you had other ideas. You're also very comfortable ignoring direct orders you don't like. You care more about people than numbers on a spreadsheet, so you and Blunt will never see eye to eye. You're petty-"

"I am not." Alex sounded actually offended to hear that.

Yassen snorted. "Yes, you are. You told me you found McCain's little movie set because you were cross that your principal thought you were a troublemaker."

"That doesn't count. It was a long time ago. At best that was one time."

"Would you prefer to continue pretending that you blew up a monotube sign because you were really so concerned about escape and not sulking about the fact that you didn't warrant real bullets?"

Alex scowled, but didn't offer a counterpoint.

"I actually like how petty you are," Yassen informed him. "You are sympathetic to animals-"

Alex huffed. "I saved one dog. One. And it wasn't a real one."

"Every time you describe a mission, you mention animals. You felt bad for Cray's snake. Even today, when you talked about your holiday at Gunpoint, you described the mounted animal heads and how you wished they weren't real. That had nothing to do with anything. You can describe the bull to me better than you can Marco. You said it yourself." Yassen took his silence as confirmation. "You like animals more than you like some people. You certainly pay attention to them a little more. That's a terrible trait for a spy to have, even if they wanted to send you undercover in a zoo. You're also imaginative-"

"Bullshit."

"You spent half an hour trying to convince me that I'm Assassin Batman with anecdotal evidence and great enthusiasm."

Alex's cheeks flared. "Yassen, I was high."

"Being high can't create brain functions that aren't already there. You don't suddenly speak Portuguese every time you eat an edible. I'm sure your uncle tried to discourage you from the arts early on, though, so I'm not surprised you haven't realized."

The more Yassen talked, the more the answers turned out to be there. Maybe he hadn't been very good at telling Alex gradually what traits he could anchor his new sense of identity on, but it seemed that Yassen had been noticing them regardless. Or maybe he'd simply had to put up with enough of the consequences of the boy's personality that it was easy to describe just shy of complaining. "You don't actually care about your health and fitness. You eat like an unsupervised toddler at a birthday party, even with your throat improving. If it wasn't for football, you'd probably have never gone outside."

Alex winced. "Rowing was alright. I mostly took it up so Jack wouldn't worry."

"It doesn't really count as a hobby if you're badgered into it. I assume that's why your karate has all but disappeared."

Alex sighed. "I know. It's useful. I should get back on it."

"Karate's a bad fit for you. Honestly, I don't know why it was foisted on you so strongly. Apart from the obvious benefit of teaching children how to control their emotions and breathing, it's too ubiquitous to be much good in the field and it's not even ideal for self-defense. All I have to do is get you on the floor and you're forced to improvise." Yassen shook his head and shrugged. "If you'd like, I'll show you some Krav or Aikido when you're feeling better, at least until you grow big enough to focus on offense. Muay Thai is my personal favorite."

"I'll think about it." Alex bit his lip. "What else?"

"You have a terrible sense of humor." Yassen crossed his arms. "I've never met anyone else who will waste time in combat situations to deliver a pun."

Alex warmed a fraction. "I have a great sense of humor," he insisted. "Though I am a bit of a smart-ass. I've gotten myself into plenty of trouble because I didn't keep my mouth shut. It was worth it though."

"See what I mean?" Yassen felt compelled to point out. "Petty. You're petty."

Alex snorted. "That's not petty. I'm snarky. It's different. Girls are petty."

"Well, maybe you have some self-discovery ahead of you, because they also tend to be hung up on their hair."

Folding his arms, Alex dropped into the chair in front of the bedroom desk. "Oh, shut up. If a man-bun is good enough for David Beckham, it's good enough for me."

"Agree to disagree." Yassen waved a hand. "The point is that whether or not it was planned, the person you are isn't the perfect spy action figure. You were always other things, but Blunt and your uncle just paid attention to the parts that they wanted. Spying is merely a thing you were stuck doing for a while."

"I thought you believed in destiny." Alex considered him, eyes anxiously fixating on his face before glancing away. "That it was my destiny that had brought me to that plane with Cray and then to Scorpia."

"I do." Yassen inclined his head. "But I think it can be more fluid than people give it credit for. Maybe it was your destiny to be a spy for a while, just not for the majority, or even the most important years, of your life. You still have plenty of time to shape your own."

Alex chewed on his lip. "I'm not convinced."

"That's just your low blood sugar talking," Yassen said, waving a hand at the doorway. "Put your shoes on. I can't find any delivery menus. We'll have to go out."

Alex watched him out of the corner of his eye as he gathered his trainers and slipped them on. He grabbed his jacket from where he'd draped it over his bed, tugging it over his arms with what seemed like exaggerated slowness. Yassen didn't miss the way that Alex measured the distance between Yassen and the door.

"I'm keeping this one," Yassen said heavily, holding up the pill he'd already taken off the boy. "But you can keep the rest. Just tell me every time you have to hold them."

Alex froze. "Why?"

"I want to know."

The boy fidgeted with his zipper. "But you won't stop me?"

That was a loaded question. He was tempted to lie, but decided against it. "From holding them, no. If you swallow them, yes." Yassen sighed. "I don't have to understand it to know that you need it. It doesn't sound like it's particularly fun for you either, so I'll trust that you'll stop as soon as you can stand to. In the meantime, I just want to know how often you need it."

Alex studied him for a long, tense handful of seconds. Took a breath. Reaching into his pocket, he grasped the other pills in his hand and offered Yassen the entire clenched fist. "You can hold them then. Like the others. I'll ask when I need them."

Yassen stared at the little pile in his palm, feeling something deep in his chest relax. "Thank you."

Alex looked away again. "Pizza sounds good. I want extra olives, though."