#Nate Vandrum Plans a Murder Part One | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

ashintheairlikesnow · 5 years ago

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The Rescue, Part One: Danny

For those of you wondering what happened to make Nate start planning a murder... this is the first part of the Rescue story, from Danny’s POV. The second half is from Nate’s POV and is upcoming.

CW: Oh, I have a bunch. Pretty clearly implied/obvious noncon (not graphic!), noncon touching and kissing on top of the already, again, real obvious noncon. Self-victim-blaming, suicidal ideation (of the “I wish I was dead” variation, but please be safe), muzzling, violent abuse, and yes, you finally get to see Abraham Denner real, real angry.

Tagging my people: @finder-of-rings @special-spicy-chicken @bleeding-demon-teeth @spiffythespook

What he would tell Ryan about, later - when he could tell him anything at all, when his voice stopped locking up because he had to be good, he was good, he was trying so hard, when he’d seen Dr. Rosa for long enough to feel like he could talk about it - was his birthday.

It was the day he fucked up again, really fucked up, and Nate got really, really mad.

But that was so long ago, Ryan said, when he started to tell him. It took so long to be able to say it, so much work sitting on the floor of Dr. Rosa’s office picking at the healing scars on his face. Eventually, though sitting up late one night with Nate sleeping in the other room and two glasses of whiskey and coke between them, it all started to tumble out. That was half a year before you showed up at that police station.

Danny shrugged, curled on the floor next to where Ryan sat on the couch, just a few inches away from touching his leg. It was as close as he could stand to get. He stayed mad, this time. I was really bad.

Mad enough to spend six months planning a murder?

Danny had looked at the liquor in his glass, and slowly nodded.

He didn't tell Ryan everything, though. His little brother wanted to know, but he shouldn’t know some things, and so Danny didn’t mention that it had started, as so much of Danny’s personal hell did, in Abraham’s bed.

By then, there were more days in Abraham’s bed than out of it, even if he didn’t get to sleep there all that often, and Danny had given up feeling anything but dulled to it. Easier and safer to accept it, easier and safer not to fight. There were knives, in the bed, but that was still better than the barbed wire and the smokehouse and the cellar and the traps - so he didn’t mind the knives that much.

You have to give parts of yourself away when your body isn’t yours anymore, and Danny was an expert at finding some remaining uncovered piece of his identity to hand over to Abraham in exchange for one fewer scar that might otherwise be layered over all the others.

He did everything Abraham wanted, even if it hurt... or worse, didn't - but he kept his eyes on Nate, and it was Nate who did what he could to make it easier on him. When he felt sick, and ashamed, it was Nate who whispered, it's oh-okay, I’m h-h-holding you, I’m g-g-going to make this feel b-better for you.

We’re going to be oh-okay, Red, and sometimes Danny even believed him.

It wasn’t that Ryan didn’t know what Abraham did to him - he had a general idea, the medical records probably told him all he wanted to know and more, and it was unraveling every day in court, wasn’t it? Abraham talked about what he did to him, and Nate talked about what Abraham did, and Danny had had to talk about it to the lawyers in the little room, watching their faces turn grim even as their voices had carefully crafted compassion.

He didn't tell Ryan how it started, that day, because… because by then Danny didn’t even try to fight back. He let himself like it, he let himself go away and buried his thoughts. He was more scared of what Abraham would do if he did fight than what he was about to do when he didn't - and besides, he was good, he had to be good, he wanted to be good.

He just didn’t want to tell his little brother that he gave up. The last time he tried to fight, Abraham had cut his already-scarred hands up so badly he couldn’t use them for more than a week. Nate had had to do his chores, had been punished for Danny’s defiance with Abraham’s knives. Danny had forced himself back to work as fast as he could to get Abraham to stop hurting Nate, and all his chores had hurt like a bitch until the cuts scarred over and healed.

After that, he did what he was told.

He spent his days dreading the nights in bed, and his nights lying awake, mostly on his little mat by the couch, dreading what would come when the sun rose.

The day Nate got angry - and stayed angry, for the first and only time - was Danny’s birthday. He knew that only because Abraham told him, whispered what day it was into his ear over and over until they no longer seemed like words at all, until the pure hate in his heart burned as much as the ropes around his wrists and the pain in his back and the hollow screaming emptiness Abraham had left where Daniel Michaelson used to be.

The cold of Abraham and the warmth of Nate made Daniel feel like he was feverish, burning and freezing at once. He needed a shower, now that they were done, lying on the bed with Danny between them. He needed ten showers. A hundred. Abraham ran a hand through his hair, and Danny held himself still even as rage raced straight through him, rage he had to bury under three and a half years of training to be good.

“Happy birthday, little Red,” Abraham murmured, sliding his cold fingers along the edge of the collar around his neck. The leather, scratchy and rough when it had first gone on, was softened with time and wearing, so comfortable now he barely noticed it was on him except for the feel of the little padlock on the back sometimes bouncing against his neck. Danny curled himself up as much as he could, closing his eyes, hands curled into fists against his stomach, trying to breathe, to stay calm.

He couldn’t turn off his brain.

Do you think that was a fucking gift, you piece of shit? What you just did to me? What you had me do with my friend? Do you think that was a goddamn present? Wrap me up with a fucking bow on my head, give me to me?

I’m sorry I want to be good, I want to be good, I’m so good for you

Do you think I'm fucking grateful for the way you’ve damaged me?

Shut up shut up I’m sorry I’m so sorry

Do you think I love you for it, you fucking psychopath?

Please, please, be good, you have to be good

I used to be a fucking person

No, stop, do better you have to try harder, you have to do better

There used to be no wrong thoughts

Sssshhh, be good be good, he can hear you thinking

"Th-thank you, Abraham, for being so good to me.” His voice was soft, a little sweet, hardly above a whisper. He knew how to speak by now, how to tilt his head back into the touch of Abraham’s cold fingers, to shift back until his shoulder blades pressed against Abraham’s chest. He knew how to swallow down the disgust until it didn’t show at all. “How…" Danny swallowed, wincing at the bitter taste in his mouth. I hate myself. He caught himself before he broke the rule. “Can I ask a question, Abraham?”

“Go ahead,” Abraham murmured behind him, his tone one of someone who felt he was being very generous indeed. Danny’s nails dug into his palms at the sound.

"What birthday is this? I, um, I can't remember."

There was nothing Abraham couldn’t take from him. He’d taken his skin and his body and so much of his mind, his memories. He’d carved a whole new person out of him, bled everything he used to be out and what was left was only what Abraham wanted him to be.

He didn't look back at Abraham, cold fingers that petted through his hair, ice pressed against his back. Instead, he watched Nate get out of the bed on the other side of him. The older man’s muscles shifted a little, the scarring across his torso and the soft pinkish circles around his neck evidence that even being Abraham’s favorite wasn’t exactly an easy or safe position to hold. Nate didn’t quite look at either of them as he left the room.

I’m s-s-so sorry, R-Red, I’m so s-sorry, it’s going to be oh-okay, wh-what do you w-w-want me to do?

