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A month after they take down Merrick, Nile has a breakdown.
They’re not, thank God, doing anything important. Actually, after banishing Booker and figuring out how their partnership with Copley was going to work, they hadn’t done much at all: Nile had gotten a new identity and a new wardrobe, Joe and Nicky had left on a couple’s vacation and come back, and Andy had started teaching her basic sword fighting strikes and blocks.
They’re not doing anything important, thank God —the last thing they need is to be taken again four weeks after fighting their way free from captivity—but it’s exactly why Nile loses it.
Or, well, it’s exactly why she loses it now and not sometime in 2042.
It’s a gorgeous day in a series of gorgeous days in Volos, which Nile had expected even though it was her first time in Greece. Her first time in Europe, if you don’t count hiding out in a random French city, or leading a rescue mission for the four immortal strangers you’d met a few days before in London, which Nile doesn’t. Not really.
They’re having dinner outside, chatting idly as they watch the sun set over the Aegean sea, and it only takes two glasses of red wine for the chatter to turn into nonsense. Nile gets a short history of the team’s post French Revolution bets and a lesson as to why she should never side with Nicky on one, which turns into a history of Nicky’s biggest fuck ups, which then, since there are few of those, turns into a history of the team’s funniest fuck ups instead.
After five (or seven? No, six) glasses of wine, Nile starts pointing to random objects every five minutes, demanding to know what they are called in Greek: Nicky indulges her and is corrected by Joe, who’s corrected by Andy, all of them swearing they’re right.
“Fytó, my love, you mean fytó,” Joe says for the second time tonight.
“You would know,” Andy mutters in her glass, and before Nile has the time to ask about that, Joe sticks his tongue out.
“‘S what I said,” Nicky says. “Too many to keep up with anyway.”
“Which one’s your favorite?” Nile asks because she genuinely wants to know, and because they’re all funnier and lighter and way less scary when they’re drunk.
“Arabic,” he says with a small smile, “because—”
“I think she can guess why,” Andy says.
“Your least favorite, then?”
Nicky hums, seemingly taking her question very seriously. “It’s a tie between Greek and English.”
“Which has nothing to do with the fact that they’re the two languages you’re the worst at, I’m sure.”
Nicky throws a red grape at Andy, who, of course, catches it with her mouth. “It has nothing to do with that. I just...don’t like them. And I have to speak English to move around quite a lot of places. At least for now.”
At least for now. Four words, Nile will think later. Four small, insignificant words manage to completely tear her apart.
“Somehow the worst languages always end up becoming the lingua franca,” Andy says. “Humanity has to make things hard for itself.”
Joe snorts, shakes his head. “Rich people make things hard for the rest of us.”
Nile’s glass of wine is halfway to her lips before something about at least for now tugs at her brain and forces her to put it down. “English—”
The last thing Nile sees before her brain starts its downward spiral is Andy raising an eyebrow at her.
“What about it?” she asks casually, as if Nile’s world hadn’t been pushed off its axis. Again.
English—English would fade. Probably? Definitely.
The very idea seems absurd. Impossible. Everyone speaks English, right? Or so it seems. How could it—
But why wouldn’t it? The Romans probably thought their language—and their empire—would last forever.
“Nile?”
Albums and movies she considers classics might disappear from collective memory.
The world will move on without her—which would be fine, necessary, even, if she grew and died as it did.
Places won’t look like they did, won’t feel familiar. Nowhere will feel like home. Nowhere will be home.
“Nile, are you okay?”
God, I’m so dumb. I’m so fucking stupid. How could she not have seen, understood ?
Losing her job and the sense of normalcy that had come with being a Marine was one thing.
Losing her friends was another. Losing Dizzy—another thing too, one she hadn’t let herself think about much.
Losing her family had been the worst, but Nile had taken comfort in the idea that they would live on and do okay without her. It might take a few years, but they would make it. They had before.
But they wouldn't really make it. Not in the grand scheme of things. They would eventually fade from her family tree, from Lakewood history, from her memory.
Just like everything else that made her—
“Nile? Talk to us.”
The thing is, she can’t open her mouth. Can’t form proper thoughts, can’t breathe, can’t breathe, can’t breathe—
Her feet move before she tells them to. She goes straight to her bedroom, doesn’t even think to pick up her iPod on the kitchen counter.
