#ends with him waking up just before yusuf comes back. andromache and quynh are old marrieds. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

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.

75 notes · View notes

even-after-a-millennia · 3 years

Text

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

33 notes · View notes

smokedstorybara · 4 years

Text

So! The promised fanfic ramble!

It’s gonna be an Old Guard Kaysanova fairytale? au inspired loosely by you know i dreamed about you (before i saw you) by BeeLove and Space Angel Hermann and Witch Doctor Newt by WaldosAkimbo on AO3 (links in a reblog so this’ll show up in tags) and several fairytales I grew up on

But, like, without any magic or supernatural elements so far

(Can’t do a readmore cause my laptop broke, sorry)

So it starts with Nicolò in a monastery asking his lover to run away with him to somewhere they can be together openly and his lover basically saying he’s with Nicolò specifically cause he thought he’d be the least likely to catch feelings. Nicolò kinda laughs it off like “yeah it was just a joke, duh” and then after the guy leaves he pulls an already packed bag out from under his cot and just takes off. Just, like, “screw this I’m out.”

Travels around for, like, a year or so before settling in a little one room house on the very outskirts (like, a bit of a walk from the rest of town) of a cute village to the east. Starts a big garden and sells vegetables and stuff in the local market. Befriends inquisitive teens Nile and her brother (don’t know if he’s got a canon name and can’t find anything on it) and local blacksmith Andromache and her wife Quynh. Starts writing a collection of recipes to also sell cause he kinda missed all the writing he did at the monastery. Also, helps out the town doctor whenever they need an extra hand.

Builds a whole reputation as the mysterious, quiet but kind, plant guy who lives at the edge of town (possibly a witch? But definitely a good one).

Then one day he’s out walking along the riverbank during a storm - maybe heading home from somewhere when it hits? - and sees someone in the water, struggling. Gets the guy out, somehow, and carries him to his place cause it’s closest and the man definitely needs to get somewhere warm and dry. He doesn’t recognize him and the guy has a pretty bad fever and a nasty looking cut on his leg, so he decides to give up his bed to this stranger and tend to him until he’s well.

Crown Prince Yusuf wakes up a couple days after falling into the river while traveling to find himself in this tiny one room house filled with plants and books and loose paper and is immediately enamored with the place - and it’s owner, his hero, the beautiful and shy Nicolò.

(He’s told, by Nicolò and the good-humored boy who’s running his market stall for him while he tends to Yusuf, that this isn’t the first time he’s woken since Nicolò fished him out of the river, but it is the first time he’s been lucid - apparently he called Nicolò an angel at one point, and the village boy finds it very amusing)

After his fever breaks a couple days later, when it’s just his leg keeping him there (and his huge crush on Nicolò), he convinces Nicolò that there’s enough room on the bed for both of them and really there’s no good to him sleeping in his creaky little wooden chair. Mostly by pulling Nicolò down next to him when he helps Yusuf back to bed after testing his leg by walking around the room. And then refusing to let go.

They both quickly grow accustomed to sleeping with Nicolò wrapped in Yusuf’s arms.

Of course neither of them say anything about their growing feelings cause Yusuf is Nicolò’s patient and Nicolò mentioned early on that he used to live in a monastery and left cause he fell in love with one of the other priests, who didn’t return his feelings, and Yusuf doesn’t know how fresh that heartbreak is for him.

After he gets well enough, Yusuf starts going to market with Nicolò and hanging around his stall, gossiping with the townspeople and making friends. He starts to wonder if maybe he could just... stay, even after he finishes healing. This life is just so peaceful and happy and he wants it, wants to be able to keep it.

But then some soldiers come through town searching for the missing crown prince and he realizes he can’t stay.

He tells Nicolò that he has to leave, that he has responsibilities he has to get back to. Nicolò says he understands (he does). They kinda skirt around acknowledging their feelings for each other, and in the process realize the other definitely feels the same, and Yusuf promises to return. At some point.

Yusuf returns home and there’s a big celebration. The crown prince has returned alive and safe! After, he tells his family everything that happened. His little sister laughs at him - as is her job as little sister - but his parents are pretty understanding and do their best to comfort him.

