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Quynh wakes and the world is blinding light from above, a stab to her tired eyes as she tries to adjust to dry land. She closes her eyes and can feel the stone underneath her, firm and welcoming in its stillness. There are no waves here, though she can still feel the water lapping at her feet and if she were to stand, she's sure she'd sway with the ghost of the undersea currents. It's been so long since the wind blew on her face, so she takes her time, just lying wherever she may be, feeling the cold seep deeper into her bones. She's surprised she can still feel it after all this time, that she still shivers as goosebumps break out across her arms. Her hair is on her face, the wet strands sticking on the side of her lips. She can taste the seawater in her mouth, smell it in the air until she gags with it, all of her body protesting at how close she still is to the water's edge.
She tries to sit, but finds that despite her body's reaction to the water, she can't move yet. She can't tell if it's that her legs are numb or that she's just too weak after all this time. That she's still alive is a miracle, that she can even inhale and feel the air as it burns its way to her lungs is more than she'd ever thought she'd get. She's been wishing she was dead for so long that for a moment, as she lies there, she thinks it's possible she's died. But she opens her eyes and the sunlight burns, every ray of light like a stab through her eyes. She gasps and there's a searing pain in her chest, oxygen-deprived lungs unfurling for the first time in centuries. She wonders what kind of corpse she might have been if she'd died under there, whether whoever found her would have seen her in her iron tomb and mourned for her.
She tries her best not to think of Andromache, the same way she's tried all these years to forget her. To allow room for sentimentality just made every death worse. To think of Yusuf and Nicolo and the way they looked at each other, the softness of their interactions, was a stab to her heart. She'd thought, so long ago now, that what she and Andromache had would last forever. But here she lies alone on hard concrete, her fingers recovering from frostbite, every bit of her in pain. There's no Andromache to keep her warm, no smile to catch hers as she throws her blanket over both of them. There's no one but Quynh, beaten and broken, trying to breathe through the pain of life.
"Excuse me, Miss, are you all right?"
She recognizes the language even if she can't place the accent and she does her best to answer. She opens her mouth, her jawbone cracking at the effort. It's taking her much longer than usual to heal, but she supposes that water will do that to a person. It's still painful to breathe, impossible that Quynh will get any words out before the person who spoke reaches her.
I'm all right, she wants to say. Just resting.
She imagines Yusuf's face had she said it, the way he'd throw his head back and laugh with all his body. He had a tendency to be expressive, every inch of him always broadcasting what he felt. She loved that about him, how easy it was to tell when he cared about someone, how easy it was to read his moods. She could always trust that she knew where she stood with Yusuf, never had to guess at what he might be feeling.
"Miss," the voice calls out again. "Do you need help?"
She can tell it's a woman now, a gently melodic tone to her voice that's soothing in the way it's so different from Andromache's voice.
"I'm calling an ambulance," the woman says.
Quynh tries to lift a hand and can't. She closes her eyes instead, listens to the woman talking, wonders what she's missed in the past centuries. She wants to ask what an ambulance is and who's coming to help her. But the sun is hot against Quynh's eyelids, and all she's wanted for a long time was to rest.
She inhales, hoping to try speaking again, and just as she opens her mouth, she feels the water lapping at her feet start to tug her body back into the ocean. It's the smallest shift. She's moved less than an inch but the idea that she might go back is enough to spur her to action. She twists on the ground, her limbs protesting the movement, pain running down her back like flames. She screams, a thing so full of pain it feels as though her very heart is trying to escape through her chest.
She can hear the woman speaking, coming closer.
Foolish, she thinks. Madwoman.
There are small hands on her face, warm like she hasn't felt for a long time. She stills, shaking against the touch. There are tears in her eyes as she freezes in place, not wanting to move in case she scares the woman away. She feels like a child seeking comfort in the arms of a parent. Except Quynh has no family left and the hands on her face belong to a stranger.
"It's okay," the woman says, stroking Quynh's cheek, brushing away her tears. "It's all right, love."
