Chapter 1: The Fifth Escape
The chain groaned under Daisuke’s weight, a rusty protest that echoed the ache in his ribs. Every shallow breath felt like broken glass shifting under his skin. Fifth time. This was their fifth try. Bonnie’s small hand was a clammy knot clenched in his, her knuckles white against the flaking green paint of the swing seat. She wasn’t swinging. Just sitting rigid, legs dangling, watching the cracked asphalt beneath her worn pink sneakers.
"Does it hurt lots, Daddy?" Her voice was a feather-light scrape in the heavy twilight air. She didn’t look up.
Daisuke swallowed, forcing a lightness he didn’t feel. "Just a bit, sweet pea. Like… like when you bump your funny bone. Annoying." He squeezed her hand gently. Too gently. He couldn’t manage more. The park was unnervingly quiet, just the whisper of dead leaves skittering across faded hopscotch squares and the low groan of the empty swing beside them. Forgotten. Like them.
He scanned the perimeter again. Chain-link fence sagging inward, choked with brittle weeds. The skeletal outline of a slide missing its middle section. Beyond the fence, the distant hum of city traffic felt like a different world. Safe. Unreachable. The air tasted metallic, thick with the smell of decaying wood from the rotting jungle gym and the damp earth beneath the dead sycamore leaves.
"Did… did he hurt you bad?" Bonnie finally lifted her head. Her wide, dark eyes, too old for six, searched his face. The fading light caught the tracks of dried tears on her cheeks, cutting paths through the grime. She looked at the bruise purpling the skin just above his collar, peeking out from beneath his hastily zipped hoodie.
Daisuke’s throat tightened. He remembered the sudden crack against the kitchen counter, the way his vision had splintered like dropped glass. Adam’s voice, thick with cheap beer and fury: "Where the FUCK is my wallet, you useless little thief?" The accusation, baseless and vicious. The scramble to shield Bonnie, pulling her behind him just as the second blow landed low on his ribs. The sharp, sickening pop. Bonnie’s muffled scream against his back.
"Not too bad," he lied, his voice raspy. He traced the constellation of freckles scattered across her nose – a map of safer times. "He just… got scared. Sometimes people get scared and do stupid things." The excuse tasted like ash. How many times had he smoothed it over? Made it smaller? For her. Always for her.
Bonnie leaned her forehead against his arm, a small, trusting weight. "I don’t like his scared," she whispered. Her breath puffed warm through the thin fabric of his hoodie. "It smells like cigarettes and yelling."
Daisuke closed his eyes, inhaling the cool, decaying air to push back the phantom stench of Adam’s anger – stale smoke, sour breath, and something metallic, like old pennies. Bonnie was right. That fear had a scent, a sound, a crushing weight. It lived in the apartment’s shadowed corners, in the sudden silences that followed a slammed door. It had driven them here, again, to this graveyard of childhood laughter.
He shifted, a fresh jolt of pain stealing his breath. "We won’t go back, Bonnie-bear. Not this time." He said it with more conviction than he felt. The other times… the shelters with their sympathetic eyes and bureaucratic walls, the friends whose spare rooms suddenly became unavailable, the terrifying nights sleeping in the borrowed car that Adam inevitably tracked down. How did he always find them? Daisuke scanned the deepening shadows beyond the fence again. Nothing moved but the leaves.
"We gonna find Curly?" Bonnie’s question was muffled against his sleeve.
Curly. The name was a physical pang, a deep bruise on his heart. His ex-husband. The kind, steady presence Adam had systematically isolated him from. "He thinks he's better than us, Dai. Always judging." "He just wants to take Bonnie away." Lies, spun like sticky webs Daisuke had walked straight into. Looking back, the manipulation felt obvious, grotesque. He’d been so desperate for love, for family, after the lonely ache following the divorce. Adam had offered both, a whirlwind romance that swept Daisuke off his feet and straight into a cage. And Bonnie… adopting Bonnie with Adam had felt like building a dream. Until the dream turned sharp.
"Maybe," Daisuke answered carefully, running a hand over Bonnie’s tangled curls. "Curly might… he might be able to help." Would he? Could he forgive Daisuke for vanishing, for letting Adam poison things, for showing up broken and begging with a child Adam never truly wanted? The doubt was a cold stone in his gut. But Curly… Curly had always seen the best in him, even when Daisuke didn’t deserve it. Especially then.