The next summer, the royal family goes to their summer house out in the countryside, and Yusuf realizes it’s only, like, a couple days’ walk from Nicolò’s town. He spends the next couple days staring out into the distance and yearning so visibly that eventually his mother tells him to go, spend the rest of summer with his man. So he packs a bag and goes.

Nicolò’s gardening when Yusuf arrives and they have a really nice, heartfelt reunion with a big hug and tears and stuff. Yusuf explains to Nicolò that he can only stay for the summer, that as soon as autumn starts he has to leave again. Nicolò again says he understands, because he does. And they fall back into the comfortable routine from before Yusuf left - sharing the bed, walking to market together, Yusuf sketching or writing poetry while Nicolò works in the garden (Nicolò secretly collecting all the poems and sketches Yusuf discards and carefully copying them with the fancy script and steady hand he learned in the monastery and binding them together with twine), cooking together, and basically just behaving like they’re married.

Then autumn comes and Yusuf leaves, promising to return the next summer. And he does. And the summer after.

For several years they build a relationship in summers. In gardening and cooking and laughing with the neighbors at market. Never saying anything about what they mean to each other (beyond, like, light flirting) but never needing to, always simply understanding. But also never acting on that feeling - beyond the cuddling at night and spending all day together, but the blacksmith’s wife doesn’t count that and her opinion is important.

(Not too important, she’s just a little protective of her friend and his feelings and suspicious of this man who’s only there in the summer and only gives vague excuses of ‘responsibilities’ for why he has to leave for the rest of the year - “what if he’s got a wife?” “Trust me Quynh, he’s not that kind of man.” “But are you sure?”)

Then one year Yusuf looks around the little house and looks at his sketches and has a thought. A thought that sticks with him all the way home (‘home’ meaning ‘where he and his family live 3/4 of the year’, though he’s not entirely sure the word still fits and wouldn’t be better suited attached to somewhere a little more green and peaceful). And he brings it up to his mother, who encourages him to follow through.

So the next summer, when he returns to the village and to Nicolò, he brings canvas and paints and other supplies and explains to Nicolò that he wants to be able to keep pieces of this place with him the rest of the year, to look at when he misses it all too much or when things get overwhelming and he needs some of the peace and comfort of the place and it’s people.

Nicolò kisses him. (Finally).

He kisses back.

They talk. Finally acknowledging how they feel, but also that it’s not something that can actually go anywhere - though not going into why - and agree it’s probably best to just continue as they have been. (If Quynh were party to this conversation she would likely be very upset).

So that summer things stay mostly the same, except Yusuf paints. Everything.

At one point he makes a flower crown and plops it on Nicolò’s head while he gardens and then instantly goes to paint that because it’s just too soft. He writes “A King Tending to His Subjects” on the back.

He shows all the paintings to his parents after summer has ended and they decide they all need to be framed and hung up around the palace. Yusuf is very on board with this plan since it makes looking at them whenever he needs to easier.

Until he realizes it means his sister can also look at them whenever she wants to, and tease him.

She doesn’t tease him. Instead she reminds him he will have to get married at some point, and marrying some nobody former priest would make some of the wealthy and powerful suitors he’s turned down very upset. He tells her he knows, but wants to have as much of Nicolò as he can, while he can. Would rather spend these summers with him before having to marry someone else than deprive himself of that specific happiness he’s found altogether.

She drops the topic.

Summer begins again and Yusuf doesn’t arrive. Nicolò waits out in front of his house every day, late into the evening. But no Yusuf.

Quynh starts to throw theories of why and threats of what she’ll do to him if he ever shows his face there again. Nicolò assures her that it’s not necessary and that he’s certain there’s a good reason.

Then about a month into the summer a young woman rides into town in a desperate frenzy, asking where Nicolò lives. Nile leads her to Nicolò’s little house.

She jumps off her horse as soon as she sees Nicolò and tells him in a rush that Yusuf had been kidnapped - by Keane, a dangerous outlaw - just before summer. That none of the warriors their parents sent had been able to get him back and that one of their advisors, a man named James Copley, had suggested they promise his hand in marriage to whoever rescues him in order to better motivate some of their less motivated allies.

Their father had gone through with it in desperation, before the family realized the whole thing was likely a ploy by King Stephen - a rumored associate of Keane’s - to get Yusuf to be his husband after being turned down by him just weeks before the kidnapping.

