Anyone reading this who has previously heard this song, don't think of it in the way Groban/his song writer meant for it to mean. I listened to this song and thought... Well I can't tell you that yet.

Important Note: Please listen to this song while reading. If you cry or even think you are going to cry at any point in time, leave me a review saying so. It can be as short as 'you bitch' or 'you got me', but my twin, NightmareWorld and I are making bets. Thanks!

Higher Window – lyrics owned by Josh Groban

It had been a year. A whole year, dammit!

Wolf paced the floor of his kitchen impatiently. It had actually been more like a year, three months, and something-odd-days, but that wasn't what mattered.

Since that Christmas, he had recovered full mobility of the leg the doctors had thought it would take four months of rehabilitation and minor surgeries to walk on unassisted again. It took one. His wife—then fiancée—joked that it was sheer force of will that did it. Whatever it was, he had required only one small surgery to remove a piece of shrapnel they caught in an x-ray and there had never been any official rehab. Rather, he stubbornly refused the wheelchair once released from the hospital's care and moved straight to stumbling around on crutches for two weeks. Then one crutch for nine days. There were a handful of days where he used the walls and his brother as frequently as not, but by the end of a month's time, Wolf was limping around on his own. Even the awkward gait straightened out within the next four weeks.

The day following his hospital release, he had gotten the first letter. This one, unlike the ones that would follow, was hand-delivered via Ben. Alex, as the letter stated, was already on an early flight to Nürnberg, where he would transfer over to another plane going to an undisclosed location. Sure, Alex knew where that plane was supposed to land, but clearly he either wouldn't or couldn't share that information. Ben said he had to be at Heathrow within the hour to catch his own ride out, but he stayed long enough to laugh at Wolf's current state and nearly wind up crippled himself. Of course, Wolf had to retort that he still looked like a pirate, which got him a light pillow to the face.

He hadn't seen either of them since.

Sure, there had been a couple letters that came after that at uneven intervals that sometimes stretched as long as two months. Most of them were postmarked from places all around the world, but every single one had gone through Zürich and been placed in a larger envelope before being sent on to him. While the new envelope had only the nom de plume Alfred Cynewulf—never a return address—as the sender, the enclosed one bore the name Alexander Rider.

The letters were never specific, but he did say that he had to get a flat just outside London with a false ID using one of his aliases. That address he had trusted to Wolf, in case he needed to get in touch. Someone with ill-intentions had gotten the location of his house, luckily while he was away on 'work'. Needless to say, he had not returned after getting a call from MI6. He mentioned a picture in his living room briefly. It was the only one he knew of that had both his uncle, Ian Rider, and former guardian, Jack Starbright, in the same picture. While he didn't ask for it outright, Alex merely stated that it was the only thing of value he would miss.

He had found it, but not until the police had removed the tape from front door. The lock had not been replaced—though it would have to be at some point in that condition—and he had easily gotten in. The indicated picture was easy enough to find, once he made a short detour around the heavily bloodstained sections of carpet. In between the grinning red head and more reserved male in a fine black suit, a boy that must have been Alex only a couple years earlier was supporting a snowboard in one hand, skiing goggles dangling from his fingertips. Just to the side of that photo, however, was the only other one that he had seen since entering. A couple, widely smiling and eternally young, was decked in wedding attire. The picture, by the wear on both the flower-embellished silver frame and the portrait itself, had to be over a decade old. When he picked it up, intending to return it and the one mentioned in the letter, he noticed the dark blue cursive penned lower left corner on the back. There was a date beside the names John Rider and Helen Beckett.

With the two pictures in hand, he did not venture further into the house. It wasn't his to traverse freely in, after all.

Another funny thing about Alex's letters was that he didn't hesitate to mention injuries he'd sustained. They were largely the kind that would fade quickly given time—burns, shallow grazes, bruises—and there weren't so many that he was overly worried; but there was mention of him being impaled by a sword once, a near-drowning another time, and claw marks from someone's pet tiger. When he was shot at, he never said how badly he had been injured. Those types of incidents were the ones that made him wonder what wasn't being mentioned. His best guess as to why he included the injuries was that the teenager didn't want to cause any worry when he returned in worse condition than he had left in.

