#userhegel

That night, they set up the campfire together without really speaking aside from what is necessary. Yusuf is fully prepared for another night of almost silence, until Nicolò looks at him from across the fire, its light reflected in his eyes.

“I am sorry,” Nicolò tells him quietly. His Arabic is careful, as if he’s practiced it - perhaps he has. “For…” Nicolò mimes slitting his throat. That is not all he has done, but Yusuf understands.

“I am sorry too,” Yusuf tells him. After all, he had killed Nicolò too.

Nicolò nods, and they fall back into the silence Yusuf has grown accustomed to. But this time, it is not as uncomfortable.

--------------------

Slowly, things begin to change. They begin to teach each other their own languages. Yusuf knows a few words of Ligurian, and Nicolò has learned some Arabic, which gives them just enough common ground to start from. Nicolò struggles with the unfamiliar sounds on occasion, but his eyes light up when he gets it right, and he is so infectiously pleased with himself that sometimes Yusuf cannot help smiling too.

After that, they begin to talk more. They piece together what little Sabir and Greek Nicolò knows, and Yusuf’s very limited Latin - which is very bad, and sometimes makes Nicolò huff with laughter - and what they are learning of each other’s languages to create their own strange dialect. Conversation is stilted at first, with long pauses while one of them tries to remember a word and the other one tries to guess it, often resulting in both of them forgetting what they were trying to say in the first place. Eventually, though, it begins to flow more.

Nicolò is Genovese, Yusuf learns, and had been a priest before coming here. Yusuf tells Nicolò about his home and his work as a merchant before.

Yusuf isn’t sure if they’re friends yet. But they’re on their way.

--------------------

At the next town they reach, Yusuf runs into a burning building to save a child from the fire. He gets the child out safely, but some of the people nearby see his burns heal in seconds. When he arrives back at the inn they are staying at, Nicolò wordlessly offers him a cloth to clean the ash and dried blood from his skin and nods when Yusuf tells him they have to leave. Yusuf does not know what will happen if people find out they cannot die, but he is not eager to find out.

They leave quickly and quietly, and it is a week before Yusuf lets his guard down. Of course, it is then that they are ambushed.

Their attackers strike at night. Yusuf wakes to the clash of steel and Nicolò’s warning shouts. He stumbles to his feet - Nicolò is standing between him and their attackers, his sword drawn. It gives Yusuf enough time to reach for his own weapon and join him.

They have a clear advantage, but there are too many. Besides, their attackers have the element of surprise. One of them manages to disarm Nicolò, a few others manage to restrain him. The others corner Yusuf, and he cannot find a clear way out of this.

“Demon,” one hisses, and Yusuf flinches. So they had seen him heal.

He fights as best he can, but it feels as if they keep coming, relentless in their assault. One of them wrenches his sword from his grip, another pins his arm behind his back.

Nicolò is screaming now, thrashing in their grip, screaming no and don’t touch him and Yusuf-

The man closest to Yusuf grabs Yusuf’s blade from where it has fallen on the ground. He drives it through Yusuf’s chest, and Yusuf chokes on the blood that rises in his throat. Darkness clouds the edges of his vision.

The last thing he hears before he dies is Nicolò, still screaming his name.

--------------------

The room he wakes in is small and cold. HIs hands and feet are shackled, and there are three men before him.

Where is he? Where is Nicolò?

The men are speaking quickly, but he understands their meaning well enough - they have seen him heal. They want to know how he does it.

He is not sure how long they keep him there, but it is a long time.

The only light he gets is when they come and bring their torches, but as time stretches on, those occasions become increasingly rare. Eventually, they seem to stop altogether, and Yusuf is left in darkness.

They do not feed him, nor do they give him water. He dies of starvation and thirst more times to count, so much so that he lacks the strength to move anymore. Instead, he stays slumped against the wall in the corner, his eyes half closed.

