Notes: For the Spyfest Week 2 prompt - "There's one secret everyone takes to the grave." Took me a while to come up with an idea for this, but I think I got something reasonably solid - and just in time, too. I've wanted to do something with Smithers for a while, and I suspect those last few Hell Is Other People updates may have inspired this, to some extent. Hopefully this doesn't seem too forced!

I may have to go back and edit this later.

Here's a fact to start off with: Alex Rider should be dead. Several times over, in fact. There are some things that humans were just not meant to survive – snowboarding down a black run on an ironing board, just for starters, and then there's going over the edge of the Bora Falls in a makeshift kayak, walking through the world's deadliest biodome with no protection gear whatsoever, walking across two immensely high buildings using a thin wire, and that's not even mentioning getting shot practically point-blank by a sniper rifle from a terrorist group that rather desperately wants you dead. No normal, healthy adult human being should be be plausibly able to come out the other end of even one of those things breathing and blinking, not without a heavy dose of luck and/or outside intervention involved. It would be even luckier for them to come out of two of those, and practically impossible for them to survive more than three – and if that human being was a teenager; practically a child, of only sixteen years of age?

Well.

Here are some additional facts; presented neatly in conjunction with the first, for convenience's sake:

Alex Rider is not dead, not really. His heart still pulses at a steady, regular eighty-five beats per minute. He grins and frowns and quirks his mouth like any other teenager would at any number of regular situations for a boy his age, and some situations that aren't. He breathes easily, laughs easily, eats food and sleeps (not entirely soundly; but is that a surprise, given his life so far?). He has hobbies; interests – none that he's pursued all too often, as of late; but then again, that's also not much of a surprise. His gaze is sharp. His movements are fluid and sure. If any of these things are what categorizes a person as 'alive', in any technical sense, then Alex Rider is maybe more alive than anyone else on Earth.

Another fact: there is one secret that everyone takes to their grave, and this is a secret that no living person can ever know.

These facts are all interwoven and connected, startlingly neatly, but very obliquely. It's possible that it would take a complete genius to work out the truth of the matter.

And one final, unrelated fact; only presented here out of interest:

Complete geniuses are very, very hard to come by.

"Thanks for the lift," says Alex muzzily from the couch. "And the shower. And – the clothes. Everything. Thanks."

"Of course," says Smithers – it isn't his real name, of course; but when you've been in intelligence work for as long as he has, you learn that names are as disposable as socks are, and just as easy to slip on and off in the blink of an eye. He has been thin and fat, fair-haired and ginger, terrifyingly tall and laughably short; British, Scottish, German, American – and everything in between, at intervals both short and long since his dismissal-slash-resignation from MI6. Changing your own height – at the very least – might seem impossible, but impossible is just another word for problem nobody's solved yet, and he is, if nothing else, always up for a challenge.

Right now, he's in his Scottish disguise – greying hair, piercing green eyes, a bit of a limp in his left leg – and the name he goes by is so far removed from 'Derek Smithers' that it's almost incredible. But for almost the entirety of the time that Alex Rider has known him, he's been Mr Smithers, and so Mr Smithers he shall be – in name, at least, if not anything else.

"It's good to see you," Alex adds, wincing as he raises his head from the couch cushion he's been lying on for the last few minutes. "Or – you know – yeah, I guess, see you. The accent's still a bit weird, though."

Smithers smiles. "I'm good at accents, or so I've been told."

"I still can't believe you managed to call me 'dear boy' with a straight face for two years running," Alex mutters.

The smile quirks upwards with amusement. "I did apologize, you know."

Smithers hums, and rises – somewhat less than elegantly, need to mind that leg – to fetch a spare blanket from one of the spare cupboards of his current house. Technically, there's no real need to keep up the full disguise for Alex, but Smithers has always been a bit of a method actor. Throw yourself wholeheartedly into the role, and all that – and besides, you never know who might be watching. Or listening, really.

He returns to throw a quilt over Alex, who mutters something vague and grateful, and wraps himself in it tightly, as if trying to ward off the chill of the lake that he found himself several metres submerged in, earlier that night.

