A/N: I know Yassen said he never saw Dima again but I just really wanted to write this.


He has traveled to all six hospitable continents by now; he has taken planes and buses and taxis and trains, motorbikes and helicopters and boats and ferries. He has spoken many languages and handled many weapons, tried dozens of cuisines and visited hundreds of tourist spots. He has been many different people, met many others, and killed his fair share of them. He is invisible, and he is an assassin.

Yet some part of him always remembers Yasha Gregorovich, the lost boy from Estrov, when he steps back onto the streets of Moscow.

The square outside Kazanskiy station is cleaner than he remembers; it is crammed with people rushing for their trains and tourists wandering around, clutching cameras and backpacks. Russia is opening to the rest of the world, and he hears as much English as he does Russian as he slips through the crowds, unnoticed.

He has a week here this time; the target is not a very public figure, but Yassen is sure he will find the man's weakness. There should be a car waiting for him; he scans the many vehicles lining the sidewalks, trying to pick out the exact one that stands out by not doing so—there he will find his ride.

It is as he spots the nondescript gray car near the end of one lane that he hears it.

"Yasha."

It must be a coincidence—but there is no such thing as coincidence. Yassen knows this only too well. He does not turn, only reaching into his pocket to check his mobile phone, and when he does, his eyes catch the homeless man on the side of the street behind him.

He stands next to the garbage bin, hair longer and straighter and streaked with premature gray, nose just as broken, wearing the same leather jacket that is now too small for him. Yassen gives him and the surroundings a cursory glance, then looks away, but one look is all he needs: he never forgets a face, not anymore, and the homeless man is exactly the person Yassen hoped he wasn't.

Dima no longer stands like he owns the sidewalk, but the fact that he is there at all, in plain sight in the middle of the street, is already impressive. The local police have been harsher on people like him since Yassen left Moscow.

"Yasha. I know you can hear me."

Yassen does not look back, preparing instead to dart through the traffic towards his ride, but then he feels the presence behind him, and he spins around before Dima can touch him.

"You've done well for yourself," the older man says, looking him up and down. "We all thought Sharkovsky killed you—Fagin said you had to be dead. The police got Fagin. They connected him to a string of crimes and—it's not a very pleasant story, not suitable for old friends catching up. Everything's the same with me anyway. We were put in jail a couple years ago; Roman and Grigory haven't gotten out yet, but I'm here, in time to see you stroll out of Kazanskiy station like a foreigner on business—so why don't you tell me about where you've been the last ten years, Yasha?"

Dima says it all in one breath; in that time, Yassen stares at him neutrally, and makes a decision the moment the words fade away into the air. "You must have the wrong person," he says in English. "I do not speak Russian."

"Even your voice is the same," Dima says impatiently. "Are you trying to fool me, Yasha? I would never forget your face—it's haunted me enough since you broke through that fortochnik."

Yassen glances through the traffic at the waiting car, and sees an opening. "You have the wrong person," he repeats, then turns and weaves his way through the vehicles.

"Hey!"

Yassen does not look back; he hears his old name called again, and then an angry shout in Russian from a different voice at the homeless man causing a racket, but he does not slow down. He locks eyes with the driver, who nods imperceptibly, and slides into the backseat of the car.

"Yasha!" he hears through the tinted windows.

The driver looks at him through the rearview mirror. "Problem?"

"No." Yassen leans back in his seat and fixes his eyes on the headrest of the seat in front of him. "Drive."

The man obeys; the car merges into the traffic and disappears into the heart of Moscow, leaving behind just another homeless man and a lost fourteen-year-old boy's memories.


A/N: I don't think people read this so I probably won't post any more, but have one more chapter so this can actually be considered a collection or something like that ^^