Chapter Text
For all her years, Andy cannot remember having felt purpose like this before. Knowing that her body no longer heals does nothing to dissuade her - if anything, it motivates her further. She may break, she may hurt but she now sees, as she hasn’t in centuries (maybe ever) that it is worth it.
Nile seems to accept her leadership, and follows it without question.
Nicky and Joe, however, draw on almost two thousand years of combined stubbornness trying to keep her from harm.
Nicky researches nutrition and tries to serve her balanced (boring, bland) meals despite her protests. Joe finds her the best available body armour (never mind how it moves). They both throw themselves in front of her at every possible opportunity. (This isn’t to say that Nile doesn’t, in the face of real danger - just that Nicky and Joe don’t seem to understand that she doesn’t need protecting from traffic or raccoons or hot oil on the stove).
She doesn’t think she’s been particularly careless - they vet jobs as they’ve always done, and now they have Copley to help. She’s not reckless, just filled with purpose, with vigour, with the need to do right. Besides, all her years have taught her that sometimes, despite best efforts, jobs go wrong.
It doesn’t entirely bother her that they’ve been locked up in a cell. It’s hardly the first time, after all. Besides, she has every faith in Nile and Joe and Copley to track them down.
What she does hate with every fibre of her being, is that Nicky is locked up with her.
He reassures her, because of course he does, that it isn’t her fault, just as she reassures him that it isn’t his.
They’ve been captured together before, they all have, really, and they know the routine. They have exhausted their options for escape, have tried at every opportunity, and have failed. All they’ve managed to do is maybe piss off their captors a little more than was strictly necessary. It isn’t in them to just give up and accept their predicament, though - they need to try everything first. Once they’ve done this, however, all that’s left to do is wait.
It’s all standard procedure, as far as standard procedure goes for a bunch of immortal warriors. Andy finds the way that criminals haven’t really changed the core of their modus operandi in decades more than a little tiresome. There’s an angry kingpin (with his fingers in many increasingly unconscionable pies) who doesn’t believe that nobody hired them, who scoffs at their insistence that there aren’t more of them, a selection of cronies and hired hands who are all too happy to try to beat the answers out of them, and a general limited amount of food, water, and warmth to make them extra miserable. Frankly, she’s bored with it.
Joe is coming. Nile is coming. They just have to bide their time, like every time this has happened before.
The one difference - the only difference - is that this time Andy is mortal.
Nicky (and Joe, her boys, her beloved boys) have always hated it when she put herself in danger, and even more so when she did it to protect them. But, until this point, they recognized her leadership and would defer to it. They accepted that this sometimes meant letting her take the brunt of their latest opponent’s anger if she felt it necessary to keep them safe, or to get them out of a sticky situation.
This time, however, there is no dissuading Nicky. No command, no proposed strategy will change his mind. Andy still puts up a fight, but eventually he turns those big, plaintive eyes on her and admits in a soft voice that the best way she can keep him safe right now is if she lets him take care of her - if she lets him stop them from doing something to her which cannot be undone.
Andy has never been able to say no to Nicky when he looks at her like that, and this time is no different.
So, she agrees. When their captors come in to see if they’re ready to talk, Nicky is the one who goads them, infuriates them. When they’re delivered pitiful meals, he refuses his half, begging with his soulful eyes.
I can starve, he says. You can’t.
I don’t need water, he says. You do.
Andy hates it. She doesn’t feel mortal, she feels the same as she always has. She feels strong, she feels enraged, she wants to protect her Nico. She wants to shield him from the world. She knows, logically, that after nine hundred years there isn’t much innocence left, but still he feels so young to her. They both do. They all do.
She thinks of the plea in his eyes, though, the desperation in his face as he silently begs her to stay behind him, to stay silent, to let him take it, and so she does.
She suspects it isn’t entirely quick tempers or even benevolence that has their captors keep taking Nicky’s bait, though - she suspects that the brighter among them recognize the look in her eyes - they see that by hurting Nicky they hurt her more than they could by beating her.
