Archive of Our Own

“Captain,” she hears from behind her. She never told her crew to call her that, but they all do. She doesn’t bother correcting them. She doesn’t have anything else she’d rather they call her. She turns to see the man she’d call her first mate if she cared to use those kinds of terms. He goes by the name Slim, for some reason, though she can’t be sure she didn’t mishear him and he didn’t bother to correct her. “They’re in our sights.”

“Good,” she says.

“But Captain,” he stops her from turning away. “There’s a ship coming up behind us.”

“What flag?” she asks.

“No flag.”

Quýnh knows what that would mean back in her old life—her second life, and in a way, she’s in her third life now. She doesn’t wish to get captured another six times to find out if she has nine lives. Before, this would mean pirates. Now, she isn’t sure.

“Do you see weapons?” she asks.

“Not close enough for that,” he says.

Quýnh considers for a moment. “We will keep going,” she decides. “If they become a problem, we will make them wish they had not.”

They are pirates, of a kind. Pirates are different now than she’s used to. Ships are full of buttons and moving pictures and contraptions that allow them to hear other ships and people on land. Radios and phones and records and videos. It’s all dizzying.

Now, they still go after cargo, but the ships look different. Everyone has guns instead of cannons. They can’t simply ransack a ship for coins or jewelry or spices; they usually take the entire ship now. That wasn’t unheard of before, of course, but it wasn’t how Quýnh operated the few times she undertook any pirating jobs.

Now, she’s less concerned with morality or saving lives. She will take what she’s owed from humanity as a whole. No one stopped those animals from throwing her overboard in her coffin, and no one will stop her from getting what she wants now.

They storm aboard the—frankly embarrassingly poorly-guarded—cargo ship and Quýnh kicks at pallets of printed cloth. Clothing, she thinks. It is all so thin and disposable now. This doesn’t even seem worth the trouble of taking the ship.

“Captain!” a man calls. Quýnh follows his voice and seems him looking down into a hidden room. Quýnh sighs internally when she looks inside at the people whose faces are tipped up to look at them.

Big eyes in gaunt faces, like she’s seen so many times before in so many centuries and places. These are people being smuggled somewhere. They spent every bit of money they could even imagine earning to pay their passage, if they’re lucky, but most of them were bought and paid for.

“This is the real cargo,” one of the men says.

“How much are they worth?” Slim asks.

Quýnh keeps her face passive, but her stomach is roiling. The people are packed into the hidden room, so tightly they can hardly move. It’s making her heart beat faster, the memory of her coffin pressing against her. She tightens all of her muscles so she won’t move.

Quýnh has developed a twitch. Or a series of twitches, perhaps. At times, she will be overcome with the need to move her limbs. Just one is enough—she just needs to move an arm or a leg out of the range of movement her coffin allowed. It reminds her she’s free.

But she won’t do that in front of anyone else.

Now she has to decide what to do with these people. They’re Chinese, she thinks. China was still called China on the map she saw, but that doesn’t mean she can speak the right language. Every language seems so different now than what she remembers. She knows languages change over time—even before she went into the water, she knew that—but she missed so much, even the people who speak what was once her mother tongue make scarcely any sense to her now.

But she’ll have to hope they can understand her well enough. “Were any of you going willingly?” she asks.

No heads nod. She doesn’t know for sure that means they’ve been kidnapped and sold if the people can’t understand her. Then a girl speaks up. She is clearly still a child, and it makes Quýnh’s stomach sick to see her there.

“We are getting good jobs in America,” she says.

Quýnh swears in Doric. They came willingly but are being sold. Keeping the ship means keeping the people, but she doesn’t want that.

“Captain!” another man yells before she can put much thought into it. “They’re approaching!”

Quýnh goes to him and barely stifles her gasp before it can escape. There, dinghy drifting in their wake, are Andromache, Yusuf, Nicolò, and the two new ones.

“What are you doing here?” she demands, hoping her voice sounds strong and angry and belies the way her heart just leapt at the sight of Andromache. And at the sight of Yusuf and Nicolò, if she’s being honest, but in a different sort of way.

“It is a nice day for sailing,” Nicolò says cheekily, making Yusuf laugh delightedly. Nicolò smiles at his laughter. The two of them always were most amused by one another. It used to make Quýnh roll her eyes, but now it makes her chest ache.

“Nile hasn’t had her fill of the sea yet!” Yusuf adds, making Nile give him a sideways glance and mutter something Quýnh can’t hear. Obviously, Nile isn’t much a fan of sailing. Slim comes to Quýnh’s side to see what’s happening.

“Should we fire on them?” he asks Quýnh, just for her ears.

“No,” Quýnh snaps, faster than she meant to respond. She can see Slim’s eyebrows go up as he notices her tone. Quýnh’s lip curls. “Do you have something to say to me?”

“No,” Slim says.

“Leave me,” she tells him. He raises his eyebrows slightly, but he does as he’s told. Quýnh likes that in a man. “Go away,” she yells to the others on the dinghy.

“It’s a free ocean,” Andromache says with a shrug. “I don’t see a cannon anywhere on your ship.”

“I have a gun,” Quýnh says, even though she showed her hand at their last meeting. Andromache smirks, ever so slightly, and Quýnh’s mouth goes dry at the sight of it.

“Okay,” Andromache says. “Do your worst.”

“You taking this ship?” Nile asks. “How do you sell the cargo or whatever? Like, how do you sell a whole ship? The only stuff I know about pirates comes from TV.”

Quýnh ignores everything she’s saying. Some of it is incomprehensible. But she hesitates. She glances back over her shoulder at where the men are looking down into the hidden room. She will not be leaving any of them with these people.

“Do you want the ship?” she calls to them. Andromache meets her eyes, a question on her face. Quýnh blows out a breath. Speaking this much in English is irritating, and she’s already barely holding onto her control. “There are people onboard,” she tells Andromache in Tiếng Việt. Her version of it, ancient, the one she’s sure Andromache remembers.

Andromache does remember, of course. “Slaves?” she asks in kind.

“Smuggled,” Quýnh confirms. “They were told they were getting jobs.”

Yusuf huffs. “Yes, that’s almost always the way now.”

Of course he remembers her language, too. And she can tell Nicolò does, too. It’s making her throat tighten a little. She’s not sure anyone else on Earth can speak this version of her language anymore. But they can.

“Is the original crew still alive?” Nicolò asks.

“For now,” Quýnh says. She wasn’t going to leave them alive anyway, but now she definitely won’t.

“Will you kill them or do you want us to?” Andromache asks.

“I will,” Quýnh says. “You can wait until we leave to come aboard.”

“Want any help?” Yusuf asks.

“No,” Quýnh says firmly.

“Alright, then,” Yusuf says easily.

Quýnh turns away before they can say anything else. She doesn’t want to hear more pleasantries or questions like they’re out for an easy stroll. She has men to kill and a ship to ransack for valuables.

She and her crew make short work of the ship. Quýnh handles the crew herself, but it leaves her trembling. She has to twitch her arms and legs, reminding herself no one has shoved her into a metal box and thrown her into the ocean. She is free. She is the killer, not the other way around.

She doesn’t look at the dinghy as she and her crew go back to their own ship. She won’t let herself look back. Some of the men are muttering about how much money they’re leaving behind, but she glares them into silence.

After a moment, she realizes they’re waiting for her to speak. Right. Words. She forgets sometimes that she’s supposed to speak aloud. Other times she doesn’t realize she is speaking aloud and talks only to herself.

“We will find a new target,” she tells the crew. “There is high risk in human cargo. We will not be taking that risk.”

“Who is the crew you let take our bounty?” one man yells out.

