A/N: … warning for Alex's Strong Opinions on taxidermy and hunting, I guess? Thank you all so much for reading and for your comments. Even if I sometimes fail at responding, I appreciate each and every one of them.
Alex arrived in Saint Petersburg with Jamie on the last day of April. By train, not by plane, which had been all the more interesting to Alex. It was only his second time in Russia, and his first visit to that part of the country, and he had spent most of the trip watching the countryside and brushing up on the rusty bits of Russian he remembered from his summer vacation.
They spent the rest of the day in Saint Petersburg, watched a play that Alex didn't understand but which Jamie quietly explained as it happened on stage, and stayed at a hotel that looked so expensive that Alex felt a little out of place.
"The city used to be called Leningrad," Jamie said that evening, "when I grew up."
Alex was dressed in his pyjamas but too excited to sleep, and the compromise ended up being the large, old windows that overlooked the world outside. Watching people go about their lives in a whole new place never stopped being interesting.
Alex glanced over. "What happened?"
"Politics." Jamie was silent for a moment before he continued. "The fall of the Soviet Union. It used to be Sankt-Peterburg. Then World War I broke out and it became Petrograd. When Lenin died, it became Leningrad. Four years ago, with the Soviet Union buried and the city given the choice, they chose Sankt-Peterburg again. The politics of little men with too much power."
Alex wasn't sure what to say to that. Instead he stayed silent and looked out the window again, though he couldn't really focus on it. He tried to imagine living in a place and being told that his city suddenly had a new name because someone important had died and couldn't entirely wrap his head around it.
You live in Leningrad now. Just like that.
We're moving to Helsinki, his brain added, unwanted, and Alex shoved the thought away again. He missed Geneva but he didn't think he would ever have felt safe there again. He still wasn't sure he felt safe in Helsinki, either, but some nights he slept okay now.
Finally Jamie broke the silence again. "There were jokes about that. 'I was born in Sankt-Peterburg, I was raised in Petrograd, I live in Leningrad, and I wish to die in Sankt-Peterburg.' Russian humour."
Alex turned the words over in his mind. Jamie didn't interrupt but just let him. Different names for the same thing. The only difference was -
- Politics.
"… Because if you die in Sankt-Peterburg, then things have gone back to normal again," Alex said.
"The only way it would ever have been permitted to become anything less than Leningrad," Jamie agreed, "was if – when – the Soviet Union collapsed and Lenin's influence collapsed with it."
And Jamie had grown up like that. In a small village, he had said that himself, where the best future he could have hoped for was to maybe escape one day. Maybe even learn to fly a helicopter.
Jamie could fly now, and he had escaped, but all Alex could think of was the raw terror of Geneva and every moment he had been afraid someone would shoot them and -
- that wasn't the way Jamie had wanted to get his wish. Alex knew they could never return to Geneva but at least his friends were still there. His school and his classmates and teachers and soccer team. Alex would never see them again but they were alive. Alive, and he still had his parents.
Did Jamie ever miss his parents? He had been fourteen. To Alex, fourteen was almost an adult but Jamie wouldn't even have been out of school. Alex couldn't imagine surviving on his own at fourteen. Did you ever stop missing your parents if you lost them? Alex couldn't imagine that, either.
Alex didn't speak. Neither did Jamie.
Outside, the world kept moving.
They drove to the hunting cabin the next day. They didn't arrive until the early evening and like with the train ride, Alex spent most of that time just watching the world outside. Saint Petersburg at first, then the city slowly giving way to forest and fields and rivers and lakes. It reminded him a little of what he had seen of Finland so far.
The cabin itself was near a lake, with scattered trees and forest nearby and was a lot bigger than what Alex had expected. He wasn't even sure why he thought it would have been tiny. Maybe because 'hunting cabin' made him think of something small and hidden, but the place they arrived at was huge.
"Some prefer their comforts when they hunt," Jamie said. "In some cases, preferably with heavy security and a steady supply of fine caviar and Georgian wine and enough vodka to make business flow. You would build connections, enjoy the best food your personal chef could supply, kill a few things to feel suitably powerful. To prove you were a man of decisive action. The larger the prey, the better, of course. Send others to track down an animal until all you had to do was to put down your glass for long enough to pull a trigger. Little men with too much money. This is a modest place."
