Archive of Our Own ^beta

When Andromache leaves, it hurts. It's an odd thing, Quỳnh thinks to herself. There's blood pooling below her body, as deep red as her name. It hurts, a distant aching thing. It's been too long since she died from a stab wound, and this time - 

Quỳnh never wished for death, in the iron maiden. She drowned a hundred thousand times, a constant breathless agony, but she did not wish for death. She does not wish for it now. 

It hurts. Not the stab wound, though that does hurt too. No, Andromache's retreating footsteps. The way in which she had turned, once Quỳnh released the trigger, and ran.  Quỳnh almost wants to set the bomb off, now, just to spite her, but she won't. Andromache was right; it is not up to her to decide who Quỳnh is. It was not up to Discord, either. It is up to Quỳnh, and she does not want to be someone who kills pointlessly, needlessly, violently. 

She chose, and Andromache ran. That hurts, though it shouldn't. Andromache has betrayed her before. Andromache has betrayed her, over and over, for five hundred years. Quỳnh shouldn't have expected her to stop now, but she did. 

There's an ache in her fingers, matching the ache in her chest and the ache in her side. It's the necklace, Quỳnh realises distantly. The world is going spotty around the edges. She's unused to dying slowly, but Nile hadn't wanted to kill her, even when she was unkillable. It's odd, to wonder what Andromache had told those who came after Quỳnh.

The pendant is worn smooth, smoother than in her memory. Quỳnh had wondered, briefly, meanly, if Andromache had only worn it once she knew Quỳnh was alive. The wear shows that's not the case. The pendant is smooth, and the rope it's strung on is different. Synthetic. Andromache has worn this for a long time. 

At least, Quỳnh thinks, she can have this with her when she dies. Andromache herself will not be there, but this pendant, worn by the both of them, this symbol of Andromache's betrayal - she will have this. 

Quỳnh breathes in; breathes out. She's not used to dying slowly, but she has, before. She knows what comes. Her vision is getting spottier, her breaths more painful. Soon the blood loss will be too great, and then she will fall asleep, and then she will die. She doesn't know what happens after that. Normally, that's when she wakes up. 

Andromache had left. Quỳnh adds that to the list of the things to curse her for. She will not forgive her. She does not forgive her, even if she does not want her dead. 

There are sounds from outside, a whirring of helicopter blades. Quỳnh has been in them, has felt their power, but she does not truly know how they work. They came about while she was drowning. She has missed out on so much, and she will never get it back. 

She can't forgive Andromache for that, either. For all the years she spent hoping Andromache was surviving, while Andromache was free. 

There are so many things Quỳnh cannot forgive Andromache for. She hopes she wins, though. She hopes that Andromache wins against Discord, and lives, because she can't wish for her to be dead. She spent five hundred years hoping she was alive. Even considering the opposite makes her head ache more. She wants Andromache to hurt, to suffer, but she wants her to live. 

Noises are getting louder, which is odd, because she thought they were meant to fade as she died. 

Footsteps. 

Andromache's face blurs into view. Her haircut has changed, over the centuries. Her expression has too, just a little. Quỳnh would recognise her anywhere, in any body. She'd told Andromache that she was not the woman she gave the necklace to, and it was mostly the truth. Quỳnh cannot forgive her, so she cannot be the same woman. The woman Quỳnh gave the necklace to would never have let her go. But it's still Andromache, down to the bones of her, and the essence that sits below those bones that various scholars have called a soul or an identity or a conscience. Quỳnh would recognise that anywhere. 

"Andromache," she manages to say. Her mouth is dry. The name comes out the way it always has; familiar. Well-known. Well-worn, like the necklace she is holding. 

"Quỳnh," Andromache says. Quỳnh went without that sound for five hundred years. She is glad to hear it again now. 

"It's not fatal," Andromache tells her. Time has shifted. Andromache is leaning over her, examining the wound. 

Quỳnh grips the necklace tighter. 

"Can I -" Andromache asks, the question cut off halfway through. She picks Quỳnh up, and it hurts. Andromache's arms shift beneath her, and it hurts. It hurts, as Andromache starts walking. Each jostle makes Quỳnh grit her teeth. She must be soaking Andromache in red. 

"I don't forgive you," she says. It hurts to speak. She shouldn't trust Andromache. She could be taking her anywhere. 

It's hard to care, though. It's hard to lift her head. She tries, and just ends up slumped against Andromache's shoulder again, cradled like something fragile. 

