Archive of Our Own ^beta

When Cyrus Hale was thirteen, he learned that nobody, not even his family, would be there if he chose to leave his training. 

It’s not exactly a lesson that was unexpected- he’d been getting the hints for years, and even when the hints were more like whispers of nobody in this family has ever failed at what we do before, and if somebody were to fail, how could we possibly let them back in? So Cyrus knew what the consequences of failing- or, God forbid, choosing to fail- to become a spy entailed. 

Exile, to put it simply. Exile from the only place he’d ever felt safe- the world of espionage wasn’t, to be sure, so his home was the only thing keeping him from falling off the deep end into paranoia and thoughts of what if everyone around me is a traitor?

Cyrus couldn’t afford to lose that. He was like a ship anchored to the sea floor in a storm. Lose the anchor, lose everything else. No, he really couldn’t afford to let everything go. Even if he wanted to. 

He didn’t, which was the truth. Espionage was something that came naturally to him- it came naturally to every person in his family. That was the obvious thing. The thing that his parents had feared was the thought of Cyrus not wanting to do it. Not wanting to be a spy. 

Cyrus wanted to be a spy. Maybe it was because of the fact it was easy for him, maybe it was because he loved the thrill, or maybe it was because he couldn’t afford to lose his family. 

Maybe it was all three. It was getting harder to tell these days. 

———

By the time Alexander Hale is fourteen years old, he thinks being hit by a car would be preferable to being scolded by his dad. 

He knows what he’s talking about, too. He’s been scolded by his father (too many times to count) and hit by a car (once, and it wasn’t really his fault), and he would much rather wake up in a hospital bed with a few broken bones than sit for another second in his dorm room, cornered by the personification of fatherly disappointment. 

(If you could even classify Cyrus as fatherly. Alexander wasn’t sure he’d give his dad that much credit.)

He hadn’t even done anything wrong this time! He’d taken the easy way out of a stupid assignment, and it wasn’t like the teacher was mad about it. Alexander was on the brink of an F in that class anyway- one more missed assignment couldn’t possibly make the teacher madder at him. (And Alexander was one hundred percent sure that she should’ve given him a pass on this one. Who would want to stand for an hour in the pouring rain, trying to get bullseye after bullseye? Even professionals would go home!)

But no, Cyrus didn’t care that he didn’t want to risk pneumonia for a stupid gun range assignment. He was so much more concerned about the state of Alexander’s grades than his health- which Alexander had known, ever since the car incident. It was all you only got hit because you were skipping class and if you fail another final because of this I’m changing the passcode for the secret exit routes. 

He didn’t care. He never cared. It was obvious, to Alexander at least. Maybe if he’d just been luckier, if he’d been born with the same innate sense of… espionage that the rest of his family had been gifted with, Cyrus would care.

Maybe then, mom wouldn’t have left. Before she had, all Alexander would hear through the paper thin walls of his room- home, not the hellhole that was the Academy- was why can’t you be honest about anything, why are you so hard on him, why do you hate him?

It was better for her now, probably. She didn’t have to think about her son being looked at like something was wrong because his father didn’t want him to have any friends. (Spying was safer that way, he had said.)

Maybe, a miracle would come by, and Alexander would magically become just as talented as his family.

(Nothing was ever that simple. Alexander knew that.)

Maybe he could just leave. 

Go missing, run out into the city, fly across the country and change his name. A fourteen year old runaway. Alexander could imagine the news headlines he’d make when Cyrus realized he was gone- if he could even get away before then. Most likely? He’d get caught leaving campus. 

Not because Cyrus actually cared about his son. But because he cared about preserving a legacy, and the one thing he needed to do that was a grandkid. 

Maybe, Alexander could get back in his father in the one way he could. End the bloodline with himself. 

At least no other kid would have to go through the same thing he did. 

———

Erica Hale, spy in training at the CIA Academy of Espionage, fifteen years old.

She is not a normal girl. That is obvious.

What is not obvious- probably due to the fact that knowing would mean you were better than her, and nobody was better than her- is the state of her family, and the state of her connection to it. 

It’s in shambles, to put it simply. She’s hanging on to what’s left, but to be honest, there isn’t much.

Mom left a few years ago. She went across the ocean, back to MI6, and Erica isn’t sure how to feel about that. On one hand, she’s probably much happier now. Away from Dad, away from the CIA, away from- just, away.

It’s logical. It’s the logical decision, of course, because if you divorce a spy- no matter how much of a fraud that spy is- it’s better to get away. Get away as far as you can. 

(How do you measure the logic of it when both people are spies? Erica hasn’t gotten time to figure that out yet. She doesn’t have time for much these days.)

Everything is logical, everything has its reason. That’s the way Erica lives her life- if she did it any other way, she’d probably go insane. Like everyone else already was. They were all insane. 