“They will not be taking money for those people,” Quýnh says. “They are…” She huffs and shakes her head. She has no idea what the phrase would be in this new version of English, and none of this crew speaks the versions of languages she knows. “Helpful people,” she says. “They do good.”

“Oh, human rights workers,” a crewman says. Quýnh knows so few of their names. At one point, she would care about that, but she doesn’t now. What will they do, kill her? Good luck.

She leaves Slim to smooth things over and goes back to her quarters. Her entire body is trembling. She spreads her arms and legs as wide as they’ll go, far past what the reaches of her coffin were. She tries to take deep, steady breaths. She squeezes her eyes closed and tenses all her muscles to try to hold herself together so she doesn’t fly apart into a million pieces.

This is as close to relief as she can find.

She should have known that wouldn’t be the end of it. Of course not. Andromache is stubborn and Yusuf and Nicolò are idealistic. It’s a terrible combination.

“Captain,” Slim says as they’re approaching port. “They’re back.”

Quýnh spins around. Sure enough, there’s a ship on the horizon behind them. She huffs. Following her around now. That’s just like Andromache. She wouldn’t leave Quýnh alone after Lykon died, either.

“Ignore them,” Quýnh tells Slim. “Get to port as we planned.”

Slim watches her for a moment. “Those are your people,” he says.

“No,” Quýnh says. “I have no people.” She leaves him and hides in her quarters until they dock. She gets away from the port and into the city as quickly as she can, but it’s not quickly enough. She is only at a hotel bar for an hour when they catch up to her. It’s only Yusuf and Nicolò, but Quýnh knows the others can’t be far behind.

“Sister!” Yusuf calls out joyfully. Quýnh has to stop herself from smiling. She didn’t like Yusuf at first. He was so open with his feelings, so honest, and she perceived it as weakness. He proved her wrong over the centuries. “I brought you a gift,” Yusuf says when he gets closer. “Well, it was Nicolò’s idea, and Nile helped.” He holds something out to her. It’s some kind of contraption, two circles attached with a curved rectangle. Quýnh doesn’t take it. “These are called headphones,” Yusuf explains, undeterred. “You can play music through them, but these are called noise canceling.”

Her interest is piqued immediately. She was inundated with noise, those 500 years beneath the surface. The constant beating of the current against the metal of her coffin made her go mad almost as much as the confinement and the dark.

And now—the noise in this world is unfathomable. Everyone has those phone contraptions that seem to never cease making noise. Beeping and screaming and talking and playing music. There are always three or four phones making sounds in any public room she enters. It’s enough to drive a woman to kill. Especially a woman who’s well-practiced at it.

Quýnh lets Yusuf press the headphones into her hands. He beams when she takes them. “And Nicolò has something to go with them,” he says.

This feels very much like a set-up. She doesn’t know how they could’ve known to follow her here, though. Were they just wandering around with these gifts on them in hopes they’d find her? She can’t decide how she feels about that idea.

“We weren’t sure if you have a phone,” Nicolò says. “They can be very confusing, but this one is quite basic.”

“What do I need this for?” Quýnh asks. She’s not exactly being hostile; she genuinely isn’t sure why everyone seems to be so obsessed with them. She doesn’t know what they do.

“It can do a lot of things,” Yusuf says.

“It’s probably a bit overwhelming,” Nicolò adds, which might be the biggest understatement Quýnh’s heard this century. She’s only been conscious of this century for about two months, so she doesn’t have a lot of understatements to choose from, but still.

“You don’t say,” she says dryly. They both laugh, and Quýnh’s heart jumps up to her throat. Oh, she missed them. She missed making them laugh. She missed teasing them.

“Well, if you press this,” Nicolò says, demonstrating. The phone changes color and some letters appear. “You can press the letters to type things in and ask it questions.”

“Who is answering?” Quýnh asks.

“Everybody but nobody,” Yusuf says. Quýnh rolls her eyes, because Yusuf always has to make everything a riddle or a poem. “It’s like a library and it will show you sources.”

Quýnh doesn’t quite understand that, but Nicolò pats her arm. She looks down at his hand on her arm and he moves it before she can decide she doesn’t want him to. “Don’t worry about that,” he says. He changes the color again and shows her a different thing. “Press this,” he says, “and then you can press any of these names and a song will play in the headphones.”

He gestures at the headphones. Quýnh stares, uncomprehending. “I’ll show you,” Yusuf says. He puts the circles over his ears. “Like this.”

Quýnh copies him, and then she jumps when she hears music. It sounds almost like a harpsichord, but different. She yanks the headphones off. “What is that?”

“It’s called a piano,” Yusuf says. “It can be very beautiful.”

Quýnh’s heart is pounding. Everything is so different. It’s like she came out of the water into an entirely different planet.

“And this lights up,” Nicolò shows her. “So that you do not have to be in the dark.” He says it with a careful casualness that belies how important he believes this to be. Quýnh doesn’t like the dark much, but she thought that didn’t matter now with electricity.

“I’m leaving,” Quýnh says, because all of this is just too much. It’s too confusing and it’s too nice to have them here and too painful to see them again. “Do not follow me.”

They don’t, but part of her wishes they would.

Quýnh rolls over, sighing. It’s been three days since she saw Yusuf and Nicolò. She’s back on her ship, and no doubt they’re following behind her. She can’t sleep.

Sleep has evaded her often since she came out of the ocean. She’s terrified she will wake to find she’s still in her coffin underwater. She keeps a small lantern lit by her bed at night so the room is never dark. The lantern runs on batteries, which are some kind of cylindrical objects that hold electricity. Quýnh still doesn’t understand what electricity is, but no matter. It works, and she enjoys it.

The phone and the headphones Yusuf and Nicolò gave her are sitting on a chair. Quýnh wasn’t sure she wanted to use them, but she found herself unable to throw them away, unable to toss them aside carelessly.

Yusuf and Nicolò still call her sister. They embraced her after she killed them. They brought her these gifts. She wishes she could reach inside herself and cut the bond between them like she can cut through a rope. She wants to have no attachments and be beholden to no one.

She can’t.

Quýnh sighs and picks up the phone and the headphones. If they are phones for your head, why does she still need the phone? She thinks she’ll probably never get an answer to most of her questions. Especially because every answer seems to breed more questions.

The music button helpfully has a picture of a music note. Quýnh played the Đàn tranh at some point, and she learned the harpsichord for a while. They used different notations, but she recognizes the music note symbol for what it is. She doesn’t recognize the names of anything, but she picks one at random.

The sound of lutes washes over her. It’s not a tune she recognizes, but it’s nice. She feels her muscles relax ever so slightly. This is something familiar, somewhat, even if the circumstances feel bizarre. She closes her eyes and listens.

The song ends, and as she’s reaching for the phone, another begins. Apparently they play continuously. She wonders how she makes it stop, but right now she doesn’t want it to. It’s that piano instrument again, and the song it’s playing is soft and light and making tears spring into her eyes.

She taps experimentally at the phone, which has changed color back to black again, and it lights up. Across it is a banner that says Claude Debussy – Clair de Lune. Maybe it’s related to the song. Quýnh could see how this would be related to the moon. It sounds like the moon, somehow.

She lies there with tears streaming down her face. It’s the first time she’s cried since she’s come out of the ocean. Her chest aches. She doesn’t know why this song is unlocking her tears, but here she is. It ends and she wishes it could come back.

More piano music comes, and then it leads into some deep stringed instrument that doesn’t quite sound like a lute but makes her cry again. This time the banner says Yo-Yo Ma – Goin’ Home. Quýnh huffs, eyes wet. That is no doubt a very thinly-veiled suggestion from Yusuf and Nicolò.