She’s barefoot, wearing loose shorts and a white t-shirt, so it’s the easiest thing in the world to lay down directly on her bed, without bothering to slip under the covers. Nile hopes, though deep down she knows it isn’t likely, that laying down will get her head to stop spinning. That she’ll be able to think rationally and hold onto whatever explanation her brain comes up with until her world starts making sense again.
It doesn’t.
***
They let her be for three days, leaving food and water outside her door, and letting her know whenever they leave the villa, though one of them usually stays behind.
But after about 71 hours, the door to her bedroom is forced open. Andy, Nile thinks.
“Nile.”
Fuck off.
I’m fine.
“Nile. Drink some water, at least.”
I’m fine.
Fuck off.
Do you remember your mother’s name?
A sigh. “I’m leaving some water by the door for you, alright?”
Andy shuts the door behind her, but Nile can still hear the loud sigh she heaves.
Join the club.
About a hundred hours after first losing her shit, Nile discovers—with some satisfaction—that dehydration is a pretty decent way to die, all things considered.
Five days and one additional death later, Andy walks into Nile’s bedroom again, dropping a litre of water and a plate of warm, heavenly-smelling food by her bed.
“You shouldn’t be doing this to yourself,” she says, and Nile would probably kick her out then and there if she could. Even if she’d been “doing this” on purpose, what would it matter? It’s not like her lungs wouldn’t find a way to fill themselves up, not like her heart wouldn’t find a way to pump blood throughout her body again and again and again and again whether she wanted it to or not.
Control over herself, over her body and over her life is something Nile hadn’t even thought she really had until it got ripped away from her a month and a half ago, sinking in the sand along with her blood, never to be seen again.
“I know it doesn’t seem like it at the moment, but we might not always have time.”
Nile wants to laugh. Time is all she has.
Time is all she has. Her name will change with the centuries, the only language she knows will disappear, and by the time it does she probably won’t even mind, her people will be unrecognizable to her, time is all she has—
“—really, you have so much to learn,” Andy is saying now, sounding, strangely enough, like the college brochures Nile glanced at in high school before tossing them out. “And it gets better.”
Different kind of brochure now. Still useless.
Andy leaves a minute or two after that last bullshit promise, and Nile promptly closes her eyes so she can sleep and not have to smell whatever it is Joe had whipped up for them tonight.
When she wakes up, it’s to voices not quite whispering. It’s still hard to make them out over the sound of waves meeting the shore outside her window, and it’s harder still to try to focus when she hasn’t done anything at all in days.
“I get it,” Andy’s voice says after a sigh, “I do, but—”
“No buts,” Nicky counters. “Pestering her about duty and training will not work. She’s beyond that.”
“What does that even mean?” Andy sounds genuinely annoyed now. “She’s just started, how can she be beyond anything?”
“She does not even eat, Andy.” Joe sounds—confused? Worried? “She’s let herself die what—twice, now? Even if she’s just started, something is terribly wrong. It will not be fixed like this.”
“Then what do we do?”
“We wait,” Joe says. There’s a lengthy silence that makes Nile think their discussion is over.
“That’s not something I can afford to do anymore. She—she needs to be ready. I need—”
Another silence. Longer, this time. Nile almost falls asleep.
“I need her to be ready. I need to know I’ve given her everything I could.”
Well. If that everything doesn’t include a time machine or a private audience with God so He can undo this, Andy might be wasting her time.
For a few days, Nile’s world is the sound of waves crashing on the shore occasionally disturbed by Andy bringing her food and water and sitting by her for a few minutes, and the unbearable weight sitting on her chest, pinning her to her bed.
Every four hours or so, she tries to remember every single detail about her family that she can, putting them together like a slightly less cliché Lifetime movie, because someone somewhere had taught her that narratives help people remember things.
And then it hits her that she no longer remembers what her dad’s laughter sounded like, and that narratives can only do so much against time and her brain’s need to make space for new memories, and that one day it’ll be 2345 and Atlanta as she knows it won’t exist and English will be obsolete and her brother and cousins’ children’s children will be worms and dust and bone and she will be the same immortal 26 year old, under a new name and—
She gasps, her traitorous lungs ensuring she breathes through everything, even anxiety attacks.