J-Just, please, please, make it hurt less, please

Sssshhh, I’ve g-g-got you, I’ve got y-you, here, I can h-help - here? Would here feel g-g-good?

Please, please, please-... there, yes, please

Danny’s face burned with the shame of everything he had done and was doing and would never stop having to do, until Abraham got bored of him and burned him in the fire just like the body that had owned the cabin before they came here.

"Twenty-sixth," Abraham said, hand in his hair, letting his fingers run through the wavy red, over and over, like petting a dog. Danny closed his eyes at the gentle, comforting touch, felt some of the disgust and shame in him fade.

It was okay. He was only ashamed because he kept thinking about things he wasn't supposed to, anyway. The wrong thoughts were the problem. Abraham hurt him, but he loved them, too, and sometimes it was hard not to just let it all run together, let himself slide away.

Stop it. Stop it stop it stop it. This isn’t how people think. You have to stop thinking the way he wants you to. You have to remember you’re a person.

He doesn’t love you.

How could anyone love you like this?

"I don't feel twenty-six," Danny murmured, as the hand moved to stroke the side of his neck, gently, around the collar. "I barely feel twenty-two." Abraham’s hand slid down his side and over his hip and Danny turned his head, fighting back tears as he pushed his head into the pillow.

Please stop touching me

Nate came back, three opened beers in his good hand hanging by the necks and clinking together, and sat down at the edge of the bed. Abraham took his and briefly pressed the cold bottle to the back of Danny’s neck with a mischievous grin, laughing when he jumped at the sudden chill, a nervous smile flashing across his face and then gone.

I hate you so fucking much

Ssshhh no puppies love their owners, stop it, he’ll hear you, think good dog thoughts

I hate myself so fucking much

"C-can I…?" He had one hand out towards his beer, then pulled it back, looking to Abraham first.

"Kiss me first," Abraham commanded, but it was teasing, like he thought this was real flirting. Danny had had a boyfriend or two do something like that, in the life he wasn’t supposed to remember. Danny swallowed back his disgust and obeyed, twisting around to press his lips briefly to Abraham’s, barely a brush before he pulled back, face burning under the knowledge that Nate was watching him, and worse - Nate understood exactly how it felt.

It would have been easier if the asshole weren't such a good fucking kisser.

"That's my good boy. You were good, today." Abraham's voice was smug. He was always smug now. “Now what do we say, puppy?”

"Thank you for letting me have a beer, Abraham," Danny said quickly, voice flat and empty. “Thank you for bringing me a beer, Nate.” He took a drink of the ice-cold IPA when Nate handed it to him. Danny had always hated IPAs and light beer, had always been the one to order endless Guinness at the bar, but Abraham only bought IPAs. Daniel hadn't had a dark beer since before (don't think about before, Abraham doesn't like that, there is no life before Abraham) - and really, IPAs were fine, he liked them now, he'd learned to like them.

It was fine. It was all fine, because it was forever, and Abraham's hand was still on him, still-

I feel so fucking sick

Twenty-six years old and he'd spent nearly four of them trapped here. He was never going to leave. No one would want him now, Abraham said it all the time. No one wants a fucked-up slut with a face full of scar tissue, no one. He made him say it, made him say it on his back and on his knees and in the kitchen cooking dinner and sweeping and dusting and cleaning the bathroom and walking traps and hunting and and and

(no one’s going to love you ever again but me, me and my Nate)

Inhale.

No one’s going to love me ever again

(but me and my Nate)

Hold for five.

Exhale.

The things I’ve done make me unlovable

(look at you pretending you don’t like it)

“I-I need a sh-shower," Danny said, voice shaking, the thoughts circling round and round and round. Down the drain with the rest of him, whatever was left, down the drain in the shower while Abraham watched.

What was left?

"But I like it when you smell like us," Abraham said with a barking laugh, and Danny didn’t flinch, because he never flinched any longer. Instead, he laid still and choked back the curses that had never left his mind, wishing he had superpowers or magic or something so he could kill him with those curses.

I wish you were dead, I wish I was dead, I wish this could just be fucking over

"L-l-let him sh-shower, Bram," Nate said, and there was something firm and strong in his voice that was almost never there. Something surprising enough that even Abraham stilled behind him, and Danny caught the flash of white-blonde hair in the corner of his eye as Abraham looked up.

“What did you say, baby?”

Nate and Abraham’s eyes met, and Danny’s mouth opened, just a little, in surprise as he didn’t see Nate fade away like he always, always did when Abraham looked right at him. Instead, Nate’s jaw settled into a grimly straight line. “You sh-sh-should let him take a sh, shower,” Nate said, quietly, taking a sip of his beer. “Please.”

There was a pause, and Danny felt his muscles all tensed so tight they might snap. Then Abraham shifted behind him, pushing himself up to sitting, and said, “Fine.”

Danny looked up at Nate, so fucking grateful he could choke on it. With a sigh, Abraham took his hands from Danny’s body and Danny scrambled away, nearly falling off the bed he moved so fast.

He wasn’t chained up - not today. The chain got in the way and besides, Danny had stopped trying to run away a long time ago.

"After his shower, he opens his presents, though,” Abraham said, smiling, reaching out one hand. Nate shifted into the bed automatically as Danny left it. He could see, as he moved, Nate tilting his head the way Abraham liked, looking at him from behind his shaggy, overgrown black hair.

But Nate’s eyes were cold, and clear, and cool.

They were entirely his own.

Danny stepped out into the living room, already feeling better just getting some distance, taking a deep breath of cool, clean air. He could hear them behind him, still speaking in low voices. Soft and sweet and loving with each other. Abraham cut Nate with love in his eyes, real love, the blade slipping through Nate’s skin as a kiss.

With Danny he was never so gentle.

What he told Ryan, later, was that it was his twenty-sixth birthday, and he'd walked out of the bedroom to take a shower.

When he got out into the living room, he’d stopped and stared up at the small stuffed white raven that perched on a tree branch Abraham had set against a wooden plaque and hung above the kitchen doorway. Abraham had brought it home one day when winter was just starting to turn to spring, done all the taxidermy himself, set in the little pink glass eyes.

A white raven is a good luck charm for something like me, Abraham had told Danny, very seriously, as he climbed up the ladder. Danny had watched him from his place sitting cross-legged on the floor, hands folded in his lap. They bring us god-favors if we kill them the right way. Do you know what this means, little Red?

N-No, Abraham, I’m sorry. I don’t know what that means.

It means my sister will come back to me one day, puppy. I only have to wait. That is the message the raven brings - I put the coins on her eyes, the ones we saved, and her debt will be paid. My sister will find me, when she wakes, and we’ll be a family again. Abraham’s eyes had shone, glimmered with real tears, and Danny recoiled from the sight. Ashley and I and my Nate, and the puppy. Abraham had looked at Danny over his shoulder, smiling. She’s going to love you, little Red.

The raven’s wings were out like it would take flight any moment, beak slightly open, and its head twisted so it looked right down at him.

Danny hated the fucking raven. It watched him while he slept, he was sure of it. He knew that meant he was probably losing his mind, but it didn’t matter. He still felt those little glass eyes follow him at night.