---
They lose track of time. There is no natural light in the room they are in, so they don’t really know how many days have passed. Andy isn’t sure if the room is getting colder, or if they’re maybe just getting weaker with lack of food. Perhaps both.
The first few days their captors try violence, but when neither of them cracks (and also as they seem to take out no small number of henchmen every time they are in the same room as them) they seem to settle on trying to starve the answers they want out of them. Nicky continues to insist on giving Andy his share, so while she doesn’t know exactly how many days it’s been, she knows it’s been long enough for Nicky to start looking grey with dehydration. She suspects he will die from it soon, but when she brings this up to him he just gives her a tired smile and reminds her that it’s fine if he does - he will come back. The only thing that seems to matter to him is that she doesn’t.
She’s miserable - cold and damp and hungry - but what hurts the most is watching Nicky waste away beside her.
---
They talk - or, at least, at the beginning they talk. As time goes on and Nicky grows weaker, it mostly becomes Andy talking while Nicky dozes (or lies unconscious, or dies and comes back) tucked into her side. It starts as discussions of possible means to escape (always in oldest languages they share, just in case anyone is listening), but when that seems to become increasingly hopeless, and as Nicky starts to lose the energy to hold his head up, Andy starts spending most of her time telling him her favourite stories of years gone by.
They (he - Andy reminds herself) might be immortal, but they are still human. Their bodies will heal, will regenerate but they need food and water to do so, so as Nicky fades and starts to die not only from lack of water but from starvation the deaths start to come closer and closer together. He will die from malnourishment, come back, and then, when his body realizes it still has no stores to draw from, still has no energy to heal itself with, he will die again.
Sometimes, when he is too out of it to protest, she tips small sips of water into his mouth. This tends to end up with him waking up enough to realize what she is doing, at which point he will turn tear-filled eyes on her and remind her that while he will come back from whatever physical trauma his body is put through, he will not be able to handle waking up to find her permanently dead beside him when he could have prevented it.
---
They move them once during their captivity. Having learned early on that entering the room while either of them is awake is dangerous, both times they accomplish the move by knocking them out with gas and transporting them while they’re unconscious. Andy comes to in a shipping container, bound with rope and alone. She makes quick work of the bindings before exhausting herself trying to find a way out. Nothing gives, no matter how hard she tries.
She loses time again. Perhaps more gas? Maybe her body just gave out? She isn’t sure, but when she wakes she and Nicky have been tossed in the same room again, carelessly dropped on the cold floor. There is blood on Nicky’s temple that wasn’t there before.
She wonders if their captors have realized that, no matter how much he bleeds, none of the marks linger on his skin. She hopes that the mess of dried blood he’s covered in is enough to mask the fact that he isn’t actually bleeding where he should be, because she doesn’t want to think about how their situation could get messier if they figured that out. Luckily, they seem to prefer keeping their distance (or perhaps they have just realized it is best for their own safety to not get too close).
Andy frees herself from her new bounds. Nicky stirs but doesn’t seem to have the energy to fully wake, so once Andy has repeated the process of checking their cell for potential means of escape (she doesn’t find any) she drags him to a corner of the room and, leaning against the wall, pulls him to her chest.
---
Someone comes to check on them what Andy assumes is once a day, with a bottle of water and some stale bread, or sometimes a can of soup and a demand for answers that they both don’t have and would never give anyway.
Nicky is barely more than skin and bones, a painfully fragile warmth (and sometimes lack thereof) in her arms. She is hardly any better, the food they get absolutely pitiful, but at least she hasn’t died of starvation. She isn’t the one who keeps coming to in stuttering huffs of air before inevitably going limp again - over and over and over.
