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Chapter Text

Elite warriors, Andy said. She and her people had seen countless battles throughout history and through every single one, they were still standing. Maybe Nile couldn’t even blame her for being such a hard motherfucker—she would have to be, wouldn’t she? And Nile would probably have to be, too.

Andy gave her the quick and dirty about who she’d be spending the rest of goddamn eternity with: Joe, who was an expert in hand-to-hand combat and short-range weapons; Nicky, who could grapple with the best of them but was their best sniper; and Booker, who brought the term ‘brute strength’ to new heights with his expertise in explosives. Nile could only hope one of them was able to crack a smile or something, since Andy obviously wouldn’t be anytime this century.

Dead-eyed Andy and these faceless, brutish men—this was the sum of the company she was to keep for the rest of her life? Nile, already bewildered and alone, felt a chill that settled way down deep. It was like someone had died and nothing was ever gonna be okay again, but she was the someone. She was the ghost now haunting her own life.

She missed her friends terribly; some 3000 miles away, her friends were glad they’d never see her again. Nile steeled her heart.

When the two of them walked into the church that looked way too abandoned to be living in, two dudes looked up from the TV and Andy grunted, “Joe, Nicky, Booker, this is Nile. Nile—Joe, Nicky, Booker. I need a shower.”

She beat it into a back room and left Nile standing there.

“But…there are only two? Guys?” Nile said faintly. There was a lot of Marine training involved in keeping her from fidgeting.

The pretty brown guy with artfully overgrown curls smiled big, set down his sketchbook, and popped to his feet. He opened his arms and approached her like a walking hug, but he ended up only patting her on the shoulder.

“Welcome, welcome,” he said. “Nicky is in the kitchen cooking, so now you know Andy isn’t going senile.”

He had a soft voice, blunt around the edges like an old kitchen knife, with an accent that was hard to pin down, and his eyes sparkled at her like the night sky. She found herself shaking his hand, and when she let go, the white guy slid into her line of vision and replaced the first guy’s hand with his own. The thing was so big Nile had trouble giving it her usual firm grip.

“Booker,” this one said, and she had to look up, and up, and up to meet his eyes. His very sad eyes. Pretty, but sad. He gave her a little smile. “It’s, uh…” He cleared his throat.

Behind him, the one who must be Joe rolled his eyes and clapped him on the shoulder.

“Sorry about this one,” he said. “We’re not sure he was raised by human beings. What he means is it’s so nice to meet you, won’t you come on a tour of this beautiful squat of ours?”

Joe was a lot more smiley than Andy. What was he meant to be the expert in? Hand to hand? Which meant Sad Eyes was either the sniper or the exploder. His ears were red and he stepped away from her, wiping his hands on his jeans. She supposed she had all the time in the world to figure out what his specialty was. And his deal.

Joe ushered her into the kitchen, where another white guy stood at the stove stirring something in a pot. He looked up, and his smile was soft. He seemed nondescript in every way, except that meeting his eyes felt like being caught in a rip tide with only prayer to save you.

“Nicky, this is Nile,” Joe said.

“Hello,” Nicky said. “Niall, this is an Irish name?”

“Oh, it’s actually like the river. N I L E. So.”

“Ah. The noblest body of water, from which all life springs.”

“Thanks?”

“Where are you from?” Joe asked.

“Chicago,” Nile said. “South side. How about you?”

“Ah.” He looked almost startled. “Mahdia. Though it has been a long time since I’ve visited, or called it home.”

“Oh. That’s cool.”

Joe seemed to take pity on her and gestured first to Booker, then to Nicky.

“Booker is from Marseilles, while Nicky hails from Genoa. I hope you like Italian food, Nile.”

Nile raised her hands as if in surrender.

“Hey, as long as it’s not an MRE, I’m happy.”

She felt eyes on her. A quick sweep of her peripherals showed all three men looking intently at her, though Booker looked away as soon as she saw him. Joe only grinned, while Nicky persisted in staring even as he stirred his pot.

“I, uh. Wouldn’t mind a bathroom, if you’ve got one that isn’t currently occupied by terrifying naked women,” she said with a weak smile.

“Sorry, sorry, of course,” Joe said. “It’s—ah, well. We haven’t been here in a long time. We hope you’ll forgive our lapses in housekeeping.”

They were occupying the rectory rather than the church proper. Joe led her through some winding corridors and up the stairs to a big bathroom with a claw foot tub. It was a bit stale in there, but everything was clean, and there was a brand new bottle of hand soap on the sink and roll of toilet paper by the toilet. When the light wouldn’t turn on, Joe pounded on the wall until it did.

“There you go,” he said. “Sometimes you just have to show it who’s boss.”

He cracked another smile. It was big and bright, splitting a beard that looked extra soft.

