Summary: AU. One-shot. There are people who live a life of lies. Enter Alex Rider. There are people who can handle a life of lies. Exit Alex Rider. •ℵ• They told him that he could kill if he hated a person enough. They were right. •ℵ• Character deaths
A/N: I'm expecting that this will be hard to understand. I had trouble understanding exactly what happens the first time I read the finished piece. Also, it's been a very long time since I've read Scorpia - for all the the major AU comes from the character death, there are still other aspects that have been changed.
italics - flashback/past events*
*the one exception to this rule comes at the very end. Exactly what it is remains open to interpretation, but it is not a flashback.
It started in England, long before he had anything to anyone. It ended in England, here and now with a smoking gun in his hands and a dead body on the floor. The world has finally gone full circle and he wonders whether it always feels this way to know that there are no loose ends to tie. He doesn't know – an eye for an eye [makes the whole world blind] they tell him, and so he listens (but what of the blindness, he wishes to ask) – and he will not ask. He can not ask. The world has gone full circle and there are only two more loose ends to tie together. The world – his world, inherited from corpses – will go full circle tonight and this time, there will be no erasing.
℘ℵ℘
Alex Rider is the abandoned rope left behind at the end of the day and picked up again for a new game every single day. He is the rope in a game of tug-of-war, each team cheating and lying its way through to another day; and the one man whom he could have brought himself to trust was dead now. Yassen Gregorovitch died on Air Force One. He had been an assassin. He had killed Alex's uncle. He had never lied to Alex, though, and that made all the difference in his world.
His father was a part of Scorpia. No, his father was a spy for MI6. His father was this, his father was that – his father, his father, his father. It all boiled down to his father, didn't it? One man out of billions and he had almost completed the circle on his own (but someone had erased it, wanted to create a new circle from the old).
He would never have been a part of the circle, he knows, if it had not been for everyone – Yassen, Ash, Rothman, Jones, Blunt, all of them a part of the eraser that had created this hole in John Rider's not-quite circle. He might not have been a part of the circle if it had not been for Ian and MI6 and Yassen and Scorpia. He still might not have been a part of this circle if it had not been for MI6 and Scorpia and the gaping hole that had been taped together and ripped apart again (and would never be perfect, because there would always be a loose thread that had escaped the weave now).
MI6 and Scorpia. It all boiled down to MI6 and Scorpia, spoiled bratty children in the sandbox who made a mess and refused to clean it up themselves [just like two overgrown bullies – pick a boy, any boy, to clean up and if he looks just like that boy who should have cleaned up, all the better (because that boy is gone now and another must take his place.)] MI6 tells him one thing, Scorpia another, and he does not know who to believe anymore – one exploits him, one tries to kill him, and two wrongs will never cancel each other out and they are equal evils, he thinks as he stares at the dull white ceiling.
℘ℵ℘
Because Yassen had never lied, he had listened. Sought out Scorpia, just like the man had said, and blamed his own curiousity [but that was not the reason and he knew it.] Listened to the stories Scorpia told him and trusted that they were more truth than lies because MI6 had lied and manipulated and he wouldn't put it past them to have created a history from scratch if it meant an expendable spy that no one would ever know about. Accepted the training that Scorpia gave him, because he had survived on sheer luck so far and his luck was running out (if he had ever been lucky to begin with. He doubted that now.)
Someone had asked him why, once. Asked him why he was at Malagosto, training to become a part of Scorpia. Asked him why he believed what Julia Rothman said. Asked him why he was so willing to believe MI6 had been lying to him for so long.
Someone had almost laughed when he gave a one-word answer to all the questions. "Yassen." A name wasn't a reason, someone had said. Think about it, someone had told him.
Someone asked him again the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that. His answer was always the same. Someone asked him why. Someone never received an answer – because Alex himself did not understand why and he never would understand. He supposed that it was some long-suppressed instinct to cling to something that was true, even if it was not. MI6 had been proven false already. Yassen had not.
℘ℵ℘
He wasn't supposed to find out MI6's side of the story. It had been a complete accident and he still wasn't sure exactly what had happened. Something had happened, of course. It wasn't a nice something; and now MI6 and Scorpia had both been proven false (but neither had been proven true and neither could be proven true).
"Why did you come back to us?"