---
Andy rouses from sleep. She’s hungry - hungrier than usual. She thinks they haven’t been fed in a while. Nicky is still slumped against her, his soft breaths puffing against her neck. She tiredly runs her hands through his dirty hair, brushing it back from his face as she wonders if they have given up on them entirely. She feels like it’s been too long, like they are overdue for food and questions, but she has no way of being sure. Maybe this day has just felt longer than the others. Maybe it’s been more than one.
The door opens with a clang. Andy doesn’t bother to look up, keeping her face buried in Nicky’s hair and keeping her own thin arms wrapped around his frail form as she holds him close on her lap. Even when she senses someone letting out a breath and dropping hard onto their knees beside her, she doesn’t look up. She would fight, but she doesn’t have the energy to. Maybe she could knock out this one with the remaining dregs of her strength, but then what? She doesn’t think she has it in her to fight her way out all while carrying Nicky, frighteningly light as he is at the moment.
Joe is coming. Nile is coming. They just have to wait.
A shaking hand meets hers where it is buried in Nicky’s hair. She flinches, but doesn’t pull away. The hand reaches across Nicky to tuck her own hair behind her ear. Initially she recoils, but then she takes a deep breath and tries to muster the reserves of her strength. The person is close. Maybe she could take this one out. She takes another breath, steeling herself. Her eyelashes brush against Nicky’s greasy hair as she blinks, her face still tucked down onto his head. She moves to look up but then she realizes that she knows that hand.
She knew that hand for millennia, but she hasn’t held it in hundreds of years.
She blinks, raising her head.
The world swims in front of her, and she blinks a few more times before it comes into focus.
She must be dreaming.
She hears shouting, sees the mouth in front of her moving but her brain doesn’t connect the sight with the sound. There’s the sound of running footsteps and Joe - or her mind’s conjured version of Joe - comes skidding around the corner, making a beeline for the three of them when he enters the room.
Suddenly, there are inexplicably warm hands pulling Nicky away from her. She clings tighter, clings with all the strength she has left as dream-Joe tries to take Nicky from her.
She huffs out a disgruntled protest, complains that this is my dream, why can’t you do what I want - I want him with me, before burying her face back into Nicky’s hair and trying to let the dream take her somewhere else. Perhaps her subconscious can take them somewhere warm.
She doesn’t get the chance. Moments later, hands are prying Nicky from her arms and she finds that she doesn’t have enough strength to keep fighting back. She opens her eyes again to see the arms pick Nicky up, cradling him against a broad chest. She sees Nile enter the room, coming up to her with her hands raised before pausing in front of her and giving her a brief relieved smile before hauling her to her feet and pulling her arm across strong shoulders.
She doesn’t see anybody else.
Just Joe and Nile.
Joe and Nile have come.
---
She vaguely remembers stumbling through hallways, Nile hauling her uncooperative body along. Joe is just ahead of them, Nicky held close.
Their path out is clear.
Some of the guards have been cut down, some have been shot, others, inexplicably, have been struck with arrows. Nicky hasn’t used a bow in decades, Joe in even longer. She didn’t realize Nile knew how.
When they reach the getaway car Nile helps her into the backseat before climbing in after her, taking her hand tightly in both of hers. Joe gets in on the other side with Nicky still in his arms, maneuvering awkwardly, trying to avoid bumping Nicky against the door.
Andy leans her head on Joe’s shoulder, leaving her right hand in Niles’ as her left buries itself in Nicky’s hair. She breathes in the smell of Joe’s shirt, finally allowing the last remnants of tension to leave her body. She sees Booker get into the driver’s seat. They must have needed to call him in for backup. The passenger seat is empty. She supposes they’re a little cramped in the back, but she doesn’t want to let go of Nile and she isn’t sure she would be able to handle Nicky or Joe moving away from her. She relaxes completely against Joe’s side, and relief so strong it makes her want to cry overcomes her as he presses a kiss to her hair.
She sleeps.
The passenger side door opens and shuts.
The wheels squeal as the car pulls away.