Chapter Text
Nile wakes up with a scream tearing through her throat as she gasps for air that she finally is able to find. The light overhead burns against her eyes, too bright for her to get her bearings as she's forced out of the darkness.
She feels warm hands cupping her face that she tries to push away, their touch feels like it’s scraping raw against her salt coated skin.
“Nile, you’re safe. Breathe with me.”
Someone takes her hands and she can feel the steady beating of their heart against her palm. She tries to copy the motions of their deep breaths but she still feels like water is burning through her lungs. The world around her slowly starts to come into focus. She’s in her room. In Italy. Surrounded by her family.
Nicky is pressing her hands against his chest as he breathes, Joe sitting next to him on her bed with Andy’s sat opposite, her hand resting on Nile’s knee, a worried frown pinching at her face. Nile notices the weapons next, Andy’s labrys is propped against the footboard of the bed, Nicky’s Glock and Joe’s knife on the tangle of blankets. They’d come in all guns blazing.
“I’m sorry,” she manages when she’s able to get lung fulls of air again. “I- bad dream.”
“You’ve got some lungs on you, kid,” Andy says, squeezing Nile’s knee to let her know she’s not mad.
Nile drops back heavily against her pillows, staring up at the ceiling as she tries to make sense of what she saw but she regrets the motion as soon as she pulls her hands away from Nicky's.
It had started with Quynh deep underwater drowning again and again like she usually saw but then Nile’s subconscious must have taken over. She was being pulled through the currents, terrified and then she felt more confused and furious than ever before but the end of the dream was already slipping away from her.
“Would you like to tell us?” Nicky asks, his voice soft and patient as always.
Nile shakes her head. “More of the same,” she says, unable to look at them, knowing if she does they’ll instantly know it was about Quynh and then nobody would get any more sleep. “I don’t even remember half of it.”
She goes to brush a stray strand of her hair that’s escaped her scarf away from her face but clenches her fist when she sees how her hands are trembling. Nicky takes her hand gently, and she holds it tightly to stop herself digging her nails into her own skin.
“Get comfy,” Andy says pushing up off the bed, “I’ll be back.”
She’s already slipping out of the room before anyone can question her and Joe shrugs when Nile glances at him.
“Do you want us to stay?” Nicky asks before Andy comes back and just invites herself into her bed.
Nile gives him a tired smile and manages to nod slightly. “Sure,” she says. Over the last six months, she’s realised that her little family have no concept of personal space, they exchange tender touches and share spaces without batting an eye - something Nile had been taken off guard by the first time Andy had strolled into the bathroom to brush her teeth while she was having a shower but now, she takes comfort in it and has learnt the best ways to fit four people in a small double bed.
Joe drops down next to Nile, shifting so his arm is underneath her and her head lays against his shoulder as Nicky sets the weapons carefully on the night stand before taking up on Joe’s other side.
“How long did it take you guys to find Andy?” she asks quietly, listening as somewhere in the kitchen Andy is going through cupboards.
“About a hundred years,” Joe says, a note in his voice that says he knows what she’s really trying to ask. “Back then when we would die more frequently, we dreamt of each other more.”
“But they never went away?”
“No,” Nicky says, “But Booker didn’t dream of her all the time, not like this.”
Nile frowns. “Maybe I should try the whiskey approach,” she says bitterly and regrets it as soon as Joe’s fingers stop tracing patterns against her arm.
Nicky shifts slightly to look across Joe at her. “You think the alcohol helps keep the dreams away?” he asks.
Nile shrugs, her fingers toying with the edge of her blanket. “I dunno,” she says, “the couple of times I’ve gone to sleep drunk I didn’t dream. Even if it doesn’t stop them, I understand why you’d want to drink after one.”
Joe and Nicky exchange one of their looks that mean they’re having a whole conversation without saying a single word. If she didn’t still feel like she was going to throw up she would probably feel bad for bringing it up.
Andy comes back in and the conversation drops like any that involves Quynh do.
“Here,” she says, dropping multiple bars of chocolate on top of Nile’s chest and slides under the quilt next to her. “Eat. Sugars good for you.”
Nile is pretty certain that Andy shares the opinion with an average eight year old that chocolate helped solve all issues but right now she isn’t going to question it. Peeling back the wrapper she nibbles at the edge of the bar while Andy helps herself to one of the others as her legs tangle with Nile’s.
The warmth of being surrounded by people that she’s come to love slowly settle her racing heart. The three of them were talking softly over her head, in English, as always for Nile’s benefit but Nile was only half listening as Andy and Joe bicker softly about one of Queen Victoria’s dogs.
Gradually as her body calms, she feels herself start to doze again.
The next morning when she wake with only Joe curled around her, muttering sleepily that she can’t abandon him too as he clings to her tighter to stop her getting out of bed, she laughs.
There were many things that he was after his millennia of life, a morning person wasn’t one of them.
.
The dreams come less frequently after that night, nobody knows why but Nile isn’t going to question it, too grateful for the reprieve. After feeling the terror and anger of a woman who had been continuously drowning every night for seven months she was starting to feel like she was the one going crazy.
It wasn’t until a job in Sudan helping refugees went bad and she took a bullet to the back of her head did she dream again.
At first it seemed too normal to be a vision of a shared mind, just her subconscious giving her a nightmare about Booker being targeted and hurt while he was alone until she saw the woman who had sliced through him with a sword.
She wakes with nothing more than a soft gasp, a foreign feeling of calm soothing her until she starts to remember what she’d truly seen. She pushes herself upright, suddenly alert and wide awake.
“Nile?”
Usually, she would curse Nicky being such a light sleeper when she wakes so often in the night but as she looks across the dimly lit room at him and sees the genuine look of concern on his face, she knows that what she needs to say might break them all.
“I’m sorry,” she breathes.
He shakes his head, easing up out of Joe’s arms without waking him. “You know you do not need to apologise for your nightmares,” he says but she is already shaking her head.
“It’s not the nightmare, it’s what was in it,” she says.
“Quyhn?” he asks sadly, knowing that she didn’t like to bring her up.
“Yes.” She nods, but goes on before he can interrupt. “But it was different.” She watches his expression carefully as she decides it’s best to just get to the point before he can jump to conclusions. “She’s not drowning any more. She’s on land. And has Booker.”
Nicky’s eyes bare into her for a solid minute, reading the fear and the certainty in her expression, seeing that this wasn’t just an average dream, that what she's saying is the truth.
He doesn’t doubt her or ask her to clarify; he just lets his head fall into his hands, rubbing at his face tiredly before he turns to wake Joe; a gentle hand on his arm, shaking him lightly.
“Yusuf, destati. Destati, cuore mio.”
Joe wakes, blearily looking around for a threat but hesitates when he sees Nicky’s expression. He looks from him across to Nile, looking only slightly more awake as he pushes himself to sit up.
“What is it?” he asks. “Where’s Andy?”
“Passed out on the couch still,” Nile says, “she wouldn’t let me move her last night.”
“It’s Quyhn,” Nicky says, watching his husband's reactions as he freezes and slowly looks back to Nile, his face crumbling into the start of a new wave of grief.
Nile is already shaking her head. “She’s alive,” she says, “she’s on land and alive. I saw her, I don’t know where but she has Booker. He’s hurt.”
Joe looks considerably more awake in an instant, knowing that they wouldn’t speak Booker’s name this early unless it was an emergency. He looks between his husband and her several times, for once seeming at a loss for words.
“Before tonight, when was the last time you dreamed of her?” he asks, his voice still thick with sleep.
Nile has to think about it and when she finds the answer, dread curls up through her stomach. “Italy,” she says quietly.
Nicky and Joe exchange one of their looks before turning back to her, no doubt remembering her screams in Italy. “What exactly did you dream of then?” Joe asks.
“Drowning,” Nile says honestly, “but I felt more confused and maybe… maybe relieved and there was a light. It was burning?” She sounds uncertain even to herself. “I didn’t think it was real.”