Ben's adventures and condition appeared in the majority of the letters. They were partners, after all. From the tone, he was collecting just as many injuries, though he had missed out on the worst of them. A medevac was mentioned, but never expanded on, in one letter regarding the older spy and cliff scaling. Other people, left nameless, received their due credit as well.

He wasn't always doing work with MI6 or another agency, though. Over Christmas, which he regretted not being able to get back to England for, he spent the holiday with an American family, the Pleasures, in California. Due to multiple cancellations, Ben spent his own holiday in southern France with family. As of late January, they were meeting in Italy to receive mission details.

For all the times I tried for this

And every chance at you I missed

I've been known to go my way but I confess

But the last letter he had received, the one from a month and a half ago, was a short one. "I'm coming home." The lack of postmarks further out than Madrid was a clear indication that he was much closer than when he had mailed the previous one, which had passed through Tokyo.

So why had Alex not visited?

It made me miss you more

His first guess was that he had been injured at some point and was sitting in a ward, waiting to be released by his attending physician. He had no doubt that it was possible. But when the two weeks had stretched to four and then six, he called Snake.

The former medic had spent another month in the room they had shared since waking somewhat uncomfortably from his concussion-induced coma. Though he couldn't return to military service, even if he had wanted to, after having a knee replaced and with his ankle supported by a plastic brace, Snake did follow through with medicine. He now worked for St. Dominics, a private hospital reserved for those who had the money or, apparently, were employed by either MI6 or MI5. This had only been discovered because Ben had come in for a brief period of time to get his patch-covered eye checked. They had passed in the hallway and spoken until the spy declared that he had a report to turn in. Alex hadn't been with him, or in the country. According to Ben, he was 'on lease' again.

It took three hours to catch Snake off-duty, and his answer was "Nothing on record since last May. He had a check-up scheduled for last week, though. When you find him, send him in."

His second guess was that a mission had gone wrong. In that case, his partner would have to know where he had gone.

With that he phoned Ben next, under the assumption that he would answer his cell phone because he wasn't on a mission for MI6. Whether by a stroke of luck, or due to Ben recovering from a bad case of the flu, he answered on the second ring.

"James, I'm a little busy." A sneeze followed. "And I was planning on stopping by."

A month ago, he might have agreed, told him to get better, and hung up. This wasn't a month ago. "Is Alex with you?"

This time, his voice was more concerned and less groggy. "Isn't he with you?"

"No." Wolf had stopped pacing, only to start again.

"That's where he said he was going. In Lisbon, he mailed the letter to you and said he was going to stop over after dropping our reports off with Jones. I took the early flight because I thought I had hypothermia. Apparently it was some kind of bug." He sneezed again, audibly covering the speaker. "Sorry. But he never visited you? I gave him the correct address."

"No," he repeated only somewhat patiently. "Did he ever hand the stuff to Jones?"

"I don't know. I'll call over on my work phone." There was a short cough and moments later the quiet beeps of keys pressed on a cell. He didn't catch anything from the low-pitched conversation, but by how short it was, he guessed their answer wasn't a good one. "The receptionist said she didn't know," Ben replied, returning to the phone. "Jones is getting a report or something from the MI5 building, but the receptionist says that she hasn't seen him during any of her morning shifts. Something's going on. I'm heading over to the office."

"Pick me up. I'm going with you."

Despite morning traffic, the anything-but-discreet black car was sitting against the curb, its driver waving a hand out the window. Locking the door behind him, he looked past the tinted, bulletproof windows and protected tires to raise an eyebrow at Ben. He had on a suit that made him look like an official driver for either an embassy or one of the big hotels. The spy tilted a chauffeur's cap at him, making the scar that ran across his left eye all the more evident, cocked a half-smile and said, "You have a meeting with Mrs. Jones about the security of your bank account."

Wolf shook his head, but opened the car door and took a seat in the back. "I didn't realize Halloween had been moved to April."

"It hasn't, unless you include April Fool's Day. This is how I go to work. Otherwise, it would be difficult to explain the car's over-the-top security measures." As he spoke, he drove with one hand to pull something from a dark backpack: an eye patch and a small silver box. Setting those on his lap, he reached up to rub at his scarred eye with a handkerchief, or so Wolf thought. He recoiled as the cloth was pulled away along with his left eye. They were set carefully in the box, which was replaced, and the eye patch was secured back around his head. "The local police find it very amusing that these expensive companies go to such lengths to protect their clientele… Wolf, you look a little pale. My driving's a little erratic, but I wanted to get there ASAP."

