Summary: She's the youngest, the newest, and yet she has lived a thousand lives worth of grief. When she thinks she's found something that might bring her some happiness, even if only for a little while, it ends - just like it always does. But Booker? He will always be there for her.
Word Count: 2,919
Warnings: It's mostly just sad. The reader's mother dies after being sick for a long time, and a lot of people in her life have died, There's a toxic relationship, and I guess you could say there's an age difference but when you're literally going to live forever it kind of becomes a moot point.
A/N: I wrote this ages ago for a blog the no longer exists because I deleted the account. Anyway, I promised a backlog of my old work and this definitely counts. Please enjoy my shitty writing from back when the world was entirely shut down for four years.
You had told him you couldn’t die.
Which was true. Technically you were immortal; you didn’t like that word. A lifetime spent studying too many myths, too many legends, too many religions had guaranteed that. So, you told him you were deathless.
And he had left.
You had called him, of course. He had answered the first time, and called you a fucking bitch, he’d told you to fuck off. You could tell he was drunk. The second time, he answered, and then he put you on speaker phone and had you listen to him fucking another woman for fifteen minutes before the shock of him doing such a thing wore off enough for you to hang up.
The third time, he didn’t answer at all.
You had cried then. Buried your face in your hands and sobbed. Choking on air, and unable to catch your breath. Booker had found you like that, on the front steps of the safe house in your pretty new dress, that you had worn because you’d thought he might like it, with tears in your eyes and a broken heart.
Seeing you like that was enough make him angry. Not his usual, depressed and defeated anger that was directed at the world for damning him to this hollow existence, but the kind of anger that made his vision flash white hot with rage, and made him clench his fists until the skin broke, and blood dried under his nails. The kind of anger he hadn’t felt in nearly a hundred years. The kind that couldn’t have been chased away by scotch or brandy or anything.
——
You were the youngest of them all; younger, even, than Nile. You had never been a warrior, or a fighter. You were a girl who couldn’t catch a break, and this was the latest in a long list of horrible, shitty, things to be thrown at you, that never should have been.
At 19, you had died in a car crash after a drunk driver hit you head on. There was nothing you could have done, and first responders were unsure how you were able to walk away from the crash without a scratch, when the car itself had been nearly unrecognizable. Your older brother had not been so lucky - his neck had been snapped when the force of the collision had pushed him forward in his seat, and then back all too suddenly.
Andy, Nicky, and Joe had found you the next week, sitting next to a hospital bed where your mother lay dying a slow painful death - the same way she had been for the last ten years.
She had been barely conscious, laying there on the hospital bed, unable to do or say anything due to her tracheostomy, and the cocktail of pain meds swirling through her system, providing what meagre comfort they could.
You had been curled up as small as possible in an armchair at her bedside, with your knees, covered in the black material of a pair of leggings, tucked up to almost under your chin.
You were dosing uneasily, likely having nightmares about their own deaths. One Air Pod, in the other nowhere to be seen, nose twitching slightly, brows furrowing and relaxing over and over again, the front of a men’s flannel clutched tight in one hand, to ward off the cold air blowing from the vent above your chair. The other holding your phone in a white knuckled grip.
The front of your Ramones shirt only just visible, and the laces of one of your converse undone and hanging over the edge of the chair.
Andy had told the receptionist she was your aunt. Nicky and Joe had said they were your brother and brother-in-law. The receptionist was too busy reading Cosmo to bother asking for ID.
Nile had been trying to track down Booker. They had said 100 years, and had it not been for you, it would have been. But none of them had had dreams of dying the way you had, and none of them knew what to do about it. The others hadn’t been sure that finding him and ending his exile early was the best decision, but Nile had insisted, and she had made some rather sound arguments in her attempt to convince the others. Or at least, she had come up with semi-reasonable reasons until not agreeing made them all feel like assholes.
——
She had finally found him in a seedy looking bar somewhere in Paris. It was barely five years in, and already Nile could tell that he wouldn’t have made it much more than another year without a psychotic break. She’d sat down on the barstool next to him and ordered a glass of water and a cup of strong coffee. It took entirely too long for Booker to even notice she was sitting there, and even then, it was only because she slid the coffee mug in front of him, and told the bartender that he’d had enough.
He’d looked up with a drunken smirk, and a hollow laugh, and asked, somewhat vaguely, if the hundred years were up already.
