Title: The Only Thing You Can Change is Your Name
Author: Emjen Enla (Fanfiction)/emjenenla (Tumblr)
Teaser: Modern AU/a Heavyverse fic. Through the dark and gritty streets of Ketterdam, among the worst of the worst one thing is whispered; if you need someone dead and you've got the money, go to the Darkling and they'll take care of it for you. Appearances/mentions of Six of Crows characters.
Rating: PG-13/T
Canon/Timeline: Modern AU, same universe as I'm Holding On; Why is Everything so Heavy? but can be read separately; set a couple months before that fic (perhaps between 4 and 6 months?), the Darkling is in his mid-thirties, Alina, Nikolai and Co. are in their mid-twenties
Dominant Characters: The Darkling, appearances by Nikolai Lantsov, Alina Starkov, Jan Van Eck, Pekka Rollins, Tolya Yul-Bataar, Nikolai's family, unnamed appearances by Mal Oretsev, Tamar Kir-Bataar, Genya Safin, Zoya Nazyalensky, mentions of Baghra, Bo Yul-Bayur, Kuwei Yul-Bo
Pairings: a TINY bit of one-sided Darklina because the Darkling wouldn't be himself without his creepy, unhealthy obsession with Alina
Warnings: violence
Notes:
-The Darkling/Aleksander Morozova uses he/his pronouns, but the Darkling as a semi-mythical figure in the lore of Ketterdam is genderless. Therefore, if this story was in Nikolai or Alina's POV the Darkling would be referred to using they/theirs pronouns.
-The City Council in this AU is the equivalent of the Merchant Council in SoC.
-Also, there's a frustrating number of unnamed characters in this trilogy (The Queen of Ravka is literally just referred to as the Queen).
Disclaimer: I don't own The Grisha Trilogy or Six of Crows or the song "Kira" from the Death Note Musical (the song I got the title from).
Some indeterminable amount of time ago, a man climbs the rickety stairs to an attic apartment. He keeps a hand on his gun, and looks left and right in fear. At the top of the stairs he knocks on the door. Crumbles of peeling paint fall away with the mild force of his hand on the door.
After a moment the door opens though no one stands on the other side. The man stands in the doorway for a moment, wondering what to do, then a voice calls from within, "Enter." He takes a deep breath, gathers his courage and steps inside.
The apartment is utterly dark, lit only by a few small lights that do nothing to give any impression of the room. The only thing that can be seen is the vague outline of a figure sitting in the center of the room. The man makes his way across the floor, stumbling over a couple objects on the way.
"Sit," the figure says.
He does.
"What do you request?" the figure asks. The voice is too low to be female and too high to be male.
The man hands over a stack of hundred dollar bills, and names his request. He gives a name, a description, and details. The figure takes it all with a nod and tells him to leave, and not to worry about anything.
He flees.
If the room had been a bit lighter, or perhaps just if he would have been a bit more observant he might have noticed that he and the figure were not the only people in the room. He would have noticed the small, dark-haired, gray-eyed boy, hunched in a corner, watching them both with wide, learning eyes.
But he didn't notice, just like everyone else who had ever come into that little apartment.
Many Years Later
The Darkling hunched on the roof of the mansion, staring down into the ornate courtyard. His booted feet were braced securely enough that he felt comfortable letting go of the tasteless gargoyle and blowing into his hands in an attempt to warm them. Ketterdam was in the grips of a coldsnap and his thin black gloves were meant to prevent him from leaving fingerprints, not keep his hands warm.
He was a little frustrated. It was supposed to get substantially warmer later in the week and he would have waited until then if his employer hadn't been chomping at the bit.
A car pulled through the mansion's front gates and coasted to a stop before the door. The Darkling pulled out a pair binoculars and watched as his targets got out. Alexander Lantsov, his wife and their sons, Vasily and Nikolai. By the time the night was over all four of them would be dead.
He watched while the family vanished inside then dropped the binoculars and climbed away from the edge of the building. Now he needed to wait for the right moment to strike.
Normally he would have hung out on the roof until the family went to bed, but it was really too cold for that tonight. He made his way to the doorway that allowed people to access the roof. There was no security, and the door wasn't even locked. The Darkling snorted, people this stupid almost deserved to be assassinated. It wasn't that difficult to slap on some climbing spikes and scale the side of the building; despite her old age Baghra had been doing it right up to her death.
