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.

Comments

Re: Some Time Later...

[transfuge]

As a man who grew up in a port city he had no idea what to do with a garden. That he left for Nicky and apparently their newest one, Nile. It was just... the siren sound of Bruce Springsteen made him investigate what was going on in the garden early in the morning.

He leaned a shoulder against the doorway and cleared his throat to make sure he didn't startle her. She was still fairly jumpy around them, untrusting which he understood. They had basically kidnapped her.

"Were you alive when any of these songs were popular?" It was his tape. Booker had a deep appreciation of 70s and 80s music. Well, until it got too pop for him. He was very selective about modern music.

[notariver]

She was much less jumpy than she had been, because while they might have, essentially, kidnapped her in the first place, they'd also come back for her when she was in actual trouble. Which might have been a by-product of going after Andy who was also in trouble, but it was still enough, and proof that the adage 'it's not paranoia if they really are out to get you' was a true one had done quite a bit to settle her.

Mostly she was just jumpy now when they managed to sneak up on her, something that she didn't think they actually tried to do, it was just that the rest of them were used to each other and she wasn't yet.

Which mostly meant that Booker was greeted with a yelp and an exclamation of: "One of y'all is going to give me a damn heart attack one of these days, I swear." There was no actual bite to the statement, it was a vent as much as anything else, but she shook her head a moment later, "But no, I wasn't. Hell, I don't even think my folks had met yet." She added, scratching the back of her neck.

[transfuge]

"I could wear a bell if it would make you feel better." Booker walked out in to the garden with his hands in his pockets. He knew better than to touch anything. He might accidentally kill something.

He had done his best to give her space while she adjusted but he couldn't deny he was curious about her. A new immortal after all this time. Why? What did it mean? Booker didn't know but he was curious.

"Well now you're making me feel old," he teased a little. "That's my tape. I got it new back in '87. This was all top of the line technology."

[notariver]

There was a flicker of expression in response, one that almost made it all the way to being a smile, however briefly, and she did reach over to turn the music down just a little, "I figured, doesn't seem like Andy's style." Truthfully she wasn't really sure what did, "And feeling old's all on you for keeping all this top of the line technology around." A pause, "But not like I can argue, I'm the one using it, figured I'd give the plants a break from me singing to them for a while."

She shook her head as she misted the next of the tomato plants in the row, "My pops used to listen to Springsteen on Saturday mornings while he cooked breakfast, even though mom always threatened to file for divorce if he 'didn't get that white boy out of her kitchen'" And there was the actual smile, "She never meant it, she'd been making the same threat since they first started dating."

[transfuge]

"You... sing to plants?" This wasn't a thing Booker had ever heard of before. Why would anyone sing to plants? They didn't have ears to hear with. "Do they applaud?"

Alright, he was being sarcastic but he couldn't help it. As much as he loved Springsteen he didn't think the plants would appreciate it as much.

Nile seemed to like it a little if it made her nostalgic. It also sent a little pang of worry through him. She had living family. He was the only one of them that had been through that before. God, he hoped she was smarter than him about that.

"You listen to Springsteen for the message. He's from when songs meant something." Ah, his judgement of most modern music was not kind.

[notariver]

"MmHM." Was the only response to that second part, because she gave a shrug and: "You're supposed to, or play music for them, people say it helps them grow better, because of the sound waves or harmonics or something." She shook her head, snorting softly, "I used to think it was a whole bunch of 'crystals speak to me' bull, but..."

A shrug as she swapped hands with the mister, stretching the one she'd been using, "Turns out a lot of stuff I thought was bull isn't, actually. So I figured it couldn't hurt. And I don't know about the plants, but there's either a mockingbird or a Whistling Woman just past the tree line that definitely didn't like me whistling yesterday. Pretty sure it was the bird though, don't see many whistlers outside of Navajo territory. Or so one of my squadmates said after she popped another one upside the head for whistling after sundown."

[transfuge]

It did sound like crystal bullshit to Booker but she spoke confidently enough about it that he might consider looking into it the next time he was bored late at night. Anyone who used the term harmonics had an idea of what they were talking about.

