A/N: My response to the prompt for SpyFest, week two! I desperately hope I'm not too late ahhhh
(I have since discovered that I wasn't too late - thanks, wolfern!)
The lines at the beginning and end come from the poem "Ozymandias," by Percy Shelley. I love Shelley. I really love Shelley. As does Nienna3791, who also wrote an awesome Shelley fic for Week Two :)
Disclaimer: Nope. Not mine.
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—"Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . .
Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed…
He wakes with a gasp. The world is white – walls, floors, harsh fluorescent light. He thinks he might be dead (is hell supposed to be this clean?).
A woman speaks from beside him.
"Welcome back, Agent Rider."
It takes less than a split-second for him to turn and wrap his hands around her throat. She looks at him, unfazed.
"Tulip Jones," he says hoarsely. His hands are still clenched at her neck. He remembers then that this is the deputy director of MI6. He's not sure if he should let go. After a moment, he does, eyes returning to scanning the world he woke up in. "Where am I?"
"St. Thomas' Hospital."
"Never heard of it." He's itching to get out of here.
"I didn't think you had."
"What happened to me?"
"You died." So, maybe this is hell after all. It's not a surprise that she's with him because he knows Tulip Jones and he knows what she's done.
"Always expected hell to be darker." But wait – she'd said he was in a hospital, which means—
"It's not hell." She's watching him now, eyes dark and unreadable.
"People don't die and come back to life, Jones." She should know that better than anyone – she was there when he found out how John and Helen Rider died. She was the one to stop him from putting a bullet in his head after. "Care to revise your statement?"
"We thought you were dead." He allows a bitter not-smile to twist his lips.
"Better." She's watching him again, watching like he's volatile.
"May I go?" A brief smile at that.
"Always so eager to leave. Just like—" she cuts herself off abruptly, all traces of amusement fading. He resolves to ask her later.
"May I go?" he repeats.
She studies him for a moment. Then—
"Yes," she says, just as he knew she would. "Clothes," she continues, jerking her head towards a neatly folded pile. She stands, motions as economical as they've always been. "I'll be outside," she says, and he doesn't bother to nod.
The clothes are too big. They're his, he remembers seeing them the day he left for Cornwall (the day everything ended), but the jeans are loose around too-narrow hips and his shirt hangs off his body. He doesn't want to remember why he's so much thinner now.
"Bank?" he asks, pushing the door open without sparing a glance for the room he's been inhabiting (he knows it's empty anyway).
"Bank," Jones confirms, and they set off.
There's a driver waiting for them outside the hospital. Aside from a quick upward jerk of his eyebrows, the man doesn't react to his presence. He's grateful for that, because despite the wary looks Jones is sending him, he's got nothing to say.
-o-
He stares at the face of the bank. "It's been—" he stops, suddenly, realising that he doesn't know exactly how long he's been gone.
"Six years," Jones completes softly, then falls silent as he takes in the bank once more.
"Six years," he repeats. "It hasn't changed a bit."
She nods in his periphery, motioning for the doorman to open the door, but he's not ready to follow her. "Blood." She flinches almost imperceptibly at the non-sequitur, but his eyes are on the pavement. "There was blood here. A great big pool, by the looks of it. Someone died here." Her flinch is more pronounced this time.
"Almost." The coldness of her voice warns him not to push it, but he's not the same man he was six years ago.
"You're slipping, Jones. Time was, you and Blunt had all the terrorists of the world by the balls – no one touched MI6." Except those too stupid to realise just how ruthless you were, he thinks (this time, he keeps his mouth shut).
"Things changed," she says stiffly, and he relishes in ruffling her.
"Yeah? Can't have changed that much if you're still pulling the strings." A hint of bitterness, now, because he's been gone for six rutting years and this is the first time he's seen her since.
She doesn't respond, but the sudden tightness in her shoulders as she walks into the bank is answer enough. He's viciously pleased to have rattled her. Then he enters his old workplace and all other thoughts fly out of his head. It, just like the exterior, hasn't changed – people still walk in and out, money still changes hands, and MI6 operatives still go to work, hidden behind the façade of normality he knows so well. The image used to make him smile – the irony of the fact that Britain's secret service conducts its business in plain sight.
Now, he's far too numb and far too jaded to appreciate it as he once did. He just follows Jones past the receptionist (who doesn't recognise him, he notes detachedly) and into the lift, pressing the button for the fourteenth floor without thinking.
"You remembered," Jones says, and he exhales.
"Six years isn't that long."
"It's long enough." He hears the faint remorse in her voice. It is, a voice inside him agrees. Long enough for them to cut you up and—
The lift opens and he steps out after her, glad for the distraction. The corridor is silent save for their footsteps – something else that hasn't changed. No agent wants to spend more time than necessary on this floor. She leads him to the familiar plain door at the end of the corridor, entering without knocking –
The office is empty. The chair he last saw occupied by Alan Blunt is unfilled, and the formerly bleak furnishings are warmed by a photo here, a plant there – personal touches that indicate that the position of director of MI6 has passed to the austere woman beside him.
He smiles, slightly bitter. "Congratulations."
"Thank you." She moves to sit behind the desk, typing something into the computer before her before studying him with an intensity he doesn't like. Still, he remains silent, waiting for her to speak.
"They tortured you for six years."
Of course she starts there. I know, he wants to say. I was there. Instead, he says, "They had no intention of killing me. After a while, they left me alone, to see how long it'd take for me to go mad."
"And did you?" A cold question, seemingly indifferent – but he knows Tulip Jones, and he hears the slight edge beneath the detached exterior.
"Madness is a hard thing to measure. I'm not the same man I was six years ago."
