Chapter Text
“Central Park is so romantic, don’t you find?”
Heather seethed, narrowing her eyes at Alejandro.
“Whatever!” She would blurt out. “I know you’ve been messing with Sierra’s head, so back off, or you’ll wish you had.”
Now was not the time, but it wasn’t like there ever was a time for this in Heather’s eyes.
And yet, he remained unphased by her response.
“My wish doesn’t involve backing off.”
This sets her off, stomping her foot and baring her teeth as a clear indicator that she was frustrated with him.
“UGH! Just go play with your stupid team and leave us alone!”
The man maintains his sly smile, standing still and seeming—
Or more likely, pretending not to notice her obvious distaste for him.
“You’re beautiful when you play hard to get.”
Alejandro was only met with a growl, solely serving to anger her more. He finally took the hint, that was enough.
“…I’m going.”
“You bet you are, right out of the game!”
Heather only stood where she was for a second, watching him walk away. She then looked down, only to see…
His team’s now-unattended carriage, and its occupant, who happened to be dead asleep.
She figured out why he was absolutely out of it, hearing from the rest of his team about a certain mishap that caused Noah to not have a good night’s sleep, and she hoped he’d remain asleep until she had executed her plan.
Now, she just had to misplace the carriage.
She didn’t even need to hide it, she just had to get Noah far away enough from the others to delay Alejandro’s team by a significant amount, in turn giving her team a better chance of coming in first in this challenge.
Seeing that his attention was with his own team, she made sure that she was out of sight, then quickly grabbed onto the carriage by the handles and made a run for it, going farther from the pond, thinking to leave him by one of the paths they’d taken earlier. She’d figure it out while she ran, she told herself.
After a few minutes, Heather had gotten a good amount of distance between her and everybody else before she noticed Noah beginning to stir. That wasn’t good. She couldn’t let him catch her trying to sabotage his team, especially not after the interaction she’d just had moments before with Alejandro.
Quickly shoving the carriage next to a bench, facing him away from her as much as possible, she would run off to return to her team.
Noah had only perceived being pushed around, which at first, he assumed was still part of the race to the pond, trying to keep his eyes shut and get back to sleep. Despite still telling himself this was supposed to happen, he still had a nagging feeling something was wrong.
He immediately realized that his gut feeling was correct when he sat up, opened his eyes and saw nobody else near him, and that the stroller had suddenly come to a stop.
—
Where the hell was he? This wasn’t part of the challenge! Did his team leave him there? Did they just forget?
Or was this intentional? Did his team think he was slacking off again? He swore he was going to try this season, why would they just leave him behind?
Alright, alright, keep it together… This is a challenge. You’re on Total Drama. You’re on international TV. If you do something dumb now, the whole world is going to see it.
Trying to drill that he was always being watched into his head, he figured that he couldn’t get out of the carriage without it falling over. He would have to wait for somebody to remove him from it.
But if his team actually had abandoned him, then nobody would. They’re not coming back for him.
That thought alone was slowly chipping at his then already fragile mental state.
Trying to ignore it or bottling it up like he normally would with any thought that was a tad too personal or emotional just wouldn’t do it now.
He never talked about his problems more than making a few jokes at his own expense, and left it at that, despite the concerned stares he’d get when he did so. He shrugged it off, like he did everything else. Obsessing over it would be a waste of time, he thought.
He knew that repression was a flimsy way of “coping,” and that it was only going to be temporary. Despite this, he didn’t expect, and surely didn’t want that dreaded breaking point to be now, when he was in the middle of nowhere, so far from home, and had cameramen breathing down his back, watching his every move.
There was a reason he acted like such a prick, why he’d shut any serious discussions about himself down, and didn’t like when others got too close.
He had carefully crafted an image for himself in public, one that was self-assured and put-together, as someone who didn’t need anyone else’s help with things like this.
He never wanted to show anyone any sort of vulnerability…
…Despite that he felt like that was just the thing he needed at this moment.
He felt small. He wanted to be held gently, to be loved, he wanted to be told it was okay and that he was going to be okay…
…And yet, he felt stupid for thinking that way and thinking anyone was going to do that for him, especially in his current state, crushing his own hopes into smithereens before they’d even had a chance to begin.
