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The gentle autumn sunshine crept in through the curtains of the smallest bedroom in 28 Cheyne Row, Chelsea. Pressing a kiss to Alex Rider's mildly-stubbly face, Sofia Jones gently extricated herself from his arms, rolled out of bed and got dressed. "Just five more minutes Sof," murmured Alex, half-asleep.
"Fine, sleepyhead, but I'm warning you, I might have eaten all the pancakes by the time you get downstairs!" smirked Sofia. After brushing her teeth, she bounded down to the kitchen where Jack greeted her cheerily with a hug and kiss and served her a plate heaped with thick American-style buttermilk pancakes. Alex appeared as she was halfway through her pile. Jack brought him a plate and poured him a glass of milk as they both sat down next to Sofia. Sofia dipped a bite of pancake on her fork in maple syrup and pushed it into Alex's mouth. "Chocolate chip, your favourite!" she giggled as she fed him his first bite of breakfast off her own fork. The three of them ate their breakfast contentedly in the sunny kitchen and talked about their main plans for the day: a visit to the exhibition on pre-historic Africa at the Natural History Museum, followed by dinner at the new Venezuelan restaurant in Sloane Square. Alex leaned over to Sofia and licked a drop of maple syrup from her lips when she finished eating, tickling her inadvertently with the little bit of fuzzy moustache that had been creeping in above his own upper lip, slowly transforming his once-boyish countenance into the attractive face of a man. How did I get so lucky to have such an adorable, clever, handsome, fun companion like my Alex? thought Sofia for the thousandth time, batting her eyelashes against Alex's face and delighting in his gentle touch.
Sofia had this amazing thing about her that Alex cherished dearly -- something that no other girl he knew, not even Sabina, possessed. The un-brainwashed, fully-restored Sofia Jones was pure, wide-eyed, innocent and absolutely frank and natural, so unlike Sabina or the other girls in Alex's class at Brookland. Sofia had no makeup, no fashionable accessories, no nail varnish, no shaved arms or waxed eyebrows -- absolutely nothing apart from her natural, lovely, strong figure and heart-warming smile. Yet simultaneously, she was exceptionally talented, clever and intellectually sophisticated. Although Nightshade's deleterious effects had been purged from her mind, she still retained the useful skills such as expertise in various martial arts, fluency in many languages, and the ability to assimilate prodigious amounts of new knowledge in the blink of an eye. She was the sister and lover all-in-one that Alex never had, the perfect companion his heart had always longed for. He loved going out around London with her, hand in hand, often with a group of their school mates, and enjoying the occasional envious looks the others threw at them -- the perfect teenage "power couple". Alex was not allowed to tell his friends the truth about his and Sofia's history (it was highly-classified MI6 information), so to them it seemed as if Alex had magically turned up with a strangely enigmatic, yet superbly delightful, girl as a companion one fine morning. (Well, at least this was a far more interesting and entertaining mystery than Alex's laundry list of consecutive illnesses that supposedly explained his frequent absences from school!) Only Tom Harris had an inkling of the truth, having personally helped Alex out on various occasions during his involvements with MI6. But Tom was fiercely loyal to Alex and wouldn't have divulged his best friend's secret to anyone for the world. Alex had even introduced Sofia to Sabina (who was still in California with her parents, and in a relationship with Blake, her American basketball captain boyfriend) over FaceTime. The two girls had happily chatted and laughed together, but Alex, with a secret feeling of satisfaction, had not failed to pick up a tiny hint of jealous longing in Sabina's eyes as she saw Sofia seated in his lap.
Sofia didn't flirt with Alex like Sabina had done. Sofia worshipped him with the firm devotion of a sister and lover all at once. But she also teased him relentlessly. They were perfect equals in every sense of the word. When Alex had been with Sabina, it had always been Sabina who initiated a kiss, never Alex. Come to think of it, he had neither truly felt the desire, nor felt comfortable enough, to do so! Sabina was certainly a nice girl and they would always remain very good friends, but with her expensive dresses and perfumes and superficial notions about what makes a boy "cute", she was just a completely different species from him, as Alex had come to realise during his months of living with her family in San Francisco. But with Sofia, it was a totally different and wholly delightful experience. Alex felt completely at ease with her all the time, speaking his mind to her and freely kissing and cuddling her whenever he felt like it. He loved nothing more than enfolding her in his arms at night and pressing their bodies together as she kissed him deeply, far more passionately and sincerely than Sabina ever had. He loved to nestle his head in her bosom, whispering to her fluently in French, and Spanish, and German all jumbled together and delighting in her sweet, witty, multilingual replies. He loved to kiss the comma-shaped scar under her ear, now a double scar just like Freddy's after the operation to remove Nightshade's radio transmitter, and tenderly suck on her earlobes and tickle her neck with his breath. He loved to gently tug and caress her jet black hair as she said his name with profound devotion and gazed with her beautiful black eyes into his brown ones. He loved how she tenderly kissed every relic of an injury on his body, from the oddly-shaped aviation fuel burns on his shoulder, to the bullet wound in his chest to the motley bruises and marks across his body, right up to the thin white scar from a poisonous spider's web seared across the back of his hand.
