I definitely get how uncomfortable this experience is for him—the body horror works well that way. All that pain and suffering, and years to come to terms with it, and now this fairly ridiculous and arbitrary nonsense. Oy.

He doesn't seem the type to go for hugs, but Nurse Jenni could put him in touch with Agent Derik, and they could go for drinks? I imagine they'd find plenty in common.

~Neshomeh

"Well," thought I, "I've read both Team Phoenix updates, I may as well do the hat-trick and read this Lazarus thing."

"Aha," thought I, "it's Alec "not-the-self-insert" Trevelyan again, I can see how things have changed for him since his recruitment."

"Well," thought I, "that was a great exploration of what happened to Alec - I wonder how closely it relates to canon? Oh, she's discussed that with doc, coolcool. But what was up with that tattoo? Let's check the story this is a direct sequel to."

"Okay," thought I, "that doesn't really answer anything... what's a Valcentica? Maybe there's a previous mission I can reference."

"... what," thought I, "the actual flipping heck?!"

I ended up checking the Board for discussion of it, and finding your conversation with Nesh and Zingenmir when you came back... seriously, that's completely loopy.

Anyway, yeah, you sent me down a rabbit-hole. ^_^

hS

This is an interesting concept, actually. Alec clearly still doesn't like his scars, but he also "sides" with them over the phoenix tattoo out of familiarity. It's an interesting sort of mindset/emotional state to think about. (I would be horrendously bothered by something like that showing up that I couldn't hide, even without a pre-existing mark for it to overlay.)

I also really like the flashback scene to the explosion. I haven't read or watched any Bond, so it was essentially an original scene for me. I love the little detail that Alec calls Bond "James" in his mind. It's still clear enough who he's referring to, but it makes sense that one of Baond's actual colleagues would just think of him as "guy I know" rather than having all the franchising/memeage associated with Bond from our media perspective.

I also like that Kitty's appearance at the end kind of works for the reader the same way it does for Alec: things have changed, but it's still a PPC spin-off. rather cute!

"And now the reminder of that betrayal was altered by the mark that had insinuated itself over top of it like an ink-wash."
I think you wanted a "the" there in "over the top of it," unless this is a phrasing style I've never encountered before.

—doctorlit, not really wanting to track down all the Bond novels to read them, ever