Chapter Text
Booker was Not doing this to say sorry to the rest of the team, though that is a benefit, but for himself as part of his healing. He couldn’t sleep. He had tried everything, sleeping pills, meditating, knocking himself out. But he had been sober for months now and he refused to go back on the progress that meant so much to him. Nile’s face popped up every time he walked pass a liquor store and the faith she had had in him keeps him going, pushing through his sobriety day by day, hour by hour.
But sobriety will not stop the dreams.
It takes him a while to remember that he’s no longer the only on dreaming of Quynh, and that’s what breaks him. The thought of his family comforting Nile, where they wouldn’t comfort him. He screams, rages, breaks more glasses and chairs than he had since he’d lost Fleur all those years ago.
She would shake her head if she could see him now, she would hold him. He hadn’t realised how much he’d craved someone to hold him before this moment. How much he missed that feeling. Andy, she was the last one to hold him.
Andy, Andromache.
He sobs and cruses and breaks a window before he decides that is enough. He thought of his family, the nightmares they were doubtless suffering from now. Because of him.
And so he planned. it was something he knew he could do, something he had always done, planned flights and mapped out routes, exit strategies, booked hotels and organised trips.
He knocked himself out. One last time, he swore to himself. Never again.
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He came around in the morning with the sun. he started with the chairs, burnt them. Then he swept the floor, packed his bags and sold the apartment.
He spent hours in a tiny café on the corner of the street planning, to find an ideal base and home for the foreseeable future, he settles on Brighton.
He ends up buying a two bedroom flat in an apartment building five minutes from the seafront, he calls the number and assures them that no, he does not need a tour and yes, he’s sure he doesn’t need a tour before buying it, and that’s great but he doesn’t have a pet, and no, he doesn’t smoke.
Which is a lie, but he figures now is as good a time as any to give it up, so he finds himself a flight out to Gatwick, organises for his motorcycle to be bought over and heads to the airport.
He calls a diving school when he’s waiting in departures, and starts building an alias.
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William Edouard is a recently divorced buisnessman, who has re-evaluated his life choices after his divorce, quit his job moved from France to Brighton and decided to take up diving whilst he is on the hunt for a change in career, but you can call him Bill.
After signing all the paperwork at a dingy little office, Booker makes his way to his new house. Its a hell of a lot more luxurious than any of his other safehouses. The place is a penthouse, two bedrooms one bathroom and a massive balcony and even allocated parking.
The main door of the building is a generic little thing, just a grey door with 5 buzzers on the side. He jogs up four flights of stairs to his new front door, it felt oddly significant, opening the door for the first time. He runs his hand through his hair back and unlocked his new apartment.
It’s really nice, very empty, but nice. The place is well lit, he takes the fourth key off the chain he was given and opens the door to the terrace. He knew it had a sea view but seeing it is something different. The sea looks unrealistically blue and the shouts of people and their kids from the seafront causes Booker to feel more carefree than he has in years.
He unpacks his guns, C-4 and knifes off his person and into various kitchen cabinets, onto a mantlepiece and sticks a Glock into his waistband, leaving only that and a knife in his boot. He makes a mental note to find buy himself a massive safe.
It was freeing to rid his person of the excessive weapons he often found himself supporting. He was unable to bring himself to get rid of them all, but it was still a relief to get some weight off himself.
“Home sweet home” he muttered.
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And so, Booker reaches back into his somewhat murky past and forges himself a new identity. He could, in theory, ask Copley. The two men keep in contact despite the exile and occasionally recommend each other books. But then he would have to explain why he is in desperate need of a new identity, and James would likely ask him to go on a solo mission instead of just taking payment. And besides, Booker decided to give up lying as part of his Getting His Shit Together.
And so, he forges it all himself.
Passport, driving licence, a degree in computer science, a gun licence and a birth certificate just because he can.
Given the amount of time finding Quynh going to take him, he figures he might as well forge it all. So he grabs a new phone from a sketchy looking shop he’d passes on his walk to his apartment. It’s not cheap, but not a lot seems to be these days.
