Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Milton squints his eyes under the harsh lights. Hospital. The sheets and the smell are unmistakable. He must have escaped from Gorski's shit cluster and ended up here. But where?

Someone else is in the room. Two someones. One… man in scrubs. Nurse. The other… suit and tie. Nice suit, expensive, pompous. Both sapiens, obviously.

The nurse clears his throat, “Looks like he’s waking up.”

“It would seem so,” Suit is unimpressed. “Hello Mr. Brandt, my name is -” the nurse cuts her off.

“Don't you think this could wait a minute? The Doc's gonna want to look him over. Why don't you just wait outside till then?”

“Fine, it’s not like I haven’t waited long enough already.” She sighs but collects her blazer and briefcase to step outside the room.

“Sorry about her. She’s been pushy for a couple of days. I don’t know why. She’s getting paid good money to sit in here on her phone,” the nurse seems to be talking more to himself. How incompetent.

Milton sighs, then groans. He feels so tired.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry. That was so insensitive of me.”

Milton furrows his brow. What the hell is this man talking about?

“I mean, I assume it wasn’t a very happy marriage, but that doesn’t mean I should talk about her divorce attorney like she’s a welcome guest.”

What the hell? His headache is receding, so he tries to reach out with his mind… Nothing. He’s on blockers. But he can’t be on blockers. He looks around, tries to read the label, determine the color on his IV, but it doesn’t seem like anything but saline. Maybe he hit his head. Concussions can cause swelling; perhaps there is a nerve disruption. Though he doesn’t feel dizzy or nauseous. The only time he ever got a concussion he threw up for half the day.

He loses consciousness with a vague thought of Mexico.

Chapter Text

Pain. PAIN. and words start to trickle through what feels like cotton balls.

“It will be too much for his system if I-”

“Verdammt!”

“Can we knock him back out?”

“No.. I- Wolfgang? Oh, thank- Wait don’t move. Warte (wait), please.”

“Where is- ah?” breath is in less supply than it was a second ago.

“The dick is stashed away.” Oh god, that’s Felix.

“No. Where?” He tries to reach out, touch everyone, but all he can see are Felix and Kala looking at him worriedly. Then it's as if light flashes in Kala’s eyes, a visitor.

“We’re okay,” she says softly, placing her fingertips on his arm, barely a connection. And that could only be Riley.

“We’re all okay, just rest. Please love, we need your strength back.” And he doesn’t know who that is. It could be all of them for all he knows. That smile belongs to Capheus and the stronger, almost desperate grip is Will’s but those eyes are Kala’s again. There’s love there that he didn’t know he was wishing for. “Breathe Wolfgang. We have you.”

He takes a breath, trying to gather his thoughts. But everyone seems to have backed away, and the lack of intensity gives Kala the chance to glance at Felix.

The fucker’s expression is equal parts a smirk and amazement.

“You should’ve told me you had a fuckin’ harem, Wolfgang.”

It hurts to laugh, but it’s wonderful. He blacks out laughing at Felix describing Sun as this “pretty little asian scary chick,” and he can’t wait to see Felix pay for like all five of those descriptors.

Chapter Text

Laughter. Always laughter. And then angry shouting and being thrown down. And more laughter. What's so funny? Why am I funny? And then he's hovering over… the floor is cold and hard where he's pressing me into it. Please-

“Wolfgang.”

His eyes fly open. He's staring straight up at the ceiling.

It's the gentleness of it, he thinks, that wakes him. Not just a whisper exactly, but caring and worrying. 

The nightmare -memory- fades.

The whispering continues. “Please, don't strain yourself. Just breathe. Your chest is still healing. It was infected."

He tries to breathe deeply and, yep- that hurts.

“Okay,” he pushes out after a minute, “okay.”

After another few breaths, Wolfgang opens his eyes.

Everyone’s there. They're all right there, but he still feels so empty.

There is a not-so-subtle celebration in the group of maybe fifteen people all crowded around his bed. It’s nice for a minute to just enjoy everyone being in his space. As he takes in the expressions on his family's faces, the numb, alone feeling starts to fade. Suddenly he's aware. And it loosens something in his chest, and he's breathing better than he has in weeks. 

