A/N: Well - I hope you all enjoy! Warning for a bit of language.
Challenge at the bottom.
Warning - updates may be a bit spotty over the next few weeks. I will continue to write but I will loose 2 days to volunteering and 2 days to school, so they may be touch-and-go, but I will make sure that I update. I've already written most of ch7.
Dedicated to Jayden95 who beta'd this.
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"Are you fucking happy now?" Alex Rider spat as he glared at the men, who stood shocked. Snake's first thought was that no child should have bruises like that. Alex's thought, however, was that they were going to discover his secrets. He swallowed hard, visibly. "You want to know how my mother died?" His voice was eerily cold for a fourteen year old boy.
Wolf was surprised at the sudden change in Alex's demeanor, but didn't push it, knowing if they didn't get the story out now they never would. "She died in a car crash," Alex lied, saying the first thing that came to his mind. He knew he was lying but didn't care. Well, his mother did die in a car crash, but the rest of what he was about to say wasn't the truth. "I was there with her. Plus, some of those are from that stupid ass exercise you called RTI."
Fox was the first to regain his voice. "I'm sorry, Cub. They - we - didn't know."
"What, my father didn't write you a memo on me or hand you his file on me?" Alex asked. His voice was dripping bitter hatred. "Fuck you all." With that, he stormed out the door.
K-Unit's hut suddenly became momentarily silent. Then Eagle spoke. "Something's wrong," he said. His tone of voice was completely serious.
"Of course something's wrong, Eagle – the kid's mother died, and his father uses the SAS as his get-out-of-jail free card for hiring a babysitter, and we get stuck with the brat," Wolf declared.
"That's not what I meant," Eagle responded. Since he was being serious, Wolf shut up instantly. "Look – the kid's bruise on his back that was really fresh, I think that was from RTI training. But those bruises weren't from a car."
Even Snake turned to look at Eagle now. "How do you know? What medical training do you have?"
"I'm on your side, Snake," Eagle said, his voice suddenly cold and detached, "but those bruises weren't form a car wreck. No…" Eagle thought, pausing for a minute, the realization hitting him instantly. "They were from a whip," he said instantly.
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Alex was sulking behind the mess hall. Four days in and his unit had discovered his 'secret'.
His life had been hell ever since he'd been born. His father had never wanted him and had never been around. He didn't have any relatives. He was put in boarding school after boarding school until he was old enough to be in middle school and was "able to take care of himself."
The boarding schools were god awful and his punishments could be considered borderline abusive if they weren't outright abuse. Then he'd gotten home to his loving father, who when he was home, would beat the shit out of him for whatever he'd done wrong while he was away... if he bothered to talk to him or look at him at all. While his father was away, his guardian would do it.
His caretaker loved to whip him. Alex had tried to tell his father about that, but Blunt wouldn't listen. "I don't have time to listen to your damn whining," he'd said, then he'd smacked Alex so hard that Alex had been left with a broken nose. And then, as if it were perfectly normal, he went to work.
Alex had stopped talking to his father after that. His mother was slightly better, at least she'd only ignore him. She didn't whip him or beat him. When having Alex didn't get the attention from her husband that she wanted, she made it a point to ignore her child even when he, too, had pleaded with her for help. And Alex knew not to go to any teachers – he'd been beaten by enough of them that they wouldn't think it was wrong.
So why was the K-Unit, Snake in particular, so worried about his scars? His whole life had been like this – beatings, being unloved, and being starved. Alex just shook his head. Maybe it was just the SAS. Maybe it was some code thing, or something.
"Hey, there you are!" a voice came from behind him and Alex groaned. It was Eagle, who he normally liked talking too, but didn't want too now. He'd seen the way that the man had looked at him when he'd called Snake a 'jackass pedophile' and feared that the man would be angry with him as well. "We were looking everywhere – hey, Cub, get back here!"
Alex had taken off at lightening speed, leaving his sling in the dust. He knew he could outrace Eagle, he'd been able to do it before. What he hadn't counted on was the fact that Eagle was used to the physical training far more than he was and that his body was physically exhausted from the RTI training.
That, and the fact that Eagle was a full-grown, 180 pound, muscle-bound male. "Cub, I just want to talk!" he called, wondering why the teenager had chosen to flee.
"Oh, yeah!" Alex called back, seeing the man behind him. They'd closed two kilometers of distance now. "Just like they all want to talk, huh?"
"Look, if you'd just stop and talk to me, maybe I could help you!" Eagle shouted, even though he didn't know if he would be able too.
"You can't help me!" Alex called back. "Nobody fucking wants to help me anymore. I don't care, alright, dammit? Just let me bloody die!"
## Break ##
"Do you think we did the right thing, sending Eagle out after Cub?" Fox asked. The two hadn't come back for almost half an hour now and he was worried.
"He's injured," Snake said, "and he's just a teenager, so he's probably got a lot of teenager-wise emotions going through him. We've just discovered his 'secret'," Snake added, making air quotes, "whatever the hell it is. Yeah, someone needed to go after him."
"And he's not going to listen to any of us," Wolf said with a sigh. He wasn't sure how he was supposed to feel now. On one hand, he believed Eagle; there was something more to the kid's story. But on another hand, wouldn't the kid of MI6's head be well taken care of by his parents?
"If he is actually being abused," Fox said, speaking up nervously, "What are we going to do about it? I mean, it's not like we can care for him full time while we're in the SAS."
"Oh, what, you think Eagle could be right?" Wolf sneered. While he personally thought that there was something more to the story, he felt like the kid was just hiding something. If the kid was really in trouble, his rich-ass father could handle it.
Fox rolled his eyes. "Look, you know I trained to be a social worker during my time at uni, and yes I think there's something more there. So what do we do?"
Snake checked his watch. "It's lights out in half an hour. There's virtually no danger too great that either Eagle or Cub could get into this early. If they aren't back by morning, we'll alert the sergeant. I don't know about you, but I'm ready to collapse."
"Fine," Fox said, although Wolf could tell that he was less than happy.