(OPEN) i'm not the way that you found me

[00nothing]

Who: Alex Rider and YOU
Where: around town
When: June 11th & June 13th
What: A cat adopts Alex and then Alex accidentally blows up a cop car. Somehow, the cat thing is the weirder part of this week for Alex.
Warnings: PTSD traumas, panic attacks, explosions, accidental self-sedation
[Open]

11th - one day i'm happy and healthy.

[after all of that business in the woods after field day, alex is seriously regretting focusing all of his attention on the hospital rather than the fence he's heard vague mutterings of around town. he's never even seen this fence before and with the way things are looking now that doesn't seem to be something that's going to change for him anytime soon.

(just looking at the woods makes alex remember the helpless feeling from the ninth and if he's honest it terrifies him, and that terror in turn makes him angry. he doesn't like either feeling very much.)

walking around town doesn't really solve any of his problems, but it was something he couldn't really do freely last month thanks to his crutches so it still feels like some sort of small act of rebellion. and somehow, getting his own mental map of the grounds he can access without feeling like he's slowly dying is a... relief. he's been remembering more and more from before the accident lately but it's all been flashes, impressions, moments in time presented without context.

in some ways it feels like he's being given just enough rope to hang himself with.

the cat started following him a few blocks back and alex has been trying his best to ignore it but when it attempts to toddle right on past his ankles while he's waiting at a crosswalk, alex is forced to quickly bend down and scoop it out of the road before it gets run over by an unsuspecting pedestrian in a car.] Stop! What do you think you're doing?

[the cat in his hands stares up at him with big eyes and meows softly and alex is honestly sort of at a loss. none of his recovered memories so far have at all prepared him for what to do with a cat, of all things.]

13th - next i ain't doing so well.

[wayward pines isn't a metropolis by any stretch of the imagination, but it is expansive enough that attempting to traverse the whole of it by foot seems a little sill after awhile when he's got a perfectly serviceable bike sitting in his garage that he's been aching to ride since he first limped home with it from the sheriff's office over a month ago. and he doesn't have a broken ankle to hold him back from doing just that anymore.

the bike pedals like a dream, and for a moment alex allows himself to sink into the innocent pleasure of the experience itself, allows himself to see wayward pines as the beautiful, scenic suburb it wants so desperately to be.

and then he's assaulted by another fracture of a memory; he's on the bike again, but he isn't coasting peacefully along, he's pedaling for his life, he's being chased through a brightly lit city, he's... being shot at? the memory hits him like a physical thing and alex's hands tighten reflexively on the bike's handlebars, the heel of his palm pressing down on a button that he hadn't even noticed until now.

something shoots out of the front of his bike. a cop car parked about ten feet away explodes when that something hits it. the bike falls from alex's suddenly nerveless fingers as he stares at the flaming wreckage in horror. he can't breath, can't think, fishes desperately into his pocket for the asthma inhaler he'd been given over a month ago but hadn't found a use for until now. alex presses the inhaler to his mouth, presses down on the top, breathes deep, and immediately passes out on the ground next to his bike, ten feet away from the burning wreckage of a police car.

so much for keeping a low profile, honestly.]

Comments

11th!

[therewerefifty]

[Makie has watched Alex's progress down the street largely because of the cat following him. It's the fluffiest mop she's ever seen, and she wonders if the boy it's following has something on him that smells delicious.

She's sitting on a bench near the crosswalk for the sole purpose of getting some sun and taking a rest before she treks the rest of the way home with her meager groceries, idly watching the cat and its adoptee up until the moment Alex is forced to snatch it from the road. Honestly.]

It's not much for self-preservation, I see.

[Two weeks into her time here and she's still wearing her kimono, so. She looks more than a little out of place.]

11th

[vdova]

[ She's driving home from the studio — it's closed today, but she has paperwork to do and bills to pay, and she’s spent most of the afternoon cooped up in the slightly warmer than it should be office. She’s not really paying attention. This is a route she takes on a regular basis and, for the most part, is one she doesn’t have to actually watch when she does so. Her mind is wandering towards what Steve might be making for dinner, towards the next lesson she’s going to teach her girls. There’s a flash of blonde hair out of the corner of her eye, and Natasha slams on her brakes, tires squealing as her station wagon comes to a halt. She almost hit someone, and cursing herself softly, she pushes out of the car, standing behind the door as she looks down for the kid she nearly hit.

It’s a boy. With a cat that looks suspiciously like the one that’s waiting for her at home, and she’s so startled by the resemblance that she blurts out his name before she even thinks to ask if the boy is alright. ] Liho?

[ It isn’t her cat, though, it’s much too small, and Natasha closes her car door, heading towards the pair. ] Are you alright?

13th.

[sidle]

❰ it's more and more often these days that fred works up the courage to leave her house. usually, it's when she has to go to the store — but going out just for fun is important too, that's what angel wanted her to do before she disappeared and woke up here, and lately she's been trying to do it anyway, even if it's here in the wrong place. she's been taking walks, talking herself into looking around and telling herself, 'see? nothing bad's gonna happen'.

which all goes to hell the second a cop car blows up not twenty feet away.

fred chokes out a panicked squeak and throws herself down behind the nearest car, curling up into a ball to best facilitate covering her head. five seconds go by, then ten, and nothing more seems to happen. and slowly, sloooowly, she uncurls to peer just barely around the bumper of the car.

the car is still there (it was a cop car), flaming like it was made for it, and on the pavement between fred's hiding spot and the flaming car is a blond boy and a bike. he's... he's not really moving. that's really really not good. she gets her feet under her and darts from behind that car to behind a much closer one, peering urgently around that bumper instead. ❱ H-h-hello? Are you-... Are you dead? I'm. I'm gonna have to poke you with something i-if you don't speak up, so just-, just say something so I know if you're alive, okay? ❰ it'll probably be a stick. please don't make her poke you with a stick. ❱

13th;

[paragon]

[ It's not actually Steve's first exploding cop car in this town.

It is, however, the first accidental one, which Steve can tell clear as day on the kid's face when he looks back at Alex after flinching slightly from the burst of metal and gasoline, the fire now quickly hollowing out the vehicle. There was no one in it, at least — he'd just passed it by on his run and had been about to nod a greeting at his student as they drew even with each other.

He starts to cross the street now, but Alex pulls out an inhaler (Steve doesn't remember him being asthmatic) and then just— drops. They hadn't had those back in Steve's day — solutions back then had included nicotine, among other things, and he figures he's pretty lucky that he was stubborn enough to avoid most of it — but even the more quack remedies would do a better job than what Steve just saw. He kneels by Alex and pockets the inhaler from the sidewalk even as he leans over him to make sure he's actually breathing. He doesn't hear any telltale wheezing from his lungs and so straightens with Alex slung over one shoulder and the bike held in his opposite hand. He's careful about where he touches it.

When Alex regains consciousness, it'll be cozy on his art teacher's couch, his bike visible and propped against a nearby wall. ] How do you feel? That was quite a sedative.

[ Steve enters the living room from the ostensible direction of the kitchen, carrying a glass of water that he sets on the coffee table next to Alex. ]