Part one of Requiem for a Rising Star, and sequel to End of the Road. I really wanted to concentrate on one story at a time, and I really really tried to. This one just begged to be written. Besides, then I can't get bored with one and slack off doing unimportant things… like that homework sitting ominously beside me. *glares at the looming stacks of paper*

As he stood in the sergeant's office, Alex went over the identification papers he knew were in the manila file on the man's desk:

[Name: Jonathan (John) Carson Doud

DOB: 13 November 1986 (24)

Physical description: 176 cm (5'9''); 10 stone (140 lbs); auburn hair; brown eyes; fair-skinned; various scars acclimated during the three and a half years with SFSG and minor limp. (see attached picture)

Condition (as of 27 June 2011): Survived a car bombing in the SFSG that resulted in scars across his back and multiple limbs (9 December 2007); Caught in the knee and chest with gunfire resulting in a limp with psychosomatic pains (11 February 2011). Diagnosed by two specialists as suffering minor PTSD (28 February 2011).

Family information: Birth parents unknown. Clayton Doud (adoptive father) and Jennifer Perth-Doud (adoptive mother) both killed in car accident on 4 June 1992. Kyle Doud (twin brother) died of stage IV leukemia on 30 April 1994. Thomas Garth (second adoptive father) lives in London, England (emergency contact information attached). No other known relatives.

Background information: Little known. No criminal records. Passed A-levels at the top of his class. Joined the Royal Air Force (RAF) on 12 September 2004. Transferred to Special Forces Support Group (SFSG), upon its creation on 3 April 2006, by Air Marshal David Hadley for Task Force Red*. 21 August 2010, X-Unit of SAS requests a temporary skilled replacement for 'Bear'. Doud volunteered and his re-assignment was accepted and signed for. Currently assigned to D-Unit.

Prior assignments: *must have level five clearance*

Ongoing/recent assignments: *must have level three clearance*]

The sergeant was not going to be pleased with an SAS member that he himself had not put here. In fact, his (fake) transfer papers from the SFSG had never even crossed the man's desk, instead being passed over his head to higher-ups. He had never gone through SAS training, but managed to get in through a change in paperwork. And that would tick the man off, if nothing else did.

On top of that, his change in hair color and new scars weren't going to throw anyone off who had gotten a good look at him from his first time at Brecon Beacons. Sure he'd grown a couple inches, but still short for even his age group, Alex was going to stand out like a cat in a kennel of dogs.

MI5 had planned for this, of course, but not in a way he had wanted.

The sergeant had level five clearance, as did most anybody who held any kind of bureaucratic position in the military, and nothing much would show up there. Hoops to jump through, phrases like 'operation still considered covert until further notice' and a lot of basic evasion typical for someone serving in a special forces division. All normal stuff there.

Now what most suits did not have was access to level three clearance. The sergeant technically didn't have this clearance either, except that the position he was in allowed him higher access so long as it pertained to a member of the SAS, which 'John Doud' supposedly was. From there, it backtracked to his unofficial files as a 'temporarily unavailable' agent in MI6 and a previous, easily recognizable codename: Cub.

Being protected by level three clearance, the sergeant would be not only obliged but expected to maintain his cover as 'John Doud', thereby eliminating problems of secrecy to an absolute minimum. It would not help his standing with the sergeant, however.

That was where he was expecting the technical difficulties.

He was right.

The man finally arrived an hour after he had called Alex in. Standing at attention for an hour was not fun, especially considering that his knee was still not in peak condition on top of his extensive new run of scar tissue. He took his time settling back into the chair, opening the file on his desk as if it was his first time glancing at it, before slamming a hand down. The intention was to frighten the 'new recruit', a tradition he had evidently kept to all these years, but it was all Alex could do to not roll his eyes. Once upon a time this guy might have scared the shit out of him. Hell, he had scared the shit out of him when he was a teenager sparkly new to the world of espionage. Now? This guy had rules to follow and at least a couple morals on top of that, which made him one of his top ten favorite people he'd engaged in conversation with this last year. Piece of cake.

"So, Doud was it?" They both knew otherwise, but both of them were bound by laws preventing the budding of any such conversation.

"Yes, sir." He was whispering as part of his cover. By keeping his voice low, it was hard to discern his voice as a teenager's. His eyes did not meet the sergeant's. The form of PTSD he was supposedly suffering would make him shy and withdrawn.

"I'll tell you right up front." The sergeant's eyes narrowed to snake-like slits. "I don't like you or anything about this situation. I don't care what you did before you wound up here, but you will not drag D-Unit down because you can't handle yourself. If I can't bin you, I will do everything I can to make your life into a living Hell."

"Yes, sir." Whose idea had this been? Oh that's right. His.

With a last glance-over at the new addition to D-Unit, he shook his head. "Disgraceful. If you live through your first overseas assignment, I'll be impressed. Report to D-Unit's cabin. You'll follow their schedule. Dismissed."