They kill him. Over and over again. They burn him, they break his bones, they cut out his heart and wait for it to grow back. When he yields no answers about how he always comes back from death - how can he, when he does not know himself? - they grow angry. They kill him again. He cannot give them answers. They kill him again. He begins to wonder if it’s just sadism by this point.

How long has he been here? Days, weeks, months, years, he has no way of knowing. He cannot see the sun in this place.

He wants to go home. Perhaps he could get out of his shackles, but he is not strong enough. He wonders if Nicolò had gotten away. Had they taken him, too, or did he escape and continue on his way alone?

When the people keeping him here die, what will happen to him? Will he rot away here for however long he will live? Will he ever see the sun again?

Footsteps nearby startle him out of his thoughts. He is long past scrambling to his feet when they come, so instead all he does is lift his head. The footsteps draw closer, and soon the faint orange light of a torch appears at the top of the stairs.

But it’s not one of them. It’s Nicolò.

“Yusuf,” Nicolò says, setting his torch into a bracket on the wall and crossing the room to kneel before him.

Yusuf is overwhelmed with relief - Nicolò hadn’t left him. Nicolò had come back.

“Did they hurt you?” Nicolò asks.

All Yusuf can do is nod as Nicolò sets to work on the shackles around his wrists. He must have gotten the key from somewhere, and he gets them off without much difficulty.

“Can you stand?”

“I don’t know,” Yusuf says. His voice is hoarse from thirst and disuse.

Nicolò slings Yusuf’s arm around his shoulders and lifts him to his feet. Yusuf has to lean on him heavily, but they make it up the stairs and out of that small hell, and Yusuf sees the sun for the first time in what feels like an age.

The men who had taken him prisoner are dead, their blood drying on the floor. Nicolò remains impassive, staring straight ahead as they walk by the bodies.

There is a horse tied to a fence outside, and Nicolò half-drags, half-carries him towards it. It takes some effort for Yusuf to get himself seated, but he manages it in the end, and Nicolò swings himself into the saddle behind him, his arms tight around Yusuf’s waist to keep him steady.

Yusuf relaxes back into his hold and falls asleep almost immediately.

--------------------

When he wakes, he is lying on a bed in a room he does not recognise, and Nicolò is watching him. He manages to sit up, but it’s a monumental effort.

“Here,” Nicolò says gently, offering him a cup of water. “Drink.”

Yusuf takes it and drains the cup almost in one go - it’s been so long since he’d had water. Or food.

“How long?” he asks when he finishes.

Nicolò’s eyes darken. “Two months. It took me too long to find you. I’m sorry I couldn’t find you sooner.”

“But you found me,” Yusuf says. He hadn’t been sure anyone would find him, and yet Nicolò had. And he’d searched for him for two months.

“After they killed you, they killed me,” Nicolò tells him. “When I woke up, you were gone, and they’d taken almost everything. All I could do was follow them back to the town we’d left, but when I arrived, they’d already left. So I kept following them, until I overheard someone bragging about a demon they’d trapped, and after that…”

“Thank you,” Yusuf tells him.

Nicolò looks as if he is going to say something else, but decides against it. “Come with me.”

Yusuf is slightly steadier on his feet now, but he still has to lean on Nicolò as Nicolò guides him through to a small bathroom with a bathtub in the centre, already filled.

“You’re covered in blood,” Nicolò says by way of explanation. Neither of them acknowledge the reason the blood is there.

Yusuf’s hands shake as he tries to unbutton his shirt, so much so that he glances at Nicolò, almost apologetically, and Nicolò reaches out to help him. Nicolò, who had once driven a sword through Yusuf’s chest, now handles him like he’s made of glass, carefully helping him into the bath. Nicolò, who had caved in his skull with a rock when he’d lost his sword in the fight, now gently works the blood from his hair, careful not to pull too much and apologising when he does. Nicolò, who had been so quiet at first, now talks constantly, filling the silence with a string of soft reassurances in Arabic, Ligurian, Greek, Sabir - every language they share.