On his twenty-sixth birthday, he’d looked up at the raven - those pink eyes and white feathers - and felt with absolute certainty, not for the first time, that he would die in this cabin. He was just the dog in a heartwarming domestic story, the pet in Abraham Denner’s happily ever after.

What he didn't tell Ryan was that he swore, he swore, he wasn’t crazy he fucking heard it - the raven had said in a croaking avian voice, you will die the puppy, the scarred up slut, the whore, and no one will miss you when you are gone.

He didn't tell Ryan about the way he had felt something in him crack apart with three and a half years of shame and rage and he was so fucking dirty now.

All he said to his brother was that he looked at the raven, and he was just fucking done.

He threw his full beer bottle as hard as he could, watching the liquid and foam spray in an arc into the air, and hit the stupid fucking thing right in its stupid fucking face. There was a shatter of glass when the bottle fell and hit the ground, and a half-second later the plaque with the raven fell, too, slamming into the ground with a heavy thunk.

A wing snapped out, the head cracked, a little glass eye popped out and rolled across the floor until it bumped, just a little, into Danny’s big toe on his left foot. It stopped staring straight up at him. No one will miss you when you are gone.

Daniel stared, eyes wide, aware that he had just done something he could not escape punishment for. Fucking whore, the raven said, or maybe that was his own mind. Scarred up worthless body. You're nothing but what he made you, who would want you? Who could stand those scars but Abraham? Who would ever kiss them but Nate?

Look at you, look at your face, look at how little is left of you. Go back in there and do the only thing you're fucking good for now.

(that’s better, see, you were trying to hold back but you never hold those sounds back for long - god I love the blood on your face)

Later, he'd hear from Nate that he had screamed - he didn't remember, the static in his head was too loud, the beat of blood rushing through his veins drowned out everything but the raven's voice hissing he is pleased, he is pleased, what a perfect offering.

Abraham and Nate ran out of the bedroom to find Daniel bashing the plaque into the floor to destroy the raven further, white feathers strewn everywhere, the stuffing scattered across the floor.

"I'm not a fucking dog!"

Nate told him later that he was screaming the words, and crying. "I'm not a pet, I'm not a whore, I’m not the puppy, I'm a goddamn fucking person and I used to have a name!"

He didn't tell Ryan that part, either, about the crying.

Nate pulled him back and he was struggling and fighting to get away, not even aware any longer of where he was or who had grabbed him and all he felt was an arm gripping his wrist, and he didn’t want that, he didn’t want to be touched any longer he was so fucking tired of hands that never stopped touching him.

He spun around and punched Nate as hard as he could across the jaw, sending him stumbling back away from him.

It all crashed back in, all at once, and Danny gasped as he looked at the only person who was kind to him. He had hurt the only thing he had left, the only person who could love what he'd turned into - who kissed his scars and told him they didn't matter.

"I'm sorry," Daniel whispered, but it was too late. "I'm so sorry, Nate, I'm sorry, I didn't-"

"Shut. The. Fuck. Up.” Abraham’s voice was a growl, and his ice-blue eyes glowed so brightly they lit up the skin around them nearly white. Light lined the edges of his skin, but it was the way sun glints off ice, blinding and without warmth. “How dare you hurt him. How dare you, you piece of shit little dog. How dare you break the god-raven!”

Daniel slowly looked down to where the man who had ruined his life was kneeling next to the ruins of the stuffed bird, and felt all the blood inside of him freeze at the deep well of glacial rage in the icy eyes when they met his.

When the things moved underneath Abraham’s eyes, they were dark and the lake was deep, and the things inside of Abraham were angry.

Nate’s face had gone white, pale as snow, and he rubbed at the spot Daniel had punched. "Abraham, calm d-down, okay? He's just h-h-having a h-hard t-t-time-"

"Get the fucking muzzle," Abraham said in a very soft, quiet voice.

"Please no," Danny said, but it wasn't even really a voice, just air that wheezed out of him. “I-I’m sorry, Abraham, I’m so sorry, please no, don’t put it back on me, I w-won’t… I’m so sorry, I-I stopped trying but I can do better, I'll be good…” He couldn’t do it again. Not again, he couldn’t wear it again. He’d been so good for months and months, he hadn’t even seen it since the last time.

"Abraham, d-d-don't," Nate pleaded, and Daniel simply collapsed backwards onto the floor, not even feeling himself hit the hardwood, as his chest caved in with fear, breathing in gasps. "He's- we can d-do something e-e-else, he's j-just-"

"I said, get the goddamn muzzle. He hurt you and you're going to put it on him."

"I… no. I’m not." Nate swallowed, and stepped forward. “It didn’t h-hurt me, Abraham. He was just sc-scared. He’s just scared.” His voice was stronger, and Daniel, sitting on the floor, leaned slowly against his leg, still staring in terror at Abraham’s glowing white eyes. “He’s, he’s going to have b-bad days, we talked about this, everyone h-h-has bad d-days-”

“He’s a dog that doesn’t know its place,” Abraham said, deadly soft. In the dim light of the cabin his glowing eyes were mesmerizing and terrible. “I am going to teach the puppy his place, Nate, and you are going to help me do it.”

He had fucked up, he told Ryan later. He'd fucked up so badly and he deserved it, really, deserved to be punished for it (oh my god, no you didn’t, Daniel you have to stop talking about it like that, you didn't deserve to be punished for not wanting to be raped anymore) - but Nate hadn't thought so.

Something had started to change in Nate’s eyes on Daniel’s birthday, something… changed inside of him, but Danny hadn't known what it was, then. Only that when Nate spoke again, his eyes and his voice stayed strong.

"I can't." Nate shook his head, putting a hand on top of Daniel's hair, and Danny leaned hard against his leg, like he could hide behind him. Like a puppy trying to hide from a larger angrier dog. "I can't be the one who does that to him!"

"You can and you will." Abraham got back to his feet, glaring Nate down until the other man’s eyes dropped under the intensity of his anger. "Then he goes in the fucking cellar."

"What? No!” Nate’s eyes went wide, and Danny curled himself into a smaller ball, but he knew Nate couldn’t protect him. Not from Abraham. "You know he’s scared of the cellar! Bram, he just broke a stupid stuffed-"

“How dare you. That raven was a gift from our god, and he should fucking repent. He’s going in the cellar.”

All alone in the dark, all alone, the things in the dark, there are things in the dark

“Bram, wh-... what are you going to do to him?” Nate’s voice went weak, nearly a whisper, and Danny choked back at sob as his heart felt like it would beat right out of his chest. Nate could not protect him. No one could protect him.

No one is looking

No one will miss you

"Make him regret his poor goddamn choices, is what."

Nate wasn't stammering, not even a little. He didn't seem to notice, but Daniel noticed, and Abraham did, too. He stepped up as well, reaching down to grab Daniel by one arm, yanking him to his feet and away from Nate with a strength Danny - whose ribs stood out, whose hipbones were sharp enough that Abraham sometimes joked that they’d bruise him - couldn’t match.