It didn't look very modest to Alex but he didn't comment. Just followed Jamie inside.
The smell was familiar but Alex wasn't really surprised. Wood and stale air, like no one had visited in a while. Their cabin in Germany had had the same sort of smell when they first arrived. It was a little cold, too. It would take a while to warm up something like that.
The similarities ended there, though. There were a lot of dead animals, that was the first thing Alex noticed. The cabin was mostly wood, with a massive fireplace, and had a stuffed animal heads watching them from every direction. Bears and deer with dead eyes, and a large chair made out of antlers, and when Alex looked up, he was greeted by a trio of ducks caught in endless flight under the ceiling.
Little men with too much money.
Alex didn't shudder but he hoped whatever room he got didn't have anything dead around to watch him all night. He could imagine waking up in the middle of the night to a dead deer staring at him in the moonlight, and the thought was enough to make him want to find a tent and sleep outside.
He didn't say it out loud, though. He was sure Jamie could tell his opinion just fine as it was.
"… It's big," he said instead, a little dubious.
"It – appealed."
Jamie didn't explain more than that and Alex left it alone. It didn't seem like Jamie's usual sort of place and Alex really doubted he just wanted it for the dead animals. Maybe he would ask again later. He wasn't stupid. He knew there was more going on but that didn't mean Jamie would actually explain.
They moved through the cabin – across the main room, up the stairs to a hallway of four open doors, and Alex caught a glimpse of a massive bed inside one of the rooms. A bed, huge chairs, and what was probably the door to a bathroom. The animal heads followed them all the while, a long line of dead, dark eyes that watched them upstairs and through the entire hallway.
Alex couldn't name half of them beyond a general 'deer' or 'duck' or 'bear', but some of them were so lifelike, he almost expected them to move. He wasn't sure what was creepier: the ones that were very obviously trophies or the ones where someone had tried to make it look like they were still alive and frozen halfway through turning their head or something.
Who wanted to live like that?
Jamie stepped inside one of the rooms. Alex followed. It looked even bigger up close. Nothing at all like the cabin they'd stayed at in Germany and definitely nothing like the cabin he remembered from a school trip. They had been four to a room then. This room alone could probably have fit enough beds for half of his classmates.
"These rooms are intended for guests. The bedrooms downstairs are smaller and meant for the staff. There is no one but us so you are free to choose whichever you prefer."
Alex's reply was immediate. "One that doesn't have dead animals."
"Perhaps not the easiest request," Jamie admitted, "in a place such as this."
Alex didn't answer immediately, his attention caught by a pair of sparrows perched on a branch above the window. Jamie followed his glance. For long seconds, it was silent. Somewhere, the heavy sound of an old clock broke the stillness. Then Jamie spoke again.
"They're dead, Alex. They've been dead for years. Decades, for some of them. They can't harm you."
Alex knew that, he wasn't a baby, but -
"- They're still creepy."
They were creepy and more than that, Alex wondered about the people who wanted a place like that. Who wanted to sit at the fireplace and drink vodka or whatever they did and look around to admire stuff they'd killed. Who had picked some deer that looked particular pretty or just happened to be unlucky and be the first thing they had spotted and shot it because … they wanted to kill something and have a dead animal on their wall? What was worse – if the deer had known it was hunted and tried to escape and never had a chance, or if it hadn't known at all until someone shot it?
The memories of Geneva were back, of the safe-room and his mum leaving because there was no one else to protect them, and the horrible feeling of being hunted, and Alex looked away.
"… I want to sleep in your room," Alex finally admitted and felt like a baby for doing it. But it was creepy enough now in sunlight. He couldn't imagine how much worse it would be in the middle of the night to wake up and have animal heads staring at him and everything would be pitch black in the way where things looked like they moved and -
- Maybe Alex felt like a baby for it but he didn't care if it meant he would actually sleep.
"The bed is certainly large enough for both of us," Jamie said and Alex did his best not to show the sudden flood of relief he felt.
