Ben studied the boy's tightening face, bouncing slightly as the train departed, feeling a small sense of helpless frustration coil bitterly in his chest. All of this time spent trying to figure out what was going on with him- from the secret prison, to the weird drugs, to spotting him in Kingman, to the endless nights spent convinced the assassin was going to pitch the boy's OD'd body into a lake somewhere- and it had come to this. Alex was neither a coddled, confused child blissfully unaware of the situation nor a frightened victim deep in the throes of self-preservation, but somehow, Ben hadn't expected this… undercurrent of anger. Frustration. The teen was doing a decent job of hiding it under a veneer of mild annoyance, but there were just enough split-second expressions for Ben to spot the jagged edge.

Damn. He'd hoped for something a bit more… positive.

What could he do? Ben stared at the side of Alex's head as the boy folded his arms and glanced at the window. He'd wanted so badly to catch up with the pair for months, to be able to speak with Alex directly. It never occurred to him that the kid he'd encountered on his missions, the one who'd he taken a bullet beside, didn't actually want to speak with him back.

"Are you okay?" he asked. His brain caught up with him a second later and he shut his mouth, but not before he got another wicked flash of anger from the kid.

"No, I'm currently being hemmed in by four of the biggest prats I've ever met while I'm on my way to school for a half day, in which I'll have to remember to get all the work from the lessons I've missed because of said prats," Alex snapped.

Eagle frowned. "Look, kid, I get that you're furious about the mission especially because of everything you went through, but we're not MI6, not really. We're not even here to hurt you, in fact, we've been worried about you and we put in a lot of effort into figure what's going on and now to top it all off, now you're being a little shit-"

"Oh, I'm sorry." Alex gave the man a cold, unflinching expression. Unnervingly reminiscent of the contract killer's. "I didn't realize I'm obligated to be nice to any adult with the passing instinct to worry about me. Pardon me while I send Mrs. Jones flowers and chocolates. She used to be quite concerned-"

"No," Ben said hurriedly. "You're absolutely right. You don't owe us anything, Alex. You don't owe any adults anything for their help. Not us, not Jones, and not even Gregorovitch-"

"Oh, shut up," Alex snarled. "You don't know him or me. You don't know anything."

"So tell us," Snake said. "We can't-"

Alex gave him a hard look. "Why should I? You've already made up your minds. Nothing I've told you has stuck. You don't listen. You just keep poking at me, trying to get me to help you come up with supporting details for some awful story you've already written in your head about what my life must be like. Problem with that is that I'm actually pretty happy here so if you don't just fucking quit it, I'd rather you fuck right off."

Ben took a slow deep breath. Fuck. Twenty minutes into meeting with the kid, and they'd already messed everything up. To be fair, he hadn't anticipated Alex's utter and complete resistance to their attempts to sort out the situation in detail, even with the little preview of his reluctance to chat for more than a minute or two that he'd gotten in Kingman. He wasn't sure what this conversation could have done differently either. Now, the jagged silence was stretching out, broken only but the faint whine of the train engines, the sounds of the other passengers, and the soft clatter of the tracks.

Wolf swatted Snake to the side, forcing the startled man to clear some room on the bench so he could sit next to the brat. Oddly enough, in a direct inverse of everyone else in their little group, he'd only relaxed the more Alex spoke. "Alright, kid. You've made your point. You say you're safe and happy where you are? Fine. I'll take you at your word, so long as you remember to tell us if that changes. Don't give me that look, we all know you fucking won't, but you should."

Ben opened his mouth then shut it. What the hell was Wolf trying to accomplish? It didn't matter. It wasn't like he had a better idea. The spy supposed the man's foot-in-mouth tendencies couldn't actually make it any worse.

"Yeah, it's the mission to try and prove Gregoro-bitch is less than stellar for you to be around," Wolf went on, smirking at Alex's twitch at his new nickname for the assassin, "but I think it's also worth pointing out that we all-" and here Wolf jerked a hand at the rest of the team "-know damn well our mission objective is horseshit, even if we manage to accomplish it. So, new plan."

Alex raised an eyebrow, but he'd also started chewing on the inside of his cheek, clearly uncertain as to where this was going. Ben was very much on the same page.

Wolf shrugged. "New plan is to have a decent vacation in Moscow. Pestering you is definitely on the agenda, so tough shit, brat, but I don't want to spin my wheels on the same boring topic if there's nothing to be gained from it. This mission is doomed to fail anyway, but if we have to talk to you to tick a box, we'll talk." He glanced around the interior of the train compartment and then back to Alex. "What are the good restaurants around here?"

The train slowed suddenly as they approached the next station. Alex stood, eyebrows furrowed, clearly turning the question over in his head as he waited by the doors. What was Wolf playing at with it, exactly? It was a hard shift and absolutely didn't fit the seriousness of the moment nor Alex's attitude, not that the spy had any better ideas on how to get any of it back on track. Ben and the others clambered to their feet as well. No one spoke as they stepped onto the platform and got on the escalator out of the station.

Near the top, Alex finally turned back to Wolf. "If you like Thai, there's a place not far from the flat."

Wolf nodded. "I could go for that. Usually get it twice a week when I'm on leave. There any good Chinese here?"

Alex's nose scrunched as he walked. "There's one across the street which used to be pretty good, but the eggrolls have been cold and kind of soggy lately. Next best Chinese is by my therapist's office."

"Do they deliver?"

