Archive of Our Own

Booker doesn't remember exactly where he was born.

What he remembers are the far-off sounds of clomping hooves along cobbled streets and the faint aroma of baking bread fighting its way past the stench of sewers. They might have lived close to a baker's shop, or perhaps the nights had grown so cold and his stomach so empty that he imagined the smell of a freshly baked loaf. He can still feel the icy wind though, this burning chill that settled deep in his bones and left him shaking. It had a way of burrowing just under his skin so that his body could never truly push it back out. Not deep enough to burn away in his blood and not superficial enough to disappear into the night. The freezing air lingered, a solid presence in his otherwise mundane life. Even in the summer, when the boiling wastes that traveled along the streets threatened to overpower all good things, Booker never quite forgot the frost of winter.

It lingers now in France, permeating through his sparsely decorated apartment and making him shiver. He sighs as he eyes the line of carefully placed bottles of whiskey in front of his armchair. They seem to shine in the weak winter light coming through the kitchen window a few steps over, their contents a sparkling amber that could be his mother's eyes, could be his son's. He blinks and the bottles are still there, full to the brim. He wonders for the fifth time that day, whether he couldn't truly die if he drank them all.

He closes his eyes, leaning backward until he can feel the uneven back of his seat, the places where the springs aren't quite coiled anymore. He shifts and the armchair accommodates him, molding to fit his new position. If it weren't for the spring at the back of his head poking him constantly, he'd throw the whole thing away. The pain it brings feels warranted, needed to keep him sane. He wouldn't be able to stand it if he was surrounded by comforts, not after what happened with Merrick.

He reaches for the whiskey bottle in the middle of the line, twisting the cap open, hands shaking as he takes the first mouthful. The alcohol burns going down, harsh and unforgiving. He thinks of Russia, shivering in front of a campfire too small for the group of tired men. Few of them were soldiers. Most of them were like Booker, unlucky bastards who'd taken the wrong thing at the wrong time and had been thrown in jail. They'd all been offered the same thing: freedom in exchange for service to their country under Napoleon's guidance.

It wasn't a hard choice. Booker would much rather die out in the open than die in a stinking jail cell. At least in Napoleon's army he had a chance of escaping. All he needed was one good battle, too much death, not enough time to count their living. He'd go through the frozen woods, steal if he had to, until he got back home to his wife and their children. He was good enough at forgery that he could get them out of the city, take them to the countryside, and settle down under new names.

He used to dream a lot back then, losing himself to the seduction of daydreams where he and his family were happy and safe. Every waking moment up until he died had been full of what ifs and maybes, whispered bits of happiness passed between soldiers as they marched forever onwards in that frozen wasteland.

He remembers being tired down to his bones, every day he marched just adding to the exhaustion from the day before. They had no time to rest, no time to bathe, no time to scarf down their meager rations. They just went on like little marionettes pulled on the strings of poverty. They had no choice, the same way so many of them had no choice back home. There was no money. There was nothing but the wet streets and the flowing sewage and the sounds of his children as they starved to death.

He stole and lied and cheated to keep them alive. And his reward was to starve in their stead, hoping for a chance to go back to them. He had dreams of a better future, but at the end of the day he had little to offer them upon his return. He could forge papers. He could take them to the other side of the world, but they would still be poor, still be cold, still be hungry.

If he thinks of that time now he can still feel the pangs of hunger from those last days, the way the cold took a back seat the hungrier he got and the more the fatigue settled in his bones. When he couldn't take it anymore, he ran. But he was weak, and a few hours later he hung for his cowardice.

He leans back in his armchair, one hand going to the side of his neck, rubbing against the memory of rope burn. When he swallows his throat sticks and he takes another swig from his bottle. He doesn't feel the burn this time around so he takes another drink, chugging the whiskey until he has to breathe. At least he's warm, even if his eyes feel like they're sticking every time he blinks. Even if his hands won't stop shaking.

He loses count of how many drinks he has. When the knock at his door comes he's well on his way to being relaxed, all of his muscles loosening with the liquor. He moves slowly, sliding down until he can reach the gun by the side of his chair. The metal is cool against his hand, and when he stands his hand is still.

