The Spies Who Loved - Elams (with E_musician)

Chapter 9

(Alex's POV) 
I help my dad bring Jeremiah to the cells. "You really have to start checking what tasks you give Eliza." I tell him. Dad sighs. "I was asked to help get her reunited with her family. She doesn't talk to her siblings anymore." He tells me. 

 “Well they make her uncomfortable and have traumatic flashbacks so that doesn’t matter just don’t give her cases like that”, I say. “Watch your tone Alex”, my dad responds. “No because you are causing her mental pain”, I respond “Alexander James Hamilton stop it”, my dad replies.

"What happened to you?!" I scream at him. He gives me a stern, yet confused, look. "What do you mean?" He asks, his voice low and scary. I gulp, losing the little confidence I had before. "U-um… I mean.. what happened to the man who was so kind and took me in.. the one who cared about everyone … where did he go?"

 “Go to either your office or your room son”, Washington says. I sigh then walk back to the office knowing I’d at least have people to talk to in there.

Eliza and John were in there, cuddled up on the couch, watching Brave. I drop my bag by my chair and shut the door. I turn off the lights and cuddle up beside John. This is nice. And warm. John is so warm.

 I can tell they’re both curious about what happened but I don’t really wanna talk about it. So I stay cuddled up and pretend I don’t notice the confused looks on their faces so I don’t need to talk about it. I really hope my plan to ignore that works without questioning.

Eventually, they give up and let me cuddle. We watched about 3 more movies before our shift was over and we could all go back to John's apartment. "Ready?" John asks as I pick up my bag. "Yep…" I mumble and follow him and Eliza out to his car again.

 “I hope my dad isn’t mad I didn’t ask this time especially after the fight…”, I mumble a little too loudly. That gains the attention of John and Eliza. “Alex what happened-“, Eliza asks with a concerned tone. 

I sigh. "We got into a fight is all that happened.." I say loud enough for them to hear while I stare at the ground. "What about?" John asks and puts a comforting hand on my shoulder. "Just.. the cases he was giving us… it's not important." I say quickly and get in the back of John's car.

 John drives us to his house. I’m still upset with my dad. He shouldn't have gotten so mad over it! At least not use my middle name mad! I stay quiet the entire ride to John's apartment, too mad to speak for once.

Eliza repeatedly looks back at me while John drives. I think she's checking on me but too shy to ask, which is understandable because I completely shut her down when she tried to help me earlier. God, why do I push away everyone that tries to help me. I've done it so much, it's basically its own characteristic now.

 I guess I just built an emotional wall to avoid getting hurt. But now I don’t know how to take it down. I want to because I feel safe with them but I don’t know how. It’s just hard.

"Alex, do you want a hot chocolate or something?" John asks me as he gets out of the car in the parking garage of his building. I shrug. "I've never had a good one but sure-?" I mumble. It's true. All the hot chocolates I've ever had have either been too watery or too chocolatey. Neither are good.

 John nods as we walk into his apartment. He goes straight to the kitchen to make us all hot chocolate. I use this time to figure out how to lower down my guard. I don’t think I’ve ever fully lowered my guard for Washington either. 

Honestly, it's hard to lower your guard for people who don't care. Now, I'm not saying Washington doesn't care, but he has trouble expressing how much he cares. That's why I can't really talk to him about stuff. That's why I have a therapist. 

 Which brings me to I don’t think I ever told Washington my middle name. Now I wonder how he knows it. That just seems kind of weird to me. He would have to physically search through records of a destroyed town to find a record on me.

Maybe he just assumed? But one can't just assume a middle name and be right. After all, there are millions of names in the world. So how did he do it?