"I know," Andromache says, as soft as she ever gets. "I know."

Then, mercifully, Quỳnh passes out. 

When Quỳnh wakes, she's hurting, but she is safe. That's the first thing she knows, even before she pries open her weary eyes.

It's Andromache, of course, who's there with her. She's cutting Quỳnh's shirt, just around the wound. Each tug on the fabric hurts.

"This will hurt," Andromache says. 

That much is obvious, and has been since Quỳnh first saw her in this century. Quỳnh glares at her, and is startled by the huffed laughter that gets her.

Andromache pulls the fabric away, and Quỳnh screams.

When it's over, when Andromache has mopped up the fresh blood and wrapped a bandage firmly around Quỳnh's abdomen, her hands smelling like bitter herbs, Quỳnh starts to believe that she might live.

"Bad blood," she says, through the bright burn of the pain in her side, localised, not in her lungs. "Infection."

Andromache shakes her head. When she replies, it's in Vietnamese too, syllables tripping from her tongue rusty as if with disuse. "No, no, there is medicine for that now. To prevent, and to cure. You will live."

Quỳnh can't reply, not for a while. The bandage sits snugly around her belly, a pressure resisting every rise and fall of her breathing. It's a pure white, clean. She can imagine the red of her blood underneath it, slowly welling up.

She should thank Andromache. She can't. 

"How long?" she asks, instead. "Until I am well?"

Andromache frowns. "I don't know," she says. "A while. When I-"

She stops. Quỳnh watches her, and waits. She is not the most patient, by nature, but she knows Andromache. Even this Andromache, the one she will never forgive - she knows her.

"The injury," Andromache says, "from when we fought. My shoulder. It was going to take weeks to heal. And that was just a graze."

Quỳnh has known fear. It's that, like a blade, which strikes through her now. "Show me!"

Andromache shrugs, placating. "It healed, it healed, I'm immortal again -"

She swallows, and looks away. Quỳnh knows what Andromache looks like when she is hurting, and it is this. 

"What happened?" she asks, and it's in the oldest language she knows, the one Andromache taught her when they'd first found each other.

"When Nile hurts you, you lose immortality," Andromache says, slowly. "She - when we found her. It was fine. I was fine, without. I was going to train her, and if I was careful I would have had years, decades. And with you back -"

She doesn’t finish that. Quỳnh's not sure she wants her to.

"Nile got Booker too, in training, before we knew. I didn't know, until we were in the bunker. He told me he gave his to me, and then he -"

Quỳnh knows the shape of this story. "It was his choice," she says.

"Not mine," Andromache hisses, and when she runs a finger along the edge of the bandage, her hands are shaking.

"I could have killed you," Quỳnh says, without thinking. That marketplace, Andromache's hands on her face, the apologies she gave, pitiful in the face of Quỳnh's suffering: Quỳnh had wanted to hurt her. Had thrown her around, had stolen back her necklace, had cursed her, and could have killed her.

There's a new fear there, an almost-guilt. She had not wanted to kill Andromache, just hurt her. She had not known.

Andromache just shrugs. Quỳnh knows what she means: "you didn't," wrapped in with "I could kill you now."

"Discord is mortal," Andromache adds, moving to clear away the bloody cloths she used to mob up Quỳnh's blood.

Quỳnh jerks as if up to move upright, but it hurts too much, and she falls back. 

"I don't know how long, but I do know she wants to use how immortals can transfer their immortality. She has the others."

Quỳnh closes her eyes, though she knows that won't force the world out. She wanted revenge. She wanted pain, and fear, and she wanted the world to beg for a forgiveness she will not grant.

She did not want this.

"Rest," Andromache says. She does not promise to be there when Quỳnh wakes. Quỳnh wouldn't trust her, even if she did. Quỳnh cannot forgive her, but she is safe.

Quỳnh sleeps.

When she wakes, Andromache checks her bandages again. She hasn't bled through them, and there's no sign of infection. Andromache unwinds the long bandages, leaving behind smaller pads of white gauze that she now binds with a clear adhesive. "It should make it easier to move," she says. "And you don't need the pressure anymore."

The progress of humankind must have been incredible to witness. Quỳnh would not have expected to survive this easily, five hundred years ago.

Behind Andromache, Quỳnh notes for the first time, are shelves and shelves of books, all in disarray. 

