Moscow, 1980

Sergievsky household

"Thank you," Anatoly sighed, accepting a warm ceramic mug from his wife. She smiled just as blandly back at him, nodding; she sat beside him on the couch and sipped at an identical mug of tea with no pretense of anything but the usual, mutual consensus of this is what we have settled for.

It was easy to forget, with Freddie and his firecracker romance, that he and Svetlana weren't the most terrible couple that had ever lived. In fact, they worked almost well together, like some well-oiled machine; it had been nearly twenty years now –

(When was their anniversary, again? Natalia would know)

– and, he had to admit, Svetlana probably knew him better than anyone he had ever met. Even including – well.

He didn't think of him, anymore.

He tried not to, anyway.

It was no use thinking of things, people, he couldn't have. He'd spent his whole life chasing the impossible and now he'd finally been dragged, forcibly, back to reality. He wanted to believe that it was a good thing. Now, he could be the husband and father he had always imagined he could be, if he weren't so damn distractible.

He also couldn't play chess, or make long distance calls, or leave the house at all without feeling as though he was being followed. It was possible (probable) that he was just paranoid, but it was much more probable that there was at least one agent on his case, now, after the ruckus he'd created.

If he could just worm his way back onto the circuit, perhaps he would be able to stop thinking about it. Chess could be the solution now, instead of the problem.

But, no – no. That was ridiculous, he could never expect to be given a place in the Russian circuit again, or anywhere at all.

He wasn't going anywhere.

To the Soviets, chess was nearly sacred, and Anatoly was the ultimate sinner. Born and bred to be the champion, and he'd left the regime in a blaze of glory – to go to America, of all places.

Traitor.

He thought briefly of his youngest brother and smiled wryly despite himself around the rim of his mug, barely even tasting his tea.

His brother Alexei, the fanatic, and Anatoly, the lecherous traitor. He may as well throw Arik into the mix. Arik, the drunk. The failure. The outcast. The black sheep.

At the very least he could comfort himself with the fact that he wasn't Arik.

Morbidly amused, he let his eyes slide from the screen. The news was never any good, mostly propaganda and as he'd heard enough of it to last him several lifetimes the television stayed on mute when he was in the living room. Svetlana was no more interested than he – but then, suddenly, out of the corner of his eye –

"Freddie," he gasped, choking off at the end as the mug slipped from his grasp and cracked against the floor, dark tea seeping into the rug.

He hardly cared about that, about anything but the man on the screen. It was only his back and those weren't his clothes, that wasn't even his haircut – but –

No, God.

No. No. His eyes fixated on Molokov's hand, blurry on the figure's shoulder. No, God- Fuck.

That could only be Freddie.

Freddie.

"Christ – Anatoly!" Svetlana was already out of her seat, watching incredulously as he fell to his knees before the television and fumbled with the volume, listening to the drone of the reporter, spewing "uplifting news" about officers returning home, of the hard work the government was doing to keep its citizens safe.

Garbage. Lies. No one is really safe here – least of all him.

(Least of all Freddie.)

"Who is that? Is that him?" Like a drowning man, he pointed frantically at the screen, gaping up at her as though she had any clue what he was talking about, or who Freddie was at all. "Is that him?!"

"What are you raving about?" She frowned and stepped back, went to grab a rag from beside the sink, some cleaner from beneath it. She shooed him so that she could kneel down and spray the stain before it set, wisps of blonde falling in her face as she worked. "Be quiet. You are going to wake the children."

"He said he was going to let him go." He slammed his fists on the floor on either side of him, staring helplessly as Freddie's back disappeared into a building he knew so very well.

Rarely did Anatoly want to cry and scream and wail like he did now – even on the flight home, he had at least had the comfort of knowing that he had made the right choice – that Freddie was safe and alive somewhere in the world, if not with him.

"You are going to have to explain yourself in a little more depth, thank you." Svetlana is nothing if not open with him, glancing up tersely from her scrubbing. On the stairs, he heard the shushes and tiny footsteps and couldn't find the energy to tell either of them to go back to their beds.

Let Svetlana do it – they don't listen to you, anyways.

"He can't – he would never have agreed." Dumbfounded, he's still staring at the screen at the commercial break, a droning housecleaning advertisement flying right over his head. "He wouldn't."

"Who are we talking about?"

Sighing, she finally threw her cloth down and straightened up in annoyance, giving him her full attention. He wasn't willing to give her his – but Svetlana, whom he'd always suspected would have made a great chess player with the proper training, had a way of snapping him back into the moment when he traveled off like this.

She grabbed him by the collar and yanked him right back up and onto the couch, hair tangled around her, nose wrinkled irritably. "You will explain the mess you've just made for me to clean up."

"Freddie." His voice failed him altogether.

All he could see was Freddie, Freddie in Moscow, Freddie who'd actually kept to his godforsaken word for once – kept his misguided promise from a month ago (thirty four days, actually, if they were counting) (Anatoly was) (not on purpose) and come here like the idiot he was, just waltzed on into Russia on Molokov's coattails and expected things to be okay.

If Freddie had managed to get his visa, after all, then Molokov must have had something to do with it.

Anatoly clutched at his stomach, face gone flushed red to bone white all in an instant.

Molokov wasn't inclined to dole out favors for free.

"I have to go see him."

Svetlana narrowed her eyes, her grip tightening near-painfully on his shoulders. Her wedding ring, which somehow still existed on her finger after the past two years, the past twenty, dug through the fabric and would surely leave a perfect crescent mark in his skin for later, if he remembered to look for it.

"You are not going anywhere until you answer me," she warned, pale blue eyes searching his like they were archives. He was afraid that she might actually find something if she looked long enough.

Because he hadn't ever explained to her what had happened in Merano, or in Bangkok, or anything in between.

She had made her assumptions and he had let her and that had been the end of it, because it had to be, because "the Vassy woman" was a convenient explanation, because they never talked about the women he slept with, because he'd never even told her that he was attracted to men in the first place or about his brother, or about Molokov, even, because everything was just going to have to be fine, and because Anatoly had no other option.

His other option, though – his preferred option – was here, in Moscow, so close by he was shocked that he hadn't felt him like an aneurysm upon arrival.

"I- do not have an answer you want to hear." Swallowing, he managed to rasp it out, eyes darting back to the screen as though it would provide her the answers for him. The next story was playing, and it was probably meant to be inspirational, but it was driving Anatoly mad. "Turn that off."

"Now you want it off?" She shook her head, purely exasperated, and released him long enough to stride over and bend down, switching the television off entirely. There was the distinct patter of little feet again as she approached the stairs – she paused and narrowed her eyes up them, warning.

"Natalia, do not let your sister leave her bed again. I am not joking."

"Yes, mother," he heard her murmur, an angel's voice. He didn't believe her for a moment, but then, they were his children – and he expected no less from them.

"Anatoly –" she began, but he shook his head, exhaling a shaky breath.

"I do not want to talk about it. I have to go – I have – business to attend to."

"You have no business anymore." Crossing her arms, she blocked his path to the door, to the stairs, effectively just with the icy way she stared at him. "Do not take me for a fool, you know better. What has gotten into you?"

There was a pleading note in her voice, as there always seemed to be – to let her know him, to try again. Svetlana had not given up as easily as he had the moment he had taught Freddie to speak the words and heard them murmured, clumsy and foreign, back at him.

Still, there was a certain nostalgia with Svetlana – it was pesky but constant and he couldn't shake it. It was not hard to lie to her when he knew that she knew the truth. It was much more difficult to keep those whole two years a secret than it should have been.

He had thought that his days under Soviet supervision would have made him an excellent liar, and if not, the chess would have done the job. But all the chess had done was ruin his life.

And Freddie's as well.

Freddie. Shit.

"Svetlana, I do not have time to explain – I will explain when I find him." He strode around her, ignoring the hand that shot out to catch his arm, and took his coat from the hook. She watched in something akin to disbelief.

"And I am just supposed to accept that?"

"Sveta – please."

She hardened her gaze, swiftly marching around and extending her arms to block his exit. He teetered back on his heels, uncertain how to go about getting around her now, chewing at his lip.

"… He is important." He finally sighed, resigning himself to explanation – if he had his way, it would be brief.

"Who is Freddie?" She says his name like an unpleasant taste in her mouth, wrinkling her nose at the harsh, foreign syllables. "That American? Your second?"

Of course, she wouldn't have watched the news.

She hadn't wanted to know anything about his life without her. She'd only wanted him to come home.

"Yes, my – second." He coughed, wringing his hands anxiously and glancing up at the clock. How long could he wait? How long had Freddie been here? If Molokov had never let him go, then he'd been in his custody for over a month already…

"What is so important about him?" From the look on her face she knows that she's not going to like the answer, but then, with Anatoly that was nearly always the case. She should know that by now.

(She does, but she's worked so hard to get him back here – and he knows that, and he'll have time to feel bad for it later when his bones aren't vibrating with the horrifying sight of Molokov's hand resting on Freddie's back like he owned him.)

"You are not leaving until you answer me."

"He is important to me. Sveta, please," he says again, a desperate note ringing in the air between them. It's quiet for a long moment, and her eyes flit to his wedding ring, eyebrows pulling together. Piecing it together, as she always did.

"I do not understand." She doesn't want to. She meets his eyes again, hesitant now, as though wondering if asking is in her best interest. She has never been able to stop him from straying before and, honestly, she had given up on the whole idea of a monogamous marriage a long time ago; but Anatoly couldn't leave her now, with the children and the government looking over their shoulder.

Anatoly wants to explode. He wants to scream, and go back home, back to New York. He doesn't know when that became his home but now that it was, he could never think of Russia as his home again, only his default.

He would rather be in Siberia than here – anywhere, anywhere, anywhere else.

"I love him," he tells her, loudly, and the silence is deafening.

"He – is a man." She's not naïve. It's not as though she'd never guessed, not as though she couldn't have guessed – but she hadn't wanted to know, and even now she doesn't want to know, especially now. She'd just gotten him back here. Practically dragged him. "Anatoly. You have a family here."

"I love him," he repeats, but his voice wavers. He's afraid to cry in front of her – somehow he's always avoided it, even in the dark after a day of practice, of Molokov's fingers around his throat, of the other obscene things that had happened to him over the years – all in the name of chess, of course. "I have to go to him. I – will bring him back here, and – then we can –"

"I will not let you bring that man into this house, Anatoly."

"I was not asking permission."

"The children will ask questions. The Soviets will come for him."

"I will not let them harm the children. Tell them what you want, Sveta, I have to go – I have to make sure he is not hurt." He knows that he's going to be hurt, of course – he hadn't looked too great the last time he'd saw him, and that was more than a month to go. His stomach clenches again in gruesome panic. "I will be back."

He slips into his jacket and is out the door before she can tell him no.

Svetlana stares pink-cheeked and empty out the window as the car backs from the driveway and onto the street.

Who is she trying to fool?

Anatoly has never been hers to keep.

Moscow, 1980

Lubyanka Building; Molokov's office

Red did not at all suit Freddie Trumper.

It was a good thing, then, that Freddie Trumper didn't exist anymore.

"Comrade Trumper," Molokov purred, striding to the desk at the far end of the room and turning on his heel to face him, hands clasped behind his back. "I have another assignment for you."

Nodding, Freddie stared blankly back at him. His back was straight, his eyes focused but empty, pale blue and bloodshot. The image of the screaming boy was still imprinted on his retinas, but he had no words to voice it – nor was he probably allowed.

He could safely say that, now, his only goal was to stay out of trouble.

And, of course, to serve mother Russia.

But that was hardly something he needed to think about.

Smiling at his response, the other man nodded to the door. Freddie didn't turn to face the men he heard padding up behind him, not even when one placed a heavy hand on his shoulder – he knew, by now, whose hand that was.

"Your comrades Petrovich and Christov will be helping to acquaint you to the city. I expect glowing reports."

If you fuck this up it's back to the chair. Be a good boy. Do you understand?

He can be a good boy, he can be. Freddie understood very well what he meant, and tried not to sweat too much as he nodded again, allowing Petrovich to pull him toward the door. The gun is a comforting weight inside of his suit jacket, although he had barely a clue of how to use it. There's still blood caked beneath his fingernails…

"You will return before six this evening. After this you will be expected to be able to navigate on your own." With an amused look, Molokov gestured out the window and addressed the other two, more experienced agents. "It is a beautiful day, comrades. Do take advantage… I will be here when you return."

Petrovich smirked, his thin lips curling so that he could hardly see them. His hand tightened possessively around Freddie's shoulder, jerking him toward the door. Christoff eyed him with sharp, eager eyes – it seemed that all of the people in this building were eager to see him broken, or to do it themselves.

He couldn't blame them, though, because it wasn't his place.

Unquestionably, he'd endure whatever these two had planned for him today. Nothing could be worse than the chair. The cell. He shuddered. Nothing.

So he followed them out through the lobby and into the cold sunlight, and did not think of anything but the low hum of Russian, the street signs and shopfronts, the culture of his new home.

If this was what it took to make his life worth living, then he would let them take as much advantage as they liked.

It occurs to him, belatedly, that he can't read Russian any better than he can speak it – worse, in fact, because Molokov had never made him scratch his clumsy pleas into the dirt. The street signs, the advertisements, are all alien to him – everything is alien to him.

Comrade Petrovich's hand doesn't leave his shoulder the entire time it takes them to leave the building and walk a good distance, apparently aimlessly. He converses, laughs, with the other man as though they're old friends, and Freddie remembers Molokov and doesn't feel left out at all.

This is his home. This is his life. He'd chosen this life.

Comrade Molokov had chosen him.

He wishes that he could take notes, except that Comrade Molokov would probably prefer them in Russian, and try as he might he could make no sense of the characters staring back at him from every building, every sign, and every taxi cab. Even so, everything – from the crisp fabric on his shoulders to the chill of every gust against his bare face – feels holy to him while he's here.

I'm home.

He's calm. He's ready. He will not let Comrade Molokov down. He's been so good since he got here, he's made so much progress.

He can do this.

