Chapter Text
I like you, Alex Rider.
I’m going to give you a second chance.
Alex snaps awake with a jack-rabbiting heart, and his breath caught in his throat. Fear wars with instinctive alertness, and it takes him a moment to recognise where he is.
And then another, possibly longer moment to comprehend how he could be where he is.
He’s at home.
He's at home, in Chelsea. In his room.
He’s in his bed, safe and whole, beneath – or rather, tangled in – his familiar sheets.
His posters are on the walls. His trophies and medals and books are on the shelves. His spools of climbing rope and snorkeling gear are hanging from the nearby hooks. It's his room.
Only, it’s not. Things are wrong. Things aren’t how they should be.
Alex sits up, looking around in awe. In shock. In confusion.
Things are off, but specifically, they’re off by a few years.
I’m going to give you a second chance.
He has a ghostly memory of a voice. He can hear the words, but he cannot remember who said them. Why they said them.
Things are blurry, and he cannot remember how he got home.
No. That’s not it.
He cannot remember how he got here.
Because this isn’t his home. Not quite. Things are missing, things aren’t where they should be. It’s almost like...
Alex looks over at his bedside table and spots his phone. It too looks both familiar and wrong. Old. Not what he’s used to. He grabs for it anyway, and blinks at the screen when it flickers on. He stares at it for a long moment, waiting for it to change.
Waiting for the date on the screen to make sense.
This is a dream. It must be.
It has to be.
But it feels too real, too perfect.
His eyes are open. He can see, he can read, he can feel.
It's impossible. But it’s real.
Alex looks back at his phone, at the date that’s burned into his brain as one of the worst in his life.
The day Ian died.
I’m going to give you a second chance.
As Alex eases himself out of bed, as he throws on the first tee-shirt he can find, as he opens his bedroom door and creeps into the hallway, he keeps expecting to wake up. For things to snap back to normal.
Because maybe he’s gone crazy and this is some kind of delusion. Maybe he’s been drugged.
But it doesn’t happen. It doesn’t end.
It's perfect, all too believable, for all that it doesn’t make sense at all.
Reaching the top of the stairs he hears someone puttering around in the kitchen. It sounds like Jack, or, he assumes it’s Jack, from the low, familiar murmur of her voice. He hovers for a moment, before backtracking, and soon finds himself outside of Ian’s door.
It's ajar, and after a deep breath, Alex nudges it open and steps inside.
He feels a little dizzy, looking around the room. It's intact, and almost exactly as Alex had memorialised it in his head over the months it had taken him to start packing it up.
Almost, because it’s lived in, slightly off from how it would be left that night.
Water in the shower, damp towel on the rack. Bed made, of course, but other things that are out of place. Moved as Ian got ready for his day.
Alex clenches and unclenches his fists, trying to get his hands to stop shaking.
“What is this?” he asks the empty room.
There's no response.
A second chance.
He backs out, and is slow and careful in making his way downstairs, pausing in the doorway to the kitchen and watching Jack as she makes her coffee.
It's her, it’s so obviously her. Just...younger. Less worn down. Less afraid.
God, Alex feels crazy.
“Oh my god!” Jack shouts, jumping when she finally spots him “I didn’t hear you come down. Morning, then.”
Alex takes too long to answer, long enough for Jack’s face to shift into concern.
“Yeah, good morning,” he rushes to say.
“Bread’s there, if you want toast,” Jack says with a nod towards the island. “If not, there should still be some milk left.”
“Yeah, thanks,” Alex acknowledges, but he’s really just looking around the room, checking the details. Checking the clocks and the calendars.
It’s the same. Everything telling him the exact same thing his phone had.
He's traveled in time.
Or to another universe.
Or something.
He's back, reliving the day Ian died.
Impossible. But...
Alex bites his lip to hold back the crazed laughter he can feel bubbling in his throat.
He turns to look at the pictures on the fridge. He'd never removed the ones of Ian. It had hurt to look at them, especially at first, but even so, he could never bring himself to hide them away.
Alex can see the spaces where pictures are missing as well. The ones that would come later of him and Jack, of Tom, of Kyra. He hopes that he’ll still have the chance to take them, to put them up on the fridge alongside the others.
First, though...
His fingers brush against a picture of him and Ian, taken when he was younger. The two of them, together at the Krav Maga studio.