The Darkling let himself into the building and hunched on the stairs, enjoying the warmth. He tried not to think about Baghra because whenever he did he was always sucked down into the bottomless pit of his own loneliness. It was a little terrifying because he hadn't thought he would miss her. For years he had hated her as his jailer, as the woman who kept him trapped in their home in the name of safety. He'd expected to rejoice that she was gone, but that didn't change the fact that she was the only person who he'd ever interacted with more than tangentially.
He pressed his gloved fingertips against his eyelids and tried to imagine that he was pressing away those thoughts. Those were the petty worries of Aleksander Morozova, not the Darkling. There was a reason he'd begun thinking of himself as the Darkling after Baghra's death. It served as a way to mentally separate himself from the pathetic child who had wandered their home wishing that something would happen to take him far away.
At least that was supposed to work in theory.
He leaned his shoulder against the wall and forced himself to begin running through the particulars of the plan. He had a job to do, he did not have time to sit and mope.
As they often did, his thoughts took on the format of a conversation. He imagined he was laying out the plan for someone else and they were listening intently. Figuring out the best way to explain what he was planning to do kept him occupied until the house quieted around him and it was time to move.
He made sure his voluminous black robes and featureless hood and face coverings were all in their correct places. In his Darkling robes he was identity-less and genderless, a wraith of the night. He was visibly taller than Baghra had been, but she had been very careful and theatrical when interacting with everyone as the Darkling. He doubted there was anyone in the city who would notice that he was not the same Darkling who had begun their reign of terror sixty years ago.
The halls of the mansion were dark but there was just enough light to see the reflections from the gold details that covered basically everything. It was almost sickening. The Darkling had known that Ravka Oil made a lot of money, but he had no idea its CEO was quite this rich. Of course there was always the possibility that all this was bought with credit cards and that Alexander Lantsov, the King of Ravka Oil, didn't have the money for this, but there was no way to tell. As a rule, the Darkling only cared out his target's finances when that would affect the job, but that could be what the Apparat wanted the Lantsovs dead for. The Darkling would probably never know and that didn't really bother him.
He went to the master bedroom first. Even though it was not that late both Alexander Lantsov and his wife were stone-cold asleep, overly confident in their high-tech security systems. The Darkling killed the wife first just to prove that the husband won't notice.
When that was done, the Darkling left the master bedroom, closing the door softly behind him. There was no noise, no mess. If the rest of the job went this smoothly the bodies might not even be discovered until morning.
The next stop was the bedroom of the older son, Vasily. Since this target was substantially younger, the Darkling was prepared to face a conscious target, but Vasily Lantsov was passed out drunk and was also no trouble. The Darkling snorted as he let himself out of the bedroom, this was shaping up to be the easiest five hundred thousand dollars he'd ever made.
The last target was Nikolai Lantsov, the youngest of the family who was rumored to not actually be Alexander Lantsov's son. From what the Darkling had heard, there was some definite truth to that rumor, but the Apparat was still willing to pay a hundred thousand dollars for his head, so the Darkling considered himself aptly paid enough not to care.
Nikolai Lantsov lived in an attic bedroom that was remarkably close to the stairwell the Darkling had been squatting in for the last few hours. Still, even though it was an attic only in name. The stairway was just as expensive as the rest of the house, though it was a bit more understated, something the Darkling's eyes were thankful for.
He wasn't sure how it happened. Perhaps the people upstairs had reached a lull in their conversation. Perhaps the wind blew just hard enough to cover up their voices. Perhaps he had made that fatal mistake that Baghra had always warned him about and allowed his success to go to his head. No matter what the answer was, he climbed the last stair and found himself face to face with a very awake Nikolai Lantsov and a handful of others.
For a period of time that was only a couple seconds at most, they all stared at each other. Aside from Nikolai Lantsov there were six others, two men, four women. The Darkling was massively outnumbered.
For the first time he cursed his adherence to Baghra's "never take a gun on a job" rule. She claimed that if you carried a gun it was too easy to panic and shoot someone you could have taken out by other, quieter means. This was probably the one time that proved that wasn't always true. If the Darkling had a gun he could have shot his target and fled before the others had a chance to do anything. As it was he didn't have any range weapons but a couple knives that weren't strictly throwing knives that he could still throw if he needed to.
He threw a couple of the knives in Nikolai Lantsov's direction. The bigger of the two men threw himself into Nikolai, knocking him to the floor and taking the knife in this own shoulder. "Tolya!" one of the girls yelled.
