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normal-thoughts-official · 1 year

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It's like destiny

When Quỳnh comes back, she's not nearly as angry as Andy wants her to be

“Take it,” is the first thing Andromache tells her when they reunite. “It was always yours.”

Quỳnh stares at what Andromache has just placed in her palm.

A dagger.

She’s sure she hasn’t seen it before.

“I don’t understand,” she says, her voice hesitant. Words still feel weird on her throat, even after over a year of practice - although, to be fair, Booker doesn’t make for a great conversationalist, and she wasn’t putting effort into making him one. And she supposes a year is nothing compared to five centuries.

Still, even the weirdness of making sounds that aren’t screams, of having words in her thoughts instead of just raw panic, pales in comparison to the weirdness of looking at Andromache and not knowing what she is thinking. She is barely recognizable - not because of the shorter, darker hair, or the weird clothes, or even the threats of wrinkles around her eyes - but because of the way she holds herself.

Andromache was stronger than iron. Stronger than 500 years under the sea. When Quỳnh was drowning and dying, it was Andromache that gave her strength, even then.

Now, she looks exhausted. An emptiness deep in her eyes, behind the bravado of resolve that Andromache projects towards her. Quỳnh knows that the resolve is real; but the emptiness is even more so. It’s bottomless, endless, constricting.

It feels like staring at a dead woman.

This look can’t - can’t - be on Andromache. It’s impossible.

It’s impossible, she remembers Andromache saying, all that time ago, as her hands got soaked in Lykon’s blood.

“This dagger wasn’t mine,” she says, instead of any of the things going through her mind. She doesn’t see how Andromache could have made that mistake. The way it shines, the material of the hilt - it looks very recently made, way more recent than anything Quỳnh could have owned before.

Andromache shakes her head, closing Quỳnh’s hand over the hilt and then pointing the tip to her heart. “I’m not talking about the dagger,” she says.

The floor clatters. A new emptiness forms in her hand.

“What?”

Andromache just keeps staring at her, those empty, resolute eyes drowning in pain so deep, Quỳnh doesn’t think she’d have known it if she hadn’t spent so long staring at the bottomless despair of the ocean. “I want it to be you,” she says. “It already belongs to you; it's only fair that you take it.”

Quỳnh just stares, her hands shaking, still positioned as if the dagger was in her hands. “You are mortal now,” she affirms. There isn’t a hint of a question on her tone. She knows, has known since she first laid eyes on her.

She’s going to kill Booker for not telling her.

Andromache nods. “Yes,” she says. No intonation. Uncaring like the fish that dodged the bubbles of Quỳnh’s screams.

She clenches her fists. She knew she’d forever resent the five hundred years where they could have been together and weren’t, but - to know they would have been the last... That she came back only to watch Andromache’s corpse finish dying…

Quỳnh takes a deep breath. It still exhilarates her, the air entering her lungs.

“I have no intention of taking your life,” she says, as clear as she can, even as she balls her hands into fists. If nothing else is certain in this weird new world - so bright and loud and full - this is. Even if Andromache had not been mortal, Quỳnh wouldn’t have wanted to hurt her. Her family was the one thing she didn’t see a reason to hate after it all - it was the lifeline she needed to keep going, despite the loss of the ocean clinging to every moment she spent awake, trying to regain her footing on the mercilessly solid ground.

“I gave up on you,” Andromache says. Her voice doesn’t break, because it never does, but the sorrow in it breaks something inside of Quỳnh, instead.

“I know,” she says. She had seen Andromache telling the new girl about it, in her dreams. Could still hear the pain and sorrow in her voice. It was the first time since Booker first showed up that she got to see Andromache talking about her own feelings. Quỳnh already knew how she felt, of course - or maybe she was projecting her own despair and helplessness into Andromache, she doesn’t know - and she had seen enough of their lives together to know that they weren’t focusing on finding her.

She also knows what Booker told her, later. The “shell companies” he created, the weird iron balloons that went underwater in search of her. The time Andromache - Andy, he calls her, but Quỳnh is not willing to accept how much she’s changed, not yet - stole one during World War I and traveled through the sea for months by herself, dying of dehydration and hunger the whole time. The way she came back when the underwater boat finally collapsed and cried for days, saying she couldn’t do it anymore.

