#when I first watched the old guard I looked at quynh and was like

[mirrorofliterature]

thinking about andromaquynh... again

particularly the post-coffin era.

it's just so

I love it

[nevermindirah]

Who talks to who, for how long and about what, in The Old Guard (2020) dir. Gina Prince Bythewood?

I got curious and so I watched the movie taking a lot of timestamp notes. way back three and a half years ago now, I watched this movie for the first time bc I like gritty action movies, and it's a really good one of those. I'm still obsessed with it all this time later because it's full to the brim with well-drawn characters who have compelling relationships with each other, and boy howdy does the data show it.

I was especially curious about who spends how much time alone together on screen, so I coded all the scenes with that in mind, and I found some really interesting patterns in the breakdown of scenes where just two characters talk, where one character is the sole focus, and when three characters talk.

the winners of course are Nile and Andy, our dual protagonists, who spend 10% of the movie's total runtime alone together. they also spend a lot of time with our dual friendly antagonists, Booker and Copley. scenes featuring combinations of just these four characters make up 40% of the total runtime.

Joe and Nicky show up less in this analysis because they're side characters who mostly appear in group scenes, but wow are they richly drawn side characters. they're key players in all but two scenes where four or more named characters talk.

read on for many numbers and much analysis of what it all means!

Andy Nile 0:12:20 Nile Booker 0:06:00 Andy Booker Copley 0:05:22 Andy Booker 0:05:01 Andy Nile Booker 0:04:56 Nile Copley 0:04:18 Nile alone 0:04:07 Andy alone 0:03:31

Andy Celeste 0:02:49 Merrick Copley 0:02:41 Joe Nicky 0:02:24 Nile Dizzy Jay 0:01:33 Andy Quynh 0:01:31 Andy Nile Merrick 0:00:52 Booker alone 0:00:32 Copley alone 0:00:28 Nicky Kozak 0:00:27 Booker Quynh 0:00:21 Copley Keane 0:00:09

(the spreadsheet, if anyone's interested in digging deeper with me)

of the 12 min that our main characters are alone together on screen, almost fully half is super duper antagonistic:

4:26 is the kidnapping sequence

1:29 is their conversation outside after Nile's nightmare featuring the iconic "me and those three men in there will keep you safe" "like Quynh?"

and 7 seconds is Nile glaring daggers at Andy after walking over all those bodies in the church

the other half breaks down like this:

2:14 is them connecting over their mortal families — where Andy makes Nile give her phone back at the end

1:45 is Nile telling Andy she's not doing this, that she's going back to her family — Andy pushes with "we'd do the same for you" but then relents and gives Nile the car

50 seconds of them gearing up for the last segment of the fight — Nile tries to get Andy to wear a bulletproof vest, she jokes around with "is this gonna be like the last signal?" — it's operations-focused but there's a real warmth between them by this point in the movie (this scene starts at 1:41:45, just 13 min before the credits roll)

and 1:29 of Andy looking at Nile like she hung the moon (which, extremely valid and relatable!) and Nile saying that the time Andy's got left "you're gonna spend it with us"

Nile has an uninterrupted 4:18 sequence with Copley that speed runs the same general shape of her arc with Andy, hella antagonistic to teamwork, though the latter here is more of a professional camaraderie than the real warmth we see Nile develop for Andy.

in this context Nile's arc with Booker is remarkably different. their first scene alone together is 1:11 in total, intercut with Andy killing mercs elsewhere in the church, and it's sort of their only scene with friction between them. Booker keeps telling Nile to wait for the signal without explaining what that means, annoyingly continuing Andy's grand tradition of not fucking answering Nile's reasonable questions, ugh. though another way of framing this is of course that he's too busy packing her a change of clothes while showing off his tits for her. as I noted in a previous meta, the end of this sequence is the one time Booker lies to Nile (claiming he doesn't know who the mercs are when he has at least a basic idea, though we don't know for sure whether Copley involved him in this specific plan).

after this Nile and Booker have two more scenes alone together and they're both extended conversations: 3:14 for their conversation alone in the cave after Andy leaves, and 1:18 when Nile joins Booker on the balcony outside the bar. both of these conversations are remarkably intimate for how little these characters have interacted beforehand. remember, 6:02 total of Nile and Andy alone together with heavy animosity (Andy shot Nile in the head ffs!) before things between them started to warm up. granted, the conversation where they first start to warm to each other is right after Nile's cave scene with Booker and Andy's scene with Celeste, so an argument could be made that this was the point in the movie where Nile started to feel ready to open up to the other immortals generally and her first one-on-one conversation once she got there was with Booker before Andy. I'm not saying you have to ship them just because they get so close so quick, but the numbers sure do make it clear that us BoNers aren't making this shit up out of nowhere.

Nile and Booker's heart-to-heart in the mine is the third-longest one-on-one conversation in the whole movie — third after Andy kidnapping Nile and Nile's sequence with Copley, which are both heavy on action and exposition and antagonism, making this the longest intimate conversation in the movie. their other heart-to-heart, 1:18 on the balcony outside the pub, is on par with Joe and Nicky's 1:17 in the van.

there's also a 51 sec sequence during the Merrick tower fight where it intercuts pretty much equally between three subsets of the action: Andy going off on her own with an axe, Joe waiting for Nicky to wake up after that head shot, and Nile and Booker being drift compatible when Nile's gun jams. we're not making this shit up out of nowhere.

ok back to our blorbos in chief. we get 4:07 of Nile as the sole focus, and 3:31 of the same for Andy.

the sequence of Nile going through hell on base just because she fucking lived (laser eyes @ her squad forever) lasts 1:14 and includes a few lines from minor characters. we get 15 sec of her first dreaming of the others and waking up unmoored, then a 20 sec reprise with her nightmare of the first person she killed. the sequence of her driving away from Copley's then figuring out what the empty gun clip means is 48 sec. and then, one of the things that stood out to me the most in really digging into these numbers: just how frequently and for how long the camera lingers on Nile's face in this movie.

extended closeups of Nile with no dialogue and no montage:

10 seconds staring at the car she crushed, killing Merrick in the process but somehow not herself

36 seconds in the elevator

and a whopping 44 seconds of listening to Frank Ocean

that's fully 1 minute and thirty seconds of this movie's 2 hr 5 min credits-included runtime devoted exclusively to long takes of Nile Freeman's face.

