Pair: Pagan, King Peacecraft, mention of Odin Lowe
Warning: pre-pre-pre war, assassinations, politics, and um... Pagan with a gun?
Note: For Pagan Month at gw_ozzies.
Summary: Pagan first met the King Peacecraft after a failed attempt to assassinate him.
Pagan Romonov had been an assassin for the last thirty years. He never missed his targets. Some said he was affiliated with the legendary Odin Lowe, others said he affiliated with no one and that he had no loyalties. The perfect assassin was a man who bordered on the sociopath, and in those days, some said that Pagan Romonov made other sociopaths bleeding hearts in comparison.
But they were wrong. Pagan Romonov never missed his shots, but that didn't mean he didn't feel each and every one of them. And he tired of feeling.
His last job was much like his first because it permanently changed his life in the mere pull of a sniper trigger. It could have been one of the biggest and the most important assassinations in history--but he failed.
He had been hired by a powerful man of the Alliance to do away with King Milliard Peacecraft the First of the problematic Sanq Kingdom, who was the loudest voice of Total Pacifism after the late Heero Yuy had been assassinated only years before. Privately, Pagan hated the job, but he needed the money and it was good for his position. Killing the King would be a testimony to his career, if he avoided capture.
But it was one thing to promise to kill a good man, and quite another to actually succeed. And Pagan was getting old.
In the window of an office building, Pagan watched the King drive down Bay Street, flanked by rows of cars which marked his passage. In a matter of minutes, the King would be in firing range, and Pagan would pull the trigger of his gun.
The seconds ticked by like the clock on a bomb, and Pagan began to sweat. He was fifty two--far too old to go around killing harmless monarchs set out to make the world a better place.
Doubts began to settle, even as the aim of his shot never wavered.
The Alliance wanted the King dead because Sanq was in the way of world domination. Or as they called it, military peace. How could the world be led by military when the world was slowly becoming convinced that it didn't need the military at all? If a little nation like Sanq could do it...
The only thing anyone wanted was peace, and like Heero Yuy, the King Peacecraft had become a shining light. But the Alliance knew one couldn't have a world devoid of war without enforcement, and they held this to the extreme. No one enjoyed being forced, and that made for the King's let's-all-get-along way of life quite an inspiration, which also made him dangerous in the eyes of the Alliance itself.
For peace, in the eyes of the military, the good King had to go.
When he came into firing range, Pagan's gun stood at the ready.
Pagan had lost his wife and his children to war. He had lost his second wife to his profession, and his third to an Alliance-Colony skirmish. He was tired of death, tired of life, tired of all the world's politicians tripping over themselves to rewrite the verses of War and Peace.
And then there was the great King Peacecraft, smiling ten stories below as he spoke to the Minister Darlian at his side. Riding in a convertible, top down, exposed. Utterly exposed. It was disgusting, the man's trust, it echoed the downfall of Kennedy...
Pagan sneered at him, trying to well up the hatred to fire. This King, believing that he could change human nature and stop the inevitable. This King, who was doomed to die.
Five seconds into firing range. Six seconds. Any longer, and Pagan would lose his target.
And you know what they say, he thought. To kill a mocking bird...
He fired.
There was scream, and all the cars stopped abruptly. He watched as Darlian made to cover his friend and leader.
The King stared up at him, catching his eye. Pagan looked back, suddenly too tired to run away.