Chapter Text
Booker calls him while Joe is grading papers in his office. Joe frowns as he gets up to shut the door, taking a quick peek in the hallway to make sure no one is listening. He and Booker talked only a few weeks ago, and there had been nothing to suggest that his friend would be calling again so soon.
“Hello?” Joe asks, cautiously.
“Joe,” Booker says. “Have you slept in the last few hours?”
“No,” Joe says. There's only one reason Booker would be asking that question, though. “A new one? Are you sure?”
“Yeah,” Booker says.
“Shit,” Joe says.
Booker huffs out something close to a laugh. “Andy and Quỳnh are going to get her. Me and Nicky are headed to France, to Charlie.”
“Okay,” Joe says. He pulls out his computer and starts looking up flights, wincing when he sees how long it will take. “It’ll be a while,” he warns.
“Andy and Quỳnh still need to find her,” Booker tells him. “We couldn’t catch much.”
“I’ll let Quỳnh know if I get anything,” Joe promises before hanging up. He books the flight and starts the longer, much more difficult process of cancelling his appointments and finding people to cover his classes. Luckily, by this point Joe has covered for so many of his colleagues at this point that everyone in his department owes him a favor.
Joe naps on the plane, and is woken by a terror that is not his own, panic and confusion worse, a creeping sense of isolation. She's observant despite all of the shock - she can feel the walls closing in around her, the distrust of the people that she’s with starting to lead towards a situation she won’t be able to control.
He sketches her with a sick feeling in his stomach, and sends a photo of it to Quỳnh and only adds - hurry .
Joe calls Booker when he lands, but gets no answer. It could mean lots of things, but Joe still spends the entire hitch to the safehouse on edge. Joe bursts through the door - Booker is nowhere to be found but Nicky pulls a gun on him from the kitchen. He jerks when he sees that it’s Joe, and the bullet buries itself in the wall above Joe's head. “Madre di Dio, Joe,” he spits. “I could have killed you.” He tucks the gun away and takes in Joe’s panicked expression, and he softens. “It’s okay, Joe,” he says, quieter. “They found her.”
Joe’s breath shakes out of him. “When will they get here?”
“Sometime this evening,” Nicky says.
“Good,” Joe says. “Where’s Booker?”
“Out back,” Nicky tells him. “Go ahead and take one of the beds. I’ll sleep on the couch.”
Joe nods, and heads out to find Booker.
Nile, when she shows up, peeking out from behind Andy and Quỳnh, is clearly intimidated by all of them. She’s fresh faced and so young that Joe’s heart aches. At least they found her quickly.
“So, you guys good guys, or bad guys?” Nile asks.
“That depends,” Quỳnh says.
“We fight for what we think is right,” Nicky adds.
“Not all of us,” Joe protests.
Nicky ducks his head and leans back.
Nile looks between the two of them, frowning slightly. Booker clears his throat. “Joe doesn’t involve himself in that,” he explains.
“I made a choice,” Joe tells her. “I teach, I write, I… I try to steer the world onto a gentler path, in whatever way I can. I don’t think that we were granted this gift just to put more violence into the world.”
“And we,” Nicky says, pointedly, “Don’t believe we are putting violence into the world. We are there when we need to be.”
“Violence begets violence,” Joe says. “It’s not the answer.”
“There are times when it is the only answer, which I know you agree with, and during those times, how can we turn our backs? How can we allow others to die in our place?” Nicky demands. “There will always be a need for us.”
“Violence is a necessary tool sometimes, yes,” Joe says. “But it is a tool that is only effective because it has consequences. How can we ever use it, if to us, it carries no meaning?”
Nicky sighs, and pushes away his plate. Nile turns her attention towards the others.
“We believe we must fight for those who cannot,” Quỳnh says. “We respect Joe’s decision, of course, and it is not that we disagree with what he does - but we have one, very unique ability that cannot be replicated by anyone else. And that is what the four of us have chosen to utilize."