“Where do we go after this?” Yusuf asks, closing his eyes.

“Malta, I think,” Nicolò says. “We will be able to get away from all this once we are there.”

When the blood has been cleaned away, Nicolò helps him into clean clothes and back into the room, then disappears momentarily to go find them food. He returns with two bowls of stew. Yusuf has to go slowly, at first - it’s been so long since he ate anything - but Nicolò is endlessly patient, and Yusuf manages to finish his whole bowl. After that, he’s too tired to do anything but fall back into bed, his eyes closing almost the moment his head hits the pillow. Nicolò settles himself in the seat between the bed and the door, pulling his sword onto his lap to clean it.

“You’re not going to sleep?” Yusuf asks, blinking at him.

“You sleep. I will keep watch.”

Nicky flops back onto the grass and looks up at him, lifting his hand to shade his eyes from the afternoon sun that hangs in the sky just over Joe’s shoulder. “It would appear so.”

Joe lets his sword drop to the grass with a soft thud. The wooden swords had been a courtesy to Nile, who had wanted to learn to fight with a sword but hadn’t quite been sure about sparring with real weapons yet - she’s still getting used to being able to take any wound and heal. Nicky doesn’t want to push her. Immortality is difficult, at the beginning, and he wants to make her feel as comfortable as possible. So they’d gotten wooden swords to spar with, even if they teach her stance and technique with a real one so she can get used to the weight.

Joe tosses his sword to the side and offers Nicky his hand instead.

(That’s the only part of the story they can agree on. Yusuf had let his blade fall from his hand, tired of fighting, and offered his hand to Nicolò. Nicolò, who had been just as exhausted, took it. The rest is history.)

Nicky takes his hand, and Joe pulls him to his feet. “What’s the score, now?”

“Thirty to me, twenty nine to you,” Nicky tells him.

“That doesn’t seem right.” Joe’s eyes sparkle with the challenge.

“Are you accusing me of cheating?” Nicky asks, as if the very idea is shocking.

“Not cheating, just… changing the score in your favour.”

“That,” Nicky says, “is a slight upon my honour, and I will not stand for it.”

“If you’re going to spar,” Andy yells from the porch, “get on with it!” She’s been lounging in the hammock they’d set up, watching them spar, for about two hours. They’d run through drills with Nile for about one of those hours, before she’d joined Andy on the porch.

“What do you say, Nicolò?” Joe asks. “First touch wins?”

Nicky gives him a light shove. “Get your sword.”

Sparring with wooden swords had thrown him off at first. The weight is all wrong, and it had taken him a little while to adjust. But once he had, he’d enjoyed it more than he thought he would - it’s more like a game than anything else. When they spar with their normal weapons, there’s always a fairly high likelihood of injury. And Nicky knows Joe will be fine, but he doesn’t like to cause him pain. The wooden swords allow him to enjoy the fight itself without the fear of hurting Joe.

Neither of them give any sort of noticeable signal. Nicky raises his sword, and Joe raises his, and a moment passes between them, and then they begin.

They know each other so well that they can almost anticipate each other’s moves before they happen. Nicky goes for Joe’s legs, trying to unbalance him, but Joe dances out of the way of his swing. Joe goes straight for Nicky’s throat, but Nicky parries and almost manages to disarm him. Nicky tries to feint, but Joe parries both strikes and ripostes quickly, forcing Nicky to back off. Their swords collide with a repetitive tap tap tap sound.

Out of the two of them, Joe is the faster one, giving him an advantage over Nicky, who is more strength than speed. But he’s had nine hundred years to learn how to counter Joe.

Nicky can’t help smiling a little as they circle each other, waiting for an opening. He doesn’t think he’ll ever get tired of this, no matter how many times they do it.

Joe swings for his torso, and Nicky drops to the ground, ducking under Joe’s blade and kicking out to knock Joe’s legs out from under him. It works - Joe falls with a surprised yelp. They end up with Nicky above him, the tip of his sword just touching Joe’s heart.

