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"So," Alex ventured, winding a length of bandage around Yassen's arm. The bullet had only grazed him, but that was still plenty concerning. "You weren't at Bath."
Yassen's face did something complicated. Guilt, but also a lot of caution. Nevertheless, he did confirm. "I wasn't at Bath."
"Which seems to me in retrospect to be kinda weird," Alex continued, keeping an eye on Yassen's expression as he capped the petroleum jelly and started tidying away the first aid kit. "Since that was where everything was going down."
Yassen stayed quiet, looking at the bandage on his arm.
"It didn't strike me as weird at the time that Nile was the one to pick me up and take me to Julia. I was mostly trying not to panic about probably dying, actually—" Alex saw Yassen twitch. Actually it probably counted as a flinch. "—and I guess if I'd really thought about it, Nile seemed a lot more like Julia's... pet, I guess, from before she started being weird about me. But you were babysitting me, in London."
Yassen looked up sharply at that. "I wanted you as a partner—"
"But you were babysitting me for my so-called assignment," Alex said firmly. "It's fine. Anyway the point is that you probably should have picked me up. Or you and Nile together, or you should have been helping out with something related to Invisible Sword. And instead you just... Weren't there. You weren't anywhere, until you showed up and shot Nile before he could kill me." He looked into Yassen's face, lifting his eyebrows. "Nile, I figured that was a couple of things, pointlessness of revenge, stuff like that. But today—"
He could see Yassen tense, but he continued, "Today, when the guy yells 'John Rider was working for British Intelligence the whole time!' at you like he expects it to be a revelation, and you just say 'I know' and start shooting... What happened? If you knew the whole time and agreed with Julia about it, why weren't you there?" Despite himself, he heard his voice getting quieter, more unsure. "Did you know the whole time, when you told me to find the widow?"
The "No!" seemed almost to burst out of Yassen. "No," he repeated, quieter but just as vehement. "Alex, I never would have— I didn't want—" Yassen took a breath, and started over, looking Alex in the face. "I only found out about John... after you were marched out of Mrs. Jones' flat. I had thought, when I told you to find Julia, that John had been working for Scorpia. I thought the Department had killed him. And I... you... seemed so much like him."
I don't want you to fail. I don't want you to die, Alex remembered. An odd answer to his question, one that Alex had realized, horribly late, was a dodge. And, We're a team. It's your mission. You're in command. They'd seemed like lies, but...
"I'm not him, Yassen." John Rider had died too long ago for him to be anything but a ghost to Alex.
"I know that," Yassen said, sitting up straighter. "I know. But you are important to me too. It is not just John's legacy that has led me to..." he gestured in frustration, and Alex's mind went to—
"You said killing Ian wasn't personal, that it was your job."
Yassen swallowed. "Yes."
"But was it ever your job to kill me? Or was I just... a loose end you could leave hanging?"
Yassen licked his lips, folded his hands. "I tried... everything I could to not have to choose."
Alex, thinking back to Yassen's vociferous alternative to Cray's order to kill him and Sabina, nodded.
Yassen took a deep breath and continued. "It wasn't an order for me to kill you," he said. "But after... you were captured, I called Julia. I wanted to break you out. We'd done it before, intercepting prisoners. But Julia told me to meet her in person. And she told me... just how much of Invisible Sword was a revenge on John Rider. She told me how she'd wanted to watch you die. She expected me to be pleased. To feel the same rage and humiliation that she did."
Alex barely dared breathe, trying to not interrupt the flow of words.
"But John never betrayed me— or at least, I could know what we had was real. I was disposable when he met me. I didn't have information he would want. I could trust that what he did for me... was because he wanted to. And that he did take the time— that he cared, even when his whole mission was supposed to be dismantling Scorpia..." Yassen gestured. "Spies play the game. But he wasn't playing with me. And for Julia to pull you into this... personal vendetta? When you were so—"
"Should she have kept me instead?" Alex asked dryly, before he could stop himself, and cursed internally as Yassen came to an abrupt and—oh, that might be guilty—halt. Okay. Okay then. That was... he was going to reconsider his entire training period with Yassen at Scorpia through a new lens later. "Just— no, keep going. Scorpia screws people up."
"I was a tool," Yassen blurted. "And I knew it. And I thought that you... But Julia told me to remember my place, and I... realized. I knew. I'd always known my place, and it was..." He stared into Alex's eyes, and Alex's mouth shaped the words before he was fully conscious of it.
"With me?"
Yassen sank into himself, seemingly exhausted. "I wasn't in Bath because I was in London, trying to break you out of Military Intelligence's grasp. When those idiotic MI5 agents told me that the Department had snatched you away from them again, I realized there was something bigger going on, but by then..."
Alex was still trying to grapple with 'I know my place'. That was... warmth bloomed in his chest. Maybe also in his face. Yassen had turned away from Scorpia for— him? For him? Not merely kept Nile's revenge shooting from going off, but walked away from the entirety of his life for Alex? "But you still came for me?"
Yassen looked up at him again. "Always."