I am a horrible human being. Feel free to despise me and give up on this story. I wouldn't blame you. It's been nearly a year since I last updated and I didn't even remember the story very well, so sorry if this chapter feels a little weird. However, it's also my longest chapter yet, so can you see I'm trying to make things better?

I hate long author's notes, so I'll keep it short. Basically, I am determined to get this fic finished. I've included a lot of stuff in this chapter (or what I feel like is a lot because it took me ages to write) to try and speed up the process, but it will probably still take a while to finish. So, please tell you'll bear with me until it's finished. It will be. I just don't know when.

By the way, I also flit between different tenses here. I don't like writing in present anymore, so I changed it to past a little while in. I wrote the beginning of this chapter a while ago (like 10 months) so it might feel a little different to the rest. Sorry if the tenses annoy you.

Anyway, enjoy the chapter. And Ben.

Ben Daniels.

I sit up so fast that my head starts swimming and familiar black dots ruin my vision of Ben Daniels. Ben. Fox. Agent Daniels. Family. How is he alive? Unless this is another dream or something one of those inception dreams. But… it feels real. The Infirmary, the bed, the unit all crammed together into this tiny room, the feeling of the ground not even shifting under my feet anymore, it's crumbling. I can hear and even feel the relief in the room, probably because I was in a coma for…how long? I feel a warm but insistent hand push me back down onto the bed and hear voices drifting around the room while my sight slowly returns, but my own voice is nowhere to be seen.

"Alex. Alex, calm down."

"That the best you got? Calm down, really?"

"It worked with you, Eagle."

"Yes, but my mind works in mysterious ways."

"I think our definitions of 'mysterious' are slightly different."

"Mysterious," Eagle rattled off monotonously, "difficult to understand, explain or identify. Synonyms; strange, puzzling, baffling. Would you like me to use it in a sentence? Anything can be anything if you loosen up your definition of anything."

Silence reigned for a few seconds as my vision finally cleared away and I looked up at Ben again, and he gave me tiny sad smile, just testing the waters. I attempted to smile back but it turned out shocked again. The silence was broken by the disgruntled voices of Wolf, Snake and Bear.

"What?"

"Sometimes, I try to understand you Eagle, I really try."

"Could, 'I'm gonna kill you' mean something else if you loosened up your definition of 'kill'?"

I see Fox shoot a non-subtle look at Bear, obviously telling him to watch it, but why?

"You fully awake now, Cub?" Wolf asks, slowly walking towards the other side of my bed.

My voice still hasn't found itself. Okay, Ben is most definitely real. His hand still on my shoulder, comforting and familiar, is all I now need to tell me that.

"I…er….wah?" is all that I manage.

I see the unit grinning at me, and Ben sighs and slumps back into his chair, still not removing his hand.

"I'm going to have to explain it again, aren't I?" He asks, seeking out the unit.

"You owe him that much, Fox." Wolf says gruffly, but somehow gently.

"It wasn't my fault…" Ben sighs again and now I really look at him, slowly getting past shock and trying to rationalise the situation. I look at the purple bruises covering his face, the black eyes and swelled up cheeks. I look at the way his dark eyes look shattered and exhausted, permanent bags rimming them. I look at the fresh cut on his neck, like someone had tried to slice his throat, and the slow and painful movements he makes as he leans towards me, like he has worse injuries under his shirt. I don't like anything that I see.

"Ben…" I say, anger at his state allowing me to find my voice "what happened to you?" my voice cracks.

He gives me a small tired smile and just says, "I think we should be focusing on what happened to you, right now. You're the one who got shot."

"You're the one who's MIA."

"Well, I'm obviously not anymore, am I? Meanwhile, you still got shot."

I blink. Then again. And again. "So…you're definitely alive?"

"Alex, I'm positive." He says, and he starts nodding enthusiastically, but stops because of that cut on his neck, and winces at it.

I decide not to question the state he's in again because I'm too busy hugging him. I swiftly lean over and shove my face into his familiar warm chest, too relieved to see him alive again to care that tears are welling up in my eyes, and too elated to feel his heart beating to care that he's ruffling my hair like I'm a child. I need this moment. I've been wishing for this moment (the reunion, not the whole 'getting shot' thing) ever since his 'death' and now it's a reality I feel like I'm entitled to act like a child for a little while. And I do.

I'm not really sure how long we stayed like that; Ben and I clinging to each other like the other would disappear any second; Wolf, Snake and Eagle looking slightly tearful themselves, so happy to have Ben Daniels and Cub back.

