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astyle-alex · 3 years

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[FanFic] Start with Why | the Old Guard

This chapter just went live on Ao3, so I’m putting it up here too! I’ll still be posting the BatFam Kid!Fic, too, but that chapter will go up tomorrow!

Start With Why (Part 4 / 6)

Fandom: the Old Guard Pairings: Background Nicky x Joe Characters / Focus: OT5 + Copley, reacting to Booker's betrayal Rating: Gen Audiences Warnings: None (well, language, because the team are all quite colorful) Total Word Count: 10,288 Chapter Word Count: 1,535

Summary:

The thing about betrayal is that it hurts. Sometimes it hurts too much to see the broader situation clearly. But after Booker's betrayal, the team has to look at themselves and see how every one of them is culpable. Booker may have done the deed, but his measly 200 years makes him a child to the others, especially Andy, and like babysitters are to blame when their charge sets the curtains on fire, the Family needs to ask themselves WHY and accept the honest answers. Why Copley, Why Merrick, and Why something made Booker believe that his choice was the right one for his Family...

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Part IV :: Joe

Booker betrayed him.

His brother betrayed them.

Joe’s own blood-oath brother of Fate betrayed them all like none of it mattered and he put Joe’s own sweet soul under the knife of callous torment, because he was too jealous and too weak and too short-sighted to know better.

Because he was too young to know better.

Nicky and Andy and Nile have all somehow resolved that they can forgive him— either they have already or know that they will, soon enough, come to it in time.

Joe cannot begin to fathom it.

Andy says Booker was a teenager trying to commit suicide and accidentally burning down the house, that he failed to see any of the realest consequences in his actions.

Nile says he’d simply found something that helped him see a sort of goodness he could finally believe in; says he met Copley, found a kindred spirit who believed in him, and wanted to do something good that actually gave him back some tangible reward— selfish bastard.

Even Nicky, Joe's own dear Nicolò, has fallen for the forger’s petty peddling.

Nicky believes him, believes that his reasons for nearly destroying everything good about Yusuf’s whole world were good enough reasons to make him truly think it could be worth it.

Joe will not forgive him, not ever. He has resolved to it, resolved to carry the hatred that the others cannot bear to shoulder. He will carry all of it for them, hate Booker for them. So, they can let the weight that comes from hating him so thoroughly rest outside their ardent souls.

For a moment, Joe isn’t sure he will survive it.

Hating Booker is like hating his own foot, like hating the run of charcoal his own fingers managed to get into his watering eye.

Booker is Family, Booker is his brother.

For a moment, Joe is very sure he will not survive this.

But then he looks at Nicky, his unfailingly kind and sweet beloved, his so-forgiving Nicolò, and hears the echoes of his dying screams on that bitch Kozak’s table… He sees shadows of Nicky’s brains being stepped in by the boot of that degenerate Keane after he’d shot Nicky in the head… And Joe feels such a blindingly hot fury at the prospect of letting anyone connected to that horror dare to live that he wants to find a way to kill Booker dead himself.

And yet, he’d hate to give the bastard what he wants.

Yusuf cannot talk to Booker, cannot stomach even thinking about it.

When he pushes up from the table, he doesn’t face the window when he storms away— instead, he goes outside the other way, tromping down onto the old cobbles that he’d been around to watch be laid. Most of them have been replaced since then.

Nicky appears beside him, eventually, as he finds one of the very few original stones left.

The love of Yusuf’s life doesn’t say anything, doesn’t touch him, doesn’t do anything but exist and be there and Joe already feels better for it— feels slightly more himself.

Which breeds a guilt like no other.

Nicky is here, but if were up to Booker, he wouldn’t be.

Nicky being here shouldn’t be what lets Joe not hate Booker for almost taking him away.

“That traitor’s head should be cut off,” Joe announces with a violent hand gesture that probably hasn’t been genuinely rude in a few hundred years. “Repeatedly, until it sticks.”

Nicky gives a slow blink that Joe finds inconsolably unreadable.

“I would’ve cut my own arm off, even if I knew it would not grow back, before I let a stranger say a bad word of him,” Joe wails. “I would have died, for good, to save him. I would have let myself leave you.”

Nicky does not say anything, he simply lets his sad eyes overflow with sympathy and understanding for how much just existing in this nightmare hurts.