But Yusuf’s father can’t go back on his decree, so they need Nicolò to get to Yusuf before Stephen (in part because they really don’t want Yusuf to be forced to marry someone he doesn’t love just because he got kidnapped because Stephen can’t handle rejection, and in part because the decree does mean if Nicolò rescues Yusuf they can marry without causing problems with any allies - aside from Stephen, but really do they want to stay allies with him after this?).

Nicolò snaps into action, asking Nile’s brother - who had been helping him with his work - to run his market stall and tend his garden while he’s gone. And then Nile insists on going with him, informing him that Andromache has been altering her father’s old armor to fit her, and should be finished by now, and reminding him that he himself taught her and her brother how to wield a sword (her brother had seen Nicolò’s while visiting once when they were still teens and insisted on learning, Nile had joined as soon as she found out. Nicolò had never been good at telling them no). Nicolò tells her to meet him in the town square at sunrise and then turns into his house to prepare.

Nile offers Yusuf’s sister a place to spend the night and leads her back into town. They stop by the blacksmith, to tell her what’s happening and that Nile will need the armor by sunrise, on their way to Nile’s home. Where they explain everything again to Nile’s mother.

At sunrise, when they bring Nile’s armor to her in the square, Andromache and Quynh insist on coming as well. The five of them set off, Yusuf’s sister leading.

Along the way, royal guard Sébastien LeLivre intercepts them, confessing to being involved in the kidnapping - not that he knew that’s what was happening, just that a friend of his convinced him to skip part of his rounds that night - and wanting to help make it right. They welcome him into the group, not having time to really get into whether they should and not wanting to waste time convincing him to go home either.

They arrive at Keane’s stronghold to find it swarming with outlaws. The group fights their way to the door and Nicolò goes in while the others stay to continue fighting the horde.

When he gets to the room Yusuf is held in, King Stephen is already there. Shouting at Keane that he explicitly said to cause no physical damage to the prince.

Nicolò takes advantage of Keane’s distraction to take him out. And then it’s just him, his love, and Stephen. Who he suddenly realizes he knows, and who recognizes him at the same time.

They fight - with swords and words. (Though first Nicolò asks when Stephen became a king and is told the man’s brother died not long after Nicolò left the monastery and as he had no heir, Stephen was excused from the priesthood to take the throne).

Eventually, (Inevitably), Nicolò wins. Unfortunately, not without great injury.

Nicolò helps Yusuf to stand and they support each other out of there. As they walk, Yusuf asks questions, and makes comments, about things said during the fight. Mostly just disparaging Nicolò’s old taste in men (Nicolò responds that his taste has definitely improved since he left the monastery) and coming to the discovery that Nicolò is the runaway prince of Genoa. Fourth son of the king and queen, who was sent into the priesthood young and then disappeared.

When they exit the building, the group clears them a path to the horse and they all ride off as fast and as far as they can. And then they stop to tend Yusuf and Nicolò’s wounds. Despite the men’s protests that they need to keep moving. They take a lesser-known path when they resume their journey, with the hope that Stephen’s men won’t find them on it, so that they need not push their horse - and themselves - too hard.

They arrive at the palace to find Stephen has again beaten them, and is spinning lies to Yusuf’s parents. Telling them that Nicolò orchestrated the kidnapping in order to manipulate his way into becoming consort to a crown prince.

Of course, the king and queen take the word of both their children and one of their guards (Sebastien) over the king known to have dealings with Keane, who Yusuf turned down just weeks before his kidnapping.

(“Besides,” Yusuf’s father points out diplomatically, “I can’t go back on my decree. So whether you’re right or not, Yusuf is marrying this Nicolò. Ah well. Nothing to be done.”)

They have two wedding ceremonies: the big, grand, official one at the palace with hundreds of guests (at which Nicolò is reunited with his family - happily in some cases, less so in others), and the small, peaceful one in Nicolò’s garden. They wear flower crowns in the second and they both cry (as does Quynh, but she will never admit it).

#the old guard #kaysanova #joe x nicky #yusuf al kaysani #nicolo di genova #stream of consciousness

43 notes · View notes

inkformyblood · 4 years

Text

01 Steal My Breath Away

No 1. LET’S HANG OUT SOMETIME Waking Up Restrained | Shackled | Hanging

“Your first death is never a good one.”

