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The last time Nile was in Spain, it was almost November, and oppressively cold and grey. Now, the first week of June, summer is just beginning to unfurl across the rolling plains, and their train is snaking through fields of rippling hay and tidy rows of vineyards and olive groves. It’s like something out of a movie, mile after mile of idyllic countryside, and Nile finds it soothing to watch in a way she wouldn’t have before she became immortal.
Next to her, Nicky is stirring his coffee, probably an unconscious gesture rather than because he's expecting any thermodynamic changes, as it’s been cold for at least two hours now. He’s staring at the television in the aisle, but with a glazed look that means he’s not actually watching the movie. If his bones hurt half as much as Nile’s do, he’s thinking about being at home, with a shower, and then going to bed.
Nile herself keeps nodding off intermittently, only to jolt awake when the train comes to a stop.
They’re two stops from central Madrid when Nile’s phone vibrates—almost unheard over the hum of the train—and they both jump a little. Nile fishes it out, and Nicky watches her with visibly restrained interest.
She sees the sender, and passes it over. “It’s for you.”
Nicky nods, and thumbs in her unlock sequence without having to ask.
A rather vicious machete had come down on Nicky’s backside during their mission, intent on his hamstrings, and instead had gotten an iPhone. Tragic for the iPhone. Also tragic for the owner of the machete, whose error cost him his life several seconds later.
When Nicky eventually hands the phone back, Nile asks, “They’re waiting for us?”
Nicky nods, and his lips twitch into a tiny smile.
When Nile had first become immortal, Nicky and Joe had made An Effort to bring Nile into the fold—they wanted stories of her life, and wanted her hands dicing onions in the kitchen and her opinion on which movie to watch, and they took her home after tough missions and drew her baths with froofy oils and candles. They left her alone on the nights when she ached, when she would kneel next to the steaming bath and press her face into a thick towel and scream for the injustice of it all, the loneliness.
If this were eleven years ago, Nicky would be asking her if she’d ever had real churros before, or quizzing her on her Spanish, and Nile would have said something smart about Taco Bell, but now—
Now, they’re both quiet, and comfortable.
Nile folds her hand into his, and he squeezes once before tilting his head back and closing his eyes. She pulls their hands onto her lap, and turns her head to watch central Spain rush past them.
The sun is half-set when they get into Madrid, and through the massive glass ceiling of the train station, Nile can see a beautiful sky tinged pink and purple. The air is still warm, with just a stir of a breeze that smells like coffee. Madrid, she’s already decided, is much better in June than it was in November. She should visit more often.
Nicky’s taken her phone again, booking it down the terminal while speaking in soft, rapid Arabic. Nile trails after him, and idly notes the blood stain on the neck of the guitar case Nicky has slung over his back. Nicky’s arm must not have been fully healed when he zipped it shut. She hopes her own case (smaller, for a banjo, though it doesn’t hold a banjo the same way Nicky’s doesn’t hold a guitar) is blood-free.
They come through the doors into the main entry, stop, and Nile is halfway through a survey of the crowd when a small figure in overalls goes streaking toward them.
“Papa!”
Nicky catches her and lifts her up with practiced ease, grinning broadly. “Topolina! ¿Que pasó?”
Nile has to mentally switch over to Spanish, just in time to understand her enthusiastic reply of, “Papa, did—did you know that McDonald’s has ice cream ?”
“I don’t think it does,” Nicky tells her seriously.
“I saw it! Baba and I stood here forever and I saw it.”
“Maybe it was a dream?”
“Nuh-uh. They have vanilla and… and chocolate. And... vanilla. Baba, how many people got vanilla?”
And there’s Joe, a small, sparkly pink backpack in hand.
“Three people,” Joe says, and nods at Nile. “Hey, kid.”
“Three people got vanillas,” Safia informs Nicky.
“Hey,” Nile says, and raises her eyebrows at the backpack. The tassels are little pink puff-balls, and the straps have rhinestones.
Joe shrugs, unconcerned.
“Three people got vanillas,” Safia is telling Nicky, and she unwraps one arm from around his neck to hold up three fingers for him. “Three .”
“Three lucky people,” Nicky says. “How many people got chocolate?”
Safia shrugs, and reaches for the neck of the guitar sticking out over Nicky’s shoulder. “Papa, what’s that?”