"You don't get many people this far out here," Booker pointed out. "Our nearest neighbor is a few miles away. You're hearing birds."

They lived out here for the privacy of it. They didn't need neighbors wondering why they didn't age or why they carried around so many weapons. Or the occasional screams from nightmares.

"Andy give you the, uh, can't go back talk yet?" he asked as he considered her tending to the garden. She was smart and capable. If they won her trust she'd be a good fit.

[notariver]

She'd been about to answer that a Whistling Woman was a what not a who, and that they wouldn't have to worry about one out here anyway when the actual question came.

Her jaw set, just for a moment, setting the mister down completely, the rest of the tomatoes could wait, and they were all in good health anyway, "Yeah, she did. When she first picked me up and again on the way back after ...everything." Getting black-bagged, as it were, had definitely put things into perspective, "And I get it, trying to contact them would put them in as much danger as the rest of us."

[transfuge]

Oh, she changed tone very quickly. Booker had spent the last two hundred years with the same three people but he could still read a person. That little skill hadn't gone away. The mention of family and what was done closed Nile.

He prepared to rip the scab off a very old wound that never quite scarred.

"There would be some danger, yes," he said with a soft sigh. "Mostly to you."

He rubbed his palms against his jeans to chase away the cold sweat. "I went back. I had a family. A wife, three sons. I didn't want what Andy and the others offered. I wanted them. It was, uh, a mistake." The old grief surged up like water in a well, clawing at his throat to choke him. He looked away from her for a second while he pushed it down.

"If you go back... you won't age. They will. You won't get sick. They will. You will watch everyone you love grow old, suffer, and die. They'll figure out your secret. They'll beg you to share it with them and you won't be able to. They won't believe you. They'll tell you... your love is weak or it's a lie that you don't love them at all. That you're selfish."

He could hear Jean-Pierre now screaming at him in the hospital while the nuns pretended not to hear. He could feel the splash of water on his face as his son rejected him and cursed him. Booker took a deep breath and blinked back the tears.

"If you go back, Nile, and I think you're planning to... you'll lose everyone you ever loved and their lasts words to you will be hateful. That's no memory to spend immortality with."

Booker reached into his back pocket, pulled out his flask, and drank.

[notariver]

To her credit she didn't interrupt and listened attentively, just leaning against the edge of the raised garden bed, letting the boards support some of her weight.

She didn't fold her arms, though one curled across her middle while the other settled into the dirt around the nearest tomato stalk, fingers working down into it a little, because as much as 'touch some dirt' or 'go touch grass' was meant as a joke, sometimes it actually helped.

She let the silence hang for a moment, sorting out what she wanted to say, but what came out first was: "I think I was too." Not quite what she'd meant to say or how she'd meant to say it, but true all the same, "I don't know if I was, but it wasn't like I had any other plan if you all slipped up and I managed to get away."

Her brow furrowed, expression darkening with more recent hurt, "But then I did and all that I managed to do by it was get Andy and me black-bagged." A little head shake, finally looking up at him instead of whatever middle-distant point she'd been staring at on the ground, "But the rest of you saved me, too, not just her." Which meant ...something, she still wasn't sure what, but she owed it to them to at least try.

"My family thinks I'm dead now anyway." And back to staring at some distant point, the treeline this time, "Dizzy, one of my squadmates, had the letter I wrote for if anything happened, and even if she didn't trust me at the end," And none of them really had, she'd seen that before Andy had swooped in and grabbed her from the collection team that had been sent for her, "She still would have sent it, because that's the code we lived by."

[transfuge]

Booker gave up on standing and sat down on the edge of a planter. He leaned forward, resting his arms on his knees, his flask still dangled from his fingers.

“But you’re still not comfortable here.” Booker tilted his head as he studied her. He didn’t know her like the others. She was a whole new person to figure out. “You still want to go home. I get it. If you want to talk about your family or how to grieve for them... well, a little whiskey and I can have that conversation.”

He shook the flask which was more full than not. Booker didn’t drink the huge amount he used to but cold turkey wasn’t possible. He couldn’t just... give it up.

“None of us want to... replace your family. We can’t. Trust me, as much as I care about them, they can’t take that place but it’s a good group.” Booker ran a hand through his hair and smiled a little.