“It's not that cut and dry,” Booker puts in. “I spend most of my time with these three, but sometimes Joe will let me crash at his place and let me try my hand at doing things his way. And we do work together, sometimes."
Nile nods, thinking it over. “How come you all were in my dreams?” She asks.
“We dream of each other,” Joe tells her. “They stop when we meet, we don’t know why.”
“I believe it is because we are meant to find each other,” Nicky says. “We’re better together.”
Joe snorts. “Not this again.”
“It’s true,” Nicky says, a muscle ticking in his jaw. “There’s safety in numbers - if I had not been with Andromache and Quỳnh in England -”
“If you three weren’t together, sticking your necks out, they never would have been in danger in the first place!” Joe says incredulously.
“Sticking our necks out?” Nicky says, just as incredulously. “That’s what you’re calling rescuing innocents accused of witchcraft?”
“Witchcraft?” Nile asks.
“What you all do is risky, you know it is,” Joe says. “I’m glad Andy and Quỳnh got out of that safely, of course, but you go looking for trouble, you can’t deny that.”
“Boys,” Quỳnh says.
“How many innocent people would have met their deaths, if we didn’t try to help them?” Nicky demands over her.
“In case you haven’t noticed, people aren’t being burned at the stake anymore, and it’s not because some maniac with a sword was running around killing people!”
“Enough,” Andy barks.
Nile’s eyes are darting between them both, obviously thrown off by the open aggression, and Joe sighs. This is not the first impression he would have liked to make. Across from him, Nicky’s mouth is pressed into a thin line. “I’m sorry, Nile,” Joe says. “Nicky and I had a complicated beginning, and now we find it too easy to slip into arguments.”
Nicky closes his eyes and breathes in deeply through his nose. “Yes,” he says. “Things often become more heated between us than we mean them to.”
Nile eyes them curiously but doesn’t ask for an explanation, which is a relief. It’s not something that Joe likes thinking about. Nicky has gone quiet, as he often does when their past is dredged up, and Quỳnh and Andy change the subject to tell her about Lykon. After that it’s very clear that Nile can’t handle any more information, so Quỳnh shows her to the bed they’ve set up for her.
Then they quietly tell Joe about the mess they’ve created for themselves in South Sudan.
“Are you serious?” Joe hisses. “You brought Nile here, into this?”
“We couldn’t just leave her out there,” Quỳnh says. “How long do you think it would take for whoever is looking for us to find a Marine who cannot die?”
Joe can’t argue with that, but - he hoped they’d be able to do better for her now.
“Can you take her?” Andy asks. “She’s smart, and a good fighter, but we can’t take her with us while we try to track down Copley, it’s too risky.”
“We can’t put that on Joe,” Nicky says. “What if they are already looking for her? That would put them both at risk.”
“We’re all at risk,” Booker says. “But we know they know about us. And if they already know about Nile they would come after us first anyway. We’re a greater threat.”
“I’ll do it, “ Joe says. “I’ll take her."
“Take me where?” Nile says, appearing in the doorway, rubbing sleep out of her eyes.
“Couldn’t sleep?” Quỳnh asks.
“Take me where?” Nile demands, looking more awake.
Joe clears his throat. “Back with me to Cairo,” he says. “I teach at a university there. Just for the time being - these four have unfinished business, but you can decide what you want to do after that.”
“No, I know what I want,” Nile says. “I want to go back to my family.”
“Nile,” Booker says.
Nile sets her jaw, sets her feet like she’s preparing for a fight. “You’re bringing me back to my family.”
“It’s too dangerous,” Andy says.
Nile turns to Joe. “I thought you said we had a choice.”
“We do,” Joe says. “But it’s not an easy one. I’m never in one place for more than a few years. If I do make friends, I have to leave them behind. We can’t have a normal life, Nile. It’s too dangerous for us, and for everyone else.”