Everyone else weren’t living with the weight of a hundred years of legacy on their back, though. That was the tough part to rub in peoples’ faces- ha-ha, you don’t know how the world works down to the atom? Sucks to be you, with your stress free lives and your perfect families and nothing to lose. 

Erica isn’t a normal girl, because every time she walks down a hallway, she can feel the stares directed at her. Look, it’s the legacy, the top student, the one who’s going to leave us all in the dust without a second thought. Erica knew that was what everyone was saying without saying it. (It came with her natural espionage abilities. The talent of knowing.)

Sometimes, when she was alone, Erica wished she could stop knowing.

But that was too much to ask- she had to live up to her grandfather’s expectations, because the person ahead of her in the lineup had already screwed everything up. (If you could fix somebody that was broken, Erica would fix her father. That way, she wouldn’t even need to fix herself.)

Everything was so tiring. Day after day after day of don’t let me down and you’re going to outshine all of us and you don’t want to be like your father, do you could wear down even people like herself. 

Even the best of the best had their limits. 

Erica knew she was reaching hers. 

———

Ben Ripley was twelve-going-on-thirteen years old when he realized that, man, something really was up with the Hale family. 

It hadn’t been obvious at first- he doubted even Jawa knew there was something wrong- because of the simple fact that the Hales were spies, and spies were literally paid to keep secrets. It didn’t matter that these secrets were more of the my dad hates me kind and not the there is someone planning to assassinate your president kind- Ben guessed that by now, it was just instinct. Keep a secret, save a life. That sort of thing. 

But for real, there was something… hugely wrong. 

He’d first been told about it when Erica had talked about her father. Ben had assumed that he was where the problems had started and would end- a man who was so caught up in lies and glory that he’d lost sight of the literal baseline of being a good human being. 

Then he’d met Cyrus. 

After his first- how to describe it? Adventure?- adventure with Cyrus, Ben got the very obvious hint that Alexander was not, in fact, the very root of the problem. Seriously- Ben had said he’d hated his parents before, but that had all been when he was in a horrible mood. He got the feeling that Alexander would not have to be in a horrible mood to wish bodily harm upon Cyrus- and vice versa, which was… telling. 

Then, the missions had kept coming, and Ben was forced to witness time and time again how the Hales were held together by string and pieces of duct tape. 

At Wiseman, Alexander and Cyrus had been avoiding each other like their lives depended on it. Erica had coldly avoided talking about it, when he’d asked after the mission was over.

In Colorado, Ben was sure the family was around five minutes away from throwing each other into the nuke. The parking lot, the hotel rooms, the helicopter, everything had piled on top of each other, and there was no room for simply talking it out. (They weren’t a very let’s just hug it out kind of family to behind with. Erica would’ve killed a man if he tried to hug her.)

When trying to save the president, Ben had the gut feeling Alexander would have been the kind of guy to resort to patricide. It wasn’t a particularly honorable thing to do, but if any father-son duo would end with the father dead, it would be those two. (And hey, maybe it would be the other way around. Ben knew Cyrus had it in him to kill his son. In self defense, of course. Of course.)

Catherine seemed to be the only one in that family to have her life together- then again, Ben had only seen her a fraction of the times he’d seen the others, and maybe British people were just better at hiding things, what with… being so chipper and all. (He hadn’t met many British people.)

Then, there was the issue of Operation Screaming Vengeance, which had ended in a form of reconciliation Ben could only describe as the bare minimum. The family- sans Cyrus, which could probably be seen as a sign- had started to reforge the bonds that never should have broken in the first place. A hug here, a smile there, an I wish you didn’t have to leave every so often. It was small, but it was a start. 

There was something to be said, of course, about how the Hales were so screwed up that they’d figured lying about everything to one of their own was a better alternative to sending her to the Academy without skills. Trixie was still an enigma to Ben, just because he couldn’t piece it together in his mind how a whole family could decide not to tell the youngest among them the truth. 

Everything had come to a head on the Emperor of the Seas, where Ben was currently staring out at the calm waves. (As wavy as a canal could get.) The things the family had done here… he couldn’t imagine they could have been done with the family, say, a few months back. 

They’d grown so much in so little time, and, for some reason, Ben felt… proud? Happy? He wasn’t sure. 

There were still things that needed to be done. Ben knew of one thing that needed to be said before everything could truly go back to the way things were- before he knew them, before they really knew each other. 

I’m sorry. 

Maybe when they finally exchanged apologies, they could finish rebuilding their relationships. Ben knew it had to happen sometime in the future- he hoped it would be the near future. He couldn’t take much more of this waiting and waiting and waiting for the Hales to fix what had been broken. 

It was going to take time. But it would happen. 

Sooner or later.