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bestillmyslashyheart · 4 years

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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

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captainpikeachu · 4 years

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What I desperately want for The Old Guard sequel is a storyline focused on Joe, Nicky, and Booker dealing with the emotional fallout from the first film.

Obviously Andy, Quynh, and Nile should still have the main center and driven action of the story, but I really want a softer emotional side story driven by the men. Because men in action movies rarely get that type of a story.

We in this fandom talk a lot about how the film is subversive and how it switched gender roles in letting the male characters play caretaker roles and do the emotional heavy lifting. And I want that to continue in the sequel. Especially because the emotional fallout between Joe, Nicky, and Booker is the one aspect of the story that we never got to see fully addressed.

Nile was ready to let Booker back with an apology, and Andy has essentially forgiven Booker the moment she realized why he did what he did, so both of them don’t have any fallout to address when it comes to Booker. But it is Joe and Nicky who haven’t gotten that chance to truly verbalize their emotions, and it is Joe and Nicky who suffered the most because of Booker’s choices. So I want the sequel to address that, and I don’t want us as the audience to be robbed of what could be an emotionally satisfying and powerful story where male characters’ main narratives aren’t about might is right and punching things to defeat their foe, but rather one dealing with emotional pain and accountability and reconciliation and forgiveness.

So much of modern media, especially action films, are driven by male characters committing some sort of violent act, often retribution in an eye for an eye, and that’s suppose to be heroic and cathartic. But it’s not, it’s just this continued perpetuation that link men to violence rather than highlighting that men should also deal with emotions and feelings in a healthy way.

The Old Guard did so well in centering its emotional heart with male characters that I want to see it continue. I don’t want the story to ignore what happened and just go with “oh Booker is back now and everyone just moved on” because the plot requires it. I want this to be a story where the characters actually address their feelings, talk about what happened to them, and how they feel, and how they can find their way back to each other.

Look, I’m not expecting some sprawling expansive deep narrative exploring trauma and recovery and forgiveness in all its stages, I get that this is a 2 hour movie at best and there are limitations. So I’m keeping my hopes realistic as possible that we simply get some interactions between Joe, Nicky, and Booker where they lay out all their feelings on the table and come to a consensus, whatever it may be. Because there is a story there to be told, an important story that we so rarely see in action films with male characters, and we have all the pieces set up for that story to happen. It would be a shame to let that go by and not take even just a tiny part of a sequel to address it. Especially when the comics even give basis for that narrative to take place in.

If Booker gets taken and tortured by Quynh as it goes down in the comics, then Nicky and Joe planning the rescue (which they do in the comics) can have far more emotional resonance. They can discuss their anger at Booker while also affirming their care for him and desire to see him unharmed, because they are good people who wouldn’t wish upon that kind of violence for their worst enemies, much less someone they love. And they do love him, and you can’t tell me that walking away was somehow easy for them or that it didn’t hurt them or that they don’t miss him.

And I want Booker to fully recognize his own love for this family, for Nicky and Joe, for the bond they all share, and that they all also love him in return and that he is not alone as he might feel like sometimes. That he can choose to do right by them, be strong for them, stand up for them, look beyond just his grief, and atone for the wrong choices he made and accept that responsibility.

I want their reunion TO MATTER. I want it to hit that emotional satisfaction, not just they get him back and it moves on like nothing happened before and all is well now.

I want the three of them to talk, really talk, and address how they all feel and where they stand with each other and how they can move forward.

If they cry or hug then even better. Show men experiencing emotions. Show men having conversations about those emotions. Show men talk about trauma and grief and depression as valid human issues that DOESN’T make men weak. Show men giving each other affection and support. Show men loving each other. Show men deal with trauma and pain and grief and anger in HEALTHY NON-TOXIC WAYS WITHOUT VIOLENT RETRIBUTION.

Show men supporting each other through the good and the bad.

Show men holding hands in silent support when they need it.

Let men CARE about each other.

#the old guard #yusuf al kaysani #nicolo di genova #sebastien le livre #joe x nicky #andromache the scythian #quynh #nile freeman #immortal family #the old guard comics #the old guard spoilers #the old guard comics spoilers #JUST LET MEN TALK ABOUT THEIR FEELINGS WITH EACH OTHER IN HEALTHY WAYS OF COMMUNICATION

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harrynightingales · 3 years

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the old guard @ eurovision (a crack mix)

the playlist equivalent of a shitpost: i.e. what i get after far too many hours spent listening to eurovision songs

this exists mostly because hearing “hasta la vista” and thinking of joe @ booker made me laugh, and i decided it warranted the most ridiculous playlist i’ve ever made. its pretty much chronological following pre-canon, the events of the movie, and post-canon. hope it gives you a laugh! songs and lyric snippets under the cut.

heroes - måns zelmerlöw (the team / “this is what we do”)

We are the heroes of our time But we're dancing with the demons in our minds

invincible - carola (andy/quynh, the original power couple / “they ran through the world together, fought thousands of battles side by side”)

Invincible – one love supreme Unbreakable – one land of dreams Two hearts unite – insatiable This love tonight – invincible

playing with fire - ovi & paula seling (the enemies to lovers speedrun pt. 1: enemies / “we killed each other” / “many times”)

Boy, boy, boy, if you're mean I will start a fight tonight You and me, can't you see, We're playing with fire Tell me now, Do you feel this burning desire?

miracle - ovi & paula seling (the enemies to lovers speedrun pt. 2: lovers / “my blessing isn’t that i get an eternal life. my blessing is i found you.”)

All the things I see I think I see them too All for you and me It's like a dream come true It's so beautiful No one will ever know It's a miracle

if love was a crime - poli genova (andy/quynh + joe/nicky giving homophobia a big fuck you over the centuries)

If love was a crime then we would be criminals Locked up for life but I'll do the time

Together we're untouchable You and me against the world Together we're invincible They will never break us down

always - aysel & arash (andy/quynh + joe/nicky living their best gay lives; the happy years)

Always on my mind Always in my dreams I wanna hold you close with me Always all the time

sound of silence - dami im (quynh under the water / “she kept fighting and she kept drowning”)

Getting hard to break through the madness You're not here it never makes sense Tidal waves of tears are crashing No one here to save me drowning 'Cause baby you're not here with me And I keep calling calling

undo - sanna nielsen (booker losing his family / “just because we keep living doesn’t mean we stop hurting”)

Undo my sad Undo what hurts so bad Undo my pain

alcohol is free - koza mostra (booker and andy’s unhealthy coping mechanisms)

Alcohol, alcohol, alcohol is free Alcohol, alcohol, alcohol is free

rise up - freaky fortune (kill floor)

Come on and rise up jump out of what keeps you down, Get high and rise up fly get your feet of the ground, Come on and rise up rise up rise up rise up rise rise rise...

alive - vincent bueno (nile discovering her immortality)

All I need is a little spark To light this whole world up Prepare for fire shots Only you can make me feel alive again, alive again

never forget - greta salome & jonsi (andy remembering quynh / “i lost a soldier”)

She mourns beneath the moonlit sky

Remembering when they said goodbye

Cause I still believe that you’ll remember me

grande amore - il volo (the van scene / “he’s all and more”)

Now you know

You are my only, great love

too late for love - john lundvik (the potential for nile/booker / the cave scene)

Say, am I wrong To wonder if it could be you and me? Is it too late for love? Hmm Is it too late for love? I wanna know Is it too late for love? I can't take no more Is it?

warrior - nina sublatti (andy & nile / “you come from warriors”)

World's gonna listen to me Violence, set it free Wings are gonna spread up

World's gonna get up and see I'm a warrior

every minute - eric saade (joe and nicky reminiscing about their malta sexcation / “oh, THAT time in malta...”)

We couldn't sleep, so we were up all night Making each other blush, and that's all right

I love it in the morning I love it in the evening I love it every weekend I want it all, every minute

proud - tamara todevska (nile making her own choices / “i’m not doing this”)

Tell them Raise your voice and say it loudly Show them what it means to stand up proudly

what about my dreams - kati wolf (copley realizing merrick’s true colours & helping nile / “he only cares about her immortality, not what she’s done with it”)

What about how I feel? What about my needs? I can't hold back, I can't go back I must be free What about how I feel?

its my time - jade ewen (nile in the elevator / “good luck, ms. freeman”) *note: not on spotify

It's my time now I'll break through I've made my move And my faith is strong now I've got the heart To reach the heights To show you it's my time tonight

hasta la vista - ruslan alehno (joe @ booker post-betrayal / “you selfish piece of shit”)

You've cast me away to a desert shore You've shattered my heart, now you keep the score

Hasta la vista, baby I'm gonna miss you, maybe

(i would) die for you - antique (the found family fighting together / “cover andy”)

'Cause I would die for you Look into my eyes and see it's true Really I could never lie to you Just to make you see that No one else could ever love you Like the way I do

say yay! - barei (andy regaining hope / “you reminded me that there are people worth fighting for”)

I feel alive I wanna fight Won’t fix by running Come on and raise your battle cry You are the one who never dies

a new tomorrow - a friend in london (copley’s board)

Come on boys, come on girls In this crazy, crazy world You're the diamonds you're the pearls Let's make a new tomorrow

this is our night - sakis rouvas (the immortal squad with a new mission and new purpose / “let’s get to work”)

Time has come, so make a stand On your own, and take command Beat the odds, you will survive Stronger now, you feel alive This is our night, fly to the top baby Yes we can do it, just wait and see

rise like a phoenix - conchita wurst (post-credits: quynh returning / “hello, booker”)

Out of the ashes seeking rather than vengeance Retribution you were warned Once I'm transformed Once I'm reborn You know I will rise like a phoenix

edit: unlikely that anyone would notice, but i’ve made some slight changes, mostly reordering! also if anyone is curious about which countries are represented, the highest number of songs are from sweden (5), greece (4), austria, romania and bulgaria tied (2) and then azerbaijan, australia, iceland, italy, georiga, north macedonia, hungary, spain and denmark all have 1.

also, songs that didn’t make the cut, in case anyone wants more:

drama queen - joe and nicky hanging out with drag queens and punching nazis in 1930s berlin

cake to bake - the baklava scene

not alone - eventual post-canon booker forgiveness

#the old guard #kaysanova #andromaquynh #everyone else out here making serious content and then there's me #could i interest you in another silly playlist??#also full disclosure these are all bops #don't @ me about any of them #except maybe how including the eric saade song is cheating bc its not technically a eurovision song #could be though??#we'll see at the melodifestivalen final #close enough though

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thinkingaboutmalta · 4 years

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Swearing in "The Old Guard" (and one bonus fact)

The last time I watched The Old Guard, I made note of every time a character swore, and what words they used. For Science and Procrastination, I guess. I don’t have a tumblr, but I felt like sharing my findings anyway.

I broke it down into one column for each of the immortals and grouped everyone else together. For swear words, I went with “Fuck” and variants (e.g. fucking, motherfucker); “Shit” and variants (e.g. shitty, bullshit); (God)damn(it); “Jesus (Christ)”; “ass(hole)”; and “other.”

There are a total of 48 instances of swearing; 34 of those are by the immortals.

Further, the swearing in the film can be grouped into roughly three categories: emphatic swearing, social swearing, and hurtful or offensive swearing. Don’t quote me on this, this is based on some paper I read like five years ago. But anyway, this isn’t Serious Linguistics™, this is an close reading of a movie so…. anyway. Emphatic swearing is when you get hurt, or when you want to add weight to your words. Most of the swearing in The Old Guard falls under this category – when getting stabbed, when something goes wrong, when they’re done with the world, etc. Social swearing signals that you are with people you feel very comfortable or relaxed around; you all know one another, are comfortable with one another, and don’t care about social customs. In a way, this is also a way to show the people you’re with that you care about them, even when the situation itself is strained or stressful. Hurtful or offensive swearing, finally, is mostly self-explanatory: swearing directed at another person to make them feel bad and/or show them how much you hate them. These are rather rare in the film – so when they are used, you know they mean business.

Andy

Andy swears the most of any character, 16 times in total. She uses "fuck” (and variants) 7 times, “shit” 5 times, and all other categories once each. (The only other character to use “fuck” is Dizzy, who says “Fuck me” when Nile reveals she has no scar.) Andy uses “motherfuck(er)” three times, twice when referring to Merrick (mood). Andy is also the only immortal to use “Jesus.” She is also quite sweary at Booker after he is hit by the grenade; she even tells him “welcome back, asshole.” It is clearly not meant to be hurtful, as she smiles when she says it and Booker laughs in response. (Which I imagine must really hurt when your stomach is blown to pieces?) Basically, she makes full use of swearing and all its, well, uses.

Nile

Nile is the second-sweariest character, swearing 9 times. Her most common word is “shit,” using it 5 times. She uses swear words from all categories except “fuck” and “jesus (christ)” at least once. She is also the only immortal to use “hell.” In addition, Nile is responsible for one of the two instances of the word “bitch,” saying “son of a bitch” after shooting herself in the foot to prove to Copley she’s immortal. The only other time “bitch” is used is by Merrick, during the final confrontation.

There’s something else about Nile’s swearing that’s interesting. Nile doesn’t swear until after Andy kidnaps her; to be precise, she doesn’t swear until she is out of her uniform. It is certainly understandable that Nile would swear more in the high-stress situation she finds herself in; she is killed, kidnapped, and told she’s immortal all in the span of like, 24 hours. In this light, it looks like leaving (escaping?) the army, she is set free, even if this means unravelling a little first.

Joe

Joe swears 6 times — I have included his “Santa Maria, madre di dio” in the hotel since, as far as I understand, it would be considered highly blasphemous in Islam. Additionally, he uses “shit” twice, and “pissed off,” “goddammit,” and "asshole” one time each: After the ambush in South Sudan, he says he’s “very pissed off;” he mutters “shit” and goddammit" after Merrick stabs him; and he calls Merrick an “asshole” and Booker a “selfish piece of shit.”