"It's not that. I just didn't know you could multi-task so well."

Ben glanced down at the box before he nodded understandingly. "You thought the eye was real. Smithers really did a good job with that, I have to admit. Completely electronic. I can only wear it for a couple hours before it makes me squeamish. The thing tracks my right eye's movements and copies them. It's just plain unnerving, so I take it out when it doesn't have to be in."

"But Alex said the doctors were confident that you would regain use of the eye within a month or something."

"Yeah. They did say that. Apparently trudging through sewer water changes things. It got infected the next mission we went on and had to be removed." He shrugged. "I didn't tell Alex, but there would have been problems if it healed anyway."

Wolf shook his head with a sigh. "You know, some people—we call them humans—actually care if they lose things like their limbs or eyes."

"Sure, but if they could have them replaced with mini computers, they wouldn't mind either. My new eye uses MI5's 3D facial recognition program to identify people and immediately sends the information back to MI6. It also makes this annoying little vibration whenever MI6 decides we've done enough and wants to bring us back in."

"Nice."

"Smithers thinks it needs to shoot lasers, but Jones won't permit it." He chuckled lightheartedly. "Alex asked if he could make goggles or glasses that could simulate that. I think he's jealous."

The Royal and General Bank loomed up ahead, and Ben pulled right up to the front. One of the men standing to the side of their grand set of double doors, ready to hold one open for you if he decided that you had authorization to be allowed in rather than meeting the taser concealed beneath his coat, approached the driver's side window. "Authorization, Mr. Daniels?" As Ben pulled a bundle of papers from the compartment in front of the passenger seat, he said under his breath, "Mrs. Jones did not mention that you would be coming."

"I didn't know either," Ben admitted, handing over the bundle. "Consider this a courtesy call, regarding Agent Rider. Oh, and SAS James Mendoza as guest."

"Ah." The papers were scanned so quickly that it appeared to be only a surface scan, as if he were looking for something rather than the actual print. They were returned, along with what looked like a credit card. A hotel's name was in raised print on the front. "Give him my regards. He's looking much better."

After he drew the window back up and shifted out of park, watching the traffic as he did, the car pulled back out on the busy street. "The doorman has to check everyone coming in who isn't fulltime and give them a pass to the back door. Perfect memory, especially for faces and behavior. He's more difficult to confuse than even Smithers' most foolproof security systems."

"What was the thing about Alex?"

"There was a sniper waiting for him when he left the building about two years ago. He pretty much owes his life to the doorman, who knew enough about emergency medicine to keep him alive until the paramedics got there. I think the doorman asks how he's doing every time we check in."

Alex had mentioned the sniper, but it didn't keep him from wondering what the scene must have looked like or which window the shot had come from.

I drew my line across the sand

And set my flag in no-man's-land

The garage turned out to be a couple blocks down and somewhat rundown. Whether Ben even noticed this while parking next to a car that cost a tenth of his own vehicle was beyond him.

"Don't they have some kind of protected garage so you don't have to park…here?"

"Sure, for the full-timers. We spies have to find our own spots. That way, someone tries to blow up headquarters, my car stays intact."

Wolf stared at him from the backseat with a wry look. "Your priorities are really skewed, aren't they?"

"I like to think so." He slung the backpack sitting on the passenger's seat across his shoulder. "Plus, there's an underground tunnel into the bank from here, so I don't have to walk all the way back."

Sure enough, when Ben slid the card along the side of the elevator panel, it popped open to reveal a small fingerprint scanner. "It also measures my pulse, so I have to be alive to get in."

"So when you turn into a zombie, you can't get back in?"

"Well that, or so somebody can't torture me into giving up my codes and then cut off my finger to get in."

"Optimistic as always."

The spy shrugged. "Reality's a bitch. Now if only we would advertise our security system so no one tries it out. I rather like my fingers."

As the letters 'GL' disappeared from the elevator's level indicator, the grimy silver doors slid open without the bell that would have accompanied the motion on any other floor. Beyond it, a dark unlit corridor with no end in immediate sight stretched forward. To Wolf, there was little difference separating this from a typical subterranean repair tunnel. From his backpack, Ben withdrew a standard flashlight. "Money saving, you know," he offered as he switched the beam on high. "Heating bills went up so a lot of the lighting was cut."

