Work Text:
[CLASSIFIED], Avannaa, Greenland, 1999
Her Initiate was Romanian.
This wasn't a surprise to Diana Burnwood.
Although the man she had managed to track down, escaping through the Paris Métro — after he so thoroughly sabotaged their attempt on Marchard — spoke with no discernible accent, when asked, he spoke impassively about a Romanian hospital and amnesia. There wasn't much else she could glean from that, and he didn't deny her when she called him Romanian to Soders and Travis.
His nationality was of slight concern to the ICA, as the KGB had sent more than a few spies in an attempt to infiltrate the ICA before the fall of the Soviet Union.
That was before Diana's time, however, and she wanted to give the man a try.
(Also, Romania wasn't technically part of the Soviet Union, but they all seemed to forget about that.)
Part of her had forgotten that perhaps his English wasn't as fluent as it initially appeared. She knew he spoke French, of course, and seemed to have no trouble switching to English when she did. She should've asked.
‘Repeat that?’ Her headset twinged with some light feedback as he buttoned up the fake KGB engineer's uniform.
(None of her training delved into mid-mission disguises. All of the undercover portions implied going undercover prior to the start of the mission, so his mid-mission stripping still came as a shock to her. Although she definitely appreciated it.)
She thought back to what she had said. ‘There are pre-flight checks to monitor the ejector function and make sure that the target understands how to escape the aircraft.’
A moment of silence, then, ‘That word— “ejector”. I do not know it.’ There's what seems like a twinge of hesitation in his voice, but she's not sure. She's not heard anything but cool confidence in it before.
Although a small part of her thinks he could've figured it out with context, she decides to give him the benefit of the doubt. It's her fault for not making sure beforehand. ‘“Ejector” describes when something is rapidly… separated. For example, in this aircraft, there is a button that forcefully releases the seat, and puts a lot of force behind it, allowing the seat to shoot out from the plane. It's mainly used if an aircraft is about to crash to allow the pilot to parachute to safety.’ She pauses for a moment, thinking about how all the actors spoke in English, and although the last thing she wanted to do is make it seem like she was diminishing his intelligence, she didn't want to give Soders a single edge. ‘Let me know if you need anything else clarified, Initiate,’ she added, quickly.
He nodded, and she saw through the cameras his mouth move silently to form the word. He didn't say anything more, and Diana didn't mention it again.
Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Kamchátka Krai, Russian Federation, 2000
Handlers and Agents were usually assigned to cases in languages they could speak. It made sense, obviously— it was hard for either of them to do their jobs if one or both of them couldn't understand what was happening.
She and her agent were usually sent to the UK, France, Germany and Italy. It was a good spread of their skills.
But Agent 47, and therefore Diana, had been specifically requested for these jobs, so they had to adapt.
He surprised her by being able to speak a little bit of Cantonese in Hong Kong in their first job together, and he professed a small bit of interest in languages. It was the first she'd heard of him having any interests, so she secretly filed it away for later.
What surprised her more was his complete fluency in Russian.
The guards still looked at him strangely, which she noted with concern through the CCTV she had managed to gain access to, but they still believed whatever excuse he gave.
But that meant she didn't know what he was talking about. She knew no Russian.
‘47,’ she said, after the fact, because technology had not developed to the point where she could have a live-feed connection to her agent, and had to deal with hearing the recordings afterwards, ‘A few of those guards sounded suspicious of you. I know you managed to abate them, but it is something to keep in mind.’
She missed the ICA facility. They could have live-feed communication, cameras, the whole shebang. But that was training. On the field, they couldn't risk the resources — at least not until Diana and 47 had proven themselves (although 47 had already skyrocketed to GAMMA, she hadn't been so lucky. She had to slog through the ranks like a bitch).
It didn't take him long to reply, his voice slightly tinny in her ear (she was stationed in nearby Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky under the guise of volcanology research, but it was still a fairly long distance for the call, not to mention the blizzard). ‘That was because I sound German. They're not used to Germans this far out.’
She wouldn't describe his voice as German but she couldn't help but chuckle, murmuring, ‘My apologies. I thought you were Romanian.’
‘I am.’ And, as usual, did not elaborate.
Her budding interest in her agent was growing. It was not agency-approved, but her job was information.