Andy’s voice was pitched low—tired in a way she hadn’t sounded in centuries—and Nile pulled in another gasping breath, hands braced against her knees as she fought the urge to run. Booker didn’t move, curled up on his side beneath a heavy quilt—trying to keep himself in this century rather than wander down the black memories of what could have been—as he felt the ghost of a rope curl around his neck. He almost preferred the nights he dreamed of Quynh: drowning was different to hanging, although both ended the same way.

⁂

Booker was dreaming—the world is hazy around him, like syrup spreading over his tongue—but he can’t find it in himself to care.

“What heavy thoughts are brewing, love?”

His wife didn’t give him a chance to answer as she slipped onto his lap, her skirts gathered up before she settled them around them both. She cupped his face, thumb rasping against the rough stubble on his cheek as she drew her long braid to one side, then around his neck.

The rough fibre of rope was a distant shock as the world fell away, and he was hanging once more.

⁂

Nile blinked awake, bright light piercing her skull. She had died—could feel the faint itch of closing wounds at the base of her neck, across her hip. Heavy leather cuffs pressed against her wrists and ankles—pulled too tight, fingers numb and unwieldy—and she pulled fruitlessly at them for a few seconds.

Old flashes of fear stirred in her stomach, and she thumped her head against the table in frustration.

“Well, now there’s a chance of getting out.”

Nile raised her head to glare at Booker, animosity falling away when she saw him, bloodied and broken, but smiling softly at her.

⁂

“I will kill them.”

Nicky’s voice was flat, muffled as he whispered the prayer and promise against Joe’s cooling skin. Andy’s lips still moved soundlessly in a count she would continue until her own death if needed, Quynh’s hands pressed against the shallow cut on her side.

Carefully, reverently, Nicky raised Joe’s head to pull the garotte free, tossing it to one side with a careless flick of his wrist.

“Please, please, please.” Nicky bent to kiss Joe’s lips, twisting to press their foreheads together, staring as unrelenting tears rolled down his cheeks. “Please come back to me, my love.”

⁂

Quynh bared her bloodied teeth at the men who filed into the room, watching their faces blanch, their eyes skittering away from her as they turned towards the priest—black robed and red faced—standing in the centre of the room. Andy slumped unconscious next to her, breath warm and fast against Quynh’s neck, wrists locked back into the iron shackles.

The priest stepped forward, hands raised, and Quynh yanked on her shackles, sending the chain rattling, snapping her teeth at the man. Fresh blood spilled down her wrists, but she grinned at her captors, watching the colour flee the priest’s face.

⁂

Yusuf woke in fragmented inches: firelight dancing against an ink black sky, the press of rough rope against his wrists, iron coating his tongue. Nicolo lay still by his feet, blood slowly oozing from the sword plunged through his chest, and for that the men they had been guarding would die.

He began to pull against his bonds, gritting his teeth against the pain, muscles shifting and straining. Nicolo’s first rasping breath came just as the rope slipped from his bloody hands. Yusuf pulled the sword free, Nicolo’s blood staining the metal, hands flying up reflexively, with a broken cry.

⁂

“I should have known.”

Andromache could already feel the tension in her shoulders and thighs, ropes pulled too tight against the crude structures anchoring them to the wall. It was a rushed betrayal, but that didn’t remove the sting.

“I’m sorry,” John said—keeping his distance from her as he pulled up a chair and sat down—passing the knife backwards and forwards between clumsy fingers.

“I just need a little bit,” he explained, placing the cold edge of a bottle against her leg, shakily pressing the knife blade to her skin. “I’m sorry. I am so sorry, but I have to.”

⁂

“Nicolo? Nicolo, wake up please.”

“I’m here.” Nicky spat out a mouthful of blood, feeling the ache of bones reforming, but Yusuf’s pleas cut deeper than any blade could hope to. The room was dark, and his hands were locked behind his back, cold metal biting into his wrists, but he stretched forward.

Yusuf smelt like the inks he favoured—iron mixed with a hint of flowers—and Nicky pressed his face into the hollow of Yusuf’s throat, kissing the skin he could reach with a sigh. He could taste the blood, but they were together. It could be borne, for now.

⁂

Joe coughed as he fell back into life, the cold embrace of death chased away by blinding burning pain. His lungs were drawn tight in his chest, metal biting into his wrists—too weak to push himself back up, strength fallen away from him during one of his previous deaths.