Bonnie lifted her head, a flicker of something other than fear in her eyes. Hope? "Curly has the puppy pictures," she stated, a small, definite fact from her limited memories of Daisuke’s old life. "The fluffy brown one that licked my nose."
"Yeah," Daisuke managed, a ghost of a smile touching his lips. "Buster. He had a really slobbery nose." The memory was a tiny flare of warmth in the encroaching chill. He checked his cheap burner phone – the one Adam didn’t know about, bought with crumpled bills saved from grocery money. Low battery. No new messages. His one tentative text to Curly’s old number, sent hours ago from a bus station payphone, remained unanswered. Please be okay. Please see it.
The swing chain groaned again as Bonnie leaned into him. "I’m cold, Daddy."
"Me too, sweet pea." The temperature was dropping fast. They couldn’t stay. The abandoned park offered no shelter, only exposure. They needed to move, find somewhere off the street before the real dark set in. Before Adam set in. The thought sent a fresh wave of nausea through him. Where? The library was closed. The all-night diner felt too exposed. His mind raced, skittering over possibilities, each one feeling flimsier than the last. The weight of their situation pressed down, heavier than the bruised ribs. Five times. Five failures. The pattern felt carved in stone.
He pushed off gently from the ground, the swing creaking in protest. Pain lanced through his side, sharp and bright. Bonnie slid off her swing and immediately pressed herself against his leg, her small body trembling. Daisuke wrapped his good arm around her shoulders, pulling her close, trying to absorb her shivers. "Okay," he breathed, more to himself than her. "Okay. We go now. Quiet like mice." He scanned the broken fence line again, looking for the gap near the dead sycamore. Their way out.
Bonnie stiffened against him. Her tiny fingers dug into his thigh. He followed her gaze. Headlights. Two bright points piercing the gloom of the street beyond the park fence. Slowing. Turning. Tires crunching gravel in the parking lot they’d crossed hours ago, thinking it deserted.
The crunch of gravel stopped. Engine off. Silence rushed back in, louder than before. Daisuke's heart hammered against his damaged ribs, each thud a fresh ache. He squinted through the chain-link diamonds, past the skeletal slide, towards the parking lot’s edge. Not Adam’s battered truck. This car was lower, sleeker, dark-colored. An unfamiliar silhouette.
Not him. The relief was a physical thing, a loosening in his chest that immediately made the broken glass feeling sharper. He sucked in a breath, the cold air sawing at his lungs.
"Who is it, Daddy?" Bonnie whispered, pressing closer, her small frame trembling violently against his leg. The earlier flicker of hope was gone, drowned in raw fear.
"Don't know, sweet pea," he murmured, his voice tight. "But not Adam. Okay? Not him." He forced himself to sound certain. He unzipped his thin hoodie, wincing as the movement tugged at his side. "Here." He draped it awkwardly over Bonnie’s shoulders, engulfing her. It smelled of cheap detergent and the faint, clinging scent of Adam’s cigarettes. "Keep warm."
He took her hand again, the grip weaker than before. "We need to go. Now. Quietly." The gap in the fence near the dead sycamore was only twenty feet away. Freedom lay beyond it, down a side street, into the maze of the city night. Somewhere.
One step. The pain in his side flared, hot and insistent. He ignored it. Two steps. Bonnie stumbled, the oversized hoodie catching around her ankles. He steadied her. Three steps. The world tilted slightly. He focused on the jagged tear in the fence, a black slash against the grey chain-link. Almost there.
Four steps. A searing agony ripped through his chest, stealing the air. He gasped, but nothing came in. Panic clawed at his throat. His vision swam. Five steps. He tried to pull Bonnie forward, but his legs were lead. The sidewalk rushed up to meet him.
He hit the cracked asphalt on his knees, a choked, wheezing sound tearing from his throat. Not a gasp, but a desperate, ragged struggle. No air. Just fire and pressure, crushing his lungs. His vision tunneled, the edges going grey and speckled.
Right. Ribs. Adam’s fist, the sickening crack against the counter edge. The memory was a physical blow. He clutched his side, fingers digging into the fabric of his t-shirt, trying desperately, uselessly, to pull in oxygen. Each attempt was a knife twist.
"Daddy!" Bonnie’s scream was high-pitched, laced with pure terror, cutting through the roaring in his ears. Her small hands were on his face, cold and frantic. "Daddy! Daddy, breathe! Please breathe! You gotta breathe!" Her voice was very close, a desperate anchor in the drowning sensation. Tears splashed onto his cheek, warm against his clammy skin. "Not breathing! Help! Somebody help my daddy!"