Maybe Jamie had expected it. He didn't sound surprised, anyway, but he never did.
"Unpack," he said instead. "Come downstairs when you're ready. I'll make some food for us."
With that, he left again, his bag left on one side of the bed. Alex claimed the other and proceeded to do his best to ignore the rest of the room as he dug out a warm sweater. It was late, he was hungry, and the rest would just have to wait.
Morning was cold and cloudy. It had taken a long time for Alex to fall asleep and it was past nine when he woke up. Jamie's side of the bed was empty and the covers neatly folded. Alex wasn't surprised. Jamie was always up early.
Alex grabbed the blanket he'd halfway kicked off the bed, wrapped it around his shoulders, and slipped out of the room, down the hallway and downstairs. Outside looked grey and the grass heavy with dew. Jamie had lit the fireplace at some point. The sounds were soothing and familiar, and the smell of burning wood and warm stone mingled with breakfast.
Alex ignored the awful chair with the antlers and curled up on the couch instead. The dead animals looked a little less creepy in the morning light and Jamie had kept the nightmares away. It was enough that Alex actually looked up and met the dark glass eyes of the sheep, goat, whatever it was that someone had mounted above the fireplace.
The horns were long and curved, and it looked like it had been caught in the moment of turning its head, but the longer he stared, the less unnerving it looked. When he looked past the dead eyes, there was a thin layer of dust on its wool, and what looked like a fine cobweb between the horns. It didn't looked like it got cleaned very often.
"Snow sheep." Jamie had appeared from somewhere without a sound, but Alex was used enough to it that he didn't startle. Probably from the kitchen, since he had a plate of breakfast along that he handed to Alex. "Native to Siberia. It was not killed here."
Not even someone's trophy or awful souvenir that had been left behind, then, but someone who had decided that what the cabin needed was more dead animals.
Not for the first time, Alex wondered why Jamie had ever picked a place like that. It was too big, too creepy, and too silent. Was it something you learned to like as a grown-up, like dinner parties or coffee? He wasn't sure. He wasn't even sure Jamie actually liked the cabin, either.
Alex pushed the thought aside and focused on more important things. Breakfast was great, at least, and a little familiar from last time he had been to Russia. It was solid and there was a lot of it, and last time that had meant a day spent hiking. Alex already looked forward to a chance to explore the area.
Breakfast passed in silence with just the two of them on the couch. Jamie didn't speak and there was no TV, something Alex hadn't even realised until then. The only sounds came from the fireplace. Even the outside was muted by solid walls and thick windows. It was different from home, where something was always going on – Matilda playing or the TV or his mum doing something or another – and Alex wasn't sure he liked it.
How were they even doing? It was the second night Alex had spent away from his mum and Matilda since Geneva. He hadn't thought about it in Saint Petersburg because he had been too tired and distracted but … now he wasn't, and he'd had too long to think about it before he fell asleep.
They were okay and Alex knew that because Jamie would have checked, but the worry still nagged.
It wasn't until Alex was done with breakfast and he'd had time to make his thoughts make sense that he looked back at Jamie.
"You're not saying something again. Like dad does."
The sharp sting that they were keeping something from him and Alex could tell, but no one wanted to say what it was. Because he was a kid. Like it was better that he knew nothing and could stare at the ceiling at night and wonder how bad it was when he wasn't allowed to know.
"You have your parents' intuition."
That wasn't an answer, that was just waving the truth in front of him, and Jamie knew that, too. Alex's eyes narrowed and Jamie met them with that same calmness he always had. Normally it was reassuring. Now, it just made Alex angrier.
"Why are we even here?" he demanded. "Dad's never said he hunts. You never have, either. I don't think you even like this place. It's ugly and creepy and if you're trying to teach me a lesson or something, then that's stupid way to do it."
Jamie's expression didn't change. Calm and patient and utterly unmoving. "It will be a useful skill for you to learn."
What, shooting innocent animals for fun? Was he going to come home with a deer or a duck or something for his own room as well? There was nothing useful about that. Alex's expression hardened.
"I already know how to shoot." And Jamie knew that, since he'd been there for those lessons plenty of times.
Something shifted in Jamie's expression but before Alex could figure out what it meant, Jamie answered.