"Abraham-" Nate put out a hand like he’d grab Danny back, until the look on Abraham's face stopped him cold. "Don't. Don't hurt him."

"Go. Get. The fucking. Muzzle."

"I said no."

“Here’s what I think of your goddamn no.” Abraham, looking right into Nate's narrowed green eyes, snapped Daniel's arm like it was a stick. He might have screamed again, he didn't know. He remembered curling over himself, but that was all.

A lot of this was gone, later, when he tried to remember it. It was like looking through a bunch of tiny circles and seeing only parts of memories.

They'd argued some more - and Nate had never argued so long for him, so angrily - but in the end he did what Abraham wanted, he always did, he finally fell into the cold blue eyes.

Danny begged.

He begged, and pleaded, and apologized, and promised to be so good, but none of it moved Abraham in the slightest, it only seemed to make him brighter. Abraham shone while he watched Danny cry for him, and beg not to wear it, and promise anything he could ever ask him to do, promise obedience and sweetness and whatever Abraham wanted - anything he wanted, just please don’t lock him up without a voice again.

Abraham glowed, and he only twisted Danny’s arm harder when he tried to pull away, until he fell to his knees from the pain. Until he sobbed hoarsely, listening to the sound of Nate rummaging through the bedroom closet until he found the muzzle in its special hand-carved black box, set with red velvet.

Sometime between seeing the metal and leather in Nate’s hands as he came out of the bedroom - sometime between that and when Nate, his green eyes blazing but his body moving without him, fitted it right back in place (sparks of pain as the little sharp bits cut hard into his skin, lines of red already bleeding before it even made it over his jaw and his nose) and pulled the strap tight behind his head and closed the little lock that hung off the back - Daniel felt his voice fade from crying to whispering to the welcome way everything began to fade away, distant and impersonal.

Until he found the spot inside his head where what was left of Daniel Michaelson could hide.

He didn't fight when Abraham pulled him along, even though it hurt his arm, or when he shoved him to get him to stay walking towards the kitchen and the door outside. He moved with shuffling feet and his head hanging down, whining in the back of his throat, but he barely felt the vibration and he didn’t even really hear the noise.

Nate had to tell him about the whining later, too.

It was okay, really, he told Ryan, the two of them curled up in the living room in the middle of the night. It felt like it was happening to someone else.

It's not okay, Ryan insisted, nearly vibrating with the urge to hug him, his own honeyed eyes glittering with tears, glinting in the dim light from the streetlight outside until they seemed to glow, too. None of it was okay, Danny!

The name still didn't feel like his, but Ryan refused to call him Red, and he’d been feeling better and it didn’t scare him so much to hear it today. So he just smiled at Ryan and shrugged. I'm sorry. It’s what happened.

This is horrible! Danny, what he did to you… over just breaking some stuffed animal he had some sick obsession with, I just. Fuck. Danny, I can’t… this is so fucking terrible.

Danny had thought that Ryan didn’t know the half of it, and he hoped he never would.

It wasn't, he said, soft and comforting. I promise it wasn't. It was… it was happening to someone else.

Someone else couldn't open his mouth any longer and struggled, in his panic and with a nose stuffed-up still from crying, to get enough air to breathe by hissing it in and out through his teeth.

Someone else was making low half-animal whining sounds in his throat as Abraham dragged him outside, Nate staring after them with that odd cold look in his eyes that Daniel had never seen before.

Someone else felt the heat sweltering outside, the crunch of dry grass in the yard. Someone else heard birds singing, caught one last glimpse of the trees and the clear blue sky.

Someone else watched with dull eyes as the cellar door was pulled open, the new one with no little bits of space between the wooden slats to let even the slightest bit of light in.

Someone else went down the creaking wooden stairs into the dark. Someone else smelled the cellar-smell, of overturned soil and stone, musty and wet all at once. Someone else was pushed so he fell onto his side.

Someone else could not scream when someone else landed on Danny’s broken arm, but that someone else tried so hard, pulling against the metal that held Danny’s jaw closed until the pain in his face shrieked inside of him nearly as loudly as the pain in his arm.

Until the dark things crept out from the shadows and into his head to claim him.

Someone else stared at the dog kennel in the corner, the ever-present threat since the second year that was never spoken of and he’d never been put in before, that Abraham opened and gestured to.

“Get in, puppy,” Abraham said. “Or I’ll put you in there.”

Someone else nodded and crawled in, curled into a ball, and watched the wire door - that looked so much like the muzzle on his face - close, watched Abraham lock it with a giant lock like the one on the smokehouse.

Someone else's nose and cheeks and jaw were already raw and bleeding and stinging by the next day, when Abraham came down the stairs with a glass of something and a straw. In his own testimony, Abraham would one day laugh while describing the way he’d come down and found Danny with his face pressed against the cage, trying to rub his muzzle against it, a rhythmic scraping that was the only sound in the cellar besides a constant, faded drip of water. Look you, naked and fucked up, just like your kind should be.

Abraham fed someone else some kind of smoothie thing through a straw that he stuck through the cage. Someone else leaned forward, and managed to get it through the grid over his face so he could close Danny’s lips around it, the liquid having to be sucked back through teeth that couldn’t open, cold down his throat, and he shivered even in the summer. Nate thinks you’ll starve down here, so I’m going to be nice enough to feed you.

Someone else stayed in the kennel for weeks. It was large enough that if someone else put Danny’s back against the grid at the back, he could stretch his legs all the way out, but he couldn’t lay down. He slept like that, slumped over sitting, until Abraham came back the next day to feed him again.

Abraham came down twice a day, to feed him through the cage and then drag him out to be punished and put him aching and bleeding and crying back again, but all that pain was done to someone else.

He couldn’t punish Danny any longer, because Danny was gone.

He lost some time when he was in the cellar, in the kennel, in the dark, all alone.

A lot of time.

What happened after that? Ryan asked in a way that made it clear he wasn't sure he wanted to know. His voice was low and shocked and angry. What did he do, after you were locked up down there in that… in that fucking dog cage?

Ask Nate when he gets up, Danny said, shaking his head.

Ryan didn't like that Nate slept here with him, in the same bed, but he couldn't sleep without him any longer. It was- it felt normal to have Nate there, and besides, Nate wanted to be there. And- they were free now, and Danny wanted to give Nate everything he wanted, for what he’d done. He wanted one day to be safe enough to say he loved him, and to see if maybe Nate could love him back.

I mean, I will, but… why do I have to ask him? It happened to you. You were the one in the cage for five months.

Someone else stayed in the cage for two months.

So what happened after you came out of the cage?

I don’t know… I don’t really remember much until I woke up smelling fire.

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ashintheairlikesnow · 5 years ago

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The Rescue, Part 3

I finally got the final part of the Rescue edited and ready to post! This is the third and final part of the series on how Danny and Nate got out of the cabin in Canada. Please read The Rescue, Part One and The Rescue, Part Two for context and to maybe have a refresh!

CW: STRONG dissociation (it’s a main theme of this piece and is vividly described), references to noncon and torture. Muzzling.

