Epilogue

He was sitting on the back of the bench, his feet on the seat. Jack would probably have scolded him for it, saying people sat there where he put his feet, but she wasn't there and the only thing she was able to do was make him feel slightly guilty for it. Not enough to move his feet though. He was comfortable as he was, sitting in the shade of a tree, a little bit away from the main pathways in the park. His notebook was resting on his knees, all but forgotten. The slight movement of his right hand, flipping his pencil was the only indication that he wasn't as calm as he appeared.

"I hate you."

People were passing by, shooting the lonely boy on the bench furtive glances, taking in his slightly battered appearance, the bruise on his face, his bandaged wrists. 'Troubled teen', they thought, and went on their merry way, dismissing the notion that there even was such a thing. If they acknowledged him, they'd have to do something about it after all. Better find another explanation than abused boy attempted suicide. Maybe he had been in a car crash. Maybe he fell through a glass door. Lots of explanations were possible.

Alex didn't care. He had given up hiding his injuries from other people. It was hot outside in the middle of London – over thirty degrees last time he checked one of those helpful thermometers on the side of buildings that depicted the time alternating with the temperature – and he was done wearing long sleeves.

"You killed him."

There had been no point in denying it. He hadn't actually pulled the trigger, but it had been his fault. He had been responsible. He had let down his guard, had thought it had been all over, when it clearly hadn't. He had just stood there in the darkness on the beach, swaying, feeling every bruise on his body and the annoying sand in his shoes, until Craig had grabbed him and had forced him to look away. Go to the nearest phone booth, there's one near the train station that I know of, call this number. You won't have to put in any money. They'll know who you are. I'll take care of things here.

After that, everything had happened in a haze. A dark Volkswagen had picked him up about half an hour later from the steps of the railway station where he had been sitting, idly watching the people passing by. Two quiet men had gotten out, had each grabbed an arm and had heaved him into the car. They had brought him to an apartment somewhere in Barcelona, where he had slept for two days. Some doctor had checked him, had declared him fit to travel and, still in that same haze, he had flown back to London, to be picked up by an uncharacteristically silent Jack.

He looked down at his notebook, the neat thin grey lines, the pristine white between them. He had tried calling Sabina twice, but every time had pressed the cancel button before finishing typing in all the numbers. He had tried to email her, but somehow had ended up asking her lightly how she was. And now he was sitting here, in the park, thirty minutes after his debriefing with Blunt and Mrs Jones, trying to conjure up a letter. Hi Sabina, he thought, I think I'm in love with you. But then I almost cheated on you - although you can't really call it cheating if you're not together - and it's likely to happen again should we ever get together. Would you mind?

Would it happen again? He rubbed his eyes. Could he ever try to get close to some girl again, without seeing Jennifer's hate filled eyes? Could he live with himself if he did that, if Sabina really was his girlfriend? Would Sabina's face always somehow morph into that of Jennifer that night on the beach?

He thought about his mother. Had she minded? She must have known what his father did for a living, must have known that his work would involve... other women. He shuddered. Nobody thought about their parents that way. But then again, he had never known them. They were an abstract entity to him, parents, of course he had them, everybody had them, but he never knew them. He hadn't even known what his father had done for a living until recently.

Assassin.

Undercover, working for Scorpia. Never mind that he had to do it if he wanted to keep his cover. His father had killed. Many times. And he had been very, very good at it.

Like father like son.

"This is a war, kiddo," Craig had said, "People get killed in wars. People lose loved ones in wars. Think of yourself as one of those child soldiers in Africa or South America. They are no older than you are, many of them even younger."

"I though we lived in a civilized country."

Craig had laughed, and there had been a bitter edge to it. "Think again."

Standing in front of the Royal and General Bank after their debriefing, Craig had hesitated, and then had extended his hand, awkwardly, as if he expected Alex to ignore it. Alex considered it for a brief moment, but then took his hand and shook it.

"For what it's worth, I am sorry," Craig said, "You having to kill that thug. Think of it this way, though. You're a survivor. It was them or us. You did an excellent job, nobody can fault you for what you did."

Alex noted that he didn't apologize for shooting Jason Carnegie. He looked Craig in the eyes and knew that the man didn't feel an ounce of guilt over it. He had simply done his job. Craig smiled at him, but the smile didn't reach his eyes.

"The mission was a success," he said, "You did good, Alex. You can't save everybody." He looked up and down the street, taking in his environment in the habitual movement of a man who was always on edge, always on the lookout for trouble.

"See you around, Alex," he said finally, then turned and walked away.

Alex watched him go. His hand gripped the strap of his backpack tightly. The mission had been depicted a success. Personally, he thought he had never failed so miserably in his entire life. Slowly, he turned into the other direction and started walking.

Mrs Jones watched as the tiny figures way down below on the street in front of the Royal and General Bank parted ways and turned back to Alan Blunt.