"No, you're not." He's not too sure what she means by that. "What are you going to do now?"
"I don't know." The answer slips out before he can stop it, but she doesn't seem fazed by his honesty. Maybe that's what makes him ask "My office still around?"
"It belongs to someone else. We'll have to set you up with a new one." He nods. It's not like he expected anything else. He can tell that she's surprised by his lack of reaction to her offer, but he knows he's too valuable for her to let them go.
"You'll work for us, then?"
"What else is there?" he asks her, because what does he have in this life besides the job that's taken everything else from him?
She doesn't answer. He didn't expect her to.
"We're not done talking about this," she warns, and he sends her a smile that is no more than a twitch of his lips.
"I know." There's plenty more left unsaid between them, but she knows he'll stay and that's enough for now.
"There'll have to be a formal debriefing," she says, rising from her chair. He follows suit and cuts her off with "Later."
They walk back to the lift. She presses the button for the basement, and he knows what's coming even before she says, "Training room. Full evaluation, now that you're healed – fitness, strength, etc." He nods.
"And if I fail?"
"You won't." She knows he has no choice but to pass, not when there's nothing waiting for him outside this building. The lift jars to a halt, then, and he feels her eyes on his back as she follows him into the corridor.
They stop in front of a closed door. He can hear the clatter of voices and equipment, muted as they are by the walls. "They know you're coming. Ask for Greene."
He nods, moving to open the door, but she stops him with a hand on his arm. He stiffens – they've been together all day and she hasn't touched him once. Her eyes are unreadable as she says, "I'm sorry." He jerks his arm away and enters – it's easier than wondering what she's apologising for.
-o-
Greene turns out to be a slim, middle-aged woman with a no-nonsense expression and one hell of a poker face. He's sure she's seen him before (before his…departure, he wasn't exactly low-profile), but all he sees is a brief flash of pity and what looks like anger before she's putting him through his paces and then he's got no energy for thoughts anymore.
A voice cuts through the fog of sweat and exertion clouding his brain.
"Greene, I need—" Sudden silence, followed by a ragged breath, and then he raises his head to meet his eyes in another face.
Jones' words come back to him. "I'm sorry." He hadn't been sure why she was apologising – maybe for thinking he was dead, for leaving him to rot for six years, for the fact that he's got nothing left outside the bank, anymore. He's not wondering now.
"Alex," Ian finally says, "what are you doing here?"
-o-
Something tired and furious and old slithers across his nephew's face, but he remains silent, watching, waiting. And Ian knows that look, the cool, detached gaze that he used to wear so often and now finds so difficult to slip on.
"Greene," Alex says (and damn the dismissal hurts), "I'll take it from here."
The woman's expression as closed-off as it's ever been, but her nod is polite and she moves away immediately. Ian's afraid to know why she defers to a twenty-year-old.
He croaks, "You've grown." It's all he can think of. It's a mistake.
Alex's smile is frozen and pitiless. Ian burns. "It's been six years."
"I'm sorry."
"Why?"
The question isn't what he'd been expecting. "What?"
"Why?" Alex repeats. The smile is gone, now, and Ian finds that he infinitely prefers it to the blankness that takes its place.
"You thought I was dead," Ian says, unsure what Alex wants from him.
"And?"
"You have every right to be angry—"
Alex's low, bitter laugh cuts him off. "I don't care that you left – that you died. I care that before your death, you spent fourteen years training me to be a spy."
"I didn't—"
"Didn't you? You trained me to survive in this world, to live when anyone else would die." Is that a bad thing? Ian wonders, before Alex damns him with seven words. "Did you think no one would notice?"
His nephew's eyes are icy, and Ian notes that even though he's experienced Alex's anger in many forms – from childish tantrums to teenage angst – he's never encountered this cold, bitter rage before. Not from him, his brain whispers, and Ian goes white with realisation.
His head's empty aside from the dull roaring in his ears. Oh. "You're—" Alex doesn't respond. He doesn't need to. The silence is deafening.
-o-
"How long?" Ian eventually croaks out, but Alex simply looks at him and he answers his own question. "Six years."
He knows it's coming. Alex's nod still hurts.
"Jones will be expecting you," Alex says, and Ian remembers exactly who was responsible for turning his nephew into the battle-hardened, world-weary spy before him. Her name escapes in a furious hiss.
"Jones—"
"Don't," Alex says sharply, and Ian's head snaps up.
"Why the hell not?"
"You don't have the right."
"I have every—"
"No, you don't," Alex interrupts, anger rising once more. "It's been six years. The world's not the same – I'm not the same. I've seen things, done things that would make you, with all your years of service—" he spits the word, bitterness tangible "—flinch. I made my peace with what she and Blunt did to me years ago, when I woke up one morning and realised that I didn't have a single thing left in the world besides this job." Ian winces at that, but Alex isn't done.
"That's the legacy you left me, Uncle, the life you raised me to lead since I was six months old. You don't get to come back now and pretend everything's the same, because it's not. The world's moved on without you," Alex says, painful indifference in his voice. "You're out of your time, old man, just a remnant of a past I'd rather not think about."
"Can you ever forgive me?" Ian whispers, because this is Alex and he'd rather go back to the hell he's been living for the past six years than never see his nephew again.
"I don't know," Alex says with brutal honesty. Ian knows it's the best he's going to get.
"Thank you," he tells him softly. For not hating me, he can't say. Alex nods, and walks away. He doesn't look back. Ian doesn't blame him.
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."
Whew. Let me know what you think!
7/16/17 - I posted in a rush yesterday to make the spyfest deadline, but now I've had time to go back and clean it up a little. Thanks to greensight for letting me know that the point of view in the beginning was a little too ambiguous!