Chapter Text
The first day is the easiest.
He wakes up in what must be an abandoned warehouse or basement. A sack is yanked roughly off his head, launching droplets of blood into the air. A cut on his temple weeps and blood slowly threads its way down his eyebrow towards his eye. His hands are shackled behind the chair he sits on, ankles are chained to the legs. He can’t raise his shoulder enough to swipe at the cut.
The blood’s going to get in his eye.
Frenchie quickly scans the cavernous room and allows himself momentary relief when he sees it’s just him. No other clowns from Butcher's clown car. Just him.
Well, him and her, of course.
Little Nina looks down at him with a radiant smile, cigarette in one hand, gun in the other.
“My little rabbit,” She takes a long pull from her cigarette and runs the mouth of the gun over Frenchie’s buzzed scalp. “I was worried my men had concussed you.”
Frenchie knows he should be fucking terrified of whatever’s to come, but he’s so happy that it’s only him, that no one else he knows has gotten involved in his bullshit. He smiles pleasantly. Maybe he is concussed.
“Only a cut, eh?”
Nina clicks her tongue, probably surprised at his relaxed attitude. “I missed you, you know. My little plaything.”
Frenchie’s mood sours slightly. “Is that why I’m here?”
“Mm, yes. And no.” Nina moves to sit on his lap, cigarette uncomfortably close to his face. “Sure, I was bored. Killing people can be so repetitive, as you know.”
She takes another long inhale then stubs the cigarette out on Frenchie’s shoulder until it burns through the thin cotton of his shirt. It’s a pain so familiar it borders on comforting.
He bites his lip hard enough to bleed but makes no noise.
“It’s simple, really, my rabbit.”
Nina stands up and throws the stub on the ground, crushing it under a shiny heel.
“If I can’t have you, no one can.”
The first week he mostly thinks of Kimiko.
As Nina’s guards move him from place to place, blindfolding him and throwing him in trunks and vans, he wonders if she made it back from the hospital okay. She must have called one of them at least. He worries less about that and more about what’ll happen once she’s back with them after the Russian shit show. She’s not a Supe anymore, and Butcher doesn’t keep what he doesn’t use. This, he knows from personal experience.
He thinks of her hands held together, pushing into his chest.
Marseille.
They should have left when they had the chance.
Frenchie gets bored, but not as bored as Nina's lackeys. They pull him out of the tiny, windowless room he’s kept in and drag him out into a makeshift kitchen. As far as he can tell, this newest prison is an abandoned apartment turned storage room The place is a fucking dump.
Despite the less-than-favorable conditions and semi-regular beatings, he’s not lost hope yet. Frenchie knows pitying himself will only make the situation more unbearable, and he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t counting on at least someone looking for him. He’s lost track of how long it’s been since Nina took him, but he figures it’s best to bide his time. He still has no idea what the fuck she wants from him.
He blinks against the harsh light from the windows and smiles when he recognizes Nina’s men. “Ivan. Anatoly. I haven’t seen you fucks since I had to clean up your shit in Jersey!"
The comment gets him socked on the side of the head, the blow hard enough to leave a low whine in his ears. He blinks back involuntary tears, shocked by the immediate onset of pain.
Ivan hauls him by his shirt collar, the ratty fabric tearing under Frenchie’s weight.
He pretends not to notice Anatoly turn the sink tap on and shove a rag down into the drain. He smiles nervously.
“I never question Little Nina,” Ivan says. “But I never understood what she saw in you. You’re just another filthy street rat.”
Anatoly saunters up to Ivan’s side.
“What, Ivan? You’ve never seen an insect you just want to crush under your boot?”
Behind them, the water in the sink has started overflowing.
Frenchie stares at it out of the corner of his eye and tries to quell his rising panic, his breaths starting to come in quick pants.
Anatoly starts rolling up his sleeves. “Back in Rybinsk, when I was little boy, my mother would kick me out of the house while she cooked. I could only wander around for so long. So I’d go down to the river and find all sorts of little critters.”
He swaps with Ivan and drags Frenchie until he’s facing the sink, one hand gripping the back of his neck roughly.
“Something about holding the animals underwater. It felt so…good.”
Frenchie shoots out his hands to hold onto the counter, but the linoleum is wet and slippery, and the Russians are simply bigger.
It doesn’t take much for them to shove his head underwater.
Even though he takes a deep breath before going under, the water is so cold it shocks him enough to let it out, bubbles rising through the water. He thrashes, but the Russians hold him down, and when he gives one of them a quick kick in the shin with his heel, he’s rewarded with a punch in the ribs.
Just when it feels like he’s about to start swallowing water, they yank his head up. He takes in air through desperate gasps, but it’s not long at all before they shove him right back under.
And so it goes.
Again and again, long enough for it to be agonizing, but not long enough to kill him.
It’s no reason to push his luck, but he knows they can’t kill him without Nina’s say-so, so when they drag him up again, he twists towards Anatoly.