Andy's sole-focus time is a little less tidy, because the majority of it isn't precisely focused on her like with Nile. we get 15 sec of her staring at her hand, realizing her immortality is gone. I could have coded all the pieces of the movie more granularly to find all the moments where we get Andy reaction shots, but I also could've done that with all of them and I'm but one humble spreadsheet lover, and it's more interesting to me that Gina primarily uses other kinds of film language to put us into Andy's perspective.

1:35 of her cutting through all those mercs in the church — other people are active in this scene, but they're not shown as people, and the horror of that is exactly the point, for the viewer, for Nile, and for Andy herself

41 sec of her voiceover at the opening of the movie, over clips of the kill floor scene

1 min of her moodily sitting in the car after the pharmacy and flashing back to Lykon's death

the Andy/Quynh flashback sequence that's a subset of Nicky and Joe narrating to Nile is 1:31, so counting that alongside this flashback here brings us to a total of 2:31 of Andy/Quynh(/Lykon) alone together screen time. almost precisely equal to Joe and Nicky's total 2:24 alone together.

further underlining Booker and Copley as our tritagonists, we get one scene of on-screen alone time for each of them: 32 seconds of Booker being drunk six months later and 28 seconds of Copley reacting to the kill floor footage. it's easy to focus on the Andy in a Union uniform element of this Copley scene, but a photo of his late wife is visible in almost every frame. I went back and double checked — only 3 sec of those 28 don't contain that photo of his wife displayed proudly between the kill floor footage and the Civil War photo, 3 sec of Copley in closeup. now that's what I call environmental storytelling.

we get almost exactly 5 min each with the sets Andy + Booker + Copley, Andy + Booker, and Andy + Nile + Booker. ABC and ANB conversations tend toward driving the plot and fleshing out detail about immortality, though a decent chunk of ANB in the "is this a Rodin?" part of the cave scene is Nile and Booker talking about following the money (their first moment of drift compatibility!) while Andy angsts nearby, and a decent chunk of ABC at Copley's place is Andy and Booker's heartbreaking "this is what you wanted" "not like this" exchange while Copley awkwardly hovers. just under half of Andy and Booker's 5:01 on screen alone together is about his betrayal, 2:13 across three scenes. the other half breaks out pretty evenly between them talking about Nile, making battle plans, and just being pals.

has any mid-budget gritty action movie ever done it better? even the infodumps are full of character and relationship details.

I also find it noteworthy that Booker and Copley are never alone together, and they never directly acknowledge anything about their relationship. we know from what they tell other characters that they've been in contact before the events of the movie, probably for some time in some detail. we know they worked together to ultimately enable the cartoon-villain antagonists to do their villainy. Copley is direct about how these results were absolutely not what he intended, and we can infer from Booker's behavior that he wasn't aiming for decades of medical torture either. but we get no information about how they feel about each other. now that I'm looking at it with this frame, it seems like the absence of information is itself a kind of telling — Booker and Copley maybe purposefully avoiding 1:1 contact, purposefully treating each other as mere acquaintances when others are around, because to do otherwise would be to look their guilt in the eye. oh shit I think I might have given myself a whole new meta idea on this tangent here: Copley and Booker as mirrors for each other.

disclaimer as we're nearing the end that there's inevitably going to be bias and error in something like this. I measured by seconds not milliseconds and I wasn't always precise about where I paused to note timestamps at scene changes. sometimes I included what ended up amounting to several seconds of establishing shots and sometimes I didn't. and there are a bunch of edge cases where there's more than one way to count who was an active part of which scenes, like for example:

I separated out Andy and Booker's opening motorcycle stalking and Don Quijote chat from the later part of what was probably just one scene in the script, where Booker talks to the hotel clerk while Andy interacts with tourists nearby

I included all as one Nile + Dizzy + Jay scene the sequence where Dizzy and Jay talk to each other about Nile before they go into the med tent and act shitty to her face about how Nile's still alive

I counted as Copley + Merrick the conversation in the car where Keane and Kozak are present and react on camera but don't have lines per se

similarly I counted as Andy + Booker the "she wants to talk to her family" exchange after Nile and Nicky leave the dinner table; Joe's still sitting there next to them but he doesn't say anything and the camera doesn't focus on him

I didn't try to delete the time where Andrei said/did stuff from the 4:26 Andy kidnaps Nile sequence but I did remove a Keane cut-away from a later Andy + Nile scene

so much has already been lovingly written about how well Joe and Nicky spend their short on-screen alone time and rightly so. I don't have anything new to add there so I'll take a moment instead to shout out to the 27 sec of Nicky telling Kozak to go fuck herself, and also the iconic Joe headbutting Merrick. fuck, this movie is so so good. every moment is a delight.

[moxiebustion]

I had an idea for the Old Guard and Sherlock Holmes a few months back, which goes like this.

John Watson is an immortal.

He doesn't remember the year he was born, but it was after Andy and just before Quynh; and in any case the calendar has changed over more than a couple of times since then.

He is, in an incredibly unlikely scenario, killed by Andy the first time, because this was way back in Andy's crusading days and there have been plenty of invaders to Albion. They kill each other and dumb chance has one of them getting washed away by a river or something and hey, look at that, no dreams, because technically they have met before. Hardly a meeting to engender the warm fuzzies in any case. Life goes on.

Andy goes back to her wandering.

Watson, after many aimless years believing himself to be cursed to be a walking ghost, watching all the people he falls in love with die, falls in with a leader of men - a truly unique mind - and it lights a spark and gives him a purpose, finally. When the king dies, he makes John swear that he will defend his lands and his people until his last breath, which, you know, might be a while. Watson vows it, and Watson is not a man who breaks promises.

