Work Text:
~ Nile ~
She’s not jealous.
She's really not.
She tells herself this often.
She almost believes it sometimes.
They’re in their safe house in Sweden laying low for a couple of days after another successful job and it’s actually quite nice. There are three bedrooms, two bathrooms and a full working kitchen. She snorts at how different her expectations are now when it comes to living arrangements.
It had been a relatively straight forward contract but they’d all come out with some healing injury. She doesn’t think she’ll ever get used to the feeling of her bones snapping back into place while her skin knits itself back together.
She’s sitting on the floor in the small living room leaning against the chair. There’s music she doesn't recognise coming from a small speaker as she sips her glass of wine and flicks through an old book she’d found in one of the drawers upstairs when she dumped her bags upon arrival.
The book is pretty nondescript, it’s an aged paperback with a faded blue cover and in incredibly small writing down the spine, she can just make out the words; Unrequited - A Collection. It seems to be full of poems, not her usual reading material but she supposes some of them are nice. Most of them just seem sad - full of loneliness and despair.
Every few pages there's a line or two underlined.
And I shall be more silent and cold-hearted
Than you are now.
But oh, to him I loved,
Who loved me not at all.
I loved a certain person ardently and my love was not return’d.
O breathe a word or two of fire!
She shuts the book, it’s certainly not helping the melancholy mood she finds herself in. She looks up at Nicky and Joe curled up close together on the one sofa and Andy and Quynh tucked up together on the other. She can hear that they're both having whispered conversations but can’t make out what’s being said.
It’s been two years since she’s joined her immortal family, eighteen months since Quynh rejoined them and she loves them, she really does, but sometimes, just sometimes, she thinks they forget she’s there. She feels like she’s in the way, sticking out like a sore thumb or like the little sister that keeps wanting to join in with the older kids who don’t want her there but entertain her because they’ve been told to.
She finishes her wine, collects the book from the floor and stands up. She stretches out her back, lets out a small yawn and says, “Ok, I’m off to bed, I'll see you all in the morning.”
Joe looks up at her and furrows his brows, “It’s barely half nine, you tired already?”
She shrugs and lets out a little hum as she makes her way towards the stairs. Nicky’s voice reaches her just before she gets to the door, “You ok Nile?”
“Yep, just getting out the way before you all start making out.” She says it off handedly with a little laugh. It’s not something they actually do, they tend to save that stuff for when they're alone but it can be a close call sometimes. It’s quiet so she looks back over her shoulder quickly and sees that Nicky’s cheeks have started to flush. Joe has a hurt look on his face and Andy and Quynh have stopped their whispering.
Oh shit, has she upset them? She didn’t mean it in a negative way. It truly is amazing how in love they all are. She just doesn’t want to feel like a spare part. She doesn’t begrudge them their happiness at all, does she wish she had some for herself? Of course. But she’d never want to make them feel bad for having that for themselves.
“Sorry Nile, we didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.” Nicky sounds genuine too. She feels really awful now, she turns to face him properly and lets out a little laugh.
“I’m not uncomfortable, I promise, not at all. You do you.” She tries to lighten her voice and attempts some joviality as she says, “I’m just aware of how painfully single I am.” It goes quiet instantly and she feels bad all over again. “Sorry, didn’t mean to bring the mood down.”
“Nile-”
She cuts Joe off, “I’m fine.. Honestly.” She is fine, absolutely fine. She’s just very aware that unless another immortal comes along that just happens to fall in love with her and that she just happens to also fall in love with, she’ll be alone except for the odd hook up she has. She snorts a little laugh at her own ridiculousness.
“If you ever want to talk..” She knows they’re there and she knows that they would try their best but they just wouldn’t get it. Andy might but she had Quynh before and she has her now so she’s not too sure. As for Joe and Nicky, they haven't been alone in millennia.
She smiles at him, she can feel that it’s a tight smile but she tries anyway. “I guess I'll just be the new Booker.” She regrets the words instantly and her face falls. No one talks about him, it’s been two years and she barely knows anything about the man.
“Sorry.. Sorry.. Don’t know why I said that. Too much wine.. I'll see you in the morning.”
“What do you mean, you’ll be the new Booker?”
She looks at Nicky with an apologetic smile, “Sorry, just a bad joke about being the odd one out.. The single one, you know.. the third.. well fifth wheel..” She trails off at the look on Nicky’s face. He looks hurt and confused.
“Booker isn't..” he stumbles slightly and then clears his throat, “..wasn’t single.”
