transfuge | Captured - with peace_inthe

Captured - with peace_inthe_violence & nickysnotmybf

Paris felt like a breath of fresh air after Marseille. The trip had healed him but it was still the most emotionally draining thing he'd done in years. Booker felt weirdly heavier and lighter. It was just a weird state of being that he didn't really like but would have to live with.

He was almost so lost in his own thoughts that he didn't notice his apartment door open without needing keys. Almost. Booker drew his gun and stepped in, ready to shoot whatever asshole thought he had stuff worth stealing. He froze. The woman he dreamed of drowning at the bottom of the ocean was there.

And then she kicked his ass. He didn't expect her to spring at him like a snake or tear into him so viciously. Booker fought for his life but she beat him down and then he was dead.

He wasn't dead in a trunk a few minutes later. Even though he kicked and fought to escape this was a serious trunk, almost like it was specifically designed to keep in a two hundred year old warrior.

Quyhn took him to a warehouse and secured him with heavy chain to a wall. All she wanted was help finding Andy. Booker refused. That got him another ass kicking. She asked again and he refused. Whatever she wanted from Andy it couldn't be good. He had betrayed them all once. He wouldn't do it again.

Booker realized he was bait about two days into being her prisoner. She stopped asking for his help and just made sure he suffered.

Finally, someone was treating him like he deserved. Booker settled into the pain as he tried to focus on how to escape. Very hard to do when he was chained to the wall with heavy iron manacles but a man could hope.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Naive?!

Anger flared up, white hot and vitriol and his lips curled back in a disbelieving smile. He wanted to lash out, to let his anger uncurl like the raw wire it was to wrap around the man he loved.

Naive?

He knew better than anyone else alive save for his family exactly how cruel the world was. Exactly how little it cared for the weak and the kind. He'd spent centuries fighting alongside this man to protect people from that cruelty and now Joe calls him naive?

His hand darted out to catch Joe's wrist, grip like iron and his voice just as cold.

"I am not naive and you know that well. I have done horrors this world has not even dreamed of and I've seen worse by tenfold. I love you with every ounce of my being, every breath in my lungs...but do not ever call me 'naive' again.

"Do not mistake my love for this family for weakness or stupidity, Husband. If he has betrayed us again and you come to harm because of it, I will drop him in the ocean myself."

It was the wrong word. Joe didn't realize it until he heard it repeated in Nicky's voice and saw the incandescent rage on his face. The reminder was there in that flame; how Nicky had lived the worst of humanity in his time and fought against it. How he continued to fight against it and hold his beliefs in spite of all he has seen. It was what Joe, other times, loved so much about him.

Remembering that now made him feel that love again, acutely, for the first time in a year.

He bowed his head in a silent apology, turning his hand to take Nicky's in his own and bring it to his lips. That kiss was the first his lips had felt of the other's skin in so long. Joe missed it. More than he realized. He missed his husband's closeness. But he had no idea how to even begin getting it back when he still felt like knives were being shoved into him, night and day.

"I am sorry, angelo. I spoke from my anger instead of my brain." He looked at Nicky and, even sorry, he had to harden his gaze a bit. "I take back that word. But nothing else. There aren't words for what I will do to him if he abused your kindness and brought you to harm."

His eyes closed a bit, almost pained.

"I can still remember the sounds of your torture in that lab. The feeling of helplessness as I could do nothing but watch. You may be able to forgive such a thing but I cannot. Not yet."

The kiss to his hand soothed his anger, but it still thrummed under his skin. He was angry...but it wasn't his husband he wanted to aim that anger at. Turning his hand against Joe's face, he cupped the man's cheek for the first time in far too long.

"I've never said that I'd forgiven him, zawj. Only that I can acknowledge my part in what happened. He still has a long way to go before I completely forgive him for the pain that woman put you through. But for him to take that path, we have to first get him back.

He is to be punished for what he did, but he is ours to punish. No one else's."

And then he was stepping forward to give his husband a kiss that was just as much teeth as it was desperate love. When it broke, he went right back to packing his gear.

