Work Text:
“Is this you?”
Nicky blinked at the phone Nile has just shoved under his nose and gently pushes the device back so he can actually see what he’s looking at.
“No, tesoro, that’s not me”
“Damn. Quynh! It’s not him!” And then she’s gone, sprinting back towards the Botticelli room, where Quynh is waiting at the doorway, hand outstretched.
“Booker’s gone ahead of us!” Quynh tells her, scowling at the setback, except then Booker pounces from behind the entranceway with a roar and swoops Nile up into his arms, making her squeal with surprise, wriggling in delight from the cage of his arms.
He only releases her on the sharp glare of a gallery attendant, evidently worried they’re going to get too rowdy but Nicky sees the way Nile loops her arm through his, Quynh’s hand in hers and the three of them disappear off to investigate.
“They’re going to be so pissed when they find out there’s no prize” Andy comments, the smile evident in her voice from where she’s standing, arms crossed, leaning back to examine the portraits lining the upper wall. They’re only on the first level of the Uffizi, but Nile has managed to infect Quynh and Booker with her enthusiasm for the game of ‘Where’s Nicky?’ that they’re playing amongst the gallery’s art. At Andy’s suggestion, no less.
“Didn’t we agree on the Rodin and the villa on the French Riviera?” Joe asks, pressing subtle kisses to the back of Nicky’s shoulder blade and neck.
“Even those two,” she nods at Quynh and Booker but she’s smiling, softer than she has in years because she gets years with Quynh now. Decades. Maybe the forever they had been denied, “know that Nile’s getting those anyway. Kid’s earned it” It had been a rough time for Nile lately, and ever since her breakdown in Siena, they’d been taking something of a sabbatical. It was nice. Just…re-adjusting to re-adjusting. Having Quynh back. Andy regaining her immortality. Booker’s early return and the way he looked at Nile when he thought no-one was looking. The way he was trying; determined and genuine for the first time to move on and accept immortality.
Being a family again. Being whole.
“Mmmph. We said we’d stop calling her kid, Boss” Joe reminds her, as the three of them slowly follow the others. Content to observe the present and reminisce with snapshots of their past.
“I know” Andy acknowledged, with a sigh, “Guess I just don’t want her to lose…that” they all looked across to where Nile had re-emerged into the main corridor, Booker still firmly in one hand who looks a little dazed and grateful whenever she does that, her phone aloft in the other, beaming at them. Radiant.
“This is definitely you”
“She won’t.” Nicky murmurs, just for Andy, then louder, “Okay, dear one, let’s see”
Nicky wrangles the phone from Nile. The three of them examine the image and laugh in acknowledgement “Ah, si, Primavera. Well done tesoro. Giuliano and I had a good laugh over that one. It’s a little of both of us. I stood in after he was killed”
“Wait, you actually knew Giuliano de Medici” Nile’s eyes go wide
“Si, certo”
“Vaffanculo” Nile retorts to no-one, in particular, rolling her eyes up to the coffered ceiling making Nicky huff a laugh, “That is so not fair”
“Think of all the famous people you have yet to know, Cherie” Booker joins in, trying to be positive for her.
“Oh, fuck off you knew Napoleon” she replies without heat, swinging their joined hands to let him know she’s only teasing.
“Correction, mon Coeur, I died for Napoleon. Bastard” Booker’s smiling away indulgent and love drunk. He catches Andy looking and blushes with a cough, swearing under his breath when Joe thumps him on the back, eyes twinkling at his pining brother.
“And he didn’t know him biblically” Quynh joins in, dodging the elbow Andy aims at her ribs easily and darting across to stroke the blush blooming on Nile’s cheeks at Booker’s endearment. “Who is winning?” she asks to fill the silence that has descended.
“Me,” Joe answers with a wink, “These are only reproductions, I get the real thing”
“As do I” Quynh agrees, sweet and diplomatic, “Speaking of reproductions, Andromache, my heart, did I not read that there was a certain familiar rendering of Judith and Holofernes around here somewhere?”
