Between Scylla and Charybdis - Anonymous (2024)

Chapter 1 Chapter Text

Germany 2020

Andy is the only reason Joe answers the call.

She sleeps more frequently than she ever has, no more restful than before, but with a sullen urgency that frequently catches her by surprise. Nile claims it's normal, that she can remember how hard and how fast she crashed during her early days with the Marines. That Andy is just adapting to her new normal. That things will settle. Nile has not seen the worst of Andy’s impatience, and by an unspoken agreement between Nicky and Joe, is being sheltered from it wherever possible. Their sister is deeply, homicidally unpleasant to be around when she is truly exhausted and even more so when she’s frustrated.

Five hours running around a forest waving an axe and a further four hours teaching Nile how not to lose her head to said axe, and now she’s clean, in leggings and one of Nicky’s hoodies, curled up on the couch with her head on Joe’s knee. Nile is wringing the last hot water out of the shower while Nicky coaxes the ancient oven back to life.

Joe runs one hand lazily through Andy’s short hair in time with her slow, shallow breathing. It’s only a millennia’s worth of reflexes that stop him from flinching clean out off the couch when his cell phone lets out a soft chime.

He answers it instinctually, afraid to let it ring any longer and disturb her sleep.

That doesn’t mean he has to be polite about it. “What?”

There aren’t many people who have his number, but that doesn’t seem to stop telemarketers from finding him once or twice a week. He’d fully prepared to explain that no, he doesn’t want to switch his energy provider, and no, he hasn’t been in an accident that wasn’t his fault, when a familiar sound stills his voice.

He’s spent weeks, months even, crammed into foxholes with only Booker for company. Endless days in which Andy and Nicky were out of reach, beyond his ability to protect, his sanity not so much saved as wrestled into submission by Booker’s stubborn refusal to let him take on the entire force of the Wehrmacht singlehandedly.

He knows his brother’s breathing in the dark. Would know it at the end of the world.

Betrayal and grief have not yet softened into misery. The pain strikes sharp, sinking deep into the tender places in his chest. He moves to kill the call.

“Don’t hang up,” Booker breathes frantically. He sounds… sober, at least. "Please."

“Are you in trouble,” Joe asks, voice low and even, for Andy’s benefit more than Booker’s.

“No, no. Nothing like that. I-“

“You shouldn’t have called.” Joe doesn’t want to talk to him. He can barely stand to hear his voice.

But Booker stumbles to speak, the words a rapid string of panicked French that only two centuries of exposure to impassioned rants allows him to translate. “You remember Paris? Eighteen eighty-nine. That bar on the Boulevard de Clichy…”

“Sebastien…”

“This is important. Do you remember?”

In truth? No. There have been too many bars to name. Hundreds of nights. All he remembers of eighteen eighty-nine is getting dragged into yet another political sh*tstorm in Austria, three horrific months in the Congo, and developing his first artistic envy in centuries in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence while Nicky drank an entire bottle of absinthe and Booker got in a fight with a local librarian over the proper storage of rare prints.

That had been a wildly entertaining night. His brother does so love his…ah.

That’s not the only conversation they’ve ever had about books.

Joe stills, and Andy stirs, drawn from her slumber more by the sudden tension in his body than the conversation. She looks up at him without a trace of exhaustion, her eyes bright and alert.

“You found it.”

“That’s the only reason I called,” Booker is clearly trying to sound reassuring. “I wouldn’t… I know I’m not…”

That’s another conversation for another day. It’s barely been a month. He can’t, not yet.

And yet he knows how much courage it has taken his brother to pick up the phone and call him. He knows why. Nicky has always been both of their favorites.

“Send me the details.”

“Joe… be careful.”

Joe hangs up without another word and drops his head into his hands. Andy's heard enough to know what's happening.

And she knows more than Booker, if only because she dreamed some of it. She doesn’t know the whole story, just enough of it to know not to ask for more. He’s thankful for that. He has struggled to find the words for very few things in his long life. This is the last of them.

“How long do you need?” She draws her knees up to her chest, the fall of her hair hiding the unfathomable age in her eyes.

His phone buzzes. Booker has sent over the details as requested. It takes Joe only a moment to start putting together a plan.

“Three days.”

“Hmm. I’ll keep him busy.” She doesn’t promise to lie to Nicky. There’s no point. Joe doesn’t plan on lying, either. “Nile will have questions.”

Of course she will. She’s young and eager and already loves them. She’ll worry about Joe taking off without a word. She’ll worry about Nicky being left behind.

“Nicky will tell her if she asks,” Joe nods, more to himself than to Andy. He can picture it easily enough. The three of them sat around the kitchen table, warm and full, tired after a long day, but comfortable in each other’s company. Nile will ask because she doesn’t know any better, and Nicky will answer because he remembers very little. Without Joe there to speak to the truth, who knows what version of the story will be told?

She shakes her head in fond despair. “I think we both know his version of events is… unreliable.”

That’s one word for it. The kindest word for it.

“You need to destroy it,” she adds. “If it falls into the wrong hands…”

Joe has dreamed of setting the accursed thing aflame for centuries. With the likes of Merrick now on their radar, the need has never been higher.

“Long have I desired to scatter its ashes to the four corners of the world,” Joe exhales. “I will see it done.”

Andy reaches for him, her hand cool and her grip strong. “Maybe you should take him with you? He’s not the man he was back then. He is strong enough to face it.”

Joe snatches his arm back and throws himself from the couch. “I don’t want him to face it,” he seethes. “I don’t want him to remember.”

She looks at him in that knowing, steady way of hers, but makes no move to follow him. “That’s a heavy burden to carry alone for so long.”

“I have done so for nine hundred years. I will do so for nine hundred more. If you have ever loved us, you'll swear you won’t let him follow me.” It’s cruel of him to ask it of her. Andy’s brand of tough love has never once translated well to Nicky. She can barely bring herself to raise her voice to him, let alone her fist. A lesser man would abuse that, but not Nicky. He will stay, if only to spare her the misery of trying to force him.

Still, she nods her head sharply. His guilt softens his anger.

“Three days,” she agrees. “If you’re gone a minute longer, I won’t stand in his way.”

Joe has no intention of lingering with the demons from their past. A day on either side to travel. Ten minutes to burn the source of his nightmares to ash. He plans to be home in Nicky’s arms long before those final hours tick down the clock.

He leaves her with the promise to do only what is necessary. She wants to go with him, that much is clear, but she won’t leave Nile, and Nile won’t leave Nicky. It’s a pointless argument, so they bypass it entirely.

In the kitchen, the radio is tuned to soft, classical music. Nicky’s shoulders are loose as he wipes stray flour from the countertop. Joe steps up behind him and tucks his cheek against his neck.

“I remember the first time we danced to this,” he murmurs, some of the tension leaving his body as Nicky leans back against him and lets them both sway with the music.

“Hmm. Warsaw. It was worth the cold.”

“I’ve never been cold in your arms, my love.”

Nicky quirks his head to one side, trying to catch Joe’s expression. “You’ve frozen to death in my arms, amore.”

Joe tightens his arms around Nicky’s waist, holding him in place, keeping him from turning around. He’s not sure he can bear to see the fondness in his eyes right now. “Details,” he whispers.

He can feel the soft rumble of laughter better than he can hear it. “Inconsequential.”

“Entirely. I remember nothing of the darkness. Only your light calling me back.”

Nicky leans further back into his embrace. “I’ve already made msemmen. You don’t need to bribe me with flattery.”

Joe carefully keeps one arm looped around Nicky’s waist. The other he slides back until he can get his hand under the loose fabric of his soft t-shirt and press his fingers against warm skin.

So many years. Countless injuries. Yet Nicky’s back is smooth and unblemished. Joe’s body still holds the scars of a boisterous, misspent youth; a nasty crescent on his left elbow from a fight with gravity and a misplaced rock, the long, jagged knot of skin on his right inner thigh that Nicky always traces with his lips whenever they make love. Joe’s craved adventure and mischief since his very first steps. Nicky, given to the church only a few scant years after taking his own, never shed any blood of significance until Joe sank a blade into his neck.

“Can a man not shower his beloved with affection?” Joe asks, stroking his fingers across the strong span of Nicky’s back, delighting in smooth, unbroken skin and remembering all too well what it felt like to first hold him like this and weep with helpless rage. “Must his motives be questioned with such unwarranted suspicion?” He presses feverish kisses to the curve of Nicky’s shoulder and aches at the mere idea of being separated from him for even a moment.

His back hits the counter, and his breath leaves him in a rush. Nicky’s hands, still covered with flour, cradle his face with infinite tenderness as he kisses Joe slow and deep. Joe wants nothing more than to take him upstairs to the tiny room they share and the bed barely big enough for one of them, let alone both. He wants to lay Nicky down against age-softened sheets, recommit every inch of him to memory, and leave with the phantom ache of his fingerprints etched into Joe’s skin.

He knows better than to do anything Nicky might read as a goodbye, however temporary, and contents himself with a kiss instead.

When Nicky finally pulls away, he only goes far enough for them to rest their foreheads together. “How long?” He’s not a stupid man, Joe’s beloved, and he knows him better than he knows his own soul.

“Three days,” Joe promises. “Not a second more.”

“Should I ask?”

“I pray you don’t.”

“Joe…” Joe lays the tips of his fingers over Nicky’s lips, his eyes closing as Nicky entwines them with his own and lays a tender kiss to his knuckles. “You will be careful.”

“Command me to bring you the stars, and I will do as you ask. In this, always.”

“I don’t want the stars,” Nicky says dryly. “I want you to act with your head and not your heart.”

“I leave my heart in your hands,” Joe vows.

“That doesn’t always check your recklessness, love.” Nicky isn’t wrong, but Joe is not cruel enough to risk foolishness in this.

They’ve somehow come full circle. From not daring to push, to pushing too hard, to refusing to accept an answer either way, and now this. It isn’t the first time either of them has left on a mission they deem necessary to face alone. It won’t be the last. They’ve learned those lessons the hard way, and Joe likes to think that they’re older now, and if not perhaps wiser then certainly more experienced.

“You’ll eat before you leave.” Nicky knows Joe well enough to pre-empt the tunnel vision that consumes him on a mission and arm him to face it as best he can.

Still, Joe hesitates. “I should-“

“That,” Nicky says kindly, firmly, “was not a question, amore.”

Joe is not a foolish man, and he is hopelessly, helplessly in love. He has been for nine hundred years.

He’ll eat before he leaves.

Genoa 1128

This isn’t the first time Yusuf has set foot in Genoa. It’s not even the fifth. He’s travelled to the so called Republic of the Magnificents many times with his father and uncle, most recently in the year before the Calamity. Beyond its value as a trading post, he’s never given the city much thought. He’s been to many places over the years, seen wonders beyond his childhood dreams. Much of Genoa is a pale imitation of old Byzantium, and Yusuf knows the Queen of Cities in ways he has no desire to know this would-be usurper.

Still, he can’t help but marvel at the circ*mstances that have brought him back. Five years ago, he’d have spat at the mere notion. Now, on the trail of the most vexing man in creation, he wonders if he and his unlucky counterpart ever crossed paths before they crossed blades.

Perhaps. He doubts he’d remember either way. Christian priests all look the same to him.

No. Not all. This one he will know even sightless and deaf.

Assuming, of course, that his priest is even here. Yusuf has been chasing him across the Mediterranean for decades now, always arriving too late to corner his quarry. His fault, perhaps, given the nature of their last meeting, but he hopes he’s worn the man down, if not assured him of his intent. Or lack of intent. Unless his priest has found more luck than Yusuf and encountered another like them, surely desperation alone warrants the need for them to reunite?

“Boy-“ Yusuf’s balance is always precarious for the first hour or so after reaching land, but he manages to hold himself with dignity as he beckons to a passing child. The boy is small and poorly dressed, but his eyes are alert and he doesn’t look on the verge of starvation. He has employment somewhere, perhaps running errands for the merchants and dockhands. Yusuf buys his attention with a single coin and keeps it with a firm hand on his bony shoulder.

“Where can I find your priests?” His familiarity with the language of the city is rusty, but there’s not a merchant in the Mediterranean worth his salt who doesn’t know Greek, and if the boy has any degree of self-preservation, he’ll know it, too.

The question maybe isn’t the best. The boy tilts his head, looking Yusuf up and down with curiosity, something closer to suspicion than hostility. “Church? Tavern? whor*house-“

Yusuf takes a breath. “A devout priest,” he clarifies. “A man of faith, not…” he waves a hand absently, the right word in the right language escaping him.

“The Abbey?” The boy extends a hand to the far side of the bay, where a byzantine tower stands proud of the cliffs, and white stone arches dip their roots in cresting waves. “San Fruttuoso.” From what Yusuf can see, the Abbey is accessible only by boat, sheltered on all sides by sharp rock and cliffs dense with foliage. “It is where the holy men pray. They don’t like…” the boy looks Yusuf up and down again, “foreigners.”

“Few places do,” Yusuf sighs. He hands the boy another coin. “Find me a boat to your Abbey, and there’s another one waiting.”

The boy grins. He’s missing his front teeth, and Yusuf mentally reassesses his age. Too young to be here alone, that’s for certain. “I, however, like foreigners very much.”

Yusuf laughs. “I’ll bet. Go. Be quick.”

To his credit, the boy is just that. Yusuf has been patient enough these past thirty years; anticipation sinks claws into his throat as a fisherman with dark freckles and deep sunburn across his nose rows him across the bay towards the Abbey. From a distance, the building is interesting enough, beautiful in that bland, colorless way so many of them are. Up close it feels imposing somehow, remote in a way that feels more isolated than secluded.

When they reach the small dock, three men are already waiting, white cowls hanging almost as low as their eyes. One of them holds a leather waterskin, another other a folded parcel of bread wrapped in cloth. Their leader steps forward as Yusuf finds his feet on dry land.

“You have taken a wrong turn, traveller,” he says, the Latin easier to understand than anticipated. He’s been preparing, not knowing his priest’s tongue, but certain any Christian man of the cloth could be trusted to speak the words of his church. “Take refreshment with our blessing, and be on your way.”

Yusuf has been preparing for this, too. “I make no wrong turn, Father. I come searching for a man to whom I owe my life.” A lie, perhaps, but not much of one. His priest killed him several times before turning his blade on his own people in defence of a life he knew could not be lost.

“Does this man have a name?”

“Not one he shared. Our paths separated us. I've looked for him for many a year now. I know only that he hails from this fair city, and he is a man of God. My height. His eyes-” Yusuf reaches into a pocket close to his heart and holds out a small stone plucked from the Caspian Sea. It is a poor substitution for the eyes that haunt his dreams, but it is the closest he’s ever found to replicating their color. “Like this.” There’s little else he dares say without risking the secret they both keep. If his priest has aged as Yusuf has, he will look too young to have sailed with the first ships.

The man holding the water leans forward. “Father Nicolò perhaps?”

The leader holds up his hand sharply for silence. “There is no one here of that description. Please, accept our gifts to you and depart with haste.”

Nicolò. Could that be his name? To be this close…

But Yusuf is no fool, despite his cousin’s protests to the contrary. He inclines his head and accepts the water and bread as if they are indeed gifts and not a bribe. “You have my thanks, and my apologies for disturbing your peace.”

“Go with God.”

As dismissals go, it’s not given with the swing of a broadsword. Yusuf has had worse.

He pays the fisherman to bring him back to the harbor. The boy, hopeful to see his new patron again, beams at him when he arrives. “Need anything?”

Fortunately for him, Yusuf has deep pockets and a soft heart. “How would you feel about breaking into an Abbey?”

The boy shrugs. “Broken into worse places.”

That makes Yusuf laugh. “Then there is only one thing stopping us from doing business.”

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“Your name. I like to know my business partners. I am Yusuf.”

After a moment, the boy says, “Renzo,” and bows with grand exaggeration.

Yusuf returns the gesture with a grin of his own. “To work, Renzo.”

Serbia, 2020

Booker’s betrayal hits hard for many reasons. Joe is unwilling to dwell on most of them. Whether Booker found it easy is not a question he wants answered. The fact that he was able to pull it off with ease… that is something else entirely. He’s good at his job. Exceptionally good at his job. When he puts together a job, the rest of them have never had cause to doubt him. Efficiency is the name of the game.

That Joe is following his lead again, so soon after London, says more about him than it does about Booker. His brother is a foolish man, and selfish, but he’s not sad*stically cruel. This isn’t something he’d use against Joe. Not this.

Still, Joe is cautious. He follows the route set out for him, but switches his car for a train, catching a flight from an entirely different airport and landing three hours before anyone might be expecting him. There’s no trouble a few bribes can’t fix and he fears losing his toes to frostbite more than any of the burly-looking security guards who track his movement through the airport.

He buys a car for cash and drives the four hours to the coordinates Booker sends him. They take him to a mansion on the outskirts of Dedinje, to the home of Danijel Stanković, a man whose biggest claim to fame is his father’s shipping business and a love of antique books. Joe's sixteen hours into his three-day window. The next three hours are spent on recon. Booker’s broken down the security systems Stanković has in place, and he’s on the money, from the seven-armed guards to the layout of the cameras. Joe is reluctantly impressed.

Perhaps that is where it starts to go wrong. Infiltrating the building isn’t the biggest challenge he’s ever faced alone, but it’s just difficult enough that it doesn’t feel like he’s being welcomed into a trap.

The guards go down, bloodless and with bruised egos. There’s no indication that they or Stanković have done anything deserving a more permanent solution. Beyond a taste for the macabre, Stanković doesn’t know what he’s just bought.

Maybe he suspects. He’s parted with nearly a million dollars to acquire it. But he doesn’t know. He can’t. Even Joe can’t know for certain until he sees it.

He moves through the halls of the mansion, silent and in the shadows. Missing the assurance of knowing Nicky has him in his sights, but achingly glad he’s here alone as he arrives at Stanković’s library and approaches the new addition that sits in pride of place on a golden pedestal.

Nausea rises in his throat. He knows that careful penmanship anywhere. Even so early into his long life, Nicky’s calligraphy stirred Joe’s soul with its beauty.

Far from joy at seeing that beloved hand, Joe only feels disgusted. He’s not forgotten that first dawning horror of understanding in nine hundred years.

Despite its age, the grotesque nature of its creation has preserved it well. The rust-colored letters are faded but still clear. Its pages brittle at the edges, but not crumbling and fragile as they would be if those vile words had been scribed onto parchment.

The one thing he has forgotten, though, is how damned thick it is.

Joe has never hated anything the way he hates this cursed book.

His hatred blinds him to the movement at the far end of the library. He moves, but not fast enough.

The first bullet catches him in the shoulder.

The second hits right between the eyes.

He doesn’t have time to regret breaking his promise.

Chapter 2 Chapter Text

Germany, 2020

“What thef*ck,Nicky?” Nile digs her fingers into the curve of Nicky’s elbow. She uses him as a brace as she doubles over to catch her breath. “I’m a f*cking Marine, okay, I’m not…” her other hand rests on her knee. “f*ck.I run marathons.”

Nicky pats her hand gently. “In my defence, when I run, people are often trying to kill me.”

Andy, cresting the ridge on his other side, her cheeks flushed, merely rolls her eyes. Andy, like Joe, considers long-distance running a no-longer-necessary evil. Unlike Joe, she is competitive enough to shelve her dislike for a chance to win a competition spanning centuries.

Somehow Nicky gets the impression Nile can be brought around to their way of thinking.

“No running for fun, huh?” She pushes herself upright and pops open the water bottle Andy holds out for her.

“Not so often, no,” Nicky agrees, accepting the water when he’s passed it. Fun is not what he'd call it.

For all that she was out of breath, Nile recovers quickly, her stamina impressive despite the brutal pace Nicky’s set from the foot of Waxenstein and Zugspitze up through the Scharnitz Pass. They’ve run less than a quarter of a route that makes up one of the most brutal ultramarathons in Germany. Alone, and Nicky would be running the whole thing. “How about Joe?” she asks.

“It’s not his preferred form of cardio,” Andy cuts in tartly, dodging Nicky’s half-hearted swipe and dancing just out of reach.Behind her, the mountains stretch as far as the eye can see, the sky a clear, postcard-perfect blue.

Nile pulls a face. “That’s really not that I was-“

Before the mortification can set in too deeply, Nicky takes pity on his newest sister. “Joe likes to throw himself off things. And into things. And under things. Sometimes all at the same time.”

His beloved is a passionate man in all areas of his life, his blood spiking hottest when his adrenaline is at its peak.

Nicky doesn’t have an opinion regarding the requirements of a mission, but he does feel quite strongly about the number of cliffs Joe likes to leap off for the sheer fun of it. Last time they were here, Joe base-jumped off the mountain and despite breaking his ankle in the attempt spent the rest of the day cheerfully telling them that it was worth it to beat the boredom of walking downhill.

Nicky hadn’t let him out of bed for the rest of the weekend.

In fairness, Nicky’s response is likely a good third of the reason Joe likes to indulge in such reckless pastimes in the first place.

“See, now I am trying to imagine the first time you guys ever got on a plane.”

Andy starts to laugh. Andy can be as bad as Joe. Worse, sometimes. “Do you remember the first time we let Joe fly?”

“I try not to.”

“It was fun,” Andy tells Nile.

“It was not,” Nicky corrects her.To this day, Joe still offers to hold his hand whenever they fly, then grins when Nicky threatens to remove his fingers.

“Nicky thinks that if man were meant to fly, we’d have wings.”

“I am not averse to flying,” Nicky defends himself. “Just to Joe being in control of the plane.” Barrel rolls in a 737… not his favorite way to die.

Nile stretches the ache out of her calves, balancing easily as she tries to soothe the cramp. “I thought Andy shot our pilot,” she offers kindly, “so I’m not in a rush to let her fly, either.”

“She is quite a good pilot,” Nicky assures her. In fairness, so is Joe.

Andy sniffs. “Who do you think taught the Wright brothers?”

Nile crosses her arms over her chest. “No. You did not teach the Wright brothers.” She looks to Nicky for confirmation. “Tell me she didn’t.”

“Joe and I were in Prague at the time. It’s possible.” To the best of his knowledge, Andy had been picking fights with politicians in Washington, but there’s no need to tell Nile that.

“Goddamnit,” she mutters as Andy winks. “Ok, fine. You know what, though?” She doesn’t wait for Nicky to ask, sprinting back down the trail they’ve just climbed. “Race you to the bottom!”

“Kids these days,” Andy says, joining him on the ridge and turning her face towards the sun. “They don’t appreciate a good view.”

“Hmm,” Nicky agrees. If Joe were here, he’d be racing Nile back to the car. If Joe were here, he’d take Nicky’s hand and kiss him until he was breathless in a way no run could ever leave him.

If Joe were… two more days.

“He’ll be fine,summiš.” Andy loops her arm through his. They’re almost of a height, her hair soft against his cheek as she leans into him. Nicky tries not to let the softly spoken words of affection worry him. When Andy first bestowed him with the nickname, it had been a sharp condemnation of his shortly-lived vow of non-violence. It’s softened over the years, a gentle, teasing name that’s joined the dozen others he’s accrued in time. Still, she’s not called him that in years. Centuries, even.

Joe hadn’t much appreciated his own nickname at the time, either, but Andy is adamant unicorns did once exist, and at this point, Nicky has no desire to learn otherwise.

“You know where he is?” He asks more to ease the pressure in his chest. Of course she does; she's Andy.

“Don’t ask me that.”

“You will tell me. If-“ If Joe doesn’t come back and Nicky needs to follow him into Hell to retrieve him. It won’t be the first time. Joe finds trouble like no one Nicky has ever met. If he’s not walking into it with open arms and a welcoming smile, he’s tripping over it, trying to fix a problem his boundless empathy compels him to solve.

It’s one of an unfathomable number of reasons Nicky loves him. And typically ninety percent of the reason Nicky often needs to shoot someone.

“If,” Andy agrees readily. There’s no outward indication that she’s worried, but he knows her moods as well as his own, and if she’s being sentimental, it’s likely because she’s feeling protective. If she’s feeling protective, Joe isn’t going to be approaching this with a clear head.

There aren’t a huge number of things Joe needs to protect Nicky from that don’t concern the entire family. Everyone who has ever harmed him over the years is dead, either by their hands or the sands of time.

He doesn’t like not knowing where Joe is or what he’s doing, but he trusts him. He has for as long as he can remember.

Instead of pushing, he changes the subject. “You should go easy on Nile. She’s young.”

Andy rolls her eyes. “Did I go easy on you?”

At the time, he would have said no. Having seen her with Booker, and now with Nile, he knows better.

“I was not so young.” But Nile is so much more courageous than he was. That there was anything left of Nicky for Andy to meet was only thanks to Joe.

“You were the baby for a long time.”

“Three years, Andy, three years.”

“Remember who you’re talking to.”

Nicky squeezes her hand tightly. “You’re not so old,” he says, his throat tight. She is. She is so old, and he’s going to lose her sooner rather than later.

She knows him so well. “Not so old I can’t leave you in the dust,” she agrees, pulling her hand free and shooting off after Nile. “Last one to the car cooks tonight!”

Genoa 1128

There are many topics Yusuf intends to raise with his priest. He has a long, well-organised and annotated list of vexations to deliver that will ensure he knows how well and truly irate Yusuf is with this entire situation. Not least on the list is his current predicament; lurking in the darkness like a petty criminal while waiting for his adolescent partner in crime to unlock a trapdoor so they can both break into a place of worship.

By the current laws of the land, he supposes he is a petty criminal, and that goes right at the very top of his list of grievances. Until meeting the priest, Yusuf was a proud, law-abiding citizen. Now look at him.

Sneaking back onto the grounds of the Abbey has required multiple offences to his dignity. Those too he intends to air.

A soft click draws him from his mental composition. Huddled under the shelter of the white-washed Byzantine tower, Yusuf watches as the locked hatch raises and a familiar face pops out of the darkness.

“Sorry I’m late!” Renzo says cheerfully. “These priests like to pray a lot.”

Every three hours, to Yusuf’s understanding. It creates a limited window of opportunity.

“Have you found him?”

“Oh yes. Father Nicolò. I can show you to his room.”

Yusuf is finding his footing, not skipping a step in anticipation. “Well?”

“Are you sure he’s your friend?” Renzo asks sceptically, holding up the wooden hatch just enough for Yusuf to climb down onto the ladder.

“Friend is perhaps not the right word,” Yusuf admits, skipping the last three rungs to land at the base of the Abbey’s tallest tower. “More like…” someone bound to him by fate and circ*mstance, their destinies entangled in an endless cycle of death and resurrection, a journey spanning continents, an adventure written into the very stars themselves. Someone Yusuf hates and resents and yearns for and dreams off and – “acquaintance.”

Renzo blinks at him. “You know he’s possessed by demons?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The other priests. I heard them talking. They’re praying for his soul.”

They’re going to need to pray for far more than his soul by the time Yusuf is done. The foolish priest had made such ridiculous accusations in the past; right before stabbing Yusuf in the face, stealing his horse, and leading him on a thirty-year chase across half the known world.

If Yusuf is not possessed by demons – and he’s not, he has checked – then the only malady the priest is suffering from is an overactive imagination and a truly deranged grip on his sanity. Neither of which bode well for their reunion. Yusuf really doesn’t want to get stabbed again.

“Take me to him.”

Renzo shrugs as if to say Yusuf is on his own with his poor decisions and leads the way through dark stone corridors.

They move quietly, the whole misadventure both exhilerating and ridiculous, until Renzo stops outside a door that looks no different from the last dozen they have passed. “Good luck!” He says brightly. “If you don’t die, I’ll wait for you at the docks!” And with that, he scurries back the way they came.

Yusuf has no intention of dying. Not tonight, at least.

He lifts the latch on the door and slips inside.

A window in the otherwise unfurnished room allows a beam of moonlight to fall across the floor. For a moment, Yusuf fears Renzo has led him astray. The room appears empty.

But there on the ground, flat on his back, his arms resting neatly on his stomach, lays Yusuf’s priest. In the moonlight, he’s as pale and still as a corpse.

If he’s come all this way just for the bastard to die on him, demons are going to be the very last of the priest’s concern.

He leans down to crouch over the still body, reaching to shake the man’s shoulders.

“Nicolò?” The name draws him from his slumber. Pale eyes snap open, and Yusuf freezes. “Wait!” he leans back, his hands raised in a universal gesture of peace. “I am unarmed!”

Nicolò scowls at him, then stabs him between the ribs with a wooden handled quill.

“Bastard son of a-“

Pain flares, bright and hot. Yusuf punches the vexing priest in the face without really thinking. His throat tightens as his lung starts to fill with blood, but the sensation fades quickly once he jerks the offending weapon from his body.

He tastes blood and fights the urge to spit it out. “Is this really the welcome I get after all these years?”

