A/N: It's been about a month since I last posted - life got in the way. I'll try to write more from now on, but I make no promises. Written for SpyFest Revival's March prompt. Itplopped into my mind and refused to leave as soon as I saw the prompt (mad as a March hare), and I couldn't rest until I'd written it. It is also written for the lovely BrigithBriice, who has encouraged me tremendously, as a sort of very belated birthday gift.

As a last note, this was semi-inspired (the title certainly was) by Goethe's Faust and Marlowe's Doctor Faustus. You don't have to know either to understand this (I hope), but I am in love with the idea that our beloved spy has made a deal with the devil. Enjoy!

He rarely has visitors, these days. Occasionally, someone would stand outside the door to his oh-so-white cell, waiting for a long moment before passing on. He would wait until his visitor's habitually light footsteps receded, and then a mirthless smile (more a simple twist of the lips, really) would cross his face for a fleeting moment. It was no one he would recognize, he knew that. No, his visitors were the greenies, preparing for their first missions and still unbroken by the bitter realities of their job. They came to stand outside his door, to visit the man who had once been the best spy in the world and come to terms with the truth of the horrors they would see or the people they would kill.

The smirk becomes a grimace as he thinks of himself before the job had broken him. He had never been carefree - his uncle had never allowed for that, always reminding him that he had to be better, to push harder until he was the best at whatever he did - that was partly why they had chosen him, because he was the best (the other part was because he was so, so, young). It was being the best that had eventually destroyed him. Really, he is surprised it had taken as long as it had for him to be affected by the work he did - so many years of the toughest missions, of the killing, of the despair could hardly have left him unscathed (he doesn't wish they had, not really, because it was when he was in the field and nearly dead that he felt the most alive).

PTSD, they had said, when he came home from his last mission. Severe mental trauma caused by (what else?) traumatic events. They had taken one look at him, those damn psychologists, and declared that he was unfit for duty and had to be taken out of the field (for his own good, of course) as though they had any idea what was going on inside his mind. He had fought the whole way, remembering at the last moment to temper his blows so that he wouldn't kill them (not yet, anyhow). He had been filled with a sort of animalistic panic at the thought of being out of the field, of being forced to recall every single awful thing he'd ever done in his entire life and relive it without the prospect of another adrenaline rush around the corner, and so he had clawed and bitten and scratched and fought the whole damn way until the one person he thought would help him had jabbed a hypodermic syringe into his neck (this is for your own good, Alex) and pressed the plunger down. He had heard the screaming, then, a terrible, endless howl that he had wished desperately would stop (until he realized that he was the one screaming). He remembered how that awful wail had been abruptly choked by the blackness that danced across his vision. He remembered thinking, knowing that he would never, could never forget.

And then he had woken up in that box, that prison with the white walls and floor and ceiling that trapped him and came ever closer until he had torn his throat raw with screaming and they crushed him and his red blood spattered the walls. He had thrown himself at the walls of his prison until his limbs were raw and bloody and he sank to what he thought was the floor in a sobbing heap. He had fallen into an exhausted sleep, haunted by the images of death and destruction that were burned into the backs of his eyelids, and then he had woken up in the hellish box again, free of blood and surrounded by white as though the previous day hadn't happened. He would repeat the vicious cycle again, trying desperately to escape the hell in which he lived, trying to escape the memories that haunted him. He had learned, eventually, that he would never escape (at least, not with his life, which would almost be a mercy, he thinks).

It drives him mad, wasting away in his cell, a shell of what he was, no signs of greatness in the too-prominent ribs and gaunt features that once housed strong shoulders and noble cheekbones. Pride hath a fall…and how far, indeed, the mighty have fallen.

There is nothing left in this world, nothing for him to live for (he doesn't live anymore, he thinks, merely exists) except maybe death. He sees irony in that, in the idea that he only bothers to draw breath or drink water because he is waiting for death to claim him (they have taken away his freedom, the one thing he vowed would always be his - what more can he live for?). In a strange sort of way, though he is waiting for death, he feels the urge to make death come for him. He will not, in fact, simply stop breathing or starve himself, as though he has retained some semblance of the regality and respect he once commanded. No, death must descend (or ascend?) from its haughty perch to the mortal realm to capture his admittedly black soul. A grin stretches across his face in a gross farce of a smile, all rotting teeth and stale breath, but his smirk is lazy and his eyes powerful, a last echo of who he used to be.

Would you believe me if I said it was supposed to be funny? I was planning on writing a humorous fic, but this plot bunny dug its claws in and wouldn't let go. Let me know what you think!

hugs,

-nrynmrth