lucetilogs | (no subject)

It was not an uncommon thing for Guy to fall to sleep somewhere inconvenient after a night of drinking. The floor was an old friend of his on nights there wasn't a lovely body to pull him into bed.

Nor was it all that strange for him to be awoken with a jostle and pains in his body. After all, being the drunken fool he sometimes was, there could be several hours he couldn't recount. So many possibilities and opportunities and reasons for his back to ache, some of them far more delightful on the imagination than others for the black parts of the night.

The stranger part is waking up beside a warm body on the floor, of being jostled and blinking away lingering bleary bits of sleep to see Anthony just beside him.

Mornings he woke up next to Anthony were never on the floor. Nor were they wearing trousers and nothing else.

He's thoroughly hung over but the cold of his surroundings is piercing as he registers it, but the most sobering sight is the look on Anthony's face.

His arm immediately reaches to clasp the one shaking him as he scrambles his body to a sitting position.

"Kim?"

His voice cracks, and he follows it by muttering, "Fuck."

A mumbling from the corner of the room that sounds an awful lot like 'Shut up, Guy and let me sleep.' sounds out. As it should for that is where H.A.R is curled up around himself trying to insulate himself from the cold unconsciously.

As soon as Guy had spoke however, Kim was wide (and painfully) awake. Why couldn't he ever just sleep through some inane blabbering, honestly?

His back hurt. Something soft was touching it.

He resigns himself to answering. So he finds the floor with his hands and pushes himself upright while blearily glancing over at Guy and Anthony. Seeing them against each other was no great surprise.

He sighed grandly while rubbing a hand over his face. Fuck it was cold.

"What is it?"

"Guy. Kim."

Thank goodness for small favours. Both of them safe and accounted for. But... The three of them. Where was Donald? Where were they? For Anthony was awake now, aware of the dim lights and metal walls, dotted with bolts.

His tone said more than words ever could. Cautious, tense. Even for him. He was already crouched, eyes wide and blinking to focus them more.

He lowered his voice even more, barely audible. A strain inhabited it, too. There was no protecting Guy from this. "Look around."

Squinting, Guy scanned the metal ceiling and the metal walls. A hand ran through the tousled mop of dark curls atop his head and absent mindedly began to scratch at the back of his neck with the short slivers of bitten and stained fingernails.

He hardly noticed that the skin there was so very tender. His arm drooped and fell away from his neck without thought as his eyes focused on the prominent feature seemingly jutting from both Anthony and Kim's backs.

"What the bloody fucking hell are those?"

His light eyes were wide and his mouth was half slacked in shock, chewing at nothing as his lips quivered with words unvoiced. They three were confined in a small space with metal walls and a metal ceiling and a metal floor with a metal door with things jutting out of their backs and stripped of their typical clothes.

That Donald wasn't there seemed more a relief than a worry. A holding. Was this a holding? By God, had they been caught?

His head swam with questions along with the burgeoning ache in his head that typically accompanied a night of drinking as much as he had in celebration. Such joys were gone.

I've made us safe.

As Guy's breath heaved with the arrest of everything suddenly becoming very bleak, it also became horribly apparent that Anthony had been wrong.

At Guy's quarry Kim came further into waking, a headache pounding subtly in his left temple and he noticed what Guy was speaking of.

Wings. Fucking. Wings.

He stared for a few moments at Guy and Anthony before remembering.
"Something soft...," he trailed off and stood up in a panic. The floor was freezing and stung his feet but he didn't care about that. What he cared about were the bright red feathers he could see protruding from his back. A wave of disgust hit him as he realized they weren't strapped, or stapled on. But a part of him.

..He had wings.

Desperate to get them off, Kim tweaked his arm and got a good grip before pulling.

And promptly emptying his stomach upon tugging. Last night's dinner and nothing else. He began to shake fiercely and dropped back down to his knees. Breath.

