This was created AGES ago. Originally it was going to become either a short, couple chapter mini-story, or a one shot, but I can't figure out where to take it, and I kind of like where it ends here. So it has magically been transformed into a drabble!
…I really need to finish this series, but I can't bring myself to make it through Eagle Strike.
Inevitable
When he turned 29, he left the business. Or, what he thought of as business. Rarely had he done deskwork, maybe twice in the 15 years he'd been working for them, both times when he was too injured to go back in the field.
Because that was business.
Fieldwork, deskwork, there's a world of difference, and while Alex Rider was quite accustomed to his world changing (often for the worse) this was a change unlike any other.
He was the support. He sent off men his age or older to do jobs, potentially deadly ones at that, that he saw as easy. Newcomers looked at him and saw a wanna-be, not good enough for fieldwork. More veteran spies nodded respectfully at the one who had stayed alive in the thick of it for, sometimes, longer than they'd even known about the business.
It was a strange sensation. And then, one day, he had enough. MI-6 could frown disapprovingly all they wanted, threaten his non-existent loved one for all they were worth. He quit. He knew too many secrets, they said. Well, so did they. And he knew all their secrets, too.
They quieted after a while, and stared at him. He waited.
He was better at this game than anyone else; he'd been born into it, bred for it, raised on it. It was a part of him, and he'd stopped denying it long ago. And they knew it, too. They knew they didn't have a chance against this one, young man, barely half the current director's age.
Alex Rider walked out of Royal and General with a satisfyingly large check, and full intention of changing his bank.
Yeah... strange. I just wanted to put something up.