She falls asleep to that one, music in her ears and tears in her eyes. She actually sleeps for the rest of the night, short though it is. In the morning, the headphones have stopped playing music. Quýnh isn’t sure how she made them stop. But when she taps at the phone, it stays black instead of lighting up as it did before. She presses at the buttons on the side and nothing happens.

She has broken it. Tears sting at her eyes again. She wants it back. She didn’t mean to be careless with Yusuf and Nicolò’s gift. And she wants the music to come back. She dresses quickly and goes to find Slim. He has a phone. Everyone in her crew seems to. Maybe one of them can fix it.

She finds Slim and holds the phone and headphones out to him. “It stopped the music,” she says.

“What?”

“Can you fix it?” she asks.

He taps on it, as if she didn’t already try that, and presses one of the buttons on the side. Apparently he knows nothing more than she does. Then he says, “Is it dead?”

“Obviously,” she snaps.

“Do you not have a charger?” he asks.

“Charger?” she echoes, baffled. What is she charging into?

“The battery is dead,” he clarifies, as if that clarifies anything. “I’ll show you.” He attaches some kind of rope from the wall into the bottom of the phone and leaves it there. “Give it a while,” he says. “You probably need to charge your headphones, too.”

“Why don’t I need to do this with my lamp?” she asks. “It has batteries.”

“Uh, if it’s the disposable kind, you just throw those batteries away and get new ones,” he says. Nonsensical. Quýnh casts the information aside. If her lamp stops working, she’ll worry about it then. Slim is giving her a funny look, not quite suspicious but certainly disbelieving. “You’ve lived a funny life, haven’t you?”

Funny is far from the word Quýnh would use. But he isn’t laughing, so she doesn’t really understand his point. Instead, she says nothing. He eventually leaves her to go get the crew ready—they have a new target today, a cargo ship full of spices. Finally, something Quýnh understands.

She waits anxiously until the phone changes color again. It’s back! Quýnh lets out a sigh of relief. When she removes the rope, she notices the bar at the top that’s in red. It’s shaped like the batteries she put in the lamp.

A crewmate is walking past. “Is red danger?” Quýnh asks. She has seen the stop signs for the horseless carriages, cars, and they’re red. The changing colors on ropes in the air that the cars obey use red for stop, too.

“Huh?” the man asks.

“The phone battery,” Quýnh says.

“Oh,” he says, looking at what she’s holding. “Yeah, red means it’s gonna die. Just let it charge some more.”

“How long?” she asks.

“Uh, I don’t know,” he says. “Few hours if it was dead.”

A few hours. Inconvenient. Though she’ll have time to loot the cargo ship and direct her crew to the port where they’ll be selling it while the phone comes back to life. So that’s just what she does. They don’t have to kill the crew; they give the ship up easily. No one seems to have much care for honor these days.

The symbol on the phone is green when Quýnh gets back to the ship and checks it. When she removes the rope, it turns white. That must be good. She goes back to her cabin to listen to the music. Her hands are shaking.

They didn’t kill the cargo ship’s crew, but there was still a short fight. Quýnh doesn’t know why battle makes her tremble now. She has always relished battle. Now everything feels too loud, even though battle is quieter now. No cannon fire, no clash of swords.

But guns fire so quickly now. Guns were quite primitive compared to what she holds now. Now a battle means almost unceasing gunfire. Grunts and screams of pain are the same, but they feel harsher on Quýnh’s nerves now. She doesn’t know why.

All she knows is her heart is pounding in her ears now, the rushing blood sounding almost like holding a shell to her ear except so much less peaceful. She can hear the crew talking to each other in the rest of the ship, boisterous and crass and too much.

Quýnh puts the headphones on. Even without the music, they drown out the sounds. Quýnh’s heart starts to steady. Noise canceling, Yusuf had said, and that certainly seems true. Quýnh taps the phone until it lightens again so she can get to the music.

She sees the Goin’ Home and touches it. The song starts and Quýnh lets out a deep breath. She likes hearing only the music, but she doesn’t like that she can’t hear anyone approaching her cabin. She sits with her back against the door so she’ll have an extra moment if anyone tries to open the door. She lets her twitches overwhelm her, setting the phone on the floor of her cabin and stretching her arms as wide as they’ll go. Then she squeezes her eyes closed and lets the music drown out any sounds she doesn’t want until she stops trembling.

Things continue that way for nearly a month. They ambush two more cargo ships, and Quýnh learns that money is more or less imaginary now. Her crewmen use their phones for money. These phones are so mysterious. There doesn’t seem to be anything they don’t do.

Andromache and the others are their ever-present tail, but never board any ship. Quýnh tells them to leave every time they appear, and they do. She thought they would press harder. She thought Andromache, for sure, would ignore Quýnh’s protests and get closer.

But they don’t. Andromache doesn’t. They seem content to follow her ship wherever it goes and back off when she snaps at them. Quýnh isn’t sure why, but she never lets them know she enjoys the music and the headphones. She knows telling Yusuf and Nicolò that would make them happy, but she won’t do it.

Maybe they don’t deserve happiness. They have had 500 extra years of happiness while she was trapped in a box. The new one, Nile, said Andromache had been trying to kill herself for 500 years. Quýnh doesn’t like that. But she’s sure Yusuf and Nicolò have not been punishing themselves in that way. Andromache was always especially skilled in self-punishment, even though she accused Quýnh of the same. Yusuf and Nicolò were always more adept at finding pleasure and joy.

Quýnh’s own thoughts aren’t even firm on wanting Yusuf and Nicolò to be unhappy. She’s reluctant to think of them suffering, even now. She was angriest of all at Andromache, because she loved Andromache most of all. She still wants to wound Andromache, but she can’t.

After she shot Nicolò, back on her ship when they first found her, he held his entrails in his hand and gasped out, “Quýnh. Not her. It has left her. She will die.” And then, of course, he’d jumped over the side after Yusuf, leaving Quýnh stunned.

She could not kill Andromache. Hard as she tried, she couldn’t, even with Andromache bound and helpless before her. Andromache didn’t fight back at all. Not so much as a punch.

“I was not afraid, at first,” Quýnh had hissed at her. “Because I knew you would come for me. But you did not.”

“I tried,” Andromache had promised, voice breaking, actual tears spilling down her cheeks. “I tried so hard, Quýnh, I swear I did. We spent decades looking at—”

“I do not want to hear your excuses,” Quýnh had cut her off, fighting down a lump in her throat. That was when she planned to kill Andromache, yet nothing happened. Her hand would not move on the blade. No matter what her mind wanted, her body and her heart would not do it.

She misses Andromache. Every glimpse of her, even from a distance, leaves her aching. She hadn’t touched Andromache while she held her captive, except to move her, and now her arms scream at her for leaving them empty.

Quýnh learns quickly that the headphones may be noise-canceling, but they are not thought-canceling. Pity these modern inventors haven’t figured that out yet.

The next time she gets close enough to speak to them is the first time they board her ship without permission. It’s just after Quýnh and her crew have raided a cruise ship—apparently rich people using a ship for their leisure. Slim had assured her this cruise line wouldn’t be heavily guarded, though they’d have to take out the security cameras first. Whatever that meant. She’d left that to him.

She had not realized it would be families. She had not realized it would be children licking food from their fingers while their mothers scolded them, the same story throughout time. She had thought it would be merchant men.

She did not like the way Slim acted on the ship. She did not like the cries of terror from the children, clinging to their parents’ legs. No child ever threw her overboard. No child ever handed her over to be hanged for witchcraft. Children liked to see her touch flames and show them the healed skin, unscathed.

