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wander-wren · 1 year

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Wren’s WIP Masterlist

all my current wips! any projects that aren’t finished that i want to finish, someday, not necessarily what i’m working on right now. all oneshots unless stated otherwise, and longfics have an estimated length given. if i decide to fully abandon a fic (which rarely happens), i’ll take it off the list. feel free to ask me about anything here, it might motivate me to finish or give me a new idea!!

other posts have my completed fics and random concepts.

Priority WIPs

these are wips i’ve worked on in the past month and/or unfinished fics currently posted to ao3. listed in rough order of priority-within-priority.

dusk to dawn- sequel to swiftpaw’s chance, rewrite of the new prophecy focusing on whitewing and nightcloud, then squirrelflight and tawnypelt as well, with others thrown in for spice. 70 chapters, 200kish.

falling feathers (i’ll follow you home)- bnha D/s au, dabihawks, your standard hawks double agent fic but with all the angst of the au. secret relationships, miscommunication, enemies to ??? to ????? to ???????? to lovers?? very VERY long, 500k+.

running- wtnv fic inspired by this fic. after being attacked in his home, carlos flees, taking a near-suicide job in night vale. what he finds is very different from the strange, hostile town he expected, and he falls in love, makes friends, nearly dies a few times, but eventually…heals. longfic, maybe 80k?

whumptober prompts- i fizzled out around day 13, but i do want to complete them eventually, even if it takes a long time

to take up swords and strike the sea- pirate!inej fic post-ck. not kanej, not kaz friendly but not kaz unfriendly. inej gets a gf. both of them are trans but that’s just a bg element. 3 parts, 35kish.

Other WIPS

sorted alphabetically by fandom, then again by rough priority within fandom. priority is completely determined by vibes and i’m hardly going to shuffle the order around regularly, so even if something is on the bottom of a long list, don’t be afraid to ask about it!

Arcane

turning out of time- t4t jinxekko, post-canon in a magical world where everything is peace and happiness on both sides. they throw an anniversary party and discover fireworks are not a great idea for not-quite-girls who used to make bombs and now have ptsd.

BNHA

sleepless- just before the hero license exams, izuku throws himself into training, determined to catch up to his classmates and never fail anyone ever again. he also stops sleeping. bakugo, clumsily, helps, and cue romance.

burn ourselves to ashes (use the rubble for the parts)- todoroki, bakugo, and deku are supposed to just be making a grocery store run. then there’s a villain attack, a collapsed building, a bleeding-out deku, and…a need for someone to cauterize a wound. todoroki has Feelings about this.

pull my feathers one by one (put ‘em in your pocket when i’m gone)- dabihawks miscommunication/getting together fic ft all of hawks’s bird traits & HPSC bashing

The Old Guard

believe you hold the answers (but your feathers are all frayed)- nile convinces booker to break his exile, sure that once the others see him they’ll realize their mistake and let him come home. joe goes ballistic.

don’t care to beg your pardon (let’s live until we die)- mortal joenicky college au where joe volunteers to be a car crash victim in nicky’s paramedic training and promptly falls in love with his competence and beauty and nicky-ness. cue romance. might kick off a oneshot series in this vein?

it’s your wound, my sutures- fairly on-the-nose title, healing works a little too well and joe ends up with a bullet buried in his shoulder. nicky and andy perform impromptu diy surgery.

The Raven Cycle

lost in what you think of me (let me be the void you fill)- i take freaky friday, give it to pynch, and rub my trans feelings all over it bc they’re both trans in different ways in this one.

one forward, one back (lost in labyrinthine spirals)- sequel to “this black thing inside of me,” in the emetophobic!adam universe. a story about recovery’s ups and downs and weird triggers. i’m still projecting/venting.

call the ravens, call the swifts- wing au getting together, where adam’s wing gets injured, ronan helps, and they have a lot of good and bad feelings.

Six of Crows

taxidermy fingerprints, taxonomize our differences- wylan comes out to the crows as nonbinary. kaz is Very interested by this. everyone talks. kaz comes out to the crows as nonbinary.

Warrior Cats

the world ends eventually (so come with me)- blossomivy fic where the two decide to abandon the clans before the great battle. they don’t quite get away in time an have to fight their way out, but it’s worth it, to be together and happy.

Welcome to Night Vale

punishment by proxy- instead of taking cecil for reeducation, the secret police decide carlos will be a much more effective deterrent. cecil picks up the pieces.

intersecting realities- takes place during that arc where the universe almost collapsed, i’m not entirely sure where past me was going with it but it seems like cecilos are wrestling with reality and which universe to live in??

#fanfiction #wips #arcane #warrior cats #bnha #the raven cycle #six of crows #welcome to night vale #the old guard #while i was searching notes and old discord convos ans google docs #i actually found at least two finished fics that i never posted lol #so i can. do that sometime

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katesbridgerton · 3 years

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If you’re still doing fic prompts: kaysanova mortal au h/c & broken bones (not drawing on current events for this one, not at all….)

Hi Liz! I hope your expectations are not too high because I had the idea and immediately wrote it haha anyway, I still hope you enjoy it. Thank you for sending the prompt. 🌻

Nicky is empathetic. If anyone can put themselves in someone else's shoes to understand a situation, that person is Nicolò di Genova. The fact that he is on the verge of losing his patience with his own boyfriend says a lot about how things are going.

Joe broke his hand when he fell on the street. Being a smart man, he put his hand on the floor first to not hurt his face… but if you ask him now, he is going to tell you that he regrets it deeply. Why? One would wonder. Because he can't draw.

And in the first week, Nicky understood it's what Joe works with, more than that, it's what he loves to do. But when the love of his life started complaining about the situation 24/7 like his hand was the only good and useful thing about him, Nicky started to lose it slowly.

That's how they ended up in the middle of an argument.

"Yusuf, please. What are you going to do? Stay inside feeling sorry for yourself? The doctor said you're going to be fine!"

"You don't understand," Joe answers in a crying tone.

"You don't let me help you or take care of you. You don't want to go out, I don't- I don't know what you want!"

"I need to draw. I need to draw," he reaffirms. "What I don't need or want is you!" he says like a petulant child.

That's the breaking point. Nicky storms out of their apartment and goes to the bar to meet their friends by himself (because they always meet at the same place every Friday).

"He said that?" Andy asks, taking a sip of her beer. "Joe said he doesn't need you?"

"He doesn't need me or wants me," Nicky answers. "Fuck! You're not rushing him to come back to work. I don't understand, I just don't," he drinks his wine in one gulp like it will help him swallow the words he had heard earlier.

Nicky can’t wrap his head around it. Sick Joe is the sweetest and neediest person, who wants Nicky’s attention all the time. What is different this time? Did he meet someone new? Are they going to break up?

"Maybe he just needs some time alone? And I think you could use some too," Quynh says. "It must be exhausting to be around him acting like that 24/7. Joe is the nicest person, I don't get it."

"Well, welcome to my team," Nicky rubs his temples. "Booker, any advice?"

"I would say have more patience, but you're already a fucking Saint, so no. I don't have any advice.”

"Anyway, where's Nile?" Nick asks. "Did anyone check on her? Is she alright?"

"She texted. Said she wouldn't be able to come today because she needed to help a friend with something," Quynh answers.

When Nicky arrives home later that night, he has no idea if he still has a boyfriend, if he wants to get inside or how Joe's mood is gonna be. He takes a deep breath, before unlocking the door. When he steps in, he bumps into Nile who murmurs an apology and leaves.

Joe is on the floor of the living room surrounded by papers and pencils. Nicky looks down to find drawings of himself, all the different moods he had that week. Including the one during their argument today, his narrowed eyes and his expression full of frustration.

"Nile helped," Joe says in a happy tone. "She helped me draw almost everything that happened in the past week with you. Now I have it and I can save with the rest," he turns to look at Nicky with a smile on his face. "She said she would help me until my hand heals so I don't miss anything. See?" He picks one from the floor. It's Nicky's profile. "You when we were watching a movie two nights ago!"

Nicky is speechless, but at the same time, he has a lot of questions. He turns around, closes the door, locks it, then turns to face Joe again.

"You- Joe, do you always draw me?"

Joe nods. "Some people like to take pictures, I like to draw you because when I do, I know exactly what I was feeling in that moment and," he smiles again. "Yeah, I have them all and whenever I'm sad and you're not around, I look at them and I just- I feel you."

Joe stops for a second, before continuing.

"I'm sorry for what I said earlier and for how rude I was. I didn't mean to be, it's just very frustrating not being able to draw your perfect features. I love you."

"I fucking hate you, Yusuf," Nicky says. "What the hell? Even in our argument, you have to be adorable. What kind of shit is that? I was worried that we were going to break up and you were upset because you couldn't draw me?" He walks towards the couch and sits in front of Joe. "Your communication skills are awful! I hope you know that."

"Are you, are you going to break up with me?" Joe asks, confused, scared.

"No! I'm going to teach you how to behave though, that will happen," Nicky chuckles, relieved. "What the fuck, Joe? How's your hand?"

"To be honest? I kind of forced it a little bit today and I know I shouldn't. I know, but no one gets your eyes as I do, so- yeah, I don't regret it."

"Did you eat anything?"

"I'm going to shower and then get something to eat. I ordered food for Nile but I was kind of feeling awful because of our argument so I didn't want anything."

"Okay," Nicky shakes his head, still in complete disbelief. "Our friends think you're an asshole, by the way."

"Well, I guess I deserve that," he rests his chin on Nicky's knee, their eyes properly meeting for the first time that night. "Nico, can you help me?"

"I thought you didn't need or wanted my help."

"Oh, I didn't. Not for drawing. I love you, habibi. But you don't have the talent."

"Smartass," Nick smiles. "You have so much to learn, Joe. So much."

"Teach me, please."

Joe bites his lower lip, and Nicky feels his entire body reacting to it.

#yusuf al-kaysani #nicolò di genova #joe x nicky #immortal husbands #otp: he's all and he's more #the old guard #tog fanfic #userbooker #userkourt #userkayla #usernicolo #demonicneonfishy #moonlightandromache #userbones #userlyde #usersimo #usercacau #userfrench #bea writes

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youssefguedira · 3 years

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I can't decide if I'd like to request Joe x Nicky and 45, 44, or 43 from the intimacy prompt list, but I somehow think one would lead to the next and end with the last (falling asleep), so idk I'll leave it up to you, if you'd like?

hey there anon!!! tthank you and sorry it took me a while to get to this!!

today i offer you: post-movie fluff feat. a very sleepy nicky

43: falling asleep with their head in your lap

44: head scratches

45: running hands through hair

After Merrick, it takes them time to find themselves again. There is Andy’s mortality, and Booker’s betrayal, and Nile’s newness to come to terms with. But they do, even if it is a slow process, even if it gets worse before it gets better. Andy’s wound heals. Nile slides into place within their family. The absence of Booker, while still painful, begins to feel less like an open wound.

And now, Joe sits on the couch in their Florence safehouse, Nicky half asleep beside him, with his head resting in Joe’s lap; Nile and Andy sit across from each other on the carpet in front of them, Nile chewing on her bottom lip as she contemplates the chessboard between them; the television chatters away quietly in the background, but none of them are really watching. The dishes from dinner have been cleared away, and the lamp next to the arm of the couch bathes the room in warm golden light. It feels like home, or the closest thing they ever really get to home.

Joe nudges Nile with the tip of his slipper - the ones she’d gotten for him, pink and shaped like unicorns, with little silver horns. “Move your rook,” he whispers conspiratorially, as if Andy can’t hear him. “You can get her knight.”

Nile, after a moment of consideration, does. This accomplishes two things: Nile takes Andy’s knight, and puts her in check.

“That’s cheating,” Andy protests.

“I am simply assisting,” Joe says. “And you’ve got an unfair advantage.”

Andy studies the board intently for a few moments before sighing and moving her queen, which allows Nile to put her in checkmate. Nile whoops in victory, and high-fives Joe.

“You’re ganging up on me,” Andy says.

“We would never,” Joe says innocently.

“Nicky, you’re on my side here, right?”

“Hm?” Nicky asks sleepily.

“Never mind,” Andy tells him, before turning back to the board and gathering up the pieces. “That was a one-off. Joe, you’re not allowed to help anymore.”

Joe runs his fingers idly through Nicky’s hair as he watches Andy set up the board again. Nicky shifts position slightly, yawning.

“Tired, habibi?” Joe asks, half-teasing.

Nicky blinks a few times. “No.”

Between the two of them, Nicky has always been the lighter sleeper - faster to wake, slower to fall asleep. It’s why they’d started sleeping with Nicky between Joe and the door. They’d been surprised once, and Joe had died in a particularly horrible manner, and he’d woken to Nicky kneeling over him, begging him to wake up. It had been early on in both their immortality and their relationship, when they hadn’t been certain of anything. Since then, Nicky had always put himself between Joe and danger.

And since Goussainville, since they’d been caught off guard in a place they thought they were safe, Nicky had been even more on edge than usual. Joe would wake to find him sitting up, alert and watching the door. And when Joe tried to convince him to go back to sleep, he’d just smile and say it’s fine, my love, don’t worry about me.

(Joe worries about him anyway, because part of him always will.)

It’s been months since then, and yet Joe knows Nicky still has trouble sleeping, even if he tries to hide it. So for him to be so relaxed, falling asleep in Joe’s lap, shows how safe he feels now. Which, after all that, is a blessing.

Nicky’s eyes close again, and Joe tilts his head back to rest on the back of the couch. Andy curses in seven languages, three of them dead, as Nile takes her queen. The television switches to some commercial - Joe’s not exactly sure what they’re even trying to sell.

“We should go out tomorrow,” Nicky says. “To the bakery on the corner, the one you liked. If it’s still there.”

