A/N: This may be very triggering to some people. Please heed the warnings, okay?

Warnings: serious depression; undiagnosed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder; swearing.

I usually hate long authors' notes, and so make a conscious effort to avoid them, but this fic needs some context, so here it is:

This may read as very out of character. It's meant to be. The experience of Post Traumatic Stress exaggerates certain characteristics of the sufferer to the extent where they are often unrecognisable to those who knew them before. It can wreck lives, alienate loved ones and sometimes even result in insanity. The triggers can be anything, a specific noise, a movement out of the corner of the eye, a smell.

This fic is written from personal experience of living and dealing with a PTSD sufferer for an extended period of time. It isn't supposed to reflect anything other than personal experience of the disorder.

Immense gratitude goes out to many people for helping and reassuring me over this fic. I find fic that deals with PTSD hard to read, and apparently even harder to write. Thanks go to FFN users amitai and nuclearxsquid, and LJ user whocares19_05,who put up with my foibles and my angst every single day, and reassured me that this was worth writing. Thanks also go to the lovely ladies who participate in Word Wars on the LJ comm jim_and_bones, who not only made me hash out the actual words to this fic but also encouraged me to share fic in a fandom none of them even knew existed.

Thank you to nuclearxsquid for a sensitive and thorough beta!

Disclaimer: Don't own it. Never have, never will. The Alex Rider franchise belongs to Anthony Horowitz, and the quote in the summary belongs to Stephen King.

There are some nights Alex can't sleep. He wakes from a nightmare, lashing out at things that fade into the darkness, reaching out for the faces of those he couldn't save, always just beyond his reach.

His dreams are never concrete, but he remembers them all the same. Little flashes of horror: Tom, bloated and drowned; Jack, her beloved red hair stained dark with long-dried blood; Ben's pale face twisted with unknowable pain as he slumps in the shackles. All of them dead before Alex even realised they were gone. He can hear their voices: you failed, Alex. You made a mistake. I hate you.

He wakes up, silently shaking, and turns the lights on in an effort to dispel the images he sees every time he closes his eyes. In the beginning, he would turn over and try to sleep, dismissing them as wrong, untrue, false - just night fears, only to wake again some scant few hours later. Now, the thought of sleeping again always makes bile rise to the back of his throat, and he slips from his bed, pads silently down the stairs to the living room, turns the television on and mutes the volume. If he wakes Jack, she will be even more concerned than she is already.

It's getting worse, the dreams. He rarely sleeps now - the terror the night holds for him grows by the day. The doctor listened to his symptoms with a frown and prescribed him sleeping medicine, promised him a dreamless nights sleep, but all it did was trap him in the dream, knowing there was no end. He doesn't take the medicine any more, although the doctor still prescribes it.

The television flickers, but Alex doesn't see it. His gaze is far away, concentrating on nothing, on pushing it back, taming the fear that is roaring in his chest. He takes a deep breath, and then another. A tree, moving in the breeze, taps against the window. Alex flinches as if he has been hit. He tries to relax, to let his muscles untense and allow him to sink back into the settee, but the adrenaline is still coursing through his body. He'll sit here, as he always does, until the sky lightens and the birds begin to sing in the trees.

He's broken from his daze by the sound of movement from upstairs. He gets up from the sofa and goes into the kitchen to begin making breakfast. Jack comes down the stairs just as he's reaching into the cupboard to get the cereal down. He knows she's there, but even so, he stiffens at her soft 'Alex?' from behind him. He whirls around.

'Don't do that, okay? I told you I didn't like it!' She jumps at his voice, loud in the quiet house.

'Alex, I'm sorry, I didn't mean-' Her face is drawn and tired and they've been here before.

'I don't care! Stop doing that, okay, just stop!' His voice is higher, afraid, and he's breathing heavily into the ringing silence. He drops into a chair, leaning his head on his hands. Jack sits beside him, carefully in his line of vision, should he choose to look up.

'Sorry,' he mumbles, refusing to look up from the table. Jack takes a deep breath.

'It's okay,' she says, but it's not, and they both know it. Once, she asked him about it, unable to understand. It's not an experience either of them wish to repeat. These days, they skirt the subject, if they talk about it at all.

Alex leaves the house as quickly as he can after that. He knows he'll be early to school, but his body is on autopilot, navigating his bike quickly through the streets to arrive at the gate just as the caretaker unlocks it. He stows his bike and then wanders onto the playing field and slumps under one of the trees at the edge. The dew wets his shoes and soaks his trousers, but he can't find it in himself to care.

Recently he's felt more and more cut off from the world, as if everyday life is happening at the other end of an endless tunnel, far away, muffled and untouchable and all around is ringing silence. He's long given up trying to touch it again.

When the bell rings for registration, he gets up with a sigh and heads into school. The cheerful white noise of the people around him is muffled, far away. He makes a beeline for his locker, where Tom is waiting for him impatiently.