Nile shook her head and said “No.” before filling him in on the new immortal that was joining their rag-tag little family.
Booker hadn’t thought that was reason enough to end his exile, his own guilt telling him that he didn’t deserve to see his family again so soon. But Nile had insisted. And then the bartender had told them they were closing, and that they needed to “Get the fuck out,” in heavily accented English, so they’d gone back to his shitty little apartment in an even shittier part of Paris, that no one who hadn’t been to Paris would have ever associated with the city.
They’d stood in his tiny kitchen sipping cups of too strong coffee that Nile had made, and then mistakenly burned, using a cheap moka pot that one of the previous tenants had left behind in cabinet Booker hadn’t even opened yet. He’d moved after Quynh had shown up. It seemed like her centuries spent drowning had changed her from the woman Andy had known, and he knew that whatever trouble and bitterness she might bring, that was the last thing he’d needed. It was the only smart decision he’d made recently, and he wasn’t even sure how sober he’d been.
Nile had spent the night. She’d slept in his room - almost passed out once her head hit the pillow, and Booker had taken the lumpy sofa in the living room, not that there was much distinction between the two rooms, and spent most of the night staring blankly at the tin ceiling tiles, the paint peeling off them from years of neglect, occasionally gulping down a few mouthfuls of the cheap brandy he’d found under the sink - the way it tasted, it might as well have been gasoline with an only vaguely raisin-y aftertaste.
The next morning, they’d found themselves on a military cargo plane returning stateside from Germany, and they’d had to get up far too early for Booker’s taste. Nile, of course, had seemed unaffected by the early wake up, followed by the moderately long, four and a half hour, drive to an American air base in Germany, and seemed perfectly at ease on the trip. He wondered if Andy or Copley had been the one to arrange transportation, or if Nile had managed this one herself.
Eight hours later had found them in New York, and boarding another flight, this one on a commercial airline, to Seattle. Joe had met them there, and only paused to explain that Andy and Nicky had stayed with you in the hospital.
——
You had been shaken awake by a warm hand on your shoulder, the first thing you saw being a pair of gentle brown eyes belonging to an unfamiliar man with an Italian accent. Another man, this one with dark curly hair and a beard, was standing behind him, a sad smile barely touched his lips, and for a second you assumed the worst, and turned your head in your mother’s direction, not facing the two men again until you saw her chest rise and fall once more with a labored, shuddering breath.
The heart monitor had long since lost any reassuring meaning with it’s almost painfully consistent beeping. Seeing her breath always did more to reassure you, especially as her condition had worsened.
It was only then that you took notice of the woman standing by the door.
Andy had been the most surprised when you hadn’t needed much convincing to believe that you were immortal. Maybe it was because Nile had refused to believe her even after she’d shot her in the head, or maybe it was because you had just accepted the news and hadn’t needed any proof or evidence that she was the only one of them that could die - and that even that had been a rather recent development.
Whatever the case, your newfound immortality had obviously not been your primary concern at the moment. If anything, you had seemed resigned to the fact that you would outlive all your loved ones, and it wasn’t until she looked at the bed with your mother in it that she realized; you already had.
When the heart monitor had flatlined, you’d simply grabbed your canvas messenger bag from where it was located next to your chair, moved the chair back to its original position closer to the wall, and moved out of the nurses’ way as the came rushing into the room with a crash cart. You had mumbled a quite “Goodbye, Mom.” and made your way into the hallway to wait for the doctor to tell you, officially, that your mother had died.
It sounded cruel if you said it out loud, but you hoped she had. Ten years in pain as her body slowly consumed itself was not something she had deserved.
It was only two hours later when your mother’s doctor had come out to tell you something you already knew. You would have expected him to come out sooner, but they had rushed her into emergency surgery - something about trying to drain fluid from somewhere it shouldn’t have been. You had nodded and remained calm.
He had known you since you were a child, seen you lose your dad to alcohol, and then your grandmother - who had taken care of you and your brother after your mom got sick - to old age, she’d died peacefully in her sleep, and you were only glad she hadn’t had to identify your brother in the morgue.
He knew you wouldn’t say yes, but he asked if you wanted to say goodbye anyway. You simply shook your head, smiled sadly, and said you had a long drive home, and needed to be leaving soon. Joe had already left half an hour ago to pick up someone named “Nile”, and maybe someone else named “Booker”. He hadn’t seemed particularly happy about the second person.
