This is for the reviewer two days ago. And all the rest of you who are still alive. Thanks for sticking around, and I know this is far, far overdue, but accept my humble apologies and enjoy the last ever chapter...

The Final Episode

Black and white words on a black and white sheet and again, Alex vaguely mourned the absence of colour—emotion was prohibited and he squashed it down with an angry twist to his mouth, and he turned back to the crinkled double sheet laid spread on his lap.

His face was there. A school picture from when he was about thirteen, remnants of puppy fat clinging obstinately to a grinning blonde, standing tall and lanky with warm eyes and a tilt to his head. The headline was; ALEX RIDER IN MI6 CUSTODY, and Alex wondered for a moment why they knew his name.

No one was supposed to know his name.

He skimmed through the column of block writing and the facts seeped in like rain droplets, soaking him down to his bones and past that, to a place where he was hollow and broken and lost. He struggled against bonds tight around his chest, his breathing harsh and stiff, the back of his eyes stinging hot as the sentences wheeled on around his head—and the words—orphan, manipulated, abused, tortured, brainwashed, drugged, hurt—felt like bitter salt in his mouth. Callous truths.

There were footsteps and he flinched bodily back, and murmurs of a conversation and the door opened with the silhouette of two bulky men, who said, "Eel! You're awake!"

And no one called him Eel anymore.

He didn't speak, and regarded them, huddled up, his hurts and bruises and scars warring for attention amongst the shouting confusing in his head.

"Eel," said Eagle, coming forwards carefully, hands outstretched, like he was a stray animal. "Do you remember me?"

He nodded, a short sharp jerk, and shifted backwards.

"Are you okay?" asked Lion. Alex felt his heart jump in his throat. Two men he'd thought he'd lost, pushed to the very back of his mind;

He nodded again. And then changed his mind, and shook his head, and flinched when both moved closer.

"What do you remember?" they asked, and Alex said, "Everything." And he showed them the newspaper.

"We looked for you, Eel." Eagle said then. "I swear we looked, the second we heard. We chased leads everywhere, and we couldn't find—you, or Rat—well, we found Rat now—" and there was a moment of sombre silence in which Alex relived a million times over the sound of a shot through his best friend. "And then Fox—" and their second dead comrade, and there was another moment of silence and Alex found himself gulping away nightmares. "—and you—nowhere. Until the newspapers, kid, but we know—we knew that wasn't your fault."

Alex looked up.

"Eagle," Lion said carefully.

"It was," Alex said in a cracked voice. "It was all my fault. Everything is always my fault. Everyone."

"No—" Eagle said, and Lion said, "Eagle," again, warningly, and he was quiet.

"What's the date?" Alex asked.

"Third of April," Eagle answered with a pounce on the new subject. Alex wondered where fourteen months of his life had gone. That was over a year. He was seventeen.

Oh god he was seventeen and he hadn't celebrated anything since his fourteenth—where would he be at eighteen? Dead before he even got to vote?

"Do you want something to eat? Some water?"

"Where am I?"

They looked at each other—"'6 headquarters. Eel."

"Why?" he frowned. "Why aren't I in prison?"

Eagle frowned. "Everyone knows, Eel."

"I know everyone knows." Alex spat. "So why aren't I in prison? Or are you just going to execute me here?"

"No, no one's going to do anything. You're a hero, Alex."

That was the first time he hadn't said Eel. Maybe he'd remembered that Eel was a lie, a facade, and he wasn't supposed to use that anymore.

"A hero?" Alex spat, and his eyes grew very hot and his fists clenched and Lion, who had been uncharacteristically silent, opened his mouth to speak, and Alex cut in with a choked, "Please get out."

They left and he was alone.

0-0-0-0-0-0

The next day he woke up to Rat sitting next to his bed in a chair. His arms were folded over his chest and he was breathing quietly to the pulse of the faint beeps from the heart machine that Alex was attached to. Alex watched him sombrely, then turned away and tried to categorize what was inside his head. He was feeling remarkably more clear and certain than he had the previous day—than he had been for months, for years even. He'd never even realised the constant fear he'd carried with him ever since he'd started working for MI6. Nearly three years of that terror, weighing him down, choking him up. But now he was clear; there was his past, laid out in detail behind him—the torture he'd gone through and the exact moment he'd broken, the long weeks of recovery while they trained him and briefed him on his missions, while Jenna soothed his nightmares and kissed away his worries and was tender and kind to him, and then his assassinations—blurry and terrible, real life nightmares as he shot dead innocent people.

God, what had he done?

