He's all and he is more. | By : DarklingWillow Category: M through R > The Old Guard Views: 776 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 0 |
Disclaimer: I do not own The Old Guard movie (or comics), and I do not make any profit from this writing. |
Interim 1.
Nile sat down on the arm of the armchair and placed her feet on the seat of the chair, a bowl of Nicky’s pasta in her hands, and the warm shearling socks that Nicky had given her for Christmas keeping her feet warm in the draughty house.
Joe was sitting by the small kitchen table cleaning their guns, the guns in pieces on separate tea towels, and his hands smeared in gun oil and grease. He worked so fast that Nile was sure he would be finished before she had even finished her dinner. Years… decades of practice, hell, a century or more of practice had made him capable of cleaning guns without ever needing to pause to think.
Andy sat down on the other armchair, propped her feet up on the footrest and dug into her own bowl of Nicky’s pasta dish. It was delicious, and the red wine he had bought matched it perfectly.
It had not taken Nile long to figure out that Nicky was most often in charge of cooking for them. Andy could cook, but she tended to defer to Nicky when it came time to cook a decent meal for all of them. And Nicky was good at it. He had a passion for cooking, and every safe house they had stayed at so far had contained at least a cookbook or two on a shelf. But so far, Nile had not seen Nicky actually open a single one of those cookbooks.
It had also been made clear that Joe was the one who cleaned house for them. All four of them were pretty tidy and tried their best to keep their accommodations clean. But Joe would sometimes take on the role of cleaning the whole place by himself, and at random times he would raid their bags for dirty clothing and take it upon himself to do laundry. Nile was still getting used to coming home to the safe houses to find Joe hanging up her underwear fresh from the washer.
Andy seemed to be very happy with the arrangements, since it meant that she got to shun housework a lot of the time. Although, whenever Nicky cooked, Andy and Nile would do the dishes after. It was only fair, after all, that Nicky be spared cleaning up after himself when he cooked for all of them.
Nile sipped her red wine and continued to watch Joe with the guns, as he deftly cleaned them and reassembled them one by one.
“Joe,” she said, smiling a little when he glanced up at her. “You said that you and Nicky killed each other when you first met. How often did you kill each other?”
Joe gave a small laugh and looked up at Nicky as he came out of the kitchen with a bowl of pasta for himself and sat down by the end of the kitchen table.
“I killed him six times, and he killed me six times,” Joe answered, and jerked his head towards Nicky with a bright smile.
“I killed him seven times,” Nicky corrected, and Joe gave a small sound of protest and said,
“We don’t talk about that, Nicolò.”
“It still happened,” Nicky answered and took a sip of his wine.
“Six times?” Nile repeated and looked at Joe. “Why did you stop? I mean, you were in the Crusades. You must have really hated each other.”
Joe laughed and nodded his head, peering at the Smith and Wesson handgun that he had given Nile for Christmas as he reassembled it.
“We did. But we were fighting each other, while the Crusaders were taking a stronghold that my army had been defending. And after we’d killed each other about four or five times, we came upon the women and the children who had been trapped in the stronghold during the siege. The Crusaders had murdered them all. At that point it just… It just felt kind of pointless. Also, it started to feel a bit pointless to be constantly killing each other, only to come back to life,” he said and looked up at Nile to give her one of his cheeky grins.
“I felt the same way,” Nicky said with a nod of his head. “I never signed up to murder innocent children and women. They were just there because they either followed the Arab camps or got trapped there when the Crusaders laid siege to the stronghold. They were not there to fight. They were innocent. And then when the Crusaders had won the stronghold Joe was the last Arab there. So, I killed him to save his life. Told him to get away safely once he came back to life.”
“Too bad I accidentally gutted him when he did that,” Joe said and held up the firing pin of one of the guns, examining it closely. “Is this crooked?” he asked and held the firing pin up for Nicky to examine. Nicky peered at the firing pin and nodded his head.
“It looks a bit bent. Show Nile,” he said and forked some more pasta into his mouth.
Joe held the firing pin up for Nile to look at, and while she did, Joe turned to Nicky, opened his mouth, and said, “Gimme.”
“It has bacon in it,” Nicky said, but still lifted a full fork out of the bowl, reaching out to feed Joe.
“Don’t care,” Joe said and closed his mouth over the fork, humming in delight as he chewed.
“He’s not a very good Muslim,” Nicky said to Nile and smiled, and Joe shrugged one shoulder with a grin on his face, as he accepted the firing pin back from Nile.
“It looks crooked, ask Andy,” Nile agreed and smiled at the pair of them.
“I’m not a very good Muslim,” Joe agreed, then held out the firing pin to ask Andy her opinion. She agreed that it was bent, and Joe said they would need a new one for the Glock. He reassembled it and dropped it on the side table as he said that it would be out of commission until the pin was replaced. Then he turned to the last gun and demanded more pasta from Nicky’s bowl.
“So, if you guys hated each other so much, how come you ended up together?” Nile asked, looking at the two men by the table.
Nicky gave a small laugh, but Joe looked up at Nile, his face very serious.
“The Crusaders found out what Nicky was,” he said, his tone even more serious than the look on his face. “They thought he was some kind of a demon and cut his head off and threw him in a mass grave. I had hung around long enough to see what happened, and I dug him out of there and carried him off into the desert, because I could not abandon him. We were the same, after all. We could not die, so I could not leave him behind.”
Nile gave a small sound of shock and looked at Nicky, who nodded his head.