When he’s not immediately stabbed again, Yusuf draws up short. The priest – Nicolò – lays beneath him, face bloody and eyes dazed, unfocused. He looks worse than he had the last time they met; an impressive feat given the sheer amount of blood and viscera they’d been wading through at the time. He’s thin in a truly alarming way, skin dry and mouth chapped, that haunting gaze of his sunken eyes as hollow as his cheeks. Pinned beneath Yusuf’s weight, his chest struggles to rise and fall.

Yusuf swings his leg over until he’s kneeling at Nicolò side. “You look unwell.” An understatement, no doubt. His touch might not be welcome, but he can’t stop reaching out and pressing the back of his hand to Nicolò’s brow. “Well, that answers that question. I guess we can still get sick.”

“Are you here to kill me?” Nicolò’s voice sounds as damaged as the rest of him looks. Misused, or perhaps merely ill-used. Yusuf has heard of priests taking vows of silence.

“I’m here to talk to you,” Yusuf tells him.

Nicolò closes his eyes and sinks back against the hard floor. “I don’t believe you.”

“And yet only one of us has been stabbed today,” Yusuf huffs. “Blood is not so easy to wash out of these clothes.” He eyes the shapeless monstrosity Nicolò calls clothing with distaste. “I think you’d be best just burning yours.”

Slowly, as if the mere effort of moving is exhausting him to the bone, Nicolò climbs to his feet. “If you’re not here to kill me, you may leave. The Abbey is not open to strangers.”

“Firstly, I am no stranger to you,” Yusuf says, annoyed by how much the rejection stings. “I’d wager I know you more intimately than any man alive. Or dead.” Nicolò glares at him. Without a broadsword and looking like a stiff breeze might blow him over, it’s more akin to the ferocity of a mouse than the lion he’d been decades ago. “Secondly, do youwantme to kill you?”

Nicolò makes no comment to the first point. “That would be preferable, yes.”

“Then why have you spent the last three decadesrunningfrom me? It’s a lot harder to kill you when I can’t find you.” Not that Yusuf has any desire to kill Nicolò. Even if he could make it stick, it’s a personal principle of his not to kill anything so pitiful.

“I tried facing my demons. I tried fighting them. I failed. I could only run.” As much as Yusuf has been hoping for this, to wear the priest down enough to force a confrontation, he finds he doesn’t much like the reality now he’s facing it.

“I’m not your demon, priest.”

“Then what are you?”What am I? He hears the unspoken plea in Nicolò's voice and feels it reflected back in his soul.

That doesn’t make him any more charitable. “Irate,” he says, crossing his arms over his chest. “Tired. Inconvenienced. Concerned about you and not particularly happy about it.”

Nicolò blinks at him. “Concerned?”

“You come to my city. You cut down my people, and you burn down our houses, and you kill me on many, many occasions! And now you have the nerve to look so wretched. I should throw you out of the window.”

“I tried,” Nicolò says miserably. “It doesn’t help.”

Yusuf scoffs. “Is that not one of your mortal sins?”

“One of many. I am guilty of most.”

Oh, that’s somehow even more infuriating than anything else. “Yet instead of seeking to pay reparations to those you have wronged, you hide here in the comfort-“ he eyes the empty cell with distaste, “and seclusion of walls built with your God’s stolen gold.”

“I tried that, too,” Nicolò says pitifully. “Helping people.” He looks like he wants to cry, but Yusuf doubts his body has enough moisture for a single tear. “They were afraid of me.”

“I can’t possibly imagine why,” Yusuf mutters angrily.“So what? This is your alternative?”

Nicolò nods feverishly. “Yes. I am repenting. I am close, I am…”

“Killing yourself,” Yusuf points out.

“If God allows it,” Nicolò nods, the mere idea bringing a bright, almost manic serenity to his gaze.

“Respectfully,” Yusuf scowls, “f*ck your God.”

He expects his words to prompt anger. He hopes for it. Rage, hatred, fear, he understands those things, knows their roots and is prepared to excavate them. This… this is deranged.

“I don’t expect you to understand,” Nicolò says sadly. “But I am doing it for you, too.”

Thirty years. Yusuf has wasted thirty years on a madman. “I don’t have any crimes to repent, priest. Other than trespass. Which is also your fault. Regardless-“

He’s fully unprepared for the way Nicolò surges forward and sinks pale fingers into Yusuf’s arms. For all his emaciated form, there’s a strength to his grip born of sheer desperation. “I will undo it,” he breathes earnestly. “This curse I have drawn down upon us both. You’ll be free, I swear it.”

There’s a bright madness to his gaze. A wild, terrible gleam that Yusuf knows in his heart never existed outside of these walls. He throws caution to the wind and takes Nicolò’s face in the palm of his hand. “You’re not cursed, Nicolò. You’re not possessed. This is not the work of demons or devils. It is a gift. Can’t you see that?”

For a precious moment, Nicolò sags into his arms. Something settles in Yusuf’s chest. A piece that’s been missing finally slotting into place.

Nicolò pushes free. “No. No, I am close. I’ll finish it. I’ll free us.”

“Speak to reason! We are not bound by any chains!” Yusuf wants to shake him. He wants, maddeningly, the quiet, steely-eyed man who had watched him so carefully across the field of battle. Not this wretched creature before him.

“You have to leave,” Nicolò says urgently.

“Not until you come to your senses!”

“Then you have my apologies,” Nicolò whispers. “And I have another sin to repent.”

Only then does he realise Nicolò's somehow managed to back him up to the window.

A second of understanding gives way to the knowledge that he now has another item on his list of grievances against the damned priest, before a strong shove sends him tumbling through the air and crashing headfirst to the ground below.

Serbia 2020

The face swimming slowly into Joe’s blurred vision is not Nicky’s. Nor is it Andy or Nile’s. As the only three people he would never choose to harm, he feels no guilt at all as he snaps forward and slams his forehead into an already misshapen nose.

“Good evening, Mister… Jones? Is it?” A voice across the room greets him pleasantly as if he hasn't just headbutted someone.

“Bite me,” Joe grumbles, dropping his head back to the ground with a thud. Compounding a head injury… he can already picture Nicky’s look of disapproval.

The asshole bleeding all over him takes a stumbling half step out of reach, hand cupping his face. Joe blinks up at the lights overhead. Green, almost dream-like. He’s still in the library.

How long has he been out? Not long, by the feel of things. The bastards have cuffed his hands and ankles, but nothing yet is numb. “I’ve got to stop waking up like this,” he grumbles, then squints out of one eye.“You look familiar. Have I killed you before?”

“He broke my nose!” Asshole wails pitifully. He draws back his boot to kick Joe in the ribs. The blow never lands.

“Enough.” Asshole Number 2, who appears to be the Asshole Who Shot Him, steps forward. Danijel Stanković is a fairly unremarkable-looking man. Fair haired and well built, with wide shoulders and a short torso. The suit he’s wearing is clearly tailored. Joe can appreciate that much, even as he glowers at the man. “I didn’t think you’d take the bait. I thought you’d be smarter. Lesson learned, I suppose.” Stanković looks to one side and extends his hand to a figure in the shadows. “You were right.”

A woman steps out of the darkness, her long black hair sweeping across her shoulder as she moves.

Once, centuries ago, Joe braided wildflowers into that hair. He’d brush it out of her face and tuck strands of it behind her ear and grin as she’d lean in close and whisper secrets to him in a language long forgotten by the world.

His heart seizes in his chest. Tears burn his eyes.

She turns to him and smiles. “Hello, little brother.”

In that second, Joe has never been happier. And he has never been more afraid. “Quynh?”

Chapter 3 Notes:

TW: Bloody imagery and body horror.

Chapter Text

Genoa 1128

“Good! You’re not dead!”

Oh, how he wishes it were so. Yusuf might not be able to die, but his ability to develop splitting headaches when dropped out of a window remains intact.

He touches his head and feels the familiar, sticky smear of blood he’s come to associate with that damned priest of his. “Ow.”

Renzo leans over him, blinking curiously at Yusuf as he tries to force himself upright. “You must have a very hard head.”

“It’s been said before,” Yusuf agrees, nodding then quickly regretting it. “How long was I out?”

“Not sure. You didn’t come back to the boat so I figured I’d come and see if you needed rescuing.”

If not Yusuf himself, then his purse, no doubt. He can’t say he blames the boy, but it does mean he’s been knitting his skull back together for at least an hour.

A not-so-insignificant part of him wants to throw all his carefully made plans to the wind, storm the Abbey, kill anyone stupid enough to get between him and Nicolò and drag the priest from his cold and miserable sanctuary by the ankles. Then drown him a few times and hope the ocean washes some sense into him.

In reality, it’s a plan with more than a few flaws. But it is an enjoyable fantasy.

One he is drawn from by a tug on his sleeve. “Come on,” Renzo encourages, “if you want to speak to your priest, I know where he is.”

“He’s not my priest,” Yusuf protests, despite thinking of him as such for thirty or so years.

No one can pass judgement quite so well as a child. The stare Renzo fixes on him is both unimpressed and incredibly judgemental. For that reason alone, Yusuf follows him.

If he had any sense, he’d get back in the boat and row as far away as possible from Nicolò, Genoa, and anything even remotely related to either of them.

Instead, he follows Renzo around the back of the Abbey, only narrowly avoiding a small cluster of cowled figures by diving head-first into a hedge.

There’s going to be nothing left of his dignity by the time all this is done, he just knows it.

Narrowly escaping his brush with a foliage-themed death, Yusuf stumbles after Renzo and finds himself standing before a small wooden door. The sun has yet to crest the horizon, but in truth, Yusuf has no idea how long he will have before bells ring and every inch of the Abbey is swarming with people.

There will be no messing around this time. He’s going to go in there, add kidnapping to his ever-expanding list of crimes, and find a nice, quiet spot to beat some sense into his priest. The priest. Nicolò.

He realizes he’s been standing still for too long when Renzo gives him an encouraging shove through the doorway. “Good luck! Don’t fall out of any more windows!”

“I didn’t fall!” Yusuf starts to protest. He quickly clamps his mouth closed as he steps into the dark corridor, and the door swings shut behind him. Renzo clearly isn't taking any risks when it comes to possible demons. He's a sensible boy.

Yusuf has all of a second’s notice before an internal door opens only a few feet away from him. He shoves himself tightly into the corner, clinging to shadows as a tired man enters the corridor. He looks ashen, his face pale and drawn. He raises a trembling, bloody hand to his lips and then to his head before all but fleeing in the opposite direction, a frantic prayer whispered under his breath.

As soon as he is out of sight, Yusuf slips into the room he just left.

A small part of him half expects to walk into a dormitory or somewhere equally unfortunate.

Instead, he finds himself in what looks like a workshop.

And there, hard at work, is Nicolò.

He’s shirtless, bones protruding sharply in his shoulders and ribs. Yusuf has seen similar emaciation in the poor and neglected, but the two dozen misshaped wax candles around him make it clear that someone is willing to spend some coin on his work. The flickering flames of light dance with the breeze Yusuf lets in as he closes the door behind him. Shadows play across Nicolò’s face, and for a moment, he appears as demonic as he claims.

Perhaps it is the nostalgia of a simpler time that colors Yusuf’s memory of Nicolò. Back then, there was only life and death, and the face looking back at him from across the flames was handsome. The man Nicolò is now looks as if he never rose from the killing blow of Yusuf’s blade, and all that is left of him is what the desert has rejected.

He doesn’t look up from his work. “You can’t be here.”

The air in the room smells foul. Stale and heavy, with a curious, unsettling tang of blood.

Behind Nicolò, five racks holding stretched parchment await a scribe’s hand. Even in the dim light, Yusuf can see a uniformity to the pale color that suggests an obscene amount of wealth has gone into acquiring the material. It’s not like the Christians can’t afford it with all the pillaging they like to do.

Yusuf steps closer, circling Nicolò to better see what work he is inscribing on one of those fine canvases.

The artist who lives in his soul sighs happily at the beautiful calligraphy Nicolò is creating. The letters are Latin, and while Yusuf has a basic ability to decipher them, the way in which they are stacked together makes it hard to interpret, especially in such low light. He has no idea what Nicolò is writing, only that he appears to be doing a lot of it. At his side, a large stack of completed sheets awaits binding.

That Nicolò can create something so beautiful while in the throngs of madness is yet another crime Yusuf intends to hold against him.

He opens his mouth to make a comment, to scoff at the idea of Nicolò attempting to make reparations in a manner those who most deserve his apology will neither get to see nor understand. Instead, he comes to an abrupt stop.

At first, he thinks Nicolò has been flogged. In the hollows of his clavicle and clinging to the sharp bones of his shoulder, dried flecks of blood create freckles on pale skin. He’s heard of some Christians committing such a practice.

He takes another step closer.

They heal quickly. Joe has tracked with morbid curiosity the rate at which his flesh knits together when split. There’s some variation. Smaller bones knit in moments where larger bones take longer. Bruises fade almost as fast as they form.

He’s never explored the length of time it takes for anything togrow back.

Horror sinks into his bones. A breathless, soundless scream claws at his throat. “What have you done?”

The skin on Nicolò’s back has mostly healed. Only patches remain where new flesh knits over exposed muscle and bone. The stain of blood that outlines what was only a few minutes ago, a raw, gaping wound, leaves no room for doubt. The lines are neat. Practised.

Yusufknows what he’s looking at, but a wall in his mind refuses to let acceptance pass.

He drops to his knees, too weak with dismay to remain upright.

The last of Nicolò’s skin turns smooth and unblemished. The bumps of his spine and the curve of his ribs strain against new flesh. Over Nicolò’s shoulder, Yusuf eyes the canvas upon which the priest inscribes his careful letters and wants to weep.

Instead, he lays his hands over pale skin, palms fitting over Nicolò’s shoulders, and leans forward until he can rest his forehead against the wings of his back. It’s the closest they have ever been without violence, and Yusuf curls himself as a shield between Nicolò and the rest of the world.

Nicolò makes neither sound nor attempt to pull away from Yusuf’s touch. He continues with his work, seemingly oblivious to Yusuf’s turmoil or what must be the fading touches of an unfathomably agonising level of pain.

Beside him, the stack of completed writings mocks him with every clean line of ink. Not ink, he realises, his gaze falling on the well the priest dips his quill into, but something more. Charcoal and blood. A sick, twisted mockery of creation, the beauty of Nicolò’s careful hand no longer something to be admired, but denounced.

How many times has he done this? Allowed another to peel the flesh from his back and drain the blood from his veins, all in an effort to reject fate and appease a vicious and capricious master?

That he can choose, not just willingly but enthusiastically, to subject himself to such punishment is beyond Yusuf’s comprehension. He’s recognised the madness in Nicolò’s eyes already, but this…

His chest shudders as he struggles to hold back angry tears. The injustice burns him. Why is it up to him to comfort the man who has caused him such harm? Why is the only person in the world who might understand him a fanatical madman so utterly mangled by the chains of his insanity that he not only believes his God would ask this of him, but that Yusuf would, too?

And why, for the love of all that is good in the world, are the men surrounding Nicolò not only enabling his madness, but encouraging it? He cannot cut the flesh from his own back. Others are helping him. They’repraying for his soul.

He thinks bitterly that it is the same blind devotion to a tyrannical system that causes men to march across half the world with hatred in their hearts.

He stands abruptly, his palms moving from Nicolò’s shoulders to brush the side of his face.

“I’m close,” Nicolò assures him, calm and serene as he works. “It’ll be over soon.”

“Yes, Nicolò,” Yusuf promises, and snaps the priest's neck with a sharp twist of his wrists.

Serbia 2020

As his days go, Booker has had better. He’s had worse, obviously, but waking up chained in someone’s basem*nt is low on his list of fun ways to start the day.

It’s not the first time it’s happened, and it probably won’t be the last.

It is the first time it’s happened right after being shot in the head by a woman whose endless cycle of death has tormented him for two hundred years, though.

Maybe he’s still drunk? Maybe he’s hallucinating… because the same woman is standing several feet away from him, and it sounds like Joe is shouting merry hell from the other side of the door.

Wherever here is, Joe is not. Joe is in Serbia, hunting for something Booker didn’t even believe existed until…

f*ck it, until one of his more eccentric contacts emailed him gushing about ‘the find of the century’ and sent him photographic proof that quiet, calm, sensible Nicky is apparently a whole lot more f*cked in the head than Booker has ever given him credit for.

That the damn thing has sat in a locked vault somewhere under the Vatican for the past thousand years or so isn’t at all suspicious until you add the fact that somehow Quynh is free from her watery prison. And is clearly doing a speedrun catch up of kidnapping cliches to get back into the swing of things.

If she set him up… if she used him to set Joe up…

It’s not like Joe can think any worse of him, but…

But no. For all their issues, Joe must know Booker would never use something like this to hurt him. He must. He has to.

Crazy, was Nile’s way of describing how Quynh felt. She’s not wrong, but she was blunt. She hadn’t known who or what she was talking about when she’d said it. Before Booker even had the chance to raise the subject himself, Nicky had pulled him to one side, pinned him with that soft, soulful gaze of his, and asked him if he dreamed of drowning.

Half convinced he was mad, Booker might have burst into ugly, embarrassing tears at the question. Nicky had soothed him. Stroked his hair and held him like no one had since Booker was a child, and explained.

So yeah, he’s known right from the start not to talk to Andy about his dreams.

Crazy is a f*cking understatement. Sometimes, in his more self-pitying moments, Booker likes to believe that the anger and hatred he sometimes feels for his family comes from her and not from him.

It’s a lie, but one he clings to.

Outside the basem*nt, there’s a quick succession of gunshots. A groan, and the string of creative curses falls silent.

“When I could dream,” Quynh says softly, ignoring the gunshots, “I would dream of you. I’ve wanted to meet you for so long.”

Booker does his best to hold up his hands in a welcoming gesture. Chained as he is, all he does is rattle. “I’m here. Not how I pictured the family reunion going down, but sure. I’ll work with what I get.”

“You mustn't think poorly of me, brother.” She sounds so damn calm it’s making his skin crawl. She’s endured centuries of hell, suffered more than any being in the history of creation, and she sounds so damn calm. “Please don’t judge me for the circ*mstances we find ourselves in.”

“No judgement,” Booker promises with a smile. There’s a little bit of judgement, but he’s chained to a f*cking wall. “Just… curious. Is this not a conversation you want to have with Andy? She’d, christ…” he honestly doesn’t know how Andy will take this. He knows how she’ll handle pretty much anything, but not this.

“I’ll see her in time,” Quynh nods, a wistful, far-off look in her dark eyes. “But there are things to be done first.”

“Like, er…” he rattles his chains again.

“It's a necessary evil,” she says. “You are the easiest way to Yusuf, Yusuf is the easiest way to Nico, and Nico is the easiest way to Andromache.”

Before Booker has time to dwell on the sheer level of ominous f*ckery in her words, he finds himself drawing up short. “I’m the best way to get to Joe?”

“Hmm,” Quynh smiles. “He always wanted a little brother. You’re his favorite. I could see it when you dreamed of me.”

Okay, there’s the crazy. “I’m Joe’s… Nicky is Joe’s favorite.”

“Nico is his soul. It doesn’t count. Why do you think he’s so angry with you? He loves you more than he’s ever loved anyone.”

“Again, Nicky-“

“He doesn’t count!” The snap of her anger seems to come out of nowhere. It vanishes just as quickly.

Booker has no idea who he is more frightened for, Joe or Nicky. He’s not so worried for himself: no matter what she says, he knows better. He is little more than an obligation to Joe. Someone tied to him by this curse they share. Whatever she does to him, it won’t have any impact on Joe. Hell, Joe might even give her pointers.

But Joe… Joe is his brother, and for all Booker hates him sometimes as only brothers can, the thought of him in pain is more than he can stand.

And Nicky… any illusion that Joe is the homicidally overprotective maniac in their relationship is quickly and resoundingly shattered whenever Joe is in trouble. f*ck with Nicky, and Joe will kill you. f*ck with Joe and… well, it turns out you don’t want to piss off the guy even the Spanish Inquisition were afraid of.

Now, whether Nicky can bring himself to raise a hand to Quynh, that’s a whole other… no, no, if she touches Joe, he’ll one hundred per cent drop kick her back into the ocean.

That won’t go down so well with Andy, though, and… f*ck it.

“What are you going to do to him?”

“You’re not curious what I plan on doing to you?”

“I’m ninety-eight per cent alcohol at this point. I don’t really have feeling in any of my extremities, and being dead is the closest thing I get to a nap these days.”

“I knew I’d like you, Booker.”

“I’m a popular guy.”

With the wall behind him, there’s nowhere for him to retreat to as she closes the distance between them. She’s a slip of a thing, barely as tall as his shoulder. “Booker, Booker… such a name. A collector of rare antiquities. I’ve never particularly enjoyed Latin as a language. But you read it, don’t you?” Read it, speak it, occasionally get into fights with Nicky about pronunciation… he doesn’t like where this is going. “Our brother once wrote a very special book. I’d like you to translate it for me.”

If he could sink into the wall to escape her, he would. “And if I don’t?” What’s she gonna do, lock him in a coffin and throw him out to sea? His vision blurs at the thought of it. Every nightmare come true.

She lifts her hand and touches his cheek as gently as Nicky did when he brushed away the first of Booker’s tears. Back when he was still Bastien, and Nicky was still Nico, and Joe would wrap both of them in his long arms and pitch them headfirst into a bank of snow to make them laugh when all any of them wanted to do was cry.

He shudders under her touch until she finally takes a step back. “Then I’ll send Nico his husband’s hands, and every time they grow back, I’ll send him another pair.”

She turns and doesn’t wait for his answer. They both know what it will be.

Chapter 4 Chapter Text

Serbia 2020

The world around Joe is clean and white. He’s tucked in a cocoon of freshly laundered sheets, lavender and chamomile and the lingering scent of the oil Nicky uses when caring for his weapons.

Sunlight warms him through the soft cotton as beloved fingers stroke a soothing pattern down his spine.

He rolls until he has Nicky trapped beneath him, both of them tangled in fabric and completely hidden from the outside world.

“Hi,” he whispers, pressing his nose into the curve of Nicky’s neck.

Nicky’s laughter rumbles through them both. “Hi,” he says back. “Are you dreaming again,amore?”

“No,” Joe denies, tucking his arms around Nicky’s waist and holding on as tightly as he dares. “But I do think I need to get up.” Somewhere, far in the distance, he can hear voices. They’re angry. Frantic. Joe doesn’t want to deal with them. He wants to stay where it’s warm, where they’re safe, where Nicky is holding him.

“I want that, too,” Nicky says, reading his mind. “Stay with me. Stay here.” He cycles through the languages they both know best before settling on the one that is uniquely theirs.

The voices grow louder.

Nicky hooks a heel behind Joe’s calf, drawing him closer. He’s so warm, so alive, and Joe loves him a thousand times more with every beat of his heart.

The voices can wait. He has only one responsibility he cares about, and that is Nicky. They’re so tightly entangled they’re almost one person. It would be unconscionably neglectful of him to not make the most of that.

He draws a trail of kisses down Nicky’s throat and across his shoulder. He trails his opposite hand up the long line of his thigh up to his chest, his fingers ghosting over lean muscle and supple skin until he hits one bump, then another, ribs jutting sharply through skin wet and sticky with blood. He looks up into Nicky’s face, falls into the sunken, hollow pools of his eyes and jerks back in horror.

Right in time to slam his head into the next stupid bastard crazy enough to get too close to him.

“f*cking hell!” He jerks back into consciousness, dazed and disorientated and entirely too f*cked off for any of this sh*t.

There’s a familiar snort of laughter from opposite him. “sh*thead,” Booker says dryly, “meet Joe. Joe, sh*thead.”

Joe’s bad day is immediately ten times worse. He squints open his eyes to see the aforementioned sh*thead lying sprawled on the ground in front of him, and Booker chained to a wall several feet away. His brother looks bored, which is nothing new, but there’s also a lot of blood on both his face and his shirt. The little bastard might not be at the top of Joe’s Favorite People List right now, but that doesn’t mean he’s okay with anyone hurting him.

Joe hurting him, for sure. Nicky, too, he supposes. But Nicky won’t, and Joe probably shouldn’t. Which means everyone else can f*ck right off.

“Why the f*ck is this my life?” he groans, trying to adjust the ache in his shoulders only to find himself equally chained down. There’s a sudden spike of adrenaline-dosed fear that shoots through him, a hangover from the last time he was bound and had to watch someone cut out his husband’s f*cking kidneys. He figures his fear is well f*cking earned.

“Born under a bad star,” Booker offers with one of his lazy grins.

Joe is immediately reminded of a time, centuries and centuries ago, when Nicky had said something similar. That was what… a week, maybe two, after Joe had found him, back when his eyes had still gleamed manically in the moonlight, and not a single damn thing he’d said made any sense. Back when Joe had to tie him down to snatch a minute or two of sleep, and Nicky had looked at him as both saviour and tormentor at once.

The memory does nothing to improve his mood.

The armed assholes who’ve spent the evening alternatively manhandling and murdering him are starting to get the message that his patience is non-existent and give him a wide berth, even as he strains against his restraints.

Two of them haul their injured colleague off the floor and drag him to the door of the… basem*nt. Gotta love a good cliché.

As soon as they’re left alone, Joe makes another attempt to free himself. He doesn’t have enough leverage to break any bones or wriggle free. From past experience, he knows it’s better to suffer the short-lived agony of a frantic escape than to wait and endure what follows.

Groaning, he tries to bring the world back into focus. Booker tilts his head to one side, looking around like he’s waiting for a pint at a bar and not chained up for a beating. “Morning, sunshine,” he says, and Joe re-evaluates his desire to punch him in the face. When Joe glares at him, Booker quickly drops that fake smile he so often hides behind. It leaves him looking as pitiful as he had the night after they escaped from the lab. “Joe, I-“

“I don’t want to hear it,” Joe snarls.

Booker, as usual, ignores him. “I didn’t know, I swear. I didn’t know!”

“About Quynh?” Because no, he’s not imagined the whole thing: Quynh is free and on the warpath. Joe can’t even say he’s surprised. She and Nicky have always had that in common: looking for peace at every opportunity and woe betide the stupid bastard who provokes them to war. It took what, thirty years of torment to fracture Nicky’s mind? After five hundred years… yeah, Joe might not understand it, might be utterly petrified of it, but he can accept it.

Whatever happens next, whatever the consequences, be they temporary or permanent, this has the potential to destroy Andy.

But it doesn’t have to. He, better than anyone alive, knows how to find someone in the darkness. He knows how much it hurts, but if he could do it with Nicky, a man he knew next to nothing about, then Andy, who has loved Quynh for millennia, can do the same.

Joe just has to make sure there’s no serious collateral damage in the process.

Which means getting out of this basem*nt and dragging Booker’s sorry ass with him before someone decides to do something stupid and tries to use either Joe or that cursed f*cking book as a way to get to Nicky.

Quynh might think she knows how this will unfold.

She has no f*cking clue.

She wasn’t in Genoa. She wasn’t in Castille. She saw only the aftermath, not the act.

No one knows. Only Joe. It’s going to stay that way if Joe has to kill every single f*cker on the face of the earth.

“I wouldn’t do that to you,” Booker says wetly, reclaiming Joe’s attention. “I wouldn’t, Joe, you have to believe me.”

“I might not know you as well as I thought I did,” Joe says slowly, and it hurts, “I might have missed a lot… but not that. You’re not that.” He's surprised to find he means it. Even after everything Booker has done, Joe doesn't doubt him on this for a second.

Booker sniffles miserably. It makes Joe want to shelve his urge to punch him and hold him instead. Since he can do neither, he merely flashes his brother a lopsided grin. “So. You got a plan, or do I have to do all the thinking as usual?”

Indignation replaces the look of misery on Booker’s face.

Joe leans back in his bonds and smirks.

Genoa 1128

Chapter 5 Chapter Text

Serbia 2020

They have a plan. It’s not much of a plan, but it exists, and now they just need to wait for the opportune moment. There’s a not so insignificant part of Booker that bitterly resents how relieved he is that Joe is with him, but he figures he will have time to drink that particular demon into submission once they’ve escaped.

For now, it’s at least enough to know that with Joe here, they stand a fighting chance of figuring this sh*t out. Call it bad luck, call it exhaustive experience, call it sheer f*cking inevitability, but Joe has been around for so long that there isn’t a huge amount he comes up against that surprises him. Nicky’s the same, but where he tends to go quiet and introverted with resignation, Joe still somehow expects better from the world and is always especially f*cked off when people fail to live up to that.

Booker thinks he’s more on Nicky’s end of the spectrum than Joe’s, which he’s why he’s not surprised when, less than a minute after agreeing on The Plan, the basem*nt door opens and a cluster of rent-a-goon mercs trail in, followed by Quynh. There’s no sign of their host, whose motivation Booker still hasn’t nailed, but two of the mercs carry a horribly ostentatious plinth between them and set it down right in front of Booker.

