Forever Fighting | ✔️ | [previously Espionage: double-cross]

Chapter 1

The sun's high in the sky, blinding her. She lifts a hand to her face, imparting shade to her vision. She turns when she hears her name being called, receiving the ball and running into a free space. 

Her gaze is caught by the group of people, watching as they spread out across the clearing

Then she sees the man.

He steps out of the shadows, a ghost of darkness. 

She stops running, ball stopping at her feet.

Something about this man was intruiging her. He looked, powerful.

"Mum, who's that?" She points towards the shadows, watching as her mother's face contorts with fear.

"Gray, get her out!"

Her father looks terrified. "No! I can help."

"Just protect her."

Her mother looks at the man, hand whipping out a hidden gun.

Everything else happens within seconds. 

Aliza Pierce points the gun at the man, aiming and firing in a second. 

She can tell the man's trained because he retaliates just as fast. 

The two bangs echo through the clearing, two bodies falling to the ground. 

Only one getting up.

"Mum!"

She watches her mother's body's fall , sees her hair spread around her head like a dark halo. She watches as a blossom of red expands around her chest and as a pool of crimson spreads beneath her body, staining the green grass with death. 

"No!" Alex sat up straight, dark waves falling around her face, shielding her from the sight of her room. Her bed was a total mess, what with the duvet laying strewn across the floor, pillows clawed at while feathers still floated down through the air with a delicate grace Alex's emotions currently lacked. "Just another nightmare," she muttered.

Her normally brown, sparkling eyes had become dull and dark, pain creeping through, turning her expression thunderous and her thoughts sour. It was like this most nights, reliving the moment that sent her world spinning on its axis. Every night was the same memory, the constant reminder that she couldn't do anything, powerless to prevent her mother's fate. Hours spent pondering what-ifs cut into her sleeping time, causing the bags under her eyes to deepen and darken.

Even after all this time, the pain hadn't faded. Every time someone mentioned their mum, an activity they did together, the comfort they had been given, it sent a pang through her heart. She longed for her mother, wishing she had more time, wishing she could remember the moments she did have and cherish them.

Yet that one memory was the only one she could picture clearly in her head. Everything else had become a blur, a faded photograph, teasing in its contents.

Pushing her hair out of her face, Alex got off of her bed and walked over to her mirror. Man I look awful. Her skin was pale and dry, lips parched and chapped.

Sighing, she ambled down the stairs and into the kitchen, turning the tap on and filling a cup with water with lethargic movements. Alex was tired, so tired of being forced to relive it; of letting herself be so affected by it nine years later; of not allowing herself to move on. Despite the many promises she'd made to herself, the constant nagging voice in the back of her mind that made her want to be better, push herself harder, part of her just wanted to stop and just be.

She wondered what it would be like to have actual relationships with other people, friendships rather than fleeting conversations in the hallway. As much as she wanted to, it was too damn hard to let anyone close, the unbearable pain her 5-year-old self felt still a pulsing nuisance in the background.

The only person she still let herself relax around was her dad but more recently, they had been drifting apart. Alex looked around the empty house, no sign of another person living there apart from the bedroom upstairs with clothes that could never fit her. He was out again, on another business trip. Her dad spent more time out of the country than he did with her. All she had now were brief conversations in between of meetings when he had a spare moment. That's what it's come to now, she thought, I'm just something to fill in those free moments, a spare part.

Now that childhood innocence had been lost, every thought was bitter or lined with the hard truth of the world. It had left her armed with wit, sarcasm and the violent tendencies from hobbies her mother's death had made her want to pursue. They were the only thing that kept her going now, really: the thrill of a fight, the satisfaction of breaking a code or the calm enjoyment of surviving in the wilderness.

So having a set of throwing knives at the age of 15 wasn't the most normal thing in the world but nothing about Alex was normal at this point. All she had now was an emotionless husk that only her unusual hobbies could bring any semblance of feeling.

Speaking of which, she had a fight tomorrow, one which had been said to prove more difficult. That in itself put a small smile on Alex's face as she pushed herself up the stairs, forcing herself to fall into another fitful sleep.