"Ours to punish..." Joe shook his head and tried not to let the kiss impact him as much as it did. He missed Nicky so badly. Just being able to pull him close and breathe him in. But those words brought all the hurt right back. "He was ours to punish. And then you decided to stop the punishment. Which, if you haven't forgiven him seems like a fairly odd decision to make, marito."

He used the Italian instead of the Genoese for that word. Maio was too special for him to use when he was still so estranged from his husband.

He gave up though and flapped his hands in complete surrender. Joe went to the closet himself and went to finish packing his gear as well. They would have to leave a note for Andy and Nile in case things went belly up. He scribbled something out and left the address at the bottom with a request for back up no matter what in three hours but possibly sooner if they were texted. Satisfied, he grabbed his scimitar and favorite rifle before letting Nicky lead the way.

This was his idea, after all.

Marito. The same fight they'd been having since Nicky had first announced that he was going to try to do some good for their wayward Booker. The same pain in Joe's eyes.

Nicky's jaw set in a hard line to keep himself from wincing.

Once Nicky's bag was packed and his sniper rifle was secured in it's own bag, he set about making travel arrangements to get them to the country that Booker was being held in. He wasn't skilled enough to find blueprints of the building, but even he could manage to get a google satellite overhead view.

He changed the timeframe on Joe's 'come save us' note to account for travel time, then slung both his bags over his shoulder and hefted up the hard case that held both Joe's scimitar and his own longsword.

The flight there wasn't particularly long, but it gave them some time to study the maps that Nicky had found and come up with a plan, as rudimentary as it used to be before the internet and Booker's quick adaptation to it. It was almost thrilling to be working a job like this again. More variables, less hard set information. It required thinking and skill and Nicky's anger burned quietly in his stomach.

Getting to the address wasn't particularly difficult. Getting set up in a nest was surprisingly easy. There were no guards, no cameras, nothing. It set his nerves on edge and he was quick to set up his rifle and lay out flat so he could get eyes through the windows.

"Holy Mother of God....Quyhn?!"

Edited 2020-08-23 18:45 (UTC)

The flight was quiet aside from planning. Joe longed for the days when any sort of journey with Nicky meant held hands and naps against each other's shoulders. This was more of two acquaintances flying off on a business trip. Joe couldn't help but feel renewed anger at Booker for that, too. It wasn't fair, maybe, but emotions were as they were. And Joe was never the most logical or fair in his furies.

When they landed though, he pushed it all aside. Him distracted meant Nicky exposed and there was no way that he was going to allow the other to come to harm just because he was in a funk. He would never forgive himself if that happened. So Joe got to work watching the perimeter and keeping an eye on the area around them as Nicky looked inside. He wasn't sure what he was expecting but 'Quynh' wasn't it.

"What?" Joe turned and pressed close to Nicky, trying to see what he was able to in his rifle. "That's not possible. That can't be possible. It's been centuries..."

The days had a rough pattern to them. Quyhn would come see him and ask for his help finding the others. He would refuse. What happened next depended on her mood. Sometimes, she left and Booker would be alone with his thoughts for the day.

In a bad mood she would beat him and ask again. He still refused. That's when he usually ended up dead for awhile.

He asked what she wanted with them. She wouldn't tell him. He didn't good considering her unpredictable temper. Insanity would do that to a person he supposed. Booker was simply grateful that he was apart from the others. She wouldn't find them through him and they wouldn't come for him.

Until she figured out his phone and took the picture. Booker knew then what her plan was. He was bait. That was when he started trying to plan an escape.

Today he rested his head back against the wall as he stared down Quynh. "They're not coming," he said with a con man's confidence. "You're wasting your time. After what I did to them, they'll leave me to rot. Hell, they probably think I deserve it. Are you gonna waste your time like that?"

Joe crowded against him and it was the most they'd touched in a year. In any other situation, being crowded off his rifle would piss him off. In any other situation, being pressed up like that against Joe would have earned a softly murmured bit of Genoese in his ear. In any other situation, seeing Quynh would have been an amazing, wonderful thing.

As it was, it still made his stomach leap and his hands shake a little as he pushed his gun over so that Joe could see through it's scope.

However, the euphoria seeing Quynh again was cooled rather quickly by seeing Booker chained to the wall in front of her. Booker, bloodied and broken, looking every bit like she'd been taking him apart piece by piece for days.