They seem to be travelling nowhere, but Freddie is careful not to think of it that way. Instead he admires that his comrades seem to know exactly where they're going; he admires the way the foreign words flow from their tongues as they sit down and order at the bar and tell Freddie to find somewhere to be, something to do.

The bar is full of strangers who look at him and do not know who he is or who he used to be. (He doesn't know who he was, either; they have something in common, at least.) But Russians are friendly, even more so than Comrade Molokov had lead him to believe; they offer him drinks, which he cannot politely refuse and nurses nervously for one hour or two, maybe, however long it takes before Petrovich returns to yank him out of his chair, murmuring gruff and sweet, "Come, comrade, for the rest of your training."

He nods, face gone pale. "Of course," he agrees (of course he agrees) shakily, and follows as he's lead to the door.

The other patrons pay no mind to him, wary of men in suits. This is Moscow and they are far from unaware.

They lead him out into the autumn chill again. People on the sidewalks give them a wide berth. Freddie blinks uncomprehendingly at a group of children that barrel past, laughing and shouting.

He knows he was a child once, but he can't remember…

But it was pointless to remember back then, when he'd been useless and filthy. Comrade Molokov wouldn't want him to remember that – then he might slip back into his old habits, and he'd be a liability. Freddie wants to be an asset. Freddie wants to be in Russia – he wants to work for Molokov, do exactly as he says, and know that this is exactly where he's meant to be.

This is where he's useful.

The alley that he stumbles into is not any warmer nor any more inviting – it's dim and the brick is stained with something dark. The ground looks damp. There is a Dumpster nearby giving off a foul smell, which he pointedly does not wrinkle his nose at. He felt his heartbeat thrum and focused on that instead, and on Comrade Petrovich's large fingers as they closed around his biceps – he's shoved up against the wall, biting his tongue to prevent a pathetic noise from escaping.

He shouldn't do that. They would want to hear, probably – he unfastens his teeth and lets out a whimper in compensation.

"Ahh – where – where are we now?"

He's supposed to be learning the lay of the land but he hasn't a clue how to even read the street names, let alone pronounce them. Let alone navigate them. Comrade Molokov would punish him if he came back with nothing at all.

"Oh, it does not matter. I will find you a map." Comrade Christov is the only man in view – he shrugs casually, smiling. His canines seem slightly too sharp. If Freddie hadn't been so thoroughly trained to think of him (and all of them) as friend and not foe, he would be right on edge. As it is he just swallows, nodding, his cheek scraping the brick.

Comrade Petrovich yanks his belt loose and his pants down his thighs, to his knees. "Spread your legs," he commands, low and menacing – as if he needed to be. Freddie did exactly as he said, hardly noticing that he was trembling. It wasn't his place to question.

There was a cold, smooth object – a rod? A glass bottle? – pressed between his legs and he clenched himself shut instinctively, rising on his tiptoes. It shoved insistently inside, just a fraction of an inch. Freddie's head spun. The two men behind him were laughing at something. He gritted his teeth and shut his eyes and didn't ask, didn't ask why.

He must have done something to deserve this.

He'd take it even if he hadn't.

Moscow, 1980

Somewhere downtown

Navigating the busy streets of Moscow at this time of year – the bite just coming into the air, the women still hanging their laundry out to dry strung between buildings – was agonizing. Even more so than driving in the city normally was. Anatoly made it halfway to Lubyanka Square before abandoning his car on the side of the road, fumbling with his seatbelt and stumbling out onto the sidewalk like a drunk.

Freddie's blurred image on the television screen was all he could see. He had to remind himself that it wasn't polite to shove, that he couldn't just plow through the clumps of friends and lovers on the sidewalk, chattering about their day.

It was going to be dark soon. He had to find him, before it was.

Before Molokov did anything else to him.

Looking anxiously to the building towering in the distance, he sped up and nearly missed the characteristic sound of Freddie's yelp from a slip of an alley between a bar and a dry cleaning business.

"You like that, do you, comrade?"

That voice was familiar, too. Anatoly stopped and stepped back, peering into the dimness in growing trepidation. Two large men in blue Soviet jackets crowded another, scrawnier man against the wall and –

"Yes," the smaller man gasped, and didn't at all sound like he meant it. His voice shuddered and cracked, tortured. "Yes, I – I like that."

"I think that you should thank me for it," the larger of the men taunted, his hand moving, a gleaming object disappearing from Anatoly's line of vision. The smallest man's breath hitched in a near-sob. "Go on."

"Th-ank you," he moaned in return. From where Anatoly stood it looked as though his legs would buckle any moment, but he still couldn't quite see why. His body was too-skinny, his voice too raw, but he couldn't mistake it.

He couldn't help it. He abandoned his good judgment, just like he had the car, on a whim, as he stepped into the alley and stood straight and tall, curling his lip.

(If he wasn't intimidating, it wasn't his fault.)

"What the hell are you doing?" His shout echoed off the brick, bouncing back and forth and side to side until it died at the opposite end. The less bulky assailant twisted back to look at him and elbowed his crony.

"Let him go!" He took another step forward, prepared to shove them aside, although he doubted that he could actually overpower either of them. In the time since he'd been sentenced back home he'd grown gaunt and inactive, preferring to stay in bed than go outside where he would be followed and watched.

The larger man turned to face him and he caught a glimpse of the bottle in his fist before he looked up and realized that he'd been right – Freddie's head was twisted to the side, his eyes squeezed shut in pain. His hair was buzzed nearly to his scalp.

Freddie.

"Get away from him!" He heard himself shouting but he couldn't remember authorizing the words, already balling his hands into fists as he advanced on them.

He doubts that he actually looks all that menacing, but Freddie looks frightened. The man jerks the bottle from between his legs casually, holding it up in a shrug, leaving him gasping and choking in pain. His eyes are dark, unreadable.

What are you going to do, hm?

"Tolya. Long time no see."

"Don't call me that," he snaps, stepping around him. Freddie stiffens when he lies a hand on his back. "Wouldn't your master like to know you've overstepped your boundaries?"

"I have no boundaries." Petrovich's eyes gleamed, smug; Anatoly did his best to keep his legs straight and still.

He does remember this man, but he doesn't care to.

"Whatever your orders were, I doubt this was included." He glanced down at Freddie's exposed thighs, flushed and speckled with something that Anatoly very much doesn't want to think about. He strokes his thumb reassuringly against the nape of Freddie's neck, glaring at his captors.

"Leave. I am not letting you take him back."

For a moment he thinks that Petrovich will simply wrap his enormous hands around his neck and crush the threat out of his vocal chords; but he's backing away already, beckoned by his comrade whose name Anatoly can't put his finger on.

He sneers past him, at Freddie. Apparently, Anatoly isn't really worth his time. (He tries to be relieved rather than offended.) "You remember your orders, Trumper."

"Of c-ourse," Freddie says, nodding, strangled and anxious. "I will be back by – by six. Tell Comrade Molokov that I will be back–"

"Sure." Snorting, he turned away. The two of them disappeared onto the far street, leaving Anatoly and their captive to the silent chill of the narrow alley.

Comrade Molokov. Anatoly doesn't know that he likes hearing those words from Freddie's mouth. He clamps down on the growing knot in his stomach, smiling tensely as he turns back to Freddie. "Are you alright? God, Freddie, I've missed you."

Freddie doesn't look as though he's missed him at all. He's pale and edgy, his limbs shaking – he doesn't move to roll off of the wall or even pull his pants up. "I don't know my way back. I was – supposed to be learning the street names – God damn it." The last bit comes out in a breathy, desperate sort of noise, his eyes falling shut, forehead falling back against the brick.

Anatoly hesitantly reached down to help him, tugging a belt loop upward. Freddie did nothing more than wince. "You do not have to go back, now."

He was waiting for some sort of elation. He was waiting for Freddie to tackle him, tell him how much of a bastard Molokov was. Freddie cowered silently.

"I will not turn you in. I have strings that I can pull – I will get Walter on the phone. I am sure he has been looking for you–" He's getting desperate. This wasn't how this was supposed to go. Freddie trembles as he opens his mouth.

"I need to get back. Comrade Molokov says that I have to be back by six, or he's going to – to…" His voice fails, his face gone absolutely ashen. Anatoly stares in dim recognition of something he's seen countless times, coming and going from Lubyanka Square.

There's a couple of ways to test it, but he doesn't think he wants to know…

(He has to know.)

"Freddie," he says slowly. Freddie doesn't so much as look up. He's got his back to the wall now, leaning on it heavily, as though trying to get as far from him as possible without running away. "Freddie – you know who I am."

"You're Anatoly Sergievsky." The way he says it is awkward. Foreign. Anatoly feels a chasm open somewhere between his lungs.

"Freddie. It is me. You love me." He reaches for his hand and is almost surprised that Freddie lets him take it, with the frightened way he's eying him. Suspicious, almost. Dim. "I love you. I have not seen you in – in months."

He searches his face for some recognition, of facts he already knows – Freddie's eyebrows twitch nervously.

After a long pause, Freddie finally clears his throat, reluctantly speaking. "My name is Comrade Trumper. Frederick." He coughs, turning his head to the alley's mouth longingly. "I really have to be getting back, I don't know what time it is."

"It's quarter to four."

This isn't Freddie. Where is Freddie. Anatoly was struggling not to panic now, squeezing his hand, pressing closer. His other hand cupped his jaw and Freddie barely seemed to breathe. "Freddie. No one is making you go back there."

"Comrade Molokov will be disappointed." The anxiety creeps into his voice again, stifling. He sounds as though he can't breathe, either. "I have to follow my o-orders."

"Since when do you take orders from Soviets?"

"I have to follow my orders."

"Freddie…" They were going to report him – worse, report him to Molokov. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. No time to waste, then. He was certain he could snap Freddie out of it, but he couldn't do it here. "I'll bring you back."

"Please." Freddie's eyes widened – they were bloodshot and he looked exhausted. What have they been doing to you? "Please, thank you – I have to be back by six."

"You've mentioned." The smile is going to fall right off of his face and crack in two on the dirty pavement. He extends a hand. "Come on. I've got a car."

Freddie relaxes, gives a gusty sigh of relief and places his hand readily in Anatoly's.

"Okay."

The car ride is expectedly awkward.

Anatoly is thrumming, his heart stopping with every bump in the road. Their car is old; he's rarely ventured into the city since his return. The winter was coming fast and it was time to start planning their move back into their apartment, back to the city, where at least the government would keep them warm.

Personally, Anatoly wouldn't mind living in the dacha for the rest of his life. Svetlana, however, had made it abundantly clear that she didn't share the sentiment.

Freddie is silent, which is unnerving in itself. He's never known Freddie to allow silence for more than a few short moments, except occasionally in bed if his lips were otherwise occupied. This Freddie doesn't look like he knows what a bed is. He doesn't cross his legs or bounce his foot like Freddie; he doesn't tap his fingers or play with the rearview mirror like he always had in New York, didn't make sarcastic comments on passerby. He didn't say a word – he sat there, still and silent, staring at his hands in his lap.

Anatoly wondered if it was more awkward because they were strangers, or because he was essentially kidnapping him.

"We're nearly there," he tells him with another strained smile, and Freddie dips his head like he's used to it.

"Thank you," he says again. Anatoly jerks his gaze back to the road, the chasm in his chest tearing wider.

This isn't Freddie. Not his Freddie, not even Florence's Freddie.

What did Molokov do with him?

"How have you been?" It sounds as absurd as he'd thought it might. They've left the city boundaries and crossed onto the dirt roads outside of it, a long stretch of highway. Commuters zoomed past them in both directions, eager to get home, anxious to get to work on time. His knuckles were white around the wheel. "I must confess, it's been boring without you."

In the mirror Freddie blinked at him, uncomprehending. "…I'm sorry?"

He plowed on, trying to maintain his cheerful façade. "My wife was not pleased to hear that you were here – I was not either, actually." He sounds hysterical. He needs to get a handle on himself. "What, ah, are you doing in Russia, Freddie?"

He doesn't want an answer. He definitely doesn't want an answer.

"Russia is my home," he says with a touch of pride, so well-rehearsed that he flushes with the way he's been waiting to say it. The car swerves a little; they're lucky that Anatoly doesn't crash it into the nearest pole.

His voice is stretched so thin and scratchy it might as well be made of paper. Sandpaper. "No, no, actually, I do not think it is," he says with something resembling a laugh. He thinks he might have gone right off the deep end with him, just seeing him like this. He also thinks that he'd like to kill Molokov with his bare hands for what he's done to both of them.

"Russia was my home, Freddie. Never yours. Now both of our homes are in America."

Frail as he is, Freddie's face hardens immediately. "I'm never going back there," he spits, as though it's the vilest thing he could have suggested. He focuses his glare out the window, lip curled – he almost looks like Freddie again, bizarrely.

Anatoly wants to touch his hair. It's so short, choppy – whoever had done it hadn't taken very much care with the razor.

The car slowed as they approached the house and Anatoly eased on the pedal, shifting gears. Freddie blinked as they stopped and looked up, alarmed and shaky again. "What – this isn't the place, this isn't where I have to be!"

"I will take you there," he repeats, smiling tightly. He has to buy them some time. He hopes that Svetlana will change her mind upon seeing this living, breathing, pathetic, broken man.

Then again, the last two might only apply in Anatoly's head. He still remembered Freddie as he was – the memory was slipping in the face of reality. Meek, obedient reality…

He can't just let Molokov get away with this. It had to be illegal. Somehow.

(He really doesn't think he can count on that.)

"Come on, come in," he beckons as he slides out of the driver's seat. The soles of his feet tingle with the knowledge that he's not safe, not even here. He's certain there's at least one government man around, just watching as he's been paid to do. Keep surveillance on the traitor, Anatoly Sergievsky. He fights a scowl – he doesn't want to make Freddie any more skittish.

He got out slowly, cautiously looking around as though he expected to be ambushed any moment. "Comrade Molokov said to be back by six…"

"I will have you back by six," Anatoly promised. He smiled again and extended a hand. Freddie was hesitant to take it this time but he did. His hands were unusually cold.