The three of them are silent for a minute, the weight of Nile’s words pressing down on them all until Joe finally pushes himself up to his feet and stretches, his joints cracking. He sighs when they look at him. “We need to wake Andy.”
Andy wakes muttering grumpily about them disturbing her when the building wasn’t on fire but as she catches sight of their faces she falls silent.
“Where are we going?” she asks tiredly.
Nile sits down on the edge of the second couch, Joe at her side as Nicky goes to start making coffee.
“We don’t know yet,” Joe says quietly.
“I had another dream about Quynh,” Nile cuts in. “She’s on land and she has Booker.”
Andy meets her eyes, an unreadable expression on her face as she processes the information. “Tell me what you saw.”
Nile goes through the whole thing, from her dream in Italy to the one tonight, trying to recall every little detail that she could as next to her Joe takes avid notes.
Andy doesn’t move the entire time she speaks, Nicky brings them all strong cups of perfectly brewed Italian coffee and they start to go over the information they have.
“Was it hot or cold where she was?” Joe questions.
Nile tries to think back to the dimly lit room. “Cold wind,” she says, “I think they’re by an ocean.”
Joe nods as he writes this down.
“Booker was in Paris last we heard,” Nicky says, “We thought Quynh was in the North Sea. They were in Scarborough when she was taken.”
Nile nods, not that she could point to Scarborough on a map. “I’ll call Copley,” she says, “she must have been seen by someone.”
Joe passes her his notebook and she takes that and her coffee back into the bedroom, giving the three of them some sort of privacy to come to terms with this latest development about their lost family member.
“Nile? It’s early there. Is everything okay?” Copley asks as soon as the line connects.
“We’re safe,” she says. “Are you still keeping track of Booker?”
“I spoke to him a few weeks ago,” he says, “he was back in Paris. He was uh- taking a break from Calais.”
“What was he doing in Calais?” Nile finds herself asking.
“Pulling refugees out of the English Channel,” Copley says, “I was giving him information on trafficking rings and their paths. He thought a British aid worker saw him revive and had to come away for a while so he went back to Paris.”
Nile didn’t know what she thought Booker would be doing during his exile, drinking mostly, but after his trip to Chicago for her, she is glad that he was doing something productive with his time.
“We need you to check security cameras around his building from whenever you last spoke to him until now. We think he’s been taken by Quynh,” she says and goes on to repeat the story for the third time this morning and as she finishes, letting her head rest back against her headboard tiredly she can already hear him typing.
“I’ll use that painting Joe gave me to run through facial recognition in both England and Paris, if she’s been anywhere densely populated it should give us something.”
“She’s been at the bottom of an ocean for the last five hundred years, she can’t have dodged every camera,” Nile says wearily. “Have you picked up anything about an Asian woman being picked up either around Scarborough or off the coast?”
Copley gives an interesting hum as the typing stops. “I don’t see reports of a woman being found but three months ago a fishing boat was found at a dock in Scarborough in the early hours of the morning, all eighteen crew members were found dead and a large knife missing. Most of the crew were killed five hours before the boat docked.” He lets out a heavy breath. “Crime scene pictures were a mess, fingerprints and footprints were found that belong to an unidentified female.”
An image of Booker in her dream being sliced open with a sharp blade flashes behind her eyes and she forces it away.
“Send me what you have,” she says, “it’ll probably come better from me.”
“I’ll let you know when I find them,” he replies. Not ‘if’ he finds them, ‘when’.
Nile nods, watching her secure email account light up with the articles Copley is sending through. She ends the call with as many pleasantries as she can manage at four am before pushing herself back off of her bed, balancing her laptop, phone and coffee as she steps back into the living room.
Andy, Joe and Nicky are curled together on the couch, all looking a little worse for wear. Andy pushes herself to sit upright as she spots Nile in the doorway. Nicky tugs her to lay back down and Joe raises an arm towards Nile invitingly.
She sets her stuff down on the coffee table before she crawls under his arm, laying her legs over his lap, to tuck her feet under Andy’s thigh as Nicky’s hand comes across to rest on her knee.
“Tell us,” Andy says and Nile takes a moment to look at her. Behind her glassy eyes, she looks more tired than Nile’s ever seen her. What should be hopeful news that Quyhn is no longer drowning is tainted with the knowledge that not only is she still suffering but she’s hurting someone else they love. They’ve all told her the stories of how lethal Quyhn was before the five hundred years of torture and Nile doesn’t think it matters what Booker had done to them, they don’t want him to be a victim to that.
Nile leans into the feeling of Joe’s fingers rubbing at her scalp. “Three months ago, in the early hours of the morning, a fishing boat was found at a dock in Scarborough all of its crew killed violently with a missing blade and forensics put an unidentified woman at the scene,” she says carefully.
Joe makes a pained noise as Andy closes her eyes.
“We were in Italy three months ago,” Nicky points out, though Nile doesn’t need him to tell her it was probably the same day she had the last dream.
“And Book?” Andy asks.
Nile sighs. “Taking a break from refugee work in Calais, he’s just got back to Paris but Copley hasn’t spoken to him in a few weeks,” she says. “He’s running through facial recognition in both the UK and Paris for any sign of either of them.”
They all take a minute to digest this. “Why would she target Booker?” Joe asks, breaking the silence. “She doesn’t know him.”
“Because he’s on his own,” Nicky says, regret heavy in his tone, “we left him as an easy target. She could’ve been seeing images of him for the past two hundred years and he was easier to get to.”
“Quynh…” Andy bites her lip and hesitates as though she’s considering something. “Quynh has had these shared dreams for thousands of years. Since before a time I can remember. She knows that you can see her and she knows that this will get my attention.”
“You think she’s sending a message?” Joe asks, looking pained and Nile’s fingers tighten around his in a gesture that she hopes is comforting.
Andy shakes her head in agreement, a haunting look in her eyes. “She always knew how to make a statement.”
Nile watches carefully as the three of them all look shaken at the thought. Over the last few months they’ve all told her quiet stories about Quynh, wanting her to know the woman as more than the terror in her dreams. Joe told her about how the two of them used to find the most intricate braids to try and lace through each other's hair while he twisted Nile's hair into the same braids, he’d show Nile artwork of the woman, smiling at Andy, eyes so bright with love and joy. Nicky spoke about how when they were travelling, she’d lay next to him and point out different constellations to him and describe how they’d changed over the millenia’s she’d seen.
Andy didn’t speak about Quynh often, however when she did, her eyes would drift away, full of regret as she got lost in the memories. But her voice was always soft, barely above a whisper as she explained that nearly a thousand years after they’d laid Lykon to rest they’d started dreaming of these two men and from thousands of miles away had watched as they went from killing to loving each other. She’d told Nile how she’d not wanted to seek Joe and Nicky out at first, still angry at the world for suddenly taking Lykon away from them but it was Quyhn who’d gradually calmed her, reminded her of the fear this life brought in the early years. All three of them told her about how Quynh had bought the four of them together, pushed for them to stay together rather than separating for extended lengths of times and drew them together as a family.
They’ve tried over the last few months to make her into a bright, four dimensional woman and for the most part, they’ve succeeded. Nile tries not to pity anybody in life, her mother used to say that it is “unhelpful and therefore a waste of time” and as much as she tries to empathise with Quynh, she can’t begin to imagine the torture she’s faced over the last five hundred years. She remembers in training when they’d worked in water, they told her that drowning was the most painful way to die and so far she’s been lucky not to experience it first hand. So to experience it hundreds of times a day, everyday for five hundred years is… Nile doesn’t know the words to describe how horrific it is. She doesn’t know how, when Quynh finally made it to land she had the psychological strength to drag herself to her feet, let alone pull herself together enough to not draw attention to herself, travel across several countries and abduct a man in a world where nothing is familiar to her and still be able to be cognitive enough to send such a poignant message.
