Archive of Our Own ^beta

It is very, very dark at the bottom of the ocean.

…

That’s the thing he hadn’t expected, see, when they threw him down here, because he’d never been-

…

-that far down before, and he’d expected to see the sun breaking through the surface, or something, but-

…

-the truth is that the sea is much deeper than he’d thought, and there is no light down here.

…

And so these are the three things he knows, when he cannot be sure of anything else:

…

the water is dark, and cold, and heavy.

…

It has been trying to crush him under its weight for a long time, but it cannot, and so he is left-

…

-with a monumental weight on his shoulders that he can never set down, Atlas holding up the sky.

…

He thinks there was a life before this, but he can’t be sure if he’s remembering or dreaming anymore-

…

-the line between the two is so thin, you see, and perhaps he’s been down here forever, perhaps-

…

-he’s been down here for thousands of years, he doesn’t know, because how could he? He can’t-

…

-even see the sun.

…

It’s been a long time. So long that he can’t remember what it’s like to feel anything other than-

…

-water and cold metal, to taste anything other than salt, to breathe air and not water. There is blood-

…

-in the water from where he pounds his fists against the metal, trying to weaken the iron, screaming-

…

-even though no sound comes out and the metal never gives way. 

…

He thinks sometimes about the times he has died, how he had figured out early on that drowning-

…

-was one of the worst ways to go, how he’s been drowning so long he can’t remember how to breathe-

…

-how there’s only so long a person can survive without air, how he doesn’t even try to hold his breath-

…

-anymore because there’s no point, he keeps drowning anyway, and holding his breath just makes it-

…

-worse when he can’t anymore and the pressure in his lungs hurts and he can’t do anything but try to-

…

-breathe and then the water rushes into his lungs and he drowns again and sometimes he remembers-

…

-how Nicolò used to talk about fate and how it’s destiny that they found each other and sometimes he-

…

-wonders, viciously, if this was fate too, if they were always doomed to be torn apart, if Yusuf’s path-

…

-would always take him to the sea, in every universe, or maybe there is one where it is Nicolò in the sea-

…

-and not Yusuf, or perhaps it is Andromache, or Quynh, or perhaps there is a happier universe where-

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-this never happened to any of them, and sometimes he blames Nicolò for this, for not fighting harder-

…

-and he knows that isn’t fair, that Nicolò would never have wanted this for him, that he fought as hard-

…

-as he could but sometimes, when he is losing hope and tired of drowning and tired of the darkness-

… 

-he wonders why Nicolò doesn’t search for him.

…

Perhaps he hallucinates the sound at first, perhaps it is just a dream - he’s had those before, dreaming-

…

-of breaking out of his coffin (it’s almost funny, isn’t it, a coffin for a man who cannot die) and seeing-

…

-the sun again, but he always wakes up in the water, and it’s been so long that he’s stopped hoping.

…

But then he hears it again.

…

Hope is dangerous.

…

He hopes anyway.

…

And then - then the metal gives way, its joints finally rusted enough for him to push through, and he-

…

-fights harder than he has in years, because maybe this is a dream but he’ll take any respite he can get-

…

-and eventually the metal falls away completely and he is out , he’s free, he can move without meeting-

…

-iron. He doesn’t know which way is up or down and so he kicks out blindly, swimming in the direction-

…

-he thinks is up, hoping that he’ll reach the surface eventually, that someday he will breathe again.

The light hurts his eyes when he finally breaks the surface. He coughs and coughs and coughs and it’s a struggle just to keep himself afloat, but he has been fighting for this for so long and he will not let the water pull him back down into its depths. The first breath of air hurts his lungs and he can’t quite seem to get enough, so he rolls onto his back with his eyes closed because the light still hurts and breathes again. And again. And again. The waves rock him gently, and the sun warms his skin. Perhaps the water will eventually carry him to shore. Perhaps he’ll wake up back in the coffin any moment now. For now, he rests. 

He can hear so much now. For so long, the only sound he could hear was his own screaming, muffled by the water. Now - now there is the sound of the seabirds calling out to each other, and the waves, and a strange rumbling in the distance, drawing closer by the minute.

Then there are voices, shouting in a language it takes him a moment to recognise. French, he thinks, but not quite the same as the French he knows. He forces his eyes open, despite the burn of the sunlight, and sees a large white thing bearing down upon him - a boat, he realises, but unlike any he’s seen before. Someone points at him over the railing, and then a rope is tossed over the side of the boat. They are shouting at him, he thinks. He cannot understand much more than the odd word. He catches “man” and “alive” and “rope”, but no more. He thinks they want him to grab the rope, so he does, and lets them pull him to the boat and out of the water.

There are people crowding around him, asking too many questions that he does not understand, and it’s all too much sound and activity and the sunlight still burns. One of them touches his shoulder, and he flinches away, unable to stop thinking about the last time somebody touched him, hauling him into the coffin. He shakes his head. He wants to tell them he doesn’t understand, but he can’t make himself form the words. The light is too bright. There is too much noise.

One of them - the same one who had touched his shoulder - waves the others away with a snapped command and holds out a blanket, saying something that Yusuf still cannot understand. Yusuf takes it and wraps it around himself gratefully. Now that the initial shock has worn off, he realises he’s trembling.

The man guides him over to a bench on the deck and gestures for him to sit, saying something that sounds like “safe”. Yusuf sits down, pressing his back to the wall and drawing his knees up to his chest. The blanket is a little scratchy, but it’s warm, and he has been cold for so long.

From here, he can see the full strangeness of the boat. It’s made of some material he can’t name, white enough to reflect the glare of the sun, with silver railings. The people, too, are dressed in unfamiliar outfits, shirts with short sleeves and short trousers, with glasses that have darkened lenses over their eyes. He has seen those before, but these are different, with no wires or metal frames visible.

The crew, after the initial excitement, seems to give him a wide berth, which suits him just fine. He is content to watch, confused by all the strange newness - how long, exactly, had he been down there?

They reach shore after only a few hours, much faster than any boat should be able to travel in Yusuf’s experience, and the dock contains hundreds of these strange white boats all moored in neat rows. The houses are different from the ones he remembers, too. 

After the crew has disembarked, Yusuf is guided down the ramp by the man who had been sitting nearby him the whole time. His legs are shaky from so long without use, but he manages not to fall as he is led to a small building just near the docks. There, more people ask him questions which he cannot answer, but eventually give up when he shakes his head in response to everything. The man from before takes him to a smaller room and offers him the same kind of strange clothes that the crew had been wearing. He takes them, because he has nothing else, and the sea breeze is cold. They do not quite fit, and the fabric is unfamiliar, but they are better than nothing.

He is kept in the building while a different man talks into a strange black rectangle, trying to decide (Yusuf presumes) what to do with him. The man stops talking with a sigh and sets the rectangle down, saying something to the other man, who still has not left Yusuf alone except for him to change. The man nods.

Then it is another few hours of waiting, until he is guided outside again. The first thing he sees is a strange metal box with glass panels set in it waiting nearby. He realises that is what they are leading him towards, and panics.

Not again. Please, not again.

He bolts, turning and running as fast as his legs will carry him. Where he is going, he does not know, but he knows he has to get away from that thing. He will not let them put him back in the water. There is shouting behind him, but still he does not stop. He runs through unfamiliar streets, past people in unfamiliar clothing, surrounded by unfamiliar sounds and smells. This world he has been thrown into is not one he recognises. 

Eventually, he cannot run anymore. His lungs are still weak, and he leans against a wall in a small alley he’d darted into for cover, breathing heavily (but breathing , he is breathing, he is not drowning). Someone turns into the alley, presumably chasing after him, and Yusuf tenses, prepared to run again - until he realises who it is. Nico.

His hair is shorter, his clothes different, and there is something about his eyes that seems not quite the same, but Yusuf still knows him. Right now, he is approaching Yusuf carefully, his hands in the air where Yusuf can see them. “Yusuf,” he says gently, the way he would speak to a spooked horse. “You are safe. Nobody is going to hurt you.” He’s speaking the Arabic of Yusuf’s childhood, the only familiar thing Yusuf has encountered so far in this strange new world.

Yusuf backs away, and Nicolò stops. He wants to say something, but he cannot find the words.

“We can take you somewhere safe,” Nicolò says, in that same even tone, “but I need you to come with us, okay? There are too many people here. We should not linger long. I will not let anything happen to you, I promise.”

Yusuf remembers Nicolò making the same promise moments before they hauled Yusuf away and cast him into the sea, and hates him a little bit for it. How does he know Nicolò will keep this one?

“Please,” Nicolò says. “We can help you. Andromache and Quynh are here too, they will want to see you. I will not force you to come with us, but you will be safe.”

The truth is, Yusuf is so tired. And he’s missed them, even if he wants to scream why did you stop looking, why did you leave me? And he just wants something familiar, something that hasn’t completely changed. Besides, where else could he go?

He nods. Nicolò smiles, relieved. “Come, then. The others are waiting.”

Yusuf lets Nicolò lead him back to the metal box - not a coffin , he tells himself, not a coffin - where Andromache and Quynh are waiting. Andromache’s hair is short now, but it suits her: she looks every bit as fierce as he remembers her. Quynh looks a little more like he remembers, but she too has changed, in the way she carries herself, in the look in her eyes. The two others that he has dreamed of are not there when he looks around.

“We should get out of here,” Andromache says. “You’ve caused quite a commotion.” She sounds almost annoyed, but when he looks up at her, she’s smiling softly at him. A joke, then. He tries to smile back.

“Come,” Nicolò says, opening the door of the metal box, and Yusuf fights back a surge of panic. Not a coffin. He hesitates, and Nicolò notices. “It’s a car. Like a carriage, but without horses. It moves on its own power. It may take… some getting used to” - Andromache grimaces at that, as if recalling a less-than-pleasant memory - “but the safehouse is not far, and we can go slowly. Okay?”

Yusuf nods. He has ridden in carriages before - this one just runs on its own power, if that is even possible. Perhaps he can learn how it works, someday. 

Carefully, he climbs into the back seat. It is not entirely like a coffin: there are windows, at least, and his coffin hadn’t had those. He can still see the sky. Nicolò gets in beside him, and Quynh and Andromache sit in the front, Quynh in front of a wheel. There is a strip of fabric beside his shoulder, and he watches as Nicolò pulls a similar strip over his shoulder and across his waist. Restraints, Yusuf realises. He forces himself to breathe. They would not hurt him.

“Here.” Nicolò reaches across for the strap beside Yusuf, and Yusuf flinches away. “It’s a seatbelt. It’ll keep you safer if something goes wrong.”

“You don’t need it,” Andromache remarks from the front seat. “It’s not like you can get injured, anyway.”

Nicolò shoots Andromache an annoyed look - this is an argument that has happened many times, Yusuf thinks - but relents.

“If you find yourself feeling ill, look at the horizon out the window,” Nicolò advises. “It will not be far.”

That’s all the warning Yusuf gets before the car shudders, and they lurch forward. He grabs onto the handle above the window, gripping it so hard his knuckles turn white. They only gain speed, until they’re on a wide grey road with nothing but other cars stretching out into the distance, going much faster than any carriage ever could. Nicolò had reassured him it would be fine, but there’s no way this thing can be safe. He looks out of the window, like Nicolò had said, but the sheer speed at which the scenery rushes by makes him feel sick. Instead, he closes his eyes and presses his forehead to the cool glass, wishing for the ride to be over.

The journey feels like it takes hours, despite Nicolò’s insistence that it wouldn’t be far. But, finally , the car comes to a stop, and Yusuf sighs with relief. He doesn’t recognise the house they stop at - they must have acquired it after. Momentarily, he wonders if any of the places he knows still stand. Or has time worn them away?

The sun is sinking behind the clouds as he steps out of the car shakily. Andromache and Quynh are already standing by the door, and Nicolò is close behind him.

Yusuf doesn’t get a chance to look properly at the inside of the house before he is ushered into the largest room, where one of the others from his dreams - a young woman, with neat braids and kind eyes - is waiting. She smiles when they enter, and says something in English that he can’t quite make out the meaning of. Andromache responds, and then Nicolò says something quietly. The woman turns to look at Yusuf.

“Hello,” she says to Yusuf in Arabic. Not the same kind Nicolò had spoken, but similar enough for him to understand. “My name is Nile.”

Nile. Yes, he knows her, had dreamed of her first death, seen the others through her eyes. “Yusuf,” he says. His voice is hoarse and rough from disuse. He clears his throat and tries again. “It’s nice to meet you.” Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Nicolò shoot him a surprised look.

Nile’s smile widens. “Nice to meet you too.”

Yusuf looks over her shoulder, half expecting the other to be here too. There had been two, hadn’t there? “What about the other?” he asks Nicolò.

Something flickers across Nicolò’s expression - anger, perhaps. “His name is Sebastien, but he is not here.” He doesn’t elaborate, but a look passes between him and Andromache and Quynh, one that Yusuf cannot read. 

Yusuf thinks back on his most recent dreams, of all four of them laughing together, of a building made of glass and Quynh and Nicolò strapped to strange tables, of the man alone. Yes, he can see it now. Whatever happened, it was serious enough for them to send the other away. Yusuf does not ask about it.

