peace_inthe_violence

It had been a good week for them. Maybe she was finally starting to understand that they hadn't kidnapped her and drugged her.

Probably not, but Nicky could hope.

Eyeing the overgrown food forest, Nicky arched a brow and dipped his head in a small bow. "Your task is much more intensive than mine. If it helps at all, I can tell you how I had it laid out? There should be boards keeping things at least somewhat contained, but they may have rotted away by now."

She was at least mostly sure now that it wasn't drugs, if only because there was no way for them to continue administering them, since everyone ate the same food and she didn't have any track marks or even any suspicious bug bites.

Which meant that she could believe that all of them -and she herself- had some kind of Wolverine healing powers, the fact remained that they had kidnapped her and were keeping her here against her will, and the fact that they admitted as much didn't change anything.

But she could bide her time. She could be patient when she needed to be, and aside from making sure she didn't, or couldn't, leave, she wasn't being mistreated, which should have made her suspicious and she knew it, but it didn't.

"Few pieces still there." She replied, because there were, and even the places where the boards had rotted were still more or less in the same shape as they had been, making it easier to tell where the beds were, "Going to have to get new lumber to put them back together though." And then, as was her habit upon unexpectedly finding one of them when she thought she was alone, she asked: "This your way of reminding me you're all keeping an eye on me?"

Her question earned a confused look from the man, his head tilting a little as he rolled it around in his head. Then, understanding dawned, and he snorted softly enough that she might not even be able to hear it.

"Nile, I watch out for everyone." The answer seemed simple enough to him. He was the last through a door so that he could cover everyone else's backs. He was set up in a sniper's nest, following them through his scope and murmuring in their ears. Even here, in the place he felt the safest in, he had still chosen the site of the house at the top of the largest hill of the property, and had cleared the trees in a wide circle around so that no matter what, he'd be able to see if someone was coming for them.

Standing up, he glanced around the roof once more before just turning and stepping off the edge he'd been standing on. He could have rolled with the landing or even jumped while still crouched, but instead he just landed with a grunt and waited a few heartbeats for his ankle to mend itself before he was strolling over to where Nile was working.

"Want to come with me to get boards? Stretch your legs a little bit? Or do you want to finish pulling everything out first?"

She knew what a bone breaking, and especially a joint, sounded like, mostly thanks to having broken her wrist during roller derby training once, and then again shortly before basic training, something she'd been terrified would disqualify her at the time, but it had healed fine and she'd been sent on her way as expected.

Which was to say that she recognized that distinct snap, and the fact that he essentially just walked it off made her grimace for a moment.

The question, however, bore serious thought, because while she should be taking any chance she could get for an escape, she also knew she shouldn't look too eager to get away from them just yet, she needed them to relax and slip up to make good on any kind of getaway.

Which was why she finally shook her head, "No, have to get all the dead stuff out first, see what I'm working with, so I know where to go from there."

The telltale crack of bones breaking and a body hitting the ground outside the window got Andromache's attention quite fast: she came around the door searching for Nicky and Nile, shoulders only relaxing when she saw them both, whole and unharmed.

Unharmed as soon as Nicky stood up, when his ankle healed.

She sighed out a breath of relief, laying the knife she'd pulled off the magnet strip back down before she came out the door. "How many times do you have to break an ankle before you use a ladder, Nicky?" she asked, coming up to them and brushing her hands off on her shorts.

He wanted to believe her. He wanted to trust her. But that hesitation was all the proof he needed that their fight to help her understand them wasn't over. He wasn't surprised, but he was a little saddened.

He smiled when Andy came through the side door, looking very much like she was about to stab someone for falling off a roof.

"I have a ladder. It's on the other side of the house." His smile never faltered. "This was faster. Perfect timing. I was about to give Nile a tour."

He moved around the younger woman, broadcasting his movements so that she could keep a distance between them if she wanted. "This entire side here was tomatoes. Sauce in the back, cherry up front. I think there were a few slicing tomatoes in the middle, too. Joe enjoys them." That last was said in a conspiratorial hushed tone and a smirk.

He picked his way through the overgrowth before he knelt and starting shifting plants aside. When he straightened up, he was smiling and holding a large purple and red tomato in one hand. "There are still some left, it seems."

She startled a little at the other woman's arrival, quiet and fast and something she was going to have to remember, and she followed, arms folding across her chest and keeping both of the others where she could see them, "Red cherries or the yellow and orange ones?"

It was both to keep him talking and because she was genuinely curious, some people had a preference, some didn't. Though both brows lifted a little at the intact tomato being pulled out of the overgrowth, "Yeah, tomatoes will keep coming back pretty much forever as long as the dirt's still good and there aren't hookworms to eat the flowers before they can turn to fruit."

She shrugged, arms still folded, "Most squash is the same way, can't get rid of it unless you uproot the whole thing and even that isn't a guarantee." There had been three summers they'd suffered through zucchini everything because they kept forgetting to dig the thing out in the winter and it had come back in the spring.

"Orange, yellow, green, red, purple sometimes," Andy responded lightly; she remembered planting some one year though she couldn't recall what year it had been. Just a long summer under the sun, working in the garden until the sun disappeared, her and Quynh and Nicky and Joe.

"Nicky loves to garden whenever he can. Been a while since he had enough land to do it properly, though," she said, bumping her arm against his companionably. "You should get him to make you pizza with the sauce he makes. Better than anywhere else you'll find it."

He nodded at Nile's assessment, smiling widely. It pleased him to no end, the fact that she was taking on this project. Maybe something he could bond with their newest sister over? Work with her to bring this garden back to the beauty it used to be?

