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Quynh is pacing across the floor, her steps undoubtedly wearing holes into the wood. The back room was dark to begin with, and though Andromache lit a lamp, it is still filled with enough shadows for Quynh to continue to slip through. She appreciates the chance to be alone with Andy, and the warmth of the room they’re inhabiting. After all these years, there’s a great turmoil that’s trying to rip Quynh in half: she wants to throw herself at Andy, relish in the company of the woman she’s spent thousands of years loving, while she simultaneously wants nothing more than to shoot her in the head.
“Do you know what it was like?” Quynh asks quietly, her voice hard as she stops pacing at the edge of the room. “What I felt?”
“There wasn’t a single night I didn’t dream of your deaths,” Andy admits. Her voice is quiet, her arms limp at her sides.
“Why did you stop looking, Andromache?”
When Quynh’s eyes flick to Andy, she’s not surprised to see the woman taken aback by the use of her full name. Well, one of her full names. Perhaps the one she liked the most. The coldness inhabiting Quynh’s voice has to stay, the strength in the ice that will keep her from cracking at the reunion.
“We were searching for the better part of a century,” Andy finally tells her. “We couldn’t get deep enough at first, and when we could, none of the places we looked were where you were. I tried, Q. Fuck, I tried. And it broke my heart every fucking time I came back to the surface without you, and it’s broken my heart every fucking day since then. I never forgot, Q, and I would have drowned myself under the fucking sea for a thousand years if it meant finding you sooner.”
Quynh watches Andy keep her jaw tight, the tears brimming in her eyes an angry sort that she’s all too familiar with. Shaking her head, Quynh turns away and stares out the window. Her fingers curl around the windowsill. Outside, it’s begun to snow gently. Snow. A thing Quynh has hardly had time to get reacquainted with.
“But why did you stop?” Quynh’s voice echoes, softer this time.
Andy’s voice is still thick when she answers, “I was afraid of what would come back up. That the woman I loved would have died underneath the ocean.”
“And?” Quynh’s voice is a gentle but heartless purr. “Are you still afraid?”
“No. I…no. I’m grateful.” Andy audibly sighs. “I’m so very, very grateful.”
“And why is that?”
“You’re alive, Quynh. You’re okay , even when it’s my turn to go. I can’t speak to what I think on the other half, yet. I don’t…know, yet, but I get the feeling the woman I love is still standing in front of me.”
Fuck. I hate it when she does that. Quynh’s thoughts ring through her head as she lets her spine straighten. She’s exhausted after all the standing and pacing, but she’ll never show it. Especially not to Andy right now.
“It is not your time, Andromache,” Quynh tells her, turning to look back at her now.
Her hair is cropped short. So much shorter than Quynh is used to seeing it, and Andy looks so much more tired, but otherwise it’s still the exact same Andromache she lost all those years ago. She approaches, taking Andy’s hand and one of the dinner knives from the kitchen counter. It’s a gentle slice into Andy’s palm, one that clearly stings, but Quynh sets the knife back down and watches her palm, praying and hoping.
The cut (slowly, at first) stitches itself back together and leaves no trace of a scar on Andy’s hand.
“Quynh, what in god’s name did you do?”
She shakes her head. “Kozak talked of it often in the final weeks. She remembered that you had lost your immortality, and she wanted to test the serum on you. I recall her mentioning that it may jump start your immortality back up.”
Andy is only staring directly into Quynh’s eyes, her lips just slightly parted in that typical Andy is still computing manner.
“If I am going to not kill you all over and over again, I need to have my partner by my side,” Quynh says, her voice gone quiet. “If I am going to come to forgive all of you–no, reintegrate, perhaps–I need help, and I cannot do it without you, Andromache. Even if it only gives you a few more years of immortality, I will take it.”
“Q…”
“Yes?”
“You shouldn’t have done it.”
“I know.” Quynh pulls her hands away from Andy’s. “I am selfish, though. And I will not lie, I want to love you all as my family again.”
The more Quynh thinks about it, the more she hates to admit one thing to herself–she already does love them again. She’d given back in far too easily, and maybe it was stupid Nicky and his heart or Nile offering Quynh some of her clothes and whatever snacks they had laying around, or maybe even just the body-crushing hug Joe had wrapped her in once they’d finally arrived at the house after an hour in the car. He’d said thank you so quietly she almost thought she’d imagined it, but she knows she didn’t imagine the I missed you.