Dinner is a tense affair. Nobody quite seems to know what to say, and so they eat in silence, with each of them occasionally directing poorly-concealed glances his way. After Nicolò has cleared their plates away, he turns to Yusuf. “I can show you where the bathroom is, if you would like to wash.” 

Yusuf nods. Should say something, but can’t seem to make himself speak. He follows Nicolò up a small flight of stairs, past two doors - probably bedrooms, he guesses - and into a small room with a grey-tile floor. There’s a bathtub by the far wall with a curtain in front of it, and a washbasin with a mirror hanging over it, and a toilet. The window is open just a crack, and a cold breeze blows in from outside. Yusuf shivers and wraps his arms around himself.

Nicolò is not looking at him: hasn’t really met his eyes much at all since he found Yusuf in the alley. His shoulders are tense as he pulls the curtain aside to reveal a shelf with a neat row of brightly colored bottles, and a metal thing affixed to the wall. The silence is deafening.

Nicolò turns a dial and a stream of water flows from the metal thing, and Yusuf’s entire world narrows down to the sound of the water, not quite the same as the waves but close enough to make him forget how to breathe. 

“Do you want me to leave you alone?” Nicolò asks, and Yusuf shakes his head quickly.

Nicolò runs his hand under the water, shakes his head, and adjusts another dial before repeating the action. This happens twice before Nicolò seems satisfied and steps aside, gesturing for him to come forward.

But Yusuf is frozen in place, watching the water as it runs down the drain. He takes a step back, shaking his head again. “Please,” he whispers. “No.”

Immediately, Nicolò reaches over and turns off the stream. He holds both hands out in front of himself placatingly. “Okay. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”

Yusuf can breathe a little easier now that the sound is gone. He closes his eyes and runs his hands through his matted hair. When he opens them again, Nicolò is watching him.

“I could help you, if you wanted,” Nicolò offers haltingly. “You won’t have to stand under the water, I promise. And if you want to stop, we’ll stop. Okay?”

Yusuf is still hesitant about the water, but he also hates the feeling of the salt in his hair. So he nods. “Cut it?” he asks hesitantly. “Please?” He can’t stand the feeling of his hair brushing his shoulders either, not after so long. 

“Of course,” Nicolò tells him. 

Nicolò directs him to sit on a stool just in front of the bathtub, leaning back so his neck is resting on its edge, and passes him a towel to wrap around his shoulders. The whole time, Nicolò explains exactly what he’s doing and why he’s doing it, especially when Yusuf can’t see it. Yusuf still flinches when the water touches his hair, but Nicolò touches his shoulder with his free hand, murmuring softly in Arabic, and it helps to calm him. 

It must take at least an hour, but Nicolò is careful the whole time, first washing his hair and then gently easing out the tangles, first with his fingers and then with a comb, apologising quietly whenever Yusuf winces as it tugs at his scalp. When that’s done, he takes the scissors and begins to cut, still so gentle, and it makes something in Yusuf’s chest ache a little. They’d done this for each other more times than he could hope to count, since the very earliest days of their immortality. It’s familiar, grounding. He closes his eyes and tries to relax.

When Nicolò’s finished, he helps Yusuf trim his beard, too, and then sits back. “Better?” he asks softly.

Yusuf nods. “Thank you,” he whispers.

Nicolò gives him a soft smile. “Of course. I can find you a cloth, if you’d still like to wash, and some different clothes, too.”

Yusuf nods again, and Nicolò disappears, closing the bathroom door behind him.

Yusuf stands up from the stool, the stiffness easing almost immediately, and crosses the room to stand in front of the mirror. He looks a little more like himself, he supposes, but there is still a hollowness to his features, a haunted look in his eyes. Or maybe this is how he has always looked: he’s not sure he can remember what he looked like before. It’s a terrifying thought.

Nicolò knocks before entering again, this time with a cloth in one hand and a small bundle of clothes in the other. The clothes he leaves on the stool; the cloth he offers to Yusuf, who takes it.

“Take as long as you need,” Nicolò tells him. “I’ll be outside, okay?”

Yusuf nods, and then Nicolò is gone, leaving him alone again in the room. 

Somehow, Yusuf manages to turn the lever on the sink and run the cloth under the water without losing himself completely. Once that’s done, he takes off the clothes the man on the boat had given him and cleans himself as quickly as he can. He still shudders at the feeling of the water on his skin, but tolerates it. As soon as he’s finished, he dries himself off and changes into the clothes Nicolò had brought him - underwear, a loose undershirt and trousers and a kind of tunic-thing with a hood, which he pulls up over his head.

Nicolò, true to his word, is waiting just outside the door. “Okay?” he asks when Yusuf comes out.

Yusuf nods. Exhaustion hits him like ten tons of stone, and he lets Nicolò guide him to one of the bedrooms. He curls up, truly warm for the first time in however long it’s been since he went into the coffin, and falls asleep almost the moment his head hits the pillow.

They go to Malta.

Or, Yusuf and Nicolò do. Andromache is eager to leave the country, before people begin to question further how Yusuf had gotten into the middle of the sea, and apparently they still have work to do. It goes without saying that Yusuf cannot accompany them in his current state, and Nicolò is reluctant to leave him, so they go to Malta, promising to check in with the others regularly.

The plane ride is harrowing, but Yusuf is not ready to take a boat just yet, and this is the only alternative. He reaches for Nicolò’s hand about thirty seconds after the plane starts moving. If Nicolò is surprised, he doesn’t show it. Just laces their fingers together and squeezes Yusuf’s hand reassuringly. 

After the plane, there is another car ride to reach the house. Yusuf sits in the front seat this time, while Nicolò drives, and it helps a little bit to be able to see out of the window. He doesn’t enjoy it, but he tolerates it.

The house is - the house is almost exactly as he remembers it, on the outside. The green paint on the doors and shutters is still chipped and peeling, the surrounding area is still half-taken over by wildflowers, the branches of the old tree by the east wall still hang low to the ground, perfect for sitting and sketching on warm evenings. If there have been any alterations over the years, he doesn’t notice them. He doesn’t realise that Nicolò has gotten out of the car until his door is opened. 

“I haven’t come here often,” Nicolò says. “But I try to stop by every now and then. The last time was about forty years ago, I think.” He unlocks the door with a key on a chain around his neck and pushes it open. “After you.”

Yusuf steps inside. The furniture has changed, slightly, but everything is still exactly where he expects it to be, down to the vines of purple flowers he’d painted on the wall. He’d painted a little bit of the house each time they visited: there is a blue mosaic over the doorway to the kitchen; flowers in the living room; a little horse in the guest bedroom, for Andromache, resplendent in the red and gold armor of the Scythians; near it, a kind of tree that grows in the land where Quynh grew up. He’d wanted to paint his and Nicolò’s bedroom next, but he’d never gotten the chance.

He steps closer to the painted vines on the wall. Up close, they are not quite the same. Last time he’d been here, the paint had been wearing away. Someone has painted over them more recently than that, long ago enough that they don’t look new but not long enough that they’re in the same state he remembers them. He reaches out and traces the outline of one of the petals.

“Booker - Sebastien - helped me restore them a while ago,” Nicolò says, as if he knows what Yusuf is thinking - of course he knows. “He was a forger, before he was one of us. I figured he would do a better job than I could.” Yusuf looks over his shoulder to find Nicolò already looking at him, almost apologetic. “They were all I had left. I did not want to lose them.”

And maybe it’s not fair to Nicolò, but Yusuf can’t help wondering momentarily if the rest of the spaces he left behind were as easily filled. When did Nicolò give up searching for him, and begin grieving for him? After a century? Fifty years? Less? He can still feel Nicolò’s eyes on him, searching his expression.

“Will you be okay if I leave you?” he asks tentatively. “I need to go buy food. The market isn’t far, I won’t be long.”

Yusuf nods, and Nicolò gives him a small but careful smile.

Alone, Yusuf makes his way through each room of the house, remembering. Here is the blue mosaic he’d painted when they first came here, before he had learned to paint people or plants or animals, that he’d spent hours measuring carefully, newly painted over the same way the flowers had been. Here is the kitchen where they’d spent countless evenings, talking long into the night. He steps outside, and here is the garden Nicolò had painstakingly tended to, growing too much for the two of them alone to eat, so they’d taken the surplus and offered it to those who needed it. Here is the tree they’d stood under the night Nicolò had kissed him for the first time. 

He swings himself up into its branches, the way he had so many times before. Up here, he can see the sea through the gaps in the leaves, glittering in the sunlight, and does not completely hate the sight of it. After all, there is a difference between seeing it from up here, and being trapped beneath it. Its surface is mostly still: it is a calm day today.

(When you are far enough down, there is no way of telling if it is calm or choppy.)

This tree had been there when they first came here and had been old even then. It has grown since he was here last, but the feeling of its bark under his hand, the way the sunlight filters through its leaves and casts a greenish glow over his surroundings, the way its leaves rustle gently in the wind - all of it is familiar and comforting. He closes his eyes and rests his head against the bark. 

He’s not sure how long he stays there, letting his mind wander, but he doesn’t open his eyes until he hears the sound of the car drawing closer. Nicolò gets out, carrying two bags, and steps into the house, seemingly unaware of Yusuf in the tree. 

Yusuf climbs down and goes to join him in the kitchen, sitting at the table while Nicolò begins making bread. It almost feels like nothing’s changed, until Nicolò goes to bake the bread in a strange metal and glass box instead of over the fire the way Yusuf is used to and he is reminded, again, that nothing is quite the same as he remembers it anymore. 

The day passes mostly in silence. Nicolò has work to do in the garden, weeding and replanting, and Yusuf spends his time wandering the house and the surrounding area, cataloguing what is familiar and what is not. There is so much that is not.

Nicolò does not try to get him to speak at dinner. The silence between them feels deafening, but Yusuf does not know how to fill it. He would have known before, would have known exactly what to say to get Nicolò to smile and ease the tension in his shoulders. He doesn’t, anymore.

He’d almost drowned, once, when he was very young, accompanying his father across the sea for-

…

-the very first time. It had been an accident - he had been at the harbour and slipped, falling into the sea-

…

-before anyone could catch him. He had never forgotten the feeling of the water closing over his head-

…

-the terror as he tried to swim back to the surface, or when he had finally broken the surface and realised-

…

-just how far the water had taken him from the shore, and then how he’d tried desperately to swim-

…

-back. He’d survived, that day, and always respected the sea after that, remembering how it had almost killed him. 

… 

He’d survived, but centuries later the sea would take him anyway.

Yusuf screams himself awake, opening his eyes to complete darkness and lashing out as if he’ll find himself back in the coffin. He can’t breathe. He’s drowning again, he must be, any moment now he’ll lose consciousness and wake up only to drown all over again-

The room is flooded with light suddenly, and it hurts his eyes after the darkness, but startles him enough to make him fall silent. Nicolò is standing in the doorway, his hand on the light switch.

“Yusuf,” he says softly, crossing the room to sit on the edge of the bed. “Breathe, habibi. You’re safe, okay? You are free.”

Yusuf shakes his head. “This isn’t real,” he whispers. “You’re not real.” It wouldn’t be the first time he’d dreamed of escape, after all. 

“Look at me,” Nicolò says. “Listen to me. This is real. You are safe, Yusuf. I am here.” He reaches out as if to touch him but stops halfway, his hand hovering in mid air, waiting for Yusuf to pull away or show any sign of discomfort. When he doesn’t, Nicolò takes both of his hands, running his thumbs soothingly over Yusuf’s knuckles, back and forth. Yusuf closes his eyes and tries to breathe. The feeling of air entering his lungs is still so unfamiliar.

“How long was I down there?” he asks. 

Nicolò goes still. “Yusuf-”

Yusuf opens his eyes. “How long?” he repeats. Part of him is desperate for a number, to know exactly how much of his life he’d lost. The other part is terrified of the answer.

Nicolò exhales slowly, letting Yusuf’s hands fall. He doesn’t meet Yusuf’s eyes when he says it. “Four hundred and eighty two years. Seven months. Sixteen days.”

Almost five hundred years. The number feels at once too large and too small. Surely, it cannot have been that long. Surely, it must have been longer. 

He realises, then, that he has spent over half of his life under the sea. He is almost a thousand years old, and that number feels impossibly large - he hadn’t even been five hundred yet when he’d gone under. And now here he is, almost a thousand, frozen in time for half a millenia while the world moved on around him.

Yusuf is only half aware of Nicolò, still looking at him warily. He doesn’t realise he’s shaking until Nicolò touches his shoulder lightly, and he flinches at the sudden unexpected contact. Nicolò draws his hand back. “Yusuf,” he says softly. And perhaps it’s the way he says it, so painfully gentle, or perhaps it’s the fact that he may not know where he stands with Nicolò anymore but he’s missed him, so much. Either way, it’s the thing that finally breaks him.

He collapses forward with a wounded sob and Nicolò is there to catch him, pulls him close and holds him tight as Yusuf falls apart. 

“I have you,” Nicolò whispers. “You are safe. I promise.”