“So, we can survive beheading?” she asked, and Andy shrugged, Joe nodded his head, and Nicky shrugged as he nodded.
“At least I did.”
“The rest of us haven’t tried that,” Andy said with a grin, and Joe laughed.
“I don’t recommend it,” Nicky said with a smile, and Joe shook his head hard.
“It took him far too long to come back after that,” Joe said in a tone that suggested they should drop this subject.
Nile nodded her head and focused on her food for a little while, but she kept her eye on Nicky and Joe. Joe washed his hands once he had finished with the last handgun and returned to the table with a bowl of pasta for himself, a glass of wine, and a couple of slices of garlic bread.
They ate in silence for a little bit, but then Joe looked up at Nile and smiled.
“I took Nicky into the desert for a few days, but he had a little bout of doubt and ran away from me to a Crusader camp. But as luck would have it, the guy who chopped his head off was there already, and he of course recognized Nicky. But instead of claiming that he had killed Nicky, he said that Nicky was a deserter and a spy for the Saracens, and they jailed him. I got him out of there, we killed the guy who cut his head off, and then fled into Arabia. It was there that we realized that we were falling in love with each other. It was harder for Nicky, because he’s a Roman Catholic, and a priest…”
“You were a priest?” Nile exclaimed in shock, and Nicky’s cheeks flushed pink.
“Yes. I was ordained when I was twenty, or twenty one or so. So, when I went to fight in the Crusades, I had been a priest for five or six years. I can’t remember exactly,” Nicky answered, and Joe chuckled a little.
“I was a merchant before the Crusades,” he added, and Nicky waved a finger in his direction.
“Joe was married, you know. Had three kids, and everything,” Nicky said, and this time Joe’s cheeks flushed a little.
Andy laughed into her wine but said nothing.
“I never would have thought you were a priest,” Nile said and looked Nicky up and down, trying her best to imagine him in a cassock and a priest’s collar. It made no sense, especially not when put together with how he was around Joe. The love that they shared. “And I never would have guessed that you had a wife and kids,” she added and looked at Joe.
Joe grinned and shrugged his shoulders, his pearly white teeth shining through his beard.
“I was something like twenty nine when I went off to the Holy War. I got married at sevent… No, I was probably still only sixteen when we married. She was seventeen though. But yeah, it was the times. We got married, had a couple of kids, and then when I went off to the war, she was pregnant with the third. I never saw them again,” Joe said, looking down at his bowl of pasta.
“We found Joe’s youngest son some twenty, twenty five years later. I recognized him because he looked just like his father. And when I inquired about his name, we confirmed it. Of course, we could not tell him who Joe was, but it was nice, knowing that Joe’s family did well, after he was gone,” Nicky said and smiled at his husband, and Joe gave him a quick smile back.
“It’s passed, it’s in the past, and I know that they did well, after I was gone. That’s all that matters, really. That they did well after I was gone,” Joe said and stood up to walk back to the small kitchen with his food and wine.
“I didn’t mean to upset him,” Nile said and started to stand up, but Nicky waved at her to sit still.
“You didn’t upset him. It’s just that sometimes he misses them. I sometimes miss my family too,” Nicky said and smiled warmly at her.
Nile nodded her head and settled down into the large armchair, legs crossed under her.
“I’m just curious. You’re so old, and you have so much history, and I am curious about how you got together and how you have loved each other for so long,” she said quietly, feeling her cheeks flush as she looked up to meet Nicky’s green-grey eyes.
“I know, Nile, and it is alright. You also have all the time in the world to get to know us. So, don’t be shy to ask us questions. I think it can be a bit fun, to recall those times. Even if there are some sore spots,” Nicky said and gave her another warm smile. “You are our little sister now, and we will never hide things from you.”
“Unless they are presents for Christmas or other random holidays,” Joe said as he returned with more garlic bread in his bowl and pointed at the socks she was wearing. “They keeping your toes toasty?”
“They are, thank you, again,” Nile said with a laugh and wiggled her toes in the warm shearling lined socks.
“Thank Nicky, I gave you a gun, remember,” Joe said, and Nicky laughed.
“We don’t always need more weapons,” Nicky said and reached out to smack his husband on the shoulder. “Sometimes a new pair of socks is just what we need.”
“They are great. My toes haven’t been cold since Christmas day,” Nile agreed and stood up to take her bowl to the kitchen. She hesitated a moment, but then she turned around and walked up to Joe and bent down to hug him. “I’m sorry if I asked too personal questions. I just want to get to know you, Joe,” she said, and Joe wrapped his arms around her back and gave her a little squeeze.
“No worries, little sister. I’m not upset. It just brought back memories, that’s all. Don’t be shy to talk to us, to get to know us. We want you to know us, and we want to know you as well. So, just ask. We’ll tell you if we don’t want to answer. I promise, I’m not upset,” Joe said, stroking her back firmly, and Nile nodded against his shoulder.
They let go and Nile took her bowl to the kitchen to rinse it under the faucet, then returned with a fresh glass of wine, and the bottle. She refreshed everyone’s drink, and then settled back down on the armchair, and asked Nicky if he was willing to tell her about his family. Nicky was more than happy to tell her all about his salt trader father who had owned a small fleet of trading vessels in Genoa, and about his highly status conscious mother, his older brother, and his older sister. And about how his brother had given him that scar across his nose and below his left eye with a wooden sword when they had been kids.
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