Chapter 2
For the last few lifetimes, Nicky has been in retrograde.
He has been tracing his deaths backwards until he finally lives the start of his mission, and knows what it is his team is fighting for. Waking in battle, calling at Booker to throw him a weapon, be taken down, rinse and repeat.
Which means that at the end of all the bloodshed he gets the delightful experience of watching Joe walk through a tripwire he knows is there, blowing both himself and his husband through a wall. A necessary evil of his curse, because he remembers that this mission ends with all of them together, safe, and the mission a marginal success. It is the best he can hope for.
At least he knows that when Joe revives he will find his love with him, ready to fight and having knowledge of guns. They will need him to make the sniping shot from across the river. He has already succeeded.
Nicky wakes with a dead child in his arms. He's encased in rubble and rebar is through his shoulder. Crushed to death. He can't even move, staring at her face. He doesn't recognise her. That's the worst part. Was this a random civilian he tried to shield, or his own child that he had raised for the last, fuck, she can't be more than five. Nicky doesn't know, so he wails until his oxygen is gone and he dies again.
Nicky wakes in a room, stretched on a bed. The world is calm. Joe is sitting on a chair, watching over him. He's hunched over, hands clasped together, elbows on his knees. The room is cleared of weapons, and bland enough to be within a range of a hundred years.
"Year?" Nicky croaks.
Joe's head snaps up. "2020." he answers. "Malta?"
"Sì."
Joe releases a breath. "Where are you coming from?"
"Not far" is all Nicky says. He never tells Joe of the quick lives, the flashes of suffering, too quick to even place on a timeline.
He doesn't often awake in the calm. It's usually warfare and trenches and move-before-they-see-you. He takes the opportunity to stretch and flop down on the bed again.
Some of the little mysteries solved, Joe moves to sit on the bed beside him. Nicky throws an arm around him easily and curls his head into Joe's hip.
"Where are we?"
"Turkey."
"Hmm."
Nicky raises his arm and touches Joe's chest. Already his heart is slowing from the maddening pace. If Nicky has been dressed and cleaned already, he must have been incapacitated for a while. Or perhaps it was a long, slow death, brain bleeds and pneumonia and radiation poisoning are familiar territory. Whatever it was, it held him in death long enough to worry Joe, there is a furrow between his brows.
"You are mad at me."
"You got hit by a car, Nicky. This was supposed to be a holiday."
Ah, internal bleeding, then.
A line of tension is still pulled through Joe's back. Nicky sits up against the headboard so they are face to face.
"We talked about this, Nicky," Joe starts, an old worn argument for him, but new and confusing for Nicky. "We needed to rest together, then you went and put yourself in danger again. It probably wasn't even going to be a lethal crash-"
"What, you want me to apologise? I wasn't even there, I didn't have that conversation with you."
"Well he's not here, is he? You are."
Joe stands, his face a grimace.
"Well, what do you want me to say?" Nicky throws after him. Joe doesn't answer, doesn't rise to the bait of throwing barbs just to feel satisfaction of causing pain when they land. A small clue that Joe has lived more than this version of Nicky has.
Nicky's heart aches. He gets up, and presses his forehead to those soft curls.
"Oh, amore mio. How long has it been, since the last death?"
"Two years. It doesn't matter. Don't worry about it, my love. The holiday is finished anyway."
Two years, a sizeable stretch. Enough to mourn the consistency of life with the same man. They squeeze each other close, then release. Joe begins opening drawers the tension in him slowly easing.
"Is there work to do?"
"Booker. He has a job, we're meeting in Marrakesh in three days. Andy's been traveling for a year." He gives a small wrapped package to Nicky. "For her."
He gives it a sniff with a small smile. "Good odds?"
Joe shrugs, but returns the smile. They will be with family soon.
(The baklava didn't make it past Andy's sharp senses, which Nicky knew when he bought it. It gave Joe a hearty laugh to see him defeated, and he wondered, was this a bid for forgiveness from the one who died too soon?)
The first time
The first time Nicolò died, it was on the battlefield in the Holy Land. He was full of self-righteous fury and he cut down the man who killed him.
When he hit the ground the noise of battle left him, he could hear only rushing like the waves of his home town. He landed face up, staring at the open blue sky. It was far bluer than the sky from home, bright with the hot sun. It was beautiful. So many years fighting for this sacred land, Nicolò never noticed how beautiful it was.
The first time Nicolò awakes, he is sure he has been judged by the Almighty and been sent to hell. It is dark and cold stone under his body, a cave, perhaps, only one hewn by human hands, the lines straighter and cleaner than any he saw in the Roman ruins of Italy. He is face down, and his whole body is on fire with pain.
There is light that he sees, cold and blue flames captured in small boxes. And figures too, unholy figures garbed in strange black clothes gathered around him, each one holding bright lights shining out, and long menacing black sticks. Everything is cold. Everything is pain.
He is on the ground, there are others are on the ground too. His head is turned towards them and they are bloodied and broken and dead.
He is staring at the face of a woman, her face illuminated like ice by the blue light and blood and wounds marring her body. As he stares, the corpse begins to stir.
The open wound on her face is closing, and she coughs. All three of the dead begin to rise, unholy and horrible. One looks straight at Nicolò, a man like a corpse.
Nicolò screams and screams and there is sound louder than he'd ever heard before and sharp pain in his body and he dies again.