Love was a paradoxical thing, John thought as he sat seated, the weight of his frame pressed deep into the red leather seat while his dull black eyes stared into the cup of tea, watching it cool.
When he was younger, he used to think it was a soft thing, weakness wrapped in ribbons, something for men who had known no hardness or suffering like he had.
Now, his thought process was drastically different. With age had come wisdom, with wisdom had come the ability to feel, and then he met her and learned that it was not just a soft thing; it could be hard. It was not just weakness, for from it strength could be drawn, just like he was doing now.
He ignored the buzz of voices and movement from the other patrons of the small tea shop just out of the way. A waitress with dull eyes and a fake smile. Her white apron was stained brown from spilled drinks. She glanced his way, trying to catch his eyes, to draw his attention.
John ignored her.
Patrons spoke around him, men and women seated on stools at the counter. Families crowded across double red leather seats like his. The atmosphere was calming, and yet there was something about this city that put him on edge.
His eyes flicked at the vague sensation of danger, dull black hardening into flinty coals for only a split second as he eyed the latest patron in the shop. The man was huge, south of six feet. His gait spoke of an old injury in his left knee. He was dressed in workman's clothes with heavy boots and a brightly colored jacket.
John caught the dark and slightly raised knuckles, born from hitting bone. The cauliflower ears that spoke of being hit in turn. The heavy yet sure gait that told a story of passable footwork. In a split second, he could tell the man's story.
A boy that grew bigger than everyone else. A bully. Probably got into trouble one too many times and was forced to channel his aggression in another way. Used the advantage of his size and went straight into an amateur combat sport. It would have worked for a time, strength, size, and aggression, carrying him through most fights, until he met a proper opponent, one that would give him an injury he never quite recovered from, psychologically even if he did physically.
Injured and broken, the boy turned man would change professions. Without the knowledge or skill to know or do better, he would relegate himself to physical labor. Construction.
The man bumped into a smaller man in a suit with a tucked briefcase and lab coat under his armpit who was just leaving. The sudden blow sent the smaller man's wire-frame glasses to the ground, alongside the white coat, but the briefcase he held firmly.
"Watch where you're going, you fucking suit."
The smaller man muttered apologies as the shop quietened for a few seconds, patrons observing with bated breath for violence that John could already tell was not coming. His eyes went searching, and the sharp red and white emblem on the white lab coat drew his attention. Umbrella.
The brute pushed past the suit and, as people's attention drifted away, the man's brown eyes first caught the seated man who stared back at him with a frown. No, he was less man and more boy. Dressed in a police uniform and a bulletproof vest that looked fit for someone older. No crime was committed, so the cop could do nothing but glare.
The brute scoffed at the glare the cop gave him, then his brown gaze caught John's pitch black. He looked away immediately, as did John a second later. Coal black eyes shifting back into a dull black as his edge was hidden, and once more he was just another sheep in the herd.
His eyes went back to his still cooling cup of tea, his thoughts carrying him to a more enjoyable place.
Helen. His wife to be if he survived the next few nights. Viggo had scoffed when he made his wish known. A retirement. Something that had never been done before. The only retirement a man of his cloth deserved was at the other end of a gun, and yet he had been given a task.
An impossible task, for an impossible emotion. Love.
He could almost picture her face in the eddies of the tea. Her soft brown hair, her kind green eyes, her wide smile, straight teeth, freckles that showed her Irish heritage, and her pink pursed lips, ones she showed him in disapproval when he came home injured with a knife in his ribs.
The woman that had tamed him. Tamed John Wick.
She had seen past him. Past his long black hair, past the dark circles and the even darker eyes. Past his few curt words and gaunt features. Past his dour demeanor and razor-sharp edge. He had thought her blind and cursed with a lack of survival instinct that would have sent a heavyweight fighter scurrying with second thoughts, but he had been wrong.
She was not blind, she was all too aware, and yet despite the killing, the enemies, the life he had built in the shadows, his slowly rising reputation as the Baba Yaga, Helen had not cared. Instead she had looked at him, seeing through all of that and into the boy who had been picked up from the streets of Belarus by the Ruska Roma and forged into what he was now, and what had filled her eyes was not fear, but something gentler. Something stubborn.
She had seen him and seen hope for something better. Something different.
He could not say when he fell in love, only that he did, and now, for that act, for that cardinal sin, he was here. Kilometers and cities away from the one person he could claim to have any feeling for other than vague notions of camaraderie and apathy.