"Thank you," Quynh says, the words crawling up her throat as though she's coughing up thorns.
She can feel liquid in the back of her mouth, and with a jolt, she realizes that she's still expelling water. She coughs, her hands going to her throat of their own accord. She can feel the woman above her trying to push her hands away. Quynh hears her say something that sounds like, "calm down," but there's water in Quynh's lungs and she knows she's drowning.
The light around her is starting to fade, darkness creeping in from the sides, her vision tunneling. It's happening and there's nothing Quynh can do except gasp, her hands reaching forward. She inhales, large lungfuls of air that burn, and though there's no sting of saltwater, Quynh knows she's drowning. She can feel it as her heart speeds up and her hands start tingling.
"Miss, you have to calm down," the woman is saying. "You're going to black out."
-
When Quynh comes to, she's in a white room on a white bed with white sheets. Overhead, there's concentrated light that burns less than the sun. She stares at the bulb until the room goes a soft yellow. Only then does she look away and to the chirping to her left. She can see a metallic box with numbers and moving peaks. There's a wire that runs from the box to a taped rectangle on her finger. On the same arm, she can see a needle that goes to her vein, connected to plastic tubing.
She inhales and finds to her surprise that she's not panicking. She feels oddly calm, her body truly warm for the first time in years. She closes her eyes and moves her toes and fingers one by one, testing the range of motion. She can lift her hand now, the one without the tubing, and can push against the mattress and shift herself upwards.
She hears a cough from her right and turns to see a white curtain blocking her view.
"Hello," she calls.
Her voice is lower than she ever remembers it being, worn from disuse, hoarse from all the screaming she did probably. That or it's the saltwater she's been inhaling for centuries.
"Hello," comes a cheery voice, but it's from the doorway diagonal from Quynh's bed. "Glad to see you're awake."
There's a young black woman with braids and a pretty smile walking into the room. She's wearing pants and some sort of jacket. Quynh stares because she recognizes every piece of clothing but the styles are off. The material too is different, unnaturally smooth and sewn in unrecognizable patterns. The young woman sees her looking, glances down at her jacket and holds out one booted leg.
"It's a lot, right?" she says.
Her voice is calm, and the assurance in her eyes jogs something in Quynh's memory. She sees scared brown eyes and blood across a desert. The hum of rolling metal machines carrying people. The memories bring forth others of a blond man freezing to death over and over and waking with a gasp. Always the gasp when they come back to life, that great lungful of air that haunted Quynh's waking dreams, that hazy world she's lived in since she gave up on the idea of Andromache coming to save her.
"Who are you?" she asks, eyeing the woman up and down.
The young woman furrows her brow and glances to Quynh's left, where the curtain blocks whoever is on the other side of the room.
"You didn't tell her?" the young woman asks.
"Haven't had much time to talk," comes the voice, out of sight.
It's instantly familiar, rolling over Quynh like the heat of the desert sun, blistering pain that sears across her skin. She shakes, her stomach cramping as wave after wave of emotion wash over her. On her left, the machine starts chirping, loud jarring sounds that make Quynh press her hands over her ears. She's breathing too hard again, her vision going in and out, the sounds fading as she tries to calm her racing heart.
"Andy, help her," she hears.
But before anyone can move, there's another woman running into the room. She goes straight for Quynh's bed, her hands pushing down on Quynh's shoulders. She's shorter than the black woman standing by the entrance and, most importantly, Quynh has never seen her face before.
"Breathe," the woman says. "You have to calm down. I don't think we're allowed to give you relaxants so soon after your last dosage."
Quynh exhales, the pressure on her head easing somewhat. She forces her muscles to relax and hears the click in her jaw as she loosens it.
"There you go," the woman says.
She turns to the black woman at the door and says, "Perhaps you should go."
"No," Quynh says. "She can stay."
The woman turns back. Quynh knows there's going to be a fight, but just as she's preparing for the argument, she hears Andromache's voice.
"I'm her health care proxy," she says. "We should talk."