“Hi,” Riley says with a smile. 

Capheus is right next to her, smiling big, “We’re so glad to see you awake!”

"I'm glad you're back, buddy," Will says with a strained smile. And it takes Wolfgang a moment to think about what that means. He's back. But Will is here. He can feel him, so no blockers, so..

Wolfgang shoots up again. This time nobody stops him. He doesn't give himself time to regret how much that fucking hurt and was not a good idea.

"Where is he?" He all but growls.

Milton wakes up a second time, and he is alone. It gives him a moment to catalog his body and to try and deduce where he is.

The place is a dump. Uncomfortable bed, haphazard corner tables. Probably an independent clinic without the backing from any pharmaceutical company. When he attempts to move again, he doesn't have any more luck than he had previously. 

Where the hell am I? 

“Ah, I see you are awake today. That is good.” A doctor sweeps into the room. He has a strong Norwegian-Swedish accent, hard to miss, and Milton starts to wonder if he even knows which country he’s in.

Doctor… “Espensen” it says on the name tag. Doctor Espensen strides comfortably to the side of his bed to glance at the monitors before turning to Milton with a very fake smile. 

“It seems you are doing well, no?”

“I feel fine,” Milton replies slowly. He tries to figure out what is making him so sluggish. 

“Ah, well, if that is so we will just have to get some information from you.” The doctor pulls a clipboard from seemingly behind his back.

“I’m sure,” he says sarcastically but with vivid agitation. “Which hospital is this?”

“The one where I ask the questions.”

Wait. what?

“Excuse me?”

“Hmm?" The doctor has a pleasant look on his face as he looks up from his clipboard. "Now, can you tell me where you remember being last? What's your last clear memory before you were here?"

Milton is so thrown by the blatantness of this man's attitude that he hardly knows what the question even is as he's attempting to answer it.

"A phone call. With" The Chairman "... a superior. We were discussing…" Gorski. Talking about Gorski. Where the hell is that little prick?! "We were discussing an issue at work," Milton growls.

Doctor Espensen nods. "Good. Thank you. Now, do you remember where this was? A building address? Or any other specifics about the situation? Perhaps your superior's phone number? Any little detail that you can focus on and verbalize is likely to help you remember what happened closer to you arriving here.”

Milton is still reeling with anger. He doesn't respond for a moment, and the doctor must be an impatient man because he all but snaps in his patient’s face. “Mr. Brandt, would you please focus on the current conversation?”

Milton doesn’t really hear him, though. “I need to leave here. I have matters to take care of. What time can I be released?”

“Mr. Brandt, we are in the middle of assessing your state of-”

“It’s Doctor Brandt, and I need to go. So, are you going to check me out, or do I need to call: first, my contracted personal physician to release me from this shithole of a hospital and second, my attorney for a very detailed investigation and subsequent lawsuit into your treatment of patients suspected of anterograde amnesia.”

“Oh, I do apologize. Doctor Brandt, I meant no insult.”

Doctor Espensen pauses, seeming to gather his thoughts. Then the doctor’s expression changes, and his next words do not make any sense. “Okay,” he sighs. His accent is notably gone, and it takes Milton a moment to even believe the word was spoken by this same man. “Okay, this was pointless.”

“What-?” Milton starts to say What the fuck, but the man sitting next to him is still speaking. 

This time, however, he is facing the top corner of the room to the left of Milton’s head. “I told you this was a useless ploy. Not that I didn’t appreciate getting to try out my stellar accent training on this barking dog of a man. But I'm done. Sydney has been texting me all week, and this is not worth the number of flowers and apologies required to make up for not answering them.” Doctor Espensen stands up and walks towards the door. He reaches for the doorknob as Milton finally gathers his thoughts enough to speak.

“What the fuck is going on?” That wasn’t exactly what he planned on saying, but this is a special kind of mindfuck.

The doctor turns around to look at Milton as if he had forgotten Milton was in the room as soon as he decided to leave. “Oh,” he smiles. “This was all fake.” And the accent this time is dulled. He could be from California or France. Milton can’t tell, and the headache is coming back strong. 