Nicky opens his mouth to reply, and then Joe steps over and puts a hand over Safia’s tumble of dark curls, uses his other arm to pull Nicky in close, and the three of them fold in together like they belong that way.
“Your Papa’s a busker, kiddo,” Joe says. “Stands on the streetcorners and sings all day and night to the tourists about his incredibly gorgeous husband.”
Safia wrinkles her nose and stares at him for a long moment, and then says, “Can I have a ice cream?”
“Welcome home,” Joe says to Nicky, leaning over for a kiss. “You were missed.”
“Vanilla,” Safia adds pointedly.
“Hey, Safi, look who came home with Papa,” Joe says, stepping back a little. “You remember Auntie Nile?”
“Oh my god, just Nile,” Nile says, horrified. “I’m not even forty yet.”
“Remember Great Auntie Nile?” Joe corrects, with delight.
Nile ignores him and focuses on the adorable child instead. “Hey, Sassafras. How’ve you been?”
Safia is staring at her blankly.
Nicky jiggles her a little. “You don’t remember Nile? She came before Christmas last year! She’s the one who got you that atrocious keyboard.”
Safia shakes her head, and then lays it down against Nicky’s chest, suddenly quiet. Her big brown eyes stare over at Nile shyly.
Nicky and Joe glance at each other, and then look at Nile apologetically.
“Well, I’m Nile,” Nile says, holding out a hand. “And it’s nice to meet you.”
“Hi, Nile,” Safia mumbles, and turns her head into Nicky’s chest.
Nicky looks more apologetic, but Joe just shrugs and jerks a thumb toward the exit. “Home?” he says, and Nile has never heard of a better idea. She still has dried blood between her toes, crunching with every step, and she knows there were days in Iraq when she smelled better than she does now.
Nicky hitches Safia up a little higher, and nods.
“Also, habibti, please carry your things,” Joe says, handing Safia her little backpack. “You’re four years old, it’s time to start pulling your own weight around here.”
“You start at the factory on Monday,” Nicky tells her gravely.
Nile walks in the door to the house, and her stomach growls audibly. It smells like potatoes and eggs, and she decides that she definitely needs to visit Madrid more often. If nothing else, the Spaniards know how to do comfort food.
Joe laughs as he steps past her. “Hungry?”
“I may be immortal, but even I don’t take my chances with train food,” Nile replies.
Joe finishes assembling the omelettes while Nile showers, and when she comes down it’s well past nine o’clock but the sounds of the city are going strong. Safia is at the table, coloring, and Nile plops down next to her.
“Whatcha colorin’, Sassafras?”
“What’s a… What’s a Sasser-frass?” Safia asks.
“That’s you,” Nile tells her.
“Nuh-uh.”
“Yep. I always call you that.”
“Nuh-uh, ‘cause I didn’t know you before.”
“Yes, you did. You just don’t remember.”
“I remember everything,” Safia says.
“You do, huh?” Nile asks, after a pause that’s probably a little too long.
“Uh-huh. I can remember the whole Green Eggs and Ham. Wanna see?”
“Dinner in ten,” Nicky says, poking his head in from the kitchen. “Topolina, go wash your hands, please. Nile, you want tomatoes on your half?”
“Yes, please,” Nile says, as Safia rabbits off to wash her hands.
It’s almost eleven by the time Safia goes to bed. Nicky and Joe troop back down to the living room like decommissioned soldiers, shoulders slumped, limbs loose. Nile watches from her starfish sprawl on the papasan chair as they flop down in succession onto the sofa and then lay there for a good five minutes before Nicky wriggles his way over to Joe, tucking himself against his side.
“They changed Sam I Am,” Nile complains, eventually.
They both look at her with identical expressions of bewilderment.
“In Green Eggs and Ham. In English, his name is Sam I Am, but in Spanish he’s—” She snorts, and can’t hold back the full giggle. “— Juan Ramón .”
“....You know the Green Eggs and Ham book?” Nicky asks, after a long pause.
“Duh,” Nile says. “Literally everyone in America knows Green Eggs and Ham.” She switches to English, just to emphasize. “I do not like them, Sam I Am, I do not like green eggs and ham. I do not like them in a house, I do not like them with a— ”
Joe groans. “So she’s going to pick it up again, next time we move? It’s going to be in other languages?”
“Probably,” Nile says, now wondering what they changed Sam I Am’s name to in the other versions. “How much longer are you guys going to stay here?”