'Alex! There you are!' he exclaims cheerfully, 'I was beginning to think that you'd gone off again.' There is no accusation in his voice, no censure, but Alex studies the dented door of his locker anyway. The bright yellow of the paint seems muted, although the sun on it glints brightly.

'Sorry,' he mumbles, 'I lost track of time.' Tom grins anyway, but there's a shadow in his eyes that hadn't been there before. Alex wonders vaguely if his presence irritates Tom, if perhaps he had wished that Alex had been gone, to come back with more tall tales, more injuries to fuel the fires of the gossip machine. He finds that it doesn't matter to him either way.

'No worries, man,' Tom says, breaking him out of his daze, 'It's cool.' He pauses for a moment, frown now firmly in place. In the back of his head, part of Alex hates himself for ruining Tom's cheerful mood. 'Hey- you okay? You're a bit out of it lately.'

Alex feels a flash of irritation. It's startling.

'Look, I'm fine, okay? Stop asking me that.' Tom holds his hands up defensively.

'Woah. Calm down, Alex. I was just asking. It's not the end of the world.' His glance skitters over Alex's shoulder and his face brightens. 'Hey, I've gotta go – Coach asked me to speak with Mark about practice before tutorial. See you later, right?'

'Bye,' Alex says, a beat late, but he's saying it to thin air. Tom is already gone, darting through the crowd like a fish.

Alex stares after him for a moment before opening his locker, sifting dispassionately through the mess for the books he needs for the day and heads off to tutorial.

He's ignored by most of his tutor group, which doesn't surprise him. It leaves him time to do some of the homework for first period, but he doesn't finish it before the bell. He flinches slightly at the loud noise, and then sighs quietly to himself, packing up and heading to his first lesson of the day.

Alex hands in his homework half done. It doesn't really matter.

He sits at the back and waits for it to end.

At lunchtime, he eats the packed lunch that Jack made for him, because he knows the look that would be on her face if he came back with a full box, and the look that would be on Tom's face if he threw it away. He sits on the field with his friends, watches his mouth chat about Chelsea's chances in the League – 'We'll win it this year, you watch us.' 'Hah, I dunno what planet you're living on, mate! It'll be ManU for sure.' lets James clap him on the shoulder, suppresses the instinctive wince.

After lunch, it's PE, and Alex changes with his back to the room in an attempt to avoid the stares and the whispers. They go outside to play football on the grass pitch, and the teacher, probably hoping to avoid any leftover grudges against Alex, puts him in goal. The caretaker is mowing the field with one of those four wheeled electric mowers that is almost a quadbike, and Alex closes his eyes for a moment, willing himself to stay in the present, willing himself to ignore the noise.

He tries to focus on the game, but the constant buzz of the engine keeps distracting him. He's startled out of a daze by the shouts of the other boys, just in time to be hit full in the chest by the football. He doubles over, winded and gasping for breath-

-he's running through the field in Cornwall again, pursued endlessly by those quadbikes, and the cheesewire is hissing through the grass and he's runningrunningrunning but they are faster and he can't think can't breathe can't move-

He comes to on the ground, curled around himself, sweaty and shaking. Distantly, someone's voice is saying 'Move back, come on, give him some room,' and he closes his eyes again for a moment, wishing himself anywhere but here, curled on the floor like a child with night terrors.

He takes a deep breath and opens his eyes, making an awkward attempt at sitting up. The teacher is kneeling beside him, looking panicked. He tries to push Alex back down. Alex flinches away as if he has been burned. The teacher looks even more worried than before.

'Alex-' he starts, but Alex cuts him off.

'Sorry about that. I'm fine, really. Have I wasted much time?' It's hard, feels like moving through water, but he manages to get to his feet.

'Alex, you just collapsed! I don't think that you should be-'

'Look, the ball just hit me a bit too hard, okay? There's nothing wrong with me!' Alex's voice rises uncontrollably.

'Alex,' the teacher's voice brooks no disobedience. 'I'm sorry, but you're going to sit out the rest of this one. I'm not negotiating on this one.' Alex scowls, but takes a deep breath in order to try and clamp down on the irritation roiling in his gut. He finds, to his horror, that he can't.

'Fuckssake!' he shouts and turns to kick at the goal post. There's a sick feeling in his gut, and he wants nothing more than to just curl up and make the world disappear, but he stalks off to the side of the pitch, watched by the rest of his class, and slumps by the kitbags with a scowl. The rest of his class watch him go: he can feel their eyes on his back and it makes him even angrier. Why can't they just let him be like everyone else?

These days, he can't seem to feel anything that isn't negative, and it's terrifying. He exists in a world with no colour, where sound is muted and other people feel so very far away. And then something happens, and suddenly the world is vivid again for a few minutes. Alex is frightened to realise that the brief lucidity isn't worth it. The brighter world is deafening and startling and scary and always accompanied by rage or irritation and he never feels truly alive any more.