There, looking grotesquely out of place against such gilded adornment, sits the source of Booker’s latest stress ulcer.

Knowing what it is, it still somehow doesn’t live up to expectations. Maybe it’s only because he understands its provenience that it means anything to him at all. From a distance, on the surface, it looks like any other book. It would be a rare and priceless treasure for its age alone. Books as old as this one rarely survive outside of private collections or fiercely protective academic archives.

But yeah, it looks fairly ordinary. Even from a precursive glance, Booker can tell that the binding has been done years, if not centuries, after the pages were first composed. Joe has its origin at a nebulous ‘early eleven hundreds’ but he’s only ever spoken about it once and had been as close to incoherently drunk as Booker’s ever seen him. The details are still pretty thin on the ground. All Booker’s ever known about the damn thing is that it’s a rare case of anthropodermic bibliopegy. So rare, in fact, that though there have been a small number of books confirmed to be bound in human skin, he’s never heard of one made only of the same material. It would be an impossibly difficult thing to source for even the most sad*stic or deranged author.

Unless, of course, the subject in question had the convenient ability to just… regrow anything someone might carve off.

When he stops to think of it like that, when he looks at it and remembers that Nicky is the source… yeah, he can understand why Joe can only ever speak of it when obliterated with drink, and why he looks so utterly wrecked right now. Booker feels sick; he can’t imagine what Joe must be thinking.

Jesus Christ, Nicky… what did they do to you? What did you do to yourself?

Once set down, the mercs take a half dozen steps back. On the surface, it appears to be to give Quynh space to do whatever it is she plans to do, but Booker’s willing to put hard cash on them being squeamish as f*ck about the book made of human f*cking skin.

Booker can’t look at it without wanting to be sick, so he looks at Joe instead.

He sees, clear as f*cking day, the way he flinches when Quynh runs her finger lightly down the spine of the book, recoiling in his bonds as if she’s touched him instead.

How many times has he wanted to hurt Joe over the centuries? Dozens? Hundreds? How is it he can barely stand to see it now?

Quynh’s dark eyes track the subtleties of Joe’s movement like a viper watching its prey before a strike. She’s the fastest of all of them, that’s how Nicky’s described her, but in all the stories shared over the years, they’ve never managed to convey just how very small she is. Finely boned and delicate, she looks almost frail in her scarlet red dress. Booker could probably wrap his entire hand around her slender neck. He thinks of her in the hands of someone his size, in the hands of the people who imprisoned her, and aches with the horror of it.

Her lovely face makes it easy to overlook the cruel twist of her lips and the cold glint of her eyes. She runs her finger back up the book's spine and turns that coldness on Joe.

“I dreamed of it, you know? We both did. He haunted our nightmares for decades.”

Joe has never looked so devastated. “Quynh…”

“They never forced him to do it. He was so scared and so alone, and every time he laid himself down for the knife, he thanked his God for the chance to atone for his sins.”

You can’t spend two hundred years with someone and never once talk about religion, but between Andy’s blatant derision and Joe’s blunt habit of changing the subject whenever it arose, Booker’s always had the sense to leave things well enough alone with the both of them. Nicky’s always been the exception. He thinks faith is a beautiful thing and religion something to approach with caution, but he’s also fulfilled the role of confessor for as long as Booker’s known him. Hell, Nicky gave the last rites to Booker’s family when asked to.

Divinity and Nicky seem to go hand in hand. For the first time, he appreciates the barely concealed rage in Joe’s eyes whenever the topic lingers for too long.

“What do you want with it, Quynh?” Booker realizes that as well as he knows Joe, Quynh has known him for even longer. If he can see through the veneer of anger to the fear his brother is trying to hide, then she probably can, too.

She tilts her head to one side. It might as well be just the three of them. The mercs in the room almost fade from his awareness as he focuses on the unfolding battle between Joe and Quyhn.

“Did you ever read it?”

Joe’s mouth forms a thin line of anger. “No.”

“You never asked him what he wrote?”

“What would it matter? He was delirious! There won’t be a damn thing in there that’ll make any sense.”

“Hmmm, I’m not so sure.” She turns to face Booker, ignoring the way Joe trashes at his bonds. “Before we start,” she says, her tone and expression gentle, “I just want to say that I understand why you did what you did.”

“Did?” is she trying to imply that he’s gone and set Joe and Nicky up after all? “I didn’t do any-“

“When you sold them to the scientists. I understand. I do.”

“A least someone f*cking does,” Joe mutters, the darkness in his eyes making it clear that while they might be allies now, his brother has neither forgiven nor forgotten Booker’s transgressions.

“You want it to be over,” she says softly, the coldness in her eyes melting away to leave only a staggering, breathtaking pain. Five hundred years. She was trapped for five hundred years. “I can help you. This can help you.” She gestures to the book. “He was so close to finding it. I watched through his eyes. The enlightenment… another few months and he’d have-“

“He wasn’t f*cking enlightened!” Joe roars. “He was f*cking dying! Over and over again! He didn’t drink. He didn’t eat. Not for years. And when that didn’t kill him, the shock of having someone carve him open f*cking did!”

“You never understood what he was trying to do,” Quynh shakes her head. She looks almost sad for him.

“Kill himself! He was trying to kill himself. Do not stand there and tell me you know what he went through because you saw it in a f*cking dream! I’m the one who found him like that! I’m the one who had to force him to live again! I’m the one who had to hold him down every time he-“ Joe breaks off, a gulp of air forcing back the fury in his voice. “The only thing that book can offer you is pain.”

Quyhn lets him scream his anger, then continues as if uninterrupted. “Every answer you’re looking for is right there within these pages. You just have to translate them. We can fix this, end this. Help me, Booker. Help me help you.”

Joe looks broken. “Bastien, don’t-“

This would be the perfect time to enact The Plan. If he can get her on side, he can convince her to unchain him. He’s not stupid enough to think he can take on an entire room of mercs without dying in the process, but if he can lull them into a false sense of security, then maybe he can start to thin out the crowd. Push her for privacy. Tell her he needs it to work.

He's one hundred percent convinced she’s as crazy as Nicky had been when he started all this, and certain he’s not about to find any answers, but if she really believes in it, that’s something else he can use to his advantage. They just need to buy time.

Any hope he has that Joe is either on board with, or f*ck, even remembers the plan is one giant f*cking question mark. There’s something wild and panicked lurking in the depths of his eyes. It could be an act, but he fears it isn’t.

Which, f*ck, is going to undo all the warm and fuzzy feelings his brother managed to bestow upon him when he believed Booker’s desperate plea.

So Joe goes back to hating him again. Status quo restored.

Still, there’s one thing he needs to clarify before he goes down this path. It’s a mistake he made with Copley that he won’t risk replicating. “Why is he here? You’ve got the book. You’ve got me. What do you need him for?”

The second the words leave his mouth, something changes in the angle of Quynh’s smile, and he understands.

“You know why,” she whispers.

The book is unfinished. Joe told him as much all those years ago. Joe found Nicky before his work was complete. There’s every possibility that the answers she is looking for don’t exist in any form. She’s never going to accept that the writing Nicky’s left behind are little more than the dying words of a madman. No. To her it is an unfinished masterpiece. A miracle yet to be substantiated.

He watches the understanding dawn in Joe’s expression and has to hide a grimace of sympathy for his brother as panic turns to desperation. He slips into a language Booker has never heard before, and while he can’t understand the words, there’s no mistaking their meaning.

Joe has never begged for anything, but he begs her for this.

She closes the space between them and kneels until she can rest her arms on Joe’s thighs. “If I cut off your head and send it to sweet Nico, which of us do you think will end up with the whole you? Maybe we’ll both get one? Will you love him still? Does it come from here, or here?” She reaches up to touch his chest, then his head. Joe flinches both times.

“I’m too f*cking sober for philosophy,” Booker says, desperate to draw her attention away from Joe. “But sure, you’ve got a deal. Now-“ he jostles his chains pointedly. “You gonna let me work or?”

Quyhn lifts her head to look at him, smiling serenely. “Once a traitor, always a traitor.”

Yeah, yeah, he’s heard that before. He’s heard it from Joe twice in the last year. He stills his expression and doesn’t react to the tear that rolls down Joe’s cheek.

“I want out,” he says with as much of a shrug as he can manage. “I was willing to sell them both into an eternity of torture to get it. At least this time Nicky’s literally asking for it.”

Lying’s always come easy to him. Not so much for Joe. His scream of desperate, terrified rage sells the whole damn thing.

Genoa 1128

The Abbey of San Fruttuoso will never forget the day death came for its inhabitants. The story will no doubt change throughout the years, the deeds done to earn its damnation sinking below the waves that lap its shores, but Yusuf, he will remember.

Perhaps not the details, not all of them, but he will remember the beginning and he will remember the end.

Nothing else really matters.

The bodies surrounding him may once have been men, but only in the very basic sense. If evil has human form, then surely it is that of men who claim themselves holy and prove themselves wicked? There is no crime in protecting himself, no sin in saving an innocent.

But Nicolò is not innocent, and Yusuf only needs protection because of the choice he’s made here in this place.

He’s found his foe. He’s seen him, spoken to him, and comfirmed both his guilt and suffering. What more should he want? What more should he need?

That he hasn’t hesitated to take Nicolò in his arms and cut down those who have harmed him… is that an act or good or evil? Is this, the blood on his hands and the bodies at his feet, the act of a righteous man, or a monster?

Does he even care any more?

He cares. He cares so much that his hands shake, and his soul screams, and he didn’t come here to kill, yet here they are.

A pale hand closes over his, gently encouraging him to lower the kilij that trembles in his grasp.

Nicolò steps into his line of sight, blocking out the bloodshed Yusuf has enacted in his name. His fingers, long and bone white, brush across Yusuf’s cheek to capture a drop of blood that clings to his skin.

When he looks Yusuf in the eye, his expression is sorrowful, cutting to his soul. “I should have run further,” he says sadly. I’m sorry.”

Yusuf, who chased and chased for what feels like a lifetime, drops his chin to his chest and shudders. His eyes sting, and he wants so badly to close his eyes and wake up at home in his bed, three decades younger and with no knowledge of Nicolò, war, or what it feels like to wear another man’s blood on his skin.

Those same pale fingers reach higher, and though Yusuf has only ever known pain and death at Nicolò’s hands, there is no fear at his touch. Perhaps they’re both beyond that?

When Nicolò strokes a hand through his hair, the first of Yusuf’s tears start to fall.

Nicolò makes a soft, pained sound of distress and places his other hand on Yusuf’s arm as if to comfort him. “Forgive me,” he whispers in Greek, “forgive me. I will finish it. I will free us. I swear it to you.”

For all that Yusuf craves the surprising comfort of Nicolò’s touch, the reminder that it comes at the cost of the man’s sanity is a harsh blow. A sob crawls up his throat. It chokes him and steals the words he longs to say. Instead, he lets the blade fall from his fingers and throws both arms around Nicolò’s waist. He draws him in, caging him within his arms where he can keep Nicolò safe, not just from the men Yusuf has just killed, but from himself. If Nicolò is in his arms, he’s not mutilating himself. That alone is reason enough to hold him.

The act clearly startles the priest. His fingers sink into Yusuf’s hair, his arm loops around the back of his neck, and after only a moment the strength in him flees, forcing Yusuf to support his weight and keep him from falling.

Yusuf thinks he can keep doing it for eternity if he has to, if it means Nicolò is safe.

He presses his face into the curve of Nicolò’s throat and breathes. “We need to leave,” he whispers.

Nicolò’s fingers stroke the back of Yusuf’s neck, seemingly enchanted by the curls he finds there. “They know what I am. There’s nowhere they won’t follow me.”

Yusuf tightens his grip. “Then we go someplace where following has consequences.” At Nicolò’s curious sound, he continues. “Home. We go home.” Not Nicolò’s home, but Yusuf’s.

If Nicolò craves penance, Yusuf will give it to him.

“And you’ll help me?” Nicolò sounds so hopeful. “I can’t do it on my own. Someone needs to hold the knife.”

Yusuf hides his misery in Nicolò’s throat and forces back a scream through sheer stubborn rage. “I’ll help you,” he promises.

The last of Nicolò’s strength gives out. He trembles in Yusuf’s arms and presses grateful kisses to his cheeks. “Thank you,” he sobs. “Thank you, thank you!”

“You don’t have to thank me,” Yusuf chokes, feeling more broken in that moment than he ever thought a human soul could endure.

But Nicolò does thank him. Over and over, with every breath, until the sun crests the horizon and the light of day fails to wash away the horrors of the night.

Germany 2020

Nicky only has a moment to react. A split second to decide, cold reality warring with the screaming in his head. “Nile,” he says, surprised by how calm he sounds, “I need you to pack the bags.”

He can tell she has questions. She’s bound to. She’s young and scared but a soldier before anything else. Nicky is not her commanding officer, but in their family's strange, informal ranks, he holds a position she has yet to earn. She nods, sharp and steady, and vanishes into the depths of the house.

The moment she leaves, Andy collapses.

Nicky collects her in his arms and lowers them both to the ground as a cry, terrible and broken, bursts from her lips. She presses her face into his shoulder and screams. Grief and rage and desperate, terrible hope war for dominance as she tightens her fists in the fabric of his shirt and clings to him for stability.

Sobs shake through her slim frame, five centuries of pain and misery condensed into one helpless explosion of emotion. The human body is not made to contain such an unfathomable degree of grief. It’s limited, so very limited, in how it can express its pain.

Nicky curls the palm of his left hand around the back of her head, holding her as close as she craves while his other arm gathers her against his chest and creates a shelter with his body. They’re similar heights, yes, but his shoulders are broader, and it's easy to try to hide her from the world when she allows it.

That she lets him do this for her, that she turns to him in her pain, is not lost on him. She wouldn’t with Joe and to the best of his knowledge, hasn’t with Booker. Both would hold her if they could. Both love her more than they know how to comprehend. But only Nicky gets to do this. Only Nicky is allowed in.

It’s a privilege beyond words. One which he is so undeserving.

That she suffers like this, that she’s spent five hundred years splintered from the other half of her soul, is because of him.

It’s a guilt he will never escape and never attempt to. It’s a guilt that nearly drove Joe from his arms for good.

Joe.

The terror that lives in his heart grows with every beat of it. Soon, it will consume him. It will render him beyond the ability to give Andy what she needs or Nile what she deserves. It will take him to a place far, far away, and a terrible part of him craves it. Once he gives in, the pain in his chest will lessen. He will be what he needs to be and do what he needs to do, and the hurt will not creep in until the end.

It's a dangerous place to go, and the consequences rarely reveal themselves until it is far, far too late.

Quynh is one of those consequences. Andy, here in his arms, sobbing in both relief and terror, is one of those consequences.

For five hundred years, Nicky has lived with his guilt and thought it as deep as it can go.

The warmth of Joe’s rings in his palm proves that he has only tapped the surface. The well goes far deeper than even he’s dared to dive.

By the time Andy stills in his arms, Nile is back. She drops three bags at his side, all of the things they need packed and ready to go. Nicky looks up at her, his eyes dry and his skin cold. She’s not standing to attention, but she’s clearly waiting for orders.

Underneath the soldier, she looks at them both with the first stirrings of the same pain that lives in the rest of them.

For all that Andy and Quyhn are older, Nicky has loved and protected them from the moment they first met. They are family, his sisters. Devotion is a word he uses rarely, but it’s the only way he can start to describe what he feels for them both. He has killed for them, has died for them, and will give his last breath in the hopes of preserving their own.

He can’t make the same mistake with Nile that he made with them.

They went to England alone because of him. Because of what he did and the fear it put in Joe’s heart, they went without backup. Quynh had kissed both his cheeks, held his face in her small hands, and promised him they’d walk through the lemon groves of Sicily before the year was done, and they’d left.

Andy whispers Quynh’s name, then Joe’s, then startles herself out of her anguish. When she looks at him, her eyes are clear. Not yet sharp, but she’s always been like this. She and Joe are alike in so many ways. She presses her palms to his cheeks the same way Quynh did. “This isn’t how I wanted it,” she says, speaking to him in a language only four people in the world know how to speak. “I’d never trade you. Not you. Not Joe. Nicu…” Even Joe doesn’t call him that. It’s hers and hers alone.

Nicky takes her hands in his and kisses them both. “We’ll find them,” he promises. “Andy, we’ll find them.”

Her expression fractures just enough for him to see the woman she had been only minutes ago still lurking behind the walls she has spent countless millennia building. “Please don’t make me chose.”

Nicky drops a kiss to her forehead. “I won’t let that happen,” he vows.

He’s failed her once. It won’t happen again.

Chapter 6 Notes:

I'm very tempted to add the 'Joe is a little sh*t' tag to this story, but I feel that if I do, I also need to add 'Nicky is a little sh*t', too.
Suffice to say, both of them are little sh*ts in this chapter.

Chapter Text

Germany 2020

Andy drives. Now she’s fortified her defences she’s an impenetrable wall of steel once more. Nile sits beside her, leaving Nicky in the back. That works for him. With the chain of command again in place, it’s getting harder to silence the voice inside him that’s screaming for Joe. Soon, it will be too loud to think at all. He’ll fade away like he has before and won’t find form again until Joe is there to gather his missing pieces and slot them back together.

Nicky has no words to define what Joe means to him. There’s nothing that comes close to describing it. Joe calls him so many beautiful, eloquent things, but even if Nicky were to call him the sun, the giver of life, a harbinger of joy, the warmth to melt away all cold, the very spark of creation that holds together the galaxy… it’s not enough. One day, the sun will die. It will blink out of existence and cease to be, and Nicky will still love Joe with every atom of his being.

Death – his, Nicky’s, both – will not change that.

It’s cruel of him to ask so much of his beloved, to place the burden of Nicky’s soul once more upon the shoulders of a man who already struggles with the need to save the world and has been hurt time and time again in the attempt.

Twice now, Nicky has lost himself. Twice now, he’s forced Joe to find him. To wade through the miasma of blood and pain Nicky leaves in his wake and draw him back from the edge of a chasm so deep that once he falls, there will be no way back.

He loves Joe. He can’t ask this of him again. He’ll reluctantly accept that blame has not always been his to shoulder. That first time, he’d had help. He’d been foolish, naïve, and cowardly and followed without question until the world was nothing but exhaustion and pain. He’d walked into the arms of oblivion blindly. Not a victim, perhaps, but not fully complicit either.

The second time, he’d not seen it coming. The darkness had seized him out of nowhere.

They took Joe from him, hid him away for months, hurt him, and by the time Nicky found him, he’d cut a bloody swath through five countries and left only whispers of terror in his wake. Even as he’d cradled Joe’s broken body in his arms, his heart had been broken, but his mind had been far, far away.

That Joe - already suffering, frightened and hurting so desperately from all he’d endured – had been forced to shoulder not only his own pain, but Nicky’s as well is perhaps the gravest sin Nicky has ever committed.

But Joe had. He’d found Nicky in the dark and pulled him back into the light and they’d healed together. Hid away together. Turned their backs on the world, and left Andy and Quynh to continue their mission alone.

Nicky knows the signs now. He’s no longer at the whim of the demons still lurking in his mind. If he chooses this and embraces it, then he is knowingly and willingly deciding to put Joe through all of that pain and misery once more. How can he? How can he claim to love Joe beyond all measure and reason if he’s willing to hurt him like that?

Nicky bows his head, words whispered under his breath. He wears both silver rings on a chain around his neck, putting them in the same position above his heart that one had held up until a fight with a Somalian pirate had caused it to shatter two of his teeth. Joe’s worn both ever since. They’ll stay there, warmed by Nicky’s flesh, until he can slide them back on his husband’s fingers.

There’s enough modern weaponry in the trunk to invade a small country. He’ll find use for most of it at some point, he’s sure, but until then, the only weapon in reach is the sword he’s carried since the early days of his life with Joe. It’s not the sword that shed blood in the Holy Land; it’s killed far more of Nicky’s kind than Joe’s.

Nile leans over the back seat, so much gentle strength in her eyes that Nicky can’t bring himself to meet them. He remains bowed forward, his words a promise made nearly a millennia ago, whispered as a reminder he cannot afford to forget.

“I didn’t know you still prayed,” she says, and Nicky hopes her relationship with religion is less convoluted and less painful than his own. He has yet to work up the courage to ask.

Andy saves him as she so often does. “He’s not praying,” she answers for him.

Nile looks confused. It’s understandable. The words are arguably Latin, though not a form she’s likely to know. “No?”

“That’s not a prayer.” Andy’s knuckles are white where they clench tightly around the wheel. They’re only ten more minutes from the airfield. Only five hours from the coordinates Joe received from Booker. And Booker isn’t… he’s not answering them, either. Nicky has no idea what to make of that. Where Joe is still simmering rage that so quickly boils over, his anger will take a long time to thaw.

At best guess, a century or so.

That woman sliced open his husband and cut things out of him because Booker sold them to her. Their brother might be sorry, but Nicky learned the art of forgiveness in a manner very different from his beloved. He makes no claims to Joe’s level of goodness—quite the contrary.

“Then what?” Nile looks like she wants to reach back and touch him, an offer of support held at a distance only because she is so uncertain about how it will be received. She doesn’t know Nicky well enough yet. She will. In time, she will know not to offer.

He can appreciate the gesture for what it is, even if he cannot accept it.

“That,” Andy says grimly, answering Nile’s question and allowing Nicky to slip back into the quiet place he’s trying to create amidst the screaming, “is a f*cking promise.”

Serbia 2020

There’s something depressingly predictable about human behavior. It’s… well, it’s f*cking miserable, but by this point in his life, Joe doesn’t need to guess how the rest of the day is going to play out.

Booker is the same selfish, pathetic man he proved himself to be in London. He’s out of his chains, but instead of doing something f*cking useful, he’s donned a pair of gloves – because they can’t have the physical embodiment of Joe’s worst nightmares crumbling under his touch as he tries to find logic in the words of a tormented Catholic priest and ‘fix’ a problem that doesn’t f*cking need fixing.

Now he’s staring at the fruits of Nicky’s tortured delusions as if they hold the answers to the universe, and his f*cking hands are on Nicky’s f*cking skin.

It doesn’t matter that Nicky isn’t here. As far as Joe is concerned, a trespass against that cursed book is a trespass against Nicky. After nine hundred years, Joe’s found that the best way to respond to someone laying an unwanted hand on his husband’s skin is to cut that hand right the f*ck off.

That it will grow back is a problem for Booker, not him. He’s happy to repeat the process until the lesson is learned.

He focuses on that and the inevitable string of impressively creative French curses he will pry from his brother. The alternative is to think about Quynh.

Joe can’t think about Quynh—not her threats or her pain. If he tries to focus on either, he’ll only cry again, and that’s not helping anyone.

Since Booker’s been a stubborn little sh*t right from day one, he’s perfected the art of tuning out Joe’s threats. That leaves Joe with one, or rather six, options. Mercenaries, he’s found, are f*cking easy to wind up.

They tend to have very fragile egos and don’t take so well to the kind of sh*t Joe likes to say to them.

Which is how he’s ended up here, spending the last hour or so getting punched in the face by the least creative f*ckers on the planet.

It’s a good way to pass the time. He doesn’t have to focus on Booker and the careful, almost reverent way he turns ancient pages, and he doesn’t have to look at Quynh, who watches him with a look that says she wants to be doing the beating herself.

On that front, Joe is torn. Part of him wants it. If Quynh joins in, if she hurts him, then Joe can put a wall around the memory of his sweet, gentle sister and accept that this haunted spectre of a woman is not the one he has loved for so very long. She becomes a separate entity—someone he can fight, someone he can manipulate into prolonging his pain in the hopes of buying Nicky more time.

Another part of him knows that if she hurts him, no matter how he might deserve it, his heart will never recover. She’s his sister. He loves her. He has loved her for almost as long as he’s loved Nicky.

He’s already lost Booker. He’s losing Andy. He can’t… he’s getting so very tired of the people he loves the most being the ones delivering the harshest blows.

He craves her violence, and he is terrified of it, and this is perhaps the closest he’s ever come to understanding how Nicky endured what he did so many years ago.

A sharp blow fractures his cheekbone and rattles his teeth in his skull. Both injuries heal almost immediately. They’re pulling their punches just enough to avoid knocking him out, and he takes some twisted pleasure in knowing that they will be doing a lot more damage to their knuckles in the long run.

“You know,” Booker’s lazy drawl cuts through the ringing in Joe’s ears. “It’s kind of difficult to focus with all that-“ he waves his hand in Joe’s direction, “racket.”

“Sorry,” Joe spits out a mouthful of blood. “Are my bones being too noisy when they’re broken?”

“Yes. It’s distracting.”

“A thousand apologies.” Joe lifts his chin and smirks at the closest merc. “Gentlemen, if you wouldn’t mind swapping out the blunt-force trauma for something a little more suited to the environment?”

One of the mercs – not the one nearest Joe, but one lurking in the background – says, “We’re in a basem*nt,” though he sounds genuinely confused, it raises a very good point.

“I'm happy to take suggestions here,” he offers. “I’ve always found knives conducive to a nice, more relaxing torture ambience.”

“No knives,” Booker barks. “I’ve seen him when he’s been stabbed, and he does not f*cking shut up about it.”

That… is a fair point. Joe hates getting stabbed. It makes him miserable, and when he’s that level of cranky, the whole f*cking world better be having as bad a day as he is. Joe getting stabbed also results in Nicky making the saddest faces, which only tips the mood further south. No knives.

“Hmm.” The closest merc hits him hard in the face. It breaks his nose and makes Joe grunt, and Booker throws his arms in the air like the melodramatic French f*ck that he hates being told he is.

“I’m trying to work!”

Joe spits—yep, that’s a tooth—and grins bloody. “I mean, you can try electricity. I'm not much of a fan myself. It's too modern. Not very elegant.” He forces himself to look over at Quynh. There’s a soft, almost melancholic smile on her face that Joe is willing to risk pushing. “There’s always waterboarding?”

Her expression closes off entirely. Booker mutters something, no doubt very unflattering, under his breath. Before she can move, he blurts – “Are we one hundred percent certain Nicky wrote this?”

“Coulda been his evil twin,” Joe offers. Booker’s glare can kill plants, but Joe is two hundred years past giving a f*ck.

Quynh ignores her anger with Joe to focus on what he’s saying. “It’s his hand. It’s his sk-“

“Not arguing that!” Booker cuts in quickly. “But it’s also not Latin.”

Ironically, Joe thinks his and Quynh’s expressions are probably the same. “It isn’t?” he asks. In fairness, he’s never tried to read the damn thing. The few glimpses of it he’s had in the past make it clear that the letters are from the Latin alphabet, but the first time he saw it, he’d not really read much Latin. The second time he’d been too busy screaming as every bone in his body was systematically shattered to give much of a f*ck what anything said.

“Not any Latin I’ve ever come across. It’s bugf*ck crazy, is what it is.”

That sounds like his Nico, Joe thinks fondly. Even when he’s frighteningly sane, there’s something beautifully bizarre about the way his mind works.

Quynh laughs and shakes her head. “He wrote it in code.”

Booker squints at the page he’s studying and leans in closer for a better look. “I mean, it’s possible… but if it is, then we’re never cracking it without a keyword. That’s if I can even figure out what type of code it is.”

“I’m sure our brother can help with that,” Quynh says.

Joe can’t really shrug, not the way he’s bound, but it doesn’t stop him from trying. “Nope,” he pops the p gleefully. “Not a f*cking clue.”

“No? It never came up on one of those cold, dark nights you spent huddled together in the desert?”

“It’s weird, but we found that the subject of his self-mutilation doesn't make the best pillow talk.”

She quirks her head to one side, trying to read him in a way she had once found effortless. If she’s looking for a lie, she won’t find one. Joe is genuinely as lost as they are. He flutters his fingers in a gesture of helpless ‘not a f*cking clue’ confusion and settles back in his bonds.

“Well, we’ll just have to ask him when he gets here. It won’t be long now.”

Yeah. That’s what he’s worried about.

“In the meantime,” Quynh continues, turning her back to Joe and addressing the mercs. “Might I suggest you find somewhere else to continue your… entertainment? Somewhere quiet.”

A dozen hands descend on Joe and he fights the urge not to bare his teeth.

They’re moving him. That’s good. As soon as he’s got some distance between himself, Booker and Quynh, Joe’s going to break both his wrists and beat these f*ckers to death with the chair he’s chained to.

He’ll be sure to do it quietly. Wouldn’t want to disturb his siblings while they work.