Yusuf presses his face into Nicolò’s shoulder and tries to steady himself. Can’t seem to get enough air into his lungs. He tastes saltwater and shudders, clinging tightly to Nicolò, who runs his hand soothingly up and down Yusuf’s back, murmuring soft reassurances. 

Yusuf cries until his tears run dry, until he feels hollowed out, empty. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” Nicolò asks quietly when he stops.
Yusuf shakes his head. He doesn’t trust himself to speak.

“Okay.”

Nicolò begins to move, and Yusuf tightens his grip on his shirt. “Wait- stay with me. Please,” he begs, his voice trembling. “I don’t- don’t want to be alone.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Nicolò reassures him, and Yusuf relaxes a little. Nicolò rearranges them so that they’re lying side by side, Nicolò’s arm around Yusuf and Yusuf’s head resting on Nicolò’s chest. This way, Yusuf can hear Nicolò’s heartbeat, feel the rise and fall of his chest as he breathes. Nicolò runs his fingers gently over Yusuf’s curls. Yusuf closes his eyes.

Nicolò begins to sing softly, a tune that Yusuf does not recognise at first. But then it hits him - it’s the lullaby he’d taught Nicolò centuries ago, that his mother had sung to him when he was a child. Nicolò remembered it, even after all these years. 

“Thank you,” he whispers when Nicolò finishes. He’s not really sure why, just feels like he has to say something .

Nicolò seems to understand, anyway. “Try to sleep, Yusuf,” he tells him, before beginning to hum again. This tune Yusuf doesn’t know, but it’s soothing all the same.

Yusuf is almost asleep, drifting in the grey space halfway between sleeping and waking when he hears it: Nicolò’s breathing hitches, as if - as if he’s crying, but trying to keep it quiet. Nicolò thinks he’s asleep, Yusuf realises, and is trying not to wake him.

“I missed you,” Nicolò whispers shakily into the silence, almost too quietly for Yusuf to hear. Yusuf doesn’t dare move, not now. Nicolò strokes over his hair again, his touch featherlight and almost reverent, like he can’t quite believe Yusuf is really there. “I missed you so, so much, Yusuf.” 

He doesn’t say anything more, just holds onto Yusuf, trembling slightly. But eventually, his breathing evens out as he falls asleep, and Yusuf follows not long after.

They don’t talk about it the next morning. Yusuf wakes to find Nicolò already in the kitchen, his back to Yusuf, stirring something on the stove. “Good morning,” he says over his shoulder, offering Yusuf a small smile.

After that, they fall into a kind of routine - Nicolò leaves early in the morning to go to the market, and then he makes breakfast for the two of them. A few days after they arrive, Nicolò buys him a few books, in multiple different languages, and so Yusuf’s mornings are usually spent reading. It’s slow, at first, given how the languages have changed, but he picks them up again fairly quickly. 

Then they eat lunch, and afterward Nicolò bakes, or works in the garden, while Yusuf wanders the borders of their property. He spends a lot of time in the tree, or by the cliffs overlooking the sea.

Nicolò had also bought him a sketchbook and pencils. Yusuf had thanked him, but he hasn’t been able to touch them yet. They sit on the table in the living room, waiting for him. He can’t work up the courage to pick up the pencil, terrified that he won’t be able to draw anymore, that he will have lost that, too. So they stay on the table, and if Nicolò notices, he doesn’t ask. 

Yusuf gets as far as opening the sketchbook and picking up the pencil, once, and stares at the blank page for a moment, and can’t think of anything he wants to draw. He knows, like a half-remembered dream, that art is something he loves, or used to love. Except his sketchbook is open in his lap and he doesn’t know what he wants to draw.

He closes it. Sets it back on the table. 

He doesn’t pick it back up after that.

Nicolò never tries to coax him into speaking, on the days when he can’t seem to form words. Just talks to him, leaving space for Yusuf to respond if he wants to. But even on his better days, there are gaps in the conversation Yusuf doesn’t know how to fill. Times when Nicolò makes a reference that Yusuf doesn’t understand, or mentions something Yusuf wasn’t there for, or when Yusuf should know what to say and doesn’t. They used to be able to speak without words, before, and now neither of them seem to know how to read the other.

Nicolò is also careful not to touch him, always waiting for Yusuf to initiate any contact instead. They still sleep in the same bed at night, because Yusuf can’t sleep without dreaming of the water, but never more than that. 

And sometimes Yusuf catches Nicolò looking at him with such raw, open pain in his eyes that Yusuf has to look away quickly. And sometimes at night he overhears Nicolò on the phone to Andromache - he calls her Andy - talking about him. I don’t know what to do, Andy. He’s not - I know. I’m trying. And it hurts, because sometimes he’s not entirely sure Nicolò isn’t still mourning him, mourning the person he used to be. He knows he’s not the same, doesn’t even recognise himself some days. But he wishes that Nicolò wouldn’t look at him that way, when he’s not sure he knows how to be the Yusuf that Nicolò misses.

Still, there are moments every now and then that make Yusuf think that maybe, he could be okay again someday. When Nicolò laughs at a joke Yusuf makes (even if it was terrible), or the silence between them doesn’t feel so suffocating, or Yusuf wakes up in the morning and doesn’t feel quite so heavy.

“Yusuf,” Nicolò says, startling Yusuf out of his thoughts, “could you help me stir this?”

Yusuf nods, crossing the room to stand beside Nicolò at the stovetop, and Nicolò smiles at him before turning to the counter. The kitchen glows orange with the last rays of sunlight, and the silence is comfortable, broken only by the tapping of Nicolò’s knife against the cutting board and the occasional sound of Yusuf’s spoon hitting the side of the saucepan. It is a kind of fragile peace.

“Tell me about them?” Yusuf asks. “The new ones, I mean.”

“Nile is kind,” Nicolò begins, “and strong. She reminded me of you, actually, when I first met her. She fought Andy.”

Yusuf smiles at the thought. When Nicolò doesn’t continue, he turns to look at him, to find Nicolò staring at him openly, frozen in place like he’s seen a ghost. “What is it?” Yusuf asks.

“Nothing, I just-” Nicolò takes a breath, as if to steady himself. “I haven’t seen you smile in a long time.”

“Oh,” is all Yusuf says. For a moment, neither of them speak. Not for the first time, Yusuf struggles to reconcile his feelings toward the man in front of him - part of him still hates Nicolò for leaving him to suffer down there for so long. Part of him is relieved Nicolò escaped the same fate. Another part of him misses him, even though he’s right in front of Yusuf (misses the Nicolò he used to know, who is the same as the Nicolò in front of him and yet not the same). Yet another part still loves Nicolò more than anything else.

Nicolò is the one who looks away first, clearing his throat and turning back to the cutting board. 

“Nile told me once that she wished to study art history, before,” Nicolò continues, as if nothing had happened. Perhaps that’s for the best. “She gave Andy a full lecture on keeping what she called priceless artwork in a cave - you remember the one in France? Andy’s treasure trove?” Yusuf nods. “She’s shown me a few of her drawings, too. They’re beautiful. I think you would like her.”

“What about the other? Sebastien?” The one who Nicolò had looked so betrayed by when Yusuf asked where he was. The one Nicolò had allowed to paint over the murals on the walls.

Nicolò sighs. “Sebastien is… complicated. His immortality had a difficult beginning. He wanted to return to his family, and we did not stop him. The entire story is not mine to tell, but… it changed him, I think.”

“What did he do?” Why did he deserve you sending him away?

“He handed us to a man with too much money and not enough morals, in the hope that he would be able to find a way to end our immortality. Quynh and I were held and tortured before they brought Andromache and Sebastien in too. If it were not for Nile, we would still be in that place, I think.” Nicolò tells the story with careful detachment, as if trying to distance himself from the pain of Sebastien’s betrayal. “We decided on one hundred years alone.”

“Why did you send him away?” Yusuf cannot help asking. He understands the pain of betrayal, the fear of being trapped. He also understands the pain of being alone.

“Because he betrayed us. He was family. But we cannot trust him for a while, not after that, and I-” Nicolò pauses. “I cannot forgive him yet.”

“One hundred years is a long time.” Even for beings who have lived as long as they have.

Nicolò flinches. “I know, but it is what we agreed. He hurt us, Yusuf, because he could not see past his own pain enough to realise that we have all suffered. There was no good solution.”

Yusuf doesn’t ask again. They finish cooking in silence, and conversation is stilted over dinner.

“You understand it is not the same,” Nicolò tells him later, when they’re in bed, and Yusuf cannot seem to fall asleep. “We did not - it is not the same. We have given him an end date. If Nile had not come for us, we could have been trapped without one.” You did not have one , is what Nicolò does not say, but Yusuf hears it all the same.

“I understand,” Yusuf says, because he does , even if he wishes there had been a better solution that did not involve exile. He knows Sebastien’s pain, after all, has spent two hundred years dreaming of it. Like so many other things, he does not know how to feel about this.

It is early evening when Yusuf brings the tentative peace they’ve found crashing down around them.

They’ve already finished dinner, and the dishes have been washed, and the two of them are sitting on the couch in the living room. Yusuf is reading - today’s book is in French - and Nicolò is mending one of the cushion covers. The sun is beginning to creep towards the horizon, and dark clouds are gathering in the sky. There will be a storm tonight.

Yusuf isn’t sure what makes him finally ask the question that’s been plaguing him ever since Nicolò found him in that alleyway. Whatever it is, he sets aside his book, looks over at Nicolò, and asks, “Why did you stop looking for me?”

Nicolò stiffens. Sets aside the bundle of fabric slowly but steadily, as if forcing himself through every movement, and turns to look at Yusuf. He opens his mouth as if to answer and closes it again. 

“We did, Yusuf. We searched for seventy-three years,” Nicolò says eventually. “By that point, anyone on the ship who could have told us where you were was dead, either from old age or- or because I killed them. But we kept looking. And then, there was a storm.” Nicolò exhales shakily. “Quynh went overboard before we could do anything. It took us days to find her again, but we almost lost her too. After that, we were not making any progress, and Andromache was hesitant to risk any more of us. We had no way of knowing if you were even still alive. It seemed impossible that you could be.”

“I was still alive,” Yusuf says, and Nicolò flinches as if he’s been struck. “I was still down there.”

“I didn’t know,” Nicolò whispers. “We had no way of knowing - if we had, I would have-”

“I was there for five hundred years , Nicolò,” Yusuf snaps, and maybe it’s unfair to Nicolò, but Nicolò gave up on him. Left him to drown for all that time. “You promised you wouldn’t let them separate us. You promised you’d find me, and you left me.” There are tears in his eyes, he realises. 

“We tried , Yusuf,” Nicolò says. “I tried and I couldn’t find you. I’m sorry. Until Booker dreamed of you, I didn’t even know you were alive. And when I did, I went back to searching for a few years, but-”

“But you stopped.” Yusuf’s voice shakes. “Even though you knew I was alive.”

“We couldn’t dive deep enough. We didn’t even know where you’d been cast off. I never wanted to leave you-”

“You did, though.” 

And that’s the worst part, isn’t it? They’d known each other, loved each other, for four hundred years, and yet it hadn’t been enough. Nicolò had still abandoned him in the end. 

Nicolò doesn’t say anything. Just looks at him, with that open grief in his eyes, as if he’s mourning him still, as if Yusuf isn’t right there in front of him. And Yusuf can’t stand it anymore.

He stands up, and backs away when Nicolò tries to reach for him. Backs out of the room entirely, then turns and runs for the door, ignores Nicolò calling for him, wrenches the door open and runs outside. 

It’s not raining yet, but the clouds are heavy with it as he runs. He’s not sure where he’s going, really, just that he needs to get out of the house, away from Nicolò, for a while. 

He ends up on the edge of one of the cliffs overlooking the sea as the first few drops of rain begin to fall. And then, only then, does Yusuf let himself break down, pressing his hand to his mouth to stifle his sobs. Because now the truth that he’s been avoiding since they came here is out in the open - Nicolò left him behind. Nicolò, the other half of his soul, who’d been by his side for over four hundred years, left him to drown.

He finds himself wanting, more than anything, to go home , even though this house is the closest thing he has to a home. Even though Nicolò is here, and before that would have been all he needed, but whatever was between them once is broken beyond recognition and Yusuf does not know if it can be fixed. He wants to go home five hundred years ago, to a world he recognises, where Nicolò never left him behind. But he can’t, and so he is here in this home that does not feel like home, with a Nicolò that he does not recognise sometimes, who he hates and loves in equal measure.

He’s not sure how long he lingers there for. Enough time that the storm begins in earnest, lightning flashing in the sky, the wind howling around him, the raging sea clawing at the cliffs below him. It’s deafening as it whirls around him, and he thinks if he listens carefully enough, he can hear it calling his name.

(He wonders what would happen if he fell. If the sea took him again. Whether he’d wash up on the shore, or be dragged back to the bottom of the ocean. Whether Nicolò would look for him.)

(He wishes he was sure of the answer. He’s not.)

Another wave crashes against the cliff, high enough that the spray almost reaches him, and he can’t help wondering how much of these cliffs has been worn away by storms like this since the last time he was here, almost five hundred years ago. How much of him has been worn away by so long under the water.

(He’s not sure he recognises himself anymore.)

