Alex gritted his teeth as he ducked behind a stack of cans. Thankfully, the bullet hit a tin instead of him, ricocheting off the corrugated metal and turning the whole pyramid of meticulously organised tinned goods into an avalanche. Alex had to shimmy out of the way as his hiding place crashed to the polished linoleum floor, and cheerfully started rolling in every direction possible.

They'd cornered him in bloody Tesco.

Alex didn't have any doubt about who these gunmen were. He'd only had to catch a glimpse of one of the men's faces in a reflective surface to instantly make the connection. For the last week, he'd been holed up in his house with an assortment of SAS men occupying his couch. He'd completed his last mission in record time, even for him, but unfortunately the messy fallout had left just enough of the obnoxious organisation alive to take the initiative to seek revenge.

If he angled his head ever so slightly, he'd be able to see it now, splashed across the black jackets of the men that were hunting him, in blazing white capitals. 'LIBERTY'. That was what they called themselves. Alex still didn't really understand what was so liberating about a plan to blow up one of the Pacific Islands. The head of the organisation had run the logic past him while he had Alex tied up at one point, as you do, but Alex still failed to make the connection.

But anyway, it didn't matter what their plan was now. Alex counted five men in the store.

He would make short work of them.

Stealthily, Alex slid from the cans aisle and towards the fresh produce. The one saving grace of this situation was that he had the store virtually to himself. It was somewhere between two and three AM. When he'd woken in the early hours of the morning, he hadn't thought twice about following up on his ice cream craving, slipping past his armed guard with no trouble at all. There had only been one cashier present when he'd entered the store, and she'd gone into the back shortly after he'd arrived, yawning deeply and paying him no mind. He had to hope that she'd heard the commotion and stayed out of sight.

The fact that they had guns and he didn't would undoubtedly have deterred some people, but Alex was used to having to make his own luck, in the absence of weapons. He would be turning seventeen soon, marking almost three years of working for MI6, and Jones was still refusing to give him a firearm.

He secured himself a gun quickly enough. Crouching in a convenient gap beneath a line of crates, he only had to wait for the gunman's feet to come into his line of view before striking, bringing the man crashing down to the floor with a curse. Alex didn't give him a chance to make any more noise, snatching the sleek black handgun out of his hand and bringing it crashing down over his forehead. The man's eyes rolled back into his head as his body went slack.

Alex grinned with he saw that the gun had a silencer. Perfect.

He managed to take out another two out before the others caught on. One of the thugs' eyes narrowed, glancing around, obviously wondering when their numbers had suddenly halved.

He spotted a flash of movement between two of the aisles, and fired. The sound of the bullet shattering the glass of a produce cabinets was ear-splitting.

Alex threw an arm over his face, shielding himself from the flying shards. Vaguely, he recognised a piercing pain tingling in his elbow, but didn't have time to assess the injury – another bullet whizzed straight past his neck, close enough that he felt the rush of air against his skin, making him shudder.

He looked up to see one of the Liberty men looking down at him, a triumphant look in his eye. Alex made a quick calculation. The man didn't raise his weapon again, but advanced on him slowly, clearly enjoying the way that Alex was having to scramble back to get away from him. Alex tried not to put too much faith in appearances, but the guy was at least six foot six, with huge hulking shoulders and a face that would make Terminator quiver in his boots. Alex vaguely recognised him as one of the goons he'd made a mental note to kill before he got off the island. Unfortunately, his plan had gone south when MI6's bomb-refusing gadgets had been destroyed, and he'd ended up having to hijack a water ski, jet out to the launch pad and manually defuse the thing himself.

Reckless, Mrs Jones' phantom voice had chided in his ear the whole time he was doing it. Very reckless, Alex…

Now, Alex carefully kept his gunning hand behind him, out of the line of sight, clutching his bloodied arm to make himself seem weaker than he was.

That was, until the man and his fellow goon were directly under a broad, shiny, heavy-looking sign. Then Alex whipped out the handgun, so quickly all the men saw was a change in his face and a blur of movement, and shot out the two supporting ropes, bringing it crashing down on both of their heads at once.

"Fresh onions!" the sign announced happily, from where it was crushing Thug #1's chest and Thug #2's cranium. "Only 19p!"

"That is a good deal," Alex mused.

He made sure to sweep every aisle for remaining Liberty men before coming to the conclusion that he had, in fact, dealt with them all. The wail of a siren in the distance alerted him to the fact that the authorities were on their way; the store assistant had probably called them. He thought he'd caught a glimpse of her when the door to the back room had shut hastily when he turned his head, but didn't approach. She probably thought this was a gang fight. He really didn't want to see someone looking at him with fear in their eyes right now.

Alex was just contemplating whether he should get some stronger rope and tie up the Liberty men more securely, when something caught his eye, poking out from underneath the blasted produce counter.

Alex went very still very quickly.

