Chapter Text
My ashes, as the Phoenix’, may bring forth
A bird that will revenge upon you all;
And in that hope I throw mine eyes to heaven,
Scorning whate’er you can afflict me with.
Why come you not? What, multitudes, and fear?
- William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 3 (Act 1, Scene 4)
2020
Porsche knew that he was dreaming.
He knew that he was laying in his bed, a thin sheet wrapped around his body. The fabric felt cold against his damp skin, cold sweat clinging to his body as he tried to fight his own mind, tried to move.
His whole body was frozen, panic slowly starting to rise inside his chest.
He needed to move but he couldn’t even twitch a muscle. He knew that Porchay was in the room next to his, passed out from the training Porsche had made him endure today - making him run until his legs nearly collapsed, his knuckles bloodied because Porsche had not been satisfied with his right hook and had made him punch the boxing sack for hours. Porchay was small for a boy his age but that was to be expected, his body hadn’t managed to shake off the effects of starving on the streets for months as a child. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t make up for it with enough wry muscle mass and training.
Nonetheless, today had been one of their worse days. Porsche had been unusually cruel to his own brother, a sense of foreboding had compelled him to push Porchay to the edge. Perhaps it was Porchay’s looming graduation that made Porsche feel like he had to prepare his brother for the harsh world that awaited him.
The guilt nagged at him. It was purely Porsche’s fault that Porchay had to be on alert wherever he went, whatever he did.
He had already been awake for hours, not able to sleep, before he slowly felt a paralyzing hold on his mind, on his body.
He was laying in his bed but his mind had taken him somewhere else, trapping him there as a cruel reminder why he had to do the things he did today. Why he had to train Porchay, not allowing him to have a carefree and relaxing Sunday night like his other peers did.
Because in his mind, Porsche was still hiding in that cupboard, pressing his palm against the mouth of his five year old brother, making him choke on the sobs that were wrecking through his tiny body, trying to keep him still. His other hand was draped over his brother's eyes, hindering him from looking out of the tiny hole in the cupboard where once had been a handle that Porsche had accidentally yanked out a few days ago. Porchay and him had been playing hide and seek, their mother sitting on the couch and laughing as their father massaged the feet of his pregnant wife.
Now the lifeless body of his father was bound to a chair, beaten up and sullied with his own blood; a knife was protruding from his right eye. The strange men that had invaded their home had tortured him to death, asking about some documents his father had sworn he didn't know anything about. They had been cruel - making his mother watch as they had tortured her husband for hours.
The relief flooded his veins like cold ice as his father’s agonized screams finally perished. One second he was alive and the next he was not.
His mother was bound to the chair next to him, gagged with a cloth around her mouth while tears streamed down her cheeks. One of the men, a gnarly scar on his face, kicked her chair to the ground, making her fall with a loud crash to the ground. Porsche was too scared to do anything, just sitting there in the darkness, keeping quiet as the tears blurred his vision. He hated himself so much, he wanted to storm out of the closet - wanted to kill those men and make them go away, save his parents and his little sister. But he couldn't move, he was paralyzed from fear.
"It is really a shame, Nampheung.", the man said. Porsche would never be able to forget his voice, raspy and demeaning. "How the mighty have fallen, eh? You were once the princess of that family and now look at what they did to you. Was it all worth it? Was he worth it?" The man shook his head, grabbing one of the canisters his men were carrying into the house. He opened the cap and let the liquid flow on his mother's face, making her choke around the gag as she tried to turn her head away from the assault.
"Khun was adamant that we shouldn’t touch a hair on your head. But there is someone who paid us a good amount of money to kill you and frankly, you Tancharoens should have all died with decades ago. You were living on borrowed time either way.“
The smell of gasoline burned in Porsche's nose, making his eyes sting as he tried to take shallow breaths. Porchay had gone limp in his arms, he didn't know if his brother had fainted or just given up on struggling against his hold. He could hear the desperate cries of his mother as the men around her drenched everything in gasoline. Everything happened so fast after that - everything catching fire, hot scorching flames licking up the walls as the men finally left.
Porsche darted out of his hiding spot, leaving the unconscious body of his brother behind as he raced to his mother, pulling the cloth from her mouth and clawing at the ropes around her ankles.
"Porsche", his mother coughed, still crying, "Porsche you need to take your brother and run, baby."
"No, mama, I won't leave you behind.", Porsche said sobbing, trying to get the damn ropes off his mother. The smoke started to accumulate in the room, the heat making Porsche sweat as he broke his fingernails while digging into the tight ropes.
