Chapter Text
The shot rang out, reverberated off the rows of houses that lined the quiet street, and Quynh flinched back, her knife falling to the ground at Andy’s feet. Andy didn’t lunge for it. She didn’t flinch, didn’t move. Another shot and this one hit Quynh square in the chest. She fell to the ground and the third shot pushed through her back.
Andy began her count. One second, two seconds. She made it to eight before the bullets clinked against the concrete, ten seconds and Quynh was back, her hands reaching for the knife. She swung fast toward Andy. Andy held.
“Wait!” Nile shouted. This time her gun was pointed toward Quynh’s head. A headshot might buy Andy fifteen seconds tops. “She’s mortal, you psycho saltwater bitch. You’ll fucking kill her.”
Quynh paused, the knife hovering over Andy’s heart. She turned her head toward Nile, the gun now pointed at the center of her forehead.
“Do you want to fucking kill her?” Nile asked, her voice a little softer now, no more insults on her tongue.
Quynh’s eyes slid back to Andy’s. She brought her knife up to Andy’s face--Nile shouted again, long and loud, and Andy held up a hand to still her. Quynh was careful as she traced the blade in a line down Andy’s cheek. The blood welled, but Quynh was there, wiping it away with the soft pad of her thumb. The cut remained. She pressed her palm against it and Andy turned her head to press her lips to Quynh’s wrist.
“It’s true?” Quynh asked. She wasn’t surprised. She’d already heard the news. Good old Booker.
Andy nodded her head, pressed her face to Quynh’s hand. “It’s true.”
“What will I do then?”
There was shouting on the street, doors slamming.
“It doesn’t change anything,” Andy said. They didn’t have much time. “Finish it.”
Quynh pulled back, her fingers curling against her blood-smeared palm. “How can you say that?”
Sirens in the distance. They’d be on them in no time.
“We have to move,” Booker said. He stepped back to look up the street, his gun held out before him in both hands. A door opened a few houses down and Booker dashed back, slipped into the shadows of the alley. Nile followed, careful to stay out of the light.
Quynh did not react. She knelt before Andy, the knife in her hand, her eyes on Andy’s face, on her throat and the exposed skin around her collar.
“I don’t care where we go,” Booker said. “But we better go now.” He pushed a hand to Quynh’s back, nodded down at Andy.
Nile crouched to collect the bullets that Quynh’s body had rejected. She slipped them into her pocket. “This way.”
Nile turned her gun back on Quynh, reached out with one hand to pull at Andy’s arm. Quynh let Nile pull Andy away, followed on their heels. She waited until they emerged from the other end of the alley, then she moved fast. She was always so fast. Quynh grabbed Nile’s gun, wrestled it from her hand. She shot Nile and Booker, lightning fast and perfectly precise, one bullet each, right to the heart. She turned the gun on Andy. Andy ignored it, surged forward to take Quynh in her arms.
“If you’re going, go fast. When you’re ready, come to this address.” She spoke the numbers and the street, three times, close to Quynh’s ear. Beatrice Ave. Beatrice Ave. Beatrice Ave. “You’ll remember?” Of course she would.
Behind Quynh, Booker began to push himself up from the pavement.
“Go,” Andy said. “I’m here, okay. I’m here when you’re ready, my love.”
Quynh paused like she might pull Andy in for a kiss, like she might pull Andy in, slide a knife into her heart, and kiss her right into her death. She didn’t do it. She shoved Nile’s gun into her pocket and she ran.
Andy did not watch her go. She did not have time to get sentimental. The sirens were close, one street over, that was all. She helped Booker to his feet, checked Nile’s chest as she gasped back to life, and together they ran, as far and as fast as they could manage.
**
Quynh didn’t return to the hotel room that night. Andy did not mention that she’d given Quynh the address to their flat, but it didn’t matter. They couldn’t go back there anyway, couldn’t check, couldn’t risk it with the police combing the area. They’d find the blood in the alley, they’d be asking questions. Quynh was too smart to attempt to go there now.
Andy, Booker, and Nile crowded into the hotel instead, slipping in through a back door that Booker had disabled earlier that day, wrapped in cheap blankets that covered the bloodstains. In the room, Andy took in the two beds, the suitcase full of women’s clothing. She wanted to shake Booker until he told her which bed was Quynh’s. She wanted to press her face into the pillows, lay naked in Quynh’s sheets.
She didn’t.
Instead she looked up at Booker, and said, “It’s good to see you,” as though her entire world hadn’t just exploded, as though she had space for anyone other than Quynh. It amazed her that she did, that what she said was the truth, it really was very good to see Booker.
Booker laughed. “Is it?” he asked. He collapsed into a chair by the window. There was a bottle of whiskey on the floor beside the chair, half empty. Andy nodded toward it, held out her hand. He passed it to her and watched as she took a swig. When she handed it back to him, he raised his eyebrows and looked at the whiskey that remained in the bottle. “Things really have changed.”