"Not to us. Too far, I think, but they do takeaway. This is me." Alex halted, nodding to the school gate ahead. Ben felt his eyebrows climb- this school had some heavy duty security. Metal detectors, uniformed guards, a thick brick wall that looked like it could withstand a nuclear strike. The teen flicked a glance around the group, before settling back on Wolf. "I've got an appointment after class, so Yassen's going to pick me up. You can walk me to school tomorrow morning, if you like."

Wolf nodded and glanced at his watch. "What time?"

"School's at eight, so I leave at about seven thirty." Alex gave them a final, lingering glance before turning to go. "See you later."

Eagle waited until Cub was strictly out of earshot before rounding on Wolf. "What the fuck was that? You can't just drop his living situation, you moron. It's the entire fucking point. He's obviously-"

Ben shook his head, cutting in as he led them back down the street. It wouldn't be practical for a bunch of strange men to be seen loitering outside of a school so heavily guarded where none of them had a child enrolled. The rest of his team followed. "He obviously doesn't trust us. Enough to be near us, perhaps, but not enough to talk to us." He nodded to Wolf, feeling a little late to the party but grateful someone else had gotten it started at least. "Good thinking. Go back to keeping it light. Let him relax so he'll keep us around without bolting."

Wolf shrugged, something weary creeping across his face. He glanced away. "Took me awhile to realize the problem, but I think this is the best way about it."

Snake frowned. "You mean him not trusting us?"

"Sure, but the bigger one, I think, is that we never really asked ourselves why he should." Wolf grimaced as Eagle opened his mouth, hurrying on to cut him off. "Obviously, we know our intentions are good. He doesn't, not really. Besides, I think we've spent so much time obsessing over what happened to him and what's going on in MI6, that we forgot that we don't actually know him."

Ben blinked. "Well, maybe not very well-"

"What's his favorite movie?" Wolf asked him. He raised a hand to get the other two to fall silent before turning back to Ben. "Come on, Fox, you've spent the most time with him. He actually knows your real name. That makes you the expert. What music does he listen to? Favorite food? What personal details do you actually know about him that you didn't read in a file?"

Ben shook his head. "We didn't really have time-"

"Exactly. We don't know him and he doesn't know us. We're just the assholes he got stuck with for a week over a year ago. Even if he remembers us better than that, it's still not much to go on. Definitely not enough to open up about whether or not the guy he's been living with is secretly abusing him." Wolf shook his head. "It's not his fault and it's not ours. We just don't know each other. That's why I say we just ease up on him and keep him talking about whatever we can. The fucking weather, if that's all we got."

Snake sighed. "I'm with Wolf. I don't love it, but he looks healthy enough. You all saw him. He shut down quick when he realized we didn't like his answers. I doubt he'll put up with it much more."

Eagle scowled. "Healthy enough is not good enough. There are loads of ways to abuse a kid that don't leave marks."

"And he won't tell us about those ways if we push him too soon," Snake countered.

Ben nodded heavily. "No, Matt. They're right." Everyone stiffened at the use of a non-codename. "All we got was arguing. Wolf got real intel. That Alex knows he can escape and has the resources to do it, which he implied Gregorovitch is both aware of and the reason for. He eats out a lot, he cleans the flat from time to time. He has a therapist and he leaves for school at seven thirty. That he's willing to see us tomorrow, or maybe just Wolf." The spy took a deep breath. "Since he did better than us at getting the kid to speak, let's take Wolf's lead."

Truthfully, it was a little galling. Ben had spent weeks and months training to extract information discreetly and respond to threatening situations in the least incendiary manner. He'd been good at it. Top of his class.

The last few days had torn through his ego like a bull in a china shop.

Four completed missions no longer seemed like enough. His training felt wholly inadequate; worse, he knew the team was dithering under his lack of actual experience leading K-unit. Wolf was much more skilled at the latter, even if the current mission called for both. He'd wondered before if it irked the other man, having to answer to a teammate nearly five years his junior. A year ago, he would have said that it was justified as Wolf wasn't as adept at navigating social or emotional-intelligence heavy situations, but his conversation with Alex had proved otherwise. Something in him had changed since their training days. A stronger emotional maturity than he was given credit for.

Ben felt like a clumsy teenager caught talking big, unable to deliver and no way to back out of a turning situation. Perhaps that was how Alex often felt.

It was horrid.

Wolf nudged Eagle with his elbow, giving him a half smirk. "Come on, mate, don't look so put out. It was your idea to merge the mission with a vacation after all."

"Yeah," Eagle said, thawing slightly. There was a stiffness to him that let his teammates know he hadn't wholly abandoned his crusade. "But what if we never find proper evidence of abuse that's actually happening? What if he never tells us about it because we stop asking?"

"Then there's nothing we can do for him anyway," Snake said. "But we won't get anywhere if he feels attacked, or like we're attacking his… mum. To use his term. Like it or not, but Wolf's right. He doesn't know us, not as well as he knows this terrorist guy by now. Starting light-hearted when the stakes are real is frustrating, but I think it's our only chance of getting him to say anything meaningful at all. We can't treat this like our normal missions. We can't just interrogate him in under a day, even if we try to be nice about it. He's not a soldier."

"Fine." Eagle glowered at the ground, then let out a harsh breath. Crows feet seemed to have erupted around his eyes overnight. "But before anyone asks, I'm not making small talk with the assassin."

Wolf nodded immediately. "Absolutely not. Guy's clearly an asshole."