Alias fic: Strange Bedfellows (4/12)
Story Title: Strange Bedfellows
Chapter Title: Sucre
Fandom(s): Alias
Rating: PG
Word Count: 548
Summary: One minute Eric Weiss is covert operations coordinator with the NSC. The next, he's hiding out deep in South America with a baby that isn't his and no idea when, or if, they can stop running for their lives.
Author’s Note: Fic origin here.
Strange Bedfellows
Chapter IV: Sucre“Ella es hermosa. Al igual que su padre.”
“Sí. Su padre.”
“Bienvenido a Bolivia, Señor Quincy. Y tú, pequeña.”
“Gracias.”
A drive, a safe house, a gun, a postcard.
Not yet.
Brussels and even Buenos Aires provided safe houses that were pretty solid-not minimalist enough for cold formula to be an issue, really. So far it’s all worked out. But as Weiss makes his way to the Bolivian safe house deep in the Andes mountains, he has a feeling he’s not going to be so lucky. The bed here is cheap and creaky, the floor is partially eaten though in spots by bugs, the windows are glued shut with grime. There’s barely a toilet and dripping water, let alone a stove or water hot enough for a bottle.
He’s never been that imaginative of a guy, but looking at Isabelle, he wracks his brain for some way to fix this. She didn’t ask for this situation any more than he did, and he’s damn well not going to make her suffer more for it.
He knows they can’t stay in the safe house for more than a day or two, not when it’s this unprotected, which means he doesn’t have much time. Feeling like a poor man’s MacGyver, he scrounges up an old pan and fills it with the slow-running water from the faucet. Following the directions on the formula packet, he pours the powder into a bottle and follows it up with the requisite amount of water and shakes it. Now for the actual hard part.
Isabelle hadn’t stopped wailing for hours, and though Weiss knows it’s not generally good etiquette to leave a baby by herself, he calculates the risk being higher if he brings her with him and have her screams alert someone.
Swearing to her that he’ll return quickly, he takes the pot of water and bottle outside, haphazardly searching the ground until he finally comes across what he’d been looking for. In a patch of sun lie a handful of rocks, blessedly dry and heated by the light, and he quickly places them in the bottom of the pan. It far from boils, but between the rocks and the continued sunlight, the water, and the formula inside the bottle, warms.
After a few minutes he tests the liquid and to his delight finds that it’s adequate. Certainly not an ideal temperature, but Weiss is pretty damn pleased with himself regardless. A grin on his face he brings his ingredients inside, preparing himself for now having to figure out how to make Isabelle stop wailing long enough to drink it.
His method is crude, but it works, and as he and Isabelle awkwardly traverse the mountains, he’s able to duplicate it. Sometimes it requires walking an extra mile to find hot enough rocks, or a patch of sunlight, or water, but it’s sustainable nonetheless.
In his mind, because thinking makes him feel the slightest bit less helpless and lost, he adds a tally next to his name and vows to hold this achievement over Vaughn’s head in the future. (Because Vaughn and Sydney will come for them, they will.) So what if Vaughn can kick his ass all up and down the rink? Weiss can warm up baby formula in the goddamn Bolivian mountains.
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Chapter Title: Sucre
Fandom(s): Alias
Rating: PG
Word Count: 548
Summary: One minute Eric Weiss is covert operations coordinator with the NSC. The next, he's hiding out deep in South America with a baby that isn't his and no idea when, or if, they can stop running for their lives.
Author’s Note: Fic origin here.
Strange Bedfellows
Chapter IV: Sucre“Ella es hermosa. Al igual que su padre.”
“Sí. Su padre.”
“Bienvenido a Bolivia, Señor Quincy. Y tú, pequeña.”
“Gracias.”
A drive, a safe house, a gun, a postcard.
Not yet.
Brussels and even Buenos Aires provided safe houses that were pretty solid-not minimalist enough for cold formula to be an issue, really. So far it’s all worked out. But as Weiss makes his way to the Bolivian safe house deep in the Andes mountains, he has a feeling he’s not going to be so lucky. The bed here is cheap and creaky, the floor is partially eaten though in spots by bugs, the windows are glued shut with grime. There’s barely a toilet and dripping water, let alone a stove or water hot enough for a bottle.
He’s never been that imaginative of a guy, but looking at Isabelle, he wracks his brain for some way to fix this. She didn’t ask for this situation any more than he did, and he’s damn well not going to make her suffer more for it.
He knows they can’t stay in the safe house for more than a day or two, not when it’s this unprotected, which means he doesn’t have much time. Feeling like a poor man’s MacGyver, he scrounges up an old pan and fills it with the slow-running water from the faucet. Following the directions on the formula packet, he pours the powder into a bottle and follows it up with the requisite amount of water and shakes it. Now for the actual hard part.
Isabelle hadn’t stopped wailing for hours, and though Weiss knows it’s not generally good etiquette to leave a baby by herself, he calculates the risk being higher if he brings her with him and have her screams alert someone.
Swearing to her that he’ll return quickly, he takes the pot of water and bottle outside, haphazardly searching the ground until he finally comes across what he’d been looking for. In a patch of sun lie a handful of rocks, blessedly dry and heated by the light, and he quickly places them in the bottom of the pan. It far from boils, but between the rocks and the continued sunlight, the water, and the formula inside the bottle, warms.
After a few minutes he tests the liquid and to his delight finds that it’s adequate. Certainly not an ideal temperature, but Weiss is pretty damn pleased with himself regardless. A grin on his face he brings his ingredients inside, preparing himself for now having to figure out how to make Isabelle stop wailing long enough to drink it.
His method is crude, but it works, and as he and Isabelle awkwardly traverse the mountains, he’s able to duplicate it. Sometimes it requires walking an extra mile to find hot enough rocks, or a patch of sunlight, or water, but it’s sustainable nonetheless.
In his mind, because thinking makes him feel the slightest bit less helpless and lost, he adds a tally next to his name and vows to hold this achievement over Vaughn’s head in the future. (Because Vaughn and Sydney will come for them, they will.) So what if Vaughn can kick his ass all up and down the rink? Weiss can warm up baby formula in the goddamn Bolivian mountains.
Next