And she was good at it.
Nyíregyháza, Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg, Hungary, 2000
It felt… wrong, listening to these recordings.
These were 47's private moments. She'd heard whispers from him, strange notes of remembrance and fear as he explored the asylum.
She believed — or at least hoped — that 47 was asleep now, in the other room. Protocol dictated that he, having dumped Ort-Meyer's car and hiked the rest of the way to the ICA safehouse where Diana was based in Nyíregyháza to drop off his tape, should have continued on his way.
Diana had taken one look at her agent, soaking wet, a minute tremble in his hands as he handed over the tape, and a lost, empty expression in his eyes and insisted he get a shower and some sleep first, protocol be damned.
She still had a report to write, and let the white light of her laptop keep her awake. She'd filled in the basic information earlier today, but there were still the actual results to fill out.
ICA/PF/54718/47/2000/OdonKovacs
REPORT
> TARGET(S): Dr. Odon Kovacs
> CLIENT(S): Prof. Otto Wolfgang Ort-Meyer
> LOCATION(S): Satu Mare Mental Institute, Satu Mare, Romania
> CONTROLLER(S) & ASSET(S) INVOLVED: Diana Burnwood [ICA-PF-54718], Handler [NOV], 47 [BRO3886], Asset [GAMMA]
> RESULT: Set-up by client to lure Asset 47 to location. Target successfully eliminated. 47 proceeded to rescue CIA Agent & ICA Informant Carlton Smith (see ICA/PF/54718/47/2000/LeeHong for more information) & used information gathered
She hesitates. The Board will undoubtedly find out about Ort-Meyer's death, even if they had agreed that this would be his last contract. It was also against protocol to forgo any mission-critical details, and 47 taking on another target (especially the client), however personal, definitely counted.
But it also wasn't any of their business.
to escape the Romanian DPIR called on him. In the resulting confusion, the client, along with several orderlies, were killed. Payment [100,000 USD] had been transferred prior to Ort-Meyer's death, as was previously agreed.
Asset extracted himself safely to the closest ICA safehouse in Hungary. Law enforcement did not pursue.
Diana Burnwood, Controller, The Agency.
She ejected the DAT tape (even she knew it was outdated, but the tiny size of it made it appealing for hiding under clothes) and tapped it lightly, considering.
She really shouldn't do this.
The silence of the room was interrupted by the crack of the plastic container opening under her nails, followed by light scratching over the magnetic tape. These audio formats were so fragile, after all, it could've happened to any one of their tapes. No one would question why the last ten minutes of relevant information was corrupted, not with the weather, police chase and 47's injuries.
No one else needed to hear 47's hushed horror as he murdered the man who called him mein sohn.
Palermo, Sicily, Italy, 2002
Retirement may have suited 47, in some way, but it definitely didn't suit her.
That was a lie; she never retired, but dealing with other agents and larger teams just wasn't her style anymore (especially given how the last time she had tried, she had been absolutely humiliated by 47). And it freed up far too much of her time for useless seminars (because even a murder job had seminars).
So she was glad 47 was back in the fold with her, even if she did mourn his peace.
‘Sì, Padre.’ She saw 47 twist around over the conference call, looking behind him as they discussed which safehouse he should go to in the interim. There was another man, an older man, poking his head through the door, and she realised that it was Emilio Vittorio, the man he worked so hard to save. ‘Lo so, lo so.’
‘What do you know, 47?’ Diana asked, humour in her voice, matching the warmth in his, the warmth he gained when talking to the older man in soft, but strong Italian.
‘Father Emilio won't let me leave tonight. He insists I have dinner and breakfast with him.’ A huff of a laugh (which to him, was akin to bursting into laughter). ‘He came to make sure I wasn't trying to run away. Again.’ He turns back to his mentor, and Diana uses the opportunity to hide a smile at how it was the first time she heard him use the word father without pain, even if the context was different.
‘E per la massa, mi figlio!’ Vittorio's voice cut through the background din, voice raised so Diana could barely catch it. ‘Se Dio vuole!’
‘If God… is willing?’ she tries. Her Italian itself is lacking, mainly derived from her French and Latin lessons, mixed with hearing her singular Italian uni friend argue with his parents. 47 was lucky in this regard. Romance languages were, understandably, his forte.