The chain around his neck was drawn tight, an endless loop of agony ripping the breath from his lungs even as it held him in place—unable to get away, unable to do anything but die. Dimly, as the world faded away again, he heard Nicky yelling, struggling against his own bonds.

⁂

Booker kicked out, trying to steady himself on the fragmenting scaffolding even as the rope tightened around his neck. A stupid accident, and one he could survive, but the sensation of rope sent his mind blank with panic. He couldn’t die again like this.

“Booker!”

Something fell, objects rolling across the floor as he wheezed, before strong arms grabbed hold of his legs, lifting him up and he could finally breathe—tiny gasps.

“We’ve got you,” Nicky gasped, adjusting Booker’s weight as Joe scrambled up the scaffolding, knife in hand. “Don’t worry, we’ve got you. Breathe, you’re going to be okay.”

#whumptober2020 #no.1 #waking up restrained #shackled #hanging #the old guard #fic #suffocation tw #character death tw #injury tw #my writing #joe nicky

4 notes · View notes

even-after-a-millennia · 4 years

Text

the water will not claim me (she already has)

Andromaquynh fic about them and water throughout the years. Huge thanks for 1k followers!

Read below or on ao3 here.

Water was hard to come by in the desert, but Andromache couldn’t let the woman she had found die from dehydration again. Tilting her head back, she gave her the last bit of water from her waterskin. Andromache watched as the woman swallowed weakly, eyes fluttering.

Standing, Andromache grabbed one of her arms and hefted her over her shoulders. She felt the woman’s weak exhalation of breath against her arm.

And she walked.

Step after step, she moved closer to her destination. On the way to finding this woman, unable to resist the despair she felt from her every time Andromache dreamt, she had found a small green area a day’s walk away. With the added weight on her back, it took two mind-numbing, grueling days to return.

Andromache kept moving, even as she felt the woman waste away on her back. It would do no good to stop and check on her. What could she do to help now?

She kept walking.

Finally, they arrived. Andromache laid the woman gently propped up against a rock, then went to refill her waterskin. The woman didn’t wake as she returned.

“Hey,” Andromache said, shaking her shoulder lightly. No response. Putting some water into her hand, Andromache brought it to the woman’s lips. They parted, taking in the drink.

Dark eyes drifted slightly open, unseeing. Undeterred, Andromache lifted the waterskin to her lips and tilted it, letting the water dribble in.

The woman coughed, eyes coming alive as she realized what was happening. She lifted an arm to reach for the skin, but Andromache easily batted it away.

“Slowly, slowly,” Andromache encouraged.

Her voice must have cut through the haze of the woman’s mind, as she looked up at Andromache.

Their eyes met and Andromache felt the loneliness that she had worn as a shroud for centuries fall away as they gazed at each other.

II.

After the battle, they were all covered in filth and sweat. Lykon was the only one of them that hadn’t suffered a fatal blow at some point and he loudly complained about their stench, laughter in his eyes. They were all so used to one another that it was nothing to all undress and climb into the gentle river they found together.

“I will look for a meal,” Lykon said, clean long before either of them.

“Thank you, brother,” Andromache replied, taking a moment to just float in the slow movement of the water.

“I expect to see you for food before sundown! Do not get so distracted you disappoint me!” he called as he walked away. Andromache may have taken him more seriously if laughter hadn’t rang through his voice.

“Yes, yes, we promise…”

As soon as he was out of sight, Quynh pushed through the water towards Andromache, who turned instinctively to receive an armful of her love.

“Do you think we will actually get back for the meal?” Quynh asked.

“If not,” Andromache said, pushing Quynh’s long, wet hair away from her face, “we are lucky Lykon is more forgiving than we deserve.”

III.

The fact that Cairo’s public baths were divided for females and males was not a deterrence to Andromache’s little band of immortals. In fact, it was somewhat of a blessing. Despite loving each other for over three hundred years now, Yusuf and Nicoló still acted as if they had just wed yesterday.

After they parted at the entrance, Andromache turned to Quynh and asked, “We were never so caught up in each other, were we?”

Quynh smiled, but her eyes were sad. Andromache knew what she was going to say before the words left her mouth, as she knew who brought that look to her love’s face.

“I think Lykon would disagree with you, trái tim,” she replied.

