Work Text:
The target begs.
“Please, please, you don’t have to do this. I know things, I can help you. And I have- I have money. I can make you rich, I swear. Whatever you want, whatever, it’s yours, just, please, please don’t do this.”
Ian has to resist the urge to sigh. “Don’t,” is all that he lets himself say.
He’s dropped the accent, dropped the facade he’s been wearing the past two days, which was a relief, but may have only served to panic the guy more. Although, pulling out his gun probably hadn’t helped either.
The man is still babbling, still begging when Ian raises the gun, his voice taking on an even more frantic tone before it’s swallowed by the bang of the gunshot.
Ian fires again, and then a third time, each bullet hitting its mark. The target crumples at his feet.
With the sounds of gunshots still echoing off the walls, Ian takes a deep breath, smells oil and the heavy dampness of the warehouse and the discharge of the gun. He looks down at the body, at the steadily growing pool of blood beneath it, and feels...
Well, there’s a ringing in his ears that’s only partly due to the gunshots.
There's a difference, between what Ian has done in the army, in the Service, and what he does now. He knows that.
But also, there’s not much difference at all.
And is it better or worse for his driving force, the reason he’s there, the reason he stays, to have been whittled down to a single person, two if he’s pressed, instead of an entire country? The vague ideas of patriotism and goodness?
More honest, maybe.
Because it’s been about Alex since the moment Ian first laid eyes on him, and it’s been about John since the moment he – Ian – was born. None of that’s changed, not truly, regardless of where it’s led him.
He owes it to Helen too.
The gun is heavy in his hands, but it feels like an extension of him when he hears the soft scuff of a shoe on concrete. He’s spinning around, weapon already up by the time he turns. A part of him knows who it’s going to be though, and it’s the same part of him that also knows, with unsettling certainty, that he only heard the sound because he was permitted to.
“Following me?”
Gregorovich doesn’t bother raising his hands, giving no more acknowledgment of the gun, and Ian’s aim at the centre of his chest, than a brief, emotionless glance. He lingers longer on the dead body, and only looks back at him to shrug uncommittedly at the question.
“Right,” Ian says, hardly surprised, as he lowers the gun.
Gregorovich, Cossack, Yassen, as he has found himself more and more often calling him – thinking about him as – doesn't have a gun of his own out, but Ian doesn’t think for a second that he doesn’t have at least one on him. Or that he couldn’t have it out and pointing at Ian’s head before he could even blink.
The pit in his stomach opens up deeper at yet another reminder of how in over his head he is. How fucked he is.
“Good job,” Yassen says.
He has the slightest urge to sigh. Maybe even roll his eyes. “I’m past the point of needing a shadow in case I fuck up, surely? It’s been a while since graduation.”
His finger is away from the trigger, but the gun is still a presence, a familiar, known weight in his hand that’s almost a relief.
Graduation. Not his first test of loyalty since being captured, since agreeing to stay, since seeing what his brother had become even as he also saw how desperate John was to keep him close, whatever that entailed. Whatever that required.
Not his first test, but also not his last.
“Or,” he begins to speculate out loud. “Do they not trust me to get the job done?”
“That is not for me to say.”
“Really? Then why are you here?” Yassen stares at him. “Or is that not for you to say either?”
Ian puts his gun away and turns his back to Yassen deliberately, bending to collect his shell casings and scouring the space around him for any other evidence he might have left.
“Well, the job’s clearly done so you can report that back as you like,” he says, still not looking the other man’s way.
“The warehouse was a good choice. As a location,” Yassen says evenly after a few moments of silence as Ian continues his check.
There’s something that stings a little, being evaluated by someone that much younger than him, along with the fact that Yassen might have been a part of Scorpia for longer, but Ian had hardly come from a civilian life.
It especially didn’t help the way Yassen trailed after John, so obviously desperate for any scraps of approval, even affection, for all that he’s getting better at hiding it. It made him seem even younger.
Not to mention the way it only served to make John seem even more...exceptional.
Yassen was good though, has outmatched Ian at every turn, so as much as it stings his ego a bit, it’s almost flattering in equal measure. He also knows it can only be beneficial for him to receive a positive report. Anything that helps keep him alive.
