The hospital room was as clean as it was empty. The bright fluorescent lights were shining brightly overhead and gleamed off the white tiles on the floor.

Its funny how hospital rooms were always so white. Alex had seen quite a few hospital rooms in his lifetime unfortunately.

They were always dreary, bleak and empty. He felt very similarly to this room.

He was alive, granted, but felt empty. After his complete mental breakdown after years and years of undeserved stress.

He wasn't quite sure what he was supposed to feel anymore. His friends had told him that they had found him lying in the street.

He had been unresponsive and unconscious. The doctors had blamed it on stress, PTSD and his previous injuries.

Frankly he was just tired. Tired of his life, tired of all the action.

He had never wanted any of this and it weighed on him every waking moment of the day. He had stayed here for awhile, on the overtly comfortable bed that belonged to the hospital reserved for wealthy patrons and special injured MI6 operatives.

He had felt no urge to leave, having nowhere to go. He wasn't sure what was next for him.

Blunt probably expected him back out in the field, completing missions and basically serving as their obedient instrument even if he was far from obedient.

Ben and K-Unit probably expected him to stick around them, as they were always concerned for his wellbeing and hated Blunt with a passion after discovering all that he had put Alex through. He was at a loss for what to do.

Rain sprinkled in a constant thudding against the window and Alex felt a small twinge of amusement. Raining in England, typical.

He was glad that he had sometime to himself. Ben and the others could be very clingy and overprotective and Alex felt overwhelmed with all the attention focused on him. He was still trying to recover.

He refused to think about certain topics, not wanting to face the backlash his brain and memories would inflict on him.

It was tough, to tie up all the loose ends of his memory and especially since now that he felt as if he had lost all control. It was like trying to hold a handful of sand without letting any of the grains slip through his fingers.

He couldn't handle all of the sand falling through and was trying to build himself solid walls inside his head.

After that night everything had been a mess. He had been a mess for days. Flashbacks, nightmares and echoes of past plagued him day and night.

The sand had been blown straight out of his hand and he had lost his grip on himself. Day by day he had slowly getting better but he was still on shaky territory.

The doctors had called it PTSD or post traumatic stress disorder. Alex remembered reading about it awhile back but had never anticipated what it would be like to actually experience it.

He had read accounts of retired soldiers and trauma victims who still lived with the reminders of their pasts but had never imagined that it could be this bad.

He felt helpless against the torrents of his memories that brought along deluges of memories came along with floods of feelings, feelings of regret, guilt, panic, terror and many many many more.

It had gotten so bad that he no longer felt like a human being. He was like an empty shell.

There was that word again, empty.

The world that had been so vibrant and real before was different for him now. He wasn't sure what exactly had gotten him to crack. To break down completely.

He had supposed that it had been the Ukrainian assassin that he had killed. It shouldn't have affected him as much as it did.

Alex had killed many times in his life, sometimes on purpose and sometimes on accident. That night hadn't been an accident.

The weight on his shoulders had gotten to be too much, too heavy and he had collapsed underneath it.

Nobody could blame him of course, he had had to deal with things that no one should ever had to deal with. The world had crashed and burned around him and the ghosts of his past clung to him like clothes.

This was his life, his life that had been twisted and turned by the manipulative work of MI6. His childhood and teenage years had been stolen from him and his adult life had been devoted to that bloody organization.

Alex had felt angry, he had been angry for a long time. The resentment had eaten away at his morals and himself as he had continued to be corrupted and controlled for a long time.

His fury had been real and ferocious, like a big angry monster inside of him.

It had existed for a long time, ever since the death of his Uncle Ian and had been steadily growing inside of him.

Alex could feel it inside of him, resting gently beneath the surface but he felt a strange urge to just push it to the side.

He was fairly intelligent despite missing several of his last school years because of being off on missions and knew that he had choice.

He could continue to let his rage and resentment control and fuel him. He could continue to let his past haunt him, to let his ghosts inject themselves into his life.

Or...he could just let it go. It was funny to him how simple it seemed now. It was funny how once everything exploded and burned and collapsed around him he could finally see a new option, a new way out, an escape.

He had could go off the grid, disappear completely, live a life of his own for once. He had the means, he had the connections and definitely had nothing left for him here in England.

Blunt would try to find him, wanting to blackmail him into more missions as he had done before. Ben would panic at first but then would finally feel a sense of relief for Alex.

Ben would know that Alex would be okay, that he would manage on his own and that he would still keep in touch somehow and somehow would be okay with it. Ben would be glad that Alex got away from Blunt and MI6 and would be glad that his adopted little brother would finally get to experience the world the way it was meant to be experienced.

K Unit would try to look for him for awhile but eventually would begin to accept it.

Yes, Alex could see it now. He would travel, see the sights, all subtly of course.

He had been trained as a spy, he knew how to hide and how to never be found.

He felt something twinge inside his chest. It was fairly unfamiliar but Alex could distantly recognize it as a form of hope.

Beneath all the scars his heart was still beating and his lungs were still pumping air. He could see and hear and taste. He could touch things and feel things.

He was not broken. He may be empty but could soon fill up with an old unused emotions like excitement and joy.

Things were not lost. He may feel lost, like a wandering veteran but he had direction.

To hell with the weight of the world on his shoulders. He was going to travel.

Alex glanced around his room and out the window. The sound of cars driving down the crowded street below seemed distant.

The dark gray cloudy rainy sky outside didn't look black or depressing to Alex. To him it was a picture of new horizons.

He could see the brilliant blue sky of Florida and the golden sunset off the coast of Hawaii. He could see. It was an escape and it was brilliant.