AN: At the cold winter morning was meant to be an "oneshot"-story, but because of my reader's constant requests (just joking D) – and my fantastic idea for the part three and laziness to come up with a new title – I had to make a sequel. It takes place immediately after part one's end.

So now you know why it might be horrible. But please, read and review, make your own estimations about it and tell them to me, I need to know if this is worth for part three

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-Is there yet something you would like to ask?

Woman's voice was gentle and understanding, so practiced that it was almost like a warning sign. Yassen tried to focus on the situation and push all the memories back to the bottom of his mind with an uncomfortable feeling that three people were observing him closely. Even though he was nothing more than just a young assassin-to-be, he had that important sense in nature that was now yelling him to get out of this white-painted room with only three chairs and big mirrored wall in it, hide and keep low profile somewhere in shadows as he had tried to do for all his life.

The woman was sitting in front of him: she was his finder and trusted, if that was the right word to describe the relationship they had – he was one of about fifty assassins-to-be whose training arrangements and mental consultation were her responsibilities. She wasn't the problem. They had talked couple of times before, and from the sound of her voice when she had just told him about that day he had been rescuited Yassen knew, that she would do everything to let him pass. After all, he was the very first of the boys she personally had found and wanted to be chosen for the training, and by far he was also the most talented one.

Then there was a man sitting little apart from them. He wasn't the problem either. Yassen knew him well, or as well as it was ever possible for an assassin to know another. He was one of the trainers of Malagosto Island's academy, the most demanding and the best; the one Yassen respected the most. He had nothing to say if he passed this test or not – he was there just to learn something about him as a person, to get to know him for the year they would be spending together if all went as it should.

The real problem was the psychiatrist, who Yassen knew was beyond the mirrored wall. He could almost picture him, that disguisting man who was acting cleverer than it was healthy for him, sitting there and making notes with that little, neat handwriting Yassen had seen in so many papers about him. He was there watching his every movement, every glance and every word, maybe even telling the woman what she had to ask by that little headphone Yassen knew she had under her long, brown hair – normally the woman never wore her hair open. He hated him, and he knew that the psychiatrist didn't like him too much either.

He hadn't been an easy patient for him, and he was kind a proud of it. Yassen had his own way to look the world and judge everything that happened to him, and he really didn't need anyone to tell him how he should feel about things, how he should have some special kind of nightmares and how he should have been so torn apart and abused when he had arrived to the island six years ago. Yassen hadn't wanted to understand or handle his memories, but he hadn't been trying to forget everything that had happened to him as a child either. He hadn't been exactly thinking about it, no, but he just had somehow known, that he mustn't ever forget. Never forget a single hit or kick, shout or punishment. Never…

Suddenly Yassen realized he was shivering. And for the first time he didn't understand his body's reaction. He tried to open his fists but didn't succeed. He saw the woman looking at him almost concerned, – or was it just his mind playing tricks with him? – and felt sick. Was it happening now? Was he going to lose it all, break down there in front of by far the most important persons in his life? No. He was almost sure, that in his outlook there was almost no signs of the struggle that was going on inside his head, nothing but the silence that had fallen to the room.

-Yes, Yassen answered. His strong but completely emotionless voice was result of the great inner struggle not to spit the words out of his mouth. The woman hadn't noticed anything strange in the gap between her question and his answer - during the training his naturally sharp mind had reached the highest possible level, and all his thoughts had actually taken only two or three seconds, which could have been only a normal time to think for proper answer.

-I… I have never heard where I was found.

The woman looked him with a little, soft smile. Yassen himself tried not to smile – he knew that his smile would have told her too much about what was going on in his mind. Let her believe he was only curious about his cruel past, anxious to find answers to the vital questions about his family and why he had been abandoned to that horrible orphanace. When she had found the name from her papers, Yassen listened it and nodded to thank her as he was writing in his memory that little word that ment him more than no one could ever understand.