Everyone was a little busy in their own joyful thoughts to notice, but I thought the room still felt a little cold. When I finally pulled away from Ben's chest to rest my head contentedly on his shoulder, I realised why.

Bear was surveying the scene with an uncomfortable smile, looking out of place and as though having Ben alive was maybe the worst thing that had ever happened to him.

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"-very lucky, Cub.", Dr Costello was saying "The bullet passed through the muscles surrounding your abdomen, but never actually entered the abdominal cavity at all, so, while there was a lot of blood which caused you to suffer the blood loss that put you into that coma, there's nothing that couldn't be fixed in surgery. Those sort of wounds don't take long to heal. In fact, your body has mostly healed itself while you were in the coma." He stopped, thoughtful, "If either of these", he gestured to both my bullet wounds – heart and abdomen "were half a centimetre lower, you'd be dead. You seem to get extremely lucky with these bullets don't you?"

I was about to answer that yes, I did, Doctor Costello, but I'd really rather not get shot at all, but Ben beat me to it, mumbling, "I'd like it better if he didn't get shot in the first place." Wolf grunted in approval, while Snake and Eagle just stared at the bullet wound with the same silently horrified expression as they had when I first shown them the one above my heart. Bear had excused himself when the doctor had told them all I would be fine. I don't know where he went.

"Of course." Dr Costello said, clearing his throat, "I don't feel the need to keep you here for any longer, then. You're free to go." His gaze turned threatening now. "I don't want you doing anything strenuous for a little while though, so no obstacle course or long runs-" Eagle whined slightly at that, "Well that's not fair!" but the rest of them took no notice, "-as it could tear the wound open again."

"I know," I just wanted to get out of there and talk to Ben. We hadn't got round to it yet, and I really wanted to know what happened to him. "I've has a bullet wound before."

Dr Costello smiled sadly and sighed. He made to walk out of the room but stopped at the door, saying "You can leave once you've got changed." Wolf patted my army fatigues at the end of the bed for emphasis and pulled the curtains around my bed closed, which I felt was pretty stupid seeing as not only did the whole Unit get changed around each other every day, but also because I couldn't put my shirt on very well.

After my third valiant attempt of putting it on, wincing in pain due to the wound, I finally shoved back the curtains and looked exasperatedly at Wolf, shirt in hand.

"Oh… sorry, Cub. I forgot." I rolled my eyes as he helped me pull it, along with the rest of my uniform, on, while Snake gave him advice on how to do it without hurting me. Wolf got a little annoyed about it after a while.

"Snake, I think he's gonna be in pain any way he puts it on!"

"I know that, I just want to try and lessen the pain!" he hissed back, annoyed, then stated very matter-of-factly, "You're doing that wrong, by the way."

A very frustrated Wolf threw down the jacket he was trying to get on me. I felt a little embarrassed that they were treating me like a child and like I wasn't there, but I guess it was because they cared or whatever, so I didn't comment as Snake marched up to me and pulled the jacket on. I have to admit, it was less painful the way he did it.

I glanced over at Ben and saw he was watching the scene with his usual crooked grin and amused expression, though it looked contorted due to his swelled and bruised face. Adorable, he mouthed. I grinned right back at him and mouthed, shut up.

I guess I sort of liked the affection, and it was nice to joke with Ben again.

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As we were making our way back to our cabin, it felt just like old times when Ben came to visit. We were all laughing and acting like idiots, and Eagle made a crack or two at Wolf's expense, which got him annoyed so he started making threats. Then I made a crack or two at Wolf's expense, which got him more annoyed so his threats got interesting. Ben made a crack or two as well which got Wolf so annoyed his threats were emphasised by punches for all of us, too. Then Snake joined in and Wolf's threats involved words like 'machete' and 'chloroform'. Bear wasn't there so they didn't reach the point where he was spewing out 'I'll rip off your arm and beat you to death with it', but it got pretty close.

Wolf's threats were a legendary thing.

Wolf had enough at one point and had Eagle pinned to the ground, ready to punch him, when a boy's voice drifted over to us.

"ALEX! Alex!"

I spun around so fast I would have fallen over if Ben hadn't quickly caught me, careful of my chest.

Tom was sprinting towards us, looking like someone who'd had the weight of the world lifted of his shoulders. He had his arms flung out, ready to hug me, but Snake grabbed him when he was a few feet away from me, so I was spared the excruciating pain of Tom accidently hurting the wound. Unfortunately, Tom was still going at full speed, so he fell over and dragged Snake with him. Ben and I exchanged an amused glance before I helped Tom up, who looked extremely confused.

