The idea hadn't crystallized yet into action. It didn't feel right to leave without seeing the others, feeling the warmth of company he only had with them, no lies, no pretense, just the weight of shared history, hardships, horrors and wonders interspaced by the cold moments of loneliness, when they retreat to their own comfort spaces.
The nightmares and memories fill his mind then. He wishes Quynh didn't haunt his dreams still, that her name didn't etch grief and guilt and sorrow into Andy's face, or made Joe and Nicky break from their bubble and crash into reality. He hates sleeping, but he cannot hate Quynh, not when he gets glimpses and pieces of her panic, enshrined in her cage: wake up, beat the coffin with her hands, drown and start again. It took him years to bear being near the ocean when there isn't a mission to distract him from fog fragments of phantom pain. He still dislikes the very smell of saltwater.
If it's not Quynh, it's his family - the last days with his wife, watching her slowly die as he was powerless to do anything - couldn't help her, couldn't die with her. Useless. Hearing his sons cries, trying to comfort them as best as he was able, seeing them grow up and realize (realizing it himself) that he wasn't - he did not change, he did not age. And he couldn't die. It was different - hearing and seeing it was not the same as the slow understanding that dawns after he watches the world move without marking his face and body, as the people he knew and loved slowly died with anger, disgust and greed in their eyes, wanting his never ending vitality and time (as if it was a gift, and not a curse, bitter years widening into a future he has no desire to see. He would have given them everything if he could).
In the intertwining time between his mortal family and his immortal one, he preserves his books (a worn "Fables" of La Fontaine and a well loved "Les jardins, ou L'art d'embellir les paysages" by Delille). In time, he would add others, first editions, books signed by the authors and luxury items alike, but those two were the ones carried with him wherever they went, the memories remembered bittersweet.
He washed away the acrid taste with brandy, cognac, whiskey, vodka, beer. Anything and everything he could get his hands on. The only care he has is when they are all together - then, he lowers the amount he drinks (drowning in it, like Quynh in her coffin, like his second son in the black-blood) so he can be useful in their contracts. If there's not enough time before their meeting, normally a quick death will take care of the poison in his veins.
He keeps abreast of technology better than the others, as a way to be worthy of being family (he's a coward, has always been a coward - and what is one to do when compared with warriors such as the company he now keeps?), though he still regrets explaining to Andy what exactly a cell phone with a GPS could do (her paranoia skyrocketed to unprecedented levels since).
The missions help - he doesn't share Nicky's certainty that they are doing good, Joe's cheer at helping an innocent or Andy's unwavering search for purpose, for hope or something good to show after centuries and millenniums of fighting the worst of humanity (it changes forms, names, but always there - disregard for others' freedom, life or needs), but he needs to be able to fight, to think and help, so he focuses on the here and now, always when he is with them.
It became a part of his agreement with Copley - a last meaningful mission, before surrendering himself - before making his own meaningful contribution and hopefully end his curse at the same time. He thought about telling Andy - about taking her with him, recognizing the same tiredness, the sorrow and bitterness (always going forward, even though it hurts, too stubborn to lay down and give up, surviving and wishing she didn't - like him), but that would leave Joe and Nicky alone. And while both of them are capable of forgetting the world when around each other - he can't take the warmth, the sheer love they have not only for each other, but also for her - little rituals created in centuries past showing love and care (with food, with hugs, private jokes and a simple smile), when Andy looks alive again, and not just a stone statue brought to life, their warmth affecting and changing her (he hoped they would succeeded, would give her more to live for than what the world had taken away).
Thinking about Joe and Nicky (Niccolo and Yusuf, Joseph and Nicholas, always one-in-two) flares the envy in him. After he had met them, it burned. How happy they were, sufficient in themselves with the eternity before them as a pleasurable adventure. Such feelings were the cause of his own shame. Joe had more than once drawn him from his more dreadful memories by discussing poetry, politics and football, the man's smiles, touches and loquacity occupying the room and banishing the shadows from his mind for a time, while Nicky offered him a grounding - his motherland recipes redone, colors and flavours hand in hand with stories of faraway lands, ridiculous situations or beauty - in forgotten ruins, distant nature or unforeseen kindness, remaking tense dinners and silent lunches with laughter and warmth.
Sometimes he can't bear to look at them, out of disgust with himself. Others, it is the mix of happiness-guilt-longing in Andy's eyes and granite countenance that draws his attention away (he aches for her - and wonders if he wasn't better this way, alone rather than having lost perfection and having to live with the knowledge of what you had lost - she's much stronger than he is, than all of them are).
He would miss them.