Disclaimer: This is a work of FanFiction using characters from the Alex Rider series, intellectual property and copyright of Anthony Horowitz.
"You ready for this boys?"
22 year old Ben Daniels looked up from his perch on the uncomfortable wooden bench that was mounted in the back of the custom made Supacat. He shook his head slightly, as if trying to clear the fog of thoughts that were crowding him and pulled himself back into the present as Wolf dropped himself into the chair beside him. To his other side, Snake sat in silence, careful green eyes surveying his gun as the jeep lurched over one of the many dunes on the way to their target. Ben pulled his own rifle round onto his lap to check the cartridge and shaft, more as something to do rather than have to think.
"Fox," Wolf said quietly from beside him. Ben turned his head slightly, an enquiring look on his face. "What's wrong with you?"
"Nothing," Ben replied automatically. That made Snake look up quickly, and Ben knew in an instant he'd answered too quickly for it to sound genuine.
"Wolf's right. You've been really quiet," Snake agreed, before hastily continuing, "Even for you, I mean."
"It's nothing." Ben replied calmly, he'd used the few precious seconds to compose himself. It was a well developed skill, one that he had used many times, from getting out of trouble with the DS in his cadet days through to now. Ben wondered if maybe that was the reason for the rather bizarre conversation he'd had just that morning.
Ben took a deep, calming breath, he had been summoned and he didn't know why. As far as he knew the tour was going well, he hadn't fucked up enough to be RTU'd, and there were no "real" issues with any of the other men in the camp.
Ben looked up as the flap to the tent opened, expecting to see the site sergeant. He hid his surprise behind a calm facade as a man with slightly greying hair, wearing a black suit and cheap looking blue tie walked in and directly towards the desk with the confidence of someone who was used to getting exactly what he wanted.
"Mr Daniels, I presume?" he asked with a smile that Ben could tell was as false on as his own as they shook hands.
"You need to keep your head in the game, Fox." Wolf advised, there was a hint of warning in his voice and Ben looked at him with a raised eyebrow. Yes, it was a condescending gesture and it appeared Wolf recognised it as so when he nodded slightly.
Ben turned his eyes back to the rifle, his hands moving in an automatic motion and satisfied the conversation was going to be dropped as Eagle shifted towards the three gathered men. Ben could still feel Snake's eyes watching him, assessing him, and he turned his gaze out of the tinted window, over the slightly dusty and barren landscape of Baghdad.
Eagle practically threw himself into the opposite seat and dropped his head to look at Ben with a frown, before a grin split across his face
"Come on, Fox." Eagle urged with an edge of cheer in his voice, it was strained Ben noticed, and he couldn't say he blamed the red head. The objective for this assignment was vague, so vague it could be interpreted a million different ways.
But it was something.
Something more than sitting out stag duties over a cartel's poppyfield, waiting for something to happen as they had so often on this tour.
Something different to waiting out the days and only looking forward to evening scoff.
Something better than spending the next three months on the same duties he had worked through in the 47th Lancashire to get here.
Ben gave the red head a smile, similar to the one he had offered the man in the meeting and Ben thought for a minute it would be picked up as false. Snake's eyes were still burning into his side, but Eagle just leant back in his own seat, stretching and cracking his back as he did so. Ben diverted his eyes back out the window.
"We believe you could do very well with us, Mr Daniels." He had said, Ben had nodded politely, not liking the man that sat before him in the slightest, but his interest had been waning, the restlessness he had experienced in his own regiment had returned in full force with this tour. It wasn't what he was expecting as part of the SAS.
"Someone of your calibre with languages and theoretical thinking could do wonderfully out in the field." He had said pleasantly, Ben could almost smell the undercurrent of deceit in the man's words and he had wondered how many other times people had fallen prey to the man's pleasantries. Ben had marked his card instantly, but he had to admit his curiosity was piqued.
"So we're all the donkeys this time." Eagle said with a smile, it was meant as a joke. And the strangeness of the statement brought Ben crashing back into the present. There was a grunt of confirmation from Wolf, but there was something in his eyes Ben didn't recognise. He watched intently, trying to figure out what it was as Snake placed his rifle down and rested it against his leg.