Now Quýnh is quaking and panting, gasping for air, hiding in her cabin and waiting for this storm of emotion to pass. The phone has died again, so she has no music. She will have to weather this on her own, pressing the headphones tighter against her ears in hopes that they will cancel everything.

But before she can get herself together, someone knocks on her cabin door. She jumps and rips the headphones off. “What?” she snaps.

“Captain.” It’s Slim. “We have been boarded.”

“Boarded?” she asks. She stands up and wrenches the door open. “Who did you allow to board us?”

“It was your people,” he says. “You told me not to fire. I assumed that order still stands.”

“It does,” Quýnh confirms. She swallows hard. What are they doing on her ship? She tries to steady her breathing as she walks above deck. She tenses all of her muscles to hold them tight and holds her head high as she confronts them. “What are you doing?” she asks.

It’s all of them this time, and it almost takes Quýnh’s breath away. This is the closest she’s been to Andromache in so long, not counting when she was briefly Quýnh’s captive, and seeing her standing there with Yusuf and Nicolò, rigging behind their heads, is transporting Quýnh back in time.

Quýnh has to look away for a moment to reorient herself. When she looks back, her gaze is drawn to the sad man, the one she took captive for so long. She had been fresh out of her coffin at the time, and she must have been terrifyingly out of her mind. She only remembers it in pieces.

She wonders if he’s told the others the truth about her yet. That he saw her talk to herself, saw her twitches. The violence, the way she’d tortured him, had brought her twitches out terribly, and she hadn’t been able to hold back completely.

He’d watched her pace, whispering arguments to herself, reliving half-remembered conversations with Andromache, with Lykon, with Yusuf and Nicolò, with village people they’d stopped to help. And she’d looked at him and seen pity in his eyes so sincere and sorrowful she’d cut out his tongue in retaliation.

It wasn’t a lie, when she’d told them he refused to tell her where they all were. But it was a lie that she tortured him solely for that. There was an element of punishment to it, once he’d admitted what he’d done. He’d told her about a flashbang stunning Yusuf and Nicolò and his own hands on the gun that had sent a bullet into Andromache’s side and she’d seen red.

She hated them. That’s what she’d spent at least three centuries sure of. They’d abandoned her, and she hated them. She was going to make them pay.

And yet.

She had tortured him for their sake, and he had nodded and accepted this from her. No more conversation to try to distract her like he’d done as she asked for Andromache’s whereabouts. He knew that he deserved torture and death for betraying their kind. Their family.

He doesn’t seem to have told them about the depth of her madness. They would be more afraid of her if they knew, she thinks. He is keeping her secret, so she’ll keep his. She’ll keep his secret that he accepted her torture, that he relished it, even. She will keep his secret that he begged her to kill him again and again for the punishment he deserved.

He meets her eye and nods at her, just one, short nod. He understands that they’re keeping each other’s secrets. They are bound by their secrets more than their shared immortality. Perhaps they even share a madness the others don’t. Andromache can punish herself, yes, but she is completely rational as she does it. Quýnh saw Booker take his punishment from her as a pilgrim took his self-flagellation. There had been a fervor to the way he absorbed her blows that spoke to enjoyment, not merely acceptance.

“Quýnh.” Andromache is the first to speak. Hearing her name is Andromache’s mouth threatens to stop Quýnh’s heart. “You can’t attack innocent people.”

“Innocent?” Quýnh asks, but it’s half-hearted and she knows Andromache can hear it.

“They’re just tourists on vacation,” Nile says. Quýnh ignores her. She doesn’t even look at Yusuf or Nicolò. She has eyes only for Andromache right now. She is falling to pieces, and it feels like only Andromache can stop it, and yet there is no power in Heaven or Earth that could make her seek Andromache out for this.

“Get off my ship,” Quýnh says. It feels like the only thing she can say when she sees them. She doesn’t wait for them to acquiesce or argue; she cannot hold herself together long enough for that. She goes back below deck and throws her arms out, giving in to the need to stretch.

“Quýnh,” Andromache says behind her. Quýnh whirls around.

“How dare you,” she starts.

“You’re not okay,” Andromache says, stepping closer. Her eyes are roving all over Quýnh, taking in her disheveled clothing. She can probably see the tremors going through Quýnh, even though Quýnh is trying desperately to hold them back.

“I am fine,” Quýnh counters. She’s perhaps never sounded less fine as in that moment. She refuses to step back, even though Andromache moving closer is making her feel cornered.

“If you never want to see me again, fine,” Andromache says, voice breaking. “But—but Quýnh, don’t keep doing this to yourself.”

“I am getting revenge,” Quýnh insists. She knows she doesn’t sound as cold as she wanted. She is so very tired. She thought she wanted rivers of blood, but the rivers of blood only remind her of drowning.

“Have you ever heard the saying the best revenge is good living?” Andromache asks.

“I must have been drowning for that one,” Quýnh spits. Andromache flinches, and it almost makes Quýnh flinch right back. Andromache does not flinch. She does not blink first. She does not drop her gaze. But here she is.

“You said you don’t care about humanity anymore,” Andromache says quietly. “But you wouldn’t sell those people, Quýnh. I know you still care.”

“You know nothing,” Quýnh spits back.

“You didn’t kill anyone on that cruise ship,” Andromache points out. “Because you do believe they’re innocent.”

“Just go,” Quýnh tries again. Her voice comes out plaintive instead of commanding. She’s all but begging when she meant to be angry.

“I can’t,” Andromache whispers. She has tears in her eyes and the sight makes Quýnh’s eyes sting, as well.

“The new one said you have been killing yourself for 500 years,” Quýnh says. Andromache’s eyes widen in surprise, either at the change of subject or at Quýnh’s words.

“What?”

“That’s what she said,” Quýnh insists. “Is it true?”

Andromache swallows hard. Quýnh can hear it. “I don’t know,” Andromache murmurs. “I guess. In some ways.” She licks her lips, and Quýnh tracks the movement. “If you weren’t there, I didn’t want to be, either.”

It’s one of the most foolish things Quýnh has ever heard her say. It makes Quýnh angry, blindingly angry with an ache in her chest. “Fool,” Quýnh hisses. “Don’t you ever hurt yourself and pretend it’s for my sake.”

Andromache has no answer to that. Their lips are so close, their bodies leaning toward each other. 500 years, countless deaths, and Quýnh’s body still remembers Andromache’s. She can feel Andromache’s breath across her face, feel her body heat and smell her sweat. It is so familiar, so wanted, and Quýnh can’t hold onto her anger.

Andromache will not move first. Her breath is starting to hitch, but she is not moving. Quýnh does. She bites at Andromache’s lips, shoves her back against the wall roughly enough that Andromache’s head hits the wood. Andromache doesn’t complain. She puts her hands on Quýnh’s hips. She came aboard unarmed, Quýnh notes, except for a few knives at her ankle. Idiot. Andromache lets Quýnh shove her and bite her and opens her mouth for more.

Their gasps mingle. Andromache’s hands grip Quýnh’s hips hard enough that Quýnh will probably bruise. They’ll fade before she can check. Andromache used to do that, used to leave love bites and fingerprint-bruises on Quýnh’s thighs just so they could both watch them disappear.

Andromache wraps a leg around Quýnh’s waist, pulling Quýnh’s body close against hers. They rock against each other, looking for friction and pressure. Pleasure and desire zap down Quýnh’s spine, a feeling so unfamiliar and strong it almost hurts after all this time.