"That was quite a fall," says Smithers, taking a seat at his work desk and swivelling around to face his guest. "I don't think I've ever seen anybody swan-dive directly into a frozen-over lake from a crashing helicopter before."

Alex pulls a face. "Well, technically speaking, I was pushed."

"Ah, that explains your landing. It was a little less than Olympic-standard, you know."

"I was under a bit of pressure, yeah."

"Well, nobody's perfect." Smithers casts a glance out the window. It's dark outside, and they're far enough away from any city that any unusual noise outside would be noted. Besides, the windows are triple-reinforced, there's all number of devious and fiendishly clever gadgets all throughout the garden and house (he has no desire for a repeat of Cairo), and nobody could possibly know where Alex is right now, because the fact that he's in Smithers' safe house number one hundred and six – on the outskirts of Aberdeen, Scotland – is complete and utter coincidence, however fortunate.

Alex follows his gaze, and says, "the helicopter crash should have taken care of the last of them. You shouldn't worry."

"Believe me, I'm not." Smithers doesn't ask who 'them' are, doesn't particularly want to know – 'they' being, most likely, the latest in a long string of unfortunate and deeply disturbed people that MI6 has conscripted a teenage boy into fighting off for them. "I was only thinking – if you survived the crash, there's the possibility that they may have, too. You should keep that in mind."

Alex's smile is grim as he shakes his head. "Fell into the lake, remember? And you were nearby, you dragged me out. It was a million to one odds. They're dead, Mr Smithers. I'm sure of it."

He certainly sounds sure of it. Smithers isn't sure he's heard anyone more sure about anything in his life, and hearing such a grim death sentence from the mouth of such a young person is... disturbing, to say the least.

"It was quite the impressive leap, yes," Smither says, instead of saying what's actually on his mind.

"Oh, I've had practice," says Alex, with another one of those twisted little horrifying smiles that he really shouldn't ever had to have on his face, and Smithers (once again) silently curses MI6. If it weren't for his partiality to keeping under the radar and biding his time, he would have dismantled them, piece by corrupt piece, years ago. He rather thinks that one day very soon, he'll have to get to work on that. As soon as Alex is out of immediate line of fire, of course. He'll have to get onto that, too. So much to do, so little time.

They pass the next few hours in a comfortable sort-of-silence. Alex gets up after a while, wanders into the kitchen, and quietly makes himself a cup of hot cocoa – something that Smithers only becomes aware of when he looks up from his coding and security systems at Alex's tap on the shoulder to see that Alex has made him a cup, too.

The television is turned on, at some point, and the volume reduced to a low murmur. Alex curls up under his blanket, and watches soap operas and advertisements with muted interest. He looks every bit the exhausted, sleepy teenager recovering from an injury or illness, and for once he might not even be faking it.

At his desk, Smithers types up fake identifications and credentials – his current project and means of employment, visas for people who very much deserve them but would never be able to get them through any legal means – fingers moving faster than most professional secretaries. He drinks his cocoa with faint amusement and gratitude at the unorthodox gesture, and at the same time, he thinks. He thinks, and he thinks, and he thinks even harder.

The leap from the helicopter had indeed been impressive – it had been pure coincidence, again, that he had been heading down Forest Drive at the exact moment required to witness it, and to drag poor Alex out of the lake, and it had absolutely been a stunt of million-to-one odds, and it had unquestionably required quite a bit of practice to come out of it as unscathed as Alex had – only a case of mild hypothermia from the freezing February water, and a few scratches and bruises. But the thing is – and this is quite a large thing as far as things go – even with Alex's alarming track record of skills and spills galore, there is absolutely no way that he could have gone plummeting out of the sky enough times to look that at-ease while doing so. Smithers had been lying, or joking, or something; back there. Alex's landing had absolutely been Olympic-standard, like he'd done it a million times before.

Smithers crafts a list of important facts in his head, and right at the top there is this one: Alex Rider really ought to be dead.

But he's not, and that means that there's either something to be found here, or he's overthinking things – and he would really quite like to know which of these it is.