She’d apologized, and he’d accepted it and moved on. That was that.
When Quynh looks back at Andy, there’s clearly words on the tip of her tongue, but she’s taking the time to choose them carefully. Some things are an easy trip to the danger zone, some things could put too many cards on the table too soon.
“What will it take?” she finally asks, her voice a quiet mumble. “How can I make it up to you?”
“It comes naturally, Andromache. Andy–” Quynh corrects herself quickly, “–It will be a slow process. There is no fast-track option to forgiveness, as much as I wish there was. I think you know that, too. What happened with Booker, yes?”
Andy’s jaw tightens again, and she holds her chin up.
“But I am open to it. Perhaps that is where our differences lie,” Quynh muses as she continues. “I want this. I have always enjoyed your company, and the company of Nicky and Joe. I get the feeling I am going to come to love Nile very soon, and while I may be wary of Booker, I think I will come around to him as well.”
“It’s all the family we have–are going to have,” Andy tells her quietly.
“I know. I know how this works. And that is why we need to fix what those people are doing in Switzerland.”
Andy nods slowly, her arms falling out of their crossed position to hang limply at her sides. “We will. We will make sure that they don’t accomplish what they set out to do, it’s just…”
“You think every man will be needed for it,” Quynh finishes for her. “And neither Nicky nor I are in the proper shape to do anything for a long time.”
“I don’t know how long it could be before the two of you are better. It could be a few weeks...it could be a few months. We are still working on a clock here, even if our maximum deadline gives us...seven months.”
“Why seven?”
Andy takes a long, slow breath. “You know there’s a kid involved now. It’s whether or not the kid makes it out alive or not that’s a large part of my primary concern. With the damage we caused? They’re going to be very careful about what they do, especially when I think they know they won’t be able to find us again.”
“They were barely able to find you in the first place,” Quynh mumbles.
“I don’t know how good their surveillance is, how good it’s going to be going forward. What samples they have from you both, what they fully did to the two of you…” Andy trails off, her eyes lost out the window behind Quynh.
“It is not pretty. It never is, though.” Quynh shakes her head, finally stepping away from the windowsill she’d been leaning on to step closer to Andy. “How much time do we have before we leave? An hour? Two?”
“Half an hour, really,” Andy says quietly. “Do you need something?”
“I was going to try to sleep, but I think I’m going to try for a shower instead.” Quynh hesitates for a brief moment, but her eyes skirt back up to the woman standing across from her. God, the memories she has. The good, the bad. Everything that sits in Quynh’s heart is heavy, and she has to be careful to not sputter out stupidly I am not sure I ever stopped loving you. “Perhaps you could help? I find that I am not very good at operating new showers.”
A faint hint of mischief springs up into Andy’s eyes. “I can do that.”
Quynh smirks in return.
—
Joe cannot think coherently.
He’s resorted to sketching while Nicky sleeps on the bed, having mumbled something about being too tired to eat after he showered. Unfortunately, Joe can’t sleep. If anything, his body wants to get up and run–his foot bounces as he retraces lines with one of his favorite pencils, though there’s something that comforts him in the fact that Nicky is in front of him.
Yet, there’s also a lot that does not comfort him.
The lead snaps.
Joe quietly swears under his breath, fumbling to clean the mark off of the page he had been working on. He stands and has to hunt around for something to sharpen the pencil with, and when he does finally find something, he crouches, hunched over the waste bin next to the desk, and whittles away at the wood.
When he straightens out again, setting the blade back down on the desk, the drawing is waiting for him. Gingerly picking it up, eyes darting over every detail he’s put in and committed to his own memory, he finds that it’s just not quite right. Instead of tweaking it and deciding to mess with the sketch that exists, he moves to the side of the page to write instead of draw. When was the last time he’d written poetry? Far too long ago, he could tell you that much.
The moon is once again full in the sky,
Hanging heavy amongst the stars nearby
Andromeda. Swinging solemnly in Libra,
What silken milk once whispered—
No, no. It’s all wrong. What even rhymes with Libra? Does anything need to rhyme with it there? Realistically, no, but he’s already begun to set up a rhyme scheme…
The words are still sticky in his brain as he tries to forget them and move on with the page.