He thinks he hears the sea calling his name again, but then it happens again, and he realises it’s not the sea, it’s a voice - Nicolò. Nicolò, calling out for him.

Yusuf turns. Nicolò is walking slowly but steadily up towards him, even as the rain lashes at his face. He stops when Yusuf turns, though, holding his hand out.

“Yusuf, come back inside,” he calls. “Please. We can talk there, okay? Just come back.”

It’s only then that Yusuf realises how cold he is. The rain has soaked through his shirt, and he’s shivering like a leaf in the wind. He steps towards Nicolò, whose shoulders relax ever so slightly when Yusuf takes his hand.

They don’t speak on the way back to the house, but Nicolò holds onto him tightly. When they arrive, Nicolò closes the door behind them before, unexpectedly, reaching for Yusuf and pulling him into a tight hug, burying his face in Yusuf’s shoulder, seemingly uncaring of Yusuf’s wet clothes. 

“Forgive me,” Nicolò whispers. “I shouldn’t have driven you away like that. I wanted to give you space, but then the storm began- and I saw you on the cliff and I thought-”

“I wouldn’t,” Yusuf says. “I wouldn’t.”

Nicolò relaxes even more. After a moment, he steps back. “There are dry clothes in the bedroom,” he says. “And a towel. Go, change. Then I think we should talk.”

Yusuf nods in agreement. 

There is a fire burning in the hearth when Yusuf emerges, and Nicolò is in the kitchen, pouring water from the kettle into two mugs. Yusuf sits down on the couch close to the fire as Nicolò brings the mugs into the living room, passing one to Yusuf and setting the other on the end table. He passes Yusuf a blanket, too, before sitting on the other end of the couch, not meeting Yusuf’s eyes. 

“Ending the search for you,” Nicolò says quietly, looking up at him, “was the hardest decision I have ever had to make, but I did not suffer nearly as much for it as you did. I’m sorry, Yusuf. You have every right to be angry with me.”

Yusuf exhales slowly and nods.

“I think that I have been too focused on having you back to realise how I have been hurting you,” Nicolò continues. “Because I have been hurting you, haven’t I?”

Yusuf nods again. He doesn’t think Nicolò meant it, but he can’t deny it.

“And I think I have been avoiding this for far too long,” Nicolò says. “So. Talk to me, Yusuf.”

Yusuf takes a sip of his tea, more to steady himself than anything else, before he speaks. “I hear you talking to Andy, sometimes,” he begins. “About how I’m not getting any better. And sometimes you look at me like you’re still grieving, even though I’m right in front of you. I know it’s hurting you to be here, and I’m not the person I used to be, but I’m not sure I know how to be that person anymore. There are days where I barely recognise you, too, and I know it’s not your fault, I know it’s been a long time, but. It’s terrifying. It feels like there’s nothing left of the world I know, and I don’t know what to do with that. I’m not even sure this is real , some days. I’m not sure I’m not just going to wake up in the coffin again. I don’t know what to do, Nicolò. I don’t know how to come back from this.”

Nicolò is quiet for a while after Yusuf finishes. Then he reaches out, pausing to give Yusuf the chance to pull away if he wants to, before taking both of Yusuf’s hands in his own. “If I am in pain, it is because you are, and I do not know how to help you. So tell me how to.”

Yusuf looks down at their joined hands before letting go. “I need time,” he says, “and space. And I don’t know if I can go back to what we were to each other before. Maybe someday, but not yet.”

“All I want is for you to be happy,” Nicolò says. “Even if you cannot ever go back to that. But, for now, perhaps we should try to get to know each other as we are now, rather than thinking about the past. You are not the same person you were five hundred years ago, but neither am I.”

“I would like that, I think,” Yusuf says, and Nicolò smiles at him.

The next morning, Yusuf finds Nicolò in the kitchen as usual, and sits down at the table while Nicolò stirs something at the stove. Yusuf should say something, but he doesn’t really know what to say, not after last night.

“Good morning,” Nicolò says carefully, and Yusuf gets the sense that he doesn’t know what to do either. It’s comforting, in a way.

“Morning,” Yusuf replies, and after that they eat breakfast in near-silence. Nicolò clears away the dishes once they’re done, and then sits back down across from Yusuf, and still neither of them speaks, and the silence is like a physical weight between them. 

Until, finally , Nicolò speaks. “What are you thinking about?”

Yusuf blinks at him. This is one of their oldest rituals - they’d started doing it in the earliest years of their immortality, first as a way to practice each other’s languages, then it had turned into a sort of game to pass the time. 

“I’m not sure how to approach this,” Yusuf says truthfully, gesturing between them. “I don’t know where to start.”

“Neither am I,” Nicolò admits. “How about we start with what you want to do today?”

Yusuf considers for a moment. “Show me how the box thing in the living room works?” 

Nicolò smiles at him, and it’s the most relaxed Yusuf has seen him since- since he got out. “I think I can do that.”

The box thing turns out to be similar to Nicolò’s phone, which he’d shown Yusuf a few times, in that the glass parts of it glow, and pictures move across it like paintings in motion. Yusuf has no idea how it works, and Nicolò doesn’t seem exactly clear on the details either, but it’s mesmerising nonetheless. Nicolò changes the settings on the box - the television - to display some story about a detective attempting to catch a murderer, which Yusuf doesn’t quite understand in places, but enjoys anyway. When it ends, and words start to crawl across the screen, he looks over to find Nicolò watching him with a small smile. Yusuf smiles back.

Perhaps , he thinks, this will work after all .

One week later, Andromache, Quynh and Nile arrive on Malta.

The morning they’re due to arrive, Yusuf is awake far earlier than usual - he’d had a nightmare the night before and hadn’t been able to fall back asleep after. So here he is, curled up in one of the armchairs, reading and listening to Nicolò moving around in the kitchen. The television is chattering away in the background, currently set to something that looks like moving drawings that Nicolò tells him is made for children. Yusuf isn’t really paying attention, but he likes having the noise to fill the silence.

“I’m going to go down to the market,” Nicolò says from the kitchen doorway. “Is there anything you want?”

“A few new books, if you can find any?” Yusuf asks. Nicolò nods, and Yusuf smiles at him in thanks.

The first few days after the storm had been awkward, at first, but slowly they’ve managed to find something that feels like familiarity: the long silences between them begin to grow shorter and less uncomfortable, conversation seems to flow easier, and Yusuf begins to realise, acutely, how much he’s missed Nicolò.

“You could come with me, next time,” Nicolò offers. “If you wanted. It would involve going in the car again, but. It might be worth it to try.”

Yusuf hasn’t really thought about leaving the house before. Hasn’t really wanted to. The brief glimpse he’d gotten of the world right after those sailors had pulled him from the water had been overwhelming - too much sound, too many people, too much light after so long in the silent dark of the ocean. 

He thinks that maybe he could handle it if Nicolò was with him.

“Maybe,” he says, and Nicolò smiles, a small, hopeful thing. But whatever else either of them might have said is interrupted by a loud knock on the door.

Nicolò freezes. Yusuf glances at the window, but he can’t see whoever’s at the door. They knock again. 

“Wait here,” Nicolò says, disappearing into the hallway, and Yusuf glances around for a weapon, or something, suddenly unable to get enough air into his lungs - this is how it had happened before. They’d been at home, and it had been a normal day, and then there had been a knock on their door and less than a week later Yusuf had been cast into the ocean. 

The door opens. “Took you long enough,” Andromache says, and Yusuf relaxes.

“You’re a day early,” Nicolò says, but Yusuf can almost hear him smiling. He follows the sound into the hallway, where Andromache, Quynh and Nile are standing on the doorstep, and watches from the doorway as Nicolò embraces all three of them in turn.

Yusuf cannot help feeling like a stranger within his own family as he watches them. But then Andromache smiles at him just as warmly as she’d smiled at Nicolò, and crosses the hallway to stand just in front of him. “It’s good to see you,” she says. And then, “Can I hug you?”

Yusuf nods. And then Andromache is stepping forward and pulling him into her arms, and something settles into place inside him that he hadn’t even realised was missing until now as he wraps his arms around her waist and tucks his face into her neck. He’s missed her - Andromache, his older sister, constant and unshakeable as the earth. Even now, when nothing else feels quite right, there is a part of him that feels safer just having her here. 

“We’ve missed you,” she says when she pulls back, one of her hands cupping the back of his neck. Quynh touches his arm lightly as she walks past them into the house, Nile behind her. 

“I missed you too,” he says. 

Andromache smiles at him before stepping back fully and following Quynh and Nile out of the hallway.

Quynh is already in the kitchen, going through their cupboards. “Nicolò, please tell me you have something vaguely edible in this house. I’m hungry.”

“I would, if you had arrived when we were expecting you,” Nicolò tells her, but there’s no heat behind it. “I was just about to go to the market.”

“Andy and I will come with you, then,” Quynh says, glancing at Andromache. 

“It won’t take long,” Nicolò says. “We only need a few-” Quynh gives him a look that Yusuf can’t parse the meaning of, and Nicolò trails off, sighing. “Fine.” He looks over at Yusuf. “Will you be okay if I leave you?”

Yusuf nods.

Once the three of them have left, it’s just him and Nile in the house, and he has no idea what to say to her. He’s felt her die, but doesn’t even know her last name. He knows that she wanted to study art history, that she went back to save the others when they were held captive, that she hasn’t been immortal long, that Nicolò loves her already if the way he’d smiled when he talked about her is anything to go by.

Nile is the one to break the silence in the end. “Nicky told me you were an artist.” She gestures to the flowers on the wall. “Did you paint those?”

“A long time ago.” As she lowers her hand, he notices that her fingernails are, somehow, bright pink and sparkling, and cannot help asking about it. “What is that? On your hand?”

“This?” She holds up her hand to show him. In the light, it seems to shimmer. “It’s nail polish. Like paint, for your nails.” Yusuf nods - this, he has heard of. Andromache and Quynh used to paint their nails, when they had the time and supplies, and he and Nicolò had tried it a few times, but he has never seen a color this bright before. “Wait, here, I’ll show you.” She pulls a phone from the back pocket of her jeans and taps its screen a few times before turning it around to show him. Some of the designs she shows him are simple, some seem impossibly complex for such a small design.

“They’re beautiful,” he says.

She smiles. “I’ll see if I can get some to show you.”

Yusuf smiles back. He likes her already. And somehow, it is easier to talk to her than the others - he did not know her before, and she did not know him, and so there are no ghosts looming over the conversation. 

They get to talking about art for a little while, and then he makes the mistake of asking where Nile was born. This leads to Nile attempting to explain the existence of the United States of America, which only really confuses him further. He will have to ask the others about it when they return. Still, as they talk, Yusuf finds himself feeling lighter than he has in a very long time.

Nicolò, Andromache and Quynh return around half an hour later. They eat breakfast together, all five of them seated around the table in the kitchen. After they finish, Andromache glances at Quynh and Nicolò before leaning back in her chair and saying, “Yusuf. Take a walk with me?”

Yusuf looks between the three of them. Quynh’s expression is unreadable. Nicolò offers him a reassuring smile, but Yusuf can see the strain in it. There is something they are not telling him.

“Okay,” he says uncertainly. Andromache gets up, and he follows her out into the hallway.

They walk side-by-side in silence for a little while. The sea is calm today, the sky cloudless. 

“It’s beautiful here,” Andromache says. Looks over at him. “How are you?”

Yusuf thinks about lying to her, reassuring her that he’s better, but she’s known him long enough that he’s almost certain she would see right through it. “I don’t know,” Yusuf tells her honestly. “I think things are better, but. I don’t know. I don’t feel like myself anymore. I’m not even sure I know what that’s supposed to feel like.”

“It won’t last forever,” she says. “You won’t feel that way forever, I promise. It might take a while, but you’ll feel like yourself again someday.”

“But what if I never go back to the person I used to be?”

“You’ll still be family, Yusuf. No matter what happens. And we’ll still love you.”

Yusuf doesn’t trust himself to speak, so he nods instead. She smiles at him softly. 

They walk a little while longer, far enough that the house is out of sight, before Andromache speaks again. “Did Nicky tell you about the job we were on, before we came here?”

“He said it went well.”

“It did.” She stops walking and turns to face him. “There’s something I need to show you.” Her tone is more serious now, and Yusuf is almost worried. 

“Okay,” he says. 

Andromache tugs up the hem of her shirt with a finger to reveal a wound on her side, a few days old by the look of it, and yet still visible . The kind of wound that she should not have, unless-

The realisation is like ice in his chest. “You’re not healing,” he whispers.

She lets her shirt fall with a sad smile. “No.”

This cannot be right. This must be a nightmare, or something, and he will wake up any moment, back in his and Nicky’s room or even worse, back in the coffin, because this cannot be right. Andromache cannot be mortal.

He remembers, faintly, when Quynh and Andromache first told them they would not be eternal, how there had been one of them before who had fallen and did not get back up. Remembers the terror that came with the realisation that any death could be their last. But as the years stretched on, and their final death never came, he’d almost stopped believing that it ever would. And yet now Andromache is standing before him, and she is not healing. He is going to lose her.

He blinks back tears. His voice trembles when he speaks. “How long?”