Genoa 1128

There’s no sign of Renzo. Either the boy has already left, or he’s seen the carnage Yusuf has enacted and is hiding somewhere out of sight. The idea burns Yusuf, both because he genuinely likes the child and because the idea of frightening someone that much makes him feel nauseous.

He has no time to spare, for all that he wants to find Renzo and reassure him. Nicolò is barely clinging to life. The longer Yusuf holds him, the more he marvels at the fact that his ridiculous priest can function as well as he has. He alternately shivers and burns in Yusuf’s arms, and in the sporadic moments where his eyes roll back and he falls lax against him, it's not unconsciousness that claims him, but death.

The… mutilation is something they need to address quickly, but Yusuf is willing to bet that it’s a symptom of his madness, not the cause. Deny a man food and drink, isolate him, whisper words of poison in his ears… Yusuf has seen it done before with slaves. Nicolò’s precious church is no less wicked a master than the peddlers of flesh Yusuf finds so distasteful. No matter the cruelties they inflict, they promise salvation or a reprieve from the pain should you earn it. He’s seen men and women walk to the executioner’s block with a smile. It’s not too dissimilar to the look in Nicolò’s current gaze.

He manages to get him into the boat, far gentler than he’s ever imagined himself being with the man who only a few hours ago stabbed him in the chest and then pushed him out of a window.

“You,” he says, climbing over the priest to take the oars in hands, “are more trouble than you’re worth; I hope you know that. Say otherwise if you disagree.”

Nicolò, by the sheer merit of being dead again, lets Yusuf get the last word.

“I’m glad we have an accord. Now… what exactly am I supposed to do with you? You look… well, you look like I just dug you out of a casket. Your hair is atrocious, by the way. Utterly appalling. We must address that immediately if we plan to travel together. I have a reputation to maintain.”

His only reputation now is likely to be one of either kidnapper, murderer, or both, in which case the state of Nicolò’s appearance is relatively unimportant, but if they are to issue warrants for his arrest, Yusuf is a vain enough man to know he doesn’t want to share space on a page with the frightful state Nicolò is currently in.

“And clothes,” he continues, because there is no future for the bloody, frayed excuse for small clothes hanging off Nicolò’s bony hips. Yusuf isn’t a large man, but anything he owns will drown the priest. Perhaps that will help? He may be reusing the same three outfits for the twentieth year in a row, but they’re all well cared for, extremely soft, and the last thing anyone would expect to find a missing priest wearing.

That settles it. He’ll bathe and wear Yusuf’s clothes, bring some order to that hair and shave off the morning’s scruff the way his kind seem to like to do, and then Yusuf will ensure he eats something.

Soon, he has a very detailed plan to nurse Nicolò back to health. There are a few significant holes in it, namely where he’s going to find shelter, what he can even feed to a man who looks like he hasn’t eaten in a decade, and how he plans on avoiding the unholy storm of sh*t headed his way should anyone find an Abbey of dead priests and rightly or wrongly come knocking on the door of the last foreigner to make port.

But other than those small details, he’s fairly happy with it.

His hands are still shaking, and he might start crying at any second, and Nicolò is so very still, but…

But. He’s making progress.

Proud of himself, Yusuf takes a deep, steadying breath and focuses on rowing them both as far away from the shore as he can.

Naturally, it is that exact moment that Nicolò bolts back to life, takes one look at Yusuf, one look at the blood covering him from head to foot, and pitches himself head first over the side of the boat.

Chapter 7 Notes:

In this chapter is 80% painful conversations and 20% Yusuf continuing to have a terrible century.

Chapter Text

Serbia 2020

It’s times like this that Booker remembers why he frequently wants to shoot Joe in the face. It’s like his brother wants to get hit, and not in the way that all of them sometimes do when trying to create a diversion. Nicky once gave someone pointers on how best to slit his throat just to buy Booker the time he needed to lay a round of explosives, and Joe has been known to literally wave at snipers. In hindsight, Booker should probably have pegged them both for f*cking batsh*t way back when.

And okay, he gets that Joe shrugs off physical violence far more easily than he does emotional hurts, and that Nicky often fails to acknowledge pain entirely – again, nothing apparently new there.

But this? This is f*cking ridiculous.

“Where are you taking him?” He demands, watching with a helpless spike of fear as the mercs doing Quynh’s bidding seize Joe and start dragging him and the chair he’s bound to towards the stairs.

Joe, covered in blood and still grinning, has a nasty look in his eyes when he answers. “Why? You feeling left out?”

“You’re a f*cking asshole, you know that?” Booker is trying to help him. If Joe wasn’t so f*cking stubborn…

“I’m the asshole?” The lazy, mocking smile Joe’s been wearing for the past hour morphs into a look of pure rage. “You f*cking sold us to Merrick!”

Thank f*ck for that. Eighty percent of his fights with Joe are based on Booker literally having to beat the words out of his brother. For such an eloquent man, Joe is very good at saying little by saying a lot.

“That’s what this is about?”

Quynh holds up a hand and the mercs stop dragging Joe away. She watches them curiously, her head tilted to one side.

“Are you f*cking kidding me? Do you know what they did to us? To Nicky. I know you hate me, but I trusted you with him!”

Booker stares at him and the one thing about himself he’s thought long dead and buried in his chest starts to ache. He does hate Joe some times. But he hates Nicky just as much. And he loves them both. Does Joe really think that Booker reserves his anger and resentment just for him? Does he think that if Booker could chose who to harm, Joe would somehow be an acceptable option?

Of course he does. Joe is so hopelessly, stupidly in love with Nicky that he can’t comprehend a world in which the rest of them don’t put him on the same pedestal of perfection. Booker loves Nicky, he does, but no more or less than he loves any of them.

Christ, Joe is supposed to be the smart one.

“I’ve told you I’m sorry!” Booker yells, his work almost forgotten. So much for the f*cking plan.

“They cut him open! I had to watch them tear pieces out of-“

“It wasn’t supposed to be you!” The words tear themselves from Booker’s throat with such force that they leave him breathless. “They were supposed to take me!”

It’s taken two hundred f*cking years, but look at that. He’s finally rendered Joe silent.

Somewhere Over Austria, 2020

It isn’t that Nicky hates flying. He doesn’t. It’s remarkably convenient, for one thing, and he enjoys the views from being up so high. It’s just that he has a routine now, and that routine involves Joe’s sparkling grins and a joke that’s been batted back and forth between them for nearly a thousand years. Nicky takes a seat in the duct-tape-tin-can cargo plane Andy has found them, and Joe isn’t hooking their fingers together. He’s not leaning in, his lips warm against Nicky’s neck, his smile wide and playful. He’s not a long line of strength and warmth at Nicky’s side. He’s not here.

So maybe Nicky does hate flying after all.

Nile doesn’t look much happier. “You know, Copley has a jet,” she points out, eyeing the pilot warily.

“No time,” Andy says. She’s waited five hundred years for Quynh. They’re lucky she’s slowed her pace enough for Nicky and Nile to keep up with her at all.

“Okay,” Nile nods slowly, “so can we talk about this? I get that there’s a lot of need to know stuff going on right now, but I think maybe I need to know?”

She does. She has every right. They’re taking her into the unknown and it’s not fair to any of them to simply expect her resilience to be a substitution for knowledge.

“When was the last time you dreamed of her?” It’s Nicky who asks, mostly so Andy doesn’t have to.

Nile frowns, deep in thought. “I don’t… Booker said it didn't happen every night. Maybe a couple of days after London?”

Nicky closes his eyes. It’s been weeks since London. Who found her? What has been done to her? The idea of her escaping one hell only to be taken into another is more than Nicky can stand. For Andy, it will only be worse. If Nicky isn’t careful he’s going to lose her to this. If it were Joe in Quynh’s position… it is Joe in her position. It’s both of them, and possibly Booker too. Nicky will walk through fire to save them, but he’ll heal. Andy won’t. Not any more.

A snarl of fury tears from Andy’s throat. She slams her fist hard into the side of one of the seats, then shouts an order to ‘fly the f*ck faster’ to their Austrian pilot. “If she’s hurt…”

“You think this has anything to do with Merrick?” Nile asks. “What was Joe’s mission? Why did he go alone?”

That is a question Nicky still wants answered. Instead of words, Andy reaches into her jacket and withdraws the parchment with Quynh’s writing. She passes it to him in the same way someone might handle a live grenade.

When Nicky takes it from her, he already knows what he holds. It still takes a solid minute for any emotion to connect with that knowledge, and without it he can only stare, until… “Oh.”

Nile arches one eloquent eyebrow. “Oh?”

With full comprehension comes a truly tangled mess of thoughts and memories. As old as he is, whole decades are missing from his daily recollection. If he wants to examine them in any significant way, he has to trigger them somehow. A smell, a sound, or a place can stir away the sands of time to reveal the history beneath the surface.

There are some exceptions. This… this is one of them. He remembers only flashes of his return to Genoa. He remembers running, he remembers feeling cold and alone and wretched, unworthy of the prayers his fellow priests offered up for his salvation. He remembers hurting more than he’s ever hurt before, and he remembers feeling so weak it cost him every ounce of his strength to say his own prayers.

He does, he thinks, remember the first time though. How he laid himself down a pleading supplicant at the wooden feet of Christ, and one of the elder priests had placed the blade against his skin. He remembers screaming, and little else.

And then he remembers Joe. The darkness parts and Nicky goes from laying bloody and petrified on a cold stone floor to tangled in the cocoon of Joe’s body, one arm flung around his chest, one leg pinning his own to the floor, and the softness of Joe’s sash bound around his wrists because he had, apparently, taken to trying to kill Joe in his sleep. Whether weeks or months or even years had passed, he still doesn’t know. He just opened his eyes one morning, and Joe was there, and Nicky felt safer than he had ever felt in his life.

He remembers that. And he remembers the horrors that men have been inspired by his madness to commit.

Nile reaches out with a curious hand and touches the abominable page of Nicky’s history. He should draw it out of her reach, spare her the indignity of touching something so twisted, but he finds himself stuck fast.

“What is that?”

Andy’s lip curls into a snarl. “Skin.”

“Wow,” Nile pulls her hand back of her own accord. “That’s gross.”

“It’s mine.” Even to his own ears, Nicky’s voice sounds rather flat.

No one can ever accuse Nile of being slow on the uptake. “Your? Your… your skin?”

“Hmm.”

“Jesus motherf*cking Christ, Nicky.”

Andy makes a sound of agreement and it’s an impossible task for Nicky to hold back a wry smile. “He wasn’t directly involved.”

His avatar did watch, though. Many times.

The gears are visibly turning in Nile’s mind. She’s so very clever and so very stubborn. He knows without question that there will come a time in the not-so-distant future when she replaces Andy as the North Star they follow across the world. He can think of no greater successor to Andy’s legacy, but oh, does it hurt.

“Okay, so… so what, someone’s taken Joe and Quynh to get to you?”

“What?” Nicky looks up, confused. “No. I’m not sure I have anything to do with this. They’re just using this as a way to get to Andy.”

“They being some nebulous asshole who has no name and no motivation for kidnapping your husband and sending you a ransom note written on your own skin.” It’s been a long time since someone has made him feel as slow as Nile manages to in that second. Nicky blinks at her as Andy starts to frown.

“She’s got a point, Nicky.”

“There’s no one alive who even knows its mine. Not outside of the family.”

“Booker’s family. He knows. He’s the one who called Joe.” Andy delivers this statement as a simple fact, but Nicky can’t help recoiling at the idea. For all the mistakes their brother has made recently, Nicky does believe that he is genuinely remorseful. That can’t be true if he’s used this against them.

It’s Nile who says what no one wants to admit. “Gonna guess Quynh knows as well?”

“No,” Andy says firmly. “No. She wouldn’t. Not to Nicu. Not to Joe. She’d never hurt them. She loves them.”

He’ll give it to Nile: she is utterly fearless. “That was five hundred years ago. People change, and she’s been through hell.”

Worse than hell, Nicky fears. He’s seen hell. He’s raided it. What Quynh suffered is beyond human comprehension.

If Joe were here, Andy’s reaction would be very different. They’ve always been able to scrap and spark off each other, pushing and pulling, because they both prefer to take a physical blow to the face than to the heart.

Andy and Nicky don’t do that and never have. Nile is so new, so very young, and like Joe, Andy is a protector at heart. She won’t subject Nile to her rage no matter how close to the edge she might teeter.

Nile seems to sense as much. Her expression gentles. “I’m not saying that’s what’s happened.”

“Why go to all the trouble? Last I knew, the book was in the Vatican.” That’s what Nicky can’t understand.

Nile stares at him, horrified. “Book? There's more of this?”

"It was quite a comprehensive undertaking." Even he'd not realized just how bad it had been until seeing the damn thing in Castile. It’s making Nicky feel nauseous just thinking about it. “The facts as we know them are thus: whoever took Joe is either working with or has similarly abducted Quynh and very possibly Bastien as well. Using the book would make it easy to draw Joe out, and he… isn’t rational about this.”

“Gee, can’t imagine why,” Nile mutters. “I’m not gonna be rational about it.”

Nicky reaches over and gently pats her knee. “It was a very long time ago.”

“Quynh wouldn’t do this,” Andy says firmly, only seeming to hear half of what he's saying. “She’s a victim.”

“Then we will save her,” Nicky agrees. “There is also a third option.”

Andy bares her teeth at him. “She wouldn’t do this!”

He raises his hand in a gesture of peace. “She might not know what she’s doing.”

“What do you mean?” Nile asks.

He tries to think of the best way to put it. “When… this was created,” he gestures to the parchment, “I was unwell.” He ignores the sound Andy makes and continues. “I was dying. Over and over again. It wasn’t anything close to what Quynh has endured, but after a few years, my mind was… fractured. Joe could tell you more, but for a long time I moved through the world with no recollection of my place within it. I was violent, dangerous. Not because I desired to be, but because the reality I existed within was one of my own creation. One of hell. If Joe had not found me I would not be recognisable as the man I am today.”

Nile curls her fingers over his and squeezes. “I thought we couldn’t get sick?”

“I got the plague six times,” Andy says, adopting that perversely proud tone that only exists thanks to the passing of centuries.

Nile swallows. “Noted.”

“It was the custom of priests to fast as a way to become closer to God,” Nicky explains gently. “I… took it to something of an extreme.”

Andy mutters something very unflattering in a language she thinks he doesn’t know. Nicky pretends not to understand.

Nile can guess anyway and shakes her head. “Guessing Joe didn’t like that.”

“I believe he was rather displeased,” Nicky nods. An understatement, perhaps, and why, to this day, Joe refuses to start eating a meal until Nicky has taken his first bite. “I am apparently a rather vexing patient.”

“You’re a pain in the ass,” Andy offers fondly.

“It’s good bait,” Nile admits. “Twisted as f*ck, but good. Just so we’re all in agreement, this is one hundred percent a trap, yes?”

“I love traps,” Andy shrugs.

“Andy,” Nicky warns.

Nile picks up where he fails to continue. “You’re mortal, Andy. We’ve gotta be smart about this.”

“I'm not dying,” Andy scoffs. “Not until I’ve seen her again.”

Neither Nicky nor Nile responds to that. They meet each other’s gaze and exchange a silent agreement. Andy, like Joe, is not going into this with a clear head. Nicky isn’t really going into it with a clear head. Nile is the only one of them who has a clear chance of keeping her cool if – when – this all descends into chaos.

Where necessary, she will follow their lead. But if someone has to make that call, it’s clear she is willing to step up to the plate.

Nicky would pray it doesn’t come to that, but in his experience, his prayers never lead to particularly good outcomes.

Genoa 1128

For the first time, Yusuf questions whether he is the madman in the duo he’s formed with Nicolò. Only someone in the grip of insanity would do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result each time.

He scolds himself for expecting Nicolò to be anything other than a frustration as he drips furiously in the boat and glares at the soggy priest squirming by his knees.

“Stop!” He barks, first in Latin, then in Greek and finally in what he thinks is Nicolò’s tongue. “If you capsize us, I am letting you drown.” It’s tempting, despite, or perhaps especially, knowing it won’t be permanent. He’s already dragged Nicolò out of the sea by the scruff of his neck once and received nothing for his trouble but a kick to the face.

In the end he’s had to settle for putting a hand on Nicolò’s neck and holding him down against the floor of the boat until his weak struggles and frantic breathing stopped his heart. As he very much hopes to avoid being kicked, stabbed, dropped on his head, or drowned himself, Yusuf’s been forced to bind Nicolò’s wrists and ankles with the sashes from his belt, and now the damned priest has the nerve to glare at him as if he is the villain in this scenario.

“That was entirely unnecessary,” he says, trying to shake the water out of his hair. “I thought we were in agreement.” He is feeling oddly hurt. Nicolò held him, whispered kind and gentle words, agreed to follow Yusuf from this monstrous land, and now they’re right back to where they started.

“I won’t give you what you want,” Nicolò snarls, his sunken face a rictus of death.

Yusuf is tempted to smack him around the head with one of the oars. “What I want is for you to regain your senses!”

“My senses are fine! You kidnapped me! Take me back to the Abbey!”

Well, that’s not happening. “I rescued you.” As if to prove his point, Nicolò kicks him with his bound feet. Yes, okay fine, on the surface it doesn’t look ideal… “You keep trying to kill me!”

“Trying being the key word! You are cursed as I am cursed!”

“I am not cursed! I am f*cking wet! You asked for my help!”

Yusuf needs to pick a direction and start rowing. To the east, the bustling harbor awaits. To the west, an unknown frontier. He’s not going to the city like this, that’s for certain.

Nicolò goes still against him. “You’ll help me?”

“I am trying,” Yusuf says, suddenly so exhausted he could cry.

“Why?”

“What?”

Nicolò’s voice grows stronger. “Why?” He demands. “What am I to you but a tormentor?”

Yusuf opens his mouth to answer with one of a dozen words, but finds none of them come to his tongue. He doesn’t know what Nicolò is to him. His murderer? His tormentor, yes. Nicolò has tormented him for decades. And yet… in that one moment that Yusuf held him, the world made sense for the first time since his death.

“I don’t know,” he admits.

Somehow, that seems to reassure Nicolò. “At least you’re an honest kidnapper,” he admits, almost reluctantly. Yusuf snorts. After the day he’s had? He’ll take it. The madness in Nicolò’s eyes seems softer in that moment, and he dares to hope they’re done trying to kill each other, at least for now. “Are you going to untie me?”

Yusuf is a hopeful man, but he’s not foolish. “Absolutely not,” he says brightly. “You should get some rest.”

“Yes, because this is conducive to slumber.”

“Hey! I found you sleeping on the floor.”

Nicolò says nothing. He’s not dead this time, and getting the last world is significantly more enjoyable in the face of his petulant scowl.

Chapter 8 Chapter Text

Joe still remembers the first time he dreamed of Sebastien le Livre. Three hundred years after losing Quynh and still reeling from the chaos of the century preceding, and he’d jerked awake with the taste of blood in his mouth and the ache of frostbite in his toes. From the second he’d snapped back to reality, he’d been stumbling from the bed he shared with Nicky, terror and sorrow constricting his throat. All he could think about was finding him, the lonely, angry, frightened man in his dreams. They needed to find him and protect him before he was hurt the way they had all been hurt. Before he was taken away like Quynh had been taken away.

The urge to protect has always been deep in his bones, but the need with Sebastien has always been breathtakingly intense.

But Bastien is not like Nicky, whose gentle soul is so easily bruised. He’s not like Andy, who allows him to be gallant more for her amusem*nt than any actual need. He’s not like Quynh, who Joe could fit under his arm and hide away from the world when she grew tired of it disappointing her every time she dared hope for something better.

Bastien is angry and harsh, a kicked dog who doesn’t trust the offering of a kind hand without looking for the hidden knife. The more he fights the new world he’s been born into, the more Joe wants to protect him from making the same mistakes they have. He’s never dealt with someone new the way Andy has. He’s only faced it himself, and he’d overcome most hurdles out of the pure stubborn need to care for Nicky. They stumbled through the dark together, the journey growing lighter as the shadows slowly faded from his beloved’s eyes.

Bastien always tries to force a distance between them. He pushes them away, Joe panics, holding ever tighter, and they both fracture. Nicky’s spent the past two hundred years telling him to be patient, that Booker will come around, that he’s still hurting and that Joe can win over even the most stubborn of men. Nicky’s optimism is, in Joe’s opinion, the most miraculous thing about him.

He wishes he were here now. He’d know exactly what to say in the face of Booker’s explosive confession, and he’d understand in a way Joe still cannot.

His brother looks away, his cheeks flush with exertion and shame, and the only thing Joe wants to do more than shake him is to hold him.

Words escape him. With their absence comes the final severing of his patience.

“f*ck it,” he says, and jerks so sharply on his bonds that he breaks both his wrists.

The pain is breathtaking, but Joe’s always been good at tuning it out when faced with a fight. He can’t grip the chair's handles, but he can fling himself sideways, using his body as a battering ram to knock the closest two mercs to the ground. He can buy himself a split second to twist his arms in front of him and use the chair as a weapon, bones grating painfully as he moves.

Booker lets out a string of furious curses, most of which are highly unflattering comments on Joe’s birth, and snatches Nicky’s book. “Don’t!” He barks, stopping Quynh from rushing to engage. She freezes, torn between stopping Joe and rescuing the book.

“What do you plan on doing, brother?” She asks Booker in her softest voice. It’s the tone she adopts right before a strike, but Joe is too busy not getting his head kicked in to worry about it. Booker’s a tough bastard. He can handle himself for a minute or two.

The mercs are less than pleased with the sudden switch in dynamic. They all try and reach for their weapons, but Joe gives them no real chance to make best use of them. Guns are great for inflicting catastrophic damage from a distance, but in proper close-quarters combat, they’re a liability. Joe’s whole body is a weapon, and it’s one he’s been using for damn near a thousand years.

Putting only enough effort into avoiding a killing shot, Joe manoeuvres himself into a position where they’re more likely to injure each other than they are him. Two go down to friendly fire when Joe hits his knees and knocks them into each other’s path.

It’s not an easy fight – the chair is cumbersome, and he’s f*cking tired. He’s also epically f*cked off with everyone in the room with him and fully set on showing it.

There’s a crunch, then a scream, and now only two are left. He pivots and-

Danijel Stanković appears on the basem*nt stairs. He, unfortunately, has the advantage of both distance and height. He’s also a good shot and proves it by putting a bullet in both of Joe’s kneecaps.

Even he’s not fighting his way through that.

“f*ck!” He goes down hard an bloody, rebreaking his wrists as he falls

Stanković approaches Quynh, his expression hard. “I thought you said you could control them.”

It might be the crippling pain, but Joe could swear that she looks scared. “Stubbornness runs in the family.”

“I see,” Stanković says, clearly lying through his teeth.

He fires three more times, and Joe’s day somehow manages to get even worse.

Genoa 1128

The sun is high in the sky when Yusuf finally rows the small boat to shore. They’ve left the city behind them and followed the coast. It takes them further north than he wants to go, but until they find their feet, he can’t risk taking Nicolò into a populated area.

Yusuf rows until his arms lose strength, then rows for another hour. Still bound and curled by his knees, Nicolò alternatively shivers and sweats, the whites of his eyes bright as consciousness – and sanity – comes in ebbs and flows. Any guilt Yusuf feels for binding him flees the first time Nicolò jerks back to consciousness and starts striking his head against the side of the boat. Yusuf almost loses an oar in an attempt to stop him.

When Nicolò is awake and in some way coherent, Yusuf feels closer to contentment than he has in decades. When unconsciousness – or death – takes him, when the madness grips, Yusuf is left alone, and his despair feels almost insurmountable. He weeps silently for what feels like hours as he rows and only stops when Nicolò stirs and makes some incomprehensible comment about angels weeping blood.

In the end, he gives up on finding human shelter and settles instead on a small bay cut into the coast. A low cliff face and a ring of trees provide shelter from the wind, and the cloudless sky promises a warm afternoon and cold evening. He can build them a fire when the sun sets.

Nicolò doesn’t stir as Yusuf splashes onto the water and drags the boat as far out of the water as he can, nor does he wake when carried out and set down upon the sand. Yusuf figures its easier to scrub him clean in the surf, but hesitates at the idea of just tossing him into the water. Instead he fetches his travel bag from the floor of the boat and starts unpacking it against the base of the cliff.

He nearly falls right on his ass when he looks up to find Nicolò watching him with those pale, unnerving eyes of his.

“Are you here to kill me?” He asks for what feels like the hundredth time. His voice is barely a whisper; it cracks as badly as his bloody lips.

Yusuf unearths his waterskin and takes just enough of a sip to ease the burn in his own throat before holding it out to Nicolò. “No,” he says, trying and failing to sound patient. “Drink.” Even with his hands bound, nothing is stopping Nicolò from taking the water skin. Joe holds it extended until his trembling arms fail him. “Drink, priest!”

That wild, manic look is back in Nicolò’s eyes. He stares at the waterskin like the man dying of thirst that he is, but makes no move to take it. “I cannot,” he croaks.

Yusuf isn’t in the mood for this. “Yes,” he says firmly, “you can.”

Nicolò shakes his head again, shuffling away from him in fear.

The frayed nerves of hurt and exhaustion snap. Yusuf is on his feet in a heartbeat. He stalks over to the wretched priest; heart hardened to the fear in his eyes. Bound and weak as he is, it’s little effort on Yusuf’s part to trap him in his arms, wrench his head back and force the neck of the waterskin past Nicolò’s lips. The priest struggles, thrashing weakly. Yusuf has never overpowered someone like this, and the intimacy of holding Nicolò against his chest feels nothing like the death he delivers in battle.

But for all Nicolò’s struggles, the second the water hits his lips he slumps in Yusuf’s arms and drinks eagerly. He curls his bound hands around Yusuf’s wrists, not to push him away but to hold him in place. He drinks until the last drop is gone and whimpers when the skin is withdrawn.

Yusuf intends to release him now that the task is done, wanting to spare Nicolò’s dignity if not his autonomy. If this is how he has to wage war against the madness in the priest’s mind, so be it. Clearly, he’s not alone in his desire for victory. Nicolò wants to be saved.

Chapter 9 Notes:

Sorry for the delay!

Chapter Text

Airfield, Serbia 2020

Nearly a millennia of experience spent in the middle of one war or another have left Nicky with something of a hair trigger. If he wakes up hurting or bleeding or some combination of the two and the person hovering over him is not Joe, said person deserves a broken nose.

He comes up swinging, a detached part of his brain fascinated, as always, by the way his skin knits together even as he forces his body to move. He has a vague memory of someone blowing up their plane, and aside from the knowledge that he now owes poor Nile an apology, there’s not much spare time to get too caught up in the fact that he’s still a little on fire.

The death grip he’s kept on his sword for the past dozen hours pays off as the familiar ring of metal cuts through the blurred and muffled sound of the world around him. With that unspoken battle cry of his weapon unsheathing comes a sudden cacophony that makes him want to go someplace quiet in his head and wait out the chaos.

He never gets to, so he settles for a little light decapitation instead.

Two men go down to his blade before Nicky finds his feet. They’re well-armed, prepared for resistance, and seemingly looking for survivors. Most people don’t survive their plane getting hit by explosive projectiles, which means they know more than they should.

It means… it means Andy.

Nicky’s annoyance at making his ‘death by plane’ a round number is immediately drowned out by a crippling degree of terror.

There’s no way he didn’t die. He remembers the flames engulfing him and Nile both, and if that didn’t do the job then the impact surely did. Andy wasn’t with them, but…

If she’s dead… if he’s lost her…

Two more figures move through the wreckage. There’s no sign of Nile, but by the looks of it the plane has been torn apart completely. She could have been thrown during the impact. She, at least, will heal. And likely be as irritated as Nicky is by being proven right. She can handle herself, Nicky knows, but that doesn’t quell his fear for her. She’s a formidable warrior, but she’s still so very young.

And Andy…

The smack of a bullet between his ribs barely registers. Everything already hurts, and when he’s tipped over the edge of pain, he tends to block everything out. Joe hates it. Another bullet hits an inch to the left. That one pierces his lung, but it’s through and through. Nicky is already healing by the time his feet bring him in reach of his attackers. Two more bullets hit without slowing him down, and with one clean swing of his blade, he separates their heads from their shoulders.

Nicky decided very early in his immortal life that if he could not move Heaven for those he loved, he would raise Hell. The men standing between him and his sisters learn that lesson quickly.

He cuts down another pair in his attempt to reach Andy’s last known location within the plane. He has to pick his way through twisted, burning metal, and when they try to use the wreckage to take shelter from his wrath, he goes through both. With enough strength and technique, Nicky’s sword can cut through most things. The exception thus far is still Kevlar, but the trick is to aim at the spots Kevlar can’t cover and throw his weight into the blow.