Ian’s gaze catches on the body. It’s far from his first, although he couldn’t say what number it was if he’d been asked. He'd never counted them, and is certainly not inclined to start now that he’s changed employer. He doesn’t particularly care if it makes him a coward, and he’s sure John would approved.
It’s work. It's a job. It's his life now.
No going back, even if he wanted to.
The man had still been a person, though, whatever his crimes. Or non-crimes. Whatever he’d done or didn’t do to end up with a Scorpia kill order out on him. Ian doesn’t know. It hadn’t been part of his brief.
Wasn’t for him to know.
His brother no doubt did. Maybe Yassen did too.
He hears Yassen move, again all too aware that he only does so because Yassen allows him to. He stops beside him, and while Ian looks down at a corpse, he feels Yassen’s eyes on the side of his face.
“Who are you reporting to?” Ian asks. “Rothman?”
Rothman, who can’t seem to decide whether she hates him, envies him, or is pleased that he’s around. Yassen's in her pockets almost as much as he’s in John’s, and Ian’s caught the way her hand lingers sometimes, the way she looks at him, sometimes with John still in the room. Not that Ian doubts John isn’t aware.
And if it is Rothman, what are her orders? Watch and report? Kill him?
Again, it would help if Ian knew what the hell she wanted from him. Besides a convenient babysitter.
Although, she wasn’t the one who took issue with leaving Alex alone with a bunch of dangerous assassins. That was all Ian.
“Or is it...” Ian trails off, his brother’s name left unspoken though they both hear it. Both always hear it.
And what would John want Yassen to do? What would Hunter?
Evaluate? Step in if Ian failed? Watch Ian’s back because he’s not there to, hasn’t been there in a long time and has now dragged him into-
Ian cuts the thought off.
“You can take care of yourself,” Yassen somewhat answers, without, of course, actually answering.
“But?”
Yassen is silent for a moment. “No buts,” he eventually says.
Ian turns to look at him, and he doesn’t see mirth or sarcasm in the young man’s face. Doesn't see much, which he can acknowledge is good in this line of work. He wonders how long it’s taken him to get good at that.
He also sees dark curls and big dark eyes and distantly thinks, for a moment, that those couldn’t hurt either, in certain situations.
The scar too, of course. Cutting through the side of his face.
Ian hasn’t managed to get the full story about that out of either party. Not yet anyway.
“Your extraction isn’t for another three hours,” Yassen says, and Ian doesn’t let himself react to the awareness of his plans, despite Yassen not officially being involved in this op at all. He’s not even surprised, honestly. “What are you going to do?”
Ian, like a professional, is going to wait until he’s back home – and interesting that that’s how he’s started to think about it, but he doesn’t know what other word to use at this point – has gone through his debrief, has checked on Alex, and has had a shower and changed before getting as drunk as possible.
For now, though.
“I’m going to wait. Long way round, and there’s a cafe with good sight lines a block away when it’s closer to the time. I could do with a coffee.”
He also has a gun to dispose of in pieces along the way, plus the casings.
Yassen nods, in approval or simple acknowledgement, Ian isn’t sure.
“And you?” he asks. “How are you getting out? How did you get in, for that matter?”
“I am on holidays,” Yassen replies. “Sightseeing.”
“This is a sight, I’ll give you that."
“I have seen worse.”
His tone doesn’t change and his face doesn’t move, but something about the way Yassen says it has Ian looking at him askance, although without entirely sure what he’s looking for, what he thinks he heard. Yassen just looks back at him.
It’s Yassen who eventually breaks the silence. “Goodbye, Ian. See you later.”
Ian watches him leave, and once he’s out through the door, continues to listen, waiting futilely, he knows, for evidence that Yassen has indeed left and isn’t still there, watching.
The feeling of eyes on him could be entirely in his head. It sometimes is.
Still, he doesn’t imagine Yassen goes far, and so he's not entirely surprised when, two hours later, Yassen sits down across from him in the cafe a block from his extraction site, with a coffee of his own.