It’s quite telling that these are the only two people Joe insults this way. He insults the guard in the van by calling him “a child” and “an infant,” but he doesn’t swear. During his van speech, he is — paradoxically — in control. Furthermore, Joe isn’t angry, not really. The speech is also not about or for the guards, it’s about and for Nicky. So let’s get back to the one time Joe is really angry. That’s when he learns of Booker’s betrayal. He shouts and strains against his bonds. He is never that outwardly angry at any other point — not after the ambush, not in the van, not when Merrick stabs him — not even at Keane after he shot Nicky (though I imagine this would be very different if Nicky had not come back)! Everything else that happens to Joe or his loved ones is, on the grand scheme of things, not worthy of his anger. He and his loved ones survive everything that happens to them during the movie. But Booker’s betrayal is different. As the saying goes, “you aren’t that angry at someone you don’t care about.” Excuse me, if you need me, I’ll be over here, crying.

Booker

Surprisingly, at least for me, Booker only swears three times. He uses “shit” twice (once in French, “merde”) and also the French swear word “putain”. He says “shit” when discovering that Andy is no longer immortal, and the other two times he swears are when he drops his booze in the post-credits scene. Interestingly, emphatic swearing is the only kind Booker uses. He doesn’t swear to be hurtful. But he doesn’t partake in the easy-going social swearing either, not even in response to other characters doing it. For instance, when Andy jokingly tells him being blown up is “an improvement,” he only laughs, and doesn’t respond with something along the lines of “fuck you, too,” which tbh I kind of expected when I first watched the film [and I think he actually does in the comic?? I only read it once and don’t have it on hand, soz]. This underlines how much he feels separated from the rest of the group. Excuse me, if you need me, I’ll be over here, crying.

Nicky

Unsurprisingly, Nicky never swears. He prefers to glare glarily and make cryptic threats.

Quynh

Quynh has all but five lines and none of them include swearing.

Other

I’d like to draw special attention to the word “bitch,” as it is used in a hurtful manner only once, and by the villain. At this point, Merrick is already defeated; his entire private army has been wiped out and he is alone in his penthouse, facing both Andy and Nile. He has a gun on them, but he is far from being the one in control of the situation; he rambles and swears (dare I say) uncontrollably. Andy and Nile, meanwhile, remain perfectly calm, and don’t even talk to Merrick; the only thing they say is Andy asking Nile if she speaks Russian. And then, of course, they kill him. The insult is ineffective, and only shows just how deeply the villain has lost, and that Andy and Nile are strong and confident enough to not let it hurt them.

Tl;dr: The Old Guard is a movie that’s chock-full of small details that further characterisation, and its use of swearing is no different. In The Old Guard, the way a character swears (or does not swear) reflects their personality, state of mind, and even offers insight into their relationships with one another. Swearing is used not exactly sparingly, but deliberately.

Bonus round: Andy calling Nile “kid”

Andy doesn’t call Nile “kid” that much; only three times in total, and all are before she knows Nile’s first name. Once she is told Nile’s name, she does not call Nile “kid” again. Furthermore, Andy doesn’t ask Nile’s name until after the plane fight. Which has another interesting detail: In that fight, Nile makes Andy lose her balance. No other opponent in the whole film manages this (in a fair fight, that is). I think it was in this moment, in which Nile Freeman made Andromache “forgot more ways to kill than entire armies will ever learn” the Scythian lose her footing, that Andy started to care about Nile beyond her being “the new one.” That look when Andy spits out a tooth? That look says “Oh, I like you!” I think this is the moment that Nile gains Andy’s full respect

Thank you for coming to my rambly TEDtalk and allowing me to overanalyse something that isn’t the subject of my thesis.

(Also, I now have a headcanon that Nicky only swore, like, three times in his entire life. One of those was when Joe blue-shelled him in Mario Kart.)

#the old guard #submission #tog #the old guard: netflix #i don't know what i did to deserve this masterpiece submitted to my humble blog with no original content #but i'm so grateful

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bpdcarmyberzatto · 3 years

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andy + booker, gen, 1,924 words.

K̂ormon means weasel, ermine or stoat in Proto-Indo-European.

The gif referenced is this one.

Andy shows up at his Paris apartment, sporting her usual black backpack and sunglasses, nearly two years into the exile. He hasn’t done much but he’s taken to speaking to other people online, through messaging boards and forums, and has even worked up the courage to begin talking to someone more psychologically trained. He’s still in his single digits amount of appointments, and it takes a lot to work through the issues he has when he has to use subterfuge for most of them. It’s from one of these appointments that he unlocks his door, unthinking and not realising that someone is in there until he hears a shift and his hand flies to the gun he doesn’t have on him.

“You’re not going to shoot little old me are you? Hmm?”

Andy’s voice. It was Andy. He can barely get his eyes up to look at her before tears are running down his face, to both his shock and hers. His appointment had been dealing with a lot of heavy stuff, that is, mainly about Jean-Pierre and his feelings about outliving his family. So Andy showing up for the first time since he’d been left on the river Thames was like a tsunami running through him. He brings his hands up to rub at the tears.

“I’m sorry,” he says watery, sniffling. “I promise I’m doing better, really.”

Andy looks him up and down and comes to a decision, he can see the cogs in her head turning from where he’s standing in the middle of the rundown apartments living room and kitchen. She soon opens her arms wide, inviting him in to hug her.

“Come here, Book,” she murmurs and he does, but he drags his feet giving her enough time to back out if she wants to.

He sees her roll her eyes and she crosses the last few meters herself, throwing her arms around him and seemingly holding him up as his knees nearly buckles, despite the height difference between them. She rubs his back, humming a little, and he clings to her, his face shoved in the junction of her shoulder and neck. He thought he’d never see her again, never again get to talk about translations of classics, never again get to listen to her repeated stories about fighting with the real Achilles, with the real Alexander. But here she is, in the flesh.

She still smells the same, he notes when his crying has subsided and his body has worked itself into a tired slump, hinting at exhaustion.

She pulls back and her almost doesn’t want to; wants to hold her in his arms until she knows instinctively that he’s sorry and that he’d never do anything stupid or selfish as what he had done ever again. Looking at her, though, he thinks she knows. He looks at her carefully and she doesn’t look any more older than she had when he had last seen her, maybe a frown line more.

“I want to go out, Book, know any good places?” She says as she lowers and then removes her sunglasses.

Her eyes still spark at him and leaves him a little dimwitted.

“Um...ah, I go to a club that plays old stuff, stuff from the forties and fifties. Or do you want to go somewhere more modern?” He says quietly, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. He didn’t really go out much and when he did it was more for the ambience than the dancing, really.

“No, that’s great. It’s getting close to six now, we should head out.”

He calls an uber to take them to the 11th Arrondissement and to the club that he goes to. He pays for their entry fees and takes her to where he usually sits. They sit there for an hour, him buying her drinks and listening to anything she’d give him about herself, the others. She purses her lips when he first asks her about the others, obviously running through the risk of her telling him anything anyways, before deciding that some will not bring them to ruin. Again.

“We’re doing fine. Nile is learning quickly, quicker than you did,” he laughs into his drink to cover the subtle sharp pang at that, “but we’re all different. You were different. She’s different. Differences aren’t bad Sebastien, however much you’re thinking you were never good.”

He looks at his drink, the beer suddenly souring in his mouth. Yet again his deficits are so easily seen despite the amount of effort he had put in the last two years to fix what was wrong with him. The use of his name further cements this as a failing.

“I’m sorry,” he says truthfully, looking at her out from under his mop of hair that he really needed to get cut. “I’m in therapy, I have been for the last few years. I know it doesn’t make up for anything but I am trying to be better.”

She looks at him in the eye, taking a mouthful of her horrifying liquor mix as she does so. She sighs when she swallows.

“Are you doing this for you? Or are you doing this as an attempt to lower your sentence?”

He thinks, for a moment, on the questions.

“Both. I’m doing it for me because I can’t live with my brain telling me things like that but I also can’t help but hope it’s enough to reduce my sentence,” he says and winces. “Sorry, I guess I’m not really very far in being better. Sorry.”

He looks out into the small crowd of people dancing already, some slowly and some fast. It’s nice to see something kept and saved, even if it’s just a dance. It feels like the more he looks, the more there’s little to recognise. He cannot imagine what it’s like for Andy, with all her thousands of years.

“Wanting something isn’t necessarily bad, Sebastien,” she says quietly and draws his gaze back to herself. “It’s not bad that you want to come back, I’d be suspicious if you didn’t, but the fact that you can recognise that you need help is the most important thing here. Now, I want to dance and you’re going to dance with me.”

She holds a hand out to him over the booth table and he takes it and tells himself the butterflies he feels are simply the emotions of having contact with his family.

They dance for hours, both swing and slow, and he blushes involuntarily when his hands are on her hips like he’s a teenage boy, stuttering and nervous. She leads more than he does, considering the last time he had been dancing like this was when the dances were originally from. He finds he has a good time, able to let go of himself for just a little while and pretend he truly was the forty two year old man his body portrays him to be.

They leave, with Andy’s arm hooked through his, in an uber the same way they arrived. Upon arriving home, he realises he has not planned for a single major obstacle: his apartment only has one bed. He tells Andy that he can sleep on the floor and she can take the bed and her eyes roll upward.

“Book, it’s fine. Stop acting like everything that happens is the end of the world, we’ll be fine.”

He tries not to stare at the reddish-pink scar on her abdomen when her singlet rides up as she gets ready for bed. Tries to not let its existence feel like the reaffirmation of the thousands of pounds of guilt on his shoulders, rising to his ears instinctively. She huffs at him after brushing her teeth.

“What you did, it’s shit and horrifying, but it’s been done. It does nobody any good to keep reminiscing on it.”

She lifts her shirt over the scar and motions to it.

“This? This isn’t going to go away no matter how much we both wish it would. Stop looking like you did,” she motions with her neck and shoulders, “you look like a k̂ormon.”

His face must show his confusion over the last word because she rolls her eyes, drags him to the bed, pushes him down into it and turns out the light, plunging the room into darkness. He gets himself situated under the sheets and blankets, not knowing which way to face. Andy checks her phone once before locking it and putting it on the side table.

“So-”

“It means weasel, Book. You look like a weasel when you do that.”

He bursts out laughing involuntarily, wiping his eyes.

“K̂ormon, k̂ormon, k̂ormon,” he murmurs, knowing instinctively that it’s from her original language. “I like it.”

He wakes up and feels someone’s arms around him.

It takes a moment for his brain to work and place whose arms they are. Her face is pressed into the back of his neck. He sighs, relaxing out of his tensed position. He looks out the window to the dreary, grey light. It musnt be very late, he can continue to sleep. It’s the first time in a long time that he hadn’t had a Quynh dream, hadn’t woken gasping and thrashing, without the use of alcohol or narcotics. He yawns and buries his face back into his pillow, distantly feeling her arms tighten around him before he slips back under.

He wakes again to the rustling of fabric and his eyes slip open, blinking slowly. The light is bright and a warmer colour. He turns to where the rustling is coming from, seeing Andy zipping up her backpack.

“What time is it?” He murmurs muzzily, rubbing his eyes.

“It’s seven thirty,” she says as she puts her sunglasses on her head. “Know anywhere good to eat?”

He does so he gets up and showers and makes himself presentable to be seen in public. As they walk down the arrondissement towards the café, she slings an arm around his shoulders and leans close.

“The others are waiting for me to make a decision about whether or not you can come back,” she murmurs before pulling away.

He keeps moving, in shock, until he motions for her to stop and they walk into the café. He gets a black coffee and croissant with Andy getting a café crème and croissant. He doesn’t know how to respond to the revelation and eats his croissant and drinks his coffee. Once he’s done and he’s had enough of watching Andy’s self satisfied smile, they get up to leave. He lets her wander out and he pays for their meals.

He wanders out to her and she swings her pack onto her back using both shoulders. She reaches out and kisses his cheeks, quickly, rubbing her thumbs over his cheekbones.

Slipping her sunglasses onto her face, she smiles at him.

“It’ll be all good, k̂ormon, you’ll see,” she says, “just wait for my signal.”

She then walks off in the direction of the metro.

He rubs his hand over his mouth and then walks in the opposite direction, back to his apartment.

The signal comes in the form of a gif in a text message at 2:45 AM that wakes him up as the tone goes off near his head.

The gif is of an ermine, a white one, and it looks like it’s talking, saying “we shouldn’t change just so we can fit in here.”

There’s a short message, too.

It’s time to come home, k̂ormon.

#my writing #*andybooker #let no one mistake us for the fruit of violence #this is fucking bad but you know what! who cares!

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chase-the-windandtouch-the-sky · 4 years

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Hello! Can you do a fic request of NickyxJoe where Nicky is taken hostage for 23 hours, and by the time he's rescued, he's traumatized to the point where he doesn't speak or move? Joe is fretting and caring and wants to kill whoever assaulted Nicky.

This is part one, because I was having too much fun, and then I got too into it - but it was mainly the prologue! I hope it is an alright first part one! <3

Nicky doesn’t pray much anymore.

It’s been a while. It’s been since he spilt so much blood under God’s name, thrilled at the death of innocents under his blade. He wonders absently if he would live long enough to make up for it. Perhaps that’s why he wasn’t able to die. To make up for all the people he ended, he spent his times on the earth trying to save more lives than he took.

The day started with a nice espresso, a long kiss from Joe, and then an excruciating amount of pain.

Long after Merrick, the nightmares of the lab slowly drifted away like a ship off to sea, he found himself in the comfortable routine with Joe that he loved. They traveled, they ate, they were with each other in the way that made Nicky think that he wished two people could inhabit the same space at the same time. They laughed with Andy, showed Nile the world, and slowly started conversations with Booker mere months after his banishment. He felt complete and whole.