The stories from even before that, that Booker had gotten out of Yusuf and Nicolò in her dreams. How they would take boats everywhere around that godforsaken island, tie ropes to their waists, and swim and drown again and again as they desperately tried to find her in the hopelessly dark ocean depths. How it went on for nearly a century, until one day the rope that was holding Yusuf gave out, and they lost him for over a year as the waves took him back all the way to Spain. How Andromache decided she couldn’t do that again - couldn’t risk losing them all on top of losing Quỳnh, too. Couldn’t stand to see Nicolò become the same shell of a person that she had.

Quỳnh is not so selfless that she is happy they gave up, but she's also not so foolish to think it would have made a difference. It was the right call; she took the comfort she could in the fact that none of them liked it.

“I’m here now,” is all she says.

Andromache’s eyes water. “You are,” she whispers. Her voice has never been this quiet. Even in their moments of intimacy by the fire, Andromache’s whispers were strong with conviction. Now, they just sound pained. “I think… God, I can’t believe Nicky is swaying me with this destiny crap,” she huffs, something that seems like it’s trying to be a laugh. “But I think this is why I became mortal now. For your return,” she says, her eyes impossibly soft, and that, finally, is a look Quỳnh recognizes. It makes her ache, something like longing that doesn’t make sense, because Andromache is right there, finally, after all this time.

She’s supposed to be right there.

Quỳnh shakes her head. “No. Fuck that destiny,” she snarls, the strength of it surprising even herself. “I should have had longer with you. I shouldn’t come back only to lose you so soon.”

Andromache would seem amused, if it weren’t for the disgust in her eyes. It almost erases the emptiness. “Lose me? I was the one who left you.”

“You didn’t leave me.”

“I did.”

Quỳnh sighs. “You weren’t the one who did this to me, Andromache. It doesn’t matter, now.”

For a second, Andromache does nothing but stare. “I don’t understand,” she eventually admits, running a hand over her hair. “Booker and Nile, they always said you were so- so furious,” she says, her voice pained. “Like you were ready to burn the world down.”

“Because I was drowning in the ocean!” Quỳnh says, and it makes Andromache wince, but in that moment, she can’t bring herself to care. The rage is still alive and swirling inside her, maybe even more than before, because she’s lost five hundred years and Andromache’s time is coming, and she looks like she’s been broken the whole time Quỳnh was away, and Quỳnh can’t even kill the bastards that did this to them. “Because I did nothing but try to help people, and I earned centuries of torture for it. Of course I was furious! I am furious! I would burn the whole world down if it made a fucking difference!”

“Then kill me!” Andromache spats, gesturing at her chest with her own hands. “Kill me! I left you. I left you, Quỳnh! I gave up, I stopped searching, I moved on while you were tortured!”

“No, you didn’t,” Quỳnh says, voice soft. The depths of the pain in her eyes tell Quỳnh that very well, so well she doesn’t even need the stories from Booker and the visions in her dreams to know it.

“Yes, I did!” Andromache is yelling now, and she grabs the dagger from the floor, thrusting it into Quỳnh’s hands, her hands bleeding because she is holding it by the blade, her grip strong enough that Quỳnh finds herself worrying more about the dagger’s integrity than Andromache’s hand. “I gave up! I moved on! I got new names and I traveled around the world and I took missions and I didn’t even let myself talk about you! For half a millenia, I tried to act like it never happened! Be angry, Quỳnh! Be furious! Kill me!”

“I’m not going to kill you, Andromache!”