Nile’s head tilts in question, “He wasn’t? I knew he was married before but I didn't know he had someone after. Who are they? Where are they?”
Joe’s lips part slightly as his eyebrows rise in shock and Nicky looks even more confused as he says, “Nile, are you.. are you serious?” He doesn’t sound condescending but she can tell he’s holding something back.
“Serious? About being the next Booker? No, sorry I really didn’t mean to upset you. It was just a bad joke about being the single one, you know.”
“Booker’s.. ours… was ours.. Mine and Nicky’s.. Nile we were together for years.”
What?
Nile is floored. Is this a joke? Are they having her on? It doesn’t seem like they’re joking but that simply cannot be right. “What?” She asks incredulously.
“Booker was with us. Had been since 1967.” Nicky sounds absolutely flabbergasted that she doesn’t know this. Why would she know this?
“I didn’t know..”
She thinks back to two years ago when she’d spent those few days with them all before all hell broke loose. There was no indication that they were all together. Joe and Nicky had been obvious, they were close - physically - just like they are now. Booker had always been on his own though, sitting off to the side or on an individual chair while Joe and Nicky took the sofa.
She had seen Joe and Nicky exchange chaste kisses that first morning. They had touched each other's hands when talking, stroked down spines while walking past each other and looked longingly at each other while recounting their history.
She doesn’t remember any of that with Booker. In fact, she thinks the only time she saw anyone touch Booker had been when Andy held his face while his chest was in bits.
They hadn’t even slept in the same room as each other. Each morning she’d woken up to find Booker slumped in the same chair.
She looks at Joe and Nicky, at the two men that have slowly become her brothers over the last two years. The men who she has trusted with her life, who she has seen hold their own breath until the other gasped back into the waking world.
“You left him.. you left him.. alone.. for one hundred years..”
“He betrayed us, Nile. You were there, you saw what he did.”
“Would you have left Nicky for a hundred years?”
Joe looks like he’s been slapped. “That’s.. that’s different-”
She cuts him off and addresses Nicky, “Would you have left Joe?” His lack of response is answer enough.
“Nile, you don't understand-”
“You’re right, I don’t.”
She looks down to the book clutched in her hands. The book she’d found in the drawer in the room that used to be Booker’s. He had his own room, it was littered with old clothes and books from years past. The book that she now realised was filled with poems about unrequited love.
She opens it and flicks through a few pages until she finds one that’s been underlined.
..I thought
That pain meant
I was not loved
It meant I loved
She reads it several times before she closes the book, places it on the table in front of Joe and Nicky and then heads upstairs. She shoves the clothes she’d pulled out earlier back into her small duffle bag, books an uber on her phone and heads towards the front door.
She can hear Andy calling her but she leaves the small terraced house and heads down the street.
It didn’t long to track him down. She was quite impressed with herself for being able to actually do it knowing just how good Booker’s skills at being able to stay hidden are. That excitement had disappeared when she realised just how good he is at staying hidden yet she'd found him in a matter of weeks. He didn’t want to stay hidden, he wanted to be found. Her heart cracked in two as she thought of Booker waiting for the others - Joe and Nicky most likely - to track him down and bring him home.
She climbs the stairs of the run down apartment building to the third floor. She finds the right door and knocks. It takes several more knocks before she hears what sounds like sleepy grumbling and shuffling feet.
The door creaks open and she comes face to face with the man she had only known for a couple of days and hasn’t seen for two years. He opens his mouth like he wants to say something but nothing comes out. His eyes are wide and his face goes through several emotions before settling on confusion.
“Hey Booker.” She smiles at him warmly. “Got room for one more?”
He still looks shell-shocked but he steps back and opens the door wider. She steps into the small, dark apartment, drops her bag onto the floor and pulls him into a tight embrace. He’s incredibly tense to start with and his hands hang down at his sides.
She doesn’t let go though and squeezes him slightly tighter. “Fancy showing your little sister the best spots in Paris?” He lets out a shaky breath and raises his arms to return the hug.
He hugs her tight and doesn’t let go. He holds her like he hasn’t held anyone in a long time and her heart breaks for him. She doesn’t know the full ins and outs of what led Booker to want to become Merrick's lab rat but she knows there has to be more to it than him simply betraying his family for the sake of it.
She leans back slightly, not letting go of him but enough so that she can look up at his face. She smirks at him, “Come on old man, where’s the best place to get coffee around here, I am positively parched!”
He huffs a little laugh, squeezes her one last time and then steps back. “Let me get dressed and I'll show you.”