Pick a Fight; Any Fight PV Aleksander Panchev Closed

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It was time.

He should not have been overthinking this. People were too simple minded, lost in their own troubles, barely living on the same plane of existence as their peers. All his careful observations, strategic approaches, had been for nothing. It was boring to say the least.

So it was time to finally do something, spring into action before summer was over and his chance was wasted. He was quite sure he knew what to do, had placed a stack of letters, all written in pale blue ink, inside his bag, had added the picture into the mix. There was no time like the present, even if Aleksandar rather preferred using the present to plan and the future to act. How much longer, however, was he going to wait? How much more slinking around, staring at the back of hoodies with animal ears, wanting to gauge out his eyes over mismatched colours and too many rips and zippers on jeans? No, it was time.

With that conviction in mind, Aleksandar had woken up early, gone for a run, eaten breakfast and prepared the things he needed. He had spent his day close by the lake, keeping an eye out, watching, waiting, but the people who had come and gone had been of little interest to him. Changing his location had seemed like the best thing to do after helping himself to some lunch, so he had moved through the different activities, watched groups of friends fawning over their latest mediocre accomplishments in arts and crafts, until...

Aleksandar's attention was caught on a new person, a boy, that boy, was it not? His hair seemed darker without the hood of some animal onesie to obscure it, fashion a little toned down for the day, but he was happy to chalk that up to a bad mood. Not necessarily ideal for his approach, but he knew how to work with cranky. The boy had placed himself by a table, worked nimble fingers on some paper, folded and pressed it into shape. So much colour, why did all these children here like colours so much?

Suppressing a shudder, Aleksandar stepped forward, slowly, like a lazy predator, too self assured to worry about his prey's reaction. He took a seat opposite the boy without a word, leaned his forearms against the edge of the table and folded his hands together. It took him a moment to study the boy, more up close, finally not covered in excessive fabrics. He was pale, as expected, face sharp, angled, not very reminiscent of the baby-faced creature who's picture he had been carrying around for months now. His eyes were wrong, lacking the depth of forest green and instead shining with a warm mix of colour, chestnut and lime, flecks and specks illuminating dark pupils. His eyes were not supposed to be hazel, they were meant to be green, green, green, like the needles of a young pine tree, luminous, bright. A trick of the light, maybe, a picture taken at the wrong angle, bringing out colours which were not really there. A small detail, hardly important.

"You are not one to be found alone often," Aleksandar said, a foreign stretch to his vowels, a lilt in his syllables that suggested English not to be his mother tongue. "Made it rather hard on me to approach you privately." His tone was pleasant, eyebrows raised as he smiled at the boy. Warm, welcoming, like they had been friends for years, and weren't they just? Were they not tied by the same filth in their blood? "Truly, I thought summer would pass without granting me the chance to meet you. A tragedy, that would have been." If the boy paid attention to Aleksandar's interlaced fingers, the press of his palms, the slope of his wrists, he would notice the shimmer of a familiar shape, a silver A hanging off a silver bracelet, a single clear stone shining from it. "Who knows when we might get another opportunity for such a lovely Family Reunion."

Jack's head whipped up at the unfamiliar voice telling him he was not 'one to be found alone often'. Was that true? He thought he'd been alone plenty in the recent days. Then again, to those who didn't know him, maybe his lingering around others, even if he didn't talk or interact with them, counted as not being alone.

"You could have just left me a note or asked to speak to me in private," the redhead answered, thinking that was how Flash had first gotten his attention; with a note to speak in private. He smirked slightly at a new thought. "So does that mean you've been stalking me for some time now, just waiting until you could get me alone?" Kinda creepy, but why might that have been? Had his reputation preceeded him again? Now this was getting interesting.

The boy's manner of speaking also reminded Jack of Flash, but less business-like and more like Flash talking to someone he wanted to befriend. That would have to change. Jack couldn't have this boy thinking they could be friends now, could he? Especially if he was being all stalker-creepish like. Something was up with this kid.

"Without granting you the chance to meet me?" he repreated with a laugh. "Am I supposed to know who you are?" The flash of metal caught Jack's attention and he noticed a familiar piece of jewlery. Was that...? Had it been stolen by this kid...?

Still, his expression didn't faulter as he continued to listen at the back of his mind. Something about a family reunion. No way. Was this kid some sort of relative of his? Surely his parents would have told him or they would have met before if that was the case, right...?