The trousers Andromache wears are tight, a second skin, but Quýnh gets her hand inside and seeks the familiar warmth. Andromache throws her head back and hits it against the wall again, but she doesn’t say a word and Quýnh doesn’t stop. Quýnh curls her fingers into the slick heat, just as she remembers. She used to dream of this, somewhere between asleep and dead.

Andromache is already wet, and Quýnh can’t pretend she doesn’t feel it, too. Andromache bites her lip as her hips jut to Quýnh’s rhythm, but then she leans forward to kiss Quýnh again. It’s softer, sloppier, her mouth hot and open against Quýnh’s, and Quýnh swallows Andromache’s moans as she brushes her thumb too-lightly over Andromache’s clit to tease her.

Andromache clenches around Quýnh’s fingers, breath stuttering and hips bucking. Quýnh bites Andromache’s lip hard enough to draw blood, the way Andromache likes it as she comes, and Andromache’s hands ball into fists against Quýnh’s back.

“Quýnh,” she gasps through it. Quýnh slips her fingers out and lets Andromache pant against her shoulder for a moment. Andromache kisses her neck, up to the hinge of her jaw, her hand going to Quýnh’s trousers. Her arms around Quýnh are constraining now, holding her too tightly.

Quýnh needs to twitch. She needs to move. She will not see pity in Andromache’s eyes. She will not let Andromache know. She can’t catch her breath. The walls feel like they’re closing in now.

This, Quýnh thinks, is what’s making violence hard. Andromache is trying to pull Quýnh back to her old self, the self Quýnh left at the bottom of the ocean as she kicked her way free of her coffin.

That Quýnh did not seek revenge. That Quýnh saved people, even people who didn’t deserve it. Quýnh is done with that. She cannot let Andromache get in her head. She cannot let Andromache pull her in different directions like this, past and future, all of it painful. She can’t even let Andromache touch her right now. Quýnh needs to stay away from Andromache.

Quýnh pushes Andromache back and steps away. “Do not touch me,” she says.

“Quýnh—”

“Get off my ship,” Quýnh says, her voice firm and threatening this time. Andromache lets out a wounded little sound and Quýnh ignores the way it tears at her chest.

Her legs are unsteady as she walks away, the throb between them screaming at her to stop, but she won’t let herself look back. Out of sight, she brings her hand to her mouth and tastes Andromache on her fingers. It’s the last she’ll give herself of Andromache.

Quýnh won’t listen to the music anymore. She won’t use Yusuf and Nicolò’s gifted phone. She must harden herself back to the resolve she had when she first escaped the water. But without the music, she can’t sleep. Her nerves fray further.

Quýnh is losing her mind. Again. She knows the feeling well.

“They are behind us,” Slim tells her one day, the two of them looking at the same ship following them.

“Fire a warning shot,” Quýnh says.

“Captain?” Slim checks.

“Do you question me?” Quýnh demands.

“No,” he says. He nods at the men. “Warning shot only.”

They spend a month brutalizing every ship they come across. Quýnh stops going aboard the ships they victimize, leaving Slim to decide what is worth taking and who is worth killing. She hides in her cabin, shaking, trying to block out the sound of the waves. The relentless slap of water against the hull of the ship is the same sound she heard for 500 years in that coffin.

When she goes back to talking to herself, she resorts to mingling with the crew. They are terrible men. They are crude and disgusting and she knows they would try to hurt her if they weren’t afraid of her. She kills one of them for brushing too closely against her, to remind them all of what she can and will do.

It all catches up to them in the South China Sea. They are known now, notorious as pirates. A ship of mercenaries overtakes them, armed and trained. A third of Quýnh’s crew is dead before she can even get above deck.

They are not expecting Quýnh’s blade. They never expect a sword in one hand and a gun in the other, she’s learned. She mows through four of them before they realize she’s there. She takes a bullet to the thigh and gasps.

She has not died since she came out of the water. She has scarcely been injured. She almost forgot what acute pain feels like. A bullet is so different from drowning. Drowning takes much longer. This bullet pierces her leg so quickly, a hot line straight through her leg.

She can ignore it easily enough. The bullet wound has healed by the time she gets to the next group of mercenaries. The deck is slick with blood and Quýnh slips. She’s only down for a brief moment, but it’s enough for the man she’s clashing with to get his gun back. He’s taking aim when a blade slices through his side and he falls.

Andromache pulls her axe free with a grunt. It hurts to look at her, to look up at the sun behind her just as the first time they met in the desert. Of course she was undeterred by Quýnh’s warning shots. Of course she would jump into a battle, mortal or not. Of course she would appear at the perfect moment to save Quýnh, just as she has countless times before.

“Getting soft?” Andromache asks with a smirk.

“What are you doing?” Quýnh demands, but it comes out breathless. There is no sight more beautiful than Andromache in battle. Her body has always seemed made for it, sculpted by the gods themselves as their perfect warrior.

“Not sitting back and watching you lose a damn fight,” Andromache says, turning back to the battle.

“I never asked for your help,” Quýnh says to her retreating back. Her heart is pounding, but it’s not from the exertion of battle. She can see Yusuf and Nicolò fighting off attackers, too, and then Nile and Booker come aboard and immediately jump into the fray.

She knows Nile is the youngest, and the newest, but she moves with the rest of them seamlessly. They trust her. No one is turning to check on her, the way Andromache and Quýnh used to do with Yusuf and Nicolò. Just once or twice; Yusuf and Nicolò certainly already knew how to fight by the time they all found each other, but Quýnh and Andromache couldn’t be sure of that until they saw it for themselves.

Andromache rejoins them, and the five of them move around each other fluidly, covering each other, fighting as one unit. Quýnh’s chest aches. She used to do that. She used to slot in there between Yusuf and Andromache.

Quýnh can’t sit here and watch. She has to fight, has to regain control of her ship. She ends up at Andromache’s side, natural as if they’d never been apart. Andromache is more practiced with these kinds of guns, but she still uses her axe.

A man on the ground surprises them. He’d been playing dead, but he rears up with a knife. Quýnh runs him through with her sword at the same time Nicolò shoots him, but he manages to slash at Andromache’s arm anyway.

Andromache doesn’t heal anymore.

Quýnh beheads the man for good measure, but it was foolish. It takes time. It takes her focus away from Andromache. So she doesn’t see how it happens. She knows Andromache is injured, but she doesn’t see the man going after her, throwing her bodily.

Andromache goes overboard into the water.

“Andy!” Nile screams.

“No,” Quýnh breathes. Andromache is mortal now. Drowning for her will be permanent. Drowning will be a final death, water in her lungs like blood gurgling out of Lykon’s mouth. The water will steal her away as it’s stolen everything else from Quýnh. Before she can think, before she can stop herself, Quýnh has jumped into the water.

The water makes her panic instantly. It’s in her face, it’s in her mouth. Her entire body floods with terror and she screams, soundless under the water. If she had the presence of mind, she would be ashamed of how she’s falling to pieces, but right now she can only feel 500 years of saltwater in her lungs. This is the first time she’s been submerged since she got away. She bathes only in increments now.

Andromache wraps her arm around Quýnh’s waist, trying to help get her head above the water, but she is injured. They’re not making much progress, and now Quýnh is panicking anew because she knows she’s making this more dangerous for Andromache. She will be the reason for Andromache’s death, and then she will have to give herself to the sea again.

There’s a splash behind Quýnh, and a strong arm grabs her. It’s Yusuf. He dove in after them. Another splash, and then Nicolò is helping pull her and Andromache out. Two more splashes—Nile and Booker. The man she tortured for a month, his tongue hitting the floor with a wet thwack, has jumped in to help. Quýnh knows it’s more about Andromache than her, but still.