"Come inside. I am sure Svetlana will have dinner started."

Upstairs in their attic bedroom, the curtains shift as two little girls peek down at the two men in the driveway curiously.

Emilia turns to her sister. "Who is that man? I haven't seen him before." Her sister gives her a long look, old enough to be suspicious of any strange man in her yard.

"He's a government man. Look at his uniform." She points, narrowing her eyes at the characteristic blue jacket. "He looks like a soldier…"

"Don't point!" Her sister smacks her finger down. "That's rude."

"They can't see us!"

"Well… Maybe we should tell mother?" Emilia chews her lip, endlessly nosy. She doesn't really want to have to tear her eyes away but the man will be downstairs in just a moment anyway, and then she can get a closer look. "I hope he stays for dinner."

For once, her older sister agrees with her. "Okay. We should dress up. We never have guests."

But Emilia is already flouncing down the stairs in excitement, blonde bouncing around her head. With a frown at her dresser drawers, Natalia reluctantly trailed behind her.

Their father's key is already in the lock – downstairs, the smell of cooking beef is twice as pungent. Emilia's stomach growls; she wanders into the kitchen where Svetlana is setting the table, neat and precise as always. She turns and frowns at the sight of her daughter peeking in. "Emilia, dinner is not ready – you know I do not like you playing with the silverware before it is time to eat."

"Daddy brought a friend home," she quipped, and slipped around her mother to hop up into her chair. Svetlana turned to purse her lips in disapproval, the words filtering through to her slowly.

"A friend." Anatoly doesn't have friends. "What kind of friend?"

"Svetlana!" Anatoly's voice shatters the homey quiet – she turns slowly and watches as he pulls a thin, twitchy-looking man inside behind him before shutting the door. "I have brought a guest for dinner, I hope you have made enough for five."

It travelled unspoken between them, a single frigid line of thought that clashed between them as they met each other's eyes.

How dare you.

How dare I?

Anatoly was stubborn, but he couldn't possibly be this stupid. She furiously turned away and began slicing the loaf of rye on the counter. "There is plenty to go around." She managed to remember her English, although she was unable to smile. The girls exchanged a nervous glance, their eyes fluttering about the stranger still standing in the doorway, wringing his hands. He was staring at the clock doubtfully.

"I have to be back by six," he says, and Svetlana gets the feeling this isn't the first time he's said it.

Anatoly tightens his grip on his wrist, practically dragging him into the kitchen.

"Of course, I will have you back by six." It's quarter to five. "Sit down, take off your shoes – where are your sneakers?"

"Comrade Molokov gave me this uniform." Freddie sounds proud of himself; Svetlana slams the knife down, sweeping the crumbs on the counter into her palm and walking them to the garbage bin. "If I follow my orders, he's giving me my own office."

Anatoly's smile turns painful, like if he parts his teeth for even a moment they'll crumble out of his mouth. Emilia pats the seat beside her, beaming. "Hi!"

Blinking owlishly, Freddie found himself pressed down into the seat beside the bouncing girl, completely at a loss. "… Hello." Molokov had taught him how to obey orders, but not how to interact with children – or civilians at all, actually. Not that he had been any better before – not that he can even remember a 'before'.

"My name is Emilia." She said it proudly in English, leaning into her father's hand as he stroked her hair, almost proud. Her lessons were paying off. "Are you a soldier?"

"Ah – no." He didn't think he was. He frowns, unsure now. She's unperturbed.

"Do you work in the city? I like your suit." She reached over the table to touch his jacket and Svetlana looked murderously over his head at her husband. Anatoly pretended that he couldn't feel her eyes like chips of ice embedded in his throat. "What's your name?"

For a moment he looked almost confused, and cleared his throat. "Comrade Trumper."

"I told you he was a government man," her sister said fervently, in Russian. She still clung to the door, too nervous to approach the strange man sitting at the table. He smelled like beer, but he didn't appear drunk like her uncle did when they saw him on Rozhdestvom or on May Day, visiting their grandparent's home. Svetlana shooed her.

"Go to your room," she said firmly, glancing to Emilia without much hope. "I will call you when dinner is on the table."

"Why doesn't she have to come?" She frowns, staring at her sister with a quiet sort of petulance. Natalia is ever understated. Svetlana shook her head and leaned down to kiss her forehead, patting her cheek.

"Go on. I will try to send her up." She doesn't promise anything, smiling weakly. Behind her Anatoly is fiddling with the coffee pot, asking loudly, "How many sugars would you like, Freddie?"

"I'm not allowed to have coffee," Freddie sighs, leaning his head into his hands. All that Anatoly can think is that he must be tired; he persists, sitting in a free chair and placing a hand over his, ignoring the way he stiffens. How long has it been since somebody touched you like this?

"Well, you are allowed here. How many sugars would you like?" He counts them mentally, watching his lips and waiting for them to form the familiar shapes. Ten sugars, four creams. ("It's divisible.") ("How do you figure?") ("By two and a half, dumbass.")

Freddie grimaces. The coffeepot growls.

"I don't think I'm allowed." As though Molokov has to authorize his every move. Everything he eats, drinks, touches. His lungs fill with fire for a brief moment; he could douse that man in gasoline and yell until he combusted, and they were safe, and Freddie was Freddie again. Freddie. "I don't like it, anyway."

"Anatoly, I would very much like to speak with you in private." Svetlana stands with her arms crossed in the doorway, her eyes burning with the same brand of fire. He looks up at her slowly, refusing to feel the guilt she was projecting.

"Later." He tries to brush her off, absurdly, as though she'd really allow it. Freddie is oblivious, looking hilariously awkward as Emilia continues to tug at his jacket, talking his ear off. She's slipped into Russian; Freddie doesn't seem to care.

"Not later."

"After dinner."

"Now."

Freddie watches anxiously as he pushes himself from the table, reluctant and reminiscent of a kicked dog. The clock reads 5:05.

"I have to be back by six," he calls, rubbing his clammy palms on the front of his pants. Anatoly waves a hand, nonchalant. The hand on the clock twitches another centimeter.

Emilia tugs his jacket again. "Is that blood?"

"What were you thinking?" The words burst from her in an explosive whisper the moment they're alone. Anatoly winces and brings a finger to his lips, knowing as he does it that it will only make things worse. It does.

"That man is not staying in my house!" She's upset. He hates when she's upset. Things were going so well.

But he can't regret it. He won't.

Freddie.

"It is not for forever. I can call Walter – I'm sure he's been looking. He's a public figure, Sveta." It's a weak argument, made weaker still by the last admission. If Freddie was a public figure, then he was valuable; Walter wasn't the only one bound to be looking for him now. "Just for the week."

"I will not have you putting my family in danger. Haven't you caused enough damage here? Let him go, Anatoly." Her cheeks are flushed, her long nails dug into the meat of her palms.

"I won't let them have him–"

"He does not even want to be here! Let him go back to wherever he wants to go, he is not my problem. Nor yours." He feels the heat rising in his spinal cord snap tautly, unstable, and narrows his eyes.

"You're being heartless," he spits under his breath. He waves a hand toward the man in the kitchen who is not Freddie. "I am not going to just hand him over to the Soviets."

"But you could! Spare us the visit – if you have lead those men into my house again, I swear. Anatoly." She blinks hard enough that he almost feels badly.

Don't cry. We're a family.

They were a family.

"The children still have not forgotten the last time you left us," she says lowly. He comes hesitantly forward, wanting to comfort her, wanting comfort himself. Why was everything always broken, here? With her. With him.

Maybe he's the problem.

He shakes the idea from his head. "I will call Arik," he murmurs as his arms encircle her waist, not without a touch of desperation. "He will take him – and I will make some calls."

"You know they've tapped the phones," she whispers. Together like this, they're both frightened in unison and Anatoly remembers a time that he loved his wife, those few and far between moments.

"I will find a payphone. It is not impossible." Optimism. It never failed. (It always failed.) He smiles, presses their foreheads together. "I only have to get him out of the country, and then things will return to normal."

Her features contort – even tearful and strained, she was strangely beautiful. He hates his father for arranging this disaster of a marriage. (He hates his father for a lot of reasons.) "No… no." Her hands came up between them; he stepped away, as though she had actually pushed him. "Do not do this to our family."

Her voice is quiet, but her words are loud.

"Svetlana–" Her hair is long and silky blonde and he can still feel it brushing his knuckles. She stares at him, hard and silent, and his voice fails him; he glances back into the kitchen. Freddie is still conspicuously absent.

She's right, of course. Always right about him. Everyone is right about him.

But nobody has ever been right about Freddie.

"I love him," he says, again; she stares at him, biting her lip in sad resignation, and the heat rushes out like tears through the cracks in his ribcage.

Arik, Svetlana, Natalia, Emilia. Freddie.

"He can stay for dinner." She touches his shoulder and he leans into the contact like an old man, his hands clutched to his heart as if that will keep it from falling out. After a moment she takes it away, leaving him to grieve.

The clock reads 5:15.

Moscow, 1980

Lubyanka Square

The clock reads 6:24.

Freddie doesn't so much as tap his foot.

"I have to be back by six," he says again, as though that will make turn the clocks back. He's nearly doubled over with anxiety; his forehead rests on the dash.

They're strangers in a car and all Anatoly can do is agonize over it; even as he pulls to a stop across the street from the ominous building, (yellow, like happiness inverted) he can't stop stealing glances at the body that Freddie used to inhabit.

He must be in there, somewhere.

The nice thing about this Freddie, he supposes, is that he doesn't sprint from the car the moment he shifts it into park. He does, however, sit up and stare anxiously at him – waiting for permission, presumably. Anatoly twists in his seat, catching his eye.

"Don't you know me?" He doesn't care, he doesn't care how it sounds. Svetlana can't be right. No one is right about Freddie Trumper. "Freddie. Look at me."

Desperate is becoming a permanent state for him.

Freddie looks at him. His eyes are empty, pinprick pupils in washed-out irises. Weren't they blue? They look more gray than anything, now, against the pale of his face. "Your name is Anatoly Sergievsky."

"You know me." The chasm – he hadn't forgotten about it, impossible – widens. Desperate, desperate… "Look at me."

He would have to let him go, again. Eventually.

Not yet.

Freddie just stares back in vague alarm, guilty. "I'm looking." It's not even sarcastic. Anatoly feels the nausea creeping into his gut; he suspects that his dinner hasn't even begun digesting.

"Look at me." Don't cry. He's not even sure he has the tears to spare. Here he is, Freddie Trumper, right in front of him as he'd wished for months – here he is, and he's not Freddie Trumper at all. "You know me, Freddie."

There is a short, dark figure leant against the wall that he refuses to think about.

Don't look.

"That's not my name." He can tell that he's growing restless, and almost welcomes it – his face has twisted in some redundant effort to recall things that have evidently been gouged from his memory. Freddie. It's stupid of him, so goddamn stupid. He can't afford to get his hopes up.

He can't afford to give Freddie up, either, but here he is. There has to be another way…

I'll call Arik.

He grimaces. He really is desperate.

The figure steps off of the wall and strides toward them from across the street. With every step his features grow clearer; Freddie glances away just for a moment and it catches his gaze like a thorn, pupils thickening.

The clock, fixed on the building far above them, reads 6:28.

"I have to be back by six," he says again, but it's faint. The only hint of fear is in the way his legs curl against the seat, the tremble in his fingers. He looks so frail – Anatoly wonders how he hadn't been blown away, earlier.

"Please look at me," but it's futile. Molokov's eyes glitter in the orange light as the streetlamps flicker on. Nearby there is a train screeching to a halt, probably boarding. People will be retreating to their homes, settling in with their families. Just where they want to be.

(Still others will be shipped to Siberia, later when it's quiet and dark and nobody will have any illusions as to where it's headed.)

(Anatoly has a feeling he'll be joining them soon enough.)

"Freddie. Don't look at him. Don't–" but Molokov's presence has overridden his, and Freddie is reaching for the handle, his eyes fixed on his face.

Molokov opens the door for him, peering inside. "Comrade. You are late." His eyes slide over his shoulders and creep like tentacles around Anatoly's neck. He stares back, eyes cold, chest burning. "Anatoly Sergievsky! What a wonderful surprise."

They'd told him, of course they had. Bastards.

"It has been a long time," he continues with a saccharine smile. Freddie swallows, begins to slide out of the car, and Molokov steps aside to let him. He claps a hand on his shoulder, possessive – I own this. "I see that you have met my newest trainee."

"Don't touch him."

"Now, now." He squeezes his shoulder smugly, and Freddie leans into it. Anatoly wants to burn his eyes from his skull – he can't take them away from the point of contact. The blurry image on the television had been nothing in comparison. "Don't be cross. He is my property."

"You said that you would let him go," he hisses, his fingers like vices around the wheel. The leather creaks under the pressure. Why trust a politician?

He's not even sure what Molokov is – sometimes a diplomat, and other times… this. Whatever this was. Freddie was strangely relaxed, eyes darting about, bright again. His tongue darts to wet his lips nervously.

"Would you not believe that he wanted to stay?" His grin widens; they're on the same level, he and Molokov.

You shouldn't have trusted me, and

I'm sorry I did.

It wasn't as though he'd had another option.

"How much do I have to pay you? I'll write a check." The government paid both of their bills. Anatoly stared him down, hoping he's been clear. You are not allowed to have him. Molokov tastes the words on the air, breathes them in with a smile, as though his pathetic attempt at negotiation is refreshing to him. "Take me instead."

"Oh, believe me. There are eyes on you already." He laughs shortly. "I think you had better come with me, for the time being. We can continue this conversation upstairs."

Upstairs. Anatoly glances back at the building, to the clock and then downward at the statue of Iron Felix that stood proudly on a pedestal overlooking the third story. He grows exponentially more anxious the longer he stares at it.

He doesn't like to think about the possibility that Molokov has earned himself a promotion with Freddie's capture, but it's there and it's real, and it's going to drive him insane.