Andy blinks, eyebrows furrowing as she mulls that over and then she lights up, she fucking glows and laughs, full and loud and the three men are beaming at her, at this Andy they have seen so rarely since Quynh was lost and more and more since she was found. “Oh, shit. Artie. Yeah, c’mon, it’s this way, I think”
They stride with new purpose towards this new distraction, Andy going first, wending her way through the other guests. They’re almost at the exit, and Nile’s still not sure which painting they’re on about but Joe promises Nile they’ll double back to finish the game, “After some sorbet, of course,” There’d been a cart selling them out on the roof terrace
“That’s why you’re my favourite” Nile tells him, abandoning Booker to hook onto his arm and press her face into his shoulder as she had done in Siena during her breakdown when she’d accidentally climbed through the window of his and Nicky’s room. When she pulls away, Joe’s eyes are kindling at her and he kisses her cheek, beard scratching her skin gently.
“Mmmph, and mine” Nicky adds on, surprising absolutely no-one as he examines some Medici family portraits.
However, this has slightly backfired because when Nile looks up, Quynh is watching her with dramatic, wounded eyes and pouting lip. “Yusuf is your favourite?”
She and Quynh have started teaming up more and more, jumping to each other’s defence when one of the other’s will open their mouth to squash a plan. They’re trying, all of them, but Andy will not risk Quynh again, wants to shield her from the parts of the world that are still so new and bright and hard, while none of them wants Nile to have the crisis of faith that they’ve all had, (some more recently than others). There’s a protectiveness over the two women’s differing lack of experience still, but they fight their corners and do it well. Nile even taught Quynh about Instagram last week and with their new encrypted phones, Quynh has gained quite the following with her more formal turn of phrase and finding delight in what to others has become benign.
“After you, Quynh” Nile corrects, giggling when Quynh’s over-pronounced pout dissolves into a smug grin as if to say ‘just so’ and she nods in satisfaction, blowing a kiss to Nile before turning back to return her head to Andy’s shoulder. Andy kisses the top of Quynh’s head.
They turn down a gallery and the two women stop dead. “Ah!” Quynh cries irritably, stepping closer and peering at it. “I remembered my angle as better”
“I will paint you in all your loveliness, chi gái. For the palazzo” Joe promises and Quynh flushes happily at the prospect. Because they also had a palazzo, here in Florence. Certo
“Hold up,” Nile interrupted, staring at Artemisia Gentileschi’s Judith Slaying Holofernes, she turns to Quynh and gestures at the painting at the woman holding Holofernes, “Are you telling me that’s meant to be you?”
Quynh nods, eyes bright “Mmmph-hmmph.”
“No way” Nile gasped, nearly head-butting the canvas as she tripped over her own feet, surging forward to get closer to it, saved only by Booker grabbing her hand and holding her upright. He catches her eye and raises his own eyebrows, evidently even he’s impressed by this new trace of their family, before returning to examine the painting. Nile must ask him which artists have wanted to capture that handsome profile, that lovely tug of the lips when he’s surprised into smiling.
“Italy was such fun during the Renaissance. This was done before the – “Quynh stops suddenly and Nile’s heart plummets to her boots, knows immediately and she turns back, as does Booker. The 1500’s. Before the witch trials. Before England. Before the Iron Maiden and endless water. The light in Quynh’s eyes has died, but the other three have crowded round her; Andy wrapped securely around her middle, Joe and Nicky bracketing her, chins on her shoulders. She reaches out for Nile and Booker and they take a hand each. Quynh entwines their finger and takes a deep breath, and her gaze refocuses, “-the bastard Englishmen” she finishes determinedly.
Nile glances over at Andy and knows immediately, they’re all thinking of Merrick, that motherfucker, dead and gone, while they will, all of them thanks to whatever had given Andy her immortality back, live to see his name erased from history. Damnatio memoriae. Andy manages a gentle smile for her, barely there but proud as all hell. It’s one of Nile’s favourites.
“the bastard Englishmen” they chorus, the moment passing over them like a wave, claiming only a second of sand before it loses its grip. Not even a footprint of the beach.
“Mmph, who did Artie say you were meant to be my love?” Andy asks, straightening up and claiming the hand Nile relinquishes.
Quynh just shrugged “Oh I can never remember. You got the title role” she teases.
