Nicolo di Genova (
peace_inthe_violence) wrote2020-09-09 02:21 pm
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Malta

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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"Good," she murmured, intending to let him do what he needed, even if she'd worry over it all the while he was gone. "So am I getting in, or are you getting out?" she asked, setting aside her drink, nearly empty but for some of the peach bits in the ice.
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He wouldn't leave without telling them all what his plan was and making sure there was some plan for if he didn't communicate with them or come back. The chances of that were slim, very slim.
"I'm here for you, you know that." He kissed the corner of her mouth. "Like always, boss."
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"I know," she sighed gently, surfacing again in the water and kicking to keep her head above water. "You keep me steady, Book. More than anyone else."
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"You did the same for me after Jean-Pierre." That was when Booker actually joined them instead of trying to live his life like nothing had changed. He had come to them a wreck of guilt and grief and they helped rebuild him.
He swam over to her and caught her around the waist. He could keep them both up in the water easily. "I enjoy being your right hand. Your friend. Lover. Whatever you need."
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He knew what it felt like, more intimately than the others, to lose everything, to feel ungrounded after everything was gone. "All of it."
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They both understood grief on a very deep, ugly level. Booker trusted she wouldn't flinch from his darkness.
"Well, you know me, I live to serve." He drew back and smiled at her. He didn't need to bring them down with talk of his family again.
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"This is nice," she said idly, carefully moving her head to rest it on his chest. "You make a good pool float." Better than a unicorn, anyway.
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"Thanks boss. It's good to know I've got a backup if this mercenary thing stops being profitable." It didn't take much extra effort to stay up if he kept his arms out. The only real downside was he couldn't quite touch her.
He did glance down at her. "You are ruining my tan though."
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She wanted to spend time with them all, time to relax and unwind and just breathe in the same spaces. And that included Booker, where there was no pressure to do or say anything much; they could both snooze in the sun, floating in the cool water as far as they cared right then. "I was worried we'd lose you," she confessed quietly, imagining almost sinking her weight into him, though she didn't move. "Before we came here. You were so low, and I didn't know how to get to you."
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"Without you I would have kept sinking." Booker paused a moment as he thought back to where he was when they first arrived in Malta. Hell, the years before that fight after fight, failure on top of failure even though they tried to do good. "Nicky fighting so hard to keep us together after the last job I have to wonder if he saw the same thing you did. How low I was. How bad I'd get on my own."
Misery loves company was a good joke but he did get pretty miserable on his own. "You don't have to save me on your own, at least. You've got backup."
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She'd rarely talked about how bad it got once Quynh had been lost, but Booker had known them all this time. He could guess.
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"I think that's why I need to see them. I have to put it to rest in myself or I'll end up consumed by it." Booker had thought about it more and more as he dreamed of Jean-Pierre. The hurt just kept killing him again and again.
He was quiet for a moment. "Do you want to see if we could find her? With modern technology and perhaps new information discovered by some historian?"
The ocean was still so unknown Booker wasn't hopeful but there were better methods now than before. Maybe they could help Andy bury her grief as well.
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"Did Nicky and Joe ever tell you how long we looked for her?" Andy asked, voice soft. It wasn't a conversation she had often, because even after five hundred years it was still painful. Quynh had been her lodestone, her lover, her everything: she'd dreamed of her for near a thousand years before ever meeting her, and she was like an angel to Andy, the closest she'd ever come to believing in the divine. "Fifty years, and we--I had to stop. I couldn't... All I could see when I closed my eyes was her being dragged into that coffin. She screamed for me the whole time, and I couldn't get to her."
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He touched down with his arms wrapped around her tightly. They understood grief on a level that might be hard for Joe and Nicky who still had the great love of their life. Their pains were different was all.
"They told me a little bit." Those times Booker's nightmares had woken them and he was a babbling mess over it. He turned his head and kissed her hair as if he could pour comfort into her. "We don't have to. I never want to put you through that pain again."
