Title: Frisson: Scars
Author: Anne Phoenix
Rating: PG
Summary: " ... for a few precious hours his damaged skin had been the object of reverence."
Word Count: 700
Warning: None
Author's Note: Written for the Flash Rider community's fifth challenge prompt, "Scars" & part of the Frisson series (available on the Archive as the rating is too high for fanfiction net). Beta read hpstrangelove - any remaining mistakes are mine!

Disclaimer: Any mention of 'Stormbreaker', 'Alex Rider', any associated entities, or any copyrighted material pertaining therein is reasonably protected by the Fair Use Rule of the United States Copyright Act of 1976, and is not intended to infringe upon any copyrighted material. All Alex Rider characters belong to Anthony Horowitz. No monetary profit made on this story.

Frisson: Scars

Scars.

Twisted designs of pale, damaged skin.

Raised welts. Unfading memories. Pain inflicted by angry men who did not see him as a child but as an enemy to be crushed, destroyed.

Anger, hatred …

Alex didn't mind the scars. Not really. In a way he needed them as a reminder of his reality to focus his mind during missions. This was not a game; he could hurt, he could bleed … cry … die. Other people minded them, though. They made people –nurses, doctors, Tom, Jack, Sabina – recoil in horror, their minds incapable of imagining why a fourteen year old boy should carry such marks.

Nurses and doctors worked for MI6. They'd seen it all before.

Tom ... Alex sighed. Tom would gasp dramatically and then ask ... why, how, why, how, why, how. It was enough to drive Alex mad. He didn't need to talk about it. Didn't want to ...

Jack hadn't seen him unclothed for many months now. He locked the bathroom door these days, refused to go swimming, refused to get changed. Of course she had to know that his body was a battlefield. She had visited him in hospital often enough. Her eyes would go wide, full of accusation, fear, self-hatred at her inability to protect him. Alex would then have to distract her, change the subject, hide the offending scar as if denial could make the problem go away.

Sabina. Now there was a good liar. She loved Alex, or she thought she loved him. She pretended that the scars didn't bother her, pretended that her eyes weren't drawn over and over to their mottled pattern. More than anyone, she made Alex feel like a freak. Wrong, different. Sabina feared Alex, too. Feared what he had been through and what it had done to him.

Once and only once had Alex's scars genuinely elicited any expression other than revulsion, and for a few precious hours his damaged skin had been the object of reverence. Alex shivered at the memories: Yassen's hands on his body, tracing the lines of his suffering, studying them like a map that might guide him … to where? Alex hardly dared to think of it.

Maybe nowhere, if the bastard's reaction to him in Prague was anything to go by.

Yassen had left marks of his own that night, as Alex's skin had been turned into a canvas once more. It had taken days for Alex to be able to draw a breath without pain and weeks for his face to heal. His kidneys still ached. He'd dragged himself to the street, coughing blood, pissing blood, wheezing like an asthmatic whore. He'd looked so rough that even the muggers had given him a wide berth, assuming, probably quite correctly, there wasn't enough of this pathetic foreign boy left to bother with.

In all of Alex's missions, he'd never been so thoroughly, so expertly, beaten. Yassen hadn't just battered his body, but his pride. Alex shivered again, wondering why the experience hadn't – and a mirthless smile made him turn his lips at the thought – scarred him, for want of a better word. It hadn't put him off. If anything, it had made him want more. More of Yassen's overpowering strength, more of his … More of him. His touch, his fingers, his cock, hi—

Alex moaned and reached down to touch himself, fingers flitting over skin that should have been smooth, should have been soft, but was forever tarnished and marked. He remembered vividly the feel of Yassen's cock against his lips, could still taste the man, salty desire mingled with blood, mingled with pain and want and need. Perhaps the damage was not just on the outside after all.

Perhaps his mind, like his body, was tarnished and marked on the inside too.

THE END
November 2009