Chapter Text
Damp hair clung to his back, already starting to curl at the ends where it dried from the heat of his bare skin. He rolled his shoulders forward and back, testing the bandages that covered a deep laceration where a knife had sliced down to the bone of his ribs. The pain had been enough to make him drop to his knees, forcing Crow to step in and quickly dispatch his attacker with a knife through the neck. She didn’t say anything about his failure, only helped him up to his feet and resumed checking the bodies he had already dropped for any signs of life.
It was his first job after storming the agency, taking down every person in his way until he reached the director’s office. In that moment, he believed he had found his purpose in life, feeling an unfamiliar rightness in the violence he inflicted. He felt good, powerful, a drastic change from the self-loathing man hidden behind a thin veneer of silver and feigned importance. That feeling was gone now, replaced with an embarrassment and sense of failure he feared he’d never be able to shake.
Jon Wick always had been, and always would be, a pathetic loser.
If he were alone in this no-questions-asked, pay-by-the-hour motel room, he would have buried his face in the comfort of his questionable pillows and cried himself to sleep. One mistake was all it took for him to doubt his confidence, making him wonder if he were better off tucking his tail between his legs and begging you to let him stay in your home until he could find another path to achieve his goal. Even that was getting called into question now, whether he had what it would take to infiltrate the criminal underworld and take down those who wrongfully benefited from the theft and trade of metalwork objects. He had his own home, a one-bedroom apartment with peeling paint and a perpetual musty smell, filled with little more than a bare mattress and a few pots and pans left behind by the previous tenant, but it was paid for by the agency, TrustRite Security. Without a rental history, or money, or identity, he was reliant upon their generosity, despite knowing it gave them control over him.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t alone. Crow was in the tiny bathroom, humming a tune he didn’t recognise over the dull roar of water being forced through a shower head congested with limescale and who knows what other kind of build up. Their third teammate, a man who went by the agency-provided name Rabbit, had volunteered to spend the night in their supply van parked just outside. It seemed to be an understood arrangement between Crow and Rabbit, the latter glancing around their motel room nervously before disappearing. Crow had clicked her tongue as soon as the door shut, muttering something about him being paranoid over nothing. He knew very little about these two, and part of him preferred it that way. The other part was nosy, desperate to know what kind of scandalous secrets would lead anyone to this kind of life.
Rabbit was a short, thin, jumpy man, living up to his agency name. Today’s job was his first time interacting with that teammate, and the first thing Jon noticed was how the man was always sniffling. His short brown hair always appeared a little too slicked back, giving it a greasy appearance, and his eyes were permanently sunken into deep shadows on his face. There was a strange intensity in his every movement that made Jon uncomfortable, but that translated effortlessly into his ability to clean blood and other biomatter in record time. Crow, on the other hand, had barely left Jon alone in his first week with the agency. Despite standing at least a head shorter, she had kicked his ass in every sparring match she bullied him into. It wasn’t a surprise, any time that wasn’t spent on a job or humbling him on the practice mats was spent in a gym, and she had the muscles to show for it. Her hair was a frizzy mess of untamed curls that ended just past her chin, over-processed from store bought hair dye in the darkest black she could find.
Without having a private space to himself, Jon would be stuck hiding behind the mask of a hardened killer, which was anything other than how he felt at the moment. He felt like a fool for not realizing he was just trading one lie for another, still forced to assume a persona that shut others out from seeing who he truly was. Jon stiffened as the bathroom door opened up, hot steam and the smell of the smell of artificial strawberry filling the air.
“How ya holdin’ in there, honey? That bandage too tight?” She took a seat on her own bed, her back to Jon while she scrubbed a towel through her hair.
“I’m fine, thank you.” He didn’t mean to snap at her, the concern truly was appreciated, but there was something about the drawl in her voice that made her words sound insincere, like she was mocking him. It didn’t help that most of his interactions with her so far had been her taunting him to strike harder, dodge faster, sincere niceness didn’t seem to become her. “It’s not too tight. Thanks for patching me up.”
“Anytime, honey. We may be strangers, but we’re a team. We take care of each other.” He silently nodded, having heard her say that once before. It sounded hypocritical once he found out the man he killed without a second thought had been on the this team before him, yet Crow had done nothing to stop the man’s murder at Jon’s hand. Her words were almost believable in this context, though.
“Should thank you for saving my ass today, too.” Jon’s hands needed something to fiddle with. Reaching into his pocket, he found the familiar shape of his cigarettes and the cool metal of his lighter. Well, it wasn’t his, but he knew the owner wouldn’t mind him borrowing it for a while. Though there were signs posted saying smoking inside was prohibited, the yellow stains on the walls and the ashtrays on every flat surface told a different story. Just as he placed a cigarette between his lips, Jon felt something heavy land on the bed behind him.