Forgetful memories of days long past,
Mirrored exile in blatant contrast,
What must always return to the earth
Pointedly lingers and ignores its worth
For sake of broken glass shards
That burn blazes in the midnight sun
Which are to be plucked up one by one
And cemented back into a whole.
Better. When Joe sits back and looks at it, he decides that he can live with the words that exist on the page next to his sketch.
He closes the Moleskine and carefully puts it in the bag he has packed. A bag that is still (almost painfully) only packed for one person. Setting his hands on the old, blue dresser that exists in the corner of the room, Joe lets his fingers curl around the lip and shuts his eyes when he hangs his head.
Rationalizing everything he’s feeling is going to take a long while. None of this even feels real yet, and while he can look over and see Nicky asleep on the bed, or shut his eyes and listen hard to hear Quynh’s voice from outside, it still has yet to register completely that everything is alright, copacetic, whatever.
It’s like he’s existing in a little wrinkle in the fabric of time. Between two explicit points of understanding, only riding out the slope until he can struggle to climb back up the cloth.
If it weren’t so cold, he’d go sit outside to try and gather up his thoughts and watch the way the stars glint and glow in the sky. He doesn’t have time to even try to sleep, because if he does, he’ll be able to lay down and shut his eyes for mere minutes before Andy’s slipping inside and letting him know he better be ready to get going.
So he checks his bag over again. Once. Twice. Besides his sketchbook, he has an empty water bottle, an extra hoodie (it’s lightweight, more meant for either summer or Southern weather), some snacks he’ll have to dispose of before they get into the airport, a few pencils scattered around, and a beat-up copy of Murder on the Orient Express. It isn’t much, but he didn’t have reason to lug too much around with him either while he was on the road looking for leads.
Every now and then, a new wave of relief washes over him in tidal form. After the last six months of agony, sleepless nights and running towards what was nearly an unachievable goal, it’s fixed. There had been so many low points that Joe forgot who he was some days, and other days that struggling along had been a fate worse than death. And yet, here he was, feeling lighter than air with most steps he took; so long as they were at least one step along into the proper process of things, Joe could not be bothered to recall the pain-ridden nights that he had been afflicted with not even a week ago...
The door creaks open, Andy poking her head in just as Joe raked his fingers through his hair. “It’s about time to get going,” Andy mumbles quietly, nodding once. “We’re all good with Q.”
“Alright.”
When he turns to the bed, Nicky is blinking up at him in what may be surprise. “I didn’t realize that I actually wasn’t dreaming,” he says quietly, his dialect locked into their weird mash of Old Genoese and Classical Arabic. “It’s nice to wake up to this, though.”
Joe cracks a faint smile. “I couldn’t complain either,” he teases gently, moseying over to Nicky’s side. “I...imagine you heard what Andy said, though.”
“Yes, I did. Where...exactly is it, that we’re going?”
“Out of here. Off the continent,” Joe mumbles, shaking his head.
“Good enough.” Nicky sits up slowly, his eyebrows furrowing together as he rubs his sternum gently. “I don’t suppose I could bother you to take you up on that offer from earlier?”
Joe digs around in the bag, pulling out a granola bar to offer Nicky. “How could I say no?”
Nicky chuckles, though it’s lacking the life it usually holds. Joe tries not to watch Nicky wolf it down, and instead checks his bag for a third time, as if something would magically be missing. Of course, nothing is gone aside from what he just took out.
“Are you ready to go?” Joe asks once he’s zipped up the bag for a final time.
“Of course.”
Nicky is half asleep on his shoulder as they walk out to the car. Joe doesn’t blame him, not in the least, and leaves him to climb into the backseat while Joe sticks his bag in the now-empty trunk. Booker and Nile must have cleaned it out as soon as they got back. Andy comes out of the house with Quynh next, and while Andy sticks her own bag in the trunk (along with giving Joe a little shoulder-pat as a greeting) before she climbs into the driver’s seat, Quynh is slipping into the back with Nicky.
Quynh.
The fact that she’s with them, all too similar to the Quynh he used to know all those centuries ago, kills him on the inside just a bit. How she went from being the one to take Nicky and hand him over to the CIA to being the woman they used to know (and, once more, returned to having a strange sibling-like psychic bond with Nicky) is hard to comprehend. Joe wonders what exactly happened in those laboratories that he couldn’t read about or watch recordings of, but it feels like an invasion of privacy to ask. Instead, he trains his eyes on the black sky of the outside world.