His vision went in and out and he didn't even have the chance to scream the pain came so suddenly.

"I'd....not touch those...were I us." He wasn't even making any sense. Breath.

He retched up in the corner again.

"Wh--"

The question died before it even came out. Anthony had caught sight of Guy's back. And then Kim's. And... God, his own must be the same. He took a deep breath, eyes wide. He was very, very sure he was not still this drunk.

...Just as he was sure that if they were dead, Kim would not be vomiting.

"What the hell," he whispered.

He cast his eyes about again. His friends, the walls, the floor. He was breathing hard, trying to sort everything out in his mind.

All he could do was repeat himself. "What the hell."

Guy couldn't let go.

That single hand, clutched to Anthony's arm tightened as his eyes fell on Kim, watched him lose his stomach with a look of horror. Yet it seemed that such images would not be nearly as haunting as when he looked back at the man he clung to so desperately and noticed the marks on his neck.

Thick, black lines. No. No. It just couldn't be.

A barcode?

"Anthony..."

His hand slowly rose to snake around his own neck, the tenderness of the skin and the muscle at the back unmistakeable as the shape he'd seen.

"...Anthony..."

He said the names with such desperation, such uncertainty. His tone was that of a beg, eyes wide, a haunting expression set above the dark circles that lined his lower lids. Seeing wings on the backs of them all was a horrible enough thought. Confinement was frightening on its own, yet a stark metal room meant that anyone could have them.

But then he saw the numbers below the barcode and knew that they'd been branded... just like the camps. Just like the bloody fucking camps.

There was no other place they could be, no other hands they could have fallen into.

"Please, no." A beg.

Once he could see without the floor spinning, Kim rolled over to lay against the wall -- he was very careful about having his wings touch the cold metal. It left him leaning forward with his elbows propped on his knees. He struggled to control himself, this wasn't the time for panic as much as he wanted to scream and rip those damn feathers out of him.

He watched from the wall as Guy's hand slipped against the black ink. They'd been coded. Identified and given a sequence of numbers to categorize them. 1,2,3..

His head dipped down and he choked back a small sob.

This was crazy. How had they gotten caught? They'd been so damn careful.

"S'not possible," his fingers tapped on nothing as he tried and tried to collect himself, he needed to be able to think quickly.

He half-wished whoever had them would be stupid enough to have some kind of identifying mark or article as to what nation they could possibly be in.
Russia? Germany? America? England? Those were the big players and the possibility of each was equal to the last.

It wasn't...well, it was possible. They'd done so much. Anyone could have outed them. Angleton could have grown the other half of his brain. Liddel could have done it. Jack. Litzi.

That thought hurt too much.

Donald...

Kim looked around the room for a fourth, but found none. The face with which he turned to Anthony was worried but more composed than he had been.

"Donald?" Both a question and possible accusation.

"Guy. Guy, shh. What is it? Guy."

His hands moved while he spoke, one running slightly through Guy's hair, the other touching the hand that had gone to the back of his neck. He didn't hold Guy's eyes, though. Instead, he looked over at Kim, precariously balancing his attention between the two.

"Donald." Slightly less of a question, but only just.

If Donald was not here... Then what? Had he made a mistake? Slipped up? Revealed them all? Had he given them up for false promises of leniency on them all?

There would be no malice in all this, if Donald were somehow the cause. No, there was no malice in all of Donald Maclean. Jealousy, perhaps, but no malice. Nothing that would lead to this. But an error or a foolishness? Yes. Yes, that might be the cause easily.

Or perhaps... Perhaps it wasn't Donald. Perhaps Donald was not here because he had been the bargaining chip. He was safe... in exchange for information from his American wife. Who knew. Who knew that Donald was a spy. A spy for Moscow. His American wife who knew and who had left him. Then come back.

He looked at Kim, any disagreement from the previous night forgotten, at least for now. He turned his gaze back to Guy, as if it had never left him. "Guy, shh. Shh."

