Disclaimer: I don't own Yassen! And BIG BIG thanks to the people who have reviewed!!
The next morning, at eight o'clock exactly, he was woken by a series of sharp raps on the door. He rolled onto the floor and dragged himself upright. When he had wrapped the duvet back around his body, he opened the door a crack.
"Yes?" God, his voice was awful in the mornings. He shook his head and tried to focus on the figure in front of him. No no no! Yassen closed his eyes, hoping that when he opened them the person at the door would have gone. She wasn't, the woman from last night was standing in his doorway.
"Hi, I thought it would be you," She said brightly. "I'm Laura." She held out her hand. Yassen looked at her. She withdrew the hand.
"Yassen," He rasped. "I'll be down in ten minutes." He tried to shut the door but Laura rammed her foot into the gap and pushed it open further.
"Five minutes, and you better learn some manners, because I will not put up with any lip from trainees, ok?" Laura's eyes were suddenly hard and Yassen noticed the faint bulge at her hip. That, more than anything else, made him nod.
"See you in five minutes then," He said, pushing the door shut as she turned away.
Six minutes later, Yassen arrived in the breakfast room dressed in the same jeans he had worn the night before, but with a soft grey jersey instead of the t-shirt.
He looked around the room he had just entered, it obviously belonged here, a place where fishing came before anything else. Fishing nets and lobster pots decorated the ceiling and paintings were hung around the walls.
Laura was sitting at a table near the wall, under a huge oil painting of waves crashing against some cliffs. He went over to join her.
"Morning, help yourself to toast." She hadn't looked up from the paper that she was poring over. Yassen slid into the seat opposite her and took a piece of toast from the silver rack.
"Thanks," He said, remembering her remonstration about manners. He looked around the table, there were another two places set but no one was anywhere near them. "Why are there two extra places?"
"There are another two people, why else?" Laura had still not looked at him, not that he minded, but it would be nice if she acknowledged his existence.
Almost as she spoke, two people walked into the room. A man in his late twenties and the girl Yassen had seen the night before. He looked from one to the other, wondering if they were a couple. He watched the man more closely though, he had the same dangerous glint in his eyes as Spider did; he was an assassin. They sat down opposite each other and reached for toast. The girl was slightly older than Yassen, perhaps nineteen or twenty, and she didn't have the same hard quality in her features.
The man leant across and kissed Laura on the cheek, making her look up; she didn't seem to have noticed the two others until then. She glanced around,
"Yassen, this is Jack and Holly, you two, this is Yassen. He's Russian." He wondered briefly why she had added that, until Jack and Holly started speaking fluent Russian.
"How old are you? Whereabouts in Russia are you from? Why are you here?" the questions seemed never ending and he gave up answering them after a few minutes.
As he ate, Yassen listened to the others, he gathered that Holly was another trainee, Jack was her trainer. He also learned a little about what they would get him to do while he was here, lots of endurance and agility exercises, though he wasn't able to tell exactly what as they had lapsed back into English and he was tired of constantly translating.
After they had finished, Laura leant forward, "Ok, this is what happens here, our job is to get you into a fit state to move onwards to Malagosto. We'll take you out for training, martial arts and weapons, and endurance, so swimming, horse riding and rock climbing." She glanced sympathetically in Yassen's direction, "Yassen, you'll be up at five from now on, so no more lie ins. We'll meet you on the beach and you'll both go for a run before breakfast. Holly, you go with Jack, I'll show Yassen around."
They walked down to the beach, then up the hill, there was a gun placement from the war at the peak of the hill and Laura stood on the roof, pointing out all the local landmarks, the lighthouse on the horizon, the path away from Sennen to Land's End, the lifeboat station, the breakwater. Yassen sat on the edge, wondering what he had let himself in for.
Finally, Laura ran out of things to talk about, Yassen didn't talk back and she was fed up with talking to herself.
