stillthrillsme | Finding Quynh PSL

Finding Quynh PSL

Joe gives Nicky a tight nod and shoulders the door in, breaking the rusty lock easily. He holds his gun in one hand and his flashlight in the other, quickly directing it around the small, dingy room. There is a mattress there and a few plastic bags full of trash, but no-one. Joe lowers his gun, sighing heavily through his nose.

They've been in Morocco a week, and they can't seem to find Quynh. To his credit, Booker was able to find the place he keeps seeing in dreams pretty accurately, and once Joe and Nicky got there, a few people remembered seeing an Asian woman wander on the beach, looking lost and confused. But since then, nothing.

They've been asking beggars all over the city, interrogating merchants at their market stalls, and even hacked into the local police files to see if they had any information. Nothing. It's like Quynh came out of the water and went up in smoke. Joe turns back to face Nicky and he shakes his head, his shoulders slumping a little.

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The words are like a slap to the face and Joe jerks, stricken. "We won't force you," he answers, quietly. They could try, but Joe doesn't want to. What good would it do, to make Quynh come along if she doesn't want to? "We can only plead, and beg for you to come back to us," he adds, his voice raw with emotion. And beg he would, if he thought it would make a difference. For forgiveness, for time, for love.

He closes his eyes to keep his emotions in check, his shoulder pressing against Nicky's for support. "That is true," he admits. It pains him but he can see it, how the ocean has changed Quynh into something strange, something unlike the sister they knew. He looks up to her again. "But it doesn't mean we cannot love you anymore."

Nicky remains stony, in the lines of his body, although his expression flickers when Yusuf's grief shows all over him, torn between nursing the blow on Yusuf and trying to deal with the pain as it's struck him too. And most of all wanting to desperately climb up and embrace her, push all this away through the wave upon wave of their love and affection.

— but that is the problem. Their sister has no more taste for oceans than they do.

'And it does not mean you don't have us,' he says, building on Yusuf's words, the emotion in them stark, honest. 'We searched for you. We were just searching for you. There was no one we wanted with us more.'

Quynh's shoulders rise, her jaw clenching. "If you were truly searching, you would have found me." - though she knows that's not true. How were they to find her when she had been lost even to herself?

She turns, away from them, to the edge of the platform, dropping herself lightly to the ground with the intention of fleeing to the escape stairs. Let them continue looking, and maybe once she is able to find herself, she will allow them to find her as well.

But she cannot flee, doesn't move towards the escape stairs. Instead, she moves in the opposite direction, until she looks around the corner at where they stood, her shoulder flush with the wall. To flee, to stay, to want, to spurn. They all happen simultaneously, but the pull of them is undeniable, and after so long she craves that familiarity. That comfort. Craves them.

"Where?" Where are they staying, where are they going - where are the others? So many questions she's harbored for so long.

"We looked for decades!" Joe says at once, unable to bite back his anger and pain at being told he would have managed to find Quynh if he had truly wanted to. "Years and years and years spent on boats, all around that cursed sea. We asked everyone, we found every single man who was on the ship that took you. We followed every lead until there was nothing. Nothing, Quynh!"

He takes a deep breath, his heart in his throat and his expressive eyebrows tight with anguish as he watches her move away, dropping from her perch.

Hope slips back on his face when Quynh asks where, his eyes gleaming with tears. "We're staying at a hotel." He gives her the name and the street. "Joe Jones and Nicky Smith." He swallows past the emotions stuck in his throat, trying to sound calm and reassuring. "Then we'll go back to the others. Probably in London. We have a house there."

Instead of opening his mouth to argue — despite the storm in his heart, something that Yusuf has snatched away deftly and now expresses — Nicky's response to the accusation is to close off, body going still, as though caught in an ambush. Yes, they looked for decades. They wept and grieved and hoped, and even now, that hope flares, when she moves so out of their reach.

'We want for you to come with us,' he adds, very quietly. Barely a whisper, like the words were not spoken at all. 'Dearest sister. We have missed you unbearably.'

They looked for decades, and she suffered for centuries more.