——
The next morning was almost eerie in its normalcy. You woke up early, ignored the polite but artificial condolences being offered by your neighbors who had either stopped by with a casserole or a who had called far too early in the morning - how anyone knew that your mother had died the night before you would never know, but small towns have their way of knowing what’s happened in someone’s life before they should - and let Joe and the other two unfamiliar people who were with him in when he called through the screen door of the laundry room, open only so people would stop ringing the damn doorbell at a quarter past eight in the morning.
You made breakfast like you normally would for yourself and your brother, except you made five times as much, and then you ignored the pancakes and the bacon and the eggs, and opted instead for a cup of black coffee, hoping it would settle your churning stomach.
Everyone seemed to enjoy their food, and they talked softly at the dining table as they ate, while you sat on the kitchen counter, nursing a third cup of coffee, then a fourth, and sneaking occasional glances at Booker.
He hadn’t been one of the ones you’d met at the hospital. He was one of the ones Joe had picked up from the airport. He hadn’t been saying much at the table and was the first one done with his breakfast. It only surprised you a little when he had appeared next to you, and placed his dishes in the sink, before leaning against the counter. He hadn’t said anything, but something about him was comfortable, it drew you in, and for some strange reason, you found yourself laying your head against his should without even realizing it.
Booker had been surprised by the action. No one acted like this around him. And he had absolutely no clue why you, a nineteen-year-old girl and the reason why his exile had been cut short by 95 years, might be as apparently comfortable in his presence as you were. All he knew was that there was some kind of a connection. Whatever it might be, the two of you - despite many apparent differences - would get along well. There wasn’t any particular reason to believe that to be the case, but somehow you both seemed know.
And the others, they noticed it too. In less than an hour of knowing each other, you already felt comfortable enough rest you head on his shoulder, and Booker, seemingly unknowingly, had instinctively wrapped an arm around your waist to keep you from falling forward, as you drifted off to sleep.
——
That had all been ten years ago. Meeting everyone, your mother dying. Finding out about your immortality and becoming inexplicably close with Booker almost immediately. In that time, you had found someone you had thought you could have learned to love, and Booker, despite trying his best not to, had fallen in love with you.
It had taken a while. You had had to settle into a new life in a new country – in multiple new countries. You’d had to learn languages you’d never have had any use for before, something that was made much easier with Booker’s help. You’d had to figure out your relationships with your new family.
But eventually, you had settled. Nicky and Joe were sort of a cross between older brothers and fathers to you. Likewise, Andy had essentially decided that you were going to be a sort of niece or younger sister to her. She hadn’t really known how to act around you at first, you were basically a teenager when you first met, and she had tried to act a bit like a mother to you at first, without taking the place of either your mother or grandmother, and then she realized that you were far older than your age, and you’d both been able to relax around each other.
Nile almost immediately became like a sister to you. You were both the youngest, and you both had the most culturally similar childhoods to each other.
Your relationship with Booker, however, was never solely platonic. You were always the closest to him, and he to you - something that shocked everyone, even him. You would usually seek him out when nightmares of drowning or of watching your brother’s neck snap as you were unable to do anything to help plagued your sleep, or when you needed a shoulder to cry on. Somehow, he always knew what to say.
When you had first called him and asked him if he could pick you up after your ex had first made you cry, he had wanted to find him, and hurt him the way he had hurt you.
He hadn’t, if only for your sake.
The second time he had simply found a way to distract you - no one had believed Joe when he had told them that he had found the two of you slow dancing in the living room at midnight, your head laying against his chest, soft smiles on both of your faces as you had been spun slowly about the living room in time with the quite music playing from the old record player in the corner.
The third time he had simply wrapped a warm blanket around your shoulders, handed you a glass of brandy, that for once didn’t taste like gasoline, and pulled you into his chest where he gently combed through your hair with his fingers until you fell asleep - Andy and Nile had found you both on the sofa the next morning, Booker’s arms wrapped around you protectively, and they had both started to wonder if Joe had been telling the truth about the two of you dancing in the living room.
This time, however, was too much. Once he had found you on the front steps, he had managed to get you to calm down enough to tell him what happened. And the only thing he could think to do was wrap an arm around you the way he always seemed to, and murmur quietly “I may not know what love is, but I sure know what love ain’t.”
And somehow, that had made you smile again, and while there were still tears in your eyes and your dress was still dusty from sitting on the steps where you were, you had never looked more beautiful.