His entire body began to shake, first where he clutched... at his neck, and on Anthony's arm. Soon, his whole torso seemed to quiver from a chill far greater than the metal biting through the thin material of his white trousers.

He shook his head as Anthony tried to soothe him. There was nothing more than that calm voice that Guy wanted, but Anthony didn't know. He had to see.

His mouth stilled as his lips pressed in a thin line of eerie silence and worry. Slowly, reluctantly, he let go of Anthony's arm and began to turn, sliding away his palm from the tattoo at the base of his neck he was certain was there.

Germany.

Nazi camp.

Prisoners of war. Captured spies. Out of the sky and into the arms of death.

Haltingly, Kim stood up as his nausea subsided, merged into the pulsing in his temples. He use the wall behind him largely as support as he rose and moved towards the other two. The only ones.

It was largely surreal, everything that was happening. Awake for minutes and their whole world was turned over. It had that thick sense of 'this is real, and happening and there's nothing you can do but accept it' reality that dreams often did.

When Kim saw Guy's hand slip from the back of his neck, Kim felt a chill seep into his skin. He wanted to vomit again.

Branded...

To confirm what he already knew, Kim touched his fingers to the back of his own neck and drew away upon feeling how tender the skin was. Ever so slightly he could feel the raise of ink under his skin. It would never leave.

"Guy, wh--"

He stopped mid-word when he saw. Anthony raised his hand, passed his fingers over the ink on Guy's neck. He didn't need to ask. He and Kim had the same markings.

They were branded.

They were numbered.

They were marked.

Anthony pulled his hand back so Guy would not feel it shake. He took a thin breath, trying to remain outwardly calm. His mind was racing. He tried to think how this was possible.

They had been drunk, yes. Of course. He and Kim might have been drinking for different reasons than Guy and Donald, but they had all likely been drunk. But drunk should not equate taken and branded without noticing a thing. The wings... The wings, he could not even begin to process. Not now.

One question turned over in his mind again and again.

Where is Donald?

Guy watched as Kim came closer and rose a shaking arm toward him. He needed them, both of them, in this moment. Their situation was as plain as it was hellish, a nightmare Guy knew could happen but never thought it would.

He was chilled by fear and the cold and the lack of clothes, and there was no other way to describe such a state except to say that he was exposed, every little piece of him there to be pried open by German doctors with gloves and scalpels and bright lights or tools meant for sawing away your fingers...

The name 'Donald' seemed to resonate in his mind belatedly, but when he thought about it, there was a certain impossibility that Donald was not a part of this. Was he dead already? Had they taken him, questioned him? Was he in their buckles and arms right now, spitting up blood on their black boots and asking for his life?

He would collapse, if he hadn't already.

The most frightening thought of all to Guy was knowing... he could not withstand this. He, strong as he was in playing with glittered masks and spitting grating insults with a disgusting smile would writhe beneath the pain and collapse.

He couldn't let them take him. Not if Anthony and Kim were to stay alive. He couldn't be a living haggard bag of flesh for them to break. He had to be dead.

"If they have him..."

He swallowed. Fuck, his throat was dry. Everything was crackling in the cold.

"...Donald..."

They had to find a way out or they had to make sure.

"We have to go."

He shook more violently now. He needed to embrace them both. He needed to tell them it was fine, and he needed to ask them, out of love, to do this.

Kim grasped at Guy's palm with his hand, squeezing tightly as if he could quell the shaking with a grip. He couldn't waver. Kim knew he and Anthony were the pillars. They couldn't falter.

Donald....Donald would have to be a secondary thought. He had to think about now, about Anthony and Guy. The quartet became a trio and he would adapt. Though what had happened to Donald would be a constant thought. One falls and takes down the next one and with it the one after that and so on.

At Guy speaking he left his revive and nodded briskly.

They had to try, dammit. No one could say they didn't try.

"Come on, stand up."