He dismisses the ID papers he's been working on with a flick of his virtual wrist, and reconnects to the local ethernet. Working quickly and stealthily, he worms his way into any and all local CCTV cameras, pulling down the feeds from the last few hours and importing them to his desktop. It takes him a moment or two to confirm this properly, but at last he finds two video files appropriate to his needs – one, a private security camera from a property behind the lake that Alex had crashed into, facing out to the back garden and beyond; the second, a speed camera positioned on the road nearby.

This has all taken Smithers the span of maybe five minutes to accomplish. Now, he plugs the videos into a cleaning and scrubbing program, and waits another few seconds for them to finish the job. His technology, even outside of MI6's considerable budget and quality, is top of the line – and Smithers is, when it comes to this sort of thing, quite simply the best there is. If there's any information at all on these tapes to support the niggling suspicion that's taken root at the back of his mind, it will be found.

The computer flashes a quick notification, letting him know that the procedure's complete. Smithers hits a key, causing the screen to go briefly silvery-opaque and reflective like a mirror – allowing him to see the room behind him in a flash without having to turn. Alex is still on the couch, still watching television. He looks half-asleep, and is almost certainly not paying attention to what Smithers is doing. Not that it would matter if he was, anyway. The computer setup that Smithers is currently working at is cunningly designed so that the screen, if viewed from any perspective other than head-on, will appear to be completely blank. It's an ingenious design, and Smithers rather wishes that he had come up with the concept first. As it is, he's only perfected it.

And it's this screen that comes particularly in handy as Smithers opens up the first of the two cleaned videos – the security footage, tone-shifted so that the midnight scene is more-or-less able to be seen. Smithers lines up the time and date of the footage to correspond to the approximate time when Alex's splashdown had occurred, and watches the scene from a distance as a young boy falls out of the sky and right into the lake. His dive, of course, is perfect. The water ripples at his entrance as if a stone had been dropped cleanly into it, and then is still for far too long.

He sees his own car skid over to the side of the road in the peripheral of the footage, and after a second himself – limping slightly, a slight figure – come down the slope of the hillside, as the even slighter figure of Alex bobs to the surface of the lake, spluttering and coughing. He knows this part well enough, so he minimizes this particular video and brings up the next one.

The speed camera's footage is far clearer, but from a greater distance. He skims the video, and then goes back to see how far he can zoom in – a decent amount, as it turns out. Taking it down to a frame-by-frame basis – and the speed camera has a very high frame rate indeed – he scours each static image for the information he needs.

There's a particular expression on Alex's face in the first few frames that he appears in that takes Smithers a few seconds to place, because of how strange it is in the context of the footage. It's boredom, almost – or the closest thing to it. It's the expression you gain when your teacher has begun to rant at your class for the millionth time about misplaced homework, the expression you find on your face when you realize that you've made the most elementary of electrical wiring mistakes – oh no, not again.

Smithers wastes maybe a split second blinking in surprise at this, and then he moves on, flicking onwards through the frames. He sees the exact moment that Alex moves in preparation to enter the water – sees how it's more muscle memory than conscious thought – and sees him take a deep breath seconds before he hits, in deliberate preparation for staying underwater as long as he can.

It's an impressive display, and if MI6 ever caught wind of this footage (they won't, of course), they would no doubt be using it for training purposes as a perfect example of how to deal with being thrown into a body of water. Because it really is perfect. Too perfect.

Smithers thinks about what he knows about Alex, and goes through his list of Alex-related facts, and thinks some more. There are several explanations here, and then there is one simple explanation that doesn't involve luck or convoluted reasoning, and Occam's Razor suggests very strongly that one simple explanation is the truth. The one problem is, it's impossible.

But then again, impossible is just his word for problem that's yet to be solved, and Alex Rider seems to thrive on making the impossible possible anyway, so –

He finishes his cocoa in one long sip, savouring the last dregs, and sets the cup aside with a sigh. He turns off the television remotely from his computer, and takes one long, sentimental look at Alex, dozing quietly on his safehouse lounge couch. Dismantling MI6 has never been higher on his to-do list than at this moment. He's moderately sure that this is the most peaceful that Alex has been in weeks – maybe months. He's about to disturb that peace, and he regrets that, but there's some things he just can't live without knowing.