[notariver]

"It's not just here." She shook her head, because that was sort-of meant as a reassurance, "I don't think I'm going to be 100% comfortable anywhere for a while." She dusted the dirt from her fingers and folded her arms, loose and comfortable instead of prickly and standoffish as she had been before the rescue, "More comfortable here than I would be most places, though. At least here I know I've got backup. It's just..."

She stopped herself, as if thinking better of what she'd been about to say, hesitating for a moment and then just continuing ahead anyway, "I think you all forgot that you've had ages to get used to all this, lifetimes, you all had time to get used to it before you even met each other, and I didn't have time to get used to fuck-all before I got swept off into all this craziness by a bunch of people I had one real confusing dream about, one time, while I was recovering from what I thought was a near-death experience!"

Her voice had continued to rise as the words had kept unwinding out of her like a spool of twine, one after the next and she took a shaky breath, making herself relax back a little as she shook her head and finally focused on him once more, "Everything I thought I knew has been upended, and I haven't even had time to breathe."

[transfuge]

Booker listened. He was good at that. Of course he wanted to immediately leap to the defense of his friends and say something stupid like none of them really got used to it and that coming for her right away had saved her. It wasn't about that. It was about her feelings.

"You're right. We're not always good at being gentle or considerate." He inclined his head towards her. "We've done what we can since getting you back to let you have that time. That space. Still, you can't run from it forever. I tried. If you ask the others will tell you what an asshole I was when I finally joined up."

Angry, grieving, and torn up by war Booker hadn't been in a good place. He had lashed out and it had hurt the others. It had resulted in him getting hurt a time or two.

"I looked at this like a curse for centuries. It felt like it. I think it was driving me mad. I don't know how to help you let that anger and uncertainty go. It took me until this vacation to really try. I can tell you it's a miserable way to live." Booker could see now that it had dragged him to a dark place and hurt himself mostly. Now he could be held when he needed it and loved when he needed it. He allowed himself those things again.

[notariver]

"I'm not running, not anymore." That much, at least, was true, or true as she understood it, "I'm just trying to understand, and if I can't do that, trying to just come to peace with it."

She scratched at the back of her neck, a half-nervous movement, mostly because she didn't know what else to do with her hands, "I've died four times in less than six months." Less than three, even, but she mostly wasn't thinking about that, "Which is already three more than I thought I'd get, and definitely too many times too close together." She shook her head again, pushing to her feet so she could continue misting the tomato plants just to have something to do, "And I don't need to know how, or why, I know none of you have those answers. But I do need a chance to process everything."

[transfuge]

"I hung for three days and died many times before I could work my way free." There was nothing but bitterness in his voice when he thought about his time with the Grande Armée. Booker was not a happy soldier. "So, I win."

It was meant as a playful joke because they all had a rather... twisted sense of humor about death. Throw in some of the general French malaise and Booker tended to be grim even when joking.

"But if you want time we can give you that. Normally we'd work but before you came along we had a bad mission. We needed a break so we'll spend a year here at the very least." Booker waved a hand to gesture to the villa and the island of Malta in general. "Eventually though there will be some cause on the news we can't ignore and we'll go fight. I hope you're ready by then."

[notariver]

That, at least, was the kind of sense of humor she was more or less used to, and she snorted a laugh almost despite herself, "You know, if you want to convince me you're not some weird death cult you have to stop saying things like that." Her reply was meant as a tease in return, though she wasn't sure how well it actually landed, still sorting out just how they would react to things, how she would react to things given as how her world-view had been set on its ear.

Also, despite her studying them for her first week there, it hadn't been to learn about things like their particular bent of humor, but instead to find a way she could get away from them all and have it stick. Something she was having to make up for now with more careful observations.

[transfuge]

"Andy hasn't been worshiped for centuries so I think we're past the cult stage." He scratched underneath his chin. "We're more a, uh, commune. Full of very deadly and impossible to kill people but unless we're working we keep it peaceful."

Occasionally, they got a little rough sparring with each other but they hadn't really done that this vacation. They drank, they cuddled, and they ate together. It was more downtime than they'd taken in years.