He thought back to the last few weeks of silence from the other man and his mouth went dry.

"We need to get in there."

His own anger aside, Joe could read things in this room that made him very quickly concerned. For one, Quynh's face looked entirely wrong. Before she'd been quick to smile and a harsh, incredible fighter but not a sadist. The smile she was giving Booker now was one of malice and self-satisfaction at his torment. Something he of all people did not deserve from her. He hadn't even been around at her internment in the iron casket. Of that, Booker was completely innocent.

For another, he looked far too comfortable in the position he was currently in. Like he'd been there for awhile. Joe mumbled a curse as he passed the rifle back and pursed his lips, thinking.

At this point, Nile and Andy would likely be on their way or at the very least getting ready to leave. Warning them about what they found would only make them come faster, not do the sensible thing and stay away. This was a trap. Clearly a trap. Quynh knew exactly how to lay it out so that everyone she wanted came right into her grasp.

He and Nicky couldn't let it happen.

"She will be expecting us. We have to be smarter than that."

He looked at the rifle and at the window. An idea came to mind that was awful but was still the best he'd have:

"You stay here. I'll go in and you can keep your sights on her. If she makes a move, drop her and keep her down. Head shots. I need her down so I can search her for a key and get Booker out." The window didn't cover the whole room, he knew. It wouldn't take care of everything. But he would at least have a shot.

"Wait until she goes for me. I'll...I'll try talking to her first. See...if I can figure out what she wants."

"It is not in their nature to leave one of their own."

Booker chuckled. This was going to get him killed. He knew it but he couldn't help himself. He didn't want to stop himself. The only advantage he had was his wits. Each time he riled Quyhn up, each time she came unhinged and came at him, Booker gained a chance to counter.

He had the disadvantage of being chained and not in the best health of his life but all Booker needed was one opening. One chance to take her down and possibly get free.

"They left you, didn't they?" Booker expected fury. He expected Quyhn to rush him to kill him with her bare hands. She went still though. Booker watched as she went back, clearly went back, to the ocean floor and drowning over and over.

It was the first time he saw fear in her.

She snapped out of it and looked almost serene which was more terrifying than her fury. "More reason they'll come for you."

He heard that mumbled curse and in some pushed aside part of him, he felt a small spark of hope. Maybe Joe would see how torturing Booker hadn't been something that Nicky could just let happen. Maybe later, when the mission was over and they were somewhere safe (because in his mind, all missions were a success until they weren't), he and his husband could actually talk without losing their tempers.

It was wishful thinking. It was also far from his forethought.

Accepting his rifle back, he replaced it where it had been, the sights and balance carefully chosen so that the huge gun didn't break his shoulder with recoil. The plan made him purse his lips...but he nodded. It was the only choice they really had.

And really...he shouldn't be needed at all. It wasn't like Quynh was going to attack them. Right?

He caught Joe's chest plate and used it to pull him forward so he could press their foreheads together. Be careful, it said. I love you, it said.

"If it comes to that, don't bother searching her. Just crush his wrists. She...she probably won't stay down for long anymore."

Joe nodded. For a second, he paused. Going up against Quynh was unlike anything they'd done so far. They hadn't ever needed to fight someone like them who couldn't die and who, clearly, had spent the last few centuries nurturing a grudge. This could go ugly very fast. Worse than with Merrick. Worse than they've ever seen.

In the face of that, the months of fighting between the two of them seemed petty.

He pulled Nicky back in close to him, forehead pressed and rubbing into his husband's for a second before he indulged in a kiss. Nothing long but not chaste, either. 'I love you, too,' it said. 'If things go wrong, I am sorry. I love you and always have. Always will.' And with that settled, he was off.

Joe clung to the wall. He knew Quynh well enough to anticipate she had some security around here. But she had been underwater for awhile so he was betting it wasn't all that advanced. Still, he was careful and slipped into the building as quiet as he could. Melting into the shadows as he got himself into a better position. One where he could both alert Booker to his presence and also get a better idea of what the Hell was going on, here.

If he wasn't discovered immediately, of course. Time to pray.