"And that's about it," She said, Yassen perked up instantly; "you can go anywhere in Sennen and Land's End, but nowhere else. Understood?" Yassen nodded and turned away, then turned back,
"Can I have some money? I spent all of the stuff Spider gave me." Laura's mouth tightened, "Please can I have some money?" He corrected, and Laura relaxed. She pulled her purse out and tugged a fifty pound note out.
"That's to last until Monday." She said as she walked away. Yassen stood still for a second, wondering what to do with the free time he now found himself facing. He swept the ocean and cliffs with his eyes before deciding to walk over to Land's End. He could do with the exercise.
Ten minutes later he stood at the foot of a massively steep hill, concrete steps led most of the way up, but they were steep and sloping. He walked up the first few and found that his total lack of exercise had taken a huge toll on his fitness and muscle tone. By the time he reached the brow of the hill he was drenched in sweat and totally out of breath.
He leant against the wall of a building that Laura had pointed out earlier and looked back at Sennen, the village looked distant already, he could see the hotel in the distance, the gun emplacement on the hill opposite. The sea was a fantastic shade of blue in the cold December sunlight and the cliffs looked almost gold.
Yassen took all this in and started to appreciate the beauty of the place. He walked the remaining distance in a little over half an hour; he dawdled along the path, stopping to climb rocks every now and then. When he reached Land's End, he sat on the wall and looked out to sea; the lighthouse had vanished in a thick ocean fog which was coming towards land. Yassen watched it for a while, his depressive mood from the night before sliding back into his mind.
He would never admit to anyone here, but he desperately missed his parents, parents whose faces he could barely recall anymore. Guilty tears filled his eyes at the thought but he brushed them angrily away and swallowed the sob which rose in his throat.
"Yassen?" The voice made him jump, "Are you ok?" he twisted around, dashing the tears from his face to look at Holly. She was stood a few feet away, clutching a riding helmet, her face looked concerned, but the emotion didn't reach her eyes.
"I'm fine," He replied shortly, "Aren't you supposed to be doing training or something?" he knew he sounded rude, but he didn't care, let them think what they liked. Holly's face dropped back into its usual blank expression, hiding her emotions as well as if she was standing behind a wall. Behind her, Yassen saw the fog roll over the edge of the cliff.
"I've just finished riding; I was going to run back to Sennen for lunch before climbing later on." There was a defensive edge to her voice and Yassen smiled, knowing that it was him who had put it there. "Do you want to come back with me?" Holly asked, before smiling at him, her look a mirror image of his.
"No thanks. I don't much like running." Yassen tried to make his voice as polite as possible, but he could hear the defiance and anger that layered his voice. Holly could clearly hear it too because she stepped back, her eyes full of anger and, unless Yassen was imagining it, hurt. When she spoke though, she sounded totally in control and polite,
"Ok then, but you'll have to run tomorrow morning so if I was you, I'd learn to like running as fast as possible." She turned on her heel and stormed off, the thick fog swallowing her in an instant. Yassen looked all around, he could barely see ten feet away, he swore quietly and then raised his voice,
"Holly? Holly, can you hear me?" he took a few steps following her but stopped, he didn't have a clue which way she could have gone. He cursed again and yelled Holly's name over and over. Eventually he gave up and went the other way, he had a vague idea of finding the road and following it back to Sennen, he was searching for almost half an hour before he finally found the tarmac sweeping between the hand-built stone walls.
He followed it along for what seemed like an age, never able to see more than ten feet in any direction, until finally he found a turning guarded by a massive sign with the words "Whitsand Bay" splashed across a blue background. He turned in and followed a path down the steep hill. It ran beside the road for a bit before turning away.
Yassen hesitated for a brief instant, unsure of which way to go. After a second's deliberation, he continued down the path which curved steeply down to a set of rocky and uneven steps.
When he reached the bottom, Yassen almost laughed; he was at the place where he had first met Holly. From there it was seconds before he was back in the lounge in the hotel, having sprinted across the car park and up the stairs.
Holly was sitting on the wide window sill, peering through the old-fashioned telescope at the fog, which was now, infuriatingly, clearing. Yassen went over and stood at the side of the window, watching the hypnotising swirls of grey against grey.