“Were you this much of a pussy with those animals too?” He asks between sharp inhales. “Or have you always been this shit at killing?”
In the blink of an eye, he’s flung onto the dirty concrete floor.
Then, they beat the ever-loving shit out of him.
He thinks he must black out because one minute they’re wailing on him and the next there’s the sound of a ringtone and receding footsteps. He curls in on himself as much as he can, but the fiery pain in his body doesn’t give him much room to move. He thinks some bones must be broken, and can feel them grinding together when he shifts on the floor.
He can barely hear it through the ringing in his ears but murmured Russian floats in from the room next door. Eventually, they come back in. Anatoly chains him to the rusted pipes on the wall, while Ivan grabs a water bottle from the busted fridge. He throws it up in the air, catches it, then lobs it violently at Frenchie. It makes contact with his throbbing ribs and he sees stars. One of them squats down next to him, but he’s hurting too much to be able to tell who it is.
“Nina wants to see you."
They leave and take the keys to his cuffs with them.
For three days, no one comes for him.
Nina smiles down at him, carding her hands through his hair.
It’s long now and crawls down the back of his neck in usually filthy curls. Sometimes she plays with it after he’s been granted a shower, but usually, she’s grabbing it by fistfuls, yanking hard enough to leave his scalp smarting.
He’s not sure what’s worse. The time he spends being abused in her bed, or the escalating cruelty of her men’s beatings. A quick glance at her phone on the nightstand tells him he’s been missing for almost two months. The mildly good morale he had at the beginning of the whole ordeal has quickly vanished. Now he spends most of his time locked away in his mind, trying as hard as he can to feel nothing at all.
Today Nina’s being considerably gentle, but he’s only been with her for an hour or two.
Hoping for mercy is most definitely a waste.
His head rests in her lap, manicured fingers roaming down his bruised skin. He’d hiss in pain, but even that seems too exhausting now.
“Nina,” He whispers.
Something’s been on his mind for a while, and now that she’s in one of her good moods, he figures it’s as good a time as any to ask.
“Why didn’t you kill Kimiko? You knew she was still at the hospital with me.”
She scoffs. “I thought you’d be happy, my little dog.”
He hears the sound of a cigarette being lit before it’s pushed between his lips. He takes as deep of an inhale as he can, then coughs harshly. Since the whole sink debacle, he hasn’t quite been able to breathe right. It was fine for the most part, but lately, it seems like it just takes too long to catch his breath.
Either way, he relishes the warm rush of nicotine in his system.
Nina takes her own sharp inhale, her other hand traveling down to Frenchie’s exposed chest.
“Well, she’s a Supe, is she not?”
He says nothing.
“Butcher wouldn’t give up such a handy weapon so easily. A chemist on the other hand,”
She shrugs and tilts her head.
“You’re not so special, my Sergei.”
When the cigarette is nothing but ash, Nina sits up, turns around, and presses cherry-flavored lips against his own. Her hands wander down to his boxers, and that’s when he takes his cue.
He floats above his body and thinks of the seagulls in Marseille.
While his father would go buy cigarettes he would sit on a bench by the shore, watching as they circled above.
Just like the seagulls, he floats up, up and away.
He thinks he might be sick.
For days now he’s been locked in some moldy, damp cellar. He’s not cuffed or restrained in any way, but he’s been too tired and too sore to move much.
He shivers on the freezing concrete, bones knocking against the floor. It does nothing to help both the old and new aches and pains he has, and even being left alone to rest isn’t providing him with much comfort.
They don’t feed him much at all. There’s a plate in the corner of the cellar with a miserable-looking sandwich on it, probably the most decadent meal he’s seen in weeks. He knows he should be hungry, but his body doesn’t seem to get the memo. Looking at the thing makes him want to gag. He wishes instead of food they’d give him clothes. Even the boxers he’s wearing are torn and ratty, barely staying up on his hips.
His skin is hot to the touch, but it provides him no warmth.
Something must be wrong with him. Really, really wrong.
Nina squats down in front of him, the sound of expensive bracelets clinking together pulling him from his sleep.
It’s always been him who’s dragged to where she is. She’s never come to visit him at whichever shithole he’s being kept.
A hand reaches for his jaw, lifting it up until they’re meeting each other’s eyes.
Two sharp clicks of her tongue.
“I’ve heard you’ve been misbehaving in my absence, Sergei,”
He looks up at her through thick eyelashes, and feels the way his skin burns. He’s had a fever for days now. He wonders if this is what decomposing bodies feel like, the rot slowly setting in.
Nina’s wearing a feral grin, but it’s quickly replaced by something Frenchie thinks is meant to resemble concern. She looks at the again abandoned plate in the corner, then back at his face.
“Something is wrong with you, my little rabbit.”
Frenchie inhales laboriously in lieu of speaking. He’s tired. He just wants to sleep again.
“Who’s been keeping guard?” She snaps at the man standing behind her, quickly getting up.