Sometime in the ensuing centuries and far to the east, Andy finds Quynh (or more accurately, Quynh finds her) and oh, hey, those dreams were about an actual person, they're real, Andy is not alone. There is much rejoicing, etc, etc, and Quynh says hey, we might have to go find the other one.

And Andy is like... what the fuck?

So they head back west and lo and behold, it's the damn random soldier that wouldn't quit and got tossed into a river for his trouble. And he's amazed, astounded, enthralled. Well, he is after they've clashed swards a few times; in Watson's defense, he has no idea what the fuck is happening. He's been haunted by weird dreams of a lady getting it on with his murderer for years and, you know, this is centuries pre-Jung, he has no explanation at all for this except that he might be going ever so slightly, benignly insane.

So, anyway. Blood is spilled, then swords are disarmed, explanations are had, amazed, astounded, enthralled etc etc.

Andy says you should come with us.

John, channeling his inner Hobbit two and a half millennia before JRR Tolkien was even conceived offer her a polite thanks ever so much, but, um, no.

Andy's like, what the fuck?

And Watson is like, well, I made a promise, and you don't break promises, do you? I swore to protect these lands and by gum, I'm going to do just that, thank you.

And Quynh says, aren't you bored though?

And Watson just give her a slight smile because at this point he's had three wives and two husbands and has raised innumerable orphans and says well, no. Not really. Wherever I go I find interesting people. Truly unique minds. My king rises again, you see. And so do all my friends. They rise again and again. I see them everywhere, in every genius, every artist, every eccentric who takes a chisel to the universe and cracks it open. They're always there if you care to look. And I swore I would protect them and I'll keep my word, so I will.

Andy looks at him like he's insane, but shrugs and says, well, when you change your mind come and find us, we'll be out there doing some actual good.

And Watson just gives her a little smile and said gods go with you then, Andromache the Scythian. You'll have a hope and a sword arm with me if needed, but otherwise I'm staying right here, thank you very much.

And that's that.

Andy expects Watson to join them eventually. He never does. It drives her fucking mental, which means she respects the hell out of him for it.

Time goes on. Life goes on. Seven husbands and three wives later, Watson meets the new guys. He adores Nicky and Joe - he's known as Galvagin by this period of history, and Nicky and Joe are fascinated by this immortal who has travelled every continent in earth (and married on them), but never wanders. He has a home. He has people who know he's immortal in his home. His spouses all knew, so do most of his children. They keep the secret. He becomes a local cryptid of sorts. Oh, yes, that's just the old soldier's house, ha ha, they say he's immortal, ha ha. And no one ever examines the joke too closely. Besides, some old-fashioned jingoism helps keep the secret too. He's their immortal, isn't he? Proper British and all that. It's not as if he's some foreigner.

The Old Guard come and go through the years. Sometimes Watson will join them on a grand adventure or a fight for a few years, but he'll always head home. Sometimes they'll lodge with him and explore every nook and cranny he knows of the isles. Andy and Watson's relationship becomes strained after Quynh is lost, because look at you, why do you defend them?? But Watson gave his word and he will not break it, even for Andy. What people are without sins, he asks, without treachery and cruelty and ignorance? The Old Guard has helped plenty of pretty shady regimes in their time. They can only be made better, only helped to change. He will search every inch of the coast, he promises, he will chase every rumour and every hint that comes to him. He will sail every boat that might conceivably travel across where she might be. He will try. But he will not leave.

He does help search. But eventually the others, grieving and in despair, must leave again. Watson promises to keep his eyes peeled in the meantime, a solitary watchman.

Watson doesn't see them again - except for letters - until the advent of Booker. He connects with Booker over his grief - oh, how many children has Watson lost! Spouses too! And over an astounding number of stories of unique minds, his resurrected friends, that Watson has found over the years. Watson is himself a very interesting man, and a good storyteller and Booker shares this love of stories. He tells him if he ever needs respite, he can come to Watson's home for a while.

Booker opts to stay with the Old Guard only because he still doesn't like the English very much, and also because running into jobs and missions sometimes distracts from the wailing grief inside his head.

When they finally all meet again, Victoria is on the throne, steam trains are ascendant and Watson has shacked up with another unique mind at 221B Baker Street.

He's an interesting one, Watson, who is now Watson properly on paper. And he smiles. He has found another friend, risen again.

Why John? Andy asked.

Boring, Joe says, who is still somewhat smarting over Joseph Jones.

John shrugs and says: There's enough Johns to make it commonplace, and I'm pretty commonplace. And Watson because, what son am I, where is my father? I do not remember.

Besides, he adds ruefully, no one uses Galvagin these days. No one east of Wales can pronounce Gwalchmei correctly...

(Booker nods in fellow feeling).

And Gawain just sounds pretentious. So... John.

It is a good name, Nicky Smith smiles.

And in the corner Sherlock is losing his goddamn mind because he had a) no fucking idea what kind of mismatched pidgin they are speaking and b) every single logical deduction he tries to make about these people all make perfect sense until they open their mouths and start talking about their lives, and then it's like OUT OF CHEESE ERROR, REINSTALL UNIVERSE AND REBOOT.

The problem with John Watson is that you have to eliminate the impossible, and the marker for that keeps fucking moving.

(Mycroft, on the other hand, as this era's Copley, sweats bullets every time John gets within spitting distance of the Stone of Scone)

[much-obliged-timothy]

June of Doom #30

The Old Guard - #30 - Buried Alive

*

“I’m just saying, he should’ve been back by now,” Joe said, pacing by the door of the safehouse. “I’m going to look for him. I don’t like this.”

Andy caught his arm. “Joe-”

“Quynh is free and she’s angry, Andy!” he said. “What if she…what if she found him?”

“She wouldn’t hurt Nicky,” Andy said firmly.

“No, the old Quynh wouldn’t hurt Nicky. The Quynh who’s been suffering underwater for hundreds of years? We don’t know her. You heard Nile; she’s free and she’s furious.” Joe yanked the door open. “He shouldn’t have gone out on his own. I knew it was a bad idea.”