He couldn’t speak, couldn’t reassure her. He was drowning on dry land, his body betraying him. The world narrowed to the agony in his chest, the cold bite of the asphalt under his knees, and Bonnie’s terrified cries, ringing like bells in his skull.
Then, cutting through Bonnie’s sobs and the panicked wheezing of his own breath, another sound ripped through the twilight stillness. Raw, agonized, bursting from the direction of the parking lot.
"DAISUKE!"
The name tore through the air, echoing off the rusted playground equipment. A voice strained with shock, recognition, and a depth of anguish that vibrated in Daisuke’s bones. A voice he hadn't heard in two years, except in dreams he tried to forget.
Curly?
Was he imagining things? Was the lack of oxygen conjuring ghosts? The distant scream hung in the decaying air, mingling with Bonnie’s frantic pleas and the terrifying, ragged silence of his own unbreathing lungs. The grey speckles danced wildly.
The grey speckles danced wildly, swallowing the rusted playground whole. Daisuke clawed at his ribs, a fish gasping on asphalt. Bonnie’s screams – high, thin wires of pure terror – cut through the roaring silence in his head. Breathe. Please, just breathe. But his lungs were crushed stone.
Then, thunder. Footsteps pounding across dead leaves and cracked concrete, impossibly fast. A shadow fell over him, blotting out the dying twilight. Strong hands, surprisingly gentle, rolled him carefully onto his back. The movement sent fresh lightning through his side, stealing what little air remained.
"Easy! Easy, mate. Look at me. Look at me, Daisuke!"
The voice. That accent. Cut-glass vowels cracking with fear. British. Warm. His. Daisuke forced his eyes open, fighting the grey swirl. Curly’s face swam into focus above him. Not a ghost. Real. Older, lines etched deeper around his eyes, dark stubble shadowing his jaw. His normally bright blue eyes were wide, frantic, fixed on Daisuke’s struggling chest. The sight punched a different kind of breathlessness into Daisuke.
"Curly?" It was a rasp, barely audible.
"Yeah, Dai. It's me. Christ, what happened?" Curly’s hands hovered, unsure where to touch without causing more pain. One landed carefully on Daisuke’s shoulder, grounding. The other brushed damp hair off his forehead. The familiar touch, absent for so long, sent a confusing jolt through the agony. "Talk to me. Where are you hurt?"
"Ribs," Daisuke wheezed. "Adam… kitchen counter…"
Curly’s jaw clenched, a muscle jumping. His gaze flickered to Bonnie, who was sobbing uncontrollably now, plastered against Daisuke’s side. "And the wee one? Bonnie, are you hurt?" His voice softened, turning infinitely tender.
Bonnie shook her head violently, burying her face in Daisuke’s arm. "Daddy c-can’t breathe! Make him breathe, Mister Curly!"
"He will, sweetheart. He will. Help is coming." Curly’s voice was steady, a rock in the chaos, though his eyes betrayed the storm inside. He looked back at Daisuke, his expression hardening into something fierce, protective. "Just hold on, Dai. Ambulance is nearly here. Saw you collapse as I pulled in. Called straight away." He kept one hand firm on Daisuke’s shoulder, the other resting lightly on Bonnie’s trembling back. "Deep as you can, mate. Slow. Just focus on me."
The world narrowed to Curly’s face, the pressure of his hand, the desperate wheeze of his own breath, and Bonnie’s muffled cries. Sirens wailed, growing louder, piercing the twilight. Red and blue lights strobed across the decaying playground, painting the rust and rot in garish, urgent colours. Then, figures in uniforms, brisk voices, the clatter of equipment. Gentle hands eased Curly aside, replaced by professional competence. Oxygen hissed cool into Daisuke’s nose, a blessed relief. A collar secured his neck, a backboard slid beneath him. Pain flared as they moved him, sharp and brutal, but the air… the air was finally flowing again.
He locked eyes with Curly over a paramedic's shoulder. "Bonnie," he gasped.
"She's with me," Curly said instantly, his voice cutting through the medical bustle. He had scooped Bonnie up, holding her securely against his chest, her face buried in his neck. "I’ve got her, Dai. I swear it." The promise hung heavy, laden with unspoken history and present urgency. "Just let them help you."
