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Nile woke up with a start, her hand clenched into a fist around her pillow case, shaky exhales escaping her and filling the dark silence. Andy looked over at her from her seat on the couch, mild concern etched on her face. It wasn’t often that the older woman got much sleep, especially now that Booker had been banished for a little longer than 6 months. She quietly walked over to the edge of Nile’s bed.
“Hey, hey. What happened, kid?” Andy half whispered, aware that the men cuddled together on the cot across the room hadn’t been awoken by the commotion yet.
“I saw her,” Nile said, her eyes wild and searching. “Andy, I saw her. ”
Andy knew that the dreams came to Nile randomly, seemingly unpatterned and without cause. Unfortunately for Nile the dreams would never stop. Not unless she found the woman in the iron coffin at the bottom of the ocean.
Nile turned to Andy, grabbing her hand in a tight grasp. “She’s out. She’s with Booker, talking about -- about you, I think.”
Andy felt the world start spinning faster, her blood roaring in her ears. She vaguely heard the sounds of Joe and Nicky waken. She didn’t notice when they joined her side by Nile’s bed.
“What?” she heard more than felt herself say.
“I saw her and I could feel her too,” Nile began rambling. “She’s so angry, so sad. She grieves and she hates. She questions. She hopes. She calls for you in her the depth of her soul but her mind feels scrambled and disjointed.”
Nicky knelt by Nile’s bedside, holding her hand with reassurance and trying to calm her. Joe pulls Andy into a soft hug, her face borrowed into his shoulder as she held in a small sob. She sniffed loudly, extracting herself from her friend’s arms and wiping at her eyes defiantely. She waited until she knew her breathing returned to normal before attempting to speak again.
“Do you know where they are?”
Nile shook her head, squeezing her eyes tightly and trying to focus in on more of the details.
“It looks like the alcohol bottle labels are all in French. It’s a small apartment in a grimy, crumbling building. Early morning? Booker was alarmed. She’s wearing red. I’m sorry, I can’t get much else”
Andy nodded and pulled out her phone. She tried to ring Booker but the number was disconnected. She cursed and threw the phone across the room, running a hand through her hair.
“Let’s call Copley,” Joe suggested. “He might know where we can find Booker.”
Nicky hummed his agreement, still holding Nile’s hand. Andy gave a single terse nod and then Joe was on the phone with the said man. It took 3 hours for them to track down Booker, mostly thanks to his reckless usage of a credit card under another one of his known false identities. He was in Paris, only a 10 hour flight. Andy could only hope that Quynh would stay put for the moment and she wouldn’t have to spend another 500 years looking for her.
The plane ride was mostly silent. The pilot was some ex-CIA affiliate of Copley’s who had retired to the coast of Mexico and luckily did not seem like the talking type. The silence was only broken by the soft mumblings of Joe and Nicky, heads bowed as they tried to calm each other’s nerves. Nile fiddled with her hands, read a book, tried to sleep again, while Andy stayed wide awake and stared into the nothingness for the entirety of the flight. They landed outside of Paris, paid off a sketchy looking man to borrow an unassuming car, and drove into the heart of the city.
It was already dusk by the time they were barging into Booker’s humble apartment, guns ready but not drawn. The Frenchman looked up from the cup of brandy he was staring into, his form slumped at the kitchen table. His tired eyes searched each of their faces, a small sigh escaping his lips.
Andy opened her mouth to question him but was interrupted by someone standing in the shadows lingering in the living room.
“Andromache,” the hidden figure called.
Andy turned and the world stood still as Quynh emerged, standing in the low light of the kitchen. She was beautiful, just as she remembered. She didn’t look like someone who had been in the ocean for the past 500 years.
“Quynh,” the older immortal forced out.
“You stopped looking,” Quynh stated coldy. “You left me to die a slow death an infinite amount of times in an oceanic grave.”
Andy choked on the sob that left her throat. Of course. Of course Quynh, her most beloved, hated her. How could she not? It was true. Andy had stopped looking for her, sentencing her to a fate worse than any could imagine. She didn’t know how to respond and could only muster out a half explanation of ‘I looked for so long’.
Quynh withdrew a hidden dagger from her robe and rushed Andy. She didn’t have much time to react, putting her hand out to protect her face from the brunt of the attack. She cried out as the dagger went clean through her hand, staggering back into the arms of Joe. Booker stood up, placing himself between the two women.
“Not long enough.”
Andy gritted her teeth before ripping the knife out, throwing it into a close by corner. She held her hand tight against her chest and covered it with her uninjured hand to try to slow the bleeding. Quynh snarled at her from across the room, hatred filling her eyes as she observed her old lover. Her expression slowly morphed into confusion then brief guilt until it settled into unmistakable fear.
“Why aren’t you healing?”
Quynh’s words were meant to come out as more of an angry demand rather than a panicky question. Andy frowned sadly, barely able to force herself to meet those scared brown eyes.
“It’s gone,” she admitted, watching as Quynh’s expression crumbled. No, it was too much like the one that she had last seen when Quynh had been dragged away from her. It was painful to watch the cold reality wash over a face so familiar and lovely.
“Gone?”
It echoed in the deathly quiet apartment.
Then Quynh was running into her arms, crying hysterically. Andy held her tightly, resting her chin against the other woman’s head for a moment before drawing back. She grabbed Quynh’s face with both of her hands, smearing blood on her lover’s cheek. She kissed the tip of Quynh’s nose and mumbled ‘I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry’ over and over again. In her peripheral vision she noticed Nile slip into the bathroom, likely to try to find a first aid kit for Andy’s hand. She didn’t care.
There were so many questions to be answered, so much pain to sift through. Quynh was still so angry and hurt; it would be a long road to healing. Andy would have to pay for betraying the woman who she loved the most but it didn’t matter at that moment. She had gotten to say good-bye to her family. All of them.