Chapter Text
“Rocks, gravel drifts, tree trunks, three shipwrecks, two shipping containers, one car -- a whole lotta fucking nothing,” Nile summarized. She sat beside Andy, shoulder to shoulder, as they watched the readout from the side scan sonar trace. Twice they found an object that had seemed promising. In three weeks. Twice the divers went down with their equipment to retrieve the objects. Twice Andy stood on that deck with her heart hammering in her throat.
Each time they came up empty, shaking their heads at what they found--twisted metal debris that happened to resemble the shape of iron coffins dropped into the ocean during the 16th century, a perfectly coffin shaped rock--and Andy’s heart ossified into a heavy weight that hung in her gut, that pulled her down toward the water. Somewhere below the waves, Quynh called out to her, sang to her, begged her to climb over the rails and sink beneath the surface.
Beside her, Nile’s phone buzzed, a text message slipping through the ship’s wi-fi. Nile checked it discreetly, typed out her response, and then shoved the phone back out of sight, into the pocket of her jeans.
Andy did not ask. It was Copley, or it was Joe, or it was Nicky checking up on Andy-- worst case it was Booker in search of connection. Actual worst case, it was Nile’s family, but Andy didn’t think so. This mission was the best thing for Nile, the best thing to keep her focus elsewhere while Copley arranged the details of her death, while Nile let her family mourn her without being tempted to intervene. One day Nile would give in, she’d decide she had to see them one last time. Maybe in ten years, maybe twenty. But for now, a mind busy with other things was the best way to ease through the transition.
Nile squinted back at the screen for a moment, then squeezed her eyes shut, rubbed them with her fingers.
“Hey,” Andy said. She set a hand on Nile’s shoulder, squeezed it in an attempt to stave off Nile’s disappointment at another day of nothing. “It’s early. There’s a lot of ocean out there. Believe me, I know.”
Nile had had the dream again. It started out the same as it always did, Quynh screaming, drowning, crazed. Quynh’s fists, her knees, pushing at the iron, banging at it. Fish swam in the dark above her, swarming at the smell of her blood. She couldn’t see them, but she could feel them as they slid past, as they cut through the water, as they knocked against her prison. Nile had described it for Andy so many times, every time Andy asked, and Andy listened with eyes closed. She caught the change in Nile’s tone first, a hint of wonder that slipped in, and then Nile said, “She punched at the iron and it gave way. It began to crumble, bits of metal deteriorating, itching at her skin in the moment before she drowned again.”
Andy understood this dream. She recognized it and she remembered how it felt. Usually the dreams came in flashes, images, scraps of information that weren’t enough to form a full picture until they began to compound, until you had enough of them that you were able to rearrange them and make the pieces fit, to fill in the shadows, those essential blanks. Occasionally the dreams were different. Occasionally the dreams were actually dreams. Occasionally you slipped into the head of that other person, saw their dreams through their eyes, sometimes you saw your own.
She dreamt fragments of Yusuf and Nicolo’s union centuries before they stopped killing each other. She dreamt her own future with Quynh so many times in the centuries it took to finally find her. She saw the first tentative touch of Quynh’s fingers to hers, saw the wonder on her own face filtered through Quynh’s eyes.
Later Quynh admitted that she was convinced their dreams were all that they’d ever have, that Andromache was a figment of her imagination, designed to push Quynh through a millennium of lonely wandering. They both knew where they wanted to end up before they ever met, but they were no better than Joe and Nicky. It took them centuries to admit it aloud.
These were the dreams Nile saw now, Quynh’s wish for her future, her desperate attempt to manifest her reality in those seconds between each death, to will the world to bend for her, to break and set her free.
Nile took her dream as truth, trusted that if everything she’d seen until now was real, then this must be too. She hadn’t lived long enough yet to know what it was like to truly yearn for something, to long for something so deeply and for so long that you were haunted, could not escape your longing even in sleep, even in death.
**
The first time they kissed outside of her dreams it was fueled by adrenaline, that post-battle high, the righteous thrill. It was the early years, when they still marveled that the other existed, when they could not believe that they were no longer alone. That kiss, another revelation. Afterward, Quynh’s dark eyes danced with delight. Her fingers traced a line along Andromache’s jaw. Two millennia later Andy still felt that touch tingle beneath her skin, just before it was drowned out by the gurgling shriek of a submerged scream.
Together they were unbeatable, unbreakable. Together they were remarkable. Together they outshone everyone, they ruled their world. Together Andromache felt every inch the God she was once mistaken for. The things they did, what they were fighting for. It felt like they were making a difference then. It felt like they had purpose. It felt like they would go on forever, never tire, never get over that initial kiss, that revelation.
The last time they kissed, they were in a prison in Plymouth, hands bound and planning their escape. The kiss stung against her split lip and tasted of their blood.
**
Three nights, one shipwreck, and several rocks later, Andy woke to Nile shaking her, Nile’s feet on the lowest rung of the ladder to Andy’s berth, her eyes bright in the dim light of the room.
“Go back to sleep,” Andy groaned. She checked her watch and then groaned again at the early hour.
“She’s out,” Nile announced. She was gasping for breath, gulping “She’s out, Andy.”
It took Andy a long moment of staring at Nile’s agitated face to understand. And when she finally did, she shook her head.