He knew logically it wasn't his fault. He tried to reason it out with himself and grapple away the guilt, because it was going to drive him crazy. Or even crazier. But there it was, lurking in the back of his mind as a black vicious shadow, clinging onto the concaved walls of his skull.

"Alex? Are you awake?" it was a soft and familiar voice and Alex felt an ache inside him open up. The heart machine sped up its beeping. He rolled over and looked at Rat, trying to take comfort in the image.

"Hey, Rat," he smiled hoarsely. "How are you?"

Rat frowned at him like he was trying to work something out. No. No, Alex didn't want an argument, or criticism, or more hate. He just wanted Rat to smile as if everything was okay before he flickered into nothing, as he eventually would. "Alex? I... do you know what happened?"

"K Unit caught me, MI6 weaned me off the drug and undid my brainwashing, and now I'm in hospital," Alex recited flatly, content to indulge his hallucination.

"No, I mean, with me. They said you still thought I was dead."

"For fuck's sake, not this again," Alex said, rolling his eyes up to the ceiling.

"What?"

Alex just glared at him and refused to answer. The ache had transferred to a painful pressure in his head, and it was building the longer Rat talked.

"Alex. I really am alive. The bullet... the bullet put me in a coma for half a year. I woke up and you were gone. I've been in recovery while K Unit were looking for you, but I'm mostly healed now. And it's all going to be okay. It's going to go back to the way it was, alright? We're going to be okay."

Alex smiled and shook his head and refused to answer.

The door suddenly swung open and men began filing in. Alex started panicking before he recognised their faces—K Unit, standing awkward and burly, looking at him with strange expressions. They looked different, he noticed. Older. Wearier. "Eel? How are you doing?" Wolf asked hesitantly.

"He thinks I don't exist," Rat said drily, if a little desperate.

"Just touch him," Eagle put in. "That's what I'd always do when he was with MI6, recovering. He doesn't think his hallucinations can touch him."

Alex watched them coldly.

"Alex? Can I?" Rat asked hesitantly, leaning out. They all watched as his arm extended, and then his fingers stopped, hovering an inch above Alex's shoulder. Alex was breathing harsh and shallow and didn't respond. Rat touched him slowly, his hand forming a warm, solid weight, resting there and not trembling in any way.

"I don't understand," Alex choked, staying very still, squeezing his burning eyes closed. Nausea welled up inside of him. "Stop. Please stop."

"It's going to be okay," Rat whispered. "I told you, it's going to be okay."

0-0-0-0-0-0

It took a further six weeks for Alex to heal physically and for his therapist appointments to go down from twice a day to twice a week, and to stop suffering withdrawal symptoms from whatever mind controlling drug Jenna had hooked him on. He lied and said that the hallucinations were a side effect of the drug and that he wasn't experiencing them anymore.

He'd started lying a lot.

They all moved back into Rat's apartment. It had been renovated in the time Alex had been away, with three new bedrooms added and Alex's made larger and decorated. K Unit had six months of leave accumulated—the time they'd spent looking for Alex had been counted as an official SAS mission—so were squashed into the extra bedrooms until they were shipped out again. Alex had to bite back multiple panic attacks as they moved back in, from when they first saw the point Rat had been shot, to when they gave him some time alone in his room and he had to try hard not to totally break down, to seeing the news with his name again on television, to pretending to go to bed and hearing the worried murmurs about him.

Perhaps the only silver lining was that no one actually recognised him. All the photos of him had been blurry stills and the only descriptions out—blond tall teenager—fit about half the boys in the country. He dyed his hair, took a 'James Robertson' alias provided by a surprisingly helpful MI6, and transferred schools.

They sat down to dinner a week after his release, everyone with glasses of wine and plates of badly cooked spaghetti. "To Alex," Rat said, raising a glass and smiling. The others echoed. Alex was silent, and Rat kept eye contact as he drank and then put down his glass, looking at him soberly. Alex felt like a fraud and looked away.

"How do you think school will be, Alex?" Eagle asked around a mouthful.

Alex shrugged and twirled his fork. There was an awkward halt as everyone stared, and he stood abruptly and said, "I'm turning in for the night." His accidental door slam on the way out was accompanied by faltering goodnights. He slid down the wall on the other side, hidden in the dark, and clutched his head as he choked and tried to breathe. Jenna appeared crouching in front of him and smiled motherly before he swiped at her and she faded away. He collapsed onto the floor, lungs constricting, an awful hollowness opening up inside of him and something screaming in the back of his head.

Things were never going to be alright.

0-0-0-0-0-0

He had his first day at his new school—a year younger than everyone else—and tried to smile his way through the packed corridors and too loud school bell and stiff shouldered blazer. He sat down at the back of class and shuddered as it filled and everyone stared at him. They don't know, he reminded himself, carding his fingers through his newly black hair.

