Anastasia Ivanov

Two years can change a lot. It doesn't seem like a long time, when you go day by day, but if you start looking at it week by week or month by month, two years drags on forever. Two years is how long I went without seeing him. Two years without seeing any green quite the same shade as his eyes.

Two years can change people. His shoulders slouched just a fraction of an inch, his eyes not holding the same playful arrogance as when I first met him. Still brilliant green, but no twinkle of an inside joke. Zachary Goode had changed a lot in two years.

I wanted to pull him aside and tell him it was me. But I couldn't. Because I'm not Cammie anymore. Anyone in the small town of Vologda, Russia could tell you who Anastasia Ivanov is.

Ana was a 22-year-old university student with a major in Journalism and a dream to become a writer for a newspaper column. She had a boyfriend of one year named Anton. She was highly skilled in gymnastics and martial arts. Most of all, she was definitely not a spy.

And apparently, I was Ana. I had been Ana for two years now. And Ana didn't know Zachary Goode, except for the fact that he was supposedly here in Vologda to become an assistant to some rich, government official. But the Cammie in me knew better. I'd suspected Viktor Kalgrad for a long time of being part of the Circle, and Zach being sent here only confirmed that. I was just glad he knew me as the eccentric and slightly outlandish college student that had moved to get away from her family in Omsk.

It had been, in fact, me who had sent a tip to the agency that they might want to check it out, and get some more information. They wouldn't have sent anyone if there wasn't some evidence that he was a part of the Circle. They wouldn't have sent Zach if it wasn't pretty serious.

It was just my luck that Zach was here. After months of no response to the tip I'd sent against Viktor, I had taken it upon myself to find as much information as I could and prepare for a recon mission to see if there was anything related to the circle on his computer. It was a week away from when I had planned on doing it when Zachary Goode had walked through the door of the coffee shop I worked at. But Ana tried not to think of that at the moment. She focused her mind on the trip she'd recently taken to Tahiti.

Anyone who knew Ana knew that I loved to take vacations to exotic places to "expand my horizons". This wasn't totally untrue. By traveling to these places, finding out as much information as I can about various bases and either sending a tip to the agency so they could deal with the things I could—admittedly—not handle, or I would take the base out myself after getting as many codes and plans out of the computers as I could. By now I had destroyed over 50 COC bases. I had sent over 120 tips to the agency, more than 90 of them had been checked out. Approximately 87% of the proceeding missions were success, with me offering as much as I could by posing as a random person. The more bases I took down, the smaller the Circle got, the more freedom I had, thus truly "expanding my horizons".

They suspected it was me sending the tips. Both the agency and the Circle. Of course, I did nothing to hide the fact that it was me, but I made sure that all traceable signals were quickly shut down or re-directed.

And now Zach was here. Here in the place that I'd lived for years now. And whereas Ana didn't know Zach Goode, Cammie certainly did, and she really didn't know how to react.

Being Ana was decidedly much easier. I had a part-time job at a small coffee shop, and I also taught gymnastics to younger kids. Being Ana was also decidedly much more boring.

I wasn't ready for him to meet Ana yet. I was almost ashamed to know that I couldn't handle it. But I excused myself, knowing that my shift would be over in five minutes anyway, and slipped out of the door.

It was a short walk to my apartment, but I was shivering the entire way. Part of it was shock. Who would have thought that of all the 1,739 agents and the millions of places to go on missions, Zach would be sent here?

"Hey, babe." Anton's voice called as I opened the door. "How was work?"

"The usual." I said. I walked into the kitchen where I knew he would be (he was always hungry). Anton was pretty much Ana's dream guy. Standing 6' 2" with dark curly hair and kind brown eyes he towered over me, but was strong enough to make it seem normal. He was caring and loyal and athletic and funny and charming. And every time I looked at him, I unconsciously searched for everything that reminded me of Zach. I crossed the tiny space, raised myself up on my toes and kissed him on the cheek. I'd done it hundreds of times over the past year that we'd been dating, but not for the first time, I felt a pang of guilt as I did it. Then I felt angry at myself for feeling guilty. It was just a cover wasn't it? But I knew the part of me that had really become Ana, actually really liked Anton. He was a great guy. Witty. Sweet. Perhaps not the smartest, but not dumb by any standards. But he wasn't Zach, and that made me really wish he was.

"Boring?" He asked, kissing me back. It left my cheeks burning as a blush crept into them.

"Of course. How was your work?" He taught high school level soccer for boys and eighth grade level girls' volleyball on weekends.

"Good. The soccer team needs to work on passing more. They just don't understand that you can't play the entire game by yourself. But the girls are getting much better at spiking." He explained as he brought two cups of hot cocoa out to the living room and I followed.

"Here you are, your Lady-ness." He said, handing me my cup.