"Targets, yes," he agreed. "Not living, breathing creatures."
Animals, like the ones on the wall, with glass eyes and cobwebs in their fur, and Alex stilled. The memories were sharp and vicious and unwanted -
- The terrace in Geneva, black and white and silent on the monitor in the safe-room; four men working on one of the windows and -
- then they weren't; dead on the ground and dark stains on the hard tiles and Alex knew his mum had fired those shots -
- and he he knew at that moment what Jamie wasn't going to say.
"… People," Alex said. "Like the men in Geneva."
He swallowed. His mouth felt dry all of a sudden. He knew the answer but now he wished he didn't and he wondered how long before Jamie or someone would have told him if he hadn't already guessed. In a year? Two? Jamie definitely hadn't planned to do it now, Alex knew that much.
Jamie would have said ducks or rabbits or – something. Not people.
Jamie didn't speak, didn't move, didn't seem to do anything but watch him, and Alex counted the seconds in the silence. Would he lie? Deflect the truth? Alex didn't know. Did he want Jamie to lie, even if neither of them would believe it? He didn't know that, either.
Finally Jamie moved, just slightly. He reached out and brushed Alex's cheek with his thumb like he had done before when Alex had been upset, and Alex felt sudden tears sting his eyes.
"Alex." Jamie made his name sound almost like a sigh, like he was sorry, and Alex swallowed against the lump in his throat.
"I saw mum kill those men. When they attacked us. On the monitors in the safe-room."
He had never told anyone. His mum had been all alone with them and barely slept between Alex's own nightmares and the need to keep them safe. Jamie had arrived but Jamie had been focused on security, too, and then his dad had been home but only briefly, and Jamie had gone with him to – make sure it wouldn't happen again, and -
- Alex hadn't wanted to upset anyone. He wasn't a kid. Those people had deserved it, Alex knew that. They were the ones who'd attacked them and if it hadn't been because his mum and dad had always been so strict about security … Alex didn't want to think about what might have happened.
They had deserved it and everything had moved so fast and Alex hadn't even realised the memories still hurt that much until Jamie had managed to dig them up for him.
Jamie touched his cheek again. Then he lowered his hand.
"Your mother is a skilled shooter," he murmured. "She knew she could not afford to miss."
Skilled shooter. Alex knew she was, they had trained together before, he'd just … never realised what she had been training for. What his dad and Jamie had -
- probably been doing for years.
James and me will do whatever we can to make sure they never try again.
Alex took a sharp breath, the realisation sudden and awful and unwanted, but he couldn't make it go away again. He had caught glimpses of articles and news reports back at that cabin that he knew his mum and dad didn't want him to see. He remembered bits of overheard conversations through doors or the silence of the night; things he had wondered about but never asked. It just – somehow hadn't fit together until now. Like the pieces of a puzzle he knew he didn't want to complete.
They worked for a group of criminals. I pretended to work for them.
Why had they never gone to the police? If there were criminals hunting them, if they had to get new names and move and leave everything behind … why had they never gone to the police? Alex had never thought about it, no one had ever even mentioned the possibility, but they had always had weapons in the house and been ready to leave with no warning and there had always been a bag ready and the safe-room and -
- who did that?
Alex had never really thought about it before. It had just been the way things were. What people did. Something they didn't talk about. Now he couldn't help but wonder.
How did his dad make money? His mum stayed at home. His dad did something with numbers and stocks but – they had moved now and he was still travelling and what sort of stocks meant he was gone that much?
And Jamie – Jamie was a pilot, he flew helicopters, but he had never talked about the people he flew around. Alex had always just assumed they were tourists but now he realised that he didn't actually know. Jamie talked about the places he had been if Alex asked and was always willing to spend hours discussion helicopters, but – how much did Alex actually know about what he did?
Sébastien's dad had worked with stocks, too. He had usually been home late but he hadn't travelled like Alex's dad did. He hadn't taught Sébastien self-defence when he was home, either. He had been short and friendly and a little out of shape and liked weird, fancy food. He hadn't gone for a run every morning like Alex's dad and Jamie did. He hadn't taught Sébastien to shoot. Alex had always known never to tell anyone and he had never questioned that, either, but Sébastien couldn't keep a secret for anything and if he had learned that sort of thing, Alex would have known.