“I hate him, Nicky,” Joe says, at a loss for words, a true rarity for him in his thousand years of life. “I hate him, and I hate that I hate him, but I hate the idea of not hating him even more than I hate this feeling.”

“You cannot hate him anymore than he hates himself,” Nicky states, and Joe feels like he’s been wrapped in a hug he didn’t know he needed, though Nicky’s hands are still in his pockets and he’s standing nigh on three full meters yet away.

Nicky will forgive him for hating Booker, Joe knows that.

He might not approve of the vitriol Joe bears their brother, certainly disapproves of the claim that any of that hatred is on Nicky's behalf, but Nicky will forgive him for it.

It makes Joe hate Booker even more.

“Your God is the vengeful one,” Joe accuses suddenly, hating himself even as the words fall from his lips. “Allah would never seek to add more suffering to this world, but your god should have filled you with His righteous fury.”

It was supposed to be an accusation, but Joe regrets it too much before he even speaks it to have managed to make the words come out with any barbs.

Instead it’s made a few tears squeeze out from the corners of his eyes.

“There is no righteousness in fury,” Nicky says, pulling the last dregs of wind from Joe’s sails with the simple and beautiful eloquence of the Divine.

Joe trembles, hands in fists, wishing he had Booker’s nose to break instead of just his own poor heart as Nicolò meets his gaze, unwavering.

“You and I have grown passed the banalities of organized religion, poorly built by broken men,” Nicky states eventually. “We fall back on scripture only when the doubt is fierce enough to quench the fire of our souls, but our souls are not like charcoal. We are not done burning once our fire has been made damp. The spark will reignite again, eventually, and we have our sure salvation in that we are blessed with time enough secured to wait until it does.”

“He killed Andy,” Yusuf wails, the only ember of his pain left burning.

At this, Nicky hardens— leans a fraction of an inch away.

To Yusuf, that fraction feels like miles and eternities.

“No, Yusuf. He did not,” Nicky states surely. “He shot her, fully expecting that she’d heal. Her time is her time, and it is not Booker’s Fate to bring her to it. Already, even having shot her, he did not stumble upon her time inadvertently. Even unaware that she could not heal, he did not introduce her to her Ferryman. All he tried to do was slow her down a little— In hope that he could somehow convince her if he explained.”

It’s a revelation to Joe, a reframing of the situation that actually matters.

It’s the difference between watching a sunrise through a window and seeing the full glory of it on the endless horizon of a jewel-toned desert.

Booker declared that he’d killed Andy.

He’d directly incited the wrath he believed he was due.

And Joe had given him his full fury for it.

Shame floods him, completely enough to snuff out the fury and turn it purely to despair.

“He still was willing to make me sacrifice you for his own pathetic reasons,” Joe says, feeling hollowed out and raw in a way he cannot fathom how to deal with. Just as he cannot fathom how the others have a depth of soul that can forgive such a heinous betrayal as Booker’s.

“I cannot forgive him,” Joe announces, “I cannot believe I will forgive him. Ever.”

“I’ll believe it for you,” Nicky supplies. “I’ll remind you who you are right now is not always all that you can be, and I will love every version of you I meet between this version and the one I know will come eventually— the one who will forgive his brother.”

Yusuf crumbles. His Nicolò still does not embrace him, but his soft smile props Joe up as steady as any arm might do.

“I hate him, Nicky,” Yusuf says, shuddering as he exorcises the vile sentiment from his soul. His voice is hardly strong enough to call a whimper. “I hate him more than I have ever hated anything, than I have ever hated you. I cannot breathe, I hate him so.”

“This will not kill you,” Nicky declares, “Your death is mine.”

It’s an old promise between them, sometimes an oath of self-righteous possession, from they each believed it was their Fate to kill the other, and sometimes it's a promise of a deep despair at the potential of the Veil dividing them.

Today, it makes Joe feel invincible— something he’d forgotten that he was.

He gives Nicky his own weak smile.

“My death is yours,” he says. Yusuf will never leave Nicky unless Nicky lets him go, Allah could not mean for them to be apart unless Nicky could truly bear it. And vice versa.

“As yours is mine,” Joe finishes.

Nicky offers Joe his hand and, together, they go back inside.

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NEXT TIME: It’s NILE’s turn to try to find some sense in this chaos!

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#the old guard #Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolo di Genova #nicky x joe #yusuf x nicolo #nicolo di genova #Booker #sebastian le livre #Andromache of Scythia #james copley #nile freeman

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