He doesn't like to think of Molokov at all, if he can help it.

He can't just abandon Freddie here, though. Not with Molokov's paws all over him. Freddie. He gritted his teeth. "Why not continue it out here?" With witnesses.

Molokov could get away with shooting him in the forehead in the soundproofed safety of his office, but he sure as hell couldn't get away with it on a busy street.

"You do not trust me?" The other man clutched his chest, feigning hurt. Anatoly's eyes latched onto the faint outline of his gun on the inside of his jacket. It's dark to contrast with the one Freddie wears, but he's seen that bulge too many times to count. He feels a growl building in his throat, protective and suicidal. "I am hurt. Come – it will only be a few minutes. I would not keep Svetlana waiting."

There's an edge beneath his dulcet tones, steel. This is not a choice. Anatoly scowls, twisting his key from the ignition. The car goes silent and all he can hear is Freddie's measured breaths and his own heartbeat which he's sure would put a helicopter's blades to shame. It chopped at his ribcage, mangled it.

Freddie, Freddie, Freddie.

"You know nothing about me. Or my wife," he mutters, but he's out of the car, following behind them as they duck through the slowing flow of traffic.

Since they'd taken an interest in him, twenty years ago and then some, he'd known the way from the front doors to Molokov's office by heart. The knot in his gut throbbed with the irony of the pristine beauty of the pale green walls he'd familiarized himself with as a teenager.

As far as Molokov was concerned, Anatoly's life had always been his business.

Freddie wasn't so familiar, but he trotted after Molokov like the most obedient dog – again, Anatoly wondered if Walter would even recognize him if he did find him. There must be some reason Molokov had gone to all of the trouble to bring him here, do this to him…

Whatever it was, he was as good as dead if Anatoly ever got his hands on a gun.

"Why don't you tell our Comrade here how much you like it here in Russia, hmm, Trumper?" Molokov smiled, sharp and sinister. Anatoly wondered, if he touched his face, if the putrid wax paper façade would peel off and melt between his fingers. Freddie nodded, eager to agree with him.

"I'm happy here," he told him, glancing back at Anatoly so sincerely that it's almost painful. He turns away; for the first time in years he doesn't want to see Freddie's expression while he talks. He doesn't want to see him at all. He feels sick. "Comrade Molokov has given me a second chance–"

"A chance to work for the Soviets. Yes, Freddie, I'm sure that's exactly what you wanted." He's not sure the American catches his sarcasm, but Molokov does, visibly fighting a laugh. Ha. Ha. Funny.

"If you would just step into my office," he hears him say, although his lips are still twitching with amusement. Anatoly glares. He follows in Freddie's tracks.

Molokov shuts the door behind them quietly – the click of it is audible in the silence, though, enough to make his heart jump against his ribcage again painfully. Freddie stands eagerly in front of his desk, twisted back to look for further instruction.

"What do you want, Alexander?" He watches the veiled hardening of Molokov's expression at the deliberate informality with a grim sort of satisfaction. Maybe I am suicidal. It certainly wouldn't be the worst thing that could happen, at this point. He'd rather kill himself than let Molokov take away everything else. Even Freddie.

Freddie swallows, seeming to shrink as Molokov approaches him. He's taller than him, but somehow it doesn't seem like it right now. "You are late," he tells him, allowing disappointment to color his tone. Freddie goes pale. Paler. "I am certain I told you to be back by six."

"I – I know." Anatoly is scandalized, his knuckles cracking as he tightens his fists. If he punched Molokov now, in the back of the head, they might even get down the first flight of stairs before the alarm was sounded. He takes a step forward and is met with a gun to his head.

"Step back, Anatoly." The pretend warmth had leeched from his voice in the space of a moment; Anatoly raises his hands in a wary gesture of surrender, gritting his teeth as he did as he was told. "I do not want to have to shoot you. It would look very bad if our retired champion were to disappear."

"Fuck yourself," he snaps, and then wonders if Freddie's spirit had simply been transplanted into him. His cheeks flush belatedly, but it's too late to recall the words; Molokov looks smug again, stowing the gun back into his jacket.

"Oh, but I do not have to." His eyes flicker lecherously to Freddie, backed against his desk.

The implication is horrendous. Anatoly shakes his head before he's even finished the thought, refusing to believe it, refusing to see the uncomfortable way that Freddie has been shifting all night long – no. "You're vile."

"What do you say, comrade, shall we give him a demonstration?" He doesn't wait for Freddie's input – he already has him by the belt loops, turning him and bending him obscenely over the desk. "Go on."

I like it here, Freddie had said.

Fucking communists, Freddie had said.

"No," he protests out loud, and his thoughts are louder. The buzzing in his ears has got to be audible – it should be shaking the floorboards, vibrating the glass of the window until it shatters. This is not happening. "No. Don't touch him."

Freddie willingly pushes his pants down over his thighs, and if his hands are shaking, well, it doesn't fucking matter, does it?

"No – what are you doing?" Molokov doesn't so much as look back at him; the sound of the metal parting as he pulls his zip down seems to ring in his bones.

"Spread your legs," he demands, and when Freddie does he purrs as he presses between them. Freddie inhales sharply, his legs shaking, and otherwise makes no sound. "Do you know why you are being punished?"

"I – wandered off. I was late." Freddie's voice squeaks at the end, bowing his head. It was like watching one of those horrible American porn videos, the ones with the scrawny boys calling their fathers "master" and begging for punishment. "I'm sorry."

"I know you are." Molokov pats him on the head pityingly and Freddie whimpers, shuddering with something decidedly pleasurable. Sick. Sick in the head. He spoke up as his hips hitched and Freddie's hands flew up to grip the edge of the desk. "This man belongs to me, Anatoly. Perhaps you will remember now."

He remembers now. He remembers a lot of things that he'd never, ever wanted to –

"Please stop," he whimpered, and the man behind him breathed hot and moist against his ear, slamming him back against the desk. He cried when he realized that it felt almost good, the way he was rubbing on his insides. "Stop!"

He lurches forward, intent on wrapping his hands around that thick neck of his. Gun or no gun. "Bastard," he seethes, but there's metal to his forehead. He stops abruptly, reassessing. In hindsight, no gun would have been preferable.

"Stay where you are," Molokov instructs gruffly, and digs his nails into Freddie's hips as he pulls them back against his. The frail man beneath him – it could be Freddie, it could be a seventeen-year-old Anatoly, it could be anyone whining like that, Anatoly doesn't even know anymore – makes an agonized noise and doesn't pull away.

It's senseless. It's disgusting. Anatoly watches with is hands held up at his sides, unable to bring himself to look away. "Freddie," he pleads, hoarsely. Freddie doesn't even seem to hear him. Too far gone.

He remembers being in that position and the way the edges of the desk, then crisp and new, had cut into his palms and left indents and bruises for days afterward. He watches, rocking on his heels, as Freddie takes it obediently, believing he deserves it for some imaginary rule that he's broken.

He remembers how his brother had waited in the car each night for him to return, how he'd pieced him back together so gently after every encounter.

No one has been here to do that for Freddie.

For months.

"Good boy," Molokov grunts. He slams into him once more with a telling noise low in his throat, his eyes falling closed; beneath him, Freddie convulses with a torn gasp.

Anatoly tastes bile.

And when he finds himself in his car again, he thinks too late of crying-screaming-thrashing for Freddie, in Freddie's place, and he grips the steering wheel and leans his forehead against it and doesn't listen to the sun go down, unable to hear anything over the scream built up silently in the center of him.

Freddie.

What did I let him do to you?

Moscow, 1980

The Sergievsky household

The house is quiet, but the windows at the ground floor are bright and welcoming. Anatoly practically trips out of the car, strangely exhausted. He finds the door unlocked for him and takes a moment to praise the God he was no longer sure existed.

"I understand." He heard Freddie's shaky, terrified speech echoing in his head, magnified. The dishes are clean and dry, waiting to be put away on the counter. He can't even find the energy to collapse onto the couch – instead he leans against the wall and slides down, his head tipped back.

It smells like rye bread and dish soap. The children must be in bed.

It's too quiet.

"Please stop," he'd sobbed.Freddie hadn't sobbed. Freddie hadn't so much as squirmed. He'd gasped and bucked back against him, and afterwards had had his head forced down to lick the desk clean of the mess he'd made.

It will never be quiet enough again.

Florence, though, Florence would want to help him. Walter would. Anyone would. If he could just tell them, find them and tell them…

What was that card she'd given him? It was months ago, and it's fuzzy in his memory. Freddie had clutched it in his sweaty palm and bid her an awkward goodbye and he hadn't even known what was going to happen to him.

What the hell had been on that card, anyways? Her address?

Her phone number?

Anatoly scrambled to his feet and raced to the bedroom, praying that she hadn't moved.

Svetlana is nowhere to be found; she must be upstairs with the girls. She can't be that angry. He'd done what she'd asked, he'd come back empty-handed. Then again, maybe she was afraid that he wouldn't come back at all.

He forgets Svetlana as he drops to his knees beside the bed and feels beneath it for the duffel bag, filmed with dust, full of Freddie's old clothes. His white jeans are missing – he'd been wearing them when Molokov had taken him hostage. God knows where they are now. He probably made you burn them.

The smell of the hotel room in Bangkok is so strong he has to hold his breath as he frantically pulls the zipper open and sifts through the fabric and knickknacks and fragments of glass that hadn't been properly swept up before his hasty departure. He doesn't look at the photograph when his hand meets the metal rectangle of it's frame, but he knows exactly what it is.

If only we hadn't been arguing –

But what would that have changed? Freddie would still have a temper; Molokov would still have been out to get him. There was no winning. Life isn't chess, no matter how much they liked to pretend it was, and they weren't the kings of the board. Not as long as they were in Russia.

Freddie in Russia. The thought is still bizarre – wrong.

He should never have left him.

It doesn't take him long to find the scrap of paper floating amongst Freddie's socks. He yanks it out and stares at the smudged ink, already reaching for the phone on the nightstand.

Surveillance be damned. He knew how to be subtle.

The extension rings for a long time – he presses the plastic to his ear and listens to his heart batter at his ribcage abusively, angrily. Why didn't you save him? He could have, he knows. He could have been just a little more vigilant. Florence was going to kill him.

If she picked up, that was.

She might not.

She had to.

Her voice is surprisingly alert; it takes Anatoly a moment to realize that people were awake in other parts of the world, going about their days like nothing was wrong, and like Freddie Trumper was in perfectly good hands. "Hello? Who is this?"

"Anatoly Sergievsky," he said hurriedly, leaning his head against the edge of the bed. The comforter was cold to his overheated skin. "He is here."

There was no time for mincing words. They would have to make do with half-truths and hints, but it would be enough. She was a diplomat herself, had played the part for years at Freddie's side. Surely she had a couple of strings of her own left to pull.

(Hopefully better than his.)

"…There?" Her attention caught, he can practically feel the way she sits up, the tension painting thick lines between them all the way across the continent. "You've seen him?"

"He is here," he says again, and opens his eyes to stare at the ceiling purely so that he stops seeing Freddie behind his eyelids, played over that desk like a doll. Like a toy. "I thought that you would like to know."

"Thank you." He can sense the way she blinks at him, can guess exactly what she must be thinking. There's no time. "Did you have anything in mind?"

"I will leave that up to you, I think." There's no time, no time to be lost. He had to get Freddie out of that building. He had to get his family out of this house. Molokov had made it clear – he was being watched. "He is the priority." But there were other priorities, too. He thought of his daughters asleep in their beds and his knuckles cracked. "Quickly, if you could." No time. No time.

She seems to understand. "I'll see what I can do."

"Please," he agrees, and adds after a moment. "I have a brother. I will call you from there. By Friday."

By Friday they could all be dead. He shouldn't be implicating her. She's not as far from the arm of the Soviet government as she thinks. Nobody is.

"Of course." Her voice is as strained as his. He forgets sometimes that Florence is a person and not just a figment of Freddie's imagination, a past life of his. He wonders if he would recognize her, if not him. "Be safe, Anatoly."

The line clicks and she's gone again. He takes a deep, shuddering breath.

Svetlana wouldn't like it, but she would understand. Arik would have no choice but to take them in – he wouldn't feed them to the Soviets. Perhaps him, but not his children. He was not as heartless as he made himself out to be.

And Freddie – Freddie would be safe soon, far from Molokov's bruising fingers.

Moscow, 1980

Lubyanka Building; Molokov's office

There's a heavy, somber feeling in the air the moment Anatoly's presence is removed.

He's escorted away by two men, whichever were the first to answer Molokov's page. Shaking. Freddie is shaking, too, a little – it hurts to move, but it will hurt more if he doesn't do exactly as he's told. Comrade Molokov can't have forgiven him yet.

Molokov is bent over his desk, looking hellishly frustrated. There's still a stain streaked white across it from Freddie's slip-up; Freddie stands to the side, hands clasped behind his back and rocking on his heels just slightly. He watches anxiously for any sign that Comrade Molokov minds his fidgeting.

Alexander has bigger things to worry about than the former Freddie Trumper.

It's growing dark, and Anatoly will be heading home – or perhaps gone right back to trembling in the parking lot like he had been before all of this. He doesn't particularly care which.

This was, to be frank, his attempt at reigning in a botched operation.

He's cursing himself for letting his men have their way with the boy before he was properly trained. They'd left him, vulnerable – all of his work could easily have been undone. He still has yet to catalogue the damages. Freddie appears to be functioning exactly as is expected of him, but there's no guarantee that the sight of Anatoly hadn't been enough to trigger some memory, any memory –

Lord have mercy on Sasha Petrovich's soul when he was through with him.

There were limited options, now, as to how to clean up this mess before Anatoly became a real security threat – and he had no doubt in his mind that he would. He was hardly bluffing, when he'd told Freddie that he'd known the Sergievsky man longer than he could even dream. He'd been assigned to watch over his career when he was only fourteen; Anatoly surely had the memory still stamped bloody behind his eyelids.

Well. Perhaps he had gotten a little carried away with his first assignment… But he'd been young, then, and arrogant with his first taste of power.

