Work Text:
“I take it the Director didn’t tell you about this?”
Winston's eyes are sharp above the rim of his martini glass as John debates how to answer. It’s been years since he left the Tarkovsky Theatre, taking his ticket and the skills he'd been taught but leaving everything else behind — his past, his accent, even his own name. His loyalties are no longer bound to its gilded halls and polished floorboards, to its grand staircases and shadowed, secret rooms. He’s free to give his fealty to anyone he deems worthy of it — or anyone who’s willing to pay the right price.
Still, John feels an old sense of obligation well up inside him, a faint but insistent tug reminding him of where he came from and what he once owed. His debts have long since been paid but the last vestiges of a child’s gratitude are hard to shake, even though he’s always known that nothing he was given had been offered for free.
The silence has stretched past the point of politeness now but Winston just continues to sip at his drink, and for all his apparent affability John can tell that this isn’t patience — it’s a trap. Winston isn’t so much content to wait for an answer as he is refusing to provide John with the means to escape from giving one.
“No,” John says. “She never mentioned anything about it.”
“Strange,” Winston murmurs, raising his eyebrows in surprise. “She's known of Viggo Tarasov’s interest in you, even before you left.”
John frowns a little. “What does that have to do with this?”
“Serving the Table isn’t the only thing they have in common, Jonathan.” Winston leans forward and his voice drops, as though sharing a secret — or, perhaps, conveying a threat. “There are rules that are older than those of the Table, and traditions even older than that. I’d expect that the Director of all people would know that the Tarasovs still follow some of them.” He pauses for a moment. “Though I suppose it doesn’t make a difference, does it? You have no choice but to see the Sibyl.”
John smiles thinly. “Rules and consequences?”
“Rules and consequences,” Winston agrees. “Now, I don’t mean to be vulgar, but I need to ask — do you have the funds to pay her? And I don’t mean dollars,” Winston interrupts, when John starts to answer. “I mean coins. A lot of them.”
"I’m not sure,” John says slowly, and frowns again.
From everything he’s seen so far, it’s always been a one-for-one exchange. One service for one coin, no matter what the service is. A drink in a bar, a room in a hotel, a corpse in need of disposal — it doesn’t really matter. The important thing isn’t the coins themselves, but what they represent: trust, and a guarantee. The more coins a person has, the more services they’ve provided, and the more likely they are to complete a job successfully. Holding a coin is proof that you know what you’re doing.
“How many does she need?” John asks.
He’s made enough of a name for himself already that he drew Viggo Tarasov’s attention, but he’s still only been in service for a few months. His stash of coins is small and hard-won and to give away more than one or two for something as trivial is this —
“Here.”
Winston deposits a handful of gold coins on the table between them. There must be at least a dozen or so there, gleaming dully in the low light, and John just stares at them, uncomprehending. This many coins in exchange for a single service would be like spending a thousand dollars on a pack of gum.
“I can’t accept this,” he starts, but Winston cuts him off with a quiet laugh.
“It’s not a gift, Jonathan. Viggo expects you to pay it back in due course.” Winston looks at him steadily and despite the amusement in his voice, there’s a vague hint of warning in it, too. “Even a favour from the devil himself isn’t worth this many coins.”
“But she is?”
Something hardens in Winston’s eyes, a flash of coldness that's all the more unexpected for the smile still on his lips.
“I know you haven’t been here long, Jonathan,” he says. “And I know you don’t speak out of conceit or a desire to be rude. But you do know that the only reason you’re here at all is because the Director and I saw fit to give you a chance, and that without it, you would’ve either starved to death in a back alley somewhere or been shot in the head for failing your tests.” Winston looks him in the eye again and this time, the warning is crystal clear. “You’d do well, Jonathan, to remember that.”
John takes a breath, deep and slow and careful. He understands why Winston is angry — it’s not his place to question a Manager — but he’s not about to apologise for a minor transgression, either. Not because he’s too proud to admit when he’s made a mistake; far from it. But everything, even a conversation between friends, is a transaction when you live in the shadow of the Table, and saying he’s sorry when there’s no cause for apology will put John at a deficit he just can’t afford. Not when he’s still so new.