“About six months.”

How long does that give them? A few decades, perhaps, if nothing goes wrong and she dies a natural death. He has lost centuries with her, and now he has only a few decades.

“We’ll still have time,” she says, as if reading his mind. She reaches out, putting her hands on his shoulders. “I promise. I’m not planning to die any time soon.”

“You can’t promise that,” he responds, because even she cannot see the future. Nor can she control what may happen - she could be hurt in battle, or a wound could get infected, or she could just get sick. Either way, someday she will be gone.

Andromache doesn’t say anything. Just pulls him into a hug, and Yusuf holds her as tightly as he can, all the while acutely aware of the still-healing wound on her side. He buries his face in her shoulder and folds this moment, this feeling, into his memory - he will not forget her, no matter how much longer he might live. He will not let himself forget her.

Andromache presses their foreheads together, cupping the back of his neck. “I love you, Yusuf. You know that, right?”

“I love you too,” Yusuf replies, his voice barely a whisper. 

Andromache pulls back fully and smiles. “Let’s go back. The others will be waiting.”

The rest of the day passes fairly uneventfully. Nicolò insists on checking Andromache’s wound to ensure it is healing well, and Yusuf’s shoulders sag with relief when Nicolò tells her that everything seems fine. He shows Nile around the house for a while, and Quynh teaches him a new card game, and Nicolò bakes chocolate-chip cookies for Nile. There’s something comforting about having all of them in the same place. Still, looming over everything is the revelation of Andromache’s mortality. It lurks like a shadow in the back of his mind, constantly whispering to him. Remember this, remember that, someday all you will have is memories . He cannot get rid of it. 

They eat dinner together around the table in the kitchen, and an awkward silence hangs in the air for all of one moment before Quynh says, “So, Yusuf. Has Nicolò told you about the thing with the goat?”

Nicolò drops his head into his hands. “I thought we agreed never to speak of that again.”

Quynh’s eyes sparkle with mischief. “You and Andromache agreed never to speak of that again. I made no such promise. Besides, I think Yusuf and Nile should know, don’t you?”

“They don’t want to hear about the thing with the goat,” Nicolò protests. 

“I want to hear about the thing with the goat,” Nile says. Yusuf nods, and Nicolò shoots him a betrayed look.

“Well, you see,” Quynh begins while Andromache laughs, “There was a goat that we owned for a brief time, just before Sebastien became immortal.”

“It was evil,” Nicolò says darkly.

“It did not like Nicolò very much,” Quynh continues, ignoring him. “And so, one day…”

By the end of the story, Yusuf is laughing so hard there are tears in his eyes, and even Nicolò is smiling despite his initial protests. It is enough, almost, for him to forget about the little voice in his head reminding him that he will not have this forever. 

Andromache, Quynh and Nile head to bed not long after dinner - they’d had to get up early for their flight, and none of them had really slept in over twelve hours. So then it is just Yusuf and Nicolò, Yusuf sitting at the kitchen table while Nicolò washes the dishes. And even though he’d been able to forget earlier, now the little voice is back, and he cannot stop thinking about how he cannot imagine a world without Andromache. How he will have to live in one someday. 

The plates clink as Nicolò dries them and sets them on the counter, and all Yusuf wants is for Nicolò to hold him, to tell him things will be okay, except he’d been the one to ask for space, and he doesn’t even really know how to ask Nicolò for this, and he’s still not really sure where they stand anymore but he needs something to feel familiar.

Nicolò turns to look at him as he dries his hands. Turns fully to face him when he sees the look on Yusuf’s face, setting the towel on the counter, his expression softening. “Oh, Yusuf,” he says gently. He opens his arms. “Come here.”

Yusuf goes, stumbling into Nicolò’s arms, and Nicolò folds him into a hug, guiding Yusuf’s head to rest on his shoulder, tracing small circles on Yusuf’s back with his other hand. “What is it?” Nicolò asks him softly. 

“I don’t want to lose her,” Yusuf says. “I don’t-”

“I know,” Nicolò whispers. “I know. It’s okay, Yusuf. It’s going to be okay.”

It’s not , Yusuf wants to say, because no matter what may happen, even if everything goes well, they will still lose Andromache someday. But he doesn’t say anything, just closes his eyes and tries not to cry.
He’s not sure how long they stand there. When Yusuf finally lets go, he doesn’t feel better , exactly, but. He feels a little more grounded, and that’s enough.

“Thank you,” he tells Nicolò, who just smiles.

“Of course.”

The next morning, true to her word, Nile goes out and returns around half an hour later with a bag full of little glass bottles of what looks like paint in every color of the rainbow. She arranges them all on the kitchen table in a neat row - ten bottles in total. She also has a bottle of clear liquid which she uses to clean the paint off of her nails. “It was starting to chip,” she explains when he asks her why. “I was going to repaint them anyway. I can do yours too, if you’d like?”

Yusuf agrees, so Nile directs him to sit across from her and place his hands flat on the table. 

“What color do you want?” she asks.

He studies the bottles for a moment, struggling to pick just one. “Uh. All of them?”

Nile laughs. She has a nice laugh. “Alright. All of them it is.” She unscrews the cap of one of the bottles - pink - and dips the little brush attached to the cap in the paint. Yusuf’s never seen a paint bottle like that before, but he supposes it makes sense with such a tiny brush. 

“My mom used to paint mine,” she says as she begins to paint. “And then she’d let me paint hers, even when I was little and the paint got everywhere.” Her expression stays neutral, but Yusuf can hear the ache of longing in her voice. 

“Tell me about them?” he offers. “Your family?”

“Well.” Nile studies her handiwork, then moves onto the next color (red). “My dad was a Marine. He was killed in action when I was eleven, so it was just me and Mom and Jordan after that. My mom’s a history teacher - she loves those antique shows, you know the ones?” Yusuf shakes his head. “They’re shows where people bring their old stuff in and someone tells them how old it is or how much it’s worth. Antiques Roadshow was our favourite. And Jordan’s my brother. Three years younger than me.” She trails off, a distant look in her eyes.

“You miss them,” he says. 

Nile nods, wiping at her eyes quickly before continuing to paint. “Yeah. It’s weird. I’ve been - you know” - she waves her brush in the air - “for almost half a year, and I keep wondering when it’s really going to sink in, that I can’t go back, or when I’m going to have some kind of breakdown. I miss them every day, but I keep going, because I don’t have much of a choice, you know?” Yusuf nods as Nile switches colors again. “There are times when I look in the mirror and don’t even recognise myself. I mean, I killed two people last week, and a year ago I’d never killed anyone before, but now it’s just part of what we do. It’s not easy , but…” She shrugs. “I’m not really sure about anything anymore.”

“I understand,” Yusuf says, because he does. Their situations aren’t exactly the same - Yusuf doesn’t even really remember his first family anymore - but he understands the uncertainty.

Nile gives him a quick smile, moving onto his right hand. “Your turn, then.”

Yusuf exhales slowly. Thinks for a moment. “It’s strange, I suppose.” Through the kitchen window, he can see Nicolò and Quynh sparring while Andromache looks on. “I used to think all I could be certain of was them - Andromache, Nicolò and Quynh, that is. They were all I had, the only people I could trust. We fought together for centuries , we could speak without words, and now…”

Nile doesn’t push when he stops, just continues to paint, giving him space to carry on. Outside, Andromache says something that makes Quynh laugh and Nicolò roll his eyes. Yusuf looks away.

“It is difficult,” he says, “returning after so long. Nothing is the same anymore. And I cannot help feeling like a stranger, around the three of them. They have carried on, and I have not.”

“Maybe you just need to give it time,” Nile suggests. 

“It’s not just that. They left me behind, Nile. I love them still, but. They knew I was alive, they knew you and Sebastien were dreaming of me and stopped looking anyway. I don’t know if I can forgive them for that, yet.”

Nile is silent for a little while as she switches to the last color. “For the record,” she says eventually, “Nicky used to ask Copley - the guy who helps us find jobs and stay hidden - to send him all the data from every attempt to map the seafloor around the English coast. Spent hours going through it all when we weren’t on jobs. Andy and Quynh would help him, sometimes. He told me once that he’d been to university too, learned everything about the ocean that he could. They might’ve stopped looking, but they didn’t forget about you.”

Yusuf wants to say something, but the words die in his throat. Nicolò hadn’t told him that. And what had he said when Yusuf asked him why they’d stopped looking for him?

I couldn’t find you. I’m sorry.

Yusuf doesn’t know what to do with this. He glances out the window again, watches as Nicolò lifts his sword to block Quynh’s attack. 

“Just something to think about,” Nile says. She returns the little brush to its bottle and examines her handiwork. “All done. It looks good on you.” 

She’s offering him an escape, and Yusuf takes it. He lifts his hands, flexing his fingers. She’s painted each nail a different color - pink, red, orange, yellow, green, teal, blue, indigo, purple, black. “Thank you,” he tells her.

“You’re welcome. Try not to smudge it, though. I worked hard on that.” She’s grinning at him, and he smiles back at her.

“May I paint yours?” he asks.

Nile nods. “Sure.” She lays her hands out on the table just as she’d instructed him to do. 

“What color?” 

She shrugs, smiling again. “Surprise me.”

He picks the dark purple, because he thinks it will suit her, and begins to paint. It’s difficult, at first, painting on such a small surface, but he gets the hang of it quickly, and Nile doesn’t seem to mind when he messes up. When he’s done, she wiggles her fingers and smiles at him.

“Next time, we’ll try something more complicated,” she says. 

Yusuf smiles at the thought that there will be a next time. “I would like that.”

In the afternoon, Yusuf wanders out to the garden, where Andromache and Quynh are sparring while Nicolò watches from the grass, his longsword beside him. His hair is tousled, a few stray strands falling over his eyes, and Yusuf wants to reach out and brush it back. He doesn’t, just sits down beside Nicolò.

“You’re not worried about her getting hurt?” he asks as Andromache blocks a particularly vicious swing from Quynh. 

Nicolò shrugs. “I would have been, a few months ago. But Andy is Andy, mortal or not, and she still fights as well as ever. Besides, Quynh would not hurt her. They’re being careful, even if it does not seem that way.”

It does not seem that way at all, from what Yusuf can see, but perhaps he just can’t see it. He imagines Andromache would not take kindly to being coddled, either. 

They watch in silence for a while, until Andromache disarms Quynh with a sharp twist of her axe, sending Quynh’s sword flying until it clatters to the grass. She holds the blade of her axe up to Quynh’s throat.

“Fine, fine, I concede,” Quynh says. 

Andromache grins in victory, then steps back. 

“I’m taking a break,” Quynh announces. She pushes her hair back from her face and picks up her sword before heading over to Nicolò and Yusuf. “Your turn, Nico.”

Nicolò stands, picking up his sword and walking over to Andromache, while Quynh drops into the spot he leaves open, drawing her knees up to her chest and resting her arms on them. 

“So,” she begins. “How have you been, little brother?”

Yusuf shrugs, watching as Andromache says something that makes Nicolò laugh before they both step back, raising their weapons. There’s no visible signal that passes between them before the fight begins, Andromache bringing her axe down to meet the blade of Nicolò’s sword. Nicolò just grins wolfishly at her, relaxed in a way Yusuf hasn’t seen him in - it must be centuries, now.

“I wanted to apologise,” Quynh says, drawing Yusuf’s attention away from the fight, from Nicolò. He meets her eyes. “To you. What happened to you cannot be undone, but I would do it in a heartbeat if I could. It has always been our worst fear, but you were the one who actually experienced it, and I am sorry we could not protect you from it.”

“You weren’t the ones who put me in the coffin,” Yusuf says, because there is a part of him that is still angry at them for leaving him, yes, but he does not blame them for his being there in the first place.

“Perhaps. But if it were not for Andromache and I, you and Nico never would have come to England in the first place, and they would not have captured you. If we had reached you sooner, broken you both out of there, they would not have cast you into the ocean. You are family, Yusuf, and we should have kept you safe. But we failed you, and for that, I am sorry.” 

“You didn’t fail,” he tells her. He thinks about the conversation he’d had with Nile, about how maybe they hadn’t completely abandoned him the way he thought they had. “It wasn’t your fault that it happened. I don’t - I don’t blame you for it.”

Quynh smiles softly at him, then shuffles closer, resting her head on his shoulder. Nicolò and Andromache’s blades clash again, and again, and again. Andromache’s grinning now, saying something in Italian that Yusuf doesn’t catch but makes Nicolò chuckle breathlessly as he parries yet another blow. 

They watch Andromache and Nicolò spar for a little while longer, blades clashing as the sun gets lower and lower and some of the afternoon heat begins to dissipate. It’s so achingly familiar, watching them. Andromache has always been the best of them, but Nicolò has spent centuries learning to counter her, and they’re almost perfectly matched. The two of them move in perfect sync, as if they’re dancing rather than fighting. Andromache’s eyes are alight, alive in the way Yusuf has only ever seen her in battle, and Nicolò is the same. Yusuf knows the feeling. He flexes his fingers, suddenly wanting nothing more than to join them. 

“Do you have a spare weapon?” he asks Quynh quietly. 