"You just granted Craig leave of absence," she said, "And we're already understaffed. Are you sure that's wise?"

Blunt looked thoughtfully at the pen he was twirling in his hands. "He's going to look for his wife," he said.

Mrs Jones sat down in her chair, placed her purse on her lap and started feeling around in it. "And you're just going to let him do that?" she asked, and then let out a small sound of satisfaction when she found a new roll of peppermint.

Blunt carefully placed the pen on the table, looked at it and then shifted it a little so that it aligned perfectly with the piece of white paper in front of him.

"Craig is slipping," he said, "He's not half as effective as he used to be. He made some serious mistakes down in Calella. Leaving Alex alone in that house, to name one of them, so he couldn't help him when he was found out. It almost jeopardized the whole mission. It was pure luck that they managed... Alex managed to find the Carnegies again. Besides...." He pushed the stack of papers on the corner of his desk so that they were perfectly stacked again. "... Who knows what he'll turn up."

Mrs Jones had finished carefully unwrapping the top part of the roll and chucked a peppermint into her mouth. Then she folded the wrapping so that it was semi-closed again and put it back in her bag. She stood up, collected her files and walked to the door.

"The Carnegie girl," Blunt said, "Has she signed yet?"

Mrs Jones turned around and nodded. "She wants to put the whole thing behind her. She realizes that her making a fuss will have the truth of what her father did come out. She'll keep quiet. She signed the secrecy act this morning and was immediately released. She will arrive on Heathrow this afternoon, and an aunt will pick her up. We already did a thorough background check on the woman, and we have found some irregularities. They won't be hard to control." She hesitated. "Alex...," she said.

Blunt looked up, his face blank. "Yes," he said, "He has a minor concussion he needs to recover properly from. Let's give him a week."

He picked a file from the stack on the corner of his desk and opened it, thereby missing the look of dismay on Mrs Jones's face. Her mouth set in a thin line, she turned around and left the room.

Alex looked down at the name he had written down at the top of the page. Sabina. He underlined it. This shouldn't be hard. He had never had trouble talking to her before, in fact, one of the reasons he liked her so much was that she had made him feel comfortable. They had talked about anything and everything while he had stayed with her family, and it had never been awkward.

They had been just friends then.

Maybe... He looked up from his notebook and looked at the geese in the pond. Was he really in love with Sabina? Or was it just wishful thinking on his part, seeing feelings that weren't there... but why then did he think of Sabina when he was making out with Jennifer on the beach? Why did his thoughts wander to Jennifer while trying to think about Sabina?

With a confused growl, he closed the notebook. This wasn't going to work. Sabina was a fantasy, a could have been. She was living in California now, far, far away from him, and even if she liked him the way he liked her – of which feelings he wasn't so sure now any longer – the whole relationship thing was impossible anyway. But it was so much easier to think about her than to dwell on the things that had transpired not five days ago.

"I hate you..."

Yes, he really needed that, another nightmare, another addition to his long list of things to feel guilty about. On the plane back home, in a fit of morbidity, he had started a list of the people he had killed over the past one and a half years, but had stopped when he realized he didn't even remember all of them and the body count just got too high.

He got up and glanced at his watch. It was probably best to head home now, or Jack would get worried. He was supposed to rest in the afternoon, and he already felt the headache that plagued him when exerting himself too much surface again. Just from sitting in a park. Brilliant. Just brilliant.

Pushing his notebook in his backpack, he slowly started walking into the direction of the nearest underground station. He wondered how much rest he would get, how long MI6 would wait before calling on him again.

He gave them a week.

Thanks for reading, putting this on your favourite list and/or putting this on alert. I was slightly overwhelmed by the number of reviews I got for the previous chapter. Thanks for reviewing:

Ferrelyn Zellaby, Emmy-loo, Sofer, Drayconette, Wolfmonster, arrowheadhunter, Alo Amicus, The smell of blood and sand, Ambrele, BlackFeatherz29, bookworm rider, Just me, SakuraCa, Chaos Dragon, darkmoon999, Ponyboy65, rhymneyfairies, Jusmine

References:

Safe cracking: http colon slash slash home dot howstuffworks dot com (replace the 'dot' with a real dot, the colon with a real colon and the slash with a real slash. Obviously).

Legal drinking age in Spain: I tried to look it up, but the sites contradict each other (nothing new there). Some say it's eighteen, some say it's sixteen. For the story, I went with the sixteen, because that's what it is where I live. As for entering clubs and discotheques, they usually have a minimum age of eighteen, but some have sixteen. Just so you know.

As for Calella de Mar, I've been there. I've described it how I remember it, aided by google earth. The house on the hill isn't there though. The lighthouse is, as is the railway track, the beach and the rocks at the south end of it. The flamenco club comes straight out of my imagination.

I'll be back...