Joe hums in agreement. Yes, maybe tomorrow they will go out and find the bakery, and help Nile practice her Italian. Or maybe they will stay in, and Joe will sketch, and maybe Nicky will find his guitar. Or maybe Copley will call them, and they will leave. He cannot be sure. The beauty, Joe thinks, lies in the not knowing.

He leans down, brushing Nicky’s hair aside, and kisses his temple. “Yes. Tomorrow.”

#neon writes #the old guard #kaysanova #joe's unicorn slippers were a very important detail to me while writing this #me? using everything i write to push the joe + nile are best friends agenda? it's more likely than you think #userhegel #usersimo #swquser #lazynbored #moonlightandromache #usertriz #anyway anon i hope you like this it has been sitting in my inbox forever and also the fic itself has been half finished for a while #so. glad i finally finished this one. i think i'm pretty happy with it?#it's about the found family of it all #neon answers #anonymous #also. i know very little about chess so if i got things wrong chess people i ask you to politely ignore it and pretend i didn't

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in-tua-deep · 4 years

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SO i watched the old guard and loved it and i have a habit of combining things i love and it’s 1am and i can’t get to sleep until i purge this from my brain i think SO consider this

Five jumps in time into the apocalypse and - he dies. Of course he dies. Maybe it’s the time jump itself, managing to rip himself apart because he tried too much too soon. Maybe it’s the apocalypse itself that kills him. Regardless, he dies.

And then he wakes up. And he’s fine. And he continues on.

Except - he has weird dreams. He dreams of - of all these people? He dreams that they’re in the apocalypse as well. It’s weird. He would brush it off but, well, he keeps dreaming of them. Again. And again. And again.

(He likes dreaming of them, honestly. When he doesn’t dream of them he dreams of ash and fire and his siblings dead and decaying and wailing at him for failing them.)

He continues to live in the apocalypse and years pass and - he’s not getting older. He cuts his leg open on some rocks, and it heals way too quickly. All of his injuries are like that, actually.

(He spends a whole week starving to death over and over again once. It isn’t pretty. He doesn’t even know he’s dying.)

Eventually he comes to a conclusion - his time jump fucked him up. He’s in a permanent... stasis? Sort of? He keeps continuously returning to the state he was when he jumped through time, including his body now? Rejecting injuries? Presumably because he wasn’t injured when he jumped?

It makes sense to Five, shhh.

And then he gets picked up by the commission. and then he doesn’t shoot JFK. and then he goes home.

(He keeps dreaming about His People. They aren’t in the apocalypse when he isn’t, which is nice. They’re probably some weird manifestation of his subconscious, considering his brain keeps casting them as people during the time periods he’s visiting)

Now I know what you’re thinking - Five is dreaming about these glorious weirdos in the apocalypse, obviously they would try to find him because they’re dreaming about him as well, right?

See, the thing is this: Andy doesn’t remember the exact date she first had a dream about The Boy.

(The Boy definitely deserved the capital letters, because he’s the weirdest enigma that they never solved.)

But she remembers her and Quynh being horrified because - the next immortal was a child? They freaked out about it and tried to write everything down they could remember to help them hunt the kid down.

And they tried - they did! for a whole three days! except after those three days the dreams just - stopped. cold. nothing new.

This was, of course, super super confusing. And maybe they would have written it off as a shared hallucination if it didn’t keep happening.

There’s no pattern to when they dream of the kid. It just happens. Sometimes a few times in a year. Sometimes there’s decades or centuries between dreams. The first time Nicky and Joe dream of him, Andy has to sit them down and explain that no, don’t worry about it. Yes she knows that it’s a child. No, he’s not a new immortal. They’ll stop dreaming about him in a few days, a week tops, it’s fine. No, she doesn’t know What The Fuck That Is About.

By the time Nile joins the team it’s sort of a weird inside joke. There’s longstanding bets about when the boy will pop up in their dreams again. It’s fine. Okay, so it’s weird, but their lives are already so goddamn weird.

(So imagine the old guard fresh in the apocalypse, no human life on earth. they’re dreaming about the boy again, and the only weird thing now is the consistency of it. maybe they’re in europe or something, but most of the planes have been destroyed in whatever-the-fuck took out the population of the whole ass world. it might have taken years to literally find and dig each other out of the rubble. yeah it’s weird the boy is not a frequent dream thing, but it’s not like it’s urgent.)

Anyway, Five jumps into his family’s courtyard and stumbles out, and eats and peanut butter and jelly sandwich, avoids questions about his age by rambling about quantum versions of himself, and goes to Griddy’s where he ends up getting attacked by commission goons and having to walk home barefoot because he had to ditch his shoes

(The Commission couldn’t put a tracker in his arm. His body kept rejecting them somehow, thanks to his... weird temporal nonsense. The Handler kept promising him that they’d find a way to fix him or whatever, but they never did. Assholes.)

Now, the Old Guard squad go to sleep and, thank you, start dreaming of Five in all his somewhat feral glory.

They bolt awake and - “You guys owes me so much money.” Nicky crows victoriously, because he totally won the pot on the next kid dream year, thank you very much.

And any other time that would be the end of it, because they’re used to these fleeting dreams of the boy.

Except Nile exists now. And of course she’s like, we have to find this kid.

Of course the others try to explain to her - except Nile points out a very important fact: it might have taken weeks or months or years to find other immortals back in the day due to travel times and lack of information and all that. But it’s 2019 baby. They have the internet and very fast plane travel. Did you have that when Booker was a baby immortal? no. it took them like, a day to go hunt Nile down though.

“You say you dream about him for a few days or a week or whatever.” Nile points out to the group’s dawning realization, “Well we have the power to get to him in a few days. So we can find him.”

“If we find him then we can never bet on him again though.” Booker points out, and Nicky who is in the process of gloating about his latest win (Nicky has won three times in a row motherfuckers) looks a bit crestfallen. Andy, on the other hand, just looks determined.

“Get off your asses.” Nile says firmly, spinning her laptop around and showing them the one (1) result for a “Griddy’s Diner” that she found that matches whatever the fuck the dream showed her, “We’re going to America.”

“Again?” Nicky complains, “I thought we swore to not go to America again for at least a century.”

(Until Nile’s family definitely dies, they don’t say.)

So they all begrudgingly go to America, during which time Five manages to get called potentially insane by his favorite sister, not get any sleep, bribe his brother to investigate an eye that doesn’t exist, and mourn losing his one lead to who the fuck started the apocalypse.

I don’t think Five or the og squad were expecting to actually meet.

But they’re hunting Five down and looking around and Five is pondering his next move and then just - across the street, their eyes meet.

“YOU.” The OG squad bellows, because Five has been a goddamn mystery for literally thousands of years.

“Me?” Five says, very confused, like someone who has definitely had trauma induced hallucinations and flashbacks whose dream characters decided to show up on the street outside his house for some reason.

And they go over to Five, and Five is like “wow what a weird hallucination to be having, maybe if i ignore it it’ll go away because that’s a healthy mindset to have (:”

and then one of them touches him and just -

Five lashes out. It’s instinctive. He has a knife and he just - stabs. Automatically. and his dream person winces and steps back and -

(He stabbed his dream person. Hallucinations don’t touch him they’re not supposed to touch him and they can’t be stabbed what - )

And then the dream person heals before his eyes.

“I probably deserved that.” Booker muses, grimacing at the hole in his new shirt thank you very much.

“You’re not real.” Five says a little too loudly and a little too insistently to sound at all convincing as he takes a step backwards.

“I’m not real? You’re not real!” Nicky butts in, slightly offended, “You’re the one that keeps - keeps vanishing!”

“Oh my god why are you all disasters.” Nile mourns putting her face in her palms as though she can block out her new weird family by sheer force of will.

“Hey, remember when you died?” Andy offers with a shrug which just makes Nile groan louder. “What’s that about? I’m not even shooting him this time.”

“You can’t shoot him, he’s a baby.” Joe gasps, gesturing towards Five’s thirteen-year-old self.

“I’m not a baby!” Five snaps, bristling on autopilot because the rest of his brain function is stuck on a repeat of “what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck”

“Baby boy. Baby.” Nicky backs his husband up, leaning against Joe and smirking.

“Am not!” Five growls, “And give me my knife back!”

“Finder’s keepers.” Booker says nonchalantly, spinning said knife in his fingers, “If you didn’t want me to have it then you shouldn’t have stabbed me with it.”

“It’s my brother’s knife, you can’t have it.” Five argues.

“Booker.” Andy says firmly, making Booker shrink a little like a scolded child, “Give the kid the knife back. How would you feel if I took your gun?”

“You wouldn’t take my gun.” Booker mutters, handing an increasingly confused Five the knife back, “I would simply shoot you.”

“Ooh,” Nicky snickers, “Fight! Fight! Fight!”

“Don’t encourage them.” Joe says, nudging at Nicky. Which would be fine if he hadn’t added in a slightly lower tone that they could all still hear, “Fifty on Andy.”

“That’s a sucker’s bet, my love.” Nicky laughs, pressing a kiss to Joe’s cheek.

There’s a beat of silence.

“No offense, but what the fuck is going on.” Five states rather than asks, clutching his slightly stolen knife (Diego didn’t even notice when he’s snagged it which honestly means he didn’t deserve to keep the weapon) tight to his chest. “Are you guys... with the Commission?”

“What the fuck is the Commission?” Joe does not whisper to Booker, who is supposed to be the research guy but he just shrugs because he’s useless.

Anyway that’s how the whole Old Guard squad winds up in Reginald Hargreeves creepy ass mansion trying to explain to an increasingly erratic immortal child that, yeah, he’s a little bit immortal. No it doesn’t have anything to do with his powers (powers?? powers??????? what the fuck i mean yes their lives are already so goddamn weird but there is a line and Booker draws it at teleportation what the fuck).

What’s this about an apocalypse?

(When they asked Five for his age, they were not expecting a curt ‘fifty-eight, probably’. Yes they are now aware there is funky time travel involved - which honestly explains so much about the frequently vanishing immortal - but still.

He looks baby but also he is baby. He’s younger than Booker!! Not even a century! They have two whole babies on the immortal squad !!)

“The world is going to end on April 1st.” Five explains, looking deeply uncomfortable. And afraid.

(And young. So very terribly young. He’s been thirteen-years-old for a long time. If these people are right - he’s going to remain thirteen until his immortality, what, wears off? Which could be literally thousands of years in the future?

He has family god damnit. He doesn’t want to outlive them. He just - he just wanted to see them again. To save them.)

And honestly why not. Five has already demonstrated teleportation. Time travel does explain his random popping into their lives via dreams. Why not? And let’s be real, they have way much more to lose by not believing him than believing him.

“Alright let’s stop an apocalypse.” Andy says, clapping her hands together.

“You’re going to help?” Five asks in a small voice, because he had sort of resigned himself to going at it alone.

“Give me the number for the eye.” Nile says kindly, “We have someone we could contact about that sort of thing, or at the very least who can keep an eye out for when it is manufactured and let us know.”

(RIP Copley when he realizes he has to deal with anything involving the Umbrella Academy. I am sure they were a very deep thorn in the governments side for a long time tbh)

“Who The Fuck Are All These People In Our Living Room.” Luther asks, Very Loudly, with Allison close behind.

And yeah. No one really knows how the fuck to answer that, let’s be real. What are they supposed to say? Hey, sorry for crashing, we’re here to lowkey kidnap your newly re-found brother because surprise! he’s immortal! Because that would go over so well.

Anyway, so the Old Guard squad are just there like,, trying to teach Five about his newfound immortality (at least he’s got good at the whole “fuck cameras” thing during his stint in the commission, though admittedly there were plenty of mission from pre-camera times. ah, the age before technology.) and also adopt him? because being immortal means family and family means no one gets left behind (or forgotten, hello Quynh)

(okay yeah they tried to put Booker in time out that one time but after a few years they were just sad and everyone was texting him anyway so now it’s just something they bring up at every opportunity. Joe wants the first turn in the bathroom? Booker, you betrayed him. He was a lab rat, Booker. And on and on until Booker throws up his hands and gives in. Yes, fine, you can have the bathroom first.)

And the Umbrella Academy usually would leave Five to his own devices but... look. Five might have vanished for seventeen years or whatever but he’s still their brother and they can be surprisingly territorial.

At least some people are getting along like a house on fire.

(“You were a crusader?” Klaus asks with wide eyes, “How does that even work?”

“What, being gay?” Nicky asks, tilting his head, “It’s fine. I have a permit.”

“A permit.”

“Mmhmm. From the Pope and everything.”

“I kind of want to be you when I grow up.”)

I can’t tell if things would go more smoothly or if the fuck ups would be even more epic in proportion. On the bright side, the apocalypse probably wouldn’t happen because Andy and Nile immediately clock Leonard-Harold’s serial killer vibes.

(Leonard realizes they’re onto him and tries to kill them which is a big mistake lmao, bye bye Leonard)

It probably ends up in an all out war against the Commission honestly, and the OG squad and the Umbrella Academy teaming up to destroy it.

(“How is this even going to work?” Allison asks at one point, gesturing at Five and the old guard.

“Shared custody?” Joe suggests brightly before doubling over because Five has pointy elbows and is not afraid to use them.)

Andy and Five probably go feral together at one point and it sure is something to behold.

“Now that is a kid who understand what a signal is.” Booker admires after a particularly large explosion happens. Nile just nods along because yeah.

(“How come you guys get to call Five a kid without being stabbed?” Klaus complains.

“He isn’t even a century old. I’m 250 and I was the youngest until Nile popped up.” Booker shrugs.

“We’re in our 950s.” Nicky says, “If little Cinque does not want to be called a kid he should have been born earlier.”