“I do remember,” he says. “I’ll always remember.” Winston seems placated by that, and the hardness in his eyes is replaced by his usual good humour instead. “I just don’t understand why something like this still exists. Or why it’s so important.”
“Ah.” Winston tosses the rest of his drink back, draining what’s left in his glass. “I could give you an answer, but it wouldn’t be a satisfying one.” He fishes the olive out of his empty glass and shrugs. “Just chalk it up to another rule if you have to. But take the coins and go to the appointment. Otherwise you can kiss your association with the Bratva goodbye.”
John starts putting the coins away, thumb rubbing over the surface of each one before dropping them into a small black pouch. Ex unitae viraes, he thinks, ens causa sui. Every coin bears those words and John is only just starting to understand how deeply they run.
“That’s all I need to do?” he asks. “Just turn up and give her these?”
Winston nods. “That’s it. She’ll take it from there.”
“And what should I call her?”
Winston abruptly sits up and grabs John’s wrist. “Don’t,” he says, more urgently than John has ever heard him speak before. “Don’t call her anything, don’t give her any names.” His fingers tighten, squeezing to the point of pain and beyond. “This is important, Jonathan. Don’t offer her anything other than the coins in that bag.”
John slowly pulls his arm free.
“What happens if I do?’
Winston’s face is grave. “You’ll get more than you asked for,” he replies. “But nothing that you want.”
**
The coins are heavy in John’s pocket as he climbs up the stairs. They seem to weigh him down, every step taking a little more effort than it really should. Or maybe it’s the sense of foreboding that presses in on him, a palpable force that seems oddly appropriate in the darkness of the narrow stairway.
There had been no signs outside, nor any distinguishing features whatsoever — just a plain grey door, unmarked aside from the everyday grease and grime of a New York City street. But John has no doubt that he’s in the right place, and going by the way a naked lightbulb suddenly flickers to life at the top of the stairs, revealing another blank door, he’s right on time, too.
The door swings open as he ascends the top step, before he even has a chance to raise a hand to knock. John cautiously steps inside, senses on high alert despite Winston’s assurance that he’d be as safe here as he is in The Continental.
“Physically safe, at least,” Winston had added, and gave him a look so heavy with meaning that John didn’t bother asking him to elaborate.
The apartment he finds within looks perfectly normal — disconcertingly so. Just a couch, a TV, and a hallway branching off from a neat little kitchen, its counter bare save for a large mortar and pestle and an old-fashioned broom leaning against it.
And equally normal, apparently, is the woman sitting at a small, round table near the windows. She’s simply dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, longish hair pulled back in a ponytail and frameless glasses perched on her nose. But as soon as she glances up and smiles at him, John realises that his initial impression might have been a little premature.
She’s somehow both young and old at the same time, a depth of knowledge and weariness in her eyes that's at odds with the smooth, unlined skin of her face. And when she speaks, her voice contains the same indefinable resonance that reminds John of the Director, or Winston, or Julius — people who've served the Table for decades, who have intimate knowledge of things John suspects he’ll never truly understand.
“John,” she says. Her head tilts back, taking the whole of him in, and she sniffs the air a little. “Hmm," she says thoughtfully, before gesturing to the chair on the other side of the table. “Please, sit. I was waiting for you.”
“Am I late?” he asks warily, but takes the offered seat anyway.
“Not at all.” She pauses and cocks her head to the side, as though listening for something John can't hear. “I was waiting for you,” she repeats, “but I knew I wouldn’t wait in vain.”
“Is that what they told you?” John asks, nodding to the cards in her hands. They’re marked only with a small bird’s leg on the side that he can see, but he can guess what they are easily enough.
She laughs a little in response, the sound unexpectedly light and musical given the strange, deep echo of her voice. Her hands shuffle the deck with a skill that speaks of long, long experience.
“That’s what Winston told me,” she corrects. “On the phone, about five minutes ago.”
John offers her a rueful smile. “I don’t mean to be skeptical —”
“Oh, but you do,” she interrupts. “You always mean everything you do, John Wick, and everything you say. That’s why they’re all afraid of you.”