Nile tore her eyes away. The last thing she needed was a crush on one of the only people who would ever truly know her for the rest of her very, very long life. She clutched at her cross and squeezed her eyes shut.

She was immortal, with only these people for company for the rest of time. It was too big. It was too much. It was pushing out at her from the inside. Her knees went weak.

“Whoa there,” Joe said, catching her before she fell. He had Arms. Capital A. “Hey, it’s gonna be okay.” Her vision swam, but she could see that he was no longer smiling, though he was looking at her with a fathomless sadness in his eyes.

“How do you do it?” she said. And then, because fuck it, what did she have to lose? “God, have you only had white people for company this whole time?”

He laughed at that and eased her down, and then they were both sitting cross-legged on the floor, Nile in the bathroom, Joe in the hallway.

“All my white people became white as the times changed,” Joe said. “Who knows what any of us will be in the future?”

“I can tell you I’ll be Black til the end of time,” Nile said. She got dizzy again and laid her head against the wall. There came a tentative pat on her knee.

“It’s a lot at first, I know,” Joe said. “We don’t want you to think any of this was easy, when it happened to us. It takes a long time to come to terms with this life, these circumstances. You don’t need to rush yourself, even if our fearless leader is acting like it’s all old hat. You can just feel your feelings, Nile.”

“My friends,” Nile said, horrified to find her voice had gone hoarse around a sudden thickness in her throat. “They weren’t even happy I wasn’t dead. What is that?”

Joe got a faraway look in his eye as he gazed past her into some ancient memory. She wanted to ask how old he was. She didn’t want to know.

“It’s funny, how so much changes, and so much stays the same,” he said. “People are fearful and irrational and will find a way to be so despite everything.” His focus sharpened back onto her. “I’m glad you’re alive, Nile. I know it doesn’t mean much now, but we are going to be great friends, I can tell.”

Nile swiped at her eyes and looked doggedly away from him, as if she could hide the fact that she was crying. As if he’d even care.

“And you like them?” she asked. “Your white people? It’s not just battles and battles?”

“I love them,” Joe said, and ducked his head to meet her eyes. “I love all of them, truly and passionately, Nile. Andy and Booker are my dearest friends and companions, and Nicky is—” He shook his head and shrugged as if helpless against the tide of feeling he was now clutching his chest over. “—Nicky is everything to me. Everything.”

“Oh.” Now it was imperative she get over how pretty and nice and muscular Joe was. “That’s so nice.”

“Andy…I imagine she was rather brusque with you.”

Nile snorted.

“To put it mildly,” she said.

“This is perplexing to her, too,” Joe said. “Soon, you will learn her little peccadilloes, her humor, her heart. You will see all of her and wonder how you ever thought there was nothing more to her than the fight. You’ll just have to give it—her, all of us—time.”

“The one thing I now have more of than anything else? Sure, why not.”

Joe smiled, eyes sparkling. In her brain, she smacked her own hand. Not for you.

“I’ll leave you to it,” he said. “I didn’t mean to follow you in to the bathroom.”

He stood and stuck out his hand. She grasped it and let him haul her to her feet.

“How many times you done this?” she asked. “Welcomed the new one?”

“Just once,” he said. “We’re trying to do better this time.”

He gave her shoulder a squeeze and another sad smile troubled his beard. When she went downstairs a few minutes later, everyone was gathered at the table and Nicky was portioning out food onto plates.

“Nile,” he said with the smallest smile. “Dinner’s ready.”

Chapter Text

The new one was named Kekoa, and when the dreams started, all four of them traveled to the Democratic Republic of Hawaii, where they aided in search and rescue in the aftermath of an avalanche and, consequently, unearthed Kekoa before anyone else could see him resurrect.

Nico was planning a welcome dinner, but they were whisked away to a luau Kekoa’s family was throwing because they were just so damn happy he wasn’t dead. Nile, Book, Sef and Nico were to be honored guests. They all got leis and wreathes on their heads, but somehow it was Book who ended up shirtless in a malo and pa’u skirt.

“Three days, we worried!” Kekoa’s tutu said, pinching his cheeks so his lips puckered obscenely in Nile’s direction. Kekoa was at least thirty years old. “Eat, eat!” This, Kekoa’s tutu directed at Nile, and shoved another plate full of pig at her. She was now balancing three on her knees.

A small child was teaching Book how to move his hips properly. Nile catcalled him and Sef wolf-whistled and Nico was somewhere loading up another plate. Book turned a look on her like a waterlogged cat, but Nile could tell he was having the time of his life.

They weren’t going to convince Kekoa to leave his family, at least not right now, but on the beach, after the festivities had died down and it was only the five of them, the lapping water, and the light of the moon, they told him how it went for them, so long ago.