"Alex," he says.

Alex mutters something, eyelids flickering, and then – like a switch has been flicked on – jack-knifes up into a sitting position, instantly alert and ready for action. "What is it? What's wrong?"

Smithers forces a smile, knowing that it won't seem forced. "Nothing bad, I promise. I just happened to have a question for you."

"Oh." Alex curls back against the couch, relaxing a bit. "Uh, sure. Go ahead, I guess. I'd say I can't tell you some things because of security, but – well, it's you." He smiles, slightly. "If you can't keep a secret, I'm fucked either way."

"Very true, very true," he says, distracted, and taps his fingers absently against he side of his desk. He knows precisely how to phrase this; had the words down solidly in his mind before he even entertained the notion of waking Alex up, but he's almost nervous about doing so. "Hm..."

"Mr Smithers?" Alex asks, leaning forwards. He looks faintly worried now. Such a polite boy – Alex had always been polite to him, at least, and he suspected that was entirely because he had bothered to return the favour. Almost everyone in MI6 had treated him as an adult – a proper operative – with all the harsh brusqueness that came along with that. Smithers had done his level best to treat him as what he really was – just as deserving of respect and equality as anyone else.

"I apologize in advance," he says, "but I really do need to know."

A breath. Alex's worried look has deepened. There's a hint of wariness in it now. He looks like he's going to say something else.

"What does it feel like to die?" Smithers asks, before he can talk himself out of it.

He knows that if he's wrong about this, Alex might give him a strange look, or possibly a suspicious one, and ask a lot of questions – a lot. He knows he'll have to explain himself, and that Alex will laugh at the absurdity of his theory, and he'll have to live, content with the fact that Alex Rider just happens to have the luck of the devil and that one day, inevitably, that luck will run out.

He would completely, totally, and absolutely prefer that scenario to what happens instead, because almost instantly, the colour drains right out of Alex's face. If he'd been standing, he would have fallen over right where he stood, and as it is, he only just about manages to stay relatively upright.

Alex opens his mouth, and then shuts it again, and Smithers' heart sinks.

"Oh, Alex," he says.

"How the hell did you know," Alex manages to gasp out, and if Smithers hadn't been sitting here watching him he would have sworn that the boy was physically injured somehow.

"I didn't," says Smithers, "I made an educated guess, because I'm –" He clears his throat abruptly. "Well, Alex, I hate to put it quite like this, because it feels a little like bragging, and I'm not all too fond of doing that, but... I am very smart."

Alex is quiet for a second, and then he bobs his head in a little nod, then lapses back into silence again – and it's unbearable and overwhelming. Smithers feels that horrible little tug pulling at him again, the one that had pulled him into this particular dreadful rabbit hole of discovery in the first place – the tug saying you need to know, you have to know, you must find out now, now, now – and has to push it away, has to tell it to wait, sometimes you need to wait. He'll know soon enough, and he knows enough to know that soon he'll also wish he had never asked.

There is one secret that everyone takes to their grave, and this is a secret that no living person can ever know, or, indeed, should have to know – the knowledge of what it feels like to die.

"Dying feels like nothing," says Alex, his eyes blank and distant with some kind of half-remembered horror. "It feels like absolutely nothing. It's – you're there one moment, and then the next you're nowhere and you can't feel or see or hear anything, and all you can do is think about how you died and how you fucked up and how much it hurt and the million mistakes you made that caused you to die, and that lasts forever." His gaze sharpens, darts up and he looks Smithers dead in the eyes – there's something unearthly there. "You think about it forever, Mr Smithers, and I couldn't exaggerate that if I tried, it is literally forever, just replaying that one moment over and over and over again."

A shiver steals its way up Smithers' spine. He can feel what's coming next, feel the intensity of it, like static electricity before a storm. He forces himself to look neutral, to not react in the least, and can feel himself failing, just a bit.