"And I'm her nurse," the woman answers. "I need to examine her."
If there's more said, Quynh doesn't hear it. She closes her eyes, letting herself feel the exhaustion in her bones. She wishes Nicolo were here. He'd take one look at her and know what was wrong, and if he didn't know, he'd find out. She misses him too, in a different way than she misses Yusuf. Because she and Yusuf understood each other in a way that Andromache and Nicolo never could, the sort of understanding that comes from being just different enough to warrant strange looks. She thinks of the young black woman from her dreams and imagines that they'll understand each other too, because if there's one thing Quynh is sure of, it's that the world rarely changes.
-
She doesn't notice how she falls asleep, but when she comes to, her room is quiet and she can see the young black woman from before sitting on the chair directly in front of her bed. She looks asleep, but when Quynh shifts, she lifts her head.
"Hello," she says. "My name's Nile. You're Quynh, right?"
Quynh looks at her, her kind sympathetic eyes, her braided hair, the curve of her smile. She's beautiful, devastatingly so, and it's such a welcome relief to feel something, even if it's the ache of jealousy, that Quynh almost laughs.
"You called her Andy," Quynh says before she can stop herself.
She doesn't mean to show her hand so early, but she has to know if Andromache's spoken about her at all over the years. It matters what Andromache's said and to whom, perhaps more than it matters if she's moved on.
Nile smiles. "Andromache's a mouthful these days," she says. "She introduces herself as Andy to everyone."
It's foolish to feel embarrassment at Quynh's age, especially at being seen by another immortal. They're destined to be together for eternity, and there are few things that she doesn't know about Nicolo and Yusuf and Andromache. There will be things Nile and Booker learn about her and that she learns about them, and Quynh's too old to let that bother her. Except that Nile is beautiful and kind and she exudes tranquility and grace. Except that Andromache's always had a type and Quynh's been away for hundreds of years. Except that Quynh needs one thing to be the same after all this time.
"Does she," Quynh starts, despite herself. "I mean, how many of us are there now?"
"Five," Nile says. "Five with you."
In another life, it would have been Quynh saying that to Nile, and Quynh can tell the thought is not lost to either of them.
"Andy will be here soon," Nile says. "I was actually just coming to see if she needed anything when you woke up. She hasn't slept since we heard from Copley that someone had found you washed up on the Newport shore. That's almost two days now, and Andy's...well, she should tell you herself."
Quynh wants to ask why Nile's the one keeping watch over her if Andromache hasn't left her side in the last two days. But the light is so bright as it bounces off the metal in the room, and she squints in an attempt to ease the burning pain in her eyes.
"Oh," she hears Nile say. "I can turn the light off if it bothers you."
Quynh nods and watches as Nile crosses over to a small rectangular on the wall. She presses her fingers against it and the lights go off. The room goes dark, throwing the equipment into shadow. It's impossible to pretend that Quynh isn't surrounded by things she's never seen before in her life but the lack of light makes it a little better. She can at least pretend it's hard to see the equipment around her in the darkness.
"Thank you," she says.
"No problem," Nile says. "I'm going to go. Give you some time before you see Andy. Probably make sure she hasn't passed out from nerves. You know, the usual."
Quynh finds Nile's casual way of providing information comforting, her soft voice somehow exactly what she needs. She still feels out of her depth, but now that she's slept, it helps to have someone she sort of knows in the room. It gives her the illusion of safety, especially given that she has no idea where she is. She's not worried though, because even after all this time, she trusts that Andromache would get her out if they were in danger.
She closes her eyes, more to try to keep away the memories than because her eyes hurt. She hears Nile leave and focuses on the sounds outside of the room, the rhythmic tapping of feet against the ground, the far-off chirps of other machines. Quynh starts counting, second nature after so long. She pauses when she gets to forty, her exhale shaky as she keeps going.
She's never made it past forty before.
She's at a hundred and fifty-seven by the time she hears a soft rap at her door.
"Come in," she says.