Nile’s on her twentieth remember-everything-while-you-still-can/anxiety attack cycle when the door to her room opens and closes gently.
Not Andy, then.
“Hi, Nile. There’s food for you in the kitchen if you want it. Joe made lasagna. I just brought you water.”
Nile hears the soft clink of glass meeting her wooden bedside table, then feels a dip in her mattress, next to her stomach.
Nicky gently touches the back of her hand. “I know this is difficult.”
As much as she can when her body doesn’t let her move, Nile braces herself for the well-meaning, useless motivational speech she’s about to get.
“I’m sorry,” Nicky says. “This is...well, terrible. I’m not sure there is another way to put it.”
He doesn’t say anything else, and it takes a minute for Nile to realize that she’s still inside and the roof isn’t leaking, which means that the water on her cheeks is a tear. A distressing amount of real-life, salty tears, actually, rolling down her face.
Which also means this is a real-life, loud, ugly sob that bursts out of her mouth.
Nicky’s concerned face suddenly appears in front of Nile, her hand folded in both of his. “I’m sorry,” he says again.
Nile cries all the tears she has left in her weak, dehydrated body.
Then she cries some more.
*
Nile tries to ration the water Nicky left behind so she doesn’t have to go back out there right away, but before she’s even had a full sip, her body reminds her that she hasn’t had water in about two weeks and she drains the glass.
Damn it. It’s been a little over a day since Nile cried the entire Atlantic ocean while Nicky held her hand, but she’s not ready to face anybody just yet. She’s sure none of them would judge her—not to her face, at least. It doesn’t make it any less embarrassing.
Well, it’s too late now. Her body screams at her that twenty more glasses of water would be nice right about now, and sooner or later, her bladder’s going to be screaming at her too.
It takes Nile’s wobbly legs two attempts to get out of bed and three to make it to the door, and by the time she makes it into the kitchen, she realizes she doesn’t need to worry. Nobody’s in there, or in the living room.
Before she can change her mind, Nile opens the fridge and almost starts crying again when she realizes there’s some lasagna left. She eats and drinks like—well, like a girl who hasn’t had anything to eat or drink in two weeks, and almost falls asleep on the kitchen counter.
She rushes back to bed after dozing on and off for a few minutes and sleeps properly, peacefully, for the first time since she left Afghanistan.
*
A week after her first meal, Nile wanders into the villa’s living room after her supper, a small deviation from the little routine she’d developed. She usually sleeps from 5 AM to 2 PM, stares at the ceiling until 8 or 9, depending on how loud her stomach decides to growl, at which point she eats a truly absurd amount of food, then heads back to bed to stare at the ceiling some more.
Unfortunately, it looks like the ceiling can’t hold her attention anymore after three weeks, and she’s tempted by the overflowing bookshelves she hadn’t paid much attention to when they first arrived.
The books are neatly organized and though there are some titles that tempt Nile—mainly novels and memoirs that had been on the ever growing Things to read! list on her phone—she pulls out a small, familiar red book and runs back to her room with it before she can change her mind.
Nothing like a Harlequin novel to get your mind off things, her mom would say when Nile made faces at her the small books her mom brought home from garage sales.
Well, Nile thinks as she stares at the cover of Midnight Magic, she’s about to find out whether that’s true.
*
Nile hates to admit it, but it’s true.
So true in fact that Nile has to considerably reduce her staring at the ceiling time so she has time to finish the book she’s currently reading, sleep as much as she wants and avoid everyone else when she needs to eat, go to the bathroom and pick another book.
Eventually though, she has to change her routine altogether because she’s finishing the books much quicker than when she first started them, and even titles as enticing as His Accidental Heir aren’t keeping her brain as busy as they used to.
Without thinking about it much, Nile leaves her room early one morning, so eager to get started on today’s reading that she forgets she isn’t following her regular schedule and runs into Nicky, Joe and Andy having breakfast.
The silence is a few seconds too long, three pairs of eyes with varying levels of surprise fixed on her before all of them make a valiant effort at a poker face.