Quynh grins at him. “I can do better than that,” she says, before getting up and heading into the house. Moments later, she returns with a familiar sword, setting it down on the grass in front of him. 

Yusuf looks down at it - studies the engravings on the hilt he knows so well, reaches out to trace the familiar lines that he’d etched into the metal himself, then looks back up at Quynh. “Is this…”

“Nico kept it,” she says by way of explanation. “Cleaned it, sharpened it, changed the wrappings on the hilt when they wore away. The blade should still be sharp.”

He stands up, the scimitar in his hands, and draws it. It slides cleanly from its sheath, the blade glinting in the afternoon sunlight. He hadn’t realised how much he missed the familiar weight in his hand. 

Quynh is already standing, her own blade in hand, when he looks back at her. “I’m not going to make this easy for you,” she says, already half-smiling.

Yusuf smiles back. “I wouldn’t expect you to.”

And just like that, they begin: even after almost five hundred years, Yusuf still drops into guard position without really thinking about it. He’s not fast enough to block Quynh’s first attack - she taps his stomach lightly with the flat of her blade before stepping back and beginning again - but he narrowly manages to parry the second and third. By the fourth, instinct kicks in. They trade blow after blow after blow, neither of them quite managing to slip past the other’s guard. Quynh is grinning fully now, and Yusuf is too, even as Quynh comes dangerously close to nicking his arm. 

Sparring has always quieted his thoughts in a way very few other things can. He was prone to overthinking before the water, before his first death even, but now he’s not thinking about the past, or about the water, or worrying about the future: he’s focused solely on the here and now, on the way their blades clash as Quynh parries his attack. 

(He’d fallen in love with Nicolò for the same reason - Nicolò steadied him like nothing else ever seemed to. If Yusuf’s being completely honest with himself, he still does.)

Eventually, Quynh manages to trip him up, and he loses his grip on his scimitar. Quynh doesn’t give him any chance to recover, pointing her blade at his throat immediately.

“That was cheating,” he accuses, but he’s smiling too widely to feign annoyance. 

Quynh shrugs. “It worked, didn’t it?”

Yusuf looks pleadingly over at Andromache and Nicolò, who have stopped fighting each other to watch the two of them.

“Quynh’s right,” Andromache says, looking fondly at them both. “No such thing as cheating.”

Nicolò nods in agreement. He’s smiling, warm and open and unburdened by guilt or grief. Yusuf doesn’t know how long it’s been since he saw Nicolò smile like that. 

“Again?” Quynh asks, pulling Yusuf out of his thoughts. She offers him her hand, and he takes it. 

They spar a few more times before Yusuf, exhausted but feeling more like himself than he has in a long time, sets down his scimitar and wanders back into the house for some water. The sketchbook Nicolò had bought him is lying on the kitchen table, still unopened, and Yusuf picks it up on impulse, flipping through the blank pages. Before he can second-guess himself, he picks up the pencil, too, and heads back outside.

Quynh and Nicolò are sparring now while Andromache watches. Yusuf settles himself on the grass, flips open the sketchbook, and begins to draw. 

He’s out of practice. His first few attempts are clumsy, the poses too stiff and the proportions all wrong, but he keeps trying, fixing what he can and starting again over and over. By the sixth drawing, he’s managed to sketch something he’s mostly okay with, even if he knows it’s not his best work. He hadn’t expected it to be, but the act itself is cathartic in a way. He still has this - the ocean has not taken it from him, the same way it has not taken his knowledge of how to fight. Even if it sometimes feels like the ocean has worn away everything he recognises about himself.

It’s a comforting thought.

“Tell me about the search,” Yusuf asks later, after Nile and Andy and Quynh have gone to bed and it’s just the two of them in the living room seated on opposite ends of the couch, because he still can’t stop thinking about what Nile had told him. He’d thought that Nicolò had abandoned him completely, when he’d seen him through Sebastien’s eyes, but he’s not so sure anymore. 

Yusuf watches as Nicolò goes still, letting out a slow, measured breath. “What do you want to know?” he asks, his voice as calm as if Yusuf is just asking about the weather. 

“All of it.”

Nicolò exhales again, closing his eyes for a moment, before he begins. “I didn’t know what they’d done to you, at first,” he says. “They closed the doors before I could see where they’d taken you. So all I knew was that they’d taken you away from me, and none of them would tell me where, or what they’d done to you, no matter how much I pleaded or threatened them. It took three days before Andy and Quynh found me and helped me escape. We hunted down anyone we could find who could tell us where they’d taken you. We did, after a week of searching, but by then it was too late to reach you.” Nicolò trails off for a moment, lost in thought, before shaking his head a little and continuing. “After that, we looked for anyone on the ship that had taken you who could tell us where you’d been cast off. There was one - a cabin boy, I think - who was willing to help, and he sailed with us for a while, but no matter how far down we dived, we couldn’t find you. Eventually, he died of old age. We kept going for a while longer, but then Quynh went overboard, and we decided we had to stop. We didn’t know if you were still alive, then. It didn’t seem possible that you could be. But then we found Sebastien, and he was dreaming of you. 

“I went back to searching for a few decades after that. Sebastien joined me in the 1860s, a few years after his son died. Those were… not good years, for either of us. We stopped because we could not keep going on that way, and there were people who needed our help.” 

Nicolò stops then, as if expecting Yusuf to say something, but Yusuf doesn’t. 

“I didn’t continue after that, because Andy and Quynh and Booker needed me. But I tried my best to keep up with technological advancements, scientific discoveries, anything that I thought could lead me to you. I went to university a few times, too.”

“You never told me that,” Yusuf says.

Nicolò shrugs. “It did not seem to matter. I still couldn’t find you.”

“It matters,” Yusuf tells him. “I thought- I thought you’d forgotten about me, or that you’d abandoned me entirely.”

“ Never , Yusuf,” Nicolò says firmly. “I could never.”

The revelation is staggering. He’d spent so long thinking they’d left him behind to drown, that in the end they didn’t love him enough to keep looking. But they’d never really stopped looking for him, had they?

He’d still had to fight his way out of the coffin himself. But just knowing they didn’t forget him, that they tried , is a relief. 

“Why do you ask?” Nicolò asks hesitantly.

“Something Nile said, earlier.”

Something to think about, she had said.

Yes, something to think about indeed.

Yusuf wakes hours before dawn, from a half-remembered dream of shaking hands trying to unlock a door, the sound of breaking glass, a muttered curse in French. The other immortal, then. It’s the first time Yusuf has dreamed of him in a while.

He’s too awake to try and fall back asleep, so instead he gets out of bed (carefully, so as not to wake Nicolò) and leaves the bedroom.

There’s a light on in the kitchen, and Nile is leaning against the counter, watching the kettle on the stove. She looks up when he enters. “Hey,” she says. “Did I wake you?”

Yusuf shakes his head.

“Nightmares?” she asks. 

He shakes his head again. “I was dreaming of the other one. Sebastien.”

Nile furrows her brow for a moment before realising. “Booker? How is he?”

“Lonely,” Yusuf answers honestly. Nile nods, as if that’s the answer she’d expected, but doesn’t say anything. Yusuf clears his throat. “How about you? Nightmares?”

“Yeah.” Nile looks exhausted, and not just physically - there’s a shadow in her eyes, an invisible weight on her shoulders. He remembers the early years of his immortality, the terror and the uncertainty, and aches for her. She’s still so new .

“Do you want to talk about it?” he offers. 

Nile shrugs. “It’s nothing new. I think I’d rather just not think about it right now.”

“Okay.” The kettle finishes boiling, and Yusuf goes to get two mugs while Nile looks for the teabags. She smiles gratefully at him when he slides one of them across to her, and passes him a teabag.

“When I had nightmares as a kid and couldn’t get back to sleep, my dad used to watch the Muppet movies with me,” Nile says as she fills their mugs with water. 

“Muppet?” Yusuf asks, confused. 

Nile sets the kettle down and looks at him, a smile slowly spreading across her face. “Oh, you’re gonna love this.”

They settle side by side on the couch, mugs of tea in hand. Nile fiddles with the television until she finds what she wants, then presses play.

Yusuf’s a little confused at first as to how the puppets work, but eventually he forgets to wonder about it at all. It only takes five minutes before he’s completely absorbed in the movie. He notices Nile glancing at him every now and then in his peripheral vision, smiling at him.

When it’s over, Nile turns to look at him. “So. Did you like it?”

“It was wonderful,” Yusuf says truthfully.  

Nile grins. “Good, because there’s more of them.”

Over the course of the next few hours, they work their way through The Great Muppet Caper and Muppets Take Manhattan , and then Nile makes an off-hand reference to another movie Yusuf’s never heard of, and when he tells her so she decides that they have to watch that too, so they watch The Princess Bride as well. By the time they’re done, the sky outside is beginning to lighten.

“Thank you for this, Nile,” he tells her. 

She smiles at him. “Anytime. We’re watching Star Wars next time, though.”

Andy, Quynh and Nile had planned to stay for a week, but Quynh and Nicolò manage to persuade Andy to stay for two to let her wound heal. After that, though, she begins to get restless, and Yusuf knows that they’ll leave soon.

Whether Nicolò plans to go with them, or whether they expect Yusuf to as well, hasn’t been brought up yet. He’s not sure he’s ready to go back to fighting yet - he’s barely even left this house. And he doesn’t want Nicolò to leave, either, doesn’t want to be by himself. 

It’s on the last night of Andy, Quynh and Nile’s planned stay when Andy brings it up. They’ve finished dinner, the plates cleared away, but they’re all still sitting around the table. Andy is drumming her fingers on its wooden surface, a habit she’s had in all the time Yusuf’s known her, and that’s how he knows what’s coming before she speaks.

“We need to talk about what we do next,” she says. “Copley’s found another job for us. It’s nearby - the Mediterranean still - but it will involve being on the water, helping people to cross. There shouldn’t be any combat, so the three of us should be able to handle it by ourselves.” She looks at Yusuf. “It’s up to you whether you want to join us or not. You don’t have to do anything until you’re ready to.”

Yusuf shakes his head - he hadn’t been sure about the idea of going with them in the first place, and he’s definitely not ready to face the water yet. 

Andy takes it in stride, as if she’d been expecting that response. She probably had. “Okay. Nicky?”

“I will stay, if Yusuf still wants me here,” Nicolò says, looking at Yusuf as he does. Yusuf nods. 

“That’s settled, then,” Andy says. “We’ll head out in two days’ time.”

Sure enough, two days later they’re preparing to leave, and Yusuf can’t shake a sense of dread as he sits at the kitchen table watching them. He knows they’ll be fine, but Andy’s mortal now, and anything could happen, especially if they’re going to be on the water. He’d been in enough storms, even before the coffin, to know that you could lose someone in the blink of an eye.

Nicolò touches his shoulder gently, startling Yusuf out of his thoughts. “They will be alright, Yusuf,” he says, as if he’d read Yusuf’s mind. 

Yusuf closes his eyes and lets his head drop against Nicolò’s arm. “I know, I just…”

“I know,” Nicolò says. He doesn’t move away, his thumb moving back and forth soothingly. “Nile will keep them both in check.”

Yusuf doesn’t doubt that. He smiles, and the tension in his chest eases a little.

Eventually, it’s time for them to go. It’s late afternoon, and the air is heavy with sunlight. What little they’re taking with them has already been loaded into the car. All that’s left is to say goodbye.

Nile hugs him first. “When we get back, we’re having another movie night, okay? No nightmares required. I’ll get popcorn and everything. It’ll be fun.”

Yusuf smiles. “Of course.”

He hugs Quynh and Andy in turn, and if he holds onto Andy for just a little longer then either nobody notices, or nobody comments on it. “Be careful,” he whispers as he pulls away from her. 

Andy smiles at him. “Always. Look after yourself, okay?”

Yusuf nods. Andy steps back, and gets into the car. Nile, in the backseat, waves.

Yusuf watches as they drive away, keeps watching even after the car has disappeared from sight. He doesn’t think to move until Nicolò comes to stand beside him and says, “I think we should go back inside.”

When they do, the house feels too empty. The others had only been there for two weeks, but Yusuf had grown so used to having them around that it feels strange to be without them now. He still thinks that his staying behind was the right decision, but he misses them already. 

Yusuf watches, perched atop a rock by the lake’s edge, as Nicolò resurfaces, tossing his head back and sending a spray of glittering droplets flying into the air. There shouldn’t be anyone nearby, but Yusuf is keeping watch anyway. He’s harbored a respectful wariness of water ever since he was young, since he’d almost drowned. Nicolò has no such reservations - he’d wasted no time in tossing aside his sword and armor and diving in when they’d arrived. Now, he treads water and looks up at Yusuf with a grin. “Are you coming in?”

Yusuf shakes his head, unable to help smiling back at him. “I’ll stay here.”

“Why? Don’t tell me you can’t swim, habibi,” Nicolò teases. 

“I can swim just fine, thank you,” Yusuf informs him, half-insulted. “Someone should keep watch, just in case.”

“Yusuf,” Nicolò says. “We’re miles away from anyone else. Besides, we cannot die.”

“I know that.”

“Come on, then.”

