"You're crazy Alex!" Tom yelled laughing as Alex ran by. Alex grinned to himself, this was probably going to hurt later, but right now it felt great. Reminded him that he was alive. What was he doing you ask? Running a mile barefoot on the abrasive surface of the track.

Alex had just recovered from the last insane mission from MI6 and instead of walking the mile like all the other boys, had decided to run it... barefoot. The feel of his feet hitting the pavement of the track was nice, it gave him a feeling of strength, and kept him from thinking about what he did for a living.

As soon as he finished Alex looked at his feet and winced. They were black and all of his toes had blisters on them Not to mention the balls of his feet. He counted a total of thirteen blisters covering his feet. Tom took one look and laughed. "Bet that hurts like a bitch." Alex growled at Tom and swatted at him. Tom skipped away taunting Alex to come and chase him. Which he knew full well that Alex couldn't do.

"Next time I do something like that slap me and remind me of how much I want to cut off my feet right now." Alex groaned to Tom, who hadn't stopped laughing at him yet. "I know mate I know," Tom muttered between laughs.

Alex sighed to himself as he limped along barefoot. After several tries, he'd given up on shoes, because those hurt his feet worse than going barefoot. And now he was walking part way home through a park. Jack was going to pick him up at the other end of it after her date. Alex really wanted to cut his feet off, surely that would make the pain go away. He realized that this was perhaps one of his stupider thoughts, but he chalked it up to pain. Alex rounded a curve in the path and nearly ran into none other than Yassen. Alex stared at the assassin wishing desperately that one of them could disappear. Or that adrenaline would kick in and make his feet stop hurting, because this was likely to end up in him running from the assassin.

Yassen hadn't really been following Alex, he'd just been curious as to what the boy had done since their last meeting. Then he'd noticed the boy was obviously limping, and had waited for him.

"You are limping," the assassin dead panned. Alex jumped; he'd been looking for escape routes. "Brilliant observation, give us another." Yes, pain made him very very stupid, Alex realized.

One did not bait or insult Yassen; one stayed very still and hoped he'd go away. Unless one was stupid with pain from blistered aching feet. Yassen was looking at him with those level eyes, which were annoyingly hard to read. "Why are you limping?" Alex gave Yassen a look that clearly asked 'why the hell do you want to know' which Yassen knew was a valid question.

"Are you going to try and kill me? Because if not, I would really like to get moving, my ride is waiting for me." Alex was so getting a psychiatrist to look at him if he survived this. He must have some as yet unknown suicidal tendencies. Yassen's eyes narrowed, before he shoved the teen back. Alex yelped and managed to land in something resembling a sitting position on a bench. "Ow! What the hell was that for?" he snapped at the assassin who was... kneeling in front of him? Yassen carefully picked up one of Alex's feet, examining the black blistered surface. "How exactly did you manage this?" Alex shivered at Yassen's cold tone.

"Err I ran barefoot on the track at school, which turned out to be not as smart as I thought." Yassen looked at him again, and if Alex looked closely, which he did, he could faintly see the 'you idiot' expression on the assassin's face.

Well that was new, the seeing expressions on Yassen's face thing. "You have a ride?" Yassen's question pulled Alex back from his thoughts, "Yeah, my housekeeper is picking me up at the edge of this park," Alex stood up, carefully moving away from the assassin and grabbing his book bag, "So if we're done here, I need to get going." Before Alex could register that he'd moved, Yassen had picked him up. Alex squawked in shock, which Yassen ignored and proceeded to walk away.

"What the fuck are you doing? Put me down!" "You cannot walk well or quickly as you are, you make an easy target for anyone bearing you a grudge after the Stormbreaker mission" Yassen explained, toneless as ever.

'Or any other mission" Alex muttered, unfortunately Yassen caught hit. He stopped dead. "You've been on other missions." Alex winced at the tone. "Not like it's any of your business but yeah." Was that anger he could see in Yassen's eyes? "Why?" Yassen was moving more slowly now, "Well it's not like I can say no. They're threatening to send Jack back to America." "Jack is your housekeeper?" Alex nodded slowly, wondering exactly when he'd entered into an alternate universe where Yassen asked questions and carried him, and he seemed to have no problem with this.

"What do you propose to do about this?" Alex shrugged, "There's not much I can do now, not until I'm 18, Ian left me as 6's ward, so until I'm 18 they have almost complete control." "And when you are 18?" 'Well then maybe Jack and I will move to America, or something, I'm not sure. This wasn't exactly what I had planned for my life." "what did you have planned?" Alex shrugged as best he could while being carried. "I dunno, I hadn't gotten around to thinking about it, maybe law, I definitely knew I didn't want to do banking like Ian" Alex grinned wryly at the irony of it all. 'Got roped into it anyway."

Yassen twitched his lips into a grimace. "I'm sorry." Alex gaped. "Okay… am I hallucinating?" He could see the minute twitch that was Yassen's smile. Okay, this whole seeing Yassen's emotions was messing with his head… and the heat. Yeah he could blame the heat and the pain on the weird twisting in his stomach.

Yassen carried him to the edge of the park, where Alex could see Jack's car. He was set down before Jack could see Yassen. "Try to be more careful." Alex nodded, painfully stuffing his feet into his shoes so as to keep Jack from realizing his idiocy. He walked away from Yassen, ignoring the urge to look back. He could still feel those cold blue eyes on him.