It's insane, delusional, impossible, but Alex has already decided.
A second chance.
He’s going to take it.
“Alex?” Jack asks, startling him from his thoughts. He can hear her concern, and he realises that he’s been staring at the unopened fridge for a noticeably long time.
“Sorry,” he says. “Zoned out. I didn’t sleep well last night.”
He jerks open the fridge and quickly reaches for the milk.
“Are you okay?”
No, he thinks. He hasn’t been okay in a long time.
“Eh,” is all he says. “A bit off, but I’m sure I’m just tired.”
Jack seems to take that at face value and continues with her morning. Alex likewise goes through the motions of breakfast, but his mind is only partially on his cereal.
He's already planning.
Even if this does turn out to be a dream or an illusion, he wants to have tried. He wants, even if it’s just in this world, to change it.
Alex has an excellent memory, even under normal circumstances. This particular day, however, he has gone over a million times. He can remember, as clear as anything, every moment, every step he took.
He has repeated, memorised, overthought all the things he might have done differently. All the things that, if he’d known, if he’d had a do-over, he’d change.
And now he’s got the chance.
“Are you alright?” Tom asks, picking up on Alex’s distracted state.
Distracted, yes. There’s shock in there too, at seeing the school, seeing everyone. The people he hasn’t seen in years, the ones that, last time they'd looked at him, it had been with distrust, or anger, or awkwardness. Not today though. Today he’s still Alex Rider, a normal kid.
Not sick, not orphaned, not hated and gossiped about. Just Alex.
It's hard not to stare, and it’s hard not to get caught up in his own head.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” he reassures Tom. Then, he has a thought. Sees an opportunity open in front of him “Maybe. I don’t know. I’m feeling a bit off.”
He wants the freedom to be at home, the space to cover all his bases. To think of a plan. He wants Ian in a receptive mood.
And most importantly, he doesn’t want Ian to be mad at him.
If this doesn’t work, if it’s not real or he fails or whatever, then he doesn’t want one of their last conversations to be...that.
All because Alex fucked up.
Plus, the twisting, heavy weight in his stomach is probably just the anxiety, but it sure as hell feels like he’s sick.
So, Alex plays it up. Frowns and moves slowly and makes himself shake a little as the day goes by. Tells people he’s not feeling great when they ask, and to really sell it, he makes himself throw up in the bathroom. His pallor and watery eyes and general air of miserableness are certainly convincing.
When he does it again later, asking to be let out of class, the school offers to call Jack. He agrees.
Alex misses history, and if Tom gets his phone confiscated, he’s not there to see it.
Jack is sympathetic, but in a rush when she picks him up. She hesitates once she’s dropped him back home, but Alex assures her she’s fine, and he’ll only be resting for the afternoon, so she’s quickly heading off somewhere.
Something to do with her study, her degree, he thinks, even though she didn’t mention. It had been at this point she’d gotten her confirmation of graduation, and he’d only later put together what that might have meant for her, for them. Before Ian’s death had ultimately derailed everything anyway.
He's not sure what’s going to happen this time, if it works, but that’s a future Alex’ problem. He just needs to get through tonight first.
And in the end, he’s happy for Jack. He wants what’s best for her. After everything she’s done for him, everything she’s given up, maybe this will be the better outcome for her too.
But yes, tonight. He needs to keep Ian home tonight. He's not sure if that will be enough, but it’s all he can think to do.
As if summoned by his thoughts, his phone beeps with a text. It’s Ian.
Jack said the school called and she brought you home. Are you okay?
Alex texts back. Yeah just feeling sick. Threw up a few times
Take it easy. Call if you get any worse. I have an important meeting this afternoon, but should be home before dinner.
Alex feels his eyes start to sting, but he sends a thumbs up and shoves his phone into his pocket before he can properly start crying.
His stomach still doesn’t feel great, legitimately, but he forces himself up to go search through Ian’s office while he has the chance. He'd never exactly been banned from the room, but he didn’t go in there much and he wasn’t ever allowed to poke around.
He's not sure what he’s looking for this time, and he can’t start breaking into anything that’s locked or deliberately hidden, but he still takes the chance to look it over with a new eye.
Which doesn’t do him much good. There's nothing about Point Blanc, or Scorpia. But that makes sense. Ian would have that kind of thing locked away, and he’d rather not have to explain why he picked open the locks on Ian’s draws. He’d notice.