…and comfortable.

It’s the comfortable that becomes dangerous.

He’s stirring a sauce that he told Nile would change her life, watching the bubbles of the tomatoes so they don’t burn. The love of his life is telling a story in the 1500s, where the two of them found a hidden waterfall and Nile is laughing at him. He loves that Joe has someone who is as forthcoming with her emotions as he is, the two of them getting on quicker than he’s ever seen anyone with Joe. His heart is full and warm, and he smiles as he stirs.

Then, the world explodes.

Nicky never quite gets over the sensation of dying. He’s standing at the stove, then suddenly he’s on the ground. Blinking a few times, Nicky tries to figure out what’s going on. Nile and Joe are a few yards away, coughing and slowly getting to their feet. Except Nicky can’t get up. He tries, but it hurts everywhere. It isn’t until he hears the painful howl of Joe does he realize someone’s pulling him to his feet. He wants to move away, but his limbs aren’t really functioning right now.

He’s dragged to his feet, which feels like they aren’t there, someone screaming. He blinks, trying to fight back, but he can’t feel anything. Someone yanks his hands behind his back and people yell. Nicky opens his mouth, but blood spills over his lips. He wants cry out, he wants to tell his love that everything will be okay, but all he can do is choke on the blood in his mouth.

They drag him away, further from his sun, further his family. Nicky wants to cry out, but he can’t.

He can’t.

As soon as he’s in the lab, they tie him down. It makes him feel rabid – feel angry and like a wild animal. Nicky always tried to be restrained after all the people he killed. But they’re strapping his arms and legs down, he’s healed, and he doesn’t know what to do. “No!” He cries, struggling against the restraints. “No!”

But its no use.

They tighten against his wrists and he feels feral. “No, no!”

Then they leave him.

Nicky lies in the room, strapped to a table, by himself. The walls are white and clinical and he smells antiseptic around him. There are instruments around him and he looks at the ceiling. “Io credo in Dio Padre onnipotente.” He says softly to himself.

Nicolo doesn’t say prayer often.

He says it because it’s comfortable and he’s feeling alone. He’s blessed, because he hasn’t felt alone in almost a thousand years. “Oh Yusuf,” he says softly. “I’ll find my way back to you.”

Nicky means it.

He will.

***

“Not good enough!”

“Joe—” Andy says exasperatedly.

“I said, not good enough!” Joe states, swiping his hands against the cups on the counter, the porcelain breaking against the floor. Nile flinches his violent reaction, feeling his anger from across the room. He paces, his hands on his hips, muscles straining against his shirt. “They have Nicky!”

“I know they have Nicky, Joe!” Andy shouts, her eyes wild. “I am doing what I can, but this is not my area. You know that!”

“Then call Booker!” Joe shouts, throwing his hands up.

Andy pauses. “What?”

“Call him!” Joe cries, his eyes filled with tears as he throws his hands up in the air.

“Joe, the—”

“I don’t care!” Joe cries. There is still blood flecked on his neck and his skin has stitched back together. “He can find Nicky and Nicky is gone. Call him.”

“Joe—”

“Call. Him.”

The next noise is a phone beep.

***

Nicky swallows, a probe inside his spine. They decided that they didn’t need to waste his time on antiseptic, so he feels the metal scrape against his skin. Nicky tries his best not to cry out, his hands shaking under the restraints. He curses in Italian, the words low and quick.

If only Joe was here.

He would look at him, feeling all his anxiety melt away.

Nicky sucks in a breath, looking at he ceiling. “Collect the samples.” Someone says and Nicky tenses.

In this moment, he thinks of Joe.

He can’t help it. His mind travels to the time in Malta, he will never forget.

Joe stood on a balcony, the sun shimmering against his skin. He was sweating slightly from the sun and from what they just did. Nicky never thought he’d seen someone so immaculate. He remembers laying in the bed and watching him. Watching the way the muscles move and the way his body curves. Nicky knows God and he knows truth.

Both are standing in front of him.

A scalpel is shoved against his skin. Nicky sucks in a breath and tries not to think about the blade against his skin. He swallows and tenses when the blade slices his skin. He closes his eyes and thinks of Joe.

Thinks of the way his eyes crinkle when he’s amused or the way his beard feels against Nicky’s chin. How he can’t picture anyone else next to him, his heat and his weight against him. Nicky turns his head away from the scientists, and sees no one.

Actually, that’s a lie.

He sees Joe.

***

“Keep your eyes open. Be ready.”

Andy is giving them instruction, but Joe barely hears her. Booker came through and traced the lab to a small town in Norway. Joe thinks that he and Nicky haven’t been here in a long time, and the ghost of his touch burns against his skin. “Nicolo, wait for me.” He says quietly, holding his weapon against his chest.

That was their promise. That they would go together.

Joe lets out a breath. “Together,” he whispers. “We promised.”

Booker turns, clearly able to hear Joe, but still unsure. Joe hadn’t said anything to him, outside of demanding he find Nicky. To his credit, he found him. He found him in Norway, when everyone else lost hope. Booker poured him a drink and Joe took it. The two sat in silence, Booker tapping his keyboard on his computer. Joe sat there, sipping the whiskey, listening to the keys.

“I’m not ready.” Joe said.

Booker didn’t respond. He hesitated over the keys and Joe almost yells at him to continue. He doesn’t.

The two of them lead the way. Joe feels closer to Booker than he’s ever felt, and further away from everyone. The world is lonely and he feels it. He feels the ache in his chest. It had been twenty-three hours since he’d seen Nicky. The longest since the time two hundred years ago when they got in an argument over a certain family. Joe remembers thinking he never wanted to be away from Nicky ever again.

And yet, here they are.

“I-I’m not ready, Booker.”

Booker doesn’t say anything. But his eyes speak louder than any words can say. The man reaches out and grab his forearm, eyes filled with world Joe knows he needs to discover.

They blast through the walls of the lab, each room empty as the next. Joe tries not to cry out each time there’s no one waiting for him, but he can’t.

Until.

They blast through a wall, and there’s figure at the end of the lab. Joe doesn’t know what he’s doing, but he’s at his side in an instant.

Joe cups the man face. His hands hover over the side of Nicky’s head, his eyes unseeing. He’s never seen Nicky like this, except the times that Joe was waiting for the main to wake up after a tragic death. “Nicolo, destati. Destati, Nicolo!”

Nicky doesn’t move.

His icy eyes stare at the ceiling, seeing nothing. “Nicolo,” Joe states, shaking his shoulder. “Nicolo!”

Joe leans his head toward, tapping his forehead against Nicky’s. “Love of my life,” he pleads. “Light in darkness. Please, come back to me.”

Nicky doesn’t move. His body is still.

Joe cups his face, leaning closer to him. “Nicolo, please. Come back to me. You promised me. You promised that we would go together. We promised.”

Nicky doesn’t answer. His eyes remain unseeing, unmoving.

Joe grips his face. “Please, Nicolo.”

Nicky sucks in a breath, his back arching against the restraints. Joe all but cries with relief, his eyes watering. “Nicky, please.”

Nicky’s eyes dart around like they do when he comes back to live, searching for answer that Joe doesn’t know the question. The man searches and finds Joe’s eyes and stays there. He lives there.

“Nicky, please.”

When Joe whispers his name, Nicky’s eyes roll toward him. “Nicolo.” He states. His eyes roll in the back in his head, and the man dies.

Nicolo dies.

He dies, Joe searching on his body for the culprit. When his hand runs down his side, he feels a sharp blade buried in his side.

Joe sees red.

The moment he takes the blade out, Nicky sucks in a breath. His body jerks and Joe presses his forehead against Nicky’s, the man shuts his eyes. “Nicolo, please.”

Nicky stares at him.

Joe loses himself in the worlds of Nicky eyes. Nicky looks around, trying to focus on something, then fixates on him.

Joe stares. “My love,”

Nicky doesn’t say anything.

Not anything.

Before Joe can plead, someone blasts through the lab. Joe turns, seeing the soldier before him. “You have no idea what you’re up against.”

Multiple guns point at him.

Joe straightens. He pulls out his sword, bracing himself against those in front of him. The curved sword is in front of him, pointing against those in front of him and Nicky. “I would recommend you leave.”

The soldiers don’t move.

“Alright then,” he states, bringing the blade up. “I suppose this is what we’re about to do.”

The guns blast. The sword swipes.

Words fail.

#the old guard #the old guard fanfiction #asks #lindsey writes #nicolo di genova #nicky #joe #yusuf al-kaysani #joe x nicky #yusuf al kaysani #yusuf x nicolo #fanfiction #drabbles

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pasdecoeur · 4 years

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once you finish the movie, you should tell us your thoughts bout nicky and joe 👀👀👀

okay the reason i took so long to answer this is........i have Many Thoughts.

primarily, i love the way they’re framed. they’re always shot like binary stars, constantly tethered, constantly circling each other. especially the way they move in the final fight sequence is *chefs kiss* beautiful — you can see how in sync they are, you can see the years and years of silted, nurtured experience between them, how they slip into each other’s space so perfectly.... it’s. it’s stunning.

and i love how fucking FUNCTIONAL they are!!!! you know? andy’s a mess, understandably, but like. STILL. also booker? is genuinely falling apart? he’s so bitter and envious, so desperately grasping at the last straws of his own humanity. “we can finally die,” he says to andy, and you finally see the only thing he WANTS anymore, and it’s. heartbreaking. and lonely immortality finally reveals its true face — and it’s true face is a curse.

you know that line where he says, i don’t remember it exactly, but it’s like. “you two have always had each other,” and i was like. WHOOF.that? that hit me where i live.

i mean, andy abducts nile, shoots her, snaps a coupla bones all within? 2, 3 hours of meeting the kid! booker infodumps his entire tragic origin story! but joe and nicky? feed her! get her to bed! sit with her when she’s scared! GOOD DAD SHIT!! I WILL CRY!!!!!

also like. if you’ve been following this blog for any length of time, you know i’m a Big DC fan. and the one thing about superbat that i’ve always low key hated, and been all ‘head in the sand’ about, is that clark will have to live MOST of life without bruce. for the vast Majority of his life, he will be heartbroken and alone. that’s what he’s choosing. that’s what he’s risking. what’s bruce risking. a little embarrassment? that’s fucking nothing. sorry. god. but that’s how that story ends. superbat is Fundamentally a tragedy. and i love love LOVE that joexnicky isn’t.

finally a queer immortal story that i can unrepentantly love!!! hallelujah!

don’t fridge your gays 💕

#kip answers #i have MANY feelings about them anon #ask box open #joe x nicky #the old guard

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beardycarrot · 3 years

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I, lying awake in bed because that’s how it always is the day before you have something important to do... am going to try to guess what the plot of Bioshock Infinite is, based on what I’ve seen in the first few hours and with knowledge of the other two (and a half?) games. Spoilers for the entire Bioshock series, except maybe Infinite, but I intend to knock it out of the park.

So. The first Bioshock is set in a futuristic (by 1950’s standards) city at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, created by a hardcore libertarian named Andrew Ryan as a way to once and for all live in a society free of government regulation. I won’t get into all the “sea slugs that produce a gene-altering wonder drug” and “child slaves brainwashed to drink corpse blood” stuff; very interesting, very important to the plot, but if I tried to explain the world of Bioshock I’d be lying here typing on my phone until the sun comes up. That stuff aside, the major plot points are that you’re not actually a guy who just happened to crash-land near the entrance to the city but are, in fact, Andrew Ryan’s son, and the guy who’s been guiding you through the city was actually using a Manchurian Candidate-style activation phrase to manipulate you into doing whatever he wanted. It’s a big, mind-blowing reveal (as is the realization that your character is actually about four years old... science fiction, man).

Bioshock 2 didn’t really have any big plot twists... or plot, for that matter ...but it was developed by an entirely different team, while the original’s team also did Infinite, so I’m expecting a return to form. Just as an aside, Bioshock 2 had a short DLC campaign called Minerva’s Den, which had a fantastic story, and a twist that the player can figure out on their own if they’re paying attention. Your goal is to get a very smart computer (for 1968) out of the underwater city and back to the surface so you can use it to cure all the victims of the slug-borne gene manipulation, and you’re guided over radio by the computer’s creator. At the end, you learn that the one guiding you was actually the computer itself, and that you’re its creator, slowly recovering from brainwashing. For the record, the endings to all three of these have made me cry.

So! With those kinds of twists in mind, what am I expecting from Bioshock Infinite? Well, I went into the game only knowing the names of the protagonists, that rather than underwater it was set in a floating sky city, and that there was some kind of religious theming but also a lot of old-timey Americana. As it turns out, the people of this city worship— no, have DEIFIED the founding fathers, and are lead by a man called Father Comstock. I’m pretty sure that name is a reference to the Comstock Act, similar to Andrew Ryan being named after Ayn Rand... but he could actually be called Father Cornstalk and I just haven’t been paying attention.

Anyway. Just a few minutes into the game, I noticed that a statue of Comstock looked suspiciously similar to my character... before deciding that I didn’t actually have that clear of a mental image of my character, they wouldn’t pull the “secret son” thing twice, and as much as I love it there probably isn’t going to be any time travel. Le sigh.

UNTIL!

