(Untitled)

[recanting]

The thing about adults, Alex found, was that they were always changing their minds about him. One day, he was an adult, and they’d send him off to dangerous situations without a single thought. On others, he was a child. They wouldn’t let him have a gun, or any weapons at all. Most adults - especially those in the intelligence game - simply didn’t

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[odunham]

She was spending more time on the beach than usual, as if going down to the sand and spending time in the sun could burn away her memories and stress. As if the day before, toys hadn't come to life and tried to destroy everyone. As if anything about her life here was normal.

With Walter and the few people she checked in on safe, Olivia could find nothing much to do -- which was always the case after bouts of inexplicable island madness, and she almost didn't want to do anything this time around. The few stuffed toys she'd gotten her hands on were back to being inanimate, and after a few hours of absolutely nothing, she went walking.

She'd made it to the beach and was preparing to head back to the compound when she stopped dead in her tracks, a table and a boy on it suddenly appearing in front of her. It had none of the impending pressure of a universe shift, just a blink of her eyes and there he was.

He was a boy, and after the shock registered, Olivia was already by the table side, fingers fumbling over the straps. Her stomach turned at the implications of the scene before her, but she kept her voice calm as she spoke to him.

"Just breathe," she said, crouching to get the first of the straps off his hands. "You're safe, and I'm getting you out of this."

[recanting]

For a few seconds, Alex's eyes were squeezed shut as he took in as much air as his lungs could possibly accommodate. But then there was a voice beside him - a woman's voice, calm and commanding - as well as hands slipping the straps off his arms and he had to look. The first few seconds were agonizing as the hot tropical sun presented an impossible glare to someone who had been in complete darkness just moments ago.

It couldn't have been her that had stopped it. The voice he'd heard was clearly a man's -- or was it? Alex's memory of the past few minutes were hazy at best. His mind wasn't thinking straight without the necessary oxygen. And if it wasn't her, then why, then, was she here?

For that matter, why was he here?

Alex takes in enough air to make sure that he's calm enough to speak. He won't let his voice tremble, won't let them see that he's scared, because he's not some kid they can easily bully into submission. "Why did you stop them?"

[odunham]

"I didn't," Olivia replied after a moment's pause, that question all she needed to know to put the puzzle together. His damp face and hair were damning enough, and it took a considerable amount of control to keep herself from demanding who did it and finding some way to enact some sort of pay back. He looked and sounded like an older teenager, but that was no excuse. He was still a child.

She got the first strap undone, and tempted as she was to soothe the raw skin on his wrist, letting him get his bearings back was probably what he needed. She knew exactly what it felt like, to be strapped to a table and completely helpless.

"Let's get you out of this and situated, and I'll explain it all. Okay?"

[recanting]

Despite making a subconscious choice to not let his missions affect his daily life, Alex knew that deep down, he didn't trust adults. Except for Jack, but she hardly counted at this point. Adults all seemed to want something from him, whether it's his skills or his loyalty, or anything else. Children were sometimes the same, but the things they wanted had more to do with homework help and games of pick-up football. Adults were more insidious with it all.

Alex figures she must be lying, but then, he himself can't figure out how he got here in the first place. He knows what it's like to be knocked out, whether it's from drugs or simply from being hit in the face and knows that the first thing he often recalls is pain. Either from the needle going into his arm or the punch that knocked him out cold. Here, there was nothing except for the feeling of breathing water instead of air.

The textbooks and news articles had gotten it all wrong. It wasn't simulated drowning. He had been drowning.

"...Okay," he agrees, mostly with the air of somebody who doesn't really have a choice. Which, honestly, was not at all surprising.

[odunham]

It was a little different on this side, being the one someone couldn't trust right away. Olivia always tried to be trustworthy, even if she couldn't be one to return that trust.

"My name is Olivia Dunham," she said as she worked on the last of the straps, hands on his shoulders to brace him and help him up when he was finally free. "What's yours?"

[recanting]

Alex doesn't need help sitting up, something that Olivia might find as he forces himself to go slowly regardless. He's done things that were a lot more physically demanding, but this was difficult in its own way. "Alex," he replies, omitting the last name because he's not sure whether or not she knew about him. If not, he'd be blowing his cover and that's the last thing he wanted.

He's not scared anymore. Or at least, he pretends he isn't. In fact, he breathes deeply once or twice and then it's like this never happened at all, at least outwardly.

"Alright, then. What's going on here? Are you with the CIA?"

[odunham]

Apart from the obvious, he seemed to be okay, more in control of his mental faculties than Olivia would have expected.

"I'm with the FBI, but that hardly matters now." It stung to admit so, but it was the truth. "You're obviously not where you were a minute ago. It's hard to explain, but you've been transported to a...different dimension, sort of. Nobody knows how we get here, nobody knows how to get back to our homes. I'm sorry you had to appear this way."

[recanting]

Control was important to Alex. He took it more seriously than he'd admit, or perhaps more than he was consciously aware of. He wasn't the type of boy who over analyzed himself. There was a good chance that he wasn't aware of how different he was from most of his peers on a level that wasn't the physical. Sure, he could do things that were vastly different and frankly extraordinary, but his mind was different as well.

Alex had never thought of it that way. He had simply accepted it.

The FBI was one agency that he actually hadn't worked with or really encountered over his time as an agent, though Alex had suspected that it was only a matter of time at this point. More worryingly were the words that came next out of her mouth. A different dimension.

Well that was just rubbish, wasn't it?

"There have got to be better cover stories than this," he quips, though truly he is grateful for her untying him. "I thought it was the FBI's job to know things."

[odunham]

"We do," Olivia said with a smile, though the more Alex spoke of the CIA and FBI with such familiarity, the more her confusion grew. And she felt nothing like an FBI agent, her badge and gun at the bottom of her backpack as though simply waiting for the day she took a step and ended up back home. "But some things just can't be explained."

Certainly that was what she'd thought of most of her Fringe cases, but even those had eventually been explained away by science and the occasional dose of faith and belief. This island fell under new rules entirely.

[recanting]

Some things just can't be explained.

If Alex had learned anything in his time with MI6, it's that every question has an eventual answer. It may not be one that he initially suspected, but the truth would come out eventually. So either Olivia wasn't telling him the whole story, or she didn't have enough security clearance to know.

"Can you please tell your government that I didn't blow up that boat? That's probably what they thought. Maybe they'd believe you over me. And even if you don't know what's going on here, there has to be a plane or something. Or a boat. Just point me in that direction."

[odunham]

"They think you blew up a boat?" Considering the fantastical people she'd met and heard of so far, the idea of a teenage boy somehow getting tangled up in government-related danger didn't strike her as odd.

Dangerous and hard to believe, yes, but not odd.

"There is no way to get home. We have boats, but you can't get far, and there aren't any planes. I'm very sorry, but you can't go back home."

[recanting]

"Yes," and it's true. He hadn't blown up the boat. This time. That's not to say that Alex hadn't done anything similar time and time again in the past. Though he doubted Olivia would approve if she knew about any of those things. "They're stubborn, you know. I don't think they like to admit they're wrong."

What he's trying to figure out is what can't means in this situation. Does it mean that she won't let him, or just that it simply isn't physically possible? The schoolboy in him wants to trust people at their word. The spy in him knows otherwise.

"Is there any way of at least getting a message out? I just want to let someone know that I'm alright."

He owes Jack that much, at least.