"You've done one of these before right?" Snake asked, Wolf opened his mouth and Ben thought for a second he was going to respond with the same curt answer he had when he returned from his first solo. Snake held a hand up before he got a chance to utter a word, "I don't expect you to tell us."
"Yeah. I have," Wolf agreed, and Ben thought for a second it would be left at that. There seemed to be an unspoken rule between the four of them, that they would answer what they could and not push for anything else. But occasionally curiosity won out, this time with Eagle.
"What was it like?" Eagle asked. Wolf shifted on his seat, and the look in his eye intensified and it was only then Ben was able to place it. Strange really, considering it was a look they had all put up with throughout the whole process of selection. Anger seemed to be something that came easy to the Hispanic man,
"Disorganised." Wolf grunted. Ben frowned and looked at Snake whose eyebrows had risen in surprise.
"Doesn't seem like Special Ops." Snake stated, there was a flash of emotion in Wolf's eyes and Ben awaited the explosion. But it never came.
"There's a lot you don't know about Special Ops." Wolf muttered, it signified the end of the conversation, but Ben continued to watch with stoic eyes, taking in each static movement, each mechanical swallow and he knew that something had happened on that solo, something big and Wolf couldn't, or maybe wouldn't, say.
"You're just sore because you got hurt." Eagle chided. Ben would have laughed, but Wolf's fist tightened into a ball at his side. Evidently Ben wasn't the only one to notice as Snake rolled his eyes and gave an exaggerated sigh.
"Eagle, shut up."
"But-"
"You're not helping." Snake chastised, his voice was calm and Ben turned his eyes to him. Snake was never confrontational, he never got involved between Wolf and Eagle's bickering matches, especially when the red head was onto purposefully pissing off their unit leader but there was something the calm Scottish man had picked up on and he was hastening to fix it.
Ben smiled slightly as he thought about how that was always Snake's "job". Eagle would play the wind up merchant, Wolf would bite and eventually snap, and Snake would be the middle man. He wondered what his own role was.
"Our field work is based on gathering underground knowledge, whereas you work on an upfront basis in your line of work at the moment. We would require you to deploy other tactics to gain the knowledge we would require."
"You mean pretend I'm someone else?" Ben offered, the grey man sat across the table nodded slowly,
"In a nutshell, you would normally work under an alias."
"Who were you writing to this morning anyway?" Snake asked, and Ben could tell a filler question when he heard it. It was a desperate change of subject and Wolf just shrugged,
"A friend."
"Who?" Eagle asked immediately, Wolf gave him a small glare and gestured with his hand vaguely,
"Someone I knew once. They're in hospital, thought I would send them a card." Wolf explained, Ben smirked as he picked up on the scent of unease in his tone. It wasn't something you heard very often in the assertive man, and when you did you knew he was hiding something.
"Nothing too serious?" Snake asked seriously, Ben looked at him with a slight frown but all Snake's attention was on Wolf. The dark haired man tried to feign an unconcerned shrug, but his shoulders were taut,
"I don't think so."
"That's what your notification was about?" Eagle asked. Ben listened in with curious ears, they all knew Wolf had been called away early that morning, and when he had returned he had been quiet, stoic and didn't even yell at Eagle for leaving his socks in the middle of the floor like he normally would. Wolf nodded curtly, but offered no further explanation. They descended into an easy silence and Ben watched out of the window as they started a sweeping left turn towards the target building in front of them.
Ben snapped his eyes open and blinked owlishly up at the white ceiling of the Boeing 747 cabin he was currently sat in. He thanked everything he knew, not for the first time, that he had awoken before that particular memory had gotten any further.
Gently he flexed his right hand, bunching the muscles into a fist, and feeling the slight pang that ran up his arm as he did so before releasing it just as slowly. It was with a frown once the hand was flat once again, that he turned it to find his palm covered in a light sheen of sweat.
That particular night time memory always affected him badly.
