#so hes like clinging onto the past while rejecting any “modern ideas”

[rayroseu-reblogs]

Im glad Skully is a different person than anyone in TWST

[violetren]

Heads up I haven’t read any Old Guard material, (that’ll be changing asap) just seen the movie but here’s a thing anyway.

Quynh sets about tracking down Andy for revenge about that whole never finding her even after sonar became a fucking thing. She finds and uses Booker because as The Grounded One drinking his days away he was easiest to find even after their identities got scrubbed. Like 80% of his dream flashes were of this one easily google-able historic bar. Once Quynh figured out how to open a web browser it was over for him.

Anyways she strong arms Booker into helping. Dude is pining even though its been less than a year, and also he feels bad for Quynh after 200+ years of feeling her die and struggle and die again in his dreams. He’d honestly be cool with just holing up and spending the next century getting Quynh caught up on the modern age, and finding her some therapy. Then he’s not alone, not technically violating the rules of his banishment, and repenting/redeeming himself by taking on the struggle of helping Quynh heal.

But Quynh has plans and she gets even more insistent when Booker mentions that he’ll probably never get to see Andy again. Quynh is charismatic in a way that is similar but so different to Andy. Booker is a soldier not a general, even if he weren’t normally so inclined to follow, he’s just coming to grips with having made an awful choice when left to his own devices. He’ll do most things if she asks in a firm enough tone. He only seems to find his spine to curb the worst of her violent impulses. After over five hundred years the whole human spieces is worth taking revenge on if an opportunity presents itself.

She doesn’t believe him when he says Andromache - Andy, is on her last life. She rejects it violently. If she survived constant dying for 500 odd years Andy should be fine after far fewer and far more spaced out deaths over the same period, right? Still, it makes her more driven to complete her search as quickly as possible. It’s not because She might be mortal now she tells herself. It’s just that she’s already waited half a milenium, she shouldn’t have to wait any more.

It takes some doing, and some explosives, but finally Quynh finds her.

Booker has been dispatched to keep the crusaders occupied. Quynh has tricked all three of them into getting trapped in a panic room; she couldn’t trust that Booker wouldn’t get all sappy and lead them to her and Andy. Nile is too young for her to take seriously without having seen in action. Its a mistake the old Quynh wouldn’t have made. The old Quynh wouldn’t have known what it was like to wake from death to realise a fish was desperate enough for a meal to try and eat at her eyelids between semi regular bouts of thrashing and drowning either, so really. What good is thinking of what the old Quynh did or didn’t know?

So Nile is there, treated with no more regard than a piece of furniture as Quynh starts monologuing at Andy.

About how she abandoned her. About how she sacrificed Quynh for her own survival. How cruel she was to leave her at the bottom of the ocean. How dispicable it was that she made the younger immortals carry that, carry Quynh, in their dreams. Accusing her of finding some sick enjoyment of hearing about Quynh’s continued suffering through them.

Just all kinds of warped ideas that presented Andy with several opportunities to stand up for herself and say something. Opportunites Andy doesn’t take because holy-fucking-survivors-guilt batman! About the most she does is confirm the guys aren’t in immediate danger, wave off Nile’s telegraphed intent to tackle or shoot Quynh, and give Nile shut the fuck up glares whenever it looks like Nile might interupt Quynh’s speech on her behalf.

This continues for a while with Quynh getting increasingly frustrated that Andy is just staring at her all watery eyed and taking this shit. All this time and Andy can’t even find two words to say to her? She thinks the fuck not. She demands Andy say something.

“I’m sorry,” says Andy. She says it like it’s everything. She says it like she knows it’s inadequate.

Quynh pulls her gun. Nile throws herself in front of Andy like a shield. Taking a full clip of ammo to the chest.

When she revives it’s to Quynh giving ANOTHER monologue about how Andy is still letting people sacrifice themselves for her, and how pathetic it is, because she is, was, Andromache The Scythian. She should have taken those bullets with pride.

Nile is so, fucking, past done at this point.

Quynh takes two right between the eyes. When she wakes up she’s ziptied to a chair duct tape over her mouth. Andy, inexplicably, is also ziptied to a chair across from her. No duct tape though and it getting a 3rd lecture for the day. From Nile - who Quynh is finally realising is not just some child.

Quynh just has to watch as this young not-furniture-not-child gets in a shouting match with Andy. It’s pretty fucking surreal. It’s so surreal that it actually reassures Quynh that this isn’t just another predeath hallucination, and that she’s really out of that damn coffin, because honestly? No way would she be able to make up this less than a century old kid aggressively telling fuck off years old Andromache that “her life has value” while Andy all but pouts as she keeps trying to disagree only to get drowned out by more affirmations.

Then suddenly she’s on the recieving end as this kid goes off on her with some very creative threats involving concrete and active volcano’s if she so much as sneezes in an extremely mortal Andy’s direction.

That’s about when it begins to settle in for Quynh that Andy really does only have one death left. And how in the hell is she supposed to get revenge for centuries alone and dying if one wrong move means Andy gets to escape into the oblivion of death forever? She can’t. She has to reevaluate her entire definition of revenge. She barely managed to cling onto the definition she’s already found.

While she’s retreated into her mind to ponder this Nile has cleared the room of basically anything that looks even vaguely applicable for use as a weapon or a means of escape. Then she adds more zipties to Quynh. And Andy. Then she rips off the duct tape.

“I’m going to go get the guys, and maybe some lunch. You two can stay here and start talking through your issues.”

And then off she fucking goes.

Andromache almost goes hoarse shouting for her to come back, clearly uncomfortable with the whole idea. And if Andromache is uncomfortable with it well... Quynh grins, something wide and manic. It’s not the kind of revenge she’s after, but it’s as good a place to start as any. Maybe during the conversation she’ll find a way to really hurt her.

Maybe, whispers the tiny slither of her aching at the sight of Andromache’s red rimmed and haunted eyes, (the part that’s kept in a little iron coffin of its own) just maybe, she’ll find a way to heal with her.