It makes her think of Lykon, the way she and Andromache took years to find him and his first act was to smile that bright smile at them and say, “Ah! At last, we can be together.” It makes her think of the first night around a fire with Yusuf and Nicolò, how Yusuf had turned his back to them to sleep in Nicolò’s arms and wasn’t afraid.

There is an innate, almost naïve kinship between them because of this uncontrollable thing they share, this unknowable fate that sets them apart from the rest of humanity. Quýnh killed them all, aside from Andromache, and they still won’t leave her.

They break the surface, Quýnh and Andromache both coughing. Andromache spits out a mouthful of water and then says, “You know I can swim.” She grabs Quýnh’s hand under the water and holds it tightly. Quýnh doesn’t push her away. They’re both trembling, but they can pretend they’re simply bobbing in the water.

“You’re bleeding!” Nile says. “I know there’s sharks out here!”

Nicolò and Yusuf each have one arm around Quýnh, and Quýnh finds herself fighting against the urge to sink into their arms. Nile and Booker are helping Andromache, but Andromache is still holding Quýnh’s hand. Quýnh wants to relax herself into Yusuf’s hold, to let Nicolò hold her up. And Andromache—well. Quýnh wants to do a lot with Andromache.

Quýnh lets herself stop fighting, just for now. Just for a moment. She lets Yusuf and Nicolò and Andromache hold her, lets them pull her from the water, and for just a sliver of a second, it feels like a different life. A different life where they found her right away, a different life where they pulled her from the sea before everything went so terribly.

For a moment, Quýnh lets herself believe in that different life.

The battle is over when they get back to the ship. The remaining mercenaries have fled, and Quýnh’s crew that is left is throwing dead bodies over the side of the ship. It’s distasteful, but Quýnh doesn’t tell them to stop.

“I’m fine,” Andromache says, though blood is streaming down her arm. “I would’ve been fine. No reason all of us needed to get wet.”

“Yes, no reason,” Yusuf says, the corner of his mouth starting to curl into a smile.

“We overreacted, I am sure,” Nicolò agrees. Andromache rolls her eyes, smiling, and elbows both of them. They’re still holding onto Quýnh, and she’s reluctant to pull away. They’re reluctant to let her, she can tell, but they don’t try to hold her.

“Thank you,” Quýnh says stiffly, not meeting anyone’s eyes. “I did not realize how the water would feel.”

“Of course, sister,” Yusuf murmurs in Tūnsi. Hearing him say that in his mother tongue makes Quýnh’s eyes hot. She longs for that different world she imagined, where 500 years didn’t pass between them.

“Maybe doing business on a boat wasn’t the move,” Nile says. It’s teasing, but there’s a tentativeness underneath, like she isn’t sure she should be making the joke.

Quýnh snorts, happy to be back on safer ground. “You are immortal for ten minutes and think you know everything?”

Nile relaxes and laughs. Quýnh likes Nile, despite herself. Nile was fierce in the battle earlier, and it’s clear that everyone has accepted her and has affection for her. She’s also proven to have a sharp mind, and Quýnh always appreciates that. Andromache’s respect and trust is not easily won, so that is proof of her worth on its own.

“I have to go tend to my crew,” Quýnh says. She doesn’t want to order them off her ship. For one thing, it feels quite rude after all they’ve done to help. For another, she desperately wants them to stay. She swallows down the impulse to beg and instead says, “We will head for port.”

Andromache locks eyes with her. “We’ll meet you there?” she asks, would-be casual if Quýnh didn’t know her better than she knows her own heartbeat.

Quýnh nods, but she can’t speak anymore. Her chest is too tight. She wants Andromache and she wants to stay with them and she wants to run away. None of it makes sense.

She watches them go back to their ship with her heart in her throat. It’s all she can do not to call after them to come back. It’s like that moment in the water, the way their hands felt on her as they pulled her from the water, broke the last of her resolve. She doesn’t want to stay away from them anymore.

Slim escaped the battle, though he has a through-and-through in his shoulder. “Captain,” he says. “Only twelve of us are left, and eight of us are badly injured.”

Quýnh nods. “We will dock,” she says.

“I don’t know that I can work the sails,” Slim admits. It had taken some trial and error for most of the crew to understand this ship. Even those who knew sailing weren’t used to a ship like this. These ships are apparently old-fashioned, used for decoration now.

“I can,” Quýnh says. Even with her new fear of the water, she doesn’t think sailing will ever leave her.

It’s invigorating, actually, adjusting the sails just as she did so many times so many years ago. She can’t look down as she climbs the mast, because the sight of the water below her makes her feel slightly dizzy, but she can ignore that.

She feels certain she will not be left to the water this time. That little boat is still following them. Should she fall, the others will be there to pull her out again. She will be safe.

The crew scatters quickly when they get to port, most of them probably off to find medical attention that won’t raise questions. Quýnh waits in the harbor for the others in their little boat. She feels almost nervous. She doesn’t know what to expect next.

Do they want her to come back with them? Does she want to go back with them? She doesn’t even know. Knowing her own mind is very difficult now. She wishes someone else knew. Andromache would, once upon a time, but Quýnh isn’t sure she can know now.

Yusuf and Nicolò both hug Quýnh when they come back ashore, and Quýnh doesn’t reject them. Booker nods at her as he walks past, and Nile gives her a big grin and wiggles her eyebrows in a way that would make Quýnh laugh if she had a laugh inside her right now.

But instead, she can only look at Andromache. Her arm isn’t bleeding anymore, though the wound is still there. Quýnh reaches a tentative finger out and touches the skin around it. Andromache tenses. “Does it hurt?” Quýnh asks.

“Just a scratch,” Andromache says, which seems to be a lie.

“Do you need some kind of doctor?” Quýnh asks.

“Nah,” Andromache says. “I’ll just clean it up. Nicky might give me stitches if I let him.”

“You will let him.” It slips out before Quýnh can think twice. She says it as a command, as if she has any right to command Andromache now. But from the smile on Andromache’s face, she doesn’t seem to mind.

“The others are going to find food,” Andromache says. “I’m going to find somewhere to wash up, maybe stay the night.” She glances at Quýnh and Quýnh’s heart leaps. They’re both unsure, which is new. Or forgotten, anyway. Maybe at some point they were unsure with one another, but it would've been nearly 2000 years ago now. “I could always use a little company,” Andromache says.

Quýnh’s heart is pounding. It’s very silly, being nervous over something so trivial. But it doesn’t feel trivial. It feels very important. “Okay,” Quýnh says. “I have been to this port before. I know a place to sleep.”

Their hands brush as they walk and it gives Quýnh butterflies. Again, it’s very silly. Across this very long life, she has made love to Andromache in just about every way physically possible. But a brush of Andromache's fingers against hers is setting Quýnh’s heart alight.

Andromache books two rooms that have a shared door and does something on her phone. It doesn’t play music, so Quýnh doesn’t know what she’s doing, but then she says, “The others will be here in a while.”

Quýnh just looks at her for a moment. Her face is the same, except…there are new lines at the corner of her eyes now. Quýnh didn’t realize that could happen so quickly, but Andromache does have many, many years to catch up to her body.

“Andromache,” Quýnh breathes. She doesn’t know exactly what she means or wants. She just needs to say her name.

“Quýnh,” Andromache answers, and then their lips are meeting.

It isn’t hurried and hungry like on the ship. This is like waking up in the morning, the sun on their faces and their horses snuffling around for food. This is like bathing in a river and shrieking at the cold, submerging each other and then apologizing with touches and kisses. This is like a snowy morning from inside an abandoned castle, wrapped up together for warmth and laughing at the sounds of Nicolò and Yusuf outside pelting each other with snow. This is the kind of kissing they did for centuries, when they thought there would always be more centuries in store.