Besides, he'd turned out a champion!

And a traitor.

Lifting his head from his hands, Alexander barked. "Trumper. Come here." His pet trotted (limped) to his side hastily, eyes still darting anxiously over his face. Anatoly's obviously unsettled him. He reaches up, snaps his fingers before his face, but Freddie doesn't so much as flinch.

Good. He was stable – for the most part.

For now.

He certainly wouldn't be after tomorrow, but that was hardly his problem. Alexander growled dangerously, watching the direction of Freddie's gaze. "I have another assignment for you, comrade." There was a distinct, deadly undertone to his voice that he saw reflected in Freddie's shudder. Pleased, he continued, sitting up straight and leveling his trademark smile at him. He was told that it could be truly frightening when he wanted it to be. "Tomorrow evening, you will be visiting the Sergievsky family at their dacha."

Freddie comprehends very little nowadays but direct orders; he nods, though, not allowing the confusion to cross his face. Good boy. "Tomorrow?"

"I will tell you when." He steeples his fingers, cocking his head. "You will be escorted, and you will take no longer than two hours to complete the task. Am I very clear?"

"Yes," Freddie agrees without any thought at all. He hesitates only afterward – if there is any dread wobbling in his voice, Alexander doesn't hear it. "… What do you need me to do?"

"I want you to deliver me four bodies, comrade, four in total… The wife and children may be dead or alive, whichever is easiest. But –"

He narrows his eyes, watching Freddie's expression freeze in place, and smiles grimly. If all goes well, the threat will be eliminated by this time tomorrow evening – Freddie's mental state could be reassessed afterwards. Perhaps another trip to the cells would do him good.

"Anatoly Sergievsky must be dead. That is non-negotiable."

Subconsciously, Freddie lips the word.

Dead. Dead. Dead.

"Right," he says weakly, after a long pause. "I can do that."

Moscow, 1980

The Sergievsky household

The windows of Anatoly's house are bright against the dusk thickening in the air; a sleek, black car rolls silently to a stop in the driveway.

"Be quick. We will be back for you in half an hour," Comrade Petrovich mutters as Freddie fumbles with the car door, eager just to get this over with. He won't disappoint Comrade Molokov twice. He clutches the gun tightly in his fist and nods belatedly back at the car, already halfway to the door.

"I will," he says, loudly so that they'll hear him and means it. There is nothing he wants more than to go back to the comfort of Comrade Molokov's hand on his head. I'm a good boy. He doesn't pay any mind to the way the stoic man in the driver's seat scowls as he pulls silently back out and glides away.

It's lucky that they were here to escort him, as he'd never have found the place a second time on his own. He'd barely paid attention the entire ride here in Anatoly's car.

There's a slight limp in his step, but he still moves like a soldier – back straight, arms straight, the gun in his hand held in clear view. No one could mistake what he was in the blue of his uniform.

No tiny faces appear in the window this time to observe his approach.

He sucks in a deep breath, squaring his shoulders. This is it – this is the moment. He can feel it in the electric charge stretching between him and the headquarters, keeping his heart beating in time with the drum of Comrade Molokov's fingers on his desk.

His knuckles connect with the door.

He lied. He isn't ready.

He's barely got the gun raised by the time Anatoly comes to open the door, but it has the desired effect nonetheless. "Freddie," he starts to say, astonished, when his eyes cross and his hands fly up in slow motion at the chilling glint of the gun before his nose. "Christ – Freddie, what are you doing?!"

The boy in the cell reappears before him, a ghostly corpse folded forward in his bonds, his head split open like a melon in the back. Freddie doesn't realize how hard he's shaking until his finger slips from the trigger – he presses it immediately back to it, staring wide-eyed at the spot between his eyes.

"Freddie –!" Anatoly gasps as he tightens his finger on the trigger. He doesn't glance back to check on his family; Svetlana is bound to come looking for him soon. "Freddie, put the gun down!"

Freddie tries to speak, his vocal cords tight with anxiety. "I have orders – I'm supposed to – to –"

Mercifully, he doesn't get a chance to stammer the rest out. Out of pure desperation, Anatoly smacks the gun from his hand – Freddie drops it automatically, cringing when it cracks against the step and flashes. The shot is deafening, bullet ricocheting from the house and somewhere into the bushes – Anatoly kicks the gun after it and curses in Russian as Freddie tackles him bodily in a panic. They tumble in through the doorway in a flurry of limbs and curses and the children are screaming in the kitchen –

"Anatoly, what was that –?"

Svetlana rushes out to meet them, slippers sliding on the floor, and stares. Her husband has rolled Freddie, stunned and shuddering, onto his back and is straddling his waist. He glances up to her, flushed with adrenaline and absurd embarrassment at being caught in such a suggestive position.

"I have – got it – under control…" he pants, gathering Freddie's wrists in a practiced motion and pinning them over his head. There's certainly no way to make it worse.

She peers around warily for any sign of a gun. "Why is he here?" Freddie is dazed, meeting her eyes blankly – she recoils. "Where is the gun, Anatoly –?!"

"I have got it under control, Sveta," Anatoly interrupts again, kicking the door shut behind him. It slams, and he hears Emilia shriek again. Svetlana fixes him with a frigid glare. "Go – get the girls, take them to get their things. Tell them we are going to stay with their uncle Arik for a while."

"Arik?" Anatoly manages not to wince as he nods. Svetlana's hair practically stands on end. "We are not staying with your brother, Anatoly!" Arik, the heathen and the drunk. Abrasive and crude. At least in Svetlana's mind – Anatoly had hardly expected another reaction from her, but these were desperate times. "I want this man out of my house!"

"Did somebody bring you here?" he says suddenly, turning his eyes sharply back to the shuddering man limp beneath him. Freddie nods woodenly, blinking at the ceiling as though searching for his train of thought. The gun, evidently, has been forgotten. Anatoly prods, wondering how much information he can get out of him while he's in this state. "Freddie? How many men were with you?"

"Tolya?" Freddie whimpers, like a lost child. Anatoly freezes as a twisted, relentless sort of hope blossoms violently behind his ribcage.

"…Freddie?" He breathes. Freddie's fingers flex, the tendons in his wrists shifting under the skin as he squirms, staring back at him dazedly.

"Anatoly," Svetlana hisses, one eye set fearfully on the window. There's no sign of the Soviets now, but they could appear any moment – swarms of them, in the dead of night, to take them to the next train to Siberia. They had no neighbors on either side to witness it. "Get rid of him."

"Sveta, wait." There are wings beating at his insides, making him quiver with excitement. Freddie's eyes aren't empty anymore – his pupils are blown wide, with panic, but it's a blessing to see him alive again. Anatoly brings one hand to his neck and feels for his pulse, feeling his throat work, his heart beat like a caged animal against its bars. He begins to smile. "Freddie. Who am I?"

"Anatoly," he manages, a bit raspy. Anatoly hastily removes his fingers from his throat. "Tolya? What's – get off of me."

He makes no move to escape. Anatoly looks back up to his wife, forgets to repress the glow under his skin, and takes a breath. "You have to take them. Quickly – before they come back. Take the car. They will not be able to follow you if they do not see you leaving."

"You are not coming with us?" She looks scandalized, narrowing her eyes at Freddie stretching restlessly beneath him. "I do not want that man anywhere near my children, Anatoly–"

"Go get their things," he urges her, eyes flashing over the living room for anything he might give her to appease her – they light on the wallet lying out on the coffee table. He points, without releasing Freddie. "Take as many roubles as I have left – buy some groceries on the way there, I am sure he will be needing some anyways."

He doubts his brother has anything of nutritional value in his kitchen hidden amongst the empty bottles. He doesn't have the time to be concerned for Arik's well-being today.

"You are choosing that man over your family." Svetlana stares at him, as if daring him to rebut. He shakes his head, scowling.

"If I go with you they'll just follow us."

"Why will they follow us? What have you done?" Her voice is tight with some internal conflict between fear and sheer anger, eyes burning too-brightly. Lord. Don't cry…

But then, this is Svetlana. She's no more prone to tears than he is.

(Perhaps even less so.)

"Just take the girls and get their things! Sveta –" He doesn't have time for this. None of them do. He twists back to look out the window, listens to his children quivering in the next room. "Please. They can't be here."

Freddie comprehends none of the exchange, watching the string of Russian words that snaps tensely between them like he might a tennis match. His breathing is still erratic, coming in spurts and then stopping altogether at every creak and crack of the steps outside in the evening breeze. "Tolya?"

Svetlana's arms are crossed. "I am not going to explain this to them," she tells him, hissing under her breath. Natalia peeks from the kitchen warily, her blonde curls falling around her like a long curtain. Her sister sniffles audibly and she ducks back into the room. Anatoly glances back at Freddie, then up to his wife, and then to the kitchen where his children were most likely huddled beneath the table they'd been eating at minutes ago.

The guilt wins, at least for now – it spirals like a corkscrew through the tight passages of his brain, scraping every paternal nerve that he has. Grimacing, he looks down at Freddie once more. "I'm going to let you go now."

"Get off of me," Freddie says automatically, almost groans it. He squirms – Anatoly carefully releases his wrists and swings his leg back over his hip, getting slowly to his feet.

Freddie lies there, stunned, for a long moment before scrambling to his feet and Anatoly wonders how long it's been since he's been given any sort of freedom.

"Sit there – Svetlana, watch him." He sighs, watching Freddie fall immediately, obediently onto the worn upholstery of the nearest couch as he turns toward the kitchen – Svetlana stands there looking mutinous, her arms crossed tightly before her chest. She watches Anatoly with a glower that he suspected was meant to burn the soles of his feet away so that he can never run off again, with anyone – but especially not with 'that man'.

Freddie. He was giddy just thinking his name, now.

Freddie. He was there, somewhere. Anatoly had known he would be. He can draw him out, now that he's seen him…

As he'd suspected, his daughters have squashed themselves beneath the table like fugitives – Natalia is curled about her sister like a mother cat, petting her hair with slender fingers as she cries. She relaxes readily at the sight of him, shifting aside as if to make room for him on the floor beside them. "Father?"

"Natya. Come here – for God's sake, get your sister out of there." He smiles, kneeling down and raising an eyebrow at her. Freddie, Freddie – no, now isn't the time for him. He'll have plenty of time for him when he's done his job, as a father. "Everything is alright."

Small shoulders slumping, she glances hesitantly at her sister before releasing her and crawling on her hands and knees from beneath the table. Anatoly scoops her up into his arms. "Come here," he sighs, squeezing her to him.

It's so easy to forget that he's a father, sometimes; when he can't feel their hearts beating beside his.

Tending his own children is nothing like tending to Freddie, who only acted like one.

Freddie Freddie Freddie –

Natalia shivers in his arms. "I thought that man was your friend?" she whispers, as though afraid that he'll hear her; from beyond the archway he swears that he can feel Svetlana's eyes still burning into him. "Why is he hurting you?"

"He's not hurting me." He wrinkles his nose, briefly, reaching with his free hand beneath the table. Emilia unfurls and latches onto it like a baby kitten, hugging it to her chest; she wraps herself nearly all the way around his forearm and he pulls her out like that, gathering both of them against him with a slow sigh. "I have to ask you a favor."

"You're going to leave," Emilia whimpers, clutching her chubby fingers in his shirt. They're probably sticky. "Will you take us with you?"

"You're going to take a little drive with your mother, to see your uncle Arik," he tells her, leaning in to press his lips to her forehead quickly. Natalia's face crumples with doubt – he remembers too late that she'd never liked Arik any more than her mother had. He turns to kiss her forehead in turn, biting back a curse. "I will meet you there as soon as I'm finished running some errands."

"What kinds of errands?" she asks, looking past him to her mother for answers – Svetlana must have managed not to roll her eyes, because she seems cautiously to be trusting his word.

He lives for the day that his children stop looking at him that way. Like he's some sort of vagabond, ready to disappear any moment – Svetlana looks at him that way, too, but it's dulled over time.

(There's no guarantee, now, that he'll live to see that day.)

(He's not going to think about that, though.)

"There are some government men who need my help with something," he whispers, as though he's telling them a secret. Everyone forgets that Anatoly can be a good father when he wants to be – that he used to be a good father, back when the girls were only babies and he hadn't wanted to rip his hair out by the roots with restlessness. Before Freddie. He forgets it, too, until he sees Emilia's nervous, giggly smile.

"Can I help?" she whispers back. Natalia isn't so easily convinced. She's silent, watching him like he's the moon. "I want to help."

"I bet they'd love your help." Smiling, he ruffles her hair and lifts her into her chair, releasing Natalia as he pushes himself back to his feet. They stare up at him, eyes blue and clear just like their mother's. "I'll ask them when they get here – but you have to get your things packed, alright?"

"Why can't I ask them?" Emilia asks, swinging her legs with endless enthusiasm. Her sticky hands are wrapped around the edge of the chair. Svetlana isn't going to have time to clean that up…

"They're very shy," he says conspiratorially, but his eyes have already strayed back to the living room. His wife stands over Freddie like some tall, blonde vision of a German shepherd – he quails under her gaze. Anatoly has to physically restrain the annoyance he's sure is rising to his face. "I will ask them. Will you go pack your things?"

Natalia is, surprisingly, the first to move – she pries her sister's hand from the chair and tugs her. "Emmy," she whispers. "Come on."

Svetlana appears in the archway, evidently having grown tired of watching Anatoly's estranged lover for him. Freddie Freddie Freddie. "Come here," she sighs, and beckons them toward the stairs. Despite his attempts to catch her eye, she refuses to so much as glance in his direction.

Anatoly watches as his family disappears, his faux smile lingering, and tries not to wonder if he'll ever see them again.

Freddie is shivering on the couch like a traumatized child, wide-eyed and glancing around as though he has no idea where he is. (Maybe he doesn't?) He cowers when Anatoly comes sweeping back into the room.

He crouches before him, taking his hands and squeezing them between his. They're still so cold, but his eyes have life in them again – Anatoly catches them on his and tries to hold his gaze for a minute. "Freddie? Are you –?" Are you you?