Nina looks pissed, and for once her anger isn’t directed at him. She turns and storms out of Frenchie’s cellar, her absence followed by loud arguing in Russian. He can only pick up bits and pieces, but it’s enough to get the gist of what’s going on. Gunshots start ringing out, then there’s the sickening thud of bodies hitting the ground.
From the corner of his eye, he can see blood pooling on the concrete outside his door.
Tentatively, Frenchie allows himself a moment of joy.
He feels his lips being stretched by a delirious smile and then he’s laughing. Even once all the noise from the outside stops, and Nina comes back in, he cannot stop laughing. The sound echoes in the empty room, but Frenchie can’t stop the horrible cackles that rip from his throat.
When they jam the needle into his neck, that’s when he finally stops.
Reality has begun to slip away from him.
He spends more time awake than asleep, and whenever he does wake up, someone’s in the room sticking a needle into his skin. He doesn’t know if it’s medicine or drugs, but as soon as he feels the sharp poke of a needle, he’s out again.
His dreams consist mostly of his father.
They’re weird and non-sensical, reminiscent of his drug-addled hallucinations. Sometimes his father is a ten-foot-tall monster who chases him through the streets of Algiers. Other times, he's drinking a warm glass of milk while his father reads him a bedtime story. Sometimes, he dreams of nothing at all.
Only inky blackness through bouts of restless sleep.
One night he dreams he's in one of the countless hotel rooms he and his father stayed in. He's a little boy again, crouching behind a bed to hide from his father's manic rage. His father's throwing things at him; shoes, a vase, books, a bottle of cognac. Then the sound of shattering glass transforms into that of rapid gunfire and loud, pained screams.
He cowers in on himself and covers his ears, willing everything to just stop.
The noise doesn't stop, but the dream changes.
Kimiko.
She's holding onto either side of his face, hands warm and familiar.
Frenchie blinks rapidly and wills himself out of the haze he's in.
He's not in the hotel room anymore. He's in the cellar, and he's shaking, and Kimiko is holding him, arms wrapped tight around him.
He thinks her mouth is moving. But it can't be.
She's speaking.
...go...we have to go...please
Kimiko's eyes are wet, tears mixing with the blood on her cheeks.
"Mon coeur," He whispers, a trembling hand reaching for her face. He's smiling, but he feels the hot sting of tears in his eyes. "Why do you cry?"
Her brow furrows and she glances towards the open cellar door.
Gunshots again.
Suddenly he's very tired. He feels his eyelids drooping, but he doesn't want to sleep. If Kimiko is here, he doesn't want to wake up from this dream.
He looks past her towards the door and wonders what Nina gave him.
Nothing makes sense.
For a second, he sees Butcher standing in the hallway. Then, he's gone.
Kimiko snaps her fingers, but his head is pounding, there's too much noise, his body hurts, but he doesn't want her to go, he doesn't want-
Frenchie wakes up with his head in someone's lap.
Distantly, he feels the soft fabric of a blanket on top of him and he notices a change in the air. Wherever he is, it's not the cellar anymore. It's warm, and even though he's still freezing, his body feels like it's giving out just a little bit less.
He looks up into familiar brown eyes.
“Hey, French. Hey, man, it’s me. Just me. You know Kimiko’s eviscerating them all right now? They’re going to die a painful fuckin’ death. We're going to get you home and it's all going to be ok, all right? We're here now. She ain't gonna fuckin' touch you again.”
Frenchie wants to nod, smile, laugh, cry, do anything. His body won’t let him. All he can manage is slow blinks, a minute twitch at the corner of his lips. Tremors wrack his entire body, and it hurts his head when his teeth clatter together. Secretly he’s thankful for whatever Nina gave him, doesn’t want to imagine the pain he’ll be in when it wears off.
He thinks this might be the closest he’s ever been to dying.
“Hey,” MM laughs weakly, his fingers brushing back the sweat-slicked hair from his forehead. It’s just like Kimiko had done earlier, and nothing like how Nina had pulled on his hair. The gentle touch is almost too much to bear.
MM smiles down at him, but it’s a sad, pathetic thing. “Your hair hasn’t been this long since Morocco, remember?”
Frenchie takes a rattling breath, and feels his vision begin to fade in and out. Fucking hell. It feels like he can't stay awake for more than a few minutes at a time.
He wants to reassure MM that it’ll be fine, that it’s him, he’s always fine, but he can barely draw enough air into his lungs as is. After two failed attempts at speaking, he just stops trying, instead focusing on the familiar lull of MM’s voice.
He’s not sure how long passes, but eventually he feels a soft, familiar hand in his, thumb rubbing back and forth on the abused skin of his wrist. He feels someone press their forehead gently against his, hears hushed whispers coming from somewhere nearby, and then the rumble of an engine.
Kimiko’s thumb continues to glide on his skin and suddenly all the human contact is too much. He wants to sleep, wants desperately to get away from his own body.
If death comes for him, he thinks he’d consider it a kindness.