Her eyes bore into his, unblinking and deep, deep brown, so dark they seem almost black in the dim light.
Who’s afraid of me? John almost asks. The question is on the tip of his tongue but he pulls it back just in time; he doesn’t need a fortune teller to answer that particular question. His record speaks for itself.
“I have your payment,” he says instead, and drops the pouch onto the table.
She nods in acknowledgement but doesn’t, John notes, check to see what the pouch contains. Indeed, she barely even glances at it, her gaze still fixed on John’s face.
“Coins,” he adds, when her silence seems to suggest that she’s waiting for something.
“Coins,” she repeats, and nods again. “Real gold for real answers, yes?”
“I get a choice?”
He’s given another smile at that, smaller and sweeter. “A choice between answers, you mean? Or a choice between what’s real and what isn't?”
John shakes his head. “Do you always speak in riddles?”
“It kind of comes with the territory.”
Her hands are still moving, fingers deftly shuffling the cards as smoothly as a Vegas croupier, the cards themselves so soft with wear that they barely make any sound. John is suddenly aware of just how quiet it is in here — he can’t hear anything of the city outside, no people yelling or car horns blaring or the rumble of the subway that he knows is nearby. There is only the whisper of the cards in her hands, the incongruous smoothness of her voice, and the steady thumping of his own beating heart.
John nods. “That seems fair,” he says. “You can tell me whatever you think I need to hear.”
There’s no pause in her shuffling but the look in her eyes suddenly sharpens, so much so that John feels a sliver of dread curl in his belly. He manages to keep his face impassive but there’s something relentless about the way she’s staring at him now, her eyes pinning him to the chair as effectively as a knife through the chest.
“I see,” she says. She finally puts the cards down and lays one hand over the bag of coins on the table, long fingers curling around it like a spider settling down on its prey. “Thank you for your payment, John Wick.”
She pulls the coins into her lap and pushes the cards towards him.
“Pick two,” she instructs. “Take them from anywhere in the deck and leave them on the table, face down, side by side.”
John forces himself not to hesitate. He takes a card from somewhere near the top and a card from somewhere near the bottom, then sets them down as instructed.
“Decisive,” she observes. “Another reason why they’re right to fear you.”
“I don’t do it for fun,” John says. He isn’t sure why he feels compelled to explain himself but the thought of her thinking that he hunts for sport is somehow unbearable. “It’s a job.”
“Ens causa sui.” She sweeps one palm over the deck, spreading the remaining cards across the table in a long, wide arc. Her face is contemplative as her fingers dance over the cards. She pauses several times, seemingly about to choose one before abandoning it and moving to another. “You are your own cause, John Wick.”
“We all use those coins,” John insists. “We all follow the same rules.” She says nothing to that, and John adds, uncharacteristically impulsive, “You’ll choose a card for me too?”
“Mmm." She gestures to the first card John chose. “The past is your own, it cannot be changed.” Then she points to the second one. “And the wheels are in motion for your present already. The future, though...”
She smiles suddenly, at the exact same moment that she pulls a card of her own from the spread.
“That’s where a certain skill is involved.” She places the card down next to the other two. “But what you said before, about the rules?” she continues. “That’s what I like about you, John. All the blood your hands are soaked in, all the blood they’ve yet to spill, and there’s still a sense of purity about you. Pure of purpose, pure of will, pure of loyalty...” She trails off. “Pure of faith.”
“Faith?”
“Faith.” She arranges the rest of the deck into a pile again and sighs a little. “There’s a big difference, you know.” Then she glances at him and smiles again. “Or perhaps you don’t. Not yet, anyway.”
She turns the three chosen cards over before John has a chance to reply. They’re laid out in a single, neat row: the first has a number of star-like shapes encased in circles, the second an image of a man and two sphinxes, and the third is filled with golden cups. The middle card, the one with the man, is upside down.
She stares at them for a long, long time. And when she looks up again, there is such a look of deep, deep compassion in her eyes that John finds himself unable to speak.