The ride was a blur of jolting motion, fluorescent lights streaking overhead, the paramedic’s calm voice asking questions he answered in monosyllabic grunts. Bonnie’s small hand found his through the rail of the gurney, clutching tight. He drifted, anchored only by that tiny grip and the image of Curly’s face, etched with worry, following the ambulance in his sleek, dark car.
Cool sheets. Quiet hum. The pervasive, sterile scent of antiseptic. Daisuke blinked awake, the harsh overhead light making him wince. He was propped slightly up. The crushing, glass-shard pain in his ribs was… diminished. A deep, heavy ache remained, a constant reminder, but the terrifying inability to breathe was gone. He drew in a cautious lungful. It hurt, but the air came. Relief washed over him, so profound it felt like weakness.
A soft weight rested on the bed beside his hip. Bonnie. Curled up like a kitten on a visitor's chair pulled close, her head pillowed on her arms, fast asleep. One small hand still loosely held the edge of his hospital gown. Her face was pale, tear-streaked, even in sleep. Someone – Curly – had draped a thin hospital blanket over her.
He watched her sleep, the steady rise and fall of her small back. Safe. They were safe. For now. The beeping of the heart monitor nearby was a steady, reassuring rhythm. He closed his eyes, letting the relative quiet seep in. The fear of the park, the panic, the desperate run… it receded, leaving a deep exhaustion and the dull throb of healing bones.
Then, the quiet shattered.
"WHERE IS HE? THAT'S MY PARTNER! THAT'S MY DAISUKE! I HAVE A RIGHT TO SEE HIM!"
Adam's voice. Raw, furious, echoing down the tiled corridor outside the private room. Every muscle in Daisuke’s body locked tight. Ice flooded his veins, instantly vaporizing the fragile sense of calm. His heart monitor spiked, the beeping accelerating into an frantic staccato.
"Sir, you need to calm down!" A nurse's voice, firm but strained.
"YOU CALM DOWN! HE'S MINE! I NEED TO TAKE HIM HOME! HE DOESN'T BELONG HERE WITH STRANGERS! HE NEEDS ME!"
"Mr. Vance, he is receiving care. You cannot barge in like this. Security has been called."
"SECURITY? FUCK SECURITY! GET OUT OF MY WAY!" A crash, like a cart being shoved. "DAISUKE! SUGAR, IT'S ME! I'M COMING! WE'RE GOING HOME!"
Panic seized Daisuke, cold and absolute. It clawed up his throat. Home. The cramped apartment with its tension thick enough to choke on. The slammed doors. The accusations. The sudden, violent hands. The crack against the counter edge. His breath hitched, the ache in his ribs flaring into a sharp warning. He couldn't go back. He wouldn't let Bonnie go back. But Adam was here. He sounded unhinged. He was getting closer. The shouting, the scuffling sounds just beyond the door…
He tried to sit up, a groan escaping him as pain lanced through his side. Bonnie stirred, whimpering in her sleep. The heart monitor screamed its rapid protest. He fumbled for the call button, fingers numb. The door handle rattled violently. Adam was trying to force it. No. No, no, no. His vision blurred at the edges. The sterile smell of the hospital was suddenly suffocating, replaced by the phantom scent of stale beer and rage.
Trapped. Again.
He braced himself for the door to burst open, for Adam’s furious face to appear, for the inevitable grabbing, the dragging, the screaming that would wake Bonnie…
His frantic gaze, sweeping the room for escape, for anything, snagged on movement to his left.
In the corner, partially shadowed by the slightly open door to the small en-suite bathroom, sat Curly. He hadn't noticed him before. Curly was slumped in an uncomfortable-looking plastic chair, head resting back against the wall, eyes closed. He looked exhausted, shadows like bruises beneath his eyes, his coat rumpled. One hand lay loosely in his lap, the other rested protectively on the arm of Bonnie’s chair, his thumb gently brushing the blanket covering her back. He must have sat vigil while Daisuke slept.
As if sensing the electric terror in the room, or perhaps startled by the escalating chaos outside, Curly’s eyes snapped open. They weren't frantic. They were instantly alert, sharp, and focused directly on Daisuke. He didn't speak. Didn't move suddenly. But in that split second, his gaze held Daisuke's – a calm, unwavering anchor in the midst of the storm raging beyond the door. The message was clear, wordless, cutting through Daisuke’s panic with the precision of a scalpel: I’m here. You’re not alone.