@whump-it, @finder-of-rings, @bleeding-demon-teeth, @spiffythespook, @burtlederp, @whumpywhumper, @18-toe-beans, @pumpkinthefangirl, @special-spicy-chicken, @whale-whumps, @swordkallya

The Rescue Part One || The Rescue Part Two

Nate Vandrum had a plan, but it took him most of a month after the day he was allowed to bring Danny back up from the dog kennel in the cellar to figure out where Bram hid the drugs.

Once he found them - in a small wooden box under a loose floorboard in the back of the bedroom closet, a place Nate and Danny never went because it was where Bram kept all his things that caused pain or worse - he began to pinch, just a little at a time, from each little bottle or bag.

Ketamine, ecstasy, rohypnol - this and that, the things Bram used sometimes when he wanted Danny to be fucked up and foggy for days, or affectionate and touchy, or just to knock him out. He didn’t use them any longer - Danny with the thing on his face day in and day out was obedient and blank-faced, an empty body that breathed and ate and moved in the bed, did as it was told and nothing more.

Danny was someone else, twenty-four hours a day, and Nate had waited too long trying to find the courage to save him but he wasn’t going to wait much longer. It was already becoming clearer every day that he was running out of time entirely before Danny was gone and didn’t come back.

By mid-November, the leaves had long since changed and fallen off the trees - the ground already hard and frozen - and he had all of it he would need. A mix of powder and crushed-up pills, every fucking drug Bram kept here. Not enough missing from any one stash that it would be obvious, but hopefully enough to buy Nate some time.

He has a plan. He would wait until mid-December, and he had one month to have everything ready.

He had his own hiding places, spots Bram didn’t know about because Nate had never had anything really worthwhile to hide. Danny never spoke any longer so he couldn’t tell on him - and Bram couldn’t see everything, could he?

Sometimes, Nate thought he could read minds. This time, Bram never showed a single sign that he knew Nate was up to anything at all.

After midnight, Nate would sneak out, put on a movie like in the days before. He moved Danny onto the couch where he would stare, blank-eyed, at a screen he didn't ever seem to really see. Sometimes he sat with him, rubbing at the places where the thing hurt the most, trying to calm the pain in his jaw for as long as he could.

Every time he touched along the edge of the muzzle, Danny would lean hard into the touch, using the pressure of Nate’s thumbs to soothe himself, all with those empty eyes, with all the core of Danny absent and only the body left behind. This Danny did not feel pain or fear unless he was actively being hurt. This Danny only sat where he was placed, cooked meals, made drinks - all of it with nothing behind his eyes.

With each passing week, that initial burst of rage on Danny's behalf cooled in Nate, set and hardened into a hatred that overrode every ounce of love Bram had forced him to feel.

What had been a forest fire became coal. What had been coal became a diamond

Bram could not see it.

Nate wanted Danny back, and watching him drift like a ghost doing whatever he was told had eaten away at him, day by day, until all that was left was the determination to get him the fuck out of here.

The mix of drugs, a handwritten note with all the directions he could remember Bram turning when he drive into town (left, straight for a long time - counted to 200 at least three times, turn right, more straight, turn left after counting to 75, left again after count to 50), a match here and there - Nate squirreled it all away, bit by bit, in the bookshelf behind his collection of leather bound Tolkein - a gift from Bram after one supply run, one of the most wonderful things the monster had ever given him. He didn’t dare to hollow anything out - he loved these books, that felt like sacrilege - but he slid little things here and there behind them, his black-handled knife with the silver stag engraving down into the loosening spine of the Silmarillion, and if he was careful, no one saw him but Danny.

Danny, still trapped in silence inside his own head, didn’t even seem to notice, not even when he was staring directly at him as he did it. He knelt on his mat, quiet and dazed, his eyes following Nate’s movements with a total absence of comprehension.

It was the eyes that drove Nate on, those empty fucking eyes. Bram never took the fucking thing off, and Danny - funny and sarcastic and kind of sweet Danny, who he'd taught four kinds of dance by now and who could do all the lines to Casablanca and who sometimes hummed music he remembered while he scrubbed the floors - never came back.

Even Red, nervous and eager-to-please and always trying harder, trying to be so good, didn’t come back. Watching a muzzled Danny move was like witnessing a walking corpse searching for a grave to fall into, simply waiting for permission to decay.

In October and November the leaves went bright and brilliant and then fell just as rapidly, the nights cooled and then shifted to icy winter, and Bram spent his days outside preparing for the snows that would all but shut them in here until spring. He knew something was different, he had to, but Nate smiled and stuttered said I love you and was everything he wanted in bed and did everything just right to hide the chorus of I'm going to save him, you fucking bastard that sang inside his head.

Nate took his chances when he had them, and he was careful. He asked for a book he remembered, and Bram brought it back to him and never even looked through it.

Which was good, since it was a book with a very detailed description on how to hotwire a car.

Although in the end he didn't expect to need that, Nate wanted a backup plan. You always had to have a backup plan. Bram had said it all the time -and Nate had learned every lesson either Bram or Ashley had to teach.

He knew how to steal, and kill, and bury the bodies, and he knew how to be a fucking monster, too, now.

Once he had everything, he waited until Abraham needed to use some old machinery and came back from a supply run with an extra four full canisters of gasoline more than he usually kept on-hand for trips to town.

He only needed one to fill the tank for the truck, just to get them to the nearest town with a police station.

The other three…

Well.

Nate settled in to wait. He was the perfect black-haired prince, Abraham Denner’s true love. He was everything Bram could ever have wanted him to be. And while he was all of those things, he watched the actual man he loved kneel, empty and broken, on the floor and eat scraps from Bram’s hands... and he planned a murder.

***

“I came back awake when he was ready to go,” Danny told Ryan, one night when he couldn't sleep. They were sitting at the kitchen table - Ryan had asked him to sit in a chair - and Danny let his fingertips trace a pattern in the woodgrain, little squiggly symbols that could have meant anything, or nothing, or everything.

Nate was still asleep, and part of Danny wanted to curl up on the floor and be there with him, maybe ask to earn the bed so he could sleep right next to Nate, but he didn't have to do that anymore - and when he asked to earn the bed, the sadness in Nate’s eyes hurt to see.

I'll sleep on the couch, Nate said almost every night, and every night Danny said, no, stay with me.

Nate stayed.

“What do you mean?” Ryan tilted his head, watching him with the soft honey eyes Danny had never forgotten, never stopped dreaming about. Here, and real now, and Danny always smiled a little bit every morning when he got to see Ryan again.

“When Nate got me into the truck, he took, uh, he took it off,” Danny said, rubbing at the bridge of his nose absently, soothing a phantom pain there. “He took it off my face. The first thing I remember is turning to look and he was throwing it into the cabin and the cabin was on fire.”

“On fire? The cabin was on fire when you woke up?” Ryan's eyes were wide.

“Yes. Before that, I was, um… I was gone, still.”

Someone else had been in the body for months. It wasn’t Danny - it was some distant thing that moved his limbs and ate the food it was given, but it wasn’t Danny in there. It wasn’t Danny in control the night that Nate set a fire.