“So we just have to wait?” Nile asks, finally finding her voice again and she hates the fear she can hear in her words.
The others must hear it too because Joe presses a gentle kiss against her forehead, fingers still absently playing with her hair.
“We’ll head back up to Copley’s as soon as possible,” Andy says, “he’s probably closer to them than we are. We’ll have to-” She breaks off with a frown. “Do we have someone in the area? A pilot?”
“Not any more,” Joe says, “we’ll have to drive back up to Egypt, we can get one into south of France from there.”
They all watch the way Andy nods, they can see the plans she’s making in her head, the travel routes and times she’s mapping out and nods. “Tell Copley we’ll be with him in less than seventy-two hours,” she says, “pack your bags.”
.
Within an hour they’re dressed, packed, have the safe house locked up and are halfway out of town, the jeep they’ve stolen occasionally making stuttering noises as Andy pushes the engine as fast as she can, adamant that she’s going to cut the travel time across Sudan and into Egypt in half. Nile keeps her earbuds in for most of the time when she isn’t driving, keeping her music on shuffle to try and drown out the nervous quiet in the car.
They make it across the Egyptian border in half the time it should’ve done and meet Joe’s contact who smuggles them into the back of a cargo plane, no questions asked. Nile stays awake as the others try to catch up on sleep, staring out of the windows at the city lights below. She doesn’t know where they are exactly, somewhere over Greece or maybe Albania, they still have another three hours before they are due to land in Marseille and then they have a several hour ride on a train up to Paris after that, where they’ll check out Booker’s place and contact Copley.
Nile found travelling tiring at the best of times, but doing it like this was exhausting, the constant changes and subterfuge made Nile miss the days of just getting on a plane in one country and off in another but it wasn’t easy to do that with the gear they carried and apparently Copley couldn’t forge the necessary documents as quickly as Booker could.
Her body ached and no matter how many times she shifted on the crate she was sitting against, she still couldn’t get comfortable. She needs to sleep soon, especially if they are heading into a volatile situation but every time she closes her eyes she can still see the sword slicing through Booker’s chest, she can still feel anger that isn’t hers and somehow it still feels like water is burning through her chest.
The fear of what is going to come, mixed with the fatigue of it all makes Nile want to curl up in a ball somewhere and never get back up and the fact that she can’t, makes her want to do it all the more.
Her eyes drift across the cargo hold. Joe and Nicky are curled together, Nicky towards the door as always, hand inches from his gun. It's the most peaceful they’ve looked since she’d first told them. Andy lies a little way away from them, half slumped against the side of the plane. Her eyes are closed like she’s fallen asleep watching over her family but Nile isn’t convinced she’s asleep, not only because the position looked incredibly uncomfortable but she is too still, breaths too shallow.
Turbulence rocks the plane sharply and Nile’s suspicions are confirmed as Andy’s eyes snap open, scanning her surroundings as Nicky’s fingers are already closing around the handle of his gun, Joe stirring sluggishly behind him.
Nile watches as they get their bearings, Andy slumps back again, her eyes falling closed. Nicky drops his gun back down on the floor and quietly extracts himself from Joe’s arms. His feet silent as he comes to stand next to Nile, looking over her shoulder at the lights below.
“You need to sleep too,” he says, his voice low so as not to disturb Joe who Nile thinks is awake by now but just not moving.
“I will,” she replies just as quietly, “when we land.”
Her eyes drift back to the lights below so she can pretend she doesn’t notice the way Nicky’s eyes rest on her.
“We don’t know what our next few days look like,” he says, “you should get rest whenever you can.”
“I know,” she says, because she does but it doesn’t make her want to close her eyes any more.
Nicky lays a gentle hand on the back of her neck, his thumb brushing against her skin softly.
“What’s gonna happen when we find them?” she asks, “Booker’s being tortured and Quynh…”
Nicky doesn’t say anything for a minute, she wonders if any of them actually know what they want, let alone what’s going to happen.
“I don’t think we’re going to be taking any new jobs any time soon,” he says. “But I hope that we can bring them both home.”
Silently, Nile hopes so too.
.
The transfer from plane to train is smooth in Marseille. Swords hidden in paper tubes, the labrys stowed away in its instrument case, travel bags on their backs. They almost blend in with the commuters around them, at least they would if Joe wasn’t reminding Nile to look less confused every time someone spoke to them or an announcement was made in French. She’d taken a year of it in High School but she was certain the teacher had hated her as she was considerably better at Spanish and it shows now.
They get off the train in Paris and Nile’s getting a strange deja vu from the first time Andy brought her through here on the way to the Charlie safehouse right before a grenade went off in their faces… literally.
“Train leaves in an hour,” Nicky says, passing Nile a new burner phone, “we can get food a little way from here and contact Copley.”
Nile nods, already dialling the number from memory. It’s still early, most of Paris hasn’t started its day yet. She tugs her jacket closer to her as they walk down the street, going from Sudan to Egypt to Paris in two days in November without stopping, leaving them with unsuitable clothing for the sudden chill in the air.
“Hello,” Copley answers on the fourth ring, his voice thick with exhaustion.
“Hey, it’s us,” Nile says, following the others into a small, mostly empty bakery but hangs back as they order, “we’re waiting for the next train now. Any luck?”
“Usual coffee?” Nicky mouths to her and she nods.
“Don’t come here,” Copley says and she hesitates. “I don’t think they left France. I could have a location in the next couple of hours.”
Nile’s heart races in anticipation and she’s unable to keep her hope at bay. “Okay,” she says, “we’ll lay low until we hear from you.”
She hangs up and joins the others as they wait for their order. “We’re staying here,” she says lowly, getting all of their attention with ease. “He thinks they’re still in the country. We should have something in a couple of hours.”
“We’ll go to Booker’s place,” Andy says, “check it out and wait for news. It’s not far from here is it?”
Joe shakes his head, he’s already checking his phone. “Twenty minute walk, maybe?”
They collect their drinks and food and step back outside into the brisk morning air and Nile cups her coffee a little closer as a cold breeze hits them. She thinks back to the last dream she had, an icy blast blowing through Quynh’s hair just as it did to Nile’s now. Wherever they were holding up, they were close enough to share the same weather.
Paris starts coming to life around them the further they walk and Nile tries not to let her eyes linger as they head up a flight of steps and the Eiffel Tower is suddenly right in front of her. She doesn’t know if she’ll ever get used to being in such iconic places and not having chances to really take in what surrounds her.
Andy’s gentle hand on her back keeps her moving, cutting through an alley before they come to a stop outside of an old looking apartment block that she wouldn’t have looked twice at. The main door is unlocked so they let themselves in, going single file up the creaky staircase to the second floor, where Joe finds the door he’s looking for.
Nile half steps up the next flight of stairs to create room for as Nicky as he goes to pick the lock and she looks up towards the sound of a child crying in a higher apartment.
Nicky raises a hand sharply, signalling that it’s already open and Nile reaches for her Beretta in her waistband as the others poise for a potential fight. Nicky rises to his feet, his hand on the door knob as he opens it sharply. Andy, as always, takes point, gun raised as she starts to clear the space, everyone else filing in behind her with Nile at the rear.
“Clear,” Andy calls from a back room.
“Clear,” Joe repeats from the living space and they all slide their weapons away. Nile double checks the hallway that they haven’t been seen before she shuts the door, noting that the lock hadn’t just been left open, it had been broken.
As she turns back to the apartment her eyes are immediately drawn to the blood that stains the floor under her feet and she steps back out of it. Directly across from her there’s a splatter of blood on the wall behind a chair like someone, shorter than Booker, had been shot from about where she’s standing.
“Bloods dry,” Joe notes, “place is a mess but doesn’t look like much of a struggle. Just Booker’s normal tidy self.” His voice is tight despite the joke he tries.
No matter what work Booker had previously been doing in Calais, he’d clearly settled down here and not done much. There are empty bottles of beer and whiskey overflowing from the recycling bin, dirty dishes still in the sink.