So, your goal is to get a girl named Elizabeth out of the city, and there is some legitimately weird stuff going on with her prison. Like, they have some of her personal possessions from various points in her life in containment: a teddy bear, a diary, and a bloody cloth labeled “menarche”. Gross. Why would you keep that. Well, when an electric current (or something visually similar) is applied, the bear and diary change color, and the blood disappears from the cloth. The reason I’m not sure if it’s electricity is that there’s some kind of siphon system set up, it looks like a bunch of subwoofers, and it’s absorbing... something? When she sings, maybe? Is the energy being siphoned what changed the quantum states of those objects, or whatever was happening? There was also a chart showing that when she hit puberty... something, really spiked, which is what forced them to build the siphon. I can’t claim to know what’s happening here, but when I finally saw her she was day dreaming about Paris, and.. I guess opened some kind of portal, TO Paris? But then a bus or something barreled towards her, so she quickly closed it. In the couple seconds that the portal was open, I saw the marquee on a movie theater that... well, was in French, but I’M PRETTY SURE said “Return of the Jedi”. I should probably mention that this game is set in 1912. That smells like time travel to me, baby!

So, this is where it gets interesting, and confusing, and complicated. I think Elizabeth is Comstock’s daughter, from various signs and posters about Comstock’s seed being their salvation, and The Lamb of God being locked in the tower, and such... and signs about a “false shepherd” who would try to take her away (again, lots of weird divergent Christian sect stuff). One sign showered the false shepherd’s hand as having the initials AD branded on the back, which the protagonist Booker does indeed have. Before rescuing Elizabeth, Comstock confronts you, and seems to know all about Booker’s past, including his wife Anna (who died in childbirth), and claims to know his future as well. Being a prophet and such. Thing is, the way it’s presented, that whole thing could’ve all been in Booker’s head...? Shortly after rescuing Elizabeth, you run into someone who mistakes her for someone named Annabelle. Hmm HMMM. I’ve also run into a diary by someone named Rosalind Lutece (I think she’s one of the creepy twins who keep popping up everywhere) talking about physics and what sounded like the concept of quantum superpositioning, as well as a little informational kiosk in which she claims quantum mechanics are what enable the city to float. There were also a couple diaries that seemed to imply Elizabeth came from... somewhere else, and a part of her might still be there, or something?

SO. Finally, we get to the part where I theorize on what’s going on. In short... iunno.

Okay, well, I feel like my idea should be obvious by now. I think Comstock might be a future, or ALTERNATE REALITY FUTURE, version of Booker, and Elizabeth is... either a past version of his wife, before she went back in time and married him, or an alternate-reality version of his daughter? But then who is the Annabelle that the girl thought Elizabeth was? Did Booker’s child not die along with his wife, and was secretly wisked away to skytown? Comstock’s wife is consistently referred to as Lady Comstock, but what if her name is Annabelle too? Maybe it’s the same concept as the Heinlein story By His Bootstraps, with the protagonist only realizing that he IS now the old man from the beginning, and has to get his younger self into this weird time loop in order to live the life he’s lead?

I might be going a little off the rails; I mean, I’m pretty sure that the statue of Comstock I saw earlier actually reminded me of Handsome Jack, a character from another game I haven’t played who happens to wear an outfit similar to Booker’s. That said, there’s DEFINITELY some kind of time travel or dimension-hopping shenanigans going on here. There are good writers on this game, and I refuse to believe the Annabelle/Anna thing is a Batman v Superman-level coincidence.

The weird part is that in the tower where they were keeping Elizabeth, they have documentation of her dating back to one year old, so she was clearly exhibiting... something, unusual, even as a baby. The game also has yet to explain Vigors, its versions of the Plasmids from the first two Bioshock games, which were basically superpowers granted by the substance produced by those sea slugs. If I had to guess, Vigors are... a result of some kind of quantum something-or-other, which they made from whatever it is they were siphoning off of Elizabeth? Maybe it’s a Scarlet Witch kind of thing... you don’t actually change yourself, you just find yourself in an alternate reality where everything else is 100% the same, except you’re a version of yourself who can shoot crows out of your hands.

Right, so. My... official theory is... that... I have no idea what’s going on. Yeah, sorry, something in that mess up there is bound to be close, but when you get into time travel and/or dimension-hopping, all bets are off the table. Or all bets, a literally infinite number of bets, are on the table. Which is a lot to try to comprehend.

#bioshock #bioshock infinite #bioshock spoilers

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caffeinatedbraincell · 3 years

Text

Hi y’all I’m back with another TOG story!

Summary: Joe and Nicky raise a duckling together during their time off. They're great parents and the ducking is very cute, and absolutely nothing sad or angsty happens because we all deserve some undiluted serotonin.

(Edit: Forgot to tag earlier, inspired by this post by @silly-old-guard-aus <3)

Read on AO3

“How are they?” Joe asked, smiling softly as he held the phone to his ear.

On the other end, Booker ran a hand through his hair fretfully. “I don’t know them like you do, obviously. But I- ah, I don’t know, this might be presumptuous of me. But I think they’re gonna be alright.”

“You know Andy well.”

“Yeah, but not Quynh. This is my first time meeting Quynh.”

“How did she react?”

“She didn’t cry in front of me. Didn’t even yell. Andy broke down instantly, but not Quynh. I told her Andy was mortal now, and then I left. I thought maybe it would be easier for them to be vulnerable with each other if I wasn’t around. Do you think Andy will be safe?”

“Yes. She is always safe with Quynh.”

“But Quynh was so angry.”

“She has every right to be angry. Even though it is not Andy’s fault. Andy knows this. Their love is many millennia old, Booker. These past 500 years will not break them.”

Booker grunted noncommittally. “I’m going to go back. Just to check on Andy. I’ll sleep in a motel if they want to be alone.”

“Alright. Text me, okay?”

“Yeah, of course. How’s everything over there?”

Joe looked over at the couch. Nicky was reclining in the corner spot, watching with rapt attention what Nile had called “one of the best episodes of Queer Eye ever” on their laptop. Nile was curled into a ball at his side. A cool draft snuck in through the cracked window, and Nicky adjusted the plush throw that was draped over them both. Nile sighed contentedly, snuggling closer for warmth.

“Good,” Joe replied, voice suddenly soft. “Everything’s really good here. You don’t have to worry about us.”

“Do you all need anything from Paris?”

“Not that I can think of right now. But I’ll let you know.”

“Okay. Okay, sounds good.”

“Sebastian.”

“Yeah?”

“Take care of yourself, okay? They’ll both be alright. Don’t sweat it.”

There was a pause. Then Booker sighed. “Yeah, okay. I’ll relax.”

“Good. Text me when you figure out where you’re sleeping tonight.”

“For sure. Thanks, Joe. Good night.”

“Good night.”

Joe left his phone on the counter and crossed over to the living room. He sat down on the carpet in front of Nicky, tilting his head back to rest it against Nicky’s knees. Nicky smiled, reaching down to run a hand through Joe’s hair. He wrapped a few curls around his fingers, tugging ever so gently before letting go. He shifted his hand a few centimeters and repeated the act.

“Come up here?”

Joe shook his head, practically melting under Nicky’s loving ministrations. The floor was especially comfy when it was closer to Nicky. “I love you,” Joe mumbled, as instinctively as exhaling. After a moment, he frowned. “I love you, too, Nile.” Nicky laughed, and Joe could almost feel Nile roll her eyes.

The episode ended with Tan France demonstrating how to do a French tuck, and Nicky wondered aloud if the technique would work just as well with his highlighter-green shorts. Joe, despite knowing full well that Nicky was trying to provoke him, promptly went off on a well-rehearsed tirade about the detriments of wearing a dress shirt with basketball shorts.

“Nile, back me up here!”

“You’re right. He’s right, Nicky. Why would you even suggest such a thing?”

“You two can’t stop me,” Nicky argued, just to be contrary.

“At least it won’t be as bad as that time you wore only yellow for two months,” Joe said resignedly.

“Yellow?” Nile asked.

“Yes, he insisted it would make the duckling feel more at home.”

“Duckling?!”

Nicky clicked his tongue impatiently. “I wore various styles and shades of yellow, from pressed goldenrod shirts to an actual pastel canary dress. He has no right to complain about my lack of versatility.”

“The duckling liked me better, and I just dressed like usual.”

“She didn’t like you better. You always kept blueberries on you to bribe her with.”

Wait,” Nile interjected. “We need to backtrack. When and why did you guys have a duckling?”

Joe gave Nicky a pointed look that did nothing to hide the mirth in his eyes. Nicky sighed around a smile.

“It was an accident.” ___

“Nicky, stop moping. Booker, get up from the floor. Enough is enough,” Andy said, far more gently that her words implied. She prodded a very drunk, very anxious Booker with her foot. “Book, have you eaten at all today?”

“He hasn’t,” Nicky muttered from the kitchen counter. “But neither have you, boss. You’re telling us to get it together, but you’re equally antsy about this whole thing. Don’t deny it.”

Andy sighed in frustration. “I wasn’t going to. It was a bad call on my part. I shouldn’t have sent Joe alone.”

“It was a one-man job. You said so yourself. And he did have the best-suited skill set out of all of us. I think, tactically speaking, you made the right decision.”

“But you’re still upset about it, aren’t you?”

“Look, boss, just because it’s a one-man job doesn’t mean said one man wouldn’t prefer company. And it would be safer to have someone along.”

“It would have been a lot of extra work for Booker, security-wise. You know that.”

“Noooo, I din’ miiind,” Booker slurred from where he was curled up on the rug. He made a valiant effort to prop himself up on an elbow before collapsing back down with a thud.

Nicky put his head in his hands. “He was supposed to be back today, right?” he whispered into his palms.

“He’ll be back. He’s fine. I know he’s fine.” Andy paced back and forth restlessly. “We just need to get out of our own heads for a bit. Be a little patient. Joe will be fine.”

The stool scraped noisily against the kitchen floor as Nicky got to his feet. “I’m going to go for a walk and not think about anything for half and hour. I’ll bring takeout on my way back. Is that alright?”

“Yeah, solid plan. I’ll drag Booker to bed and try to get him fully conscious by the time you’re back.”

“Sober?”

Andy chuckled. “Don’t get too ambitious.”

Twenty minutes later, Nicky was sitting on a park bench, forlornly looking out over a pond as the sun set behind him. He’d already called a nearby Indo-Pakistani restaurant and ordered one plate each of everyone’s favorite biryani to-go, including Joe’s. Joe had to come back tonight. He had to.

Nicky shook his head in frustration. He was doing a very poor job of thinking about nothing. Suddenly, a tiny movement out of the corner of his eye caught his attention. He turned his head, squinting at the reeds growing on the pond bank.

The reeds rustled ominously. Nicky was just contemplating his chances of outrunning a rabid racoon, or alternatively, how long it would take him to heal from death by racoon, when the rustling stopped. Then, with a piteous squawk, a small ball of yellow fluff popped out onto the footpath.

Nicky stared in surprise. The poor little thing had landed on its back, its orange, webbed feet flailing in the air. It didn’t seem to be able to turn itself upright. Cautiously, Nicky approached the creature and very gently scooped it up. It gawked at him with wide, frightened eyes, and he heard himself mumbling soothing reassurances as he set it back on its feet. It stumbled half a meter and fell into the pond with a splash.

Nicky almost jumped to rescue it, before remembering that it was a duck and probably did not need to be rescued from the water. Was this one old enough to swim on its own? At what age did ducklings learn to swim, anyway?

The baby animal splashed around happily in front of him, clearly not drowning. Still, Nicky decided to stay for a few minutes, just to make sure it would be okay. He looked around. The mother duck and her other babies had to be around here, somewhere.

Eventually, his phone pinged with a message from the restaurant, letting him know his order was ready to be picked up. He was startled to find that it had been over forty-five minutes since he’d left the safehouse. If he didn’t get back soon, Andy and Booker might start to worry.

Nicky looked wistfully at the duckling. “Off you go, little one. Go home to your family. I’ll go home to mine.” The duckling blinked up at him quizzically. “I’ll come visit you tomorrow, if you want,” Nicky tried. “In fact, I’ll bring Joe with me. You’ll love him. He’s the sweetest person you’ll ever meet. A ray of pure sunshine, just like you.”

As he spoke, he unconsciously reached out a hand to the duckling. To his utter shock, the creature hopped right up onto his palm and settled down.

“No, you can’t come with me,” he cajoled. “You belong here. In the water. Come on, in you go.” Reluctantly, it leapt back into the water, but made no move to swim away. Nicky pursed his lips, thinking hard. Maybe if he just got up and walked off, the duckling would go back to its family. He figured it was worth a shot.

Nicky got to his feet and turned around. He’d taken only two steps away from the pond when he heard a frantic splash behind him, followed by the soft thwack, thwack, thwack, of webbed feet on concrete. He whirled around.

“No, you have to go back to your pond!” he whispered urgently. The duckling tilted its head. “The pond!” Nicky gestured dramatically toward the fading light on the surface of the water. “You know, your home.”

Nicky sighed. He would just have to walk away as fast as possible. There was no way this baby duck could keep up; it would have no choice but to go back to its family. The thought made his heart break a little, but he had no other option. Taking a deep breath, he began to stride away purposefully.

In a matter of seconds, a series of tiny, woeful quacks stopped him in his tracks. He turned to find the duckling flopped over onto its stomach, crying.

“Ehi, no, piccolo mio,” Nicky exclaimed, rushing forward to gather the poor thing in his arms. He unbuttoned the top of his coat and held the duckling against his chest to warm it up. “Don’t cry, it’s okay. It’s alright.”

He looked back towards the pond. There wasn’t one single other duck in sight. He looked down at the duckling, trembling weakly in his jacket as it calmed down. He sighed. Andy was going to throw a fit.

“Looks like you’re coming with me, little one.”

Nicky managed to smuggle the duckling in and out of the restaurant without anyone noticing. As he picked up the warm takeout boxes, the duckling poked its head out of his jacket to investigate this new source of warmth. By the time Nicky reached the safehouse, he was carrying four boxes of biryani stacked one on the other like a Christmas tree, with a sleeping ball of fluff on top where the angel would go.

Before he could even knock, the door flew open and Andy shoved her cellphone in his face.

“Look, it’s a message from Joe! He says his flight got delayed, but he’ll be here tomorrow morning!”