Nile ran into the room so fast that she tripped over the coffee table and Joe just barely managed to catch her before she fell. She was covered in cold sweat, her eyes wide and frantic, hair messy from sleep.

“She has him,” she said, gripping Joe’s arms. “Oh, god, she has him.”

The color drained from Joe’s face. “Where?”

“I don’t know. She tricked him.” Nile pulled away and put her face in her hands. “Pretended to run to him for help. He was comforting her when she killed him.”

“How did she know where he-” Joe froze. Andy subtly pushed Nile behind herself. “Fuck! Nile! You drove us to the safehouse! You led her right to him!”

“Stop,” Andy snapped. “Nile is new to this. You and I should’ve been the ones to know better, Joe. Focus. We can use Nile to track Quynh, just like Quynh used her to track us.” 

Andy fought down the feelings rising rapidly inside of her. Quynh, her Quynh, back after all these years. 

But what was she going to do with Nicky? Surely she’d never hurt Nicky. The two had been close friends. Quynh had always admired Nicky’s kindness and bravery. Nicky didn’t laugh often, but Quynh got him to laugh almost as much as Joe sometimes. 

She must be using Nicky to lure Andy in. Andy was the one she was angry at, surely. It was ultimately Andy who had failed her, not Nicky or Joe. 

“She’ll trade him for me,” Andy said, because she couldn’t have Joe losing his composure now. “That has to be her plan. What else would she want with Nicky? She’s probably been waiting for one of us to be alone, and Nicky just happened to be the first one.”

“Where did she take him? What did you see?” Joe demanded, ignoring Andy.

But Nile just shook her head. “She had him in the back of a van. She wasn’t driving and there were no windows. She…she had a gun pointed at him. He was dead and bound.” She looked at Andy with that mix of desperation and fierce resolve that made her such a good addition to the team. “We have to find him, Andy. That rage she feels isn’t just directed at you. She blames all of you, even Nicky.” 

“Nile, call Copley. We’ll go see what we can find. And I am calling Booker. He can’t be on his own out there right now, not if she’s going after us,” Andy said, kicking the door all the way open and grabbing the car keys. 

Joe and Nile hurried to follow her out. She didn’t need to ask to know they were armed. 

She was heartbroken over Quynh’s fate. But it was no fault of Nicky’s, and Andy would do anything to get him back safely and take the consequences herself. 

***

Booker met up with them the next day, drunk enough that they smelled the booze on him before he even entered the safehouse. Joe had roughly taken him to sober up, yelling at Booker about how they all needed to be ready for anything and on guard. Booker did not drink again.

Copley tried to track down Quynh. When he showed no signs of success, Booker joined in the search. They debated moving safehouses, but decided to stay in case Quynh sent a ransom or anything of the sort for Nicky. They set up a strict watch rotation and ensured everyone was armed at all times. 

It was three days before the letter arrived.

Andy unfolded it. Joe reached for it, but Andy held it away as her eyes scanned over the words and her heart shriveled in her chest at them.

“Andy!” Joe said, pleading. “What does it say?”

She swallowed down bile and read it aloud, her voice monotonous despite the horror threatening to choke her. “You will not find Nicolo. I thought of the perfect way to hurt all three of you at once. You and Yusuf will suffer, knowing you can never save him. He will suffer as I did. I can think of no more perfect revenge than this. He will cry out for Yusuf with every dying breath, and Yusuf will sob for him with every passing minute, and you will live with the knowledge that you were responsible to protect them both. As you read this, Nicolo is dying yet another death, buried alive deep beneath the earth, waiting for help that will not come just as I did. Every time you think of his agony, know you caused it by abandoning me.”

Joe sat down heavily. Nile put a hand over her mouth. Booker pushed a shaking hand through his hair.

“No,” Joe whispered. “She wouldn’t. Not Nicolo. Not him.”

“Get up,” Nile whispered. “Joe, get up. He needs us. I don’t give a fuck what she says. We’re going to find him. We’re going to save Nicky. Get up!” 

Andy felt numb inside. Nicky, her kind, caring Nicky, was buried alive somewhere right now, waiting for them to find him and save him. Trusting them to save him. Just like Quynh.

She felt like she was spiraling. This couldn’t be happening again. Not again.

“Andy!” Nile shook her and ripped the letter from her hands, crumpling it up and tossing it off to the side. “Andy, he needs us. We cannot fall to pieces right now.”

“She could have buried him anywhere,” Booker said, shaking his head helplessly. “Where do we even start?”

“Nicolo,” Joe whispered, and began muttering to himself, clasping his hands together and pressing his face to them. 

Nile placed a firm, comforting hand on his back. “Andy, think. You knew her best. Where would she take him?”

Andy honestly had no idea. She thought and thought, but they had traveled so many places that she couldn’t pinpoint one. The world had changed too much in the centuries that Quynh had been trapped in the ocean; she had no idea what Quynh would do or where she would go. 

Nile waited only another moment before nodding to herself. “Then we focus on surveillance videos. We try to find the van they took Nicky in. It’s better than sitting around doing nothing.”

“Andy,” Joe said, picking his head up. Tears were already dragging tracks down his cheeks. “We can’t fail him. He’s alone. He must be so scared.” 

And who wouldn’t be, buried alive by your own friend, knowing you would never truly die? Forced to suffocate in the cold, lonely dark again and again for eternity. 

So they got to work, even if the weight of the letter threatened to drag them all down into despair. They searched and searched, abandoning sleep whenever possible to keep going. Nile and Booker took over care for Joe, who would not eat or sleep or stop for a moment unless forced to. Andy was barely keeping herself together, but she managed to cling to her fractured pieces for the sake of her team.

Nine days after getting the letter, they found him.

It was Booker who got the idea when he saw Nile on her phone with Copley. Nicky had been carrying a cell phone with him when he left the safehouse that day.

The phone was no doubt long dead, but Booker managed to track it using something which Andy did not understand but which gave them a general location.

It was just outside a nearly abandoned town, with miles and miles of ground that no longer bore crops. Condemned land left to the wildlife to roam.