“Please,” she says, pulling her bloody dagger by the blade still until the tip is touching the tender, fragile skin over her heart. “Please, Quỳnh. I kept living before, because you were gone and I couldn’t rest, but now you’re back, you’re back, so I can go-”

“And what about me, Andromache?” Quỳnh yells, the scream cutting through her throat in rage, rage that burns like the water that was filling her lungs, and for a moment she loses herself, doing nothing but screaming desperately into Andromache’s face. “What about me? You’re telling me you had to keep living the whole time that we were apart, but you can’t live now that we’re together? You can’t live with me? You can’t live for me? I need you, Andromache!” Her name tears itself off Quỳnh’s throat, burning and scratching her from the inside, as if trying to turn her inside out, despite the awful familiarity of screaming it at the top of her lungs. “Everything is so different, and I dream that I’m still drowning every night, and I don’t know anyone or anything except for you! It’s always been you. I don’t want you to die for me,” she throws the dagger to the side, uncaring of Andromache’s hand, and grabs fistfuls of her clothing, pulling her down to look at her. “I don’t fucking want you to die, Andromache! Why the hell would I want you to die? How dare you want to die, when I’ve been needing you for five hundred years?”

She suddenly lets go of Andromache’s clothing, and Andromache falls to her knees. Andromache never lets himself fall, much less to her knees, and it makes hatred burn anew inside of Quỳnh.

“Get the fuck up!” She spats, kicking at the defeat that had lodged itself in the set of Andromache’s shoulders, hard enough to send anyone else reeling, but Andromache just looks at her. “Don’t you dare do this to me, Andromache! Do you hear me? I need you. If you feel that bad about leaving, then stay! Don’t you dare try to leave me again!”

She feels raw, now, her voice unused to being heard and throat burning with the pain of every word. She’s exhausted, has been for five hundred years, and it makes her voice drop back into hoarseness, every word dragging out of her throat like she had crawled through that beach, dying of thirst and hunger every few steps.

“I’m sorry,” Andromache says, and her eyes are wet.

Quỳnh looks down at her, and she knows her eyes must be burning. “I have no use for your guilt,” she says, an echo of words she knows Andromache knows well - they both heard it in their dreams, after all. She never thought she’d be using them against Andromache - Andromache, who didn’t know regret, only certainty. “I don’t want your pain. I want your help.”

Andromache nods. “Anything you need,” she says.

“Good,” Quỳnh agrees, extending her hand. “Now get up.”

--------------

Her reunion with Yusuf and Nicolò is similarly guilt-ridden, but fortunately they don’t ask her to kill them. If she heard that shit again, she might actually do it, knowing that to them it wouldn’t stick.

She is also introduced to the new girl, Nile. Quỳnh already knew about her, of course, but to meet her and have it confirmed… “Two new immortals,” she marvels. “It used to take millenia for a new one to show up.”

She doesn’t know why that, of all things, is what makes the amount of time she’s lost hit her with enough force to bring a lesser woman to her knees. Not the fire that can be ignited with the flick of a switch, or the impossibly bright colors, or the moving paintings plastered to buildings that look like they can touch the sky. Just her family, so different from before.

An Andromache that accepts defeat, a Yusuf that goes by a name that has nothing to do with his own, a Nicolò that seems so goddamn uncertain around her, and two new siblings she never had the chance to meet.

“Everything seems to happen a lot faster, these days,” Andromache says, taking a sip of vodka, and of course vodka of all things has survived all these years Quỳnh was away. “But maybe I’m just fucking old.”

“Nah, I feel it too,” Nile says. They all stare at her.

“You are twenty-seven years old,” Nicolò points out.

She shrugs. “And a lot of shit happened in that time.”

Quỳnh supposes she can’t argue with that.

--------------

Andromache teaches her everything.

Relentlessly, one lesson right after the other, jabs and weapons and technology and languages and even geography all mixed at the same time.

Had Quỳnh not known her so well, she would have thought that this is entirely because Andromache is desperate to keep her promise, desperate to help her as much as she can before her time runs out. But she knows Andromache better than she knows herself, so she knows that it’s that and the fact that it’s just how Andromache is. She doesn’t know how to teach without attacking, dumping all the information on her pupils and leaving them to find their way out. It’s why the boys never rose against her, and why Nile always did.

Quỳnh doesn’t mind it. The focused, wordy structure of her thoughts keeps her grounded, the avalanche of information keeping her thoughts from straying too much to the ocean. The closer the future gets to her grasp, the sooner she can leave the past behind.

