#I’ll never forget Pierre barking on the radio with him

[cecoeur]

Thinking about how Daniel made the photo of him with Pierre and Patrick as the first image in that dump. He could’ve made it the helmet swap with Oscar, a group photo, or the 3 on the garage floor. Any of those probably would’ve made more sense from an engagement or aesthetic standpoint. But no he specifically chose a candid moment with the two guys who were with him every second he was in that car. Two guys who would be relatively unknown to the casual fan, but who were integral to Daniel and shared the ups and downs of this journey with him.

[fruit-teeth]

Showtime

Alternate title: Spy’s first backstab (sort of)

/(I’m doing another one of these since folks liked the one about Sniper! This one isn’t my best, but it’s all right, I suppose...just a warning, though, there’s a lot of blood towards the end, so if that bothers you please read with caution or just skip this one, thanks!)/

“Is today the day?” Rene murmured to his reflection.

His reflection stared back, and he took stock of himself: he was still a boy, only seventeen, but he looked so tired. Redness still tinged his eyes, those blue eyes that matched his mother’s—he knew the answer in his heart.

“Yes,” he nodded, rising and taking a breath.

It was about eight in the evening. His mother was up in her bedroom, likely listening to the radio, and his stepfather was in the kitchen, drinking from his flask while he read the paper. Rene passed by the room which had once been the study, and he stood in the doorway.

The room was dark, but the walls were painted in a sickly pastel pink that reminded him of his mother’s perfume bottles. Little paintings of zoo animals and Noah’s Ark decorated the walls, and in the center of the room sat his sister’s bassinet. She’d been born just a few days earlier, and Rene knew this was the child his mother always wanted.

In fact, this was the future Amelie had always wanted: she’d been married young, too young, to an older man who passed away shortly afterward. She’d given birth to Rene, and then promptly forced into the life of a working single mother. But now, later in her life, she’d been graced with a new man whom she loved, and now they’d had a daughter. Rene had never seen his mother so happy in all her life, and he knew his presence in her life was only a reminder of the heartache she had suffered through. For her sake, and for his own, he knew he had to leave.

Despite everything, Rene chose to bid his newborn sister goodbye. He entered the room and knelt beside her bassinet, reaching inside to brush her cheek gently.

“I’m leaving now, Cadence,” he spoke softly, placing a hand on her head. “It was nice meeting you…I hope I’ll see you again, someday,”

His stepfather barked from the kitchen, “Let your sister rest, you stupid boy!”

Rene sighed, quickly kissing Cadence’s head. “Goodbye—be strong,”

He didn’t say anything to his stepfather, and he went upstairs to gather his things together. He got together all the money he’d saved, all the trinkets he’d stored, and anything else that could potentially be worth selling, and he tucked as many clothes as he could fit into his suitcase.

Finally, at about midnight, Rene got everything he needed to leave on his own. He was scared, he almost felt sick—but he felt he had to do it. There was no place for him here.

As he walked out into the hallway, he took one last look at his mother and his stepfather asleep in their bed. For a moment, he thought about waking them up and bidding them goodbye, but he chose not to. Maybe, if there was no goodbye, they would just forget about him with ease.

It was snowing out when Rene had finished his trek to the train station. He bought a ticket, and when the train arrived, he boarded it without an issue.

He passed the conductor on his way inside, and the man asked, “Where is a young man like you headed on a night like this?”

Rene barely looked up. “Nowhere,” he replied simply.

He’d barely thought about where he was going to stay, but he had enough money to just get somewhere to sleep before he could get a job.

The train took him to a different part of the city, deep into Paris, where he wound up on a street corner. He dragged his suitcase behind him down the street, looking all around for somewhere to rest. It was early morning, now, and he eventually found a small diner. Hoping he could get breakfast, Rene stopped there.

However, when he entered the establishment, an older woman in a fur coat spotted him, and he took his arm.

“What’s a young boy like you doing here by yourself?” she spoke very sweetly to him, yet still maintained a vice-like grip on his arm. “You seem awfully far from home,”

Rene swallowed, tensing up. “I…I…” he took a breath. “I’m just here to get breakfast,”

“Mm,” the woman nodded in understanding. “Well, if you join my friends and I, we would pay for your food,”

“Really?” Rene perked up at the idea, but he was still wary of such an offer.

The woman went on. “But we would need a favor from you. Are you willing?”

Rene was about to just blindly agree, but he knew better. He cleared his throat. “What’s the favor, ma’am?”

“Oh, do not concern yourself with such a thing,” she waved him off. “You may call me Miss Tilda. Now, come along—there is a seat for you at our table,”

Sure enough, there was an empty seat at a table filled with sharply dressed men. They watched Rene silently as he approached as if they were taking in every small detail about him. He wanted to turn around and run away, but there was hardly any time for that as Miss Tilda guided him to sit at the table.

“Men,” she began. “I have found a young boy. Tell them your name, child,”

Rene felt himself break into a cold sweat. “Um…R-Rene,”

“Rene?” a large, suited man snorted. “What are you doing out of daycare, little boy?”

“I’m…seventeen,” Rene defended, his voice quivering.

“Yeah?” a taller, skinnier man leaned over the table. “I joined when I was eleven, and by the time I was your age I had already killed four men!”

Rene felt his heart hammering fast: what had he just gotten into?

“We don’t want to scare him off, Garner!” Miss Tilda snapped at the man, before turning her attention back to Rene. “Now, after breakfast, you will need to complete your first task. It requires you to act—can you do that?”