“How old is hot axe woman?” Klaus asks, absolutely enraptured.

They OG squad all exchange a look and just collectively shrug, “Old as balls.”

“Besides,” Booker says dismissively, “What’s he going to do about it? Kill us?”

and that ends that conversation)

(They also don’t discuss how young Five is. How young he was when he died. How that’s going to effect him all his life. How he’s going to be old in years, but he’s always going to be thirteen in the same way that Nile is stuck in her 20s. Sometimes it seems like the immortals are getting younger and younger in age and... it sucks.)

anyway just. Old Guard and Umbrella Academy shenanigans as they stop the apocalypse and try to look after the semi-feral teenager they have been saddled with and figure out what comes next

#far tua long #long post #tog/tua crossover #and then klaus died and wakes up and andy throws her hand up #'THREE? IN LIKE ONE DECADE?' she demands #STOP BEING IMMORTAL #quynh arrives and she and five probably get along like a house on fire tbh #five: yeah being horrifically alone and somewhat frequently dying kind of sucked now that i think about it #quynh: hmm. my child now.#granted quynh's experience was like. horrifically worse? in it's own way?#five's was nothing to sneeze at but daMN QUYNH #who knows maybe the umbrella academy are who finds quynh #they have money #why not go on a captain america esque search for a random immortal in the ocean #they found steve rogers eventually they might as well find quynh amiright #five wants to stay with him family but also like #his family aren't exactly road tripping together and singing songs around the fireplace #they have their own lives #nicky holding up five: bastard #nile: NO #joe: bastard baby. brat boy.#nile: NOO #the old guard are a disaster family and you can pry that from my cold dead hands #anyway it's 1am so have this #andy: hey copley we have a new immortal for you to erase the tracks of #booker wants to be relieved he is DEFINITELY no longer that baby of the family with TWO whole babier immortals #but let's be real he still totally is #joe: FIVE never betrayed us #booker: five would literally sell you to satan for one cornchip #booker: please stop bringing that up at every opportunity

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regina-del-cielo · 3 years

Text

Immortal Siblings AU | Four, then three, then four again

I mentioned that the bulletpoint post describing how the Guard from the Immortal Siblings AU found Joe had totally run away from me. It has, in fact, become a study on them grieving over Lykon and then finding Yusuf.

I have, somehow, reached a sort of natural end to the amount of bullshit my mind can add to this list/fic draft. So, if you want to give it a read... grab a snack. It’s long. I’m sorry.

Warnings for Wikipedia levels of historical accuracy - I added links to the relevant pages when quoting historical events, but since I was just trying to work out a timeline (famous last words), the research wasn’t extensive. There’s a lot of hand-waving.

By the end of the 11th Century, I think Andy, Quynh and Nico haven’t been in Europe for a while, not really. They moved south, and then east, after the sack of Rome of 410 CE. Seeing the great cities fall has become hard for them, especially for Nico, who is a nomad at heart but has a soft spot for cities, together with Lykon, the true city boy in the group. He’d seen it happen to Athens, he wasn’t sure he could deal with seeing Rome wilt.

For reasons I cannot fathom, my mind is settled on them having been in India when Lykon dies (possibly sometime around the middle of the 6th century, in the mess that was the crumbling of the Gupta Empire???)

Seeing him die destroys them, and they take a break from any battlefield to grieve their friend and brother. They wander, occasionally helping but almost never raising their weapons, too leery of injuries and of losing each other.

(Quynh, who was the first to notice Lykon’s wounds, has nightmares that make her cry in her sleep. Andromache holds her so tight Nico can feel the tension on her muscles against his back. He and his sister barely sleep, scared of the open spaces of Asia as they’d never been before. Lykon was the youngest of them and he died, what if they stop healing too?)

(If Nico stands guard over his sisters and feels an ache in his chest seeing how they hold onto each other, he’s never going to say it out loud. His Mache deserves the love she shares with Quynh. But sometimes he wishes he had someone to hold him like that, one he can call his heart.)

The first time they go to battle again like in the old days it’s almost the end of the 10th century, and they’re helping Quynh’s lands gain independence from China. They have a reason and a specific side to root for, and it’s the kind of cause Lykon would have approved of. They find purpose again.

They are distantly aware of how things are holding up in the west – they know Constantinople has crowned itself capital of the Roman Empire (what is left of it anyway); they know of the new religion, Islam, and how it was brought further east with the armies conquering Persia. They met the Varangians on the Northern Plains of the Rus’, when Andy insisted on going back to their steppes for a while.

They acquire new swords, repair the old weapons, make improvements on their bows. They travel, and help, and listen. They learn new languages. They heal.

They’ve just spent the winter in Samarkand when they hear merchants newly come from Constantinople talk about the Frankish armies that took Antioch and making their way further into Palestine.

The words ‘freeing Jerusalem from the infidels’ make Andy sigh in exasperation and twist Nico’s guts. The three of them don’t really understand the point of going to war for a god, but Jerusalem is old, and she’s been coveted by many throughout their long lives. Things like this never end well, they know it intimately.

But they’ve been away for a long time, centuries at this point. Things are very different from when the Romans had the power. They are less eager to throw themselves into the battlefield now, and there’s much they don’t know about the dynamics of Europe and the Levant. Still they’re worried, and decide that they’ll move west to see if something can be done, for the civilians at least.

At first they travel slowly, keeping an ear out for gossip spoken by the caravans coming from the west. Things radically change, however, when they dream of a new immortal (a man, with a curly black beard and shining dark eyes) dying on the walls of Jerusalem and reviving to an unprecedented slaughter – said man is, obviously, absolutely terrified and they feel it.

He’s also woken up surrounded by living enemies, with high risk of being killed or injured multiple times, and of being seen.

They are still too far away to do anything more than hope that the new guy is clever enough to keep himself alive until they can reach him, but now Nico is all for moving west at full speed to get him out.

“What the everloving FUCK is happening over there?!” is the common theme in their thoughts; nothing about this war they’re walking towards is making any sense.

Yusuf al-Kaysani is, in fact, clever enough to keep himself (and a few other civilians to boot) alive and get out of Jerusalem when it becomes clear than no matter how many Franks he kills he can do nothing to stop them alone. (It’s a fucking carnage, and he’s so tired). He walks away from the battle and tries to reach some sort of safety in the desert.

When he’d decided to stay in Jerusalem and fight instead of escaping the siege, Yusuf had considered the possibility of dying. He had not accounted for waking up from a fatal wound with no sign of having been hit in the first place.

And then there are the visions. Or dreams, he’s not sure. They don’t seem to make any sense? Who are those people?! Is his mind so addled by the war that he’s conjuring scary warrior women and a stupidly handsome man, armed to the teeth and camping in the desert?

(fantasizing about handsome men in his sleep isn’t exactly news for him, but there were never women in those. And none of his usual dreams involved weapons. Something is definitely off)

For the following days, Yusuf makes sure to stay away from human settlements while putting as much space as possible between Jerusalem and himself – the last thing he needs is to become a potential target for any invader that may cross his path.

But he’s alone, having nightmares, constantly on edge, and in a body that suddenly doesn’t feel like his own anymore, since he doesn’t even have the scars to prove that the injuries he sustained were real to begin with.

After a couple of weeks, the appearance of the strangers in his dreams starts feeling safe and comforting; they seem to operate like a little family, and God knows how much he misses his own.

(should he try to go back home? Would news of the siege reach his family before he does? Would he be able to go back to his previous life in the state he’s in? Could he keep this secret from them? Would they still love him or think him a monster?)

Despite their impressive warrior appearance, they feel... kind. And gentle. Sometimes, it feels like they’re trying to reassure him, even. Especially when he dreams from the perspective of the man.

The sensation those dreams leave on his skin is like a cape. You’re not alone, it whispers. Wait for us.

Andy, Quynh and Nico have just left Baghdad when the dreams change, and not for the better - Yusuf was passing through a village when a band of marauding Franks started harassing the locals. He moved to defend the villagers, but was overwhelmed and what’s worse, the Franks saw his wounds close too fast. Their reaction was vehement: they called him a demon, incapacitated him and then brought him back to their garrison, with every intention of ‘properly getting rid of him’.

Nico wakes up screaming and Andy has to sit on him so he doesn’t just sprint ahead without actually knowing where the fuck he’s going.

“We can’t just raid every single Frankish encampment in a twenty mile radius around Jerusalem, Nico!” “TRY ME” *Aggressive Sibling Bickering follows* *Quynh doesn’t bat an eye and just rolls out a map of the area she purchased and starts mapping out the fastest routes*

Yusuf is having a Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week at the hands of his captors, who are getting disturbingly creative in their tortures, but whenever they let him fall unconscious he sees the people of his dreams travelling much faster than before, looking Royally Pissed Off, and the surroundings are... starting to look familiar too?

If he tries to pay more attention to the conversations his torturers are having with each other outside of the tent he’s in and hoping the dreams go both ways, so the maybe-real trio can find him easier, now that’s nobody’s business but his own.

(spoiler: it works)

When they are in sight of Jerusalem, the immortals find a drunk “pilgrim” boasting about his band capturing a ‘pagan demon’ while coming back from their victory at Ascalon, follow him back to his camp, and as soon as it’s feasible they attack.

(Andy will later gripe that Nico didn’t leave her anything to do because he just paved his way through the Franks like he was harvesting wheat.)

seeing the Stupidly Handsome Man of his dreams standing in front of him covered head to toe in blood, with a double-bladed axe in one hand and a sword in the other, staring intensely at him as if to peer directly into his soul is... an experience for Yusuf.

(he may have composed a lot of poems about that first vision of Nico through the centuries. The words ‘avenging angel’ have been used quite profusely, too)

The protective instinct that Nico has felt for the newest immortal since the first dream clutches at his throat when he finally sees him, chained to a pole and so thin his clothes barely cling to his body, but with the softest dark eyes staring back with a glint of recognition when he comes closer.

(he could cry with relief at the knowledge that he’s not scared of him. Nico has seen the faces of the men that were keeping him captive, he knows he looks a lot like they did, and that he paints a gruesome picture.)

“Are you alright?” Nico asks first, in Greek. (He knows, from the dreams, that his captors prayed in Latin. He wants to make sure that the other knows that he’s not like them.)

“You were in my dreams. You came.” Yusuf answers back in the same language, although his sounds much newer than Nico’s.

“Of course. We’re not meant to be alone… and no one deserves to be in a cage”.

Nico uses the axe to break the chains, and by the time he’s done Andy and Quynh have reached them and his sister throws the keys at him to open the shackles.

“Couldn’t take a moment to get them yourself, little eagle? You wanted to show off your skills to the new one?” Quynh teases, just to see Nico blush. Andy stares at her brother and their new companion for a few beats, before finally asking his name.

“Yusuf ibn Ibrahim ibn Muhammad Al-Kaysani, known as al-Tayyib” he answers, letting out the first smile in weeks at the raising eyebrows of his saviours. “Just Yusuf is fine.”

“You have a sense of humour, brother. I like you!” Andy snorts, before cutting her palm with the edge of her axe, and showing him her fast healing.

“We are like you, Yusuf. That’s why you dreamt of us, and we of you” Nico adds gently, while Quynh offers her waterskin to Yusuf. They also offer their own names.

“We need to clean up this mess and move away from here” Andy says, while Nico helps Yusuf up. “One of those fuckers was boasting about an undying demon with others in a tavern, the last thing we need is to fight our way out against their whole army because someone else decided to come check if he was saying the truth.”

“It’s been a long time since we were in Kush” Quynh whispers, and Yusuf sees their faces open in a look of affectionate grief he remembers seeing on his Baba’s eyes when he talked about his own mother.

“We can talk about it more when we’re somewhere safer” Andromache suggests, before moving to set up the stage of an ‘accidental’ fire.

As they’re riding away, Yusuf turns slightly to watch the camp burn, leaving no trace of the invaders that hurt him. Jerusalem looms in the distance - lost, and wounded. If he were a little less exhausted, he could easily work out a metaphor about his own situation.

But then he looks at the three people of his dreams – Quynh, Andromache, Nikolaos – that came for him. Who are the same as him, immortal.

His world has turned upside down, and there are so many questions to ask, and he could sleep for a month straight – but one thing is certain.

He’s not alone anymore.