No, someone else had knelt like a good dog with its head in Abraham’s lap, took scraps of food straight from his fingers with the muzzle off just long enough for dinner - not quite long enough for Danny to try and come back. Someone else had taken the constant movement of cold hands with grateful whines and whimpers for the affection.

Someone else stayed kneeling, not noticing its feet going steadily numb, as the two voices that made up its entire world chatted and talked. There were sounds, in the bedroom, while someone else sat on the mat and thought about nothing at all.

Then there was, for a while, silence.

Someone else heard the sounds of scraping and rustling and thumping and ignored them. Sounds meant nothing to dead bodies and that's all it was, now. A dead body that still, inexplicably, kept breathing and eating and hurting on command.

This other person, wearing Danny’s face behind the muzzle, stayed still as one of the others walked back and forth, pulling things from bookshelves and talking to himself. Someone else was very, very good and had been told to go to the mat, and so someone else stayed there.

Someone else tried very, very hard, and was very, very good and did not notice the heavy scrape of a sleeping body dragged outside, the thunk of the cellar doors pulled open. The time that passed as someone else sat alone in the cabin.

Danny Michaelson was far, far away, letting the other person live uncomplainingly without a voice while within himself, he never stopped screaming.

Someone else registered, as though through a distant fog, a voice that told them it was almost time to go. That someone else stared dumbly down at their ankle as hands unlocked the chain that tied the body to the wall - the body was chained again, because otherwise someone else would get up and walk around sometimes at night and it bothered Abraham to see it - and someone else thought, I will be ordered into the bed now.

That person raised hands to touch the hips of the one who would hurt them, only to have their hands gently pushed down and away, cupped their face around the muzzle, pressed it just a little at the jaw where it felt so good, it felt so soothing, and someone else closed their eyes and whined, deep in their throat.

"H-Hate that sound. We'll g-g-g-get the last b-bit off later," A deep voice said.

Someone else knew the voice, and moved towards its sound instinctively. The deep voice came with soothing touch, gentle words, no pain. Someone else wanted more of that voice. "We n-n-n-need help to g, to get the ankle cuff off. Th-the cops will help, I'm s-sure. Good th-th-thing it's been raining all month so the forest w-w-won't burn, too.”

Someone else did not care about the forest, but only about the hands attached to the soft voice, the good voice, the voice that did not hurt. The warm forehead that pressed lightly to its own. The thing that wore Danny’s face tried to put their hands up to the metal grid still locked in place and stopped, an inch away. Never touch the fucking muzzle, Red.

Someone else made a pleading sound, someone else begged without words in an animal's whine, take it off, I'll be good now, please take it off.

"Ssshhhhh, once we get out of there," The good deep voice said, and it didn't stammer at all. "The k-key to the lock on the b-b-back is in his truck. I've g-got you now, just trust me, okay?" The voice wasn't afraid, and it seemed like a good voice. It was his favorite voice.

Someone else relaxed.

It trusted the voice.

***

“I don't understand what any of that means,” Ryan frowned, putting his hands up over his face, as Danny tried to talk his way through it. “You were there, the someone else was you. Why do you keep saying it like that?”

He only shook his head. “Dr. Rosa calls it dissociation,” he said. “It's normal. She says it's normal, that- that I'm not… I'm not broken because of it, and it could take a long time to stop-”

“It's okay,” Ryan said, and reached out to grab his hand. Danny's skin still crawled at any touch he hadn't asked for, but he didn’t pull away. It seemed to make Ryan feel better, anyway. It made Danny feel disgusting, like a thing anyone could touch whenever they wanted. You can make my body do whatever you want. “You're okay. I'm sorry, I pushed when I didn't mean to. Keep talking. I want to know everything.”

Danny nodded, slowly, and took a deep breath.

***

Someone else had taken the offered hand and stood, walked with a slow, stumbling gait through the kitchen and out the door. Someone else shivered in the frigid air, until the owner of the voice slid a heavy woolen coat over their shoulders, clad only in a thin, torn-up T-shirt and even thinner pajama pants.

“S-Sorry, I forgot to g-grab a sweater, and it’s k-k-kind too late, now.”

Someone else wrinkled their nose at the smell of gasoline, overpowering and heavy, that filled the air and floated around, settled deep in their lungs. Someone else was led to Abraham's truck and put inside. Someone else listened to sounds they did not recognize. Someone else smelled the smoke.

Red hair, already long and shaggy because it was winter and Abraham liked his hair better long in winter, fell over empty blue eyes as someone else curled up against the early shivers that came with the frigid cold, pulled the wool coat more tightly around themselves, buried their body in it as best they could.

Someone else heard the driver side door open and close.

Green eyes met theirs, and someone else blinked, and for one moment Danny looked up at Nate and the strange, stricken expression on his face. Eyes wide, and his hair was mussed-up and messy, and he was wearing his sweater inside-out. He smelled like gasoline, too. Then Danny tried to speak, and felt the harsh bite of the muzzle cutting deeply into his jaw, and Danny slipped back away.

Someone else thought, puppies aren’t allowed in the truck. Puppies don’t go to town.

"I d-d-did it," Nate said softly, his voice shaking.

Did what?

Someone else had been dimly aware of a hand sliding around behind their head, the click of the key in the lock and the thump as the little lock dropped onto the floorboards.

Danny’s heart jumped at the sound of the lock falling. Someone else felt less, as Danny felt more.

Warm, loving hands were undoing the buckle that was always too tight. He felt the sudden lift of the pressure and pain that had become all he ever felt anymore, winced at the sting of fresh air against skin, the trickle of fresh blood as removing the muzzle pulled wounds back open that had been trying like hell to heal around it.

He watched - Danny watched - as Nate got back out of the truck, holding the muzzle by the straps in his good hand, his jaw set in a grim line.

The cabin was on fire.

Flames licked orange somewhere inside the living room, and Danny could see straight through the kitchen door to where the fire was racing along the lines of gasoline that had been splashed around. Smoke poured upwards into the sky, the opposite of the rainstorms Danny had been locked out in so many times. The big doors to the cellar were flung open, and Danny looked carefully away from the darkness there and back at the brightly shifting, dancing light that lit the clearing with a sickly glow.

He watched Nate walk with purpose close enough that he must feel the heat trying to push him back and throw the metal and leather muzzle as hard as he could through the open kitchen door, where it thumped to the ground and then skidded along to a spot where the flames lit the inside of the cabin so brightly Danny’s eyes couldn’t bear to look.

The muzzle was gone.

Danny went away again. He didn’t know for how long. He came back to someone shaking him. He heard Nate’s voice, low and worried, soft against his ear. He was whispering, "Pl-please, please, I wasn’t too late, I w-w-wasn’t, please, please come b-back to me, D-Danny, please…”

He remembered shaking his head, still far away, because it had hurt to come back, he didn't want to any longer. His jaw throbbed, his nose ached, there were spots across his body that lit up with new pains when Danny stepped back up to feel them. Then Nate's hand slid up around his jaw, cool fingers over the cuts that burned hot, and Nate's mouth was on his, and Danny… felt.