"There is no time for that, baby. Please. Please just take your brother and run.", his mother screamed. "Listen to me, Porsche, I love you both so much and I'm so sorry ... I'm so, so sorry, baby. You need to live, you need to survive. You have to take care of your brother, you hear me? Run Porsche, leave now!“
Porsche ignored her words, trying to move the chair towards the exit but his body was too small. The chair didn’t even budge despite the adrenaline pumping in his veins.
His mother gathered her last strength, shoving Porsche away from her body with her knees. She immediately curled up in pain, looking at her stomach where her baby girl was waiting to be born, waiting to see the light of the world. She cried harder, broken sobs leaving her dry throat, kicking one last time with her bound feet at Porsche who sat frozen on the floor, looking at his mother as she was withering in pain. "LEAVE!", she screamed at him again.
Smoke was clouding Porsche's vision and he was crying so hard, he just wanted to curl up next to his mother and die. He wanted to leave with her, he didn't want to stay here alone in this world.
He heard coughing behind him, his brother was slowly regaining consciousness. He heard the tiny voice of his baby brother calling for his parents, scared and confused. Porsche sprang on his feet, running to Porchay and hauling him off of the ground, looking frantically at his mother as the fire started to engulf every piece of furniture in the room.
"You have to survive Porsche. Take care of your brother, you're all he has left now.", his mother screamed at him over the sound of the fire growing rapidly. "I love you both, don't you ever forget that, baby. Go now. GO!"
And Porsche ran. As the flames licked up his legs and back, he carried Porchay out of the house, collapsing on the ground. Porchay was clutching his leg, crying and screaming loudly as their house got swallowed by the flames.
They were both covered in soot and grime, their eyes stinging from the tears and the smoke as they watched the world burn around them, as everything was violently ripped away from them.
Thirteen years later, Porsche was laying on his bed, not able to move. He felt the flames licking up his back, burning him alive just like his mother had been burned alive. He laid there, staring at his ceiling without blinking, as he was forced to relive that moment again and again, hearing the screams of his mother as she slowly turned to ashes and bone. There were no tears in his eyes, no sobs leaving his tortured soul because Porsche had not been able to cry since that night. He just laid there until the sun was rising, drenching the room in the color he hated - bright, flaming red.
❈
The first time that he saw Kinn Theerapanyakun up close, the man was bleeding onto the concrete in the back alley of Porsche's workplace.
Porsche had just dumped the trash out, closing the bar and leaning against the wall of the back alley. Smoke curled around him as he let his tired body rest for a few seconds, inhaling the smoke and holding it in his lungs until it burned.
Suddenly, there were men shouting and heavy footsteps echoing in the alley, destroying every pretense of peacefulness Porsche had tried to lull himself into. They were chasing a man who was running from them, clutching his side as he nearly crashed into Porsche, painting the dirty concrete with blood that spurted between his fingers.
Porsche froze, looking at the pale stranger who was trying to regain his strength before the men chasing him could get close. He looked so fucking angry, his handsome features pulled into a dark frown. Oh he was pissed alright, looking like he was the one waiting for his assailants to walk into his trap, a trapped tiger ready to rip their throats off with his bare teeth.
If he were anyone else, Porsche would have pulled him into the bar and hid him before the other men could catch up. But Porsche stood there, his whole body tensing up as he looked at the stranger, looked at the glint of the golden ring on his finger that was coated in the man’s own blood. It was like someone had dumped ice cold water over his head, his nerves on edge as he tried to come out of his stupor.
Because Porsche knew exactly who the man in front of him was. He looked different from the pictures Porsche had pinned on the board on his wall - less perfect and composed. In fact, the man looked utterly fucked. His hair was in disarray and his clothes were torn. There was an ugly bruise forming on his cheek and blood dribbled down his lips, leaving his shredded creamy dress shirt with little pink spots. There was an obvious gash on his left side, someone must have grazed him with a knife.
Porsche blinked, coming to his senses as the men chasing Kinn finally showed up, attacking him with ruthless viciousness. Porsche stood there, his hands shaking, as he brought the cigarette to his lips.
He took another drag of smoke into his lungs, watching with cautious eyes as Kinn hauled one of his assailants right into the trash can, the muscles in his backs and arms flexing as he did so.
Their eyes met for a fleeting moment but it was enough for Porsche to feel the simmering rage inside of his heart flame up again. The feeling was a constant in Porsche's life, the only thing besides Porchay that gave him the drive to move forward, to not succumb to the call of the void that beckoned him sweetly.
