A/N: I'M SO SORRY, GUYS! I'm so, so late this week. I wish I had a cool excuse but I'm afraid I was not base-jumping with international supermodels in order to stop global warming and save kittens or anything- I just plain forgot. Like, two days in a row.

My bad.

P.S. Thank you everyone who messaged me. I'm not dead and I love you too!

Alex watched as Yassen and Dima wandered through the main room and out onto the balcony on the other end of the penthouse. He wasn't sure what he was expecting when Yassen had explained Dima was an old friend from his time living in Moscow… but he hadn't necessarily expected this. He seemed more at ease than Alex would have guessed he could be, at any rate. Not as relaxed as he was at their flat, but not as on guard as he was with Vankin. Odd. He wished he could understand what they were talking about, but whatever low conversation they were having was spoken far too softly for his limited translation skills anyway.

Dima poked his head back inside. "Lada? Call me when the doorbell rings. Dinner's on its way."

A second later the balcony door shut behind them, cutting off the cold air and the second hand smoke alike.

Lada glanced at them out of the corner of her eye, as the screen shifted from the scoreboard to the highlights reel of the last race. She'd chosen Peach as her rider, to Alex's lack of surprise, and managed to wrestle a win, to his profound shock. Alex hadn't even been trying to lose on purpose (though he'd considered the idea). "Of course. Papa can't wait to dig out the most disgusting of all his brands."

"What do you mean?" he asked.

She sighed. Alex noticed briefly a rough patch of makeup on her neck, where the foundation hadn't quite managed to conceal the enlarged pores of someone capable of growing facial hair. He carefully glanced away, not wanting to make Lada uncomfortable nor examine his sudden surge of jealousy.

They were only about a year apart in age. Or were supposed to be. Frankly, he appeared closer in age to her pre-teen siblings. He shoved away the urge to touch his own perfectly smooth cheeks.

Why couldn't he just be normal?

"Oh, he digs those stupid things out every once in a while. I'm not surprised. Your father visiting him is probably special occasion enough. Says he used to smoke them back when he was young and poor and the world was harder." Lada rolled her eyes and tensed.

Zena and Zoya hovered in the gap where the hallway led into the living room. While both still looked unhappy, the hard edge of anger seemed to have evaporated. Alex got the impression that everyone was bracing for another fight. Not spoiling for one exactly, but rather resigned to it.

Alex pointed to himself then to each of them. "I'm Sasha, you're Zena, you're Zoya. Hello, nice to meet you. You be player three and you, player four. Let's move up to five laps this time." He turned back to Lada as her sisters tentatively sat on the floor and gathered their controllers. "What does your father say about that time? Yassen doesn't like to discuss the past."

Zoya piped up, quickly selecting her racer. "We only hear about it when he's angry that we won't do what he wants, like drink his stupid health smoothies or stop watching television or asking for new clothes he doesn't think we need. He won't shut up about how bad the orphanage was before he was homeless and lived in a condemned building with his friends and tried not to get caught stealing food by the police. How the boys would just die or disappear and we should appreciate what we have."

"Mama says he should stop acting poor around us," Zena said, eyes riveted on the screen. "It's embarrassing. We might learn bad taste."

"What does she know about taste?" Lada said quietly, lips twisting with obvious derision.

"He was really happy your father came back. He was supposed to be dead," Zoya added absently before her siblings could get into a proper fight, obliviously preventing another spat as she cycled through Daisy's alternate outfits.

Alex snorted. "Yeah, I'm half convinced Yassen is death-proof, so no worries there."

"You're strange. You call your father by his first name."

"Yassen's not my dad," Alex said, after a pause. The countdown to the race appeared onscreen. Abruptly, he realized he didn't really want to get into the how and why he'd come to live with the strange man looking after him, even if Yassen had told him it was unnecessary to lie to Dima, and to some lesser extent, his family. Perhaps he should? He'd been enrolled under his stupid Russian stripper name after all, and school would be where they all saw each other most: he was already introducing himself with it to ensure no one slipped up there, so maybe he should just commit to the entire lie and hope Dima and Yassen did the same. Besides, the truth was a crazy enough story without having to figure out how to explain it to Dima's kids. "He's my mum."

"What?" Lada said, raising an eyebrow as the other two snickered.

Alex grinned, leaning into the joke. "I mean, every time I so much as think about going outside, he insists that I wear a coat, no matter how quick of a trip it will be. If I eat sugar, clearly I'm asking for diabetes or at the very least scurvy. If there's so much as a ray of sun in the sky, he wants me to wear sunblock because cancer will surely strike me down before I can make it more than ten yards from the door. That's not dad stuff. He's a mum."