She learns about electricity and guns and cars and toasters, about the origins of their new names, about cellphones and stoves and planes, and Quỳnh is glad she will never have to get on a boat again. She thinks she’d like to try and fly one, which earns her shocked faces from Andromache, Yusuf and Nicolò. Apparently, they had all been terrified out of their minds when they first heard of the invention. Cowards.

She learns all the ways the world has changed and all the ways it has stayed the same, about how they don’t have to pretend to be married to be allowed to travel anymore and how a good part of humanity backpedaled on the whole “making their relationships a crime” thing, but they would still get stares and nasty comments and occasionally be killed for it. How technology made their work so much easier, and hiding themselves so much harder, and more necessary than- well, not ever, but very necessary.

She learns about this new Andromache, with her deep sadness and her air of defeat, but also an emptiness that seems to be slowly filled every day. She learns about her new vices and mannerisms that she picked from Booker and even Nile. She learns the way English sounds on her tongue now, a part of her glad that, at least, the sounds of the language have strayed a bit from the ones that sentenced her to 500 years of torture. She learns about the weird pills Nile makes Andromache take, how she can use her guns just as well as she had used swords and crossbows, and a few stories of how she filled her time when Quỳnh was away. She learns about the fragility that settles under her skin, what her whispers sound like when they’re broken as she repeats reassurances to Quỳnh after a nightmare, how her hand feels under Quỳnh’s as Quỳnh wraps bandages around the cut that she made down to the bone. How her forehead feels against Quỳnh’s, and how her eyes fill with tears whenever Quỳnh brings them together. The way her breath still stutters, disbelieving, pained, when they touch.

Quỳnh hates that time has stolen that from them, too - the natural way they fit together and touched, free of guilt or pretenses. Andromache can’t bring herself to do more than those touches, so intense and yet so still. And Quỳnh respects that, because they both need time - but they don’t have that, not anymore, and Quỳnh wants to rage and scream, because there is so much more of Andromache that she hopes she could learn and relearn, like what her touch feels like when it isn’t so intricately laced with pain it feels like the very contact of their skin burns.

She can only hope their time is enough for that.

--------------

She learns about the new Quỳnh, too.

Learns that she is careless in battle. That she yells a lot. That she has a tendency to lose herself, wake up from a non-existent dream to find out she was staring into space. That she is quick to anger, but even quicker to burn out from it. She is exhausted of being angry. She is exhausted. And anger feels too much like being back there.

She learns that the new Quỳnh needs a lot of touch, of grounding, of reassurance that the world around her is solid. That at the same time, she can’t stand to feel trapped and might panic from the way a hug envelops her front. That she hates the bright lights and constant information of the world, but she loves the loud noises of this new century music Nile likes, how it fills every silence and ends every emptiness. That she can spend hours on end staring into water, but can never bring herself to swim.

That she loves the old Andromache in her memories, and hates her, because she doesn’t understand. That she loves the new Andromache in her reality, and hates her, because she does understand. She is also broken, also empty, and they can find comfort in the mirrors of each other, but at the same time - she needs her strength, needs normalcy, needs Andromache.

She is a walking contradiction, and she doesn’t know what to do with it.

--------------

One day, it’s just the two of them, sitting by the fire, which is ridiculous because they have electricity now, and even a fireplace in their safehouse. But sitting by the fire out in the open feels familiar and right between them, so they went to the garden instead, where they can pretend things are still simple and in their respective places. Just her and Andromache, until the end.

She ignores the way the “end” feels like a real threat, now. She is pretending, after all.

They are laughing, and the sound was once even more foreign than words, but she finds that, with Andromache, it comes easier.

She thinks of herself, smiling at the prospect of being burned alive with Andromache by her side. So much has changed, but every day she finds new things that haven’t.

“I still want it to be you,” Andromache says, making Quỳnh notice the sudden shift in mood brought by her introspective silence.

“Hm?” she asks, trying to remember what they were talking about.

“When my time comes,” Andromache explains. “I want it to be you.”