“Abra” Nicky prompts quietly, “Her name was Abra”
“I much prefer this one to Caravaggio’s. He’s all about skulking around in the darkness until he has to paint pretty little princess Judith slicing through a jugular like it’s made of butter. As if it were that easy. Artie always was more honest…” Andy mutters, eyes faraway. “Fuck but I miss her”
“Artie?!” Nile all but shrieked, “You like, actually knew Artemisia Gentileschi, you didn’t just pose for her?”
“She was a dear friend” Quynh confirms, gaze somewhere with Andy back in the Renaissance. “Andromache gave Artemisia that bracelet. We loved her very much” she nods at the gold bracelet inset with blue cameos adorning Judith-Andy’s wrist. There’s a heaviness in Quynh’s voice again, that wasn’t there a moment ago. Remembering something else that was painful.
Andy hummed in acknowledgement but from the way the others straightened up and stepped back from the painting, Nile sensed that was a story she wouldn’t be getting, at least today. Had they known Artemisia after the trial? Had they – Nile looks at the writhing face of Holofernes anew. The steely righteousness of Judith and Abra. Yes. Yes, she thinks maybe they had.
“Come on,” Andy says after a long moment. They file away from the painting, return to the roof terrace, to sunlight and sorbet and the sounds of Florence. Nile feels very small at this moment, as she realises that as much as this city has seen, as much as the world has seen and all the people it has held, her new family has seen and met and been a part of that too. And she'd known that, of course. But they've just left a gallery of art behind that they saw being painted. And now, they're standing on a roof eating sorbet, like anyone else here. And in 500 years they might be back here, eating sorbet, while the people around them are consigned to portraits on the walls. And they'll still be here.
“You look lost in thought, mon tresor” Booker asks, quietly as Nile stares out at the colourful shields on the Palazzo Vecchio, and the distant red tile of Brunelleschi's dome.
“I feel lost.” She admits, and hates it, had wanted to leave this behind in Siena. But she’s not alone. None of them are. And she knows that she can ask now, “How do you remember all of it? How do we carry around all this history?”
Booker blows out a breath between his teeth, and takes a bite of his pistachio sorbet, taps the little neon green spoon to his lips, determined not to be flippant. “I think that’s another thing that…heals isn’t the right word. I think our capacity to remember increases with our lifespan. To help us cope. I’m not sure it would work otherwise.” He says in answer to her first question. And then, for the second,
“I think, I think the worst part is that we can’t go back. No, I think one of the things about this, for all of us, sometimes is that we can’t tell the people who are gone that they live on. That we can’t tell people we lose that they are remembered. Or vindicated. Honoured, celebrated. Loved, even by people who never knew them, that they have had an impact on people, on the world that they will never see.”
“A legacy is planting seeds in a garden you never get to see grow” Nile quotes and Booker’s smile is bittersweet.
“But we do.” He continues, winding down his tangent to find the proof to his hypothesis “We hold the evidence of their legacy in our hands and we’re far from infallible, doing what we think is right depending on the century like Joe told you. We can’t see the future, more’s the fucking pity. But all we can do is try and make sure that we make a difference, that we speak for those who can’t speak for themselves. Bear witness and do what we can to help along the way”
Booker ducks his head under Nile’s surprised gaze. He’s come a long way since Merrick. Taking his regret and turning it into resolve. “Copley showed me the boards”
“He’s very proud of them” Nile replies distractedly, staring out at the city. No-one knows how they’re going to be remembered. But they can choose how they live. And we can remember them for it, as best we can. Booker takes her hand and leads her back into the gallery with the others, the game of earlier abandoned. Transformed into something more serious; the older immortals leading them on a personal tour of the art, pointing out lost friends and versions of themselves.
Nicky’s shadow, handsome and tall standing out of place at the far right edge of Leonardo’s Adoration of the Magi, Andy with long hair (and nothing else!) Nile had stopped dead and grabbed hold of Andy’s chin, turning it to get the right angle and when she’d gaped, Andy had merely winked. Joe cast as a glorious Asclepius. Gone but not forgotten.
Maybe this is the why, too.