The Darkling knew that the job was off. Without the element of surprise, even the elusive and powerful Darkling couldn't take these odds. He turned to run down the stairs but a voice stopped him. "You! Freeze or I'll shoot!"
It was always a good policy to avoid being shot, so he stopped and looked back. One of the women had somehow come up with a handgun and she was holding it in a way that proved that she definitely knew how to fire it. She had a thin, striking face and dark, searching eyes. Her hair was probably platinum blonde, but it was so pale it looked white.
She was beautiful.
It took him a second it realize what he was thinking and reprimand himself. Hadn't Baghra trained him to avoid being distracted?
"Put your weapons down!" the girl said.
"No, thanks," the Darkling said in the mid-range, androgynous voice that Baghra had spent many, many years drilling him on until she deemed it perfect. "I'll be going now if it's all the same to you." Then he dove for the stairs.
He didn't bother going down them, he simply jumped, a trick he'd practiced on the the many staircases at the apartment as a bored teen. He heard the gun go off behind him and pain seared his left side. He was more surprised than anything else; he hadn't expected someone that delicate to actually pull the trigger regardless of her obvious proficiency with firearms.
He hit the floor at the bottom of the staircase and rolled before coming back up running. He made for the staircase to the roof. They'd expect him to go down and attempt to get out of the building; they wouldn't think to look up.
The roof was no warmer than it had been hours before. The Darkling hunched down behind a particularly large gargoyle to wait. Nikolai Lantsov and his friends would be out on the lawn within minutes. If he tried to scale the building now he would be seen and captured. Fortunately, it would probably be hours before anyone, the police included thought to check the roof, so he could wait here for the right moment to make his escape.
He took a moment to see to his side wound. The wound was bleeding but still rather shallow. He was lucky the girl had been shooting a handgun, her aim would probably be lethal with a rifle.
He ripped a section out of his robe, pointedly ignoring the part of his brain that was chattering out the exact reprimands Baghra would have used had she still been alive. He knew he'd messed up, but he was going to get out of it and everything out be okay.
He wrapped the strip of fabric tightly around his chest and settled back against the gargoyle to wait.
It was dawn by the time the Darkling made it back to the apartment. He showered to thaw out, stitched up and bandaged his wound, then he contacted the Apparat to come with the rest of the money.
When the Apparat showed up, the top floor of the apartment was clothed in darkness and the Darkling was back in his robes. He'd cleaned some of the blood off in the sink but it would take much more time than he had to wash it completely and fix the ripped part.
The Apparat paid the second half of the five hundred thousand dollars without asking for details about the job so the Darkling didn't bother mentioning that Nikolai Lantsov was still alive. He'd gotten his money and the Apparat knew better than to cross him so it would be fine.
As the Apparat left, the Darkling bid the other man goodbye using his real name, just to throw him off and make him even less likely to attempt revenge when he realized Nikolai Lantsov was still alive. Once was gone, the Darkling locked the door and opened the curtains before heading downstairs to pick a bedroom.
Most people who came to hire the Darkling assumed that the room they saw was the only one that he used, but in reality the Darkling owned the whole building. There was enough space to house many people, but he lived alone. The building was completely furnished but modestly so even though there was absolutely no reason for that either.
The Darkling was one of the richest people on earth. The fees required to hire the Darkling were so high that Baghra had been set for life before he had become a teenager. He had enough money that he and a couple others could live lavishly without ever thinking about working again.
He wasn't exactly sure why he kept taking jobs when he didn't need to, though he suspected it was because he had no idea what he would do with himself if he didn't.
He pointedly did not think about these things as he picked a room with a large, soft king-sized bed, and collapsed onto it. He curled up under the blankets and slept.
The Darkling woke up after the sun had set and stumbled groggily to the nearest kitchen to find something to eat. His side was throbbing so he took a couple painkillers and a pill from his antibiotic stash because the last thing he needed was a raging infection.
He dug through the fridge looking for something that he actually wanted to eat. He knew that he had leftover pizza in one of his multiple fridges but this apparently wasn't the one. He considered trying to find that pizza, but he didn't feel like wandering around checking all the refrigerators. Instead he warmed up some soup that probably hadn't been sitting for too long.
He had just finished eating when the proximity alarms for the staircase leading to the upstairs door started going off. Someone was coming to have an audience with the Darkling.
