Sorry for the boring author's note. This is my first Alex Rider fanfic, as I've abandoned the Animorph archives. So… yeah.

Just wanted to say that this is a oneshot, though if a lot of people want me to expand it, I do have a vague plot stretched out for it. Just couldn't be bothered to write it all.

DISCLAIMER: Oh come on. You just have to look at the writing to know I'm not Anthony Horowitz. I could more easily pass for KA Applegate! Anyway, I don't own Alex or Yassen or K Unit (as much as I wish I did), but I do partially own Lily. Lisa, Tobias and I split the ownership.

Normality

Yassen Gregorovitch leant his head against the cool bathroom tiles, hot water pounding off his back before it turned lukewarm again. The pipes at his house in Australia took some getting used to, but this was what he wanted, right? Normality. That was why he'd pretended to be dead after the incident on Air Force One, so Scorpia and MI6 and the rest wouldn't track him down. The rest… like Alex Rider.

Quickly he turned off the taps and wrapped a towel around his muscular body. Even if he no longer worked as he used to, he still made a point of keeping in shape.

Treading softly towards his bedroom, he smiled at the sight of Lily, his fiancé, standing in the doorway of the nursery. Watching their nine month old son, no doubt.

Yassen reached out and pulled Lily into an embrace. There were many things he loved about her, from the fact that she never jumped, no matter how quietly he tiptoed up behind her, to her almost obsessive love of books (which normally manifested as strange quotes from obscure series). But the one thing he loved about her the most was the fact that she didn't care about his past occupation. She loved him anyway.

"He's growing," she remarked softly. Yassen smiled.

"Babies tend to do that," he replied. Lily gave a quick half grin, just as a knock came from the door. She hurried up the hall, calling quietly, "Make sure he doesn't wake up, I'll get it."

Yassen stepped into the soft green room and picked up his infant son, rocking him gently. How had he come this far? From cold assassin to loving husband-to-be and father. It was almost too good to-

The thought derailed as he heard Lily's piercing scream from the front door, followed by a sound that Yassen knew all too well.

A gunshot.

Quick as a cat, he placed his son back in the cot and sprinted to the front door where-

Oh God.

-Lily lay, eyes blank and lifeless, in a pool of rapidly spreading crimson.

"Lily!" he almost screamed, at her side in an instant. He felt for a pulse, any signs of breathing, anything to tell him she was not-

"Yassen Gregorovitch."

The man looked up at the sound of the name he abandoned years ago, in favour of the less conspicuous surname 'Daniels'. A large man in camouflage clothes was standing over him, his gun pointing straight at Yassen.

"Get up. Now."

Enraged, Yassen leapt at the man, only to be intercepted by another equally well built man who knocked his wild punch away and landed one of his own. Dazed, Yassen was seized by the arms and dragged away from the only home he'd known for the last two years.

And that's when he heard a pitiful wail drifted from the nursery.

"NO!" Yassen screamed, fighting against his captors desperately. "No, my son, my son is there! You can't leave him!"

He received no reply – only the cries of his infant child.

"No, Alex! NO! You can't leave him, no, Alex! ALEX!!"

When he finally realized that no amount of struggling would get him free, he collapsed, his expressionless assassin mask slipping away, leaving tears running down his face and sobs choking in his throat.

His beloved Lily was dead, his pride and joy Alex was being abandoned while he could do nothing – and only four minutes ago, he had been thinking that it was all too good to be true.

All he had wanted was normality. Was that so much to ask?

Reviews would be muy apreciado – much appreciated.

--FoxGlade