Rene tried to think of how to answer properly. “I…yes, I-I can act. I was in Romeo and Juliet in school—”

“Oh, of course, he was,” a red-haired man groaned. “You just had to get us a theatre kid, didn’t you, Tilda?”

“Please,” Tilda snorted. “That means he has experience. Come, now—our waitress is coming. Let us eat, shall we?”

After breakfast, the group drove off to a hotel, where they gave Rene a ‘script’: he was supposed to be a lost delivery boy, and he had to approach an older wealthy couple known as the Gerards with a request for directions to the fourth floor. Miss Tilda gave him a uniform and a crate filled with oranges, and then she pushed him into the hotel lobby.

Rene felt his hands shaking as he gipped the crate, but he tried to remember the exercises his stage director had taught him in school: breath, relax, let the character drop in. This wasn’t too different from playing a character on stage, right? He just had to pretend to be a lost delivery boy…that couldn’t be too hard. He tried not to think about why he was supposed to do this, and he also tried to ignore the fact that the men in suits were longer around him.

The Gerards passed into the lobby, wearing fine clothing and chatting as they dragged along their suitcases. Rene took a deep breath: showtime, he thought.

“Excuse me?” he spoke in a higher register, making himself sound younger and more innocent. “Excuse me, do you know where the fourth floor is?”

Mr. Gerard raised an eyebrow at him. “What, you can’t ask the staff? Don’t you work here?”

“Yes,” Rene hadn’t anticipated this question, so he tried to come up with something. “Yes, b-but I just started here, and they will not speak to me, and I know your room was on the fourth floor, so—”

“We were on the third floor,” Mrs. Gerard seemed to catch wind, and she turned to tug on her husband. “Pierre—”

Before anyone could do anything else, Miss Tilda was there, and she came and stood behind Mr. Gerard. “Sir,” she began, pressing something Rene couldn’t see into his back. “Come with us, and we will make this as quick as possible,”

One thing Rene would never forget was the look of fear in their faces when they were led outside by Tilda, and he also recalled later that he never knew what had happened to them. He didn’t even know what this was for—but that was the least of his worries when two suited men grabbed him and dragged him out the back wordlessly.

“You almost ruined that for us!” barked Garner once they were outside, and he shoved Rene up against the dumpster. “Oh, I knew we shouldn’t have listened to Tilda about you!”

“Garner, let the kid go,” sighed the other man, who Rene knew as Jacques. “He’s just an idiot, okay? We got what we wanted out of him,”

Garner wasn’t backing down, though, and he pulled out a knife from his coat pocket. It was a strange knife Rene had never seen before—it seemed to fold up, and it had handles so Garner could grip it properly.

“I should just carve you up and leave you here,” Garner hissed, a wild look in his eyes. “You don’t have a family; you don’t have anyone—who will miss you? Nobody!”

“Garner!” Jacques protested, yet made no move to help.

Rene’s heart was pounding in his eyes, and he was hyperventilating. Yet along with the fear, a feeling of rage welled up in him as Garner spoke, and it boiled over when the man turned to glare at Jacques.

“Shut up!” Garner snapped. “This little coward is going to learn today—”

Before Garner even had time to register what happened, Rene yanked the knife from his hand and plunged it into the back of his neck. Garner let out a yell and stumbled backward, but Rene wasn’t finished. In his frenzied anger, he attacked again, this time stabbing the knife directly into Garner’s chest and dragging it up to his throat, cleanly slicing him all the way up. Blood poured like a river—Rene had never seen so much blood in his life, and it scared him.

He gasped, dropping the knife, watching in horror as Garner wheezed desperately and dropped to the ground in a pool of his own blood. Garner writhed around to no avail, his chest heaving, choking sounds punching their way out of his throat until his movements stilled, and he fell silent. Rene didn’t have to touch him to know he was dead.

Rene caught his breath, and he braced himself, expecting Jacques to come after him next and kill him. However, Jacques just stared at him in silence, his eyes trailing from the dead body to Rene’s bewildered face. Jacques smiled after a moment, nodding at him.

“Good job,” he praised, taking a step forward. “How do you feel?”

Rene felt a flurry of emotions. He felt strangely proud over what he had done, yet at the same time, he was still terrified. But, most of all, he felt nauseous as he stared at the blood.

“Sick,” Rene mumbled, still shaking.

Jacques chuckled. “Don’t worry, it’ll go away. Here,” he knelt, picking up the knife and placing it in Rene’s hand. “This is yours, now—have you ever seen a butterfly knife?”

Rene just shook his head at he stared at the knife. “It’s still bloody…”

“That’s all right, I can show you how to wash it,” assured Jacques, taking Rene’s arm and leading him away from the sordid scene. “Also, you’ll need a suit. I can get you to a tailor tomorrow,”

“Uh-huh,” Rene nodded, turning up to look at Jacques’s face. “Why…why are you helping me?”

Jacques shrugged. “I never liked Garner. But, if I’m being more honest, it’s really because I think you have potential,” he met Rene’s eyes. “But you just need someone to teach you how to use it,”

“Okay…” Rene agreed quietly, watching as the knife glinted in his hands.

No one paid attention to the blood on their clothes as they walked down the street together, but unbeknownst to them, one tourist was watching from a rented car. She blew a puff of cigarette smoke, observing the way the boy traveled down the street with his new mentor, and then she drove away.