Nile moves further into the dingy apartment, her eyes drifting over the open kitchen cabinets. There’s not much food there but the bread on the counter is barely mouldy, he can’t have been gone more than a week which is simultaneously a mercy and a painful thought. You could do a lot to a person in a week.
“If we’re being watched, we’ll find out soon enough,” Andy says, but doesn’t sound certain as she gauges vantage points around them from the window. “I’ll go see what he has that we can work with.”
Nicky is digging through the cupboard under the kitchen sink for cleaning supplies and Nile goes to join him but he shakes his head when she asks if she can help so she wanders after Andy into a small bedroom. Like the rest of the apartment, it’s unkempt. A pile of clothes on the floor, fresh laundry not put away, balanced on a chair, bed unmade.
Andy’s on her knees next to the bed, pulling a crate out from underneath it.
“Do you have safehouses that don’t have small armouries in?” Nile finds herself asking as she watches Andy lay six different pistols on the bed with accompanying magazines next to them. She tosses a couple of tactical knives next to them and Nile can’t even bring herself to be surprised at the sniper and assault rifles that follows.
“A couple,” Andy replies, pushing the crate back under the bed. “there are a couple that we just own but rent out through people so they’re not just sitting empty. We don’t come here often, he doesn’t like being here besides on jobs. Pull the crate from the other side will you?”
Nile does as she’s asked and starts laying out tactical gear, vests and comms on the other side of the bed. They’ve only used comms on one of the three jobs she’s done with them, but these look sleeker than the ones before, simple ear pieces and packs, looking more like something someone would wear undercover than in a fight.
She hopes that if they're going through the gear that Booker has stored then it means Andy is actually going to wear a vest without complaint. She says she has no issue with wearing one, so long as her whole team is just as protected no matter how fast they heal.
"This should be enough," Andy says, assessing what's in front of them.
"Will she use guns?" Nile asks, she thinks Quynh has people with her, maybe someone that's helping her navigate this new world. But she doesn't think that someone who hasn't seen daylight since the 1600s would be that much of a threat with a gun in her hands though the marine in her reminds her that a gun in any hands has the potential to be lethal.
Andy looks down at the guns considering. "I don't know," she says honestly, "her aim rivalled Nicky's with a bow but if she's with people, they're likely to have firearms."
Nile nods and then stifles a yawn in her shoulder. Andy gives her a half hearted smile, shaking her head. "Go, rest," she says, "there's nothing to do now but wait."
"Yes, Boss." She heads back into the living room, they've got most of the blood off the wall and the stain on the floor has faded but the sharp smell of bleach is strong in the air despite the open windows.
Joe is sitting in one of the armchairs, his head bowed over his sketchbook on his lap. She passes Nicky in the kitchen, who doesn’t glance up from where he’s clearly looking for something in one of the cabinets, she doesn’t ask, just slides past him to settle on the slightly uncomfortable couch.
With the windows open the wind curls through the apartment and Nile only feels slightly bad when she tugs the hoodie off the back of the couch and tugs it over her head. It's a similar size to the ones she usually steals off of Nicky, but smells like cheap cigarettes instead of spices. She rests her phone against her knees as she curls up, scrolling through news articles to pass the time. French news reports a fire at one of their refugee camps, creating more tension with the British as more people try to cross the channel to escape but there has been nothing about a hostage situation or anything that looks like it could be Quynh.
Scrolling between one article and the next, sleep catches up with her.
.
Booker wakes from death slowly. His body forces him back to life though his mind fights against it, wanting this time to be the last. But it never is.
He’s laying on the cold steel of the boat floor, his soaked clothes doing nothing to help the chill that’s sunk through into his bones. He hates the fucking cold. He curls up on himself as much as his bonds allow, too tired to try and fight them this time. It still feels like something is clawing at his lungs with every breath but he knows, slowly they’ll heal from the damage the water has done.
He won’t give his family up. Not again. No matter what Quynh does to him.
She’s somehow acquired a small group of what Booker thinks are normally drug smugglers, clearly in deeper shit than they realise when dealing with Quynh. She’s furious. Every bit the pit viper that Joe described her as.
Booker thinks of how much the world has changed in the past two hundred years of his life. The advancements in weaponry and machinery alone would blow his younger selves mind. But even he can’t imagine the torture that she’s faced in a body that refuses to let her be at peace. For five hundred years, drowning again and again.
He did the maths once, when he was alone for a while and the only company he had was the horrors he felt of her deaths over and over and over again. The number he’d calculated was in the high millions and that was several years back from now.
He hears the burning rage in her voice when she asks about Andy and the others, she sees the technology they have now as having no limits. She doesn’t understand that the four of them searched for her sometimes for decades at a time without pause whenever a new invention was available. They’ve sent out divers, radar and even a submarine over the years, looking for any hint of the cage they killed her in.
To Quynh though, after centuries of trauma, it seems as though they abandoned her and it doesn’t matter what Booker, a stranger, says to her, it’s not going to change her mind.
She’d sought him out through their shared dreams, targeting him because he was alone and drunk - easy to catch off guard. She’d seen enough through his eyes and Nile’s that there was a reason for his solitude and him telling her about how he betrayed their family did nothing to ease her anger.
It was strange to see, someone blinded by rage, focussed solely on wanting to hurt a group of people but when finding out that he’d already hurt them, her fury turned to him. He hadn’t told her about Andy’s mortality, no matter how much she questioned him about her but she had killed him several times over in various, creative and painful ways for daring to put her in harm's way.
Booker doesn’t know for certain how long he’s been with her, it was hard to keep a constant track of time when death takes so much out of you. He thinks it’s been a week, maybe two since she’d plunged a blade into his lungs in his apartment, he’d clipped her with a round as he tried to fight back but ultimately was left to bleed out. She comes to him now, whenever he wakes and taunts him with whatever she’s seen through Nile’s eyes. It’s a small comfort that she doesn’t learn new things often, knowing that Nile and hopefully the team are safe if she’s not triggering the dreams. But Quynh made it clear that she wants her to see.
She wants Nile to know what she’s doing to him, to draw them out to her so she can get her revenge.
It doesn’t matter how many times Booker tells her that they won’t come, not for him, still Quynh tries.
The cupboard door opens and he winces against the sunlight that burns against his eyes. Quynh stands silhouetted in the doorway as she assesses him.
“You take longer to come back,” she says, stepping close to him, her voice is even, like she’s casually noting the weather. “I drowned quicker.”
“Sorry for the inconvenience,” he mutters and she laughs without warmth.
“The weaker you are the slower you’ll heal,” she notes like he doesn’t know this, “you should have taken the food when it was offered to you.”
Booker snorts, knowing that if he keeps her talking she might calm enough for them to just talk today - he can never tell, it might get him keelhauled again. “I’m familiar with the concept,” he says.
Over the years he’s died in a variety of horrific ways, bombs and grenades are the messiest, it takes longer to regrow or attach limbs and it never stops being painful. Drowning feels like fire’s burning you from inside out and it doesn’t matter if you accept it or try and fight it, the pain makes it terrifying every time. But dying of natural causes hurts the most. Hunger or dehydration, makes the time between deaths drag out as your body tries to redistribute energy so you can try and get to supplies but if you can’t, it’s agonising.
"I wonder how much Andromache would have starved if she didn't escape the doctor," Quynh sighs, stepping closer to him with a dangerous glint in her eyes.
He pushes himself to sit upright, the cold that's sunk deep into his muscles makes moving painful and he tries to focus on her instead.
A part of him wants to protest that he tried to get Andy away before they took her in, that the whole thing turned into a shitshow the second the plan was put in motion but he knows he's probably lying to himself. He knows he deserves this and if she torments him for the next century with no rescue, he deserves that too.
“Do you think the hurt she felt when you shot her is close to the terror I felt when I drowned,” she goes on, her voice dangerously quiet. “Again and again, slowly realising as my body tried to decay that they’d abandoned me.”