“I’ve never seen someone tank a stabbing like that and still finish a job, you’re somethin’ else. Take my knife, relying on a gun in close quarters combat will getchya killed.” He had seen the knife on two occasions now; once as a threat against his life, and once to save it. The blade was deeply serrated, something better suited for hunting and gutting an animal than self-defence, but as he held the knife in his hands, he could understand how the weight behind it allowed the blade to slide so easily into flesh. Despite how natural it felt, it hoped he’d never have to use it.
He set the knife, still in its sheath and likely still covered in blood from earlier, on his night stand before finally lighting his cigarette. The nicotine calmed his nerves almost immediately, allowing him to relax. Not enough to let his guard down, but enough to feel less prickly towards his teammate. “...Thank you.”
Buried deep in the bag of belongings Jon had left home with was a cell phone he hadn’t touched once. Before today, he had nearly convinced himself that he could somehow not only navigate being human, but also take down anyone involved in the illegal trade and forging of metalworks within a few months, showing back up on your doorsteps as someone worthy of your love and adoration. Now, he had been humbled, severely so, and all he wanted was to see the face of the only person who saw who he was under the silver-plated persona. Jon cradled the phone in his hands, the only physical tie he had to you, debating sending a message, to have visual proof that your connection still existed.
“Awful strange for a man with no past to have a cell phone, Wolf.” Jon gritted his teeth. Of course the woman was watching over his shoulder. She had been incessantly inquisitive into his past, yet another thing he foolishly believed wouldn’t be the case in the line of work. Did no one value privacy any more?
“Jon,” he quickly corrected, “I’m only Wolf when I’m working, and I don’t believe it’s any of your concern what I do outside of work.” Jon was starting to learn that the more annoyed he became, the easier it was to accidentally slip into Scandalabra’s way of speaking. Like he needed to give Crow another reason to pester him into divulging who he was. Trying to signal that he wasn’t in the mood for her continued questioning, he stamped out the cigarette that he had nearly forgotten about and settled under the sheets of his bed, trying his best to ignore the pain in his side when he twisted too far.
Crow watched him from over her shoulder, sliding under the scratchy sheets of her own bed. There was something about Jon that bothered her greatly—he simply didn’t exist. It was impossible in this day and age to have never been recorded on any CCTV, to have no digital footprint, to have never made a single transaction of money for goods. As far as she could tell, he had simply spawned into existence at the bus depot downtown. So how was it that he had a phone, and what was his reason for having one?
She had suspected him of being a spy at first, someone from another country pretending poorly to be just some guy when he first sparred with her. He strolled through the front door of TrustRite Security and took out every single person who stood in his way to the director’s office, then killed her previous partner with no hesitation, yet couldn’t pull off a single win against her? If he was trying to convince her that he wasn’t a threat, letting her beat him over and over wasn’t the way to do it. On her own suspicions, and with the director’s approval, she followed him around as closely as she could, pestering him into sparring with her for hours every day to see if she could get him to falter in his performance.
To her surprise, and slight disappointment, he appeared to be nothing more than he claimed to be; a man with no past and a lofty goal that made her laugh in his face. Stopping people for stealing and faking random objects made of metal? If he wanted to be a hero, at least he could pick a victim that other people cared about. With the quick thinking and devastatingly accurate shooting she saw from him today, along with the impressive skill he had already shown when she watched him, unseen, practicing with his gun on his own, maybe there was some potential in him yet.
“Okay, Jon. They’ll use anything to keep your under their thumb, and if ya think they don’t have anything over you now, that just means the director’s intelligence will be lookin’ even harder for a weakness they can exploit.” She rolled onto her back, reaching over to turn off the light on her night stand. “That’s why the agency is full of people with secrets they’re runnin’ from, we all got something to lose if we disobey a directive. ‘Cept you, right, honey?”
“And what do you have to lose?” He should have just ignored her, letting her assume he had fallen asleep or simply didn’t care, but the retort came out before he could stop it.
“Seeing the world from this side of a prison cell for the rest of my life.” There was a challenging tone in her voice, like she knew her answer would only beg further questions. For a moment, Jon’s desire to know every scandal that crossed his path had him itching to dig into such a cryptic answer, but he saw the trap for what it was. If she divulged information about her past, she’d expect him to do the same. Instead, he closed his eyes, willing restorative sleep to wash over him as quickly as possible.
It only took a few moments before the events of the day replayed behind his eyelids against his will, snippets of a movie he couldn’t look away from.