Much as the man was trying to get a rise out of him, force him to break cover, Alex went right with it, acting the part he had been assigned with. Saluting the sergeant and deliberately meeting his eyes before he turned to leave, he felt that his day was getting off to a good start. When the door was closed, his leg began to throb with a dull tattoo as it got used to moving again. Massaging the area around his knee did little to help, but he wound up doing so anyway.

The brief look he had gotten at a map in the sergeant's office made it obvious as to the location of the cabin he would be spending the next months until redeployment, but Doud was one to get easily lost. Thus, he spent a good ten minutes bumping into people, quietly asking for directions. The cap pulled low over his eyes gave him the appearance of being even shorter than his five foot nine height and most of the soldiers walked off trying to guess whose kid he was.

Finally getting to D-Unit's doorstep, he raised a tentative hand, wondered once more what he was thinking when he had asked Blunt to transfer him here, and knocked.

Tiger was not having a good day either.

He and his team had attended Dolphin's funeral last week, and the sobbing young widow clutching her nine-month-old to her chest had done nothing to lift the oppressive mood. Dolphin had been only twenty-three when he had joined the SAS, and barely four weeks later, they were putting roses on his casket. Jaguar, by far the most empathetic of the group, had delivered their condolences to the widow. Whether or not she even understood what he was saying was beyond their knowledge, but it was a nice change to not be thrown out or banned from coming by the family.

Crane, the new recruit that had been killed in action a month before Dolphin was approved to take his open position, had never married, but his family had been incredibly close to him. His father had never approved of him joining the military, and at his funeral, he sure as hell was not letting D-Unit enter the close-knit family service.

There had been Badger before that, Iguana before that, and Cat, their original teammate, before them all. The position that none of their replacement members seemed to live through was now referred to as the 'Black Cat' seat. A rumor had begun to circulate in the SAS that it wouldn't be until thirteen recruits had their lives claimed in the Black Cat seat that D-Unit would have a replacement last more than a year. So far, nothing had happened to dissuade that line of thinking. Four down, nine to go.

And now he had to welcome in Black Cat number five.

It was not going to be a good day.

He was about to kick Jaguar out of bed—it was already 0700, so the candidates in testing would have left to start running the courses by now—and join up with Crow in the mess hall, when he heard the knock. It wouldn't be the sergeant. He was letting the units rest up until the test candidates were funneled down to the four or five fresh recruits. From there, the empty positions would be filled in, some of the units would have their members switched around for the purpose of balancing senior crews with the newest ones, and then the real courses would start up. Until that point, they went through classes on the upgraded technology, practiced at the shooting range, and extra language courses were offered if you had the time and interest.

So it had to be…

On the porch was a scrawny kid in baggy fatigues and a thin long-sleeved tan shirt, the typical barracks dress that all the units and trainees wore at Brecon Beacons.

His first thought was that this kid was one of the training candidates, and he'd gotten turned around at some point during the day. With his size and the way he avoided his eyes, it certainly seemed like it. "What do you want?" Tiger grunted.

"This is D-Unit's cabin?"

"Yeah. Why?"

The kid uncomfortably shifted his weight to one side. "I'm Bunny, Dolphin's replacement."

His eyes narrowed. "I didn't think they assigned new recruits for a few more months. Selection's only just started."

"I'm not a new recruit, sir. I was transferred here from X-Unit."

That rang a bell in Tiger's head. X-Unit was a forward unit that had recently been specializing in Kandahar. Within the last two years, the losses R-, X- and Z-Unit had been suffering down in Afghanistan were worse than the rest of SAS combined. Only the infamous Redbird, the one-eyed commander of X-Unit and almost any operation in the area, remained of the original twelve soldiers. If this kid, Bunny, had been in Redbird's unit, he was underestimating the kid's skills by a long shot.

"I think you might want to reconsider another unit, Bunny. There are a couple oth-"

Shaking his head, the young soldier pulled out the nerve to meet his eyes for a few seconds. "I chose this unit specifically. I heard about the Black Cat position and figured it would be better for me to fill the spot than someone fresh out of selection."

Tiger held the cabin door wide open and stepped aside, letting him in. "Then I guess you've found the right spot. I need to boot Jaguar out of his bunk and then we're heading to the mess hall for breakfast. You already know your way around here, I take it?"

"Mmm, not really," he murmured, sinking on to the bed that had clearly been uninhabited for quite some time. "Redbird picked me out of an SFSG team doing work in the area for X-Unit when he needed a spot filled, I stayed with them for awhile, and when the time came around to make a decision, I switched from SFSG to SAS. So this is actually the first time I've been here."

"Huh." As he'd said he would, he got the snoring soldier out of bed with a well-aimed kick to his mattress, sending both of them to the floor.