“That makes thirty one,” Nicky says.

“You cheated.”

“Me?” Nicky asks innocently. “That was a perfectly legal move.”

“Nicky’s right,” Andy chimes in.

“Nobody asked, Andromache,” Joe says, but he’s smiling.

Nicky moves his sword away and holds out his hand for Joe to take. “She’s simply helping to clear up the confusion.”

“You’re a bastard, my love,” Joe tells him fondly as he takes Nicky’s hand.

Nicky pulls him to his feet. “You love me anyway.”

What happens is this: Nicky wakes to find Joe muttering and twitching in his sleep, saying his name over and over. “Nicolò.”

“I’m here,” Nicky says. 

Joe rolls onto his back. “Nicolò, don’t- wake up- don’t go, please-”

Nicky sits up and shakes him gently. “Joe. It’s just a dream. Wake up.”

“Please- you can’t- don’t leave me behind- Nicolò-”

“Joe,” Nicky says, a little more firmly this time. “Destati, amore, sono qui.”

Joe screams awake, his eyes flying open as he sits bolt upright. 

“Joe, look at me.” Nicky takes Joe’s hands in both of his own. “Listen to me. You’re safe. It wasn’t real. Just breathe with me, okay?”

Joe closes his eyes. Nicky presses their foreheads together, deliberately measuring his breathing to give Joe something to follow. It works - little by little, Joe calms down.

“There.” Nicky shifts their position so they’re sitting side by side, Joe curled into Nicky’s side with his head on Nicky’s shoulder. “Tell me?”

Joe takes a steadying breath, and Nicky holds him just a little tighter. “It was a job, I think,” he begins, his voice barely a whisper. “Something went wrong, and you - you wouldn’t wake up. I begged and begged but you- you were gone, Nicolò. And I can’t help thinking - if I don’t go first, then I’ll have to be without you, and I don’t- I can’t-”

He cuts himself off with a choked sob, hiding his face in Nicky’s shoulder. 

“You won’t,” Nicky says. “We came into this together, hayati. We will leave it together.”

“You can’t be sure of that.”

“No, but I can be sure of some things.” Nicky brings their joined hands to his lips and kisses Joe’s palm. “I know that I love you. And I will not leave you. And even if we do not know what will happen, we will face it together. Always.”

Joe nods.

“Try to get back to sleep,” Nicky says softly. “I’m right here. I promise.”

Until a bomb goes off on one of their jobs, and Quýnh throws herself in front of Andy before she can react, taking the brunt of the explosion. The impact still knocks her off her feet. Her head hits something hard, and she blacks out.

When she wakes, there is a ringing in her ears, and her whole body aches, but she doesn’t think she’s seriously injured. She sits up, slowly, as the dust clears.

“Quýnh?” she asks, her throat hoarse from the smoke.

“Andy!” someone calls - Nile. “You okay?”

Andy coughs. “I’m fine, where’s - where’s Quýnh?”

She starts coughing again, and Nile crouches beside her. “What happened?”

“Explosion,” Andy says. “Quýnh jumped in front of me.”

“You’re not hurt?”

“I’m fine,” Andy repeats. 

From somewhere to her left, Quýnh gasps awake, coughing, and Andy forces herself to crawl to her. “Quýnh.”

Bones snapping back into place make a very distinctive sound. Quýnh groans in pain, and opens her eyes. “Andromache?”

“Here.” Andy wants to take her hand, but she doesn’t want to hurt her.

“You’re - you’re okay?”

Andy almost laughs at that. “You’re worried about me?”

“Always,” Quýnh says sincerely, before clenching her jaw against the pain. 

“That was a stupid move,” Andy mutters. 

“I knew I would survive it. You might not have,” Quýnh says simply.

Oh. Andy wants to say more, but Quýnh cries out, and Andy takes her hand. Later, then.

-------------------------

“How do you feel?” Quýnh asks for the seventeenth time, reaching out to brush Andy’s hair away from her face. 