Nile and Booker are the last to arrive, slipping into the backseat and Booker shutting the door with a tight slam. This many people packed into a BMW from the 90s is not ideal, clearly, but they’re making it work. Andy turns on something quiet on the radio, fiddling around with stations until she finds something she likes. Joe doesn’t have much of a preference, but Nile is quick to ask for Andy to go back (“I liked that song!”). As soon as Andy has rolled her eyes, her fingers deftly click the proper button and she finds a quick remark to make about it being a shitty song, then something about American Top 40 is the worst genre to exist. Booker mumbles a quiet agreement, but it’s quickly shut down with Nile telling him that he has no room to talk, seeing as he is a “Europop-liking bastard.” It elicits a chuckle from Joe.
Nicky is silent as he leans forward, directly over the center console, and changes it back. “I’d rather we didn’t,” he says quietly, settling back into his spot.
Nile initially seems to consider arguing, when Joe glances back in the rearview mirror, but she decides not to just as quickly.
“Andy, slow down, you’re going to hit something,” Booker mumbles quietly from the backseat, but it’s loud enough to be completely registered by Andy.
“Would you like to drive? I’ve witnessed you drive on the damn Autobahn, Book. You tell me that you’re going to go the speed limit.”
“I would be going closer to the speed limit than you are–plus, it’s dark, and one of my headlights is out.”
“Oh! So it’s the fault of your shitty car–”
“She is made from fine German engineering, so fuck you, first of all.”
“This car is older than Nile for fuck’s sake.”
When Joe looks back in the rearview mirror, amidst the somewhat-playful argument that will undoubtedly end in Andy threatening to jump out of the car, he’s surprised to see Nicky and Quynh almost asleep on each other. He smiles faintly at the sight, just when–
“So help me, I will turn this car around and drive us into the Gulf of Mexico.”
—
Booker pops the trunk as soon as the others are inside, and though his fingers are itching to reach for the packet of cigarettes he knows he keeps back here, he swallows hard in an attempt to find some sort of restraint in himself. All of this is highly stressful business, it’s not his fault that he’s trying to lay off the damn smokes. Not that it would even change anything! He can’t get lung cancer or mouth cancer or destroy his body–Booker of all people knows, he’s tried everything–so what would be the point in stopping?
He doesn’t know what the damn point is. What he does know is that it’s harder than hell to keep his hands away from the back left corner box.
Instead, he picks up a bag to shoulder, retreating into the garage to find subtle places to store the bags. He knows they won’t be back to the States for a decade at least, and, honestly, probably more time will pass before they’re ready to come back to this specific house, if they do ever again, so he’s primarily trying to hide the weapons from the innocent passerby who may start digging around in places they don’t belong.
“Hey...Book?” Nile’s voice comes from behind him, quiet in the cold, but he turns to face her nonetheless. She’s bundled up in warm clothing that she undoubtedly just threw on over her tactical wear–hold on, it’s not just warm clothing, it’s his damn coat. “Will you just...sit with me for a bit?”
She’s holding her phone, he notices now. It’s lighting up her face, buzzing quietly if he really listens.
“Of course,” he says, as if it were stupid to ask.
She climbs onto a workbench that’s been pushed up against a wall, and he leans against it. A perfectly good spot exists on the counter next to it, but he’ll wait until he knows what this is about to settle in on it. Especially when he’s still got more of the car to unload. Besides, he’d sit directly next to her, but he’s unsure of how much weight the thing can hold.
The phone is put on speaker when she answers, and Nile takes a shaking breath before her voice comes out.
“Hello?”
Booker’s eyebrows immediately furrow, and he can’t help that he straightens up instantly.
The voice is feminine, matured. “Oh my God. Nile, they...Nile, they told me they saw you, I–”
“I know. I know.” Nile squeezes her eyes shut, biting her lip for a moment before she speaks again. “I’m so sorry.”
Booker sits on the workbench next to her. Fuck the counter, if the bench breaks they’ll figure it out later.