The job was small and impersonal, the assassination of a cybercrime syndicate’s leader who was staying on the top floor in a high-rise motel, along with the retrieval of any technology that could access the internet. It should have been easy—they counted five people in the room from the safety of he rooftop they were watching from, three men and two women who had arrived separately. Nearly an hour later, they all left, allowing the team to begin.
Jon should have looked closer while they were in the room waiting, that had been his first mistake. Five people were counted, five people were seen leaving, and the intelligence they were provided didn’t indicate anyone else involved. His second mistake was questioning the directive of the job.
“If the value is in the electronics, why not just leave with them?” Rabbit had secured every device he could find, but a few were encrypted beyond what he could crack with his mobile supplies.
“Because you’re going to get the passwords for me.” The dots connected in his mind before he could open his mouth to ask further. Right. Fear. If he had the gun, he had the power. Jon had already seen how quickly someone could turn to begging for their life the minute they had a gun pointed at their face. An awful mix of eagerness and guilt swirled in his gut.
The unseen eyes and ears hiding in the room heard it all, and would turn what should have been an easy job into an unnecessary bloodbath.
Rabbit was still occupied with the electronics, while Crow was looking for any items worth selling when their targets returned much earlier than anticipated. Jon heard the faint click of the lock a moment before shots fired out blindly, giving him enough time to drop behind a long leather couch for cover. It did nothing to stop the bullets, but it gave him a chance to run without being seen. An acuity he was still growing familiar with guided his actions, tuning his hearing in to the precise source of the gunshots. His gun was aimed before he even appeared around the far side of the couch, taking out one target with multiple bullets through the chest and dropping the other to his knees with a lucky bullet through the leg. That man would bleed out within moments, but Jon’s attention had already shifted. He could have been impressed by his work if he weren’t aware of an invisible timer that had been triggered by the noise. Shouting and screams could be heard from the other rooms on the floor, there was no doubt that hotel security would be on their way sooner than later.
In his mind, the world had gone silent. Taking cover behind the couch again, Jon was picturing where the syndicate’s leader stood while he moved to line up his next shot. His bullet was chambered, his finger tense against the trigger. Like Crow’s dedication to forging her body as a weapon, Jon had spent countless hours in the past week holed away in a gun range, accepting nothing less than perfection from his aim and reaction time. Leading with the gun, it only took a glance over the cushions to see his target before the shot was lined up.
One shot. Recoil. Another. Then silence.
Holding the gun ready, his finger just brushing the trigger guard, he waited a long moment before looking over the edge of the couch again.
By the splattered blood and bone fragments that fanned over the top of the doorway, Jon knew his practice had paid off. One bullet through the throat, and one through the head, quick and reliably fatal. The two women from before were nowhere to be seen, but that was no surprise with the way they had been ambushed. He felt his skin prickle with the chill of fading adrenaline, a slight tremor in his hands encouraging him to holster his gun for safety. Just like before, his emotions floundered between a sort of vicious thrill and shock that he was capable of such violence.
In a moment of clarity, he looked around to see that Rabbit was long gone, along with the electronics, and Crow was likely still taking cover somewhere as she carried nothing more than the knife kept tucked into her waistband. They had a room a few floors below, a necessary cover for their presence in the hotel, as well as a meeting place in case something like this happened. Remembering the invisible timer ticking away, he stood, seeing the large pool of crimson blood that surrounded the final body, enough to taint the air with the taste of copper. A shuffling sound in a nearby bedroom caught Jon’s attention, spurring him to see if Crow was ready to leave. With his defences down he walked into the room without a weapon drawn, expecting to see the greedy woman digging through luggage in search of hidden treasures.
That was his third mistake.
This was the snippet that kept playing on repeat through his mind. He could swear he heard someone yell a warning at him a moment before a gloved hand gripped his shoulder. Jon turned in time to dodge a blade puncturing deep between his ribs, forcing the knife to bounce off of them instead. He tried to stifle an undignified yelp of shock, but it still came out as a pained croak. It was a feminine grunt and wet gurgling he heard next, something warm splashing against the side of his face. Jon could only glance at Crow before the pain of his injury broke through his already waning adrenaline, dropping him to his knees with a silent scream.
Though he only saw it for a moment, the expression on her face burned itself into his memory. She looked like a ghost of herself, face blank with a vacant look in her eyes. Her hand still clutched the knife, standing over the body of Jon’s attacker while he fruitlessly clamped his hand over the haemorrhaging wound. Content with her work, Crow sheathed the knife, careless of the blood that still coated it. A hand reached out to Jon, lifting him to his feet before the body it was attached to walked away to check the other corpses. She looked like a corpse herself, all the life and spirit he found annoying now missing from her movements. Even her normally tanned skin looked ashen in comparison.