Still, it’s interesting to be in the space, to be in Ian’s office knowing what he knows, without the grief there, and the suspicions, crowding things out.
Alex spends the rest of the afternoon in bed. He doesn’t sleep, he doesn’t think he manages to doze, but he’s curled up, not entirely performatively, under the blankets hours later when Ian pops his head in.
“Hey,” his uncle says, just as softly as his knock on the bedroom door had been.
Alex looks at him, and bites the inside of his cheek to distract himself. “Hey.”
Ian comes to sit on the end of the bed.
“How was work?” Alex asks.
“It was fine. Had some trouble with a client though, so I’ll be in my office for a bit.” He’s frowning as he speaks, more concentrated on Alex. He reaches out to press the back of his hand against Alex’s forehead. “How are you feeling?”
“Okay-ish.”
Alex is staring at Ian. He knows he is. Drinking in the sound of his voice, the details of his face, even how he smells.
It's all exactly the way he remembers, but also not. Not exactly. As hard as he’d tried, things had faded, blurred as the years went by.
“Alex?” Ian must have caught him staring. He withdraws his hand, but only looks more concerned.
“I threw up a few times a school, but I haven’t since,” Alex offers, before adding, lest Ian suspect he’d faked it to get out of school, “stomach still doesn’t feel great though.”
And well, he had faked it, technically, but not for the reasons Ian would think.
“Do you think you’ll be up for dinner? Jack will be cooking.”
“Maybe, we’ll see.”
“Okay then. Maybe try and have a nap, and see how you go. Shout if you need me. Or Jack, obviously.”
He pats Alex on the arm as he stands, and leaves the door slightly ajar on his way out. Alex strains to hear him head to his office, but his uncle is distinctly quiet about it, moving almost silently. He'd never noticed before.
About an hour later he gets a text from Tom, which answers the question about him getting his phone confiscated. And maybe that’s a good sign. Proof that things can change, that Alex can change them.
Are you ok?
And are you SURE you’re sick? Because if not Jahid heard about a party tonight that we may or may not have managed to get the address for.
Alex assures him he’s fine, but that he is feeling sick, but also that it shouldn’t stop Tom from going and having fun. Tom, of course, puts up a fight. He even brings up Ayisha, as if that would move Alex.
But, he supposes, it did once. Back before everything.
Hopefully this will change things for the better for her too. No Julius and his cruelty.
And he hopes Tom does go, and hopes he and Steph still...well, ‘hit it off’ is probably the wrong way to describe vomiting on someone while they explained the queer allegory buried shallowly within the X-Men movies, but it had worked for them.
Ideally, Alex staying home won’t derail that.
He heads down for dinner when Jack calls it up, but sticks with a glass of water, both to keep his cover, and because the thought of food right now is genuinely off-putting. The others are eating though, and it’s the takeout stir-fry, just as he remembers.
If Ian notices it’s not home cooked, he doesn’t let on, but perhaps that’s because he’s got his nose practically buried in his tablet, watching footage of the Roscoes. That too, just as Alex remembers.
“I thought the rule was no devices at dinner.” Alex almost immediately regrets saying it. It’s almost instinctual, the urge to needle Ian, but the last thing he wants to do is draw more attention to the thing that’s going to get him killed.
His eyes stray to the clock on the wall and he feels a growing sense of dread. A countdown.
An afternoon to think and he still doesn’t actually have a plan here beyond keep Ian in the house. Make sure he doesn’t tell anyone about Point Blanc and Parker Roscoe.
But who knows. It might even be too late.
“It’s work,” Ian says.
“The client you mentioned? Must be important if you’re doing overtime from home and breaking your ‘tablets at dinner’ rules.”
Maybe it’s better to know what Ian knows. He hadn’t really asked questions the first time, but maybe now it will help.
He just won’t bring up the school. He won’t mention the lead that tipped Ian off. The thing he passed on or mentioned to the wrong person that seemingly threw up enough of a red flag that Scorpia decided he had to die.
“Michael Roscoe was one of the clients at the bank,” Ian confirms. “He died recently.”
“Oh, that’s sad,” Jack says.
“Hmm, yes. And now his son inherits everything. It's a bit of a mess.”