He still can't quite believe it; but then, he'd barely been able to believe they'd broken him in the first place.

Obviously they hadn't done it as well as they'd thought.

Freddie shakes his head, frantic. "No. No. Where am I? Tolya?" Anatoly has never seen him so anxious in his life, not even in the car just yesterday. I have to be back by six. He's staring at him, eyes bulging out of his head. They're bloodshot, darting too-quickly like he doesn't believe it's him. He looks around them, craning his neck. "Where am I?"

"You're in Russia," Anatoly says slowly, though he considers lying just to keep him calm. Freddie's face goes pale in the space of an instant, and he squeezes his hands with what he can only hope is a reassuring smile. His hands are shaking, just looking at him. Freddie. My Freddie. "Freddie, it's okay."

"I can't be in Russia." Freddie clutches his hands with a strength that he didn't look capable of, his breaths coming quick and shallow. Anatoly recognizes the panic attack before it hits. "I can't be in Russia, I can't –!"

"Hush! It will be okay!" He squeezes his hands again, kissing one. "Just breathe slowly."

Well, maybe not. The Soviets will be growing impatient soon, with the silence inside the house. No more shots fired – he's suddenly sorry that he'd kicked the gun away, so thoughtlessly. They could have used it, to escape or…

There were a lot of other possibilities, most of them a tad gruesome, but he didn't have the time for that right now. (or the mental capacity)

Freddie gulps the air down like he's losing a race. "Russia," he gasps, like the world is crumbling around his feet, leaving him stranded on a hostile little patch of land –

That's what Russia was to him, though, wasn't it?

"What do you remember, Freddie?" Anatoly is fighting to stay calm. One of us has to be. He's got one eye glued to the front door – he wants to draw the curtains, but that would draw suspicion. "Freddie. Look at me."

Freddie doesn't look like he can focus hard enough to remember his own last name, let alone something as specific as the circumstances of his kidnapping. His chest heaves; his face is going red with the effort he's making, however subconsciously, to follow Anatoly's directions, but his lungs apparently aren't satisfied.

"I have to kill you," he moans, incoherent. Anatoly tenses; he never stops smiling, but it's strained. He hears a muffled rustle and prays that it's only the wind.

"Of course you don't have to kill me. Who gave you that idea?" he asks, painfully casual. There's every possibility that the wrong pair of ears might be listening right now. Back in the bedroom, he hears one of the girls burst into tears – he thinks vaguely that it must be Natalia and tries not to let the weight sinking in his chest crush his lungs entirely. "I love you, Freddie. You remember me?"

He hesitates, staring at him half in fright. "I – I think so."

Anatoly isn't entirely convinced, but it's a better answer than the blank 'no' he'd received the night before. "I missed you," he tells him earnestly. He watches Freddie blink the confusion away; he stops withdrawing his hands, at least. Anatoly's smile becomes a little more genuine. "Are you alright?"

"I was going to do it." The uncertainty etched into his expression morphs, horror replacing it. He tugs his hands away – they're hot, now, sweating. He wrings them in his lap, leaning away from. "He told me to – he – Jesus."

"Do you need a bucket?" Anatoly murmurs, because it looks like he might actually throw up – probably on him, if he didn't move. "I can –"

"No – oh, God." Freddie brings a hand up to cover his mouth, as if he's discovered some horrible taste on the back of his tongue – for a moment Anatoly thinks he really is going to puke, and irrationally he holds out his hands as though to catch it. Freddie is staring at him, dismayed. "I'm in Russia."

"Yes?" Anatoly sidles closer, laying a hand over his very gently.

"Russia," he moans. "Jesus –"

"We have Jesus here," Anatoly supplies, lips twisting. Freddie is unamused. He turns his hand over and twines their fingers, holding onto him for dear life. "The same one, even."

"They're coming back," Freddie says suddenly, and whirls to face the door, his face gray. "Jesus Christ. I have to kill you."

"Or," he suggests with that same strained smile. "Or we could simply turn ourselves in."

Freddie looks like he might throw up again, on purpose now, staring at him incredulously. "Are you fucking – joking with me right now?"

He pauses after he curses, his Adam's apple bobbing nervously. Anatoly recognizes the gesture.

Watch your mouth, brat, Alexander Molokov used to snap, and smack him across the back of the head. The pieces on the chessboard in his memory rattled more with fear than real vibration.

But he isn't afraid of Alexander Molokov. Not anymore.

"I have been in contact with Florence Vassy," he says earnestly, gripping his hands between his like he can warm them singlehandedly. He's Freddie, now, Freddie again with the way his eyes light at her name and Anatoly knows to take advantage of it while it lasts. "She has promised to help us."

"Florence is British," Freddie begins, his eyes wide with a fresh wave of panic. Anatoly waves a hand to silence him impatiently.

"She and De Courcey are on their way." It's only a small lie. Not even a lie, so much as an exaggeration. He has no idea who is going to show up, only that they had better be prepared to take his children as far from here as possible. Straight over the border, his entire family. He belatedly regrets not calling his parents in the city – but that might have been pushing it.

Freddie clutches him close and Anatoly is reminded that he's not the only one worried that he'll slip away. His nostrils are flared with terror.

(He remembers one night, the spider in the bathroom – Freddie wouldn't like to be reminded of that particular incident. If he remembered it at all.)

(Anatoly itches to try it, just for the smile it brings to his lips.)

Svetlana slips back into the room, the girls in tow – they each carry their backpacks, fat with whatever she'd deemed necessary. Emilia clutched a stuffed cat to her chest, practically pranced over to him.

"We're leaving," she tells Freddie proudly in English, and glances to her father for his approval. He smiles weakly; Freddie only stares, face twisted.

"I forgot you had kids," he mumbles under his breath. You forgot a lot of things.

"You're going to ask them, right?" she asks, chirping. Natalia is attached at her mother's hip, trembling with nerves. It takes him a moment to remember what she's talking about, but he nods belatedly, laughing. It sounds only slightly faked.

"Of course," he promises, and leans down to kiss her head. Freddie is looking out the window again. He turns his eyes to Svetlana, catches the sadness in them like a cold. "Sveta."

"Who am I waiting for? A woman?" she asks tightly. She doesn't shake – her eyes bore into him until he wants to crawl behind Freddie and hide from them. Even dulled, Svetlana is a force to be reckoned with.

"Florence Vassy," he admits. The woman that you assumed. "She did not tell me when."

If anything he's glad that he doesn't have to be there for that particular meeting.

"Soon, I hope." Briskly, she shakes her head and wraps an arm around her daughter. "Emilia," she calls, and the younger scampers to her immediately. Anatoly tells himself that he's not jealous of that ability. She hesitates, though, when she reaches the door – the children keep walking, seeming to sense the gravity of the situation as they climb into either side of the backseat.

"You are sure you are not coming?" she asks, almost under her breath.

"You can leave me here," Freddie blurts, although from the way he's got him by the cuffs of his shirt it doesn't look as though he plans on letting him go anytime soon. "I'm supposed to kill you, anyway."

"No one is going to kill me," Anatoly sighs, praying that it's true. He nods to Svetlana, gripping Freddie's wrist in turn. "I will be joining you soon enough. As soon as we can lose them."

The Soviets are everywhere; he'll be surprised if they ever lose them, even when they leave the country.

Svetlana doesn't look pleased. "Anatoly –"

"They are going to be back soon," he urges, and regrets the sick look it puts on his lover's face. He wants to kiss it away. He wants to – "Please, Sveta, do not start anything with Arik."

Her face pinches, and she turns away from him again. "I cannot promise anything."

Freddie squirms beside him, glancing around in half-curiosity. He's wary still. "You're going to get both of us killed," he mutters, and it almost looks as though he's mapping the moves in his head – what was it, ten ahead? At least. If he was feeling up to it. Anatoly feels a crush of pride in his chest when he hears the engine roar to life.

It goes on and on, and as it begins to disappear it becomes a purr. It's not familiar, not to him.

Freddie goes as white as his pants. "Tolya –"

His fingers are too tight now, cutting off his circulation. Anatoly shakes them off with a frown, glancing past him and out the window.

A sleek black car is gliding smoothly into the driveway.

"They're going to make me kill you," he chokes. Anatoly shakes his head, reaches up and pulls the curtain shut with a decisive tug. He's certain that he'd seen the flash of their suits approaching the doorstep.

"They will not," he tells him firmly, as though that made a difference. "It is only Molokov's men, Freddie."

Only Molokov's men, the ones whom he'd found spreading him apart and shoving things between his legs in an alley just yesterday.

He doesn't have time to panic. Freddie gets to panic, Freddie hasn't taken his pills, Anatoly has to –

The door bursts inwards. Freddie lets go of him to clutch at his own chest, gasping for air.

"Anatoly Sergievsky," Petrovich sneers calmly. He's got a pair of handcuffs dangling from his fingertips, another from his belt loop. "You are under arrest."

Moscow, 1980

En route to the Lubyanka Building

They're seated together in the car – thrown haphazardly, actually, one on top of the other. Petrovich doesn't bother to buckle them in before he's slamming the door with enough force to make Freddie shake again, falling heavily back into the driver's seat and starting the car with an angry roar.

"Freddie," Anatoly whispers, paranoid that the men in the front will hear him. It's not as though they'll really decide what happens to him now – only Molokov has the authority to do that.

Unless he's ordered them to do what they will with them.

If Anatoly is paranoid, then Freddie is terrified. He opens his mouth to speak and then clamps it tightly shut, shrinking into the seat, curling into himself.

"Freddie," he says desperately, watching the familiarity drain out of him like dirty water. "Freddie. Look at me. Don't let them do this to you."

"Quiet back there," a man from the front barks. Freddie's hands clench into anxious fists where they're cuffed behind his back. He says nothing in reply, just shuts his eyes tightly. Anatoly pretends that he doesn't hear his labored, panicked breathing.

"Freddie," he begs, but the only sound is the rumble of the wheels over the dirt. He struggles to sit up against every bump in the road, hands scrabbling at the leather, searching for purchase.

Somewhere in the back of his mind he hopes to God that his brother hasn't moved in the past three years without telling him. Without telling anyone.

(That would be just like him, disappearing when it's least convenient.)

Freddie is unresponsive, breathing slowly with his cheek against the leather seat. He's made himself unreachable again.

Anatoly wants to kill Molokov again, and again, and again, before they've even reached the Square.

He's doesn't wait for Freddie outside tonight, no, of course not – there is still enough light to see by, and the people are rushing to and from their trains, fleeing while they can. Molokov likes the suspense, anyways – Anatoly sullenly, morbidly wonders if he gets off on it, knowing he always gets to be the one surprising people.

This whole experience positively reeks of his adolescence.

He finds that he hasn't missed it.

The door swings open on Freddie's side and Anatoly can only watch as he's dragged out by his collar, gasping and stumbling awkwardly like he has to relearn how to walk. "Hey –!" he starts to protest, but then someone's hand is reaching in behind him to give him the same treatment.

They're walked across the Square in plain view. It's supposed to be a walk of shame, but Anatoly likes to think that one of the people hastily averting their eyes will try to help them. Or would, in any other circumstance.

Fuck them, then, he thinks, and then thinks that he's Freddie enough for both of them.

The people here know him, the young ones anyways. The Soviets have pushed chess into a real sport over the years, made him a celebrity – and now a traitor.

They turn their eyes away and pretend they can't see him. It's his life or theirs.

Fuck them.

On the third floor Molokov is waiting for them behind his desk, his back to them. Freddie is as green as the walls when they finally make it to his office – he turns, his hands folded behind his back, and narrows his eyes at the two of them.

Anatoly wrinkles his nose and leans closer to Freddie, murmuring, "Let me handle this."

Because for whatever reason he still thinks he can protect him.

Maybe. If he tries.

(If he tries a little harder, this time.)

"Very touching." Alexander rewards him with a mocking smile. His eyes are cold, burning as they look past him at Freddie's trembling form. He already looks like a frightened, beaten animal, but Anatoly is struck suddenly with a horrid anticipation that Molokov is going to make that a reality very soon. "But I am afraid that you and I will have to speak later."

He walks slowly around the desk, around Freddie who is stranded now, his captor backing away cautiously. "Comrade Trumper," he murmurs, leaning in close to him from behind. His mouth is too close to his ear; Anatoly feels an irrational surge of jealousy, disgust, and bares his teeth.

His squirming does him no good. Alexander continues his ominous circling, like a shark, toying with its prey – Freddie's skin crawls visibly, sweat beading on his brow.

Whatever demons he was battling, Anatoly couldn't reach them anymore.

He growls under his breath, interrupting him again just as he opens his mouth. What do I have to lose? My family is safe. For now. Forever, if he got himself killed – he'd never know the difference. He shoves the morbid thoughts from his mind, lip curled. "He's not your comrade. Let him go, Alexander."

"I should think that you know better how to address me, Anatoly." Molokov doesn't even look back at him, still breathing against Freddie's neck. His throat works fearfully. "Comrade." Molokov's voice works like hypnosis', making slow eye contact, low and smooth; Freddie's expression is tight with fear and possibly confusion.

Please don't forget me again.

Anatoly swallows as well. The hand on his shoulder tightens painfully.

"I'm sorry," Freddie manages, half of a whisper. He can't seem to tear his eyes away from his captor's.

"I am very disappointed in you, comrade. I thought that I had trained you better." He's only scolding, but there's a darker undertone that puts Anatoly's teeth on edge. Molokov doesn't smile, just looks him in the eye. "What were your orders?"

"T-to bring back – a body." Freddie swallows down the excess words like bile. "His body. I tried to –"

"I did not ask you to try, did I?"

His smile is sudden and cold. There's no gun in his hand – Anatoly is focusing so hard, trying to capture the movement when it comes but it never does, and his head is pounding – and suddenly he has Freddie by the hair, throwing him bodily to the floor.