The woman seemed to listen something from her hidden headphone, and then she turned to the man's side saying something to him. The man nodded, and they both looked to Yassen who pretended not to notice it. After all, he was supposed to be a cold-nerved, stonefaced assassin.

-I think that was all, the woman finally said.

-We meet again after your first mission, Cossack. Try not to get killed before that.

The man rose, and Yassen followed. He didn't thank the woman – he was still too young to understand, that it wasn't the pretended coldness that made an assassin, but the coldness deep inside one's heart and soul – and left the room after the man, looking as calm and passive as during the whole interview.

In ten minutes he was on his way to the coast. Malagosto Island was soon only a spot on the horizon. The older assassin sat in the boat, relaxed and prepared. Only now, with a wind in his blonde hair and turqoise water all around him, a knife in his boot and a little handgun on the right side of his waist, Yassen dared to laugh. With that maniac laugh that wind stealed before it reached anybody's ears, he challenged the whole world to try what so many had already failed to do – and to be killed while trying.

………………………………..

-You believe you did the right think, don't you?

It was the psychiatrist in woman's headphone. She laid the papers from her hands on the seat, which was still warm after Yassen, and turned his gaze to the mirror behind which she knew the man was sitting with his notes. As so many others, she disliked him too.

-I think he seemed like completely normal boy in his position, she said calmly, smiling to him in an irritating way.

-He handled himself well. Didn't cry, allthough you said he would. In fact, didn't express any kind of signs of his "mental unstableness", what you were looking for.

-His charm does it, was the answer the woman heard.

-He can be so charismatic, so quiet and sweet, even lovely when needed. He –

-He's the absolute elite of our young trainees, the woman interrupted with an icy voice.

-He is everything we are looking for. He has the gift, the sense of a natural-born killer.

The psychiatrist was silent. Then he said, with a tip of pity in his quiet voice, though it was impossible to know was it for Yassen or for the whole world that would suffer because of him:

-I didn't say he isn't talented, or that he isn't just what SCORPIA wants. But believe me, he isn't a natural-born anything. He could almost be just a human-shaped, Terminator-like killing machine, that's how much emotion I have succeeded to find in him. I mean, he wasn't born like that – there wasn't a drop of murderer in the boy I believe was raped and slowly tortured to death somewhere in his childhood's gloomy playgrounds painted with desperation and the darkest shades of grey and black.

The psychiatrist sighed, and continued like a man knowing that nothing he said wouldn't matter anything to his listener:

-I know you saw the sparkling in his eyes, too, when you gave him the only thing he needed to know. The walking corpse you thought you saved is now roaming free, murdering people with your permission. You can't do anything if he decides not to obey your commandments, because as you said, he is becoming – if he already isn't – superior to all the other assassins you could ever assign after him. God I wish you are happy now. You didn't leave him, the boy who was already dead, to die, but brought him here and killed all what was still left of him. And if –

-What? Woman said annoyed, when the silence in the headphone continued. The psychiatrist took a deep breath, and said with a pretended calmness in his quiet voice:

-Nothing. I have absolutely nothing left to say about Yassen Gregorovich – or Cossack, as you like to call him nowadays. Now I shall only sit and wait the day, if that day is never to come, when you are able to bring me his dead body so I can see what really was so wrong in his head.

The woman ripped off the headphone and left the room, remembering herself that they must find a new, more suitable psychiatrist – somebody who would understand SCORPIA's needs and purposes, not trying to fight against them. But at the same time she couldn't escape the little feeling of guilty that made her swear that the psychiatrist's assassination will be carried out by no one else but Yassen – for some reason, this didn't ease the guilty. And although the psychiatrist met his death only two weeks after this fatal day of his – though it wasn't Yassen's job because he didn't have enough experience for silent assassinations yet – that feeling stuck in the woman's mind and raised its head every time she heard about Yassen's horrifying success along her years. She probably wouldn't live long enough to admit it to herself, but in her black dreams she kept seeing the face of the young, beaten boy, and every time she woke up to the horrible realization, that there was nothing beneath the boy's icy-blue, tired eyes.