“It’s just a dream,” she said. She rolled onto her other side, her face toward the wall of their cabin. “You’re in Quynh’s dream.” She squeezed her eyes shut, tried not to remember Nile’s last dream, the rusted iron flaking off onto Quynh’s skin. She focused on her own dreams of Quynh instead, dreams of seeing that familiar shape on the screen, of waiting impatient on the deck as the divers went down, of the crane hoisting the coffin onto the ship, and then Quynh’s face. The feel of Quynh in her arms for the first time in five hundred years. Her Quynh, her soul, her reason.
Behind her, Nile huffed, frustrated. She stepped off the ladder and began rummaging around in the cabinet beside the bunks.
“I know what I saw,” Nile said, her words short, muffled.
Andy twisted back to find that Nile was pulling on a sweater, a coat to protect against the cold sea spray.
“Where are you going?”
“To search.”
“It’s a dream, Nile,” Andy repeated. She was awake now, could tell that she was going to have to talk Nile down from this ledge. Andy had been there before, so fucking sure, and so fucking wrong.
“She doesn’t dream,” Nile snapped. “She hasn’t slept a single second in five hundred years.”
That snapped something in Andy’s brain, in her heart. Of course, of course, Nile was right. There was no sleep for Quynh, just the drowning, her only relief those seconds of death before the drowning began again. Quynh didn’t sleep and she didn’t dream and she was--Andy slid from her berth, caught the jacket that Nile threw into her arms. She shoved her feet into her boots and then they rushed out into the corridor, up the stairs and onto the deck.
“What did you see?” Andy shouted over the roar of the ocean, the whistling of wind in the crane’s rigging.
“She’s at the surface,” Nile shouted. “She’s fighting against the waves. She’s screaming.”
Andy closed her eyes, listened to the waves and the wind. She couldn’t hear her.
Nile rushed along the edge of the boat, stared down into the water. One of the night crew shouted down to them from the bridge and without thinking, Andy shouted back: “Man overboard!”
That got them what they needed; within seconds the boat was flooded with bright light that blotted out the stars. Next came the large spotlight, scanning across the water, reflecting against the surface and illuminating the waves.
Two of the crew--Andy wracked her brain for their names, had downed whiskey with them just a few days prior--rushed up beside Andy and Nile.
“Who was it?” the woman asked, her dark hair whipping across her face, sticking to her skin.
“We didn’t see,” Nile said. Her hand found Andy’s side, but she kept her eyes on the water.
The woman (Shannon?) pulled a life ring from a yellow bag attached to the rail, scanned the water, searching for movement, for the flailing fight of a fallen scientist.
“Where did you see them?”
“I don’t know,” Nile said again. She sounded ragged, raw.
“We heard a scream,” Andy supplied, but the wind caught her voice, carried it. “A woman’s scream.”
Shannon did not respond, and Andy stepped away, began to walk the perimeter of the ship, eyes looking for breaks in the waves, searching, searching. She took the stairs to the ship’s bow two at a time. Once there, she stood at the rail, shut her eyes, tried to feel Quynh’s presence.
“Where are you?” she asked, and as she said it, she knew that it was just as hopeless as it had always been. She felt nothing but that same hopelessness, that weight in her gut that pulled her down, down, down.
Maybe Quynh was out of the coffin, maybe she was at the surface, maybe she was fighting the waves. It changed nothing. She was still lost to Andy. She was out there, somewhere, still struggling, still dying, still completely and entirely alone.
Andy couldn’t bear this alone, not for another thousand years, not for another forty. How many did she have? Thirty, forty if she was lucky. Realistically, given her line of work, much much less. She imagined how it might feel, to climb over this rail, to slip beneath the waves. She imagined how it would feel to end it here and now. She could end this quest, this waiting game, once and for all.
She wouldn’t--she wouldn’t do that to Joe or Nicky, to Booker, to Nile. She wouldn’t do that to Quynh. Not if she really was out there, not if she might find her way to some distant shore, might lie in the sand, might feel the sun on her shrivel soaked skin.
Andy’s hands ached where they gripped at the rail, her heart pulsed tight in her chest, and her throat was raw with her screaming. Fuck, that was her screaming. She heard herself now as it tore from her lungs, ripped at her throat, and she couldn’t stop, couldn’t stop the sound, the fury, couldn’t stop the shaking of her body, couldn’t, fuck--
Nile pried her hands from the rail, tried to wrap Andy in a tight embrace. Andy couldn’t bear it, fought against it. Fuck, she had no fucking time, and she screamed it at the sky, at every god she’d ever known, at every made up god she’d cast aside. She pushed at Nile and when Nile fell away, Andy pushed her again, felt satisfaction when Nile stumbled and relief when she caught herself on the rail and did not fall. Andy fell instead. She fell to her knees, pounded her fists against the deck, and when Nile found her again, when Nile draped her body over Andy’s, Andy didn’t fight her off. She let herself be held. She listened as Nile spoke into her ear.
“She’s out there, Andy. She’s out there. Saltwater rusts iron five times faster than freshwater, did you know that? I’ve done the research. It’s real and she’s out there. She’s free, and she’ll find the shore. She’ll find it eventually, won’t she? She’ll be carried on the waves and the currents-- And you know what happens when she reaches that shore, Andy?”
“What happens?”
“She’ll sleep,” Nile promised. “She’ll dream.”