Author's note: This is my first fanfiction and I just wrote it in an hour so constructive criticism is appreciated. This is how I thought Alex's life might have gone if Never Say Die hadn't been written.

Alex Rider had been less than one year old the first time an attempt had been made on his life. It was sheer luck and an unfortunate ear infection that prevented him from travelling with John and Ian Rider on that fated plane trip to France. His father's brother, (never uncle, Alex, you make me sound so old), still reeling from his own loss, had had a baby thrust upon him and all the responsibility that involved. While he loved Alex, Ian was never able to be the parent he thought Alex deserved. He was always too busy with work, and it was work that would finally kill him.

Fourteen years after he lost his parents, Alex was orphaned once again. Despite his loss, Alex still had family in Jack, and it was her he relied upon to get through those first bleak months. He didn't get much time to grieve with all the missions he was sent on, but Alex felt deeply, and there was a new emptiness inside him that no mission could fill. Nevertheless, he persisted.

Then Jack died and Alex's world was torn apart. The emptiness grew to a gaping hole inside him and he ached inside and out. He felt hollow and the excitement of America couldn't reach him through the walls he had built. He was three months into his new life in America before the tiptoeing and the oh so careful questions of are you alright Alex, is there anything we can do to help Alex, do you want to try again with the therapist Alex got to him, and he knew he couldn't stay.

It was back to London, back to the empty house that had never quite managed to sell, back to the quiet voices that made him clench with guilt whenever he looked towards Jack's old room. School was better than it had been in America, but Alex didn't quite fit in anymore. He was an outsider, too damaged to ever really be a teenager again. Tom, of course, made it all bearable. Tom's propensity for asking questions had faded somewhat from the looks Alex kept giving him and he instead focused on making everything as normal as possible. Alex would never be able to express to Tom how much he helped him through those early months back in London, how much he helped him heal.

Move two years forwards and Alex was doing ok. His life was busy with football and school and friends and although he would never really recover from what had happened to him, he was making progress. He was in the midst of his A-levels and without MI6 dropping in every five minutes he was excelling, getting excellent marks in French and Spanish and decent ones in Maths and Science. He started to seriously consider what he would do after school.

He knew he would never be able to deal with the boredom of civilian work, not after what he had done. The SAS was out of the question; Alex knew he was capable but there were too many bad memories there. In the end, with the encouragement of Tom, he had decided on going to university, majoring in politics and foreign policy. This would give him a few more years to decide what to do, and it wasn't like he couldn't afford it. He decidedly ignored the correlation between his studies at University and the skills of Intelligence workers. That was a problem for another day.

Alex completed University four years later and left with a Bachelors degree and great friends. No one at Uni had known much about his past, but they hadn't cared and had made new memories together. He had found a tenuous sense of belonging and acceptance that he'd been looking for since Ian's death all those years ago. He was healing.

Alex tried his hand at a variety of jobs and enjoyed most of them, but none of them seemed to fit. He had good colleagues, reasonable work hours, and interesting work, but nothing matched the thrill of his years as an Agent for MI6. So it was in his mid-twenties that Alex applied for MI6 the normal way, unassuming in the flood of applicants, not standing out for any other reason than a great aptitude for the work, He was no longer the youngest employee by any means.

Word got around that Alex Rider was back at MI6 and he rose quickly (some would say unfairly so) through the ranks. He was soon receiving exciting (and dangerous) missions, and he always came back in one piece. This Alex Rider was the Agent he always should have have been; paid fairly and no longer blackmailed into working for MI6, he was passionate about his job and colleagues. Alex was an oddity in that he had a good social life, and he didn't sacrifice his undercover life for his real one. And if one day Alex Rider was the head of MI6? He would have been the only one who was surprised.

Author's Note: Hope You enjoyed! Please review and keep reading AR fanfiction because there's some great stuff out there! This is just a one-shot btw so I won't be continuing it