First words your soulmate says to you are tattooed on your wrist + andromaquynh
Time to give the ladies some love.
Also, I am not entirely sure what language Andromache and Quynh would have spoken to one another, to begin with. But we can safely assume the words on each others wrists are not written in English.
And yes, I did set this in the Old Guard verse, so it’s sort of less AU and I guess more..The Old Guard with fanon additions? Alt timeline? Alt style? But I am using the films timeline in that Quynh precedes Lykon.
Tl’dr: The Old Guard as we know, feat soulmates. And my personal “Quynh was never in the iron maiden” AU. And Andy is still immortal. Ok there’s all the bases enough babblings!
Finding Quynh brought Andromache a peace she never thought she’d know. A comfort she believed long gone from her tireless existence, dismissed, devoid and empty as it was. Canvasing the Earth, over and over, with no end in sight.
She woke up alone. Everyday. For how long?
Counting time with the stars, and counting nights with passages of light.
Alone.
Even with war, battles, a lifetime where conflict and rage seemed to thrive and be brought upon the world by design, once there was Quynh, there was peace. At least in that the stars, the skies, no longer looked down upon her in their silent mocking.
“You are so far away.” Quynh’s serene, mildly grouchy sleep voice interrupting her thoughts. So many lifetimes passed, aside, behind them and before them. “I thought you sleeping, but your breathing is not steady enough.”
Andy blinks, slowly, eyes long adjusted to the dark, Quynh’s head pillowed against her stomach. “Sorry,’ Her voice barely above a whisper, a kiss to her head. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“Thoughts like yours could wake the dead, Andromache.” Quynh huffs, making no move to sit herself up as she laces their fingers together. “What has you so lost?”
“Not lost,” Andy corrects, “Just..”
“Reverent?” Quynh suggests, finally pushing herself into more of a sitting position, choosing Andy’s lap as her chair, Andy’s arms finding her waist with ease.
“Mm, that could be it. What has clued you in?”
At that, Quynh unlaces their fingers, finding Andy’s wrist instead, where the words seem to glow even in darkness. A band that wraps in mimicry of a bracelet.
“No! You are not real. You are a visage.”
Quynh had lamented in the past that she wished it was a touch more romantic, or at least ‘a little more flavourful, Andromache’. But Andy would only kiss her and remind her that all the heat, the fire of their relationship their love could come later.
“You were starving and dehydrated, wandering a desert” Andy had said, “It’s a miracle you could speak at all.”
“That’s on the universe for doubting me.” Quynh had retorted.
Andy’s is not anymore romantic, in turn, mirroring Quynh’s movements to find Quynh’s own wrist, of black and gold against her skin.
“Oh, if only.”
The words are like a constant reminder, and the two women had stared at each other across the desert as their wrists seemed to glow in unison, Quynh shouting at Andromache in confusion.
When the words appeared, they stood, accusing one another of trickery. But Quynh needed food, water, shelter. And it was hard to keep up any sort of argument so weakened as she was.
“The desert has brought its final tricks at last.” Quynh had exclaimed, wishing she had something sharp nearby.
Andromache did, but she was not willing such an unfair fight. Even if denial was about the only thing on her mind.
“I have been accustomed to this desert, and it lies at me like this now?”
Bickering got them nowhere, and Andy had food on her-and water. And giving it to Quynh had seemed the better choice of it all. Even if Quynh tested things as thoroughly as she could before taking them.
“Please, as if your brain screaming's can ever be hidden from me.” Quynh said, comfortable on Andy’s lap in their dark room. “I only wonder why now.”
“Doesn’t really have a schedule.” Andy says, letting her fingers graze along Quynh’s wrist, Quynh doing the same with hers. “There are textbooks in schools that don’t go as far back as we do in their timelines.”
“Then such textbooks are missing out.” Quynh said, making Andy laugh as though she’d tickled her. “Come on, my love, it is so late.”
It was-the clock on one of their phones showing them as much, but she knew how Quynh could be, and that it was mostly in jest.
“This cannot be the same woman who has partied at clubs until the sun rises.” Andy said, hands loose where Quynh’s tanktop sits. Cotton, pleasant to the touch.
“It is, but that woman was not peacefully sleeping before hand.” Tugging Andy until they could roll sideways, throwing her leg over Andy’s waist, nose to nose with her.
“You know..” Andy said, after they’d lain in silence a few moments, carefully testing the waters of Quynh’s sleepiness, “We haven’t been to a club in a while.”
“Go to sleep and you might even get a dance.” Quynh yawned, already falling back into slumber.
“Oohh in the red outfit?” Andy asked, sure she could sense a closed eye-roll of ‘what else’.
“Red and possibly leather.” Quynh’s arm tightening about her waist, leg drawing her inward further. And Andy’s own eyes grew heavy with the motion, catching the glow once more from her skin before finally falling to blissful sleep.