Nicky almost dropped their dinner (and the duckling) in his haste to grab the phone. Beneath the update, Joe had sent a selfie of himself at the airport terminal, captioned with a cheery “See, boss? I’m fine!” and a couple heart emojis. Looking at his beloved husband’s radiant smile, Nicky felt his eyes mist over involuntarily.

“There’s a duckling sleeping on my biryani.”

Nicky and Andy turned around. Booker, who must have maneuvered the takeout from Nicky’s hands while he’d been distracted by Joe, frowned dubiously at the stack of boxes.

“Do you see it, too, Andy? Or did I just drink way too much earlier?”

“Both,” Andy replied without missing a beat. “Nicky, why is there a duckling-”

“It followed me,” Nicky blurted out. “I was sitting by the pond and it fell out of the reeds right in front of me. After that, it just kept hanging out nearby. When I tried to put it by the pond and go, it started crying. What was I supposed to do? I couldn’t just leave it!”

“Okay, but what if its mother is looking for it?”

“I really, really tried to find the mom. But there wasn’t one other duck in that entire pond. I have no clue where this guy came from.” Nicky spread his hands helplessly.

Just then, the duckling woke up. For a frantic second, everyone held their breath as it flailed around, threatening to topple from the stack of boxes. But the moment it saw Nicky, it sat back down, contentedly preening its downy feathers.

“Oh my god,” Booker said incredulously. “Nicky, I think it imprinted on you.”

“What?” Nicky demanded.

“Oh, no way,” Andy countered. “Ducklings are supposed to imprint on their mother ducks. Nicky isn’t even the same species.”

“Yeah, but ducklings have been known to imprint on other animals, including humans,” Booker continued. “Especially if the mother is absent during the baby’s first few days for whatever reason, it will imprint on whoever it can find. Nicky, looks like you adopted a duckling. Or it adopted you. Good luck.”

“Oh no,” Nicky fretted. “I can’t raise a baby all by myself. Where is Joe, I need a co-parent! Andy, can I have some time off? Maybe, uh, a few weeks? Oh no, I don’t even know how long it takes for a duckling to grow up. I don’t know anything about ducklings. Booker, can you print out the Wikipedia page on ducklings for me?”

“Relax, Nicky,” Andy chided. “You’ve raised chicks before. How different can this really be?”

“8-12 weeks,” Booker read out from his laptop. “Nicky and Joe are going to need 8-12 weeks off to raise this duckling to full maturity. After that, they can reintroduce it to the pond.”

Andy sighed. “Fine. You two were gonna have time off anyway, since I have business in Portugal and Booker’s going to Germany because he scored tickets to the World Cup.”

“Oh, Joe didn’t want to come?” Nicky asked.

“I only managed to get one ticket,” Booker admitted. “I offered to let Joe go instead of me, but he wouldn’t hear of it. Said maybe next time, if we get more tickets.”

“Oh. I guess that works out then.”

“For the record,” Andy said as she extracted her box from beneath the duckling, “this is absolutely ridiculous. Only you, Nicky, would go out for a walk to ‘clear your head,’ and come back with a real live orphan duckling.”

In the end, it was a good thing they were in Genoa, because Nicky had maintained his ties to the port city over the centuries and, in a matter of hours, was able to take out a lease for a small cottage closer to the pond. After dinner, Booker and Andy helped him shift his and Joe’s belongings, as well as some meager furniture, into the new place.

“I think I’ll stay the night,” Nicky decided as they finished up. “The duckling is already asleep on my jacket, and I don’t want to jostle it in the process of moving back to the safehouse.”

“Sounds good,” Andy said around a yawn. “We’ll send Joe over as soon as he drops off the mission file. Come on, Book. Time to go.” There was no response. “Booker?”

Booker tip-toed out of the room where the duckling was sleeping, waving his laptop around triumphantly. “She’s a baby pekin. That’s the species. Also she’s a she, in case you were wondering. See this faded eyeline?” He pointed to a picture on the laptop. “That’s how you can tell.”

“A she,” Andy grunted approvingly. “What are you going to name her, Nicky?”

“I don’t know. I’ll ask Joe tomorrow. He’ll come up with something pretty and meaningful.”

“Your laptop was dead, Nicky, so I plugged it in to charge,” Booker said, shoving his own laptop into a bag. “You’re gonna be doing a lot of googling, I think.”

“Thank you, Booker.”

“Mhm. Andy, let’s go? If I fall asleep before we make it back, you’ll have to carry me the rest of the way.”

“I’ll leave you on the footpath.”

“You wouldn’t!”

“I might. Let’s go. ‘Night, Nicky.”

“Goodnight, you both. Safe travels, in case I don’t see you before your flights.”

The next morning, Nicky woke up to webbed feet padding determinedly across his chest. He opened his eyes to see beady black eyes staring down into his soul, and very nearly had a heart attack.

“Madre de dio!” he yelped, sitting up sharply. He managed to gather his bearings and catch the little ball of yellow fluff before it tumbled off the bed. “Piccolo mio, you can’t just do that!”

The duck let out several loud, indignant squawks, stomping around in his lap. Nicky furrowed his brow.

“Are you…yelling at me?”

The squawking and stomping continued.

“Oh,” Nicky surmised. “Maybe you’re hungry. Babies usually cry when they’re hungry. Is that right, preziosa? Shall we find you something to eat?”

Nicky doubted the duckling understood any of what he was saying, but she responded to his tone, nuzzling her tiny beak into his hand. He took that as a yes. Nicky climbed out of bed with a yawn, stretching thoughtfully as he walked over to the clothing trunk to get dressed.

That was how, ten minutes later, Joe walked in on Nicky standing at the kitchen table in yellow sleeping shorts and a yellow t-shirt, slicing green grapes in half as a very energetic duckling devoured them happily. Joe felt his lips curl up into a hopelessly wide smile.

“When Andy told me you had a surprise for me, this is not what I expected.”

Nicky dropped the knife and whirled around, practically throwing himself across the kitchen in his haste to wrap Joe up in his arms. Joe gasped as the wind was knocked out of him. He clung to Nicky, burying his face in his neck and breathing him in. God, how he had missed him. Finally - finally- Joe felt like he was home.

After a few moments, Nicky pulled back, eyes shining as he cupped Joe’s face in his hands. “You stink,” he accused, before kissing him soundly. Joe’s protests died in his throat, and he grinned into the kiss, feeling full to the brim with happiness. He marveled quietly at his husband’s ability to make 900 years seem like the blink of an eye. Perhaps his body had stopped aging centuries ago, but it was only in his Nicolò’s arms that Joe still felt 31.

Eventually, a series of tentative chirps interrupted them, and they broke apart, laughing.

“Aww, amore mio, how rude! You haven’t introduced us yet,” Joe quipped, gesturing between himself and the duckling.

“Ah,” Nicky smiles sheepishly. “Joe, this is…a duckling. Duckling, this is Joe - remember the one I was telling you about by the pond? The one with a smile like sunshine, sweetest person you’ll ever meet?”

Nicky turned, and Joe kissed him again, impossibly more in love than he’d ever been in his life. The idea of his husband waxing poetic about him to ducklings in a pond was just too adorable to bear.

Later that afternoon, after Joe’s valiant but fruitless attempt to potty train the duckling and Nicky’s stoic re-sanitation of their patio threshold, they decided to swaddle the drowsy baby in a soft washcloth and watch a movie together while she napped. They sat on the loveseat Andy and Booker had carried in last night, the duckling nestled comfortably between them. Both of them elected to watch a soppy romantic indie they’d seen a hundred times before instead of the new action flick; it was Joe’s first day back, after all, and he’d really had enough of gunfire for a very long time. Nicky couldn’t agree more.

Around halfway through, Joe leaned forward and paused the laptop. He stroked a finger gently down the sleeping duckling’s back, and then looked up at Nicky.

“Did you really not pick out a name for her yet, amore?”

Nicky shrugged his shoulders with a half-smile. “I figured that’s your department, no? Coming up with something melodious, beautiful. Poetic. Some worthy descriptor for this lovely little creature.” Nicky yawned. Maybe the duckling’s need for sleep was rubbing off on him. “You’re the creative one.”

Joe gasped in mock offense. “You are creative!” he whispered insistently.

Nicky laughed softly. “Yes, coming up with ways to keep you enamored for nine centuries does take creativity.”

“You could laze about on this couch for the next nine centuries and I’d still love you more than life itself.”

Joe’s retort was very matter-of-fact, but Nicky melted like sugar in a flame. Given how often his husband said things like that, he didn’t see how it was possible to be caught off guard every single time. To be stunned into speechlessness, heart alive with emotion his tongue knew no words for. It made Nicky realize what the poets meant when they compared love to a river of fire that could only be crossed by drowning.

“I know, hayati,” he replied at length, leaning in for a kiss. “Believe me, I know.” Nicky did not add that he felt the same, that if they never so much as left this house for another millennia, their love would only continue to grow - but Joe heard it anyway.

The next evening, Nicky finished showering and, after a moment of contemplation, opted for a mustard-yellow sweatshirt and last night’s sleeping shorts. As he walked towards the kitchen to make dinner, he decided to ask Joe to run down to the local pet store and pick up a bag or two of proper duck feed. The duckling could only be expected to eat grape halves for so long. He reached the kitchen and promptly froze in the doorway.

On the counter was a large steel basin filled with water. Inside the basin was a very happy duckling, splashing around gleefully. Next to the counter was a rather disgruntled Joe, soaking wet and trying in vain to coax the duckling into staying still long enough for him to rub a little Dawn soap onto her back.

“Wallahi, Nicolina, a little soap doesn’t hurt! Come on, baths are nice. You’ll like it, I promise. Would you rather smell like pond water, or, uhh…” Joe squinted at the soap bottle. “It doesn’t say what scent this is, actually. But I’m sure it’s better than pond water, don’t you think?”

“Joe, what are you doing?” Nicky laughed from the doorway.

“Nicky! Oh, thank God you’re here.” The duckling seemed to agree, chirping excitedly at Nicky as he walked towards them. “Give me a hand, amore. Nicolina doesn’t like soap.”

“You’re calling her Nicolina?!”

“It suits her. She’s just a miniature you, see?” Joe managed to seize the duckling and hold it up next to Nicky. “Both yellow, both don’t like soap-”

“I like soap!”

“Both like to swim,” Joe continued, ignoring Nicky and putting the duckling back into the warm water.

“And I’m only wearing yellow to make the duckling feel more…at home, you know?”

“Pekin ducks are white, Nicky.”

“Well, this one’s clearly yellow.”

“That’s because it’s a baby. Mother ducks are white.”

Nicky shook his head to clear it. He’d definitely come in here with the intention of telling Joe something else, not arguing about duck colors.

“Oh, right! Joe, I meant to ask you - could you get duckling feed from the pet store while I make something for dinner? After you’re finished bathing her, of course. That way she’ll have something nutritious to eat tonight.”

Joe nodded, and then leveled Nicky with his best poker face, a sparkle of mischief in his eyes. “Who will have something nutritious to eat, amore?”

“She will.”

“Who?”

“The duckling, Joe.”

“Yes, but the duckling has a name, right?”

“ I am not calling her that.”

“Però-”

“Yusuf al-Kaysani, I swear-”

Joe put on his best puppy face. “But you said I could name her anything I want!”

“I said you could name her something beautiful and meaningful.”

“There is no name more beautiful and meaningful to me than yours, Nicolò. You asked me to find a worthy descriptor for her - and I found no better way to honor her charm and kindness than to name her after you. You stole my heart the moment I saw you, and she did the same. What can I do? It’s perfect.”

Nicky gaped at his husband. “Wha- I- You- Hayati! You can’t just say things like that!”

Joe gave a tiny smile, trying to hide his triumph and failing spectacularly. Nicky threw his hands up in surrender, circling around the counter to thoroughly kiss the smug look off Joe’s face.

“So the name can stay, then?” Joe asked, a little breathlessly, when Nicky pulled back.

“Don’t ask questions which you already know the answer to,” Nicky scolded, kissing him again. “Now go pick up duck feed before the pet store closes. Remember, if Nicolina doesn’t get dinner, then neither will you.”

Joe burst out laughing. He stashed the bottle of Dawn soap next to the sink, waving an alacritous finger at the duckling as he scrambled out of the kitchen. “Looks like you’re off the hook for today, little one!” Nicolina splashed and quacked enthusiastically in response. “Nicky, there’s a clean towel next to the basin to dry her off with. Can you-”

“I’ve got it, love. I’ll finish up here before starting dinner.”

“Grazie mille, see you in ten!” Joe called from the living room, grabbing his wallet and heading out the door. Nicky sighed, reveling in the peace of the moment, silent but for the gentle splashes and chirps of the duckling in front of him. Eventually, he picked up the towel.

“Alright, Nicolina. Let’s get you dry and warm for your nap, shall we?”

The next few weeks passed happily, with Nicolina becoming a central part of their family. She was extremely intelligent, managing to figure out potty training by the end of week two. It took until week three to convince her that soapy baths were a good thing, but she grew to love it enough that as soon as a bubble bath was prepared, she would hop in of her own volition. Both Joe and Nicky were ecstatic. By the time week four was drawing to a close, Nicolina had even learned how to turn her heat lamp on and off by herself, by stepping on the switch.

One evening, as Nicky was walking back to the cottage after running an errand, he was struck by a thought. Tomorrow, he realized, would be the one-month anniversary of having found Nicolina by the lake. Since the duckling wouldn’t be with them for a full year, this was probably their best chance to have a first birthday celebration for her. He pulled out his phone and hit recent.