“Good morning, Nile,” Joe, who surprisingly has the best poker face, says. Might be because he’s genuinely glad to see her—unlikely as that seems. “Breakfast?”
“No thank you.” For a second, Nile thinks about turning back without a book so she doesn’t have to pick one out in front of them. But it’s not like they’re unaware she’s taking them. And what else is she gonna do? Go back to her room with nothing to do but think all day?
No thanks.
Without looking at titles or blurbs, Nile picks another Harlequin and two small novels, hoping she has enough material for a few days, and flees back to her room.
Unfortunately, one of the books she picked is pretty decent and the second of a trilogy, and she finishes it two days later, just as the sun rises, which means she’ll have to face the others again if she wants to know how the other Montgomery brothers find their happy-ever-after. It takes longer than she would’ve liked, but Nile gathers her courage, grabs her books and heads to the living room to replace them.
Joe is carefully chopping vegetables and Nicky is squeezing lemon juice into a small porcelain bowl. Both raise their heads at the same time and smile at her when she walks in.
“Morning, Nile. Breakfast should be ready in thirty minutes,” Nicky says.
“I’m alright, thank you,” Nile says after a moment of hesitation. She wouldn’t say no to that lemonade he’s making. Hopefully it’ll last a few days and she can have some later tonight.
She places the books back where they belong on their respective shelves, but she’s unable to find the rest of the Montgomery trilogy. Damn it.
“There are several missing,” Nicky calls apologetically from the kitchen. “I can try to find a copy online, if you want.”
“I—um...sure?”
“I usually get them at the airport, they don’t have the largest selections. It can be frustrating sometimes.”
“I didn’t know you, ah, liked those that much,” Nile says as she heads back to the kitchen.
“It’s not his fault,” Joe says, leaning towards Nile as if to tell her a secret. “The more tenuous his grasp on a language, the more questionable his taste.”
“I will not be shamed for having a...broad palate.” Nicky hip checks Joe as he heads to the sink to rinse his hands. “I’m glad someone else is reading them,” he says, and sounds so sincere it almost makes up for Nile’s embarrassment. Almost.
“Thanks for, um—letting me borrow them.” Nile quickly goes back to the bookshelves, grabs the first novel she sees and runs to her room before she hears Nicky’s response.
*
It feels a little ridiculous to keep being nocturnal after that, especially when Nile eventually realizes that the reason she doesn’t usually run into Andy, Joe or Nicky is because they work around her weird little schedule. Nile doesn’t want to be more of an inconvenience than she already is.
If it was that inconvenient, they wouldn’t do it, the rational, annoying part of her brain points out.
That doesn’t make her feel any less shitty, but it does push Nile into making an effort not to flee whenever someone else is around. She still doesn’t eat meals with the team, but she also doesn’t run back to her room if one of them joins her when she reads in the living room or on their deck.
Is that progress? Going back to acting like a normal human being (ha!) is taking her longer than she’d like, but it feels like she’s on the right track. Or like she’s on a track in the first place, which is better than whatever she’s been doing these past few weeks.
She’s in the kitchen getting started on a new book on a sunny Wednesday morning when Nicky walks in and starts getting some fruits and vegetables out of the fridge. It looks like he’s putting together a snack basket.
“I like this series. Really charming, and romantic.” Nicky says some time later as he starts peeling cucumbers. “I think the second book is my favorite.”
“I like it too, so far,” Nile says. “I’ve always—I’ve always liked wedding-themed books and movies.” She hadn’t given much thought to the idea of getting married, and always told herself she wouldn’t until she came back home: she wasn’t going to widow someone if she could help it. Still. “Having all your loved ones gathered in one place to celebrate you, and having family—” Nile swallows hard, tries to get the thought out. She gives up after a minute. “I think it’d be nice,” she says instead.
“I think so too. I would’ve liked to have my family there, if I ever thought I would be getting married.”
“Do you ever,” Nile asks before she can stop herself, “do you ever miss them? Do you—do you remember?” Are they even your family anymore?
Nicky puts down a spoon full of humus and looks up at the ceiling, frowning. Nile can’t read the look on his face.
“I’m not,” he says after a moment, “I’m not sure how to answer your question.”