Yusuf relents, unable to do anything else when Nicolò is looking at him like that. “Fine. But if we are attacked by bandits again, it’s your fault.”

“If you say so.”

Moments later, Yusuf takes a tentative step into the water, then another. Soon, he’s swimming further out to where Nicolò is waiting for him.

“Was that so terrible?” Nicolò asks. 

Yusuf ignores the question. Instead, he says, “I almost drowned, once. When I was younger.”

Nicolò tilts his head to one side. “You never told me that. Is that why you’re so nervous around water?”

“I’m not nervous,” Yusuf says. “I just don’t particularly trust it. We cannot die, but what if we drowned and couldn’t swim back to the surface? We would just drown, over and over again.”

“The lake’s not nearly deep enough,” Nicolò points out. 

“That’s not the point. I meant in general. It could happen.”

“It won’t,” Nicolò says in the same tone he uses when he talks about fate bringing the two of them together - unfailingly certain, as if he simply cannot fathom anything else. “I won’t let it.”

It’s not a promise he can keep, but it’s reassuring to hear him say it anyway. Yusuf sighs and nods. Nicolò smiles before bringing a hand up between them, pushing a stray curl away from Yusuf’s face - his hair’s getting long again. It’s impractical for battle, but Nicolò loves it, so Yusuf has been reluctant to cut it short again.

Impatient, Yusuf kisses him.

Nicolò holds him steady, one arm around his back and the other cupping his jaw, as Yusuf pulls him impossibly closer. It’s been a few years now, and yet this feels like a revelation every time, something Yusuf never thought he could have until Nicolò. Yusuf’s not thinking about the water or the possibility of drowning anymore. All that matters is this, Nico’s hand moving to the back of his neck, tilting his head to get a better angle. 

It’s been a few years, but there are so many before them, and sometimes the prospect of so much time is dizzying. He thinks he could face it, though, if Nico is with him. 

Nicolò pulls back but doesn’t go far, just rests their foreheads together and smiles. “I love you.”

Yusuf smiles back and kisses him again.

They stay like that for a while, until finally Nicolò pulls away. “We should make camp,” he says. “Before it gets dark.”

Yusuf lets out an exaggerated sigh. “If you insist.”

Nicolò rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling fondly. He untangles himself from Yusuf and swims for the shore. Yusuf watches for a while before following him.

Or, he tries, but is stopped by something - cold metal clamped around his right ankle. A shackle. He looks down, but can’t see anything through the water, which is suddenly much darker than it had been before. When he looks back at the shore, calling out for Nicolò, Nicolò is nowhere to be seen. 

He kicks out frantically, trying to shake the iron off, but it doesn’t work. He calls for Nicolò again, but there is no answer. The water has turned ice-cold.

There’s a sharp tug on the chain connected to the shackle. Then another. Then it’s pulling him under, and he strains against it but it won’t stop, and he calls out to Nicolò one more time before his head slips under the water and-

Yusuf wakes with a jolt, his heart racing. You’re not underwater, he tells himself as he tries to steady his breathing. You’re in Malta. You’re safe. Beside him, Nicolò is still asleep, curled up on his side with his back to Yusuf. Yusuf closes his eyes and listens to Nicolò breathe.

It’s been two weeks since Andy, Quynh and Nile left, and he’s been having more and more dreams like this - half-memory, half-nightmare. But no matter how they begin, they always end with him underwater, or drowning in the worst ones. Still, he’s stopped screaming himself awake, which is a small victory but he considers it a victory nonetheless.

He rolls onto his side and curls closer to Nicolò, partially for warmth, partially to reassure himself that this is not just a dream, that Nicolò is really here, won’t disappear like he had in Yusuf’s nightmare. You’re safe , he thinks to himself again. He closes his eyes, pressing himself even closer to Nicolò’s back, close enough to feel the gentle rise and fall of it as he breathes, and tries to fall back asleep.

He’s almost there when Nicolò twitches in his sleep. Mumbles something that Yusuf can’t quite make out. When Yusuf sits up properly and looks down at him, his brow is furrowed in distress. He’s dreaming.

“Nicolò,” Yusuf whispers, shaking his shoulder. Nicolò curls in on himself, mumbling again. “Nicolò. Destati.” He shakes him more firmly.

Nicolò wakes with a sharp gasp, his eyes flying open, and rolls onto his back, breathing hard. His eyes search the room almost frantically before landing on Yusuf, and he relaxes almost imperceptibly.

“Did I wake you?” is the first thing he asks, because of course it is. Yusuf almost wants to laugh.

“No, I was already awake,” he says instead. “Nightmare?”

Nicolò nods, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” Yusuf asks.

Nicolò is quiet for a moment. Then, “You do not need to worry about me, Yusuf. I’m okay.”

It would be a lot more convincing if Nicolò’s voice wasn’t shaking, if his breathing wasn’t shallow. Still, Yusuf doesn’t push, just lies back down beside him instead. They’re only an inch apart.

“I used to dream,” Yusuf says. “In the coffin. When I wasn’t dreaming of the new ones.”

He feels Nicolò still beside him, sees him turn his head to look at him in his peripheral vision. He’s never told Nicolò what he dreams about before. Nicolò’s probably guessed, but they’ve never talked about it.

“I’d dream of you,” Yusuf continues. “And Andy, and Quynh. Sometimes it would be a memory. Sometimes I’d dream of you finding me, or of getting out. They always felt so real , real enough that I’d begin to believe them. And then… I’d wake up, and I’d be back in the coffin. And now I’m out, but I dream of being back there. No matter how the dream starts, it ends with me drowning, somehow.”

Nicolò exhales slowly. Looks back up at the ceiling. “It’s always the same dream,” he says quietly. “It has been for centuries. There is someone taking you away from me, and there is nothing I can do to stop it, no matter how hard I try.”

And, well. Yusuf doesn’t know what to say to that, so he does the only thing he can think of: he reaches across the inch of space between them and takes Nicolò’s hand, lacing their fingers together and squeezing gently. “I’m here,” he says.

Nicolò squeezes back. “Thank you,” he says quietly.

“Of course,” Yusuf replies.

They don’t speak after that, but Yusuf doesn’t let go of Nicolò’s hand, and Nicolò doesn’t pull away either. Somewhere in between one breath and the next, Yusuf falls asleep.

“I want to try painting again,” Yusuf says four days later. “The bedroom ceiling, I think.”

Nicolò looks up from the bread dough on the counter in front of him. “Are you sure?”

Yusuf had wanted to paint it before, but then they’d left for England, and he’d never gotten the chance. But now he does, and he wants to make something new . He nods.

“We could buy you supplies in Valletta,” Nicolò says. “But it will probably be best if you come with me to do it. If you think you’re ready for that.”

Yusuf’s not sure he is, but he’s willing to try. When he says so, Nicolò smiles.

The car ride is - it’s not easy , but it’s slightly more tolerable than it had been before. When Yusuf flinches at a particularly sudden stop, Nicolò reaches across to place a hand on his knee, and Yusuf smiles at him.

As they get closer to the city, Yusuf forgets his unease and watches out the window. Valletta is young, Nicolò tells him, built twenty years after he’d been cast into the ocean. It’s beautiful - the sunlight glitters on the surface of the water in the harbour, and even from a distance Yusuf can see cars and people moving in the streets. 

It’s loud , too, he discovers as soon as he steps out of the car. There’s the rumbling sound that he knows now is the sound of a passing car coming from everywhere at once, and people talking as they pass by. So many people.

Nicolò’s hand brushes the small of his back. “Okay?” he asks softly.

Yusuf nods. He’s already beginning to get used to it, but Nicolò takes his hand anyway, providing him with an anchor in the stream of people passing them by.

The first place Nicolò guides him to is a hardware store (or so Nicolò says) for paint and brushes. Yusuf spends at least half an hour just looking at all the different colors of paint, all pre-mixed. He remembers spending hours trying to perfect the ratios for the specific shade of blue he needed for a painting, and now there are more colors of paint than he’d ever had all laid out in neat rows before him. It feels almost miraculous. He spends another half an hour picking the colors and brushes he needs, before they move on.

The next is a store full of art supplies - pencils, pens, paints, more different types and colors of paper than Yusuf has ever seen in his life, even fabric and needles and thread. They end up buying a few of almost everything, just so Yusuf can try them out. 

They stop briefly in a few other places too: one where Nicolò buys a device made up of a flat spinning disc with a movable arm that swings out over it within a case, and a few flat black discs in colorful paper covers to go with it (“It’s a record player,” Nicolò tells him when Yusuf asks. “I’ll show you when we get home.”); a small stand that sells baklava, where they spend around ten minutes trying to decide which kind to get and end up buying three different kinds; another that sells pastizzi in little paper bags.

With pastries in hand and their purchases dropped off in the back of the car, they wander through the city for a while, with no particular destination in mind. Valletta’s old town, as Nicolò calls it, is beautiful, with its colorful window frames and balconies, its statues and its high walls bordering the ocean. Some of the buildings must be centuries old, except none of this was standing the last time Yusuf was here.

He was gone long enough that entire cities were founded while he was suffering. It shouldn’t be surprising - he knows how quickly the world can change, and he had been gone for almost half a millennium. Still, there’s something about seeing evidence of it that makes it feel tangible. He’d thought he was beginning to get his bearings in this new world, but this rips the ground out from under his feet and leaves him, once again, scrambling for any kind of foothold he can find.

If Nicolò notices him going quiet, he doesn’t say anything. They finish their pastizzi in near-silence, side by side on a bench overlooking the harbour.

When they’re both done, Nicolò gets up to throw away the paper bags before offering his hand to Yusuf. “Anything else you want to see, or should we go home?” Nicolò asks.

“Let’s just go home,” Yusuf says, taking his hand.

Nicolò gives him a worried look, but doesn’t push. Just squeezes his hand before they begin to head back to the car. Neither of them say much of anything until they’re on the road, Valletta shrinking into the distance behind them.

“What are you thinking about?” Nicolò asks when they reach a red light.

“How many other cities on Malta are there that I don’t know about?” Yusuf asks, aiming for a joking tone and falling short: it comes out sounding more subdued than he’d meant it to.

Nicolò glances at him before looking back at the road. The light turns green, and the car rolls forward. “There are at least nine that were founded after, I believe.”

Nine whole cities, maybe more. He feels so unfathomably old.

Nicolò shoots him another concerned look, but Yusuf barely notices, leaning his head against the window and watching the other cars drive by. 

“I’d like to show you something else, if that’s okay,” Nicolò says quietly after a while.

Yusuf thinks about just asking Nicolò to drive them home instead, but changes his mind. “Okay.”

Nicolò gives him a small smile.

It’s not long before they reach another city, this one familiar - Mdina. There have been changes since he was here last, places where the walls have been repaired and rebuilt, but he can still see echoes of the city he remembers.

Nicolò parks the car outside. “We can’t take it in,” he says, before climbing out and walking round to open the door for Yusuf. “Come on.”

Inside, it’s not exactly the same; just like the walls, it’s been built up and rebuilt over the centuries. Even still, he thinks that if he tried, he could find the building they’d stayed in the very first time they’d come to Malta, before they’d bought the house. 

“Not everything has changed,” Nicolò says when Yusuf looks at him. 

Yusuf smiles at him.

They walk through Mdina for a while, through the squares filled with crowds of tourists, down the smaller, quieter lanes and alleyways, along the walls. Surrounded by it all, in a city that was founded before he was born, Yusuf doesn’t feel quite as old as before.

The sun is beginning to set by the time they leave, the sky streaked with orange and pink and purple. “Thank you,” Yusuf says as they make their way out of the city.

“Of course,” Nicolò replies. When Yusuf takes his hand, lacing their fingers together, Nicolò smiles.

The mosaic over the kitchen doorway had been the very first thing he’d painted in the house.

They’d been so young, though back then it hadn’t felt like it - Yusuf was forty-four years old, immortal for eleven years, and the house had been the first place since he’d failed to die in Jerusalem that felt like someday it could be home. He’d wanted to do something to make the place beautiful, make it feel like theirs .

It took him almost a week, the colors mixed and mixed again until he found the exact shade he wanted, the angles and lines of the design measured and checked twice to make sure it was perfect. He’d spent two days sketching it out, another day checking it, and then three days after that painting each individual shape, balanced precariously on an old wooden stool. Nicolò had pretended to be annoyed every time Yusuf accidentally blocked the doorway, but when it was done, he’d smiled and told him it was beautiful.

The horse and tree in the guest bedroom were the second and third, painted four decades after Andromache and Quynh had found them, while they were all staying in the house after a particularly difficult few years of fighting. He’d done it because although the house had been his and Nicolò’s home for years by then, he wanted it to be a home for them, too. 

They’d been to Quynh’s homeland - the Red River Delta - only a decade or so before, and so Yusuf could fairly easily recreate the tree for Quynh from memory and the drawings he’d done while they were there, with Quynh occasionally correcting him on certain details. Quynh had grinned widely at him when it was done, tracing the painted lines of the leaves with her fingertips. 