Zena giggled and glanced at him incredulously. "You shouldn't say it so loud. He might hear you."

"Oh, he knows." Alex feigned surprise as that earned him a look from all three girls. The doorbell rang, prompting Lada to stand with a sigh and move towards the balcony. "What? I didn't say he wasn't a good mum."

Dima took a long pull, almost pensively as Yassen lit up his own cigarette. The bitter edge of tobacco filled the crisp air, carried by the sharp wind and accented by the winking lights of the buildings peeking through the trees. A large park bordered the property of the complex, providing lush greenery only distantly visible under the occasional streetlamp. Dima exhaled a plume of smoke with a supremely satisfied sigh. "These are awful."

Yassen took a neat pull, nearly coughing on the harsh smoke filling his lungs. The Belomorkanals had no filter, touted as some of the strongest cigarettes in the world. An actual cough escaped his lips. No wonder the rest of the world had abandoned the papirosa design after World War II. "God."

Dima laughed. "Too strong for your poor lungs? Don't lie. I saw your pack sticking out of your pocket earlier. Lights? Those are lady cigarettes, Yasha."

"Then women are the smart ones, to hedge their bets against lung cancer." Yassen irritably cleared his lungs and took another drag. "And that's not my name anymore."

"I noticed. You asked me to use this one once, though."

"I know," Yassen admitted. "But this is now." He sobered, half considering Dima out of the corner of his eye. Alex had known about Estrov and a few details of what had happened there, but he hadn't known that Yassen's name had changed until he'd told him. Likely, that wasn't a part of MI6's files, which would be sourced from their own moles in the SVR. Still. Some record in some forgotten warehouse somewhere had to exist referring to Yassen's true identity; Vankin had told himself they were hunting for such a thing specifically to support their case. If that were true, it could be disastrous if Dima casually tied Yassen to Yasha Gregorovitch of the town formerly known as Estrov. While his name was the only potentially compromising thing Dima knew about him, it could be enough for the right agency to piece together his true purpose in Moscow and otherwise upset the SVR's plans- thus upsetting the balance by which his and Alex's new lives rested.

Dima huffed, but the look in his eyes was sharp. He glanced away. "Yas-sen is such a silly name, though. Who calls themselves 'ash tree'? I feel ridiculous just saying it. I know you're a big international assassin with a reputation now, but I don't know why I can't call you by your actual name in private."

Ironically, it was just like his situation in prison: Yassen's best option was to stick close to Dima and ensure he didn't use the wrong name, only this time both his and Alex's life depended on it. The contract killer smothered a sigh. Still. It would defeat the point if Dima felt like Yassen was rejecting their old connection- names were important in Russia, had felt important to him once even if it seemed like an arbitrary gesture to him now. Yassen couldn't discount the fact that Dima's sentimentality was the deciding factor in his protection from both Scorpia and the bratva. "Perhaps I will use it again someday, but for now it is best we do not. Slip-ups happen to the best of us and there could be… complications for me. For Alex. I don't ask lightly."

"Very well, soldatik. You and your caution must be appeased, no?" Dima nodded, leaning against the railing and flicking his cigarette against the edge of it. He turned and nodded to his house. "Well, all embarrassment aside, you've seen what's become of my life for the most part. Care to give more cautious answers of what's become of yours?"

Yassen leaned against the railing. "You know what's become of mine. At least as much as you need to."

Dima scowled. It pulled the lower half of his face slightly out of alignment. For a second, underneath the pale white balcony lighting, he was a teenager standing under the dim glow of a barely working streetlamp on Tverskaya street, wearing an oversized leather jacket with the sleeves rolled up. "Tell that to Roman. Tell that to Grigory. Where were you all these years?"

Yassen took in a slow, meditative breath through his nose. Stonewalling was only brewing resentment. Chert. "It's a long, sad story," he said eventually. "And the last person I told it to died a long time ago."

"Now that," Dima said, his temper fading as quickly as it came. "I do not doubt in the least." He scoffed lightly through his nose. "Don't worry. It being painful does not surprise me. Not even as a child did I let myself believe a rich couple in that building had decided to adopt you and whisk you far away to live in a palace. It's fine if you don't want to tell me, I guess. It's just something I've wasted much time wondering about, off and on throughout the years. Perhaps I just need more hobbies."