Warm, and soft and desperate, tasting lightly of the whiskey they’d been drinking, he and Abraham. Danny opened his mouth for Nate, because that was what you did - but it wasn't like before, this was different, and he closed his eyes, hesitantly kissing back.

"Oh th-th-thank Christ. W-Wake up," Nate begged, in a voice ragged and hoarse and half-gone from breathing in the smoke. "Pl-please, please wake up, there h-has to be something l-left of you to s-s-save, Red, please, please t-t-tell me I wasn’t too late, pl-please..."

"W-we're not allowed in the truck without Abraham," Danny said hoarsely, his disused voice like gravel in a sore throat. Freed from the metal grid, his skin ached. Burned and bled in the cold air. "You'll get in trouble."

Nate laughed, a half-crazed sound of relief, and turned with wide, white-rimmed green eyes to start up the truck. "F-fuck trouble, Danny. I got you out, I did it, we did it."

"You're not allowed to touch the keys," Danny said, almost plaintively, but it was sinking in, and his eyes were starting to widen. "Wh-where's Abraham? He's, Nate- he's going to be so mad when he finds us in the truck-"

"He w-w-won't care about th-that now," Nate said, voice firm and steady. "He d-d-doesn't give a shit about anything right now, Red. I hope he fucking chokes on his g-g-goddamn lying t-t-tongue.”

Nate shifted gears, and the truck roared to life as they jerked forwards and began to move down the gravel-lined dirt tracks through the woods.

“I'm getting us the f-f-fuck out of h, here."

***

“Where was Abraham? What happened?” Ryan had let go of his hand but Danny still felt the touch like spiderlegs and he pulled his hand back to himself, looking down at the tracks of scars along his veins, swallowing against the panic that threatened around the edges of his mind when people touched him.

“Nate gave him ketamine,” Danny said, and felt himself starting, slowly, to smile at the thought. “And some, um, some other stuff. “Got him too high to move and chained him to a bar Abraham had in the ceiling for-... for me, and left him to, um… to die.”

“Chained him…?”

“Handcuff Year.” Ryan winced, the memory of that conversation its own special torture. That first Christmas, Nate staring with an awful, resigned look of familiarity at the leather and metal cuffs in the box Danny had opened. “Nate found them and he… he tied Abraham up in the cellar with them to die.”

“But he didn't die. He's, he's on trial.”

“No, he didn’t. He was still… still alive when they found him, not even burned. Just smoke inhalation.”

Ryan whistled. “Lucky son of a bitch.”

“Blessed,” Danny corrected nervously, and watched Ryan's answering blank stare with a spike of guilt for not being better already. “His, um, he served a, a god, he said. We were blessed he loved us.”

“He was a fucking lunatic if he told you that bullshit. He didn't love you.”

“No.” Danny frowned down at the table. “You're right. Not me. He loved Nate.” And Nate had loved him back, right up until he didn't any longer.

Right up until he had to choose between them.

***

Danny and Nate drove away in the truck, and Danny saw the woods around him for the first time in months.

Had they always been so pretty? All the leaves were gone by now, bare branches everywhere reaching fingerlike towards them across the dirt path to the real road. There had been snow, but it had mostly melted with some sunny days while someone else sat outside in the thin, weak sunlight soaking up whatever it had to give, muzzled face tilted up to catch the warmth.

"Do you, um, know where we're going?" He asked, and hissed as his face hurt, his jaw too long held shut to keep speaking so easily again. His voice still sounded so weird, like he wasn’t meant to have one, and he barely managed to speak above a whisper.

"No," Nate said, and shrugged. "Other than we t-turn left and then there are s-s-signs. We'll find c-cops when we get to town."

He drove with one hand and reached the other out. Danny took it, and it was something solid, and real, something that anchored him to this side of his head and not the side that just went away.

Behind them, the cabin burned, a pretty orange glow against the pitch-black night sky.

When they made it to the road, Nate sat for a second, letting the truck's engine rumble as he and Danny looked at real, honest to God pavement.

Danny hadn't seen a road in four years.

"Red."

He turned, and Nate was looking at him, intensity in his face. Danny shrank away from it - expressions like that never boded well. "What?"

"N-No one's g-g-going to do th-that to you eh, ever again. Ever. Again. G-Got it?"

Danny nodded, slowly, but he wasn't sure he believed it yet. Not until Nate smiled, slow and a little shy, the way he used to smile before Abraham brought them here, and kissed one of the scars on the back of his hand.

"H-Here we go," Nate said, and turned the truck onto the road, the two of them driving away from the burning cabin to find a town, a police station, and hope.

***

“So by the time we got to town and the cops went back, everything burned down, but they found Abraham in the cellar, still alive. They found, uh, a lot of the… the things he used on us, too. They found the… for my face.” Danny shuddered, a little, phantom aches breaking out like a line of fire along the scars. “The leather burned a little but the metal part…”

“You don't have to talk about that. What about the bird?”

Danny blinked at Ryan's question.

“The bird?”

“The, the raven thing up on the wall. That you threw the beer bottle at. What happened to it? Did it burn?”

“No. Yes. Maybe.” Danny's heart skipped, just thinking of its pink eyes and empty dead glare, the way it seemed like it was always staring at him from its perch above the doorframe. “Nate said it wasn't in the house. The cops s-said they never found any sign of it, either.”

Sometimes he was sure he'd look out his window and see it staring back in at him, with that look in its eyes, waiting for him to go somewhere - anywhere - alone. Which was why Danny never did. He stayed with Ryan, or Nate, and he never, ever was alone.

On the worst Red days, Danny tried to come up with a plan for what he would do if Abraham came for him - even though Nate and Ryan told him nobody walks out of a maximum security prison.

It didn’t really matter.

Abraham would come back for him, eventually, and even if Danny didn’t want to think about it, Red knew.

Danny kept a notebook in the closet, and he wrote down everything he could think of, and he tried to make a plan for just in case, because he had been someone else for nearly half a year and he never, ever wanted to be someone else again.

When he was scared, at night, he curled into a ball next to Nate in the bed and he closed his eyes and dreamed about the rumble of the truck, Nate’s warm hand grasped so tightly onto his - the softness and ferocity in the kiss that brought him back to life…

And he dreamed of a cabin on fire.

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ashintheairlikesnow · 5 years ago

Text

Ash/Athena AU: Enter Corrine

Strap yourselves in, motherfuckers, because @whump-tr0pes and are about to take you on a rollercoaster... that’s right, the storm is here!

CW: Dehumanization, threats of torture, referenced past noncon/torture

Very little rattled Corrine Michaelson.

She was feeling more than a little rattled now, and she did not like that feeling. She very badly wanted someone to punish for it.

She twisted her ring around one finger, large blocky gold with the slightly raised M at the top, with a twist of vines around it, and settled back into the soft cushions of the section couch in her eldest son’s formal living room.

“What do you mean, they’re gone?”

She looked up at the three men arrayed before her - Nate Vandrum, who stood largely relaxed with his hands clasped behind his back, and two of the Michaelson’s armed guards.