“Nobody abandoned you,” Booker forces out in defence of his family. “They tore themselves apart trying to find you. They followed every lead, as often as they could. Andy went out of her mind searching for you, she still blames herself that you were taken instead of her.”
Quynh’s fist connects with the side of his face faster than he sees her moving. The force of the blow knocks him back and he tries to blink away the dark spots that pepper across his vision as he feels his cheek bone start to knit itself back together. A hand in his hair yanks him roughly back upright and she leans close, her breath prickling against his cheek.
“You think your lies will spare you,” she hisses, fury in her eyes, “they won’t.”
He groans as a blade twists up into his stomach and he welcomes darkness when it comes.
.
Nile is awake and her mind alert the second her phone rings in her hand.
“What have you got?” she asks as soon as she’s hit the receive button and she suddenly has everybody’s attention as Andy appears in the doorway.
“Security footage in Le Havre shows a woman who looks remarkably like Joe’s art getting off of a fishing boat this morning,” Copley says, not bothering with a greeting. “I’ve sent a picture to you.”
Nile scrambles for her actual phone, setting the burner on loudspeaker on the arm of the chair as she downloads the file she’s been sent.
The image is grainy in the early morning light, but the dark haired woman’s face is clear.
She turns the screen towards Andy who’s come closer and watches as the older woman freezes, her lips parting in surprise like she still hadn’t quite believed that Quynh was on shore until she saw the picture for herself.
“It’s her,” Nile says, not taking her eyes off of Andy as Nicky and Joe crowd in close to see the image.
Nicky mutters something under his breath that Nile doesn’t understand as Joe curses.
“I’ll send you the location,” Copley says, “the boat is still there. I’ve also got footage of six different men around the dock, I think they’re together.”
“Just six?” Nicky asks, a low note in his voice that Nile hasn’t heard before. It’s terrifying hearing it from her usually gentle brother.
“I can’t be certain,” Copley replies, “they’re the only ones I’ve seen get on and off the boat.”
“We’ll be there in an hour,” Andy says, reaching out to cut the call. She doesn’t need to tell them to pack it up. Nile is already pulling her boots back on, shoving her Beretta back in her waist band as around her everyone is shoving what they need to take into bags.
They stow the weapons and tactical gear back into the crates, tossing blankets over the top so they can get them out of the apartment without drawing attention to themselves while Nicky - the least likely to draw suspicion - goes to acquire them a car. He messages them when he’s outside and they hurry down to the surprisingly nice vehicle he’s stolen.
The drive out of Paris is slower than any of them would like, as the morning grows later, more people start to spread out into the streets but it gives them time to go over the maps of the docks and configure a strategic plan.
Nile can feel the tensions rising in the car the closer they get to their destination. The stakes on this mission are higher than most and they all know it. They have to save Booker, and Quynh too if they can and God did they all pray they could.
Andy parks as close to the dock as she can without raising the alarm and they all climb out of the car to gear up, conscious that it was still broad daylight and although most of the fishing boats have been sent out already and the marina is almost completely empty, they still face the very real possibility of being seen.
The combined weight of the tactical vest and swords on her back are a comfort. Nile knows that she doesn’t stand a chance against Quynh with blades but she hopes her companions aren’t as well trained.
The four of them duck through alleys, keeping their heads low so as not to draw attention and the docks come into view as they turn around a corner.
One small, slightly rundown fishing boat sat, seemingly harmlessly bobbing on the waves, moored up well away from any others.
“Five guys on the deck,” Joe reports, looking through his binoculars. “No sign of Quynh or Booker.”
“She keeps him below,” Nile says, remembering the dark and musty smell of damp.
“Let’s try and keep this quick,” Andy says, pulling her labrys from over her shoulder, letting it hang by her side as she draws her sidearm and checks the silencer.
Nile sends the signal to Copley and then follows suit, sword in one hand, gun in the other. She’s never shot and swung a sword at the same time, but she’ll take her chances.
Together, as one, they move down the dock, boarding the boat with surprising ease. Whomever Quynh is with are clearly amateurs. They sit together on the deck, a deck of cards dealt out around them, not paying attention to their surroundings.
Joe gives a sharp whistle and the men flurry into action with curses of surprise. The first one raises his gun and Nile drops him with a silent bullet to the head. It’s easy work, these men are no match for the old guard, who cut through them with ease. They must make too much noise though because below deck they can hear the shouts of other men.
Gunfire rings out and Nile swings around to find the source but before she can a sharp, familiar pain shoots up through her leg and she’s fading with a burning in her abdomen before she realises the bullets are being shot up through the deck floor.
.
Booker revives to the sound of gunfire and he’s more alert than he has been in days. He forces himself not to move, his stomach is still knitting itself back together and despite the adrenaline that’s now pumping through his system it takes all of his effort to push himself to sit up against the wall.
Quynh isn’t in the room and he wonders if she’s the victim of the firefight happening or the source, although with guns clearly not being her forte he thinks they’re under attack, her backup - although being incredibly badly trained and therefore incapable of much - are smart enough not to turn on her. He wonders if someone has finally noticed a group of armed men on a boat and they’ve called in the Gendarmerie but he doesn’t think there’s enough gunfire for them. For the number of people on the boat, it sounds almost one-sided like whoever’s boarded either has silenced weapons or aren’t using guns at all.
Booker’s heart leaps with hope before he quashes it down. It won’t be them. They won’t have come for him.
He can hear Quynh scream something but her words are too muffled by the gunfire for him to understand what she’s saying. He tries to push himself up to his feet but the shackles that bind his wrists and ankles are heavy and old and the way they join together make it hard to move and so he waits. Listening as the gunfire slowly subsides until it’s eerily quiet outside.
There’s a scrabbling at the door outside and Booker pushes himself straight as it’s pulled open and the light from outside blinds him temporarily until the world comes back into focus and he realises its Nile, not Quynh silhouetted in the doorway, a sword in each hand, her jeans are torn and blood staining the front of her tactical vest but she’s somehow made it past Quynh alive.
“Booker,” she breathes, relief filling her tone as she rushes towards him, her swords crashing to the floor as she reaches for his chains in one hand, the other pulls lock picks out of her pocket.
“So you went for dual blades in the end,” he says, aiming for a light tone but his voice sounds wrecked even to him.
Nile’s fingers fumble with the lock picks as she hums and he takes them from her, they don’t have time for her to practice.
“Andy?” he asks, “Quynh doesn’t know she’s mortal. I didn’t tell her.”
“Joe and Nicky are with her but she’s surprisingly good for someone who's been out of practice for a few centuries,” Nile says as the locks under Booker’s hands come undone with a crack. She pulls them away for him and he refuses to meet her eyes as she watches the torn skin under them heal.
“Let’s go,” he says and she takes the hint, grabbing both of her swords - one of which Booker recognises distinctly - in one hand and pulls him up to his feet with the other. He staggers slightly, the dehydration stronger than his ability to heal but he pushes through it. He takes her sidearm that she offers and checks it as he follows her out of the dinghy storage cupboard he’s been kept in the last however long.
He staggers on the stairs behind Nile, catching himself on the wall until she grabs him, slinging his arm around her shoulders, pulling him with her as his head spins.
They make it out onto the deck and the sunlight burns his eyes and the world comes back into focus just in time to see Quynh’s blade cut through Nicky. He crumples to the ground and Joe lunges towards her.
He’s talking to her as he parries her blows but she doesn’t seem to be listening as her sword drives up into his rib cage. Both Booker and Nile push forwards towards her at the same time but Andy’s quicker, not knowing how to sit a fight out for once in her extraordinarily long life.
Quynh’s sword cuts into the handle of the labrys as Andy blocks her swing and Quynh uses that motion to twist it out of Andy’s grip, tossing their weapons to the side as her hands go around Andy’s throat. Booker raises his gun as Quynh shoves her back against the side of the boat, pulling the dagger from her belt.