He decides on a pay as you go contract seeing as the phone actually belongs to ‘Bill Edouard’, so with any luck he won’t be using it too much. He downloads Instagram and Twitter, which according to the app store are the most popular social media sites now. He fiddles with the accounts until they backdate, so according to Twitter William Edouard had been on the site for 7 years. He backdates a couple of meaningless tweets and makes one about moving to the seaside town.
Instagram takes a while longer. He finds some photos he’s taken of Nantes, backdates them, and then goes looking for a couple of him with other people. Scrolling through his camera roll he finds a photo Andy had taken of him, Joe and Nicky. If anyone asks there were no tears involved in unexpectedly coming across the photo.
It’s the back of their heads against the skyline of Istanbul at sunrise. It had been an easy job; they had finished it early and decided to spend the rest of the days till their flight out getting high on the roof of the safehouse.
He captions it ‘holidays’ and finds the beer emoji. It’s the closest he’s come to alcohol in months, but he changes his mind last minute. The sun emoji takes its place alongside a stupid face.
It’s the closest Bill’s social medias come to having any faces on them, and he plans to keep it that way.
Then comes followers and people Edouard follows. Which is exasperating to say the least, but it feels necessary. It takes him the better part of two days to completely forge Edouard's best friends and newly acquired younger brother’s Instagram’s and Twitter’s. He leaves his account public so after tagging all his black and white photos of Nantes to the point of tears, Edouard has gotten himself a considerable following.
The diving course will take four months. Which is exasperating, but not unexpected, it also gives him time to buy and learn how to operate an active sonar equipped ROV. He should also probably take a refresher course for a boat he is going to somehow get his hands on.
YouTube, Booker soon realises, is undeniably one of the best modern inventions. “Period”, as Nile would say. So he finds some basic ROV and sonar equipment use tutorials and he’s relatively confident the rest he’ll be able to figure out himself, with the help of a manual. ‘so not really by yourself then Book’ a teasing voice that sounds disconcertingly like Andy makes its way into his head.
He sighs, grabs his reusable shopping bags and searches for the nearest Supermarket.
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After filling his new fridge and cupboards with food to last the next few weeks, setting up his new coffee machine and setting down the four supposedly unkillable houseplants that he had grabbed thinking of Andy. One for the bathroom, one for the kitchen and two for the living room.
“This is not a home, Booker”, Andy had said once looking around one of his apartments, years ago. “It needs something…..” she had sighed, hands on hips as she glared around the flat. “A photo or a houseplant or a teapot, you know. This is just- it’s just a house.”
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He jerks awake, breathing hard, clawing at his throat.
Drowning.
Quynh.
Fuck, he wanted a cigarette.
Breathe, he told himself. Slow and deep, in and out.
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40 mins later Booker was online shopping. He knew what it was but had never done it before, and it turned out to be unnervingly anxiety inducing.
Bedsheets, a bed, cups, plates, random utensils, towels, sofas and chairs, rugs and carpets, the whole lot. All due to arrive in the next week.
Booker felt oddly determined to make this his home. Not William Edouard's home. His. And so he ordered three ‘dark coffee’ coloured bookcases, and went in search of a bookshop.
It was something the others had always teased him about, the way he ordered new books every time he bought himself a new safe house, instead of just brining his collection over.
So he finally decided to empty the storage unit he still has in Marseille. He finds a ridiculously expensive moving company that specialise in moving antiques and suddenly he feels a lot better about his new apartment.
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Brighton was a nicer than he had expected it to be. His initial research of the town had described it as trendy, which confused him because he could not begin to understand how a city could be trendy, but it was proven to him by the hordes of teenagers that leaked out of the train station every Saturday morning, with their eyeliner all over their faces, chains around their necks, and with their corsets which were apparently back on trend?
He wandered around the busy streets of Brighton and eventually he came across a bookshop, well, a Waterstones. Not exactly what he was looking for but still. He walked in surprised to find carpet beneath his feet as he moved through the shop.
He ended up with some new bestsellers, which he was incredibly wary of, three different cookbooks, a book on Buddhism, two self-help books, some German poetry and a couple of books on how to care for house plants.
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His bike had finally arrived a day later, so he headed down to the diving school. It was an almost unpleasantly sunny day, so he grabbed his favourite sunglasses and grabbed some sunscreen.