“I’m sorry, I—”
“Don’t apologize,” Nicky says, meeting Nile’s eyes, “you did nothing wrong. I’m just not sure how to explain it.” He’s quiet again for a minute or two. Then: “I—you reminded me of this...incident that happened a little while ago. It must’ve been...some time in the late 1700s? The 1760s, I think. Joe and I were in Spain, taking a break after a job, but expecting some more work to come our way soon, and we had decided to put some order into the things we had in that safe house. I was sorting through some of Joe’s doodles—I keep most of his drafts, he always thinks they are much worse than they actually are—and choosing which ones I would keep and which ones I would toss. There was this one portrait that came up a few times, and for the life of me, I could not place who Joe was drawing, so I decided to put them in the pile we would throw away. It was...it was Yusuf who pointed it out to me. He pointed out to me that the woman in the portrait was my sister, and that I used to ask him to draw her—and my mother—from descriptions I gave him.”
Nicky is quiet again, then shakes his head. “It took me a while to get over that. Few decades, I think. So to answer your question: I miss them and I don’t remember them. I don’t remember them, and I miss them. This...awful feeling,” he says, slowly moving his hand over his heart, “it never really goes away.”
Well. Nile had asked. She can’t be mad about how the answer makes her feel, can she? Nile bites her lips, then releases it. She knows it’s a bad idea, but she still wants to ask.
“Even though you have Joe?”
Nicky smiles ruefully. “I don’t think I will ever be able to put Yusuf’s love, talent and generosity into words. Ever. But no. That type of heartache does not go away either.”
Nile would bet her right hand that they’re both thinking of Booker right now. She won’t mention it—she’s probably overstepped enough for today.
“Andy and Joe are already down at the beach,” Nicky says, breaking the heavy silence. He gathers the food he prepared and gently puts it into a straw beach bag. “Will you be joining us?”
Nile shakes her head. “I think I’ll keep reading.”
“Enjoy! Oh, and you should ask Joe about wedding movies,” Nicky says as he steps out. “He makes fun of my literary choices, but he will watch any movie, so long as there is romance in them, and ideally a wedding.”
As she waves Nicky goodbye, Nile thinks that adding rom coms to her roster of distractions might not be the worst idea. For now, she’ll stop thinking about her mother’s shoulder pads and her brother’s sneakers and focus on whether Mac will let herself open up to Carter so she can get her happy-ever-after.
***
“I see Nicky finally let you move on to better things,” Joe says one morning, when he catches her finishing Sense and Sensibility. Nile doesn’t usually venture out of her room that early, but she rushed out of her room when she realized Joe was up. He makes the best coffee she’s ever had, and until she figures out his secret, she’s not gonna pass up an opportunity to have a cup.
“I’m not sure I’d say better things,” Nile says after a moment as she puts the book down.
“No?”
“No—I mean, I get it. Mr Ferrars made a promise, he’s an honorable man, yada yada yada, but why did Elinor have to—I don’t know...suffer for so long?”
Joe frowns up for a moment before he goes back to adding honey and a splash of oat milk to her mug. “But does she not love him even more because he is such an honorable man?”
“Maybe,” Nile mutters. “No, definitely. She just—didn’t do anything wrong. She doesn’t deserve all the waiting and pining and grieving.”
“Fair,” Joe says as he brings their mugs to the table, “though without the waiting and pining and grieving, there is no story.”
“See, this is why I liked those other novels. The worst it ever gets is at the end, during the climax, it’s dealt with in a chapter, and that’s when you know the characters are finally gonna get together for real.”
“And you didn’t get bored?”
“Sometimes,” Nile admits. She could do without the jealous ex-boyfriend plot lines and sometimes things got a tad over dramatic for her taste. “Though,” Nile adds, remembering what Nicky had said some two weeks ago, “I could say the same about romantic comedies.”
“Ah. I suppose you could,” Joe says, then smiles up at her. “I guess I have no excuse for enjoying them as much as I do, considering.”
“You don’t need an excuse to enjoy them,” Nile points out.
“You’re absolutely right. Speaking of which, would you want to watch a movie together later? Nicky and I are going into town this morning, then we’ll probably stop by the beach, but I will be back to make dinner.”
