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It starts like this: Andy has about two seconds to make a decision about a schoolbus of kids, so she commands “Portugal, ‘52,” and in the following uproar takes a knife into her clavicle so she can shoot the asshole who organized the whole affair, right in the face.
“Hmm,” says Copley. They’ve got an excellent and bribable doctor on hand, who never asks why Andy is the only one that ever gets sown up. “Have you ever heard of ‘toning it down’?”
“All these newfangled words,” Andy drawls, while she’s poked and prodded.
“It won’t happen,” Nicky confirms. “Trust us, we’ve tried.”
“She won’t even relax while we go on our anniversary trip,” Joe says, from the couch where he’s cleaning one of Nicky’s numerous knives.
“I’m merely suggesting,” says Copley, “that your more sacrificial strategies need to be retired. And that you occasionally need to allow your body time to heal.”
“And what would I do?” Andy questions. It's hard to tell if it's genuine or a challenge.
“There’s this thing called Netflix,” Nile says, and Andy wrinkles her nose and replies,
“At least when Shakespeare was sexual, he didn’t make you sacrifice your common sense.”
“She’s seen the Kardashians,” Nicky shrugs in explanation, and doesn’t sound apologetic about it. “Television bores her. And Booker mainly watched sports.
“Maybe this is an opportunity,” Copley tries to persuade, to refocus. “If not to take a real break, then to overwrite old habits. I’ve gotten ahold of some armor that—“
“We should spar,” Andy says suddenly. “You’re right.”
“Thanks,” says Copley, “so—“
“Get us a field zone for practice.”
“Yes, and I’ve also gotten my hands on—“
“Thanks!” Says Joe, clapping Copley on the shoulder. “Tomorrow, then?”
“I have an idea,” volunteers Nile, and Andy nods at her. Go on. Copley sighs, so Nile says: “paintball.”
“It’s a field zone,” Copley says over the phone, when Nicky calls him. “No cameras.” Also, the teenager manning the front desk of the paintball range is alternating between scrolling Instagram and napping.
“This is for children,” Andy says.
“It will do,” Joe murmurs, craning his head to evaluate the space.
“Look,” says Nile, “you get shot by the other team, you lose. And you can tell because of the paint. It makes sense. We all already know what getting shot feels like, so there’s no point in an exercise closer to reality.”
“You have four hours all to yourself,” Copley informs. “I told them it was a birthday party.”
“Happy birthday,” Nile grins at Andy, whose lips twitch but then she looks up from where she’s inspecting her paintball gun and, in a smooth motion, shoots Nile in the knee.
“We’re not on the same team,” Andy says, and yeah, Nile agrees.
Joe seems to pout, briefly, because of what this indicates about the overall team setup. With a peck on the lips, Nicky says, “it wouldn’t be fair if we were one team, no? We are too synchronized.”
“I want Nicky,” Nile claims immediately. Andy raises an eyebrow as if to say, they’re both softies with each other, what's the point in picking one, but doesn’t disagree. Just snags Joe by the arm and slinks off to camouflage into the poorly decorated paintball zone.
“I think,” Nile huffs minutes later, “it’s supposed to be zombie apocalypse themed.”
“Maybe,” Nicky agrees, to the thud thud thud of paintball against the wall behind them as they sprint. “Oh, I think I’ve been shot.”
They stare at the bright green from their current stronghold, behind a wooden cutout painted to look like a zombie (?) horse.
“Maybe,” Nile says, “you could limp for a few minutes?”
“Huh,” says Nicky. “That does make sense.” And thus it begins: terrible playacting.
How is she supposed to shoot Joe again, when he’s wobbling around so pathetically?
“You’ve actually been shot in the thigh thousands of times,” she tells him, paintball gun still trained on the back of his head even as she shakes a little with laughter, “how are you so bad at this?”
“Nickyyyyy,” Joe moans, beaming. Before Nile can remind him that Nicky is on her team, Joe’s actual teammate kicks in the practically-cardboard wall of the hideout to shoot Nile in both arms. There may be a backflip somewhere in that maneuver. No part of Andy is fair.
“Sorry!” Nicky calls from somewhere far off. Wiggling her shoulders, Nile lets her arms flop, and Andy lets her run off with both of them loose and waggling. Nile feels ridiculous. She doesn’t stop.
When she scoots up next to Nicky in the underbrush and he hands her a new paintball gun, Nicky observes, “you’re young.”