Nile stares at them all in turn, furious, and walks out the door. Andy glares them down and goes after her herself, which is not the kindest way of dealing with this, but might be the quickest.
“She’ll need a fake ID,” Joe says. “The sooner the better.”
“I’m on it,” Booker says, and opens up his computer. Joe, Quỳnh, and Nicky start to play poker to pass the time - Quỳnh, as always, picks them both clean.
Nile and Andy stay outside for a while. Joe is just starting to think about joining them to see if he could help when the door blasts open, off of it’s hinges. A grenade rolls in - Booker, closest to the door, falls on it just before it goes off. He doesn’t block all the shrapnel, and some of it winds up in Joe’s left leg.
Joe shouts. It hurts - it hurts far more than the last time he was killed by violence, a stabbing in the eighties.
Something hauls him to his feet - Quỳnh is running for the door, pulling knives out from nowhere, but she doesn’t make it all the way there before smoke starts filling the room, from two more grenades that get tossed in. Quỳnh starts coughing, and collapses. Joe looks around, dazed - the pain in his leg is starting to fade, but his head is still ringing. Beside him, Nicky’s face is contorted into a snarl of rage. He starts dragging Joe back, further into the house, but the smoke reaches them before they get far enough.
Waking up after being tortured is not a pleasant experience. There’s a fresh tang of blood in his mouth. That wasn’t there when he passed out, so now he has to contemplate whether the so-called doctor slicing into him carved out part of his lung, or whether he bit through his own tongue from the pain. He tries not to worry about which it might be, tries to be grateful for the fact that he’s not in pain for the time being.
He’s still uncomfortable, though, and his ears are ringing. Gradually, Joe registers it as shouting, and he forces his eyes open. He turns his head and finds Nicky straining up against his restraints, hollering in French about broken trust and betrayal.
Joe lifts his head, and his heart sinks. Andy and Booker have now also been captured, strapped down to similar gurneys in the lab along with Joe and Nicky and Quỳnh. At least there’s no sign of Nile - that’s good. Joe’s glad. Maybe there is no record of her, maybe she can go back to her family and live in peace with them for as long as she can.
Nicky is still screaming - at Booker, apparently, who’s trying to say something over him but not having much success. Quỳnh, between them, is attempting to play peacemaker to no avail.
“What’s happening,” Joe rasps.
Nicky jerks back against his gurney, banging his head a few times against the steel. He closes his eyes and forcibly regulates his breathing before turning to Joe. “Are you alright?” he asks.
“Aside from the obvious, yes,” Joe says.
Nicky yanks against his restraints some more, growling in frustration when they don’t give, and slumping back to stare up at the ceiling.
“Nicky,” Booker says.
“Don’t speak to me,” Nicky snaps, and closes his eyes.
“What happened?” Joe asks.
“This is my fault,” Booker says, quietly. “Joe, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t speak to him either,” Nicky snarls. “Don’t - don’t you -”
Booker shuts up. Joe, finding that he has nothing to say, does the same.
Andy and Quỳnh speak to each other softly, in the old stew that Joe and Booker have no hope of ever learning. It’s possible that Nicky might understand some of it, having spent the most time with them, but he gives no sign of that, instead taking slow, deep breaths in and out, the same very basic coping method that Joe had been forced to teach him so many centuries ago.
Aside from that, they all stay quiet. Joe tries to prepare himself mentally for what is to come, but he knows it's a doomed endeavour. He’s died more in the last 24 hours than he had in the past 50 years. He has no frame of reference for what is to come.
“Try to get some sleep,” Nicky says quietly. His eyes are still closed, but his head is turned slightly towards Joe. “We’ll all try to keep her away from you, but…”
But, Joe thinks tiredly. But they won’t be able to, not really.
Despite knowing that sleep is important, the endless years that stretch out in front of him now include torture and grotesque medical experimentation, and Joe has a hard time imagining ever getting rest on this uncomfortable steel. Still, he tries, and has managed to slip into something approaching a light doze when approaching gunfire wakes him.