"Who is it?" he calls.

He can't remember if he locked his door.

He clicks off the safety on his gun, thinking about how empty his apartment is. There's nothing to find except his sad collection of empty bottles littered around his living room. But Merrick still feels so close even six months later, and Booker has to defend himself to keep the others safe.

There's another knock and Booker steps forward, lifting the gun and pointing it at the door.

"Come in," he says.

He hears the rattling doorknob and the door catching on the uneven frame. There's a short cut-off curse and he recognizes the voice before he fully realizes who it is. By the time Nile shoves her way in, he's lowered the gun.

"Nile," he says.

She blinks at him, raising one unimpressed eyebrow at his apartment door. "It wasn't locked," she says.

Booker shrugs. He can't remember the last time he changed his clothes.

Nile's eyes slide past him to the kitchen behind him. He doesn't need to turn to know that there are empty beer bottles lining the kitchen counters. He might have left a couple of empty cigarette packets on the table, and he's amassing a small collection of lighters because he keeps forgetting his when he goes outside. The living room isn't better. He sleeps on that armchair so the largest mess is there, a large collection of empty bottles, remnants of takeout, and a pile of blankets that he puts on and takes off depending on the weather.

"Nice place," Nile says, her eyes focusing back on Booker.

He tries not to wince under the gaze, too preoccupied at the moment with how he smells to ask why she's there. He can feel the acrid scent of old liquor emanating from his pores, and try as he might, he can't remember the last time he took a shower. But Nile smiles at him as she watches him, seemingly relaxed in Booker's presence.

"Why are you here?" he asks, wincing at how rough it comes out.

Nile shrugs. "I was in the neighborhood," she says. "Figured it doesn't count if I just happened to run into you. Not like you weren't going to invite me in. Not like I could say no, if you did."

Booker shakes his head. "Wouldn't be polite if you didn't come up," he says, fighting back a smile.

It's been so long since he's seen a familiar face, too long since he felt like he could breathe. He wasn't born to be alone, no matter how much he tried over the years. He was born with siblings, other bright blond heads that faded from his memory as they were taken away or lost to the streets. He can't remember when he lost his mother, only that most of his memories of her are vague silhouettes.

He married young because he couldn't stand being alone, because he fell in love, because hunger and pain seemed lessened when it was shared. He tries not to laugh now at how perfect his punishment is. To be alone with his sins is the worst thing they could have done to him.

"I'd offer you a seat," he shrugs, motioning to the single armchair. "But that's mine."

Nile leans against the doorframe watching him. He meets her carefully blank face and her brown eyes. He knew a kid once, younger than Nile but with the same kind of softness about him. He fought in a war that ripped his soul to pieces, and every time he came back, he'd kiss his wooden cross and joke as though he hadn't just missed being blown to shreds. He looked at Booker the way Nile looks at him now, as though he mattered enough to be pitied.

"I brought you a phone," Nile says.

She tosses a rectangular box at him. He could catch it even though he's loose-limbed and warm from the whiskey. But something in him seizes up as he thinks of the cold, of the young soldier who had Nile's eyes. He just misses the box, hearing it clatter on the linoleum floor at his feet. He looks down at it slowly, then back up at Nile, at the suspicion creeping into her expression.

He imagines her oncoming look of disappointment and finds that he can't bear it.

"We said a hundred years," he says.

"When's the last time you slept?" she asks.

She catches him off guard. That's the only reason he can think of as for why he tells her the truth.

"I don't know," he says. "A day ago?"

He hasn't been sleeping. He drinks and tries to forget, letting the alcohol numb him until he dozes. He can't tell if he dreams or if he makes things up in his inebriated state. He knows he's always tired, that he feels like he's going to crawl out of his skin, that he can't for the life of him remember when he last felt well-rested.

Nile nods, still not walking inside, still not leaving. "Where do you sleep?" she asks.

Booker looks at the living room, at the nest of blankets and at the protruding spring on the back of his armchair. He can't figure out how he fits on the chair or how he'd go about getting a good night's sleep on it.