(She didn't mention that the part she did recognise had Vittorio call 47 my son. It was a far cry better than the last time she'd heard someone call him that.)
A hum of affirmation. Guess she was close enough. ‘He's saying I have to stay for tomorrow's mass as well.’ He leaned in closer, dropping his voice slightly. ‘Privately, I just think he wants me to finish as much of the harvest as I can and cook again.’
She laughs in understanding. She'd only had his cooking once before, that morning in Nyíregyháza, where he had wordlessly handed her a warm plate where she had slept on the sofa. It wasn't until she was halfway through the plate when she remembered both her training against food she didn't see being cooked as well as 47's talent in effortlessly hiding poison within his food.
It was odd, that he could break through her walls like that.
Not that it stopped her finishing. It was a very good meal after all, even if she forgot to ask him what it was.
He translated a few more times between them both, and she let his voice wash over her. She marvelled at how much 47 spoke over the call — he was always quiet, not from shyness, but from just a natural instinct to let others fill the silence, and his general distaste for revealing things about himself. That, she understood — she was also a notoriously private person.
I want to be his friend, she realised with a start. While before she had very little issue with the professionalism expected between them (hell, video calls weren't exactly recommended), seeing his personality come out while he'd been living for himself made her yearn to find out more about this man. Gardening didn't interest her in the slightest, but seeing the subtle way his eyes lit up when she asked what he grew made her interested on his behalf. She wanted to know what else was there, what else lay hidden in his brilliant mind.
It wasn't his fault before, Diana chided herself. He didn't exactly get a chance to be a person in that damned asylum, or when he was running around killing with no idea what else the world offered.
There was something else there in his voice, an undercurrent of grief, longing and love, especially whenever the topic turned to Vittorio or the Church.
But maybe she was just imagining it.
(Even then, she knew she wasn't.)
Colchagua Valley, Santa Rosa, Chile, 2004
Her secret list of 47's interests was growing. Gardening was the biggest one (that initial video call hadn't stemmed his desire to talk for hours about it), fashion was a close second, but his knowledge of wine surpassed her own to the point where she didn't even need to brief him on the El Diablo wine that the Delgados produced, as he was her source. The first mention of the wine they produced had him nodding, describing the taste profile and the differences between it and other wines from the Santa Rosa region.
He was like a living Good Housekeeping magazine.
Aéroport de Paris-Charles-de-Gaulle, Roissy-en-France, France, 2004
The departure board ticked over, the outbound flight to LAX now showing as last call, but she still hesitated.
The Agency's been having some problems in Paris.
Her words echoed in her head on repeat, as they had since 47 had missed his assigned check-in a number of hours ago.
She needed to flee France. They needed to flee France.
She should be on the flight. Part of her knew it was stupid for her to wait, but a larger part of her wouldn't let her leave.
Her steady breathing was slowly replaced with panic; she tapped her boarding pass against her hand in a repetitive motion, her heels clinked against the ground as she paced.
A brushing of a hand against her back made her jump, and she spun around to see what it was — had the problems in Paris followed her here?
‘Shouldn't you be on that flight, mademoiselle?’
Oh, that fucker.
She hit him on his shoulder, angry that he hadn't checked in with her, but the fear quickly returned as she saw how he clutched his abdomen, his eyebrows pinched together. ‘Shit. You're hurt.’
‘I'm fine,’ he replied, quickly, eyes darting down, presumably to make sure he hadn't bled through. ‘We don't have the luxury of me not being fine. I wasn't followed.’
Diana took a deep breath. He was right. They didn't have the luxury of time. ‘Well then. Let's go, Agent. You can debrief me on the plane.’
Birmingham, West Midlands, England, 2015
She steeled her face against a twinge of pain as she shifted. 47 was needlessly fussy; you would almost think he shot her and was feeling tremendously guilty.
Oh, wait.
But she refused to let him fuss over her any more, especially because she knew how much he hated hospitals in general, let alone having to visit every day, yet he would still insist on it to make sure she was okay, as though they'd somehow missed the bullet all this time.
(He did not have to visit at all, and she told him this several times. He did not listen.)