They forced themselves to be methodical, mapping the area and breaking it into a grid pattern, each of them assigned grids to dig up. They checked for signs of recently turned over ground, but found none as snow had recently fallen over the area. So they dug and dug, for two days. 

And on that second day, nine days after the letter, Andy cried out with relief as her shovel struck a tarp.

She cried for the others, who rushed over and helped her dig it up. Wrapped in the tarp was the lifeless body of Nicky.

“Nicolo!” Joe cried, holding his love to him and sobbing into his motionless chest. He rocked with Nicky as Booker, Nile, and Andy dropped to their knees around them. 

He held Nicky until Nicky took a frightened gasp of breath, hands already coming up to try and claw away a tarp that was no longer there.

“Nicolo,” Joe said, cupping the back of his head. “It’s alright. It’s alright now. We’ve got you.”

“Are you real?” Nicky croaked out.

Joe made a pained noise. “Yes, my heart. I’m real. We all are. I’ve got you, Nicolo.”

Andy pulled her jacket off and draped it over Nicky’s shoulders carefully. She reached out and stroked his filthy hair.

“Nicky,” she said quietly. “Oh, Nicky. I’m so sorry.”

Andy could think of no words to describe the trauma Nicky had been through. Buried alive, wrapped in a tarp, dying over and over again for nine days.

The trauma made itself apparent as Nicky began to cry silently, pressing his face forcefully into Joe’s neck and grabbing onto Joe until his knuckles turned white. His whole body shook, shoulders heaving with silent sobs. 

“Nicolo, Nicolo,” Joe whispered, crying again himself, stroking Nicky’s hair, holding him as tightly as he could. 

Andy finally felt her own tears come as she touched Nicky’s back and felt him flinch beneath her hand. They had saved his body, but Quynh had gotten her revenge by damaging his mind.

[luminarai]

the old guard but make it sports i guess??

to the surprise of everyone (mostly me tbh) i actually put some thought into these! read on for weirdly specific meta

some sports lend themselves quite naturally to the old guard (fencing, horseback riding, martial arts etc) but i got to thinking about what sports would they go into that wouldn’t be related to their ‘jobs’ or maybe in a modern au and THUS:

for nile i thought something that would suit her quick thinking and way of pushing her own limits would be rock climbing. it’s the kind of sport that takes a lot of physical and mental strength along with endurance and agility which i think would be a great match for her. also consider her reaching the top of whatever she’s climbing and just standing there, looking out over the landscape, the wind against her skin, at peace, just taking it all in... it’d be a thing she’d do just for herself, a way to cement her self confidence in new areas and experience a combination of adrenaline and intense focus that she can really revel in

for joe and booker the obvious choice would be football/soccer of course but here’s my niche scandinavian take: handball! it’s a team sport, quite fast paced compared to football (we’re talking like. 20 goals per game) and quite physical. (it also enjoys popularity in both north africa and france if that matters!) i also considered tennis, squash (the sport) and even badminton but i think joe would dig the social aspects of it and drag booker along because damn boy, you need to get out of the house and talk to people, ok. i call the pose for their picture ‘don’t throw that fucking thing at me and don’t give me those eyes i can see you lifting it you absolute walnut’. 

(nicky dutifully attends their big games and usually drags nile along - neither of them have any real interest in the sport but nicky buys the best snacks and they sit in the back the entire time practicing italian shit talking and listening to podcasts with shared headphones) (andy used to go too but she got a little too uh enthusiastic and got banned. oops)

my knowledge of roller derby is limited to that one ellen page movie BUT holy shit can you imagine andy and quynh tearing up the rink??? fucking lethal my dudes. we know they’re both quick, elegant and strong af so their games would be fast paced, at times brutal and they’d both have the best fucking time. in an au they’d probably meet while on opposing teams and flirt via basically mauling each other - esp with quynh as a jammer, the player who scores points by lapping the opposing team who have to stop her. nobody knows whether to be annoyed when they finally get together because the public flirting gets outright dirty or relieved because the injury percentage drops SO MUCH, oh my god how are they both still standing. and yes, their derby names would be pit wiper and androma kills because get fucking wrecked. the boys all get too caught up at their games and make a lot of stupid bets that nile inevitably wins because she’s the only one with critical thinking skills in these scenarios

nicky’s was actually the one who kicked this whole thing off for me; aerial silk is a very cool type of acrobratics - it’s basically yoga played on Extra mode and also in the air?? it’s all about stamina, flexibility and body strength. it looks super graceful but is also very challenging and it’s a fairly individual sport, which i think would suit nicky very well. i was honestly also inspired by the fact that the most aerial silk guys at my gym (i do pole fitness which has some overlap with the aerialists) have the same kind of figure as nicky: not bulky or cut, but still very strong with broad shoulders, lean arm muscles and strong legs. i don’t think he’d be interested in performances or competitions but he does occasionally invite joe to watch him practice when he has the studio for himself (the first time, joe nearly faints because his blood doesn’t know which direction to go and you know it doesn’t get any less heated from there wink wonk)

all that being said please don’t ask me about sports because i genuinely know next to nothing about most types of it - but i did have a lot of fun making these!

[youssefguedira]

dear followers today i offer you more iron maiden joe au featuring what i like to call sibling bonding through sports and trauma. tomorrow? who knows

Rating: General

Summary:

Booker has spent two hundred years only knowing Yusuf through the spaces he left behind: the house in Malta; the way their stories always seemed to be divided into before and after, and the way Andy would always get that distant look in her eyes when they talked about before; Quynh’s perpetual habit of crouching by the water’s edge, whispering in a language Booker couldn't understand; Nicky and his quiet, constant grief; Booker’s own dreams of Yusuf, terrified and furious and desperate and always, always screaming. And now Joe sits forward on the couch, fixated on the screen as PSG get dangerously close to scoring.

None of this makes any sense, so Booker stops trying to understand it and watches the game with him.

-

Two years after Joe gets out of the coffin, Booker meets him for the first time.