Five minutes into the lesson and a girl shoved her way into the chair next to him. He turned his head to maybe attempt at making a friend before he was greeted with arms wrapped tightly around him and a head buried into his shoulder. He flinched at first, then relaxed into it as he realised who it was, and hesitantly hugged her back. "I never believed it," Niamh swore into his shoulder. "Not for one second. I never, ever believed it."

"I missed you," he offered honestly.

"You fucker," she sobbed, drawing back and staring at him with watery eyes. She hit him on the chest. "Why did you fucking do that to me? Don't answer."

"Okay," he said mystified. "And lower your voice. People are staring."

"I don't give a fuck," she said grandly, glaring them down, but lowered her voice anyway. "How are you?"

"A bit surprised," he admitted. "Why aren't you in sixth form?"

"You think I could've done my GCSEs while you were... being tortured? Fuck off. I couldn't stop crying, let alone try to revise. So I was held back a year and I had to transfer because it was so embarrassing, so here we are."

"Right," he said uncomfortably. He hadn't realised they were that close, and he didn't need the extra guilt.

"It's not your fault," she said hastily, correctly interpreting his expression. "I just couldn't stop thinking about you. And imagining. And then... all those horrible articles... and some reporters figured out I knew you, and kept asking me about you, and saying all these things about you..."

"I read what you said," he told her. "Thank you, even if it wasn't true."

She opened her mouth to protest but the teacher hushed them angrily.

And so school, somehow, fell into the same pattern that it had before Alex had been kidnapped; Niamh throwing friends at him and dragging him to socialise and somehow relaxing him enough to have something that was an approximation of fun. K Unit were visibly relieved when he returned happy enough after a day at school and when his phone would constantly go off with alerts from some big crazy group chat he was in, as well as fairly good reports from his teachers and estimations he should finish his GCSEs by the end of the year.

He still had to go to a therapist specialising in deprogramming as well as his old therapist, Shahena, racking up a total of four therapist appointments a week—but he was experienced with handling therapists and instead of opening up as he had been trying to do before the kidnapping, he instead presented a wounded but healing soldier who was slowly progressing back to a good and stable mental health. He realised that this time, he was just too damaged to attempt any visit to his psyche, and trying to show just how fucked up he was would only end with him locked up back in the mental facility.

That would be ironic. The full circle, completed. If he had just stayed there in the first place, none of this would ever have happened. Most importantly, no one would be dead.

0-0-0-0-0-0

Jenna tried to kill him a month into his new life. She had been following him for three days but he had convinced himself he was hallucinating, especially since most of that time a mutilated Jack or Sabina had been walking next to him. But then she snuck into his room through the window in the middle of the night and woke him up with a knife to his throat. He woke up quietly and stared at her wild haired silhouette highlighted by the moonlight. She'd been too loud and behind her, Rat was inching forwards silently with a bat raised in his hands. Alex made sure not to breathe. Jenna whispered to him, "This is what I should have done in the first place, you useless pathetic thing. Gutted you like a stuck pig."

He stared up at her and didn't say anything, a thin layer of skin separating his blood from her cold long knife.

"You don't even belong here," she hissed. "I'm doing you a favour."

Then she turned just as Rat swung; one hand caught the bat and she gasped in pain, but got a knife inside of his ribs.

No. Alex refused to let it happen again. He didn't think. He just reacted.

Afterwards when the gun was cooling in his hand and Jenna was slumped on the floor, hands curled loosely over her stomach, and everyone else came rushing in, and Rat came to sit down beside him and unstrapped the bulletproof vest that he'd worn before he came in as a precaution with the knife embedded into it, only then did Alex start breathing. Wolf had two fingers to Jenna's neck, and Alex asked the question wordlessly.

"No, she's not dead. Near, though. Is she the one who took you?"

He nodded mutely. He was losing words, lately.

"Maybe we'll wait for her to bleed out for a bit before we notify MI6. Are you alright?"

"You're not angry?" he directed it at all of them.

"Of course we're not," Rat said, loosely swinging an arm around his shoulders. "It was self defence."

"Yeah," Alex echoed, although it was a lie. "Get her out. Please."

He curled on his side, away from them, and shut his eyes tight, feeling the weight of their worried gazes and listening to her whines and the soft thumps of her body moving. Someone bought in a lock and locked and shut the window. He liked that they did that. Someone else brushed a hand over his hair then turned the light off, retreating with light footsteps and leaving the door half open.

He didn't sleep for four days.