He threw the empty bowl into the sink and bolted for the interior stairs. He made it to the room just as there was a knock at the door. He threw the still-dirty Darkling robes on, pulled the mask on and yanked the blinds closed. Then he turned on the tiny lights and settled down in the specific place Baghra had marked out all those years before. When he was sure he was ready he pressed the hidden button to open the door.
Two men entered the room. Neither was in particularly good shape and both carried themselves with the pompous poise of extremely rich and extremely arrogant men. Granted, basically everyone who came to the Darkling with jobs was extremely rich and extremely arrogant, but these two seems somehow more so than usual.
The Darkling watched without speaking as they fumbled and stumbled their way across the dark room and sat down before him. One set a stack of hundred dollar bills on the floor between them; the consultation fee.
The Darkling picked up the bills and checked them by tilting the stack towards one of the tiny blue lights. Baghra had spent literally decades fiddling with the arrangement of the lights until they only benefited her and left her customers floundering in the dark. When she'd died the Darkling had seen no need to do anything but tweak the angles to accommodate his larger form.
Two carefully placed lights gave him a view of both customer's faces, and the Darkling studied them as he slid the money into his robes and waited for them to speak.
"I am Jakob Hertzoon," one man said. "This is my business partner, we are here to-"
"No you're not," the Darkling said in the Darkling voice.
"Excuse me?" the man asked.
"You're not Jakob Hertzoon," the Darkling said. "You're Pekka Rollins. And you," he gestured at the other man, "you're Jan Van Eck. Just because no one knows who I am does not mean that I am not knowledgeable about the inhabitants of Ketterdam."
"I-" Pekka Rollins looked nervous now, it was obvious that he hadn't expected the Darkling to recognize the false name. "I…"
"So we lied about our names," Jan Van Eck said leaning forward slightly. "We still have a job for you."
"I'm listening," The Darkling said steepling his fingers together.
Jan Van Eck pulled a folder out his briefcase and handed it over. The Darkling took it but didn't open it because that would reveal that he had enough light to read it. "That is a file on a man named Bo Yul-Bayur. He used to be a practicing doctor, but recently he's been doing medical research for Ketterdam Hospital. He has some research we want. We tried to buy it from him but he went into hiding with his son. We want to hire you to find Yul-Bayur, retrieve his research and...remove him and his son from the picture."
This would not be the first job the Darkling had taken that would require him to track down his target, but it was never a good idea to seem too interested. "Finding Yul-Bayur might take me a considerable amount of time," he said injecting as much disinterest as possible into his voice. "You'd have to make it worth my time."
"Is ten million dollars worth your time?" Van Eck asked.
It felt like the world actually stopped spinning, only years of Baghra's lessons kept him from reacting. He had never been offered a job with that much payment, and Baghra hadn't either. When the Darkling had been in his early teens, Baghra had assassinated five members of the City Council at a million dollars a head, and that was the biggest job either of them had either done. Ten million was like a dream.
"Do you actually have that much money?" he asked when he'd controlled his emotions enough to speak in his androgynous voice without emotion. "You do realize that I charge half up front which means that you'll need to give me five million before I even start on this job."
Van Eck reached into his briefcase and set several more stacks of hundred dollar bills on the floor. "That's a million dollars right there," he said quietly. "If you take the job, I'll give you another million every two weeks until we reach ten million. It will take us five months to get there and I imagine that you'll be done long before then if you're as good as everyone says you are. When you finish, I'll give you the rest of the money all at once."
The Darkling picked up one of the stacks of bills and checked them, trying not to look as excited as he actually was.
"Do we have a deal?" Van Eck pressed in a strange tone that suggested that he might have realized just how interested the Darkling was. Pekka Rollins looked on, staring at the money like he wanted nothing better than to steal it.
The Darkling knew he shouldn't agree right away, that he should tell them he'd get back to them and take time to do some research. The reason that Baghra had gotten that five million dollar job was because a group of people on the City Council had pooled their money to pay her. Van Eck was claiming to have ten million to pay an assassin with no help. Something was fishy, but the Darkling found he didn't particularly care.
That realization was a little startling. It seemed that he didn't just take jobs because he didn't know what else to do; it seemed there was an element of greed to this too. It didn't matter how much money he had; he liked to make more.
"You have a deal, Mr. Van Eck," The Darkling said. "Now, what kind of research do you want me to retrieve?"
Hope you enjoyed. I'm not going to promise anything more in AU because I don't want to tie myself to anything, but I am thinking about other stories.
Please fav, follow and review!
Emjen