Chapter Text
Alex Rider has never been particularly good at saying no to father figures. This is unfortunate, considering they keep dropping into his life like particularly manipulative confetti. The problem, Alex reflects while dangling upside down from a helicopter over the Thames, is that he’s never had the chance to develop a proper immune system against paternal bullshit.
He definitely wouldn’t call them ‘daddy issues’. He just has a type. And that type is: emotionally unavailable men with questionable morals and a flair for psychological manipulation. Which is, coincidentally, also the job description for “Spy Handler” on MI6’s LinkedIn. Hence, the new job.
Alex Rider was fourteen when he first realised that every man over thirty in his life was either trying to adopt him, arrest him, or avenge his dead father. He was also fourteen when he realised this wasn’t normal. This epiphany hit him somewhere between the third and fourth concussion of the term, courtesy of a retired SAS officer who’d screamed “YOUR DAD WOULD’VE DODGED THAT!” while hurling a smoke grenade at his head. Alex had been too busy seeing stars to point out that his dad was, in fact, dead, and therefore had a significant disadvantage in the not-getting-hit-by-explosives department.
But that was the thing about being Alex Rider. No one ever let a little thing like corporeal reality get in the way of a good father-son bonding moment.
The first case had been Ian. Dear, dead Uncle Ian, who’d apparently looked at a grieving three-year-old and thought: perfect spy material. Alex remembered the exact moment he’d realized something was off - when Ian had taken him to the bank vault and shown him the gun collection instead of, say, a normal uncle’s collection of embarrassing childhood photos or embarrassing adult lego.
Ian had raised him like a project. Not a son, exactly - more like a really ambitious IKEA shelf. “Hold the torch steady, Alex.” “Don’t cry when you fall off the climbing wall, Alex.” “Always check for tailing cars, Alex. Even when you’re getting milk.” Alex didn’t know he was being groomed. He just thought Ian was finally proud of him. Which, in hindsight, was like a lab rat thinking the scientist keeps putting him in the maze because he believes in the rat’s potential.
“You’re just like your father,” Ian had said, which was apparently spy-speak for ‘I’m about to destroy your life but you’ll thank me later because you’re desperate for approval.’ But Alex hadn’t heard that. He’d heard: ‘You’re special. You’re wanted. You’re mine.’
Alex had, of course, nodded solemnly, because when your only living relative tells you you’re like your dead dad, you don’t ask follow-up questions. You just accept that your weekend plans now involve learning how to disarm a bomb using a paperclip and existential dread.
And so when Ian died - mysteriously, violently, and with a suspicious amount of classified documents in his sock drawer - Alex didn’t cry. He just stared at the coffin and thought: I must’ve done it wrong. I must not have been good enough to keep him alive. Alex missed him.
He missed him so much that when a man with a face like a haunted potato (Alan Blunt) showed up and said, “Your uncle was my best agent. You’re your father’s son, aren’t you?”, Alex didn’t hear the alarm bells. He heard: “You can still earn his love. You just have to risk your life for a country that’s just buried him.”
And Alex - stupid, desperate, fourteen-year-old Alex - had said yes. Because what if this was the test? What if Ian was watching from spy-heaven, clipboard in hand, muttering, “Let’s see if the boy’s got the stones to be my son”? (Alex does have them, by the way, but unfortunately they spend most of their time in a rock tumbler.)
The second case had been Blunt. Alan Blunt the Bureaucrat of Paternal Neglect, whose emotional range made a brick wall look expressive, had mastered the art of the backhanded paternal compliment. “Your father would be proud,” he’d say, usually right before sending Alex into a situation that would give a trained Navy SEAL pause.
“You’re your father’s son,” he said every time. Which was MI6-speak for: You’re genetically predisposed to trauma and espionage. Congratulations, you’ve won a lifetime supply of both.
Alex should’ve said no. Instead, he said: “Where do I sign?” Because Blunt had said father. Not uncle. And Alex thought: Maybe if I do this right, he’ll keep saying it. Maybe if I get shot at enough, he’ll finally call me a good son.