"Booker," Nile says. "Where's your bed?"

It takes everything in him to grin at her, to pretend to be okay. "Shit," he says, making a show of looking around the apartment. "I knew I'd lost something, somewhere."

Nile blinks at him.

"Hazards of the move," he says.

She's so silent, her eyes watching him as though she can see right through his bullshit. So he forgot a bed. It's not like that warrants Nile's sadness or the way her gaze lingers around his apartment. He looks with her, finding the broken pieces, wondering what it is that she thinks of him as she sees them too. He can't decide if it's sadder that he has no kitchen table or that all three of his dishes are dirty.

"Well," he starts.

"You don't have a bed," Nile says, cutting him off before he can ask her to leave. "Everyone needs a bed."

Booker blinks, thinks of sleeping huddled around a campfire with hundreds of other men, all of them curling close for warmth. He remembers the numbness that washed over him the first time he died, how he felt the chill for months afterward, how some nights he still feels it, this piercing stab of pain that reminds him he's still alive. Barely. Wretchedly.

"We can't die," he says, trying to keep the bitterness from his voice.

He can tell Nile doesn't buy it, but she shrugs, easing off his doorframe. "Never underestimate the power of a good night's sleep," she says.

Then, with a nod at the fallen cellphone box, she's gone.

*

The bed comes a week later, dragged up the two flights of stairs by two muscled delivery men. He gets Nile's text five minutes before he hears the knock at his door, a single "you're welcome" followed by a row of sleeping emojis.

He glances around his living room and kitchen, at the bottles and the garbage. He moves without meaning to, pulling a garbage bag out from one of the cupboards. Nile bought him a cellphone and a bed and gave him no warning, no time to say no. He has to gather his garbage, has to run around half-dressed picking up after himself. He tries not to flinch at the clack of glass bottles as he stuffs them into the bag. At the very least, having few possessions proves to be an advantage because he's mostly done tidying the two rooms by the time the delivery men knock on his door.

He lets them in, his gun tucked safely away in his clothes. They don't come in further than the living room, just long enough to drop off all the pieces and get his signature. They leave without a fuss, and Booker jams his shoulder into the door to get it into place, clicking the locks closed for the first time in four months. He has a bed, an expensive one from the looks of it, and the last thing he wants is for someone to steal the first gift he's gotten in a long time.

He ends up in the little room designated as the master bedroom, all the way at the end of the hall past the kitchen. He's always had a bedroom, just never the desire to make it his own space. It felt too final, as though by having a place for himself he was acknowledging the length of his punishment. A hundred years is a long time to be alone, after all.

But now he has a bed, and even he knows that beds require bedrooms.

*

He starts sleeping, starts crawling onto his mattress half-sober because he can't bring himself to line his bedroom with liquor bottles. He's spilled one too many bottles of alcohol on his living room carpet and he lives with that. But Nile bought him his bed and he can't imagine getting it dirty by being careless. He doesn't want to ruin the soft, blue jersey sheets that came with it. And because he doesn't bring his liquor bottles into his bedroom, because there's nothing there except his bed, he sleeps.

He dozes at first, tossing and turning as he tries to get comfortable on the memory foam mattress. He can't remember the last time he had a bed this soft, can't remember when they weren't running for their lives or jumping out of planes. He feels like they must have stayed at other hotels with comfortable beds, but his memories are fuzzy these days. And besides, the difference between all those other beds and the one Nile gave him is that this one is his.

It's laughable that something so small can make such a difference. But it does, and so even though he can't seem to get comfortable, he gives it a go because this is his bed. Because Nile chose it for him. Because she cared enough about the bags under his eyes to do something about it. Because her kindness sits on his skin, too deep to erase but superficial enough that he can feel its sting.

He can't remember the last time he had a bed this soft.

*

He sleeps and he wakes, and some mornings the thought of living doesn't sit so heavy on his shoulders. Some days, he sees the sun peeking through the blinds in his bedroom and he thinks of the way it sat across his wife's face, the neverending shades of brown that existed on her hair when the sun hit it just right. He thinks of his three children and their matching curls of dirty blond hair, how they crawled into his arms when he made it back from war.