"You and I both," Yassen admitted with a grimace. As much as he loathed the idea of talking about his past, it was obvious that it was going to be necessary. Dima had stuck his neck out for him enough already and with little in return except Yassen complying with a Bratva contract that barely scratched the surface of what the man wanted from him. A confidant, in some form, most likely. Moving forward, he needed Dima's trust, which meant he had to give him some kind of answer now. There was no helping it.

That still didn't change the way his teeth clenched, as though trying to trap the words inside.

"As you might recall, the apartment was owned by a man named Vladimir Sharkovsky," Yassen said brusquely. Informationally. In English. Somehow, impossibly, his conversations about his past had seemed to go better when he had them in English. Easier to distance himself. To keep it factual. "He kept his mistress there. They caught me stealing. I didn't know he was connected with the bratva and several other powerful interests back then, but he kidnapped me and essentially kept me as his slave. That's why you never saw me come out. I arrived at his dacha in the trunk of his car, beaten and bloody."

Dima seemed to chew on his words for a long minute. "A slave?" he said, repeating the unfamiliar word.

"Rab. I've no better word for it," Yassen snapped, forced back into Russian. It stung like a slap, even though he knew on some level that Dima didn't lack the vocabulary as a personal attack. "I wasn't paid. I worked constantly. I had no days off. I was not permitted to escape. The dogs were more valuable than me. What word would you use?"

"Slave," Dima said, after a moment. He was studying Yassen, expression shuttered with something Yassen prayed was not pity. "Was he unusually cruel?"

What a stupid question. How could their introduction imply anything but?

Yassen sneered before he could stop himself, busying himself with his cigarette to give himself a chance to wipe the expression from his face. Getting himself under control took a concerted effort. He hoped it was just the vodka. "I won't bore you with the details, but when an assassin arrived to murder him, I begged him to take me with." Yassen looked away, out at the distant lights. "Even with every bullet I've taken, every knife fight I've lost, and every shard of my soul that I've had to sell since, I do not regret that decision. My life may not be entirely my own, but at least it doesn't belong to him."

Dima gripped his shoulder, shaking Yassen gently and staring him solemnly in the face. "I am sorry for that. Thank you for telling me even if it is wrapped in old pain. It is not so happy an answer as I had hoped, but one that I can believe." He hesitated. "Had I known where you were, I would have come for you. You know that right?"

A wicked stab of an old memory- the bitter, fleeting sensation of the old reckless hope of a fourteen year old curled in a fetal position on the floor of a tiny servant's room- flooded Yassen. How many of those first nights had he allowed himself to dream of just that? "You would not have gotten past the gate," he said, in lieu of addressing the actual sentiment behind Dima's words. He spun a finger at the balcony. "His security was better than yours."

Dima snorted softly as he released Yassen's shoulder. His crossness from earlier hadn't returned. Yassen had returned to stonewalling without warning and was actively stepping out of touch distance, but Dima didn't seem nearly as rejected as he had before. It baffled him, honestly. "Eh. I nearly died doing more foolish things at that age. You're not the only one who can take a beating."

Yassen snorted, remembering his cigarette all of a sudden. It was nearly ash. He tapped it anyway. "It was him who gave me my new name with a beating," he said absently. One last thing. Maybe Dima did erroneously pity him, but perhaps Yassen could turn that to his advantage. He tapped his cheek and glanced at Dima. "One of his men had broken the bone. He asked me my name and I couldn't even say it right. I didn't dare correct him. That's how I was named Yassen."

"Why on earth would you want to keep it? Take back your name, soldatik. Like you did your life."

Yassen shook his head. Honesty came a little too easily now. "Yasha died then. Why disrespect the dead?"

"For personal satisfaction," Dima insisted, pulling out a smartphone. His eyes narrowed on the little bright screen as it illuminated his scowling face suddenly. He peevishly stabbed at it with his thumbs. "You'll see. Let's find Sharkovsky's grave. We'll both piss on the ball gargling cocksucker-"

Yassen couldn't help himself: he laughed, feeling the bitter, jagged anger leak out from him like rainwater from a gutter as the world shifted into something more tolerable. Something Dima could curse at and threaten to piss on.

The mobster looked up from his screen. "How do you spell his surname? It won't come up."

Yassen gasped, mirth fading as he brought himself under control. He gestured to the balcony door, where "Lada" was approaching. "Come now. I think food has arrived. The children-"

"We'll make it a family activity," Dima suggested, lips twitching though he finally relented and tucked the phone away. He waved to his child through the door and tugged it open. "Teach the children some proper spite. Act as living examples. They've done studies-"

Yassen flicked his cigarette into the darkness beyond the railing and followed. "Did you read that in your books on parenting? You'll have to show me sometime."