Next chapter is in progress. Here's a little something to bridge the gap. It's not really a chapter, more a moment of recognition for a great character who is sorely missed.
- stormbringer94
Finally alone, Alex perched on a rock and watched dead leaves shift in the wind. The cabins were within shouting distance but here in the forest he could pretend he wasn't at Brecon Becons. He could pretend he wasn't a spy or an orphan or a killer. He could pretend he wasn't leaving in a few hours, and he could pretend K-Unit weren't just like everybody else.
He could pretend, but he wouldn't. Wolf's words were stuck in his mind now, and it was at times like this that he really missed Jack. She had no expertise in espionage; she didn't understand military protocol or survival of the fittest. She couldn't speak a anything other than English and Pig-Latin and she couldn't wield a weapon to save her life (clearly).
She could, however, understand people. She could have explained why K-Unit were acting the way they were. She could have comforted him and told him what to do. It was weird; her being gone. The years without her had warped and sometimes it felt like she'd only died days ago. Sometimes it felt like decades. Either way, for Alex missing Jack had become like breathing; involuntary and constant.
He walked through life with a nagging awareness of her absence, and though he rarely let himself really think about it, he ached for her company. On the rare occasions that he allowed himself to drop his guard it was only ever for a brief moment in the dead of night, when the world went to sleep and there was nothing left to distract him.
As had become the pattern of Alex's life, he never told anybody. Not about the suffocating guilt and loneliness that weighed him down, or the infuriating desperation he lived by. Lies and secrets were a learned habit that Alex had adapted to quickly, a habit he favoured over the truth when it came to K-Unit. They wanted desperately for him to open up and tell them what had gone so wrong in his world.
Instead, he carried on with his life; working, fighting, breathing, missing her.