The question catches Nile off guard even though she’d thought about it since Nicky mentioned that Joe was into rom coms. Though she started interacting with the team again a few weeks back, she’d managed to keep her distances for the most part, and hadn’t really done anything social with them. Tempting as a movie sounds, is she really...ready?
Then again—it’s just a damn movie. What could possibly happen?
“Sure. I’ll make popcorn.”
“I don’t think we have any—I’ll bring some back from town, with some candy as well.” Joe seems as excited as her brother did on Christmas Eve. “I haven’t had a movie night in a while. I’m looking forward to it.”
“So am I,” Nile says. Surprisingly, she means it, too.
*
“You put me in an Austen mood, Nile,” Joe says later as he cues up Netflix.
Nile starts when Nicky walks into the living room with popcorn, jelly beans and soda. She hadn’t expected him to join, and had she known he would, she really wouldn’t have expected him to wear a t-shirt and sweatpants that match Joe’s.
Looks like movie night is serious business.
“Joe’s a bigger Austen fan than I am,” he says as he drops their snacks on the coffee table. “But this is one of my favorite adaptations.”
Nile smiles when she looks up at the screen and sees the pink and blue Clueless title card, and when Cher Horowitz starts narrating, she forgets every little worry she had about movie night.
***
For all the rom com talk, only one of their weekly movie nights turns out to be romance-themed: Nile had requested The Best Man (“If only for Morris Chestnut, you guys.”) and they ended up doing a Best Man/Best Man Holiday double feature.
Tonight is a bit of an exception. Much Ado About Nothing isn’t exactly a rom com, but Nile won’t complain considering Nicky had picked Brokeback Mountain last week, which, sure, could be considered romantic, but is far from a comedy. Nile had cried for an hour after, and she’s still not sure if she forgives Nicky for his pick.
“We should have a Keanu marathon,” Nile says, about an hour into the movie. “It’s fun,” she adds when Joe turns hesitant eyes on her. “My—my brother and I used to do it all the time. Our last one was a Denzel marathon, and before that we did a cult classics one.”
Joe shrugs. “I’m not going anywhere. Shall we make a list?”
They have a short argument about the order they should watch the movies in—The Matrix should be last instead of first, Nile would die on that hill—but since she’s the one who chose the marathon topic, she lets it go.
After a quick bathroom break and a beer refill, Nile settles comfortably in her seat so their marathon can begin.
“What if we really are in a simulation?” Nile asks when Morpheus offers Neo the red and blue pills. She’s joking (and yeah, it’s not the greatest joke in the world), but realizes Joe is seriously considering her question when he hums quietly.
“There would probably be more of us.”
“You think they’d actually breed humans?”
“No, I meant more of us,” Joe says, gesturing between himself and Nile. “We’d last longer than the average human.” His face falls, and Nile wants to kick herself when she realizes what he’s probably thinking about. “I guess we should thank Merrick for proving to us that that would definitely be true.”
Good job, Nile.
“Nine times out of ten I think I’d pick the blue pill,” Nile says, trying to change the course of the conversation as fast as she can.
“You know,” Joe says after a deep breath, “I’m not quite sure what I would do. I think it would depend on how I felt about Morpheus at the time. Would you really not want to know the truth, Nile?”
Before all of this, she might’ve said seven times out of ten, but so far, discovering a hidden truth about herself hasn’t been all that great.
“I just...have a feeling that I wouldn’t handle it well, if I found out my life was fake. And that there was little I could do about it.”
“Little?”
“Maybe not little, but that the chances of me actually doing what needs to be done to free humanity are slim to none. Though at least in the Matrix, you actually get to die. Sorry,” she adds, sucking in a quick breath. “That was insensitive.”
“That’s okay,” Joe says, though he’s frowning. “I know this will take a while to acclimate to.”
“When did you? When did any of this start making sense?”
“Around the 15th century, I think. But I had started feeling better, more settled, a few decades after we met Quynh and Andy. Though I will say, before I met Nicky, I expected to have a longer life than he or Andy did, and did not fear or expect death, not until war came to my home.”