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wickedpact · 3 years

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life's hecticness has finally kinda caught up to me and im just feeling super worn down and im seeking comfort in the old guard and because your blog always sparks joy ive come to you. on the subject of comfort do you have any thoughts on coping mechanisms/ways to comfort themselves the members of the old guard have? and similarly, ways they help comfort the others too? i would love to hear any and all thoughts you might have on the matter <3 - 2ta

in terms of comforting others:

nicky: words. i think its kind of interesting, but every time in the movie we see as character in emotional distress nicky speaks up (its okay nile, tell us, sono qui, everything happens for a reason boss) the only time he breaks this habit is when booker talks about grief in the lab.

booker: we dont rlly see booker explicitly comfort people much but he does seem to tend towards expressions of solidarity or subtle check-ins/expressions of concern (for the former he tells nile about his family, he tells nile big wounds take longer to heal, he reminds andy that ‘this is what you wanted’ and for the latter he asks andy post-stab if shes alright, he tells andy he wont see her again, etc)

hes also quick to (rightfully lmao) accept blame (after the kill floor, when he wont get up when the squad escapes, and the scene where he and andy get captured)

joe: he doesnt do a whole lot of comforting to the non-nicky’s out there interestingly enough. he encourages andy like the others do just after the baklava scene (i know you needed a break but its been over a year boss) he also tends to make little light hearted jokes/comments to lighten the mood sometimes (this plus 'faster than the elevator', etc)

and i suppose one could say him answering nile’s questions during the dinner scene are a type of comfort in itself, tho .. .... his answers arent exactly reassuring lmao

nile: So are you good guys or bad guys?

joe: Depends on the century

(j o s e p h you could have given her a more reassuring answer than that!! altho depending on the person, straight honesty can be very comforting in of itself, and joe prolly knew that andy would dance around nile’s questions and be generally unhelpful)

but additionally joe is a pretty strong protector and worrier about his friends’ well-being. he advocates for finding nile in the train scene and tells the others to ‘cover andy’ when they find out shes mortal

(plus the little touch he does to andy’s back!)

andy: andy’s mileage varies when it comes to comforting (primarily nile of course bc shes the Distressed One in the movie) but a lot of the time she tends towards offering stability and loyalty (me and those three men in there will keep you safe, you’re one of us now we would do the same for you, [to nicky] this changes nothing) which of course makes sense for her. stability and loyalty obviously probably mean so much to andy and as Team Leader shes probably very used to offering those things

nile: nile is more the comfortee than the comforter in the movie for all the obvious reasons, tho i think its interesting that at the end she tells andy ‘youre gonna [spend the time you have left] with us, andy’ not only bc shes delivering that stability/loyalty right back at andy but also bc shes also a leader (in the marines) so she might have a similar situation as andy with offering stability & loyalty as a Leader

being comforted:

nicky: the most notable instance of nicky being upset and getting comforted is obviously the van speech, tho like ive said i doubt joe’s go-to method of comforting nicky is a Speech. tho also (obviously & as ive talked abt a lot) i think he takes a lot of comfort from the idea of destiny/fate and the idea that he and The Lads were all destined to be together. he lomves his friends and hes happy when theyre happy

booker: alcohol.

honestly im not even sure how booker would really like to be comforted/comfort himself besides his given Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms. i think he does take a lot of comfort in his Solidarity with andy tho. considering his ‘that way madness lies’ comment about the immortality and his comment in the comic about ‘whats the purpose of an uncertain immortality?’ and his tendency towards tech, i think he’s the kind of person who likes when things are explainable and logical (and u could say thats a way he foils with nicky i suppose)

joe: him touchy

ive been meaning to make a gifset thats just Joe + Reassurance Through Touch but i keep forgetting about it. hes a very tactile boyo. in the comic while theyre having the nile nightmare joe reaches out and physically grabs nicky’s arm/shoulder in his sleep, like hes subconsciously checking hes still there. he worries So Much about the others (nicky in the armored van, nile in the train scene, andy post-mortality) and their well-being that i think he takes a lot of comfort in knowing all the lads are okay and safe (esp nicky)

andy: like i mentioned i think she likes loyalty and stability, which is obvs something shes had a serious lacking of throughout her life. ik u arent super into the comics but the recent tales through time story about andy went over how she takes comfort in the idea that her axe belonged to her mother once, even if her modern-day axe has had all its parts and pieces replaced so many times its not the axe her mother gave her 7000 yrs ago anymore. however andy still clings to this idea of her axe being her mother’s axe (‘this is the labyrs she held in her hands’). the memory of her family/mother and the stability of having the same axe with her through her history obvs comforts her a lot.

nile: again similarly to andy i feel like loyalty/family comforts nile a lot. she followed her father’s footsteps into the marines and worries about her loyalties to them through the first half of the movie, and tries to go home & thinks about her mom and brother through the whole thing.

(plus, music obvs means a lot to her)

#2thoughts anon #!!!! feel better tho 🥺#Anonymous

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ofbloodandbullets · 3 years

Photo

So it’s recently come to my attention that not everyone in the world has actually watched The Old Guard (WHO KNEW?!) so I’m going to try and do some info dumps about the world, the general canon and Andy’s history, personality, powers etc. This will ... probably get kinda lengthy.

Also: MAJOR MAJOR SPOILERS FOR COMICS & MOVIE.

The first thing you need to know is that for the main part, the history and the world that TOG takes place in is the exact same one as the real history of the world. It’s set in modern day, though the plot points stretch back to 7k+ years ago. It’s also important to note that there is a lot of historical inaccuracies and some things in canon that conflict themselves so it’s best to just take it all with a grain of salt and just go with what works best for your particular preferences etc.

The main difference between reality and TOG is that in TOG there are a very minute like .00000000002% of the population that are immortals. Now, it’s important to note that these people can die but they resurrect pretty close to immediately after they die no matter the amount of damage done. Now it can take some time to fully heal or reform, depending on how extensive the trauma (being blown to bits or burned etc. will take longer to fix but there’s no amount of damage that we know of that can actually keep them dead).

There are times when, for reasons unknown to the characters in character (or to us as readers of the comics / viewers of the movie etc) that the immortality just stops. There’ll just be a time that they suffer injuries that just don’t heal, and they die. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to this, be it age, number of times they’ve died, whatever. Now, I have my own entirely headcanon and personal preference based theory which you can find HERE but it’s totally just a random idea that I had that I liked to explain the loss of Andy’s immortality in the movie (that doesn’t happen in the comics) and lets me say that she regains her immortality post canon so that I can nudge things back in the direction of the comics for post movie plots and so on.

Andy is, as far as we know, and as far as she knows, the oldest (human) immortal, coming in at around 7,000 years old. She was born into a tribe, the Scythia (hence what she’s generally called: Andromache the Scythian). A nomadic warrior tribe that I headcanon to be a matriarchy, Andy was betrayed by the ‘queen mother’ when she was sixteen and killed in battle because the leader feared that Andy posed a danger to her continuing rule. This person was practically a mother to Andy and it was a horrific betrayal. What was almost as shocking to Andy was the fact that she got back up again after being literally stabbed in the back and killed.

In the vein of trying to thwart prophecies making them happen, Andy killed the matriarch and took her placce ruling the tribe, eventually becoming a God King to her people and ruling over them for hundreds of years until her loneliness absolutely overwhelmed her and one day she just vanished.

At some point after this, she began to dream of a woman, feeling a pull towards this stranger that she couldn’t begin to explain. After dozens, maybe hundreds of years, she managed to track down the woman in question (Noriko in the comics, Quynh in the movie) and realized that they’d been dreaming of each other. (In the comics she meets Lykon before Quynh/Noriko, whom she had also been dreaming of).

Now, the connection between these immortals isn’t explained in canon, and for a long time, Andy, Lykon, Noriko (and eventually Joe, Nicky, Book) thought they were the only ones but there is a scene in the second set of comics that implies that there are other ‘packs’ of immortals. I headcanon that it’s a ‘like calls to like’ / kind of Sense8 simpatico type thing - like minded souls drawn to each other, which is why Andy and the others didn’t know about the other immortals, but again, that’s just entirely my thoughts on the matter.

Lykon is the first to succumb to the loss of immortality, a short couple hundreds years after he and Andy find each other. He dies on a battlefield, one that he and Quynh/Noriko and Andy fought on like a hundred/thousand before, champions for the abused etc. Skip forward a couple hundred years again and enter Joe & Nicky, a Knight and a Muslim warrior who kill each other on the battlefield only to both wake up and spend (an unspecified amount of time) hunting and killing each other before eventually Andy & Quynh/Noriko find them. In time, Joe & Nicky realize that they love each other. (Important to note that Quynh/Noriko and Andy were also lovers). In the movie, when the first major surge of witch hunts began, Quynh/Noriko and Andy go to help the women that stood accused, only to be captured and accused of witchcraft themselves. After being hung, drowned, burned at the stake and coming back to life every time, the witch hunters settled on locking Quynh into an iron coffin and dropping her into the ocean. (In the comics, Noriko is lost at sea during a massive storm that had thrown their ship entirely off course with Andy having no clue where they actually were at the time.)

Joe & Nicky arrive in time to rescue Andy, but Noriko is already gone and despite spending decades tracking down every person even remotely involved in the so called ‘investigation’ into the women’s inquisition and punishment, Andy wasn’t able to find anything about where Quynh could be.

Cue angst & depression & guilt for ages after.

The trio still steps in over the following decades, trying to help prevent the worst of atrocities, but Andy quickly begins to spiral into an, at best apathetic, at worst, entirely distant and withdrawn mindset and steadily begins to lose hope that they’re actually making any difference at all.

Skip ahead a century or two and enter Book; a Russian conscript who had been forced into the fight after being convicted of forgery. Hung for desertion, Book spend days dying over and over again as he hung there, unable to attempt an escape until the troops finally packed up and moved on. He and Andy, Nicky and Joe meet up and Book kinda reluctantly joins their little group. It’s revealed that Book dreams, still, of Noriko/Quynh and while he can’t tell where hse is, dreams of her still dying, drowning on the floor of the ocean over and over and over like she had been for the last hundred or two years.

Book returns at some point to his mortal family which ended in disaster when his last remaining son was dying of cancer, cursing and screaming at Book for ‘choosing not to save him’ by making him immortal too, even though it’s something Book had no ability to transfer or make happen. Between his nightmares, losing his son and a number of other factors, Book decides he wants to end it all but no matter what he tries, doesn’t die and stay dead.

Eventually he’s approached by a pharmaceutical company that has figured out what he is and wants to run tests on him to see if they can unlock his healing / immortality for other people. Merrick’s company works in league with an ex CIA agent whose wife died of a horrific terminal disease who hopes that they can find a way to keep anyone else from dying if they don’t have to. Initially it was just supposed to be him, but he’d set up a display to stream for proof of what he was / they were and the corp decided they wanted all of the immortals. Book ends up betraying the team, and he and the others end up locked up and tested on / killed / experimented on etc.

There’s another character introduced in the meantime, the first new immortals in centuries, an American soldier named Niles. There’s a lot more that goes on here, but the main point is that in the movie, Andy stops healing from her wounds shortly after she tracks down Nile and is put into incredible amounts of danger when Merrick (the leader of the pharmaceutical company) captures Andy, Joe, Book, Nicky. Book is devastated, Nicky and Joe are furious, Andy’s just tired.

Eventually, Andy and the others break free with Niles’ help, destroy the lab they were originally held in etc and set out to try and hunt down any other proof, lab results, anything that Merrick got his hands on during the tests.

The group meets and settles on a hundred year exile for Booker (which I think is one of the stupidest things - like, the man’s clearly desperate and depressed and lonely and mentally unstable so by all means let’s isolate him for a fully century) and at the end of the movie we see him stumbling home to his apartment six months later to find Quynh standing in his apartment, pouring and drinking a glass of water which is a whole power move considering how many millions of times she died by drowning.

In the comics, Quynh/Noriko was driven entirely mad and to the point of wanting vengeance against Andy for abandoning her and spends a while gaslighting Andy and torturing her physically and emotionally and what not until she manages to isolate Andy from the other immortals and scoops in to ‘rescue’ Andy. IDK what they’re going to adapt this to in the second movie,

Again, via the link posted above, my Andy slowly begins to regain her immortality (again, IDK what they’re going to do with the next movie).

Uhhhh yeah. So I .. think that’s the majority of what you need to know for canon info about Andy. THIS is also an important PSA regarding my Andy’s history & her longest lasting relationship that has nothing to do with canon at all but that is part of Andy’s bg in every verse, even if it never comes into play.

#CHARACTER INFO.#BIO.#HEADCANON. ( do not reblog. )

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theoldguard-recs · 3 years

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What are your favourite hurt Joe /caring Nicky Fics.?

Hi! Thanks so much for your patience in this reply.

I have to be honest that I don’t have any faves along those themes (my co-mod might, and this post can be added onto!). If this kind of fic is still of interest to you, I ran a quick search with some different tag combinations and found the following that might be of interest to you.

Please note these haven’t been read thoroughly, only skimmed to see if they might be related to your request; your mileage may vary and please read the tags / use discretion!

If anyone else has recs, please feel few to add them to this post!

A burden halved - dana_norram - Mature, No Archive Warnings, ~2300 words. Shower sex, mild smut. “After Merrick, Joe is barely holding together. Nicky is there to lend his arms until he does.”

Hold me when I shatter - everything99 - Not Rated, Graphic Depictions of Violence, ~3300 words. “Nicky feels his tension and holds him tighter, holds Joe together as he threatens to fall apart and does not allow the nightmare to pull him back into a world full of pain and agony. “We are in Malta and we ate apricots and pomegranates and dates and figs yesterday. You took my hand and laughed at how sticky it was and when we kissed, I could taste the sweet juice of the fruit, the sun and the salt of the sea on your lips.” During their healing time in Malta Joe's sleep is haunted by memories of the lab. But Nicky is there for him as he always was and always will be.”

call me home, beloved - nicolorinaldidigenova - Teen, No Archive Warnings Apply, ~3200 words. A month after Merrick Industries, Joe finds himself wanting to be alone with Nicolò, as he starts to feel himself unravel. ***or a glimpse on what Joe means when he said: “he's the moon when I am lost in darkness”

In a Heartbeat - NamelesslyNightlock - Teen, Graphic Depictions of Violence, ~4000 words. When the sword sunk deep into Yusuf’s gut, it was Nicolò who screamed.

what wise men fear - itsmylifekay and velociraptorerin (Old Guard Mini Bang fic, features art). - Not rated, creator chose not to use archive warnings (and therefore any may apply including Graphic Depictions of Violence), ~10,000 words. Nile watches as Nicky reemerges, arm raised and already firing, before her gaze is pulled away, Andy shouting about incoming and taking shots of her own to keep the door secure. Between the two of them it doesn’t take long and as soon as the hall is clear, Nile turns back to watch Nicky’s march, mystified by his transformation. Joe gets hurt and Nicky snaps, told from Nile, Nicky, and Joe's POV. Feral Nicky. At a glance this fic features lots of violence.

lights with guide you home - screamingarrows - Not Rated, creator chose not to use archive warnings (and therefore any may apply), ~35000 words. In which Joe is hurting and Booker is hurting and the road to redemption is not easily paved. Angst with a happy ending, everyone is sad. Hurt Joe / Comforting Nicky appears to feature prominently although a main focus of this fic also seems to be on the friendship between Joe / Booker.

