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Interlude: I'll Face Myself
Interlude Title: I’ll Face Myself
Canon: PPC
Rating: T, for swears and body horror
Agents: Trevelyan, A.
Time Period: May 2010 HST
Word Count: 1566
Summary: Change – whether it’s your choice or not – means you have to take a good, hard look back at your past. Even, and especially, when it hurts.
[Immediately follows Interlude: A Changed Man.]
Warning: Discussion of severe burns.
Alec stumbled back across the hall to his and Callahan’s response center, his mind reeling. In the mirror, he’d been able to see the tail of the phoenix mark extending beneath his collar, which could only mean one thing.
It didn’t stop at his face.
He ducked into the bathroom and locked the door before stripping down to his boxers, seeing exactly what he’d expected/dreaded/feared.
The explosion all those years ago hadn’t just disfigured his face. It had burned and blistered the skin on the right side of his neck and torso, third- and fourth-degree burns half-wrapping around his back and down his right leg. Thank God there hadn’t been any need for amputation, but it had been touch-and-go. His very survival after the explosion had been touch-and-go.
And now the reminder of that betrayal was altered by the mark that had insinuated itself over top of it like an ink-wash. The scar itself was still there, still leathery and tough, the damaged nerves still causing him pain on bad days even now, after all this time. The curling lines meant to resemble minimalist tail feathers felt like a violation of some kind, overwriting the reminder of the pain and trauma he’d gone through with an ornate symbol.
Alec touched the scar on his ribs, his fingers brushing against the gently-waving lines of the phoenix mark. They weren’t raised any more than the scar was; they were a part of him, for better or worse.
He stared at himself in the mirror, looking at his eyes instead of anywhere else. At least those were still the same, grey-green and weary. He’d only in the past few years begun to release his bitterness and accept his scar, nearly twenty years since the explosion as HST reckoned time (and thirteen years from his own perspective); did the damn thing have to change now?!
Deep breath, Alec. It had taken a lot to keep from losing his mind in front of the Team; like hell he was going to have a complete breakdown half-naked in the bathroom. He took a deep breath in, let a deep breath out, and closed his eyes.
Fuck.
*
October 1986
Arkhangelsk Chemical Weapons Facility, USSR
Six minutes.
Plenty of time. Alec had planned this to a science; it had even been his suggestion to set the timer for six minutes instead of five. Six gave him and Ourumov a minute’s leeway to escape. They’d agreed that the chemical weapons plant had outlived its usefulness and would be a useful sacrificial lamb to break Alec off from MI-6. Alec had no doubt that James would escape, too. Just as well. An eyewitness report would confirm his tragic death at the hands of a power-mad Soviet colonel.
The blank Ourumov had fired next to his head had deafened him in his left ear, but he could still hear out of his right. He heard James doing…something. Something squeaked – the wheels of a cart full of gas tanks, he surmised. Ourumov's voice, smug: "You can't win." And then the sound of a conveyer belt turning on, gunfire, and loud, loud tumbling and clattering of metal gas tanks hitting the soldiers standing below. Ourumov dodged; Alec couldn’t move until he was positive that James was gone. One hit him on the arm, and he suppressed the urge to swear. Damn thing felt like it had broken a bone. Maybe it had. He hadn’t expected a perfect escape, anyway. But they had time. They had time.
Five minutes.
“He’s gone,” Ourumov growled in Russian. “Get up.”
Alec struggled to his feet, avoiding using his injured arm to get himself up. “The plane,” he said hoarsely.
“I’ll stop him. Go. Like we planned.”
The colonel ordering him around rankled, since this had been Alec’s idea in the first place. Still, arguing would get them both killed, so he followed Ourumov, creeping after him to the runway and ducking behind an outbuilding. The soldiers – and James – were otherwise occupied; they wouldn’t see him.
And then he heard the plane engine roaring, and actually swore. What stupid bastard had…?! He and Ourumov should have been the only ones with the keys. Clearly, Ourumov had failed.
Alec was going to berate him for that later.
He crept around the side. There was the distinctive sound of Kalashnikovs firing, and he could see James running, trying to catch the plane like he was late to a connection.
Four minutes.