If I stop working now, people will think we're scared.
Something nagged at the edge of Alex's awareness but his mind shied away from it and he forced his attention elsewhere. He had learned to listen to that knot in his stomach sometimes. The one that told him to leave something alone, even if he usually didn't manage.
James was my student.
Alex took a deep breath and tried to make sense of it all; too many memories he suddenly had to look at in a whole different way and he didn't even know where to start, and -
All I can do is try to keep you as safe as I can.
"… Why did we never go to the police?" Alex didn't want to ask. He did, anyway. "If someone wants to hurt us because dad used to be undercover, why didn't the police ever help?"
Your father was a soldier when I met him. His last job before you were born was to go undercover in a large group of criminals and find out how to stop them. They found out and wanted revenge. They've never stopped looking for him.
Alex hadn't questioned his mum's explanation and now he wondered why. But they had just escaped and he hadn't even known if his dad or Jamie were okay and … he had been too scared back then to wonder. All he had wanted was his family, safe and home.
What kind of soldier went undercover with criminals? The more Alex considered it, the more holes he found in the story he had been told, and the list of questions kept growing. He didn't think anyone had lied to him but – that didn't mean he wasn't missing the most important details.
"I think," Jamie said quietly, "that you have already guessed why."
Because soldiers didn't go undercover. Because if his dad had worked for the police, it would have been a much easier answer to give him. Because Alex was getting increasingly sure that his dad hadn't been a soldier at all by then but a secret agent or a spy and that he wasn't any more. Because there had been no one to help them, no one to go to, just the five of them and new names and new identities in a whole new country, and -
- Just how many people were they hiding from?
"… because dad was a spy or an agent of some kind." Alex finally said. "And he left. If dad had still been working for – whoever it was, then they should have helped when we were attacked. They should have done something. Mum had to do it alone. Matilda's just a baby and I couldn't help. No one knew we were there. Mum said those people have never stopped hunting dad. It's been eight years. If dad was still working for whoever made him go undercover, they should have done something."
There was a flicker of something in Jamie's expression. Alex recognised it as pride and despite everything, the thought unfurled in his chest, warm and welcome. Jamie's approval mattered.
"I never believed that your father had been killed," Jamie said, careful with his words the way he always was. "I knew he was an undercover agent. I expected his death had been faked for the sake of extracting him from the operation. I wanted an explanation, though, so I arrived at his doorstep in London. You were four weeks old. In an other world, you would have been raised in France. There were already plans in place for the three of you to move to France under new identities."
James figured out it was a lie and found us.
More and more of his mum and dad's explanations started to fall into place, bits and pieces matching up with what Jamie now said.
"Dad told me." Alex took a slow breath. Let it back out. Jamie didn't look surprised so Alex figured his dad had probably told Jamie he had shared it, too.
They were supposed to have moved to France. His mum and dad and him. But they hadn't. They had moved to Geneva, and Jamie had gone with them and become Alex's brother. And they had done it without any help from the people his dad had worked for.
If he could figure it out, other people could, too.
"Dad wasn't just worried about the people he went undercover with. He didn't trust the people he worked for, either."
It was not a question. Alex was absolutely sure about his conclusion. Jamie's nod just confirmed it.
"There was no security, not even a single guard. They relied entirely on your father's supposed death being convincing enough to dissuade any interest. My presence proved they had miscalculated, and the group your father went undercover with had – has – a long history of gaining access to classified information. They have managed to infiltrate a number of places that should have had far better safeguards in place. His concern was … not unwarranted, I expect."
"So we left." Away from London, to Geneva and new names and … why had they never gone to the police?
Because it had all been a lie. Because his dad had probably worked for the government and they could have made sure all their French papers were real, but his dad couldn't have done the same when they were on their own.
Alex had accepted that Ryan Alexander Greaves was not a real person. That it was just a piece of paper meant to keep them safe. The awful realisation that Alexander Morrison had never been real, either, hit him like a sledgehammer.