He eyes the door with trepidation, hoping that somehow it’s the police doing something fucking useful for once, and that it isn’t a rival corporation intent on grappling for control over their bodies in microcosm of the awful capitalist nightmare they’ve found themselves in. He expects to be disappointed, He doesn’t expect it to be Nile.
She shoots the guards that follow her, and Joe sees her have to shrug that off and his heart aches for her, even as he is so selfishly happy to see her. She releases Andy first, who scrambles off of the gurney in the cold, controlled rage that could only be challenged in intensity by Quỳnh.
Quỳnh and Nicky are released in short order, and Nile goes to Booker next. “Leave him,” Nicky says, flatly, as he works on the straps keeping Joe down.
“No,” Andy says. “We’ll deal with him after we get out of here safely.” Her tone leaves no room for discussion, and Nicky doesn’t challenge her, just helps Joe off the table, handing him his shirt. As Joe shrugs it on, he grabs a handgun from one of the dead guards and brings it to Joe.
“Will you use this?” he asks.
Joe may not believe in how Nicky and the others have chosen to spend their lives, but he’s no pacifist, especially not when faced with something as morally repugnant as this. He nods.
“Do you know how to use it?” Nicky asks. Joe nods again. “Show me.”
Under Nicky’s watchful eye, Joe knows that the way he deals with the safety and pulls out and reloads the clip is deliberate at best. Certainly not practiced or quick like the others are.
“And the assault rifles?” Nicky asks.
“Never held one,” Joe tells him.
“Stay close to me. Just behind me and to my left, if you can manage that,” Nicky directs. “I’ll help you. Tell me if you run out of ammunition.”
“Alright,” Joe says.
“We’ll bring up the rear,” Nicky says, bringing them into position behind Nile and Booker. Andy and Quỳnh are up front. Joe realizes that there are only five guns between the six of them. He tries to hand Nicky the gun he’s holding, but Nicky just shakes his head and stands there, hands empty, waiting for Andy to give the signal.
Being able to hold onto something is comforting, even when that something is a gun. Joe doesn’t argue.
Fighting their way out of Merrick’s glass cage is not easy. Joe tries not to look closely at the faces of the people he has to kill, but they are all choosing to kill for money, so Joe finds that shamefully easy. At some point he dies again when the wall he’s standing next to explodes into him, which is exactly as painful as it sounds. He wakes up choking on gas that makes every breath painful, and to Nicky grappling with an enormous man in old fashioned fisticuffs. Joe tries to help but gets a bullet through his head for his trouble. The next time he wakes he’s slung over Nicky’s shoulders in a fireman’s carry.
“Sorry,” Nicky says, letting him down. “I was trying not to get separated from the others.”
After that, Joe doesn’t have to do much. He joins Nicky and Booker on the roof, where São Paulo apparently means that Nicky jumps off a building holding onto a rope to crash through the glass windows one story below, and by the time Joe and Booker join the rest in the penthouse there’s nothing for them to do. The enormous man from before is crumpled on the ground in front of Nicky’s feet. There’s no sign of Merrick himself, but when Joe and Nicky and Booker burst out onto the sidewalk that’s also been taken care of, the man crushed into the passenger seat of the car, and Nile climbing out of the wreckage, bruised and bloodied but alive.
The only car near them that they can take to flee the scene is a little sedan. Andy gets in behind the wheel, but that’s the only easy decision. Quỳnh says, “You and I, Nicky,” and points Booker in the direction of the passenger seat. Joe didn’t contribute much to this besides being a liability, so he takes the middle seat in the back as some kind of apology. Nile gets in behind Booker, and Nicky and Quỳnh take the remaining seat behind Andy. Nicky wraps his arm around Quỳnh’s middle to keep her steady on his lap, and spends the entire drive glaring a hole into the back of Booker’s head. Joe, trying not to invade Nile’s personal space, finds himself pressed up against the pair of them, and is sweltering before they’ve made it more than a few blocks.