Alec almost had to laugh; of course he’d found some way to get out of this. The sound of motorcycle engines stopped with a cry of pain, and then the engine revved again; Alec looked around the corner of the building to see James trying his damnedest to catch up to the plane, now on a bike. He honestly had to admire his former partner agent for that, even if he really wanted to kill Ourumov now.
Alec could tell from his own experience that the plane was running out of runway and wouldn’t be able to take off at all, even if James could catch it. Maybe he’d have enough room to brake if he swerved. Otherwise all three of them would be stuck.
No such luck. The damn plane plummeted off the cliff…and James’ motorcycle with it.
An ignoble end for his former partner, Alec thought, with a twinge of regret. Where had Ourumov gone? Radioing a helicopter, no doubt, or heading towards the emergency bunker that had been built in case of just such a situation. He ran that way too, beginning to smile just a bit. Maybe not all was lost.
He heard the buzz of the plane’s engine, looked up, and saw it flying away. At least James could verify his alibi now.
Three minutes.
And then his world went white.
The next thing he knew, he was coughing, powder snow in his mouth.
He couldn’t hear, he couldn’t see, he couldn’t move.
The only thought hazily drifting through his head was Six minutes already? as though he’d merely glanced at his watch while waiting. His world whited out again, and the next thing he knew was Ourumov yelling at him over the ringing in his ears.
“Get up!” The colonel sounded hysterical. “We have sacrificed too much, do not ruin this for us!”
Alec tried. He couldn’t move.
“Get up!” Ourumov shouted, and grabbed him by the right shoulder, the one sticking out of the snow.
Alec felt a twinge of pain and something distantly like a plaster being removed, and glanced up at the colonel.
Ourumov had a look of horror on his face, and Alec could see his gloved hand. Stuck to it was a ragged patch of fabric from Alec’s tactical suit, and something else wide and torn and bloody.
My skin, Alec realized distantly. That’s quite a lot of my skin.
He opened his mouth to scream, and vomited instead.
*
He’d spent the rest of 1986 and nearly all of 1987 running the Janus Syndicate from a burn ward in a Swiss hospital. Ourumov had confirmed his suspicion: the damn timer hadn’t been set for six minutes.
It was three.
Six minutes would have left him a whole man. Three minutes had turned him into this: a wounded man who’d survived Arkhangelsk and the medevac to Switzerland out of sheer bloody-mindedness. He’d ended up with two goals: cripple the United Kingdom by whatever means necessary, and kill James Bond, the man he’d once called friend.
He’d ended up accomplishing precisely zero of those goals.
Alec pinched the bridge of his nose and opened his eyes again. That was all behind him, far behind him, and focusing on the past didn’t help. But that, all of that…that reminder of his past, the mark of Cain that had been branded onto him, was changed now, too.
This marked an entirely new set of trauma, something he never could have comprehended from his base in Cuba nine years after that explosion. Magic and heartbreak and actual death, full impalement by a demon lord’s poison-clawed fist.
Maybe that explained the phoenix. Death, rebirth, and the fire from which he’d rebuilt himself the first time. His scar was the phoenix’s pyre.
That didn’t mean he had to especially like it.
He prodded the ink-wash feathers trailing across his ribcage again. They didn’t wipe off, or move, or do anything to indicate that they were anything other than mundane permanent marks on his skin, affixed to the leathery scar tissue.
Magic had, once again, done something ridiculous to his life, and there was no turning back from it.
He sighed and got dressed again. As much as he hated this change, there was no getting rid of it. It was just something else he had to accept about himself…though he rather hated wearing his heart on his sleeve, so to speak. He wasn’t the strangest-looking agent in the PPC by far, but this wasn’t especially welcome.
There was a flurry of knocks on the door. “Alec! Aaaalec, open up! I’m back!” Oh, great. Callahan. He really didn’t want to deal with her interrogation about this right now.
He opened the bathroom door and did his best to glare at her. “What?”
“I’m officially fit for duty, so says FicPsych!” she said, beaming. “Your turn next.” Then she blinked owlishly at him. “You got something on your face, you know that?”
He pushed her over into a pile of blankets and left their response center.
“Hey! Alec! That’s not very nice!” he could hear her shouting after him. He couldn’t help but smile, just a little.
