Work Text:
For five years, Yassen slowly counted down the days until his contract with Scorpia expired. He dreaded each time they contacted him with a new target, the long haul flights to get to where the target was, the long list of protocols he had to endure to ensure he left no evidence of his misdeeds. It got harder over time, too. Law enforcement agencies around the world were getting smarter. Yassen noticed the cameras popping up with increasing frequency in the cities he visited. Passports were designed with new technology and cost more to forge. And there was the whole separate issue of the jobs getting harder, too. Someone in Scorpia middle management had decided that the key to prevent assassins from being bored and leaving was to give them increasingly challenging jobs over time. Yassen felt that he was not getting paid enough for the complexity, and he did not care about being bored. All he cared about was surviving until he could leave.
Yassen planned his departure a long time in advance. He had passports made for a number of aliases, flats rented, legends built. He obtained referrals to contacts outside Scorpia’s network for contingency plans. He even picked up textbooks for subjects that he’d done well in at school (Yassen refused to acknowledge that almost a decade had passed since) and tried to imagine going to university and making a career out of not killing someone.
Exactly 1825 days after he had signed the contract that had bound him to Scorpia for five years, Yassen quit. To Yassen, who had for years been counting down the days to this moment, underwhelming would have been the best way to describe it. Yassen had gone to Venice to deliver the news to Julia Rothman directly. She had smiled, expressed her disappointment at seeing him leave so soon, bid him farewell, and that was it. Yassen was surprised when walked out of the Widow’s Palace for the last time, finally a free man.
Yassen made his new home in a university town. It was not a large town by any means, but the revolving door of students meant that there would be a constant stream of young, new faces and Yassen could very easily slip in among them. Here, he focused on catching himself up on the large chunks of knowledge that he had missed when his education was abruptly cut short at fourteen. One of his favorite subjects in Estrov had been science. Yassen’s parents had been scientists, but they never spoke of their jobs and he didn’t know what they actually did when they were alive. For a while, he’d been upset they were involved in the manufacturing of biological weapons, then he got involved with Scorpia and he realized that his hands weren’t any less bloodless than theirs had been. But now was the turning point. A fresh start. Yassen told himself he could get any job after this and he might even be able to undo some of the wrong that he’d done.
Of course, the sense of paranoia he had developed as a professional assassin never went away. He took pains to build false compartments in his floorboards and furniture to hide his documents and weapons. He maintained memberships at several gyms where he worked out regularly. He varied his routines and made sure there was not a discernible pattern to them. All in all, he came as close to a normal life as a man with his past could ever dream of having.
When autumn came around, he enrolled himself in the university. He kept his flat in the city center and walked thirty minutes along the towpath to classes every day. It felt surreal to be coming back to school after so long, but like every challenge Yassen had faced so far in his life, he quickly adapted.
His first day back in school, Yassen found found himself in class armed not with a weapon, but with a stack of notebooks and pencils. The last time he’d been in a classroom like this had been on Malagosto, about to dive into the thousand year history of firearms. There were other students seated around him, mostly faces that he recognized from orientation. He smiled at some of them and said hi, but turned his attention to the lecturer when she began speaking.
Behind him, he could hear someone named Harry trying to plan a party for later that evening and had to suppress a wince of annoyance. Yassen had been to exactly one party during the orientation period and he had no desire to go to any more. He’d dressed up nicely in a three piece suit and tie for the first one, only to to be the most overdressed person at the party by far. He was mocked by some of the other guys, but the women had found it charming and Yassen had spent the night fending off their advances as he sipped at what seemed to be a never-ending supply of lukewarm cheap booze. It wasn’t that Yassen was not interested in women, it was that he was nothing if not the opposite of attention seeking and he did not appreciate the situation he found himself in. He’d received invitations to countless parties after, but he’d declined them all politely and succinctly.
As the days went by, Yassen gradually fell into a routine. He tried to minimize the risks of an ex-Scorpia operative by varying his routes to and from class, where he sat and when he showed up, but it was unavoidable with a schedule that said he had to be in a certain class at a certain time each day. He lived alone and mostly kept to himself. He found that he shared very few common experiences with his classmates and while it was something he could fake if he wanted to, he simply couldn’t bring himself to do so. He was out of Scorpia now, he’d worked hard to come this far, and he just wanted to live a simple, honest life.
The years flew by quickly. Yassen soon found himself putting the finishing touches on his thesis. He had found a full-time job months ago doing research at a pharmaceutical company in Italy - Yassen had made doubly sure they weren’t up to anything nefarious before he’d signed the offer letter - and all that was required now was to simply graduate. Yassen decided to reward himself with a coffee the cafe across the street from his flat. Yassen brought his coffee over to a table in the corner and pulled out his laptop.
He’d barely gotten a sip when a shadow loomed over the table.
“Mind if I sit down?” Someone asked.
Yassen froze and looked up slowly. A woman stood in front of him. She looked tired, like she hadn’t slept in months. She wasn’t carrying anything, not even a drink, which Yassen found odd given where they were. Nonetheless, he nodded and shifted his things slightly to make room for her. Yassen had scoped out his escape routes from the cafe years ago when he first visited and he recalled them now, prepared to spring up and leave at a moment’s notice. But this woman, despite her strange mannerisms, didn’t seem to pose a threat, so Yassen continued to sit there in a relaxed manner.
“Yassen Gregorovich,” the woman said.
This close, Yassen could smell the peppermint she’d been sucking up to a moment ago. Something about the woman’s tone made cafe suddenly felt colder then it had been a moment before.
“Yes, we know who you are,” she continued. “My name is Tulip Jones. I work for British intelligence. We’ve been aware of your presence here for quite some time now.”
“I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about,” Yassen said casually. “You must have the wrong person.”
The woman shook her head firmly. “You are Yassen Gregorovich. You’re an ex-Scorpia operative. You’re wanted for murder in more than nine countries including the UK. You’ve been living here ever since your retirement from Scorpia three years ago.”
Yassen shrugged slightly and waited for her to continue. If they wanted to arrest him, they’d have sent a team of armed men. No, he had a feeling Tulip Jones was here with another purpose.
“Three months ago, two children in London were kidnapped. The police and the security services have searched all over for them, but they’ve gotten nowhere.”
Yassen raised an eyebrow. “What makes you think I will be of any use, when you’ve already got plenty of people on the case?”
“You’ve got contacts we don’t have,” the woman paused. “And the ability to function without government oversight.”
Yassen thought about it for a moment. He didn’t really have a choice. Tulip Jones was asking him now, but if he declined, he would probably find himself forced to do the job under less pleasant terms, or worse.
“What’s so important about these children?” he asked.
She ignored the question and pulled out a set of photographs. They showed a young boy and girl and neither of them could be more than ten years old. They both bore a striking resemblance to her.
Yassen looked at her. “Do your bosses know you are here speaking to me?”
“Does it matter?” she asked. “If you don’t find them, MI5 will receive a tip that you’ve been living here under their noses this whole time.”
What choice did he have? Yassen had known it would be optimistic to think that his past would stay buried forever. “Just this once,” Yassen said. “I do this, and you promise to leave me alone.”
Mrs Jones nodded. “Just this once,” she confirmed.
Yassen doubted that would be the case. Ever since he’d left Estrov, his life had not been his own. He changed masters every few years, and each time he was an unwilling servant. Would he ever be free again, or was this all he was destined to be? Yassen stifled a sigh, his mind already planning how he could escape from Mrs Jones’ reach once this was done.