It was the same brand Joe would spend far too long applying to Nicky’s back when they took vacations somewhere sunny. More than three different restaurant reservations had been cancelled one holiday, much to Booker and Andy’s frustration, in favour of sunscreen application turning into massages, which turned into foreplay, like many things were apt to do with Joe&Nicky.
Chucking at the memory of Andy lobbing empty sunscreen bottles at the other boy’s heads as he had cheered her on, Booker slapped some sunscreen on his nose and set off.
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He took a deep breath before entering the shop. A small bell tingled as he pushed the door open and walked over to the counter. The shop stank of seawater, there were heaps of equipment all over the shelves, and an inviting sign on the counter that read ‘ring the bell or yell’.
“Hello! How can I help you?” A slight Irish accent hidden among a booming voice surprised him. Booker turned to the other end of the shop and saw a middle-aged man covered head to toe in freckles smiled at him.
“Hi, I’m Bill Edouard” Booker offered his hand to shake, which the man’s calloused hand firmly returned. “I spoke to someone over the phone, I’m looking for an intensive diving course.”
“Seamus Daly.” He introduced himself, “Of course! Lillian mentioned you, she said you sounded interested in the four-month course we’re offering?”
Booker nodded, “Yeah it sounds great”, he rolled his eyes at himself internally, “diving has always been a dream of mine.” He practically cringed at the sentence, but it seemed to be what Seamus was waiting for.
He slipped behind the counter and logged into the computer, “Do you have any diving experience at all?”
“I’ve only dived twice before, and it was a few years ago now” Booker explained. What he did not explain was that ‘a few years ago’ meant 1894.
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With the lessons half paid for and due to start in a week Booker inquired after buying his own equipment, “Is that something I should do now, or should I rent from you for now?”
“Probably best to rent for the first two weeks or so, see what fits best.” Daly explained as a young woman with light turquoise, almost white, long hair and an eyebrow piercing stepped out from behind a door that Booker had previously assumed to be a storage cupboard.
“Lillian, this is Bill, you spoke on the phone a couple of days ago.” Seamus turned to his employee.
“Nice to meet you in person.” Lillian nodded at Booker and leaned over the counter to shake his hand. He gave her a small smile and was unsurprised to feel her properly squeeze his hand.
“So, what brings you to our humble abode?” she asked playfully, tapping a pen against the counter, which was accompanied by an eyeroll from Seamus.
“Just moved here a couple of weeks ago from Nantes and I figured it was as good a time as any to learn how to dive.” Yet another bout of lies, but it could not be avoided.
“Nantes! Damn,” she exclaimed, her eyebrows risen up to her forehead, “You’re French? Why the change of scenery?” Another eyeroll from Seamus.
“Leave the poor man alone you fiend.” Seamus tutted as his typing became progressively harsher.
“No, I don’t mind” Booker figured that as Lillian and Seamus were likely to be the closest he would come to having friends in the next year, or however long he stayed, he should indulge her questions.
“Oui,” he sighed, realising his whole ‘no lying’ thing was going to have to wait, “divorce.” He supplied, then backtracked at their expressions, “I’m glad to have gotten away be honest, and Brighton’s lovely, so no complaints from me”
“Sorry man” He hated the pity in her voice and reminded himself that it was aimed at Edouard. “Anyway, are you all up and running to start in two weeks?”
“Yep,” he smiled and went to shake Seamus’ hand, “Thank you again, I’ll see you then.”
“Perfect.” Seamus gave him a tight, but genuine smile. Lillian went for a small and slightly awkward wave from where she was back to tapping her pen against the counter.
“Bye!” she called as the bell dingled on his way out.
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Furniture started arriving two days later and the place was starting to feel like a home. He had gone shopping for even more plants after the discovery that they did actually make the place feel more alive. He was up to nine and after the assembling of his new bookshelves he decided he needed a couple more to fill the gaps between his books.
They had arrived from Marseille yesterday and it had, unsurprisingly, been incredibly emotional, and felt solemnly final to unpack them. Mostly first and second editions of famous works, his collection was an antique bookseller’s dream. Some of his books were gifts from his family, predating even Joe&Nicky.
Booker had never organised his books alphabetically or anything stupid like that. Simply by how it felt right, “vibes” Nile would call it.