She felt the whiskey burn in her throat. “I guess they have,” she said, and then coughed once.
Nile was pacing the short hallway by the door. She had her phone pressed to her ear. “They aren’t answering.”
“Give it time,” Booker said, speaking up before Andy had a chance to say the same thing. “Sometimes they get distracted, don’t hear their phones. Here.” He held up the bottle of whiskey.
Nile brushed him off, then reconsidered. She crossed the room, swiped it from his hand, and then collapsed onto the bed opposite Andy. Nile fell back until she was lying on the bed, her feet still firmly on the floor. She stared up at the ceiling and then shook her head.
“I thought you were dead, Andy,” Nile said. “I thought you were fucking dead and it was my fault because I led her right to you.”
“You did exactly what I wanted you to do,” Andy said. She pulled at a frayed spot on the knee of her jeans.
“How are we gonna--she’ll tear this town apart. Why aren’t they answering their goddamn phones?”
“Drink the whiskey, Nile,” Booker ordered. Nile lifted her head long enough to drink some whiskey and then fell back with a huff.
The town was going to be fine. There was only one person Quynh hoped to tear apart. Quynh needed to pull Andy apart, but her back together in a way that made sense, a way that she could understand. Five hundred years apart.
Andy knew how it felt to drown.
“She isn’t going to kill me.”
Nile laughed and held up the bottle in a salute. She took another sip.
“She isn’t going to kill Andy,” Booker repeated.
Nile pushed herself up on her elbows. She looked hard at Booker, then Andy. “Are you both blind? She just got really fucking close to doing exactly that.”
“She didn’t do it,” Andy said.
“Yeah, okay, because of the police.”
“No,” Andy said. “She had plenty of time to kill me, take the two of you out, and disappear. She didn’t do it because she already knew what was at stake. She already knew because Booker knew. You told her.”
“I did,” Booker agreed. “Multiple times.”
Andy started at ‘multiple’, at the realization that Booker had spent actual time with Quynh, but it wasn’t just those few moments for him. Her eyes returned to the suitcase full of women’s clothing. She longed to lock Booker and Nile from the room, to press those clothes to her face, to lie in the bed where Quynh slept, to push her mouth to the pillow, to rest her hand in the barely perceptible indentation Quynh’s body had left behind.
“How is she?” Andy asked instead.
Booker shook his head. He stood and grabbed the whiskey back from Nile. “Better than I think I expected.” He grimaced at the burn of the whiskey sliding down his throat. “Better than I think I would be. But you know... not good. She’s not good, Andy.” He sat down again, beside her this time, his body pressing heavily into the mattress. She set a hand on his back, her head on the hard curve of his shoulder.
“No,” Andy said. “I know. Notre Dame?”
She watched him nod from the corner of her eye.
Later, after they’d reached Joe and Nicky, after they showered and waited and then gave up exhausted, Andy pressed her face to Quynh’s pillow and remembered how it felt to drown.
**
Three days later. Nile slept easily now without the dreams that jolted her awake. Joe and Nicky were back from Paris, their faces hard and their weapons ready. There was no sign of Quynh. Three days later and Plymouth was quiet, safe, but Andy could feel Quynh in the air, could feel Quynh’s presence tickle the hairs on her arms, could feel water gurgle in her lungs. Three days later and Andy slipped out of the hotel in the early hours of the morning, crept out silently while the others slept, and returned to the flat on Beatrice Ave.
The street was quiet, asleep, and when Andy stepped into the flat, she knew at once that Quynh was there.
“It’s Andromache,” she said. Her voice low, just above a whisper. “I’m here, love, and I’m alone.”
A shadow moved at the end of the corridor and Andy paused, her hands held out in front of her. She had no weapon. She was not a threat.
“Is that you?” she asked the dark, sure that it was, that it had to be, knowing beyond a doubt that while they searched everywhere else, that this was where she’d be. They’d stopped by the flat just that morning, just to check, and nothing was out of order, nothing was out of place, but Andy knew. She could feel it in the pounding of her heart and the pulling of her gut. She could smell the salt in the air.
“I’ve missed you,” Andy said. “I’ve missed you every single day.”
Something shattered in the kitchen, a loud thump against a counter, like a body falling, like a head or a fist. Andy rushed forward and then fell back, surprised by the sudden force of Quynh pushing against her, Quynh rushing from the shadows, hands tight on Andy’s arms.
“Every single day?” Quynh demanded, her voice a painful ragged whisper close to Andy’s ear. Andy let her head fall forward, her nose pressed to the collar of Quynh’s shirt. She turned her head and her mouth found Quynh’s skin and she pressed her lips to Quynh’s neck. Quynh’s body tightened against her. Her hand fell away from Andy’s arm and fumbled against the wall, searching for the light switch. They weren’t near a door. There was no switch within reach.
“There,” Andy said. She guided them along the wall and when Quynh’s fingers found the switch, she pressed it and the world went bright and Andy’s heart was there, illuminated, truly visible for the first time in so fucking long.