Spoiler: He didn’t. He called him “asset.” Which is Latin for “weaponised abandonment issues.”
Blunt didn’t so much lie to Alex. He’d just omitted the truth, like a Victorian mother explaining where babies come from. “You’re not a child soldier,” Blunt had said, after Alex’s second near-death experience. “You’re a consultant.”
“Consultants don’t get waterboarded,” Alex had replied.
“Your father never complained.”
And that was it. That was the magic phrase. Your father never complained. It was Blunt’s abracadabra. His get-out-of-guilt-free card. Say it, and Alex would fold faster than a MI6 origami seminar.
Because what if his dad had done this? What if Ian had also been fourteen, scared, and bleeding out in a Siberian bunker while a man who looked like a tax auditor told him to “walk it off, you’re your father’s son”?
Alex didn’t want to be less than his father. He wanted to be enough. So he kept saying yes. Yes to the missions. Yes to the lies. Yes to the “we’ll extract you when it’s feasible” - which, in MI6 speak, meant “we’ll send flowers to your funeral if we remember”.
Alex had started keeping track. By his fifteenth birthday, he’d heard “you’re your father’s son” seventeen times. It had preceded:
- Three near-death experiences
- Two actual death experiences (temporarily, but still)
- One (1) instance of being used as human bait
And a partridge in a pear tree of psychological trauma
The third case had been Yassen Gregorovich, which was where things got complicated. Yassen was what happened when your father’s murderer decided to take a protective interest in you - a sort of lethal guardian angel with even worse abandonment issues than yours.
Yassen was different. He never lied, or even omitted the truth. He just killed people and looked sad about it. Which, in Alex’s world, counted as emotional honesty. Yassen lurked in nearby shadows and shot people who looked at Alex wrong. Alex told himself it was Yassen being ruthless and tactical. But what he felt was: Dad just punched the guy who bullied me on the playground. Except the playground was a weapons facility. And the punch was a 9mm.
The first time Yassen saved his life (just deciding not to shoot him didn’t count, though it was a kindness not many men he met afforded him), Alex was fourteen and about to be executed in a Cuban missile base. Yassen pulled rank, carried him away like a broken suitcase, and said: “You look like him. Your father.” Alex, delirious, thought: He sees me. Not the mission. Not the blood. Just the part that’s someone else’s kid.
The twentieth time Yassen had saved his life, Alex had been drunk and tied to a conveyor belt heading towards a lava pit. (Why did they always have lava pits? Was there a villain IKEA?) Yassen had shot the villain, untied Alex, and said - not unkindly - “You have your father’s eyes.”
Alex had melted. Not from the lava. From the validation. Because this was a man who’d known his dad. Who’d respected him. Who’d killed for him. And now he was killing for Alex. It was twisted. It was unhealthy. It was the closest thing to a hug Alex had had in years.
When Yassen died, he said: “I killed your father. But I didn’t want to.” Which was his way of saying: I’m sorry I hurt you. I didn’t mean to be your villain. I just didn’t know how to be your dad. Alex cried that time. But only because Yassen had tried. And trying, in Alex’s life, was the most fatherly thing anyone had ever done.
And then Yassen had come back to life. Better than any of Alex’s other dads had managed so far.
Interlude: A Brief List of Other Men Who’ve Used “Your Dad” as a Emotional Crowbar
Mrs Jones (“Your father never asked why. He just did.”)
Smithers (“Your dad hated these trousers too. Still wore them. For Queen and country.”)
A random sniper in Marseille (“You even bleed like him. Poetic, no?”)
A crocodile (probably. Alex wouldn’t put it past them at this point.)
The worst part wasn’t even the manipulation. The worst part was how good Alex had gotten at leaning into it. He knew exactly how to tilt his head when Blunt needed reminding that Alex was just a kid (useful for guilt-tripping). He’d perfected the art of looking like a younger, more vulnerable John Rider when Yassen’s moral compass started spinning. He could play the prodigal son, the damaged orphan, the willing weapon - all depending on which father figure needed which flavor of validation.