[lovelikedestiny]

~ Nicky & Copley friendship

the first time Nicky learns about the date of death of Copley’s wife he all but invades his house in a polite and kind manner

by the time Copley has recovered from the shock of having four warriors in his home, the table is already set and Nicky is serving homemade pasta

Copley manages three bites before bursting into tears and Nicky gives him tissues and a hot chocolate with a smiley on the milk foam

they talk for hours about all kinds of topics like philosophy, ethics, religions and morals until a sleep deprived Joe - because his favorite pillow is missing - reminds Nicky to sleep and drags him into their bedroom

Copley is stunned when he discovers that Nicky keeps all of the information he told him about his wife in mind and gets his first hug after he thanked Nicky for cooking his wife’s favorite dish

he gets Nicky a tablet only for recipe-apps and shows him patiently how to use it, later however he sees how Nicky carefully writes down all recipes he wants to try on paper, tongue tucked between his teeth

Copley is the one who introduces Nicky to “Hay Day” because it helps him to focus on something simple to relax and although Joe is suspicious at first he can’t be mad at Copley when Nicky is showing him excitedly that he named his two rabbits Yusuf and Joe

after every mission Nicky takes his time to feed all his animals and to harvest, he names his farm “The Old Guard” and befriends Copley’s farm

even Andy and Nile can’t roll their eyes anymore after watching Nicky smiling softly at his tablet - “Look Andromache, I named the horses after you and Quynh” - “Nile, do you want to name my elephant?”

the first thing Nicky sends Booker is a screenshot of one of his dogs, called “Sebastien”, later he asks Joe why Booker sent back a 🥺 “sad smiley with a serious eye infection, his eyes are badly watering, Yusuf”

Copley is more than surprised when he gets a package for his birthday the date of which he never told one of the others

inside are exotic types of tea, raspberry-chocolate cookies with an unused, small candle, pens from a hotel from Andy, a piece of soap and a painted picture of his wife Joe drew based on a description of Nicky

on the attached birthday card Nile has written short and sweet how Nicky forced Andy and Joe to prepare a present for Copley

because Copley is an intelligent man he gets that he has to befriend Nicky to be tolerated by Joe and Andy

through the impression Copley left on Nicky with his waving and smiling through the scope of his sniper rifle Nicky knows not to underestimate Copley

after Nicky and Copley discussed for four hours if pineapple on pizza would be a violation of human rights, they’re not allowed to get drunk together anymore

although Nicky is the first one to adopt Copley officially into their team, he is the hardest to read and Copley keeps a small notebook in his drawer where he records all clues regarding Nicky’s facial expressions and gestures, based on Joe’s and Andy’s behavior

when Nicky calls him “James” Copley is frightened to death because he thinks he did something to rouse Nicky’s anger and can’t sleep for three days until Nile tells him that Nicky only called him James because he is now a member of the team

as Copley saves them on a mission, getting Joe’s and Andy’s respect and an impressed thumbs-up from Nile because “Hot damn, Copley, you got some moves”, Nicky just smiles knowingly at him like he did as Nile saved them in the lab

that Nicky’s middle name can be “little shit” Copley discovers when he and Nicky get kidnapped and one of their enemies gets frustrated with Nicky’s too honest answers to their questions without answering anything, in fact “What did you want to do?” - “My husband.” - “Jesus fucking Christ, just answer the question!” - “Wait, hold on a second. I thought Jesus Christ was one person. Are you telling me they were lovers? How else could Jesus fuck Christ? My whole life has been a lie!”

Copley nearly chokes on his own spit, especially when he sees the bulging eyes of their enemy

every time Nicky picks up a stray, he gives them Copley so he wouldn’t be too lonely and even though Copley can’t keep all of them he now has two kittens, a pup and a chicken with vertigo

he, Joe and Nicky get passionate about gardening and whenever they visit Copley for missions, Nicky gives him offsets from some of their plants

as Copley realizes that Nicky is a big fan of musicals they visit one together and talk about the meaning of the songs and their interpretation afterwards, humming the songs in the car on the way back and Copley nearly crashes when Nicky nails every note perfectly

Nicky is happy to talk to someone who has found proof for what he said all along “We can do some good. We were meant to find each other. It’s like destiny” because they have a purpose, he answers every of Copley’s curious questions good-naturedly

they solve crossword puzzles together: Nicky always gives small hints when Copley doesn’t know an answer right away to help him without revealing the whole thing and Copley is able to impress Nicky with the range of his knowledge

both of them are the only ones that watch nature documentaries with true interest

at negotiations no one has a chance against Copley’s polite, controlled pokerface and Nicky’s blank expression or his death stare

when Copley nearly dies on a mission because he is buried under a collapsed building and is afraid to die, it is Nicky who holds his hand through a gap and talks calmingly to him

Nicky asks Copley to show him his research and expresses great interest and recognition for his data and persistence in searching

soon Copley has developed a soft spot for Nicky and can’t refuse him anything because honestly, everyone of the team has a soft spot for Nicky

Copley experiences first hand that a disappointed Nicky is a worst nightmare and even Andy tries her hardest to avoid it

Nicky is excited when Copley shows him his library and spends hours reading in there

in every safe house Copley makes sure to get them a usable kitchen and stocks up their groceries based on analyzing Nicky’s ingredients preferences before

[masterwcrk]

@valiantsword, 

moved from here because of being forced into beta editor.

    there are two certainties whenever clary comes back into their lives.  first, arthur remembers what heartbreak feels like.  that, in turn, reminds him why he closes himself off to the world around him.  centuries have turned his emotional skin to leather and being reminded that thorns can still wedge beneath is enough to bring him to his knees. the second, of course, is a conversation with nicky on all the reasons why this time arthur should take that leap to put his heart on a silver platter.  to this, arthur will most definitely deny he understands a damn thing the knight is talking about.

           i lost the capacity to love centuries ago, arthur always winks and pats nicky on the chest.

     every time she’s gone arthur lists all the reasons, to himself, why he should’ve said something.  most prominent among them is to finally know one way or another.  that way he could celebrate or move on, depending on the reaction.

     it takes a second too long to turn the knob once his hand lands on it.  it takes a few extra seconds beyond that to push the door open, both thrilled and dreading the face ready to greet him on the other side.

     clary is more beautiful every single fucking time.  it always boggles arthur’s mind that he could fall even deeper and more hopelessly in love but he does.  her radiance make him stop to watch the way she moves around him once the deadbolt is shut once again.  he takes in the way the lights glint off her hair and the feel of her very presence upon his skin, eliciting gooseflesh until a tingle shudders down his spine.

     the reaction is so visceral it brings a few unexpected tears to his eyes.  maybe one day he’l be brave enough.

                 one day.

     her voice brings a tired smile to his lips.  it’s easy to forget the tears when he looks up.  the immortal can’t help but reach out to gently cup clary’s cheek; allowing himself one physical reminder that she’s really here.

