Yusuf al-Kaysani and Nicolò di Genova (Figure Out How To Begin Again)
Josef has not gone more than a week without Nicolas since the first day that they killed each other, and even that week was because of an incident with a storm and a boat separating them.
This time around, Josef thinks that he will only spend a few months, maybe a year at most away from Nicolas. Whatever Nicolas needs to do as he wishes and then contact him again, through letters or their safehouses. Josef can be patient, after all; Nicolas deserves time to explore the parts of himself that he had never considered before.
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They do not see each other for twenty years.
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They meet again on the battlefield.
Nicolas is not Nicolas anymore. Josef is not Josef.
When Andy- because she herself is Andy now, not Andromache- summons them for the next mission that both of them are needed for, they meet as Nicky and Joe.
They are not the same men anymore- though, by the their very nature, they are more the same than they have ever been.
Nicky has shadows under his eyes. Joe is sure that his are not much better.
There is nothing that Joe wishes for more than to kiss the shadows from under Nicky’s eyes.
-aletterinthenameofsanity, put up my name in the sacred game (twenty long years ago)
Written for Day 24 of @monthlywritingchallenges' Reset January: Beginning again.