They make love in a bed and both end up in tears, but they’re cleansing tears. Andromache kisses the tears off Quýnh’s face and they lie together in a bed so soft Quýnh thinks she could be dreaming it all. She would not like to wake up to find this isn’t real. She needs this to be true.

“This does not mean I want to go back to what you’re doing,” Quýnh says softly, tracing a finger across Andromache’s collarbone. “I do not care to help humanity.” She isn’t sure if even she still believes it. She does not care greatly either way anymore; she no longer wants her revenge, either. She only wants to stay with them.

“Okay,” Andromache says easily. “I mean, you could always work ground support with Booker. If you wanted.”

“Booker does not fight?” Quýnh asks. He fought earlier, on the ship.

She wonders if she did that, if her torture damaged him somehow beyond repair, though she’s not sure how that could be. Surely he could not have survived nearly 300 years without being tortured before she came along. And she didn’t even torture him that badly. She’s withstood far worse, even leaving aside the iron maiden.

“We’re working on it,” Andromache says. She shrugs. “Joe and Nicky don’t trust him yet.”

Quýnh nods. That makes sense. And she’s willing to bet each thinks of Booker’s betrayal affecting the other more than himself. They always were like that. Self-sacrificing and sometimes self-righteous. She misses them so badly her stomach aches.

She has to swallow hard before she can speak. “Perhaps I can watch him,” she ventures. “Make sure he will not betray you again.”

She can see the hope rise across Andromache’s face. Andromache nods furiously. “Yes,” she says immediately. “Joe and Nicky would feel much safer, knowing you’re there.” She presses her forehead against Quýnh’s. “We all would.”

“Probably not Booker,” Quýnh points out wryly.

Andromache laughs, too loud and a bit breathless. “He already said he wouldn’t have a problem with you coming home with us,” she promises.

Home.

Quýnh has not known a home in thousands of years. She left her first home after rising from her grave, and she has never lived in one place for longer than two decades. Ironically, her underwater coffin was the longest she’s ever stayed anywhere. That was certainly not home.

But home. Home is a fire under the open sky, taking the roasted meat Nicolò hands her and moving her head so Yusuf’s gesticulating does not knock her off her seat. Home is Andromache’s warmth against her back and the quiet murmur of Yusuf and Nicolò across the fire. Home is Lykon’s loud, booming laugh, and the way she and Andromache would try to emulate it and all three of them would fall to the ground in hysterics.

Home is the thunder of hooves behind her in battle, Andromache’s callused hand gripping hers. Slim said those are your people, and he was right. They are her home. They are here to take her home. They followed her for two months in hopes she would come home.

They get up and put their clothes back on before the others get back. They have food with them and all call greetings when they see her. “Give me stitches?” Andromache asks Nicolò.

He looks surprised. “You will let me?”

“Yes,” Quýnh answers for her, and Yusuf laughs out loud.

“Quýnh’s going to stick around,” Andromache says, the smile on her face warming Quýnh’s chest. “She’s going to come with us.”

“Will you really?” Yusuf asks, as if they’d joke about this.

“Yes,” Quýnh says, and then she gasps when he lifts her up off the ground and spins her around in a hug. Nicolò comes over and hugs her, too, though his is far less airborne.

“I am so glad you’re coming home,” he whispers in her ear in Tiếng Việt. Her eyes sting with tears and she only nods, then shoos him off to tend to Andromache.

The meal they all share is…interesting. Quýnh has found all food now is very different. Even something as simple as rice seems different. But then again, Quýnh went 500 years without. She cannot be sure she didn’t simply forget what food tasted like before.

“Here, try this,” Nile says. “Wait, oh my God, have you ever had potatoes before?”

“The one from the Americas?” Quýnh asks.

Nile looks a little disappointed, maybe. Quýnh doesn’t know her well, and this seems an odd thing to be disappointed about. “Yeah,” Nile says. “I forgot you guys traveled a lot. I just thought we were about to blow your mind with fries.”

“Oil is different now,” Booker points out. “And ketchup, maybe.”

“She’s had tomatoes,” Yusuf says.

“Man, every day I realize I do not actually know history,” Nile complains.

“Don’t worry, we barely remember it, too,” Nicolò says. “I do not remember when I first had ketchup.”

“You can tell me the color of the flower blossoms on a random day in, like, 1451 because Joe kissed you under them, but you don’t remember when ketchup was invented?” Nile asks, rolling her eyes.

Quýnh laughs a little. That does sound like Yusuf and Nicolò. Then Yusuf says, “They were violet.” and takes a piece of the potato off Nile’s plate with a wink.

“Last time they were periwinkle,” Booker mutters.

“And next time they’ll be yellow,” Andromache agrees.

“I will not have you implying I’m inventing stories!” Yusuf protests, feeding Nicolò one of the potatoes. “You didn’t specify which day in 1451.”

“We kissed many days that year,” Nicolò agrees. “Every day. The blossoms were of every color.”

Quýnh is so overwhelmed by this all she can hardly eat. She tries not to let it show, because she doesn’t want to draw anyone’s attention, but Andromache puts her hand on Quýnh’s leg beneath the table. She doesn’t say anything, and they let everyone tease each other and joke around the table.

They all sleep in one of the rooms, despite having two, and Yusuf and Nicolò bring the mattress from the other room to sleep more comfortably. Quýnh declines sleeping on any of the beds, even though she would like to lie in Andromache’s arms.

Sleep can be difficult for her. And she does not want to feel constrained. No one argues when Quýnh sleeps across the room on her own, but she sees Andromache, Yusuf, and Nicolò looking over at her every time she looks up until they fall asleep.

Andromache falls asleep with her arm outstretched toward Quýnh. Quýnh tries not to think about it all night long.

In the morning, they come back to her ship with her to gather her things. The crew is gone, along with their personal things. None of them have much, and they always take it with them when they dock in case Quýnh leaves them behind. She’s done it before.

“Captain,” Slim says. He looks behind her at everyone else, his hand tensing over what she knows is a gun at his waist. “Has something happened?”

Quýnh shoots him and steps over his body. Nile’s mouth is gaping open. “Wasn’t he your friend?”

“No,” Quýnh says. “He was useful, and he was not unkind to me. But he was not a good man. He hurt others.”

She knew what kind of man he was when she took him aboard. She had always planned to kill him if he got out of hand. He’d wanted to sell those people they’d found, and he would’ve hurt the children on that cruise ship if Quýnh had let him. She does not know what he did on the ships she left to him. She doesn’t want to know.

“What of your ship?” Yusuf asks.

Quýnh is going to say they will simply abandon it, but she stops. Yusuf has a hand on the mast, looking up at the sails almost longingly. He loved sailing, she can remember. He sailed with his first family for all of his first life. Modern ships don’t seem nearly the same, even if they are safer and faster.

“We can keep it,” Quýnh hears herself say.

Yusuf’s eyes light up. “Can we?”

Nicolò is giving Quýnh the special smile he saves for anyone treating Yusuf well. He loves to see Yusuf loved. The ship is a gift to both of them, even if Nicolò has never loved sailing as Yusuf has. They gave her the music, so she’ll give them this.

“What about your crew?” Booker asks.

Quýnh shrugs. “They will find other ships. Other jobs. They are the type.”

“You weren’t close with any of them?” Andromache asks.

“No,” Quýnh says. She meets Andromache’s eyes for a moment. “I suppose I was waiting to get back to my real crew.”