Was his name even Alex? Did he even want to know?
"… What's my name?" Alex asked before he could change his mind. "My real name. I know it's not Alex Morrison."
"Alex. Alexander John Rider," Jamie replied. He had answered immediately and that warmth was back; the thought that he hadn't been more than a few months old when he had become Alex Morrison but Jamie still remembered his real name. "You were born on the thirteenth of February. John is your father's legal given name; your mother's is Helen. You have an uncle in London – your father's brother – who saw you as an infant but who still works for your father's old employers. They worked for the same agency for a while. Your grandparents on both sides died before you were born. You have a godfather, another of your father's old colleagues, who retired some years back on account of severe health issues. You have an aunt and uncle on your mother's side as well as more distant relatives on both sides, none of which your parents have stayed in touch with in their adult years."
Alex Rider.
He had a name now. A birthday. A family he had never met and most of them were dead or people his parents hadn't wanted to see but – it was more than he had now. He had always known his grandparents were dead, but he had never known he had other family. His mum and dad had never mentioned anyone and Alex … hadn't ever wondered. Lots of people didn't have siblings.
Rider. The name felt weird and alien, the same way Greaves did. Alex wasn't sure if it was supposed to feel special to him. Mostly it was another reminder that his entire life had apparently been a lie.
Jamie didn't say anything, just watched, and Alex felt the bitterness return.
"Are you even allowed to tell me? No one tells me anything."
No one had lied, not that Alex could actually remember, but his mum and dad had sure twisted the truth as much as they could. And now he was suddenly, magically old enough to be told the truth? Alex didn't believe that for a second.
"It was only a matter of time before you asked the right – or perhaps wrong – questions. We all agreed that when it happened, you would be told the truth. This is sooner than we wished, perhaps, but not unexpected. You have your parents' intuition and intelligence. Once you discover a puzzle in front of you, you do not relent until you have solved it. You are old enough to understand both the importance of secrecy and the danger that remains. It may make your new identity easier to adapt to as well."
"Because Alex Morrison didn't exist, anyway, so what's one more fake name, right?"
The tears stung again but Alex ignored them. This was – too much; stupid and overwhelming and he never wanted that kind of life, and then Jamie's arms were around him and he was sobbing into his chest as months and months of stress and fear caught up with him.
"It's not fair." He still had nightmares and his mum still checked the locks and security three times before she went to bed, and Alex knew she had been up to check so many times when a fox or a cat or something triggered the system, and there was no one else to help. His dad travelled and so did Jamie and -
"… I want to go home," he pleaded. He didn't say to Geneva and he didn't need to. "I just – want to be normal. I don't want this and Matilda is going to think this is how it's supposed to be and it's not fair."
Jamie ran a hand through his hair, slow and soothing, and Alex felt a little bit of the tension ease up. He took a deep breath, tried to push it all away again – the fear and anger and stress – but it turned into a half-sob instead.
He was so tired and everything was overwhelming and he just … wanted their home back. His room and his toys and the tree he had learned to climb in but he would never see it again. The burned-out ruins of what had been home had been in the middle of one of those articles he wasn't supposed to have seen. The picture had caught his eye and he had known instantly what it had been. The bone-deep sense of loss in his chest had told him before he recognised it himself.
Jamie had lost everyone when he was fourteen. His home and his parents and … he had been careful to keep it age-appropriate but Alex had enough pieces to fill in more of the puzzle now.
Age-appropriate. Alex hated that word because it just meant someone was hiding things again, but at least Jamie didn't pretend it was all fine. And – maybe it made sense, then, the hunting and the awful animals and everything. Jamie had taught him how to pickpocket so he had a way to survive without money, the same thing Jamie had wished someone had taught him before he had to survive on his own. And now he was supposed to learn to shoot people because there were people hunting them, and maybe one day his mum wouldn't be able to protect him, and Jamie wanted him safe.
Jamie had been alone at fourteen. He'd had no money and no idea of how to survive or protect himself and he wanted to make sure Alex would never be in the same position. That Matilda, when she was old enough, would learn the same.