At least some things hadn’t changed.
Canon: PPC
Rating: T, for swears and body horror
Agents: Trevelyan, A.
Time Period: May 2010 HST
Word Count: 1566
Summary: Change – whether it’s your choice or not – means you have to take a good, hard look back at your past. Even, and especially, when it hurts.
[Immediately follows Interlude: A Changed Man.]
Warning: Discussion of severe burns.
Alec stumbled back across the hall to his and Callahan’s response center, his mind reeling. In the mirror, he’d been able to see the tail of the phoenix mark extending beneath his collar, which could only mean one thing.
It didn’t stop at his face.
He ducked into the bathroom and locked the door before stripping down to his boxers, seeing exactly what he’d expected/dreaded/feared.
The explosion all those years ago hadn’t just disfigured his face. It had burned and blistered the skin on the right side of his neck and torso, third- and fourth-degree burns half-wrapping around his back and down his right leg. Thank God there hadn’t been any need for amputation, but it had been touch-and-go. His very survival after the explosion had been touch-and-go.
And now the reminder of that betrayal was altered by the mark that had insinuated itself over top of it like an ink-wash. The scar itself was still there, still leathery and tough, the damaged nerves still causing him pain on bad days even now, after all this time. The curling lines meant to resemble minimalist tail feathers felt like a violation of some kind, overwriting the reminder of the pain and trauma he’d gone through with an ornate symbol.
Alec touched the scar on his ribs, his fingers brushing against the gently-waving lines of the phoenix mark. They weren’t raised any more than the scar was; they were a part of him, for better or worse.
He stared at himself in the mirror, looking at his eyes instead of anywhere else. At least those were still the same, grey-green and weary. He’d only in the past few years begun to release his bitterness and accept his scar, nearly twenty years since the explosion as HST reckoned time (and thirteen years from his own perspective); did the damn thing have to change now?!
Deep breath, Alec. It had taken a lot to keep from losing his mind in front of the Team; like hell he was going to have a complete breakdown half-naked in the bathroom. He took a deep breath in, let a deep breath out, and closed his eyes.
Fuck.
October 1986
Arkhangelsk Chemical Weapons Facility, USSR
Six minutes.
Plenty of time. Alec had planned this to a science; it had even been his suggestion to set the timer for six minutes instead of five. Six gave him and Ourumov a minute’s leeway to escape. They’d agreed that the chemical weapons plant had outlived its usefulness and would be a useful sacrificial lamb to break Alec off from MI-6. Alec had no doubt that James would escape, too. Just as well. An eyewitness report would confirm his tragic death at the hands of a power-mad Soviet colonel.
The blank Ourumov had fired next to his head had deafened him in his left ear, but he could still hear out of his right. He heard James doing…something. Something squeaked – the wheels of a cart full of gas tanks, he surmised. Ourumov's voice, smug: "You can't win." And then the sound of a conveyer belt turning on, gunfire, and loud, loud tumbling and clattering of metal gas tanks hitting the soldiers standing below. Ourumov dodged; Alec couldn’t move until he was positive that James was gone. One hit him on the arm, and he suppressed the urge to swear. Damn thing felt like it had broken a bone. Maybe it had. He hadn’t expected a perfect escape, anyway. But they had time. They had time.
Five minutes.
“He’s gone,” Ourumov growled in Russian. “Get up.”
Alec struggled to his feet, avoiding using his injured arm to get himself up. “The plane,” he said hoarsely.
“I’ll stop him. Go. Like we planned.”
The colonel ordering him around rankled, since this had been Alec’s idea in the first place. Still, arguing would get them both killed, so he followed Ourumov, creeping after him to the runway and ducking behind an outbuilding. The soldiers – and James – were otherwise occupied; they wouldn’t see him.
And then he heard the plane engine roaring, and actually swore. What stupid bastard had…?! He and Ourumov should have been the only ones with the keys. Clearly, Ourumov had failed.
Alec was going to berate him for that later.
He crept around the side. There was the distinctive sound of Kalashnikovs firing, and he could see James running, trying to catch the plane like he was late to a connection.
Four minutes.