It had been spring when he finally got back home, and word had gotten back to his wife of his death. When she saw him, she screamed so loud he swore he could feel the echoes in his chest. She ran to him, the sun settling on her skin as she crossed the dirt road and threw herself into his arms. She smelled like freshly baked bread and he remembered his mother, the cold, ever pervasive scent of sewage.

He ate well that day, heaps of warm soup and hot bread. He ate and ate, hoping to fill that gaping hole in the center of his stomach that felt like panic. He knows now why it took him so long to accept that he couldn't die, why he denied it for as long as he could, why he never tested his immortality. He was home. He was warm. He was full. There was nothing else he could ever want.

*

Nicky wanders in on a Friday in March, slipping in quietly and wandering around without a word. Booker doesn't have time to react as his refrigerator door opens. He's barefoot, just out of the bathroom, freshly showered because he could feel the layer of dirt on his skin, because his bed is so new, too clean to carry him as he is. He can still smell the scent of the generic shampoo on his skin, something that aims to be coconut but smells more like artificial sugar.

At least he's clean this time.

"You have no food," Nicky says, closing the refrigerator and turning soft hazel eyes on Booker.

"No," Booker says. "I don't."

He doesn't know what to do with his hands, whether he should go back to his bedroom and find a shirt or stand barefoot and shirtless in the kitchen doorway, dripping onto the floor. He tries not to look at the stack of takeout containers in his sink. At one point, he was going to wash the plastic ones so that he could have more dishes.

He'd been thinking of Nile, hoping perhaps that she might come over again, that he could offer her something to drink. He even bought a carton of orange juice for the occasion, promptly forgetting it after it stayed untouched for a week. He can't remember how long ago he purchased it, but he knows it's probably past its expiration date.

"Did you want something to eat?" Booker asks.

Nicky looks at him, nothing on his face to give him away. But Booker knows him enough to know that he expects something, a courtesy that Booker has failed to offer.

"I have to change," he says.

Nicky nods and Booker leaves him in the kitchen. He takes his time putting on his only pair of clean jeans and a t-shirt. He's exhausted. These days it seems that the more he sleeps, the less he rests. He can tell it's the alcohol. He's not drinking nearly enough to fall into his drunken stupors, that state of semi-consciousness that passed for rest in the first weeks of his exile.

He can't remember much from those early days aside from a hazy numbness, a perpetual state of nonfeeling that kept away the raw aching wound of his loneliness. He drinks to forget and has always done so. That is and always shall be his truth. He drinks so that he doesn't remember the way his son screamed at him when Booker couldn't save him. He drowns himself in liquor so that it hurts less to think of his wife, of how she stood by his side unwavering even as he failed to provide for them in the early days after the war. She loved him even when he stole and lied his way into a fortune. She loved him even when she knew he would outlive her and their children, to her last breath she loved him.

So he drinks and hopes he can bear the weight of that love.

He inhales, holding it until the air burns in his lungs. He doesn't know what Nicky is doing in his apartment and he hates himself a little for the way hope blooms in the darkest corner of his heart. If Nicky's here then maybe he's forgiven, his traitorous brain tells him. But he smothers down the thought as quickly as it comes, thinks of Joe's anger, righteous in the face of Booker's betrayal.

He doesn't deserve their forgiveness, doesn't deserve the nice clean bed that Nile bought him. He stares at it, at the blue sheets tucked neatly on all sides. He imagines sinking into it, letting the sheets envelop him until he's asleep, safe, comforted, his feelings so very different from the first time he looked at it. But then, he was always one to adapt to new situations easily. It's what gave him an advantage back in the 1800s, the way he could just fit in wherever he went, with whomever he chose to befriend. Back in the day he was charming, witty, full of vibrancy that demanded attention. People liked him and gave him things. And he got used to having after the war, used to the servants and the beds with their mountains of pillows.