"Where are we?"

"Tuah's library," Andromache says.

Quỳnh shifts, feeling the tug and pull of the wound. With Andromache's help, she manages to get upright. 

"Tuah?"

"Another immortal," Andromache says. "Younger than us, older than Joe and Nicky. He saved me, after we were separated. He's a record-keeper, not a warrior. Discord captured him, too."

"He knew Discord, before," Quỳnh says, puzzling it out. "He had records."

"He didn't say, but I think he split from Discord after you were drowned," Andromache tells her. "Discord didn't want to do anything to help. Tuah saved me."

"She was there," Quỳnh says. "She knew? The whole time, she knew where I was?"

"I don't know," Andy says, frustration clear in her voice. "I don't know. But she found you so easily, while I-"

"Maybe she was looking the whole time," Quỳnh says, letting her anger out. "And didn't give up."

She knows it's wrong. Discord would have mentioned the years of searching for her, she's certain. Instead, she'd plucked Quỳnh out of the ocean shortly after she'd learnt she was mortal. It's not likely to be a coincidence.

Andromache flinches anyway, in the way that she does, a small and subtle tell. She still doesn't give a reason. She still gave up on Quỳnh. 

Quỳnh doesn't like feeling used. She doesn't like the idea that someone knew where she was, the whole time, and didn't save her until she was useful.

Quỳnh had thought the bomb was the bait. It wasn't, not all of it. Quỳnh herself had been the bait, too. She'd known that by the time she was bleeding out, and they'd left her with a bomb to die. Andromache would have stopped Discord, if she hadn't stopped for Quỳnh.

Quỳnh is tired of being betrayed.

Andromache sighs, a quiet thing. "You should eat something," she says. "There's a market; I'll be right back."

Quỳnh cannot forgive her. There's a necklace wrapped around Quỳnh's wrist, and she cannot forgive Andromache.

"Thank you," she says, instead.

Andromache flinches again. "You don't-" she starts, and then she closes her mouth, nods once, jerkily, and is gone.

Quỳnh doesn't fall back asleep, which she wants to believe is a good sign. She's exhausted, but she can stay upright. Andromache has left her a knife, she realises, just within reach.

She doesn't pick it up. Instead, she waits.

The footsteps that come back, less than an hour later, are Andromache's. Quỳnh doesn't need the knife.

Andromache returns with bowls of a thin congee, and clothes. The food smells good. Quỳnh's stomach rumbles. She's not certain she'll be able to keep it down, but she needs food.

Andromache passes her a bowl and spoon wordlessly. The clothing, she drops in a messy pile. It's old, Quỳnh realises. This is somewhere Andromache has been before, has left things. This is the first time she's left Quỳnh alone long enough to get them.

"We were here right before we came for the nuclear base," Andromache says. "It's more comfortable upstairs, but -"

"Safer here," Quỳnh understands.

Andromache nods, tugging at the bottom of her bloody shirt. She hesitates, looking behind Quỳnh.

"I want to see where I hurt you," Quỳnh says, rather than asking why Andromache now feels the need to hide. 

"It healed when I became immortal again," Adromache says, but she doesn't hide, or tell Quỳnh no. Instead, she looks both tense and relieved at once, pulling her bloody shirt over her head. The shape of her is as familiar as it always has been. Quỳnh knows the way the lines of her body shift, as well as she knows her own.

She grips the spoon more tightly, to stop herself from reaching out.

Andromache turns slightly, bending down to sift through the clothing she brought. The light shifts across the gold of her skin, glancing off her shoulders above the band of her bra.

Quỳnh has seen her more undone than this, but that does not change anything. She is still Andromache. Quỳnh still knows her. Quỳnh still wants her.

She lets herself look, steady and quiet. It has been five hundred years. Andromache is the same as she always has been.

Except - 

"Your back," Quỳnh says, louder than she thought she would. "Shoulder blade. Did I forget about a scar?"

Andromache freezes. She reaches up, one hand finding the spot Quỳnh saw perfectly. It shines differently in the light. 

"You didn't forget," she says, quietly, and Quỳnh knows what the scar is. 

"It reminded me," Andromache whispers, "every time I moved, that you were back."

Quỳnh cannot forgive her. Quỳnh is glad, in some terrible way, that Andromache cannot get any more new scars, that the marks Quỳnh left on her are new and permanent reminders.