“Why didn’t you come home? Why didn’t you tell us you were okay? When can I see you? I just want...all I wanted was to know my baby girl was at peace.” The woman’s voice is shaking and unsteady as she speaks, and she definitely has some stutters in there, but...
His breath catches in his throat. Booker had his suspicions as to who was on the other line, but once he realizes that it is, in fact, Nile’s mother, he’s at a loss for words. Nile’s hand quickly darts over to grip Booker’s wrist tightly. He feels like an intruder, suddenly, on what should be an incredibly private moment, but she wants him there (and apparently wants him to stay), so he can’t really go anywhere, it seems.
“I couldn’t come back home, not after they said I was killed in action,” she says quietly. It’s the honest truth, at least. “And I’ve been working overseas–it’s top secret stuff, Mama. I can’t really tell you.”
“You could have called and let us know you were alright! That we didn’t have to go through the entire mourning process for you when you were okay–of course, of course I’m so thankful that you’re alright, that you’re safe...you are safe, right?”
Nile’s grip on his wrist manages to get tighter, and she begins to swing her legs off the side of the bench. “Of course I’m safe. I’ve got some good friends that got my back, no matter what. And I know I should’ve called, but I just couldn’t, and especially when everything was so fresh...I needed time to readjust, too. I’m legally dead, Mama. I can’t just...call.” Nile trails off at the end.
“Kiera and Conn said they got weird vibes from who they saw you with–”
“That was Sebastien. He’s...probably helped me the most, getting acquainted to my new life,” she says, her grip loosening just slightly. “I don’t know what they told you, but I promise that he’s a good man.”
Something in Booker’s chest gets warm.
“...okay, okay. I believe you.”
“I wanna see you soon, but I’m leaving the States in an hour or two. I want...I want to see you, so bad. I miss you guys so much, but...I can’t be there tonight.” Nile’s voice has started getting thick.
“When can I see you? Or, where can I see you? If I have to go to another continent, Nile Dominica Freeman, I will do it.”
“I don’t know yet. I...wish I did know. But when I have an answer, I’ll tell you,” Nile promises. The swinging of her feet stops. “I...have to go, though. Obviously, you can’t tell anyone I’m alive, but...just know I love and miss all of you.”
Booker is staring at the ground, his eyes trained in on a little crack in the cement while Nile’s mother says her goodbyes. It hurts him, a dull ache in his own chest that won’t go away. When Nile hangs up the phone, her fingers numbly setting it down on the other side of her on the bench, she’s staring off at the other wall in the garage. Booker doesn’t know what to say–much less how to even approach the situation he’s just witnessed.
“Thank you,” she says quietly, before he can open his mouth. “For staying. I appreciate it.”
“Of course–”
“No, really. Thank you.” Nile squeezes his wrist again, letting go for a brief moment only to throw her arms around him in a tight hug. “I appreciate it. So, so much.”
Her voice is getting thick again, so Booker just carefully wraps his arms around her and pulls her in for a bear hug. She buries her face into his shoulder, and he stays still and quiet, aware that he is solely there to be a comforting presence, and whatever she needs in that given moment.
They can finish emptying the trunk in a little bit. They’ve got time.
Booker finds himself humming quietly, not even thinking about it when he starts it up. He doesn’t even like the sound of his singing voice ( especially his singing voice), but humming is alright for the time being. Nile eventually gets a deathly sort of still in his arms, but she does not make any motion to move, nor does she complain.
“We’re going to Italy?” she finally asks, her voice quiet and a little rough, though muffled by his shirt. “North or South?”
“South, I think,” he mumbles quietly. “I’m not completely sure, but Andy is.”
“I haven’t been to the South part before.”
“That’s an honest-to-God sin,” he promises. “It’s beautiful there. Maybe damp because of the winter, but...hey, it beats Kiev right about now.”
Nile chuckles quietly, slowly pulling away from Booker. He lets her go so she can sit up and face him.
“We’re gonna be there for a while, aren’t we?”
“More than likely.”
“I’m going to have to learn Italian, aren’t I?”
Booker laughs quietly. “Yeah, you are. But don’t let Nicky teach you, he won’t teach you standard, he’ll mumble something about Florentine Italian and teach Ligurian instead.”
“So...get Joe to do it, got it.” Nile manages to smile faintly, giving him a half-laugh. “Really. Thank you, Book.”
He lets her have a small smile. “Any time.”