The King Is Dead

Summary: An injury like this would keep Alex out of the field, maybe forever. That hurt more than Alex thought it would. He shook in Yassen's arms, his entire body shuddering. He would never be as good at anything as he was at being a spy, and he would never be a spy again.

Disclaimer: Alex Rider, his universe, and all associated characters and plot lines belong to Anthony Horowitz. Any recognizable works, references, or quotes are credited to their original creators.

Warnings: Established slash relationship, slash intercourse, age gap, strong language, injuries, violence, underaged drinking and irresponsible use of drugs.

Rated: T/M (subject to change)

Alex thought it was probably nice out - could see the faded strip of sunlight falling through the crack between floor length curtains. It must be sunny, but he was too lazy to get up and check. He just wanted to lie there, warm under the covers, enjoying a single moment of inactivity and thinking about something as idle as the weather.

Opportunities to rest and relax were few and far between. He cherished each and every one. He especially cherished when he could share these moments with a certain someone else…

An arm wrapped around him, moving over the base of his ribs, running up his chest. Fitting comfortably around him, moulding to him. Perfect fit, like a glove. Fingers intertwined with his, and he couldn't help the contented sigh that escaped him. This was nice - bliss, even.

Abruptly, a harsh rattling noise cut through his constructed arcadia. Alex and Yassen groaned in unison, both getting jolted from their perfect little paradise world. People like them only got perfect in glimpses, it would seem. Mere snapshots of peace.

Alex extracted himself from the blankets, ignoring Yassen's protests and pleas. Ignoring the warm and welcoming hands that tried to pull him back to bed.

He placed bare feet on cool, hardwood floor, then knelt. His hand scrambled around, searching for his mobile phone. He found it still encased in the back pocket of the blue jeans he had been wearing earlier - discarded carelessly across the room.

The cell was still vibrating - a phone call. Looking at the display, Alex scrunched his nose in annoyance.

"MI6?" Yassen asked, now propped up on his side, head tilted towards him. Blankets falling down his chest to his waist.

"MI6," Alex confirmed. He could already feel his good move evaporating.

He watched the call ring out, thinking it would be a waste of time to answer. He knew what they'd say, he knew how they'd say it. They would summon him to the bank. It's an emergency. Urgent. We need you, ASAP. Alex knew the drill.

"Call me when you get back?" Yassen asked. He, too, knew the drill. Understood that Alex had to go and probably wouldn't be home any time soon. It was one of the things Alex loved about him, the ability to simply understand. To be able to comprehend the life Alex lived. To not question.

"Of course," Alex nodded and smiled, then averted his eyes to the floor. He gathered his clothes, pulling them on hastily. He gave Yassen a kiss to say I love you - aware that it would be the last one for an undetermined amount of time. And if things went badly, maybe the last one ever. That was always a possibility, but they both tried not to think about it. When he pulled back, Yassen released him reluctantly.

Before he left, he made a stop at the window, pushing the curtains to the sides. He'd been wrong; it wasn't sunny. London was a grey fog, the clouds all fallen from the skies above. Torn down from the atmosphere.

Rain was falling, looking like the flickering static of an old television tuned into a channel it didn't have. The strip of light he had seen from the bed, that he had mistaken for sunlight, was in fact from the lonely lamppost outside the building; like a solitary lighthouse in a storm.

Alex frowned. He had been looking forward to some sun.

He ought to be careful what he wished for. If it was sun he wanted, it was sun he got - not that he had the time to enjoy it.

MI6 had sent him off to the south of France - one of his favourite places, where he'd gone on holiday many times as a child. With Ian and Jack. Once with Tom. Later, with Sabina. A place where, under different circumstances, he would have grown up; completely unaware of the world of espionage, he would have been.

Ignorant, but blissful.

He would have parents. Maybe even siblings. Pets. He'd speak french. He wouldn't be a spy. Probably, he would have been quite happy; but then, if you had asked Alex a few days ago (lying in bed in a warm embrace), he would have said he was happy. He wouldn't have gotten that if he had grown up in France.