"Harder to lose than a necklace," Andromache says, almost a joke, and then she pulls a sleeveless top on, leaving her shoulder bare for only a moment more, before she pulls a jacket out of the pile and shrugs that on too.

The necklace is in Quỳnh's pocket, now, heavier than it has ever been. 

"Do you want -" Andromache says, gesturing at the pile of clothes. "None of it's your colour, but…"

Quỳnh hadn't thought about it, but now she's overly aware of the fabric of her shirt, stiff with her own blood. "Please," she says, setting down the bowl, and forcing her weak fingers to undo button after button. She shrugs the shirt off, refusing to hesitate or think about it.

Andromache doesn't move, and she's still breathing regularly, but Quỳnh knows her. It's intentional now, not organic.

Andromache hands her a new shirt, soft with age. There's no sharp collar, and it has soft sleeves.

When she tries to put it on, her side pulls so badly that she stops, gasping.

"Let me," Andromache says, and Quỳnh lets her, lets her move her arms gently, tug the shirt over them and her head, smooth it down her back and her sides, moving gingerly over the area of the wound. 

The first time Quỳnh touched Andromache in this century, it was with violence. The first time Andromache touched Quỳnh this century, it was with -

Well, Quỳnh thinks, not entirely violence. She remembers Andromache holding her face distinctly. It was not the first time. She is a little surprised to learn that she hopes it's not the last.

"Eat," Andromache says. "Trust me, mortal bodies hate cold food a lot more than you'd think."

Quỳnh almost laughs, despite herself. She does as she was asked, though, and it's slow going but her body does not revolt, and she knows she needs the food.

When she moves too quickly, her wound hurts. Andromache notices, because she's been watching Quỳnh as closely as only she can. 

Quỳnh keeps eating as Andromache pushes up the edge of her shirt, running a gentle finger across the dressing of the wound. It doesn't hurt. Andromache's touch is as warm as it always has been, moving across the tender parts of Quỳnh's body.

She hadn't asked. Quỳnh hates that Andromache can read her well enough, still, to know that she welcomes the touch, that she trusts Andromache's strong hands, even though she cannot forgive her. 

Quỳnh wakes up. She's not sure how long she's been asleep, but the wooden bowls they ate from have been cleaned and stacked neatly, and she's been tucked in with the same blanket she first woke up in the cave under. 

Andromache is reading through books, a few metres away. One hand comes up slowly, to rest at her chest. It clenches at nothing there, then freezes. 

Andromache takes in a breath, unsteady enough that Quỳnh can hear it shaking, and drops her hand. 

Quỳnh closes her eyes again.

When she opens them, Andromache is sleeping one step above her, curled up between her and the entrance.

It's a protective position, and Quỳnh heart aches so suddenly she almost can't bear it. She still can't forgive Andromache, but here, in her sleep, she looks like she always has, open and vulnerable. 

Quỳnh moves the blanket so it's lying over the both of them. She can't do anything else. Andromache has followed her many worse places, everywhere except under the water, and Quỳnh still, despite herself, despite everything, loves her. 

She's awake for more of the next days, and joins Andromache in her search through the books for anything that might be helpful. 

She's midway through skimming a book about an immortal she's never heard of when Andromache laughs, a startled sound.

"Do you remember," Andromache says, angling the book towards her. 

Quỳnh walks over. It's a drawing of a scene she remembers well, where she and Andromache are both smiling so wide her cheeks ache now in sympathy. 

"London," she says. "I still can't believe we got away with that."

"I can," Andromache says, and Quỳnh wants to kiss her like she had in the moment after the one depicted in the sketch. 

They go back to their work, but when Quỳnh finds a depiction of Lykon, she shows it to Andromache.

"He always smiled like that," Andromache says, tracing the page with a gentle finger. 

"You still frown like that," Quỳnh points out. Andromache frowns, the exact match to the drawing, and Quỳnh can't help her smile.

For a moment, she thinks Andromache will kiss her, and she's not sure how she'll respond. She doesn't forgive her. She doesn't forgive her, and nothing else between them has changed in five hundred years. 

Andromache looks away, though. "You said I wasn't the woman you gave the necklace to," she says. "I'd been afraid you wouldn't recognise me, and I was right."

Quỳnh shakes her head. "I recognised you," she says, because it's true. "But I didn't know you to break promises. And we said it was us until the end."