“Fine,” Andy says. The words come out sharper than intended, and Quýnh draws back.

“Did I do something?”

“You threw yourself in front of a bomb.” 

“So you didn’t get hurt.”

“And if you hadn’t woken up? I can’t lose you again, Quýnh, I-” Her voice breaks. “I can’t.”

“I can’t lose you either.” There are tears in Quýnh’s eyes as she looks at Andy. “If I get blown up a few times to make sure you don’t get hurt, then so be it.”

“What if you don’t wake up?”

“It’s a risk I’m willing to take.”

Neither of them speaks for a moment. Then Andy looks away. “If it’s my time…”

“It’s not. Not if I have anything to do with it. You’re going to live, Andromache.”

“You don’t need to protect me from everything.”

Quýnh smiles a little at that. “I can’t help it.”

“Maybe try avoid getting blown up in the future, then.”

This time, she deliberately messes it up, so the ball hidden in one of the cups falls out as she shuffles it, and Quýnh laughs as she watches it roll along the table, catching it before it hits the floor. “You’re losing your touch, my heart,” she teases.

Andromache smiles. “Maybe.”

Quýnh tilts her head. “Show me how you do it?”

How could Andromache say no?

She does the trick again, this time explaining how she hides another ball in one of the cups, to make it seem like it multiplies. When it’s Quýnh’s turn, she replicates the trick perfectly, and laughs in delight. 

-------------------------

Quýnh shivers and shifts closer to Andromache. It’s a rainy night, and even by the fire, the icy wind bites at them. 

“I hate winter,” Quýnh mutters. 

“It’s not that bad,” Andromache says.

“It’s cold. And it’s rainy. And it’s miserable. When we’re done here, we’re never coming to England again.”

“Yusuf will agree with you on that one.”

“And he’s right to. I hate it here.”

Andromache can’t help laughing a little at Quýnh’s frustration, which just leads to Quýnh looking at her in confusion. “What?”

Andromache just smiles and kisses Quýnh’s forehead. “Nothing.”

Quýnh curls into Andromache’s side, shivering again. “It’s freezing.”

“So you’ve said,” Andromache teases.

After that, neither of them speaks for a while - Quýnh lets her head drop onto Andromache’s shoulder, and Andromache absentmindedly traces small circles with her thumb on Quýnh’s upper arm. She stares at the fire so intently that when she blinks, the flames dance in the darkness behind her eyelids. It’s not an uncomfortable silence: those don’t really happen anymore, not after this long.

“Where are you?” Quýnh asks softly, tugging her back to reality.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re so far away.”

“I’m right here,” Andromache says, looking down at her.

Quýnh looks like she’s going to say something else, but doesn’t. “I love you,” she says instead.

Andromache kisses Quýnh’s temple. “I love you too.”

-------------------------

Quýnh is silhouetted against the setting sun, looking like a warrior-queen from an ancient tale, and the sight takes Andromache’s breath away.

For so long, Quýnh had been nothing but a dream to her. But she’s real, and she’s by Andromache’s side, no matter what. 

Quýnh turns back and smiles at her, almost glowing. “Race you to the tree.”

Andromache pulls her horse alongside Quýnh’s. “I’ll give you a headstart.”

Quýnh’s eyes sparkle with the challenge, and then she spurs her horse onward, streaking across the fields, her hair streaming out behind her. Andromache counts for one, two, three and follows her, chasing after her. Quýnh is fast, but Andromache had been riding for almost as long as humanity had, and she begins to catch up.

Quýnh laughs into the wind, and speeds up just a little. Riding further, and further, and further. Until Andromache cannot close the distance. Quýnh reaches the tree and keeps riding until she disappears over the horizon.

Andromache follows her, and when she reaches the top of the hill Quýnh had ridden over, she is nowhere to be seen.

-------------------------

The sunlight filters through the curtains and drags Andy out of sleep. Her whole body feels heavy, like she’s been asleep for days.

