Broken | Lucas North - Spooks/MI5 Story [Featured]

Chapter 1

AUTHOR'S NOTE:  Events in the following two chapters occur during Spooks/MI5 Season 7.1, when Lucas North returns to London after eight years in a Russian prison.  Prior to that, Lucas had been section chief of Section D "Counter-Terrorism Unit" of MI5.  After his capture in Moscow, Tom Quinn succeeded him and after Tom's early retirement, Adam Carter filled the role of Section Chief.

Events in chapters 1 and 2 (apart from the recollections) occur between S7.1 and S7.2.

Oh yes!  There's now a fanfic trailer, too!  

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Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.  

-Anton Chekhov 

The first time she saw him, he was walking along Regent street, his hands in his coat pockets and his head down, deep in thought. She had stared at him for a minute, trying to register the face, the aquiline nose, the thin lips, the dark hair slicked in a sideways part. But it was the haunted expression on his face that gave him away, and when he looked up, as if sensing that someone was watching him, she knew.

The moment she said his name in her mind was the same moment that he saw her, his eyes widening as he recognized her face in the crowd. Alexa George turned her gaze downwards and crossed the street, the light flashing, indicating that the time to cross was over. She ran, her heart beating inside her chest, feeling as if it were about to burst out of her thick woolen coat. Her breath came out in bursts of steam in the air before her.

Alexa stopped and ducked into a darkened alley, catching her breath. She felt sweat gather upon her brow and her breath came in heaves, the taste of bile filling her mouth.  It felt like a kick to the stomach, seeing him again. Seeing him alive. It had only been what, nine years?

Alexa peered around the corner. The crowd of shoppers milled about, lost in their own lives, shopping for the latest accessory, not noticing her at all. She scanned the crowd, her eyes alighting upon each face but no longer seeing him. She took a few minutes to keep looking, making sure, as she caught her breath and forced herself to calm down, forcing her mind to think thoughts that had nothing to do with the man she had just seen.  What could she occupy her mind with? The latest fashion? Shoes? Puppies?

But it was useless. His face invaded her thoughts - alive, breathing, walking along Regent Street, his face cast downwards.

Lucas North.

Only he'd used a different name when Alexa first met him in Moscow so many years ago. It was a time in her life which Alexa wished she could no longer remember, for she could not afford to relive it, not even for an instant. But against her will, the memories came rushing in, engulfing her, and Alexa felt faint as she left the alley and began stumbling towards home.

But as if a dam that held her memories hidden for so long had been breached, the memories returned.  Alexa remembered the way he had looked at her from the darkened hallway of the club, his blue gray eyes searching her face, studying it as he suppressed any sign that he knew her.  But she saw the look in his eyes - that glimpse of recognition.

Then, as the Russian next to him asked him which of his beauties he preferred, his expression turned into a sneer and for a moment, she thought that what she had first glimpsed in his eyes had been all an illusion. Blind foolish hope.

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She'd been eighteen then, housed along with ten other girls in an upstairs apartment of a club where women and under-age girls danced for and served men of power.  It was a place where the powerful Mikhael Lubienko conducted business.  Lubienko, a peddler of information, drugs and women.