The “Hurt Joe | Yusuf al Kaysani” and “Joe | Yusuf al Kaysani Whump“ additional tags help filter fics down to a manageable amount, but it’s likely that there are a number under “hurt/comfort”. Other tags you might find helpful to search with include “Worried Nicky | Nicolo di Genova” or “Protective Nicky | Nicolo di Genova” and synonyms / canonized tags like BAMF!Nicky.

The sheer volume of Joe/Nicky fics is daunting, and I know that I’ve definitely missed a lot depending on what tags are or aren’t applied by authors, but I’m hopeful others might have some faves they can share!

#The Old Guard #The Old Guard Fic #Hurt/Comfort #some whump fic in here #Joe #Nicky #Joe/Nicky #Angst #fic finding

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caffeinatedbraincell · 3 years

Text

Hi I tried to write some Joe x Nicky angst w/ a happy ending (predictably, it turned out to be mostly fluff). TW for a panic attack~

Read on AO3

In the end, Nicky thought, it was the most pedestrian thing. He wouldn’t even have looked twice, had he not already been on edge from when Joe had spilled hot coffee on himself at breakfast.

Joe was spending the afternoon with Nile at a convention, and Nicky had decided to make the most of his solitude by cleaning their entire house from floor to ceiling. He was sweeping their bathroom when he saw it - two small, oddly-shaped pieces of wax paper that hadn’t quite made it into the dustbin. He bent down to take a closer look.

Something about them was familiar. Something was wrong. Nicky set down the broom and dust pan. He picked the bits of paper up to examine them. Then, his gaze snagged on something in the dustbin, and the chilling reality of what he was holding clicked into place.

It was a Band-Aid wrapper. The wax paper had been peeled off the sticky edges so the Band-Aid could be used. Which was ridiculous. Ridiculous, because they didn’t need Band-Aids. They healed instantly.

Nicky took a measured breath and stood up slowly. He walked back into the bedroom and picked up his cell phone.

“Hello? Andromache? Yes, I just wanted to ask real fast - did you by any chance come by our place since we saw you last weekend?” He paused. “No, no, I know. Yes, I know we asked for time off, of course you would call ahead.” He listened as Andy asked if he and Joe were okay, concern creeping into her voice. “Yeah, boss, we’re fine. But, ah, something just came up. I’ll call you back.”

He knew Andy wouldn’t buy it; he’d hung up way too abruptly. But Nicky needed time to think, he just needed a moment, one moment of quiet, could the ringing in his ears just shut up for one damn second-

He sat down on the edge of their bed and took a deep, deliberate breath. Why would there be a used Band-Aid wrapper in his and Joe’s house? Nicky had just given himself a papercut while clearing the stack of junk mail in the living room, and his immortality was still working. So that left Joe. But Joe’s immortality had to be working too, because…

Because we have to go together, Nicky thought, devastated. That’s the rule. That’s how it fucking works.

No one knew for sure how their immortality worked. He tried taking another deep breath, but it didn’t feel like any oxygen was reaching his lungs. He rubbed the heels of his hands into his eyes, and they came away wet.

Nicky startled as a ragged sob was ripped out of him. When had he started crying? Why couldn’t he catch his breath? He slid to the floor and kneeled next to their bed, curling in on himself as he gasped for air. His heart thudded like it wanted to beat out of his chest.

Yusuf, he thought as his vision splotched black around the edges. He blinked rapidly at the worn bedskirt. What was going on? He reached around for his phone to text Joe, but suddenly couldn’t find it. Yusuf, come back, come home, he begged, giving in to the darkness as his head dropped heavily to the floor.

Nicky woke an indeterminate amount of time later, disoriented and tucked into bed. The curtains had been drawn and the lights shut off, but a couple candles flickered softly on their dresser. There was a covered glass of water next to him.

Nicky groaned, sitting up against the headboard. Despite the tremor in his hand, he managed to down the entire glass without spilling a drop. As he set it back down, the bedroom door cracked open.

“Nicky?” Joe’s eyes widened when he saw Nicky awake. He silently closed the door behind him and practically ran to Nicky’s side.

Joe sat down in front of Nicky and reached for his hand, raising it helplessly to his trembling lips. Joe kissed his palm, his knuckles, his fingertips, as if grounding himself against some great weight. Nicky didn’t miss the way Joe’s fingers flitted around his wrist, as if Joe was resisting the urge to press his fingers to the pulse there.

“Amore mio,” Joe asked, voice cracking a bit. “What happened? You were- you wouldn’t wake up. Oh my love, why didn’t you call me?”

“I couldn’t find my phone,” Nicky replied. He furrowed his brow, trying to piece together the disjoint bits of memory floating around in his head.

“It was centimeters from your fingertips.”

“I don’t know, Joe, I-” Suddenly, Nicky’s eyes widened in realization. He gripped Joe’s shoulders and looked into his eyes, dead serious. “Joe. If I ask you a question, do you promise not to lie to me?”

“I- Nicolò! God forbid I ever lie to you, my heart. Why would you need to ask such a thing?”

“Are you still healing?”

Joe froze. “Wait. Wait, Nicky, are you-”

“Answer the question, Joe.”

Joe reached up to clutch Nicky’s wrists where his hands still rested on Joe’s shoulders. “Yes,” he whispered. “I- I broke a glass in the kitchen, on accident, when I went to get you water just now. A small shard got stuck in my hand. But it healed completely, I’m fine now.”

“Show me,” Nicky demanded, uncharacteristically firm. “Where? Which hand?”

“Here. This one,” Joe splayed his left hand out in Nicky’s palm, watching as he inspected it thoroughly. “Nicky?”

“What?”

“Please, amore-” Joe swallowed around the lump in his throat. “Please, if you can, tell me what happened? You were unconscious when I came back, and…”

He trailed off, looking down at the bedsheet to hide the unfairly persistent tears pooling in his eyes. Nicky made a soft noise of concern, reaching out to cup Joe’s face tenderly.

“Hayati, I didn’t mean to scare you. I think it might have just been a particularly bad panic attack.”

“You rarely get panic attacks without triggers.”

“Yeah. Nothing major happened, it was just- I found- Joe, there was a Band-Aid wrapper in our bathroom. Do you know how it got there?”

Joe snapped his gaze up to meet Nicky’s. “Hold on, that’s what this whole thing has been about?! Nicolò, ya amar, you could have just asked me. Remember when I went for a walk last night? There was a toddler who fell down in the park, and his mom had her hands full with an infant, so she asked if I could help her put a Band-Aid on his scrape. There were no trash cans nearby, so I waited until I got home to throw the wrapper away. My heart, you couldn’t seriously have thought I would lose my immortality and…not tell you?”

There was a suspended pause. Then, Nicky looked away. “Forgive me, Yusuf.”

“No,” Joe choked out. “If I have given you any reason at all to believe that I would hide such a thing from you, then it is I who should beg your forgiveness. I’m sorry, Nicky. I promise, I swear on all that is holy, on our very love, that you will be the first person I tell when that day comes. Please, my life, I-”

“I know, Joe. I know. I’m so sorry for thinking otherwise. Come here,” Nicky pulled his husband into his arms, leaning back against the headboard and tugging the duvet over them both. “Just stay with me for now, like this. I need to hold you. I need to feel that you’re okay.”

Joe drew a shaky breath, inhaling Nicky’s scent and pressing a languid kiss to his collarbone. He wrapped his arms around Nicky’s waist. “I’m okay. I’m always okay with you. Nothing can take me away from you. You know that, right?”

Nicky hummed, smiling into Joe’s hair. “Of course. Ti amo così tanto, tesoro. Just stay a moment more, and then we’ll see about dinner. You’re probably hungry after the convention.”

“Mmm,” Joe nuzzled closer. “It’s also fine if you want to just hold me like this forever, you know. I don’t mind.”

Nicky laughed softly, and Joe felt it like a gentle roll of thunder beneath where his head lay on Nicky’s sternum.

“Worry makes people insane, doesn’t it?” Nicky murmured after a beat.

Joe tilted his chin up to look at his husband, who promptly took advantage of the angle to lay a kiss on Joe’s parted lips. “You’re not insane, amore.”

“I shouldn’t have doubted you.”

Joe sighed, relaxing back down in Nicky’s arms. “Next time, just text me instead of literally passing out with panic, okay?”

Nicky’s eyes crinkled in a warm smile. “Okay. I promise.”

#the old guard #joe x nicky #kaysanova #fluff #fanfiction #tog fanfic #angst w/ a happy ending #kavi writes #yusuf al kaysani #nicolo di genova #I don't usually attempt angst so feedback is especially welcome

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violetren · 4 years

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2nd Old Guard Movie: A romantic dramedy with some action for flair.

Nile demands life stories to catch up on everything about her new family now that shit has calmed the fuck down for five minutes. Joe never one to miss an opportunity to retell the epic that is his and Nicky’s love story jumps straight on board. Meanwhile Booker and Quynh are doing this weird not quite buddy cop thing trying to track down the rest of the family, where Quynh is like “and then we kill them!” and Booker is like “No... then we talk to them” while trying to work a knife out of Quynh’s grip. So side by side you’ve got these twin sets of flashbacks where things with Joe and Nicky go from killing each other to being soft and domestic making dinner for Nile and Andy while they talk, and things with Andy and Quynh going from bright and happy, to Quynh breaking into the families current home by blowing up a wall, and kidnapping them all before they can recover or some shit. Somehow they all manage to get through to Quynh before she can permanantly kill Andy and the movie ends on this “we’ve got a lot of healing to do but we’re hopeful we can do it” type note.

3rd Old Guard Movie: A family comedy w/ violent b (maybe c) plot.

A return to the first in that some capitalist mofo is trying to collect the family, except this time Quynh is there as like that redeemed villain that hangs out making snarky comments and refusing to admit they’re soft enough to be apart of the family. While also being all “this is my stupid depressed french son who has been helping me recover so I must in turn stop him from selling us all out in a fit of melancholy” and “this is my chance to bond with The Baby since I missed her first dozen or so deaths, and my wife and brothers seem to care for her deeply.” One of her hardest hitting snarky comments is “from the brilliant minds who thought exiling the guy who fucked up because he was lonely was the best way to handle things.” This is where Nile begins to set aside her worries that Quynh’s gonna let the crazy take over and kill Andy while they all sleep so she can be like “I have been SAYING people!” Whatever rich guy is hunting them 100% has back seat to Andy and Quynh getting into a shouting match over who did or did not remember to ride by the mill on the way home to get some flour 800 years ago as part of airing their greivances for theraputic reasons.

#the old guard #chirping wren #tog quynh #andromache the scythian #andromache x quynh #joe x nicky #tog joe #tog nicky #nile freeman #tog booker #yusuf al kaysani #nicolo di genova #sebastian le livre

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even-after-a-millennia · 3 years

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my heart (and lungs) ache for you

Femslash Fortnight: Tuesday - Hanahaki disease AU

For those of you that haven't read a Hanahaki disease AU before, the basic premise is that unrequited love makes flowers bloom in your lungs and they will kill you if you don't tell the person that you love them or if they don't return your feelings. You can get surgery to remove the flowers, but it also takes your feelings for that person away, so many people don't go that route. The flowers usually have meaning, same in this fic, and the meanings are at the end of the fic. Hope you enjoy!

This was written for Femslash Fortnight, hosted by @tog-femslashfortnight

You can read this fic down below or over on my Ao3 account here.

Yusuf and Nicolò burst into Quynh and Andromache’s cell, covered in blood and ready to spill more, to find a lone woman slumped against the wall.

She looked up at them, her eyes dead.

“It’s too late,” she croaked.

Their eyes widened as they took in her words. The blood on her wrists, the floor. The lack of their other sister.

“...Quynh?” Yusuf asked, his voice quivering. They are both shaking in front of her, the adrenaline of their fighting crashing in the worst possible way.

“Gone,” Andromache said, her voice twisted and broken. “And… that’s not all.”

She coughed and a bloody flower falls from her lips.

She closed her eyes so she wouldn’t have to watch as all she had revealed sunk in.

She far preferred the darkness found behind her eyelids than the reality in front of her.

___________________________________

Andy had died two hundred and forty-nine times from the disease in her lungs by the time that Nile joined her group. While her body reset with every death, whether it had to do with Hanahaki or not, the flowers always came back. A bitter reminder of the one she had lost.

The first time she coughed up a petal around Nile, they were eating their first meal altogether. Nile’s eyes were darting around, unsure where to look. Joe and Nicky had told their story, so had Booker. Nile asked her how old Andy was. Her chest tightened and she put down her bowl. The men at the table knew what was coming, but Andy still saw Nicky’s brow furrow as she began to cough. He had been to college multiple times for medicine, trying to find a way to alleviate her pain. There was nothing he could do. Not anything, not without Quynh there. And though they had searched for her until they had almost lost themselves, there was no sign of the iron coffin that had become her tomb.

Nile stared at Andy, then the bloody petal in her hand.

“Better get used to it, kid, it isn’t something that can be fixed,” Andy said.

Joe winced and Booker handed Andy his flask. She took it and chugged a mouthful, hoping the taste of carnations would be washed away.

She’d had countless kinds of flowers emerge from her chest over the centuries: pink camellias, forget-me-nots, salvias, yarrow… the list went on. Eventually, she stopped looking up their meanings.