“Yeah? Sorry?” She says.
“No.” He smiles, small. “We need it. You know we do.”
Well. Nile’s always been considered old, amongst her peers. The girl who had to grow up too soon, the eldest daughter, a daddy gone and a family to support, training to join the Marines way back in high school. Trying to be an adult since you’re eleven doesn’t earn you a lot of time to giggle and play.
“How long until my arms ‘heal,’ you think?”
“A few days,” says Nicky grimly. “You must maintain the ruse that long.”
“Stop,” she snorts, and playfully shoves his shoulder with her own, but apparently the other team has also acquired a taste for the dark, somewhere between thirty different tactical strategies.
Roughly half an hour is spent deciding the best way to cross an open area towards a gunman without being shot, and at least an hour goes to Andy learning first to reluctantly pretend that one of the zombie cutouts is a civilian, and then training herself not to dive in front of it for certain maneuvers.
It’s a lot. A few thousand years of immortality can really influence a fighting style. Andy has a few days before she wants to be back on the ground, so—paintball.
“I want to name the fake civilian Claude,” says Nicky, and Joe says,
“Why would you pick a baby name without consulting me?”
This apparently merits a bloodier—or just more colorful—skirmish. And then they’re unsuccessfully ambushing Andy in a fake shed.
“I could kill a soldier in twenty different ways with a few strands of hair,” Andy says, and it isn’t even a boast. The menacing factor is toned down by the way she’s splotched with bright neon rainbow from the last few rounds.
“But not me,” Nile says.
“You’re too short for one of them to work,” Andy acknowledges, and then: “give me the gun.” Nile gives her a gun, which is promptly fired at her chest. Teal blooms over her vest. “The real gun, Nile. I am not a child.”
“But then you’ll shoot us for real,” says Nicky patiently.
“My love, I think that’s an unfair reality we have to get accustomed to,” Joe says, dropping from a hole in the roof and shooting three paintballs, none of which find their mark.
Fortunately, they don’t get shot by Andy in the name of training, because the pimple-ridden teen clomps out into the open field and shouts, “fifteen minutes left! And you have to eat your cake before your time is up.”
“Cake?” says Nicky. Andy drops Claude-The-Zombie mercilessly to the ground, stepping with a wooden crack on his speech bubble that proclaims deadication! and says,
“Reliable sources claim it’s my birthday. …again.” They eat cake.
“This is a good idea,” Andy says. Somehow, despite the speed at which she is consuming cake, there is no frosting on her face. “We should do this again.”
It is, Nile realizes, possibly the greatest recent change Andy has encountered, has kept. She’s adapted to bayonets and guns and grenades; she’ll adapt to mortality, too. She’ll adapt well. It’ll just take time.
“Ooh,” says Joe, just as one of Nile’s back bruises finishes its long healing process from getting rammed with Andy’s entire bodyweight, concentrated into one perfect elbow.
“Yeah,” Nile says. “We should.” She means it. Andy licks chocolate frosting off a thumb, reveals a stripe of teal beneath. The woman’s already had more birthdays than anyone on the planet. She doesn’t need Copley faking any more of them. Maybe it can be Nile’s, next time. She’s getting a cake with buttercream frosting.
“Copley can be the civilian,” offers Nicky. Maybe they can practice Andy letting them get shot instead of her. She suspects, besides Andy going first into danger, that this will be the hardest instinct to break.
There is a suspicious amount of purple paint on Joe, which is a color that used to only be on Nicky. She takes a still-wet glob of pink from her forearm, and flicks it at all of them. Andy ruffles cyan in her hair, kicks Joe lightly when he playfully attempts to drag her off, splatterpaint soles to her boots leaving a painting in abstract down his grey T-shirt. Hopping on his back with a sly defector! that Nile suspects carries more significance than she could ever understand, Nicky joins the fight. Someone’s burner cell buzzes. Keeps buzzing. It’s probably Copley, checking on them. That poor man. He’ll have to suffer them on missions for years to come. The teenaged employee is convinced (intimidated) to give them another few minutes of rolling around in the grass.
It’s one afternoon among millions for them, but it feels special. Missing a few pieces, but special nonetheless. Special in the waiting. In the in-betweens. The adjustments. In unspoken things, about the man who drinks too much, and a crazed woman in the sea that only Nile will dream of. In the hope of them.
“There’s this thing,” Nile says, half-breathless, sunlight warm on her skin, “called laser tag.”
With this family, there's years to come.