Alex took another deep breath. This time it was uneven but didn't turn into a sob and he wiped his eyes with his sleeve. With the tears gone, he mostly felt tired. Wrung out.
Who had taught Jamie? Alex didn't know but he was sure it hasn't been nice. Jamie had been eight when he had first learned how to shoot, he had told him that. Military training for kids no older than Alex himself was. Had they been taught about shooting people then, too? Or had it all just – been a game somehow? Like learning to shoot had been to Alex at first. Something cool and interesting and time spent with his dad.
Had Jamie hunted, too, when he was eight? He had lived in a tiny village. His parents had been poor. They would have needed the food, then. Not – dead animals on a wall and a cabin that was larger than their home in Geneva had been.
"How did you learn?" Alex stopped, then forced himself to continue. "… Hunting. You were my age when you learned to shoot."
How to shoot people, he couldn't make himself say but Jamie understood, anyway.
"Military training in school was to prepare for our later military service. We learned to shoot and maintain a gun, certainly, but the majority of the activities were … simpler things. To take orders, to fit into a military hierarchy, to encourage our interest through rewards. Military games against other schools to encourage competition – how to navigate with a compass and map, how to make our way through a forest fast and unseen."
Not that different from what Alex already knew, then. From the things Jamie and his parents had already taught him over the years.
Jamie paused. He looked like he was considering what to say but before Alex could open his mouth, he continued.
"I was nineteen when I became part of the same group of criminals your father was sent undercover with. They had a training centre for their new recruits – a school, they called it. It taught everything necessary for such a line of work. Your father was an instructor there for a while."
"And he taught you." Another piece of the puzzle. Another little part of a past that he had to figure out in bits and pieces.
"Eventually." Jamie paused for another second. "Your father is skilled with weapons but more importantly, he is a gifted teacher. He taught your mother many of the same lessons his students had been expected to know."
- Geneva, and four dead people on the monitor, and Alex had left behind his home and his friends and his name and everything he knew in fifteen minutes -
"- And me," he said when he realised something else. His mum handled a gun the same way Alex had been taught to. She shot the same way, and did the same things, and his dad had taught both of them. His mum was good. Not as good as his dad or Jamie, because Alex didn't think that anyone was, but good. Alex knew enough to say that he wasn't bad, either.
He had learned to shoot when he was six. Had his dad already planned it back then? Alex didn't want to think about it but couldn't shake the thought, either, low and nagging and persistent. Maybe this was sooner than he was supposed to have found out but … had this always been his dad's plan? His mum had never gone hunting. His mum was also an adult. Maybe she hadn't needed it. Maybe she had learned the same way and Alex had never known.
"Alex." Jamie's voice was soft but insistent the same way Alex's teachers' had been, and Alex instinctively looked back at him. "We never want you to need these skills. You or Matilda. If you go through your whole life and never need to raise a weapon against another person, that will be a good thing. There is nothing we want more for the two of you than safe, normal lives, with people you love and careers that never force you to choose between duty and family. If you can tell your grandchildren as an old man about how you grew up with more names and languages than you remember and have it be nothing more than an amusing anecdote, we will have done our jobs right. If you have forgotten in seventy years that we ever had this conversation, if you have not needed to touch a gun in fifty years, if you have been able to only ever choose your home based on what you want and need as a family and not a hundred security concerns … that is a good thing. Do better than we have. That is all we want for you."
The words made something in Alex's chest twist sharply, and he clenched his fists in response to keep the sting in his eyes from turning into tears again.
"I just want to be normal."
Have friends and grow up in one place under one name and not have to suddenly remember that Jason was his uncle and not his brother and that his parents and Matilda had different names and -
"There is nothing we would rather want for you," Jamie agreed quietly. "But right now, that is not an option. In five or ten years, perhaps. We have options. They merely take time."
Time. Five or ten years felt like forever. He would be a teenager, almost an adult, and Matilda would be old enough to have had the same talk from Jamie.
Jamie fell silent. The only sounds came from the fireplace and the old clock. Above them, the snow sheep watched with unseeing eyes. Hunting had been a lot more exciting in theory.