Unlike Joe’s scimitar, a graceful, elegant weapon designed to slice and pierce, Nicky’s broadsword is as much a weapon for bludgeoning someone to death as it is for stabbing them. He proves as much by piercing the tip of the blade through the vulnerable spot between belly and hip on one mercenary, then hauling it free to slam the pommel of the hilt into another merc’s throat. Both go down. Neither are dead immediately, but they don’t last more than a split second beyond hitting the ground before Nicky finishes them both off.

“Stop!”

Nicky’s Serbian is rusty at best. He responds more to the tone of voice in which the sharp warning is delivered than the words themselves. Pivoting on one heel, fully expecting an ambush, he jerks to a shuddering, horrified halt at the sight that greets him.

Andy is unconscious. She has to be. Unconscious, but not dead. One of the mercs, his face hidden behind the protective wall of a helmet, has her around the waist, and she hangs limply in his arm, his weapon pointed at her. She’s bloody from head to toe, but in the smoke and poor light, it's impossible to see just how badly she is hurt.

Either way, the threat is more than implied.

There’s still no sign of Nile. That’s his only saving grace. If she has any sense, she will stay out of sight.

Nicky cannot. Nor can he continue to fight. Conscious, Andy would be cursing him to hell and back, fighting with all of her formidable strength. Like this, all Nicky can see is how fragile and vulnerable she is. What if she is bleeding internally? What if she has a head injury or if she’s inhaled too much smoke?

She’s mortal now, and the ways in which he might lose her forever are innumerable.

He lets the blade drop from his grip and raises his hands carefully. One of the mercs – and he can count twelve now, possibly more on their way – snatches it up. Nicky doesn’t bother bracing himself for the blow.

It comes down hard and fast, and the chaos around him blinks into darkness.

Serbia 2020

Booker wakes up to screaming.

He screws his eyes shut in misery, the high-pitched wail striking right through him to the tender part of his brain that is still protesting the bullet that just mangled it.

It’s a woman’s voice. One that takes him a minute to recognize before he jerks fully back to consciousness at the sound of a familiar name being screamed in agonized despair.

“Andromache!”

Quynh. That’s Quynh.

He jerks upright and finds himself once again chained, this time to a chair in what he thinks is Danijel f*cking Stanković’s library. That f*cking book is on the table in front of him. On the other side, his head hanging forward and his dark curls matted with blood, Joe is unmoving. As well as the cuffs he’s already bound with, they’ve added both zip ties and duct tape. The overkill is almost funny, at least until he remembers the sound his brother made when Stanković blew his kneecaps out.

Quynh’s wailing hasn’t drawn him back to life yet, which means his death was likely messier than Booker’s. No surprise there; Joe really f*cked them off.

Booker’s neck aches as he tries to get a better look at Quynh. The moment he does, he’s struggling furiously against his own bonds. Several pairs of hands reach out to smack him harshly around the back of the head, but he ignores them.

At the far side of the room, crumpled in a heap on the floor, Quynh screams endlessly as she rocks Andy’s still, bloody body. No. No, not her body. She’s not dead. She can’t possibly be dead. Booker would feel it. He’d know.

She’s never stayed so silent and still while dead. Her head hangs back at an angle, her pale throat equally covered in blood and ash. A deep burn stretches up one of her arms, and her black pants are torn and bloody. Her shirt is no better, and her blood turns the crimson red of Quynh’s dress almost black.

A small part of him longs to see Quynh jump to Andy’s defence. He wants her to get angry, to strike out at the people holding them and fight for her the way Nicky and Joe have so often described. But she was working with them, and while she might not be now, she’s no use to anyone in a fight. She only clutches Andy to her chest and wails, her lovely face streaked with tears and her whole body shuddering.

Booker thinks she looks a lot like he imagines Joe or Nicky would if the day came when one of them no longer healed. She looks like she is cradling the other half of her soul and watching as it is torn away.

Speaking of Nicky…

The library doors open, and a dozen more mercs file in. Two of them drag Nicky between them. As bad as Andy looks, Nicky appears worse. He, at least, will heal.

God, please let him heal.

The mercs dump Nicky face-first on the table, far too close to the book. His wrists are cuffed behind him, but that’s the only restraint Booker can see.

Another eight mercs drag four coffin-sized boxes into the room before filing out. Booker’s heart sinks.

The chair Booker is in jerks as he’s pulled around to face Stanković. Their not-so mild mannered host lines a seat opposite Booker and settles with his elbows in his knees. “We’ve not had chance to know each other yet,” he says, his accent faint but his speech carefully slow. “But I think we have much in common.”

Booker pushes down the fear that’s trying to claw up his throat. “Not so sure about that.”

“We are academic, no? Collectors of fine things. Bibliophiles.”

“Kidnappers,” Booker adds. “Murderer…”

Stanković looks faintly amused. “You have no murder?”

Okay, poor example. Feeling off balance and painfully aware of his family in such danger, Booker scowls. “What do you want?” Stanković looks across at Nicky and Booker snarls.

“My father collects books. Rare books.” He reaches over and runs his hand down the spine of Nicky’s book. “This is rarest.”

“What’s that got to do with us?”

Stanković has very strange eyes. Pale amber, sharp and unnerving. They’re the eyes of a predator. “My family owns lot of land. My mother is from Italy. Genova. Her family own more land. An abbey on the coast. Haunted, people say. We have lots of libraries. Lots of books. One book written by a priest hundreds and hundreds of years ago. Story of man who lived there who was possessed by demons. Story of how his friends tried to help him. How he murdered them in cold blood and butchered his way across Europe for hundreds of years. A monster who cannot be killed. I like this book. Horror. History. Mystery.” He cracks a crooked smile, his gaze moving from the book to Nicky, who lays so still on the long table. “Writer talks about another book. A book made of flesh. Only one of its kind. I try to replicate it with little success.”

“That’s honestly f*cked up.” That Booker can keep a level voice is a f*cking miracle. Copley was one thing – he saw them in action, he figured out their secret after meeting them, but by the sound of it, Stanković has been hunting for Nicky.

“I’m good at history,” Stanković says proudly. “And patient. Lots of stories. Lots of letters. I track this book down. Find it in the Holy Church. They have more stories. More letters. About man who carved the flesh from his back a hundred times in search of salvation, but who lost his fight against the devil and drowned the faithful in blood. Vastator. Angel of Death.”

Goddamn f*cking Catholics. Thing is, though… Stanković is not the first person he’s heard call his brother by that name.

“And this has what to do with us?” He’s fishing for time as much as he is for information, but Stanković is lucky Joe is unconscious. He brushes his fingers lightly across the crown of Nicky’s head, barely making contact. Booker wants to kill him for it.

“I never dreamed that man still lived. Was a childhood story I loved. Fairytale. Like stories of Miloš Obilić. I dream about possessing the book. Years and years, until one day it is mine, and its mysteries belong to me. Maybe the secret of eternal life? Maybe instructions for summoning demons and riches? But I get it, I read it, and nothing. No secret, just… more mystery.”

Because, and Booker can’t f*cking stress this enough, it’s utter f*cking insanity. Quynh might think it is written in code, but it’s more likely just an incoherent stream of tormented consciousness put to ink. Booker tried and failed to make sense of it. Far from finding any great insight into their shared curse, all it’s given him is a fresh appreciation for Joe’s patience and a budding worry for the state of Nicky’s sanity. Eighty percent of it makes no sense at all, and the remaining twenty percent is just a stream of guilt-filled lamentations for crimes committed in the name of god.

Stanković pats his shoulder consolingly. “You help me, Mr Booker. You ask him to unlock mystery, and if it is what we hope, I let you die in peace. Together. Andromache is lost either way, but I will ensure it is quick for all of you.”

Booker flinches at the damning of a woman he loves more than any other, alive or dead.

“And if I don’t?” He’s not about to talk Nicky into anything. He’s not sure anyone can. Except Joe… Booker eyes the coffin-like boxes with growing fear.

Stanković smiles. “Then she dies, and you both go back to ocean with dear Quynh.”

He clearly doesn’t know about Nile. Quynh hasn’t told him. Booker still can’t understand why she is working with him, or how they even met, but the fact that she’s kept that secret for them means… he doesn’t f*cking know what it means, but it might be all the hope they have.

There are four boxes. One for Andy, yes, for Booker and for Joe. One for Quynh. All present and accounted for. Stanković follows his train of thought and nods seriously. “Him,” he gestures at Nicky, “I keep until secrets are not secret, then I give him to the Holy Church.”

Booker, who has dreamed of Quynh’s endless cycles of death for two hundred years, wonders which fate would be crueller for all of them.

Listening to Quynh's helpless cries and looking across at the rest of his family - unconscious, bleeding, reliant on him for protection - he honestly doesn’t know.

Genoa 1128

It’s not truly cold, but Yusuf still shivers regardless. Huddled close to the fire he’s built against the cliff face, he rubs his palms together and huffs out a heavy breath in the hope of warming his fingers. Besides him, curled towards the flames and buried under Yusuf’s cloak and his two spare tunics, Nicolò sleeps peacefully. Yusuf might envy him, but the heaviness of the priest’s slumber suggests a bone-deep exhaustion that he can’t help but sympathise with.

It's not the first night they’ve shared in each other’s company. The last one feels like a lifetime ago. They’d collapsed side by side, too worn by the cycle of death, and woke almost a day later, wary and bloody and surrounded by death. Both of them petrified.

It’s hard not to dwell on the difference he can see so starkly in Nicolò’s sunken cheeks. He’d been handsome then, for all Yusuf dislikes dwelling on it. Now he’s an uncomfortable mix of looking both very old and painfully young.

A part of Yusuf wants to bash his brains in. Another part longs to see him with that same stubborn fire in his eyes. They will never be friends, but this strange fate binds them together, and he is so very lonely for someone who might understand him.

It’s tempting to join Nicolò in slumber. Every part of him aches with exhaustion, and keeping his eyes open is starting to become an impossible task. His head lolls back against the rock and his shoulders slump. Consciousness dances further and further out of reach, and he’s just about to tip over the other side when an old, familiar dream cuts through him.

Two women, their dark hair long and the weapons in their hands glinting under the sun. They ride hard across sand dunes, the sea a far-off spec before them. An arrow flys through the air, then--

Yusuf jerks fully awake with a start.

Beside him, Nicolò bolts upright, his bound hands scrambling to put some distance between them. He clutches the cloak around his shoulders, his pale eyes bright and full of tears.

A woman’s scream sits on the tip of Yusuf’s tongue, but spills from Nicolò’s lips. “Quynh,” he breathes, tears overflowing.

Yusuf hits his knees and crawls down to Nicolò’s side. “You see them too?”

“Are they demons?” he asks, his shoulders trembling.

“Do they feel like demons?”

Nicolò stares at him. “They feel like you.”

That’s not an answer. But it is, Yusuf thinks, true. The women he sometimes dreams of feel familiar. They feel like they fit.

And they feel like Nicolò.

Chapter 10 Notes:

This chapter is heavy. All content warnings apply.

Chapter Text

Serbia 2020

They’ve slept this way for as long as Nicky can remember. If the morning comes when he doesn’t wake to the comforting weight of Joe’s arm around him, then it is a morning Nicky will find himself listless and adrift. It’s not that they don’t fall asleep in other positions. It’s not that Nicky doesn’t ever drift away with Joe in his arms. It’s simply that Joe settles best when plastered against Nicky’s back, and Nicky can sleep in any position so long as Joe is with him.

And if he rarely wakes up to the sight of Joe’s beautiful face, so be it. He wakes up instead to breath warm against his skin, or sleepy kisses pressed into his neck. He wakes up knowing Joe is rested and happy. And when they are alone and safe and can indulge themselves, he wakes up with every inch of his husband’s firm, naked body pressed flush against him. He wakes up feeling Joe’s hardness against his hip and delights in spending the minutes it takes for Joe’s consciousness to catch up planning all the ways they might pass the morning together.

“Hmm, you’re thinking too loud, my heart,” Joe mutters into his throat. “Go back to sleep.”

“How can I sleep when there are so many better uses of our time?” Joe is so warm against him, a ward against the chill that tries to creep down his spine. He shivers, and Joe grumbles in disapproval, pressing even closer. He slides a thigh between Nicky’s, wriggles until both arms are around his waist, and clings.

“Time is something we are not short of,” he breathes into Nicky’s ear. “You’ve not been sleeping.”

“Neither have you.”

“I can’t sleep if I can’t hold you,” Joe whispers, a note of fear in his voice that has no right to be there. Not here. Not in their bed. “What if I wake up and I can’t find you?”

“Then I’ll find you.”

“But what if it’s dark? What if you can’t?”

“Then I’ll wait for you,” Nicky promises. Joe kisses the back of his neck, the skin sensitive from the warmth of his touch. “I’ll wait forever.”

“Nico… beloved.” That’s when Nicky knows it’s bad. These days he’s mostly Nicky. When he’s not, he’s Nicolò. “You need to open your eyes, my love.”

“I thought you wanted me to sleep?” Nicky’s not aware his eyes are even closed.

“Please, love. Open your eyes. Let me know you’re okay.” Joe isn’t made to sound so scared. It’s Nicky’s entire purpose in life to ensure he never has to be.

He opens his eyes, and the cold makes sense.

They’re not in their bed. Joe isn’t holding him. He’s bound and bloody in a chair less than a foot away, and when Nicky jerks in outrage, desperate to touch him, pain shoots across his shoulders.

He’s been bound often enough in life to know what it feels like.

There’s no point struggling. There’s no point giving in to fear. If he does, Joe is only going to react badly.

It looks as if he’s already done so. His hair is matted with blood. There are no bruises on his face, but from the way its crusted against his skin it’s clear someone has beaten him badly. Perhaps for as long as he’s been missing.

The one blessing of their condition also means that it’s impossible to tell how badly Joe has been hurt. Nicky might not need to worry about wounds healing right or bones setting clean, but if he doesn’t know what has been done to his husband, then he doesn’t know how best to care for him.

He doesn’t know how many people need to die for their trespass.

Joe’s alive, and he’s awake. Everything else, Nicky can work with.

For now, he must soothe the helpless, frantic fear in his beloved’s eyes. Nicky smiles and asks, “How’s my hair?”

Fear briefly flashes to annoyance before exasperated affection takes over. Better. Much better. “Nicely tousled,” Joe lies. “You look better than Booker.”

Nicky jerks his head around. He’s laying uncomfortably on a long table and the vulnerability of the position is not lost on him. He manages to twist around enough to see Booker, who looks almost as bad as Joe does. Nicky’s heart starts to beat more frantically. If both Booker and Joe are here, then with Andy injured as she is, that once again puts their rescue in Nile’s hands. Assuming she’s not been taken, too.

“Morning, sunshine,” Booker says with the nasal quality of someone who has just had their nose broken.

Nicky swallows. “You look terrible.”

“sh*tty local hospitality,” Booker snorts. “What’s your excuse?”

“Plane blew up in my face,” Nicky shrugs. He adjusts his position, using the excuse of the ache in his shoulders to test the strength of his bonds. Metal. Not ideal, but they’re cuffs, not manacles, and they’re loose enough that if he breaks his thumb he can probably slip them.

“Yeah, that’ll do it.”

Nicky’s about to respond when hands settle on his arms and haul him upright.

Joe snarls, “Touch him, and I will f*cking kill you,” and Nicky doesn’t have time to try and soothe his panic before he’s on his feet and face to face with a man who looks oddly familiar somehow. Behind him, Nicky counts a dozen armed mercenaries. They’re outnumbered, and with Joe and Booker restrained, Nicky is limited in the carnage he can inflict before a killing blow is delivered. He needs more time.

In flawless Italian, the man offers Nicky a cordial greeting. “Forgive the circ*mstances of our meeting. My name is Danijel Stanković, and I am a big fan of your work.”

Nicky frowns. “My work?” The book, or something else? How does he even know who Nicky is?

In an archaic form of French even Booker doesn’t speak often; his brother calls, “Nicky, Nicky, look at me. No matter what he says, do not-“ The merc closest to Booker slams the butt of his weapon into the side of his head. Nicky instinctively moves to help, only to get pulled back by solid grips on both his arms.

Joe’s quiet voice draws him back. Nicky finds his gaze, and the world drops away. He’s expecting to see rage in his husband’s eyes. Joe is never more volatile than he is when someone is hurting his family.

It’s been only weeks since Nicky watched people torture him in the name of science. He seemed angrier then than he does now. Now, somehow, he is only soft. The vitriol he spat at Stanković is nowhere to be seen. “I’ll find you,” Joe promises, straining in his bonds. “You know I’ll find you.”

Nicky frowns. Of course he knows. Joe will never stop searching for him. That doesn’t mean he understands. “I’m not going anywhere,” he tries to be reassuring. Instead, tears roll down Joe’s cheeks. “Amore…”

“I’ll find you,” Joe says again. Nicky is frightened now, truly. He can’t remember the last time Joe was this afraid of anything. “I love you, and I will find you.”

If Stanković wants to separate them, Nicky isn’t going to let it happen without a fight.

A broken-hearted sob cuts through him, a woman’s voice. When he tries to turn, those hands hold him fast.

“All I need is but a moment of your time,” Stanković says earnestly. He’s close enough for Nicky to see all the colors in his eyes, but smart enough to stay out of striking distance. “Your help with a spot of translation.”

“I have email,” Nicky says absently.

Stanković’s smile stretches thin. He gestures to one of the mercs, and the cuffs around Nicky’s wrists fall free. Rough hands turn him to face the table he’d been laid on. From this angle, he gets a clear view of not just Andy, but of Quynh.

He’s unbound. Free to fight now. But the sight of his lost sister stuns him. “Quynh…”

The sound of her name draws her attention from Andy, who she holds against her chest. Quynh lifts her chin, meets Nicky’s gaze, and sobs. “Please. Nico, please.”

It’s then that he sees it.

Last time, he’d been too preoccupied with getting Joe to safety to really think too much about the book. Now, he has a million and one other things he should be focusing on, but the only thought in his mind is that someone has bound it. And they’ve done a good job. As good as if he’d done it himself.

Did he? He has no memory of doing so.

He has no memory of reaching out and touching the book, either.

“Nico,” Joe’s voice again. “Look at me.”

Has there ever been a time when Joe has asked him something and he’s refused? Why is his head not turning? Why can he not tear his eyes away from the book?

“You owe me,” Quynh sobs. Nicky doesn’t know what she wants, but she’s right. He owes her everything.

He’s dimly aware of Stanković speaking. Of Joe calling his name, and of Booker spitting curses. Of Quynh’s tears and Andy’s stillness.

But the world has narrowed to the confines of the book. Unbound as he is, there’s nothing stopping him from really touching it. He traces his fingers over the carefully drawn letters and can feel the press of hard stone against his knees. His belly aches, and his bones feel hollow. He can smell the sharp copper of blood even as he remembers pressing his forehead to the cold floor.

A voice whispers directly into his ear, closer than anyone but Joe has been in centuries. “Can you read it?”

Of course he can read it. He wrote it.

He nods.

“Nicolò, listen to me, listen to my voice, Nicky! Ni-“

Firm hands slide under the hem of his shirt, pressing against his back and stroking across his shoulder blades. It doesn’t occur to Nicky to mind.

The screaming around him is muffled now. The voices far, far away.

“Can you finish it?”

Can he? It’s been so long. It’s been so long. Nicky peels open the cover and remembers.

“Yes,” he whispers.

Genoa 1128

Nicolò tries to kill Yusuf twice more in the hours before dawn. He gets one good blow purely through the advantage of surprise, a rock swing with impressive coordination at Yusuf’s head. There’s no strength behind the blow, so neither it nor the second attempt does more than daze him, and Nicolò comes off worse. There’s no recognition in his eyes either time.

There’s not much of anything. The closest he comes to showing any emotion is fear as he watches the shallow gash on Yusuf’s forehead heal over.

Somehow, that’s not the worst of it. No, that comes shortly after dawn, when Yusuf is so tired he thinks his eyes might start bleeding if he blinks too hard.

Nicolò is more alert. He kneels before Yusuf in the sand, his long limbs neatly tucked to his sides, and the warm folds of his borrowed clothes hiding his frail body. He raises his bound hands to Yusuf in supplication and, with genuine earnestness, says, “You don’t need to bind me. I will not fight you.”

Yusuf snorts, because Nicolò tries to fight him at every given opportunity, sane or not, but he thinks he’s starting to notice the difference in the priest’s fractured states of mind and holds back the bitter laughter bubbling in his chest. “No?” He gives Nicolò the space to fill in the gaps, and his heart sinks as the priest obliges eagerly.

“It took a year,” he admits, a grotesque flush of shame in his cheeks, “but I haven’t needed it in a long time. I can be very still. You don’t need to worry about that.”

There’s nothing cruel in the way he’s bound Nicolò. The sashes are soft, and though tight, Yusuf’s been careful not to cut off his circulation. It’s as kind as he can afford to be, but the sight of it suddenly sickens him. His fingers fumble with the knots.

Nicolò smiles beautifully and thinks Yusuf trusts his promise to endure pain without complaint. If he sees the disgust in Yusuf’s expression, he misreads it.

It’s not even a risk. As long as Yusuf keeps his guard up, he can overpower the priest right now.

He needs to sleep. He needs to sleep so badly he can barely think. But he can’t stomach the idea of keeping Nicolò bound when he’s like this.

“Do you have a blade?” Nicolò asks him. “A smaller one, I mean. I’ve never tried it with something the size of your sword. You’re welcome to, of course. We can make do. Oh, or find a sharp rock. Whatever you think is best. I appreciate your help in the matter, truly.”

Nicolò sets his hands on his knees and doesn’t move. Yusuf imagines trying to carve strips of skin from his back with a rock and almost vomits.

He swallows painfully. “I… later.” That’s the only excuse he can attempt. Later. Not never. If he starts screaming the way he wants to it will only upset Nicolò.

But the thought of a delay does the same. Nicolò bites his bottom lip and peers up at Yusuf with hopeful eyes. “The light is better now,” he says first, offering up a practical excuse. When that fails to move Yusuf, he shudders. “Please, I…. I would rather not wait.”

“Nicolò…”

Something changes in Nicolò’s expression. He doesn’t recoil physically, but his whole body seems to droop. “I understand. At your leave. I just… wanted you to know I won’t be difficult.”

“Difficult,” Yusuf echoes, feeling very far away. “Show me.”

Relief brings life back to Nicolò’s pale eyes. He rises slowly, legs unsteady, and removes the lays Yusuf dressed him in the night before. “This was kind of you,” he says, “thank you.” Each item is carefully folded before set on the sand.

“Kind.” Yusuf doesn’t feel kind. He feels like he’s floating. Like he’s back on the battlefield and bleeding to death.

Once down to those flimsy small clothes of his, hipbones sharp and his belly hollow, Nicolò returns to his knees. He whispers prayers and makes the sign of the cross before laying himself down, arms at his side.

He looks almost peaceful.

Yusuf finds himself down on his knees beside him without conscious effort. He rests one hand on the middle of Nicolò’s back. Nicolò doesn’t flinch. If anything, he relaxes into the touch.

His skin feels so thin beneath Yusuf’s hand. Barely anything between it and the hard bone below. The steadiness of hand, the skill needed to cut and not kill…

“Don’t worry if I die,” Nicolò says, blithely oblivious to Yusuf’s mounting horror. “It’s harder now than it used to be, and harder still the first time I think, but I’ll be still when I wake, I swear it.”

In a stark moment of clarity, Yusuf understands just how vulnerable Nicolò has made himself. It’s been decades since he has entertained any real fantasy of inflicting pain on the man who first murdered him, but he won’t deny those fantasies did once exist. He’s dreamed of painting his hands with Nicolò’s blood. Of the sounds he makes when his lungs fill with blood, or he chokes to death with Yusuf’s hands around his throat. In those early days, this would have been an impossible gift.

He can do anything to Nicolò now, and so long as he ends his torment with his promise to rend flesh from bone, Nicolò will thank him.

Lost, alone, and with no idea what to do next, let alone how to handle the terrifying responsibility of caring for someone so tormented, Yusuf struggles to his feet.

He leaves Nicolò laying in the sand, a smile on his face as he waits to be abused, and turns to the sea.

He walks until the surf hits his feet, and continues. When the water is as high as his chest, when he struggles to keep his footing and push forward, he pictures Nicolò’s careful calligraphy and wonders just how many times someone can be hurt before they learn to not only bear the pain in silence but crave it.

And crave it, Nicolò does. Yusuf can see it in his expression. Pain is preferable to patience. In suffering, he believes himself safe in the arms of his cruel, capricious god.

The water rises to his throat. He has to propel himself forward, pushing against the tide.

He can hear his name on the breeze.

Yusuf has never taken his own life the way Nicolò so frequently attempts to. He wonders if it will be different. If by doing so, he might understand.

Please. He needs to understand. He needs to sleep. He needs to know what to do.

The sea takes him as Nicolò calls his name.

Chapter 11 Notes:

One step forward, six steps back...

Chapter Text

Serbia 2020

The moment Nicky lays his hand on the book, he’s gone. In all Booker’s long years on earth, he has seen many harrowing things. He’s seen his family through the worst of hurts, seen them struck down so low by the wickedness of humanity and the cruel, callous hand of fate. He’s seen Joe wrecked by pain and stared into Nicky’s flat, thousand-yard stare. He’s watched Andy try and fail to wash away her misery in sex and alcohol, recoiled when Joe’s flinched at his touch, and wept over each of them as death has stolen from them time and time again.

He doesn’t think he’d ever seen anything hit as hard or as fast as this.

Nicky is his usual business brand of carefully constructed disinterest right up until he locks sight on the relic from his past. In that instant, Booker understands just why Joe is so afraid.

Far from any fear that his brother will dig in his heels and suffer for his stubbornness, Nicky's spark blinks out of existence. He exists in body only.

With his back to Booker, it’s Joe’s expression that gives it away. Far from cursing up a storm the way he usually does, he whispers frantic promises in the language only the two of them share, tears streaming down his face. Whatever physical danger Nicky is in clearly isn’t what’s worrying Joe right now. That much is made clear when Stanković puts his hands under Nicky’s shirt and Joe doesn’t upend the laws of the universe to break free and beat him to death. Joe’s killed people for looking at Nicky wrong.

He's clearly more focused on soothing Nicky, on tethering him to the here and now.

When Nicky, swaying on the spot, his voice far away, tells Stanković he can finish what he started, Booker damn near dislocates his shoulders trying to get free.

Joe doesn’t. He continues to call to Nicky, gentle and pleading. It doesn’t work.

At least not until the merc closest to Joe wraps a garrot around his neck and tries to throttle the desperate words from his throat.

That’s the misstep. The place where trauma collides with love, and Joe is the only person who envisions a scenario where Nicky’s past hurts will trump his current need to protect. He knows he doesn’t share their history. He knows that there have been more years spent without him than with, and those years have been cruel. He sees the horror of what Nicky endured reflected back in Joe’s eyes, but there’s not been a single second where Booker genuinely thinks that anything can displace the core foundation of Nicky’s being: Joe first, always.

Stanković’s goons learn that lesson quickly.

Booker doesn’t even know where Nicky got the blade from – odds are someone f*cking checked him for weapons before they cuffed him – but the second Joe’s voice shifts from a whispered plea to a choked cry of pain, Nicky has a blade buried deep in the throat of the merc responsible.

Quynh’s the fastest of them, that’s what Nicky says. If true, it’s a f*cking terrifying thought because Nicky moves like lightning. If he’s armed with a sword, facing Nicky down is practically asking for death. With knives? Might as well not f*cking bother.

Before the first merc even has chance to raise his hand to his throat, Nicky flips the blade in his palm, pivots on his heel and slams it into the asshole on his other side. Stanković stumbles back, nose bleeding from a headbutt delivered in the same move.

The rat bastard wants the Angel of Death? Here he f*cking is.

There’s something oddly hypnotising about the way both Nicky and Joe fight. A dance synchronised over the centuries and perfected in a thousand wars. It’s rare they ever fight alone, but whenever they do, Booker is always fascinated by their differences.

They’re both incredibly graceful. Both are skilled beyond comprehension and creative in the ways they use the millennia of techniques they’ve learned. But where Joe favors a more elegant approach, Nicky’s philosophy is often to just grab something heavy, be that his sword, a chair or once, memorably, his own severed arm, and beat the absolute sh*t out of the poor f*cker closest in range.

For someone as lean and lanky as Nicky, it often surprises people just how strong he is. He can put Booker on his ass, and Booker has four inches and thirty pounds on him.

Nicky’s propensity for bludgeoning people to death with whatever is closest continues as he snatches up the book and swings it at Stanković’s head hard enough to knock out a tooth.

The figure behind Booker tries to use him as a human shield, only to get caught first on the back swing and then with an upper cut. Booker wouldn’t have blamed his brother if he’d just abandoned him to his fate, but he’s not surprised by the defence.