“Crow…?” He wouldn’t say he was worried about her, he was simply...off put. She stopped in her tracks, seemingly pulled out of the eerie trance that fogged her emotions. Her shoulders sagged as a sigh escaped her lips. Then, just like it had never happened, she perked up and spun to face Jon, a too-big smile on her face that clashed terribly with the blood streaked across her cheek and forehead.
“Not a bad recovery, considerin’ the whole plan went to hell in a hand basket. Ready to get out of here?”
The deep black of his suit jacket concealed the blood seeping from his side long enough to make it back to their room without raising suspicion. In the chaos of it all, only a few minutes had passed from the first gunshot to the moment they were blending into the panicked masses that crowded the emergency stairs. No one noticed them slip away a few floors below, and there wasn’t a single witness to see Jon starting to stagger before he could collapse inside their room. With a hastily-applied gauze pad and a change of clothes, they fled the hotel separately, Crow lagging behind to end their reservation early, her words dripping with a charm so genuine the clerk would only remember her as the cute southern girl who wouldn’t hurt a fly when he was later questioned by police.
It was a real shame the hotel’s camera system hadn’t been recording any footage for two days, an issue unknown to the security team until they went to review footage, and would continue to be offline until a tech was available the next day. Any proof that the three had ever set foot in that hotel was long gone, just as they were in the supply van Rabbit drove to their current location.
Sleepless, due in part to the aching pain that seemed to radiate through half his chest as well as his restless mind, Jon listened for the sound of Crow’s breathing. He had asked her earlier, between winces as she was placing a few quick stitches to keep the wound from stretching and tearing further, why she warned him about the attacker if she was just going to stab him anyway.
“Don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, honey. I was in the other room, I only came runnin’ when I heard you yelpin’ like a kicked puppy.” He wanted to argue, as he most certainly did not sound like some mongrel canine in pain, but the smirk on her face told him he’d just be playing into her little game if he denied it.
“And you didn’t hear anything beside that?” Her smirk was replaced with the furrowed eyebrows of concern.
“No, did you?” He didn’t answer. Maybe he just imagined it. Maybe it was just his subconscious trying to make him aware of the danger it sensed. Maybe he was just fucking losing it and he didn’t need anyone else to know.
Draping his arm over his eyes, he somehow convinced himself that sleep was all he needed to clear his mind. He resorted to the same trick he used every night, imagining his arms wrapped around you as he bunched the blankets up, pulling them against his chest. It was a sad imitation of the comfort you brought him, a cold reminder of the first time in his life he didn’t want to be anyone other than himself. He’d been fine every single day of his life leading up to that night, so why had it changed everything for him?
Just a few more jobs, then he’d be able to visit you. He’d promised not to leave you like the others, and after everything you had done for him, that was a promise he could never break.
- - V - -
It was undeniable now, Jon was losing his mind. Neither Crow nor Rabbit heard the crying, the wailing sobs that seemed to echo off every surface, making his ears ring. Nearly every corner of the building had been turned upside down with nothing to show for it, but he knew he had to be close to it now. Rabbit was too invested in cleaning the blood of the slain bodyguards to give Jon anything more than a scowl and a shake of his head, and Crow was focused on finding her own treasures to take, quickly deciding that auditory hallucinations weren’t the worst trait she had seen in a teammate before.
Jon stepped over a body sprawled across the entrance to the office, careful not to track any of the blood further than it had already soaked into the carpet. Rabbit had already chastised him for his carelessness when it came to the mess left behind from a body left to bleed out, Jon didn’t care to receive another lecture for tracking that blood around even further. There were two other people tied up in this room, their primary target and his wife. They, too, seemed oblivious to the wails that had to be coming from somewhere in that room, their eyes trained on Jon as he became desperate, searching increasingly impossible locations for the source of the noise. His fingers brushed against the middle drawer of an imposing wooden desk, questioning for a moment how something with a voice so big could fit in a space so small.
“What—What do you want from us?! Is it money? I’ll pay you more, I’ll double whatever you’re getting if you let my wife go!” The roar of a carpet cleaner in another room nearly drowned out both his voice and the ear-piercing cries. The building had to be left spotless, otherwise it would be too obvious what happened when someone came to investigate the couple who would soon be reported as missing. Jon glanced at the man casually, knowing the majority of his expression was concealed by the intricate mask he wore. The snout extended a few inches past his face, revealing only the curve of his bottom lip and the harsh edge of his jawline.
