Malta

[peace_inthe_violence]

This is a fairy tale of blood and bullets
It is the story of three men and three women and a small island between Italy and Africa.
This is a story about tragedy and pain, about healing and hope, but mostly it is about
love.

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[peace_inthe_violence]

"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."

[notariver]

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."

[peace_inthe_violence]

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.

[notariver]

"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."

[peace_inthe_violence]

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."

[notariver]

"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.

[peace_inthe_violence]

"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.