He got used to this bed, the same way he got used to having the others around him. The way he got used to the ache of eternity, the unbelievable pain that came with thoughts of the years stretching endless before him. He got used to loss, to the chasm that houses all of his pain, how it threatens to eat him alive. Until the day it was too much, until his desire to escape that yawning, gaping, hunger that is his sorrow won out and he said yes to Copley.

He only ever wanted it to end. No one was supposed to get hurt except him. No one was supposed to die except him. But nothing turned out the way it was supposed to and now he lives with the knowledge that he hurt everyone, including Nile. Now he lives with the fact that the cold is real, permeating his every cell, the loneliness running so deep he knows he'll never get it out.

Alcohol is the only thing that helps. It distracts him, makes it so that it's harder for him to notice that he's empty inside, that all that's left are the shattered pieces of who he was before Andy.

Before Joe.

Before Nicky and Nile and Merrick and Copley.

He sighs, running a hand through his hair and going back out to the kitchen because even if he can't look Nicky in the eyes, he still wants to. The same way he wants to call Nile on the phone she gave him, the same way he wants to see Andy, to see Joe. He's always been selfish, always wanted more than he deserved. But that's who he is.

That's who he will always be.

*

Nicky doesn't come back, but every few days, Booker will wake to a ringing doorbell and open his door to find a stack of tupperware with enough dinners for the week. The first time it happens, he can only stare at the ordered boxes. He doesn't even think to look for who dropped them off.

He eats them because Nicky went through all the trouble of cooking the meals. Because one of the lunches has freshly baked bread that melts in his mouth. He thinks of spring when he bites into it, of the sun shining down on a dirt road in Marseille, and the wave of warmth from a bowl of soup. And because the tupperware keeps coming every week, he gives in and buys a microwave. Then, because standing in his empty kitchen and eating out of the cheap tupperware seems too sad even for him, he buys a kitchen table. And because he can't seem to find a set that doesn't come with at least four chairs, he brings the whole thing home.

He has a stocked kitchen. He has a bed. And on the nights when he can't get to sleep, he has his armchair and his unopened bottles of whiskey.

*

Spring gives way to Summer and as the days grow longer and the sun burns in the Parisian sky, Booker retreats further into his apartment. He eats the food that comes to his door, delivered by a skinny teenager with bad skin. He doesn't talk on the rare occasion that Booker runs into him, just places the tupperware right in front of Booker's door and goes on his way.

Booker likes the kid, enjoys the silence that greets him no matter what he does. He even offered tips once, the neat bill almost crinking with how new it was. The kid didn't even acknowledge the money as he turned to walk back down the stairs. Another time, Booker brought him coffee in his only mug and the kid took one look at it and said, "I don't drink Keurig." Booker had been too stunned to correct him, more surprised that the kid knew about his new Keurig machine than he was interested in telling him that the coffee was Colombian.

Since then, Booker doesn't offer things and the kid keeps coming by, keeps dropping off the dinners. The dishes pile up in Booker's sink, cheap tupperware stacked on top of each other until they spill onto the counter. He tells himself that he's going to wash them, but the weeks pass and the dishes remain, until, one day, Booker wakes and they're still there.

He watches the sun from the kitchen window falling over the sink and the counter. He can see the dried food clinging to everything, the full bottle of green dish soap and the unused sponge. He imagines scrubbing the tupperware and thinks of how long it would take to get all the remnants of food off the sides. He sighs, longing for the comfort of his bed. What he wouldn't do to doze all day, to find that haze in between sobriety and inebriation. His hands itch for a bottle of whiskey and suddenly, he's so thirsty, he can feel it in the back of his throat. He swallows and finds that his mouth is dry.

That's how Andy finds him, standing in front of the pile of dishes, trying to clear his throat. Booker hears the jingle of the keys he gave her, the clinking keychains, as she unlocks the door. He knows it's her because she bursts in, this wild energy that radiates chaos. He can hear her boots against the wooden floor as she makes her way into the apartment.

He's not exactly surprised to see her. He knew when he gave her his key that she would come.