He didn't have a good answer for Julia Rothman's question. He didn't think that he had an answer at all, in fact. A name wasn't a reason.
"…Yassen."
But a name was all he had left now. MI6 had been proven false. Scorpia had just been proven false. Yassen still had not [and in the end, Alex Rider was still the same child who had been abandoned by the adults and forced to grow up too soon, too fast] so he listened to Yassen's dying request (or command, he supposed. It hadn't been a question.)
When Scorpia ignored his protests and sent him out on an assassination – "you will be able to kill, if your target is someone you hate enough" they told him – he had listened to Scorpia. They should have known that sending Alex Rider to kill MI6 in a room full of lies would never end well.
℘ℵ℘
"You're not going to shoot me," she said. A quiet confident voice – was this the voice that ordered men to their deaths, that lied and manipulated and exploited until there was nothing left for to give?
Not going to shoot. Not going to betray. Not going to turn traitor. Always the same, quiet confident voices, self-assured and believing that they will be the winners, never the losers.
MI6 and his father. Scorpia and his father. Ash and his father. Who else was missing from the list.
"Now or ever."
His father had trusted MI6. MI6 had trusted his father, hadn't they? Or maybe it was Scorpia who had trusted his father and Scorpia his father had trusted. It didn't matter anymore. His father was dead and there was only one gun but there were two people holding the gun now and they were both equally guilty. Never equally innocent of his father's death. Always equally guilty.
Alex didn't realize he had pulled the trigger until the first bullet bounced off the pane of glass (or was it another new invention, designed to protect liars from justice?) and he reacted on instinct alone, ducking from the ricochet and firing again, from a different angle. This time, there was no sheet of glass. He didn't miss.
They told him that he could kill if he hated a person enough. They were right.
℘ℵ℘
"You shouldn't have lied to me."
There won't ever be a reply, he knows. A dead body can not speak – a dead body will tell no lies. Alex has decided, by now, that perhaps it is the dead bodies he likes best. No lies. No more exploiting. No more manipulating.
It's quiet now. Strangely quiet, the calm before the storm that is coming any moment now. He is in no hurry when he stares at Tulip Jones's dead body on the floor, a small neat hole in her forehead where the bullet entered. Nor is he in a hurry when he walks out of the room, out of the building to the waiting car.
There will be no hurry for Alex Rider. Not tonight. Just two more loose ends and then the circle will be complete and he will have done his duty.
℘ℵ℘
He wonders whether women always die like this, these quiet unexpected deaths. Neat deaths. Julia Rothman's cooling body is at his feet, a small bullet hole in her forehead. Just like Jones.
J.R. Julia Rothman. In the end, he had not been able to see much of a difference between MI6 and Scorpia. J.R. Tulip Jones's last name began with a "J." He didn't know what her first name was when he still believed MI6 and the lie had not been exposed. He knows it wasn't Tulip. He still doesn't know, but decides that if her first name began with an "R," it would be the icing on the cake. J.R. and R.J. He likes the sound of that – similar names, similar initials – representative of MI6 and Scorpia, both so similar. Perhaps the only difference between the two all along was reversed positions. Reversed viewpoints. He doesn't know.
His thoughts are scattered, jumping from subject to subject. There is still no hurry. The alarms have sounded and, very soon, there will be guards bursting into the room. He expects it, anticipates it. There will be nothing for them to find – a dead body tells no tales.
MI6 and Scorpia. He had cut ties with them now, he supposes. After decades, he has completed the circle and all the ties have been cut and they are free now. He is free now.
When the guards come running into the room, guns trained on him, Alex smiles and pulls the trigger. The circle that he has been forced into, the circle he has been forced and tricked into completing, is now finished.
℘ℵ℘
"You did it."
"…yes."
"Why?"
"…because. You didn't lie."
The gist of this one-shot is that Alex did kill Mrs. Jones. He doesn't stop there, though. He also kills Julia Rothman. Perhaps he kills himself. I'm still not quite sure, which is why the ending is very open to interpretation.
The reasoning is more complex. My Alex does this because he's fed up with the lies. MI6 has lied to him. So has Scorpia. Perhaps they didn't lie to him directly, or perhaps it wasn't even to him. The point is, they have lied and it's affected Alex greatly; and of course, a person can only take being lied to so many times. In this case, that number has been surpassed. Hence the character deaths.