#i also try to make sure to sprinkle in andy and joe every now and then | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

bestillmyslashyheart · 4 years

Text

its a thin line between bliss and agony

It’s a strange thing when your world is so small. When it’s so dark you can’t see anything even in the few seconds your eyes are open.

Booker’s world was water. Water so deep that the sun could never reach it. It was dark and it was cold, colder than anything he’d ever felt, and the pressure was so heavy he knew it would kill him if the water didn’t.

He should have thought it through a bit more, put himself in a box or a coffin, protected his body from the creatures he shared his watery grave with. But he hadn’t; hadn’t thought much beyond making sure his body stayed down where it needed to be. And in the brief moments he was capable of conscious thought, he didn’t much care. Those moments were few and fleeting, mostly occupied with the knowledge that he was right to suffer. His family had suffered while he stood by and did nothing. It was only right that he now do the same.

There was a strange sort of bliss in that feeling. In knowing that he was paying for the crimes he had committed against his own sons.

As he choked on yet another lungful of water, Booker thought he might finally understand that whole penance thing Nicky used to go on about.

---

Nile watched the man struggle in her dreams and forced herself awake. There were nightmares and then there was whatever this was.

The lights turned on a moment later and she turned to see the other four in varying stages of waking up, their attention on her. “Sorry,” she apologized weakly. Nile ran a hand over her throat and tried to be too obvious about how she was savoring every breath she took.

“What is it?” Andy asked. Nile shook her head.

“Talk to us,” Nicky urged.

Nile looked over at them, the four immortals who had crammed themselves into two twin beds in order to give her her own space. “Nightmare,” she offered.

Nicky sat up. Behind him, Joe put his elbow on the bed and propped his head up with a hand. His other hand was on Nicky’s hip. In the bed next to them, Andy had pushed up to put her back against the wall while Quynh had her head in Andy’s lap, her eyes wide open despite the fact that she was clearly still half asleep.

“I saw a man.”

“Probably Booker,” Joe told her. “He’s the other one of us.” Right. They’d told her earlier that there was a fifth member of their team. A man named Booker who had died as part of Napoleon’s army, about 200 years ago. He’d taken some time off from the team. They said she’d keep dreaming about him until she met him but that probably wouldn’t be for too long, once he knew she had joined them.

Except- “he was drowning,” Nile admitted. The other four snapped to alert, Quynh and Joe sitting up, now wide awake. “He- there was a chain around his ankles and he was deep underwater. He drowned, came back, and drowned again.”

“Andy,” Quynh said slowly. “When was the last time you spoke to Booker?”

Andy shook her head. “The last time we saw him,” she confessed slowly. “He needed a break. Said we’d meet back up in ten years.”

“That was eight years ago,” Nicky said softly.

“Have either of you spoken to him?” Andy asked, looking to Joe and Nicky. They both shook their heads. “Shit.” She started to get up but Quynh held her down.

“There is nothing we can do right now, Andromache,” she told her. “We do not know where he is.”

Andy turned a hard look on her. “Someone put him into the water,” she spit out. “He is dying. Over and over and over again. Has been for who knows how long. And I did- we didn’t know.”

“We will find him,” Joe said. “We will.”

Nile cleared her throat gently, half wishing they wouldn’t hear her. No such luck, however, as a moment later she had their undivided attention again.

“Is there anything you can tell us? Any clues as to where he is?” Andy asked. She was tense, her body primed to move, and her focus was a physical thing that Nile almost wanted to shy away from.

“It was dark, I could barely see him. And it was cold, colder than anything I’ve ever felt.”

“The ocean,” Joe declared, sounding resigned. “He’s at the bottom of the ocean.”

“He-” Nile swallowed. “He wasn’t-”

“Wasn’t what?” Nicky coaxed gently.

Nile closed her eyes and pictured the man she had seen. He’d been still in death, his body hovering in the dark sea, tethered only by the chain around his ankles. Then he’d awoken. And his body remained still, even as it fought for air that didn’t exist. “He wasn’t fighting,” she confessed softly. “He was just- it was like he accepted it.”