The last thing Booker wanted was to hurt her.
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"I wish I could look again. I miss her--she was...everything," Andy confessed. "I know they don't understand, because they still have each other. But it's like re-learning how to do everything, just...missing something. Everything feels wrong for a long time." And some of it never feels exactly right.
"It's okay, Book. You're not hurting me." Not any worse than she could hurt herself by thinking about it, anyway.
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His world had started falling apart with her death. Then he lost Michel out at sea and Jean-Pierre got cancer... it was misery without his wife. It was hell until his heart scabbed over enough to go on.
He still kept his lips against her hair and his arms solidly around her like he could protect her from it or at least help her carry that burden. He would do that for her.
"You say the word, Andy, and we'd all be willing to try to find her. Where you go, we follow."
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"I'm not supposed to be making you sad again," Andy murmured, voice softer, almost apologetic as she took one of his hands and carefully laced their fingers together: he'd be her otter, holding hands so they wouldn't float apart from each other in the pool. It wasn't that big, but any distance seemed too much right then.
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They wouldn't wallow. He wouldn't wallow in it. It wasn't like that night she found him drunk. That was a very bad night.
"And it's no hardship to spend a little time now admiring you in the sun." He brought her hand up and kissed her knuckles like he was a proper gentleman.
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Andy usually did attempt to keep her mood light and fluid, knowing how dark it could get otherwise, and it spread easy among the others the longer they spent time here. It wasn't the longest break from the mercenary life the group had taken: Andy remembered the better portion of a year spent rebuilding a destroyed Aboriginal school, somewhere in the middle of nowhere in Australia. Booker had been in high demand given his penchant for reading to the children and she knew he'd loved it.
The memory and his bringing her hand up to his lips made her smile, a little joyful laugh escaping her throat. "Sebastien Le Livre, you terrible flirt," she teased. Andy liked seeing him so free, and happier than he'd been in a long time. Maybe ever, certainly since the death of his wife; none of them could take the place of his first, mortal, family and Andy knew that. It wasn't even a matter of trying hard enough and getting through. Nothing would erase them, not the painful memories of watching his children pass before him. Andy hasn't always made herself obvious about it but even when Booker's youngest was in the hospital she'd watched him, ready to step in when he broke from the weight of carrying and denying that silent, hulking inevitability.
The poets had had something true with their words. How terrible it was to love something death could touch.
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"I happen to think I'm a very good flirt," he mused as he tugged her further into the shallow end so her feet could touch the bottom of the pool. Then he swept her up and began a somewhat awkward waltz.
It was much harder to waltz in water but that was sort of the point. Let her laugh. Let her tease him. Somehow, they had to find happiness again after all the darkness or they'd be lost.
Booker tried very hard not to get lost somewhere these people couldn't reach him.
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"You remembertrying to teach me this the first time?" she asked, having settled into his arms.
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In time, he had learned to appreciate that instead of being disgusted by it. He had done the same with Joe and Nicky. Booker had not been the best member when he first joined but he was also in not the best state of mind either.
"And for someone so graceful in battle you were not good at dancing."
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He'd been appalled.
She had laughed, and they'd taken him with them anyway.
"In my defense I'd never had to dance. I had to learn to fight," she chuckled, wrapping her arms around Booker's shoulders and settling into just swaying and standing with him, cool water sparkling on their skin in the sunlight. "You got used to us eventually, though. For which I'm glad," she murmured, nuzzling at his collarbone.
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Love her. Love Joe. Love Nicky. They all took up space in his heart. Booker saw immortality as more of curse but these people were a blessing.
"And extract my own head out of my ass." It had only required them murder him three or four times because he had been such a prick. Booker wouldn't say he was a good man but he was better for knowing them and letting them teach him how to better.
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They'd managed and gotten around it, the hurt and the anger, and now they were here. "We all learned to love you, too," she murmured with a soft smile only a little teasing around the edges. "Come here, and give me a proper kiss, then. Like a lady."
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CW: Sex ahoy!
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