She hadn’t forgotten a single detail of Quynh’s face. Five hundred years and she was exactly as Andy remembered her. She took it all in again anyway, the depth of Quynh’s eyes, the curve of her mouth, the turn at the tip of her nose that always caught the light. She remembered the sound of Quynh’s laugh, the sharp smell of her sweat.
Quynh wasn’t laughing now.
“Every day.” Andy confirmed, and then: “Please.” She wasn’t sure what she was asking. How many times had she died and gasped back into this life? How many times had Quynh died in a single day? How many times over five hundred years?
The next time Andy died it would be her last.
Quynh’s hand found its way around Andy’s neck, and Andy longed for more than the simple touch of Quynh’s fingers. Her head fell back, hit against the wall, and the ache of it helped. It still wasn’t enough. She closed her eyes and swallowed hard against the pressing pad of Quynh’s thumb.
“Please.”
Quyhn’s fingers tightened and Andy gasped at the pressure against her throat. Both hands now, and Andy wrapped her fingers around Quynh’s wrists. Soon she would start to struggle. Soon she would fight back. Quynh would let her go. Quynh didn’t want to kill her, not really. Not yet. Quynh would give her this.
Quynh stopped too soon. Andy deserves worse. Quynh’s fingers stilled, her brow furrowed. She’d found the cord of Andy’s necklace and she pulled it free from beneath Andy’s shirt and rubbed her thumb over the filigree.
“Every day,” Quynh said. “So what are we to do?” She leaned in. Her fingers were careful on Andy’s skin now, her touch gentle, but when she leaned in, it was to press her teeth to Andy’s collarbone, the necklace tight in her hand, the cord pulling hard at the back of Andy’s neck. When Quynh spoke again, she was close enough that Andy could feel the words forming against her lips. “I long to shove my knife into your gut, to listen to your heart stop, to swallow that moment when it starts again. I want to hold you beneath the waves and watch you drown so that I can suck the sea from your lips. And you stand there and say please when you know that I can’t. So what are we to do?”
“We can. I’m ready,” Andy said, and she believed herself. She believed with her entire heart and her entire soul that that was true. Her death probably wouldn’t repair the damage done to Quynh. A single final death for five hundred years of smaller ones. It couldn’t change the past and it couldn’t give them a future, but it was something. It was the most that Andy could give.
“The smaller death then,” Quynh said, eyebrows high, almost smiling. “How do they call it in French?”
Quynh had learned a lot in these few short weeks. Andy was almost certain they’d never used that phrase before she lost Quynh to the sea.
“Le petite mort,” Andy breathed.
It wouldn’t be enough and she wanted it just the same.
“Le petite mort,” Quynh repeated. She looked around the room, at the old sofa, a wooden chair. “I would have you on a bed. I spent long enough lying on iron and the beds are so soft now.”
Lust and longing curled in Andy’s gut. She leaned forward to kiss Quynh, but Quynh held her back, pinned her against the wall with her forearm. “A bed.”
“Upstairs,” Andy said, and was rewarded for this response with a crushing kiss. She gasped for air when Quynh pulled away. Quynh’s hand slid down over Andy’s clothes, over Andy’s breasts and across her stomach. Qunyh’s hand curled between Andy’s legs and Andy rocked against that pressure, swore and pressed her mouth to Qunyh’s jaw, teeth to skin and tongue to sweet stinging salt.
“Lead the way,” Quynh said.
**
Once a very long time ago, on a particularly tender night at least a century before the sea separated them, Quynh stared up at the star-filled sky and said, “There is no one who knows anyone better than I know you. Nor that knows anyone better than you know me. Have you ever thought about this?”
Andromache laughed, her body still shaking through the breathless aftermath of sweet release. A breeze cooled the damp on her exposed skin and she shivered as she moved over Quynh. She dropped a kiss onto swollen lips and tasted herself on Quynh’s tongue.
“I’m thinking about it now,” Andromache said. She leaned back on one arm, her head propped in her hand. The fingers of her other hand traced circles low on Quynh’s belly. She slowly worked those circles lower, still longing for more.
Quynh smiled. “Good,” she said. “There’s more.”
“Go on.”
“There’s no one in this world that has known one person as often and as intimately as I’ve known you.”
“I see what you’re doing,” Andromache whispered. “It’s beautiful, but it doesn’t have to be poetry. We’re the only ones here and we can say what we mean.”
Andromache’s hand worked lower and Quynh’s eyes fell shut, sealing out the stars. “Say it then.”
Andromache said it: “It’s impossible that there exists any two people in this entire world who have fucked each other as many times as you and I have fucked. There is no one that’s loved for as long or as often as we have loved.”
“It’s a beautiful thought, isn’t it?”
**
Andy woke to shouts, to the shriek of metal sliding against metal, to the muffled but unmistakable sound of death. She woke alone in the big soft bed, her heart pounding as her friends died the many deaths that she could no longer give.