“Money won’t buy you out of the corner you’ve backed yourself into.” Their directive for this job was to capture the man alive, along with his wife if she were present when they had the chance to strike. The couple was wanted by no fewer than eight countries independently of INTERPOL’s interest, for the crimes of drug trafficking and forging currency. According to Rabbit, they would be auctioned off like cattle to the highest bidder, a fact that didn’t bother Jon as much as it maybe should have. They were bad people facing a punishment for their crimes, he wouldn’t feel guilty for bringing them to justice.
He tugged the drawer open with ease, rifling through the innocuous pens and notepads that almost seemed too normal for such prolific criminals. Just as he was about to move on to a different drawer, Jon’s thumb brushed against a metal latch, accidentally activating it. Out dropped a hidden compartment, only big enough to hold a few handwritten letters and a striking silver locket-style necklace. He clutched the locket in his hand without a second thought, finally silencing the shrieking cries that threatened to deafen him. With his mind free to think of anything other than that infernal noise, Jon was left to wonder how a necklace was capable of sounding like a sobbing woman.
When he looked up, the faint apparition of said woman stood before him, her face buried in her hands as silent sobs wracked her body. Long silver hair in swooping waves fell like a curtain around her, though she was transparent enough to see through. Was she...a ghost? For a brief moment he nearly reached out to her, unable to believe his own eyes. Through her, he could see the faces of the man and woman staring at him, reminding him that his insanity was still on full display. Quickly pocketing the necklace, Jon left the room in a rush, breathing a sigh of relief now that he could finally hear his own thoughts.
It had to be the combination of sleeplessness and working nearly round the clock that had left him a hallucinating mess. Two weeks straight of catching a few moments of sleep in between rundown motels and airplanes, followed by hours of watching and waiting for the right moment to strike down his targets. This last job had been the hardest, his surging adrenaline and muscle memory for murder making it a challenge to remember these two had to stay alive if they wanted their payout. He could feel the burn of exhaustion in his eyes, the cold sweat that left his skin feeling clammy. Somehow he knew that simply going home wouldn’t guarantee him sleep, only endless hours to lay on an uncomfortable mattress with a threadbare excuse for sheets, wishing he could see you instead.
The dull, choppy whirl of a helicopter approaching in the distance told him that he’d soon be a few steps closer to getting his wish.
Finally in the privacy of his own home, Jon worried the smooth metal of the locket between his fingers, still hidden away in the pocket of his pants, while he cooked himself a sad meal. On an impulse, he pulled it out of his pocket, admiring the intricate filigree that decorated the exterior now that he could get a closer look. It appeared worn down on the high spots, revealing a cheaper, reddish metal underneath. Jon felt a strange draw to the object, an inexplicable kinship. Glancing up, he saw the woman again, less faint than she was before. He wasn’t sure if she had noticed him yet, but she had at least stopped crying, cautiously looking around her new surroundings. She was older than he would have thought, lines of age gracefully framing her eyes and mouth. The way her hair fell around her face was reminiscent of the locket’s design, but wouldn’t that mean...
All at once the wheels in his mind began turning, trying to connect all the pieces. The woman and the necklace were one in the same, just as he was a mere candelabra only a few weeks ago.
That was the only thing that made sense, but that didn’t explain why Jon, now a human, could see the spiritual manifestation of an object. He wouldn’t claim to understand the science of it all, but he was nearly certain that connection required a special pair of glasses to be made. He knew who he could ask, but he wasn’t going to see you until tomorrow. Maybe it would be best if he stored the locket somewhere secure, she didn’t seem to be aware of him yet, and if this were just a hallucination from lack of sleep then she’d be gone in the morning anyway.
“You...You can see me? Mizzica!” Fuck. Too late for that idea.
“I-I can see you.” He couldn’t lie to her, there was a hopeful desperation in her voice that felt much too familiar. Should he tell her what he used to be, spoiling the secret that objects could become human? Or would it be better to pretend being something he wasn’t? Not that it mattered, the woman was speaking a mile a minute in a language he couldn’t understand. Her attention shifted quickly, eyeing the boiling pasta and seasoning packet sitting next to the stove.
“Unni esti vostru...wife, zitellu? Ci dev'èssiri tanti fimmini ca ti vonnu cucinari.” With an exasperated sigh, she tried grabbing for the fork he was using to break apart the instant noodles, only for her hand to phase right through it. Was it a feature of the glasses that allowed the objects he was most familiar with to interact with the world of humans? Even if he couldn’t understand the woman, the way she grabbed at his waist and cheeks told him she was saying something about his looks. He had a feeling that it was about to be a very long night.