Nicky and Joe exchange a look, and then Nicky sighs heavily and looks away.
“Maybe another six months,” Joe says, playing with Nicky’s hair. “Maybe sooner. Her friends are all starting to… ride bikes. Write, a little. They’re reading more complicated books. I think by fall, most of them are going to leave Safia behind.”
Again.
Because Safia is never going to learn to ride a bike, or write her name, or do somersaults, or read more than a few words, or anything else most five years olds are capable of.
“Maybe Germany next,” Nicky suggests. “We haven’t been to Germany yet with her. Do we still have that house in the south?”
Joe snorts. “You mean the one that we bought back after Napoleon invaded?”
“It was a nice house,” Nicky protests. “It had the most wonderful mural on the side, remember?”
“I remember. But, habibi, now we can have one with running water, and indoor toilets.”
“Spanish to German will be rough for her,” Nicky says.
“I’ll paint us a new mural,” Joe replies. “Safi will be fine, she’s a smart cookie, and German is easy. Even Nile could learn it.”
“Excuse you, Nile already knows German,” Nile interrupts.
“Do you?” Joe asks mildly.
Nile replies with something very unkind indeed, in German, and Nicky barks out a laugh.
“You guys should go somewhere warm,” Nile suggests. “Like Greece. Or Sao Paolo.”
“We were in Greece with her two years ago, but—” Nicky glances at Joe, considering. “We haven’t been to Brazil in ages.”
Joe hums.
Silence descends again, and Nile closes her eyes and listens to the sound of music from the restaurant next door, recorded, but the speakers are so high quality that when she closes her eyes she can imagine it’s a live band anyway. Maybe tomorrow she'll go down for a beer, and try the meat and cheese board Joe had been espousing over dinner. Jamón… iber-something.
Me gusta jamón, Juan Ramón, she thinks, and giggles.
The songs change over three times before Nile opens her eyes again. Joe and Nicky are still curled close, heads tipped together into a little steeple, and Nicky is running an aimless finger over Joe's thigh.
Eleven years ago, Nile would have excused herself for the night, and crept upstairs. Now, though, she stays right where she is.
"Are you guys doing okay?" she asks.
“Of course,” Joe replies, with a grin.
“No, for real,” Nile says.
“Nile—”
“I mean it.”
The grin fades. Joe stares at her for a long moment, and then exhales slowly. His eyes slide away, fixing on the middle distance.
“Are we doing okay,” Nicky repeats, and turns a heavy gaze onto her.
Nile waits.
“We are… doing okay,” Nicky says, eventually. He looks like he’s trying to convince himself as much as Nile.
Nile shakes her head. "Eight years is a long time.”
"Not to us.”
"You don't get tired of it?” Nile asks.
They don't answer, and they won’t look at her. Joe's thumb rubs over and over the back of Nicky's hand, where their hands are joined.
“You don’t get tired of her? ” Nile asks.
Then Nicky, eyes shining, in the barest of whispers:
"Sometimes."
Eight years ago, they found Safia in a satellite lab of Merrick’s, and none of them knew what Dr. Kozac had wanted with a four year old, but there wasn’t much to do about it at the time. Andy carried her out of the building while Nicky, Nile and Joe laid waste to her captors. They scoured the lab for information, but everything had been wiped, and there was no trace of Kozac.
The purpose of the child became evident mid-rescue, when Andy took her out of a second-story window, and then watched in horror as the tiny fractured arm healed before her eyes.
Nile still remembers the look on Andy’s face when she’d said, into the terrible silence, “Joe, when Kozac had us in that lab… exactly what kind of samples did they take from you?”
Nicky had had those samples taken, too. So had Booker. They knocked five years off Booker’s sentence for mailing them a spit sample with no questions asked, but in the end Safia had come back as an even split between Nicky and Joe.
The why of her is obvious. The how eludes them to this day.
They thought maybe, she was just aging very slowly. Maybe she’d been born an infant and given time, she would eventually become five, and then six, and then seven. But it’s been eight years and she still writes the letter S backwards. Still hasn’t grown an inch.
Nile thinks of Safia’s brain as a sort of container—which, maybe all brains are containers, but Safia’s brain container is just the right size for a four year old’s, and that’s exactly how it stays. If she learns German, she’ll forget Spanish. If she learns to tie her shoes, then she forgets her shapes. And if Nile goes too long between visits, then she forgets Nile, too.