Rage builds inside of Quỳnh again. That happens so easily, these days. “You-”

Andromache shakes her head. “No, not like that.” She says, turning to look at Quỳnh, her eyes with that softness that Quỳnh dreamed of for five hundred years, and way before that as well. “I will be with you for as long as you let me,” as time lets you, she wants to correct, because what could Quỳnh want but eternity with Andromache? Even though there were also Yusuf and Nicolò, there was no one she knew better than Andromache. Nothing that could anchor her to reality as well. “But when my time comes… I want my life to be in your hands.”

Quỳnh stares at her. “You have a very weird notion of romance.”

Andromache laughs, bumping their shoulders in mild retaliation. A happy touch. Quỳnh will treasure it.

--------------

No sooner can Quỳnh say that she is able to walk the streets without making a fool of herself does she ask about finding new jobs.

They all stare at her, bowls of “cereal” on their hands.

“We have money,” Yusuf points out.

“I know,” Quỳnh replies, biting into her pear. She still doesn’t like the weird new food that comes from boxes. It’s goddamn unnatural. She maintains eye contact with him as she bites, which she has learned Nile finds “vaguely threatening,” so she does it as much as possible. She likes to be a threat, even if she wouldn’t actually use it against her family.

“I don’t know if that’s a good-”

“Look,” Quỳnh interjects, because Nicolò’s soft voice gets on her nerves when they’re talking about her, “I know that you’d all be happy to have me sit here and talk about how fucked up I feel all day,” she says, and Nicolò winces, although as usual, it is contained. She doesn’t feel bad about it. “But I’m not built for sitting still, and I am still angry as hell. If I can use that to kill some human traffickers instead of snapping at you guys whenever we discuss my decisions, I think that’s a win for anyone, don’t you?”

“Well-” Yusuf begins, but she doesn't allow him. She's the type to overwhelm her adversaries, too.

“Besides, sitting idle rehashing your feelings hasn’t worked well for you all,” she says, and all of them but Nile wince this time, and maybe she does feel a little bad, but this is a fight, and in a fight, she strikes. “I doubt it’d do anything to me other than make me relive being stuck in that goddamn box. I want to feel freedom. To go around the world. Make myself useful. Kill some motherfuckers. I might not be able to get revenge for what happened to me, but I can at least stop something similar from happening to others. I need purpose, you guys, or I’ll go even more insane than I already am.”

There’s a beat of silence. Then, Nile says, “you’re actually pretty well adjusted, all things considered.”

She grins at her, and already, it feels natural. “Well?” she asks, waiting for someone else to try and talk her out of it.

“Fine,” Andromache says, arms crossed. “But I’m going with you.”

Quỳnh didn’t expect any different. She doesn’t like it when people treat her like it’s fragile, so she’s not going to do the same to Andromache.

Besides, Andromache is good. Mortality won’t change that. Even before the iron maiden, Quỳnh doesn’t remember the last time she saw Andromache die. “Wouldn’t have had it any other way,” she says, smiling.

--------------

Quỳnh rages.

She strikes and yells and charges, leaving behind her crossbow in favor of daggers and hand-to-hand combat, leaving no kills for others to finish off. Sometimes she’ll take them all herself. She gets slashed at, and shot, and dismembered, but she doesn’t care. As long as the pain is sharp and well out of her lungs, she welcomes it.

Andromache is the only one who can keep up. She is by her side, always, and Quỳnh takes bullets for her, grins with her through the blood on her lips as Andromache helps her break through the enemies, shoving people in Quỳnh’s face so she can finish them off.

She always knows just what Quỳnh needs.

--------------

Quỳnh despairs, too.

Whenever there are victims their enemies had been keeping, Quỳnh is the first to find them. She drops to her knees as she frees them - in cages, they’re always in fucking cages - and letting her own jumbled nonsense mix up with theirs, adding to the confusing mess, which she knows just makes things worse, but she can’t help it, she needs them to be free and okay, and what the fuck is wrong with humanity, how can this keep happening so many times, why is it always girls, always girls who look like her and are from places like her old home, and they need to get out of there, out of there, out of there, now-

She ends up crying in Andromache’s shoulder as she soothes her, and Nile and Yusuf take over handling the victims and getting them to safety.

Every time.