He can’t get a shot though, with this gun at this distance, the bullet would more than likely pass straight through Quynh and into Andy and with Quynh’s knife at Andy’s throat, nobody dares move. Out of the corner of his eye Booker is relieved to see Nicky helping Joe back to his feet but he doesn’t look away from the women in front of him as his heart races in terror.
Andy is saying something, Booker can see her lips moving but it’s in a language so old, he doesn’t understand.
“You abandoned me,” Quynh hisses back in jilted ancient French, the language she’s tried to make sense of since capturing him, and for the first time since he’s met her, Booker hears something other than cold rage in her voice. “You left me to drown!”
“We looked for you for decades!” Joe calls out desperately, the pain easy to hear in his voice.
“Five hundred years!” Quynh cries, “I was dying!”
Booker has seen Andy upset and hurt many times over the past two hundred years but the way she looks up at Quynh whose blade is cutting into the skin of her throat hurts him, with such guilt and pain in her eyes, from the centuries without the woman she loves makes Booker tighten his grip on his gun.
“I’m sorry.” Booker sees Andy say in English but her voice is too quiet for him to hear. “I would do anything for it to have been me.”
“Maybe this will make up for it,” Quynh says, her voice cold and she moves so fast that by the time anyone realises what's happening, the dagger is already deep in Andy’s lung. Nile’s scream mixing with the cries of Joe and Nicky barely register in Booker’s ears. He feels his heart break as he watches her eyes widen in pain and shock, she tries to say something but she’s drowning in her own blood as Quynh lets her go. Andy’s body slumps back, rolling over the rail and crashes down against the water.
“She’s not immortal!” Nile is screaming again and again. “She won’t come back!”
Booker can’t even bring himself to feel satisfied as the horror dawns on Quynh, he fires twice, straight into her chest and she’s dead before he hits the deck.
By the time he reaches the side of the boat where she fell, Nicky’s already diving down, Joe right behind him.
Booker grabs hold of Nile’s arm to stop her following after them. The soldier’s voice in his head that sounds too much like Andy tells him not to leave an enemy unsupervised when you’re vulnerable. He keeps one arm tight around Nile who has sagged against him, staring hollowly down at the water. Joe and Nicky resurface, Booker can see them holding her up but he can’t bring himself to look at her as they pull themselves back up onto the deck.
Quynh comes back to life violently, gasping against water that isn’t there for a minute, a look of terror as she looks around desperately.
“Andromache,” she sobs, scrambling across the deck towards Andy, taking her from Joe, letting her head rest on her lap as she cries, talking in that ancient language again.
Booker lets his gun fall to his side and he and Nile drift closer. Booker falls to his knees next to her body and he feels tears on his own cheeks. This is his fault, not Quynh’s.
He reaches out with a shaking hand to rest on Andy’s ankle. Her body is already cold from the water.
He feels arms come around him and he’s drawn into Joe and Nicky’s embrace, even as he tries to push them away, not deserving of the comfort, they keep him close.
The cold starts to catch up with them, all shivering violently in their wet clothes, but for the first time Booker doesn’t care. He lets himself freeze.
Quynh’s stroking Andy’s hair back, murmuring to her in languages so ancient probably only she knows now.
“Did she-” Nile’s voice breaks as they all look at her. “Her hand. It moved.”
“Nile…” Nicky tries gently, reaching out to her but she shrugs him off, reaching for Andy, pulling her tactical vest undone.
“Leave her be!” Quynh cries, trying to push Nile’s hands away but Nile shoves her off just as viciously, her fingers going to rest on Andy’s neck.
“Nile, come on,” Nicky tries again, “she’s go-”
“Alive,” Nile says, choking on a slightly hysterical sound somewhere between a sob and a laugh. Booker feels his heart jump and nausea twists in his stomach threateningly as Joe’s arm tightens around him. They watch as Nile tugs up Andy’s shirt and they all stare in disbelief as the knife wound in her chest slowly starts to knit itself back together.
Booker’s fingers tighten around Andy’s ankle, like if he holds tight enough she won’t slip away from them again and a sob bubbles in his throat as he feels the muscles contract beneath his fingers. They all hold her closer, waiting with baited breath until suddenly she coughs.
They scramble to tip her onto her side as she brings up a mixture of her own blood and half the English Channel before she falls back against Quynh’s legs exhausted and blinks up at them all, a soft “Oh,” falling from her lips.
“It was not your time, Andromache,” Nicky says, pressing a thankful kiss to the back of Andy’s hand that he’s clutching.
Andy’s other hand gropes at her side, like she still expects to find herself bleeding only to find smooth skin under her fingers. She brings her hand up, her fingers stretching out to trace across Quynh’s cheek as they both cry.
“Forgive me?” she breathes and Quynh nods against her hand.
“My heart…. I wanted to kill you,” she says, “I did not wish to see you dead.”
There was a softness in Andy’s eyes that Booker doesn’t think he’s ever seen before as she gazes up at Quynh. Booker is happy for her, but something twists inside of him as he sees Andy, who he loves most in this life, gaze up at the person whose been torturing him for a week with such adoration.
“We should go,” Nile says, drawing them all back to the reality that they were sitting on a boat in broad daylight surrounded by a bunch of dead men covered in blood.
“How’d you feel?” Nicky asks Andy as he helps pull her to sit upright.
She nods. “Better than I have in months,” she says, rolling her shoulders back.
They all gather their weapons together and push themselves up to move. Booker stumbles as he stands, his head spinning as his body tries to balance itself out and Joe’s arms are suddenly around him, catching him before he hits the floor as exhaustion and starvation hits.
“Pardon,” he manages as tries to rise back up to own feet. “Sorry.”
“We’ve got you,” Joe says, adjusting his grip so Booker can lean on him, Nicky takes his arm on his other side and they help guide him off the boat, Quynh and Andy right behind them.
“Nile-” he tries to say when she goes back down below the deck.
“She’ll come,” Nicky assures him.
They head back to the car as fast as possible, tossing their weapons in the boot and piling in. Andy slides into the driver's seat as always and a cautious looking Quynh gets in the passengers side with a little coaxing from Andy in what sounds like some sort of Vietnamese. Booker ends up pressed against the door in the back, Nicky at his side as he takes the spot in the middle and he lets his head rest back heavily against the seat. His bones are painfully cold and the heat that rushes from the vents of the car burns against his skin.
Andy pulls up sharply next to the docks just as fire dances up from the cabin and the whole boat explodes outwards with a sound loud enough that it shakes the ground. Nile runs towards them, a proud glint in her eye as dives into the car next to Joe, half sitting on his lap as she twists around to lay her swords in the boot behind her. The car pulls away before the door is closed and a weighted silence fills the air.
Now what?
With the adrenaline seeping out of his system, Booker feels himself being pulled further down into the cold.
“Booker?” Nicky’s voice is soft but Booker can’t find the energy to respond. “Nile, pass that bag over.” He hears. Hands cupping his cheeks make him open his eyes and Nicky’s looking down at him in concern. “Here. Drink.”
Booker tries to take the water bottle that’s pressing against his lips but his hands shake and Nicky helps him take small sips until the bottle is nearly empty and it no longer feels like someone is trying to lobotomize him.
“Grazie,” he says, still heavily tired and painfully cold but feeling better than he was.
“Do you feel up for eating?” Joe asks and Booker hates the worry he can hear in his voice. He shouldn’t be worried about Booker, not after everything. Booker manages a slight shrug and an unwrapped cereal bar is pressed into his hands. He takes small bites of it as they pass through Northern France’s countryside, hoping that they make it back to Paris before they kick him out again so he can get back to his flat easier.
He lifts his head and sees Quynh twisted around in her seat, watching him carefully.
“J'ai eu tort de te blesser,” she says quietly. I was wrong to have hurt you.
Booker sighs. “Ça va. Je le méritais.” It’s okay. I deserved it.