0-0-0-0-0-0

They soon stopped his medication and lowered his appointments from four to two. Alex was fine with that; he didn't stop smiling nowadays, didn't stop laughing and cracking jokes, helping out round the house, teaming up with Rat again to tease everyone. Gone was the flinching, the flashbacks, the panic. He was fine. He was fine.

"Go on, give me a beer," he wheedled as they sat down for weekly poker night.

"Wait nine months and you're legal," came the rehearsed response, accompanied by many rolled eyes. Leopard flicked a card at his head and he caught it without looking, then grinned up at them for appreciation, which was not given.

He took a beer anyway, because he was faster than Snake, and then grinned in victory as he opened it. No one liked to take food off him once he had it. They'd learned from the first time, when Eagle had playfully grabbed a container of something off him and Alex had broken down, begging not to be starved again.

They let him drink—it tasted shit anyway, but it was the principle of it—and everyone as usual soundly beat Alex. While they were revelling in their victory and slight drunkenness, Alex slipped it in—"Hey, guys. Hope it's cool that me and some mates from school are going on a road trip this weekend."

Silence. "Road trip," Wolf echoed, suspicious.

"Yeah, you know, like with snacks and sleeping in the car and visiting stupid landmarks. Road trip."

"We know what a road trip is," Snake interrupted. "We just... don't think you're ready."

"Seriously?" Alex drew in a deep breath, because this wasn't really about the road trip, this was about seeing if they really thought he was back to normal. If they had really fallen for it. "Guys, come on. It's been ages. I'm off the drugs—the Scorpia ones and the anti-anxiety ones—and I'm doing really well at school, I don't even need a therapist anymore and I haven't had a flashback or nightmare in months. You really don't think I'm better yet? What more do you need?"

"I think it's a good idea," Leopard said unexpectedly. "He's right, he's improved, and we should appreciate that. He's more than able to function without us and if he wants to go on a road trip, he should be allowed to."

Everyone apart from Wolf and Rat gave grudging agreement, so all eyes turned on them. Wolf said slowly, "It's up to Rat. He knows Alex best out of all of us. So, Rat? Is Alex better? Should we let him have more freedom?"

Rat had eyes only for Alex and watched him seriously. Alex stared back, blank faced, willing himself to be walled off against the onslaught. "Yes," he said eventually. "He's better."

"Great," said Alex, smiling hugely. It felt unnatural and too wide, his head stiff on top of his body as he creaked it from side to side. He wanted to be sick. "That's so great. Thanks. I'm just going to... let everyone know..." he gestured loosely to his phone and moved off backwards, not letting his smile drop as he left the room, turned the corner, shut the door, and wept quietly with his fist stuffed into his mouth.

0-0-0-0-0-0

They had a big goodbye when K Unit were finally deployed. Everyone stood around the door with the car waiting outside, huge bags strapped to their backs. They all knew it was coming but there was an air of tragedy about the whole thing.

"It'll be fine," Wolf said confidently. "It's not even a proper mission. A month long stay with the Italians to help train up their army, just as a favour. Zero risks, zero danger. We'll phone back every other night. It isn't even confidential."

"Right," Alex smiled. He'd heard it a thousand times since they'd got the news. "Have fun."

"Don't have too much fun," Rat corrected. "And wear sun tan. God, I sound like your mother."

"And bring us souvenirs," Alex ordered.

Everyone bundled together in rough hugs and backslaps, awkwardly muttering goodbyes before making escapes. Soldiers weren't good with emotions. They disappeared down the stairs and waved from the back of the car as it sped off round the corner. When they'd gone, Rat shut and triple locked the door, then stood with Alex in the hallway. "Guess it's just you and me," he said. "Like old times, huh?"

"Exactly," Alex said but thought, hopefully not. "Except without the shitty girlfriend."

"She wasn't that bad," Rat rolled his eyes. "And at least we made a better couple than you and my sister."

"We're not..." Alex said, then trailed off as Rat disappeared to another room. He chased after him. "Take it back! Me and Niamh are just friends!"

"Not what she wants," Rat grinned, raising an eyebrow and dancing backwards with his hands up in resignation.

"How do you know what she wants?"

"I'm her brother, you twat, you don't think she tells me everything? Aw, Alex, you're bright red."

"I'm not," Alex growled and stormed out to go to meet Niamh and complain about what a shithead Rat was. She similarly went bright red when he told her and they both agreed to come up with some elaborate revenge plan for the ill timed comments of Alex's now unfortunate guardian.