--------------

Sometimes, Andromache is hit. It’s not often - that woman can block bullets with a goddamn axe, after all - but it happens. Her blood flows through her clothes, liquid and crimson, and she grunts in pain, sometimes letting herself fall, but not for long.

Quỳnh rages when that happens, too.

It’s a matter of seconds before whoever unlucky bastard that managed to get the drop on them is gone, and just a few more before the room is cleared.

Then, she despairs as well.

But not for long. Andromache is fine. She’s always fine.

She’ll continue to be fine. She has to. Quỳnh needs her to.

--------------

When it finally happens, it's because of Quỳnh's mistake.

She knew what a grenade was - of course she did. Andromache had been thorough, teaching her about every type of weapon that had been created since Quỳnh was gone. But there had been so many of them, not to mention all the other things she had to know about, and Quỳnh hadn't been up against one before, so when one of them falls at her feet, her first thought is, that's a weird rock.

It’s only a fraction of a second before she realizes, grabs it, and hurls it to the other side; but it’s a fraction of a second too late. When it explodes, it’s still close enough to hit her.

And if it’s close enough to hit her, it’s close enough to hit Andromache.

--------------

When she awakes with a gasp, her first thought is this is not the ocean. The second is Andromache.

And the third and the fourth and the fifth and the ones after she had lost count as she desperately screamed and searched through the dust to find her, bones still reconnecting and flesh still pulling itself together as she crawled over her own remains.

She finds Andromache lying on the floor.

Breathing.

But barely.

"No, no, no, no," Quỳnh hears herself say, distantly, as she assesses the damage. It’s a lot. Her arm is badly burnt, and some of the debris from the explosion has punctured her stomach. Quỳnh can see some of her guts coming out, and Andromache's breath is shallow and pained, and no, no, no, no.

She doesn’t even know where to press. There’s so much blood. "Fuck," she screams, hearing Andromache's gasp. "It's going to be okay, Andromache," she says, "I mean, medicine these days, right, I bet we can take you to a hospital and they'll just give you a pill and you'll be good as-"

Andromache grabs her hand, stopping her pointless grabbing. "It's time," she says.

"No," Quỳnh replies, tears in her eyes and anger in her voice. "No. No. It's too soon, it's only been a few years, you- you can't leave me, Andromache!" She has the sudden feeling that she won't survive this loss. If anything kept her afloat all this time, it was the love she has for her family. They wouldn't all be gone, but… Andromache and Quỳnh had been each other's before they were anyone else's. Andromache had known every side of her that had ever existed, from the start. She remembers parts of Quỳnh even she doesn’t. Their histories were one and the same, and this was the one part of her past that she wanted back.

"I'm sorry," Andromache says, and Quỳnh can see the truth of it in her eyes. "I'm sorry. I didn't want to leave you so soon."

"No, no, no," she continues, frantically trying to find something, to think of something-

Andromache makes a pained noise, and it cuts through the chaos in her mind. "Quỳnh," is all she says.

"No. No!!!" she yells, punching the floor with all her strength, the words a terrifying shrill even she is surprised by. "No, Andromache, I don't-"

"Please," she says, and Quỳnh wants to set fire to the world. "I still want it to be you."

"I-"

"Quỳnh. Please," she says, grabbing her by the hand, "I don't want some idiot with a grenade to be the one to send me out for good. My life is yours, only you can take it." She repeats, an echo of that first conversation, and Quỳnh still hates the words.

But…

She'd want the same. She can't give them the satisfaction, short lived as it will be.

Andromache and herself were united by love, but they were also united in violence. It was a part of who they were, of who they had become together, and it would still be, here in the end.

Quỳnh nods, and unsheathes her dagger. Andromache softens, breathing a sigh of relief. "I love you," she says.

"I love you too, Andromache," she says, and kisses her, her tears and blood falling onto their lips, and god, Quỳnh really does hate saltwater. It's the most painful kiss they've ever shared, and Quỳnh doesn't want it to end, doesn't want the agony to give way to numbness again even if she knows it's the merciful thing to do.

She kisses the love of her life until she runs out of breath, gasping like she hadn't since- since before. And she stares into her eyes, already looking so peaceful, so soft, as she stares at Quỳnh in wonder, like it's the best thing she's ever seen.