Alex takes a sip of water to distract himself. He'll have to bring up Parker, or rather, Not-Parker, eventually. They'll have to do something about Greif, and Point Blanc, and all those kids. Two people are already dead, and Alex won’t allow there to be more.
But tonight, the person he has to focus on saving is Ian.
And without food to distract himself with, Alex’s attention is locked onto Ian. He’s torn between how much he missed him, relishing in the chance to see him again, to have him there and alive and breathing right in front of him, and wondering if...he ever could have figured it out.
It he would have caught on before Ian had eventually, surely, told him.
He wonders, even now, if he can actually see it. Knowing with terribly earned hindsight what Ian was, what he did, can he name it? Or is it just that he does know, and it’s impossible to take that back?
He’s not sure.
Even in the dark, Alex had been a perceptive child. It was something that Ian himself had encourage to a degree, as long as he was smart about it – Alex hadn’t always been smart about it – and still, he’s never known. Never had a clue.
So maybe he wouldn’t.
Even now, staring at him, it’s hard to relate his boring, grey-wearing, rule following uncle with what he knows this – their – world was. What they did.
Then again, even Yassen on the surface, scar and all, looked entirely ordinary. You'd never guess what he was either. Maybe that’s just the mark of a good spy. Or assassin.
Ian must catch him staring, again, because he looks at Alex with worry, fork poised in the air halfway to his mouth. “Alex?”
“Huh?” Alex blinks.
“Are you sure you shouldn’t be in bed?”
There’s a part of Alex, the part that’s tired, the part that has been so tired for so long now, that would love to just curl up in bed and sleep for a week. but he can’t. and at the moment, he doesn't think he even could.
“I’m fine,” Alex brushes off. “And what? I can’t spend time with you?”
Ian shares a look with Jack. “You don’t usually.”
“That’s not-” Alex finds himself stuttering, suddenly embarrassed. “I mean-”
“It’s fine,” Ian says with a smile. “You’re old enough now that it’s embarrassing to hang out with your parents. I remember that.”
And Alex does remember the superficial but visceral cringe he’d sometimes felt when spending too long with Ian, especially when they weren’t on one of their holidays. When Ian nagged him, or drove like an old man.
The feeling makes less sense to him now, but he can remember it. A very specific teenager thing that makes his chest feel tight just thinking back on.
The wasted time.
“You can remember that far back?” Alex retorts, seizing on Ian’s good humour as his own distraction as much as for the others. “But it was so long ago.”
Ian’s smile curls further. “Yeah, there it is. Feeling better, are you?”
Alex shrugs. “I’m not hungry, but the nap helped.”
“Good,” Ian says. After a moment though, as he refocuses on what’s left of his dinner, his smile fades, and he eyes Alex warily, like he knows full well that he’s not telling the whole truth.
Point Blanc, or the Roscoes, don’t come up again for the rest of dinner, and after helping tidy away the plates, Ian informs them that he has more work to do tonight, and that he’ll be in his office. He's off before Alex can think of a way to stop him.
As he hovers anxiously in the middle of the room, he briefly looks to Jack, who also stares at the door Ian had disappeared through, looking worried herself. Or maybe not worried, but certainly weighed by something. She shakes her head and turns to start washing the pan she hadn’t cooked in before Alex has a chance to question her either.
The problem is the countdown. The ticking clock.
The problem is that Alex doesn’t know enough. He knows his side of the day, but he doesn’t know enough about Ian’s. About Yassen’s. About Blunt’s and the others’.
He thought...
He thought he knew what to do, but the later it gets, the closer the clock ticks towards the moment Ian had left, the less sure he is. What if it’s not enough?
Panic claws at him.
His chest feels too tight, his heart beating too fast.
He doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know how to keep Ian here. He may not know to start looking for a mysterious boarding school in the middle of the Alps, but who knows, he might have already tipped them off.
Yassen might already be here, in London, preparing.
Only Ian, only Yassen, only Martin Wilby had known the full story. The rest of them only had pieces. And Alex himself had only pieces of those pieces. The ones he’d spent years prying loose from various reluctant parties.
He wanders into the hall, and once it’s in reach, has to grasp at the staircase banister, his breaths coming too fast.
He doesn’t know what to do.
Ian’s going to die.
He's going to die in some filthy, scummy warehouse again and leave Alex all alone.
It's going to happen again.
Alex squeezes the banister until his hands ache.
No, he tells himself.
No.
Second chance.