They stop in one of their safehouses for long enough to get cleaned up, and then it’s off to a neutral location to deal with the fallout from Booker’s betrayal. They bring him to a bar and direct him to stay outside to await their judgement. Nicky grabs him by the arm and says, very softly: “Whatever we decide, know this. For myself, I could forgive you. For Andy and Quỳnh, I might forgive you. But the moment that Joe and Nile were involved, and you did beg us for help in keeping them out of your vicious schemes - that, my brother, I do not think that I can forgive. I don’t know if I will ever bring myself to speak to you again.”
Booker ducks his head, and flees.
Nile is also unhappy about not even being an afterthought in Booker’s considerations, but it becomes very clear very quickly that her hurt and Joe’s pales in comparison to whatever Andy, Quỳnh, and Nicky are feeling. Quỳnh tries to take the diplomatic approach, citing that they have all known how desperate loneliness can be. Andy scoffs at that, understandably - she had been alone so long before she found Quỳnh, but Joe does not think she would ever have sold out her only friends. Nicky doesn’t say much, just: “I don’t think that is long enough,” over and over, even after Andy and Quỳnh settle on an exile of 100 years.
“You have to agree too, Joe,” Andy says. “You’ll have to stay with us for a while, until we are sure that the danger is passed, but after that - you’ll have to turn him away if he comes to you.”
“I don’t think he would,” Joe says, eyeing Booker’s hunched shoulders through the window.
“That may be so, but you have to agree,” Quỳnh says. “There’s no consequence to this if he can just go to you.”
Joe thinks about how Booker had been the one to call him with the news about Nile, how Joe had dropped everything to get to France as quickly as he could. He’s going to have to fake his death now. There are probably still dirty dishes stacked in his sink, that he’ll never get to wash. “Alright,” he says. “One hundred years.”
“I still don’t think that is long enough,” Nicky says.
“Jesus, Nicky,” Andy says, exhausted. “How you handle him after is up to you. Ignore him for the rest of your unnatural life for all that I care, this is about us as a group.”
“Fine,” Nicky says. “I’m not going to be the one to tell him.”
In the end, Andy tells him, which is probably for the best - Andy is not someone that can be argued with.
They meet with Copley, the man that Booker had been working with - the others do not consider his actions to be a personal betrayal, and as such have found them easier to forgive. Joe gives him as wide a berth as possible. There is no mention of him on Copley’s ode to the surveillance state, but now Copley knows about him, and his eyes land on Joe whenever they are in the same room. It’s just curiosity, Joe thinks, but he’s unsure enough about that to be uncomfortable. He doesn’t like the idea of Copley trying to find things out about him, and his pseudonyms are not clever enough to fool anyone who is actively looking.
“And… Mr. al-Kaysani,” Copley begins, as the others are looking at the summation, such as it is, of their violent work. In truth, Joe is pleased about it too. He's glad to have confirmation that good is coming out of their actions. “When did you -”
“Joe is off limits,” Nicky says, turning around. He’s not smiling. “And this?” he waves his finger around in a circular motion. “This stops now. Our history is ours, not something to trawl through for your amusement.”
“It was just research,” Copley says, but backs down immediately when he sees the flash of Nicky’s eyes. Joe has been on the receiving end of that, and it never ended pleasantly for him. He does not blame Copley for nodding quickly and saying, “Of course, yes. No more.”
There’s a bit of back and forth on where to head next. Eventually they decide to head for Vienna, and Joe sighs as they approach the car. With five people it won’t be so bad, but it’s going to be quite the drive.
Nicky slides into the middle seat before Joe can. “Take the front,” he says. “Your legs are longer.”
“Are you sure?” Joe asks.
Nicky nods.
“Alright,” Joe says. And, because it was a thoughtful offer, he adds: “Thanks.”