"And then," continues Alex, doggedly – like the words are forcing themselves out of his mouth after so long being trapped inside him. He looks more like a puppet than a boy; his mouth moves independently of the rest of him – animated while he himself remains lifeless and listless. "And then, you're alive again, and you don't even have time to adjust to that even though it hurts more every time it happens, because every time it happens you're in the middle of whatever it was that led up to you dying the first go 'round, so you've got to get it right this time; you've had eternity to think about it so goddamnit you've got to get it right this time, get the motions perfect and time it right because if you mess that one up?" His shoulders shake. It's unclear if it's laughter or something else entirely, and even more unclear which of those options is more disturbing. "It's the nothing again. And again and again until you finally get it right, and even then I'm not free because I never know when I'm going to die again, and I just can't – I can't – I can't –"

Smithers watches Alex break with a kind of detached dismay – sees him crumple forwards into himself, bury his face into the blanket in one last desperate attempt to salvage his dignity as he sobs like he's just watched the world burn. His shoulders shake wildly, he appears to be hyperventilating, and Smithers can't do anything but watch and wait for it to be over. There is quite literally nothing he could say, here and now, that would help. Most people are afraid of death because it is an unknown – something that they can't predict and can't fathom. Alex fears death for precisely the opposite reason – he knows it all too well, and knows that it's even worse than anyone could possibly imagine.

After nearly a full two minutes, Alex takes a deep, heaving breath, and uncurls. His eyes are red but dry, and his expression is controlled, and there's a lot to unpack in that alone. Theoretically, he needs the help of a psychiatrist quite desperately, but then again – where would you even start?

"Anyway," he says, voice impressively steady. "That's just how it is for me. Maybe it's different for other people? Probably, I mean. Because," he swallows audibly, "if everyone was like me – you know. Nobody would ever die."

Smithers is silent for a second. Alex seems to be waiting for a response.

"Dear god," he says eventually, which is the only way he can react without resorting to coarse language. He pauses again. "I take it you haven't told MI6 about this."

The noise that comes out of Alex is strangled. "I haven't told anybody about this, apart from you right now – can you imagine what Mrs Jones would do if she found out her pet teenage spy was functionally immortal? I'd never get any rest." The look he has on his face while he's saying this is wary, really – like he's terrified of some invisible threat. It's certainly not MI6, because Alex has never been afraid of them, but – ah.

"Alex," says Smithers, "please be aware – very aware, in fact – that nothing you say to me will ever leave this house. Or this room, for that matter."

Alex looks no less wary, but some of that terror drains away from him and he nods.

Smithers waits for a second for Alex to say something, but he doesn't appear to feel like speaking, so he asks one of the obvious questions, to breach the silence that's threatening to consume the room. "Do you have any idea what may have caused this... condition?"

"Condition," repeats Alex, thoughtfully, "condition. That's an interesting way of putting it." A second, and then, "uh, no. It's just always been like this." Another one of those awful twisted bitter smiles. "I used to think I was lucky, but now I'm pretty sure that someone cursed me. I wouldn't even be surprised at this point."

The next question that Smither has in the back of his mind is one that cannot be spoken aloud, because it feels wrong, on every conceivable level in existence, to do so.

"Hundreds of times," Alex says, answering it anyway – because it's the obvious question, despite how taboo it is. "Maybe thousands. I stopped counting after Point Blanc, it was just too – you know. In my line of work, it's kind of..." He trails off.

Inevitable, is the word he's not saying.

Smithers comes to the abrupt realization that he would probably burn a country to the ground for this boy, virtually or otherwise. And this is no small realization, considering he really does have the power and skills to do so. He's not entirely sure what brought this realization on, but he suspects that it has something to do with the fact that enough is enough. There's a limit to the suffering that any one person can sustain, a solid line that should never be crossed for any living human being, let alone a child. Alex shouldn't have had to found out that he could survive death once, let alone thousands of times. Smithers had known it was bad, but this. This was something else entirely.

Alex is still talking.

"I fell off a cliff when I was seven," he's saying. "That's how I found out. I was on a hiking trip with my uncle – I cracked my skull on a rock on the way down, and I guess the blunt force trauma must have killed me on impact? Or maybe it was exposure, I don't know." A shrug. "Either way – I died. And when I came back, my uncle didn't understand why I was screaming and crying, or what I was talking about, or – or why I didn't want to hike up higher. He ended up half-carrying me up the mountain, and... I just kind of didn't talk about it after that, he must have convinced me it was a nightmare or something."