“Hello, Joe?” He paused as Joe spoke. “Yes, yes, the post office was open. It went smoothly. Yeah - I wanted to ask, can you feed Nicolina and whip something up for dinner? I just remembered a thing; I’ll have to take a bit of a detour.” On the other end, Joe grumbled something about Nicky going on impromptu shopping trips without him. “I never said I was going shopping!” Nicky laughed. “But you’re right, as usual. Tell me, hayati, how am I supposed to surprise you with what I buy if I take you with me?”

The next morning, Nicky snuck out of bed before either Joe or Nicolina were awake. He decorated the living room of their cottage with baby blue and yellow balloons - some hanging off the roof and walls, others rolling around lackadaisically on the floor. Then, he puttered around the kitchen for a bit, mixing batter and putting two cakes in the oven to bake: a regular one, and a special miniature one made with all duck-friendly ingredients.

Miraculously, neither of his housemates had woken up to all the ruckus he’d made in the kitchen. Nicky tip-toed back into the bedroom and quietly slid a dress box from beneath the bed. He went to the bathroom to shower and get ready.

When he’d stopped at a clothing shop the previous night, Nicky had honestly been dismayed at the lack of birthday-appropriate formal wear available for men in any color other than dark blue, black, or tan. Certainly there was nothing even approaching some semblance of duckling yellow. Nicky had sighed in frustration - he should have brought Joe along after all. Joe would have known what to do.

Nicky could almost imagine his husband’s gleeful smile. “Amore, try this!” he would say, gesturing to the obnoxious excuse for a suit on Nicky’s right. “Or no, wait - what about this?” Nicky’s gaze had snagged on a lovely light yellow dress, on display in the women’s section across the aisle. It was a simple a-line dress with short sleeves and a flowy skirt that would probably come down to a little above his knee. There was no print, only a few tiny red flowers embroidered at the hem and on one sleeve. Also, it had pockets.

In his head, Nicky imagined Joe, who would have suggested the dress as a joke, tracking Nicky’s interest and suddenly getting on his soapbox about how men can wear dresses, too, because gendering clothing is stupid and outdated, and really, it was supposed to be hot tomorrow, did Nicky really want to spend Nicolina’s first birthday all uncomfortable in a scratchy suit, and…

Before he could second-guess himself, Nicky took the dress off the rack. He skipped the fitting room and decided to just pray that it looked good on him instead. He’d made his purchases and been halfway across the street when he realized that he hadn’t picked one out for Joe. He’d immediately turned and started walking back, earning a confused honk from a taxi driver who had to swerve to avoid him.

That was the story of how, on the morning of Nicolina’s first-month birthday, Joe came into the living room to see his husband in a stunning pastel-yellow dress, glowing like the sun itself among a shower of blue and gold balloons, playing peek-a-boo with a delighted duckling perched on the coffee table. Warmth and sunlight streamed through the open patio, and the air smelled sweetly of vanilla and cinnamon.

Joe pressed a hand to his heart, so overwhelmed with love that he was physically unable to breathe for a few seconds. Looking back, he prided himself on being able to remain standing at all. It shouldn’t be humanly possible, he thought, to fully and truly embody perfection to the degree that his Nicolò did. Joe smiled at the irony - he sometimes forgot that the very basis of their existence itself wasn’t humanly possible.

Nicolina spotted Joe first, and ran excitedly off the end of the table in a wildly risky attempt to take flight. Nicky gasped and lunged after her, managing to catch her before she hit the floor. “Nicolina, what the-”

He looked at Joe, standing open-mouthed in the living room entrance, and smiled. “Good morning, my love. Did you sleep well?”

“You’re beautiful,” Joe blurted out, like a thirteen-year-old talking to his crush. He frowned. Surely, Nicky’s current state of dress deserved something more poetic.

But Nicky’s smile only widened. “I’m so glad you like it, Joe. I have to confess, I had my doubts. But the look on your face convinces me I made the right decision.”

Joe opened his mouth to say, yes, yes this was absolutely the right decision, this might have been the best decision ever - but what really came out of his mouth was “Uh. Yeah. Can I, um. I really want to kiss you. If you want.”

Apparently, he would continue to be possessed by the ghost of an incoherent and besotted teenager for as long as Nicky was wearing this damn dress. Fortunately, Nicky seemed to find this endearing, laughing as he gently deposited Nicolina in his pocket - omg, it has pockets! - and walked up to Joe. He reached out to cradle Joe’s face in his hands, gazing at him like all the stars were in his eyes. Joe, who had just gotten out of bed and hadn’t even combed his hair, couldn’t imagine what Nicky was seeing, but the next moment, their lips were pressed together in a tender, blissful embrace, and every other thought in Joe’s head dissolved like salt in the ocean.

“Oh, I almost forgot!” Nicky exclaimed, pulling back all too soon. “I got one for you, too! It’s in a dress box under the bed. Would you be interested?”

Joe blinked as his brain caught up. “One for me?”

“Yes, and don’t worry, I picked something you’ll like. It’s not tacky or unfashionable, I promise-”

“I like everything you pick.”

“That’s not true, you didn’t like the t-shirt I wore two days ago-”

“I like everything you pick for me.”

Nicky paused, trying to find a counterexample. “Ah. I guess you do. Well, go try this one on, then! Let’s see.”

Five minutes later, when Joe hesitantly stepped out of their bedroom in his new dress, Nicky realized that he had vastly overestimated his own ability to remain a functioning member of society with Joe looking like that. Even Nicolina, now resting quietly on a bunched-up blanket on the couch, couldn’t seem to take her eyes off of him.

“Well?” Joe asked, giving an experimental twirl that did nothing for Nicky’s screaming brain. “Does it look okay?”

Joe was wearing a knee-length deep teal sheath dress with a dribble of silver sequins spilling down one side like stardust. A shallow v-neck gave way to a sleeveless top, and the richly colored fabric fit snugly against his hips in a way that had not been nearly so breathtaking on the mannequin. Like Nicky’s own, this dress was simple, without excess print or decoration. Still, the way it looked on Joe as he stood there, smiling a little shyly in the late morning sunlight, left Nicky stunned.

He tried to speak around the sudden dryness in his mouth, but no sound came out. Rather, Nicolina chirped up first, quacking approvingly from her comfy spot on the couch. Joe grinned, crouching down next to the duckling.

“Aww, thank you, little one. At least someone has feedback for me.” Nicolina nuzzled her beak into his cheek affectionately.

Nicky sat back down on the couch and put his head in his hands. Joe glanced up.

“Nicky?” he asked, a little worried now. He walked over and sat down next to him. “Amati, is everything alright? Do you not like it? I can change back-”

“Mashallah, Yusuf,” Nicky said hoarsely, taking Joe’s hands in his. When he looked up, Joe was shocked to see tears glistening in his eyes. “It’s just - you are the most beautiful, wonderful, miraculous being that God has ever created, and I never forget this, but sometimes I am reminded anew and I just- I am left in awe of you, of your endless love and beauty. I can’t handle any of this. You’re too handsome, too kind. I wish I had one hundred hearts to love you with.” He sniffled, wiping his nose with the back of his hand.

For the second time that day, Joe was rendered utterly speechless. On Nicky’s other side, Nicolina whimpered worriedly, climbing out of her blanket nest and nosing at his elbow. He chuckled wetly, reaching out to pet her.

“I’m fine, piccolo mio. Better than fine. Don’t worry.” To Joe, he said, “Sorry. I’m overreacting.”

“No,” Joe mumbled. He dropped his head to Nicky’s shoulder, reverently bringing their joined hands to his lips. “Ti amo, Nicolò. So much. Thank you.”

Nicolina clambered onto Nicky’s lap, snuggling close to him for warmth. Nicky caressed her downy feathers comfortingly. He turned and pressed a soft kiss to the top of Joe’s head. It had been a busy morning, and they still had big plans for the day, Nicky knew. A nice long walk in the park, visiting Nicolina’s pond, eating cake, maybe going out somewhere fancy for lunch or dinner (somewhere that allowed pets; he would have to google it). But for now, he allowed himself to just breathe, swathed in bone-deep contentment.

Over the course of the next month, they took Nicolina to the pond every single day. By week five, her feathers were growing out in earnest, and she could fly quite reliably. In week six, Nicky and Joe got comfortable leaving her at the pond unsupervised, using the time to run short errands before returning to pick her up. By week seven, Nicolina would stay out longer and longer, often loathe to leave the water even after the sun had set.

As week eight drew to a close, Nicky reminded Joe to pack an extra jacket for their trip to the pond. Nicolina ran ahead of them excitedly. The pond was always her favorite part of the day. After watching her splash about for a bit, Joe went for a walk around the park, and Nicky left to go grocery shopping for the upcoming week.

When Nicky returned, Joe was back on the bench in front of the pond. For a second, Nicky had a vivid flashback to the evening this all started - he’d been sitting in that very spot, worrying about Joe, when Nicolina had quite literally dropped into his life. He shook his head fondly at the memory.

“Joe?” He approached the bench. Joe looked up at him and smiled, patting the adjacent seat.

“How was groceries?”

“Ah. Nothing too remarkable. A lady spilled a gallon of milk in the aisle where we were waiting to pay, and then we all got distributed into different queues, so it took longer than usual.”

Joe clicked his tongue sympathetically. For the next couple hours, they sat mostly in silence, listening to the sounds of the evening and watching the last rays of sunlight fade from the surface of the pond. As it got dark, the park slowly emptied out, save for a few teenagers roasting marshmallows over a fire pit in the distance.

Nicky sighed deeply, holding his arm out to Joe. Joe scooted closer, wrapping his arms around Nicky’s waist and resting his head on his shoulder.

“She’s not coming back tonight, is she,” Joe whispered. Nicky squeezed his shoulder, pulling him closer.

“Got attached, Yusuf?”

Joe huffed. “Two months is nothing in the span of centuries, right? So why…” He trailed off, but Nicky heard what was left unspoken.

“The heart only knows how to live in the present, hayati. That is why it falls in love. That is why it cries when something ends. Even if we always knew it would.”

“You’re so composed - won’t you miss her?”

“I will. Terribly so. It just hasn’t sunk in yet, so I can offer you wisdom like a hypocrite.”

Joe smiled sadly. “When it sinks in, I’ll do the same for you.”

“I know, my love. My all.” After a few minutes, he said, “Give me that extra jacket.” Joe handed it to him, and Nicky shook it out, wrapping it like a blanket around Joe’s shoulders. “Lie down.” Joe lay his head in Nicky’s lap, stretching his feet out onto the bench. Nicky wove his fingers through Joe’s hair calmingly. “Alright?”

“Mhm. Nicky?”

“Yes?”

“Are we staying the night?”

“We can stay as long as you want.” ___

“The end,” Nicky said with a flourish.

“Wait, what?” Nile lifted her head from his shoulder and looked at him incredulously. “What do you mean, the end? You never saw her again?”

“Of course we saw her again,” Joe answered from the floor. “We walked by the pond several times a week, and she would always swim over to say hi when she saw us. It was the sweetest thing.”

“About a month later,” Nicky picked up the narrative, “Booker got back from Germany and Andy from Portugal. We took a series of back-to-back missions after that, and didn’t get to return to Genoa until early spring.”

Joe’s phone buzzed on the counter, and he got up to go check it.

“Mhm, and then?” Nile prompted.

“Well, when we got back, we came by the pond to see if the ducks had returned to their northern habitats yet. As we stood by the water, one duck, a beautiful, white bird, swam gracefully up to us and nuzzled our ankles for a bit. She looked really happy to see us.”

“Oh my gosh - Nicolina?!”

Nicky smiled in confirmation. “Do you know, she had a mate? He was quite lovely, too. They made a good pair.”

“Wow,” Nile breathed. “That’s so awesome.”

“Guys, look at this.” Joe walked back to them, phone outstretched. “A message from Booker.”

Nicky took the phone, and Nile leaned over to see. On the screen was a photo of Andy curled up next to a Vietnamese woman that Nile had only ever seen before in her dreams. Quynh, she knew. Andy was fast asleep, and Quynh smiled serenely at the camera. Her eyes looked like she had been crying, but her happiness was evident, even in the hastily taken picture. The message beneath it read “they’re letting me stay the night,” followed by a tentative thumbs up and smiley face.

Nicky grinned. “Oh, God. I can’t wait to see her. And look at them - I told you, Joe.”

Joe leaned in for a quick kiss. “I never doubted it.”

#the old guard #joe x nicky #kaysanova #found family #fanfiction #tog fanfic #kavi writes #loooong post #yeah this one got away from me idk what happened #but I love how it turned out!#feedback always welcome <3 #fluff #no seriously this is just tooth-rotting fluff be warned

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mprosperossprite · 3 years

Text

I Made Stuff in 2020

Shoutout to @nevermindirah for the tag

Rules: It’s time to love yourselves! Choose your 5 favorite works (fics, art, edits, etc.) you’ve created this year and link them below to reflect on the amazing things you’ve brought into the world in 2020. If you don’t have five published works, that’s fine! Include ideas/drafts/whatever you like that you’ve worked on/thought about, and talk a little about them instead! Remember, this is all about self-love and positive enthusiasm, so fuck the rules if you need to. Have fun, and tag as many fellow creators as you like so they can share the love! <3

In 2020 I re-watched Leverage, which led me to tumblr, which led me to seeing these posts about this movie The Old Guard, which led me to watch one of the best films I’ve ever seen, which led me to AO3, which led me to discord. Before falling down The Old Guard rabbit hole, I hadn’t written fanfiction since 2012. Unsurprisingly, a lot has changed since 2012 for me and for the internet. For the first time since my participation in internet fandom, I feel like I’ve found a community online and that is probably the big theme of this post: making for each other has been an absolute joy in an otherwise pretty shit year.

This is not really a year in review, so much as a last two months review (my first fic of the year was published on November 2nd) but it’s been a utterly delightful and impactful couple of months, so here we are. On to the fics!

