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Darkness.
Sudden, all-encompassing darkness, holding her captive, silencing her screams.
She wants to move, struggle, punch her way free, but she is paralysed.
Cold water flowing into her, like ice creeping into her lungs...
Shivering, she opens her eyes.
Just a dream.
It was just a dream.
(Not too long ago, it was harsh reality.)
Will she ever forget the way the water was pressing together her lungs, Quynh thinks as she sits up from her nightmare- thankfully not one shared with the team.
Is she ever going to forget the darkness?
Will the memory of the cold feeling in her limbs ever grow distant, muddy, the way most memories do over a decade, centuries, millenia of time, she wonders as she kisses Andromache's head, eternally grateful for the way the other woman grew to be so at ease with her again so quickly that she can touch her when she sleeps without the warrior waking and pressing a blade to her neck.
"Tôi mến bạn" she whispers into her hair before extracting herself from her embrace and getting up. I love you. Looking down at her sleeping partner fondly, Quynh takes a deep breath before silently leaving the room.
Is the pain in her chest, the terror of death and loneliness and water in her lungs ever going to lessen?
Is she going to be able to swim without getting a panic attack again, shower with cold water or the light turned off?
On an intelligence gathering mission, is she ever going to be able to crawl through the air vents instead of taking the long way across the roof to avoid a claustrophobia induced panic attack?
Will she be able to get punched or fall to the ground in battle and not immediately believe that she is dying simply because the air left her lungs for a moment?
Shivering, she stands by the living room window, looking out into the dark. She could get a blanket, turn on the light, but she only flexes her hand against the window pane.
If she were to get a blanket, give into her weakness, she might start to cry, and she's not sure whether she is ready for that yet.
And somehow, darkness and cold of the land are different enough from the sea to be bearable.
And least she isn't dreaming now.
Are the nightmares ever going to go away?
Not that she didn't have nightmares before. Living millenia does not stop the terror of war from creeping into your chest, and even immortality never stopped the dreams about death.
But they used to be fleeting things, those nightmares.
Interrupted, sometimes, by dreams of Andromache, sweet ones or those that left her burning for her lover, and other nights by slow ones filled with landscapes, riding or flying through the dreamscape world, as well as dreamless nights, and slowly replaced by new nightmares while the past terrors fade into the background of the masses of jumbled, half forgotten memories accumulated over millenia of time.
Will the memory of the metal on her skin, unchanging, unyielding, ever be as distant, unfocused in her mind as the memory of Andromache's face had gotten after centuries under the sea?
"Quynh?"
Andromache's voice, raspy from sleep and disuse.
Quynh leans her forehead against the closed window as Andromache slowly walks up behind her.
"{Beloved, are you alright?}" she murmurs in Scythian.
They never used to call each other that, before. Now, they can't not do it.
Usually, they speak English with each other, because Quynh insisted on learning the modern form of the language that is so very different to the Anglo-Saxon she knew, so different she first didn't realise it was the same language at all, as quickly as possible.
But in these private moments, they revert to the comfort of their first languages, basking in the familiarity of it.
As Andromache stands behind her, encircling her waist with her arms, Quynh lets out a slow breath- oh, the luxury of breathing freely, in and out- and quietly nods.
Maybe it is going to take millenia to forget the time spent at sea, but she will live long enough to see it happen- and so will Andromache with her re-gained immortality. If their theory is right, and they only become mortal when they wish to die, then they will truly live forever, together. As long as they have each other, they have no reason to die (or, at least, enough reason to live).
Should she never be able to forget about it entirely, she will learn to really live again despite it.
With the team.
With Andromache.
She is the only one who still calls her by that name. So much has changed- she had been gone for so long.
Sometimes, it feels surreal, just how long she had been caught at the bottom of the sea.
Of course she remembers it- the nightmares alone are proof of that- but it is one long episode of terror to her, and she couldn't have told them how much time had passed down at the bottom of the sea.
Ten years?
A hundred?
Half a millenia.
The world changed so much, she barely knows the words for half the items currently in the room with her, and not just because she doesn't speak the local language.
She had spent the world wars screaming inaudible into the vast of the ocean, missed the industrial revolution while laying constrained at the bottom of the sea, stared into darkness for five hundred years instead of ever glancing into Andromache's eyes.
Andromache places her chin on her head, and Quynh leans back against her, letting her hold her, see her weakness.
Only her.
What the long time really encompasses is not the unchanging way she spent it in, but what she has lost during it.
She never wants to forget Andromaches face again.
But whatever happens, she knows: she will never forget her love, carrying the feeling with her wherever she goes, together or apart.