He turns to his IV, startled, and the fake doctor informs him: “We’ve had you on a steady mix of sedatives, scheduled parenteral nutrition, and neuro-blockers. I can’t believe you haven’t thrown up. When we planned it all out, I was dizzy just looking at it. That amount of shit.”

Definitely American, Milton thinks before he realizes that this man's nationality is not the most useful information he could be gathering right now. “And where am I?”

“Nah,” he says casually. “I’m gonna go call my fiance, and you can suck a dick.” With that, the fake Doctor Espensen leaves the room.

Chapter Text

“How- how did you-?” Wolfgang can’t be sure if he’s short of breath due to his remaining injury. It could be that every time it occurs to him that he's in the same room with his whole family, apparently safe, his chest does since strange tightening and loosening thing. 

“Will, mostly,” Riley says with a soft smile. Always soft.

Wolfgang rolls his head just enough to see Will’s face. He is sure the man will blush or roll his eyes and share the credit. He doesn’t. Instead, Will’s jaw locks. And his eye contact is intense as he grits out, “I had to get you out of there.” The wave of determination does not hide the guilt he's still feeling.

It’s Lito who breaks the moment, wrapping one arm around Will’s chest and pulling Will against himself tightly until his shoulders drop. Only then does he let go of Will, and he rounds his friend to grasp Wolfgang by his shoulder, “It is good to have you back!”

Wolfgang lets out a breath around a smile.

They tell him they've been living in the flat Rajan had secretly purchased. They rescued him only 13 days after he was abducted.

It feels like so much longer than that, and he fights to not let it show. He can tell it hasn't worked when Capheus shifts from foot to foot and Nomi wraps her arms around Amanita.

They tell him that when Wolfgang was taken,

everything came into focus. No one in the cluster questioned a single decision. Lito didn't stop to explain anything to Hernando and Dani: not the blood staining his shirt or the reason he had to be in London now.

“Lito, what is happening to you!? Why can we not go to the hospital? You’re bleeding!”

“No. No, no puedo ir al hospital. Please, Hernando. Yo tengo que ir a London. They’re hurting him!!”

“Who!? Who is hurting him! Who is he?”

Lito can't breathe, but he can already feel Sun, centered and focused on a mission that he can sense being formed in his head.

“Lito. Lito, come on baby. You’re not making any sense. We have to get you to the hospital.” 

Lito caught his breath enough to finally raise his head and look at the love of his life. Hernando has never seen that look on his boyfriend’s face before. His 'intense smolder' in his films is nothing compared to this.

“I have to go to London,” Lito said seriously, almost sternly.

Dani came running into the bathroom, “I have an ambulance on the way!”

“No!” Lito dismissed. “Tell them I’m fine. I won’t need to go to the hospital. Estoy bien.”

“Pero Lito-” Hernando started.

“No! Hernando, Dani, por favor! Escuchenme. Tengo que ir a London." (please. Listen to me. I have to go to London.)

Capheus didn't try to explain why he looked so despondent. Nomi didn't blink an eye at wiring money - from an oil company, of course - for tickets from Jomo Kenyatta International Airport to Kerry in Ireland, then the next flight to London.

Waiting for his flight, Capheus sat with his mother glued to his side.

"It is about the spirit," Capheus told her.

"The spirit?"

"Yes."

"The spirit of Jean-Claude?" Jella says, sitting down beside his friend.

"Yes, he is in trouble."

"He? I thought the spirit was a she?"

"She is. But there are others. And this other, yuko hatarini." (he is in danger.)

"What kind of danger?"

Capheus looks into his mother's eyes. "He could die."

Nomi and Amanita have to take a flight to Atlanta before heading to London.

Everyone had felt the whisper of the violation of Milton's possession stunt with Kala.

Sun is the one to shift when the feeling is mentioned, angry and uncomfortable and angry that she is uncomfortable. "Possession" really was the best word for it. How it felt, the loss of control, the odd feeling of being in your body but not being in control. It was nothing like sharing with one's cluster. They are, in a sense, all one body... or all sharing all of their bodies... It's complicated.

They had all known exactly where the building was -- getting in was not so easy.