Andromache scoffed, but moved to hold Quynh’s hand only to have their hands meet halfway. They looked down, considered their intertwined fingers, then burst out laughing.

“Very well, I am bested. We are just as bad,” Andromache said, pulling Quynh further into the bath.

IV.

England was dreary. There was no other word for it. Clouds hung above them with weak sunlight poking through. It drizzled most days without end. And people were dying of false accusations of witchcraft.

Their tiny house in the woods was their only sanctuary from the madness of the world around them. Every day, they tried to help those they could. And every night, they retreated back to their small one room with walls and a roof and collapsed together, soaked through and exhausted.

In the middle of the night, Quynh shook Andromache awake.

“What? What is it?” Andromache demanded, instantly awake and weapon in hand.

“It is finally really raining, ánh nắng của tôi. It is like a monsoon out there,” Quynh said, looking outside with a soft smile gracing her lips.

Andromache groaned and fell back into bed, dropping her ax back onto the floor. “Wonderful, I am very glad. May I sleep now?”

Quynh turned to her and shook her head, pulling her long nightgown off until she was just in her shift. “We should not waste this weather.”

“What do you mean?” Andromache asked, instantly more awake.

Quynh walked slowly towards her and leaned down to whisper in Andromache’s ear.

“Dance with me.”

She turned and walked out the door. In a moment, her shift was soaked through but she merely lifted her arms and face to the sky, letting the rain cascade down her.

Then she turned her head to look back at Andromache, sitting stunned in their bed as she stared at the woman who held her heart.

“Are you joining me?” Quynh asked.

Andromache had lived over five thousand years and over the millennia, she had developed a grace in her way of moving that came from battlefields and training. That said, she scrambled out of bed and her nightgown in her rush to get out to Quynh.

In that moment, the ugliness of their day to day work faded from mind and all Andromache knew was Quynh’s laugh, her cold lips curled into a smile even as they kissed, and her arms around Andromache as they danced in the downpour.

Andy hated coming back to England. The rain seemed to mock her.

Of course, their assignment had been on the coast. It was finished now, but still, she had come back to the water. The vast ocean stretched out in front of her, crashing into the shore and soaking her bare feet. Her shoes lay forgotten in the sand.

It had been two hundred years since they had given up the search. More than that since she and Quynh had danced in the rain that night. The ache was old, but here, in the ocean where somewhere in its depths, Quynh lay trapped and dying… that ache turned into a burn in her chest.

The waves at her feet were the closest she had gotten to touching Quynh in a very long time.

She knelt in the water, uncaring about the ridiculous clothes this century required her to wear. When she got back to their safe house, she would don trousers and be freer. For now, she let the layers of fabric soak through around her, weighing her down with each wave.

“Anh nhớ em,” she whispered, and the burn in her chest flared into an inferno.

Joe and Nicky found her there hours later. The tide had gone out but still, she sat, soaked through and staring blankly out towards the ocean.

As she settled into the jacuzzi bathtub in their latest Air D and D, or whatever Nile called it, Andy let out a deep sigh of relief. While her muscles had already recovered from the strain of the mission, she still let the warmth soothe away any remnants of pain. She leaned back and closed her eyes.

The bathroom door opened and closed but she didn’t have to look to know who was there.

There was a rustle of fabric and that, that made Andy turn to watch as Quynh took off her dirtied outfit. Some things never grew old, no matter how much time had passed.

“Baths have truly come a long way in the time I was gone,” Quynh said, settling into the v between Andy’s legs. The water splashed a bit as she moved, but as she settled, so did the small waves.

“The world is definitely better for it,” Andy agreed, dropping a kiss on her love’s bare shoulder.

It took them a long time to get here, Quynh’s back to Andy’s front, submerged in warm, scented water in the 21st century.

Andy may always resent the centuries taken from them and the pain they had both gone through to get to this moment. But now, her arms around her heart long gone from her, she let those feelings fade away in the water and pulled her closer.

They soaked together, unspeaking, as calm as the water around them.

Translations thanks to @hottopicmonk on tumblr: trái tim - heart

ánh nắng của tôi - my sunshine

anh nhớ em - I miss you

#andromaquynh #andy x quynh #joe x nicky #in the background #the old guard #the old guard fanfic #fanfic

83 notes · View notes