“Five of pentacles,” she says, tapping the first card. “The past. You came from nothing, John, absolutely nothing. No money, no home, no family. Not even a name.”
John remembers freezing winters and makeshift beds, remembers starvation and sickness and struggle. Against his will, he shivers a little.
“But you did have one thing,” she adds. “Something that was yours and yours alone, that came from within and couldn’t be stolen or traded away like everything else you had.” Her fingers trace over the symbols on the card. “Something innate. Something rare.” She meets John’s eyes again. “Something that could, with the right training, turn your nothing into piles of gold.” She taps the second card. “The Chariot, reversed.”
“The present?” John guesses.
“In a manner of speaking.” Her mouth twists a little. “More present than the past, at least. And not quite the future. Not yet.”
She stares at the card and lapses into silence, her eyes going unfocused in a way that John will freely admit is distinctly unnerving. And this despite the countless bullets that have whizzed just past his head or lodged right into bones, despite the blades held against his throat or shoved deep into tissue and muscle and flesh. At least those things had concrete explanations, actions and consequences that could be seen and felt and measured. This — the unseeing, all-seeing glaze over the Sybil's eyes, eyes that are too dark and too knowing to belong to someone with a face so young — this is something that John cannot explain away.
“Viggo Tarasov isn’t the first to make an offer,” she says eventually. Her eyes refocus but it does nothing to ease John’s discomfort. “Nor will he be the last.”
“Are you saying I should wait for a better offer?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she replies. “You’ll take his. You want to take his.” She glances at the first card again. “You had nothing,” she adds, “and they gave you something — the Director, then Winston, then Marcus. And Viggo Tarasov will give you even more. And you’ll think you left all that nothing behind you but you didn’t, John. Not really.” She leans forward a little. “Tell me, John… before the Director found you, when you had nothing and knew you had nothing, what did you wish for? What did you want, more than anything in the world?”
There are any number of answers John could give her, and all of them would be true enough; none would give her cause to think that he was lying. But the real truth spills from John’s lips anyway — and not because he feels like he doesn’t have a choice, but because he needs to know what that truth actually means. Or more to the point, what it means in the context of what she’d earlier claimed: that John is not just pure of loyalty, but pure of faith, too.
“Purpose,” John says.
“And?”
John licks his lips, no longer surprised that she knows there’s more.
“And the means to fulfil it.”
She nods, but it’s an unsettling gesture, somehow — less like she’s agreeing with what John said and more like she’s confirming the thoughts of some unseen third party. “You see, John? You’ve always had faith in something. Even when you thought you had nothing.”
Her head tilts to the side in a strange, almost avian way.
“And now,” she adds, tapping the third card, “we come to the end.”
John looks down at it, at the card and at her hands, at one of her fingers pressed lightly against its edge. They’re the hands of old folktales and whispered bedtime stories, of legends still told in lands an ocean and a continent away. But still they ignite a faint spark of memory, and John remembers… John remembers. These are the hands of an old woman, a grandmother, a crone. The crone. The —
“Баба Яга,” he murmurs, still half-lost in a memory that’s already starting to fade. “Костлявая нога.”
“Ah.”
John looks up and sees that she’s smiling again, wider and brighter than any of the smiles she’d worn for him before. “Баба Яга. You have named me, John Wick,” she says, her voice very, very quiet. “As I have named you.”
John goes very still, Winston’s warning echoing in his head.
“Winston,” he starts, forcing the word out through his suddenly dry throat. “He said that if I gave you a name, you’d give me something in return.”
She laughs, then, and it sounds nothing like her laughter when John first arrived. No longer delicate, no longer gentle; now it’s harsh and loud and laced with some secret delight.
“John,” she says, not unkindly. “I just did.”
John’s fingers twitch. He feels the bone-deep need to have a certain weight in his hands, to feel hard plastic and textured grips against his skin.
“I don’t," he says, "I don’t understand.”
She shrugs.
“I gave you something already. Understanding what it is costs extra.” She raises a eyebrow, expectant and offering.
“I think maybe I should just ask you to tell me about the last card.”