Smithers just nods.

"And then I was fine, until MI6 recruited me, and then..." He hesitates, then shakes his head. "Stormbreaker. I drowned twice, Sayle skewered me once, and that – that fucking jellyfish, it got me seven times. Seven times."

It takes him a split second to process this, and then Smithers is shaking his head and rising to his feet. Even if MI6 didn't know about Alex's extraordinary death-defying talent, they had still sent him into unbelievably deadly situations nonetheless, and that's worse somehow, and the more he thinks about it, the more twisted and horrifying it becomes, and –

"I'm going to kill them," he says. "I will kill every last one of them, I will end every person even remotely complicit in this abhorrent, vicious, cowardly scheme of theirs – how dare they."

"Pretty easily, apparently," Alex says, although there's an odd expression on his face.

"Not for much longer, they won't be," Smithers growls, whirling back around to his computer. His fingers fly across the keyboard. There's records in MI6's systems – the Rider files. They're buried deep, but that's nothing to him. A few well-placed emails to high-ranking government officials, and the whole edifice will come crumbling away like tissue paper.

"You'll break your cover," Alex says, sounding suddenly worried. Smithers hears the sound of bare feet on the floor, and feels Alex's hands on the back of his chair.

"Unlikely," he snaps. He's barely hanging onto his accent as it is, which is a shame, because Scottish is a remarkably good dialect for being angry in. "And even if it weren't, damn my cover. You're more important than any of that – where was it, where was it, now –"

"Mr Smithers." Alex's voice is very quiet now. "Please – stop. I don't deserve this, it's not – you don't need to do this. You shouldn't even know, and I shouldn't have told you. It's not – it's just not worth it picking a fight with them. I'll survive anything they throw at me anyway."

When Smithers stops, fingers still hovering over the keyboard, to glance back at him and take in the look on his face, he notes that Alex still is wearing that odd look.

It takes him a second to calm down and manage to pinpoint that peculiar expression, but when he does, it very nearly drives him back to incandescent anger all over again, because that emotion? It's gratitude. Alex is grateful that someone is expressing outrage over his situation, that someone's trying to help – even when that's quite literally the bare minimum that anybody should be doing for him. It's enough to make him want to drag Alan Blunt out of retirement by the throat and toss him off the uppermost floor of the Royal & General.

Instead of doing that, he takes a deep breath, and does the next best thing.

"Alex," he says, "Alex, my dear boy, I'm so sorry for everything you've gone through. This is exactly what you deserve, and anyone who tells you otherwise is wrong, or attempting to exploit you."

The look on Alex's face right now tells him just about everything he needs to know. It's relief, and determination, and acceptance – all rolled into one.

"However," says Smithers. "I feel the need to correct you on one tiny point that you seem to have misunderstood."

His fingers move faster than lightning. The emails are composed, the appropriate files attached, and he links them all to a single program that he writes within the space of less than a minute.

"I'm not picking a fight with them," he says. "I'm destroying them before they even have the slightest hope of fighting back." He raises his hands from the keyboard. "...but I recognize that you've had far too many people in your life making decisions for you without consulting you first, so – I will leave the final decision up to you." He pushes himself back from the desk, and indicates the screen. "Send those messages, and I guarantee you that MI6 will be finished, within the hour. Delete them, and we'll never speak of this again."

Alex stares at the screen, as if mesmerized, and looks at the words on the screen – send and delete. It seems like a simple enough choice, but choices like these always have layers to them – layers invisible to anyone but the person making the choice.

Here is a fact: Alex Rider has died, many times before, and although that never resulted in him being dead, in any technical sense, there was always something missing. And that something – although maybe impossible to clarify or define by anyone at all – just may have been freedom.

It's rare that you notice the cage you're in until you're free – or until someone else points it out to you. Smithers knows this all too well. He watches as Alex hesitates – watches and hopes and wonder. It seems to take entirely too long for something to happen, but then –

– with determination and anger flickering in his eyes like a storm, he leans forwards, and he clicks. And it's obvious to see by just looking at him – he knows he's free.