He was starting to open his mouth to say something when Andy's arm bumped his and he turned instead to smile at her. "Grazi, Capa. I know what you are trying to do, and no. I will not make pizza again so soon." There was just a hint of a mock lecture in there, and then he was handing her the tomato that he'd rescued from the weeds and turned back to Nile.

"Sì, you are absolutely correct. Some types are more resilient than others, but I would be willing to bet you that the entire edge over there," and here, he gestured off towards the opposite side of the space. "Is still very much littered with zucchini and yellow squash. Maybe even a few others."

He picked his way to the back where a simple pole fence had been built, peering closely at the vines that stretched over them. "This used to be very fine grapes for wine...but I believe they may have all gone wild by now. Probably too tart to eat, unfortunately."

"Not really a fan of grapes, no big loss as far as I'm concerned." She shook her head, "And if I never see another zucchini in my life it will be too soon." An opinion she might change her mind on a few decades down the line, but one that she was fairly dead set on at the moment.

"If there's still good tomato plants down there though that's a start. I was thinking beans, too, string beans or yellow wax beans, because they'll climb the tomato cages easy as anything else." She gave a little shrug, "My mom says it keeps the bugs off the tomatoes until they're big enough to handle it on their own." Something she wasn't entirely sure worked, but always seemed to, so she didn't argue the point.

Andy chuckled at Nile's vehemence regarding zucchini, and caught the tomato with gentle hands when Nicky passed it to her, shaking her head and returning the sentiment in Italian as she turned back towards the house. Let the two of them bond, or at least tackle the garden, now that no one was being attacked or hurt.

She'd still talk to Nicky about jumping off the roof again and giving her a heart attack.

"Le lascerai perdere la tua cucina? Peccato, Nicolò," she said over her shoulder. "Don't let Booker hear you talk about growing grapes again."

"Your mother is a very wise woman, cara." He used the little bit of affection without thinking about it, a sure sign of how much he already considered her to be family. Even if she didn't consider herself as family, yet.

Andy turned to head back to the house and Nicky's lips twitched up in a fond smile. "Non le sto insegnando a fare la pizza! Booker can stay out of my grapes, the French heathen...

"Sorry, sometimes the temptation to tease is a bit too much to ignore on days as fine as this." The last was directed at Nile, though it wobbled a little as he started to pick his way through the weeds so he could survey the damage to his grapes. "If you don't like grapes, we can pull them out, wild or not. If you like to garden, this can be your garden now."

She squinted, both at what she was fairly sure was an endearment, and definitely one that made her bristle automatically, but also at the Italian. She didn't know a lick of it, she'd taken Spanish in high school and barely remembered any of that.

"The only part of that I understood was 'pizza' and I know enough to know that I don't want to know." She shook her head at the rest, though she followed all the same, better to keep him where she could see him and keep him talking, "I don't know about 'like', but it gives me something to do, and something I know how to do, figure it'll make being stuck here a little tolerable."

He missed her squint because he was too busy smirking at Andy's ancient hand gesture on her way back to the house. And by the time that he made it to the grapes, he'd been watching her from the corner of his eye enough to know that she was watching him just as much. He frowned a little, hiding it by reaching out to see if he could find any surviving grapevines.

"We're not trying to keep you 'stuck' here, Nile. We are not kidnappers." He hated that she thought of them like that and hated the fact that this was the place she was going to hate because of it. This was supposed to be a home, not a prison.

"Yeah, you know, you all keep saying that, and that you know I don't want to be here, and I can't leave either. You can't have it both ways. Either you are keeping me here against my will after you snatched me away from who I was supposed to leave that camp with, or you're not kidnappers and I can leave."

She shook her head, dragging both hands up over her face in suppressed frustration, "I've already argued this until I'm blue in the face. I'm here, I can't leave, y'all might as well start with the weird stuff already so I can stop waiting for it."

He didn't lose his calm. If anything, he just seemed to get calmer. Her voice rose and he sighed, keeping his eyes carefully neutral on the tomatoes with her only in his periphery. He knew she was anger, he even understood why...but this was new territory for them, too.

It had taken close to a century for Andy and Quynh to find himself and Yusuf. They'd had time to work out their immortality and each other on their own, to ponder the dreams and talk about what they could mean. Even Booker had taken time to find, and he'd had the most telling dreams of all of them: There was no mistaking Napoleon's army for anything else, after all. He'd had time to make it back to his family, but he'd also come to terms with his immortality along the way.

But Nile? She was so young. And she was so young.

"There is no 'weird stuff', Nile. I know my promise means nothing to you, but I promise you that you are safe here. We're only trying to help you with this new life."

"I want to believe that, I really do, because for some reason you all believe that, but I don't know if it's because it's true or because you're all telling the same lie."

She was still mostly sure she'd been abducted by some kind of cult, but none of their reassurances sounded like any cult she'd ever heard of, and there was the part where none of them, including herself, actually stayed dead, and that was the part she was still trying to wrap her head around as much as anything.

"It is a lot to take in, I know. I'm sorry." He flicked his gaze from the tomatoes to her, then back to the tomatoes before she could take it as a threatening gesture. Was he being overly cautious? Probably. Was he going to stop? Probably not.

"I didn't mean to upset you, Nile. I will leave you to your garden unhindered." 'Your' garden. He'd given it to her, no question about it.

Picking his way through the weeds, he gave her a wide berth so as to not accidentally corner her on his way back to the house. The shingles still needed work, but he'd get to it another time.

Malta

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