As he sits there, the world gradually fades back to grey. He doesn't bother to fight it – it's not as if it will work.

The last period of the day is given over to a careers fair thing. Alex hadn't exactly listened when his tutor was explaining it earlier that day. He wanders around the stalls listlessly, and when he's called in to talk with the Connexions woman, rolls his eyes and follows her in.

'So, Alex,' she says with a smile, 'What are you thinking of doing after Year 11?'

Alex shrugs.

'No idea.' Her smile fades a little.

'Come on, you must have some clue. Getting a job, going to sixth form, an apprenticeship?' He frowns – her constant smiles and questioning are beginning to irritate him.

'I told you – I've no idea. I dunno what I'm doing this weekend, how am I supposed to know what I'm doing at the end of the year?' He leaves unsaid the reason why. There are so many things that could go wrong between now and the end of the week, let alone the end of the year. SCORPIA could decide that their revenge was worth more than a million pounds. Blunt could call on him again. Someone in the press could get hold of his files. Jack could realise the mistake she was making here and go back to the United States. So many things. How was he supposed to plan? None of it would ever happen the way it was supposed to anyway.

The lady frowns, troubled. 'You do realise that you need to sort it out, Alex,' she says gently. 'The world doesn't owe you your living.' Alex sits back in his chair, a sudden wave of exhaustion crashing over him.

'I know,' he says, flatly. 'And I'm sure that by the end of the year, I'll have it all worked out. For now? No idea.' She sighs, clearly giving up. He knows she has at least another fifty people to see today.

'Alright. But look-' she fumbles around on the table and thrusts some leaflets into his hand. 'Here's some information on the apprenticeship scheme the government are looking at, and here's some on local sixth from colleges. Take a look, okay?'

'Okay,' he agrees, absently, and stands to leave.

He shoves the leaflets into his bag, knowing full well that he won't look at them. His head is just too full at the moment to deal with the future. He has enough trouble with the present.

He grabs his bike from the rack where he left it this morning and pedals straight home. Jack has enough to worry about without the extra stress of wondering where he is and what he's doing. The repetitive movement wipes his mind, and he's grateful. It's nice to not have to think for a while.

Jack isn't actually in when he gets home, so he bypasses the kitchen and goes straight up to his room and lies down on the bed. His brain is working again, but in a way he doesn't want it to. He stares at the wall and tries to quiet it again, but it won't go. He stays there for a long time.

The faint noise of the door closing and of movement downstairs does not disturb his reverie, and so it's only when Jack knocks carefully at his door does he realise that it is now dark and she's home. He sits up as she pushes the door open.

'Alex, hey. Sorry I wasn't in. Did you get my note?' The expression on Jack's face suggests that she already knows the answer to this question.

'Note?' Alex asks anyway.

'Yes, I left it on the kitchen surface with your dinner.' Alex shrugs.

'No, sorry, I came straight up to my room when I got in.'

'So you haven't eaten, then? It's 9 o'clock.' He shrugs again, she sighs. 'You really do need to eat something. Come downstairs and I'll warm it up for you.'

He follows her down the stairs automatically, brain slow to adjust. He eats his dinner on autopilot, aware of Jack watching every bite. Before, when she didn't, he'd pick at the food, his stomach constantly uneasy, or forget to eat at all.

Alex retreats back to his room after dinner, mumbling something about homework that he knows he won't do. He can feel Jack's worried gaze on his back all the way up the stairs.

He gets his Biology textbook out of his bag and opens it to the questions he is supposed to do and reads them, but the words on the page don't make sense. He doesn't remember learning anything about the biological composite of carbohydrates, and he's definitely never heard of the Biuret test. Alex wonders if he wrote down the page wrong, and flips through the book looking for something he recognises. There are a couple of things at the very start that he distantly remembers learning last year, before it all started. He sighs and begins to read through the chapter. Maybe he can learn at least a little from it.

Much later, he sits back at his desk and briefly scrubs a hand over his face. It's late, and he knows that he won't finish this work tonight. The words won't stick in his head, no matter how many times he reads it through. Jack will worry if there is still a light under his door when she comes up for the night. He might as well go to bed.

He feels a shiver of dread at the thought. Sleep now means terror, and the turmoil of his subconscious mind. Sleep means nightmares and waking up fighting against the sweaty tangle of the sheets and hitting out at enemies who fade away into the darkness like they have never been. Sleep means acknowledging the things that he tries to ignore, tries to push down every day in the hope that maybe one day it will go away.

As he lies in the dark, staring at the ceiling and fighting the sleep that is slowly creeping upon him, Alex knows that it doesn't work like that. Every time he pushes it away, puts off facing it for another day, hour, minute, the problem grows. Eventually he'll have to deal with it, muster all his energy and face up to the nightmares that plague his sleep and deal with the distance that feels so insurmountable between him and the world.

But it won't be today. And it won't be tomorrow, either, if Alex has anything to say about it.