“No,” Andy corrected after a moment of utter silence, her face stony. “Like he embraced it.”

---

Andy killed everyone in their path. It was easy, knowing that it was to keep her family safe. Knowing it was the only way to find Booker. There was a lot of ocean in the world, a lot of places too deep for the sun to reach, and if they had to look at every inch of it they would but Andy knew there was a faster way.

“James Copley.” The man was literally shivering in his boots in front of her. Andy didn’t know what she looked like but from the carnage she’d left behind her and the rage she felt at the man in front of her, she couldn’t imagine it was pretty. “Booker.”

Copley’s eyes widened. “What about him?”

“You had to find out about us somehow,” Andy replied. Behind her, three very familiar sets of footsteps entered the room, a fourth set right behind them. She gestured to the board of photos and news articles behind Copley. “Eight years ago, you met myself and Booker. We didn’t tell you how many were on our team or what their names were and yet you know a whole hell of a lot about us. Which means you got it from one of us.”

Copley started nodding earnestly. “Yes. Booker spoke to me about you, about your gifts.”

“Why?” Nicky asked.

“He- he believed we could do some good with it. If the gift could be shared, then people could stop suffering.”

“That doesn’t sound like Booker,” Joe mused.

Copley swallowed audibly. “He wanted to know if the gift could be taken away.”

“That sounds like Booker,” Joe and Quynh said in unison.

“Where is he?” Nicky stepped forward, standing next to Andy now. He was always the most outwardly mild mannered of them all but right now Andy almost wanted to take a step back. There was a cold fury in Nicky that she’d only seen a few times in the last millennia. Joe always referred to it as a remnant of his time as a crusader when he’d been powered into battle by the righteous anger of a holy man defending his faith. Andy had never put much stock in righteousness but even she had to admit it was a powerful thing when wielded by Nicky.

Copley didn’t say anything and Nicky crouched down to his level. He didn’t touch the man but he didn’t need to. Copley looked about ready to crawl out of his own skin just to put any measure of distance between them. “Where is he?” Nicky asked again, his voice quiet.

“I don’t know,” Copley told them. He was lying.

Nicky shook his head. “You are lying to me, James. So I will ask you again and I suggest you do not lie a second time. Where is Booker?”

“The ocean,” Copley confessed.

“We know,” Andy told him. “But we’re going to need you to be more specific.”

Copley struggled to his feet. Neither Nicky nor Andy moved an inch except for Nicky to also rise to his feet. Standing up, the space between them was minimal. Copley edged around them nonetheless and grabbed something from the board. It was a folded piece of paper with no markings.

He held it out to them. “He left this. Said to give it to you when you came looking.” He scoffed. “I thought he was kidding. After all, why would you come to me looking for him?”

Andy glared at him. “Why would you try and turn us into lab experiments?” She snatched the paper from his grip. “What does it say?” She started to unfold it.

“I don’t know,” Copley replied.

“You didn’t read it?” Nile asked. The paper was folded a few times but it wasn’t sealed and Andy could see from the wear and tear that it had been opened and closed many times.

“I can’t.”

Andy finally got it open and stared down at the page. It was a letter, long enough to take up the whole page but not nearly long enough for everything she’s sure Booker had to say. Scanning quickly, she realized it was written in no less than five languages. One for each of them, she mused.

“Joe,” Andy called. Joe came over and she held the letter up. “When we get him back, you really need to help him with his Arabic.” Joe looked at it, his eyes easily falling to the section written in his own native language, a dialect that hadn’t been written down for centuries except when Joe tried to teach it to Booker. It was a mess, the handwriting awful and half the vocabulary wrong.

The Genoese was much better though Andy spotted a few modern Italian words sprinkled in. Quynh’s language and her own were only slightly better than the Arabic.

Andy ignored those four sections and focused on the French. It was a goodbye and an apology. He’d done this to himself, deciding that living in a world where he’d stood by and watched his sons die was too much. Was too hard. The four of them would be okay, he said. They’d lived a long time before him and they would be just fine after him. But he couldn’t keep going in the world as it was. As he was.