1. The Sport of Bright Steel - This was the fic that started it all. Someone on the Old Guard kinkmeme prompted a Joe/Nicky fic from the POV of their swords and I sat down on my couch one Saturday morning and an hour later had a lil piece of fanfiction all written out. And then I panicked that it was terrible and weird and so posted it anonymously to the kinkmeme. And then someone in the discord rec-ed it in the fanfic channel and then I dusted off my old AO3 account and posted for the first time in 8 freaking years.

2. Our Toil Shall Strive to Mend - This was my second foray back into fanfic (once again, inspired by a kinkmeme prompt), and the first multi-chaptered fic I ever wrote. Big manly man with tiny human? I am weak. I love all of the Old Guard characters, but I think Booker will forever be my favorite to explore in fic. Unlike the others, Booker is a reluctant soldier and much of his pain comes from losing his identity as a husband and father. This fic asks what if Booker’s path to healing comes in the form of fatherhood? Writing the last chapter made me cry happy-sad tears for him.

3. The Perfect Shot - From the idea that both snipers and photographers are in search of “the perfect shot” came this delightfully silly little fic. Nicolo di Genova, sniper and international man of mystery, knows one damn pun/pick-up line and just so happens to find the one man (Joe, photojournalist) whom it works on hook-line-sinker. Everything about this is fun and makes me happy. Never in a million year would I have written this, if not for a very silly post on this website that someone on discord suggested as a Joe/Nicky prompt. Inspiration strikes in the most unexpected of ways. And I fucking love puns, y’all.

4. This Rough Magic - Nicky is a selkie who accidentally get himself married to unsuspecting, marine scientist Joe and it might be my favorite thing I’ve written all year. It’s a story about identity and the unexpected and being willing to take a leap of faith. This fic would not have happened without the discord, and made me so so grateful and happy to be creating with other people and as part of a community. The joy of fanfic is that it is freely created and given, and I never would have dared to write this story without the inspiration, support, and enthusiasm from internet friends.

5. Bring the World Back into Tune - aka my Book of Nile opus, still a work in progress. Technically it’s a Hades/Persephone fusion, but really it’s about finding family, finding healing, and finding love, about making meaningful choices despite whatever fate or the supernatural has in mind. I fell into Book of Nile because who they are beyond being immortal has so much in common: growing up basically ghettoized in a country that doesn’t give a damn about you, fighting for an imperial army because there were no other viable choices, knowing the pain of missing 1st families. In Bring the World Back into Tune I love that I get to explore what it means to be fated for something (they’ve become Hades and Persephone without realizing it, in addition to the whole immortal thing), and also what it means to still get to choose how you arrive at and cope with that fate. Very few people are reading this on AO3, but it’s something I love working on and through because the characters and ideas are so compelling.

Honorable Mention: Leaving AO3 Comments - One of my greatest joys this year has been in giving to others the kind of love and support I’ve received as a person who makes stuff on the internet. I love leaving AO3 comments, and applying my English major brain to what I’m reading. The things we love most are deserving of our critical attention, including and especially fanfiction. I’ve met fandom soul-mates in the AO3 comments and befriended authors. In response to a shitty anon comment on another fic, I crafted what might be my fanfic manifesto: why fanfic is the heir of western storytelling moreso than our popular media and why the “expectedness” of fanfic is in fact its greatest feature, not it’s biggest flaw. It is A+ work, if I do say so myself.

None of this would have been possible without the internet (the kinkmeme, tumblr, discord, and of course AO3) and, perhaps more importantly, without the great, supportive Old Guard fan communities. Thank you for the beautiful fic and stunning art. For the thoughtful meta and funny headcanons. For the cheering and screaming and encouragement. For the kudos and comments. We make for ourselves and each other and that’s a truly remarkable thing.

Thanks to @hyper-fixate @sweetlyenchains and many others for being so lovely and kind and making my 2020 better with The Old Guard fic and art and thinking and community. If y’all are inspired to do this year end recap too (whether tagged or not), please tag me! I’d love to read about your triumphs too!

#the old guard #fanfic #writing #fandom friends #tog #tog fic #fic rec #book of nile #joe x nicky

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caitlesshea · 4 years

Text

death doesn’t discriminate

“Nile called. She said they did a recon mission in Brazil, blew up some buildings.”

Booker waits a moment, makes sure James is fully in the room before speaking again.

“She said it could’ve been a solo job.”

“She wasn’t supposed to tell you.” James mumbles as he stands next to him.

Booker turns towards him, ready for an argument, when he sees the wary expression on James’ face.

“Why?”

James turns away from him and starts pacing the length of the room. Booker thinks momentarily that he should’ve started this conversation in the office and not their bedroom, but he can’t change it now.

“James. Why?”

At the sound of his name, James turns toward him with wide, almost terrified eyes.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It does matter.” Booker crosses his arms as he leans against the dresser and stares at James. “Why didn’t you give me the job?”

“Because.”

“Because why?”

“I couldn’t.”

Booker scoffs. “You couldn’t?”

“Mm.”

“Why?” Booker moves closer to James as he shoves his hands in his pockets. “Why?”

“He said you were in pieces!”

Booker freezes and it feels like all of the air has been sucked out of his lungs.

“What?” Booker breathes out and it’s the only sound in the room.

James rubs at his face like he’s mad at himself for letting that slip.

“The church, after the grenade, the report back was that you were in pieces.” James’ breath catches on the word pieces and Booker stares at him incredulously.

“I healed.” Booker says slowly, as the dawning realization that James had cared for him, even then, sinks into him.

“You won’t always.”

“Not for a long time.”

“Just look at Andy!”

Booker feels like he’s been slapped and James realizes what he said a moment too late.

“Sébastien.”

“No.” Booker takes a deep breath. “No.”

Suddenly he can’t be here, in their room, in their house, with James. Booker bodies his way out of their bedroom and starts moving through their house, collecting his keys, wallet, and phone.

He knows he needs to say something, anything, but he can’t get the words out from where they’re lodged in his throat.

Before he makes it to the door he turns to look at James and almost stops what he’s doing at the tears in James’ eyes. This isn’t how Booker saw this conversation going, this isn’t how he wanted it to go.

James pulls Booker’s motorcycle helmet from its hook by the door and hands it to him. The argument that he’ll survive any crash is on the tip of his tongue but he takes the helmet and nods instead.

He turns without another look back and it isn’t until he’s been riding for at least thirty minutes that he lets the tears fall.

When his phone won’t stop buzzing he finally pulls over to look at it. He wants to rip his helmet off and throw it into the grass as far as it will go, but he stops himself.

He sees a few texts from Nile and one from James and because he’s nothing if not a masochist he reads that one first.

[James: I’m sorry]

Booker wipes at his eyes and instead of reading the string of texts from Nile he decides to call her.

“What the fuck did you say to him?!” Nile seethes on the other end of the phone without so much as a hello.

“I didn’t…”

“Don’t make me call Quynh.”

Booker sighs and a feeling of helplessness settles in his gut.

“We got into a fight.”

“No shit.”

“Nile.”

“You need to fix this Booker.”

“I don’t know if I can.” Booker hangs his head because he knows that’s not true.

He knows it only escalated because he got scared when James admitted to caring about him even then.

“You better. He requested to join us on our next job, he’ll be in Berlin tonight and we head out tomorrow.”

“Job? What are you talking about?”

“Some trafficking ring. The meetup happened yesterday and we’re taking them out tomorrow, he asked to join.”

“He can’t!”

“Well. He is. So you need to fix this.”

“The house in Berlin?”

“Booker.”

“Dammit, Nile.”

He can hear her sigh over the phone. He knows he’s breaking every rule they have in place that allows him to speak to Nile and Quynh, and sometimes Andy, but never affords him the opportunity to join them on jobs.

They don’t even know he’s dating James. Or was.

Fuck.

“Please.” Booker isn’t above begging. He knows the kind of people on this job that they’ll be dealing with, he can’t let James go into that, CIA training be damned.

“We’re at the house in Berlin.”

“Thank you.”

“And Booker?” Nile waits until she confirms he’s listening. “He was crying.”

She hangs up, after she twists the knife he was already feeling in his chest.

“Fuck.” Booker groans, wipes more tears from his eyes and heads to the private plane hangar they use and asks for a flight to Berlin.

When he gets to their safe house in Berlin he wants to scream. Nile, the asshole, said the job was tomorrow.

What she didn’t say was that it was in the dead of night.

So, now he’s a couple of hours behind when James got here, and Booker can tell he’s already been here because his laptop is on the table, but they’re all gone. For however long this job takes.

Booker really doesn’t want to get caught in the safe house when they return so he heads out to a café until he can get Nile to let them know they’re back.

He’s barely taken a sip of his coffee when his phone rings.

“Nile.”

“You’re in Berlin?”

“You know I am.” Booker grits out.

“Copley’s hurt.”

The blood drains from Booker’s face and he sways where he stands.

“What?”

“It’s bad. Can you meet us?”

“Tell me where you are.”

She rattles off some address and he’s already jumping on his motorcycle before she even finishes.

Fear, like he’s never known, grips him to the point where he knows he’s a mess. He barely manages to contain the sob caught in his chest as he finally makes it to their location.

Nothing matters except getting to James. Booker doesn’t even take out his gun as he runs into the building.

He barely has a chance to take stock of the situation, which is, a lot of dead bodies and the people he considers family all sitting around James as they check him over.

Booker feels like he can’t move. There’s so much blood, more than he feels like he’s ever seen before, which he knows isn’t true, but it’s coming from James, and it matters.

“Sébastien?” James croaks out and Booker doesn’t hesitate, he slides down next to James, pushing Nicky out of the way, who protests until he sees the look on Booker’s face.

Booker’s frantically looking over James, who looks surprisingly okay for someone sitting in so much blood.

“Sébastien.” James grabs his hands and stills them.

Booker looks at him and then back to Nile and narrows his eyes at her sheepish look.

“She said you were hurt.” Booker whispers and James nods at him but lifts his shirt to show him his bloody stomach.

“I don’t.” Booker shakes his head. “He needs a doctor!”

It’s not lost on Booker that the placement of the wound is very similar to the one Booker obtained at the church in France.

The wound they were arguing about. Healed but not.

“We can’t take him to one.” Andy says quietly.

“We have to. He’ll die.”

“Sébastien.”

Booker turns to look at James as he coughs wetly.

“No.” Booker swallows. “No.”

Booker fumbles for his phone and calls one of James’ contacts that he set up for Andy should she ever need medical help.

“What are you doing?” Joe asks him and Booker shoves him back.

“I’m getting him help.”

At their blank stares he growls. “Do you really think he’d just let Andy die if she was hurt?”

No one says anything and Booker feels anger coursing through him that they still thought so little of James.

“You can either leave or you can stay.” Booker grits out.

Thankfully they all keep quiet and in no time at all Booker’s sitting in a waiting room in a hospital waiting to hear if James is going to survive.

Booker feels like his nerves are so frayed he’s going to come apart at the seams. He can’t get his legs to stop shaking, either.

Nicky settles his hand on Booker’s knee and Booker looks over at his brother with watery eyes.

“He’ll be okay.” Nicky says quietly and Booker shakes his head.

“You don’t know that.”

“Have a little faith, Book.” Andy says from where she’s leaning against a wall.

He laughs as he tips his head up toward the ceiling.

“How long has this been going on?” Joe asks as he squats in front of Nicky’s chair.

Booker doesn’t want to answer, wants to tell them it’s none of their business since they decided to exile him, but.

“Since London.”

Booker looks around at everyone. Nile’s smiling, Quynh has a grin that looks suspiciously like the Cheshire Cat. Andy looks tired and Joe and Nicky have their heads tilted to the side like they’re wondering just how much they missed.

“Not here. We’ll talk at the safe house.” Andy decides and Booker nods.

They’re finally allowed back to see James and Booker can vaguely hear the doctor explaining something about a miracle and fast healing organs when he see James sitting up in bed, smiling.

Booker rushes over to him and grabs his hands.

“I healed faster than I should have.” James says quietly to him and Booker looks at him and James pulls up his shirt to show his unblemished stomach.

Booker doesn’t hesitate he just leans down to hug James as best he can while he weeps tears of joy.

James puts his face to Booker’s cheek and kisses it once.

“I’m sorry.”

“I know. I’m sorry, too.” Booker doesn’t think he needs to admit just how scared he was, and how he understands now why James didn’t want Booker running headfirst into danger.

“I love you.” James whispers and Booker feels the tears well up again.

“I love you, too.”

#the old guard #booker x copley #bopley #mentions of injury #mentions of blood

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nilestiddies · 4 years

Photo

It takes a long time to be able to acknowledge this feeling for what it is.

It’s grief.

Nile knows she should be grateful for this gift of immortality, and all it’s given her; she has the chance to truly put good out in the world in a way that normal human beings cannot, and this newfound family, and every chance in the world to be whoever she so chooses. And yet, she’s hurt. She mourns. Out of all of these good things she has so suddenly earned, she can’t just move past what she lost. She will never see her family again, nor get the chance to do more than kiss in the dark with Dizzy. All of it is gone.

No one bothers her for the first four or five days she spends in bed. Out of their eternities, she supposes it doesn’t matter. But eventually, someone comes and sits with her so that she isn’t so alone in her misery. Booker, by the weight on the edge of the mattress. Joe and Nicky would lay down, be tactile, and Andy isn’t as heavy as he is. At first, there’s silence. Then she hears him open and drink from his flask, and he offers it to her when she rolls over to look at him. It’s pretty hard to get drunk, she’s realized, but the burn is familiar enough that she likes its heat down her throat when she takes a swallow of it. It’s good liquor. Everything is collected when its new and further aged in these safehouses, making it the best and probably most expensive in the world.