"Bullet wound, Tom. It would be sorta painful if a boy going as fast as a train ran into me." I smiled slightly.

"Oh." He grinned sheepishly, "Sorry." Then he looked at Snake, who, like him, was covered in mud and looking a little miffed, but at least standing up again. "Sorry." Snake huffed and tried to wipe mud off his face while Eagle laughed at him.

Tom looked back at me again, as if he couldn't believe I was there. He gingerly stepped towards me and gave me a soft but quick hug, obviously scared to hurt me. "No one would let me in to see you, and these guys-" he jerked his head towards K-Unit "-said they couldn't sneak me into the Infirmary!"

"Because we couldn't! People would get suspicious if you disappeared from the rest of your school!" Wolf said, undignified.

"Them getting suspicious wasn't really a big worry of mine when my best friend was shot and dying!"

"Comatose, actually. I was in a coma, more or less stable." I grinned at Tom. "I'm fine now. I promise not to get shot again."

"Ugh, please don't make that promise." Tom made a face. "You know as well as I do it'll be hard to keep." I looked at him apologetically, trying to say there was nothing I could do about that, and he seemed to get it. "I was… I was just really worried about you." His voice cracked, and tears he blinked away welled up in his eyes.

I felt really bad for him all of a sudden. He'd spent the past 3 years thinking I was dead, then he'd come here to be shocked out of his mind that I was alive, we'd started patching our friendship up again, but then I'd got shot in front of him and he was terrified I'd get taken away from him again. Permanently.

"…Tom, I can say this much." He looked at me like he was going to fall apart if I didn't say the right thing. "Whatever happens with Scorpia, I promise I will try to come back to you. Then we can be proper friends again." Tom smiled shakily and nodded, knowing that with my life that was the best he was going to get.

Wolf awkwardly cleared his throat, "You should get back to your class now, or they will get suspicious." Tom nodded again and set back off the way he came, yelling over his shoulder "See you tonight?"

"Brooklands is going down to the shooting range tonight!" I shouted back, "I wouldn't miss it!" Tom grinned and disappeared from my view.

"Oh, you are so not shooting tonight." Snake stated firmly as we all set off again, the cabin now in sight.

"Why, was my arm shot?"

Snake glared at me. I could tell he was angry mostly because he was still smothered in mud, but that anger always made his 'protective medic' come out. "You'll be on your stomach when shooting, remember? Even if you stand up, the recoil will hurt your chest."

I opened my mouth to tell him anyone barely felt the recoil, but stopped. I figured he had been so worried about me for the past 2 weeks, he earned the right to be a little overprotective. I replied with a huff and we carried on walking in silence.

In the end, curiosity got the better of me. "Where's Bear?"

The thought of Bear had been weighing heavily on my mind. After all, he'd given that look to Ben, which was really strange. I mean, the two of them had always gotten along well enough whenever Ben visited in the past. Ben had been a little cautious around his 'replacement' at first, but they'd grown to be friends. What could have possibly changed that? I wanted to see if Ben felt the same way about Bear all of a sudden as well. There had been that sharp look Ben threw him when I first woke up:

"Could, 'I'm gonna kill you' mean something else if you loosened up your definition of 'kill'?"

I didn't have much else to go on, seeing as Bear had disappeared.

Ben did not disappoint.

His whole body stiffened as though he was in pain, and his step faltered slightly, so he nearly slipped over in the mud, but I steadied him, not wanting him to fall over and hurt his probably already battered chest. The rest of the Unit gave him a strange look, but didn't think anything was out of the ordinary.

"The sergeant wanted to see him, that's why he left so quickly earlier. I think the sergeant was really angry with him for some reason." Wolf explained.

Ben muttered something under his breath.

"What did you say?" I asked him

He looked at us all sadly, especially me, but there was a lot of fire in his eyes, too. I don't think I'd ever seen him so angry. "The sergeant probably found out about him."

We all stared at Ben. For someone who had always been calm and collected, the look on his face was scary, mad even, only enhanced by his wrecked face. I wondered if whatever had happened on his mission with Scorpia had scarred him permanently. I knew better than anyone that sometimes when someone goes off on a mission, you don't know how much of that person you're getting back.

"Fox…what are you talking about?" Eagle asked while the rest of us looked at his curiously. Ben continued to stare at the ground as though it had personally wronged him, not meeting Eagle's gaze.

"Ben?" I ventured. "You okay?"

Ben seemed to snap himself out it and jerked his head up at me. "…I'm fine. Sorry about that, um… hard mission." We all exchanged unconvinced looks.