Surprisingly enough, the tunnel thankfully wasn't as long as it had seemed and at its end was yet another set of doors. There was...something…that happened during the next five minutes, between getting from those doors to standing outside Jones' office, but he just couldn't figure out exactly what it was. Ben waved a hand in front of his face. "You there?"

"Yeah, just a little… How'd I get here?"

The spy sighed, running a hand through his hair. "There are a couple regulations about having visitors. One of them is they can't know how to get in. Another is lots of paperwork afterwards." He paused, his hand hovering above the wooden door, about to knock. "Can I ask a personal question?"

"Shoot."

"Have you always been afraid of heights?" The look he received was enough to make him raise his hands in surrender. "I never asked."

He knocked on the door, and a voice drifted out into the hall. "Come in."

Jones was known throughout the office for her tendencies towards sucking on peppermints or crinkling their wrappers when she was stressed. Her facial muscles may never twitch to form smiles or frowns, but she certainly got her feelings across when she harbored enough of them.

With those rumors in mind, Ben grew uncharacteristically tense upon walking in. Her desk—formerly Blunt's as she had no intentions of putting funds to work making her office look pretty—was organized to an almost obsessive-compulsive degree. There were no fewer papers than the typically hectic and otherwise chaotic day would see neatly placed in their indicatively labeled plastic bins and filing cabinets. But today, there was a single thick manila folder on her desk, marring the clean void. Five sheets of paper were stapled together on top of it, the date and time inked along the length of each one. Ben could tell, even from the distance he stood at, that they were evidence of a phone conversation that hadn't gone well, but would remain filed away forever.

The evidence, however, that he didn't want to see were the plastic candy wrappers pinched and folded into tiny squares sitting beside that folder. She might as well have made a small army from them.

But here I am the one-man band

With a song that's meant for two

The woman herself was sitting primly behind her desk, hands folded in her lap and a peppermint in her mouth. You couldn't tell from the way she spoke, but when it crunched and jostled against her teeth, the nervousness became immediately apparent. "The doorman tells me that you are here about Agent Rider."

There were no longer any other seats in the room. Ben assumed it was also due to the budget cuts MI6 had recently suffered. Regardless, he remained standing. "Yes, he was supposed to visit Wolf and I, but never did. Alex isn't the kind to say something and do something else."

Mrs. Jones picked up one of the wrappers, almost as if she were inspecting it. "Your assessment is correct, Agent Daniels. Agent Rider never boarded his return flight, in fact, and we were alerted to this the second the plane landed without him. Were you not bedridden the week following your return, you would have been one of the men sent to Lisbon to locate him."

"And?" Wolf asked impatiently. "Where is he?"

She neglected acknowledging the tone of his voice for picking another red and white swirled candy from the crystalline tray in the corner of her desk. "By his own request, he will be on a flight to Waikato within the next two days." Two identical envelopes with stamps sealed on to the right-hand corner of each were pushed across the table. "I trust you understand what that means, Agent Daniels."

Seeing his name on one of them, Wolf grabbed the letter that would have been mailed later that afternoon and tore open the seal. He scanned through the contents before tossing it back on the table. "This says nothing except that he's been in some kind of accident. I don't understand. Why is he flying to this Wakato place?"

Ben, now numbly leaning against the wall, made no movement towards his own. "Waikato, Wolf. It's in New Zealand. A small region in the shadow of Mt. Tongariro. It's…" He looked up from his hands to Mrs. Jones. "What happened?"

The loose papers were shuffled into the manila file, revealing the name on the side: Alexander Rider. "There was a sniper."

And there is a light

From a higher window

Shining down on you tonight

"He's survived snipers before."

"As he did again. Agent Rider has always uncanny luck. All three shots that pedestrians reported hearing to local authorities were accounted for. No traces of blood were on any of them. That is the reason it took six weeks to locate him. By their reports, he fled the scene and hotwired a car. All indications point to a safe house in Cordoba as his destination. He had been given the location on a mission over seven months ago, but apparently retained the information."

"So is he…?"