"You can ask stuff too. Not the why and how but about us, this place, the things we've done. We'll talk if you want that." Booker wasn't sure if he did or didn't. His past was a mix of painful and beautiful. If it helped her relax, well, there were some things he could mention.

[notariver]

She nodded, "I know it, and I will. Soon." That nod went circular, turned into a shake of her head before she stilled, "I still have to try and wrap my brain around it on a personal level first before I start throwing around the weight of that much history."

It ran the risk of falling and crushing her, metaphorically speaking, under the weight of all those years with the wrong question, or just the right one, and that was one of those things she was trying to avoid until she'd gotten herself to accept all of this a little more fully.

[transfuge]

"If you figure it out, let me know." Booker would like an explanation. He's wondered why him for decades. He wouldn't consider himself as anyone's first choice for an immortal warrior. For some reason he had gotten this burden anyway.

He sipped at his whiskey as he considered her. "You're not the only one wondering why you. Why now?"

If Booker still believed in God he might have taken this as a sign. Or if he had Nicky's view on destiny and fate it might allow him to accept this and not wonder.

"I haven't come up with any answers either."

[notariver]

"It's less 'why me, why now' and more, 'what the fuck am I going to do about it?'" Help them when there was a fight to be had? Probably, she was reasonably sure of her ability to not die too much in the process, depending on the what and the where of it.

A dry little huff of a laugh followed, it had definitely been meant as a laugh but she knew it hadn't made it all the way to being one, "Kind of always wanted to be Robin Hood as a kid, what you all do is kind of the next best thing, right?"

[transfuge]

"Garden, apparently." Booker could vaguely remember that feeling but when he woke up immortal he only had one thought: home. It had driven him across the harsh Russian plains and further. Home. His wife. His sons. He had pushed himself hard to reach them.

Robin Hood. He chuckled at the idea. "We've occasionally stolen from the rich and given to the poor. Don't read the original stories though. It'll ruin the mythos for you."

The Robin Hood in the original stories was not a good character but only someone who read as much as Booker had might know that. "If you want to dismantle capitalism we can figure that out."

[notariver]

She clicked her tongue, giving a little point of one finger at that first answer, agreeing that yes, he got that one anyway.

Though her expression melted into one of aghast surprise, one that was entirely put on and only a little exaggerated, "You've all had all this time and haven't figured out how to do that yet?" She tisked, shaking her head, "Damn good thing I came along to shake things up or you'd never get anything done, apparently."

[transfuge]

"Not in a way that keeps us from being noticed." Booker liked the attitude. Nile gave as good as she got. And she was funny though he also thought she was seriously against capitalism.

They could get along.

"But if you have any suggestions how we can do that I'll listen." There were few things Booker enjoyed more than tearing down the rich who exploited the poor. He had been a teenager in the revolution. It gave him a few ideas.

[notariver]

She definitely gave as good as she got, and the fact that she was was probably the first indication that she was finally starting to settle and that she was finding her equilibrium again.

"Right, the not being noticed thing kind of puts a damper on it, but anybody who says to start small is part of the problem. Even if they don't know it" A little shrug, "Start with home owners associations, they used to be for the people who actually lived in the neighborhood, but now you've got one landlord who owns four or five houses, sometimes more, sometimes in the same neighborhood, sometimes in a few, but because they're the homeowner, they're the one who's in the associations."

A crooked little smile, "But you get it voted into the bylaws that members of the HOA also have to be residents and suddenly the people in charge are people who actually know what's going on in the neighborhood. That's how my mom did it. It's how we went from hiding a garden in the back of the house to having an actual community garden."

[transfuge]

Booker was amused that Nile thought they owned property anywhere with an HOA. That sort of attention was bad for them. This was probably the nicest property they owned. Hell, Andy had a few caves that were mostly storage though perfect for emergencies.

"So that's where you learned all of this." He gestured at the various plants. Booker had no idea how to tend to any of them but she had done a good job. "Your mom and the community around you?"

It'd be nice if they could effect change at that sort of level but the nature of what they did was very often the big picture and even then it didn't always do anything useful. They saved lives, but it didn't always feel like enough.