Nile Freeman Week 2020

↳ Day 7 – Free Choice

Nile sighs heavily as she walks up the steps of the latest safe house. Another safe house, another city, another day just like any other. Except it’s not like any other. It’s her birthday, her first birthday since her… first death. 

Her first birthday of having no contact with her family. 

Soon, she reassures herself. We lay low for a while, make sure Copley really has cleaned our trail, a year, maybe two. Soon. But not now. Not in time for her birthday. What is her mom thinking today? Her brother? She knows it’s hard on them, knows from her dad’s passing just how hard death is, but now it’s her and she can’t quite fathom what they must be feeling, especially today. 

With so many thoughts swirling in her mind, she’d had to get out of the house. What could she say to Andy, to Joe and Nicky, about this, that she’s sad ‘cause she doesn’t get a birthday party? No, best to leave it be. There’s nothing to be done anyway. No need to drag the mood down for the rest of them. She had hoped a walk in the crisp fall air would clear her mind, but now the sun’s going down, her ears are cold, and her thoughts are as chaotic as ever. And she’s likely missed dinner. She sighs again, taking one last moment to herself before unlocking the door and stepping inside.

At her entrance, Andy looks up from her place on the couch. “Nile’s back,” she calls across the house.

“Uh. Yeah,” Nile winced. “Sorry, didn’t mean to get back so late.”

“It’s fine.” Andy shrugs and gets up to start towards the dining room. “Dinner’s ready.”

Nile frowns at her retreating back. “You didn’t have to wait for me.”

“It’s fine,” she repeats over her shoulder. “Com’on and eat.”

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: The Old Guard (Movie 2020) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s) Characters: Nile Freeman, Andy | Andromache of Scythia, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Nicky | Nicolo di Genova, Original Characters Additional Tags: Nile Freeman-centric, POV Nile Freeman, Mountaineering, Rescue Missions, Airplane Crashes, Minor Character Death, Injury, Nile Freeman appreciation week Summary:

Nile Freeman Week 2020:

They are packed tightly into the too-small car.

nile freeman week 2020 

favourite nile scenes + comics

Nile Freeman Week 2020: Day 3 - Favorite Fight Scene

nile freeman week 2020 ↳ day seven: free choice !

you have known it since you were a child. there are people in the world who want to make your blood mean death. you didn’t let them then, and you won’t let them now.

you have known it since the men in uniforms came to your door and told you how brave he had been and how proud you should be and all you could think of was the fact there are so many jokes he never got to tell you that he never will now. you regret not laughing harder before.

you have known it since you were in basic and someone had to leave because their grandmother passed and they were suddenly gone. gone. they didn’t die too but it was almost like they were dead to you, no longer experiencing the thing that brought you all together.

you have known it since you lost the first member of your squad. they died under someone else’s hands but it still felt like your fault, still felt like it was your failing. it took you a long time to realise that it was, but it wasn’t, and this is what makes you a good leader. 

you have known it because you have brought it to other people. you know it in the worst way you can know it (and you are sure it is the worst way) and you know you will keep knowing it that way. there is no escaping it for you, not in these lifetimes.

you have known it intimately, in a way only a handful of others have ever known it. you have known it because it came into your home and turned out the lights but you told it, the same way you’ve been telling it since you were a child, to get the hell out. 

it listened. 

The immortality healed a lot within the first couple months it spent in Nile’s body. Scars faded off her skin, she stopped getting acne on her back from sweat, her hair even seems more lustrous. She enjoys that, of course, but the one thing that stayed is the one thing she wishes her new immortality would have eradicated. Maybe it simply cannot change whatever’s wrong with her brain.

“Look at me.”

Andy’s soothing touch guides her face away from the beds and back to her. Her eyes remind Nile of the ocean, in their depth and complexity, the way the light catches the ridges of her iris, much different than that thing she dissected in middle school. She thinks she’s a little hysterical right now. After all, her lungs are full of silken spiderwebs, drawing in tighter and stickier while she tries to make sense of it all. 

“There’s nothing here,” Andy says gently. Her voice is only ever so genuinely soft when it has to be. “You think any of us would let that happen? If we see a single bug, you know that Nicky kills it because they scare the daylights out of Joe. So there’s probably not a million bugs hiding in your mattress.”

“There could be.”

Instead of patronizing her, like others often did, Andy smiles at Nile and strokes her thumb over the curve of her cheek. “Would it help if I check?”

She nods, and the two of them return to NIle’s bed, the sheets not yet on it because she didn’t get that far before the thoughts got to her, as irrational and disruptive as they always are. Andy cuts open the mattress along its seam and shines a battery-operated flashlight into it. Just springs and foam. There aren’t even any leftover spiders crawling around, because Joe makes a point of bug-spraying their beds hours before they lay down. 

“Nothing there.”

Nile nods, but the second that Andy smooths the torn edge back down, she’s filled with the fear all over again. Something is in her bed, something alive, and as soon as she relaxes, it’s going to take her. She will die a final death in its heavy embrace, sucked into the mattress and left there like that one season of American Horror Story. Her face must show her hesitation, because Andy nods to herself and leads Nile out to a cot in the corner of the main room, one usually reserved for keeping watch, and pulls a chair up next to it. 

“No mattress, no bugs, and I’ll be right here to keep you safe. Get some rest, kid.”

The easy understanding and kindness nearly kills her. But she keeps her cool and gets into the hammock, taking a moment to balance out before truly relaxing, and listens to the room in hopes of keeping track. Joe and Nicky murmur in the other room, Andy breathes slow and even as she watches something mindless on the TV, and the pages of Booker’s latest read make a soft little swishing sound when he turns them. 

She sits up so fast her head spins. 

Booker has been exiled. He isn’t here to read or turn pages. She looks around for the source of it, finds nothing, and squeezes her eyes shut to listen for it again. She doesn’t hear it. Upon noticing her distress, Andy simply offers a hand, and doesn’t say a word when Nile holds it a little too tightly as she settles back into a comfortable position, hoping for sleep. 

“Does it ever stop hurting?”

nile freeman week 2020 | day two: favorite nile relationship

“i know how i want to spend the time i’ve got left. you’re gonna spend it with us, andy.”

　⟡ day seven: nile personnel profile