She looks exactly the same as he left her, and part of him is surprised that he can't tell she's started aging. She should look more tired, he thinks. The same way his wife was so tired at the end. But Andy stands at the entrance to the kitchen, her arms crossed as she surveys the general disarray in the room. She's still so very much alive, Booker doesn't know what to do.

"You look like shit," she says finally.

And it's so like Andy that Booker can't help but laugh. "Thanks," he says. "It's nice to see you too."

*

Andy found him five years after he came back from war, in the summer, when the wine from the previous year's harvest was just about selling out. She came in wearing tight-fitting trousers and a ruffled collar, looking for all the world like she belonged with the bourgeoisie. He was no different then, with his expensive clothing and his estate, his vineyards, his workers, his maids.

When he saw her, he didn't understand. And then, she marched into his home, pulled out her revolver, and shot him right between the eyes.

"Seemed faster than explaining," she said when he woke, gasping for breath.

Dying always felt like the tail end of suffocation to him, that last desperate gasp of air that didn't make it through, a sudden realization of the end before the darkness settled. Coming back to life was worse, his body clawing its way to wakefulness, all of his muscles coming alive at once, tensing and releasing, that sudden relief before he realized that nothing had changed. When he woke, the desperation was never far behind.

But that second time, when he woke to find Andy standing above him, waking felt almost peaceful. He remembers Andy's crooked smile as she extended a hand to help him stand, remembers the deep red stain on the collar of his shirt, the smear of blood on his face. He took the handkerchief Andy offered him and cleaned his face, his fingers, the cover of his pocket watch.

"Who are you?" he asked.

She looked at him, the revolver hanging from her side. "I'm the woman of your dreams," she said, the grin a little sharper.

She told him about Joe and Nicky, about the years they'd been alive, the fall and rise of civilizations he'd never heard of before. She stood before him with the knowledge of thousands of years, an air of detachment that felt familiar somehow. He recognized in her the same ache that would settle in his heart a few years later. But he hadn't been able to tell what it was at that time, so he'd brushed it aside, disregarded it the same way he passed on Andy's offer to travel with her.

"I'm fine where I am," he told her.

"I know," she said, a deep sadness in her brown eyes. "But when you're ready, we'll be waiting."

*

Andy stays with him for a week and because she stays, he very carefully puts away the bottles of whiskey. He doesn't throw them out, but he can't bring himself to leave them in the open where Andy might see them. He knows the perils of alcohol and the toll they take on a body. He spent the better part of the 19th century attempting to drink himself to an early grave, and his oldest son was the only one who managed it. He knows what drinking is going to do to Andy in the long run, the way her body will start to resent it if she keeps it up long enough, how her liver will fight until it gives out, until she's lying in bed in her own sick, wishing it was over.

He doesn't know what he'd do if he had to watch someone else go that way.

They don't drink. They don't gamble. They don't stay awake talking about how much they hate the endless days before them. Andy doesn't do much except lounge in Booker's armchair and watch as he walks around his apartment picking up after himself. He hadn't noticed how much garbage he'd amassed until Andy came and kicked over the stack of bottles strewn across the living room floor.

He cleans. She watches. And somehow, at the end of the week, the dishes in the sink are gone.

"Thanks for helping me clean," he tells her just before she goes.

She turns to him, her grin just a little too sharp. "You know me, Book," she says. "Always here when you need me."

Then, she too is gone.

*

Booker calls Copley in the fall, a solid year after Merrick Pharmaceuticals. He's sleeping better, a solid seven hours a night. He's still getting dinners and Andy's been around to visit three times. He keeps in contact with Nile, and though his bones still seem to ache in the cold, he feels more like himself than he has in a long time.

So he calls Copley and asks for a job. It starts out small, just kidnapping victims or retrieval of hostages. He doesn't even break a sweat, but it helps to be out in the real world again. Even alone, there's a lot he can do, things that keep him distracted so that he doesn't have to think about Andy aging, so that he can keep the nightmares away.

They come often now because he's sleeping regularly, because he's drinking less alcohol. He sleeps and he dreams and when he wakes in the morning, he swears he can still hear the echoes of his children's cries. Sometimes, he dreams of his wife and the smell of must and roses that permeated the air on the day he buried her. He dreams of her smile and wakes with a cry of anguish in the morning.