That one thought from earlier wasn’t alone for long. He could feel his head get fuzzier and fuzzier, and he could hear his ears start to ring not only due to this, but the silence. He felt his legs start to shake. It only served to stress him out more, so luckily he didn’t have a need to stand up.
He couldn’t even bring himself to cry. He couldn’t say anything about it. He felt like he was sinking into his own mind like it was quicksand, not realizing that the rest of Team Chris had been looking for him, and that Tyler had found the stroller.
“Ugh, I know just who did this… Where is he? Where did she leave him?”
“Alejandro! Everyone! There he is!”
It had only kicked in for him that he had company when Izzy and Owen got as close as they could to him, peering over the open carriage like he was a newborn child, which he responded by instinctively slapping the closer, Owen, in the face, turning over in the carriage to shield his eyes from the sunlight.
Izzy turned back to Noah with a look of concern, while Owen rubbed the side of his face that had been hit. Noah looked unassuming but he could really pack a punch if he desired.
“Oh, he doesn’t seem very happy…” Owen winced, his hand still on his face. “We’re sorry for leaving you, buddy!”
“Man, I wonder how this happened? Like, I swear! I saw him with us before I went into the water, and next thing we knew, he was all the way here!” Tyler would say, adding incoherent hand gestures to try to help get his point across.
“Hey, don’t forget we’ve got a race to finish. Why do you think we came back for our teammate?”
Alejandro speaks up, taking the stroller and pushing it back towards the finish area.
“Back to Turtle Pond, everybody! We can talk while we run.”
While the others followed along, Alejandro quickly restarted the conversation.
“Something seems… Off. Both with Noah going “missing,” and with Noah himself. There’s no way we just left him here.”
“Oh, yeah. We all knew he was with us when Tyler swam for apples, and now he disappeared out of nowhere, and he’s being way too quiet! He’d be telling us off for leaving him by now!” Owen added, catching up and running directly behind Alejandro.
“…I’m sure one of the other teams was behind this. How did we just lose an eighteen year old!?”
“I have yet to hear “Ooh, careful there nutso.” or “Watch it, Sergeant E-Scope,” whoever that is! It’s so weird for him to be this quiet!”
Izzy would jump up and cling onto Owen’s back, trying to peer over the top of the carriage. She could only see the top of Noah’s head.
“Oh wow, he’s really living up to his role as the baby.” She commented, trying to point out his docility.
“Goodness me, Izzy! Is it bad to miss when he was telling us off? What do you think, Al?”
“I’ve already got my suspicions on who could’ve displaced him, but… Judging by how Noah’s acting, she…” Pausing to reiterate and to make his choice of words more vague, ”Oh, or he… Could’ve done more than just moving him.”
It was like the group had forgotten Noah was even there, and that he could hear every word they were saying. Not like he wanted to, and he couldn’t respond to them, anyway.
“….Maybe we could ask him what happened when he’s feeling better? I think it shocked him way more than it should’ve.”
The thing is, Noah didn’t know what had happened either. All he remembered was falling asleep after eating a few of Owen’s pretzels, then waking up being rushed to that random corner. He’d scared himself by overthinking more than anything else that had actually happened.
“Oh man…. What do you think happened? Did they play mind games with him, or something?”
“I’m guessing this person possibly threatened him or scared him into complete silence… This seems to be quite unexpected behavior from Noah, so it’s a great possibility that this person, or possibly this team, could be a major threat to our team.”
“You’re saying they could be really dangerous if they’re able to do something like that to someone like Noah?”
“Precisely. We have to watch out.”
All the way back to the pond, Noah had his head facing away from everyone, with his hands covering his ears. He clearly didn’t want any of the conversation, which didn’t help the others, who really wanted to know what had happened. If only they had a reason for his disappearance and his sudden change in behavior…
—
By the time they’d returned to the finish, having retrieved their apple from the pond on their way, the other teams had been there a long time. Team Amazon had been first, Team Victory a close second, which left Team Chris for dead last.
Heather showed Alejandro a malicious grin, with him only being able to return a knowing nod.
The rest of Team Chris shared looks of dissatisfaction, and looked among themselves, possibly already thinking of who they were going to eliminate…
…Until Chris revealed that this was a reward challenge, and nobody was going home that day.
Their anxiety turned to relief. Not long after, they all returned to the plane.