He said it to both of them. They needed to figure out what this place was.

While Kim took Guy's hand, Anthony rested one heavy hand on Kim's shoulder. He squeezed at the words and pushed himself to his feet.

"Wait."

He strode toward the door, all cool and confidence. It was the same fashion in which he had lit his cigarette while being questioned about any left leanings in an office in MI5. He was steady because he knew he could not afford to shake.

If Guy saw him tremble now, all was lost. If he could not be strong for Guy-- for Kim as well, but Kim could stand alone-- then he could not count himself as being worth anything here.

He reached for the door, and his hand met metal. No shock-wiring or anything of that sort. Anthony breathed a sigh of relief. He twisted the handle, wanting to feel the strength of the lock. They had to try to break down the door. He just needed to know whether his strength would be enough to make an attempt or whether he would need to call on Kim's help.

...But the handle turned, and the door slid open just a crack.

It was only due to the squeeze of that hand that Guy could stand at all. In shaking like a leaf and accepting one's own death, it made it quite difficult to find the strength of the legs beneath him. He gripped back tightly, and once up, refused to let go just yet.

He needed to stabilize his entire being. His footing, his legs, his centre, his preparation for what he had to tell them both. A single arm reached out and Guy palmed Kim's cheek, his lips quivering out a meager upturn of the lips as though he'd found some ray of hope in all this... all this disparaging imprisonment and condemnation. In a way, he had.

It was the only way they'd have a chance. Accepting that made these whole last few moments a little more vibrant, that way.

But then he heard the metallic scrape of the lever on the door, felt the small pressure change as the air outside their shockingly sterile cell met the air inside.

"What...?"

Everything about this was even more wrong. That door never should have opened, and since it had, just what the hell was going to happen now?

Kim stared as Anthony touched the handle ...and found it unlocked.

He was too stunned to think properly about this new development. The door was open, unlocked.

A sharp, almost panicked sounding laugh broke forth from Kim. All this, the kidnapping, the brand, the wings. And the fucking door was unlocked? He might have cried if he didn't have Guy to hold.

"It....no they can't be that stupid." Whoever they were.

"Anthony?"

"An ambush?" It was all Anthony could think of, though he couldn't hit upon the point.

The three of them were trapped. If their captors knew anything about them, they would know some desperate bid at freedom through such an idiotic error would not raise their hopes enough to crush them when it failed. If they'd made it harder, perhaps.

But this was easy. Too God damned easy.

Still. Still. It was folly on their part to remain here, to just wait, when there was the possibility, however slim, that this might genuinely be a way out.

"If it's a trap," Anthony whispered, "we've no choice other than to spring it."

"No..."

Guy took a small step toward the door, nearly repulsed by this possibility of tainted freedom as much as he was the very room they stood in. Yet it was a sick thing to realize that Anthony was right. He pulled away from Kim, taking another few steps. A hand swept over his side as a habit pulled his muscles to reach in a pocket that wasn't there for his beloved personal vice and self-medication. He couldn't help thinking that a sip of gin from that thirty year old bottle he kept refilling would calm him, but it was the least of what had been taken from him. From any of them.

Whatever motivation behind his movements--whether it was self-sacrificial that he'd take the trap or rather something entirely had snapped in his mind in the moment it took to propel himself forward--there was no indicator what had changed. Only that one moment, Guy was staring at the door and the next he was shoving it open with a stiff arm as he said sternly and with a frantic insistence,

"We have to go. Now. So let's."

If Anthony's suspicions were right -- and they were seldom wrong -- and the door was booby-trapped or maybe even monitored by heavy firepower, anything was a possibility at this point...well, there weren't many ways they could escape if that was the case.

Kim could have spent another minute or two contemplating this when Guy burst forward from his arm and made for the door. Kim's imagination went wild for those few painfully quick moments.

If it was some kind of explosive waiting for them, and Guy threw open the door...

they'd all be dead.