His phone rang, but he did not answer it. It was not until the third ring that he finally acted. His hand dipped into the inner pocket of his pristine black suit and came back out with a phone. His fingers moved with practiced motion, unlocking it and opening a message.
EXTRACTION
PROFILE:
Name: Annette Birkin
Alias: N/A
Relationship: Wife of Dr. William Birkin. Mother of Sherry Birkin.
Last Known Location: NEST Laboratory, Sub-level 4, Raccoon City Underground Facility
Status: Unknown.
Priority: HIGH
BACKGROUND:
Dr. Annette Birkin. Virologist. Co-developer of the [REDACTED] alongside her husband William. Umbrella Corporation, Research Division. Twenty years of service. No prior criminal record. Dedicated. Loyal, not to Umbrella, but to her husband's work.
Last confirmed location: Hidden Umbrella facility, NEST, lower levels, approximately 0300 hours, September 27th. Surveillance footage shows her moving through corridors alongside other co-workers shortly before information was lost.
OBJECTIVE:
Infiltrate.
Locate Annette Birkin.
Extract alive if possible.
COMPLICATIONS:
Umbrella Security and Agents. Possible [REDACTED]. Raccoon City Police Department.
An extraction. That was the impossible mission. John stared at his phone in silence. This was not like the Viggo Tarasov that he knew, and he knew the man well. No, this was someone else speaking through the leader of the crime family.
He scrolled up past the meticulously typed-out words and to the picture of a woman in a white lab coat with the Umbrella logo. She looked plain. A bit gaunt, with tired eyes that spoke of working long hours without rest. He knew a thing or two about that.
Then he scrolled back down to the details, the highlighted blocks of black redacted and crossed words. No, Viggo Tarasov was simply being used as a middleman. This was a job from the High Table. The question remained: what did the council of some of the most powerful men want with an Umbrella researcher, and what did it have to do with him.
The answer came as he finally took a sip of his cooled tea. Umbrella was a leading pharmaceutical giant, yet judging by this dossier and its note of underground facilities, that was not all that it was. Regardless, it did not concern him, not truly at least. The High Council needed an in with Umbrella, and for that they were planning to extract a researcher, one that was most likely willing if he was reading this correctly.
Why him?
That answer came as he swallowed the tea. He was disposable. He had the makings of a legend according to Viggo. He was the best candidate the Ruska Roma had coughed out in decades. He had both the experience, skill, wit, and strength to do this, yet he was also far down the pole enough to be discarded if Umbrella caught wind of this.
Regardless of all that, he still struggled to see why this was termed an impossible mission. He looked through the carefully crafted dossier again, searching for that one thing that would make things clear. His eyes drifted to the redacted parts. What did the High Table know? Why did they deem this an impossible mission? There had to be a reason. The council was not known to act without careful moderation and consideration.
John took another sip of his tea, one hand holding the ceramic cup to his lips, the other scrolling through the phone, until the door to the shop opened once more and his instinct screamed out in alarm.
His eyes left his phone and he watched as a strange man walked in, but no, strange was too simple a word for him. John noticed him immediately, the way a wolf noticed a mangy and sickly, flea-diseased mutt.
The man staggered. He could be mistaken for drunk by someone without John's experience, but John knew better. It was the wrong kind of stagger. Dark eyes glanced at the cuffs, which were stained dark, crusty at the edges. John took a breath, but the smell of tea, pastries, and people overshadowed what he searched for, but even without that iron tang in his nose, he recognized it.
Blood. Fresh enough to still be wet in places, judging by the splatter. His lips too had more than their fair share, smeared across his mouth like he had been eating raw steak and had simply wiped his lips with his forearm. The final thing to draw his attention was the eyes.
It was often said that the eye was the window to the soul, and in John's experience those words had more than their fair amount of truth. The man's blue eyes were bloodshot. The veins around them were so pronounced they looked ready to burst, and his movements were jerky, twitchy, like an addict aching for a fix.
John set the cup back on the saucer. So gently it did not make a clink.
His eyes flicked around. Most people had not noticed the man yet. They still sat, chattering, still eating. Still pretending the world was normal. Unaware of what had just walked in.
John looked past the viewing glass and into the street beyond. He had chosen this seat deliberately. Back to the wall, clear sightlines to every entrance, every exit, every patron. The street outside moved like it always did since he stepped foot in the city hours ago. People walking with clear directions. Cars honking as they passed. He looked at his watch. It was getting late. 7:49. Late enough that the electric lamps had come to life, but not so late that one could not see without them.
His attention refocused on the staggering man.