Kinn was a proud man, that much Porsche could tell, trying to fend off six man by himself without a sound leaving his lips. He moved fluently and sharp, every one of his kicks and punches precise and calculated. But he was not stupid, he knew that he couldn't fend them all off by himself and get away.
There was nowhere to escape when six man flanked you, viciously trying to rip into you.
"Hey, you!", Kinn shouted towards Porsche while he twisted the arm of one his assailants behind his back, pushing the man violently into the two other man that were running towards him.
Porsche's mind was on overdrive, not knowing what to do. He tried to keep a straight face as he watched another man jump onto Kinn, making the man stagger backwards with the weight before Kinn decked him in the face and made him slump to the ground. "Are you deaf?", Kinn growled at him.
"Who, me?" Porsche lifted one finger, pointing at himself with an innocently questioning look on his face.
"Yes, you! Help me.", Kinn growled again and staggered towards him, a clear limp in his right leg. The men behind him were slowly getting themselves off of the ground, the man in the trashcan was pulled out by two of his friends. There was a rotten banana peel in his hair and the man looked on the verge of tears.
"Mh. I don't know, they seem like the wrong people to anger.", Porsche said, the concern in his voice as fake as the bottles of presumably expensive liquor Yok sold in her bar.
"Do you have the slightest clue who I am?", Kinn said arrogantly, his face hard, a strong emphasis on the word "I". Of course that brat thought that he was the sun and everyone else was just floating around him.
I know exactly who you are, Porsche thought with a grim smile. Because I am going to be the one to destroy you and your family.
Kinn, unaware of the real danger in front of him, turned his head and looked at the men that were now starting to gather behind him again.
"How much?", Kinn asked without turning to Porsche. The arrogant air of a rich boy who had been able to put a price tag to everything he has ever wanted or needed in his entire life surrounding him like a potent stench.
"Fifty grand.", Porsche said and Kinn's head whipped around, looking at Porsche as if he had lost his mind. He appraised Porsche's frame from head to toe in a quick glance and then he snorted.
"Yeah, no.", Kinn said smirking. „You’re not worth that much. More like five."
"Mhh.", Porsche hummed. "Good luck, I guess. Break a leg!"
"Fuck! Wait!", Kinn huffed out as two of the men grabbed him while the third one produced a knife out of his pocket. "Fine! Fucking fine!", he shouted as he looked at the armed man approaching him.
And so the mouse flings itself willingly into the trap, Porsche mused.
He took a last drag of his cigarette before flicking it away. He was on them in a heartbeat. Bashing skulls in, dodging and blocking, throwing kicks and punches. He had something they didn't have - the strength of madness, the ferocity and brute force that came with a man suppressing his anger on a daily basis and now letting it all flow out. He didn't register the pain of the punches and kicks he received in return. Because it didn't matter to Porsche if he got hurt, he only needed to survive.
Back to the wall, guard always up. Porsche's brain was on overdrive, the adrenaline kicking in and making him rip into the assailants with a ruthless efficiency. Be fast, be unpredictable.
He found himself pressed back to back with Kinn, both of them fending off the attackers while slowly advancing down the side street.
"On three we are going to run to my motorcycle.", Porsche whispered harshly towards Kinn. The man nodded, his whole body tense and eyebrows furrowed. Porsche smirked.
"THREE!", he called out loudly, darting away from the group and yanking Kinn with him.
„Fuck, you lunatic.“, Kinn cursed, letting himself be dragged like a ragged doll, still kicking a few of the man, who came dangerously close to them, to the ground.
Porsche was on his motorcycle in a heartbeat and Kinn was behind him in less than that, clutching Porsche's waist like a damsel in distress as Porsche fired up his motorcycle and shot out of the alley.
His motorcycle was by no means fast but it did the job, propelling them through narrow side streets and onto the main road.
Kinn's grip around Porsche started to hurt, the man clutched him as if Porsche were driving with 200 km/h through the streets and not with the 60 km/h his baby merely managed to push itself with.
He made a sharp turn to the right, driving into the parking lot of a gas station. Kinn darted away from Porsche and the motorcycle in a heartbeat, looking around frantically before he turned accusingly towards Porsche.
"Where did you take me?", he demanded, looking at Porsche as if he was a dragon who had just kidnapped his princely ass. "What is this? Take me home."
Porsche quirked an eyebrow. "Do you always put out this fast?"
Kinn spluttered. His fair skin turned a dark shade of red as he realized what other implication his last sentence had. "YOU!", he said threateningly.