Booker hadn't observed anyone else around. When he listened he didn't hear other footsteps. It seemed like he and Quyhn were alone but he wasn't entirely sure of that. Someone got her out of the ocean. Someone helped her navigate the modern world.

There were other people but none of them were near Booker. Quyhn's personal army was kept far away from Booker where he couldn't take advantage of them or use them. It made things very easy for the others to find him. Exactly what Quynh wanted.

"They looked for you!" he argued, jerking forward on his chains. "They tried to find you. They didn't have the means to reach you. Doesn't that count for anything?"

"They will answer for what they did." She had said the same thing before. Booker couldn't get a plan out of her... and then there was movement in the corner of his eye. He glanced over and almost cursed.

Joe. It was clearly Joe. They had come for him. The idiots.

"What about me?" he asked trying to keep Quyhn's attention. "I betrayed them. What do you think I have to answer for?"

"They abandoned you. I expected you to be more helpful."

Her private army was scattered, but once Nicky had lowered himself back into position next to his rifle, they didn't stand a chance. He didn't take any of them out, not yet. He didn't want to risk losing any chance of talking to their long lost sister. Instead, he quietly and expertly guided his husband (and oh how that kiss still burned on his lips) through the building to avoid them.

As soon as he saw the dark shape of Joe moving through the shadows in the same room as Booker and Quynh, he felt his stomach tighten and he took a couple deep breaths to keep himself perfectly steady.

It felt strange to hold her in his cross hairs, not because he was aiming at her but because they'd lost her before the rifle had been invented. Holding his family in his cross hairs was nothing new, but she... everything in her body screamed violence and his finger tapped lightly on the trigger guard.

"Be careful, Joe. She has a blade on her left hip. Short. Dagger of some kind."

The thing about instant healing was that you couldn't look at someone and immediately get an idea of where they had been hurt. There were ways to tell, though. Dried blood on clothes and skin, for instance. Tears or holes in clothing. The amount of gore remaining on the floor. Joe met Booker's eyes and looked him up and down, taking in all these clues. Days of torture were clear. Joe frowned deeply both in distaste of what had been done and at the knowledge Quynh had done it.

This wasn't going to go well.

Joe nodded at the blade and appraised her once more before stepping out of the shadows and making himself known.

"We didn't abandon him," Joe said. "We punished him. And even then he's been having pretty regular visits from Nicky, so..." He shrugged in an attempt to seem at ease. His scimitar was holstered, guns resting in their spots at his side and on his back. He spread both hands out in front of him, signalling his intention to come in peace. For all the good that wouldn't do.

"Hello, Quynh." It had been so long. Even in this situation his eyes got bright and his heart soared to see his old sister again. Joe swallowed it away. "I see you met Booker. How about you let him go and you and me talk, huh? Just you and me."

Oh, fuck.

Booker thought Joe would do something useful like shoot Quynh from the shadows. No, apparently, he decided to walk right into the trap instead. These were the people he had eternity with. Honest and noble to a fault. They couldn't even be backhanded when it would help them.

God help him, he loved them fiercely for it though right now it would get them all killed.

"It is not just you." Quynh started to look around, her eyes sharp. "He is here too, isn't he?"

Well, she hadn't forgotten that. Joe and Nicky were a unit. Where one went so did the other. Booker didn't dare glance towards the windows and give it away. He slumped back against the wall and glared.

"Careful. She's not reasonable," he warned. "She'll turn on you as surely as I did."

Joe didn't let his eyes drift toward the window. Instead he scowled a little and walked into the room with his arms folded across his chest. "The little mention I made of Nicky coming out to meet Booker? Yeah. We haven't been exactly meeting eye-to-eye on that. Sometimes even old married couples need to take a break.

"I'm alone."

The chances of Quynh believing that were slim but it was worth the attempt at least. He stopped a few paces off from her and met her eyes.

"Booker has got nothing to do with this," he reminded her. "Let him go. He served his purpose."

"Where is she?" Quynh looked at Joe, her gaze sharpening as she thought of Andy. Booker had noticed that too. Any mention of Andy and she lost some of that wildness. "Did you bring her?"

Booker felt like he didn't even exist in the room at the moment. Thousands of years stretched between Joe and Quynh, years Booker had only heard of in bits and pieces of stories.