     “ well, “ his touch lingers but eventually arthur forces himself to pull back.  one, so he doesn’t make it awkward and two, so he can untie sheaths and holsters.  no matter how old he gets, the way the damned things press against his hips never gets easier.  “ as planned as it could.  we had to improvise a little because there were more bodies on the inside than we were lead to believe. “

     speaking allows him to get a handle on his emotions.  “ how’s it going with the journals? “

the way he touches her holds a reverence she's only ever felt traces of before, & she tries not to let her thoughts linger on it. each page of these journals are so meticulous, outlining each of her lifetimes as many remember them. the earliest entries are from Andromache's memories, then the rest are Nicky, or Joe. the one sole entry she knows belongs to Quynh without having to see the original handwriting had hurt as if the loss had happened recently & not so many lifetimes ago. but there are no entries from Arthur, not that she has noticed. she doesn't remember any of them ever being in his handwriting, & now that she's on the final book, it seems strange to her that the member of the guard she gravitates to the most would have had such a reserved presence from this process.

she's... trying not to linger on that, either.

' here, let me. ' guns are something new. she remembers her way around pistols to some degree, but even those had only been in the last two lifetimes. it takes her a moment to shoo his hands away, but eventually she manages to ease the mess of sheathes, holsters, & hardware inside of them off of him & set them aside to be cleaned later.

' so what I'm hearing is that something can still surprise you, even after all this time, ' the redhead teases. ' less exciting than your day, I assure you. ' there's only so many times she can read accounts of how they had found her just after she had fallen into some sort of commitment or another. each time, crossing paths after she had been married off or had already started some sort of family that kept her from traveling with them. what makes it worse are the notes that the only lifetime that hadn't happened, she hadn't crossed paths with them at all - that journal had been from her own memories, a lifetime later.

' it's... hard, ' Clary admits carefully, taking the moment to move out of his space & busy herself with making drinks for the both of them. ' I've never had the agency the rest of you have enjoyed. reading these really drives home how different my experience has been. ' & her age. that had been another change - each lifetime, finding her older, & older. something feels pivotal about this lifetime, though. in her experience, that's... not always good. the last time she had had this feeling had been before she had set aside her role as oracle & ended several lifetimes of prophecy. this time, the end might be a little more definite.

she's going to have to tell him eventually. maybe. there's a part of her that knows that will only bring more pain, & that's what keeps her from speaking the words. ' will the others be back tonight, or is it just the two of us? '

[regina-del-cielo]

“The Old Guard” Daemon AU: General Thoughts

I’m pretty much rambling out loud to myself, and I’m still looking up things for the individual Detailed Posts, but I wanted to set down a few General Things about my TOG Daemon AU (mostly to explain my thoughts beyond... “I don’t know I like the Vibes bro”)

the Guard’s daemons may settle during their first lives, but these people are borderline eternal (or have the potential to be, in Nile’s case). And despite their age they can still adapt pretty well to changing times. This is reflected by their daemons’ shapes

they’re all extant species (although some may have had a rough time in recent centuries in the wild), known by humans since basically forever, and are either ubiquitous (Nile’s), widespread in at least two continents, if not an entire hemisphere (Andy’s, Nicky’s), or an animal that despite its relative specificity is still recognizable as something familiar by people all over the world (Joe’s, Booker’s, Quynh’s, Lykon’s)

example: Quynh’s daemon is going to be a snake, although I haven’t decided which species yet. My strongest candidates atm are either some type of cobra or some pit viper endemic to Vietnam. Now, most of these were “scientifically” described by European zoologists only in the 1800s, and before Quynh was chucked into the sea nobody outside of Southeast Asia would have been familiar with her daemon’s specific brand of snake. But snakes have a very... conserved body shape and aspect. No matter the species, anyone who met Quynh and her daemon would have recognized him as one

(did her having a snake daemon influence the witch hunters’ decision on which woman to throw into the sea? Probably. The mentality that didn’t allow Nicky to become a priest because Reparata was a she-wolf would have gone Bonkers over a not-white undying woman with a snake daemon. Especially in the time of the witch hunts)

the Guard is composed of *Copley’s voice* extraordinary individuals, just a tiny bit terrifying (affectionate). They’re not war machines nor are they heartless, but even if they weren’t immortals they would be playing on a different league than all of us

that’s why my choices are mostly falling towards charismatic, culturally significant, ‘emblematic’ animals. They’re also either apex predators or pretty high on their natural food web

except for Booker’s, but his goose hasn’t been a prey Once in her life. Booker’s daemon knows no fear and is always ready to start a brawl. That bird coined the phrase ‘peace was never an option’ and lives up to it diligently.

paradoxically, globalisation has made having a ‘flashy’ daemon easier for them. People are exposed to nature documentaries of virtually every habitat on the planet since very young ages, and even a fairly small zoo will have its share of ‘exotic’ animals. There is so much choice in the modern world that most people’s daemons are simply an expression of their favourite animal, or one they just felt a kinship to during a formative period of their life. If someone were to question a member of the Guard about their large, predator daemon, they could get away with it by shrugging and saying ‘I just think they’re cool, man’