Sofia's own body was a very similar "museum of injuries", as he often thought of it. Back in her Nightshade days, Sofia had been trained in minor surgical operations, and had both healed, and been healed by, her fellow Numbers on many a mission. But it was a different form of healing that she craved now. The sweet girl never felt ashamed to bare her own body to her dear Alex, who was always so gentle and fiercely protective of her. Alex would caress her thoroughly in turn, paying homage to his divine little goddess whom he adored from the bottom of his heart and was immensely proud to call his very own. He would suck the knife wound just above her breast, trace the criss-crossed scars across her back with his tongue, and kiss her burnt little pinky toe, realising time and again, as he reverently explored and caressed her body, how so incredibly similar they were -- how they had both belonged to a world completely unknown to all but a few souls like themselves, how they both had suffered unspeakable things and been thrown into dire situations without a choice, but above all, how beautifully and perfectly they understood and belonged to each other now.
"Do you remember when we first met, Alex?" Sofia asked him that night, turning towards him and reaching out to interlace her fingers with his as they lounged on the sofa after returning home from an excellent museum visit and dinner.
"How can I ever forget?" Alex replied with a smile.
"You were sitting across from us at dinner and asked if Will and I were related," reminisced Sofia fondly. "I think I fell in love with you then, although I didn't know it at the time."
Alex kissed Sofia's forehead and drew her into his arms, cupping one of her cheeks with his palm while nuzzling the other with his nose, and whispered "Me too, baby, me too." It had not escaped Alex's keen eyes that a momentary shadow had passed over Sofia's face when she said her brother's name. Sofia's happy memories of William as a child had been restored to her thanks to months of therapy at the Delhi Station military hospital. Not a day went by that the poor girl didn't fervently pray for her brother's safe return home, but MI6 still hadn't managed to pick up any new leads on Nightshade's location yet. Mrs Jones had promised Sofia and Alex that they would be the first to know if any new information came in, and they would be allowed (asked, rather!) to assist with the rescue operation to the best of their abilities.
"Of course Freddy gets to claim the honour of being the first one of us to fall in love with you, I admit," Sofia added with a giggle, raising Alex's free hand to her lips and kissing it softly as she snuggled closer into him. "You know, I sometimes wish I could have been the one captured in Rio and Freddy the one who escaped instead," she added slyly with a characteristic mischievous twinkle in her eye. "That way I would have been the one to break out of prison with you! I would have undoubtedly come up with a much better escape plan than you two idiots combined, of course," she said with a lofty air of superiority.
"Why, what would you have done, my darling Daedalus? Made us wings to fly to Crete instead?" Alex cleverly retorted. Sofia caught on to the brilliance of his remark immediately and laughed heartily, highly impressed at Alex's quick wit and knowledge. For indeed, as the ancient story goes, the imprisoned architect Daedalus had escaped from Crete using wings he had fashioned himself. But Alex and Freddy had escaped from prison and gone to Crete, where Nightshade was based. Sofia never forgot how Alex had ultimately saved her and Freddy from the evil Nightshade Teachers' clutches, and knew she would be eternally in his debt. Sofia had loved Freddy (Number Nine, as she had known him then) intensely from a young age, spending time with him at every chance. Freddy's deep love for and unflinching loyalty to Alex from the very beginning of their acquaintance made Sofia yearn all the more for the warmth of Alex's touch and his sweet company, knowing how greatly Alex loved her own dear Freddy as well. She and Freddy had partnered to kill and cause unspeakable suffering many times in the past, but now they partnered to do all the good they could, and to make their beloved Alex -- their true saviour! -- happy and bring him joy in as many ways as they could, from cracking silly jokes together to practising self-defence with him to baking him delicious treats, often with little surprises hidden inside.
Jack came over to them in her nightgown, with a big smile on her face and two soothing cups of chamomile tea in her hands. "All right my dears, I'm going to head up to bed now. You two should turn in soon as well -- it's getting very late and you want to be awake tomorrow morning before Freddy arrives, don't you?" Alex and Sofia kissed Jack goodnight and drank their tea nestled against each other in peaceful silence, then rose to go upstairs and get ready for bed. Snuggling under the covers, Sofia laid her head on Alex's shoulder. "Goodnight, Alex", she said, planting a tender kiss on his cheek.
"Goodnight, Sof", replied Alex, wrapping her in his arms as he pressed a kiss to her lips and and closed his eyes. Just as he drifted off to sleep, Alex felt a little drop of moisture on his neck, and heard a faint whisper softly sighing "Goodnight, Will."