He haltingly lurched into motion after Guy, moving to grab him before he could open the door --

"Guy, wait! Wait!"

But it was too late.

"Guy!"

It was pointless for so many reasons. First of all, there was nothing in the world that could stop a determined Guy Burgess. Second of all, they were all as good as dead already. What did it really matter if Guy hastened it?

...But the door opened wider and Guy was in the hall and nothing happened...

Anthony looked back at Kim and nodded. Time to go, his expression said. He followed Guy into the hall and settled a firm hand on his shoulder.

A circular hall with similar doors to either side.

"Do we follow it around?" he asked his friends. He knew the answer. What other choice did they have?

There was a rush that passed his face as the doorway cleared behind him and he stood in the bleak hallway. The words that crossed his mind seemed like from so very long ago, and yet they were more applicable now than they ever were.

It's a careful bloody room in a careful bloody place.

Everything about this hallway and the other doors are so damn careful, all covered in metal and not a single thing to face him for finding it. Every way is closed and there's a wide expanse leading to so many potential things.

"Of course we do."

Yet Guy could not simply walk down the hallway where so many doors remained shut, just as theirs had. What poor bastards could be, just as they had, shuddering and hopeless behind them?

Without a thought or a care for the consequences, Guy took his strides down the hallway, flinging open doors as he met them, continuing when he saw they were empty.

Edited 2011-09-21 07:40 (UTC)

Damnit. If Kim could afford to roll his eyes at that very moment he would have done so with gusto.

At least the could leave that room, now leaving the building was another bit altogether. At least, though, the hallway was completely circular so there were no corners to peek around.

Except Guy had to take it upon himself to open all the doors. All the very similar doors.

Walking, moving, whichever, apparently he needed more time to recover from pulling at his wings because his vision swam but Kim could walk straight through it. It was just disorienting.

"We can't chance letting anyone know we're here Guy." Besides that, if all the doors were the same. How were they supposed to know when the hallway took them back again if they opened every door.

Edited 2011-09-22 17:13 (UTC)

"Guy." He whispered the word as he put a hand on Kim's arm to help steady him.

He understood. God damn it, he understood. Behind every door could be another captive. Someone else who needed help. But they couldn't help anyone right now. They had to save themselves first. They had to get out, get themselves settled first. Then they could help others.

"Guy. We need to go. Now."

Guy turned around with his handle on another door with a rather pained look on his face. As much as he wanted to, as much as he hated it, Anthony was right. Reluctantly, he squeezed the handle and left it be.

They weren't safe yet. That much was clear. This could easily be a trap, although the dingy and ragged version of a cock-eyed optimist Guy harboured within his character couldn't understand why any trap would begin this way. It was too easy, and therefore it simply couldn't be.

He walked over to the other side of Kim, grabbed his hand, kissed the back of it, and breathed a hard and nervous sigh.

"All right. We go together."

Kim needed his physical support as much as he needed the both of them to keep him from mentally falling to pieces. He leaned enough to catch Anthony's eye.

"Together."

A small smile from Kim. Oh his dear friends, what would he do without them? He took the aid without complaint though he would have insisted he were fine normally. It was a comfort to be had, for now.

"Come on then."

Around and around they went, till they came to an extension to the hallway leading to a single set of large doors.

"...Suppose that's our way out?"

It was wholly suspicious.

"Or into more trouble."

But it was a chance that had to be taken. What other choice did they have? He released Kim's arm, which he had kept a hand on, to stride forward, once more in the lead.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

Nothing else to be done. He put a hand on the door to the left, turned the handle, and pushed. It opened without complaint, and he closed his eyes, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Nothing happened. Nothing at all.

Guy looked between his two friends, taking up Kim's arm in lieu of Anthony's being gone. He hadn't let go of Kim's hand yet, nor would he. A moment of pause and he could hardly stand it. Standing, waiting, expecting the worst was tearing at his nerves as much as the whole bloody situation.