"You know, if you wanted help, you could have asked and I would have come back." Holly hadn't looked round at him; he looked down at the back of her head, her russet red hair and her hunched shoulders. He moved a little closer and sat down on the edge of the sill, turning his back on the grey light outside.
"Sor… Well, I didn't know that did I?" Holly glanced round at him then, her eyes reproachful, Yassen realised that he had said something wrong, but didn't care. Let her think what she liked about him, what did he care?
"That was nearly an apology. It's a start, I guess, but if you're going to be rude, then don't do it when Laura or Jack are around. Laura can floor you with a finger, and Jack can move faster then you can blink. And by move, I mean draw, aim and put 5 bullets in your leg. They're good." Holly's voice was full of admiration as she talked about her mentor. Yassen nodded, feeling lonely again in her face of her obviously close friendship with Jack, and… jealous? No, not jealous. Definitely not…still…Yassen snapped himself out of his emotional probing and turned to look at Holly. Time to bite the bullet,
"Look, maybe we got off on the wrong foot. I don't want friends here, but acquaintances might be ok. Truce?" Yassen swayed slightly, what had he just said? He took a deep breath and looked up at Holly as she answered.
"Ok, truce," She said. "But even acquaintances need to know something other than the others' first name. My full name is Holly Amber Jones; I'm nineteen years old and was born in Keswick, in The Lake District on 28th July. Your turn…" she was suddenly much friendlier, Yassen felt a little wrong-footed but recovered quickly.
"I don't know my middle name; I don't think I have one, but my full name as I know it is Yassen Gregorovich. I was born and raised in Estrov, in Russia. My birthday is 20th of October. Happy now?" Holly nodded, gazing out of the window again. Somehow, Yassen felt a little less lonely now, he was glad he had tried to clear the air between them, Holly wasn't too bad really.
"Why are you here?" she asked suddenly. "What made you want to be part of SCORPIA?" Yassen opened his mouth to answer, then shut it again and thought for a minute.
"My parents, they were killed in an accident. I just didn't care what I did after that and I somehow ended up here. I guess the idea just grew on me, I worked with the Mafia in Moscow for about three years and I saw lots of death, and eventually, it didn't affect me and I didn't care who died." He paused, surprised at the words, and more surprised by the truth in them, "What about you? Why are you here?"
Holly turned around and looked at him, her eyes suddenly spilling tears down her cheeks.
"I don't know. I thought I did but, it's just hard, I don't think I could kill." She let out a shaky laugh. "Imagine that, an assassin afraid of killing. Sorry about this, I'm going up to my room." She was on her feet and through the door before Yassen could react, and even if he could have reacted, what would he have said? He sat on the sill, watching the sky clearing and the water become blue again.
Holly had somehow managed to open parts of his soul that he had blocked out. He was running through their conversation in his head, stunned at how much he had told her. He hadn't spoken to anyone like that since his mother died.
He saw movement on the pavement below and, looking down, realised that it was Jack, he was walking around outside, looking alternately at his watch and in the direction of the lifeboat station. Yassen watched him for a while, wondering what he was doing. Suddenly he remembered what Holly had said while they were at Land's End. She had rock climbing that afternoon.
Yassen pushed the stiff wooden window open and leant out. "Jack, she's in her room. She was upset about something." Jack had looked up at the sound of his name, his right hand moving instantly to his hip, to the pistol tucked into his waistband. By the time Yassen had finished talking, he was already at the corner of the building.
Yassen tugged the window back into place and stood up as Jack entered the lounge; he didn't look at Yassen but went straight to the door and swept up the stairs. Yassen followed quickly, wondering what the huge worry was about.
He found out soon enough; Holly was lying on the floor of her tiny bathroom, blood pulsing strongly from a vertical slash on her wrist, several other scars intertwined on her skin. Jack was kneeling at her side, his hand clamped tightly around her arm, just above the gash on her wrist.
Hope you enjoyed that chapter... Please review, they make me feel so much better!