“God, was it really almost two thousand years ago?” Sef said, shaking his head. “We were completely in the dark. First I couldn’t believe it was happening, and then I thought God was reviving me with a set task: to kill this one.” He jerked his thumb in Nico’s direction. Nico smiled and waved. “We had no answers for decades. And when we finally met others like us, what a surprise! They had no answers either.” He laughed and clapped his hands.

“There are others?” Kekoa asked.

Some of the joviality faded. Nile squeezed Book’s knee.

“We’re not actually immortal,” she said. “We might get thousands of years, but death comes for us too, eventually.”

“First, there was Andromache the Scythian,” Book said. His mouth twisted into a wistful sort of smile. “She was born neither Andromache nor a Scythian, but by the time the rest of us came around, even she had forgotten the details of her first life.”

“She died, oh, seven hundred years ago, now,” Nico said.

“There was also Quỳnh, and Lykon. None of us are old enough to have met Lykon,” Sef said.

“Quỳnh died when Andy did,” Nile said. “Like…like she was just waiting.”

Nile still didn’t understand. Time had dulled the loss, but it still flared if she allowed her thoughts to linger there too long. It was not for them to understand the vagaries of their condition—once, Nile might have chalked this up to God, but now it just seemed so maddeningly random, even if she could convince herself they had been touched by the divine. She supposed she would never be able to stop wondering about the whys of it all: why them, why the amount of time they were given, why their limbs and eyeballs might grow back quick but their nails and hair took the same amount of time as any other person’s. Et cetera. Trying to make it make sense was an exercise in futility. And insanity.

Book hooked her ankle with his. She sent him a grateful smile and held out her hand. He squeezed it and pulled it up to lay a kiss on her knuckles.

“I went at the same time as Sef,” Nico said, bursting the awkward bubble of their collective grief. “Our stories are intertwined.” He knocked his knee against Book’s. “As for this one, we didn’t find him for some years.”

“I don’t dwell on those days,” Book said. “They were hard, and confusing, and filled with death.”

“I died a lot,” Kekoa said. His breath shuddered out of him. “I died so many times, under.”

“I’m sorry we didn’t get to you sooner,” Nile said.

“Never mind all that!” Kekoa said with a laugh, cheer limned with desperation. “How was it for you? How long ago? Do you remember?”

“Ah, my friend, she may be in charge but make no mistake, she is the youngest of us,” Book said. “Until now.”

“Gimme a break,” Nile said, swatting him. “You’re only like two hundred years older than me.”

“It felt much bigger at the time,” Book said.

“You guys are like when my dad said he just did something but turns out it was twenty-five years ago,” Kekoa said.

“Welcome to immortality, kid,” Book said. “The 23rd century was just a few weeks ago.”

Nile was trying to grasp at the first days of her own entrance into immortality. It was jumbled now, the overwhelming horror of it having been absorbed into the chaos of everything that happened around it. Andy’s palpable nihilism. Nico, making food. Book, trying so hard not to give himself away but not being able to keep his eyes off her. And Sef—

“Oh my God!” Nile shouted.

Book jolted beside her, and Sef and Nico were upright and on guard.

“What?” Book said. “What’s wrong?”

“I forgot about meeting Sef for the first time!”

Book subsided into his chair with a groan.

“Christ, but you love giving me heart attacks.”

“Do we…get those?” Kekoa asked.

“Eh?” Sef said. “Did I do something?”

“You probably talked her ear off, chiacchierone,” Nico said.

“Or hugged her too much when she didn’t even know you,” Book said.

“You cannot shame me for being full of love!” Sef cried. “I will not be shamed!”

“Oh God,” Nile said, slapping her hands over her face.

“Did he commit some sort of unforgivable faux pas?” Nico asked.

“No, no, it was me,” Nile said. “God, it’s so embarrassing.”

“Now you’ve done it,” Book said. “We must know.”

“Or we will die,” Sef said solemnly, eyes huge. Nile could see the reflection of the moon in them. Moon, stars, and all the cosmos besides, damn him.

A glance at Kekoa told her Sef had, once again and with no effort on his part, beguiled the newbie.

“Okay, I just want you to remember no one bothered to tell me you and Nico were together.”

Nico let out a massive guffaw that echoed down the shoreline.

“Yeah, yeah, yuk it up,” Nile said.

“What?” Sef demanded. “What did I do? Caro?”

“Oh my darling, it’s just that you are very handsome, yes?” Nico raised his eyebrows at Nile. Nile sighed and nodded. Nico patted Sef’s hand. “Very handsome, and very kind, and who could blame her? Not me.”

“Wait, what?” Book said, glancing between Sef and Nile. “Youssef?”

“Why must you say it like this?” Nico demanded.

“Would you rather I say it like you do?” Book said. “When he’s in trouble?”

“Please no,” Sef said.