Oh no…

Suddenly, he was aware of the eeriness of the silence that rang throughout the empty store, no one but him and a bunch of bodies. Hardly daring to breathe, Alex moved closer and picked up the fallen object. After the hard metal of the gun, it came as a shock to feel the soft material caving under his rough hands.

Yet somehow the toy monkey seemed to weigh more than the gun. It greeted Alex brightly with its sewed red smile.

Horror started churning within Alex. Was there… was there a child somewhere in the store?

He didn't have to look very far. Just as panic was starting to truly take hold, something blinked at him from beneath the adjacent counter.

Alex forced himself to stay still, not wanting to scare the little creature. He peered into the darkness, wishing he hadn't severed the lights so badly in the gunfight.

Sure enough, a pair of wide, bright eyes were glowing from beneath the counter.

Alex hesitated, then held out the monkey.

"Hello," he called softly. "I think this is yours."

The pair of eyes blinked again, and then a small, round face formed around them, as the child inched forward a fraction. Alex's heart sank. He was no older than five or six.

"I'm sorry for all the noise," Alex apologised, trying to keep things simple. Sorry didn't even come close to the crushing guilt that was weighing down on him. He'd probably traumatised the kid… "But you're safe now. There were some bad men trying to, uh, trying to hurt us—" trying to hurt me, he thought "— but it's okay, they're all asleep now." He tried to glance around without scaring the kid too much. "Is… is your mum or dad here?"

The boy must have trusted something in Alex's voice, because he crawled out from underneath the counter, and, after a hesitation, took the monkey from Alex's outstretched hand. He hugged it against his chest. Alex surveyed him as efficiently as he could. The kid looked shaken, but Alex couldn't see any blood, nor was he limping in any way. His eyes were trembling with shock, but not pain.

"My mum's over there," the kid mumbled into the monkey's fur. "I think she's asleep too."

Oh dear God, he had an actual lisp. Alex followed his gesture, heart in his mouth, fearing the worst. His fight might have just cost a child his mother…

But then he sighed in relief when he found that the woman lying beneath the counter was, indeed, just asleep. Or unconscious, to be more precise. There was a bruise blooming on her temple, but her pulse was strong and she was breathing just fine. The grocery basket on the ground beside her was overturned, its contents spilled out across the floor. He thought she might have fainted.

Moving back to be with the kid, Alex dialled 999 and waited to be connected. Jones might give him some shit for calling the emergency services before her, but he didn't care about that right now.

"Your mum's going to be just fine," he told the kid.

His eyes widened hopefully. "Do you promise?"

Alex really wasn't a promise kind of person; they always felt showy, in which case they usually ended up broken. But he nodded firmly.

"I promise. Hey, I'm Alex. What's your name?"

For the first time, the boy's face cracked into a watery smile. "George."

Alex returned the grin. "This is going to make you the coolest kid in school, you know, George."

George's smile grew. He started babbling about his friend, Sarah or Sophia or something, and Alex tuned out, focusing on the voice in his ear asking him what his emergency was.

The kid was going to be okay.

. . .

"Alex, what you did today was—"

"Reckless. I know. You don't need to tell me."

As Mrs Jones surveyed the agent in front of her, she believed him. She hadn't seem Alex Rider look so sombre since his uncle's funeral.

"Leaving the house itself was thoroughly irresponsible. You knew Liberty were still targeting you. You brought that fight into a public place. And engaging an enemy in public, without doing a full sweep for civilians first? Without calling us first?"

Mrs Jones shook her head.

She could see how this was affecting him. A lesser spy might say he looked unaffected, but Jones knew his emotional cues. Alex Rider was virtually tortured with guilt.

"I won't let it happen again," he promised sincerely.

"Oh, I know."

Alex glanced up.

"Alex, every spy goes through this. You've been working for us, by choice, for a year now. This is a normal stage in almost any agent's career."

He let out a choked laugh. "What, almost getting a kid killed?"

"A mission where civilians are endangered because of recklessness. Overconfidence in your abilities. Cutting corners."

It was an occupational hazard of employing people who needed to be daring enough to survive on nerve alone, at times.

"Most spies have this kind of wakeup call. Yours was relatively gentle. And if it's any consolation, you handled it well."

"I… I did?"

Mrs Jones nodded. "There were no civilian fatalities. That's what matters in the end."

She thought she saw some of the heaviness lift from his eyes. What really mattered was that he wouldn't make the same mistake twice.

"Although you could benefit from some lessons in how to minimise monetary damage." Now Mrs Jones sent him a pointed glare. "MI6 is not a bottomless vault of cash, you know. And you do have a habit of destroying property that's considerably expensive for us to replace…"

"Oh come on," Alex protested. "It was a sign for some onions…"

. . .

For the prompts: liberty, monkey, onion. This was very, very fun to write. I hope it was somewhat enjoyable to read!

-Ally