"Right…speaking of which, when are you going to tell us about it? Or, you know, how and why you just turned up here when you were on a mission from MI6, not the army. One you were presumed dead on, by the way." Wolf said accusingly.

"Wait, did you just turn up here? You didn't even go back to MI6 headquarters first?" I asked, confused. He really hadn't said a word about it.

"Yeah, he just turned up here a week ago while you were in your coma, all bloody and half dead. Collapsed at the entrance to the base. The guys on duty barely recognised him he was so beat up. They took him to the Infirmary and patched him up best they could. Of course, when he found out about you the doctors had to treat him from your bedside." Snake lips touched upwards slightly at that, "Didn't tell us any more than he's told you, but Eagle just about fainted when he saw him." Eagle looked indignant for a second, but quickly turned on Ben with the rest of us.

Ben looked absolutely exhausted. "Official Secrets Act…" he murmured half-heartedly.

"Technically, if you never went back to MI6, then you never got debriefed so you didn't sign it." I pointed out.

"I have signed it. I did it the day after I arrived." He looked sad. "She was annoyed I hadn't gone straight back to headquarters, but when I told her about the mission and why I had to come straight here, she softened slightly and I was debriefed here. She let me stay here while I recover from my injuries."

"Who's 'she'?" Eagle asked. I had a bad feeling about this. She couldn't still be here, could she? I knew that if she was, there was only one reason for it. She would say it is far too dangerous for me or my class to be here anymore, and because there is nowhere else they can send us, Scorpia, the root of the problem has to be eliminated now, which meant-

"Mrs Jones." Ben said, looking at me.

I was going on a mission.

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"She would have been told that you woke up. She'll probably be here soon." Ben said, slumped down on one of the cots in our cabin next to me. Bear still wasn't back.

"I am not going on another mission." I snarled.

"Hey, Cub, she might not send you on the mission after what a disaster it was with me." Ben put his arm around my shoulders comfortingly.

"She will. She wanted me to do it after she told us about you being MIA."

Ben balked at that, but all he said was, "She seemed to get over me quickly, didn't she?"

We all stayed in silence for a little while, until I finally broke it, needing answers.

"Ben." His head turned slowly towards me. "If I am forced to go on a mission, I want to know what I'm facing. Tell me about your mission."

"Alex, you know I can't break the Official Se-"

"Ben." I said, determined. "Please."

He stared at me for a good five seconds, then did the same for the rest of the Unit, who were leaning forwards on their cots, hoping. Then he looked back at me and saw the hard look in my eyes, and all the fight went out of him.

"You can't spread it to any of the other Units, though." He warned us, and we all nodded.

"Okay…where to start…" We let him collect his thoughts as he tapped his fingers insistently on his knees. I knew it was a sign of nervousness from Ben, so I gave him a reassuring smile, to which he gave me a shaky one back.

"Well, you all know that Scorpia teamed up with that other terrorist group, Alpha, right? And MI6 got really worried about it because if it grew, it would be unstoppable?" We didn't know the name of the other group was Alpha, but we knew the rest, so we nodded.

"Well, they decided to send me in undercover. I was another recruit for this new Scorpia. They were getting so many people wanting to join up at that point, MI6 decided it would be the best time for me to go in. Less chance of being found out if there's more people, you know?" He sighed, and Snake interjected, "I take it that plan didn't work out too well?" Ben looked up and shook his head.

"It went alright at first. I made it to one of their training islands where they train assassins and spies, similar to Malagosto." He nodded to me when he said it. K-Unit knew all about my time at Malagosto. I had to tell them where I learnt to shoot and I trusted them enough to listen to me about it. "There were about 50 other recruits there, too, so I thought I'd be hard to detect."

"I made it about a week before I was found out. I think they were just waiting for MI6 to send someone in, so they were being extra careful about everything, making sure everyone on that island would be loyal and useful to them, so, to test that," He took a deep breath. "They made us kill someone."

Wolf, Snake, Eagle and I all gasped. It would have been funny if the context wasn't so horrible.

"I didn't do it!" Ben said quickly, "That's how I got found out. I and a few other people couldn't do it, so they locked us up and…tortured us a little while they ran thorough background checks on us." We all looked down sadly at 'tortured'. It was obvious already that Ben had been tortured, of course. Mrs Jones had told us she presumed he'd been tortured, and there was the physical evidence of Ben himself, but hearing it from him was still painful for us all.