It was over a year behind them, but the old wound still gave her some pain. It wasn't the main cause of her discomfort right now, however. She was inflicted with a common cold, and the two superhumans-with-fantastic-immune-systems were not the most understanding of why she felt so shit, even if they were trying to help… in their own way.
47 was — undeniably at this point — her best friend, but if he suggested she go for “a light marathon” to clear her lungs one more time, she was going to stab him with a needle again.
‘Um… poți să repeți te rog?’ The words flowed freely from Victoria's mouth, not because she was suddenly a polyglot, but because “please say that again” was the most common phrase she spoke.
Diana had no idea why Victoria had been so adamant on learning Romanian (the fact 47 gave her sweets whenever she tried probably helped a lot), but it highlighted a failing in herself that she hadn't yet considered: she'd known 47 for well over a decade by this point, and she'd never considered learning any of his native languages (aside from Russian, but that's because it was deemed mandatory by the ICA a number of years prior). She should be able to speak to him in his language, not just hers.
47 chuckled (chuckled! Diana nearly fainted) and repeated, ‘Vorbesti engleză?’
‘Nu.’
47 shook his head.
‘Da?’
‘I would hope so. I asked if you spoke English.’
‘Ohh…’ Victoria nodded. ‘I thought you were asking if I were English.’
Diana grinned into her mug of tea from where she was wrapped on the sofa. She'd moved back to England (not for her, but Victoria had — rightfully — decided she hated Chicago, and Diana knew that she didn't want to live anywhere hotter right now, so it was back to England for them), and there was no stopping Victoria from dragging 47 with them.
Being in England did, however, mean she had less of an excuse not to turn up at the ICA TETRA meetings in Copenhagen, now that she had been reinstated.
(Entirely her fault. She was the one who decided to make their base there in 2006. Damn her and her lack of foresight.)
47 didn't have the excuse of a job, seeing as the ICA was still recovering from losing its entire American division in one go, and she was also, once again, in charge of his contracts, and Victoria was taking full advantage of his being here.
‘Didn't you have something you wanted to tell Diana?’ 47 asked, and Diana had to brace herself from the smaller girl launching herself at her.
‘Vindecare rapidă!’ If she wasn't mistaken, it was a well-wish, so she returned Victoria's hug fondly.
‘Thank you, Victoria.’
‘Foarte bine, Victoria.’
The girl twisted towards him, a devilish look in her eyes. ‘Mersi, tată!’
Diana wanted to imprint the look on his face into her brain forever.
Berlin, Germany, 2020
She knew 47.
She knew him well.
She had no idea what the fuck he was saying.
She recognised parts of it, certainly; at least some of it was Russian, and she'd heard him speak enough Romanian that even with her shit skills (she’d tried to learn, but life kept getting in the way) she recognised it. But there were at least two other languages in there, and whatever they were (one was German, she thought), Grey was understanding it perfectly.
‘What the fuck are you two saying?’ It seems she wasn't the only one confused, as she saw Hall twist around in her seat, blue light from her laptop flooding her face, casting her in a pallid hue that made the twenty-five-year-old seem far older than she was. ‘I speak German, and whatever you're saying is nonsense.’
They'd only been together for a few days at this point, and Diana had her laptop on her lap, trying to find contracts that would take them near enough to Providence targets that they could use ICA resources for whilst they waited for the Ark Society gathering on the Isle of Sgàil to occur.
‘Conlang,’ Grey grunted, at the same time 47 said, ‘I don't speak German.’
‘Yes you do,’ argued Diana, brows creasing in confusion. ‘You've spoken German a ton of times. Hell, you spoke German today.’ Berlin was a city that did speak English as well, but 47 was fluent enough he didn't care.
‘Not willingly.’
‘Pardon?’
47 shrugged, his argument with his brother (and wasn't that a shock) forgotten momentarily. ‘Father was German. I didn't have great associations with it even before the memory recovery.’
‘A constructed language? That's so cool!’ Olivia interrupted, her eyes alight with curiosity. ‘Is it like a code?’
‘Eh, nothing so formal,’ Grey waved his daughter (because he wasn't subtle about how he felt about her) off. ‘Our warden’ (that was something Diana noticed straight away, Grey's refusal to refer to Ort-Meyer by a familial term) ‘spoke German, yes, but the rest of the doctors were mainly Romanian and Hungarian. And Russian was just useful, I suppose. We had to learn all of them.’ His eyes focused on his younger brother, lost in memory. ‘We had no reason not to speak in a mixture. It seems that habit stayed, at least between us.’