The gun she has slipped away into the belt of her dress, and the small sheathed knife at her breast reassures her that she is not defenseless. There has not been a time when she had feared physical harm from Yusuf or Nico, but knowing the weapon is close by stays her urges for violence. For now.

Her lips curl at the sound of those names - names of people they have grown into, another reminder of the passage of time.

She comes forward hesitantly, like a nervous bird, glancing between the both of them, ready to scatter at the first sign of movement. Step by step until she's close enough to touch them, and she reaches to brush her fingers against Nico's cheek. She's not sure what she had been hoping for, but the confirmation that they are real is both overwhelming and met with a dull emptiness. Her eyes shift to Yusuf to watch him as her fingers shift down to Nico's jaw, then further down so her thumb bumps over the bob of his throat.

Joe stays very still as Quynh makes her approach, his gun still at his side though he has no intention of lifting again unless he absolutely has to. He watches as she comes forward, closer and closer, his eyes dark and hopeful. Quynh's touch on Nicolo's face is so soft it makes Joe ache to reach back. He doesn't dare.

"Please come with us," he whispers when she glances over to him, echoing Nicolo's earlier plea. "You don't have to do this alone. We can do it together."

If he's being tested, it is one he can bear. Nicky does not move, just raises his chin, but without the wolflike glare of a challenge. No part of themselves, body or soul, have been secrets from each other, there is no reason to begin with this now. He's not afraid of what she will do.

And any physical wound will heal.

'We will do it together,' he says, still very quietly, barely above a whisper, only for their ears. 'It was true then, and it remains true.'

Their voices, this close, are like silk against the rawness of her heart, a soothing balm on an injury that still smokes from the heat. Quynh withdraws her hand from Nicky, takes half a step to Joe, catching a tuft of his beard between her fingers as she looks to Nicky this time.

"And what if I harm you," Quynh asks; there's a madness that chases her, that spurs her hand where before she would have stayed it. A darkness that lurks, that clouds forgiveness with a prospect that she has not yet had the strength to acknowledge completely - that she will not be able to forgive. That she will slice into the only thing that doesn't heal as quickly as their flesh and bones do.

"What then?"

Joe stays very still as Quynh reaches for him in turn, her touch so light on his beard he can barely feel it at all. He does not flinch at the question, tilting his chin up in determination. "We will heal," he states, calmly. They always do. "And then there will be nothing to forgive." Joe expects some measure of madness -how could it be otherwise, after what she has endured? And still his loves her, his sister that was lost and miraculously returned.

Very slowly, letting her see what he is doing so she has the time to move away if she needs to, Joe reaches up, meaning to take her hand in his. "Please," he says, again.

She's as connected to them as she always was. His heart lurches towards her, painfully, powerfully, almost moving Nicky forward towards her as well, yearning and anguish married and so unhappily together. Instead, he blinks, his will keeping him on the spot. Simply watching, waiting, being there. The last unspeakably small, and yet impossibly important.

'Please,' he echoes, softly. He wants to reach for her as well, but two might look like chains, and Yusuf is the better of them, more patient in his gravity. Nicky waits.

That Nico doesn't intervene is calming; there is trust, misguided as it may be, but the idea that there is space in their world to trust her...

There's a comfort she cannot deny, a swell in her chest that tips over the precipice as Yusuf's soft hand encases hers in warmth.

She's been so cold, for so long.

"I will hurt you," she murmurs. She's never been able to deny Nico of much, nor Yusuf by extension. "But I have no strength to save you from that pain." For now, she will go with them.

Yusuf holds her hand in his lightly but preciously, his fingers sure. He tilts his head forward at her warning, his dark eyes gleaming with tears. "So be it," he returns, quietly. "If that is the price to pay, we are willing." He speaks for Nicolo because he knows - Nicolo and he have discussed this often enough. Both of them have endured terrible pain through the centuries, they will endure this too.

"Come," he says, giving her a very gentle pull. "Come with us." Back to the hotel they have a room at.

It would never be a mistake, to trust her. She is different, the sister he remembers would never have smeared blood all over his own flag, have pierced it unerringly into his heart as one of her arrows. She had never turned herself against him like that. And even if it's done now, it is simply forgiven.

