Summary: Alec goes to Q's place after a bad mission. Takes place before Q is appointed Quartermaster. Bright Star 'verse, but can be read alone. Angst and brotherly fluff (very heavy on the angst).
Note: This story takes place some time after my fic "Crash and Burn." Q's real name is Danny Drake and he is the son of a former double-oh agent. He met Alec in my story "The Recruit" and they developed a close friendship.
Title: "Little Lost Robot" is the title of an Isaac Asimov short story. This fic might have come about because I'd just finished reading a collection of Asimov's short stories (Robot Visions) and was in the mood for robot philosophy. My brain is weird.
Little Lost Robot
February 2010
Daniel Drake stopped in front of the door of his flat and sighed, steeling himself for what he might find inside. His security system had alerted him to the fact that an intruder had dropped in on him unannounced. He shifted the heavy backpack slung over one shoulder and, with a decisive nod, let himself into the dark flat.
"Alec," he called softly, "I'm going to turn the lights on. I will be very upset if you shoot me."
No answer.
He let out a nearly inaudible sigh and flicked the light switch on.
Alec Trevelyan was sitting slouched on his couch, staring with unfocused eyes at the dark television screen. He had a glass of dark liquid in his hand, and there was an open bottle on the coffee table in front of him.
A grey cat sat beside him and meowed indignantly at Danny, as if to say, 'What took you so long?' It jumped down with a soft click of its nails against the hardwood floor and made its way to its master.
"Found my wine, did you?" Danny sighed, approaching cautiously. He leaned down to give Turing a quick rub between the ears. The contents of his bag shifted with a sharp clink.
"Only alcohol you have in the place," Alec grumbled, his voice rough. "Cheap wine. You have terrible taste." His eyes flickered up to take in the worried expression on his young friend's face.
The teenager - nineteen, nearly twenty - pursed his mouth. He swung the backpack down off of his shoulder and set it gently down on the floor with a soft clunk of heavy glass. Kneeling, he unzipped it and pulled out a bottle of amber liquid. The cat poked its head into the bag, curious to see what else was inside. Danny gently batted the inquisitive nose aside.
"Which is why I stopped for liquor on the way home," he said, setting the whiskey on the low table. He pulled out another bottle - vodka this time. "Is that enough, do you think? I don't know how much it takes to get you really drunk."
Alec stared at him with dead eyes.
Danny looked down, unsure of what to say. He cleared his throat. "You did want to get drunk, didn't you?"
Alec snorted derisively. "Would I have come here if I'd wanted to get pissed? Could've gone to a bar instead. Picked up some hot piece of ass, made a night of it."
Danny furrowed his brows, thinking, watching him in that careful, analyzing way he had. "But then you would have had to watch yourself," he concluded. "It's safer here."
Alec snorted sardonically. "And I need to feel safe, do I?"
Danny nodded, suddenly decisive due to having followed his line of reasoning to its logical conclusion.
"Yes," he said firmly, "That's why you're here. Because I have top-notch security and I'm a friend and you can talk to me if you feel like it. I also won't be offended if you don't want to talk. You don't want to be alone tonight, but you're not in the mood for sex. Another double-oh would understand, but none of them are in town. So here you are."
Alec glared. "Are you finished psychoanalyzing me? I would have gone to Psych if I'd wanted that."
Anyone else would have cowered under the look, but all Danny did was throw up his hands in exasperation and get to his feet. "Oh, for pity's sake, will you stop being contrary and open the damned bottle? You're not the only one in need of a drink."
Then he pivoted on his heel and walked to the kitchen to get himself a clean glass and fix himself a quick dinner, shrugging his baggy jacket off as he went.
Alec watched him go and ran his hand across his face, suddenly very tired. The kid was smart; that was a given. He knew Alec well, too.
He tossed back the remaining wine in his tumbler and reached for the vodka. Danny had splurged and gotten Alec's brand. The whiskey wasn't quite as nice, but it would do for getting blind, stinking drunk, since he did actually want to do that, despite what he'd said.
When Danny returned, juggling a tumbler and two plates of sandwiches awkwardly, he offered a silent apology to the kid by filling his glass first.
By the time the first bottle was gone, Alec was feeling a warm buzz and was decidedly tipsy, having ignored the sandwich that had silently been offered to him. He had drunk the lion's share of the vodka, since the kid - the lightweight - only sipped at his glass between nibbles of his own sandwich while reading a well-loved Isaac Asimov book about robots with his sockfeet tucked up under his legs and the grey striped cat curled up on his lap.
