#and david. boy howdy david. also taverner is there

[altschmerzes]

drive the wedge

a (very long) slow horses gen fic about kidnapping, trauma, survival, recovery, and what a family is and isn’t

At the end of 4x05, Patrice abducts River at gunpoint. This time, they go to a remote, isolated manor where Frank is waiting for them. The slow horses do not see or hear from River again for almost five months. During that time, Frank does his level best to break River and rebuild him into a tool he can use, with Patrice as his assisting shadow. This… doesn’t really work. In fact, the process ends up breaking not River, but someone else.

Meanwhile, Slough House is on overdrive trying to find a missing colleague who the Park is all to quick to deem presumed dead and rubber-stamp his file as such. Louisa almost quits, and finds an odd solace in working alongside Lamb to try to bring their missing agent home. She is having a bad one - the maybe-loss of her best friend is tearing her apart.

It all comes to a head when Louisa follows a lead that she knows better than to follow. She is meant to be the last blow that destroys River's resolve. It doesn't shake out like that. By the time they're both rescued, it's a long road to recovery. But there is a road, and there's help along the way.

chapter two up now on ao3!

For all that he demands they get moving, Lamb doesn’t actually want to be saying any of what he’s about to have to say. It’s… personal. It’s information about River that even River himself may or may not know at this point. And it’s not that he cares overmuch about embarrassing River — not least because River seems all too happy to embarrass the daylights out of himself on a regular basis — but fuck’s sake, this goes a little beyond embarrassment. This is… deeply personal and painful stuff. He’s digging his hands into River’s exposed belly and dragging the bloody, pulsing mass of his insides out for everyone to see. Still, it has to happen. Lamb has to gut him in absentia, because they won’t get him back if they don’t have every piece of the puzzle. So he says what he has to say as brusquely and neutrally as possible, as if he’s never met the boy whose photo he points to as he says, “Here’s our missing agent.”