Sometimes, he dreams of the day he died.

The cold seeps into his bones as the season changes to winter, each new mission a welcome relief from the burden of his thoughts. Copley never says no because there's always someone to save.

And slowly, so slowly Booker doesn't even realize it's happening, he stops drinking. It's all the running around, the adrenaline from each successful mission, the flights back and forth, the different hotel rooms. There's not enough time for him to stop by a liquor store and pick up a bottle of cheap whiskey. He has distractions to chase, people to follow, plots to foil.

He feels good, and it's such a strange, mesmerizing concept that he doesn't know what to do, doesn't know how to feel. It's been so long since he's felt anything close to contentment that it throws him off. He doesn't know what he'll do if the feeling lasts, doesn't know who to be after three hundred years.

So he doesn't think about it, knows it wouldn't do him any good to start examining himself now. He's been a lost cause since the 1800s, after all. And besides, there are so many people to save.

*

Towards the end of February, Copley tells him about a mission in New York, but Joe's the one waiting at the end of the boardwalk in Coney Island. Joe's eyes are on the water, with his back to Booker, and he doesn't turn around even though it's just the two of them and Booker is making noise on purpose. He stands so still he might as well be part of the scenery, his jacket billowing out behind him as the wind blows over from the cresting waves.

It smells like sea salt and sulphur, the two scents easy to distinguish during the winter. There's no one around for miles, just Joe and his jacket, the curls in his hair, and the loud beating of Booker's heart. He might die here, he thinks, pierced through by Joe's righteous rage. He'd deserve it after everything he's done. But that's just more wishful thinking, remnants of the dark thoughts that pushed him to work with Copley and Merrick in the first place. Joe won't hurt him, even though he should. Even though he has the right.

"What are you doing here?" Booker asks finally, unable to stand the silence.

His wife never let the house go quiet. She was always humming something, always chatting away with the workers, with the children, with him. He couldn't stand the silence even before she died. It gave him room to think about all that he'd eventually lose, about what he had to look forward to, that endless forever. Filling silences was what he did best, either with chatter or with alcohol, it didn't matter. Everywhere he went, he needed conversation, nonsensical and pointless though it sometimes was. He was never a man of few words. Neither was Joe.

"We're gathering intel," Joe says.

"Us?" Booker asks.

Joe scoffs. "You didn't think I'd let any of the others come instead, did you?"

They're quiet a moment, the truth of London settling in the space between them. Joe turns at last, his eyes running up and down Booker, lingering on his face. Booker holds himself still, knows that the bags under his eyes are less pronounced these days, that he looks well fed and clean.

"You never sent Nicky a thank you note for the dinners," Joe says, at last. "Or to Nile for the bed."

Booker exhales shakily. "I don't know where you're staying," he says.

Joe blinks, his face carefully neutral, so unlike his usual expressive self. "We have the house in Malta," he says. "The one in New York. Prague. Budapest. Taiwan."

Booker says nothing. The silence stretches between them, a horrid tangible thing that almost seems to suffocate. Booker waits, meeting Joe's gaze for a moment before he looks away. He can hear the crashing waves even though he's not really seeing them, and the rhythmic sounds of rolling water against sand helps to center him. He doesn't have a good explanation to offer. He never even had a good reason for London, no reason to believe anything would come of it, nothing to prove that he might at last get what he'd always wanted. Everyone is always trying to kill them and no one's succeeded. Merrick was no different.

"I'm sorry," he says.

Because there's nothing else to say. Because words are inadequate. Because a long time ago, he lost his family and he's so very tired of being alone.

Joe says nothing for the longest time, the crashing waves the only sound in the empty beach. He's so still, so quiet, that when he exhales Booker swears he can feel it in his bones. Joe turns, his coat fluttering in the wind, his face cold and closed off. He looks at Booker and away. Then, with what looks like relief, he sighs.

"That's a start," he says.

And as Booker looks at Joe, as he thinks of Andy and Nile and Nicky, he feels as though, perhaps this time, it really could be.