It’s not going to happen again.
Fuck it.
Before he can second-guess himself, he marches up the stairs and towards Ian’s office. He knocks, but is entering the room before Ian can even acknowledge him. He makes sure to shut the door behind him.
The bravado of moments ago unfortunately seems to slip away just as quickly as it had come as he stares at Ian’s confused face. How does he even start?
“Alex?” Ian looks between him and the closed door with bemusement that bordered slightly on concern.
“You can’t leave the house tonight,” Alex blurts.
“I’m sorry?”
“Promise,” Alex pushes. “Promise you won’t leave the house tonight.”
“Alex-”
“-it’s not safe.”
That gets Ian’s attention. “Alex, what are you talking about?”
“It’s not safe,” Alex repeats, and the words come out a little shaky.
Ian is frowning at him, and Alex doesn’t know what to read in the expression.
“Alex,” Ian says carefully. “Everything’s fine. Maybe you should go back to bed. You’re not well and-”
“I’m fine,” Alex cuts in. “But you aren’t. Or, you won’t be if you go out tonight.”
Ian sighs, and stands up. “Alex.”
“I know what you are.”
“What?” Ian says after a noticeable pause.
“I know you’re a spy.”
It’s because he’s prepared that he sees the look of shock pass across Ian’s face. It's quickly shuttered into something blank, something neutral, but Alex sees it.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” comes the expected response.
Alex shakes his head. “Don’t. You don’t need to do that. But really, we don’t have time. You're a spy, you work for British secret intelligence, and if you tell anyone that you’re looking into Parker Roscoe and his father, if you tell anyone about the school he was sent to, or any other connections you’ve made, you’re going to die.”
“What sch-” Ian cuts himself off with his own shake of the head.
He circles around his desk and approaches Alex, who feels rooted to the spot. He looks worried, but Alex can tell that it’s not about the right thing.
“I know it sounds crazy,” he says with increasing desperation. “But I’ve lived through this. I know what’s going to happen. You're a spy and tonight, if you leave, you’re going to be murdered.”
Ian reaches out a hand, like he’s going to check for a fever again. “you’re okay, Alex. Everything is fine. Should I call for Jack?”
Alex dodges the hand.
Ian frowns, and says, almost more to himself than to Alex, “you sleepwalked a few times when you were a kid, but this is-”
“I’m not asleep, and I’m not dreaming.” At least, he doesn’t think that he is, and he’s going to act like he’s not. This is real. This is his last chance. “I know how this sounds, Ian, but please, you have to believe me. I know what’s going to happen, and what’s going to happen tonight it that you die. Unless we stop it.”
Alex lets Ian take him by the shoulders. ”Alex."
He sounds more lost that Alex thinks he’s ever heard him.
“I know my father was a spy too.”
He sees Ian swallow.
“You what?” he says, quietly.
It’s crazy. He doesn’t blame Ian for not believing him, but he has to. And this is all Alex can think of to convince him.
“My father was a spy,” Alex pushes on. “He was a spy, working undercover in Scorpia. Until they killed him.”
“How do you know that name?” Alex thinks he hears real panic threading through the question.
“I know about Scorpia. I know about your work and the Department and Alan Blunt and Mrs Jones and even Yassen.”
“Yassen?”
Alex nods. “I know. Please, you have to believe me.”
Ian’s hands, where they’re resting on his shoulders, are shaking.
“How could you know about all of that?” Ian asks faintly. “Have you been- You can’t know about them. You shouldn’t know about any of that.”
“But I do. Because I know what’s going to happen. And you can question me later, you can take me to a hospital, you can take me to Blunt, you can do whatever you want, as long as you stay home tonight. As long as you don’t tell anyone what you know.”
Alex has no idea what to do long term. He has no idea if they’ll come for Ian anyway. But if he can keep him home, if he can derail things, get them through tonight, then just maybe...
He reaches out a hand to grab at the fabric of Ian’s jumper, and he looks at it rather than his face as he murmurs “you died.”
“Alex.”
“You died,” Alex repeats, blinking. “You said you were just going into the office but you died and I can’t- I can’t let that-”
His vision goes blurry, tears spilling over to run down his cheeks, and he’s not sure whether it’s him moving forward or Ian pulling him in, but the next thing he knows is that he’s got his face buried in his uncle’s shoulder and he’s sobbing.