A/N: My response to SpyFest 2018, Week Two, and the awesome prompt of 'Self-preservation: the first law of intelligence.'

This prompt scares me, mainly because I read it and instantly conceived an angsty, dramatic, Tulip-centric fic. Instantly. *shivers* Anyway, the Week One poll is ending soon, so head on over to the Revival forum thread to vote and learn about the rest of the incredible SpyFest contributions! Thanks as always to wolfern and dalekchung for the glorious month of inspiration that is SpyFest.

Disclaimer: You know the drill. Not mine, etc. etc. etc.

This is how you become a good spy. It's not something you learn, it's not because of training and skill and instincts. No, the day you become a good spy is the day you decide unequivocally that this mission is not worth your life. After all, there are only two kinds of spies in the world: good…and dead.

This is the first lesson she is taught on her very first day of MI6, before she even sets foot in the Royal and General Bank. She is twenty and walking out of her uni class when she's waylaid by a man in a dark suit and glasses. She is twenty-one when she learns that not accepting his offer won't end well for her…MI6 doesn't take kindly to being told no. Tulip pastes a polite smile on her face and decides. "Yes," she says.

-o-

Two years later, she's on assignment in Scotland when she meets him. He is everything she's ever wanted, kind and clever and far too knowing for his own good. There is something about him that feels safe, which, in her line of work, is rare enough. She finds out why two weeks later when they bump into each other in the bank.

"You," she says. He blinks, shifting the stack of paperwork in his arms.

"Me," he agrees.

It doesn't matter how much she wants him, wants that sense of safety, because her line of work is actually their line of work. They have rules about this sort of thing for a reason, and he is not worth the cost of breaking them (she squashes the tiny voice inside her that says that he could be).

Alive, she reminds herself. Stay alive. Succeed. No distractions.

-o-

Ten years later, she's many things. She's got a decent success rate; her coworkers know and respect her. She's married to a man she likes and trusts who is good for her cover and doesn't question her many disappearances. They have two children, and she loves them more than she thought possible. She's alive.

Four more years is all it takes for her life to go to absolute and utter shit. Because in those four years, she's made enough of a name for herself that someone decides it's a good idea to break into her house and ransom her family. She doesn't bother calling MI6, not when the size of the pool of blood in her once-spotless living room tells her that they're dead, all of them.

(She knows it's true. It still hurts like hell when she finds their bodies.)

-o-

She buries them quietly, without tears or anguish, with nothing but a hollow numbness in her stomach and steel in her spine. And then she walks into the Royal and General Bank and takes the lift to the fourteenth floor. Standing on the other side of his desk, she doesn't say anything to the cold man who recruited her, who now knows her best out of anyone in the world (because everyone who knew her better is dead). Maybe he reads the answer in her eyes, her body, sees the truth that encompasses her entire being: that she has nothing left but the very first lesson he ever taught her.

She is alive.

He smiles, cool and without compassion. "Welcome to MI6, Tulip Jones."

This is the day she stops being Agent Jones and starts being Mrs. Jones, Deputy Head of Special Operations.

-o-

Twenty years later, she's standing in that office again. Two decades have changed everything and nothing—her family is dead, John Rider is dead, Ian Rider is dead, but Alex Rider is alive. So is she. And she knows better than to be on the losing side of this war. She pulls a slim file from her purse and tosses it on the desk, waits patiently for her former mentor to read it.

He does, and she can see the moment he understands. "What are you doing, Tulip?" he asks her, voice as blank as he is.

She smiles, blunt and sharp and cruel just as he's always been. "What you taught me, Alan," she tells him.

Two days earlier, she'd laid that same file in front of her very best agent. It is twenty years in the making, twenty years of carefully gathered information, of hatred for the man who manipulated her into his strongest weapon. It is twenty years of asking how someone managed to find her flat when only one person knew its location.

She throws him to the dogs without a hint of remorse.

-o-

Two days later, there's a memo on her desk describing the particulars of the very public trial of Alan Blunt. A single word is written at the bottom.

Congratulations.

She doesn't bother asking how Alex got into her office without tripping the alarms—considering the stunts he regularly pulls on his missions (the ones that send her cold, callous heart into her throat), breaking into her office is nothing. It should bother her that her best agent has so little concern for his own life, but she's long since learned that good spies may be made by self-preservation, but great spies are made by the ability to face the choice between living and saving the world, choose the world, and walk away anyway.

Alex is quite possibly the greatest spy she's ever known.

Seating herself behind the desk, Tulip Jones crunches a peppermint between her teeth. Smiles at the photo of two children and the cool blue walls that have replaced endless, unfeeling grey.

Self-preservation, eh?

This is not how you become a great spy. This is how you become the bloody director of MI6.

Oh, this was so much fun.

Questions? Comments? Confusion? Let me know what you think, and don't forget to check out the SpyFest 2018 threads!