Alex didn't want to. He didn't want to but at the same time there was an awful knot in his stomach that told him that he didn't have a choice. That he had to. They escaped in Geneva but he hadn't been able to do anything to help and if something had happened to his mum, he would have been alone with Matilda. There would have been no one else to help them.
"… I don't want to," Alex said.
I don't want to, but he had to, and Jamie had to have seen that, too, because he ran his hand through Alex's hair again, gentle and soothing.
"I know." A heartbeat. Another. Alex counted the seconds until Jamie spoke again. "I think, perhaps, that this week, I will do the hunting. In summer, when we visit Russia again, you can try fishing. There is an abundance of birds in this area. I will hunt and we will prepare them together. Would that be acceptable?"
Logically, Alex knew it wasn't any different from the dead chickens he had sometimes helped his mum with. Those came in plastic wrap, these came with feathers. They had both still been alive once.
Above them, the trio of ducks was still caught in endless flight. Glass eyes watched them from every wall in the cabin.
Alex didn't want to hunt anything himself. Jamie had promised that he would do it himself and that Alex wouldn't have to … and that would be good enough for now.
He had to learn. One day, he might have to shoot someone, because his mum had, and if Jamie thought hunting would make it easier … Alex would do it.
Not now. In summer, maybe, but for now he would simply watch and learn and hope that maybe that would make it easier.
Like their first night in Russia, their last night was spent in Saint Petersburg as well. The hotel was different but still old and fancy and so expensive that the chairs in their room looked like they came from a museum somewhere. It looked like the sort of place that was meant for things to live in, not for people, but at least the hotel didn't have dead animals everywhere. It was the first time in a week and a half that Alex hadn't looked up to find some animal or another watch him with creepy glass eyes.
Jamie had let him have fast food for dinner as well; McDonald's that tasted just the same in Saint Petersburg as it had in Geneva. It was the first time in a week and a half he hadn't helped Jamie with dinner, too. Alex never wanted to help pluck another bird again. The first one had been sort of interesting. The rest had just been boring and seemed to take longer and longer with every single one.
Alex was curled up by the large window, on the wide ledge lined with a soft cushion and old-looking pillows -
"Brocade," Jamie had told him -
- and watched the world outside pass by like he had done the first night of their trip, what felt like forever ago. It was past his bedtime but Jamie hadn't made a big deal about it. Just told him to brush his teeth and put his pyjamas on but otherwise let him stay up.
Sankt-Peterburg, Petrograd, Leningrad.
And now it was Sankt-Peterburg again.
Morrison, Greaves … Rider.
Alex would never be Morrison again, he knew that. He hated the name Greaves and everything that came with it. And Rider … Jamie had been clear that he was never allowed to use that name. It was dangerous, something that might help people find them, and Alex knew that unlike Sankt-Petersburg, he would probably never get his name back. Morrison or Rider.
Would he still be Greaves next year, or the year after? His dad had said he wanted to retire. Would they have to move again, then? Learn another name and another language? Alex wouldn't be surprised. Not when there were still people hunting them. Not when there was no one to help them.
Come summer, they would be back in Russia, just Jamie and him. They would start with fishing and if Alex felt ready, move on to hunting from there. A week and a half ago, he would have said no. Now, after watching Jamie … maybe it would be okay. The first day had been awful. By the last day, the wait had been boring more than anything. Jamie was patient. Alex had wanted to get up and do something.
It will be a useful skill for you to learn, Jamie had said.
Alex hadn't touched a weapon the entire time they had been there. He still had the nagging feeling that Jamie had gotten things his way somehow. Alex had gotten used to it. From watching Jamie, but … it was still progress. Or whatever Jamie and his dad would call it, because he didn't think his mum would have liked it any more than he did.
"Alex?" Jamie's voice was low in the silence of the room, and Alex glanced over and saw the unspoken question.
"Just thinking," he said.
Jamie didn't prod him for more of an explanation. Just nodded. He seemed to understand when Alex didn't want to talk, and Alex was grateful for that. "You should get to bed."
He probably should. His eyes had been drifting shut for a while. Alex nodded. Slipped down from the window.
Tomorrow, they would be home again. Alex had wanted answers and now he had them. Some of them, at least.
A part of him still wished he had never asked.