It’s that point, when he is protecting Booker, that four more of the mercs reach them and one slides a blade into the base of Nicky’s neck. It’s not necessarily a killing blow, but it is a paralysing one and will remain so until the blade is removed.

It’s Stanković who catches him as he falls. He gets his arms under Nicky’s and steadies him, stepping over the bodies on the ground until he’s able to manoeuvre Nicky back onto the table.

Joe is almost incoherent with rage. Blood flows down his arms, wounds scored deep by the brutal way he’s been bound. He doesn’t seem to notice or care. The softness he keeps for Nicky now turns to fire as men move to tie his beloved to the table. They fasten knots at his wrists and ankles and stretch him out between Booker and Joe. With the blade buried deep in his spine, Nicky is helpless.

Booker’s Serbian is rusty. They spent five years in this part of the world, back in the late 90s, but none of the memories are good ones and he’s tried to shed as many of them as he can in the decades since. It means he can’t fully follow the orders Stanković barks at his men, but the message becomes clear enough when they drag Joe away from the table and put two bullets in the back of his head.

Nicky can’t move and doesn’t scream, so Booker does it for him.

It helps no one. Unresisting and limp, it’s easy for them to detach him from the chair and dump his body into one of the four coffins.

Terror claws up Booker’s throat as the lid closes, sealing his brother inside. Is this the last he’s ever going to see Joe? Are they going to take him away and condemn him to the same endless cycle of death Quynh was subjected to?

And Quynh… she looks stricken. Her dark eyes track Joe’s limp form as he vanishes from sight. Andy is motionless in her arms, so still she might be dead. Joe’s locked in that box, the last thing he saw before his latest death the living embodiment of his worst nightmares.

Booker is going to lose all of them.

Andy might be dead. Joe is about to be taken away. Nicky is in the hands of a man who has stalked him for years. And Booker is… completely f*cking useless, as always.

With Joe contained, Quynh too traumatized to act and Booker too f*cking pointless to deserve oxygen, Stanković gathers himself and turns his attention back to Nicky.

He dusts himself down, dabbing at his bloody nose with a folded square of cloth. He unfastens his suit jacket and hangs it neatly over one of the unoccupied chairs, then casually starts rolling up his sleeves.

He’s in no rush. Why would he be? He has them exactly where he wants them. By the time he’s finished preparing himself, Booker can hear the muffled thumps of Joe hammering on the inside of the box he’s been locked in.

He doesn’t know what to do.

Then Stanković climbs onto the table, settles himself on the back of Nicky’s thighs, and yanks the blade out of his neck.

Nicky chokes, blood pooling in his throat. He heals quickly, but it still takes several minutes before he is able to speak. “I am going to kill you,” he says, cold fury hidden in the calm, modulated words. The second Stanković made himself complicit in Joe’s pain, he was dead. It should sound ridiculous coming from a man bound and helpless, but the implicit promise in Nicky’s voice can’t be ignored.

“I did wish to be civil about this,” Stanković says in Italian. He follows by cutting through the material of Nicky’s shirt, hacking at fabric until he can peel it away and cast it to one side.

Joe continues to pound against the walls of his prison.

Panicked, Booker does the only thing he can do. He runs his mouth. “You’re a lying piece of sh*t,” he snaps, desperately trying to draw Stanković’s attention from Nicky. The bastard has his hand splayed across his brother’s back, his fingers idly stroking across pale skin. “All this bullsh*t about being a collector and wanting to solve mysteries. You’re just a f*cking sad*st looking for someone to torture.” He recalls the boast Stanković made about trying to make his own version of Nicky’s book and snarls. “That’s what this is about. Nothing else. Civilized my f*cking ass.”

Stanković’s gaze narrows. He jerks his head. Booker’s world tilts off balance.

That was a waste of f*cking time, wasn’t it?

He’s dragged over to the coffin next to Joe’s. He gets a second, maybe two, to try and fight, then pain explodes behind his eyes, and the world turns black once more.

Genoa 1128

Yusuf splutters to life and almost shocks himself right back into unconsciousness. Nicolò pounds on his chest furiously, his pale eyes wild and his hands trembling. He curses Yusuf so fluently, the words blurring into one angry tirade. It feels a little unfair, given the sheer number of times he’s died on Yusuf in the past day, but he’ll take an angry Nicolò over the wretched creature cheerfully offering himself up for slaughter any day of the week.

Seeing Yusuf awake doesn’t stop Nicolò from pounding on his chest. He gets in three more furious blows before Yusuf snatches his fist and rolls them over on the sand. He’s cold and wet, violently ricocheting between mortification and annoyance, and furious at how easy it is to pin the priest down and hold him there.

Nicolò’s murdered him so many times and in some fairly creative ways, and while he might never have been the kind of heavy-set beast so many Christian Knights were, he’s beaten Yusuf to death with his bare hands before. Yusuf has returned the favor every time, and perhaps that is why he misses the tempest of fire and ice he first met all those years ago.

Yusuf hates him and Nicolò hates him right back, and they match in every way. A balance in the universe Yusuf has been chasing for nearly thirty years.

This doesn’t feel balanced.

It doesn’t really feel like hate, either.

“You’re a fool,” Nicolò hisses up at him. Water clings to his eyelashes. Yusuf could drown in his eyes as easily as he’s just drowned in the ocean. “You throw your life away for nothing!”

That might be the funniest thing Yusuf has heard in years. “Surely you jest? You, who ask me to mutilate you.”

Nicolò glares at him. “You’ve done it before!”

“You could fight back before!”

Nicolò’s response is to slam his knee into Yusuf’s leg hard enough to numb the muscle. He grunts because f*ck that hurts, but instead of loosening his grip on Nicolò’s wrists, he tightens it. “You do all this for your god?”

“I wouldn’t expect a heathen to understand.” Heathen, he says. Yusuf’s been called worse. Nicolò has called him worse.

He shifts his weight until he can pin the priest fully to the ground. It’s intimate, violent almost, but there’s less fear in his eyes than there was before. “Oh, I understand,” Yusuf snarls. “You ask your god for forgiveness, but not me. You didn’t kill god, you didn’t burn his home and desecrate his land. You did those things to me.” They’re words he’s wanted to say for years, and of all the various responses he’s imagined, the look of wide-eyed bewilderment on Nicolò’s face has never been one of them. “You think your pain will earn you his forgiveness? What will you do to earn mine?”

“I…”

“I am not cursed!” Yusuf continues, the words pouring out of him. “I am blessed! Blessed with eyes that may live to see all the wonders at our feet. Blessed with hands that might hold sword and shield between the innocent and those who would harm them. Blessed with a mind to learn all the languages of the world and a tongue in which to speak them. Blessed, Nicolò! And you seek to take that away from me?”

The look in Nicolò’s eyes is unlike any Yusuf has seen before. He looks enraptured. “I do not see the world as you see it.”

“No. You see pain and ugliness and hate,” Yusuf says bitterly.

“I don’t hate you. Not any more.” But he did. There’s no masking that. Yusuf thinks of the stories his people tell of the Franks, both those based on horrifying fact and wild, hysteria inducting fantasy, and wonders what stories Nicolò grew up on living in a city once burned by the Fatimid navy. Hated is such a hard cycle to break; destruction and devastation always fall on those least deserving of it. Nicolò came to Yusuf’s home with hatred in his heart, and Yusuf was taught to hate him in return.

Yet here they are now.

The priest has done nothing to earn Yusuf’s forgiveness. He has done everything to earn it.

None of those things are what Yusuf wants from him.

He doesn’t know what he wants from him.

Not to hurt him. That much he does know.

And perhaps, given the way Nicolò has responded to Yusuf’s poorly planned foray into the ocean, he doesn’t want to hurt Yusuf either?

Occasional lapses into madness-induced violence aside, that is.

“You said you’d help me,” Nicolò says, a pained, disheartened note to his voice. “You promised.”

“I will,” Yusuf swears. “If it takes me until the end of the world, I will help you.” He loosens his grip on Nicolò’s wrists and brushes the backs of his fingers across his cheek instead. Nicolò startles, flinching back not in fear but in wonder. “When was the last time someone touched you with kindness and not to cause pain?”

“We reap what we deserve,” Nicolò sighs, now leaning into the touch, his eyes heavy-lidded.

“I’ll decide what you deserve,” Yusuf says stubbornly. “That is your penance, priest. If you hurt, it is because I desire it. No other reason is acceptable.”

“And then you’ll forgive me?”

“Then you will ask for my forgiveness,” Yusuf corrects. “And you will have no doubts that it has been granted.”

Ambiguity is the root of misery. They have much in common, yes, but in this he fears he is floundering in the dark. He can ill afford to inflict injury because he acts in one way and Nicolò interprets it in another. This must be resolute.

Nicolò sighs. He nods slowly. “I accept your terms.”

“Good,” Yusuf agrees, his heart pounding. Can it be so easy? “Then you will eat, and you will drink, and you will cease this incessant attempt to take your own life. It is mine, and I will not have you waste it needlessly.”

That flash of fear is back, but instead of giving in to it, Nicolò nods his head stubbornly.

“As you command,” he breathes, a spark of that old madness swimming to the surface, bringing with it a chill Yusuf can’t explain. “It will be done.”

Chapter 12 Summary:

Last of the violence in this chapter. All the comfort to come!

Chapter Text

Serbia 2020

Nicky has thought about it before. Of course he has. How could he not? He has a tendency to let his thoughts run away with him, to get lost in his head, and he has time. Centuries of it. He’s thought about it.

About what he would do, who he would be, if it were Joe condemned to the impossible horror they’ve lost Quynh to.

He’s thought about it. He’s dreamed about it. He’s woken screaming and sobbed in Joe’s arms, full of self-hatred as he’s taken comfort from a man he hasn’t lost while Andy’s stood watch in the doorway to their room, a silent sentinel of suffering.

It takes time for his spine to repair the damage done to it. Not long, but too long. Long enough for them to take Joe from him. For them to drag Booker to the same hopeless fate.

Time enough for Nicky to sort through the memories hammering against his mind.

He doesn’t remember everything: it’s been so long and he has no way of knowing one way or another. But he does remember enough.

The instinct at the very core of his being, one he has always assigned to a simple aspect of his all-consuming love and devotion to Joe, finds a new root in his mind.

It’s as he’s said to Nile: he gave his devotion to God, and when that failed him, he handed his heart to Joe instead.

Only that’s not it, is it? Before he loved Joe, before he even knew the man he now knows better than his own mind, Joe demanded that devotion. Not, as Nicky perhaps believed at the time, because he felt he deserved it, or that it was owed to him, but because Joe, who followed him across the world, who searched for him and saved him, could see no other way to protect Nicky from himself.

Everything Nicky is and will ever be is Joe’s. First and always. There’s nothing helpless or even pre-destined about their love. They made a choice almost a thousand years ago, and that choice has changed everything.

Nicky makes a choice now.

For years, he chose to subject himself to the worst kind of physical pain. Over and over again, he laid down for the blade. Even as he feared it. Even as he felt a little bit of his sanity be peeled away with his skin.

Joe might hate that, but as Nicky lies bound and helpless now, he can only be grateful.

Pain is an excellent teacher, and Nicky is a dedicated student. He knows how to endure.

And that endurance allows him to do things you’re not supposed to do to your body. The part of his mind that is there to stop you from acts of catastrophic damage is easily overridden when you have as much experience as Nicky does.

Even at his very weakest, he’s never been as helpless as he looks.

Bones pop. Muscle and skin tears, and he hears every nauseating second, but the pain doesn’t reach him.

The darkness he’s described to Nile consumes him as he leaps willingly into the abyss. If it means forcing Joe to find him, so be it. If it means Joe’s pain and misery, so be it. Nicky is his, and he is Nicky’s, and better this kind of suffering than an eternity apart.

Joe’s already given his blessing, hasn’t he? He said as much with his desperate promises to find Nicky. He knows. He always knows.

The cries of fear and anger from the men around him have no hope of piercing through the veil. He tastes blood and feels bones snap under his hands and all that matters is reaching Joe.

A familiar face swims into vision. Their host, their captor, the man who would take Joe from him.

Nicky knows him. Has seen his face before. Not in this lifetime, but centuries ago. He’s not one of them, not an immortal… but he knows those eyes. They’ve killed him before. They’ve hurt him before.

And now they’ve hurt Joe.

Stanković’s face is a bloody mess. He stands alone, surrounded by the bodies of his men. The weapon in his hands trembles – Nicky thinks one of those breaking bones might have been his arm – but at this close range, he won’t miss. A bullet to Nicky’s head won’t be the end of him, but it might be the end of Joe.

He goes still, absently aware of the blade lodged in his side and the weeping bullet holes scattered across his chest. A small part of his mind is able to remind him that he should hurt, but Nicky only blinks at the gun in his face.

Stanković’s lost. He’s a dead man; he has to know it. Instead of rage, he only looks enraptured. “Magnificent,” he breathes in wonder.

His finger tightens against the trigger.

The body that collides with Nicky is small, but Quynh is nothing if not an expert at making herself into a weapon. She knocks him off his feet, and the bullet misses him by a breath.

Stanković shouts in startled rage.

Nicky and Quynh move together like the last five hundred years have not happened. He yanks the knife from his body, and she palms a discarded weapon from amongst the bodies. Their blades sink into flesh in perfect unison as Quynh snarls the words she uttered the last time she came to his rescue.

“Not my brother.”

Genoa 1128

Now that he is conscious and coherent and they have found some degree of a truce between themselves, Nicolò has taken on a whole new preoccupation with Yusuf’s clothing. He’s donned one of Yusuf’s tunics, the worn blue turning those pale eyes of his the same color as the ocean. On top of that, to ward off the chill that races through his thin bones, Yusuf has wrapped him in his thick cloak. He runs his fingers over the soft fabric, so very unlike the coarse clothes he wore in the Abbey, and traces the fine embroidery along the edge.

Yusuf leaves him to it.

They spend another few hours tucked in the shelter of the cliffs. Yusuf catches fish for their supper and finds a pool of clear, fresh water that has collected from passing rainstorms. Armed with suitable rations for them both, he watches as Nicolò prepares a fire. The task seems to exhaust him, and he only wishes to sleep, but he drinks when Yusuf demands it and picks carefully at the white flesh of the fish they prepare. It’s not much of a meal, but it’s clearly more than the priest has had in a very long time.

Determined not to take their tentative truce at face value just yet, Yusuf gently binds Nicolò’s wrists once more with his sash. “Just while we sleep,” he promises, forcing himself to meet the priest’s eyes. “I will not harm you, I swear it.” Nicolò says nothing, only curls up under the cloak and sleeps.

Exhausted, Yusuf throws an arm over him, just to ensure he doesn’t run off in the dark and try to bash his skull open again. Far from flinching from his touch, Nicolò presses back against him and sighs. The body in Yusuf’s embrace goes limp, the tension he holds even in sleep finally sinking from his bones.

They’ll head inland in the morning and find proper food and shelter. Nicolò needs shoes and clothes. He needs somewhere warm, somewhere with sunlight, clear water, and an abundance of food. Yusuf isn’t too worried about coin. He has enough to see them through a few weeks, and is not afraid of hard work.

He’s more concerned about the attention they will no doubt attract. It’s not unheard of for his people to travel this far north, but by now someone will surely have raised the alarm at the Abbey. They’ll be looking for Nicolò. They might even be looking for Yusuf. If the boy saw him…

They’ll need to go south, but south means taking Nicolò closer to the heart of the very church that has him so convinced of his wickedness. Yusuf might have won this battle with Nicolò’s sanity, but the war could well continue for years. If the priest has another lapse into madness, Yusuf thinks he can handle it, but if he does so around the wrong kind of people…

He holds Nicolò closer and tries not to think of what might be done to him. His fellow priests, men who claim to have his best interests at heart, have tortured, mutilated and abused him for years. What might someone do to Nicolò if they have evil in their thoughts?

Yusuf will protect him. He must.

But first… first he must sleep. It’s foolish, perhaps, to leave themselves without a guard. He fears he has no choice. He cannot keep his eyes open a moment longer, and Nicolò is still so weak.

Just a few hours. That’s all he needs. A few hours to reset his aching head and bleeding heart. Surely fate will be kind enough to give him that, at least?

He closes his eyes and falls gratefully into the waiting embrace of sleep.

When he wakes, the setting sun is now high and bright in the sky. It blinds him as he blinks, consciousness slipping through his fingers like grains of sand.

Then Nicolò is torn from his arms.

The boot that kicks Yusuf in the side of the head helps drive the dregs of sleep from his mind but does nothing to prepare him for the violence that descends on him from all sides.

The men surrounding him spit cruel words in the same tongue Nicolò had scolded him in, but when it becomes clear they aren’t getting through to him, one of them switches to Greek. After five quick kicks to the head, the words aren’t much easier to follow.

He thinks he picks up the word ‘murderer’ amongst them. That is the kindest.

Then Nicolò calls his name, the sound of his voice cutting through the clamor of violence. How Yusuf finds his feet, he doesn’t know. One moment he’s on the sand being kicked to death, the next he’s got his arm around the throat of one of his attackers and a blade pressed into the bastard’s neck.

The attack stops. The men, all wearing the uniform of the Genoa City Guard, draw their blades in slow, calculated threats. Behind them, thrashing violently in the arms of two more guards, Nicolò frantically calls Yusuf’s name.

For a moment, Yusuf fears they’re there to take him away. Instead, one of the guards cuts through the sash tied around Nicolò’s wrists, and the other does a poor job of trying to soothe his panic. He holds up his hands and tries to appear non-threatening, and Yusuf wants to tell him that he’s going to get stabbed, regardless.

The Captain of the Guard, a man with pale, amber colored eyes, approaches Yusuf, his weapon sheathed. “What do you want with the priest?” he demands in Greek.

Any hope he had that this might be a miserable coincidence splutters and dies. They know who Nicolò is, and they know who he is. They think they’re here to rescue Nicolò from him.

“That is between me and the priest,” Yusuf says, pressing the blade against his captive’s neck in warning. “Release him or lose your man.”

“Kill him,” the Captain says unflinchingly, “and lose your shield.”

Struggling to contain Nicolò without harming him, the guard holding him loses his patience and shakes him hard. Now his wrists are free, Nicolò lashes out violently, punching the second guard in the throat. That it takes two of them to restrain him when Yusuf can clearly remember how fragile his bones felt says more about his priest’s stubbornness than the guard’s skill. Yusuf is proud, right until the second guard strikes him hard across the face, and Nicolò goes limp.

The Captain is right: the second Yusuf kills his prisoner, he loses his shield. It’s a risk – there are six of them and only one of him, but if he hasn’t hunted Nicolò across the world and butchered an Abbey full of wicked men just to let some underpaid, overzealous men drag his priest back into Hell.

He does not enjoy killing, nor has he ever found it easy. But for Nicolò? Each time is less laborious than the last.

He opens his captive’s throat with his blade and uses the Captain’s surprise to knock him off balance. He ducks low and rolls, snatching his small knife from its place by the fire and sinking it into the thigh of the guard closest to him. He goes down screaming, and Yusuf moves on to the next. He slices through two more before turning to Nicolò and right into the Captain’s sword. It finds a home between Yusuf’s ribs, sinking in deep and robbing Yusuf of his breath.

The Captain draws back his weapon for a second blow. Without it to keep him on his feet, Yusuf falls to his knees, blood pooling under his tongue as he chokes and desperately tries to fill his lungs with air.

When that fails, and he collapses onto his side, he can see Nicolò through the spaces between the Guard’s legs. His gaze is unfocused, his face bloody, and if Yusuf could, he would scream at him to run. To escape while they were all more focused on him.

Instead, Nicolò’s pained expression shifts. It becomes something cold and hard, the same look Yusuf remembers from the first time they ever met. The same look he’s worn every time he’s set out to end Yusuf’s life.

Perhaps he sees his chance? Perhaps he knows that this is the escape he’s been looking for.

Perhaps it’s not fear of the guards that drives him to panic, but fear of them failing to kill Yusuf properly?

This is his chance to be free of Yusuf. To condemn them both into the hands of the Church he so loves. He wants to save them from demons, he says. Here is his chance.

Yusuf really is a fool.

The Captain's blade comes down hard. Yusuf is oddly comforted by the familiar expression on Nicolò’s face as he dies.

Serbia 2020

Booker is only awake long enough for him to bust his knuckles once against the coffin before the damn thing is opening once more. He lets out a furious scream, too confined by the narrow space to draw his fist back for a proper punch but determined to break the first face he sees regardless.

He’s glad he can’t get much momentum when it’s Andy’s face that swims onto view.

“f*ck,” Booker breathes, scrambling to help her open the lid. She’s on her side, one arm braced against the coffin, the other struggling to hold it open. This close, she looks even worse than she had from a distance. Her whole face is bloody and bruised. A burn curls up her throat, and several of her fingers look broken. She doesn’t have the strength to stand, but from the streaks of blood behind her, she’s clearly dragged herself across the floor to free him.

She looks terrible, but she’s beautiful in her stubborn determination to protect her family.

Booker scrambles out, fully prepared to throw himself over her and shelter her from the hail of bullets no doubt on their way.

Instead, he emerges to a blood bath.

There are bodies everywhere. There are parts of bodies everywhere. The library is destroyed. The long table has been overturned, chairs shattered and broken by a whirlwind of violence. And there, at the epicenter of the storm, Nicky and Quynh.

Or rather, there is Quynh, screaming in fury as she stabs Stanković in a mindless outpouring of rage.

And Nicky, dead-eyed and still, half undressed and soaked from head to toe in blood.

Andy’s arms give out, her strength exhausted. Booker can’t be in three places at once. He has no idea how to reach Quynh and isn’t stupid enough to approach Nicky. They need to get Andy to a f*cking hospital and escape this whole nightmare, neither of which he can do without Joe.

That’s his first stop. He hurries to the coffin they locked his brother in and shouts reassurances he has no idea if Joe can hear over the relentless hammering of his own fists.

Joe doesn’t punch him in the face when he throws open the lid, and for that reason alone, Booker doesn’t take it personally when he ignores him entirely to throw himself across the room to Nicky.

Joe, not knowing how long he was dead, reacts to the sight of his husband about as well as he can be expected to, which is to say he lets out a broken moan of pain, then sucks all of his misery in like an imploding black star. A second is all he allows himself before he’s soft and quiet, folding himself down at Nicky’s side and drawing him into his arms.

Booker’s never seen a time when Nicky hasn’t gone willingly, if not gleefully, into Joe’s embrace. He wants to weep for both of them when Nicky doesn’t respond to the loving arms that surround him.

They don’t have time for it, so he does as Joe does and swallows his grief.

“Hey Boss,” he says, scared any sudden movement or loud noise is going to injure Andy further or drive Nicky further away. “You look terrible.”

He waits for Andy’s usual quip, his fear growing when she only manages to summon a shaky smile. Tears cut tracks through her dirty cheeks. He’s never seen her like this before. Never seen her so hurt and so vulnerable, not even after Merrick.

“I’ve got you,” he says, carefully drawing her into his arms. “We gotta get you out of here.”

Blood bubbles on her lips. “Quynh?”

Before he can answer, a rapid hail of gunfire explodes from outside the room.

He spins them around, putting his back to the door in an effort to shield Andy from further harm. “Joe!”

Joe is already armed with one of the mercs weapons.

Seeing Andy in danger, Quynh finally stops screaming and is at Booker’s side almost faster than he can follow.

Christ, she can move quick. He has no idea how she plans on protecting them with one small knife, but a part of him almost wants to see someone try and take her on right now. If they get through her, they sure as sh*t aren’t getting past Joe.

They brace themselves for a fight.

But when the door explodes inward, it’s not more mercs who appear, but Nile. Beautiful, brilliant Nile, who storms into the room, weapons hot and with so much rage in her expression that she looks like the ancient goddess of war Andy actually is.

As soon as she sees there is no one left for her to kill, she looks both furious and relieved.

“I am never getting on a plane with any of you assholes again.”

Chapter 13 Notes:

After a slew of brutal chapters, please accept nearly 5k of nothing but comfort. Nobody is in a good place and there are lots of conversations that need to happen, but for now, cuddles.

Chapter Text

Serbia 2020

“I am never getting on a plane with any of you assholes again.”

In any other circ*mstance, Nile’s remark would be funny. When even Joe fails to summon a snort of amusem*nt, her irate expression settles into something grave. Her dark eyes take them in one at a time; Quynh, standing poised to attack, her dress sticky with blood; Booker, with Andy in his arms, both of them looking battered to Hell; Joe, trembling violently; and Nicky, who is doing a good impression of one of the many marble sculptures that have been crafted in his likeness.

When no one says anything, she makes a decision. Raising her weapon, she addresses them all. “You got Andy, Book?”

“Can walk,” Andy slurs, making no attempt to move at all. Nile ignores her as he nods. “Great. You’re on me. Nicky-“

Joe’s mouth trembles, his eyes huge and wet with tears. “Nile-“ he keeps his arms around Nicky as if he can somehow protect him from the carnage he’s just committed to save them.

To the best of Booker’s knowledge, no one, not even Andy, has ever had the balls to try and force Joe’s hand when it comes to Nicky’s wellbeing. He’s sure as sh*t not stupid enough to try, and if Andy ever has, then she’s given up centuries ago.

Nile doesn’t even flinch. “The job’s not done, Nicky,” she says, her voice even and hard, a command underwriting every word. “Are you with me?”

Nicky doesn’t blink, but he does incline his head. It’s a snort, a sharp thing, but it’s a reaction that beats his terrifying stillness any day.

“Good,” Nile has to know just how much they trust her now. To her credit, she doesn’t waste time before moving on. “You’ve got Quynh.”

Quynh, who must have dreamed of Nile at least once, bares her teeth and hisses something in a language Booker doesn’t speak.

Nile raises one eyebrow. “Andy is gonna die if we don’t get her help. You want that to happen?”

Booker clutches Andy tighter. They can’t lose her, not now. Quynh appears to agree. The rage on her face melts into fear as she starts to rock back and forth on her heels. Her breath becomes heavy, her movements jerky and anxious, until Nicky slips out of Joe’s embrace, holds open his arm, and whispers her name.

Quynh doesn’t so much run to him as she does tackle him, her arms and legs winding around him as she cries his name. Over Nicky’s shoulder, she gets a clear view of Joe’s stricken face and immediately dissolves into a fresh round of shuddering sobs.

She and Nicky seem on opposite ends of the spectrum right now. They’re both clearly overwhelmed by everything that’s happening, but where he shuts down, she spirals.

Still, it’s the result Nile wants, even if it’s messy.

“Joe, you cover our backs,” she finishes. Joe is usually out front. When he’s not, it's because he’s with Nicky. The need to hold shines like a beacon from Joe’s heartbroken eyes. But he nods, and they move into formation.

“Wait,” Booker says. “We can’t leave it here.”

Almost as one, they turn to look at the discarded book on the floor. It’s splattered with blood – some of it Nicky’s, some of it not. Nile blinks rapidly as she goes through the same complex cycle of emotions Booker did. It looks so innocuous now, abandoned between the bodies. Still, it’s big enough to be awkward. Neither Nile nor Joe can spare a hand, not when it’s on them to protect the rest of the group. Booker has his hands full with Andy, and while she’s no great challenge to carry, he doesn’t want to risk injuring her further by asking her to hold it. That just leaves Quynh and Nicky. The thought of forcing Nicky to have anything to do with it is sickening.

In true Nicky fashion, he keeps one arm around Quynh and bends to pluck it from the carnage.

Joe’s knuckles are white. When they’re out of here, when they’re safe, Booker gives it an hour, maybe two, before his precarious grip on his anger slips. If he plans it right, he can make sure he’s in Joe’s face when it happens. Better him than anyone else. He can take it. Nile won’t understand, and the others are too fragile right now. If killing Booker a few times makes Joe feel better, then it’s the least he can do.

Outside of the library, it’s clear she’s been busy. There are bodies strewn down the hallway and more in the spacious open landing and foyer.

Between them, they look to have killed everyone on site.

That doesn’t make it any easier to relax when they make it outside only to see two vans skid into the long driveway, lights flashing.

“They’re with me,” Nile explains before Joe can put a bullet through anyone dumb enough to approach them. “I called Copley. Figured we’d need a medevac.” Her gaze falls on Andy, softening as a group of privately employed paramedics hurry towards them.

“Nile,” Joe says warningly. He’s put himself in front of Nicky and Quynh and isn’t lowering his weapon.

“We can’t just walk into a hospital,” Nile huffs. “Copley owes us, so I called in a favor. Andy needs a doctor – a proper doctor,” she adds when he starts to protest. “The rest of you look like you took on an entire firing squad. You want to just walk into a civilian hospital?”