"Hold up, hold up," Jack said, putting down his origami to hold up his palms, grinning. "What's your name, Mr. Stalker?"

Aleksander Panchev (@Ruka Burnett-Tân)

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B O T T O M S / S H O E S

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There was a short moment of silence, the shake of a head, a small sigh.

"How impersonal." A note, who did this boy think he was? "I prefer a more face to face approach, though far be it from me to pull you away from company. I have waited for a moment of your time and it has come; No harm done." Aleksandar smiled, lazily shrugged his shoulders. He was a patient young man, could have waited for the boy's time until the end of the month. What he wanted to do would be concluded quickly either way. "Stalking is a strong word, would you not say? Observing, perhaps. I have not gone out of my way to follow you around, merely kept an eye out for you should you be close by." Another smile, blue eyes drifting down to the paper the boy had been folding up until being interrupted.

A laugh made his head snap back up, eyes narrowed. Surely this was no laughing matter. "I would be surprised if you did." Or maybe... "Actually, you may have heard of me. Perhaps your father mentioned me in passing. Perhaps your friend did." The short one with the colours. Would he have talked about their meeting?

Whatever pieces the boy had gotten so far, they were not enough for him to puzzle them together, it seemed. Or maybe he simply wasn't very bright. "Indeed, I have failed to introduce myself." Not that it was particularly important for the boy to know his name, was it? "Aleksandar Panchev of the Durmstrang Institute." He did not offer his hand, instead reached it inside his bag, clasped it around a stack of letters. "I have been attending Camp solely to meet you." A small grin would quirk the corners of his mouth upwards. "It has been interesting to see what kind of school it is my father's money has been put into for the sake of your education." A bitter expression twisted his features for a split second.

Heaving a sigh, he finally pulled the stack of letters from his bag, neatly tied together with a string of brown yarn. Pale blue ink would paint the words Aria Valov across the top envelope. "I believe you might be interested in these." Why would he not be when the words inside were written by family. "At the very least they might help you deal with your father's passing. Perhaps they will inspire you to reconnect with your mother? I felt that was a choice you deserved to make." Carefully the letters were slid across the table, came to rest in front of the boy. Whether he would take them or not, Aleksandar would leave them there with no intention of taking them back again. It was his brotherly duty, he felt, to make sure Ruka knew of the family he still had out there.

Jack blinked at the smiling stranger. What a weird kid. "If you say so," he replied, gazing into those blue eyes as if he could read him better that way. Where had this boy come from? Surely he couldn't have been a student at Hogwarts, could he have? Jack didn't think he remembered seeing him in the hallways or at mealtimes or in any of his classes, yet they looked around the same age. Just what year was he, anyway?

The way the boy's eyes narrowed when Jack laughed also reminded him of Flash. Oh, what fun. Did this kid get disgruntled just as easily, too? He was talking about how he would have been surprised if Jack knew him, but that maybe his father might have mentioned him in passing. Or his...friend. "I have no friends," he said automatically, like the phrase was triggered from his mouth by his hearing the term. Even so, his mind raced through a catalogue of people the boy could have possibly been referring to.

Before he was able to reach any sort of conclusion in that department, however, the boy had already introduced himself. Ahh...Drumstrang. No wonder Jack hadn't seen him before. The Welsh boy's hazel gaze focused on the hand that reached for something in his bag only to grasp a bundle of letters. Jack's brow wrinkled in confusion at that. The comment that this Aleksandar Panchev had been attending summer camp soley to meet him didn't help his puzzlement. "Meet...me?" he repeated under his breath, the gears in his mind whirring. It hadn't been the first time someone had mistaken him for someone else, after all. How should he deal with this situation, though? Perhaps he could find out what was going on by learning who the letter were addressed to. If, indeed, they were meant to be addressed to him at all.

Your father's money...? The more Aleksandar talked, the more Jack struggled to deduce who, exactly, the Durmstrang student thought he was supposed to be. It was around the time the words 'your father's passing' were spoken that things finally clicked. He stared at the letters in the other boy's possesion until they were slid over to him. Then he looked back up at Aleksandar.

"What...do you know about my mother?" he started slowly. Then, "...Why wait so long to give these to me? Why only now would you come to meet me?"

Aleksander Panchev (@Ruka Burnett-Tân)