He couldn’t die. So he’d found a way out anyway.

He asked her to leave it, to leave him. To not go looking for him.

The others had crowded around her at some point, each of them reading the letter alongside her.

“I see,” Nicky mused after a few minutes. He looked at the letter a little longer and then nodded. “Copley,” he said, raising his voice slightly.

“Yes?” Copley replied. His voice was higher than it had been earlier.

Nicky didn’t look at him as he asked for a third time, “where is Booker?”

Copley looked confused. And also slightly ill. “He said the letter would explain?”

“Oh it does,” Joe agreed easily. He turned away from Andy and stared at Copley. “Now tell us where he is.”

“He-”

“He did not get where he is on his own,” said Quynh. “Someone got him out to wherever he is and helped him weigh himself down and maybe even helped him into the water, if the weight was too heavy for him to move himself.” Copley took a step back. “Tell us where he is.”

“He did not want to be found,” Copley admitted.

“We know.” Andy carefully folded up the letter. “Now take us to him.”

---

It was less than two weeks from Nile’s first dream to when they pulled a man shivering and gasping for air onto the deck of a boat. Andy, Quynh, Joe, and Nicky were still in their diving suits, each of them struggling to get them off as fast as possible.

In their absence, Nile fell to her knees next to the man she’d only dreamed of. He had flipped over to his hands and knees and was taking in deep shuddering breaths. The sun was hot overhead but his body was shaking as if it was winter. “Hi,” she said softly. She reached out but let her hand hover over his shoulder, unsure if her touch would be welcome. He didn’t reply. Nile hesitated for a moment longer before deciding that she didn’t care that she didn’t know him. She put her hand across his back and laid her cheek on his shoulder. “I’m Nile,” she introduced herself.

The shaking under her increased but she didn’t think it was from the cold. “Sebastien,” he replied. “But you can call me Booker.” He coughed once. “Why’d you have to be in the damn desert?” He asked weakly. Nile was confused for a moment before it hit her. The others had dreamed of her before they’d met so of course Booker had too. “I forgot how hot it was.”

Nile scoffed. “Why’d you have to be so damn deep? I didn’t think it was possible to be that cold.”

“Sorry,” he told her sincerely.

“Don’t apologize,” she replied. “It’s nice to meet you.”

She thought Booker might have replied but two strong hands grabbed his head as a body slammed to its knees in front of him. Nile pulled back to see Nicky in front of Booker, staring at him intently. “Do not ever do that again,” he warned.

“Or what?” Booker asked.

“Or you will never get rid of me. Joe will get jealous of all the time we spend together.”

“As if I would not be right there with you,” Joe argued. He was at Booker’s side, opposite Nile and he maneuvered the man into a kneeling position only long enough for him to wrap his arms around him and squeeze tightly. Nicky let him though his hands never left Booker.

Nile heard Andy and Quynh approach and stood to get out of their way. A moment later, Quynh was hauling Booker to his feet, uncaring of Joe and Nicky. The two men rose with them, however, neither relinquishing their holds. Quynh pressed her forehead to the side of Booker’s, the only part of him she could really reach and said something that Nile didn’t understand.

Booker started nodding, slowly, then frantically. At this point, Nile figured it was safe to assume that the water on their faces was not just from the ocean and she stepped further back to give them some privacy.

The group hug continued for a long while, the three of them clutching at Booker while he held tightly back. Andy stood a step away. Still very much with them but not touching, not yet. When Nicky and then Joe stepped back, Andy slotted into their place.

“Sebastien,” she said softly.

She said nothing else. After a minute, Booker collapsed into her arms, Quynh’s arms falling away.

Andy held him even as Booker’s knees gave out and they fell back to the deck. She held him as he sobbed, though her own face remained dry. “Never again,” she finally said. Nile wasn’t sure if it was a request or an order.

Nonetheless, Booker replied, “never again.”

on ao3

#the old guard #tog fic #sebastien le livre #my fic #its cry about booker hours

47 notes · View notes