The horse for Andromache had been harder, but Andromache had described the horses’ adornments as best she could, and Yusuf had sketched it for her over and over again until she finally nodded and said it looked right. Then he’d mixed the colors, trying shade after shade until he was satisfied. When he’d finished it, after days of careful painting trying to get it right (horses had never been his strong suit when it came to drawing them, but he wanted this one to be perfect), she’d looked at it for a long time without saying anything, to the point where Yusuf had begun to worry he’d done something wrong. But then she’d smiled with tears in her eyes, and pulled him into a hug.

The flowers had been painted around fifty years or so before they’d gone to England. It had been a bad few years for all of them, and Yusuf had needed to create something beautiful, something that would help him forget the centuries of pain and death and destruction he’d seen, even if only for a little while. They’d been beginning to wear away the last time he’d been here: everything had. He’d meant to re-paint them, but he’d never gotten the chance. Nor had he gotten the chance to paint their bedroom ceiling like he’d wanted to. They’d only had two weeks of a break that was supposed to be much longer before Andromache and Quynh’s letter had arrived, summoning them to England.

The morning after their trip to Valletta, Nicolò moves their things into the guest bedroom before laying white sheets over all of the furniture to catch any stray paint. Yusuf carefully sticks masking tape to the edges of the ceiling and opens the window. Then, Nicolò smiles at him and leaves the room, leaving Yusuf alone to work.

He begins with dark blue, using the roller to paint a layer of it across the whole ceiling. Once it’s dried, he paints another layer over it in the same color. The next day, he uses sponges to add areas of lighter blue and purple and some gray, blending together to create swirling galaxies and nebulas. It takes two days to cover the whole thing. He’s grateful for his immortality - without it, the stiffness in his neck from spending all his time looking up would make this feel impossible.

But it’s fun . He’d forgotten how much he enjoyed working on something so big, something he’s creating just for the sake of making something beautiful. 

After the galaxies, he takes a fine-tipped brush and paints the stars, in pinpricks of silver and shimmering white, picks out the constellations he can remember and joins them with gold, scatters silver stars in between them. He creates a few of his own, too - a scimitar, a longsword, a labrys, a bow - and paints them in the center. He leaves spaces in between them, constellations he has yet to create, for the two newest members of his family.

The stars take four days, simply because of the sheer amount of them he paints. On the ninth day, he leaves it to dry. On the tenth day, he takes the masking tape off of the walls, uncovers the furniture, and then lets Nicolò see it.

Nicolò looks at it for a long time in silence. Reaches up to follow the line of the longsword constellation, then the scimitar, then the labrys and the bow before letting his hand fall back to his side. 

Yusuf watches him. His expression betrays nothing, but Nicolò has always been like that, quieter with showing his emotions than Yusuf. Yusuf has no real reason to be nervous about how he will react - he never has - but he wants Nicolò to like it.

Finally, Nicolò turns to look at him, his expression breaking into a smile. “It’s beautiful , Yusuf.”

“You like it?” Yusuf asks.

“I love it,” Nicolò says sincerely.

Yusuf can only smile at him.

A message appears on Yusuf’s screen. look for godspeed , Nile’s texted him. by frank ocean. i think you’ll like it

Andy had given him a phone like Nicolò’s before she had left, explaining that it would only be able to contact her, Quynh, Nile, Nicolò, and Copley in case of emergency, but that he could use it to talk to them if he wanted. In the three weeks or so since then, he’s used it to message Quynh on occasion, and Andy even less often, since the two of them don’t often respond. Nicolò tells him that’s just how they are.

But Nile responds to him almost instantly, seemingly no matter what time it is. She talks to him most days, about anything and everything, explaining whenever she makes a reference he doesn’t understand, recommending things she thinks he’ll enjoy. He loves her so, so much already. 

I will look for them , he responds. 

Nile replies with a :) .

“Nile again?” Nicolò asks from the doorway.

Yusuf nods.

“How is she?”

Nicolo wants to know how you are , Yusuf types.

i’m good, Nile responds. tell him i said hi

“She says hi,” Yusuf reports. Nicolò smiles before entering the room fully and sitting down.

When they’d been moving their things back into their bedroom from the guest bedroom, Yusuf had found a guitar leaning against the wall in the corner, seemingly forgotten; he’d picked it up and brought it into the living room, not wanting to leave it. Nicolò picks it up now, plucking its strings experimentally and making a face at the sound they make before setting about tuning it.

The sun has already gone down, and the room is lit by warm orange light. It’s quiet, aside from Nicolò’s muttering as he tries to tune the guitar, and Yusuf closes his eyes, suddenly tired. 

After a few moments, Nicolò makes a triumphant noise and strums a few chords. Yusuf opens his eyes and watches him as he plays a short tune.

“Play something for me?” Yusuf asks.

“I can try,” Nicolò says. He plays a few notes, before pausing and then beginning again, playing a few bars before he starts to sing. “ All’ombra dell’ultimo sole… ”

Yusuf doesn’t know the song, but he enjoys it, and Nicolò’s voice is as lovely as ever. He claps when it’s over, and Nicolò pretends to bow, smiling as he does, golden in the soft light from the fire.

They’re so close, now, and this is the sort of moment where Yusuf would have leaned in to kiss him, before. And he realises, suddenly, that he wants to. He doesn’t think he imagines the way Nicolò shifts slightly towards him, the way his eyes drop to Yusuf’s lips for the briefest of moments. It would be so easy, too: all he would have to do is lean just a little bit closer, close the already small space between them. 

He doesn’t. He’s not sure why, really. The moment passes, and Nicolò looks away, setting aside the guitar, clearing his throat. “Would you like to help me make dinner?”

It’s a way out, and Yusuf takes it. “Of course.”

In the kitchen, they move around each other as if nothing’s changed, Yusuf wordlessly passing Nicolò a knife before he asks for it, Nicolò making room for him seemingly without thinking about it. It’s not entirely seamless: Nicolò bumps into him a few times and Yusuf has to ask where the pan Nicolò wants is, but they laugh it off whenever it happens, and Yusuf feels warm, unable to keep himself from smiling.

After dinner, Nicolò sets up the record player he’d bought in Valletta, sliding a thin black disc out of one of the paper sleeves and placing it carefully on the player. He moves the arm to hover over the disc, then lowers it. A moment later, somehow, music starts playing. Nicolò smiles at the look on Yusuf’s face. 

“How is that even possible?” Yusuf asks, examining the player.

“The music is stored in the disc, and then when it spins, it plays,” Nicolò says. “Something to do with the grooves on the disc. Quynh could give a better explanation than me, but that is the basic concept, I think. There are faster ways to play music now, but I think it sounds better this way.” He sways gently from side to side to the music. “This is Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters . Elton John. I love this song.” He turns to Yusuf, offering his hand. “Dance with me?”

“I’m not sure I know how anymore,” Yusuf says.

“That doesn’t matter,” Nicolò tells him. 

Yusuf takes his hand, lets Nicolò pull him close, sliding one arm around his waist, bringing Yusuf’s hand to rest on his shoulder. It’s more of a gentle swaying than anything else, unlike the dances Yusuf is used to, but he likes this. Nicolò smiles at him, soft, and Yusuf is lost.

Yusuf remembers the exact moment he’d fallen in love with Nicolò. Many of his memories were dim even before the water, and they’re even more so now, but he remembers that as clearly as if it were yesterday. They’d been making camp one evening, and Yusuf had arrived back from collecting more firewood to find Nicolò sitting cross-legged by the fire, mending a hole in one of Yusuf’s shirts that he’d been meaning to get to for a while now, without Yusuf even needing to ask. Nicolò had looked up and smiled at him as he approached, his eyes warm, and Yusuf had thought oh, of course, that’s what this is . 

It has been centuries since then. Neither of them are the same people they were then. And yet, now, Yusuf loves him just as much as he did back then.

Nicolò lifts his arm to allow Yusuf to turn in a circle, then pulls him back towards him, smiling, and suddenly Yusuf doesn’t want to go another moment without saying it. 

“I love you,” Yusuf says, all in a rush. “And I know things still aren’t really the same as they used to be, that I’m not the same, but I’m not sure I ever will be. And I’d like to try again, with you.”

Nicolò doesn’t say anything, and Yusuf is suddenly not sure he hasn’t misinterpreted the entire situation. He adds, hurriedly, “That is, if you still want-” 

“Yusuf,” Nicolò says, quietly. Yusuf falls silent, and Nicolò reaches up to cup Yusuf’s face in both hands, his thumbs brushing Yusuf’s cheekbones almost reverently. 

The song is still playing, but neither of them are moving anymore. Yusuf doesn’t dare to, for fear of shattering this moment.

“You love me?” Nicolò asks wonderingly, his voice shaking just a little. “Even after everything?”

“Even after everything,” Yusuf says. “I forgive you, Nico.”

Nicolò makes a quiet, almost wounded sound in the back of his throat and kisses him.

It’s not like it was before, but Yusuf doesn’t want it to be. This, here, now, this is new, and they will build it together, piece by piece. Yusuf wouldn’t have it any other way. One of Nicolò’s hands slides down to the small of Yusuf’s back, pulling him closer and still not close enough. Yusuf cards his fingers through the soft strands of Nicolò’s hair and tilts his head to the side.

Nicolò’s eyes are closed when they part, neither of them going very far. “For what it’s worth,” Nicolò says softly, “I do not care if you are never the same person you were, because it doesn’t matter. You are here, and you are whole, and I love you as you are.” His eyes are glittering with tears when he finally opens. “Yusuf, hayati. I love you so much.”

Yusuf brushes his tears away and kisses him again. It’s a long, long while before they part, and even then they don’t go far - they end up on the couch, Yusuf sitting between Nicolò’s legs with his back pressed to Nicolò’s chest, his head on Nicolò’s shoulder, their joined hands resting on Yusuf’s stomach. Nicolò traces idle patterns on the back of Yusuf’s hand with his thumb, leans down to press a kiss to Yusuf’s shoulder. They don’t say much, but they don’t need to. 

Even later that night, they curl together in the dark of their room, Yusuf’s stars shining in the faint moonlight that comes through the curtains. Yusuf rests one hand over Nicolò’s heart, presses his lips to the back of Nicolò’s neck. They fall asleep like that, so close that Yusuf almost can’t tell where one ends and the other begins. It’s perfect.

“You don’t have to do this,” Nicolò says a week later as they’re getting ready to leave the house. “If it’s because you feel like you need to prove something, you don’t.”

“I know,” Yusuf tells him. They’ve had this conversation multiple times since Yusuf suggested this, and Yusuf’s answer has been the same every time. He’s not doing this because he thinks he has to: he’s doing it because he wants to at least try.

“If you’re sure,” Nicolò says.

“I’m sure,” Yusuf replies, and that’s that.

They walk down to the beach hand in hand - they’ve gotten into the habit of going for long walks around the island over the past few days, but they’ve never made it this close to the sea. Yusuf hadn’t been ready to face it. He thinks he is, now.

There aren’t many people here. They find a spot a good distance away from anyone else, and stop only a few feet from the high water mark. 

“Ready?” Nicolò asks.

Yusuf takes a deep breath to steady himself. “I think so.”
He takes his shoes off first, then his socks, tucking them carefully inside his shoes, then rolls his jeans up to his knees. When he stands back up, Nicolò takes his hand and brings it to his lips, pressing a quick kiss to Yusuf’s knuckles. “I’ll be right here, okay?”

“Don’t go far,” Yusuf says. It comes out sounding more pleading than he means it to, but Nicolò just nods and lets go of his hand.

He can do this. He turns to face the sea and takes one step towards it, then another, flinches when he comes into contact with the water, but keeps going anyway. The feeling of the water against his skin makes him shiver, but he keeps going anyway. He closes his eyes and takes slow, measured breaths. He can do this.

When the water is almost up to Yusuf’s knees, he risks looking back at the shore, almost expecting Nicolò to be gone, like he is so often in Yusuf’s dreams - but Nicolò smiles at him reassuringly. 

Except then the waves recede, and the water tugs at him as it rushes back, as if it’s trying to pull him under, and Yusuf’s heart is beating wildly in his chest, and he needs to get out . He turns and walks out of the water as quickly as he can. 

No chain rises from the deep to drag him back under, no shackle of iron clamps itself around his ankle. Because this is real, this is not a dream, and Yusuf is free.

Yusuf is free . For the first time since he broke out of the coffin, he fully believes it. This is real, and Yusuf is free.

And suddenly, he feels like he could fly if he wanted to; he wants to run to the top of the cliffs and shout with joy. Do you see? he wants to shout. I am free! You could not kill me, you could not keep me, you could not break me. I am free, free, free!

Another wave crashes against the shore. Yusuf is smiling, smiling so widely it hurts. 

“Yusuf?” Nicolò asks.

“This is real,” Yusuf says, and then he’s laughing with tears in his eyes, and Nicolò’s pulling him close, his arms around Yusuf’s waist, chest against Yusuf’s back.

“This is real,” Nicolò confirms, and he’s smiling too as he kisses Yusuf’s temple. “You’re free, Yusuf.”

Yusuf leans back and looks up- there’s not a cloud in sight, and the sun is shining brightly, and he is free, and he is going to be okay, even if there are still days where he doesn’t feel it, even if it takes him decades. Yusuf smiles up at the sky. It’s a beautiful day. 

And he is going to be okay.