Yusuf laughs that bright laugh. “Aw,” he says.

“I did steal the ship,” Quýnh admits. “So you will have to figure out how to hide it.”

Nicolò snorts. “Oh, Quýnh,” he says, voice so fond and loving it hurts Quýnh’s chest. “In some ways you are still the same.”

She isn’t sure that’s true. She thinks in most ways she is very, very different. But right now, with these people smiling around her, she thinks she’d be happy to find out.

“Okay, are you ready?” Yusuf asks. Joe. She’s trying to keep up now, though he’s promised her he has no qualms with her using his real name. She’s heard Nicolò—Nicky—use it, and Andromache (Andy, they call her Andy now, but she said Quýnh could call her anything she wants) said she keeps slipping back to Yusuf and Nicolò because Quýnh is saying it. “This one might be a little shocking.”

“What are you going to play her?” Nicky asks, peering over Joe’s shoulder to squint at the phone suspiciously. He wrinkles his nose. “She is not going to like that.”

“I know,” Joe says happily.

“You are such a troll,” Nile says. This doesn’t seem to be the insult Quýnh would think it is.

They are showing her more music. Before, they loaded her phone with only instrumental music, no singing, because they thought it would be more calming. Now they want to find out what kind of music Quýnh likes. She’s been enjoying this almost as much as Joe has.

They’re also slowly starting to show her more of what her phone can do. The Internet, apparently. Quýnh still barely understands what it means, but Andromache confessed she only somewhat does, too, so maybe that’s okay.

Joe also admitted her phone somehow allows them to see where she is in the world, and they were using that to follow her. She supposes she’d feel more offended if she weren’t nestled into this soft couch in a safehouse right now.

The phone can play music even while she bathes. That’s made the water more tolerable. And it never hurts that Andromache joins her. That’s worth them following her around and not telling her they knew where she was.

They have a mortal man who helps them, someone who was involved in holding them captive during Booker’s betrayal. They say he is on their side now and wants to meet her, but Quýnh isn’t so sure about that yet. Andromache promised her to keep him away until Quýnh’s ready, as if someone was going to try to force Quýnh to see this man. Quýnh knows no one would, but it’s always nice to see Andromache rush to her defense.

Andromache moves to touch Quýnh but stops herself. They’re still working on that. Quýnh wants her touch, but sometimes it’s too much. She doesn’t know why and she doesn’t know where the line will be when it goes from comforting and welcome to stifling and panic-inducing.

But the important part is that they’re working on it. Andromache does not get hurt or resentful when Quýnh brushes her hand away. Quýnh always tries to do it gently, which is new, too. She and Andromache have never been careful with each other before, and a part of her chafes at it.

She can’t try to shove everything back to how it used to be, though. And Andromache understands. Andromache sometimes looks at her like she’s going to disappear, like looking at her hurts the same way it hurts Quýnh, so maybe Andromache needs this new gentleness, too.

“It’s like bonding with a new horse,” Andromache had said, completely serious. “You learn what spooks ‘em. And sometimes you can’t learn, because it’ll be different things every time. So you can only read the signs that it’s coming and adjust.”

“Andromache,” Quýnh had said, rolling her eyes. “You really must stop comparing me to a horse.”

That’s not a new development. For a very long time, horses were Andromache’s main focus. In the early days that they knew each other, every silence was filled with Andromache’s knowledge of horses.

Andromache had smiled at her, a sweet little smile Quýnh’s seeing every day now. “But it’s my greatest compliment.”

Now, Quýnh feels good. Joe’s shoulder is pressed against hers, and it’s not hurting. It’s not too much. Nicky is still draped over the back of the couch, but he’s leaning on Joe, not her. He’s close enough that she can feel his body heat, just a little, and it’s comforting. Nile is sitting on the ground next to the couch, painting bright green lacquer onto a sleeping Booker’s fingernails.

This is a new home. They don’t sleep outdoors often anymore. (Andromache had assured her they still do sometimes, and they can whenever Quýnh wants even without a necessity.) They don’t need a fire for warmth or cooking or safety. They have electricity. They have music and art and theater and information, all at their fingertips on these phones.

They have each other. Everyone is content right now, sated by a good meal Nicky cooked and the good company. They are safe here. They are safe together. They are home.

Quýnh reaches out and takes Andromache’s hand. She can twine their fingers together. Even when other touches are too much, she can usually take touch on her hands. She watches the smile bloom across Andromache’s face and for once doesn’t fight the smile on her own. It makes Joe and Nicky smile, too, because of course they were paying attention to all this.

Then Joe says, “Okay, I’m pressing play now.” He does, and a horrible wailing sound from his phone makes Quýnh jump against her will. She grabs onto Andromache’s shoulder with her other hand.

“Yusuf!” Andromache scolds. “Joe! Whatever your name is this century!”

Booker bolts upright, making Nile gasp and accidentally paint a green strip all the way up his arm. “What’s that?” he mumbles in French.

“It’s only music,” Joe tells him.

“Are you sure?” Nile shoots back.

“It’s called thrash metal,” Joe says.

“I know what it’s called,” Nile says. “I shopped at Hot Topic a few times.”

Andromache’s face tells Quýnh that means as little to her as it does Quýnh, so she doesn’t feel bad about being baffled.

“What do you think?” Nicky asks Quýnh. “Do you want me to put this on your list?” Apparently all the music is called a playlist. She can categorize it into other playlists. Or something like that.

They can also use phones to send written messages to each other and hear each other’s voice across any distance. This sounds incredibly far-fetched, but Andromache and Nile demonstrated for her. She has yet to see it work across an ocean, however, so she’s reserving some skepticism.

“No,” Quýnh decides. She doesn’t want this on her list. It hurts her ears, and the heavy thumping of the percussion makes her chest hurt. Joe turns off the music. Booker lets out a sigh of relief and flops back down on the ground.

He holds up his hand, half-painted. “What is this?”

“It’s your hand,” Andromache says.

“It’s green?” he asks.

“I don’t think so,” Nile says innocently. “Looks normal to me.”

“It’s green,” Booker insists.

“I think you are sick,” Nicky says with an exaggerated frown. “Perhaps you are losing your sight, my friend.”

“Go back to sleep,” Joe suggests. “May your eyes heal themselves as you rest.”

Booker is muttering French curses at them, but he does close his eyes again. Nile goes back to painting his fingernails. He submits to this with no further comment. He is apparently on a liquor ration, because he drinks too much—Quýnh knew that to be true already—and he is not taking it very well.

Nicky had confided this is not the first time they’ve limited his liquor, but this is the best he’s ever taken it, so Quýnh considers herself lucky. She was worried his irritation might come out as resentment, considering she did hold him captive for a month and torture him, but he’s shown no signs of that except to get a bit tense when she holds a knife. That’s smart for anyone, really, because she is extremely adept with a blade.

She laughs now, at this ridiculousness around her. She forgot, in her 500 years underwater, that sometimes this is what life is. Often, even. Life is light arguments and silly jokes and grumpy attitudes. Life is family and home. Life is these people around her, even the new ones she’s still getting to know.

They pull her from nightmares and memories of water in her face, in her lungs. They move when she needs to twitch and it’s a new kind of fluidity, a new kind of coordination in the group. She doesn’t think she wants to get back into battle just yet. She needs to adjust a bit more. But they can still move when she moves.

She does give them good incentive, since not moving means they often get hit in the face or throat, but no one has complained so far.

She was alive for those 500 years, but she wasn’t living. This is living, now. They are helping her live. And this, she thinks, squeezing Andromache’s fingers and listening to laughter in the air, is the kind of living she is more than happy to return to.