AN: I want to thank With the What Now for doing an awesome beta job and helping me find some direction with this little story, she actually helped expand it from the original 'one-shot' to the more than 'one-shot' it turned into. Any and all leftover errors are all mine of course, that and my little idiosyncrasies. Let me know what you think please.
Description: 'This doesn't make sense,' Alex thought… 'This was not how the SAS worked, not as far as he'd understood it…' As he'd understood, the SAS prided themselves on their versatility and teamwork, on being the ultimate soldiers for whatever was needed – and so far he just wasn't seeing that.
Disclaimer: Not mine…
Acting, not Reacting:1
By Marns AKA Bumpkin
Rated PG-13
Gen
(Wordcount: 1, 995)
'This doesn't make sense,' Alex thought yet again as he went through the motions of doing as he'd been told, while the unit he'd been assigned to ignored him for the most part. The leader, Wolf, on the other hand, was still doing his utmost to make Alex's life miserable, as if it was some sacred calling he'd been given from on high. Alex barely managed to quash his sigh of frustration as he reiterated to himself, 'This is not how the SAS worked, or at least not as far as he'd understood from what Ian had told him at any rate'. From what he'd understood, the SAS prided themselves on their versatility and teamwork, on being the ultimate soldiers for whatever was needed – and so far he just wasn't seeing that. But no, instead what he was seeing was basically boot-camp, with a few extra activities added in. Not exactly what he'd thought was SAS material, and really, it was stuff that didn't make sense for him to be doing either.
He supposed he could have missed a lot of the more specialized stuff as he'd arrived in the middle of a session, that was a definite possibility. Like the Sergeant had said when he first saw him, fourteen weeks of training in twelve days – the very idea was preposterous, especially when what they were teaching him wasn't for the most part, needed or particularly useful for the purposes of his upcoming assignment. It was more than a bit frustrating, for both them and him. He could understand why they were not too happy with him; he hindered the unit while they were learning the stuff they needed and he didn't.
Well, he did have to concede on the usefulness of the unarmed combat class,; that particular segment of the training could save his life – if only they were more interested in actually teaching him rather than just beating him down. He was already a first-grade Dan, a black belt, in Karate thanks to his Uncle, but the techniques and styles they were using at Brecon Beacons – well, they were a hell of a lot dirtier and meaner. They were made up of a bunch of different disciplines all cobbled together making it that much harder to fight. It was unpredictable, powerful and utterly brutal; Alex was knocked down so often and so hard that it took almost all his nerve to keep getting up again. He did keep getting up though, and he learned. Even if they hadn't intended to teach him, he paid attention and gained the knowledge they were unwittingly sharing. Pain is, after all, a great motivator.
Then, on the tenth day, they did the exercise in the 'Killing House'. Alex was enthralled. This, he thought, was the type of thing he needed to learn, it was the type of knowledge that would enable him to survive where Blunt intended to send him. He'd hung back behind and watched avidly as the four men detected, dismantled, disengaged, and otherwise navigated the booby-trapped house. He shadowed them and listened to their every word as they worked, learning and memorizing everything they did right up until the end. Then Wolf struck, shoving him into the trip-wire. That was a bad scene, painful and totally unnecessary.
'Or was it unnecessary?' Alex wondered. It had certainly gotten Alex thinking again and maybe that had been the point behind Wolf doing it.
Up until Wolf had pulled the stunt with the trip-wire, Alex had been operating pretty much in some kind of dazed auto-pilot mode since he'd arrived at Brecon Beacons. Not the smartest thing for him to do, he had to admit, but with Ian's death, his subsequent grief and then all that he'd learned after it – well, perhaps he could be excused for being a bit overwhelmed. Of course, Blunt's demands and blackmail for Alex to complete his Uncle's last – and fatal – mission hadn't exactly helped him cope any either. It had only added to his feeling of being inundated by everything that had happened.
To give himself some time to think, Alex showed some integrity and didn't rat out Wolf – which meant precisely nothing really. Alex knew the Sergeant already knew what happened anyway since he had watched K-Unit via the CCTV with the man on their other two training exercises that day, so keeping quiet only made Alex look loyal to his team – which led to now. Their punishment hike, 30 miles with no rations and nothing else. Pure survivalist hell with only what they carried in their 55lb backpacks – 22lbs for him; they at least made that allowance for his age and size That and an extended deadline. It was downright decent of them when he recalled many of their rants about how he was resented, how he was just a schoolboy and shouldn't be there. Except, he didn't feel particularly resented, and other than Wolf, he didn't feel all that persecuted either.
Mostly what he felt from anyone else he'd encountered at Brecon Beacons was indifference, and perhaps a bit of pity. Finally, the thing he felt the strongest from everyone, including himself, was varying levels of confusion. They had no idea why a school-boy was thrust into their midst and MI6 didn't tell them. MI6 didn't like to give up any information to anyone for anything, even to those who were directly being affected.