He feels Nicky tense at his side. “Ne dis pas ça,” he says and Booker falls silent, not wanting to upset his family any more than he already has. Do not say that.
“Je ne parle pas français mais fais l'anglais,” Nile says in jilted French and her accent makes Booker cringe even in his weakened state. Joe laughs at his reaction and even Nicky smiles a little. We don’t all speak French but do English.
“You did not deserve it,” Nicky says again, his eyes boring into Booker’s until Booker looks away.
“We’ll just subject you to Nile’s French instead,” Joe puts in and Nile scoffs.
“I did French for three years in High School,” she says like that means something. “Blame the American education system, not me.”
Joe slings an arm around her shoulders, letting her sit more comfortably on his lap so her back’s leaning against the door. “Oh, we do.”
The mood in the car is lifted slightly and Booker would rather listen to her butchering his native tongue everyday for the rest of his long life than be alone again. Nile looks to Quynh. “I’m Nile, by the way. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
Quynh looks surprised to be spoken to but her expression softens into something close to a smile. “It’s nice to finally meet you,” she says, “your dreams were a comfort to me.”
Booker sees Nile look taken back and hesitates. Knowing that she’s thinking of the trauma she inherited seeing through Quynh’s eyes but she smiles because Nile is nothing if not compassionate.
“I’m glad,” she says. “Hey, Andy, where are we going? I should update Copley.”
“Just tell him we’re going off the grid for a while, no jobs unless the world is ending,” she replies. Given the events of the past year, Booker really wouldn’t be surprised if the world did end before the new year.
Nile nods and pulls a burner out of the bag and presses it to her ear as Booker scrunches up the cereal bar wrapper and shoves it in the door pocket and Nicky passes another one without a word.
“Hey… Yeah, we’re all alive,” she says, “they’re with us… I hope so. I blew the boat but you should probably check local security footage just in case… Yeah, well, I was working with what I had… No, she’s okay, she says we’re going off the grid for a while, nothing short of the end of the world.”
.
About an hour after they cross over into Belgium, Andy takes a left turn off of the main road, Nile has a vague idea where they are as she drives up an overgrown dirt track, not caring as branches scrape down the side of the car but the end of the drive opens up to a large steel gate and Joe climbs over her to get out and pull it open. The house behind the gate isn’t what Nile expected for one of Andy’s safe houses, it’s an old looking bungalow with overgrown plants climbing up the stone walls and it looks almost like one of those cottages that sell for millions when presented right.
“Is there anywhere you guys don’t have millions of dollars worth of property?” she asks as she climbs out of the car and looks towards the thick treeline that’s within the property line.
“Does it make a difference if we bought them when they were newly built?” Nicky asks as he steps out of the car behind her. Nile snorts and shakes her head but doesn’t offer a reply, he’s probably not even joking.
She moves around to the trunk, pulling out her go bag and blades as they pass the rest of the weapons between them to take inside. Joe reappears from around the side of the building as Andy digs out a key from a plant bed, wiping the mud off on her already ruined jeans before shoving it in the lock.
“The power is on,” Joe says, taking his bag back from Nicky as the door opens with a scream of protesting hinges.
They step inside the hall and Andy flicks on the light switch that comes to life with a hum of old electricity, it smells musty and there’s still a chill in the air even inside but by the way the tension seeps out of the people around her, Nile knows they’re safe here.
“I’ll start a fire in the kitchen,” Nicky says, looking towards her, “no central heating here, sorry.”
Nile smiles slightly. “It’s okay,” she replies, “when were you last here?”
Joe glances towards Booker curiously. “Seventies?”
Booker shakes his head slightly. “Sixties for a month.”
Nile nods, following them through into a large kitchen, a table set in the middle of the stone floor. She rests her swords on one of the chairs so she can clean them later and lets her eyes drift to the covered frames on the walls, she tugs the closest one down, stepping back to avoid the cloud of dust that flies through the air. Set in a dark wooden frame lies a gorgeous oil painting of the cottage, the gardens laid out neatly and a grey horse stood grazing by the tree line.
“This one of Joe’s?” she asks and Nicky squints up at it from where he kneels in front of the fire as he lays kindling down.
“Yes,” he says, “we stayed here for several years in the mid nineteenth century.”
“We’re going to need to make a run to a shop,” Andy says, coming into the kitchen to look in the cupboard under the sink, leaving Quynh hesitating in the doorway. “We’ve just got the stuff we bought.”
“How long are we staying, Boss?” Joe asks, pulling the dust cloth off of the table to lay the bag of supplies they brought on top. There isn’t much in there, some water, dry pasta and rice, tinned goods and a particular tea that Nicky likes. It’s just enough for a day or two.
Andy glances back at Quynh and she softens as their eyes meet. Nile would think it was sweet had Quynh not tried to kill them all just hours ago and has been torturing Booker for the past two weeks.
“I was thinking a few months,” Andy says, “until we’re settled.”
Nile can’t help but snort. “Unless you find an exemplary therapist, I think you’re going to need longer than a few months.”
Andy rolls her eyes, shoving Nile gently as she passes her. “There’s some stuff to clean your blades in that drawer,” she says, “don’t get blood on the table, it’s an antique.”
“So are you but you also look like an extra from Carrie,” Nile quips back and sighs at the look of confusion that passes over Andy’s face. “You guys have gotta start watching movies.”
“We watch movies,” Joe defends, “just not horror films. When you’ve lived as long as us, bad effects tend not to be that scary.”
Nile rolls her eyes but changes the subject. “Where’s Booker?”
“Washing up and finding dry clothes,” he replies like he’s also not wearing damp jeans and a sweater that has to be itchy at this point, he has at least taken off his shoes and socks, leaving barefooted prints on the dusty floor. “He won’t talk about what happened though.”
“He wouldn’t tell me where you were,” Quynh says, her voice terrifyingly casual like she’s not talking about the information she'd tortured him to try and gain and everyone falters.
"He's family, Quynh," Andy says like she's desperate for her to understand.
"Perhaps I shouldn't have hurt him," she says, "but he told me how he hurt you all."
"I didn't say he was perfect," Andy says, "but he's family, yours too. He helped us look for you, bought our technology and even drowned on dives when he thought we were close."
Quynh’s expression doesn’t change but she sinks back against the wall slightly, clearly not having expected Andy to call her out.
“I can go to the store tomorrow,” Nile says, changing the subject to ease the sudden tension in the room.
Nicky nods to himself as he finally gets the fire blaring, adding a dusty log to the flames and Nile draws closer to it, feeling the warmth against her hands. “We’ll write a list,” he says, “we’ll have to dump the car too, or at least change the plates.”
“Copley can probably get us some,” Joe says but Andy pulls a face so he goes on. “There should be hot water now if you want to go get washed up.”
Andy nods, pulling a steel kettle out from a cupboard. “Someone make a pot of tea,” she says, “we’ll be down in a bit.” She heads out and Quynh trails off after her like a lost child and Nile watches her go before moving over to the sink. She washes her hands the best she can with the bottle of dish soap that is probably older than her but it works just the same as she washes out the kettle and sets it on the stove. The gas hisses to life and Nicky passes her the box of matches to light it, the flames stutter a little and the room fills with the smell of burning dust as she hadn’t bothered to clean it before she sets the kettle on top.
Joe starts wiping down counter tops and directs Nile to a cupboard full of mugs to rinse through for them to use and while she waits for the kettle to come to the boil she looks into the drawer that Andy directed her to and pulls out the bottle of lacquer thinner and a couple of rags. She sits down in front of the fire, laying the supplies out across the cold stone floor.
“I have oils in my bag,” Nicky tells her as he steps past her, his hand brushing across her shoulder, “I’ll get them after I shower.”
Nile nods her thanks as she draws her scimitar, she’d gotten most of the blood off before she’d re-sheathed them but some had already dried against the steel. Coating the rag in lacquer thinner, she methodically starts wiping down her blade, careful to get all of the gunk out from the grooves where the blade meets the hilt. It’s something Nile’s found calming, afterwards she’ll disassemble and clean her guns. But the motions she goes through helps her mind and body settle after a fight.