They all came down to this: Andy loved Quynh to this day, and she ached to have her back by her side.

“Is it… not requited?” Nile asked tentatively.

Andy snorted.

“Not in the traditional sense,” Nicky said, taking the responsibility of answering. “Andy’s wife is unable to return her love and that is why she is still sick.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“Tell her about when you two idiots both had it,” Booker said, and Andy looked at him and sent him silent thanks.

Joe smiled, his eye wrinkles out in their full glory. “This is years after the Crusades, and one morning, I wake up with heliotropes dripping from my lips. I didn’t want to tell Nicky, so I hid them from him.”

“Little did he know that earlier that day, before he had woke, I had coughed up violet petals,” Nicky said, smiling over at his husband.

“Stupidity ensued,” Booker said with a small grin.

“Until one day we both coughed in front of one another and noticed the flowers. It took a while for us both to admit our feelings. Didn’t help that I was angry at the idea that someone out there didn’t love Nicky back,” Joe said, laughing.

“Only for us to realize that we had both thought our love to be unrequited when in reality, it very much was,” Nicky said.

Andy shook her head, taking another swig of Booker’s flask before handing it back.

“Idiots,” she said with a small smile.

_______________________________

Her shoulder wasn’t healing.

Her fingers came away red after she brushed them over the stab wound. It was partially healed, but still bleeding sluggishly. She quickly left the mine and went to the nearest town.

She grabbed all the first aid supplies she could think she would need. It had been a long fucking time since she had needed to patch herself up after a fight, but she had done field medicine on others, on mortals, much more recently.

In the end, she didn’t need to. In her six thousand years of life, Andy had somehow forgotten about the kindness of strangers.

“We also have cough drops, if you would like,” the woman, Celeste, said as she helped Andy put on her coat again.

“Thank you. That would be good.”

Andy got back to her car and shut the door behind her. Her lungs were burning, but she didn’t let herself cough. She had died on the killing room floor just a few days ago, so she had a while before the disease got bad again. A few petals here and there, then full flowers, until she was unable to breathe around the growth in her lungs. The longest she had made it from the beginnings of the disease to her inevitable death was nine months.

When she was immortal, that had hardly mattered.

Now though…

Now she was running out of time.

__________________________________

“Hey, if they can examine the Hanahaki in your lungs, they might be able to find a way to stop it. And I can finally move on and be with my family. It could work out for both of us.”

Her side bled and bled and bled.

“Oh, Book.” There were tears clogging her throat, petals right behind them.

“What have you done?”

_________________________________

Bloody flowers fell from Andy’s lips.

“Fuck.”

The sentiment was echoed around their safe house.

Nile, Joe, and Nicky were all staring and trying not to stare as Andy went to the kitchen and made a cup of tea to soothe her throat.

She had been drinking a lot of tea these days. And taking a lot of naps. And sleeping in general. When she was awake, she felt lethargic. She had bruised her ribs from coughing so much and her throat was constantly inflamed.

It had been seven months since they had left Booker at that pub. Andy felt twinges of emotion about it daily, though the emotion itself changed constantly. Grief, anger, understanding, betrayal, sadness. They all flowed through her.

Nile’s phone rang.

“Hello?” she asked, her voice curious but guarded. “Book? WHAT?!”

They all focused on her.

She looked up, directly at Andy.

“Quynh got out of the coffin. She’s been recovering with Book for a month,” Nile said, her eyes filling with tears.

Her smile made them spill over, it was so big and full of hope.

“She wants to see you again.”

“Andy,” Nicky said gently, ever the voice of reason, “if you see her and she doesn’t return your love, it will accelerate the disease. You will die in days, not weeks.”

Andy nodded, glad of the fact that no mention of surgery was mentioned. Surgically taking out the flowers inside Andy’s lungs would remove the disease, but also remove her ability to love Quynh anymore.

And that really wasn’t an option for Andy.

“I’ll risk it. At least…” she trailed off, her thoughts too private to be spoken.

At least I’ll die having seen her again.

By the looks on her family’s faces, split between fear and hope, they knew what she had thought anyways.

_______________________________

They went to France. Marseille, specifically, and Andy let herself be glad that Booker had gone to his home city. It gave her hope for him.

They let themselves into the safe house, Nile insisting on going first.

“I don’t think it is a trap, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t be smart about this,” she said.

Andy knew that Joe, Nicky, and Nile were all carrying a small army’s worth of weaponry, but she hadn’t bothered. She would live or she would die, one way or another, and she did not want to raise a weapon against Quynh in her final moments.

They entered, the others scanning the room for threats. But there was only Booker, slouched into himself as usual.

“Hey. She’s right through-”

“Andromache…” whispered the voice Andy hadn’t heard in five hundred years.

Her eyes snapped to the source and there stood Quynh in black skinny jeans and a deep red sweater, her eyes flinty as she looked at them.

Her smile wasn’t warm, but it wasn’t cruel. “Hello, my love.”

Andy felt something building in her chest and she sprinted to the nearest garbage can, and coughed and coughed and coughed. Petals and buds and flowers came pouring out of her lungs. She felt a soft hand on her back, soothing her through the pain, but she couldn’t tell who it was.

The final carnation fell from her lips and she slumped over the trash can.

She heaved a breath, the first that didn’t burn her lungs since Quynh had been taken from her.

Wiping her mouth on her sleeve, she rose and turned to Quynh.

Her expression was fractured from what it had been. Andy could now see beneath the anger to the Quynh she knew before.

“Hanahaki?” Quynh asked.

Andy nodded. “Since you were taken from me.”

“And still you stopped searching.”

Andy stared straight at Quynh as she said, “Yes.”

“You are mortal now.”

“Yes.”

“And yet, you did not search for me in your final days.”

“That, actually, is not true,” Andy said. “With resources provided by Copley, we have been. Only to find out, you weren’t where we were searching.”

Quynh’s mouth twisted, but Andy knew her face, knew it more than her own, and she saw how she tried to hide her trembling bottom lip. “You could have died, and I would not have seen you again.”

“But that did not happen,” Andy said, risking a step forward.

“I am here,” she said, taking another step.

“And so are you.” Yet another.

“And you still love me, despite everything.” Closer.

“Or else I would be choking on flowers right now, my final death.” Andy was a foot away and finally stopped.

“We have a chance to spend my remaining days together. It won’t be an eternity, but it will be more than I ever expected to be able to have. I know we have much to discuss and many traumas to bear, but I want you, Quynh. I want you with me until the end.”

“Just you and me,” Quynh said, eyes fixed on Andy.

Taking a chance, Andy leaned her head forward, until their foreheads rested against each other.

“Always,” Andy whispered.

Flower meanings: Red carnation - Alas for my poor heart, my heart aches Camellia, pink - Longing For You Forget-me-not - True love memories, do not forget me Salvia, blue - I think of you Salvia, red - Forever mine Yarrow - Everlasting love Heliotrope - Eternal love, devotion Violet - Loyalty, devotion, faithfulness

#andromaquynh #andy x quynh #andromache the scythian #andy #quynh #fanfic #my fic #tog femslash fortnight #hanahaki disease

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lazaefair · 4 years

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Has anyone done the Disney Princess AU yet

Part 1 - written by me, @poemsingreenink, and @iwritesometimes

poemsingreenink: Like, if anyone has big, soft innocent eyes it's Marwan who I swear to god looks near happy tears in most intense scenes. I at one point during Aladdin in theaters thought "You know Jafar's maybe just not had a great life. He's really having a day here." BECAUSE OF HIS BIG SOFT EYES.

lazaefair: LUCA MARINELLI HIMSELF SAID IT

sarah: HOWWWWW DID HE EVEN GET CAST AS JAFAR LIKE THOSE ARE DISNEY PRINCESS EYES

lazaefair: I...I need somone to draw Joe in a Disney Princess dress

sarah: but WHICH PRINCESS i feel like belle's off the shoulder gold ballgown has promise

lazaefair: Ariel’s pink gown would really drive the point home, though Although you’re right, Belle is a literate, dreamy brunette who loves poetry, so she’s closer as an archetype

sarah: i'll be honest: i was mostly thinking of getting his shoulders nude

lazaefair: Nicky is Ariel. Big blue eyes, otherworldly, utterly uncivilized.

sarah: YES

So imagine: Prince Yusuf, who had a giant statue of himself gifted to him on his birthday, and who hates it because his best friend (and immortal general of the army) Andromache is NEVER GOING TO LET HIM LIVE IT DOWN.

Also imagine: feral merman siren Nicolò who bites off fishheads and communicates through weird clicking noises, when he’s not singing men to their deaths. He’s not one of those useless pretty koi mermaids, no. He’s a motherfucking creature of the deep. Lamp eyes that are used to distract fish prey. Claws and pale fins and an intense stare and fangs.

Now imagine: Prince Yusuf going overboard in the storm that hits his royal yacht. Struggling, swept away, half-drowned and losing hope fast when an unearthly song fills the air, low and sweet and compelling. He’s swimming towards the singing before he realizes it, delirious, until something closes around his ankle and drags him under. The thing under the water kills him quickly.

And then kills him again, when it doesn’t take. After the third killing, Nicolò’s on his way to being well and truly mystified (“Okay, don't panic. They all die eventually, maybe...maybe I’ll just need to do it again?”) and gives up after the fourth and fifth killing. He drags his (attempted) prey to a little sheltered island he knows about, kills it one last time just to make sure, and then watches, resigned, as the flesh heals up and the lungs push water out until it’s coughing its way back to undeniable life.

“You rescued me,” is the first thing Yusuf says to him. “Your song – it is the song of my heart. My soul.”

Nicolò...has no idea what to do with this, coughs awkwardly in reply, and leaves before he can think too hard about the warmth in his chest answering to the warmth in the human’s expressive, grateful eyes.

(He doesn’t tell Yusuf the truth about their bloody first meeting until years later. It’s too goddamn embarrassing, to be perfectly honest.)

Of course he comes back within a day, almost shamefully quickly. Unable to help being fascinated by this gorgeous, well-spoken, kind and generous human who cannot die. He starts bringing things to Yusuf: at first just fish, then interesting-shaped fragments of rock and coral, and then bits of treasure he’s collected over the years, just to hear what new poetic turn of phrase Yusuf will spout on the spot when he’s given something.

“...this is my family crest on this treasure chest, Nicolò. How strange.”

“It is the chest you said your great-great-grandfather lost,” Nicolò says, the words coming out dry and halting from long years of disuse. Watching Yusuf’s hands as he traces the elaborate lines engraved on the lid, now blurred with rust and coral.

“That’s amazing. Truly. I am at a loss for words,” Yusuf says, smiling.

“No, you aren’t,” Nicolò says, and keeps watching so he can see the moment when the smile turns into a laugh.

Another day, he brings to Yusuf what Booker had told him was called a ‘dinglehopper’ and was what humans used to keep their hair in order, as they did not have the ocean to spread it out like beautiful seaweed in the waves. Yusuf takes it, mouth twitching in a way that makes Nicolò doubt the accuracy of Booker’s explanation. Yet Yusuf does not correct him, but in fact solemnly thanks him before offering the dinglehopper back and asking him to help untangle his riot of curls.

And so it goes. Days pass. Fascination becomes infatuation, turns to desire and then into love, until neither can imagine living without the other, and yet—

Eventually, Nicolò has to give Yusuf up. The prince is too noble and good to just abandon his people indefinitely. And because Nicolò loves him, he goes out and once more lures a ship in with his song, but not to dash it to pieces on jagged rocks this time. He leads them to the island. Watches from a distance as the astonished shouting begins, then back-pounding hugs and joyous celebration as Yusuf boards the ship and sails away. Watches Yusuf turn back more than once to scan the beach, clearly looking for Nicolò, but Nicolò does not follow. Instead, he watches until the ship is lost to his sight and he cannot feel the ship’s current or smell, and then he dives deep and goes to visit Merrick.

Meanwhile, Yusuf arrives back at the capital, where his other best friend, Quỳnh (immortal admiral of the navy) feels terribly guilty about the prince going overboard on his birthday. Which is why she uncharacteristically doesn’t give him shit when he comes back babbling nonsense about mermaids. Or when he spends the next few weeks moping around, writing mermaid poetry and drawing mermaid pictures.

To be fair to him, the particular mermaid he sketches over and over does look pretty striking. Otherworldly and all that. Good cheekbones. Nice pearly scales. “Fucking...giant anglerfish eyes,” Quỳnh mutters while she and Andy look over the latest pile of sketches Yusuf’s left abandoned on a library table. “Our prince has been fucking bewitched by a fucking fish.”

“Mm,” Andy agrees.

So when Nicolò arrives at the palace one fine summer’s day – naked, his fangs smoothed away to look perfectly human, a giant emerald in one hand and a silver fork in the other – and walking, on legs, it causes a bit of an uproar.

“You still smell like the sea,” Yusuf says hoarsely into Nicolò’s neck, the two of them wrapped around each other as closely as two bodies can be.

“Oh, fuck,” Andy says, lowering her axe. Quỳnh looks more closely at the dirty naked wild man their prince is embracing as if his life depends on it. Angular face. Skin encrusted with salt. Absolutely enormous piercing blue eyes. Naked, did we mention naked.

“Oh, fuck,” Quỳnh says.

“You get them separated,” Andy says. “I’ll go...get them a bath.”

The price Nicolò paid for his new human shape:

His siren song.

His immortality.

What he gets in return:

Yusuf teaching him what a dinglehopper is actually called, and what humans actually use it for.

Yusuf teaching him how to read and write his native tongue, and a few other tongues besides.

Yusuf reading poetry to him or sketching next to him on long lazy afternoons in the gardens.

The immense pleasure of intimidating the fuck out of any remaining would-be suitors for Yusuf’s hand in marriage who are still hanging around the palace for some reason.