But it seemed that some had guessed something about the reasons, and then done their best to help the only way they could.
With the cobwebs cleared from his mind and his body mindlessly exhausting itself with the punishment of the hike, Alex found he could reason again. He mentally reviewed his time spent at Brecon Beacons and saw a whole new facet evolve. For all his bluster, the Sergeant had actually done a fair amount to accommodate Alex, a hell of a lot more than he should have if what Alex suspected about Blunt's aims for this little side excursion were true. So, instead of an utterly demoralized child, which would have made him that much more malleable to whatever the man in charge of MI6 wanted, they were getting back a confident one. Whether that was the result they had wanted or not, they were stuck with it because of the skillful judgment of just what would allow Alex to mostly keep up with his unit, despite his age and size.
Wolf's actions also took on a whole new meaning when seen from another angle. The man was a born leader, plain and simple, and when you lead men, you get a feeling for when one of them aren't operating at optimum. Alex had been placed under the man's leadership and he couldn't deny that he hadn't been operating at anything close to optimum for the majority of the time he had been at Brecon Beacons. No wonder the man had been snapping at him like a bear with a sore tooth, he'd probably been trying anything he could think of to wake him up. It was only too bad that it had taken the flash grenade in the damn Killing House to finally do it.
Wolf was still a dick though, Alex wasn't changing his mind on that. He didn't care how much of a born leader the man was or that in the end he'd ended up helping him, he was always going to be a dick.
He was so lost in his thoughts that he almost walked into the Sergeant. Surprised that he'd managed to find where he needed to be while not paying the best of attention to his surroundings, not that he could see much in the rain, he stumbled to a halt and scraped his wet hair back from his forehead to look up at the man. He was just shoving some matches back into his pocket after lighting a cigarette. He looked at his watch.
"Eleven hours and five minutes, that's not bad, Cub, but the others were here three hours ago."
Alex didn't say anything. What could he say? Bully for them? They'd had a shorter time than him, at least they made it in their own time frame – that was good, right? The Sergeant didn't take any notice of his silence, he just pointed towards the top of a wall and said, "anyway, you should just make the first RV. It's up there."
Alex whined. There was no other word for the sound that escaped his throat, it was remarkably similar to the pitiful sound puppies make when unhappy. The wall was two to three hundred feet straight up, solid rock without a foothold or handhold in sight. Alex knew how to climb, Ian had taken him rock climbing lots of times, all over Europe, but he'd never climbed alone and never when he was so tired. The Sergeant looked at him knowingly.
"Cub, it's not as difficult as it looks."
Alex shot the man a disbelieving look. He chuckled and said, "Let me put it this way, Wolf really made you mad when he pulled that crap in the Killing House, didn't he?"
Alex looked narrowly at the large man and said slowly, "Yes, sir."
"Well, It must have been really hard not to come out yelling or swinging at him for that stunt, but you didn't – instead you kept quiet, understanding that doing either would have got both you and K-Unit in trouble. That was good, that was thinking strategically. But I also know you remembered about the CCTV in the Killing House and that's why you didn't say anything about what Wolf did, again you were thinking on more than one level - but I wonder if you've figured out why he did what he did? Why he's being so hard on you this entire time?"
Alex was quicker to answer this time, "Yes, sir, I think so anyway."
The Sergeant nodded, "Good, then all you need to know is that wall there is like Wolf, looks difficult as hell but easy to figure out once you get started."
Alex snorted. He hadn't expected that. Who knew the man had a sense of humour? Summoning up the dregs of his strength reserves he smiled at the Sergeant and brushed by him on the way to the wall.
"Thanks, Sergeant." He said to the man as he put his hands on the wall to search for the handholds he knew had to be there.
"You're welcome, kid. And don't worry, they're waiting for you just over the top with a nice cold dinner. Survival rations, you don't want to miss that!"
Alex rolled his eyes and started to climb. Twenty minutes later he made it to the top and sure enough, K-Unit was already there with three tents that they must have pitched earlier that afternoon. Two of the tents were barely large enough for sharing, the last tiny and obviously for him alone. The one called Snake looked up from his cold can of stew when Alex wandered into speaking distance.
"Hunh, I didn't think you'd make it." His lightly Scottish accented voice held something that Alex thought was respect, and maybe a little warmth. Certainly more than the words themselves would suggest at any rate.
Alex's reply, spoken as he walked by, was droll, "Nor did I."
Snake's laughter followed him as he wandered over to the other three where they were trying, and failing, to light a fire with flint rocks and some rather soggy tinder. He threw the matches he had pick-pocketed from the Sergeant down at their feet and said, "Here, these might help."
Dumbfounded faces followed him as he went to his tent. He didn't care, even if he knew that he had a better chance of survival now that he'd come to his senses and that he was no-one's docile little puppet, he was going to sleep. He was bloody exhausted.
Tbc…