Nate stared back at her with his jaw set, with the unreadable green eyes that softened only for Daniel. Corrine had little use for mortal humans beyond their usefulness to her, but she would have given Nate a job even if Daniel had not been the one he rescued. When a man spends six months planning and then burns a house full of people alive to get vengeance for someone … a smart Syndicate sees the potential in having that sort of careful, analytical violence properly directed.

Directed at the protection of her son, and of hunting down those who had sullied the Michaelson family and insulted them by using him against his will, Nate Vandrum was an employee she very nearly liked.

In this moment, she liked him less.

“J-Just what I said, ma’am,” Nate said quietly. “We let our g-g-guard down, and th-they left without approval. Without w-w-warning. They left their th-things behind and we were unable to catch up to them in time. We think they must have h-h-had some warning.”

Corrine could not read people like her son and husband could, but she saw the way a muscle twitched in Vandrum’s cheek, and she wondered.

Nate seemed aware of her scrutiny, as he shifted just slightly and straightened his spine. “They even l-l-left one of their oh, own behind.”

“Did they now?” Corrine blinked, surprised. That was at least something, although she couldn’t imagine whatever poor sap they’d left behind could be of any use. Well, there wasn’t a living, breathing, bleeding mortal on Earth who couldn’t be of at least a temporary use to Corrine Michaelson, but…

Her fingernails, painted a deep beige-pink to pop against her dark brown skin, began to tap lightly on the fabric of the couch.

“Yes. His name is Isaac Moore.” Nate paused - it was barely a moment, but Corrine caught it. “We don’t know what purpose he serves to the group itself - but they don’t appear to have hesitated to leave him. He’s st-still out with D-Danny, in the woods. I’ve c-confirmed with our men that Isaac Moore and Danny are ac-accounted for. But the r-r-rest of them are gone.”

Corrine frowned. She had come here expecting to find the little ragtag band of heroes still kept in place, effectively held like zoo animals waiting for her to decide their exhibits.

She could sell them back to the Stormbecks one by one - she’d heard the family was desperate to get their hands on them. The man who had once run their Syndicate was blissfully dead now, and honestly Corrine had been looking forward to meeting the one she’d heard was responsible for murdering him. He had insulted her deeply, once, a long time ago.

Corrine did not leave grudges behind. She did not forgive or forget. She held every slight, every insult, every attempt to overthrow her carefully close, and waited. In this, perhaps she had waited too long.

She hadn’t exactly decided to sell them, yet - but had considered it, and Danny’s house would no longer do. Her eldest son had a reputation, since his return from his unfortunate waylaying by those anti-syndicate mercenaries, for being… weak.

Unwilling to take the harsh steps necessary to maintain control. Unable to even really be part of running the Syndicate at all. He’d holed up here in an old summer home and Corrine had begun to understand that her eldest son - adopted, as a child, to shield her youngest from too much scrutiny - could not be trusted to keep them if they wanted to go.

She was surprised to discover they had gone without Danny even knowing.

“You will question everyone who has worked this house the entire length of their visit,” Corrine said, her voice brusque and sharp.

Nate Vandrum nodded, once, as did the men on either side of him.

“Nate, I need your absolute focus on this,” Corrine said quietly, steepling her fingers together. “I want you to find them. I cannot have them escape my territory without my knowledge, I cannot. I will not be shown to be weak.”

“Yes, ma’am. I take full r-r-responsibility for the f-failure to maintain their security h-here-”

“Yes.” Corrine frowned at Daniel’s bodyguard and partner. He looked right back at her, with no discernable expression at all. She wished, briefly, she had her husband’s ability to understand people, to know the wants and needs of humans at their basest depths. “You will take responsibility. This is your fault and your failure.”

“Yes, ma’am.” His voice did not change. Even and strong, the constant presence at Daniel’s back. The shadow of her son, stronger than her son could ever be now. Corrine felt a flicker of something like affection, deep within a heart that rarely felt it for anyone she wasn’t married to or the mother of.

“You say my son at least is accounted for? Along with this… Isaac person?” Corrine sighed, rubbing at her temples with one hand. “Does he have any useful intel? Have you discerned his potential usefulness to the Michaelson group?”

Nate paused again. His expression did not change, but there was a calculation there, a consideration. Corrine looked up at him. He is trying to decide how much to tell me, she thought. But Nate was loyal to Daniel in ways that ran deeper than the blood she might otherwise have made him shed for her. He would never have hidden a single thing that could bring Danny risk or harm, and she knew it.

She couldn’t read people like her husband and son could, but you didn’t have to. Nate wore his loyalty, his devotion, like visible armor. As long as Daniel was in this world to protect and to shield, Nate could not be harmed by knife or bullet or a mother’s hunger for someone to blame.

And for all her coldness, Corrine would not have taken him from Daniel - she could never even have begun to make herself try. Daniel had suffered, for the choice Corrine had made in bringing him into their home. He had suffered for years as a stand-in for every choice the anti-Syndicate fools hated the Michaelsons for.

Daniel had come home, to his parents and to his brother. Corrine could indulge him in allowing him the love he had found in the darkness.

“I don’t believe h-he knows m-m-much, ma’am,” Nate said carefully. “He s-seems to be a sort of… fighter, for th-the group. He has a lot of physical c-c-capability in combat but I wouldn’t s-s-say he’s.. overburdened with knowledge.” His eyes slowly raised, looking at something behind her. “Not knowledge w-we can use, anyway.”

“Damn. Can I kill him?”

Nate blinked and his eyes jerked back down. “Ma’am? Are you… asking?”

“Yes. I don’t want to, if there’s a good reason not to, but I dislike that his little friends left without my permission or my say-so. I dislike that they abandoned one of their own, and I immensely dislike the idea of feeding, clothing, and housing a useless scrap of flesh.” Corrine tilted her head to the side, crossing one leg over the other in the tight-fitting deep red suit she wore, her hair pulled into a tight bun at the nape of her neck. She looked like power, and she knew it.

Patrick was the nominal head of the Michaelson Group, but Corrine was the bite behind his charming smile - and everyone knew it. A precious lucky few even knew why.

“I have a deep need to fuck someone up, Vandrum, and it might as well be the runt they left behind.”

“I w-w-wouldn’t, ma’am,” Nate said, and swallowed. She watched his Adam’s apple bob with unusual nervousness. He seemed… pale, and when she thought about it, she could hear the way his heartbeat had sped up.

“And why not?”

“Because… ah, b-because…”

Behind her, she heard the back door from the kitchen open, the sound of her son’s soft, half-breathless laughter. Another male voice laughing with him.

“Do you, um, do you… do you want to see if anyone wants, um, lunch?” Daniel’s voice sounded lighter - stronger - than it had since he’d come home. Corrine’s eyebrows raised nearly to her hairline.

She… couldn’t remember the last time she had heard Daniel laugh like that, speak like that, to anyone but Nate Vandrum. And then only rarely.

“I… yeah, sure, let’s do it, but first - come here,” The second voice replied, with the same shy flirtation. There was a pause, and then the two men laughed again.

Corrine looked back at Nate, who gave her a slight, uncertain smile. “D-D-Danny likes him,” Nate said softly.

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