"Where is she, Yusuf? What did you do to her?"

And there the sanity went. Booker remembered that too. If there was too much talk of Andy Quynh's grip on sanity started to slip.

"Joe..." Booker warned. If he said the wrong thing or made the wrong move Quynh would strike. He had died a few times like that.

Joe glanced at Booker to heed the short warning and turned all his attention back to Quynh. If her wording hadn't been a signal enough the look in her eyes was. He took a step back and to the left to put her more firmly in Nicky's sights, just in case.

"Andy isn't here. She's in a safe house with another immortal. A new one. Her name is Nile. I think you'd like her," Joe was just talking, trying to say something to bring Quynh back to the present. Back to herself. "I'm sure they both want to see you. But not like this, Quynh.

"Do you really want Andy to come to you because you are holding a member of her family hostage? Let him go. There's a better way..."

"She should have come sooner."

"Joe!" Booker shouted a warning but Quynh already moved to strike. She drew a dagger and lunged at Joe aiming straight for his heart. There was the wild fury Booker was familiar with.

He jerked against his chains trying to do something but he was helpless. All he could do was watch as the two clashed. Booker fully expected Joe wouldn't defend himself, the bastard.

He wouldn't fight back against his family because he had no sense of self-preservation.

Nicky had better fucking do something and not hesitate like his better half.

Eight hundred meters away, hidden in the dark window of a half abandoned building, Nicky had been waiting. Watching. Reading Booker's lips and keeping his cross hairs on the woman he'd once loved almost as much as he loved his husband. He watching Joe's words, watched his body and his eyes, and when Quynh moved to grab for that blade, Nicky didn't hesitate.

His finger squeezed the cross he'd etched into the metal of his trigger. There was a sound that would not carry the distance to their ears, the scent of cordite in the air, and then Nicky was sliding the bolt back to police his shells and load another round into the chamber.

Eight hundred meters away, Quynh's head snapped forward as the bullet hit her just above her left ear. She crumpled, but he didn't have time to shoot the dagger out of the air.

He loved his husband.

Joe smiled out the window and winked at where the man was hiding away. But that was all he had time for. Quynh wouldn't stay down for long. Joe raced forward to kick the blade at least off to the side and then felt around the still body to see if there were keys anywhere. After all this time he probably only had a minute, tops, and now she would know there was a sniper watching. They wouldn't get the drop so easy again.

"Do you know where the keys are for the cuffs?" He looked up at Booker and pulled his scimitar out to have trained on the back of Quynh's neck. "We're not going to have long."

"I haven't seen any keys. Get out of here!" Booker didn't think anyone else had heard that shot but he had no idea. He knew Quynh would be pissed when she woke up. Joe was still in danger. "Get Andy far, far away from here. She doesn't know Andy's mortal and we need to keep it that way."

Booker figured Quynh may have loved Andy once but the ocean had twisted that love into something dark and ugly. She was in danger. She needed to be on the other side of the world from Quynh as fast as possible.

"I'll be fine, Joe, please," he pleaded. "She can't really do anything to me and I can't tell her shit."

Quynh started to twitch on the floor. Her body was healing. She'd be conscious in a minute.

"Go!"

She would not be conscious in a minute. She started to twitch and Nicky squeezed that cross again, cursing a little at his husband as he did it. The bullet missed Joe by only a few inches and Nicky breathed a sigh of relief.

"Just break his wrists, Yusuf!"

Booker would just have to forgive them for the rough handling. Later. When there wasn't another immortal trying to kill them.

Joe cursed under his breath and ran over to Booker to listen to what his husband said. "I'm sorry," he hissed as he broke one of Booker's wrists to force it through the cuff and then went to go and shatter the other one as well.

"You know? Actually, I am not all that sorry. You're a pain in my ass, Booker." Still, he wasn't about to just leave him here for Quynh's sadistic whims. Family was still family.

He yanked one of his guns free and held it until Booker's wrists were healed enough to take it from him. Joe turned and watched Quynh for any sign of life, the scimitar back in his other hand and ready to attack if needed.

"We're leaving here together. Let's move."

Captured - with peace_inthe_violence & nickysnotmybf

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