The waitress was the second to notice him, a full three seconds later. The same woman who had tried to catch John's eye earlier. She had just dropped a plate of pastries on the table of an elderly couple when her attention was drawn to the one man without food or drink in hand.
"Don't."
He almost did not recognize his own voice. It was low, a husky thing that spoke of just how rarely he used it, yet somehow the woman heard him. She turned, gave him a look before turning back to the man, and to her death.
"Hello, are you alright? You seem a little pale," she called out to the man as she walked to him, concern written across her face, enough to get past her perpetual mask of false cheer. Her words were enough to finally draw attention from the nearby tables. She reached out and put a hand on his shoulder in concern, and in return, the man lunged.
It happened so fast and yet so slow. The woman screamed, her withered instinct finally coming to life as she tried to jerk back, but the man already had her outstretched hand in a vice.
His jaw unhinged, his cheeks tearing from the force, then he clamped down on her throat. Hard. The woman's scream was cut off instantly as he ripped, tearing muscle and cartilage with a wet sucking sound that carried across the sudden silence. The sharp, jerky motion sent hot, wet blood spraying. It hit the counter. Painted the floor. Stained the shirt of the patron in the booth behind her.
Then the screams started, just like sheep that had just realized there was a sick mangy wolf in their presence, they lost all sense of reasoning and logic in their haste to get away, in their bid to not be the next victim.
Chairs scraped as they were shoved to the sides and away. Tables knocked over as people began scrambling away from the door, shoving and trampling over each other as raw animal panic took over.
John frowned.
The frown deepened as the man dropped the waitress's body, ignored the way she still scrambled for her throat. Her panicked wide eyes went searching for hope, for help. They met John's, but he did not need to be a doctor to know that there was no helping her. She was dead even if she did not know it yet.
The man turned toward the nearest person. An older woman who had frozen in place, mouth open in a silent scream as her body fought to pick between fight or flight. The man moved faster than John expected. He went from stillness to a lunge, crossing the distance in two jerky strides.
John brought the cup to his lips and took a sip. The tea had gone cold.
He watched over the rim as the man tackled the old woman. She screamed as cracked fingernails found her collarbone, but before it could bite down, another person acted. The construction worker from earlier tried to be a hero, grabbed a chair, swung it hard. It was a solid blow, enough to rattle most people. It connected with the man's back, and the chair shattered.
The man froze, then he turned, his movement slow and wooden. He had not even flinched from the blow. The man dived for the construction worker, and the burly man backpedaled, but his injured leg slowed him enough for the rabid man's teeth to clamp down on his thigh. The construction worker's scream was high-pitched as he fell on his ass.
"Freeze!"
The boy cop called out, finally shocked out of his surprise. His hand went to his holster but instead of a pistol, he drew out a stun gun. Stupid, John mused to himself. The boy fired, and the prongs shot out and dug into the man's back. John shook his head. If the man was as drugged as he assumed, then a taser would not nearly be enough to put him down.
Regardless of his thoughts, the taser was somewhat effective, as the man twitched, the sensation of volts of electricity surging through his nervous system was enough to force him to freeze for a moment. Enough for the construction worker to lash out with his free leg. Heavy boot crashing into the man's head and snapping his neck back.
Then once again, there was heavy silence, accompanied by ragged breathing, muffled cries of fear from the clustered sheep who had retreated to the end of the store, their efforts to open the back door rendered useless without a key.
"Fuck, what the hell kind of drugs was he on?" the construction worker grunted as he struggled to his feet, using a fallen table for support. The young cop shook, still surprised. John took a second to read the name tag on the Raccoon City bulletproof vest the kid had on.
LEON.
Then a single jerky movement drew his eyes. The waitress. For a second, he doubted his own perception and memory. For another second, he doubted himself. Then he saw it again, clearer, not the vagueness of his ever-constant peripheral sight. The jerk of a finger. The twitch of her left eye as those still wide orbs stared at him, pleading for help he could not offer.
John set the cup down. Pulled out his phone. Scrolled back to the dossier. To those black redacted blocks. To the words he had skimmed past.
COMPLICATIONS:
Umbrella Security and Agents. Possible [REDACTED]. Raccoon City Police Department.
He stared at that redacted section. Then looked back up at the carnage, then back to the dead woman with the twitching fingers.
John inhaled slowly through his nose. An impossible task they had called it. He exhaled, and just like that, like a switch that had been flicked, he shed the guise of a sheep as his eyes hardened into black pits. He would make it possible, even if it killed him, because he knew that at the end of this was a different life. A peaceful one with the woman he loves.
A/N: You know me and my snippets.