"Is this... freedom?"

He would walk out the door regardless of whether it was or not, but he needed to know that they would follow.

A deep breath. He wouldn't shake, he would not. Not while Guy was half-holding him up. "Only one way to find out."

Again Kim moved - heedless of the thought that perhaps Guy would not want to move forward. But some delightfully abstract part of him reasoned that Guy had never stopped moving forward his entire life. Why stop for doors, now?

His hand is heavy on Anthony's shoulder, but not dependent. Even in the absolute terror of these moments, Kim still remembers what Tony had done yesterday. What he, himself, had done.

Reconciliation wouldn't be for some time, not until they sat down and talked about it. But now, that could all be put aside until they were back in England - which this was so clearly not.

"Together?"

Anthony looked back at Kim and gave a single nod. He understood all too well. His hand raised, settled on Kim's, and squeezed. It was not an apology, not an explanation, nor an offer for one. It was a simple acknowledgement-- Everything else can wait.

"Only way to do it," he agreed, his voice nearly lost on the way out.

He took a deep breath and moved for the doors, keeping close to his friend. Freedom or a fate worse than they had already suffered... they'd face it together.

Stand or fall.

It wasn't very often that Guy needed something at all to propel him forward, but the combination of Kim's arm in his grasp and his step forward shook Guy enough to remind him of that momentum. It was so very easy to stand and be taken by the cold reality of what could happen. He absorbed everything in the chill, like a sponge, imaginined the possibilities, the travesties, but could not let himself stay that way. He answered the tug and walked forward.

When staunch sunlight beat down on his face, when the hard steps outside the door were warmer than the metal inside had ever been, Guy squinted and near winced.

Where were the bloody black boots? The leather belts? The semi-automatic rifles and barbed wire fences? That bloody, bloody, bright sun was garish and heated, staring down at them and lighting up a freedom that should not have been there.

But it was.

Guy's hand let go of Kim's, slid out without him realizing it as he walked down the stairs, sheilding his eyes. They were in the midst of a town. He spun on his heels, nearly throwing himself off balance with the flare of his painful wings, and stared at the building behind them. A massive dome? Every door had been empty, theirs had been unlocked. What was this? A holding for something else?

Was this Bergon-Belsen, the holding place for thousands of Russian POW's, Dutch Jews... and now spies? Was this where people were made to work until they died?

... or was this Sobibor, a place where nothing awaited but death, where the forest lined road was horrifyingly named 'the road to heaven'? So many Soviet soldiers had gone there, transported there to die.

No. No it could not be Sobibor. Sobibor had been covered up two years ago in a hasty sweep by Nazi forces to bury everything that had happened after an uprising they never saw coming.

There was only Bergen-Belsen. They were there.

Not there...here. Yet... Guy knew they would not work. They were spies. They would not work.

They would die.

"Christ..."

It was the wrong slogan for the wrong camp but he knew that if they walked through that town and saw what he believed they would, it would be muttered on the decaying lips of the inmates, a false promise in an unforgiving hell.

"Arbeit macht frei."

Work will set you free.

He would have flinched at the German if he weren't so utterly horrified with what he saw.

And relieved. All he expected: black soot skies, gray dirt... gray people in gray clothes with one smear of colour on them to identify their crime for living with no hope for anything except possibly the relief of death. Everything he had horribly concocted was destroyed the instant the sun beat down on them and there were no cries in other languages, no barked orders, no alarms.

Just sunlight and the hum of a town living and breathing.

The club sighs....

three men's lives are changed forever.

The ... normalcy of the entire place catches him off guard and for a moment he's certain he's dreaming and he can laugh and breath now.

Except he still feels those wings, can still feel the heat on his neck and the sun is too realistically blinding to be a creation of his own mind.

So it's all real. It seemed too docile though, and Kim felt exposed with no shadows to hide in or walls to duck behind.

His wings shuddered.