Freddie barely throws his hands out in time to catch himself before he shatters his teeth. Molokov's foot is already shooting out, colliding with his stomach and sinking in, eliciting a breathless gasping noise from Freddie as he curls automatically around it, cradling his damaged organs. He doesn't fight back; he doesn't even try to shield himself. Molokov's foot collides next with the side of his head, leaving him limp, whimpering.

Anatoly wonders how often he's had this done to him, and then hastily backtracks.

He doesn't think he wants to know.

(He's going to find out anyways, isn't he?)

"I asked for four bodies. You did not even manage to bring me one," he sneers. Anatoly's eyes are watering just watching the way Freddie shudders and clutches at his temples, but nevertheless the words send a horrible chill straight to the core of him – he imagines, for half a moment, his children sprawled broken and lifeless before him, piled atop their bleeding mother. The gritty feeling of rage it brings to the base of his esophagus, burning and growling, has him wrenching at the hands of his captor once more.

"God damn it, you leave him alone!"he snarls, but nobody is looking at him. The hands merely tighten, cutting off the circulation past his biceps. He throws an elbow back, rage bubbling like carbonation in his gut, and something collides with the back of his head so hard in return that he feels himself pitch forward.

For a long moment, everything is black –

– breathe –

– he resurfaces, choking and grasping at the air as he's tugged swiftly down the empty hall – there are no men in navy suits here, no people at all, only the pale of the walls that shines in the fluorescence and Freddie's sobbing breaths as he's transported beside him, stumbling along to the best of his ability. Molokov is talking. He has to concentrate to make out the words, and even then they echo crazily – the hall seems to tilt down, down, down…

He wonders hysterically if they're being escorted to hell.

"I'm sorry – I'm sorry, I can do it," Freddie is sobbing brokenly beside him, a little boy trapped in a man-sized body, in clothes that aren't his. Anatoly is glad that he doesn't have to look at him when he's like it. "I swear –"

Someone, a skinny man Anatoly wouldn't bother to name if he could with spindly fingers that jabbed into him like tiny knives, yanks a door open and grabs him, nearly throwing him down a set of stone stairs. "Damn it," he curses, half under his breath as gravity pulls him down, stumbling the whole way.

There's a chill rising from the floor and snaking around his legs, as though it will chain him to the floor. He's lost sight of Freddie – he looks around wildly, half-expecting to see his familiar, favorite pair of white pants.

Instead he finds the white gleam of Molokov's teeth in the dimness.

"Consider this a mercy," he advises in that silky, asphodel-scented voice of his. There is an empty cell growing closer by the second – he tries to fight it, jerking at his unresponsive muscles but the back of his head is pounding and his muscles feel leaden. "I could have killed you – but that would be such a waste. Do you not agree?"

"Get your hands off of him – he's not yours to keep!" He can't stop looking, can't stop seeing his hands like vices around Freddie's wrists, his hips. From somewhere behind him Freddie is whimpering.

His own voice rings back at him, a loud, empty echo of desperation. There are so many people, suddenly – too many – when had they all gotten here? What did they want? He wasn't actually going to kill them –

Suddenly there is Freddie, his shuddering shell of a body pressed up against him – he jerks his arms free and finds that the handcuffs are gone, he's free –

His arms come around his lover protectively, lip curling in mad triumph –

Molokov merely smiles as they're crowded into the cell, just the two of them, and the hoard of Molokov's men seep from the hall like water running into a drain. The turn of the lock is deafening, but Molokov's voice is quiet, and it vibrates in his very bones as he releases Freddie and stumbles back against the wall, feeling for something to balance him.

"Comrade Petrovich tells me that you were alone when he found you." Molokov meets his eyes with a cold, easy smile. "But don't worry – your wife and children will be found shortly. Perhaps I will even allow them visitation."

"They are children!" He can't contain himself; Freddie cringes at his volume, clutching the bars. He's straining to be as close to Molokov as he can be. (his master, Anatoly thinks darkly, and then mentally slaps himself) "You will leave them out of this! They have done nothing to you."

"What jeopardizes the security of the nation is my prerogative," Molokov shrugs, spreading his hands. He begins to back away, back the way they must have come, although if he admits it to himself he had spent most of the trip in a whirlwind of hysteria. "It is my duty to protect my motherland. Yours was to represent it fittingly."

His eyes cut to Freddie, or what's left of him. Freddie will have imprints on his forehead later from the force with which he presses his head against them.

"You both could use a little more training, I think," he murmurs, and Freddie nods helplessly along. Anatoly wants to be sick. He thinks he might be – it smells like cold and death and his legs are shaking.

"I can do it," Freddie moans. He imagines that he can hear his frantic, stuttering heartbeat.

Molokov has already begun walking away from them, disappearing rapidly into the darkness.

"No worries, comrades." The soft scrape of his shoes was fading, but somehow his voice was not. "I will be back for you."

Freddie clutches the bars with every shuddering ounce of strength left in his body, helpless to do anything but listen to Molokov's disappearing footsteps.

He's screamed himself hoarse more than once down here – Anatoly doesn't know that, but he can see it in the lines etched into his face like battle scars. The ground floor is somewhere that he had somehow managed to avoid in all of his years visiting this place – it's deliberately cold and dimly lit, and Freddie has clearly been here before.

He wonders how many people have died down here – and then, how many have escaped.

(He can't imagine the answer is in the double digits.)

"Freddie." He dares to break the silence only when Freddie sinks to his knees. He looks broken. (He is broken, but Anatoly doesn't like to think of it that way.) Anatoly hesitates before approaching him – this isn't Freddie, not anymore. At best it's half of him; he's afraid to ask what happened to the rest, afraid that he'll find the answer somewhere in the darkest corners of this room, or one just like it.

He lies a hand on his shoulder and Freddie grabs onto it with a desperation born of weeks with only Molokov for company, looking up at him helplessly. His nails have been clipped short, probably painfully so, but he still tries to dig them into his wrist. "Tolya don't leave me –!"

"I'm not going anywhere." Where is there to go? Who's watching them right now? Someone. Not Molokov – not now – but he'll be back. All there is to do is wait.

He sinks down to his knees beside him and pulls his remaining hand from the bars, holding it between his. "You're cold," he observes quietly, trying to keep the anxious thrum out of his voice. There is a bright side, he thinks desperately, always a bright side. There is always a way out. He'd escape Alexander Molokov's clutches more than once in his life, just… never so directly.

Freddie blinks oddly, as though he's not used to being worried over. He nods after a long, awkward moment. "It's cold down here."

They're strangers again. Anatoly grits his teeth against the disappointment.

"You said Florence was coming," Freddie says into the nothing between them, and Anatoly's head snaps up. He searches Freddie's eyes, and though they're pale as ever, it's something. There's a quiet desperation in Freddie's voice, growing in volume – there is heat between their hands. "She's going to get us out of here?"

He doesn't think that Freddie remembers who Florence is, really. He doesn't know that he cares. Just hearing the familiar way he says the syllables is enough.

Drawing him closer, hands tightening around his, Anatoly nods vigorously. "Yes, of course. All of us."

Fat chance, Freddie would have said.

This Freddie curls his lip, but he says nothing. That's a Freddie thing to do, too. He gets like this when he's upset, when he's depressed (which was too often, for someone so alive) – he closed his mouth and his mind and curled up by himself for days on end, without making a sound.

They don't have days.

There aren't very many ways that Anatoly knows how to draw him out of it: he doesn't have any coffee, or a hot shower, or a new bottle of lube –

He pulls Freddie's hands right up against his chest, breathing slowly. "She's in touch with De Courcey. He sure as hell has to know some way to get us out."

There's a bruise set permanently just to the left of Freddie's temple, like Molokov's personal stamp on him. It doesn't sit well with Anatoly – he reaches up as though to wipe it away, listening to the way Freddie's breath hitches.

He hasn't kissed him properly in weeks.

"Freddie," he begins, the word breaking off into breathlessness as he realizes their proximity. If they couldn't escape, then this was his second choice. "Do you –?"

He remembers when he'd hated Freddie Trumper with every fiber of his being – he remembers, very clearly, when Freddie had hated him.

He remembers Freddie flipping the board in their very first match.

He remembers Merano, and Florence straightening her blazer, holding out a hand to shake. The Merano Mountain View Inn – famous for its peace and tranquility.

Freddie swallows nervously as their lips brush, and he remembers the same motion echoed back in time, to one too many glasses of wine and Freddie grasping at his wrists, sneering, backing with him onto the bed.

It's so easy to forget his wife, his children. His brother. He's done it so many times.

"Freddie," he breathes, and sucks his lower lip between his, holding his face gently in his sweaty palms. Freddie groans, shifting closer – the cell is dark, but it isn't cold. Freddie's fingers crawl into the collar of his shirt and he tugs, and Anatoly comes with him willingly.

There is a single mattress in the corner, but God only knew what kind of parasites it was infested with.

No. The floor would do.

Let them watch.

This isn't quite Freddie, but it's not hard to pretend that he is. He feels like Freddie; these aren't Freddie's clothes, but in the dark, he can pretend that it's denim covering the confused and growing bulge between his legs, and he squeezes it with long fingers just to be sure. Yes, it's Freddie – the same length, the same whining gasp, the same ferocious fingers in his hair as he yanks him closer, breathing hotly into his mouth.

"Tolya," he groans, like he's just getting a feel for the word. It's so much like the first time he'd fucked him that Anatoly nearly bends him over then and –

Freddie grabs fistfuls of his curls and thrusts his tongue into his mouth.

Molokov hadn't taken care of him like Anatoly had. Molokov probably hadn't kissed him at all – he certainly hopes not. No. He'd beaten him instead, like he had in the office – into whoever this not-Freddie was, this remnant of his lover.

You're Freddie Trumper, he wants to tell him, and he does with the wet, silent movements of his lips. He wonders if Freddie can remember his middle name at all. He wonders what he knows about himself; what Molokov had let him remember.

He's going to kill Alexander Molokov, he decides.

Freddie sucks the scowl from his lips with a whimper, pushing closer insistently.

They could kiss forever, but just kissing left them the time to hear the darkness rather than the blood rushing in their ears.

There is no just kissing Freddie Trumper, and there never has been; even with only the shadow of him here, pressed against him, a botched suicide attempt of his from another life, it's everything he can remember all at once. It's Merano in a bottle; he slides his hands beneath that hideous suit jacket and slips it from his shoulders, relishes the fact that he can remove Molokov without even speaking. Freddie arches into him, into affection, and whimpers into his mouth.

He needs to feel him, every inch, just to be sure that Molokov hasn't hurt him too badly – he touches him wherever he can reach, around his back and up his chest, popping buttons hastily free along the way. He falls on him with his mouth open and sucks a trail of healing bites along his collarbone, pressing their bodies together.

There's so much that he remembers, that Freddie could remember too, if he'd just try. He knows he can make him remember.

Freddie hisses when he touches the back of his thighs, so he slips his fingers into his mouth and squeezes him again beneath the soft fabric of his soldier's pants. Freddie is not a soldier; he's a captain.

He can make him remember. He's going to.

"Oh – Fuck!" Freddie chokes as their hips come together the first time, and Anatoly smiles through the pain, smiles at every godforsaken time he'd ever heard him say that four-letter word.

He remembers the shape of his fingers as they wore grooves into his hips.

He remembers the way he'd rolled him onto his back and gripped his shoulders, clenched his eyes shut like it was the end of the world. Like the chapter was over, and he was afraid to see what came next.

In Merano Freddie had had no basis for what he was doing, no idea that he should have wrapped his hand around him, or rubbed his thumb over the tip of him. Now he does. Now, he's Freddie – if only for the moment.

And Anatoly arches and gasps and lets him just have him, here in the dark with the stone cold against his back.

He remembers the clumsy way he drives into him, the hasty brush of his fingers, the way he tucks his face into his neck and moans helplessly as he comes, his hips stuttering forward into his own mess.

"Tolya," he groans, reverently like he used to, almost like he knows what it means.

Anatoly feels the first twinge of pain and lets himself believe it.

Florence, Florence is coming to get them soon… Florence or Walter. Someone.

"Freddie," he mumbles, gathering him close like a child, his fingers slipping through his short, choppy hair and they drift together in the darkness, together but separate with the aching realization that there is nothing there.

Nothing.

They fall into something like sleep with their limbs tangled and their clothes in one crumpled heap beneath their heads, protecting them from the chill.

It's there, though. It's always going to be there.

"Ah –! Let me go, блядь –!"

Anatoly finds himself lifted from the floor by the roots of his hair, and with a strangled noise lashes out at the first warm body that he sees. Freddie whines like a kicked puppy and he thinks he could be sick. "Sorry –" he gasps, but it's in Russian. He squeezes his eyes more tightly shut, tears beading at the corners of his eyes and spilling over rapidly as he's dragged to his feet. "Sorry – блядь!" He breaks off again, gasping, scrabbling at the hand in his hair.

"There has clearly been a misunderstanding," Molokov says pleasantly, somewhere behind him. He twists, hissing, in an effort to face him – he's dimly aware that he's still naked. Molokov is speaking in English and it takes him a confused, horrified moment to realize why.

There is a man with his hands on Freddie, on his Freddie on his shoulders, keeping him firmly in place as he stares at Anatoly in terror.

"I am sure you heard me correctly, comrades… I am very disappointed in both of you."

"Let me go Alexander –" Anatoly's chest heaves as he feels a hand circle the back of his neck, fingers brushing near his throat. Molokov's voice has dropped seemingly an entire octave, no longer pleasant.

"Especially in you, Anatoly." The fingers tighten – they don't quite crush his windpipe, but it's uncomfortable to say the least. He kicks back at him uselessly, swatting and clutching at his wrist as though he can force him to release him.

"You should know your place," he continues. "I am sure we have had this conversation before."

Twenty-odd years ago, maybe.

"I'm not a child anymore."

"You were not a child then," Molokov sighs. He holds out his hand and someone must put something into it – Anatoly can't even see him, can't turn around, can't do anything but yelp and roll as Molokov drops him, suddenly, and kicks his knees out from under him in one swift motion.