She wipes her scimitar dry, setting it aside to draw her sabre and starts repeating the process, starting at the top of the blade, working down to the point. This takes her longer, the vine engravings down the blade make it harder to get the blood out of. Booker reappears as she moves onto the hilt, wearing dry clothes and a dark coloured sweater, looking more content with colour to his cheeks and no longer shivering. Joe and Nicky disappear together as always and Booker joins her in front of the fire.
“It’s still in one piece then,” he says, nodding to the sword in her hands.
“It is,” she says. “Thank you. I’ll try to take care of it.”
He inclines his head. “I’m sure you will,” he says, “it makes sense for someone to make use of it.”
“Andy says you made it?” she asks, swapping rags to start wiping it dry.
“An officer that we met, not too long after my first death had one similar. Before my son died he lived a little way from here, the other side of the border, that’s when we got this house,” he explains quietly, “we had a lot of time on our hands to try new things. From what I remember it’s a pretty close replica, the only difference is the vines.”
Nile shakes her head as she looks down at it, still in slight disbelief that he can just make a sword. “It’s beautiful,” she says honestly and he manages a slight smile.
“Merci.”
The sound of footsteps in the hallway come closer and Nile sees the way that Booker falters as Andy and Quynh step into the room. Quynh doesn’t come past the doorway but still he turns away, rising up to pour out tea as the kettle starts to whistle.
“Here, Nicky said to give you this,” Andy says, passing Nile down a small drawstring bag that she knows is full of wax and oils to clean both blades and guns, but she keeps a second bag in her hand no doubt to clean her labrys. “We’re going to be in the living room.”
Nile nods and despite Booker’s resistance to even look in Quynh’s direction, he still passes Andy two steaming mugs of tea to take with her. As they leave Booker comes back to join her, setting a mug next to her as she digs through the back for some oil.
“Oh, here,” Booker says, doubling back to pull open one of the drawers, he tosses her an old box of coffee filters and she thanks him. Spraying oil down the scimitar blade before wiping it down with a folded coffee filter, without any better rags, this would work just fine.
Booker sets his own tea down on the floor before disappearing out into the hall, returning a minute later with several of their guns, including Nile’s own Beretta and as she works, he methodically starts stripping down the rest of their weapons.
They work mostly in silence, breaking it only to ask the other to pass them something. By the time Nile has finished both of her swords and their scabbards Joe and Nicky have reappeared, finally in dry clothing, their own swords in hand.
“There’s still hot water if you want to get cleaned up,” Joe says to her, taking a sip of the tea Nicky passes him.
Nile nods, feeling kind of disgusting with dried blood flaking against her skin and she knows the smell she can smell is a mixture of her own blood and sweat. She pushes herself to her feet, not bothering to put the stuff away as Joe takes her place.
“I’ll show you,” Booker says, going to stand up but Nicky’s hand on his arm makes him sit back down again.
“I’ll go, I’m up already,” he says and Nile doesn’t miss the way his gaze lingers on Joe a little pointedly. Rather than commenting, she sets her mug in the sink and follows Nicky out of the kitchen and down the hall, they pass the living room where she sees Andy and Quynh sit cross legged in front of the fire, labrys and sword laid out between them as they talk lowly.
“This is your room,” Nicky says, pushing open a door on the left hand side. It’s a decent sized room with a double bed set below a large window and an already lit fire to take the chill out of the air. “We’ll buy some heaters when we go to the store and all the beddings are still stored, we’ll check after we’ve eaten. But make yourself at home.”
“Thanks,” she says, stepping over to the bed where her bag already lays on top the mattress. She unzips it and starts tugging stuff out. “Is it a good idea to leave Joe and Booker together with all of the swords?”
Nicky’s lips rise in a half smile but he looks too tired for it to seem happy. “They need to talk,” he says, “I think they will. Booker not giving us up despite being tortured means a lot after what he’s done but still, it will take time for us to trust him fully again.”
Nile nods, it will probably take her centuries to come close to understanding how deep their bonds go. “But he’s staying?” she asks.
“We will not make him leave,” Nicky says, “if he wishes to come back to us, it’s down to him now.” And Nile thinks he means more than just physically come back to them, Booker has to learn that he’s not as alone as his mind tricks him into believing, especially after the newest batch of trauma.
“I know…” Nile hesitates but Nicky waits patiently for her. “I know I wasn’t serious before when I said about a therapist but maybe - Booker especially - talking to a professional isn’t a bad idea.”
“He wouldn’t be able to be honest, it could make things worse,” Nicky says but Nile shrugs.
“He could go to grief counselling, say his family died recently,” she says, “he doesn’t have to tell them when these things happened, just what.”
Nicky considers this and sighs. “It wouldn’t be the worst thing for him,” he says after a minute, “but I do not believe it will work if he doesn’t want to go.”
Nile knows this. She remembers her brother refusing to see a grief counsellor when their father died, he’d gone because their mom had asked him to but he hated every minute of it for months until years later he’d asked to go back and as he cooperated with the process he’d gotten better. “I think he will,” she says, looking up at him honestly, “what else does he have?”
“I’ll suggest it to him,” he says, his fingers drumming on the door frame.
“If not, Copley said before that he could probably find one and bury them in confidentiality agreements, I don’t think that would be a terrible idea, especially with Quynh now. She seems…” Nile doesn’t know how to finish that sentence. Unstable? Angry? Terrifying? Not at all the person that she used to be?
“I know,” he says, understanding, “we all do. Just give her some time.”
Nile can’t help but smile slightly. “We have nothing but time.”
Nicky chuckles, pushing himself off of the door frame. “Get washed up, we’ll put something together for dinner.”
“Do you think Joe would braid my hair tomorrow?” she asks, grabbing her wash bag and a pile of sweats to change into. She gets a soft smile in return.
“I’m sure he’d love to,” he says, stepping back so she can step out of the room.”Bathroom’s there, take your time.”
Nile steps into the bathroom and it becomes even clearer just how old this house is as she sees the Victorian style bathtub with a steel shower over the top. She takes the time to unbraid her hair, hating that she’s used to the way blood feels smeared through the strands and after the events of the day she’s thankful that she kept her most recent style short and natural so she doesn’t have to stand there for an hour until her fingers ache.
She showers quickly, not wanting to tempt the old water heating system into freezing her and heads straight back to the kitchen. Their weapons are still laid out where she left them and a pot of something is simmering on the stove giving off a warm scent of mixed spices but otherwise the room is still.
She steps back out and crosses quietly into the living room. Her eyes find Booker first, leaning back against the wall next to the fireplace, sound asleep with his head resting on a jutted out piece of stone. Joe and Nicky were sitting on the floor a little way away, facing each other with their sides resting against the couch where Quynh and Andy are curled up together, the four of them talking softly in an old Italian.
Nile can’t help but hesitate in the doorway as she takes in the sight. You’d never have thought that a few hours ago Booker was being tortured by Quynh for information and they’d all cried over Andy’s body when now, they look so relaxed and domestic. She almost doesn’t want to intrude on the family moment.
She goes to step backwards, to go and check on whatever is cooking or to make more tea but Quynh’s head whips around at the slightest movement, her eyes narrowing as she searches for the threat. She seems to relax slightly as her eyes come to rest on Nile but she’s drawn the attention of the other three.
“Nile, come join us,” Andy says, a peacefulness to her whole demeanour that Nile has never seen before. She pats the cushion next to her and Nile carefully climbs over the arm of the couch to slide into it, not wanting to disturb them too much. She ends up half curled against Andy’s side with Joe’s head dropping down against her knees.
“How’re you feeling?” she asks, looking up at Andy and finds herself softening as Andy looks across at all of them and smiles softly.
“I’m good,” she replies and for the first time, Nile believes her.