“I am Nicolò di Genova,” Nicolò replies to the marquis’s indignant demands – predator’s smile still frightening even without endless rows of needle-sharp teeth. “You have seven days to leave this place forever. Get your affairs in order.”

Friendship with Andy and Quỳnh.

“Holy shit. Did he just—”

“—stab the marquis with a fork, at dinner, in front of the entire court? Yep.”

“...”

“New best friend.”

“Obviously.”

Yusuf writing poetry about him and to him. Nicolò likes them all. He wouldn't know a good human poem from a bad human poem, but nothing Yusuf touches could be bad, so ergo it's good.

Sightseeing throughout the kingdom with Yusuf’s strong, gentle fingers twined around his.

Yusuf breathing blissful curses into Nicolò’s ear, exactly like he used to do on their island, as they move together on his enormous bed.

Yusuf. Yusuf. Yusuf.

(Booker is also there. He insisted on being turned human, too, and coming along to make sure Nicolò doesn’t totally fuck this up, but he’s really mainly there for the entertainment. And the booze. Andy asks him at one point about losing his immortality. He shrugs. “Look, if we die, we die,” he says, then offers Andy another pour of fine French brandy. The two of them get along famously.)

It’s all going great until one night on the beach, while they’re walking along hand-in-hand under the stars and idly discussing human and merfolk constellations. Someone approaches them, dressed splendidly and moving with arrogant grace. He is also angular, also fair-haired, also possessed of unsettling eyes. And he has Nicolò’s siren song, gently humming from the shell that adorns his neck.

“Merrick,” Nicolò hisses as Yusuf’s eyes grow glazed and blank, and he tightens his hand on Yusuf’s, afraid for the first time. “Our deal—”

“He can’t bear the idea of living forever without you, can he? And so he hasn’t proposed,” Merrick says, smiling cruelly. “You’ve missed your chance. He’s mine.” And he extends his hand out to Yusuf—

Who stirs, suddenly, and turns to Nicolò. “Limpid, or shimmering?”

“What?”

“Shimmering,” Yusuf decides, peering into Nicolò’s eyes. “Yes. Limpid would be too pretentious, I think.”

And that’s pretty much that – we don’t actually get the plot with Merrick the Sea Witch because Yusuf only has eyes for one weird-looking white guy. Also, his one artistic failing is that he's tone deaf.

They do eventually kill Merrick because true love wins out and we are all about those happy endings, Grimm’s can suck it, etcetera, so Nicolò gets his immortality and his siren song back. He’s also back to being a merman, but Yusuf does not care. “I could paint your beautiful tail for the rest of my life, my love, and still fail to capture the luminous iridescence of you,” he murmurs, stroking said tail with tender fingers. The last person to touch Nicolò’s tail got his hand bitten off. Here and now, Nicolò runs his claws through Yusuf’s hair, clicking deep and happy in his throat.

(“This is weird, right?” Quỳnh asks from where she and Andy are busy scraping evil kraken guts off their armor, a prudent distance down the beach from the lovers. “I’m not the only one who thinks it’s weird?”

Andy says nothing, just offers Quỳnh the rest of her bottle of vodka. This is why Quỳnh loves her so.)

(The wedding is a nightmare, at least according to the palace chef charged with cooking the wedding feast. “What is this, this, abomination? What in heaven’s name have you brought into my kitchen!”

“Tubeworm,” Booker says. “Considered a fine delicacy among our people. Don’t worry about it.”)

#the old guard #joe x nicky #immortal husbands #kaysanova #disney princess au #by lazaefair

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scimitar-and-longsword · 4 years

Note

Two requests if it's okay 1) a gif of the neck grab of pride Andy gives Nile after she jumps out the window. 2)Fic about Nile's first birthday as an immortal Thanks so much!!

Sorry this took so long lol. I really liked the prompt and I just wanted to get it right! We all know my brotp is Booker & Joe... Nicky & Nile are a close second....

—————–

There was a sliver of dull sunlight shining right across Nile’s forehead as she came to consciousness on the morning of her twenty-sixth birthday. Or at least it should have been her twenty-sixth birthday. She wasn’t quite sure on the details.

Did she even still count her birthday the same now? Was she twenty-six? Or perhaps only one? No- No. That sounded ridiculous. So maybe just the first anniversary of her twenty-fifth birthday?

Nile opened her eyes and stared up at the ceiling. It was a rather unremarkable ceiling, painted a faded a pale green. It was discolored brown from water damage in a few spots.

She had been to this safe house once before. Two months ago after a particularly rough mission the five of them had limped in, blood soaked and exhausted. Luckily this time they had only been exhausted.

This was the first time she had been to a safe house twice. It was strange how much it felt like home after only having been there once for a week. But after seven months of new place after new place she felt a welcome familiarity with this crumbling cottage, small though it was.

She had known what bed was to be hers. No dragging of an old mattress from another room. No reshuffling of sleeping arrangements to accommodate for her. No Andy or Booker taking a couch or armchair. No Joe and Nicky sleeping on the floor because they both couldn’t fit on the couch.

Booker made a low pained noise in his sleep. And Nile’s thoughts were brought back to the present.

Booker was in a bed perpendicular to hers, their head’s only a couple feet apart.

She glanced up at him, he appeared to still be asleep, his arm slung over his eyes.

Nile craned her neck to see Andy still asleep in the bed next to the door. Her immortality was gone but she still insisted on sleeping closest to the door. The first line of defense.

Joe and Nicky were directly across from her, huddled facing her in a bed that seemed too small for the two of them.

How old were each of them again? 953, and 950. Booker was 247...or was it 248?, And she couldn’t even guess at Andy’s age.

Would that happen to her? Her years becoming so numerous that she couldn’t remember the year she was born?

The sun had moved enough to shine irritatingly in her eyes, Nile brought her hand up to shield them. But after a minute or so, when her arm grew tired, she flipped onto her stomach. Her frustration got the better of her and she sighed loudly.

Too loudly, apparently, as Nicky started awake and sat bolt upright in the bed across from hers. Joe too started, and sleepily said something to Nicky in Italian that Nile couldn’t quite make out. Nicky glanced around the room and made eye contact with Nile.

“Sorry.” Nile whispered.

Nicky gave her a sleepy smile and turned over to face Joe, responding to him in Italian as well, but this time she heard her name and the word for sleep.

Andy and Booker hadn’t even moved. Both of their breathing was as even as Joe’s was slowly becoming once more.

Nicky was obviously awake still, propped up on his elbow facing Joe. His other hand stroked Joe’s hip soothingly.

A minute or so passed where Nile turned the problem of her birthday over in her mind, before she gave up trying to fall back asleep. She got out of bed with a frustrated sigh, and exited the bedroom.

The rest of the cottage consisted of a bathroom and a small main room full of mismatched furniture and with what one might consider a kitchenette.

Nile plugged in and turned on a hotplate and filled a kettle with water. She opened the pantry and was surprised to find a half used package of instant coffee. It took her a moment to realize that it was hers, left here from the previous stay in October.

She couldn’t help but smile to herself. Silly as it sounded, it was nice to find something she knew she had left behind for herself.

She glanced around the room, the little touches of each member of her new family were evident. Various swords hung on the wall above the small dining table. She was sure they were all sharp and battle ready. There was a single bookshelf that was full to bursting, with piles of books on the ground all around it.

Despite the cottage’s pathetic excuse for a kitchen there were nice pots and pans and a stand alone pantry pushed against the wall next to the small counter that currently held the slowly heating up hot plate. That would have been Ncky’s doing, Nile thought with a smile.

The water finally came to a boil and Nile made herself a cup of coffee. She looked out the window at the Welsh countryside and took a long slow sip of her coffee.

She started when she heard the door to the bedroom quietly click open behind her.

She wheeled around to see Nicky stepping into the main room, and closing the door behind him once more with another soft click.

“Good morning.” Nicky said quietly. He crossed the small room and took out a mug to poor himself some of the hot water.

“Sorry I woke you.” Nile said.

She opened the pantry and fished out a tin of tea. But when Nile turned to offer it to Nicky, he was already stirring in some of the instant coffee mix.

“It’s fine,” He said with a smile. And when he saw Nile’s look of surprise, “Sorry, do you mind if I have some of your coffee?”

“You never drink coffee.” Nile said, not really answering his question.

“I think you’ll find words like ‘never’ rather useless when talking to a 900 year old man.”

“I just mean- I’ve never seen you drink coffee. You have a cup of tea. Every morning. For seven months”

“We go through phases,” Nicky said, taking a small sip of his coffee, “Joe was particularly fond of coffee for most of the 1600’s.”

“An entire century is a particularly long phase.”

Nicky chuckled.

A comfortable silence fell over them for a while after that. Nicky sat at the small dining table and opened a book he had left there the night before. Nile stared out the window watching the morning fog burn off as the sun rose higher.

She thought about how much had happened in the two months since the previous time they had been to this safe house. None of them had died, thank god. But Nile had been shot twice in the leg, and Joe had taken the butt of a gun to the back of the head, knocking him out just two days ago.

Booker had had his throat cut so deep that Nile thought he was about to fade out as she held the wound together. Luckily he had pulled through, his healing repairing the damage as if nothing had happened.

Try as she might to distract herself though, her thoughts returned to her birthday. Surely it wasn’t something that should bring her this much anguish. She was not the type of person to care about getting older, let alone now when nothing would change.

But she had seen the way immortality weighed heavily on Andy and Booker. She had even glimpsed it’s sting in Joe and Nicky’s eyes, though they were better at hiding it. At least from her.

“Did you dream of Quynh?” Nicky asked after nearly a half hour had passed.

“What?” Nile said, genuinely confused, “Oh- no. I had just been thinking and forgot I was in a room full of jumpy, trigger happy warriors. I sighed too loudly.”

“Was that what woke me?” Nicky smiled, “Perhaps I am a bit jumpy.”

Nicky returned his eyes to his book, but it really didn’t look like he was reading. In fact Nile was pretty sure she hadn’t heard him turn a single page in his book this whole time.

“It’s my birthday.” Nile said before she could overthink it.

“I know.” Nicky said simply, taking another sip of coffee, and lifting his eyes to meet hers.

“You-” Nile shook her head, a confused smile spreading over her face, “You know?”

“December 10th, 1994.” Nicky said as if that was an explanation.

Nile took a seat at the table with him.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Nile asked, and then hastily added, “I mean- I just feel kind silly for trying to hide it now.”

“I wasn’t sure that you wanted to celebrate.” Nicky said.

“It does feel strange.” Nile said.

“It always does.” Nicky said, he took a deep breath before continuing, “I’m afraid that won’t change.”

“Do you celebrate?” Nile asked, “I’ve been with you all for the better part of a year and I don’t think any of you have mentioned birthdays. Do you even remember yours?”

“October 22nd,” Nicky said, “On the Gregorian calendar at least.”

“So you remember, you just don’t celebrate.”

“Sometimes we do. Big numbers, milestones.” Nicky said, “Booker’s 249th birthday was two days ago. Next year we’ll probably do something. But generally no, we don’t celebrate as a group.”

“As a group.” Nile turned the word choice over in her head, “So that’s Nicky and Joe speak for you guys celebrate each other's birthdays without Booker and Andy.” -or me.

Nicky laughed, nodded, and took another drink of coffee.

“Wait- October 22nd? The last time we were here was on your birthday.”

“That’s true. This is one of my favorite safe houses, I imagine Andy picked it for that reason.”

“I missed your birthday. And I could have done something- gotten you a present or made you a cake.”

“I don’t need anything from you Nile.” Nicky said.

“I know you don’t need anything. But if you want to celebrate with someone I could have made an effort-”

“Do you want to celebrate today Nile?” Nicky cut her off.

Nile blinked at him for a moment. Did she?

“I’m not sure. With Andy and Booker the way that they are- it feels selfish.”

“Forget about them. Do you want to celebrate?”

“I think so?” Nile took a deep breath and tried to order her thoughts, “This will be one of the last birthday’s that my age reflects how I look. One of the last times my birthday will have meaning beyond just being a piece of trivia to remind me of how long I’ve been frozen in time. So yes, I think I do.”

“Good.” Nicky said with a small smile. He got up from the table.

Nicky disappeared into the bedroom and for a moment Nile dreaded him popping back out with everyone to surprise her. But no, that wasn’t Nicky's style.

Instead, he returned a minute later carrying a small rectangular package.

“Happy birthday Nile.” Nicky said simply as he placed it in front of her, and took his seat once more.

“Nicky-” Nile started, but her words seemed to evaporate in her throat.

“Open it.” Nicky said, his smile was the biggest she’d seen it in months.

She took the lid off the box and found the unmistakable shape of a white jewelry box.

“When my sword, my first sword, the one I brought with me to the holy land from Genova, began to deteriorate beyond repair it was Joe who suggested I melt the steel down to keep. A memory from my previous life.”

Nile took it out and opened it slowly, in it was a delicate silver charm bracelet. On it was a single, rough looking charm.

“Joe wears a piece of it on a chain around his neck.” Nicky continued.

Nile knew exactly the charm he was talking about. A simple rectangle of metal that hung low from Joe’s neck.

“Booker has a vein of the steel in a ring that he hardly wears, Andy has an earring, though I haven't seen her wear it in decades,” Nicky paused, “Quynh had a piece too, on an anklet. Though I suppose it’s rusted away to nothing by now.”

Nile stared down at the bracelet, unsure what to do next. Nicky took a deep breath, She could hear the slight quiver in his breathing that he tried to suppress.

“I have more though, I’ll replace Quynh’s when we find her.” Nick said. He extended his hands out toward the box, “May I?”