“Is it so unbelievable that a strong and worthy woman would fall to his charms?” Nico said.

“Okay, it was like, an hour of my life, I didn’t fall to anything,” Nile said.

Sef gasped.

“Nile! You fell to my charms?”

“Everything was weird and unreal!” Nile cried. “You were the first person who was nice to me since I’d died! And that includes Andy killing me a bunch of times!”

“Your leader killed you?” Kekoa said faintly.

“Don’t worry, she was just saying hello,” Nico said.

“I was nice to you,” Book said.

“If by ‘nice,’ you mean you kept looking at me and then looking away when I looked back, sure, babe,” Nile said. “Sometimes you were just like. Fully red.”

“It’s bizarre to meet a stranger and know you’re going to know them for the rest of time!”

“I’m getting that,” Kekoa said.

“I would not blame you if you too fell to the charms of my Sef, Kekoa,” Nico said. “It is perhaps the most understandable thing in this life.”

Nile felt the roll of Book’s eyes affect the gravitation pull of the earth.

“I think I’m safe,” Kekoa said.

“I seem to remember a certain Frenchman—” Nico said, sly.

“No!” Book said, scrambling to slap a hand over Nico’s mouth. Nico scampered away from him and landed in Sef’s lap.

“Oh my God, are you serious?” Nile said.

“Not me,” Sef said, mirth audible. “Nico.”

Nile burst into laughter so hard she had to clutch her stomach to keep the ache contained.

“It’s not funny!” Book said.

“Not even Andy, old man?” Nile asked.

“Andy is very intimidating!” Book said.

“And Nico, Nico is very good at listening, and feeding, and saying comforting things,” Sef said.

“As oddly as possible,” Book grumbled.

“I thought you and Andy…” Nile twiddled a hand in the air. “You know.”

“Oh, just a few times when we were fucked up, nothing to write home about.”

“Whiskey dick?” Sef asked, all sweetness and light.

“I’ll have you know my dick works regardless of blood alcohol content. If I have one thing, it’s a working dick. And Andy knew that.”

“I hope you know you guys are painting a very weird picture of this Andy person,” Kekoa said.

“Ah, she was greater than legends,” Sef said. “I will show you actual pictures someday. Drawings, paintings—I have thousands, scattered around the world.”

“There is more than one way to be fucked up, you know,” Book said.

Nile got out of her chair and sat her ass on Book’s lap. His arms came around her automatically, and she curved herself around him enough to lay her head on his. She wanted to ask him if he remembered her face, her voice, the way she smelled, because she was forgetting. Only a few centuries and Andy was slipping away from her. She wanted to ask all of them, but she couldn’t do it in front of Kekoa.

“Let’s not trouble Kekoa with our maudlin elderly bullshit,” she said. “Tell me what about Nico made your heart go pitter patter.”

“Oh, yes, I am desperate to know,” Sef said.

“It’s not fair, you know,” Book said. “No one can ever mock you two about a misplaced crush from hundreds of years ago.”

“Shows what you know,” Sef said. “Quỳnh mocked us day and night.”

“She dreamed of us mooning after one another pathetically for years on end,” Nico said. “She had choice words.”

“In any case, my discombobulation was swiftly put to rest upon the arrival of one Yusuf al-Kaysani, on whom the sun rises and sets, the end,” Book said.

“For now,” Nile said with a bounce of her eyebrows. Book tried to scowl at her but he had never really been successful at it and wasn’t about to start now.

“It’s better the other way, anyway,” Book said.

“What way?”

“That the moment you appeared in my dreams, I felt you in my bones. That as soon as I met you, I knew I belonged to you, any way you would have me.”

Nile stroked his face, breathed in the scent of his head. Salt air and bonfire and jasmine flowers.

“And they say I’m the romantic,” Sef said.

Kekoa’s eyes roved over the tangle of Nile and Book, and Nile’s breath caught. There was hunger and wistfulness, and then he was turning away. It wasn’t Sef Kekoa had stars in his eyes over.

For the next several thousand years, Nile would come to learn him as surely as she knew Sef and Nico and Book. She would love him, as she loved them. They would live in each other’s pockets and argue and tease and hurt and heal and learn the best and worst of each other. Kekoa would be written into the fabric of her soul alongside the rest. Someday, it would be him welcoming a new one, marveling at all there was to come.

But for now, they were just strangers at the beginning of their story.

“Hey Kekoa?” Nile said.

“Hm?”

“We’re going to be great friends, I can tell.”

The ocean swelled and deposited a piece of driftwood at their feet. Kekoa flashed a smile at her and got up to wade into the water. He tilted his head up and for a moment, he seemed like the hinge between heaven and earth, the sky full of stars and the ocean full of wonders, the past and the future.

Nile grabbed Book’s hand and held on.

End