Disclaimer: No, I don't own anything having to do with Jason Bourne. I wish I did, particularly a certain someone named Matt Damon, but I don't.
Author's Note: Well, I finally got suckered in to writing a Bourne fic. This started out being a one-shot in my brain, but so far I've got four chapters and I'm hardly half-way through. This fic will take place, initially, throughout Treadstone's first years, before Jason loses his memory. While I was watching Ultimatum, I was slightly frustrated that we knew nothing about the relationship between Jason and Nicky that was not so subtly hinted at. In fact, we know very little about Nicky's character throughout all three movies. Here's my interpretation of their history together. I realize it's not exactly an original idea, but I hope I wrote it so that it's interesting enough to slog through. It's not perfect, but I like it well enough. I'm going to try and keep it pretty tame in terms of language and sex (which is sometimes difficult for me—I like to write with lots of f-words and inappropriate situations), but I may end up changing the rating at some point. And no, I haven't read the books. I should, but I don't have time. So this story is entirely in movie-verse. Enjoy!
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Prologue
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"Congratulations, Ms. Parsons. Your assignment is Paris. Welcome to Treadstone." This from Conklin, quick and dirty, over the phone. Quite suddenly, her salary quadrupled.
She boarded a plane the next day. Langley, Newark. Newark, Paris.
God, she really hated to fly.
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She thought she knew all about Operation Treadstone. She was a smart girl, after all. Sped through undergrad work in two years, top of her graduating class at Johns Hopkins, MD-PhD with an emphasis on abnormal psychology before she turned 27.
Let it be said that not many people could claim to have called Nicolette Parsons stupid.
Treadstone, they told her, was an elite kill squad. Highly trained assassins, so resourceful and lethal that they could pretty much destroy whatever or whoever they wanted to. Luckily (luckily—she might have laughed about this later), these guys had been put through some of the most rigorous and experimental behavioral modification to date. Names changed, morals stripped, memories reshaped. They were conditioned to obey only the mission, to be perfect, good little assets. They were trained to be infallible, flawless, and damn near invisible.
She was assigned to Paris to, firstly, monitor the mental and physical well-being of the contiguous operatives and, secondly, to assist in coordinating logistical operations for Treadstone. She was the contact. The link back to Langley.
Simple, she thought to herself as she entered the Paris headquarters. Make sure the thirty million dollar human weapons don't snap and help them get their precious guns. Easy. Her work back at Langley as a psychology consultant had been much more difficult, she thought. Here, she was paid not for her long hours, but for her secrecy and discretion. The agents did most of the work, they told her. It's not as if they hadn't been trained for it.
So she thought she knew what to expect. Hang around until an assignment from Langley comes in, send the assignment to the asset, and help him get whatever he might need in order to complete the job successfully.
Simple. Easy.
But nothing--not her impressive education, her two years working for the CIA, or her excellent composure--could have prepared her for Jason Bourne.