Ian had wanted a legacy. Blunt wanted a tool. Yassen wanted absolution. And Alex? Alex just wanted someone to pick him up from school without an ulterior motive.
The helicopter swung lower. Somewhere in the darkness below, a nuclear weapons dealer was waiting - another ghost from his father’s past, because apparently John Rider had been very busy making enemies and very bad at making friends. The plan was simple: use Alex as bait, catch the dealer, extract information, and maybe - just maybe - Alex would get to live long enough to develop normal trust issues like a regular teenager.
Alex closed his eyes and tried to remember what his father’s voice sounded like. He couldn’t. He could remember Ian’s voice, Blunt’s voice, Yassen’s voice - each of them telling him he was his father’s son, each of them shaping him into whatever they needed him to be. But John Rider himself remained a ghost made of other people’s memories.
The helicopter stopped descending. Alex could see the dealer now - he looked like Santa Claus if Santa sold plutonium, though he had Alex’s father’s eyes, because of course the universe was nothing if not committed to the bit.
“Hello, Alex,” he said over the comms. “I knew your father. You look just like him.”
Alex didn’t bother asking. He just tiredly wondered if there was a loyalty card for this. "Fall for ten ‘your dad’ manipulations, get the eleventh existential crisis free.”
He was so busy wondering this that he almost missed the part where Santa pulled out a gun and said, “Any last words, little Rider?”
Alex looked at the gun. Then at Santa. He was going to need therapy. Assuming he lived long enough to find a therapist who specialized in my father’s colleagues keep trying to kill/adopt me. Below him, the man who’d probably loved his father (they all had, wasn’t that funny?) took aim.
He was fifteen years old, had daddy issues that could fill a textbook, and was about to be shot at by another remnant of his father’s complicated doublecrossing backstory. All things considered, it was a Tuesday.
“Tell me,” Alex said into his comm, channeling every ounce of teenage sarcasm he had left, “did you also know my father in the biblical sense, or are you just here to shoot at his emotional replacement?”
The man hesitated. Just for a second, but it was enough.
Thanks, Dad, Alex thought, as he dangled in midair. For absolutely nothing.
He was unarmed, because of course children couldn’t carry guns, he was dangling like a punching bag in the gym, and as usual, Alex was tired. For the first time - he didn’t think: What would my dad do? He thought: What if I just… don’t? What if I let the bullet come? What if I finally failed the test? What if -
The glass in the neighbouring skyscraper shattered in a shockwave. Yassen burst in, dual-wielding like it was Christmas morning and they were in Die Hard.
Blunt’s voice crackled over the comms: “Agent Rider, your father never gave up -” And Alex - exhausted, broken, fifteen-going-on-fifty Alex - just laughed. It was hysterical. It was ugly. It was the laugh of a boy who'd just realised that even death wouldn’t get in the way of these men from parenting him posthumously.
“Of course he didn’t,” Alex wheezed, as Yassen plucked him out of the air and threw him over his shoulder like a particularly violent fireman’s carry. “He’s dead. That’s peak reliability. Can’t disappoint anyone if you’re six feet under.”
Yassen paused. “You are not your father,” he says - quietly, almost gently.
And Alex - stupid, desperate Alex - felt his heart do something traitorous. Because that? That was new. That was worse. That was worse than “you’re his son”. That was “you’re you”. And Alex hated that that was all he’d ever wanted.
Definitely not daddy issues, though. Just a series of completely unrelated incidents involving older men who want to shape him in his father’s image. Totally normal. Alex Rider definitely doesn’t have daddy issues. He has daddy subscriptions. Monthly renewals. Auto-billing to his soul.
And the worst part? He keeps signing up. Because every time a man with a haunted look and a file full of his family’s secrets says, “You’re just like your father,” Alex hears: You’re not alone. You’re not nothing. You’re part of a story that started before you, and maybe - just maybe - won’t end with you in a body bag.
It’s a lie. But lies run in the family.