Work Text:
“They’re calling you Andy now.”
Quynh’s observation pierced through the strained silence between them with the force of a bullet.
They’d barely exchanged a word in two days – since Andy first came back to find Quynh, bleeding out on the floor of the power plant, after she’d lost everyone else.
She’d brought her to Tuah’s library, the nearest safe place she could think of, and done her best to patch up the wound and make Quynh comfortable so she could rest.
“Can’t exactly introduce myself as Andromache the Scythian these days,” Andy gave back, not able to stop her mouth from twitching into the tiniest of smiles about Quynh starting something like a conversation with her. She still looked weak and pale after losing so much blood, but certainly seemed to be on the mend.
“The world changed tremendously,” Quynh remarked.
She was nestled into a blanket, propped up into a sitting position on multiple pillows, a step below where Andy had set down to spend her quiet company while she was resting.
“Hasn’t it always?”
“But I used to be in it to witness the change.”
There still lay so much hurt in this simple statement that Andy could as well have been stabbed with a blade right through the chest.
“Quynh–” Andy began, about to apologise yet again.
She didn’t know how often she’d asked for Quynh’s forgiveness so far, but she was determined to try making amends for as long as it took, in every way, in every language she could think of.
Quynh, however, cut her off, not with words of her own, but with an entirely unexpected, tender motion. She reached out her hand, placing it atop of Andy’s, squeezing it gently.
The gesture took Andy’s breath away, and for a moment, all she could do was stare at Quynh’s hand on hers, before her gaze returned to Quynh’s face.
That face she hadn’t seen in person in five-hundred years, but that had been burned into her memory all this time, and probably would stay etched there for eternity.
“I know,” was the only thing Quynh said, and it was all it took for Andy to understand.
Quynh hadn’t fully forgiven her yet – she could tell from her posture, from the expression on her face, from one-and-a-half millennia of knowing her. But those deep, chocolate brown eyes told her that she’d at least started to.