"They decided the others were only having second thoughts about the whole thing, not spies. But you know Scorpia. They were never allowed to leave." Dead. "I don't know how they found out I was the MI6 agent. I had a solid file, but they have hacked into it somehow. They must have a scarily good IT team."

"Why didn't they want you dead, too?" Eagle asked, sounding serious.

"Oh, they wanted me dead." Ben almost laughed. "They just thought they'd have some fun first. Tried get information about MI6 out of me." They tortured him more. Badly. "Maybe they were planning to kill me slowly and painfully and then send my body back to London in parts as a warning message."

He sighed and ran his hands through his messy hair, which had grown quite long. And then gently placed a hand on his beaten up face. He winced.

"How bad…" I couldn't find the words. I half wanted and half didn't want to know how badly they'd hurt Ben, one of the only people I really care about. "How bad was it?"

"I don't want Snake over there panicking, okay?" Wolf, Eagle and I nodded, looking worried and I glared at Snake a little, until he nodded as well.

Ben stood up, took a few shaky breaths and, wincing slightly, pulled off his shirt.

It was a mess. That's all I can say. I don't want to go into too much detail, but it was worse than his face. Half-healed cuts, bruises of varying colours and other marks littered his chest, making it look all the colours of the rainbow. I spotted a few burn marks in the mix, too, and guessed that he had a few cracked or broken ribs due to the bandage that covered half his torso. You could tell his body was healing, but it was still a hard sight to see your friend that way.

That's why Snake immediately forgot what had been previously decided, leapt up and started examining all his wounds, muttering curses, much to Ben's annoyance. No one tried to stop him though. We were all too in shock ourselves.

"Shit…" whispered Wolf. "Oh man…Ben…", while Eagle had these wide, horrified eyes and he was silently taking it in. Eagle was never silent. Ben was the youngest of the group –besides me- so they all felt responsible towards him in a way. I just looked at Ben sadly and felt like I was going to cry. No one hurt Ben like that.

"What happened next? How did you escape?" I said, reigning my emotions in and blinking tears back.

Ben managed to fight of Snake, who was cursing very loudly now, and pull his shirt back on. "I got lucky. The guy who was taking me too…er, another room" Torture room, I filled in. The place where he was tortured. "Well, he wasn't very experienced. I managed to take him down and a few others. Don't ask me how I did it, I just guess I was getting desperate at that point."

"I managed to get to the coast of the island and hotwire of their speedboats to take me away. I pickpocketed enough money for a plane back to England and I had to walk half the way here." He finished, sitting back on the cot again.

"Wait, that's another thing. Why did you come to Brecon Beacons first?" I asked

"Ah," Ben said, that anger from earlier slowly coming back. "Well, I did something before I left the island…"

"…What did you do?" Wolf asked slowly

"I broke into one of the buildings and hacked into the mainframe."

"You could have left! God, Fox, you had to be a heroic spy, didn't you?" Wolf fumed.

"They were expecting me to try to leave straight away. If I'd tried to leave straight away, I'd have been caught, but doing what I did allowed enough time to pass for them to realise I must be somewhere else on the island, and reduce the security on the coast, and place it somewhere else."

"Ugh, Fox… still. That was dangerous." Eagle pointed out, "How'd you hack into the mainframe? You're not that good with technology."

"Well, actually the fake tooth Smithers gave me did that, but I did manage to find out some…interesting information."

"Information so interesting it made you come here?" I prompted him, hoping he wouldn't hold back on this part of the story.

"Yes." Ben said seriously. "One of the things I found was a list of past Scorpia agents and assassins. Ones that were dead, or left and so needed to be killed."

We all waited in silence for him to tell us why this information was so important to Brecon Beacons, when Bear walked in, and it was like I saw him for the first time.

I felt like I'd been dunked underwater the past 3 years, and now I was suddenly yanked out again, back into reality.

'The moment the boy met Bear, his senses kept stabbing at him saying that Bear wasn't to be trusted and that he was bad news.'

He is bad news.

'still ever so slightly wary about him'

You were right to be.

'Why is Bear better than a unit of SAS men, and a spy?'

Because that's what he was trained for.

"Could, 'I'm gonna kill you' mean something else if you loosened up your definition of 'kill'?"

Kill.

'his own cool blue eyes stare back. Sometimes I can't help but feel as though I've seen them before, not the exact eyes, but the type…mysterious blue, hard yet gentle, as though they have seen-'

You have seen those type of eyes before.

I saw them all over the place at Malagosto. I saw them in Julia Rothman. In Yassen Gregorovitch. In Nile. In assassins. Scorpia assassins.

"Oh look," Ben said, "Here's one of them now."