"Me.", Porsche mused again. "Ok, as fun as this has been. Pay up, pretty boy. I have places to be."
"Are you dumb? I don't have 50.000 baht conveniently stashed in my pockets.", Kinn said distastefully. That prissy bastard.
"Who said anything about baht? The deal was made in dollars, as every good deal should be."
Kinn's eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets, his eyes widening comically and his mouth agape. Porsche tried not to snicker at that facial expression, putting on his stoic mask as he extended his hand, his palm up, as he regarded Kinn with a "Pay up, bitch"-face.
"I can't believe this is happening to me...", Kinn muttered. He was patting down his pockets, searching for something, anything, when both of their eyes fell to the shining watch on his wrist.
Porsche smirked. Kinn looked like he had bitten into a sour lemon.
"Fine.", Kinn growled. "But let me use your phone first. I need to call my people."
"Sure. You need my social security number, too, pretty boy? You know, so that it will be easier to find me and let your men beat me up?"
Kinn looked utterly done with Porsche. "Don't be an idiot. This means nothing to me.", he said but cringed openly as he took off his watch, cradling it in his hands as if it was his firstborn, before giving it to Porsche with such a murderous look that Porsche wished he could snap a picture for his secret pinboard.
"See? I fulfilled my promise. I promise not to let my men beat you up if you let me call them."
Porsche looked at him, a contemplative look on his face. He shrugged and took his phone out, opening the phone app as to not let Kinn see his background picture, which was of course Porchay smiling at the camera while doing aegyo. It was one of the photos Porsche loved the most and Kinn absolutely didn't need to see that.
Kinn called the number in record speed, clutching the phone while pressing it to his ear. He barked some orders at the person on the other side, telling him where he was and to get there as soon as possible.
Porsche waited impatiently, getting on his bike again and starting the engine while Kinn ended the call.
"Phone.", Porsche demanded and Kinn gave it to him with a distasteful look at his beat up, second-hand Xiaomi.
„Your name", Kinn ordered.
"Why?"
"So that I might include you in my prayers every night for saving me.", Kinn dead-panned.
Porsche hummed. "It's enough if you include me in your wet dreams every night, sugar."
„What!?"
"What?", Porsche mocked him highly amused.
"Do you even know you you're speaking to? I'm Ki-"
"And I'm not interested.", Porsche interrupted him coldly. "Your entourage will be here soon. My cue to leave." And with a two finger salute towards Kinn, the expensive watch dangling from his fingertips, Porsche departed.
He was riding down the street when a column of black cars drove in high speed past him. Porsche gritted his teeth, letting the facade of the goofy and careless stranger Kinn thought he had encountered slip from his face.
The watch sat heavy in his pockets and Porsche gripped the handles of his motorcycle harder, clenching his jaw and feeling the hate in his guts roaring to life.
Just you wait, he thought. This won't even compare to what I'm going to take from you.
❈
2015
Five years ago, Porsche had killed for the first time. It was not something done in self-defense or by accident - it was something he had planned meticulously for a while.
As he was standing in front of Impyerno, a night club for the most deprived souls in Bangkok, his hands were sweating. There was a carpet cutter knife hidden in his right boot because he was not wearing enough clothes to hide it anywhere else. Porsche looked like a kinky hooker - he was wearing a black, sheer blouse and leather pants. There was a leather collar on his neck, it was connected to the thin chain that he had wrapped intricately around his waist, the metal cool on his skin. He wore black leather gloves that might have looked misplaced anywhere else but here, he fit right in.
His friend Sai had put some makeup on his face, not questioning why he wanted to look like anyone else but himself - his cheeks looked fuller with the blush, his lips tinted red and there were blue contact lenses in his eyes.
Sai hadn't questioned him when he had asked her to use her prosthetic makeup in order to change his facial structure. She never asked questions, she just seized him up with a sad smile and complied with his strange requests. Porsche was glad that she had at least fun in trying out the things she had learned in her Makeup Academy. He was also glad that she worked for a privately owned theatre which had a costume like this he could burrow, even if he didn't think that he would be able to bring them back this time.
He fit right into the crowd that was standing in front of the club, looking like a nice little sub in the search for someone to entertain for the night. The bouncer looked him up and down and Porsche averted his eyes coyly, the fact that his hands were trembling - even for a different reason - played right into his charade to look harmless and submissive.
"ID?", the bouncer asked and Porsche was ready to pull out the fake ID he had made Tem do for him, when a small hand snuck into his view, a delicate looking finger attached to a boy who looked barely legal hoking into the chain on his waist. He was wearing makeup similar to Porsche's - red lips, green contact lenses and blush all around his cheeks and nose, his eyes highlighted by a black smokey eyeliner. He was wearing a white silk shirt, a red ribbon wrapped around his neck and tight black pants.