Alec leaned forward to open the next bottle, fully aware of the eyes watching him from behind the edge of the book.
He sighed. Was he ready to talk?
No, he decided, once again raising his now refilled glass to his lips with a slightly unsteady hand. He was not. Not about what had happened, at least.
Another topic, however…
"Thinking about building a robot?"
"Hm?" the kid murmured absentmindedly. "Oh, no. Not right now. I already did that when I was a kid. It wasn't as interesting as I thought it would be."
Alec snorted. "Of course a bloody robot wasn't interesting enough for you."
Danny placed a bookmark between the worn pages with neat, precise movements and closed it. "It wasn't so much that it was uninteresting," he said thoughtfully. "I wanted a friend, and it wasn't."
Alec felt a twinge of sadness for the lonely young boy Danny must have been as a child, isolated by the very genius that was at the core of who he was.
The long, clever fingers absentmindedly caressed the faded cover of the book. "It only did what I programmed it to do. It didn't really think for itself or evolve." He shook his head and smiled ruefully. "Of course, it was only a rudimentary robot. A more complex one would be able to learn and adapt."
"You'd be able to do it now, wouldn't you?" Alec said. "You're better now than when you were a kid."
"Well, yes," Danny said slowly, "I could. Of course I could."
"You could make a robot that could do what I do, better than I'd do it," Alec went on.
Danny's lips thinned, and he narrowed his eyes thoughtfully at Alec before he responded. "We have drones, of course, as well as robots that would be able to detonate bombs and fire guns with less of a chance of being detected and with more accuracy. At this stage, they are being piloted by humans and don't make any real choices on their own - not because we can't make the technology to do so, but more for the reason that we don't want robots to evolve enough to take over the world. There are also robots specially designed for certain tasks only; those are the most common types. They don't make any actual decisions either, and there's always a human overseeing the machine, lest it do something disastrously wrong. Wrong by human standards, that is, not by the rules encoded in it."
He was blinking rapidly and frowning, which meant that he was doing a bit of thinking and figuring things out.
"But regardless," he said firmly, catching Alec's eyes in his bright green gaze, "In my opinion, a robot would never be able to replace you. For one thing, you're Alec, and you're my friend, and you're completely irreplaceable in that aspect."
Alec would have squirmed under the intense scrutiny if not for his training.
"For another," Danny went on, "no matter what kind of 'brain,' so to speak, you put in a robot, you'd have to program it first. And a robot brain would never be able to compete with a human one in terms of making decisions - the correct decisions for a given situation, based on more than programmed rules."
He continued, "Humans make decisions based on a multitude of factors, only some of which the mind actively notices, but human perception is more than that. There are so many subconscious details that the human mind notices that simply cannot be programmed into a robot brain. That's why human instinct will always be better than a robot brain in terms of decision-making, given the same data. Robots might be faster and more precise, but human instinct is better overall, in many cases. Most humans have common sense and morals, and that's not something you can program into a robot."
Alec swallowed hard as he looked at the clever, young, understanding face beside him.
"How much do you know?" he croaked.
Danny set his book down on the table and busied his hands with petting his cat.
"I heard you had a bad mission," he said softly, hesitantly, not meeting his gaze. "I looked into it a bit." He nervously worried his bottom lip between his teeth, his eyes flickering up to meet Alec's. "I don't think it was your fault," he said softly.
Alec snorted loudly. "Not my fault." He laughed mirthlessly. "Not my bloody fault, was it? Not my fault I killed three children? Who never did any harm to anyone? Not my fault?!"
The cat startled and was off and out of the room at his shout.
Danny sat and looked at him unflinchingly. "You have a license to kill in the name of Queen and country," he said firmly. "You made the decision to do what you did because you deemed it the best option to obtain the desired results."
Alec huffed, slumping back against the sofa cushions. "It's not that clinical." He sighed and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. "Three children. The youngest one was just a baby. A toddler."
He could feel Danny looking at him sympathetically.
"You had to, or you wouldn't have done it."
Alec laughed, the taste of it sour on his tongue. "Did I? Did someone put a gun to my head and make me do it? Was I ordered to do it?"