‘17 was the same,’ 47 notes with idle interest, his hands concentrating on something in his hands that she couldn't see. ‘He didn't speak to me, but I spoke to him in our way, and he seemed to understand me.’
Grey frowned, and asked a question in hushed tones.
‘No, I don't think he had the memory serum,’ replied her agent, voice still lowered, but she strained to hear him. ‘Father locked him away after you left because he disappointed him.’
‘He always had trouble without guidance,’ noted the older man, a twinge of mourning in his voice.
The room fell silent, for a minute, and Diana was just about to turn back to her work when 47 spoke once more, as though he had just realised something.
‘Father's false memories of you… the “you” in those only spoke in one language. I should've realised before, Lucas. I remember telling him that what he was saying was wrong, but then I forgot why.’
Grey, who had turned to get a drink, choked and swung his head back round. ‘His what?’
Birmingham, West Midlands, England, 2021
She'd just finished the paragraph she was on when her phone buzzed.
Tobias: Three Seagrass reminds me of you.
She smiled, knowing he was on the plane from Dubai to London with Grey, no doubt with the same chapter she was currently reading. It was a tradition they'd sort of had since she'd met him for the flight back from Paris after he'd been hunted by Albert Fournier, when he got curious about what she was reading. She lent him the book, and they passed it back and forth whenever they exchanged information until they had finished it. Eventually, it evolved into just buying two copies of the book and texting the other whenever they wanted to move onto the next chapter.
This month's book was A Desolation Called Peace.
Diana: What part? The alien fetish? Or how she sprouts poetry every four seconds?
She shakes her head, curious to see what part he actually sees in her.
Tobias: Sure.
Bastard. And she was about to tell him just that, but he sent another message.
Tobias: How would you describe your job, in one word?
Diana: ‘Information’, I suppose?
Tobias: Page 70.
She thumbed through the chapter until she found what he was referring to, and let out a snort.
Diana: ‘These things can't fuck with Information's head, Information comes prefucked’?
Diana: Wow, thank you so much.
Tobias: My other thought was Yskandr, because much like how he puts insane thoughts and ideas into Mahit's head, you do the same to me.
Diana scoffed, even though she was alone in her living room (the house was too big for one person. She'd never needed that many staff in Chicago, but her paranoia over Victoria led her to overcompensate. Now, though, the silence stretched on far too uncomfortably. She wanted the days when she had Victoria and 47 beside her again), and tapped out a reply.
Diana: Unlike Mahit, however, you actually listen to me.
Tobias: For better and for worse.
Tobias: Lucas agrees, by the way.
Diana: Of course he does. Tell him to go fuck himself.
Tobias: Gladly.
Mendoza, Argentina, 2021
Diana thought she'd been doing a really good job so far, keeping her cool. She'd had far too much fun today, despite everything, and had maybe had too much to drink before 47 finally showed up to do his favourite thing — talk about wine.
He was so distracted, in the end, talking to a highly uninterested Corvo Black, that Diana had to be the one to push Tamara into the grape crusher.
Bastard.
Her composure, her steadfast ability to keep calm in the face of overwhelming stress was almost destroyed when she saw 47 — now dressed as his true, unaltered self (a sommelier) — grip the neck of an ancient looking bottle and glare daggers into the back of the head of security, vitriol in his voice as he corrected him that you decant wine, not pour it.
‘Repeat that?’ she asked, sleepily.
The older man was curled up on her chest, limbs tangled with hers, and didn't open his eyes as he repeated, in an equally sleepy voice, ‘Te iubesc, Diana.’
She considered asking him what it meant, to tease him, but she knew the answer. She'd known the answer for a while now, since he first said it and the sheer joy in Victoria's face when she heard it — that's when Diana realised that it was the same phrase he said quietly to Victoria when she needed help going to the doctors, when she left home, when she eventually came back.
She stayed silent, as she knew he preferred to say it in his words.
Instead, she stroked her thumb along his cheekbone, saying, with her heart full of how lucky she'd been, ‘I love you too, 47.’