It was almost poetic, Alex would later think, that this should be the place it happened. This little slice of heaven - a place that held such good memories, and had been meant for even more. A place that held aspects of his current life, and whispers of the life he could have had. Streets he could have lived in, people he could have grown up with, schools he could have attended, places he could have called his own.

This place that was supposed to be the pinnacle of change in his life, years ago, is the place where his life changed forever in the present day.

Coincidence, perhaps. But Alex didn't believe in coincidence. Maybe it was more like fate.

Alex had been on many missions, each one demanding he lose another part of himself. Each villain more eccentric than the last; each plot for world domination more elaborate, more insane. All of his missions were like this, in many ways his missions were practically identical. Yet, each one was very different. Different losses, different threats, different motives, different ways to cope. Each one occupied a different space in Alex's mind. He remembered every moment with distinction. Sometimes he wished he couldn't.

Once again: be careful what you wish for.

In this moment, he couldn't find the variance. If you asked Alex now, he couldn't have said a thing. He didn't know where he was, who he was working for, what his mission was. He couldn't tell you what world catastrophe he was derailing this time. He probably couldn't even tell you his own name.

But who could blame him? All things considered, Alex thought he was keeping it together exceptionally well.

Bright red blood streamed down his arm in a torrent similar to a waterfall. He could feel his hand slipping in the viscous liquid. Dreading what he would see, Alex looked away from the carnage below to the carnage of his hand. The sight was jarring - such a shocking thing to see that it barely computed.

A shard of glass, at least two inches wide and several long, had slammed clean through his hand. Cleaved a hole through the tendons at the bottom of his hand, and coming precariously close to his pulse point; any further would have severed his radial artery, and Alex would have been done for.

Alex knew it should hurt. A knife sized, jagged piece of glass was sticking through his hand, of course it should hurt. But somehow the pain wasn't registering. The sight of his mutilated limb didn't seem to make it to his brain. His nerves were shot, signals fizzling out before they made their full journey, refusing to tell his brain that there was a problem. Alex could clearly see that there was a problem, but his grip on the edge didn't loosen. (It would hurt later, he was sure, when the shock wore off.)

Probably a good thing he couldn't feel it at the moment, considering he was dangling six stories up. If he looked to the concrete below, he could see exactly what would happen to him if he let go. It wasn't pretty.

"Cub!" The yell shocked him back to reality. He looked up. Miraculously, a hand had appeared - the hand of God, perhaps? At least, it offered Alex salvation.

Alex reached up with his free hand - all too aware that his other hand, slick with crimson, was sliding towards the edge. Seconds away from falling, he latched onto the outstretched hand. Vice grip nearly breaking his fingers. He was yanked upward, his joints hyperextending uncomfortably, then another hand clamped around his wrist.

A considerable heave found him flying over the edge. Alex stumbled and fell on the glass-covered floor. Luckily, the shards didn't slice through his thick army pants - but there was still the matter of the fragment already piercing his skin (and muscle and tendons and bones and nerves and veins.)

This matter, however, was taken out of his hands. Not literally - he had lost a lot of blood, and removing the glass piece would only exacerbate the issue - but in the sense that someone else had decided to take care of the problem.

A hand - the same hand that had saved his life seconds earlier - found a place applying pressure around the wound. A call for a medic was made, and a familiar looking soldier was soon knelt at his side.

In fact, most of the faces surrounding him were rather familiar. Cub, he had been called.

Snake took his injured arm from Fox, aka Ben Daniels, and did his best to staunch the blood flow. It was a nasty wound, and the expression on Snake's face wasn't giving him cause for celebration.

"Shit, Cub." Alex looked up to see who had spoken. Wolf, of course. He probably could have guessed from the callous profanity. (Doesn't he know that there are young ears present?)

"What happened?" It was Eagle now, staring at his mangled arm in abject horror.

Alex frowned, looking over the edge of the broken floor-to-ceiling window. A woman's fractured silhouette was displayed below, spread with limbs at awkward angles. She had been an assassin or a spy (a traitor), someone willing to kill to get the job done, anyway. Would have had one more name to cross off her hit list if Alex hadn't tackled her out the window.

Alex tried to remember, the details were out of his grasp, but some things came back, distantly, as if through a thick fog.