"Your orders were to eliminate a terrorist before he solidified his plans for his next target," Danny said calmly. "By any means necessary. I haven't been at MI6 as long as you, but I know what that means."
"So I made the choice to kill three children, not to mention their mother and the pilot of the damned plane I blew up. Just to get to one man. Makes me as bad as he was." Alec tossed off his glass and reached for the bottle again.
Danny sighed and pulled the bottle out of his hands, placing it closer to himself. It wouldn't have prevented Alec from getting to it, but they both knew that it was more symbolic than anything. Alec stayed where he was.
Danny bit his lip and spoke again in that calming, soft way he had. "You did it to get to one man who held the reins of a terrorist organization that had plans to bomb who knows how many cities around the world. Now that you've taken him out, they will be concentrating on internal reorganization and fighting for the top position, rather than planning attacks. We now have the time and opportunity to infiltrate and interfere in the organization to prevent the attacks altogether, sparing many thousands of lives, including those of countless children. You know all this, Alec," he said gently.
When Alec didn't respond, Danny went on. "It doesn't make anyone feel good about it, but it was something that had to be done. And you did it. This was a matter of numbers, Alec."
"I could have found another way…" Alec knew that he couldn't have.
Danny knew that Alec knew this. "Once he reached Pakistan, there was too great a chance that we would have lost him. You had to take him out on that plane. He knew that he was being targeted and yet he decided to take his wife and children with him on the same aircraft anyway."
Alec snorted. "So it was his fault?"
Danny shrugged. "If we are assigning fault, then yes, I'd say that the overall fault lies with him. He didn't have to turn to terrorist activities for ideologies he didn't even believe in, based on our intel. All evidence pointed to him having been in it for the money and power. Therefore, if blame needs to be assigned, then why not to him and his greed?"
Alec slammed his hand on the arm of the sofa. "Is it that clear-cut for you?" he demanded. "All black and white, numbers on a page?"
"No," Danny said, deadpan. "I'm only trying to make you feel better. Is it working?"
Alec let out a surprised guffaw that sounded more like a sob.
"But really," Danny sighed, "what I see is that it had to be done. Would you have felt better about it if you had been piloting a drone remotely and instructed it to fire on the plane instead? What if you had ordered a robot to take the target down 'by any means necessary,' giving it the reasons that were given to you: killing this one man at this one time would prevent an unknown number of terrorist attacks that would have resulted in an untold number of deaths. The robot would weigh the number of lives saved against the number of lives taken and make the same choice you did."
Danny went on, oblivious to the fact that Alec was far too drunk to follow along. "Would it be your fault or the robot's? Is it your fault or that of the person or organization who gave you the order? Why does blame need to be assigned at all?" he asked rhetorically, getting heated. "It happened. It had to happen in order to prevent a series of other casualties, and it did. In addition-"
"Will you shut up, Danny?" Alec burst out. "Christ. I didn't come here for a philosophical monologue on morality or to get lectured on bloody robots."
The younger man fixed him with a triumphant look. "You came here to get drunk in safety and comfort in the company of a good friend."
Alec threw up his hands in defeat. "Fine! Yes. I admit it. Now will you please shut up?" He couldn't help it, but a smile snuck onto his face as he said it.
"Gladly." With a satisfied smirk, Danny picked his book back off of the table and stuck his nose in it again. "But first, eat your sandwich."
"Bugger off."
They sat there in a comfortable silence, Danny with his book and Alec lounging against the back of the couch with his eyes closed, listening to his friend breathe. The cat came creeping back, having decided to forgive Alec for his outburst and allowing him to stroke his soft fur.
"Will you please stop staring at me?" Alec mumbled presently, having noticed the frequent looks directed at him by his companion.
Danny lowered his book, now that the game was up. "Do you want a hug?"
Alec's head shot up and he blinked at Danny, baffled. "What?"
Danny squirmed in his seat. "It's just that...Well, despite your Russian heritage, you are very British. And British men often have trouble displaying emotions that aren't considered manly and they can't accept physical and emotional comfort of the nonsexual sort when they're vulnerable. Emotionally constipated toxic masculinity, you know? Just as British as tea and crumpets, really. You're alright with roughhousing, but seeking out nonsexual physical comfort would likely be too much vulnerability for you."
"So," he said, fixing Alec with a steady look. "Do you want a hug? It does wonders towards making one feel better, and I won't tell anyone."