He nods as Yusuf speaks. Yes, they'll endure. The joy they have awaiting once all reunited is worth every pain imaginable. Nicky moves to flank her, giving her space, and protecting his beloved's wide open side.

The last thread of resistant snaps at the lightest pressure from Yusuf's hand, drawing her towards them, taking her with them.

For so long she'd hoped, and then forgotten, brought back now by their presence ( though had it been long at all, in that coffin, throughout all that pain? ).

So much is different, not just her, but there is some comfort in the idea of having guides that are familiar with this world, and while she remains cautious and uncertain, she will try.

For herself. And perhaps, for them as well.

Joe wakes up with his face mashed into his pillow instead of Nicky's shoulder, as it usually is. He's also on the floor, he notices quickly, curled on top of several pillows and blankets, his shoulders hurting a little. He hasn't slept much on the ground in the past century or so and frankly, does not miss it.

He opens his eyes with a put-upon sigh, getting his bearings. He remembers managing to bring Quynh back to their hotel room the night before, and striving to persuade her not to go up to the roof to sleep. She'd flat out refused the bed so they'd made do by piling up a little nest on the living room carpet instead, hence Joe's current predicament. He rolls onto his back carefully, craning his neck to look at the others. Nicky's awake already (of course he is) and Joe reaches out to take his hand, his eyebrows arched interrogatively. Is everything alright?

Nicky was particularly fussy over dinner. Yusuf had dutifully given him the takeout menus from the drawer, but the evening had been passed with several disgruntled phone calls from various takeout outlets as he requested to know more about the dishes. Eventually a little Turkish shop had been delighted to provide specifications, and Nicky had decided to enclose a little extra for the who had brought it to their door.

The boxes, practically licked clean, are stacked neatly on the small coffee table, lit by the side from the lamp. Nicky's eyes closed, then opened, watching Quynh. Yusuf's breathing had lulled him, but it had seemed clear after a while that he was meant to stay awake and watch over them both.

He reaches back at once, twining his fingers with Yusuf's. Everything is quite peaceful, and it's a pleasant surprise. He can do nothing about his own area which looks barely slept in, but for this, he will be forgiven, and it can be made up for.

After a grateful squeeze, Nicky shifts, sitting up.

The four walls they had brought her into were spacious only for a while; they move around her with care, and while one part of her demands it to be so, the other part struggles to reconcile their earnestness with what she knows herself to be capable of. She is a danger to them, just as much as she is a danger to themselves.

The cuisine of this century is infinitely more robust than that which she is used to, and after centuries of nothing but salt water in her mouth and down her throat, suffocating her... even the containers she can fish out of the giant trash vessels is edible.

Yet Nico insists on causing a scene, which is comforting in its own way. He has always been so particular in certain areas, so amiable in others. The food is begrudgingly delicious, and perhaps it's to stave off any more comfort that will ultimately lead to disappointment that she snarls at them when they try to goad her into the bed.

She spent ages suffocating in the sea, she doesn't need a bed of sinking sheets and pillows and mattresses to smother her while she sleeps. The floor is more than adequate, though the roof would be better, and she concedes to the bedding, but only so that they might lie down quicker.

Quynh had taken up the furthest most edge of the blanket, stoutly glaring at Nico, whose eyes seemed destined to stay open throughout the night. There had not been much sleep to get, and she scowls at them presently, reaching out for each other like that. Habit, surely, and one that's she's certain they take for granted.

How many years had she reached out, and felt nothing?

Yusuf squeezes back, holding Nicolo's hand in his gently. His eyes briefly roam over Nicky's body and the way his side of their makeshift bed looks barely slept in, his eyebrows arching a little. He knows better than to ask about it, but expect a gentle request for you to take a nap later on, Nicky.

He rolls onto his back carefully, spotting Quynh at the very edge of the blanket, glaring mightily at the both of them. "Good morning," he says for the both of them in old Ligurian, and reaches for Quynh too, meaning to take her hand in his. She can glare all she wants, that's not going to stop Yusuf from extending affection towards her as much as he can. He won't ask how they slept, because he knows. "Breakfast?" he says instead, glancing back towards Nicolo.

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Finding Quynh PSL

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