First Kill- Chapter One. # 8 in the Illya Series

[mrua7.livejournal.com]

This was my first fanfic, originally posted on Fanfiction.net
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                                                              "First Kill."

A young Illya Kuryakin's hand shook as he reached out to check the girl's throat for a pulse. Her skin was warm and as he felt it, there was the faint hint of life still there. The wound was not fatal; she would live.

He quickly emptied his coat pockets then taking it off, he then draped it over the the still form laying at his feet on the sidewalk. From her attire she looked to be some sort of street-walker who ended up at the wrong place at the wrong time.

"Someone would find her," he reasoned to himself as he stepped over her and continued walking in the direction he had last seen his target running.

This innocent had been shot by Kuryakin's quarry as he made an attempt to stop the agent's pursuit, making the Russian all the more determined now to catch his prey.

His superiors would say that the woman was no more than collateral damage. Illya believed otherwise.

But to voice such an opinion or any opinion for that matter in the Glavnoye Razvedyvatel' noye Upravlenie was a sure sign of weakness and a possible one-way ticket to the gulag, so he kept this belief along with many others to himself, ensuring the GRU would not know.

To Illya an innocent had no place in this "cat and mouse" game and he did his best to avoid their entanglement without bringing attention to himself for doing so, while other operatives did not hesitate to use an innocent to their advantage.

The man he pursued now, Professor Ivan Ivanovich would pay doubly for trying to defect as well as for his carelessness in wounding the girl, that Kuryakin promised himself.

It was his duty to stop the man, but it was his sense of honor and chivalry that drove him to avenge the girl. This was not part of his training as an agent but a remnant of his childhood upbringing.

His father's father had been a nobleman but that meant nothing in the Soviet Union, however, the belief in proper behavior and honor did in the family of Count Alexander Sergeivich Kuryakin.

Illya never knew his grandfather, but remembered the stories his babushka told him as a child, while sitting beside warmth of the fireplace in the family dacha.  His father Nickolaí would be playing his concertina and his grandmother would speak to him of the days when she was young and lived in a grand house in the city of Kyiv, where there were dancing, banquets and happy, prosperous times.

Alexander Kuryakin took good care of his tenants and was generous to them to a fault, yet still at the time of the revolution they turned on him. He accepted it all with dignity and was ever the gentleman. But sadly he died in a re-education camp in the Solovki gulag.

"Dershite goluysoko Illuysha_hold your head up high Illuysha, never forget where you came from, no one can ever take that away from you," his grandmother told him."You my child come from a long line of honorable men...gentlemen."

He never forgot those words as the gentle sound of the concertina and his grandmother's voice eventually lulled he and his siblings to sleep.

.

Illya continued down the darkened narrow Parisian street having lost sight of Ivanovich. He knew that if the professor were able to meet up with his American contact; he would surely lose the man and fail to complete his mission.

Failure was not an option to Kuryakin, as this was his first important assignment for the GRU and it had to be a success. If he failed, it could result in his transfer to some far-off destination, forever dooming him to a desk job or worse.

He stopped at the entrance to an alley when his instincts kicked in. It was a prickling feeling that raised the hairs on the back of his neck, telling him to go there. Illya drew his Tokarov pistol as he walked silently, pressing himself against the wall as he moved into the alleyway, his senses at heightened awareness.

Then without hesitation he stepped quickly around a stack of wooden crates aiming his weapon at the crouching figure of the grey-haired Ivan Ivanovich; the glass of the man's spectacles shining in the dim light.

"Ostov'te svoy orushia_ drop your weapon!" Illya orderded in a menacing tone.

"Please do not shoot!" Begged Ivanovich as he tossed his handgun at Kuryakin's feet. "Please do not kill me?"

"You nearly killed that woman," Illya growled in response. "You showed her no pity while trying to kill me, why should I show it to you? Why should I care if you live or die?"

"Because I have a wife and a child. I can give you money." The professor begged nervously.

Illya steeled his jaw, and stared coldly at the man. "You should have thought of them before you decided to run" he said modulating his voice lower. "Why would you do this to your family? He reached up with his free hand brushing his shaggy blond hair from his eyes, feeling a momentary pang of doubt.

Suddenly Ivanovich drew another weapon, aiming it at him but Illya was too quick. He fired, putting a bullet between the older man's eyes before he was even able to fire his gun.

Ivanovich's head snapped back at the impact, his body fell against the wall then, as if in slow motion, he slipped down to the ground into the shadows.

Illya emptied the man's pockets, then taking a switchblade from his own pocket, he sliced off one of Ivan's index fingers then wrapped it in a handkerchief. He turned, leaving the body without a second thought, taking the grisly offering to his handler Katiya Revchenkov; proof that his mission had been completed.

This was his first kill and knew that it would be just one of many to come, if he was lucky and didn't get killed himself.

As he walked away into the darkness, he heard only the sounds of his footsteps against the cobblestones as his thoughts drifted to Ivanovich's words.

"I have a wife and a child..." For a brief moment Illya thought he might have let the man go in spite of his anger at the wounding of the girl, thus countermanding his orders. But the man drew a weapon and it became kill or be killed, and ending his dilemma.

Other operatives had spoken of the thrill of the "first kill", but he felt no such emotion. There was only a sense of emptiness and a twinge of "something" in the pit of his stomach.

His first mission was a success, but was it guilt that gnawed at him now? He did what he was trained to do. "Pochemu_why? Why did he feel this way?" He asked himself as he crossed the Petit Pont bridge to the left bank, disappearing into the night.