Quỳnh smiles at her, small and certain, and puts the knife through her heart.

--------------

She wails.

There’s no other word for it. She’s wailing, cradling Andromache’s bloody mess of a body in her arms like it makes a difference.

She doesn’t know if it’s the sadness or the rage that is ripping the screams out of her, but she supposes it doesn’t matter. Rage and sorrow have been the same thing for so long, she hardly sees a point in giving them different names. There’s no separating the two, no facing the unfairness and grief for what she's lost without also feeling the wrath for those who took it from her.

She is aware that her screams are too loud. That she'll give their location if she keeps this up, that they'll find her, take her again, begin to torment her all over again - but the scariest part is, she doesn't really care. Not at that moment.

"God damn it, Andromache!" She yells, her hands wet with blood, her body bathed in sorrow. She doesn't know if she's angrier at Andromache, herself, the bastard who threw the grenade, or Fate itself. All she knows is Andromache is gone, and everything stops making sense after that.

She was her tether to reality. The first person who had ever truly known Quỳnh; the only one who could bring her back from the torment of her own mind. The only one who enjoyed baklava quite that much, who fought that viciously and cared so fiercely, who smiled at herself as she stoked the fire and had Quỳnh laugh along before she even knew the story Andromache was remembering.

Gone.

"Andromache!" She hears herself yell, "you promised! You promised until the end, Andromache!"

Andromache lays, unresponsive.

Quỳnh lets out a painful, cutting scream as she pulls the dagger off her shattered heart, a mirror of Quỳnh's even in death. "You promised, Andromache!"

She holds her closer to her chest, letting her tears fall over the broken body of her love with abandon. Those tears belong to Andromache; she can take them in her rest. Doesn't she know that Quỳnh's life is hers, too?

She hears footsteps, too slow and careful and familiar to be anyone but her family. Yusuf and Nicolò. She feels the urge to drive them away, to keep Andromache to herself and her pain, but she knows that, like her, they haven't known a life without Andromache in too long a time.

"Quỳnh," she hears one of them say, and she presses Andromache closer to her chest. She can't be pulled away, not yet. She may be drowning, but she doesn't want to be rescued this time. It's simpler like this. Let it run through her, end her, change her. It's the only thing it can do.

"Quỳnh," the voice insists again.

"I'm not letting her go!" She screams to a random direction, and hopes Yusuf and Nicolò know that she will end them if they try to make her.

"Quỳnh, please," the voice insists again. "Look."

What is there to see?

“Quỳnh!” A yell, so unlike Nicolò, and that of all things makes her eyes snap open.

Andromache is still in her arms.

Her guts are still hanging from her body.

But-

Her arm is no longer burnt.

“What-” she says, in a language no one but her can ever understand again, except-

The wound is healing. Slowly, so goddamn slowly, it’s always so slow the first couple of times, and bigger wounds, too, and the skin that is reknitting itself is even reforming the scar she had from that first shot she took, and what the fuck-

“It’s impossible,” she says, a wonderful echo of the past, laced with beauty and hope.

No one replies, but she knows what they’re thinking - can feel the relief, and the anticipation, and she’s vaguely aware that the bastards who hit her should be getting away by now, but Andromache is in her arms, and she is healing.

She brushes her hair off her forehead, and presses a kiss to her temple, and says, “Andromache,” and Andromache gasps awake.

“Quỳnh,” is the first thing she says. Then, “what-” as she looks down at herself, finding her stomach- well, not intact, not yet, but certainly in a better condition.

“I don’t know,” Quỳnh replies, laughing, “I don’t care. Andromache…” She kisses her. There’s nothing else she could say.

Impossibly, Andromache smiles through it. Her hand tangles in Quỳnh’s hair, careful not to push or pull, just touch, and oh, so this is what it feels like, now.

“Quỳnh,” Andromache gasps, “Quỳnh.”

She kisses her again, and again, and again, stained by tears and blood, and she remembers what it’s like when sharpness and depth feel good, and right.