"I thought they were letting us sleep in, Tigger." That earned him a shot to his exposed stomach. "Oww." The tan, dark-haired Jaguar put an arm protectively around his abdomen as he pushed himself off the floor. At the sight of the short blond soldier, he stopped to take a better look. "I didn't know you had kids, Tig-ouch." And there went his ankle.

"Bunny's our replacement."

"Damn. You got screwed in the naming department," he wisely noted, limping over to put his bunk back in order.

"Redbird gave me the name. On paper, it's technically Grey-1."

The name of X-Unit's commander perked Jaguar's ears up just as fast as it had Tiger's. "You worked with Redbird? We're going to have a lot to talk about over breakfast. Where's Crow?"

"Probably at the shooting range," he assumed, based on previous experience. Turning back to the small soldier, he jerked his thumb at the door. "I'll show you to the mess hall."

Alex was pleasantly surprised that his cover was holding up so well. Unlike his first time at Brecon Beacons, his unit seemed to immediately take to him. (Of course, with K-Unit he'd been fourteen, inexperienced, and only in the most basic parts of selection. Looking back he realized that he wouldn't have liked himself much either. K-Unit had, obviously, learned their lesson since then.)

Now, he just had to remember his cover story, which Jaguar was intensively scrutinizing.

"And Redbird actually picked you out of the SFSG unit?"

He acted as if it wasn't a big deal, because as a formerly non-SAS member, he shouldn't know of the legend that Redbird had made of himself. Being in MI6, he knew plenty, but not as someone from SFSG, where the main concern is how to be most efficient as backup. With a shrug he said, "I guess. He just dragged me from my post and told me I'd been re-assigned."

"Wow." The soldier leaned backward in his chair, completely ignoring the pile of mush on his plate that the cook was exaggerating by calling it chicken, much less food. It certainly didn't taste like it. "How was it being with X-Unit? Was it exciting?"

"It was only for a couple months. After the firefight-"

"You got into a gun battle?" Jaguar was absolutely exuberant, but then, taking a glance over at Tiger, stories like this must not come in all that often.

"A small one in Kandahar. We were caught by surprise and I got the worst of it, being out front. They shipped me back to London, and now here I am four months later."

Tiger grunted. "Wolf—commander of one of the other units here—said the guy he had to replace had been killed."

"So did everyone else." He tapped the skin over his heart. "I just got lucky, I guess."

Jaguar whistled loud enough for someone at the next table over to complain, which he dutifully ignored. "So why did Redbird call you 'Bunny'? That doesn't seem very nice."

"He probably would have called me Rabbit if someone hadn't already taken that. I was the one they sent to scout out the area and take messages back and forth between other units collaborating in the field." He grimaced. "One time he called me Bunny, and it kind of stuck after that."

Not meaning to interrupt story time, Tiger frowned as he looked around the mess hall. "Did Crow ever come in?"

Alex looked to Jaguar, who shook his head. "Seen hide nor hair of him since yesterday. Did he even return to the cabin last night?"

"Later than usual, almost at midnight. I'll need to have a talk with him. The sergeant gets wind of it and he could be in trouble if this continues." He sighed and remarked to Alex, "Crow's the strange sort, but for the most part he's reliable."

Nodding, he was quickly startled out of his reverie as he noticed the figures just coming in the door. The one in front, with dark hair and an even darker expression, was trying to kill the blond idiot that had attempted to glomp him. Repeatedly. Just behind the two with an exasperated expression, as if this was an all-too-frequent occurrence, and carrying a clipboard under his newly de-casted arm was the tallest (and most mature) of the group. Further back, and slipping in a (coincidentally) well-placed pile of mud, was the somewhat-new(ish) recruit added to this unit. Despite that, he fit in with their constant state of insanity almost worryingly well.

Before they could get a good look in his direction, he pulled his camouflage cap down further over his newly re-colored hair and stood up from the table to dump the uneaten mush into the trash, muttering an excuse of some kind to his two highly confused teammates, and walking silently out the door. Not once did he risk taking a glance back to see if someone had recognized the little they saw.

A/N: Damn it all, I am sick again. How this keeps happening, I have no clue. No f***ing clue. It all adds up to more antibiotics, more steroids, and more appointments with specialists whose job names I can't even pronounce. If I die before the next chapter is finished…my twin can post a picture of my tombstone for you all to admire. Have a great day, because no matter how bad yours gets, I will always be here to have one that's even worse. =So review, dammit=

Also, made some changes thanks to the incredible help of arwel and wolfern, who brought to my attention that different systems of measurement are used in England, and there is no 29th of February this year. ^_^ Thanks guys!

*Down to the last grain of detail, I'm doing my best to keep to real situations. Task Force Red (or Maroon; whatever) was the first recorded operation of the SFSG, who basically act as the official support force to the SAS. But that's the watered down version for those of you who just want to enjoy the story. The history of the SFSG is really quite impressive and worth looking into. It's a new group, and not much has been leaked out, so there's little to nothing to go on…but still a cool subject.