He's barely on the ground before the man behind him has come forward to stomp on his fingers stretched out over his head, with a sickening crunch – Molokov's voice rings through the room with some kind of sadistic pleasure, and he's cursing in a stream of Russian that doesn't even make sense anymore, shuddering at the way his fingers burn even when he's yanked them back to his chest.

"I can see that you are in need of a reminder."

He can practically hear the ghastly smile stretched across his face. He can't bend his fingers, can't even feel them –

Freddie sounds like he's crying. "Freddie," he tries, but it comes out garbled with pain. His eyes are streaming, he can't see – a boot flashes out again to kick him savagely in the ribcage, sending him tumbling onto his stomach, winded and choking on his own breath.

There is a hand in his hair, again, and he moans as it's pulled upward, scrambling as he's pulled right up off the ground. Every nerve in his body is throbbing in alarm.

"What do you think, comrade?" It's not directed at him. Freddie shudders, wraps his arms around himself. Molokov smiles as he squeezes his fingers properly around Anatoly's neck, leaving him to gasp and claw at his hand with clumsy, damaged fingers. "You are not a traitor like Anatoly, here, are you?"

"Let him go," Anatoly snarls when the pressure on his throat is briefly removed, but the fingers squeeze down again mercilessly and his voice becomes a gasping whine.

Freddie's legs are trembling – he thinks that they might fail him any moment, send him tumbling to the floor. He can see it in his head, feel the ghosts of the pain as they all closed in and beat him the way that Anatoly was about to be. He remembers this.

"I – No?" he rasps. His head is swimming. Anatoly's voice echoes in the confines, watery, distant. Freddie Freddie Freddie. He sounds so desperate.

Molokov twists his hand in Anatoly's dark hair again, pulls his head back, forcing his back to arch. The man who had kicked him – it isn't one that Freddie knows, or perhaps it is but he can't recognize him now, not when his eyes are glued helplessly to Anatoly's exposed and working throat – chops the side of his hand down against the very base of his neck. Anatoly seizes, coughing violently, and Molokov twirls a metal bar ominously between his fingers.

"You don't sound so certain of yourself, comrade." His eyes glint like a monster in the dark. "Would you like a turn?"

He holds the bar up in invitation – Freddie watches Anatoly's eyes flicker fearfully to the metal, then Molokov's face, then Freddie's, as if wondering if he'll really do it. He will. Freddie averts his eyes, ashamed somehow of the thought.

"N-no. No." He tries to take a step back and bumps immediately into the wall of a man behind him – Petrovich leers as he twists to look at him, thick lips twisted into a grin. "I, I don't…"

Freddie, he heard Anatoly groan in the depths of his mind, writhing in pleasure-pain.

"Freddie," he hears groaned from across the room, hoarse.

"Come now, of course you do." Molokov purrs, holding it out to him encouragingly. His teeth glint, white as his pants, his favorite pants, until he got these ones… (He doesn't remember, can't remember, why can't he remember?) "It will be a good experience for you. Or would you rather the gun?"

"I'd – yes." He draws another shaky breath, staring at the dull metal before him. Anything. Anything is better than this. He doesn't want to think about it – whatever Molokov asks him to do, he has to do it. He will.

Will you really?

The voice in his head sounds like his, but it also sounds like hers –

(what was her name?)

– the woman, the woman who'd touched his hands so gently, slipped the paper into them and clasped them as Molokov did now with the gun, like she cared about him –

(Comrade Molokov cares about him)

And she'd loved him, and he'd loved her, and Anatoly had been there, and he'd loved him, too, and what was it exactly that they were in Bangkok for in the first place?

"Would you like another lesson, Comrade? The blood takes some getting used to, I know. But I am confident in your abilities."

He can feel his eyes on him, as though the atoms between them have seized his skin with hooks and were tugging him, compelling him – there is an itch so deep in his brain that he wants to fall to his knees and beg for some kind of mercy. Wasn't this supposed to be his mercy? Why was death so much more appealing?

The darkness that had made its home in the core of him writhed uneasily under Molokov's supervision. The metal of the gun felt too-heavy in his sweaty palms.

"Do I have to shoot him?" he hears himself asks, dazed. Molokov merely smiles wider and shakes his head, twirling the bar. There is a sickening moment of anticipation.

"Of course not, comrade."

He slams it down against Anatoly's ribcage and the roar of blood in his ears isn't enough to drown out his scream, piercing through the fog with urgent clarity –

don'tleavemedon'tleavemedon'tleaveme –

"Stop! Stop!" And there are hands on him again, and he feels the tears on his face without registering how they got there, his organs tearing with every savage strike of the bar – on his face and arms and legs and his back and his stomach, God, right down on his stomach like he means to impale him but stops just short and, "Stop! Fucking stop –"

"Freddie," Anatoly gurgles, and there's red on the floor, red filling up his vision. He lunges toward Molokov with murder in his blood, an inhuman snarl building in his chest at the sight of this man he knows (why, why, why were they in Bangkok?) left defenseless on the cement, convulsing and choking up blood in violent, offbeat spatters almost in time with the erratic blows of the bar.

"Watch closely, Frederick," Molokov instructs sternly, lip curled as he prepares to cleave the air in his lungs once more.

As he raises it above his head to deal what must have been the final blow, Freddie's fingers slipped – in an instant he remembered, on the most instinctual level, that he held death in his hands and he raised it to point it at the center of Molokov's forehead.

"Stop," he demands, voice trembling with senseless anger, senseless fear. The Russian (wasn't he supposed to be Russian? who was he really?) turned back to him and straightened up with slow caution, raising an eyebrow.

There is an arctic moment, the kind that Freddie feared would freeze his memories where they would never thaw within his lifetime. He stared into Molokov's eyes, half-desperate for some sort of reassurance. That this was okay; that this would be okay.

He doesn't want to die here.

He doesn't want Anatoly to die here.

Molokov doesn't look properly afraid of him. He scarcely has the time to wonder why before there is a gun to his head, cold and probing at the base of his neck, nuzzling there like some affection-starved animal. His gut tightens with painful anticipation, but for once, he doesn't screw his eyes shut. They're fixed on Molokov, then past him –

Anatoly lies limp and bleeding on the floor, breathing shallowly.

"Would you like a moment alone?" Molokov asks conversationally, but Freddie can see the end in his eyes. He swallows, the lump in his throat suddenly too thick for him to speak past it. He shakes his head, stumbling when he's released.

"If you won't commit to me, then I won't commit to you," he tells him, circling around him slowly. The bar is held at his side, nearly dragging on the floor. It's long and light, but Freddie has seen the damage it can do, heard it whistle through the air. Anatoly groans, a pitiful noise, a dying animal. "Tell me, comrade – do you want to help me?"

He can't make sense of anything he's saying, head spinning. "Wh – no. No. Please," he begins, but Molokov is already sneering.

"Doctor," he spews desperately, dropping to his knees and crawling towards his lover. "He – he needs –"

"I suppose that is a no."

"Please," he gasps, his lungs constricting. The darkness has leaked into his heart at last, poisoning his breaths. Molokov seems far away, his voice distant and tinny. The gun slips from his fingers and clatters the short distance to the floor. Anatoly is damp with sweat and tears and blood and possibly urine, he can't be sure, he doesn't care. He has to help him –

"I will be back when you are ready to speak with me coherently."

It's like he can't even hear him.

Anatoly's ribs are swollen and tender beneath his fingertips as he feels along desperately, looking for some silver lining. It's gonna be okay. Okay. Okay.

It's not going to be okay.

(who is that woman, what's her name, why were they in Bangkok, anyways?)

Molokov and his scoffing men are already retreating leisurely, and Freddie feels his diminishing presence pull him like a tether, straight from his center. He whimpers. Anatoly whimpers as well.

Anatoly clutches his rumpled Soviet jacket with withering fingers, sticky with blood. He feels over his heart, choking on the words he's trying to say. They're all the same, anyways – he reads the shape of his lips, desperate for some connection.

Freddie, Freddie Freddie…

"Freddie – you're back," he manages hoarsely, eyes glowing with feverish happiness. Freddie wishes that he could understand. Frustration sticks in his gut like tar, stinking – why were we in Bangkok?

"Please!" he wails uselessly, and he thinks that far away he hears Petrovich snort in response. The footsteps fade gradually, ascending. Leaving them together… alone…

Then there is silence and cold and dark and nothing, nothing.

I could be nothing…

Nothing might be better than something, if the something is this.

There's blood under his fingernails.

There's blood everywhere, actually. Anatoly has only just stopped coughing it up. It's thick, sticky on his hands. He imagines that the cloth on his legs has disintegrated, replaced by a slick, matted layer like oil pastel. Freddie is afraid to look at it. It's not red, he knows, but black – it's not blood. It's lifeblood.

No.

Anatoly isn't going to die.

He can't.

He won't.

Freddie won't let him.

Anatoly hasn't spoken in what must be an hour – it's hard to tell, here in the cells where the time slips by like sand and Molokov's words carry some extra weight that he'll never be able to explain. His chest is still moving with the labor of his breaths, which wheeze between his lips halfheartedly, and his fingers are slackening slowly in Freddie's collar.

"We'll be fine. You'll be fine," Freddie tells him, listening to his own words fill the room like so much empty vapor. He lets them flow, as thick and awkward as Anatoly's choking gasps.

"You're fine. It's probably just your ribs, you know, when your ribs are broken it feels like you can't breathe but really you can – or you wouldn't still be breathing… Would you?"

Anatoly's head shifts in what might be a nod. He swallows.

"Say something," Freddie begs, tightening his fingers like claws around his biceps. If it hurts, Anatoly barely seems to notice. He blinks up at him with difficulty, fingers twitching, tightening in return.

The slight tug on his collar is almost enough to appease him.

But not quite. "Say something."

He doesn't know what he's saying. He doesn't know who he is. His identity has narrowed down to pure, fleeting hues of scarlet anger and even briefer azure flashes of desperate hope to contrast with the burgeoning darkness, which is closing in around them.

Each time Anatoly's lungs spasm he hears it in the waver of his breath. "Hi," he manages, and his smile looks like it would peel off about as easily as the thin membrane blood beneath his lips. He coughs, deep and agonized – warmth spatters his chest, spittle clinging to the hairs on Freddie's arms.

"You're going to be fine," Freddie tells him, and he believes it. If he thinks about it hard enough he can imagine them back into the hospital in Bangkok, except now it's functional – there are nurses bustling, Thai nurses dressed like the prostitutes on the streets during the festival that night.

He still doesn't remember exactly why they'd been in Bangkok. But it can't be that important.

"Freddie," Anatoly sighs, and the sound is chunky, breathless. "Ah…"

"You're fine. Comrade Molokov will bring you a doctor." He nods to himself, the story unfolding itself in his mind, painting itself on the stone walls like a bright mural, a dream – he sits by his side in the hospital room, and they smile at one another, and the machines beep steadily and they are alive.

"You're fine," he assures him, and he doesn't even see the painful way he smiles back at him when their noses brush. His lips taste like salt, and darkness.

He remembers when he'd breathed it in the first time, so afraid. I could be nothing, too. It wasn't so bad as he'd made it out to be. It lived in both of them, now, in their lungs and in their veins and in their hearts. Consuming them.

"It's okay," he tells him in response to some unspoken question. He might have made it up. Anatoly looks confused. "It doesn't hurt."

No. Dying doesn't hurt at all. Freddie should know – he's done it more than once.

Anatoly coughs again, a horrible groaning, hacking sound. "Fred-die," he moans, suffocating under the weight of Molokov's words which make up the very air, everything. They eat slowly at his bones until he can't sit upright. He whines. "Freddie, I l-ove you."

Freddie loves him too. He smiles.

He talks forever, about this and that – about Russia, about Molokov and the cells, about Bangkok, about chess. "We should play a game," he says, and "I'll start – knight to A3." Anatoly doesn't respond. His chest is convulsing oddly; there is fluid leaking between his lips. Freddie could talk forever, though, and does.

He leans down to kiss him, periodically, listening for the slow and constant exhale. Anatoly is still. He stares dimly at the ceiling.

"I love you," he says, desperation tainting the words now. There is no sudden intake of breath. The warmth has leeched from his body, leaving it tender and purple-white, cooling in his lap. "I've missed you a lot. Tolya. Tolya?"

The silence becomes hostile as the words trapped in his ribcage begin to burst outwards, a manic stream. Molokov's voice is ringing in his ears.

Dead dead dead –

Only a pawn –

Worthless –

"Tolya?" he whispers, grappling for the last remnants of his sanity. The blood on his fingers smears wetly around the trigger of the gun, lying beside him on the floor.

He lifts it and stares into the mouth. It's only as dark as the air in his lungs. He lowers it again, disappointed.

Anatoly isn't in there, either.

The cell is dark; his heart is dark; the blood on his hands is dark, dark, Anatoly's blood –

Light explodes before his chest.

Freddie chokes as the blackness wells thickly from his lungs, exactly as he'd thought it would. The gun clatters to the floor.

He finds Anatoly's hand and clutches him as the warmth grows in a shallow pool around him, and thinks of a woman with a mischievous smile, slipping a white card into his hand.

"I love you," he tries to say, and it flows silently from his lips to disappear into the dark.

There is nothing white down here.

The gun is cold and silent on the floor beside the two corpses, twined together like lovers. Freddie's hand is limp beside it.

Alexander Molokov's shoes clap softly on the stone as he returns to check on his prisoners – or what's left of them. The very air smells like death.

He sucks lightly at his teeth, nudging Trumper's limp hand with a slight curl of his lip.

It's a pity. He could have been a remarkable asset.

As for Anatoly… well. No one could deny that he'd had his run. Forty wasn't too young to die, was it?

He bends down to take the weapon from the floor and warm it in his palm, weighing it, casting the bodies a final, blandly disappointed glance. The echo of his footsteps vibrates, soft and sharp, all down the hall as he leaves them where they lie.

Someone is going to have a terrible time scrubbing all of that blood off the floor, and it's not going to be him.

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