--------------

Once Andy is fully healed, and once Quỳnh has used the dagger with trembling hands to confirm that the recovered immortality is here to stay - nothing but a little nick on her hand, she doesn’t want to spill any more of Andromache’s blood - and screamed in glee, and rejoiced, and kissed her again, and again, and again, she allows Andromache to sit up long enough to hug Yusuf and Nicolò, too.

Quỳnh is still sitting behind her, hands over her shoulders. But she lets them have their turn.

“You’re back,” Yusuf says, tears falling openly, but steadily, his tone pure shock and wonder and Quỳnh is thankful to him for being such an open mirror of everyone’s feelings. “We missed you, boss,” he says, and Andromache laughs.

“It can’t have been more than a few minutes,” she says.

“We missed you,” Yusuf repeats, a sob, his head buried in her shoulder.

Nicolò stands behind him, hands behind his back, and Quỳnh knows it’s so they don’t see them twitching with the need to touch Andromache as well. He gives her a small smile. “Welcome back, boss,” he says.

“Come here, you idiot,” she replies, beckoning him over, and suddenly it’s the four of them, all together, mess of limbs and tears and glee, and Nicolò inhales deeply, and Andromache closes her eyes and smiles, unabashed, and it’s not a new vision but it feels like it is.

--------------

“Hm… Hey guys, what’s going on?” NIle asks as she appears at the door, slowly lowering her gun, like she had expected some sort of disaster to be waiting for her in the room. Booker is behind her, taking point, still hesitant to lower his gun quite yet.

No one replies for a second. Then Nicolò does. “Andy is healing,” is all he says.

Quỳnh watches as their eyes go wide, and they run, and-

And then it’s six of them, and Nile screams and cries and checks Andromache all over, and oh, Quỳnh’s family is bigger now.

She finds herself laughing, loud and unabashed and a bit hysterical, if she’s being honest, but no one will call her out on it.

--------------

Andromache allows Nile to keep fussing over her for exactly one minute before saying, “alright, alright, just because I can afford it doesn’t mean I want you all to smother me to death,” and pushing them all off her. Quỳnh doesn’t budge, of course, but the others respect her too much for their own good - although Nile has the right idea most of the time, she has to admit.

Booker raises her a sad little corner of his lips, which Quỳnh knows is what he considers a smile. “Guess you didn’t get what you wanted, eh, boss?” he says, flat, but in the way that betrays that he cares about her answer.

“No,” Andromache says, “this is better.”

--------------

“How?” Nile asks, eyes darting over Andromache’s face like she can find the answers there, and Andromache just shrugs.

“We’ve never known the answer to that, kid.”

“Has this ever happened before?” Nile prods, starting to scan her shoulders with her eyes now.

“If it had, I’d have told you,” Andromache rolls her eyes.

Nile keeps searching. That girl is relentless. “Why?” she asks.

And Andromache-

Looks at her, eyes soft and smiling, and says, “I’ve got people that need me.”

“There’s always people who need you,” Nile argues, lifting Andromache’s arms so she can inspect her torso.

Andromache just laughs. “The world needed a strong warrior to lead these idiots,” she gestures to the boys, earning an indignant “hey!” from Yusuf but not much else, before looking back at Nile, “and it had that. But now- there are people who need Andy,” she says, looking pointedly at Nile, then at Quỳnh, all softness and purpose.

The corners of Nicolò’s lips tug up, faintly. “You starting to believe in my ‘destiny crap’ now, boss?” he asks, voice impossibly soft for the jab that he wants to pretend it is.

Andromache looks at Quỳnh. Then at Nile. Then at the others, the matching relieved faces, the tears in their eyes, the relief and the love as they all look at her. Then she looks at Quỳnh again, and Quỳnh sees the same look reflected in Andromache’s eyes.

“Sometimes it’s hard not to,” she says, and Quỳnh smiles.

#the old guard #tog #tog fic #quynh #quynh the old guard #Quỳnh #Quỳnh the old guard #Quỳnh tog #quynh tog #andromache of scythia #andromache the scythian #andy tog #andy the old guard #andromaquynh #andy x quynh #quynh x andy #my fic #you know im actually quite happy with this considering its a fic that i wrote #writing quynh isn't easy but it's fun

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