"Thank you, your Manly-ness." I replied before taking a sip.

"No, no. It's your Highness. You know, like all of the royal people."

"Well, if being a lady makes me your lady-ness, what are you that makes you your Highness? Are you high again, Anton?" I teased.

"Again? I've never smoked anything. Bad for your lungs. If I can't breathe, I can't play sports."

"Mmmhhmmm." I murmured as I took another sip. My mind started wandering to Zach. When he'd entered the coffee shop, his hair was dyed blond and his eyes were still green. He had little dark circles under his eyes like he hadn't gotten enough sleep and the smile on his face wasn't completely genuine. No one else would have noticed these, but I sure did.

"Whatcha thinking about, 'Stasia?" Anton asked.

"Nothing… just classes I suppose." I lied.

"Yeah, I haven't asked how my favorite writer is doing in writing class…"

"It's Journalism. And the teacher doesn't like me very much." I sighed.

"Now why wouldn't he like someone as wonderful as you?"

"Well…" I started. "I kind of corrected him when he misused a few terms and he thinks my writing style is immature." He just laughed.

"Immature is boring people's way of describing fun." He stated.

"Yeah well it didn't help that I sort of insulted him afterwards…"

"Ana, Ana, Ana…" He shook his head. "What am I going to do with you?"

"I mumbled it!" I defended myself. "And how was I supposed to know he knew Italian?"

"We've gone over this. If you insult someone in a different language, make it something obscure. Like Latin! You speak Latin—though I don't know why—and practically no one else speaks it!"

"Tony!" I sighed. " I speak Latin because it's the base language for most foreign languages and I'll just have to keep it really quiet… with how things are going so far, it looks like I'll be cussing him under my breath a lot."

"Just don't get kicked out." He laughed. "I don't think newspapers will like that mentioned in a job interview."

"Yeah." I mumbled. "Screw other newspapers. I'll probably just end up writing a travel column for the local newspaper here. I pretty much have a guaranteed job there."

"You're thinking boringly again." Anton teased. "You are going to become a famous writer and we'll travel to all those crazy places you like going to and we'll go climb a few mountains and be king and queen of the world and we'll ride off into the sunset, live happily ever after… all that cheesy stuff."

"So what?" I quirked an eyebrow. "All of that depends on me not getting kicked out of Journalism? No pressure or anything…"

"No." He smiled, setting his cup on the table. He stood up, held his hand out to me and pulled me up in front of him. "It depends on you being you, because you're the best damn journalist out there and anyone would be crazy to not want you to write for them. And it depends on me being by your side every step of the way." His face lit up in a mischievous smile. "Because if I'm not, you never know what could happen."

"And what could happen?" I asked cautiously, taking a slow step back. A mischievous Anton was never a good thing.

"You could get… kidnapped." He said while quickly grabbing me around the waist and throwing me over his shoulder. And I've never gotten kidnapped before, I thought to myself sarcastically..

"Tony! Put me down!" I sounded exasperated.

"And if they kidnapped you and I wasn't around to save you," he continued on, ignoring me. "they might torture you." Once again, never happened to me before. "You wanna know how they would torture you?" he whispered in my ear.

"How?" I played along.

"They'd tickle you to death." He said, simultaneously letting his hand flit over the areas he knew affected me the worst. Sometimes, I thought I might be dating a 6 year old.

"Tony!" I squealed, gasping for air. "Tony! Stop! Tony!"

Before I could get out another word he had swung me around and placed my feet on the ground. I would have scolded him for being so childish, but he placed a hand under my chin, tilted my head up so I was looking into his eyes—eyes that distinctly weren't green—and pressed his lips softly into mine. And despite the tiny voice of Cammie in the back of my head screaming that it was wrong, Ana was falling under a spell. Ana, for the moment, didn't allow Cammie to dwell on evil government officials, or terrorist organizations that were trying to kill her, or guys with distinctly green eyes walking into coffee shops. No, at the moment, Ana was very busy. Ana was most definitely and most completely in love.

But it was just a cover, Cammie reminded Ana.

…Wasn't it?

AN: Hello, and welcome to For Every End, A Beginning! The sequel to the (hopefully) most beloved What Could Possibly Go Wong? This first chapter is kinda short a fluffy, and I'm sorry about that. I had an entire part with Zach's point of view and more chapters ready and everything… then one of my brothers broke my computer yesterday… and all of my work was gone… with only a few days until I promised you guys the sequel. And I was just as excited as you guys for this to come out. So anyway, I threw this together and it should be pretty similar to the original but here is the first chapter! As you can see there's the whole battle-between-Cammie-and-the-Circle thing going on (looks like she's done pretty well so far) and now some romantic trouble… Introducing Anton! Don't worry, you'll get your Zammie. But does she really love Anton? You'll have to wait and see!