"I know," Andromache says. She doesn't protest, or try to give excuses. She just accepts it, the fact that she had abandoned Quỳnh, like it's an easy thing to bear. Quỳnh almost wishes Andromache was screaming and lying, just so she could know that the broken promise hurt her too, that it was a difficult and painful thing to have done. 

"Why -" Quỳnh starts, and then cuts herself off. She doesn't really want to know why Andromache broke her promise, not if it means Andromache will tell her why she wasn't worth finding.

That's not the question Andromache answers, though. 

"I tried," she says, the word so heavy Quỳnh almost believes it. "As soon as I could, I went back with a boat and I looked for you, but I couldn't find you."

"And then you gave up," Quỳnh says. 

Andromache's shoulders slump. She's looking at the ground, not at Quỳnh, despite her insistence on eye contact when they were in the marketplace.

"And then I gave up. Then, when Joe and Nicky were with me, we still couldn't find you. And we tried diving and gave up, and then trawling and gave up, with every new net over the years, and - there was an invention by the 1990s that lets you see shapes underwater with sound, called sonar, that they use to map the ocean floor, and that couldn't find you either."

That was thirty years ago, or less. Quỳnh hadn't thought -

"And then I gave up," Andromache says. Her hands are shaking, and she's trying too hard to keep her voice steady. "Again. I'd searched the whole area you could have been in, with the best equipment, and I couldn't find you. And I gave up. I can't ask for your forgiveness. I broke our promise."

"I was told you gave up," Quỳnh says, slowly, trying to process it.

"I did," Andromache says, bluntly, like it hurts for it to leave her mouth, like the context doesn't matter. "We found Nile, and she was dreaming of you, and I almost went back to search again but -"

"But?"

"There was nothing left to try," Andromache says, heavy. "I couldn't think of anything we hadn't done. So I gave up. And I wasn't searching constantly, even when I was searching. I was free, out here, and you -"

"I was drowning," Quỳnh fills in.

"Yes," Andromache says, and her voice is breaking. Quỳnh has rarely seen her cry, but she knows what it looks like, and she's crying now. "Quỳnh-"

"You tried," Quỳnh says. "Everything?"

"Clearly not," Andromache snaps, but she's not angry at Quỳnh. "Discord found you, so clearly I didn't try everything."

Discord had pulled Quỳnh from the ocean and told her that Andromache had given up, and Quỳnh had hated Andromache for it, because it was impossible to reconcile the Andromache she knew with someone who would not do everything to get her back. 

Except, it seems, she does not need to reconcile those things. 

It's a relief. It's like she's just pulled out a blade, and there's still a raw wound, but it is clean and it will heal. It will not fester. 

"It's not the end yet," Quỳnh says. 

Andromache's breathing stops.

"And it's still you and I," Quỳnh adds. 

She takes the necklace out of her pocket. Andromache has worn it for five hundred years, as a reminder. 

"I'm not giving it back," Quỳnh says. 

Andromache nods, jerkily, but she doesn't protest. She'll do whatever Quỳnh asks, Quỳnh realises. Even unforgiven. Quỳnh doesn't want that, though. 

"You don't need a reminder," Quỳnh tells Andromache. "I'll be right here, won't I?"

"You -" Andromache says, and then she laughs, and then she is kissing Quỳnh, desperate and clumsy with it, with the grief of five hundred years lost. 

"It's my necklace," Andromache says, pulling back. "You gave it to me."

Quỳnh kisses her again, open-mouthed and greedy. "Mine again now," she says. 

They hadn't needed tokens, before. They'd just always been by each other's side. Quỳnh wants it to be like that again. 

"That's also my shirt," Andromache says. 

Quỳnh knows how to play games like this. They've been playing them for a very long time.

"Oh, you want that back? I thought it suited me."

It doesn't. It's not her style, at all, but that just makes it obviously Andromache's. 

"It does," Andromache says, her eyes honey dark, her hands so familiar around Quỳnh's waist. 

They have many more conversations to have. There are so many things Quỳnh has missed, and she's still healing, and they have a rescue mission to plan. But for now, Quỳnh just wants to sink into this again, unmarred by guilt or distrust, just them, until the end. 

"I could be persuaded to take it off," she says, and braces her hands on Andromache's shoulders so she can wrap her legs around her waist, and let Andromache take the full weight of her and her desire. Beneath her hands is the scar she left, and beneath her mouth is Andromache's, and they will have time to work out everything else.