"He never reached the safe house. Alex Rider died the very same day that he should have left the city. We found the car riddled with bullets and abandoned on the banks of Almada, barely twenty minutes away. His body was located in a park near Cristo Rei Sanctuary. The policeman who found him mistook him for a local. That was the second reason it took six months to locate him. The coroner never looked past the bullet in his head to realize that his hair was dyed and skin covered in makeup. It was lucky that his fingerprints had been put into their system in case identification was ever made." She popped the mint into her mouth before looking across her desk at the two pairs of dead eyes staring back. "His will states that he wished to be buried beside his brother—"

"—but he doesn't have a brother—"

"—and partner, Benjamin Daniels. As your own will states that you wish to be buried on the highest point of Mt. Tongariro, that is where he will go."

And the music floats on the breeze

Bringing an easier time

And all of our cards are on the table

Tell me what you want to do

"I have already assumed that you be on leave for the next month. You should find a one-way ticket in your envelope, Agent Daniels. I do not wish to see or hear from you until that month is over. As for you, Mr. Mendoza, my intentions were for a cover story to be made so that you and Dr. O'Reilly would not be made to grieve. If you should so wish, I will make preparations for the two of you to accompany Agent Daniels."

Just don't tell me that it's too late

For me to love you

"I would like to see him one last time."

How perfect we were meant to be

Our warm and silent symmetry

It's times like these when all

All we need is to be reminded

Ben and the remnants of K-Unit were far from being the only ones at the service in the small cathedral. There were a dozen MI6 operatives, office workers and spies alike, in their stereotypical black suits and dark glasses who divided their time between mourning the fallen spy and watching the other attendees and possible vantage points. The doorman, who had never taken a holiday in his life, had taken two days of leave to stand guard at the single door. "He will rest in peace," he assured them. Four CIA, one of which Ben could point out to Wolf as the head of covert operations, and another who identified herself to them as Tamara Knight stood in their own small group. The rest came on their own or in pairs, and appeared to be from a variety of agencies and organizations, representing a multitude of countries.

At the open casket was the only mourner who had been Alex's own age. Tom Harris was sitting steadfastly atop the coffin, talking throughout the entire hour to Alex, telling him what he had missed at school, the rumors that had followed his departure, the proceedings following his parents' divorce and his brother's recent move to Chicago, and anything else that passed through his mind. While many of those attending assumed he was going through the stage of grief referred to as denial, Ben correctly informed Wolf and Snake that this was his way of getting regret off his chest. The teenagers hadn't seen each other since the previous Easter, and Tom, who had always told the spy what he had missed in Chelsea, had not had that chance in nearly a year. Tom had time to grieve later when his friend's death sunk in. Right now, he just needed to talk.

As the hour passed, and those assembled began to depart, leaving small tokens and flowers on the coffin, Tom looked up at Wolf. "When I go home tomorrow, would you mind if I read the letters he sent back to you?"

"Sure."

And I have flown a thousand miles

To empty rooms and crowded aisles

At noon, and marking the hour's end, the bells began to toll their mournfully vibrant song.

And we went from cathedral bells

To show-and-tell and wish-you-wells

The sun crested over Mt. Tongariro's snow-tipped peaks. As Ben, carrying Alex's ashes in a small locked wooden box, arrived at some pre-determined destination that could have been straight out of a movie with its view of the stunning landscape, they were momentarily blinded.

And I still look at you

And I am blinded

I am blinded

No one could honestly say that they didn't shed a single tear, because they would have been lying.

Because there is a light

From a higher window

Shining down on us tonight

And the music floats on the breeze

From an easier time

And all of our cards are on the table

Tell me what you want to do

Just don't tell me that it's too late

Don't tell me that it's too late now

Just don't tell me that it's too late

For me to love you

[Morti irrequieti somnum reperirat, et lux memorandi nostri eum porteat ad pacem aeternam.]

A/N: Yes, I heard this song and thought, 'Snipers.' But this story plot was basically handed out free of charge by the wonderful and circle-drawing KusajishiFukutaicho. So if you want someone to violently murder, she would be the one.

I would have stopped with this being a one-shot, but had so many requests that Believe and Higher Window became inevitable. Hope you enjoyed.

And please, please tell me in a short review if you cried. My pride and the ongoing bet with my sister count on it!