“Your loss,” she replies, shrugging again. “A wise one, of course, but a loss all the same.” She taps the card with the tip of a finger. “Seven of cups. Reversed. What do you think it means?”
“I have no idea,” John starts, but she picks up the card and holds it out to him.
“Look at it,” she insists. “Tell me what you think it means.”
John takes the card. He sees now that the cups are suspended in a cloud, and that each cup has something inside it; among other things, he sees a man's head, a snake, and a pile of jewels.
“You said it was reversed,” he says. She nods. “So…” John flips the card upside down. “Everything in the cups will fall out. They’ll be left empty.”
She stares at him, unblinking.
“Go on.”
“Someone’s looking up at them,” John adds, slowly. “So maybe the cups aren’t real, maybe they’re an illusion. Or a dream. Or… or a delusion.” He looks up and tries to search her eyes but they’re so dark that he finds only his own reflection. “So when they’re emptied…”
“Yes?”
John puts the card down.
“Maybe then he'll see the truth.”
She doesn't smile, but there's a noticeable shift in her eyes, a certain satisfation in them that tells John the appointment is over now.
“The coins you paid and the service I provided,” she murmurs, pulling all the cards back into a single pile again. “The name you gifted to me and the gift I gave to you.” She shuffles them, once, twice, thrice. “The card I pulled and the future you saw.” She puts the cards down and offers her hand. “We’re squared away, John Wick.”
John looks down at her outstretched hand. It’s smooth and pale and soft-looking, and when he takes it, her grip is warm and strong.
“No debts?” he asks, just to make sure.
“No debts.” She smiles and lets go of his hand. “You can consider us even.”
Two minutes later, John is blinking into the cold sunlight of a New York City afternoon. The sounds and sights and smells of the city are such a stark contrast to the dimly-lit silence that he’s left half-wondering if he’d just been dreaming. But when he puts his hands in his pockets to ward off the chill, his fingers come into contact with the soft edge of a well-worn card.
John pulls it out. The seven of cups, reversed. And on the back is a handwritten message:
IT’S THE RIGHT CHOICE. WHATEVER HAPPENS AFTERWARDS, DON’T EVER DOUBT THAT.
**
“And?” Winston gives him an expectant look as he pours him a shot of bourbon, then a shot of whiskey for himself. “I don’t expect you to tell me what she said,” he adds quickly, “but you must have more to say than that.”
“I don’t,” John says, deliberately bland. “It was interesting. That’s all.”
Winston eyeballs him as he hands the glass of bourbon over.
“You gave her a name, didn’t you.”
It’s clearly not a question and John knows there’s no point in pretending it is.
“It was an accident.”
“Accident,” Winston scoffs. “She’s the Sibyl, Jonathan. Nothing’s an accident where she’s concerned.” He waits for a reaction and when John gives him nothing, he sighs heavily. “I did warn you,” he says. “At least tell me she didn’t give you the exact date you’ll die, or something equally morbid.”
“No,” John says. “She just — I think she gave me a name. Like I gave her one.”
Winston frowns. “A name?”
“Yes. But I —” John stops suddenly. He feels, for no discernable reason, almost afraid.
“Jonathan?” Winston’s frown deepens. “Jonathan, what is it?”
“Nothing.” John swallows. “I mean, the name — I don’t remember what the name is.” He surreptitiously reaches into his pocket and — yes, the card is still there. “How can I not remember?”
Winston gives him a long, hard stare.
“Perhaps it’s just as well,” he says eventually. “Names have power, you know. And I imagine living with one the Sibyl gave you is like having the Sword of Damocles hanging over your head.”
“But you don’t believe it’s real, do you? Fortune telling, seeing things before they even happen — no one can see the future.”
“Some would say that no one can kill three men with a pencil,” Winston says. “And yet…”
“That’s different,” John insists. “That’s... that’s training and instinct. You’re talking about —”
“Faith?” John falls silent and Winston pulls a coin from his pocket. “Ex unitae viraes,” he adds. “What do you think keeps us united?”
“Rules,” John replies, automatically catching the coin when Winston flicks it towards his head.