Ben knew now what it was that Wolf was talking about. It was only after his own experience with Special Operations that Ben could relate to the man's loathing.
If he had knew then, what he knew now, he would never have gotten involved.
Because once you were in, you were stuck. Wolf was living proof, the man had so far completed two solo assignments for SO and they kept coming back again. Ben had never been able to figure out why.
It had taken one look across a filled airport lobby to figure out why.
You learned things when working with Special Operations. Things that were interesting. Things that were almost impossible. And things that were downright fucking intolerable.
Ben had seen another side to the military, it showed them in a new light, and he didn't like it.
Was it not what he was fighting against 90% of the time? Did he not fulfil his role as a rifleman for 4 years to protect innocents? To protect woman and children?
It had taken two weeks for his whole system to be turned on its head.
It had taken two weeks for 6 years worth of hard bloody work to be pulled apart and thrown to the ground before being blown to smithereens by an atomic weapon so powerful it could have destroyed the Southern Hemisphere.
It had taken two weeks to make him question 15 years worth of belief and learning he had acquired from friends and family.
Because, while it may be grotesque, and intolerable and controversial...
Ben would never forget the surprise he felt when he had first realised what was going on. And yet he would never forget the admiration as the ultimate contradiction looked back at him calmly, fitting into place as Ben himself hadn't managed too.
He would never forget the anger he had aimed at the woman pulling the strings, practically yelling at her that his involvement was wrong, only to be thrown a back hander when he realised it was nothing to do with the British government and he was there under his own jurisdiction.
He would never forget the skill that had been involved in the underground fight, nor the moment he had decided to step in because loss was inevitable. Only to be proven wrong minutes later, when he managed to get away almost unscathed by his own accord.
He would never forget the panic he had felt while trying to desperately to locate the contradiction and the sense of relief when the faint green dot had finally blinked out a location on the monitor, only to be surprised by a full update of intelligence, specified to a degree even some of the most experienced soldiers wouldn't have managed, before Ben had even finished patching up the first gash on his leg.
He would never forget the audacity of the higher ups, suggesting he be sent in on the raid , only to be told by the contradiction himself that there was no other way and backing it up with an argument even Ben couldn't contend.
He would never forget the grim determination that was on that face as he led on the floor, semi conscious from blood loss as that contradiction spoke calmly in a situation where he should have been screaming and crying and panicking.
But mostly, Ben would never forget how, over the last two weeks, he had drawn assumptions and conclusions only to have every single one of them rejected and overturned by that damn contradiction.
He had believed teenagers should be in school, learning ways of the world and gaining experience. Alex had grown and mastered more skills in the 8 months since they first met, than Ben had in the whole of his education.
He had believed that it was too dangerous for teenagers. Alex had stood, glared and mocked in the face of it, never once faltering or backing down from a situation that Ben was sure even grown men wouldn't be able to handle.
He had believed that teenagers were just that, innocence and ignorance and everything else that came along with it. Alex had wiped that away from the minute he had stepped foot into the church and attempted to take Ben down.
He had believed that it was a disgusting, intolerable, insane and despicable idea for a teenager to be a spy. Alex had proven it was a stroke of genius.
Ben gently rubbed at his temples and took a sip of the glass of water that had been placed in front of him by the stewardess. The assignment he had agreed to with Special Operations had tested him in a way his career with the SAS never had, and while he couldn't wait to get back to his unit and the SAS it had provided one very keen insight that was illustrated by the get well soon card that had arrived a week into his hospital stay.
Ben pulled out the cartoon illustrated thought, and smiled a slightly as he glanced at the picture of a fox laying in hospital bed. He flicked it open;
To Ben,
Get Well Soon.
Took a long time to find this card.
Won't be seeing you,
Alex
Ben had never believed things were black and white. But he hoped that this time, the written words would be sincere and as clear as they were written. And Alex would do what he did best and contradict the grappling hands of the intelligence world.
But Ben considered himself educated, by a bloody teenager no less, in his ability to question. For Alex had proven, beyond all reasonable doubt, that there were indeed many sides to a coin.