Alec almost had to laugh; of course he’d found some way to get out of this. The sound of motorcycle engines stopped with a cry of pain, and then the engine revved again; Alec looked around the corner of the building to see James trying his damnedest to catch up to the plane, now on a bike. He honestly had to admire his former partner agent for that, even if he really wanted to kill Ourumov now.
Alec could tell from his own experience that the plane was running out of runway and wouldn’t be able to take off at all, even if James could catch it. Maybe he’d have enough room to brake if he swerved. Otherwise all three of them would be stuck.
No such luck. The damn plane plummeted off the cliff…and James’ motorcycle with it.
An ignoble end for his former partner, Alec thought, with a twinge of regret. Where had Ourumov gone? Radioing a helicopter, no doubt, or heading towards the emergency bunker that had been built in case of just such a situation. He ran that way too, beginning to smile just a bit. Maybe not all was lost.
He heard the buzz of the plane’s engine, looked up, and saw it flying away. At least James could verify his alibi now.
Three minutes.
And then his world went white.
The next thing he knew, he was coughing, powder snow in his mouth.
He couldn’t hear, he couldn’t see, he couldn’t move.
The only thought hazily drifting through his head was Six minutes already? as though he’d merely glanced at his watch while waiting. His world whited out again, and the next thing he knew was Ourumov yelling at him over the ringing in his ears.
“Get up!” The colonel sounded hysterical. “We have sacrificed too much, do not ruin this for us!”
Alec tried. He couldn’t move.
“Get up!” Ourumov shouted, and grabbed him by the right shoulder, the one sticking out of the snow.
Alec felt a twinge of pain and something distantly like a plaster being removed, and glanced up at the colonel.
Ourumov had a look of horror on his face, and Alec could see his gloved hand. Stuck to it was a ragged patch of fabric from Alec’s tactical suit, and something else wide and torn and bloody.
My skin, Alec realized distantly. That’s quite a lot of my skin.
He opened his mouth to scream, and vomited instead.
He’d spent the rest of 1986 and nearly all of 1987 running the Janus Syndicate from a burn ward in a Swiss hospital. Ourumov had confirmed his suspicion: the damn timer hadn’t been set for six minutes.
It was three.
Six minutes would have left him a whole man. Three minutes had turned him into this: a wounded man who’d survived Arkhangelsk and the medevac to Switzerland out of sheer bloody-mindedness. He’d ended up with two goals: cripple the United Kingdom by whatever means necessary, and kill James Bond, the man he’d once called friend.
He’d ended up accomplishing precisely zero of those goals.
Alec pinched the bridge of his nose and opened his eyes again. That was all behind him, far behind him, and focusing on the past didn’t help. But that, all of that…that reminder of his past, the mark of Cain that had been branded onto him, was changed now, too.
This marked an entirely new set of trauma, something he never could have comprehended from his base in Cuba nine years after that explosion. Magic and heartbreak and actual death, full impalement by a demon lord’s poison-clawed fist.
Maybe that explained the phoenix. Death, rebirth, and the fire from which he’d rebuilt himself the first time. His scar was the phoenix’s pyre.
That didn’t mean he had to especially like it.
He prodded the ink-wash feathers trailing across his ribcage again. They didn’t wipe off, or move, or do anything to indicate that they were anything other than mundane permanent marks on his skin, affixed to the leathery scar tissue.
Magic had, once again, done something ridiculous to his life, and there was no turning back from it.
He sighed and got dressed again. As much as he hated this change, there was no getting rid of it. It was just something else he had to accept about himself…though he rather hated wearing his heart on his sleeve, so to speak. He wasn’t the strangest-looking agent in the PPC by far, but this wasn’t especially welcome.
There was a flurry of knocks on the door. “Alec! Aaaalec, open up! I’m back!” Oh, great. Callahan. He really didn’t want to deal with her interrogation about this right now.
He opened the bathroom door and did his best to glare at her. “What?”
“I’m officially fit for duty, so says FicPsych!” she said, beaming. “Your turn next.” Then she blinked owlishly at him. “You got something on your face, you know that?”
He pushed her over into a pile of blankets and left their response center.
“Hey! Alec! That’s not very nice!” he could hear her shouting after him. He couldn’t help but smile, just a little.
At least some things hadn’t changed.