0-0-0-0-0-0

It wasn't that he didn't scream during his nightmares, it was just that he'd learned while captive to scream soundlessly so he didn't get hit for making too much noise. And it wasn't that he didn't get flashbacks, it was just that he'd learned to smoothly make an exit to the bathroom and suffer it out silently with his head between his legs on the resolute bathroom tiles.

"You sure you don't want the therapists anymore?" Rat asked over breakfast to Alex's latest request.

"One hundred percent," Alex said with certainty, not looking up from his cereal. "They don't help at all anymore. And I have you if I need someone to talk to, right?"

"Not that you do talk to me ever," Rat said, watching him carefully.

Alex started. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Exactly what I said. You haven't talked to anyone about anything serious since you got back, let alone me."

"That's not true. I've talked loads. I'm just over it now. Isn't it important to move on?"

Rat stared again at him for a long moment. "Fine," he said eventually. "Forget I said anything. If you think you're better and don't need any help, then you are. I'll cancel the therapists."

"Great," Alex replied a little harshly. He felt the ache build up inside of him again, something swollen and vicious opening up. He bit the inside of his cheek against the pain and went to school.

0-0-0-0-0-0

He was walking barefoot through an empty moonlit street, rows of corpses shambling along behind him with their wrists chained to each other and their eyes mournful and rotting. He started running but they kept up pace, their heavy rattling breathing just over his shoulder, their thudding clanking footsteps reverberating through his bones. Panic skewed his vision, hot and acid. The soles of his feet started falling apart so he was leaving behind a trail of bloody footsteps.

He died abruptly when Jenna caught up to him and thrust her long skeletal fingers through his throat. Then they buried him, wrapped him up tightly and pushed him into a shallow grave, kicked soil over his face. He only remembered how to scream once they left him and the maggots started digesting him, worming into his flesh and eating holes through his body, and then he didn't stop, everything that was inside of him expelling in an endless, raw, broken scream.

"Alex! Wake up!"

He thudded awake with the same easiness as falling from a cliff. Hands were tight on his shoulders. Someone was screaming, loudly, and he scrambled away from the person shaking him and onto the floor on the far side of the bed, scrubbing at his eyes wildly until he stopped screaming. Rat tried to approach him and he flinched away blindly, before scrambling away and out of the room, backing away down the corridor as Rat followed him slowly. "Get the fuck away from me!" he screamed, frightened at his own animalistic rage. He backed into a wall and shuddered away, sweating and shivering, fists up in front of him.

"Calm down, it's just me," Rat soothed.

"I know who you fucking are, I said go the fuck away!"

Rat backed away a few steps then folded himself down into a cross legged non threatening position. Alex stayed standing, trembling and furious. Rat placed his hands on his knees and watched him, eyes wide and liquid in the dark, tiredness etched under his eyes. He waited.

Alex finally got his breathing under control and trapped all the fear that was spilling out of him back into his head, dropping his fists and relaxing slightly. He didn't take his eyes off Rat, his vision occasionally clouding with black spots, blood dripping down his hands from where he'd dug his nails too hard into his palms. A long time passed before he completely relaxed, and then it all came out in a sudden rush, and he collapsed downwards, hiding his head in between his knees and crying softly and desperately. Only then did Rat approach him, sitting down next to him with a light hand on his shoulder. "I'm sorry," Alex whispered, still hiding his face. "I didn't want to wake you up."

"Don't ever apologise," Rat said, his voice rough with sleep. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"No, no. It's fine. I don't usually scream. It'll be fine."

Rat's hand tightened a little on Alex's shoulder. "You don't usually scream? What does that mean, that it happens often?"

Alex realised his mistake too late and bit his cheeks hard so he wouldn't say anything else.

"Alex," Rat prompted. "I thought you were better."

"I am," Alex said miserably.

"Going catatonic for two hours after screaming loud enough to bring the house down doesn't exactly constitute excellent mental health."

Alex had raised his head and blurted before he could stop himself, "Please don't send me away."

A long silence. Rat moved to crouch in front of him so Alex had no choice but to meet his eyes. "You really think I'd send you away? After everything we've been through? Everything you've been through?"

He shrugged, feeling pathetic and small. "I killed people," he said quietly.

"It wasn't your fault, Alex." Rat gripped him by the shoulders and moved even closer to him. "It wasn't your fault. None of it was ever your fault. All the things that happened when you were a kid, in the SAS, with Scorpia—none of it is ever your fault, will ever be your fault. Okay? And I swear to you, I will never send you away. I will never leave you. I would die for you, Alex. Is that understood?"

"Yes, sir," Alex mumbled, and Rat lifted his arms round him and hugged him like a child, and Alex sagged against his chest with his eyes shut and felt honestly for the first time in a long, long while, that it really was all over.

The End.