The Cannibal had known who Kala was. Her name. Maybe even what time she was likely to step into a cab in London. Milton had never been an unintelligent man.

Whispers had eyes on her. So Bug shut down the cameras at the airport for Kala to change her shirt and take her hair down and then again when she got off the plane in London, where she bought a new outfit in the airport merchandise shop.  

They had to work almost without including Kala. As they each made their way through London, they never crossed paths with her. Passing off the BPO hazmat suit was difficult, but they figured it out. Amanita hid it in a cafe bathroom, taking a picture of where it was tucked and showing the picture to Nomi so that Kala could find it ten minutes later.

A different switch happens simultaneously a block over in a boutique. Kala leaves a purse full of blockers in a corner behind a line of wedding dresses. (She doesn't have the time to dwell on the irony of using wedding dresses to save a man she was in love with who is not her husband.) A few minutes later, Dani and Lito walk into the boutique. Like the professional actors they are, they are completely believable in their fake engagement. Dani feels bad for leading on the sweet salesman who follows her closely, asking about her tastes and telling her about what would look best with her bone structure and hair and height. He is good at his job. But when Lito comes to her shoulder, purse full of pills now stuffed into the tote they came in with, she remembers that there is apparently a life at stake here. She leaves with a smile, giddy at having been part of this secret plan that still has Hernando biting his nails.

Walking through the city looking like you were on a mission wasn't all that distracting, but it was hard for the Cluster to not look distraught, which is definitely more attention-grabbing.

Nomi and Amanita go to grab Jonas from his flat while Will is on his way to a more dangerous place.

Getting Will into the interrogation room is actually just as easy as it was getting him into the Icelandic hospital before. Or maybe it's not and everyone is just too stressed to tell the difference.

Slamming Milton's mother-fucking face into the table was really satisfying. And the whole cluster is disappointed that they all can only access Will's memory of it.

Milton comes out of the place in a body bag, and sensorium and sapien alike stare at his beaten face as they make their way through curves and tunnels until they transfer from the "ambulance" to a family van. They have to shove Milton onto the floorboards after making sure he was securely zonked out. No one is sad about that. The van and its passengers are loaded on the first ferry from England to France they can book. It'll take a day for the trip and probably another to find a good place to hide Whispers.

Kala hops on a plane for Paris while Will and Riley are getting on one bound east for Germany. They know BPO hasn't moved Wolfgang out of the country yet. They mean to catch them in transit. That should be the easiest.

The blockers are good, but they wear off some time still mid-trek, so on the planes and the ferry, they try to discuss their plan but are interrupted by questions from their loved ones.

Hernando is finally done getting half-answers out of his love.

And Capheus cannot ignore another call from his mother. So, while the wifi is awful on the ferry, Capheus does his best to explain what is going on to his mother. It is not as hard as it should be. She is a trusting mother, and her son has never lied to her in any way to hurt her. He explains about the days he had in the beginning when he could feel the spirit of Jean-Claude, and he tells her he loves her in seven languages.

Chapter Text

Sitting in the driver’s seat, Capheus speaks with his mother for some time. She has questions about these people that are so connected to her son’s life. She is not judgmental, it is not in her nature. 

But Jella is his usual pushy self. Light-hearted though he is, he’s very worried for his friend. 

Eventually, Jella makes it to the question Capheus suspects he has been holding since he left Kenya: “So this one who is in trouble… you trust him? He is good?”

“I don’t know how I can answer your question better, my friend, as to say that he is a part of me as the others are. And if one of us dies, we will feel it. And I believe it would be unbearable. We all feel his pain and fear, even now.” Capheus tries to keep the haunting feeling out of his voice.

Jella nods, less worried, but it’s clear he doesn’t understand. Capheus doesn't know how to make him.

Lito’s explanation doesn’t go so smoothly. 

Sitting in the back row of the van, Hernando finally says. “You have to tell us what is going on, Lito.”

“Lo sé, lo sé.” Lito mutters, trying to gather his thoughts.

“Who are all of these people?” Daniella asks in a whisper, and Lito holds back on telling her how futile that is.

“Well, they are my friends.”

Hernando almost scoffs. “Friends? Lito, sé todos tus amigos. And I’ve never seen these people.”