Alec stared. "You want to give me a hug."
Danny heaved a frustrated sigh. "I'm asking if you want me to give you a purely platonic embrace with the aim of providing physical and psychological comfort at this emotionally vulnerable time."
"Bloody hell." Trust Danny Drake to turn the simple act of hugging into some psychological mumbo jumbo.
"I'll take that as a no, then," Danny sniffed and turned back to his book.
Alec chuckled. "Fine. Come here, if you're going to sulk."
"I'm not sulking." He was definitely sulking.
"You are. Come here and give me a bloody hug," Alec commanded.
He reached out and yanked his skinny companion into his arms and against his chest. Danny yelped and scrambled to keep himself from falling right off of the sofa before settling in an awkward position that bent his head back and arm out in an odd position. He had lost his book somewhere along the line, too, which miffed him.
"This isn't exactly what I had in mind, Alec," he said after a strained minute or two, sounding a little smooshed. To his surprise, the bigger man shuddered and pulled him closer.
"Oh," he said softly, "Alright then." He wriggled his arm free and managed to maneuver the both of them into a proper hug, with Alec's face pressed against his suddenly wet shoulder. "It's okay, Alec." He patted the drunken man's shaking back and stroked his hair. "It's okay."
They stayed there for a while, Alec heaving silent, painful sobs against his friend's shoulder, and Danny quietly providing the comfort the older man didn't know he'd needed.
Alec shifted after a few minutes, moving slowly out of Danny's arms with his face averted in embarrassment.
Danny reached down and scooped Turing up from where he had escaped to, and dumped him in Alec's lap without a word.
Alec took it for what it was: silent encouragement to cuddle another living thing that wouldn't be quite as embarrassing as hugging a younger man with whom he was not having sexual relations.
Turing, sensing that his human's companion - the one with the big hands who had rescued him from cold and hunger as a kitten - needed comfort more than the cat needed a quiet place to hide, consented to being used as a living security blanket...at least for the time being.
Danny then fished his book out from under a cushion and found his page again, settling back into his comfortable couch. He stuck his socked feet under Alec's thigh, wiggling his toes until the other man lifted his leg and let him shove both feet under it.
Alec raised an eyebrow at him.
"My toes are cold," Danny complained, and flipped a page.
Alec let a small smile creep onto his face; he knew that what the younger man was doing was anchoring him, but he let the lie pass.
"Thanks," he said after a long silence.
"Alec," Danny said softly, "if you were a bad man, you wouldn't feel guilty about it."
Alec swallowed hard and focused on petting the purring cat in his lap. "It's not that simple," he said. "You don't know-" He broke off, shaking his head.
He could feel the jade-green eyes burning into the side of his face and neck.
"Alec, you forget that I've seen my father's files," the younger man said quietly, "I know what he has done, and I don't love him any less. I don't respect him any less either. If anything, I respect him more, especially since I began working at Six and now that I- I've seen death, and how easy it is to kill and how difficult it is at the same time. Why would I feel any differently about you than I did before this mission?"
Alec rubbed his face and swore under his breath about cocky brats who thought they knew better than everyone else.
"Of course I do," Danny said in a matter-of-fact tone of voice. "My IQ is significantly higher than that of anyone else you know. How many other people do you know with six doctorates and over a thousand patents?"
Alec snickered and swept Danny's feet off of the sofa before diving at him. "Little smart-ass," he said, trying to catch him up in a noogie.
Danny leapt away with a startled yelp, while the cat decided that enough was enough and escaped to the bedroom with a disgruntled yowl.
Danny skidded and scrambled around his flat with a very drunk double-oh in pursuit, both of them whooping with laughter by the time they crashed back onto the couch. Danny's neighbor thumped on the wall of the flat (it was, after all, very late...or very early), and the two of them dissolved into furtive giggles.
They fell asleep there, tangled up in each other like a pile of puppies.
When Danny woke up the following morning, Alec was gone. So was Danny's book.
"Bastard. I was reading that."
At least Alec had washed the glasses and dishes, evidently having eaten the sandwich that Danny had made for him.
Then he stopped and glared at the refrigerator, where Alec had scribbled a note on the magnetic whiteboard there:
'I hate tuna, by the way. Would prefer bacon next time. ~A'
"You can make your own bloody sandwich next time, arsehole," Danny grumbled, putting the kettle on for his breakfast tea.
. . . . .