“Death used to terrify me,” Nile says. “It scared the crap out of me, that things could just—end. When I was 8, maybe 9, my best friend and her family randomly moved to Portland, and I don’t think I ever got over it. But then my dad died, I just—I had to. I had to move on, otherwise I’d never make it, and it helped, eventually, when I started my tour. I knew for a fact that everything that had a beginning had an end, and I could deal with it. How does—how does anything make sense otherwise? How does it make sense now?”
“Technically our lives are finite as well. Especially in the timeline of the universe, well—our lives and the lives of others both are grains of sand on the beach.”
Nile doesn’t know what face she makes, but Joe smiles at her, almost fondly.
“It’s true,” he says. “Quite a bit of your life is almost the same as it was when you thought you were mortal.” Nile raises an eyebrow and Joe shakes his head in response. “I mean it, though there are obviously differences. The biggest one I can think of is that a lot of regular mortals are worried about being remembered. Well—more than that,” he adds with a little frown. “They want to make sure that they...that they’ve left their footprints on the sands of time.”
Nile doesn’t manage to hide her smile in time. “Smooth.”
Joe grins. “I keep up with modern celebrities.”
He looks so proud that Nile doesn’t have the courage to tell him that the particular Beyoncé song he’s quoting is almost a decade old. Not that that would mean much to him anyway.
“Most of them won’t be remembered,” he continues. “After two or three generations, when there’s no one left to tell their stories, they are gone. For good. That’s not quite the case for us. We can ensure we do something, contribute something, in order to be remembered—if not by our names, then by our actions. We have more than enough time for that—it’s our blessing, just as it is our curse. For other humans, not having the time we do is their ultimate blessing, even if they do not always see it that way.”
“I don’t—I’m not sure I follow.”
“It is because they do not have much time, because seven, eight decades—if that—go by so fast that they must live. Live properly, that is. Why should I care about celebrating the day I was born each passing year when there will be another one just like it in what will feel like a month? Why should I care about seeing Paris at least once in my life when she will be there in a decade? In six decades? When she might not be there at all in a hundred years?”
“So our lives...are not the same,” Nile says, still confused.
“In that sense, no. But the premise is the same. The important part.”
“And that would be?”
“That you are alive in the first place.” Joe laughs at Nile’s unimpressed face. “I know, but think of it this way: both you and other humans are presented with a garden. They might only get to see it bloom once, while you will witness a thousand springs. Either way, there is nothing you can do about being presented with the garden. You are here—and so are they—whether you like it or not. You are here, now, for the next centuries or the next millennium, a garden sprawling out in front of you. You will see it die and come back to life more times than you thought it could, in ways you did not think it could or should. But it is here. It was offered to you—by chance, or by design. What you choose to do with it, or whether you choose to do something with it at all, does not change the fact that it is here. The premise is the same: we are all here. By chance or design. We were all given something, whether we like it or not.”
“But ours is still...more difficult to deal with.”
“Probably. But regular humans don’t even know of our immortality, so their life is as hard as they believe it ever gets.”
Nile sighs. “I guess that makes sense. Though I don’t think it makes me feel any better.”
“The good news is, Nile, you’ll have a few years to come to terms with it all.”
Joe’s smile is gentle and understanding when Nile looks up at him, and the tension she hadn’t realized she held in her shoulders started fading away.
“I guess I do.”
Heart somehow both heavier and lighter than it’s been in weeks, Nile does her best to focus on the movies, but falls asleep in the middle of Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and wakes up just in time to see John Wick start kicking ass. She has no clue how long she was asleep, but her head is now on Joe’s shoulder, Andy is on the couch next to her, bare feet on the coffee table, and Nicky is on the floor at Joe’s feet, clutching the bowl of popcorn that had been on Nile’s lap.
“‘M sorry,” Nile whispers to Joe, raising her head. She’s embarrassed for all of two seconds when she realizes that Joe—and the rest of the team—have seen her in a much worse state.
Joe waves his hand, dismissing her apology. He grabs the popcorn from Nicky and hands it to Nile, and she puts it between her thigh and Andy’s.
Nile’s always loved action movies, and it’s easy to actually focus on this one. She can’t even help the low, appreciative hmm she lets out when John/Keanu beats a henchman with his hands cuffed, and startles when Andy chuckles.
Nile raises an eyebrow. “Can you do that?”
“With my eyes closed,” Andy says, facing Nile.