After the second year, Andy came to visit, and brought Nile with her for moral support. (Children terrify her.)
“My god,” she said in amazement, as it was possibly the first time Andy had ever been inside a modern house occupied by a small child. “Are there any goddamn toys left at the store? Doesn’t she have a room? ”
This was just after she had had the novel experience of stepping on a Lego, so she was perhaps a little more grumpy than usual.
“So this is your life now?” she asked, looking around at the toy-strewn living room. “Tea parties and… fort building.”
Nicky shrugged.
“We’re really good at macaroni art, too,” Joe said helpfully.
Andy pulled out her flask and took a drink.
“I know you need us in the field, boss,” Nicky said, after Andry had downed about half of it in one go. “We want to be there. Truly, at heart, we are warriors first. But—”
Joe picked up a plastic tiara and spun it back and forth between his thumb and forefinger.
“One at a time, maybe,” Nicky suggested. “Alternate us. So the other can be at home, with her.”
“For how long?” Andy asked, eyes narrowed.
“For as long as she’s here,” Joe replied.
“That could be a long time,” Andy said.
Nicky sighed, heavily. “What can we do?”
“Well, we don’t know she’s immortal,” Andy said, which was really fucking brave of her.
Sure enough, Joe was instantly upright, eyes alight. “Don’t you fucking dare. If you touch one hair on her head, Andy—”
“She didn’t mean it,” Nile interjected hastily. “Joe, she would never, you know that—”
“I know you don’t want to hear it,” Andy said, cutting her across easily with a voice like steel. “But Yusuf. Nicoló . This is cute for now, but what happens in twenty years? Thirty years? How long can you be happy playing house with a toddler who can’t remember more than three months back?”
“We’re a thousand years old, Andy, thirty years is nothing, it’s a blip,” Joe said, shaking his head.
“She doesn’t age,” Andy said. “How about a hundred years? Two hundred years? How long will you chain yourself to this child?”
“Chain ourselves? ”
“Andy,” Nicky said, quietly, but he didn’t need volume because his tone had everyone in the room instantly paying attention. “She’s our daughter.”
“She’s a lab experiment.”
“Yes,” Nicky agreed. His face was full of pain. “And she’s our daughter.”
It’s October in Germany, and the winter is already settled in. Nile’s boots crunch on frozen grass as she makes her way up to the house. She shoves her hands into her pockets, and hopes that the heat is cranked inside, because this mission had come up while she’d been in Aruba on a much-deserved holiday, and coming from the sandy beaches of the Caribbean to the permafrost of alpine Germany just isn’t fair.
She knocks on the door twice, and stuffs her hands back into her coat.
Safia opens the door, dressed in pajamas, her hair in approximately… one and a half pigtails.
“Hey, Sassafras,” Nile says, waving. “Miss me?”
She gets the same blank look she always gets.
“Nile! Come in!” Joe yells from somewhere in the house.
Nile steps inside and Safia runs away, disappearing down the hallway. She takes off her snowy coat and hangs it up to dry, then bends over to pull at the laces of her boots. In another room, she can hear the distinct sound of a blade being sharpened.
“Can I get you anything?” Nicky’s voice asks, and when Nile looks up he’s standing a few feet away, dressed in a thick fair isle sweater. He looks tired, she thinks.
“Whiskey?” she asks. “That’s good for hypothermia, yeah?”
“If by that, you mean it causes hypothermia. Then yes.”
Nile pouts at him, and Nicky gives her a half smile and then disappears into the kitchen.
A small dark head pokes around the corner.
“Hey,” Nile says, grabbing her bag. “I’m Nile, I know your dads. I have a present for you!”
That gets her. “A present?” Safia asks.
“Yep,” Nile says, and pulls out a bright green book titled Grünes Ei mit Speck, presents it to her.
Safia takes it, and says, “Thank you.”
“It’s in German,” Nile says, a little needlessly.
Safia looks up at her. “What’s it about?”
“I’ll read it to you,” Nile tells her, and starts guiding her over to the couch. “It’s about a man named Jack, and he wants his friend to eat some green eggs and ham.”
“That’s silly. Green eggs aren’t real.”
“You’ll like it. It used to be one of your favorite books.”
“When?”
“A long time ago.”
“When I was a baby?”
Nile sits down on the couch, and Safia scrambles up next to her. “Yeah,” Nile says. “When you were a baby.”