“Well, this is the first time I've been in the same country as any of them… I’ve only ever seen them…” he sighs, “in my head.”

He gets wide-eyed looks from his family.

“In your head.”

“Sí. Sus nombres son Nomi, Capheus, Kala, Will, Riley, Sun, and Wolfgang. I started to see them… almost a year ago?”

“What do you mean, you ‘started to see them’? Lito, you're not making any sense.”

"I know, Hernando."

"You are saying that… you are telepathic?"

"Like a mutant?" Dani asks excitedly.

"No, I'm not telepathic. I don't know about mutant." The information of the genome and how sensoriums differentiate from sapiens runs through his head. Is that a mutation? Didn't Mr. Hoy say it was another species? "It's only these seven people." Then Lito remembers that he could connect with anyone else of his kind, too… well, that's for later.

“It’s hard to explain, Hernando. One day, I just saw them. We all saw eachother. The connection- it’s a miracle and a curse all at once.” His emotions are starting to take over. “We feel eachother’s hurts and heartaches. We laugh when one of us laughs. We share in the joys of each of our lives. We all have so many loved ones now who we didn’t know before. We remember eachother’s memories. We share dreams and loves and when we feel ecsta-” Perhaps he should have kept that for later as well.

“Ecstasy? Is that what you were going to say?” Hernando’s eyes are going to come out of his head and touch his lenses.

“Uhm…”

Dani has no hesitation in turning to Nomi and Amanita, who have been playing news clips to eachother on their phones and adamantly not listening. “Did he say that you share ecstasy? ”

Nomi is good at schooling her face when having discussions about love that others might not understand, but this is a little different. She’s never already seen the person in throws of passion when this discussion happens. 

The couple are twisted in their seats for a moment before Amanita nudges her girlfriend to get her to talk. There’s not really much context she can provide as a sapien.

“Yes. We experience any strong emotion or sensation of another one of us. So when one of us is working out really hard, pushing ourselves to the limit, we all feel it. When one of us is having sex, we uh- we feel it.” That was smooth.

“You feel it?” Hernando is blushing, and Nomi feels bad because he doesn’t even know the extent of the cluster’s awareness of their lovers that she’s failing to communicate.

“Yes. We feel it, and we see-”

Dani squeaks. “You SEE!”

“They see everything in my life, we see into eachother’s souls.” Lito is aware that he’s waxing poetics, but it is really his natural state.

“That’s great. Eachother’s souls. Yeah, that’s great. But they can all see when we’re-!! I can’t even… What all have they-?” 

It’s not slut shaming exactly, but the whole cluster flinches at the thought that floats between them, no one exactly sure who it came from first: what do you care? don’t you want everyone to see?

“They’ve seen a lot, but Dani, none of this is meant to hurt you!” Lito says, trying to move past that negative thought. “Either of you! If anything, it’s helped.”

Dani stalls, “helped with sex?”

“No,” Lito shakes his head. “Well, actually yes, quite a bit. But I was talking about other things.”

“Like what?” Hernando asks, finally finding his voice.

“Like with Juaquin.” Lito says seriously.

Dani’s expression darkens, “what?”

“Wolfgang, the man who we are trying to save-” 

“the man we will save” Nomi cuts in.

“-he helped me rescue you.” Lito finishes.

Dani tilts her head, trying to understand.

“I could never take a punch like that. I couldn’t. But he could. Pain doesn’t mean the same thing to him. He can keep pushing through. And that’s just what he did. I needed him, and he was there.”

“You can’t fight like that.” Dani says.

“No. No matter how much I do for my movies, it will never be the real thing. It will never be like that.” 

Hernando is nodding. He wasn’t there for the fight, but Dani describing it as ‘a scene from one of his movies’ always seemed very unrealistic. He loves Lito, but off the movie set, he’s really sensitive to pain. Showing up with a swollen face just didn't seem right, though he adored his love for his decision to get Dani back.

“So you have been psychologically linked to these other people for… years?”

Basically. “Sí?”

“And you didn’t think I would want to know that?” Lito is not unfamiliar with Hernando’s ire, but Dani adding “that we would want to know that” in a quiet, frustrated voice makes him sweat.