Nile nodded and pushed the box toward him. He removed the bracelet and held it up for her, fastening around her wrist when she offered it.

“Don’t feel obligated to wear it every day, or even often. Joe tries not to wear his on missions if he can help it.”

Nile took a closer look at the charm, it was a square, rough and unpolished, much like Joe’s. She had never gotten a close look at Joe’s pendant so she didn’t know what if anything was etched into the metal. But as Nile turned the square of rough steel over in her hand she noticed a tiny but intricate cross indented into one of the corners.

“I don’t-” Nile started, she laughed and then a small sob escaped her throat, “Thank you.”

“You are very welcome.” Nicky said, his smile was back to the small one she was used to.

“Well now I have to get you something.” Nile laughed out another sob, followed by another, and then she was full on crying.

Nicky moved around the table to stand in front of Nile and pulled her into an awkward hug while she still sat. Her head fell into his chest and she threw her arms around his waist.

“Hey. Hey- shhhhh.” Nicky said. He placed a hand on the back of her head, the other arm wrapped around her shoulders and held her tight to him as she let the sobs rock her body for a minute.

“I’ll have other birthday’s Nile, as will you. Don’t pay it any mind. I don’t need anything. Though I imagine that’s not why you’re actually upset.”

Nile nodded against Nicky’s chest, vaguely aware that a wet spot was forming where her tears had soaked into Nicky’s shirt. He held her there for what seemed like hours, but in reality was probably less than a quarter of an hour. Until her sobs had subsided into the occasional uneven breath.

“You haven’t missed Joe’s birthday yet.” Nicky finally said.

Nile laughed, pulled back from the hug, and wiped tears away from her cheeks.

Nicky took a step back, and placed his hands on his hips. He looked very fatherly in that moment, which made Nile’s heart ache, but it also warmed it ever so slightly.

“What about Andy?”

“I don’t know hers,” Nicky said, “But I don’t think she ever knew her birthday. She’s older than the idea of a calendar, or at least in the way we experience years and months.”

Nicky stood in front of her for a minute longer before grabbing both of their mugs and taking them to the bathroom, where the only sink in the cottage was located.

Nile took another closer look at the charm. She suspected that the cross that was pressed into the metal had more significant meaning than just their shared faith in a higher power. She would have to ask him about it later when she was feeling less emotional.

Nicky returned but he didn’t hover, instead choosing to grab his book and move to an armchair by the front door.

When Joe got up at last he gave her a wink and pointed at the bracelet.

“It looks good.” he said, and then went to kiss Nicky good morning.

Andy and Booker followed shortly thereafter, and the day passed mostly like any other.

That night she lay in the same bed she had started her day in, her heart much lighter. While it hadn’t been like any other birthday she had celebrated, it had been nice.

She got the distinct feeling that they were all aware it was her birthday. Even though no one else directly acknowledged it.

Booker had gone for a run with her and sparred with her before lunch. Which wasn’t necessarily abnormal, but she did get more than one hit on him that she was pretty sure he let her land.

Andy was a tougher one to crack, but given that she had chosen this house for Nicky’s birthday and now hers, Nile felt like it wasn’t a coincidence.

Nicky, with a little help from Joe, made a surprisingly good deep dish pizza using the fireplace for dinner. Another thoughtful gesture that was not lost on her.

Nile looked up at the now familiar ceiling. And turned the charm around her wrist in her fingers.

She felt different. This wasn’t the first time she’d had to grapple with the consequence of her newly acquired immortality in the seven months she’d had it. But it was the first time she’d felt generally ok with it.

Up until now Nile had felt mostly like she had only lost things since she died for the first time. She had lost the world as she knew it, her life as she knew it. She had lost her family, and a home to call her own.

But for the first time she felt aware of how much she was gaining. The feeling of safety that only came with home. She genuinely felt excited to make her mark on countless safe houses all over the world.

Family. Each of the other members of the Guard had already felt like a new family to her, but something about the simple understanding of today had made her feel loved in a way she had never experienced before. Each of their reactions to her birthday seemed to fit them all perfectly.

Things were different now, but she liked the small place she was carving out in their family.

Twenty-six years on this earth. She looked forward to what Twenty-seven would have in store for her.

((Available on AO3 as well, link on my tumblr 💜))

#request #ask #my stuff #my fics #Nile #Nile Freeman #Nicky #Nicolo di genova #Nicky & Nile #the old guard #the old guard fic #poe39

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randomingoftherandomness · 3 years

Note

Hi! Hope you're doing well. I posted this Booker/Joe/Nicky prompt on the TOG kink meme originally. No one claimed it, so I thought I might try asking you, if that is okay. Here:

"Porn with feelings is one of my favorite things, so: Five Times Joe and Nicky invited Booker into their bed and the one time they told him to stay.

You do not need to be explicit with the smut if you do not want to, although that would be lovely and much appreciated.

Just give me Joe&Nicky and Booker catching feelings throughout centuries worth of hookups while thinking that the other party is only interested in friendship and sex.

Angst With A Happy Ending, please.

Bonus for Bottom!Booker, but it is not a must.

Double Bonus for Exasperated!Andy dropping hints that they are too oblivious to understand."

Thank you for reopening your Ask Box and for considering my prompt. Have a great weekend!

A/N: Hope you’re well too, friend and thank you for the trust in my abilities! 😁 Feel free to consider your prompt filled if you’d like? It’s not as porny or as angsty as I think you were looking for but I hope it still satisfies.

one.

“I’m telling you guys,” Andy hisses, fingers digging into the soft dirt under her palms. “I have a bad feeling about this.”

“And I’m telling you, Boss. We’ll be fine,” Booker grins sunnily, peering over the ridge to spy the military convoy transporting black-market arms and munitions. At the sight of the gleaming trucks and the stern-faced men with their faces focused on the road, the mischief dims a little.

Joe slaps him in the arm with a warm laugh. “If you get shot in the ass, you’re bunking with me and Nicky tonight. Let Andy have the big bed all to herself.” The man waggles his brows, brown eyes winking in devilish delight. “Maybe if you’re lucky you’ll get front row seats to how Nicky makes love to me.”

Seeing that there were only two tiny Queen sized beds in their latest digs, Booker’s eyes blink in alarm, turning to her as if to ask, you wouldn’t do that to me, would you? He’s been with the family long enough that that was one knowledge he already has a too intimate familiarity with and not one he is keen to revisit.

If his reasoning hides the way his eyes always seek them out in a crowded room, that’s for him to know and only him.

Her only answer is the unsheathing of her hunting knife and the pulling of her scarf over her nose and mouth. “Better watch your ass, kid.”

two.

Nicky’s hand in his is what pulls him out of his thoughts. He must have been staring at the sea for longer than he had thought because stars dance in his eyes and he has to squeeze them shut to block out the sudden spinning of the world around him.

Slipping away from Nicky’s touch, he sighs as he slowly feels himself come back to his stiff joints and sun-beaten face. He’s lost track of time again.

Booker feels Nicky take a seat on the sand next to him and instinctively looks around for Joe, before raising an inquiring eyebrow at him. “He has run out of his favourite colour again,” Nicky chuckles, kicking out his legs and burying his bare feet in the warm sand.

“Ah.”

“Ah,” Nicky echoes with a smile. Their sympathies are immediate and resting solely with the poor salesperson who has to deal with Joe’s charm as he convinces them that one brand cannot be a substitute for another. They sit together, watching the tides kissing the shores in companionable silence before Nicky turns onto his side. “Are you okay?”

Booker considers the question, still keeping his eyes on the way the sunlight dances on the waves. This beach is too warm for this time of the year and the air is the wrong tang of brine. Next to him, in the space where his wife should be with her wild laughter and her windswept hair, is nothing but empty, foot trodden sand. His heart sticks in his throat when he opens his mouth to speak and only the sound of unspeakable grief steals out past his lips.

When Nicky wraps his arms around him, he doesn’t try to pull away. When he asks if Booker wants to come with him, unmistakeably to bring him to their bed - the one where he and Joe sleep in and not the comfortable guest bed in the spare room - he merely sighs, sinking into the warmth and strength of Nicky’s arms around him, and allows himself to be cared for.

three.

The camaraderie he feels amongst this new family is one he never thought he could have. He appreciates every new memory he builds with them and every new layer of life he lays down even if he cannot help looking behind him and long for what is no longer his.

Friendship and brotherhood are easy to grasp. What confuses him, however, is the way Joe, Nicky, and Booker have somehow developed something more than that. He isn’t unaware of the pleasures that brothers in arms share on a battlefront. Any shred of comfort and warmth to be shared in those moments of relief in finding yourself escaping Death’s embrace is one that was somehow tolerated when he had been conscripted to march for a madman.

What Joe and Nicky have is more than that, and Booker knows it, is in awe of it, and can hardly stop admiring it.

What they have in the moments where Nicky’s warm breath tickles against his neck as Joe presses in between his trembling thighs is one he cannot divine.

The easy way they three have fallen into the rhythm of kisses and touches, of shared quiet moments, lulled to sleep with the smell of sex on their skins confuses him and calming heartbeats. How, when he builds his first safehouse, he puts out a room for Andy but leaves the little touches for them in his own. The way he feels no jealousy when they go off on their own and nothing but elation when they fold him into the fabric of their being. And yet.

Yet, when they are together, Booker feels like his heart could stop from the guilty happiness he has coursing through his veins. When he is in the space between wakefulness and sleep held in their arms and sharing their space, it is the calmest, the safest he has ever felt since the day he walked away from Marseille.

And Booker can’t stop but to wonder. What does it all mean?

four.

Joe stops mid-sentence and it doesn’t go unnoticed. The sounds of the other guests in the hotel percolate into their room and he has to take a moment to look at the bed where just an hour before, they’d languidly been tangled under the covers. They had arrived two days earlier just to take advantage of the privacy of the room and the luxury of a King-sized bed where Joe had pressed kisses into the quivering corner of Nicky’s lips as he tries not to laugh while Booker is playfully nipping at his jaw.

God, has it just been an hour since he had to wrangle them all into some semblance of order so that Booker can catch Andy before she gets here?

“What’s wrong?” Nicky asks, clear eyes catching in the light when they gaze at him. His beloved’s hands move methodically as they make the bed. The same sheets that still carried the scent that he is sure now permeate every shared space the three of them occupies on a regular basis.

A whirlpool of emotions snake around his chest and all he is able to do is to reach out to Nicky; to the anchor in the storms of this strange life they live, to his true North. It speaks to the bond they share that Nicky comes to his side, kissing their clasped hands, patiently waiting for him to speak.

Joe thinks he can burst with all the love he has in him for this man. Then the quiet flicker of his mind to another face, another smile that he holds just as dear and he swallows down the maelstrom of words bubbling up because he knows that whatever he says now matters.

Love is not a finite source. Joe has seen enough and been through just as much to know that that is true not just for himself, but for Nicky too. Smiling at Nicky, he feels his shoulders relax, leaning into him.

“My love, I think we need to talk.”

five.

“Come here.”

Booker hesitates but Nicky does not allow him any room to escape. Taking him by the wrist, he drags him to the quiet of an out of the way spare room in Copley’s home, eyes cataloguing every scrape, bloodstain, and healed over wounds.

Sitting him down on the bed, Nicky begins to methodically push his fingers through Booker’s hair, brushing out flecks of dried blood and grime, bits of glass and debris. Neither one speaks for a long moment and the familiar silence is heavy between them. From this room, Nicky can pick out the quiet murmur of Copley and Nile speaking while Andy is being tended to by Joe. This moment won’t last and Nicky has to speak his peace.

“He’s hurt. We both are.”

Booker flinches but Nicky doesn’t allow him to rise from the chair, pressing him back into position, feeling some small relish when Booker obeys. “Why, Booker? Why couldn’t you come to us if you were hurting? Why did you hide from us?”

Blue eyes look away from him and down to where his leg is shaking.

“Aren’t you going to defend yourself?” Nicky asks finally, softly and feels his heart break a little at all the possibilities that are slipping away with every moment they leave this unresolved. He sighs when Booker doesn’t speak, fingers moving to cup him by the jaw.

“We love you,” He says. “But maybe that’s not enough just yet.”

“Maybe,” Booker murmurs. Moving to stand only for Nicky to take him by the hand, pulling him in for a kiss.

“One day it will be.”

and the one.

Joe can smell the sea on Booker from the other side of the room.

Andy had levelled him a heavy look, telling him not to fuck this up with a soft smile on her lips as she leaves with Quynh in the first cab they could hail down. Nile had laughed when they asked if she was staying, telling them that she’ll be in the next city over if they needed her for anything.

Which now leaves Joe, Nicky, and Booker in a small motel room with the dying sunlight stealing through the gaps in the curtains. Nicky’s knee knocks against his and Joe has to sigh. Looking over to Booker, it is clear that the man is in the middle of some fight or flee reaction and he is tamping it down to fidget in the chair by the television set.

Picking up one of the scratchy towels that came with the room, he tosses it at Booker, jerking his head at the bathroom door.

“Get cleaned up. We can talk after.”

Booker gapes rather unattractively at them and his look of incredulity grows into a frown when Nicky sighs around a snort. Joe can’t help but mirror Nicky’s amusement and feels his lips curl into a smile. Exhaustion clings to the way Booker looks from the towel between his hands and to them at the bed.

Joe feels a swell of affection cut through the need to clear the air before they go any further into this. He won’t make the mistake of not talking this through again. Walking over to him, he nudges Booker to his feet, pulling him into the bathroom. Brushing his thumb in an arc under his tired eyes, Joe says, “Maybe we can leave the talk for after we sleep.”

#booker x joe x nicky #the old guard fic #teentitantruefriend #thank you for the prompt!#gab writes stuff

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