She shifts, reaching towards the other side of the bed, for Quýnh, and opens her eyes-

The other side of the bed is cold. There is nobody there. Because Quýnh is gone, stolen by the sea, still alive but subject to a fate far, far worse than death.

Quýnh drowns, and Andy lives, carrying the memory of Quýnh deep inside her. 

The room darkens - the sun must have gone behind a cloud - and a chill settles in the air.

“I told him to go, but he’s insisting that he needs to see you. He won’t say why.”

Andy sighs. She’s tired, and her whole body aches from sparring with Nile the other day. But if Booker is here… He’d known the rules of the exile. He wouldn’t break them unless he felt it was absolutely necessary.

“If you don’t want to, I can tell him-”

“No,” Andy says. “No, I’ll talk to him.”

Joe looks concerned. “You sure, boss?”

“He wouldn’t have come here for no reason.” She gets up slowly, her muscles burning, and follows Joe out of the room and to the door, where Nicky is talking quietly to Booker.

“What are you doing here, Book?” she asks tiredly. 

“I need you to see something,” Booker says. He looks back at the car behind him. Andy can see the faint shadow of a person in the window, but she can’t tell if it’s someone she knows. The window is open, only a crack. 

“Come on,” Booker calls to the shadow. 

The car door opens, and Andy watches as the shadow gets out - a woman, in a green hoodie and blue jeans, her hood pulled up so Andy can’t see her face. She catches a glimpse of dark hair as the woman makes her way slowly around the car to stand at the bottom of the steps.

It can’t be.

Andy has let herself hope before, and it has always ended in heartbreak. She’ll think she hears Quýnh’s voice, or her laughter across the street, or sees her walking away. And it’s never her. It can’t be her, because Nile would have noticed in her dreams. Because Andy would know. Somehow, she would know.

The woman tugs her hood down, and the world drops out from under Andy’s feet.

It’s Quýnh. She looks a little different, but it’s still Quýnh. All she can do is stare, her eyes filling with tears, still not entirely convinced any of this is real. 

“Hi,” Quýnh says, and Andy nearly sobs at the sound of her voice, so familiar and yet so new at the same time. “Long time no see.”

And it’s those four words, the modern phrase sounding so strange in a voice she hasn’t heard in centuries, that finally break Andy. A strangled cry tears itself from her throat and then she’s moving, running down the stairs towards Quýnh. Quýnh stumbles back as Andy collides with her, but wraps her arms around Andy tightly and buries her face in Andy’s shoulder. Andy’s crying - they both are - and she’s shaking, holding Quýnh as if she’ll disappear if she lets go. If this is a dream, she doesn’t want to wake up.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers when she’s found her voice, running her fingers through Quýnh’s hair the way she used to do. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” She needs Quýnh to know it, needs her to know how the guilt has been eating her alive ever since they’d stopped searching full time. Repeats those two words over and over until they don’t feel like words, just sounds. 

After what feels like centuries, but cannot be more than minutes, Quýnh pulls back. She reaches up and brushes away Andy’s tears, and Andy closes her eyes.

“I know, my heart,” Quýnh whispers, her voice shaking just a little. “I know.”

“I tried,” Andy says. “I tried to find you- I tried for centuries, but I couldn’t.”

“I know.” Quýnh presses their foreheads together. “But you tried.”

Andy nearly breaks apart then - at the confirmation that no, Quýnh doesn’t hate her for failing. That she has another chance. Even if she’s mortal now. She has a chance.

“I missed you,” she says, and it’s not nearly enough to describe the agony of the past five hundred years: waking from a nightmare only to reach for someone who isn’t there, having to fight alone for the first time in millenia and feeling like she’s lost a limb, making a joke and turning to see Quýnh’s reaction before her absence hits her again - all while knowing that Quýnh was still out there somewhere. 

Quýnh pulls her into another hug, as if to say, I understand. “I missed you too.”