She already knows who it is, and it's less hard than Qunynh imagined to open her eyes. Andromache's already looking at her when their eyes meet, her mouth pressed into a hard line as she exhales shakily. Quynh watches her, the obvious way Andromache is barely holding it together doing more to calm her down than any of the drugs she's been given. She wants to do so many things at once, it's impossible to do anything at all. Instead, she takes a deep breath, the air raising her chest. She holds her breath for only a moment, just enough to feel the beginnings of panic, to know that she's alive, that this is real. She can't imagine another place where she'd feel terror that deep, so she knows she's awake and alive. She's real.
"Hello, love," she says. "It's been a rather long time, hasn't it?"
-
There were times in the floating reality Quynh existed in over the past centuries where she'd imagined being able to breathe again. She used to think that it would be like warmth flooding her body, soothing. She imagined that her body would wake from the blurry edge it existed on. At one time, she even imagined that it would be like being reborn that first time, that desperate gasp of a new life, an out-of-control reach for existence. But in all her time underwater, Quynh never imagined that she'd come to life in Andromache's arms, surrounded by dim white walls, in a world she didn't recognize.
"I'm sorry," Andromache says.
She's been saying it over and over since she moved from the door.
"It's all right, love," Quynh says, the same way she's been saying it since Andromache touched her.
She can still feel the ghost of Andromache's fingers on her arms, that press of palm against her elbow. Andromache's holding Qunyh's face now, her fingers edging into Quynh's hair, the heat of her hand making Quynh shiver. But what Quynh feels the strongest is that first touch, the way it ran through her like a bolt of lightning. She wants to ask Andromache to hold her elbow again, to hold her like she did the first time so that Quynh can memorize the feeling. She wants to catalogue the moment, the way Andromache stared at where they were touching, the little intake of breath as they both realized they were looking at each other again.
"Can we go?" Quynh asks.
She hasn't looked away from Andromache's eyes, the different hues of brown in them, the faint green. There's no blue in Andromache's gaze, no way to confuse it with the darkness at the bottom of the sea or the surface of the ocean.
"We should," Andromache says. "We don't want anyone asking too many questions."
That's familiar in a way that makes Quynh nostalgic for old times. She remembers jumping from town to town, country to country, never staying in one place too long. She and Andromache had set off together after Lykon died, wanting to map the entire world. They'd been everywhere before they met Yusuf and Nicolo. But they'd all gone together after, discovering that things changed too quickly for them to ever really see all there was to see.
She thinks of hundreds of years of darkness, of how much she doesn't understand of the world she woke up in. There's so much to see again, so many places to go. She looks at Andromache and feels the heat of Andromache's hands on her elbow.
"Don't let go," Quynh says. "When we go, don't let me go."
Andromache's mouth drops open. "Never," she says, her voice hoarse. "Quynh, I...I'm so sorry."
"It's all right, love," Quynh says, reaching out to touch the side of Andromache's face with her fingertips.
She feels the warm cascade of tears and moves to wipe them away from Andromache's cheeks. Her hands feel like they're burning, and she imagines that it's all the years without anyone to touch.
"I love you," she says, surprised that it's taken this long, that she could have possibly forgotten the one thing that's always been true.
Andromache does kiss her this time, her fingers gentle as she pulls Quynh in. They're both shaking by the time their lips touch, a trembling that goes from Quynh to Andromache and back. She can't tell who exhales first, whether it's Andromache who presses forward or herself. There's no time to pick apart the mechanism because Quynh feels like she's come alive, every part of her flooding with warmth.
You kiss the same, she wants to say, amazed at the way small consistencies settle her.
Andromache's thumbs find their spot behind Quynh's ears and it's as though they're back in Mesopotamia at the edge of the Euphrates, their campfire crackling next to them. It should surprise Quynh how easy it is to replace bad memories, how she's able to force them to the back of her head and focus on the way Andromache kisses her. She thinks of other nights in countless cities, the heat of Andromache's hands on her, the paths her mouth traced and retraced.
For so long, they only had each other. For so long, Quynh had nothing.