"Khun Chao Fah", the bouncer said and immediately straightened his posture, looking nothing like the dominant male that had stood before Porsche a few seconds ago.
"He is with me.", the melodic voice attached to the boy said, he was seizing Porsche up and down, his finger still hooked into the chain. The bouncer nodded and let them in, bowing his head as they passed him, the boy leading Porsche by the chain like Porsche was a dog.
Porsche felt an uncomfortable feeling creep up his neck - he had wanted to pull attention on himself, but not by the wrong people. He knew exactly who he was looking for, had tailed the man the last three years and knew that he frequented this place every third Saturday of the month.
He didn't know who this boy was but he needed to get rid of him as soon as possible.
"Thank you.", Porsche said, not sure if the boy was even capable of hearing him through the loud thumping of the music. They were in a floor leading to a big black door, another bored bouncer standing there.
"You're cute. A shame that I'm not into subs, your crying face could put stronger man on their knees.", he hummed and unhooked his finger from Porsche's chain. "I'm Chao Fah Chanthara."
Porsche froze momentarily. The boy must have realized, because he smiled sweetly at Porsche, the arrogant look of someone who was accustomed to people freezing when hearing his family name apparent on his face.
The Chantharas were a family closely linked to the Theerapanyakuns. In fact, Porsche was here because of a Chanthara and without realizing it, he had walked right into a relative or sibling of the man he planned to kill.
❈
After their parents had been murdered, Chay and Porsche had lived on the streets for several months, begging for food and money. Porsche had started to sneak into houses and steal things because he didn't want to see his brother slowly die from hunger and thirst, the five year old had been too fragile to live on the streets. They had been placed in various orphanages, people questioning where they came from and who there parents were before they managed to run away - because Porsche knew the second they revealed their identity, they would be in danger again. They had lived in his friend Tem’s backyard for several months, his friend sneaking them food and drinks whenever his parents left for work.
This was all before Porsche snuck into a closed bar one night, about to steal some electronics and money when Yok had found him, screaming at the top of her head like she had seen a ghost.
Because to Yok, who knew exactly who Porsche was, he had been a ghost. A boy who should be dead, killed next to his family in a gas-leak induced fire. It was a strange and lucky coincidence, meeting Yok who had been his father's estranged sister, running away years ago from home after Porsche's grandparents had threatened to kill her because she would dress differently, speak differently and the last straw was that she didn't want to hide herself anymore, wanting to transition to a woman.
She had left her family and had only begun to speak to Porsche's father in the last two years before he was killed. She knew more than she let Porsche believe when she took them in, wordlessly paying someone to forge them new documents and a new identity. Thus, Porchay and Porsche Charoen were born and while Chay was in the right age to go back to school without anyone asking too many questions, Porsche knew that he couldn't go back. He had started to work odd jobs, helping out Yok at her bar and working for anyone that was willing to pay him no matter how small the pay.
Yok had never talked about his parents, but Porsche had rummaged through her things one night, finding a notebook filled with his father's handwriting and attached to it an encrypted USB device.
He had read the notebook several times, memorizing everything that was written into it. Memorizing all of the names that were mentioned, all the things that didn't make sense to Porsche and seemed like coded writing. There was a picture of his mother next to another girl and a boy when Namphueng had been a little girl, they were holding hands in front of a big mansion.
And there had been a name in big, red letters. Next to it his father had written "do not trust, motives unclear - might double-cross?". Chakan Chanthara was the name, he was the firstborn son of the Chantharas who belonged to one of the wealthiest families in Thailand. They worked exclusively for the Theerapanyakuns, so it was a given that Chakan had something to do with everything that had happened to his parents.
By reading the notebook Porsche had found out that his father - who had been a high ranking police officer - had also worked as a private detective for a powerful assemblyman who had wanted to take down the Theerapanyakuns for good.
While researching Porsche found out that a year later the assemblyman had been photographed with Korn Theerapanyakun, shaking hands on the opening day of the real estate agency of the Theerapanyakun Holding. Evidently, there had been a change of plans and the aftermath was that his parents were murdered while the Theerapanyakuns and the assemblyman still lived a good life, no harm done to them.
Thus the first people on Porsche's hit list had been named when he was barely fifteen years old. Chakan Chanthara, assemblyman Sanoh Sakdan and the Theerapanyakuns.