“Can you teach me how to do that?”
Even in the low light, Nile can see Andy’s eyes soften. “Whenever you’re ready.”
Nile has no clue when that will be. But if Joe’s reassuring tone earlier and the small smile Andy is currently aiming at her are to be believed, that’s nothing she needs to worry about for now.
***
After weeks of reading books she’d never really had on her radar, Nile decides to start putting a dent in her Things to read list, picks out a collection of Langston Hughes’ poetry that she’d been eyeing for a few days, and brings it back to her bedroom.
She’d read quite a bit of his work in school, liked it more than she’d expected to, and then abruptly stopped once her English teacher brought up his sexuality. (“Even the best of them can disappoint,” Mrs Sheppard had said. The last thing Nile had wanted to be was a disappointment).
As Nile scans through the contents, her eyes zone in on a familiar title. She shuts off her bedside lamp and moves the small desk that faces her window, which is perfectly illuminated by the sun.
Once she’s comfortable, feet on the small wooden chair and knees leaning on the desk, she flips through the pages until she finds what she’s looking for. Her eyes carefully take in the words, while her heart stutters over the meaning they had then, and the one they carry now.
The words ignite a spark in Nile that had been extinguished weeks ago—months ago, now—something she honestly had never thought she’d feel again. There’s so much more she wants to reacquaint herself with, but Nile closes the book and gets out of her chair so fast she almost knocks it over.
Nile’s sleep clothes are off in a half a second, and she almost turns her room upside down trying to find her bathing suit, line after line and stanza after stanza flooding her brain.
I went down to the river,
I set down on the bank.
I tried to think but couldn't,
So I jumped in and sank.
Nile finds her white bikini top and gives up on finding the bottom, pulling on a pair of comfortable beige linen shorts she’s probably gonna regret using later. Right now, it really doesn’t matter.
I came up once and hollered!
I came up twice and cried!
If that water hadn't a-been so cold
I might've sunk and died.But it was Cold in that water! It was cold!
Nile runs through the kitchen to the patio, hoping she doesn’t wake anyone yet. A quick glance at the oven clock tells her it’s just after 7:00—Joe and Nicky are probably awake already, but Andy might not be, so Nile closes the patio door as gently as she can and rushes down the villa’s flight of stairs. She hadn’t even realized she was barefoot until now.
I took the elevator
Sixteen floors above the ground.
I thought about my baby
And thought I would jump down.I stood there and I hollered!
I stood there and I cried!
If it hadn't a-been so high
I might've jumped and died.But it was High up there! It was high!
She keeps running, almost slipping down the old stone stairs that lead to the beach. One part of her tells her if she keeps going this way she could fall and break her neck. The other part of her couldn’t care less, wants to go even faster, wants to push and tire the joints and muscles she hasn’t used in so damn long. It feels like her blood had been sitting still, wasting away in her veins, and that it’s finally started flowing again.
She remembers, even amidst the chaos of her thoughts, that all a broken neck would do is slow her down.
A small sound Nile’s never heard herself make before makes its way out of her lips when her feet first touch the water. Relief? Joy? Not quite. It feels like drinking your first glass of water after being lost in the desert for days: euphoric, yet still not enough.
When water comes up to her chest, Nile decides she’s done waiting and lets herself fall completely into the water.
So since I'm still here livin',
I guess I will live on.
I could've died for love--
But for livin' I was bornThough you may hear me holler,
And you may see me cry--
I'll be dogged, sweet baby,
If you gonna see me die.Life is fine! Fine as wine! Life is fine!
Nile comes up gasping, somewhat disoriented but smiling, the sun blinding her, water clinging to her lashes. Once she gets her bearings, she understands why Andy, Nicky and Joe come down here almost every day. Gorgeous isn’t the word, especially on a sunny, quiet morning like this one.
Her eyes find the horizon, the sky and the water almost indistinguishable. Nile thinks of the water far beyond what she can see, where the Aegean sea meets the Mediteranean, vast, overwhelming, but finite. She has no clue what she’ll do today, or tomorrow, or how to make sense of the truly ridiculous amount of tomorrows she has left. This morning, having both feet firmly planted in the sand and licking the salt off her lips is enough. At least for now.