“I didn’t know how to tell you!”

It is then that Hernando remembers there is an unconscious man tied up and blindfolded in the very back of the vehicle. “And I suppose you don’t know how to tell us why our first trip to Europe involved abduction?”

Amanita pipes up, "I'm afraid that has nothing to do with ecstasy."

As Will and Riley’s plane makes its way over the Netherlands, everyone starts feeling shaky. The whole cluster feels like a big clump of clammy skin. It’s gross. And it takes a while for someone (Riley) to spot the withdrawal symptom. As soon as she thinks it, the whole cluster’s focus is on Will, even though Kala is deboarding from her plane. 

Will really tries to keep his guilt under wraps. Now is not the time for a pity party, but it’s really hard when the last of his adrenaline wears off and he feels so sick. 

“It’s the drugs.” Riley whispers to him. “It’s just the drugs, and it’ll wear off, I promise.”

The knowledge shared by a few of them that withdrawal can last weeks in some cases is not helpful.

He just tries to breathe through it and drink his water quietly.

Chapter Text

Twenty-five minutes later, Will and Riley touch down in Düsseldorf. There’s no time to focus on how tired he feels. They need to move quickly. That doesn’t stop Riley from flowing through the airport to get Will something to snack on the way into the city. There’s someone here they need to see.

Even as the man at her door introduces himself as Will Gorski in bad German, she can tell he is odd. He obviously knew the language by heart once, it’s clear in his word choice. His greeting is perfect, just like a native, better than hers. 

Swetlana Dogan stares at the two people on her doorstep, where they stand as if they are in the midst of a war. They barely move, and when they do, it is as one. As the young lady shifts to the left, the man, Will, shifts forward as if to cover her - though he shouldn’t be able to see that she has moved. It is strange, though not as strange as what they tell her next: 

“Der König des Ostens bittet um Ihre Mithilfe.” [The king of the East requests your assistance.]

Swetlana feels her eyes bulge with shock. She hasn’t dealt with kings or gangs in a decade. The move to Düsseldorf was specifically orchestrated so that she would no longer need to be a part of any of her brother’s political bullshit. Quatsch.

“Er braucht deine Hilfe,” the young lady says.  [He needs your help.]

“I do not know what you mean,” Swetlana says in her clearest, nonaccented English. She hopes to perhaps confuse the two, as she has others in the past, making them believe they have come to the door of an ignorant old immigrant woman.

It does not work.

“Frau Dogan, Hör bitte zu”  [Ms. Dogan, please listen.]

“The king of the East, Wolfgang Bogdanow, asks for your help.”

“I cannot help you or your king,” she says quickly.

“Yes, you can, " the man says forcefully, and for a split second, Swetlana sees him debate pushing through her to get inside. 

She does not miss how the girl behind him grabs his arm tightly.

Any authorities would take long minutes to arrive, assuming Swetlana could get to her phone before this couple tackles her. 

She sighs before stepping slightly to the side. “You may as well come in and tell me what you 'request.’”

They both say “thank you” sincerely enough.

The man doesn’t even wait for her to return to her table where she had her lunch sitting. “The king of the East was taken prisoner less than 20 hours ago." It does not escape her notice that these poor souls have obviously been awake and on the move for that long.

The kingdoms of Berlin essentially have no limits that are not the whims of the other kings. The police are easily manipulated, business owners easily intimidated, and the airports are just a call away for the kingdoms to request extra security screenings, even for private runways.

Her visitors ask that the south stall all outgoing flights from Berlin Brandenburg Airport. They ask her to call her brother, Khalil Dogan, the king of the south, and tell him to ground any plane with medical or scientific items on their rosters. Or better yet, ground them all.

This is the cluster’s best, fastest at catching Lila. She and her cluster need to be off the chess board just like Milton. She wasn't on any transport out of Berlin that the hackers could see. Nomi had a basic program running, trying to see if there's a certain plane she's likely to be on, and there’s no obvious choice. BPO used Brandenburg when they arrived, but they came under a different name, and that name isn’t on any outgoing flights anywhere in the country.

Wolfgang feels rocking. Something tight around his chest.

He feels nauseous.