It’s smart and shows a level of forward-thinking none of them has ever managed. She’s still so new to this life that these kinds of precautions are second nature. The rest of them… they’re still learning.

Quynh unpeels herself from Nicky and hurries to Andy’s side as three EMTs coax Booker into loosening his hold on his precious cargo. They are business-like and no-nonsense, but they’re gentle as they lay her out on a gurney and make no attempt to stop Quynh from following. Frantic questions pour out of Quynh as she tries to stay close to Andy. Most are in the same language Booker doesn’t speak, but she tries a very archaic form of French, the same Italian dialect Nicky and Joe speak in private, and finally, English. She doesn’t touch anything inside the van as she carefully climbs inside. Booker follows her, painfully aware that all of this is probably terrifyingly new.

They still don’t know how long she has been free from her cage or how she even managed it, but with the best will in the world, it’s impossible to catch up on five hundred years in such a short amount of time. When Quynh was last free, antibiotics hadn’t even been invented.

She’s doing well – screaming fits and extreme bouts of violence aside – but she must be terrified. Andy tries weakly to take her hand. Booker curls himself up and makes himself as small as he can while the medics work. Copley might be the best at what he does, but Booker isn’t trusting anyone with Andy. One wrong move and he’s killing every f*cker in the van with him.

Quynh does much the same. She has the benefit of being half his size and able to physically cram her body in the small space by Andy’s side. No one tries to move her. The difference, perhaps, between EMTs on the street and people who are probably paid obscene amounts of money to fix shady f*ckers like them from even shadier situations.

Watching the two of them together, Booker waits for the familiar strike of envy that’s always haunted him in these moments. When they’re all raw and on edge, adrenaline is still sharp and poisonous in their veins. He’s always been spared a kind word and a caring hand. All of them rely on physical touch, especially after a fight, and they’ve never once been anything but kind and thoughtful with Booker’s care.

It's been just enough to keep him tethered to reality, but it has always felt like a pale, painful imitation of what comes after. When Nicky and Joe collide like magnets, they forget about the rest of the world.

It's hard watching them become one person, even with the memory of their warm hands and gentle words still lingering.

He waits for the same to happen with Andy and Quynh. To feel, once again, like a stranger in his own family.

It never comes. All he feels is relief. Joy for Andy and elation for Quynh. To be reunited after five hundred years… even he’s not that much of a bastard.

And when he watches through the van's open doors as Nile hustles Joe and Nicky into the second vehicle, a part of him hates that he’s not there to see them return safely to each other’s arms.

How foolish he feels now. How petty and small.

Pathetic, Joe says. Yes. He feels pathetic.

“Sir,” a voice cuts through his self-pity. “Sir, are you hurt?”

He’s died maybe a half dozen times this past few days. He’s been chained and beaten and watched as his family has suffered the same mistreatment. Layers of blood, each in a different stage of crustiness, stick his clothes to his skin. There’s bone and brain matter in his hair.

“No,” he swallows. “I’m okay. It’s not mine.” It’s mostly his. And partly Joe’s. “She’s all that matters.”

“f*ck off,” Andy slurs. “I’m fine.”

“She’s not fine,” Booker tells everyone, just in case they’re stupid enough to believe her. The EMT smiles and pats his arm.

“You’re in safe hands,” he promises.

They better be. Copley is on him. Good or bad, friend or enemy, Booker has brought him into their lives. If he betrays them now, there’s no place on earth Booker won’t hunt him to.

“They’re my family,” Booker says brokenly. He has lost them all once and knows he will do so again soon. So long as they live. So long as they’re safe.

“Please,” he whispers, then lowers his head into his hands and tries not to weep.

Genoa 1128

Yusuf is slowly getting the hang of this whole ‘dying’ thing. With some degree of accuracy, he can predict what heals quickly and what takes more time. Fortunately, stab wounds heal far more efficiently than, say, getting pushed out of a window onto his head.

He comes up swinging, desperately hoping he’s only been gone a few minutes and that he’ll be in time to catch up to Nicolò before he’s spirited away. His fist meets nothing but thin air, and there is silence all around.

Fearing the worst, he opens his eyes and forces himself to his knees.

“Oh good,” Nicolò says quietly, “You’re awake.”

Yusuf almost sobs in relief. The sound catches in his throat, clogged by the desperate whispering of Nicolò’s name instead. “Did they hurt you? Are you harmed?”

There’s blood on Nicolò’s face. On his – Yusuf’s- cloak, and all up his arms. Any wound is probably healed already, but that doesn’t stop Yusuf from grabbing his hands and pulling him closer for a more frantic check.

It takes only a moment to assure himself that Nicolò is unharmed. Now, at least, if not before.

It takes a few moments more to spot the bodies surrounding them. The Guards are all dead. Slaughtered, by the looks of it. The body closest to them has nothing left resembling a skull. Only a gaping hole the size of the rock that lays beside him.

Yusuf doesn’t remember doing that.

Nicolò is tense in his arms, but a spark in his gaze suggests he’s not currently lost to the madness. Yusuf takes his chin between his thumb and forefinger and gently raises his head. “Nicolò, did you do this?”

Nicolò presses into the touch. “I don’t know,” he admits. Yusuf can see no lie in his eyes. “You called my name, and things went quiet. I…” he looks around at the carnage, and his eyes fill with tears. “Did I… did I do this? Did I…ai, what have I done?” He hiccups back a sob, an unspoken plea written in the devastation of his expression.

“Nicolò…” brushing the tears from Nicolò’s pale cheeks is a thoughtless act. “Hush, release your sorrow. You saved me.”

He still looks frantic. “I… I did?”

“You saved me,” Yusuf repeats. “Thank you.” He holds his arm wide, inviting Nicolò to find comfort in his embrace as he had offered it to Yusuf at the Abbey. Nicolò doesn’t hesitate. He all but crawls into Yusuf’s lap and clings to him, sharp elbows and knees knocking in his haste.

He smells like blood and salt. They both desperately need to bathe, and it will take hours to repair their torn and bloodied clothing. But they are alive, still, together, still, and that is all that matters.

Nicolò buries his face in the curve of Yusuf’s neck and continues to whisper his broken Latin prayers. Yusuf cups his hand carefully over the curve of his skull, shifting only to press a gentle kiss to the crown of his head.

To think… Yusuf genuinely feared Nicolò would betray him. It feels like an unfathomable misstep on his behalf. Nicolò is frightened, and he is sick, and though he lashes out in his pain and confusion, he could have left Yusuf to the ocean. He could have condemned him for the Abbey. He could have told these dead men the truth – that Yusuf came for him, kidnapped him, and murdered him in the process – but instead, he’s killed them all.

Yusuf can restain him with ease. What mad strength is there in Nicolò’s frail form to kill not one man but several? And where is it now as he trembles in Yusuf’s arms?

“I have you,” Yusuf promises. “I will not leave you.” He strokes his hand over Nicolò’s tangled hair and rocks them both. “God himself will not move me from your side, I swear it.”

That god—Nicolò’s, not Yusuf’s—is clearly testing them, but if Yusuf has to lay waste to Heaven and Hell to keep Nicolò with him, he will do so.

“We must move,” he whispers, drawing Nicolò up to his feet with him. “Search the bodies; take anything useful.”

“I am no thief,” Nicolò says, affronted. He makes no move to leave Yusuf’s arms, but his trembling has eased.

Yusuf must resist the urge to kiss that ludicrous pout off his face. “I am,” he says, oddly proud. “I stole you, did I not?”

“Is that what I am?” Nicolò asks; his question is unclear, and the answer he seeks is undefinable.

Yusuf responds as if he understands. “You are everything.”

Serbia 2020

Andy will live.

An exploding plane is no match for Andromache the Scythian, mortal or otherwise. She says as much before the morphine kicks in, and her eyes slide closed. Quynh, curled up at her side, their fingers entwined, whimpers at the sight and doesn’t settle until Booker tiredly explains that, in this case, unconsciousness is a kindness.

She doesn’t understand. Joe can sympathise with her there. How cruel their fate to be separated for so long, only for escape to end in this bittersweet reunion?

As Quynh lays beside the woman she has loved for millennia untold, Joe turns his focus on the matter of his heart.

Copley might have sent them the best in the business when it comes to private healthcare, but that doesn’t mean the room Andy has been set up with is equipped for six warriors and the centuries of baggage they carry with them. They’re somewhere outside of Belgrade, in an industrial complex that they’ve got moonlighting as a medical facility. The staff are well paid enough to ignore the suspicious, asking no questions outside of those necessary for Andy’s care.

They’re given food, water and fresh clothes. There’s a shower off the main room that both Nile and Booker have taken their turns with. Now Andy is settled and as comfortable as they can make her, Joe should really get Nicky cleaned up.

Booker has sacrificed his jacket to preserve Nicky’s modesty, but it’s no less bloody than the rest of them. The sight of Nicky and Joe crammed into one of only three chairs, both of them crimson with drying blood, is likely to test the resolve of even Copley’s hires.

But Nicky is asleep, and Joe doesn’t have the heart to wake him.

The chair they have occupied is set in one of the small alcoves in the room. It’s narrow enough for Joe to touch the walls with both his elbows, which is how they’ve ended up like this: Joe’s spine aching as he wedges himself in the chair, and Nicky twisted up in a position that makes Joe’s hips ache in sympathy. Nicky’s a bendy little sh*t on the best of days, but he’s got his long legs wedged up against the wall and his neck curved into the ball of Joe’s shoulder. How anyone can sleep like that is beyond him.

Under Booker’s jacket, goosebumps prickle Nicky’s skin.

Joe has no idea how long he was out for. Did Stanković touch him? Did he hurt him? Did he cut him open the way he so clearly longed to do? Joe might have been too occupied with Nicky’s fracturing mind to react at the time, but he’s never going to forget the cruel, casual way Stanković put his hands on his husband.

“He’ll be pissed at you if you don’t wash the brains out of your hair,” Booker warns him from across the room. He looks exhausted, his eyes bruised, and Joe can’t find it within himself to send him away, even as Booker’s shoulders curl in anticipation of some blow.

He’s right, of course. Nicky will be most displeased by Joe’s state.

“Amore,” Joe whispers against the crown of Nicky’s head. “Wake up, my love.”

Nicky blinks open his eyes, awake in a second. He’s lost none of the tense, alert sharpness in his eyes, even after sleep. Joe takes his hand and kisses the back of his knuckles. “Let’s clean up,” he encourages, slipping into the old pidgin they once created from scraps of Joe’s colloquial Arabic, Nicky’s Ligurian, the common Greek they shared, Latin, and the Malti they both learned together. They switch between dialects seamlessly, words interchanging and evolving each time. Even Andy, who knows them best and speaks each language like a native, struggles to keep up with them. It’s the one sure way Joe has of reaching Nicky.

Or it always has been. They’ve never faced this before. Joe’s caught him on the edge of the abyss more than once, back in Genoa and then Castille. He’s never been so far out of reach that Joe cannot call him back.

Joe has had over nine hundred years to love Nicky, show him his value, and protect him from pain, yet a bitter part of him fears that nothing those nine hundred years bring will ever override the first thirty years of Nicky’s life.

Habits learned as children stick hard and fast, and all too often, the world is set on reminding Nicky just how cruel it can be.

Nicky unfolds himself at Joe’s gentle nudge, rising in a way that gives no indication to the discomfort of his previous position. He lets Joe take his hand and pull him to the adjoining bathroom. They both pretend they don’t see Nile’s eyes tracking them.

She’s never seen them like this. She doesn’t know them well enough yet. She will. Given how she’d managed to get through to Nicky earlier, she might even be someone Joe can rely on in the future. Andy manages as well as she can, but Booker flounders. He tries, always, but he’s clumsy with words and even more so with his hands, and Nicky’s never been far enough gone to notice either.

Joe can’t risk that. Not now. It took over a decade to fully free Nicky’s mind from the trap of that f*cking book. A decade of Joe’s growing patience and Nicky’s shrinking fear, until a week would pass without relapse, then a month, then a year.

They’ve never spoken of it, of the book and what it meant. Of what was done to Nicky, and what Nicky willingly subjected himself to. Not since those first days in Genoa, before Yusuf knew any better.

Perhaps… perhaps they should have? Perhaps Joe has done Nicky a great disservice in keeping quiet?

He just… f*ck, he just isn’t made to see Nicky suffer. He can’t stand it and never has. It burns him to see Nicky’s tears. It shames him to know how many missteps he took in those early days. Memories of Nicky struggling against him, terrified and confused, still haunt him even now.

The door closes with a soft click and Joe has to bite back a whimper of misery.

He’s not leaving Nicky alone in this. Not now, not ever, but the thought of having to go back to those dark days of their past makes him tremble. His body is tightly coiled, on edge from the sheer number of times he’s been killed, and he hasn’t been this close to complete emotional collapse since Castille. This is nothing compared to that, but the thoughts of one cycle to thoughts of the other, and all he feels is helpless. Helpless to save himself as others subject him to their own sad*stic whims. Helpless to protect Nicky, who knows no sense of self-preservation. Helpless to save his beloved’s gentle spirit as Nicky does what he only ever does when faced with losing Joe.

He sucks in a sharp breath. Now isn’t the time. He flicks on the shower and lets the room fill with steam.

Instead of wallowing, he peels Nicky out of Booker’s jacket and places his trembling hand against cool, clammy skin.

Panic claws up his throat. Thoughtlessly, he puts his hands on Nicky’s hips and twists him around until he has an unobstructed view of his husband’s back.

It’s as bloody as the rest of him, and it's all too easy to picture muscle and bone instead of soft, pale skin.

The levy in Joe’s heart breaks. The tears that burst free are violent in their outburst, grief burning down his throat as he pictures it over and over again in his mind. Watching them hold Nicky had been his worst nightmare, yes, but even as knots had been fastened, Nicky’s voice from centuries ago, “I can be still, you don’t need to bind me,” rose from his memory. Now they rattle around his skull, refusing to leave him.

Joe chokes, flinging his arms around Nicky’s waist and pressing his forehead between his shoulder blades. He’s never letting Nicky out of his arms again. If bastards like Stanković want to touch him, they’re going to have to carve their way through Joe first.

Strong fingers curl over Joe’s, fastening them in place.

They’re both still dressed—Joe hasn’t even removed his shirt yet—but that doesn’t stop Nicky from stepping into the small shower and pulling Joe in after him. The water is hotter than perhaps comfortable, but Joe doesn’t mind the sting. He puts himself between Nicky and the worst of it and watches as the water at their feet turns bloody.

Nicky’s thumb strokes rhythmically over the bones of Joe’s wrist. He’s not fully back, not with Joe yet, but part of him is there. Part of him longs to comfort Joe as he cries, and if this is all he can manage, Joe will take it gladly.

He presses feverish kisses to Nicky’s neck and shoulders, closing the gap between them until their feet align and their hips are flush, and there’s not even enough space for water to sneak between his chest and Nicky’s back.

Slowly, carefully, Nicky’s fingers move from Joe’s wrists further up his arms. He slides them under the tight bands of Joe’s sleeves, the touch innocent where it would usually be sensual.

By inches, Nicky comes back to him. Minute after minute, he returns a little more. When he turns in Joe’s arms to start the process of washing bone and brain from his curls, Joe has to wedge one leg against the stall to keep his balance.

Nicky’s touch is tentative at first, as if he’s forgotten how often he’s done this in the past.

Joe is patient with him as he is nothing else in life, and while he aches to press their lips together and find home in the warmth of Nicky’s mouth, he waits. Nicky will come to him. He always has. Joe knows how easy it would be to demand more than Nicky is ready to give right now.

When he’s satisfied with Joe’s hair, Nicky tugs at the wet fabric clinging to his chest. Joe is willing to allow some distance if it means he can feel Nicky’s skin against his own. Once free from his shirt, he draws Nicky back into his arms. It puts Nicky under the spray of water. Blood rolls down his face like tears, but he tips his head back, baring his throat, and Joe aches now as he once did all those years ago.

The parts of Nicky that are reassembling themselves suddenly snap into place. He comes back with a jolt, one moment far away, the next crowding Joe against the wall, frantic and frightened as he runs his hands over every part of Joe he can reach.

“It’s alright!” Joe rushes to soothe him. “I’m alright, Nicky, we’re okay, it’s safe.”

“Joe.” Nicky moans his name as if in pain. “I thought… I thought I lost you, I thought…”

Joe takes his face gently in his palms and bumps their foreheads together. “You saved me,” he whispers, his voice almost lost to the downpour of water. “You always save me, my love.”

There’s more strength in Nicky’s lean body now than there was back then. More ferocity, more sweetness, more grace, more kindness. He’s everything he used to be times every moment Joe has loved him. An infinite being made possible by their love. When he kisses Joe, it’s with enough force to make both their heads spin. He sinks his fingers into Joe’s hair and takes everything Joe is so desperate to give him.

“Infuriating, impossible, reckless man,” Nicky hisses between stolen breaths. "You are never allowed to leave me like that again. Do you understand?”

Kissing Nicky can sometimes feel like trying to battle an act of god. Joe’s helpless to do anything but hold on for the ride. Still, he feels he has to protest a little. Just so Nicky knows he is okay. “I didn’t actually plan for this to happen!”

Nicky bites his lip in retaliation. It’s not hard enough to draw blood, but his message is clear, regardless. “I mean it,” he says furiously. “I will burn the entire world to ash before I let them take you from me.”

It’s something they both say. Something so many people claim when they are in love. It’s an easy vow to make but almost impossible to live with. Most would never try.

That Nicky, a man so gentle and so kind, can say it and mean it… the significance is not lost on Joe.

To his mind, Nicky is the living embodiment of what it is to be a peaceful man. That he is capable of what he is and chooses not to unleash that violence every time he is made to suffer says everything you could need to know about him.

That the exception, the one and only thing that can override that core foundation of goodness, is Joe, is not something he takes for granted.

“I will never leave you,” Joe promises him. “Not now, not ever.”

Nicky nods frantically, anger turning to misery, his eyes bright with pain. “And you’ll forgive me?”

Joe closes his eyes and draws Nicky’s head to his shoulder. “You are forgiven, Nicolò. In this, always. You are forgiven. And you are loved.”

Nicky shudders against him, and they stay locked together that way until the water runs clear and cold.

Chapter 14 Chapter Text

Serbia 2020

Someone is going to have to say it. It might as well be Booker.

Andy is still sleeping, which makes his timing cowardly, but Joe looks dead on his feet even after a shower, and if Nicky’s home, then he’s not answering the doorbell. That leaves Nile, who is a f*cking kid and shouldn’t be expected to shoulder the collective bullsh*t of five f*cked up people just because she’s been unlucky enough to share their curse.

He takes a breath and prepares himself to get stabbed by someone. Money’s out on who it will be. “So Quynh… any reason you stopped wanting to carve Nicky up to finish his little art project, or should we expect you to break out the knives while we sleep?”

He doesn’t know her. Beyond the aching sympathy and horror he has for her suffering, if he has to pick a side, he’s picking the one that doesn’t result in his brother having his f*cking skin torn off.

And he’s blunt because they all sure as sh*t need to be on the same page. Yes, she’s traumatized, and yes, she’s clearly a victim here as well, but Booker remembers the cold certainty in her voice when she’d talked about Nicky’s book and the supposed ‘cure’ he could unlock.

“Er,” Nile stares over at Quynh in horror. “What?”

Quynh, for her part, doesn’t stir from Andy’s side. Their fingers are laced together, and all she cares about is her.

“He didn’t find a f*cking cure!” Joe’s exhausted, yes, but he will never be too tired for this argument.

“You’re joking, right?” Nile’s outrage is almost as loud as Joe’s. Booker has no idea how much she knows about the book or its origins – perhaps even less than he does, depending on what Nicky’s told her. “Please tell me you’re joking.” Her gaze travels from Nicky to the pile of wet, bloody clothes Joe has dumped in the corner of the room. She no doubt remembers the state they found Nicky in and can draw her own conclusions. “Oh f*ck that noise,” she snaps. “I don’t give a sh*t what collective trauma y’all have. First person who tries to cut anything off anybody’s getting a bullet to the head.”

Nile, Booker thinks, might end up being his favorite.

“This isn’t the time,” Nicky’s soft voice cuts through their collective anger. His focus is fixed entirely on Quynh. She’s as far away from them as he had been. Maybe further. The only thing in her world right now is Andy.

“Is there ever a good time for this kinda sh*t?” Booker is pushing his luck with Joe and he knows it.

“They didn’t… you know…” Nile twirls her finger in the air, apparently not yet at a level of comfort with them where she can talk about mutilation without looking nauseous.

Nicky shakes his head. That… that’s good. That’s something.

“Good. Okay. How did he even find you? I mean… who even knows about it?”

“The book?” Joe asks. When Nile nods, he slides his hand up to rest on Nicky’s neck. “I thought it was still in the Vatican.”

So did Booker. Which leads to a whole other question. “And how did it get there?”

Joe waits for Nicky to answer, but when it becomes clear he either doesn’t remember or isn’t interested in speaking, he continues. “My guess is someone found it after we left the Abbey.”

“After I killed everyone,” Nicky says softly. “That’s the story, isn’t it? That I was possessed and murdered everyone there.”

“Stories are bullsh*t,” Joe snaps. “How many stories are out there about us? Hundreds? Thousands?” After two hundred years, Booker is still putting a lot of them together and trying to pick out fact from fiction. Get Andy drunk enough, and she has the most outlandish stories up her sleeve. Booker was there when she shot Hitler, but he’s still not sure he buys the stories where Joe kills Jack the Ripper, or Nicky kills Vlad the Impaler. It still makes his head spin when he thinks of his family as being that old.

“They still died, Joe,” Nicky points out. He’s not meeting anyone’s gaze. He’s not actively avoiding it, but the spot on the wall behind Booker’s left shoulder is clearly fascinating to him.

“Yes,” Joe nods, his jaw set so tightly Booker can see the tendons in his neck as he moves. “Because I killed them.”

Nicky turns his head sharply, almost dislodging Joe’s hand from its place on his neck. Joe, far from returning to that soft, almost coddling state he’s been in since the mansion, raises one challenging eyebrow, his expression set.

“What?”

“I killed them,” Joe says, a challenge in his voice. “And I wish I’d done a better job of it because clearly, someone lived to be an evil motherf*cker another day.”

Nile and Booker share an uncomfortable look. On the one hand, this is clearly old history between Joe and Nicky. History they might not be so keen to share with others. On the other hand, Nile just got blown up, and Booker was kidnapped from his sh*thole apartment. They do have some right to know, for all that it’s clearly a personal – and painful – subject.

“You don’t remember, Nicky?” Nile asks gently. She’s leaning forward, her elbows propped on her knees, and when she looks at you like that, it’s hard not to want to spill all your secrets.

Nicky shakes his head. “I remember more,” he admits. “I remember the book. Apparently, not everything.” He looks back at Joe. “I killed the guards? That was me.”

Joe uses the hold he has on the back of Nicky’s neck to draw him close enough to kiss his forehead. “You did what you had to.”

“But I didn’t kill the priests?”

“No, love,” Joe soothes, his dark eyes glossy with tears. “Forgive me, I should have talked to you about this years ago.”

“You followed me. To Genova.”

“I’d follow you anywhere, Nicolò. As you have followed me.”

They’re lost in each other as they so often are, but for once Booker doesn’t feel shut out in the cold. He thinks of Nicky and the flat, empty look in his eyes, and for the first time he believes in the destiny they both talk about. Who but Joe could save a man from that?

He thinks of Joe, who imposes no limits on his emotions, his anger, his joy, his passion, his love, and his pain, all part of the tapestry upon which entire empires have been built. Joe’s soul is as tall as mountains, as breathtaking as the ancient stones that stretch to touch the heaves. Nicky’s is as deep as the trenches beneath the ocean, whole worlds hidden in places light never reaches. And they fit together as if born from the same star.

No, Booker doesn’t feel cold. He feels warm in the radiance they share.

And he feels… god, he feels shame.

Looking at Quynh, curled around Andy’s sleeping form, and at Joe, his shoulders a barrier positioned to protect Nicky from the world, he feels very young. Very young and very foolish.

He never knew Andy in the days after she lost Quynh. Her grief has faded, a stone worn smooth by worry. Her sharp edges don’t cut him like he is starting to think they have Nicky and Joe. It’s a blunt weapon, capable of inflicting massive trauma but too heavy to be wielded day in and day out.

Andy is older than the god Nicky has mutilated himself for. If anyone could bring the world to its knees in her grief, it’s her. Yet here she is, nearly five hundred years later, still in the shadows, still trying to do some good in the world.

He prays for just a fraction of her grace.

Joe cards his fingers through Nicky’s short hair, gentle and sweet in the way he so often is with the man he loves. Nile is alert, on edge, her sharp, wary gaze split between Nicky and Quynh. She has an objectivity the rest of them don’t. She took command back in the mansion. She’ll keep them safe.

Andy is going to be okay.

Quynh is… well, she’ll have Andy. If now isn't the right time, Booker won't be around when it is.

He waits until he’s certain everyone is focused on something else, then slips from the room.

If he says something, he knows they’ll tell him to stay a while—until they find their feet and everything is back to some semblance of normal.

Call him selfish, fine, but he’s never been good at waiting for a blow to fall. Better to see it coming and close off his heart.

The facility Copley has them set up in isn’t exactly equipped for supplying international fugitives, but Booker has his phone and, by some miracle, his wallet. He can catch a train to Nova Varoš and pick up one of the grab bags he has in lockup, then hop over the border and bunk down in Sarajevo for a few days. Just long enough to figure out how many times he needs to drink himself to death before he can forget the coffin, and the sound of Joe’s screams, and the book made of Nicky’s flesh.

The cool air that hits him as he exits the building doesn’t do nearly enough to knock away the cobwebs in his mind. He feels lethargic, and each step away from his family is one he desperately doesn’t want to take.

He tells himself it’s that, and not Joe’s faster reflexes, that saves his brother from a broken jaw when he grabs Booker’s arm and spins him around.

Joe might not have Booker’s bulk, but he, like Nicky, is all lean muscle. He might not swing a broadsword around for fun, but Joe is wickedly strong and knows how to use it to his advantage. He has Booker shoved up against the wall before Booker can even find his feet.

“We’re not done,” he snarls. He looks just as angry now as he had back in that basem*nt, but beneath that rage is an exhaustion so bone-deep that Booker wants nothing more than to hold him.

“Joe…” Booker doesn’t want to fight. “Go back inside.”

Go back to Nicky, is what he wants to say.

His brother’s lip curls. “You think I don’t want to? You think I’m not losing my mind every f*cking second I’m not with him because I can’t know for certain that someone isn’t hurting him?”

“So go-“

“Shut the f*ck up! I’m not going anywhere until we talk. You’re sure as sh*t not going anywhere until I know I’m not gonna have to fish you out of a f*cking river.”

Booker’s mind flashes back to the basem*nt and to Joe’s tear-streaked face as he’d screamed, “Kill himself, he was trying to kill himself!” It’s impossible to think of Nicky, sweet, gentle Nicky who finds joy in life's mundanities and can light up a room with his laugh, as ever being in such a dark, lonely place.

“I’m not… that’s not what’s gonna happen.” He hates the way he flushes with embarrassment almost as much as he hates the fact that all his carefully thought-out plans with Copley and Merrick backfired so badly.

He has no idea how to start convincing Joe he’s not a danger to himself when he knows for a fact that he’s planning on dying at least once before the week is out and twice if he gets his hands on enough vodka.

Joe pushes him back against the wall and keeps him pinned there, both hands on Booker’s chest. Booker could push him off, but after watching his brother get beaten for hours on end, he’s in no mood to raise a hand to him.

“You want to die so badly?” Joe demands. “If it were possible, then I’d f*cking let you. It’s not my job to make you want to live, Bastien!”

Booker's anger rises to meet Joe’s. No one said it was his job. He’s not Joe’s responsibility. He knows that.

“Then why the f*ck are we here?”

“Because it’s not! It’s not your time. It doesn’t matter how you feel about it;that’s just the way it is.”

Booker can’t help but laugh bitterly. “Brilliant pep-talk. This what you gave Nicky?”

Joe uses his grip on Booker to shove himself back and drag a hand through his curls. “Nicky, I had to murder, kidnap, drag across the Mediterranean and f*ck some sense into.”

Booker stares at him. Yeah, Joe is definitely exhausted. He’s many things, but never crude, not about Nicky. “Don’t think that’s gonna work here.”

“Yeah,” Joe snorts. “No sh*t.” He lets out a heavy breath and slumps sideways until he’s slouched against the wall next to Booker, their shoulders touching. “I don’t know what to tell you. I wish I did.” His temper always burns bright and hot, but it rarely lasts for long.

Booker swallows back his grief. “Like you said. Not your job.”