Maybe he doesn’t speak because he doesn’t have the words, or maybe because he knows from experience that none will be enough. He watched his family die. But he got to say goodbye to them, and Nile never had that opportunity. They think she died in action, an IED, with nothing but ashes to come back to them. They got her tags. Tears spring up fresh on her cheeks, leaving her to bury her face in the pillow once more and pretend she can still breathe.

He rubs her back while she cries for a while, stops when her cheeks begin to dry, but not before. Perhaps he does get it, at least a little. The others are too old and accustomed to one another to feel it this way. She pulls the blankets tighter around her and waits for him to leave, but he doesn’t, instead staying with her and rifling through the bedside table for something. The book she was reading, she realizes. He flips through the pages and hands her the little green bookmark that was tucked between the pages.

“When I sort, there is only time to think about what I see in front of me,” he says. His voice is much slower reading than speaking. Literacy was a treasured gift when he was young, from what Nile remembers of a history class so long ago, and it shows now how his first education was not in English. Still, he reads to her. “So there in my little gray space, I don’t think about Xander. I don’t wish for the feel of the green dress against my skin or the taste of chocolate cake on my tongue. I don’t think of my grandfather eating his last meal tomorrow night at the Final Banquet. I don’t think of snow in June or other things that cannot be, but somehow are.”

He stumbles on the words every so often, until he reaches the end of the chapter and replaces her bookmark for later. She still is too overwhelmed by it all to sit up, but she appreciates Booker taking time to do this, so at the very least, she doesn’t have to grieve alone. She lifts the edge of her blankets and he wordlessly slips under them beside her. There’s still no touching, clinging, like the others are prone to, but they do share warmth under the covers in contrast to the cold of knowing they will outlive or already have outlived every person they ever loved prior to that first death.

She remembers the way Dizzy held her, desperately pressing down on her cut throat, and begging her to stay alive, stay awake, wait for the help that was coming. Her lashes were wet. It was in such a way that she must have been crying, for her own blood would not have reached that close to her eyes.

“It’s alright.”

“No, it’s not.”

He nods. “You’re right. But it will be.”

Then he fluffs the pillow beneath her head and fully returns to the peaceful companionship, at which point she is far quicker to fall asleep than she expected. Although she dreams, it isn’t tainted with the pain that has bullied her for the last week. Instead, it’s tender moments with her loved ones, preserved memories to return to in her darkest hours.

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#nileweek2020 #nile freeman #sebastien le livre #emwrite

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giuseppeeward13 · 3 years

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Timed Writing

So before starting this page I wanted to test my creative writing speed. I set a timer for one hour and wrote at my normal speed. I got up to 755 words which about 12.5 wpm. Here is what I wrote:

The dog God entered the water. His tall naked body felt warm as the liquid caressed it. Water? He thought it was water, but soon realized it was not. No this was something different. The liquid in which Salavar stood was the purple, pulsating blood, of the ancient Varkeenso, by whom he and his brothers were birthed into the pure nothingness of the empty non-existent universe, before the existence of time. Salavar, was a God within the universe, but at the same time he was a universe in it of himself. Himself? More like itself. Gender and identity were creations of its creations. This was the problem. The dog God simply existed, there was no meaning behind its existence, for there was no existence to have meaning aside from the simplicity that it did exist. It had no body and no name, until the creations gave it one, and left it here to ponder how that may be possible. Was this its universe of universes? Did it present itself to Salavar, (who will use that name and “he/him” pronouns for the purpose of understanding his own thoughts for the first time in the history of existence), as the blood of itself. Did it have a self to be or was it simply existence. That was what Salavar was supposed to be, just an existence within a greater existence, from which it was birthed, and from itself others would be created, with this sort of meaning. Yes, that was how it was and how it was supposed to be, but the cruel creations, not only created their own creations, but also creating an identity for their own creator, and left him to suffer the misunderstanding of understanding. In the dream that was his current understanding, (that which he just conjured in upon himself as having not supposed to), he was tall, but he could not understand how tall, or what exactly tall meant, as he had nothing to compare it to, and no reference from which to understand it. Salavar simply knew from somewhere deep within the made up being he was. In addition to this he was in the shape of the creation’s creations called “Pagin”, skinny, light colored strong, and sleek. All this, and yet his head, and the made-up soul, from which these thoughts and understanding came were that of the creation’s creation’s creation called dog, which was, I woke up breathing heavy. The dream I had was perplexing. It made my head hurt in ways I couldn’t explain and made me fear the universe in all its complexities, for all it’s complexities. I thought I had grown out of these dreams. It had been a long time since I woke up crying for my parents, after dreaming about how human society/sentience is possible. That had been when I was a child, and now I was living on my own. I swung my legs over the side of my hammock and flicked on the light. After rubbing the sleepiness, and anxiety out of my face I got up and poured my morning coffee. The house was small compared to the mansion I grew up in, but large for one person. The whole building was about 400,000 square parcel units, but that included the 14 dog homes. Dog, the thought reminded me of my dream, which I tried to shake out of my head. Had I ever remembered this much of a dream for this long? Why had I been thinking about the square unital size of my house, when I had work to do. The booker was coming at three tics to the forty second moon, and it was currently…. What time was it? Where was my ticker? I checked under the hammock, and sure enough it was there. How does it always end up down here? I thought, but it didn’t matter because it was ten tics till, leaving me with 7. Three Tics till! Who in their dogs schedules something for three tics till, and EM at that? I clicked on my dog cloak and climbed up the shaft into the main house. Sladblock Booker, that’s who, I answered myself in my ever so facetious inner voice, “Bookieeee”, I said flicking my cloak tail in greeting as I saw that he was already in my stage. “You know I hate when you call me that, you dog’s sleek, feg”, he retorted scowling more than ever” Bookers, are such terrible Pagins I wanted to say but what came out of my mouth was “By

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rileywrites · 4 years

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Love ur Clay & Violet series & since prompts r open was hoping you'd consider this request: Nile plane goes missing in unfamiliar territory while on a mission & Bookers Not taking the news too well as he & the family search for her. Then after a few months Copley sends them a location he mysteriously got send & they go guns drawn on high alert & like the bamf Nile is she's like "One would think ur Not happy to see me?" & they have a happy reunion!

Thank you for your prompt! You can read the answer on Ao3 here: “The Search”

...

"Booker, you need to sleep. You've been staring at that satellite feed for hours."

Booker shrugs Joe's hand off of his shoulder.

"This is a new source. I have more water to cover," Booker says, marking a potential point of interest. "I can't stop now."

"Book," Andy says quietly. "You're no good to her if you're so tired you can't see."

"I can't stop." Booker looks up at Andy with itchy, tired eyes. "Please, don't make me stop."

It's hard to see the pity and exhaustion in Andy's face. It's even harder to see the understanding and resignation.

"Okay. Okay, Book." Andy sighs. "Try and rest at some point."

Nile's plane went down three weeks ago. He can't stop looking now.

Hours later, Booker is so tired he can't keep his head up, his eyes burning from how long he's been staring at a computer. He ends up asleep on the laptop, pen pressing into his cheek.

...

Copley turns up on the doorstep of the Oslo house unannounced, two months after Nile's plane goes down.

"You bring news, I assume?" Andy asks, sitting up from her stretch on the living room floor.

"They found pieces of the plane," Copley says bluntly.

"Why do you not sound more pleased?" Nicky asks.

Booker doesn't have to ask.

"They only found evidence of the pilot and co-pilot in the wreckage," Copley says, pulling up the report. "No sign of Nile."

"Send me the coordinates. I can narrow my search further, pull more detailed data from a smaller field." Booker pulls up his map of the projected flight path and narrows the range. "If she isn't in the wreckage, she isn't trapped. She must have gotten to land."

No one else is saying anything. Booker can't stop talking, can't stop searching, can't stop to think about what happens next if Nile is trapped on the floor of the Pacific Ocean.

He has to keep looking, or he's going to fall apart.

"Thank you, Copley," Joe says finally. "We appreciate the update."

"I will keep looking through my channels. I know Booker will keep looking as well." Copley's smile is tight. "Maybe we will be able to put boots on the ground at some point."

"You are welcome to the spa- to Nile's room," Nicky suggests.

If Booker grinds his teeth any harder, he'll have to grow new ones.

It's not a fucking spare room. Nile is somewhere in the goddamn Pacific right now, but it's still her space.

"You know he doesn't mean anything by it," Andy says later. "Force of habit. We're searching too, you know. We miss her too."

"I know."

...

Booker doesn't know why he keeps paying for Nile's last burner phone. Doesn't know why he pings it daily like the phone isn't waterlogged on the bottom of the ocean. Doesn't know why he keeps fucking calling.

"You know what to do at the beep."

Booker hangs up. Dials again.

"You know what to do at the beep."

Again.

"You know what to do at the beep."

It's short, cheesy. It's one of the few audio clips they have of her. The downside of living in the shadows is lack of proof you exist.

Booker has a few Polaroids from their last family trip to the beach. Andy is covered in Zinc, and Quyhn's cover up is around both of them. Joe and Nicky look obnoxiously Eurotrash in their speedos. Nile looks so goddamn happy in her gigantic sunhat.

"You know what to do at the beep."

Booker cracks. To be honest, he's amazed that he made it three months without drinking himself into a coma.

He wakes to Joe gently wiping his face with a washcloth.

"Shh, habibi, you're okay."

"What if she’s gone, Joe? What if she’s gone and I never told her?"

It’s Quyhn who answers him, “She loves you. I know you two haven’t talked about it, but she loves you. Don’t you dare give up on her.”

"I won't," Booker promises. "I'll find her. Whatever it takes."

"Besides," Andy says from the doorway, voice rough. "She's too new. She's out there, somewhere."

“We don’t know how any of this works, not really,” he can’t look any of them in the eye, makes no attempt to hide the tears streaming down his cheeks.

Joe dabs at his face, and Nicky brings him water.

"Some things you just feel," Andy says firmly. "She's out there. I know it."

...

Booker has been staring at satellite footage of tiny islands in the Pacific for what feels like years when Copley comes bursting in.

They both set up shop on Java when the search for Nile entered its seventh week.

"I think I found her," Copley spits out, waving a piece of paper. "That, or someone else in trouble. Either way, time to pack and call Andy."

Booker takes the paper. Scribbled on it are a set of coordinates and a mess of Morse code.

"SOS 1812? That's really what came in?"

"The signal is bad, and it was brief, but they sent it three or four times before the signal cut out. It sounded like a makeshift device." James takes the paper and tosses Booker his go-bag. "Get in the goddamn car."

When they get to the closest airport to the microscopic island the signal came from, the rest of the team is waiting near the helicopter.

"I told you," Quyhn says with a smug smile.

Booker can't find it in himself to begrudge her the gloating, not when they have their best lead in three months in front of them.

Not when Nile might be less than an hour away.

...

They exit the helicopter on high alert, guns drawn in case the uninhabited island is actually more settled than they realized.

Booker has stared at the few images he could find for hours now. This little crescent-moon slip of land is in a fucking satellite blind spot.

The remnants of what might have been a driftwood SOS are the first sign that someone is here. It also shows that there's been a storm recently.

"There's a small crater lake that probably has fresh water," Booker says, scanning the beach. "If someone is here, they would find it."

"We'll head there first, then." Andy takes one look at him and steps back. "Lead the way."

The hike is tense, guns pointed in every possible direction with every step.

There's some sort of perimeter around the clearing, purposefully placed branches driven into the earth.

All Booker can think is "Please be Nile, please be Nile, please."

There's a shelter against the rock face, a campfire burning in a circle of stones.

"Show yourself," Booker orders, heart in his throat.

"It's about fucking time you got here."

Booker almost passes out when Nile emerges from a cave beyond the lean-to. She's thin, the kind of emaciation that comes with starving to death.

"What? Y'all don't look happy to see me."

A sob rips out of Booker's throat, and his brain shuts down. When he blinks, he has his arms around a too-frail Nile, holding her so tight she might break.

Nile crumples into his embrace. She cries until she can't cry anymore.

"I'm sorry," Booker says over and over again. "I'm sorry we took so long. I'm sorry I couldn't find you faster. I'm so fucking sorry, Nile."

"Shut up and hold me," Nile orders.

Booker can do that.

...

Booker can't relax, not until Nile looks less like death.

All the hours he put into looking for her are now spent taking care of her.

Even for an immortal, repeatedly drowning, dying of dehydration, and starving will lead to complications.

Nile wakes screaming more often than not, so Booker takes up vigil outside her door.

Nile has food trauma, so Booker helps her regulate her intake. He also brings back brownies from the bakery she likes whenever he goes out.

When Nicky gives her the all-clear, Booker is the one who helps her train.

"Stop pulling your fucking punches, Book." Nile runs a hand over her buzzed head. "Try and fucking hit me like you mean it."

Booker can't help it. He's trying not to baby her, but he can't bring himself to fight full-out.

"Just fucking fight me!" Nile shoves his shoulders, and Booker barely manages to not fall on his ass. "I'm fine, Booker. I'm fucking fine, just fucking spar with me!

Booker holds his ground until Nile sweeps his ankle out from under him and drops him to the mat. She pins him with her knee between his thighs and her hands on his wrists.

Booker stops breathing.

"Why won't you hit me?" Nile squeezes his wrists.

"I love you too much to hurt you," Booker says before he registers the thought.

Nile's fond exasperation is replaced with even fonder affection.

"You're an idiot." She kisses him, and Booker has never been happier. "I love you, too."

Booker tests her hold on him, shivering when he can't comfortably move.

"I thought I lost you without telling you," Booker admits. "I thought -"

"I'm right here, Book." Nile kisses him again. "I'm not going anywhere anytime soon."

"No more solo missions." Booker leans up as much as he can for another kiss.

"Agreed."

#askedandanswered #topstory21 #rileywrites #book of nile #RileyWrites Fanfiction #my work #the old guard #tog fanfiction

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