Alex was a spy, he was sent out to infiltrate all kinds of places. Governments. Agency's. But it hadn't really occurred to him that he could be on the receiving end of things; that one of his coworkers could be there to forward information to another government. Another agency. Alex never thought he'd be so unlucky.

The woman had been kind - the closest thing to a friend that he had on this mission, when K unit were away. They were away a lot, so he spent most of his time working with her; she'd been there as tech, not a spy, and Alex had found her a refreshing presence. Innocent in a way he wasn't anymore. They'd even shared a room together, him being the only child (he argued that he wasn't a child anymore) and her being the only woman, it made sense. They had limited space to begin with, they couldn't afford to be giving people single rooms.

He remembered waking from nightmares, trying not to disturb her as well. Biting down on his fist to keep from calling out (for Yassen, that was usually the name on the tip of his tongue.) She had seemed to sleep on peacefully, but now Alex wondered if it was an act.

He wondered who she had told about him. He didn't know who she had worked for (too late to find out now.)

It had been just another day on the mission - except it wasn't. This day, they had finally managed to get what they came for.

Alex had come back to the hotel, picture proof of some documents on his phone as well as a flash drive hidden in his pocket. The hotel suite that was acting as their base of operations had been mostly empty; just her and another tech worker. Alex had handed the flash drive to him, because he was sitting at the console.

He felt the rush of adrenaline leaving his body as his mission came to a close. Felt his walls come down, the mission stress falling away. Calmer than he had been in days. He should have known better than to get comfortable. He wasn't out of deep waters yet.

The male tech had sent a message to the other agents and K unit: come home, we did it. He had uploaded the flash drive to the main computer, had told Alex to forward the pictures from his phone to MI6 immediately.

Alex had moved, unconsciously putting the other two people in the room between him and the towering windows. A habit. (He had plenty of experience that told him that standing next to windows was a big no no.)

He had been focusing on his phone when a gunshot rang out. Looking up, it had taken his brain a second to register what had happened. She had shot the tech in the head, stopping him from sending the information to '6. Then, she had turned the gun on Alex.

He had drawn his own gun - that he technically wasn't allowed, but if Eagle insisted on leaving his spare somewhere as unprotected as a padlocked bedside drawer, Alex couldn't be blamed for taking advantage - but she had gotten the jump on him. Was already moving before he'd flicked the safety off.

She had disarmed him.

At that, he laughed - she hadn't quite disarmed him, actually. He looked at his injured hand that was still being cradled by Snake - it was still very much attached, thankfully. Not disarmed. Not quite.

He was aware that K unit were looking at him with concern (laughing probably wasn't a good sign, in their books.) Then black spots flooded his vision. Alex was distinctly reminded of the weather in London not a week before. His eyesight flooded with the same static filled vision. He didn't remember anything else.

Alex woke up to a pounding heart and a stabbing pain. Pain that started in his arm, but seemed to radiate throughout his entire body. Every bump and jolt sent a new wave of discomfort over him.

He cracked his eyes slightly. Saw that he was in a small, box like room. Lying on his back, surrounded by shelves that held what looked like medical supplies. He could smell the alcohol, a familiar scent in all the chaos. An ambulance, then.

They went over another bump, Alex's head tilted to the side. He squeezed his eyes shut again, waiting for the ache to pass. When he opened them again, his eyesight was hazy.

Another bump, and suddenly his hearing came back. In one surge, he was aware of every sound in the ambulance. The breathing, the heartbeats, the shouting. His heartbeat rose. Little strips of conversation and medical jargon flooded his ears all at once.

BP rising! Systolic is…

… at risk of clotting.

Administering half a dose of heparin...

He can't lose much more blood…

I think we'll have to cut it off.

That's what Alex latched onto. Cut it off. No way. They couldn't…

Alex tried to focus through his fuzzy vision - thought he saw someone he recognized, sitting next to him. Snake, maybe. That would make sense.

"Don't let them cut it off…" It was little more than a whisper, but every person in the vehicle was hyper aware of him. They heard.

"Shit! He's awake. Someone sedate him!"

"Don't let them…" Alex trailed off, a needle jabbing into his uninjured arm. Everything faded away.

AN:

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