Joe shakes his head, the movement felt more than seen. “Course it’s my job. You’re my little brother, you stupid sh*t. I love you.”

It costs Booker every ounce of himself not to burst into tears. Instead, he coughs and chokes out. “You just said-“

“I haven’t slept in four days. Don’t look for any f*cking sense right now.”

“I mean I never do- umph!” Joe has sharp elbows, and he’s not afraid to use them. Booker rubs his arm.

“Look… I know you feel like you’re all alone. I know I haven’t helped.” He holds up his hand before Booker can interrupt. “Just… let me. I know… things haven’t been easy. And I can’t actually say I know how you’re feeling because we don’t f*cking talk about sh*t like we should. But… this. Wanting it to be over. That I get. We all do.”

Booker swallows. He wants to call bullsh*t. He wants to throw Joe’s words back in his face. But he knows Andy gets it. And now he knows that Nicky, to some extent, gets it, too. If he could be so blind to that, maybe he is to all of it.

“You too?”

Joe chuckles darkly. “You ever been in so much pain that you hate your own mother for bringing you into the world?”

Booker is about to deny it when he thinks of the days before and after his very first death. He nods stiffly. “Yeah.”

“My mother had been dead for centuries. Wasn’t much point in hating her. But Nicky? Every part of me but one wanted it to be over. Wanted to sleep. Wanted to be f*cking done with it. Except that part of me that’s his. That part wanted to live. Wanted to hold him again just one more time. So no matter how much I wanted to die, the fact that I couldn’t didn’t really matter. I couldn’t let go.” Joe’s voice is flat and matter-of-fact right up until his last words. Then he sobs, and Booker turns to see tears rolling down his face. “And I hated him for that.”

“Castile?” He asks, already knowing the answer.

“Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition,” Joe snorts. “They, er, had this rule. To make them legit. To make it ‘god’s work’ and not straight up f*cking torture. They couldn’t shed blood. Took them months before they figured out what I was.”

“Christ.”

“Nicky found me. He ended several family lines and toppled a few small countries in the process, but he found me, and I hated that I’d hated him.”

“It’s Nicky,” Booker shrugs. “I think he’d get it.”

“Not really,” Joe says grimly. “You saw him today. It was worse then. He’d spent too long inside his head. And I… f*ck, I was scared of everything. I just wanted to curl up and not exist, you know?”

Yeah. Booker knows. It’s his default state of being.

“That’s why we weren’t in England with Andy and Quynh,” Joe admits. “I was terrified of my own f*cking shadow, and Nicky had just murdered his way across the entire continent. If you’d put us in a room with another religious fanatic, I think we’d have set the whole country on fire.”

“Pity.”

The corner of Joe’s lip twitches before his mouth forms a flat line. “So yeah, you want to talk about being tired, and scared, and making a choice that you have no f*cking clue how to live with?” He turns to face Booker, his dark eyes impossibly old and achingly sad. “I know a thing or two about that.”

“It’s not the same.” Booker doesn’t have ‘tortured by the Spanish f*cking Inquisition’ on his bingo card of reasons for f*cking up his life.

Joe shrugs the shoulder not leaning against the wall. “Doesn’t really matter. I made a call, we lost Quynh. You made a call-“

“A stupid call.”

“I mean yeah, it was f*cking dumb,” Joe agrees, “but dumb’s kinda your thing.”

“f*ck you,” Booker says, more because Joe expects him to than any real vitriol.

“What I mean is… maybe exile’s not the right way forward. Nicky was worried you’d not accept it, not think it punishment, if we went too easy on you.”

“I think that’s the Catholic in him,” Booker says, only to freeze when he recognizes the words that come out of his mouth. “I mean, sh*t-“

“Oh, it’s definitely the Catholic in him,” Joe snorts. “So, you know, f*ck that. I’ll talk to him.”

“I don’t want to come between you-“

“A thousand wars, a few dozen murders and the entire de Medici clan haven’t managed that,” Joe says, a shadow of his usual grin emerging. “He loves you. Desperately. But also? Welcome to a world where Nicolò di Genova is pissed off with you. It f*cking sucks. Consider that your penance.”

Booker finds it impossible not to mirror Joe’s tired smile. He’s not sure he believes his luck, not yet. Not until he’s heard the words from Nicky’s mouth as well. But still. His heart aches to be back in that small hospital room with his family.

Which means… “You’re climbing the walls, aren’t you?”

Joe bangs his head lightly back against the brick. “If I don’t hold his hand in the next thirty seconds, I might start crying again.”

“Got it. Come on, let’s get you back inside.” Joe doesn’t need more than an encouraging nudge, but he does require Booker’s hand on his arm to stop him from bumping into the doorframe. Booker really needs to get him on a flat surface – or on Nicky, he supposes – and make sure he sleeps. Still, childishly, selfishly, he has to ask. “Are you still pissed at me?”

“Once I’ve napped,” Joe struggles to walk in a straight line, but that doesn’t stop him from hitting Booker with a milder version of his usual glare. “And I stop seeing two of you, we’re gonna talk about sh*t. Your sh*t.”

He can’t decide if that idea is welcome or mortifying. “We just talked now-“

“Yes, Bastien, I’m still pissed off,” Joe says patiently.

“Right. Got it.”

Genoa 1128

Under Yusuf’s instruction, they head northeast, moving deeper into the Kingdom of Lombardy towards Verona. For all that he wants to take the first ship and head out to open water, the seas are well patrolled, and they can ill afford to be caught with no way of escape.

Thanks to the spoils they have taken from the guards, they have both horses and fresh provisions. Nicolò has boots. They can’t wear the guard's clothing without drawing unwanted attention, and in truth, there’s little to be salvaged that isn’t ruined beyond repair. Yusuf burns his bloody clothes and dons the last of his tunics.

They take two horses, resting one and riding the other. It’s not that Yusuf doesn’t trust Nicolò not to run off, or worries that he can’t catch the priest if he does. Nicolò is too weak to ride at the pace they need to keep. Yusuf would prefer having him seated in front of him, where he can keep his arms around Nicolò and hold him safe, but it’s not practical. For all that he’s skin and bones, he’s long-limbed and broad-shouldered and not particularly cuddly. It makes it hard to control the horse.

Instead, Nicolò slumps against his back. Yusuf keeps one hand on the reins and the other on his wrists, holding him when he starts to nod off.

He pushes them hard, keeping off the roads and stopping only to swap horses, pester Nicolò to eat and drink, and to check they’re headed in the right direction.

When it becomes too dark to continue without risking injury to the animals, he finds them a secluded spot under the broad branches of a towering tree, sets Nicolò down in the grass and sees to setting up camp.

He searches for more firewood and returns to find Nicolò giving the horses his rations.

“They’re hungry,” Nicolò explains when Yusuf shakes his head in despair.

“You’re hungry,” he points out, eying the sharp line of Nicolò’s collarbone where it peeks out from the neck of his tunic.

“Oh no, I feel much better.”

“Uh huh. Do you know how to skin a rabbit?”

The look Nicolò gives him could curdle milk, but he proves adept enough at preparing the supper Yusuf catches for them, even if it might be unwise to trust him with a paring knife.

The evening is almost peaceful as they pass the cooked meat back and forth between them. Yusuf makes sure Nicolò gets the first and last bite, and smiles when the priest insists on fetching the horses more water before they turn down for the night.

“If I take first watch,” Yusuf asks, leaning against the tree while Nicolò fusses with the animals, “can I trust you not to run while I sleep?”

Nicolò looks almost affronted by the idea. “I gave you my word.”

Yusuf wants to point out that Nicolò’s also tried to kill him a half dozen times in the past two days. He thinks better of it.

“It will be another three days before we reach the Marquisate of Verona. We can’t be seen, you understand?”

“There are men like you this far north,” Nicolò says with a frown.

“There are no men like us,” Yusuf reminds him. Women, perhaps, but Nicolò is the only man he’s ever dreamed of. “We can’t be seen. Once we reach Verona, we’ll head south for Venice. I have contacts there that can take us to Cephalonia.”

Not, Yusuf thinks, that Greece will be any less dangerous for them. One wrong move in any direction, and they will be caught, separated, and Nicolò taken back into the cruel embrace of his church.

He doesn’t say any of them. Nicolò is exhausted, that much is obvious; for all that, he claims to be feeling better. A few days don’t undo decades of mistreatment, even for the likes of them.

So he takes first watch and tries not to stare into the fire, or at Nicolò, who curls up under his cloak and falls almost immediately into the arms of slumber.

Looking into the fire will blind him to dangers beyond it. Looking at Nicolò is almost as calamitous.

So instead, he plans deep into the night.

The moon is high and bright in the sky above them when Nicolò starts to moan in his sleep.

His face is mostly hidden under the cloak, but he jolts awake at the touch of Yusuf’s hand on his shoulder. In the moonlight, his eyes are almost as pale, more grey than the blue they’d been by the sea.

And for all that Yusuf wants to soothe him and ask about his fears, the look of adoration on Nicolò’s face turns him to silence.

“I hoped you were real,” he breathes, smiling beatifically. “I wasn’t certain. He’s tested me before.”

Yusuf pushes back the cloak's edge and runs his hand over Nicolò’s hair. “Who has?”

“The Morningstar,” Nicolò breathes, closing his eyes. “He comes for me in my sleep.”

“Not tonight,” Yusuf promises. “Tonight, I’ll keep you safe.”

Nicolò doesn’t answer. He turns trustingly into Yusuf’s touch and drifts back to sleep, blissfully unaware of the turmoil his words have created.

Yusuf doesn’t wake him to take the next watch.

Chapter 15 Chapter Text

Serbia 2020

There’s a curious numbness to Nicky’s fingers that wasn’t there when he was touching Joe. He’s missing something fundamental, something he doesn’t know how to exist without. It’s absurd because, for all that Andy might joke, he and Joe are quite capable of going entire days without touching each other—days, not nights, but that’s a different matter.

Just because Joe isn’t here, where Nicky can see him, is no good reason for his body to turn against him. Joe is with Booker (who betrayed them) and he’s fine (exhausted, hurting, frightened). He’ll be back any minute. Nicky doesn’t need to go after him.

“You okay?” Nile asks him kindly. There’s such a gentle warmth in her eyes that it’s hard not to want to confide in her and spill all of his secrets. When the words rise in his throat, he remembers that she’s only a child, still, and does not need the burden of his demons when she is so clearly dealing with enough of her own problems.

He nods slowly, then seizes his opportunity. “Perhaps… would you be kind enough to get me a coffee? It’s been a long night.”

“No kidding,” she snorts, rising from the small plastic chair she is curled in. Before she gets to the door, she hesitates. She looks at Quynh, who hasn’t stirred. “You sure you want me to leave?”

“You’ll be just down the hall,” Nicky assures her. “Perhaps you could get Joe a tea as well?”

Nile doesn’t look thrilled by the idea of leaving him, but she has no reason not to trust what he tells her. Once she leaves and the door closes behind her, Nicky takes a deep breath.

“I know you’re listening,” he says to Quynh, finding it achingly hard to slip into her language after so many years of disuse. “I can’t promise you the answer you’re looking for.”

She wants a cure for their immortality. She wants a way to escape. Nicky can remember wanting the same. He thinks, distantly, that he might even have been close to figuring it out. What he doesn’t know is how. With the return of his memories, patchy still as Joe has proved, comes acceptance, if not understanding. Whatever he was doing makes no sense to him now, but it did then.

If he can figure it out…

It won’t be like last time. Last time he was alone, and he was in pain. Now he has a fixed point in the sky to follow if he gets lost.

He won’t get lost.

He has Joe, and he’s older now. Experienced, if not perhaps wiser, and he can endure so much more than his younger self ever could. Back then, the pain had broken him. Now, he doesn’t have to let it touch him. He can step away from it, let his body remember while his mind keeps its distance.

He can give Quynh what she needs. And perhaps even Booker, if they can’t help him.

He can help Booker. Him and Joe. He knows he can.

But Andy is dying no matter what they do next, and if it were Joe… Nicky would want what Quynh wants, and he doesn’t think he’d be gracious about it.

“You have to promise to leave them out of it. All of them.”

Quynh doesn’t stir, but he can feel her sharp gaze fall on him. She’s listening. “Nile and Booker… they’re both too young. They have no blame in this. And Joe… he was only doing what he thought he had to do to protect me. You understand that. You did the same for Andy.” Protecting Andromache of Scythia is no small task, but Quynh had always managed it with enviable grace. She understands. She must. “What happened to you was my fault. We should have been there to protect you and we weren’t. That’s on me, not Joe. You won’t hurt him.”

Quynh stirs. She strokes her hand through Andy’s short hair. Even in sleep, Andy leans into the touch. “And you’ll help me?”

“I’ll help you,” Nicky promises.

“You’re a poor liar, Nico,” she reminds him. “You can’t keep secrets from Yusuf.”

Nicky’s knuckles blanch white over his knees. “Then I will learn.” There’s nothing he won’t do for Joe. Nothing. A pound of flesh is a small price to pay to keep him safe and to balance his own debts to his family. “It’s like you said: I owe you.” When she says nothing, he has to fight back the urge to squirm uncomfortably. He promised Andy he’d not make her choose between Joe and Quynh. He can’t let her down. “Do we have terms?”

Her eyes are as dark and unfathomable as the sea she was lost in. “I have missed you, little dove,” she says, unearthing Andy’s ancient nickname for him from under centuries of rubble. “We have terms.”

The door opens, and Nile returns, balancing a handful of steaming hot cups. “So, word of warning, the coffee tastes like sh*t.”

“I’m sure it’s not so bad,” Nicky assures her, taking his and Joe’s cups from her hands. The warmth helps bring feeling back into his numb fingertips. After one sip, he grimaces. “Remind me to take you to Italy. You have earned good coffee.”

“Damn right, I have,” Nile grins. “Just so long as we go via land, I’m all for it.”

They’ll need to move eventually. When Andy is well. If Quynh and Booker are to accompany them… he really doesn’t know.

Nile settles back down in her seat, then makes a startled noise. “Oh!” She wriggles, trying to reach into the back pocket of her jeans without spilling her coffee. When she finds success, she lets out a soft little sound of relief and extends her hand to Nicky.

The silver chain with Joe’s rings dangles from her fingers. Nicky’s breath catches in his throat. He reached for his neck, horrified that he hasn’t noticed their absence. “Nile…”

“I found them in the wreck,” she gives him a gentle smile. “Figured you’d want them back.”

Nicky presses the rings to his lips, fighting the urge to weep. “Thank you, Nile,” he whispers, hoping to convey his gratitude properly.

“You can thank me by never making me get on a plane again.”

Nicky thinks she won’t let that one go any time soon. Fair. She has earned it.

“Nicky?” Nile then asks. He inclines his head, prompting her to continue. “I get if you don’t want to talk about it to Booker or Andy,” she says, hesitant at first, but growing firmer with every word. “And that there might be things you think you need to protect Joe from. But… you can always talk to me. If you need to. I’ll listen. You know that, right?”

“I hope you’ll allow me to offer you the same kindness.”

“That’s not a ‘yes’,” she says, pulling a face.

Nicky laughs, delighting more in his newest sister with every passing day. “It’s not a ‘no’, either.”

Joe is welcomed back into wakefulness by the slow, steady pattern of Nicky’s heartbeat. It’s his one of his favorite sounds, trumped only by the gentle lilt of his voice as he whispers one of Joe’s many names.

The calm, rhythmic beat assures him that Nicky is alive and well before he even opens his eyes. It’s one of the rare occasions when he wakes to find himself in Nicky’s arms, not vice versa. The hard floor of Andy’s hospital room presses against his knee, but his head rests on Nicky’s chest, and much of his body is cradled in his husband’s strong arms.

He can feel the weight of a gun resting between his back and Nicky’s palm and knows it’s going to take him months of patience and gentle care to break Nicky of the need for constant vigilance that’s been building in him since France.

The fingers that stroke across the back of his neck, playing absently with curls that Joe should probably get Andy to trim, reassure him that the fear hasn’t buried the soft parts of Nicky he loves the most.

Joe tightens his arms around him and is rewarded by a kiss to the crown of his head. “Hey,” Nicky’s voice is low, for Joe’s ears only. “How’re you feeling?”

Joe scrunches up his eyes and reluctantly pulls himself from the comfort of Nicky’s arms. “Are we sleeping on the floor again?”

“You were sleeping on me,” Nicky points out, “and I wasn’t sleeping. So…” the shadows under his eyes are pronounced. They take Joe back to a time when Nicky’s piercing gaze had been the only part of him that looked alive.

“Been a while since we’ve done that,” Joe admits, letting the comment pass without reprimand. There will be a time to wrestle Nicky into bed and exhaust him to the point where he will actually sleep, but it won’t be for a few days at least. Not until Andy is fit to travel and they all agree on a safehouse.

After checking his watch, Joe realizes he’s managed almost eight hours in Nicky’s arms. Nile and Booker have pushed their chairs together and pilfered the one Joe and Nicky abandoned. Nile has her head on Booker’s shoulder and her ankles flung over his calves. He’s propped his feet up on the extra chair, one arm around the back of hers, keeping her secure as she sleeps. His gaze is bright and alert, watching over them while they’ve slept.

A week ago, that protection would be both unwelcome and impossible to trust.

Nile stirs, a soldier’s instincts in tune with her surroundings. She blinks, looking as disgruntled as Joe is at being awake, but it takes only a second before her gaze sharpens. She’s going to be another raging insomniac like Nicky, Joe can sense it.

“How’s Andy?”

“Ready to get the f*ck out of here,” Andy croaks. They all turn to the bed, where she is propped up by a pillow, both her bandaged arms wrapped around Quynh, who sleeps soundly against her. Sleep might not be the best description. She’s probably passed out.

“How do you feel?” Booker asks, a softness in his gaze that exists only for Andy.

She looks terrible. Her face is one giant bruise, and bandages are wound around every visible limb. Her bright eyes look red and sore, but her smile… Joe’s not seen that smile in five hundred years. She strokes her hand through Quynh’s long hair, tears rolling silently down her face.

Without thinking, without looking, Joe reaches for Nicky’s hand and squeezes. Nicky tightens his grip immediately. If he’s being entirely honest, Joe isn’t sure what to make of Quynh and her return. A day ago, she watched him beaten and tortured. She talked of subjecting Nicky to unspeakable pain.

But, ultimately, she’s fought alongside them. It must be so confusing, to be in this new, frightening world. She must feel so lost. So betrayed.

If he can slowly find a way to start forgiving Booker, he owes her the same sympathy, surely?

A soft rap on the door jerks Quynh from her dreams. She startles, drawing a pained hiss from Andy and rapidly switches into a stream of whispered reassurance.

“You’re safe,” Andy tells her, speaking the words in the tongue Quynh taught them over a thousand campfires. “You’re safe, my darling, I won’t let anyone hurt you.” Andy is confined to bed and unarmed, but she’s ready and willing to die before anyone lays a hand on Quynh. Even conflicted as he is, Joe knows he’ll do the same. Hell, he’ll need to do the same before Andy does.

And odds are he won’t beat Nicky, who already has his weapon fixed on the door.

“Do assassins knock, these days?” Booker asks, his gruff voice holding a hit of dark humor.

The door opens, and Copley walks in. He seems unperturbed by the gun in Nicky’s hand, or the fierce scrutiny he’s under on every side.

“Andy. I hope you’re feeling better?” Copley is polite in that annoying, English way of his. Quynh flinches and sinks into Andy’s embrace. “You must be Quynh. My name is James Copley. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

“Thanks for the assist,” Nile says when Quynh doesn’t answer.

Copley inclines his head. “Happy to help. Though I must say you’ve had me on my toes these past few days. The explosion of a plane, I can handle easily enough. The decimation of an entire branch of ex-red berets is slightly more problematic.”

“They had it coming,” Booker scoffs.

Booker kicks the chair he’s got his feet on over to Copley. He sits, his gaze lingering on Andy a beat longer than it does on the rest of them. “What do you know about Danijel Stanković?”

“That he’s a sad*stic f*ck?” Nile offers, looking at Nicky and Joe.

Copley nods slowly. “This is a trait he gets from his father, no doubt. The elder Stanković runs a global shipping enterprise. He’s made a lot of money by making unsavory trading agreements with several African countries, most notably Somalia. Thirty years ago, Stanković’s vessels accounted for less than five percent of the maritime traffic through the Gulf of Aden. Now, it’s closer to ninety.”

“Let me guess,” Joe says bitterly. “He’s never had problems with pirates.”

Copley tilts his head. “He claims to be ‘luckier’ than his competitors.” Booker and Joe both snort. Lucky. Sure. “Shortly after marrying Maria Renzo, Stanković branched out into underwater construction. He’s a key funder for NOAA and a director for National Ocean Mapping, Exploration, and Characterization. He-“

“There’s where I f*cking know him from!” Joe shouts. “I knew I knew him from somewhere.”

“Stanković?” Copley asks.

“He did look familiar,” Nicky agrees. They’ve all earned degrees in underwater archaeology and spent significant time working with various deepsea exploration groups over the years. Andy is almost singlehandedly responsible for kickstarting the infamous Explorer’s Club back in New York over a hundred years ago. For all that they’ve stepped away from the daily work they had done to find Quynh that first century, none of them have truly turned their back on the hope of one day finding her.

“f*ck,” Joe hisses. “I can’t believe I missed it.”

“How many thousands of people have you met in your life?” Copley asks, eyebrows raised. Joe scoffs. It doesn’t matter. He shouldn’t have missed it.

“It’s how he found Quynh,” Nicky concludes.

A soft voice rises from the bed. “He said he was looking for me.”

The rest of them share heavy looks at the implications arising from that one simple statement.

“How did he know about any of you?” Nile asks.

Stanković already knew about the book. How did he know about Quynh?

Andy nudges her gently, a question whispered in her ear. “He wanted the book,” Quynh says into Andy’s collar. “He wanted Nico.” She shudders, not attempting to raise her head or look at any of them. Now she has Andy back in her arms, Joe doubts she will be in a rush to connect with the rest of the world for a decade or two. He wouldn’t be if he were her.

It costs Joe every scrap of calm he’s accrued over the years not to yank Nicky out of the room, find the first transport, and run.

Andy meets Copley’s gaze across the top of Quynh’s head. “Get us everything on Stanković and his family. Anyone they’ve ever worked with. Anyone who might know.”

“On it,” Copley agrees. “In the meantime-“

“We’re leaving today. Quynh needs somewhere safe, and Nicky-“

“I’m fine, Andy,” Nicky tries to reassure her.

“Needs to get off the grid,” Andy continues as if uninterrupted.

“Where will you go?” Copley asks.

“And do we have to fly?” Nile mutters under her breath.

“Home,” Andy says firmly. “We’re going home.”

Venice 1128

By some miracle, they make it to Venice without further attack. Nicolò’s expression upon setting foot in the city is a picture of distaste, reminding Yusuf that Nicolò’s people are very good at disliking everyone, and are disliked themselves by nearly as many.

The dialect is different here, but Yusuf has an easier time of it trying to get them passage on a ship than Nicolò does. They’re used to merchants travelling back and forth, and Yusuf’s family name still caries weight even now. He claims to be his own nephew and doesn’t meet Nicolò’s curious gaze when doing so.

Part of their rouse begins on the outskirts of the city, where Yusuf trades their horses for a night in a small tavern. He pays extra coin for a servant to fetch hot water to the room and gleefully bullies Nicolò into a proper bath before taking a blade to the nest of wild hair and shaving off his sparse beard.

Now looking only ill and not feral, Nicolò is closer to the man Yusuf first saw all those years ago. He is, in fact, quite beautiful.

A continuing headache in need of near-hourly wrangling, but one far easier on the eyes – and nose – than before. Further coin is traded for rich new clothes. Yusuf ensures Nicolò wears the smarter, more luxurious items while donning far plainer ones himself.

“All you Genoise priests are nobility, aren’t you?” Yusuf asks the question instead of answering Nicolò’s protests. He’s only a little smug when Nicolò narrows his eyes at him.

“My father’s position was democratically elected,” he sniffs, which means absolutely nothing when those elections are so often predicated on who has the most power and wealth with which to buy a vote. “And he has never officially claimed me, so it wouldn’t matter even if it weren’t.”

“Ah,” Yusuf says cheerfully. “So you are a bastard!” He only narrowly avoids being shoved into a canal for that one. “That’s the face I want!” Nicolò’s expression is full of disdain, and it sells the lie easily once they reach the port.

Yusuf has the option of trading work on one of the ships bound for Cephalonia but chooses instead to rent the one cabin on board. “My companion is recovering from wasting sickness,” Yusuf uses Greek to converse with the captain of a magnificent-looking vessel while Nicolò lurks in the background. “He carries no contagion but requires comfort and peace during our journey.” To Yusuf’s knowledge, the Venetians have only just completed their own sacking of the Holy Lands, not to be outdone by their hated neighbors to the west. It costs him everything he has not to bristle at the suspicious once-over the captain gives him before accepting his coin.

He hustles Nicolò to the small cabin they have been assigned, fully prepared to keep up appearances and sleep on the floor. The alarming blankness that settles over Nicolò once he sets foot on the ship sets Yusuf’s nerves on edge.

“Are you going to attempt to cast yourself into the ocean?” He asks, all but dragging Nicolò over to the small bunk. The luxury of the room is found only in its privacy. Yusuf will make the most of it.

“I… I do not know,” Nicolò admits, looking lost. At least he’s honest.

Yusuf takes his wrists and gently binds them to the frame of the cot. “Sleep,” he encourages. “It will be a few days before we make land. Make the most of it.” He strokes his fingers through Nicolò’s hair, softer now, like silk against his skin, and repeats the process until Nicolò drifts away obligingly.

The trust in which he not only allows himself to be bound for his own safety but to accept the comforting touch of a man who has killed him innumerable times is a gift Yusuf has no intention of squandering.

Once he’s certain Nicolò’s slumber is deep and not superficial, he slips from the cabin and heads above deck, arriving in time to see them cast off.

The crew is busy at work, their cargo already stored, and their journey quickly underway. No one spares Yusuf a second glance as he watches the shore with his heart in his throat. Any moment now, someone will try to stop them. They will know who he and Nicolò are and what they have done. They’ll try to separate them.

But no one comes. There’s no last minute dramatics on the docks, no cry of outrage from the crew. Yusuf’s coin has bought them anonymity, if nothing else.

A cabin boy, barely older than little Renzo, tugs sharply on Yusuf’s sleeve. “I’ve been told to fetch you food, sir,” he says, his Greek atrocious. He looks a little green. Perhaps it is his first sea voyage?

“Bring it here, boy. My companion is resting.”

The child scampers off. Yusuf can’t help but wonder what happened to Renzo, guilt an unfamiliar and unwelcome companion.

When the boy returns with a simple plate of hard cheese, cured meat and a slab of bread, he also hands Yusuf a flask of water and a small wineskin. Yusuf doesn’t drink, but perhaps it will help Nicolò sleep without terror?

Back in the cabin, Nicolò has not stirred. While he needs the sleep, he needs sustenance more, so Yusuf reluctantly shakes him awake.

He doesn’t have to wrestle Nicolò to make him drink this time, nor threaten him before he will take more than a single bite of food. They’re making progress. It’s slow, but it has only been a few days.

One day Nicolò won’t slip into madness. One day he will sleep without fear. One day he will stop looking at Yusuf as both hero and villain.

And one day, Yusuf might understand why all of these things are more important to him than his own happiness.

Until then…

“If I untie you, do you promise not to stab me?”

“I don’t know,” Nicolò says, still so sweetly honest.

Yusuf snorts and unfastens Nicolò’s bindings. “Guess we’ll find out together.”

Vatican City, 2020

Two men stand under the dome of St Peter’s Basilica, their heads close together as they gaze upon the likeness of St Michael the Archangel.

The first, his crimson robes almost blood red in the soft candlelight, raises his chin in defiance of the angel who bares down upon a hoard of demons, his sword raised high. “How many times must you lose him?”

His companion, dressed not in robes but a sharp business suit, bows his head respectfully. “My son was foolish, Your Eminence. He allowed his pride to get the best of him.”

“And not only have we lost the best chance of securing Vastator in nearly five hundred years, but the book as well.”

“It will be recovered, Your Eminence.”

“You’ll forgive my lack of faith.”

“Long has my wife’s family been on his trail. I swore on her deathbed that I would see her life’s work complete. Give me time, Your Eminence. I will bring you both Vastator and the book, as promised.”

“A week, Mr Stanković,” the Cardinal allows with grace. “One week.”

“And if a week is not enough?”

“Then we will take our own steps to ensure their return to Rome, just as we did in Castile.”

Stefan Stanković inclines his head one more before taking the Cardinal’s hand and kissing the signet on his finger. “It will be done.”

To be continued…