"We should go," Andromache says, pulling away gently.
Her lips are red, and though she's drawn back, she doesn't go far. Her fingers are still on Quynh's face, her mouth so close that they're almost kissing again.
It can't be that easy, Quynh thinks. Surely there's more to waking after all this time. She's certain her body isn't done fighting her. Even as she sits with Andromache in her arms, there's a part of her that isn't sure she's awake. It sits at the back of her head, never loud enough to drown out the rest of the world but there nonetheless.
"Take me home," Quynh says.
She's tired of being surrounded by the unfamiliar, and though she knows better than to think that anything remains from before she went under, she knows Yusuf and Nicolo are still alive. She wants to be surrounded by them, huddled in between Andromache and Yusuf, the way they've slept countless times before. She wants to be able to hold Yusuf close to her and feel Andromache's breaths on the back of her neck, to know that she's alive and they're alive and second chances exist.
"You should change," Andromache says softly.
She's reaching down by her feet before Quynh can question her. She lifts a small bag and hands it to her.
"Clothes," she says.
Quynh pulls out black pantaloons made from thick material. The rest of the clothes look much like Nile's had, a white ensemble to go on top that comes with an overcoat made of leather. She holds the pieces of clothing in her hands and raises an eyebrow at Andromache.
"It's what the children are wearing these days," she says, smiling.
Quynh shakes her head and returns the smile. She tries to get off the bed and pulls on the tubing coming from her left arm. Outside the room, two people walk by. One of them is the woman from before who called herself Quynh's nurse.
"All right," Andromache says, stepping aside to block Quynh from the outside view. "Change of plans. We're going to go before someone comes in to check on you."
She starts putting everything back into the bag she picked up from the floor. Quynh watches her, content to take in the way Andromache goes about getting things ready. She's looking for the way this Andromache fits into the memories Quynh has of her, trying to find the differences, the obvious signs of time passing. If Andromache's changed, then that means that time's passed and Quynh is awake.
"I'm going to make a phone call," Andromache says, coming around to Quynh's left side. "I'll explain what that is later."
Quynh nods. She's still not sure if she feels better knowing that Andromache's changed or knowing that she hasn't. Her head feels full of cotton, and her hands haven't stopped shaking since she woke up. But every minute that passes makes things a little better, the world solidifying a touch. Quynh starts counting again, watching Andromache pull a small rectangle from her trousers. She hears low rhythmic sounds, and then Andromache puts the rectangle to her ear.
There's a moment where nothing happens, and then Andromache speaks. "We're leaving," she says, and it takes a moment for Quynh to realize she's speaking into the small rectangle. "Let Copley handle the clean-up. We have to get her out, Joe. Meet me in ten."
Andromache pulls the rectangle away from her ear and shrugs helplessly at Quynh. "I'll explain everything later," she says. "We have to go now."
It's after Andromache's pulled out the tubing from Quynh's arm and they've headed out the room that it occurs to Quynh that she knows Joe. Yusuf took to calling himself Joseph in the late 1400s and Nicolo became Nicholas. The knowledge that she's going to see Yusuf settles over her so that Quynh barely sees where they're going. She follows Andromache, their hands clasped as they walk. Far off, Quynh can hear chirping and a loud commotion, but she's thinking of Yusuf and Nicolo now. She's so preoccupied with seeing them again that it takes her a moment to realize that Andromache's shoved her into a small room and is speaking to her.
"Change into your clothes," she says.
Quynh does, working out how things fit with Andromache's help. She finds that she likes the way things sit on her body, tight but not constricting. She's thinking of how easy it would be to shoot her arrows in her clothes, how the trousers stretch with her movements. She looks at Andromache and notices that both of them are wearing similar articles of clothing and that, too, is comforting.
"You look beautiful," Andromache says, honesty making her breathless.
Quynh smiles, hearing the words in a hundred different languages, in a hundred different parts of the world.
"So do you, love," she says.
Then Andromache opens the door and, together, they step outside into their new world.