“Rules,” Winston confirms. “And trusting that everyone will follow them. And since our rules deal with life and death, Jonathan, with absolutes that are utterly inarguable — faith really isn’t that far a leap.”
“Did you have to see her, too?” John asks, staring down at the lion and the wreath embossed into the gold, at the words that curve above them. “When you first started?”
“Oh, I’m strictly new school, Jonathan,” Winston replies. His tone is dismissive. “I’ve never tied myself to any of the powers who sit at the Table. I’m bound only to the Table itself.”
He tosses the rest of his drink back, barely flinching despite the fact that he'd taken the whiskey neat.
“Now go home and get rid of whatever it is she gave you that’s burning a hole in your pocket," he adds. John looks up, surprised, but Winston just raises an eyebrow. “If she gifted you with more than a name you can’t remember, then it’s a riddle you can’t hope to solve right now. And trust me, you don’t need the distraction when you meet with Viggo Tarasov.”
**
It’s Viggo who bestows the name John had already been given — or, perhaps, the name he’d inadvertently given to himself. And when the time comes, and all the cups spill over and reveal that all they ever held was blood and bullets and lifeless bodies piled high, it’s Viggo who gives him the means to get out.
“This is what you want?” John asked, when Viggo told him what leaving would cost. “You want me to do the impossible?”
It didn't escape Viggo's notice that he hadn't refused outright.
“This is what I want,” Viggo said. “You’ve served well, and I wish you every happiness — truly, I do. But you’ll be leaving me with a very large gap in my ranks, and I think you’d agree it’s only fair that you help bridge it before you leave.”
“And completing an impossible task will do that?”
“Don’t you see, John?” Viggo’s voice was almost kind. “If you succeed, your name will become synonymous with the success of the Bratva.” He shrugged. “Who needs the man if I have the legend?”
And so John finds himself ripping up the floorboards in a corner of his kitchen, going through strongbox after strongbox and looking for the one thing that might make the impossible a little less so. He finds stashes of coins and weapons, and passports and IDs, and wads of cash in more than a dozen currencies, but it’s hours before he finds what he actually needs.
This box is smaller than the others, and filled with what look like random curios. To John, however, they’re anything but. He starts laying them out one by one, taking far greater care with these items than any of the others. A wooden rosary with a large metal crucifix; the very first coin he ever earned; a dimestore paperback with daisies pressed between the pages. And there’s something else there, too, something John hadn’t expected — something stashed away and forgotten, until now.
An old, worn tarot card.
He goes to pick it up but something underneath it catches his eye, and he pushes it aside instead. And there, lying half-hidden beneath the card, is the very thing John had been looking for.
He weighs the Marker in his hands and stares at it for a long, long time. It lies heavy in his palm, and he knows it will be heavier still when Santino accepts the offer and John marks it with his own blood. He’ll end up owing a debt bigger than any other he’s ever had; bigger, even, than the debt he owed to the Director for taking him in. Paying that debt had seemed impossible once, too — but halfway through his training he caught Winston’s eye and John knew that one day, eventually, he’d be in the clear. And so he was — and still is. Still could be, if he just puts the Marker away and forgets about leaving. Just like he forgot about the card in the box.
John looks over at the other items again, at the rosary and the book and the coin. When the Sibyl told him, years ago, that he was pure of faith, he hadn’t understood what she’d meant. But now, decades later — now that he’s found something that’s worth the price of an impossible task — John thinks he might be starting to understand.
Over the course of his life, John has had many names and held many, many titles. Some he was given, some he chose, and some no one else even remembers: Jardani, Jonathan, Baba Yaga; orphan, apprentice, assassin. And if this works and the task is done and Viggo gets his legend, John will be free to add another one, too. One that he never, ever expected to have.
Husband.
John picks up the tarot card. Seven emptied cups on one side, a handwritten message on the back. He runs his fingers over the words, whispers them into the empty room like the Sibyl might whisper an enchantment.
“It’s the right choice. Whatever happens afterwards, don’t ever doubt that.”
He has the task, he has the Marker, and he has someone to mark it. The only other thing John needs is a little faith.