(and honestly, looking at which animals get most of the conservation efforts in our reality, it’s pretty obvious that in a Daemon AU iconic birds and mammals (mostly carnivores) would be more common in a modern age as people’s favourites)

(Nicky is still vaguely traumatized by that time in the 90s when a bunch of people stopped him to coo at Reparata instead of side-eyeing her in distrust)

(He may have cried when a kid told him he had ‘the coolest daemon EVER’ and said kid’s daemon changed into a wolf pup to mimic Reparata. And the kid’s parents just smiled and indulged their child instead of scolding them and dragging them away from his ‘bad influence’)

(Joe is Banned from watching nature documentaries set in the savannah because he always starts weeping when he hears the narrator explain how the animal his daemon is based on is on the verge of extinction)

(if the Guard regularly makes anonymous donations to wildlife conservation groups worldwide, that’s between them and the universe)

[gffa]

I swore for about ten entire minutes that I wasn’t going to do a set of recs for THE OLD GUARD, I was just going to watch the movie, indulge in a bit of fanart, and then I would be done. But then I was like HOW ABOUT I HAVE SOME FEELINGS INSTEAD? and here we are. So HAVE SOME FEELINGS ABOUT ANCIENT IMMORTALS AND REASONABLY ANCIENT IMMORTALS AND BABY IMMORTALS.  COME YELL ABOUT FEELINGS WITH ME, FANDOM. THE OLD GUARD RECS: ✦ An Unrecorded History by xpityx, joe/nicky, 1.1k    Joe closed the book and dropped it none too carefully on the table. He would have liked to have thrown it away—to prevent anyone else from reading it—but it was far too easy to make copies of books in these times, so he knew it would be no use. He also could not quite bring himself to discard something as precious as a book, no matter how poorly written it was. ✦ keep yourself alive for me by retts, joe/nicky, NSFW, 1.7k    Nicky grabbed Joe’s hand and pulled him towards the stairs, not that there was any resistance from Joe. ‘If I remember correctly, this one has two bathrooms, doesn’t it?’ ✦ let’s give them something to talk about by lacecat, joe/nicky & andy/nile, nsfw, 4.8k    In which Nicky and Joe take liberties with recounting history, because it’s fun. ✦ Family Dinner by dadvans, joe/nicky & nile, 2.4k    The only time Nile ever sleeps a full night and feels remotely part of herself is when she stays with Nicky and Joe, who shampoo brains out of each other’s hair in the shower and clean their guns on the couch watching Chopped reruns. ✦ one burning candle, one wind-whipped flame by Dialux, joe/nicky & andy, 5.1k    Yusuf dies, and dies, and dies, and lives, as well, for a thousand years. Nicolo’s by his side for all of them, and it’s not quite the love story of eternity, but it’s theirs: and that’s enough for them both ✦ Future Days by maroon, joe/nicky & andy/noriko, 2.1k    “Then why untie me?” The man grins, terribly amused, and awfully affectionate. Andromache wants to look away, but for some reason, can’t. Maybe because the look in his eye reminds her of herself, a lifetime ago. “Because my beloved is soft, and kind, and will flay me alive if he’d known I tied up a woman.” ✦ Islands of Hours by RC_McLachlan, joe/nicky, 1.5k    There eventually comes a lull, and so they go to Malta. ✦ take out by j_gabrielle, joe/nicky & nile, ~1k    It probably should bother her when Joe kicks the door to the flat open and promptly marches in to deposit their takeout on the living room table. All while he is tracking half-dried blood and mud on the shiny tile floors. “You, ah,” Nile says even as she hurries to pick through the night’s offerings. “They let you on the subway like that?” ✦ all a smooth plain, and the soil deep by inlovewithnight, andy & nile & joe & nicky, 2.1k    After London, they all need to rest. ✦ we are golden by retts, joe/nicky, ~1k    Joe lowers his gaze to the open page on his lap. The sketch is of a man on a charging horse, hair and beard whipping in the wind, sword in one hand and a shield in the other. The eyes in the drawing are the same eyes watching him now. His Nicolo. 'You were a hard fucker to kill back then, Nicky.’ ✦ An eagle’s old age, a sparrow’s youth by BakedAppleSauce, joe/nicky, 2.2k    Joe comes shuffling back into the room, heavy footsteps that mean he’s either tired, or not really trying, or both. Familiar as breathing. Nicky’d recognize him anywhere, walking among a million of strangers. In which some people are laying low for a while, in more ways than one. ✦ A Most Forgetful Death by RC_McLachlan, joe/nicky, 1.2k    “You’re an incurable romantic,” Nicky says, and though his expression doesn’t so much as twitch, Joe can hear the laughter languishing between the words, can feel it on his tongue and rubbing up against his teeth when Nicky meets him halfway to smear a kiss against his mouth. ✦ Luce e ombre by sheafrotherdon, andy & nile, 1.2k    The discomfort is so new that it startles her, and she searches her memory to remember a time before she was immortal: a time when a cut, a scrape, a bruise hurt for longer than a moment, long enough to interrupt sleep. The memories don’t come ✦ When I Am with You by takethisnight_wrapitaroundme, joe/nicky, NSFW, 5.4k    “You… would like to waste a thousand euros’ worth of champagne by pouring it all over me?” Nicky has to repeat it aloud to make sure he’s heard right. While spending some quality time together on vacation in France, Nicky has a surprise for Joe. And Joe, as it turns out, has a surprise for Nicky. ✦ the common tongue of your loving me by spokenitalics, joe/nicky, NSFW, 1.4k    “It’s just— Do you ever wonder how much we’ve forgotten?” Nicky asks, eventually. “How many names and faces and places have just… faded away from our memory?” ✦ i have loved you for a thousand years by owilde, ~1k    It’s him. Again. Yusuf shields his eyes from the blinding desert sunlight, staring into the near distance where a man is stood, alone, a harsh silhouette cut against the bright blue sky and peach-coloured sand. ✦ this is why by retts, joe/nicky, 1.2k    Small as it was, they had their own room in the London safe house, which was a good thing because Joe was prying open Nicky’s mouth with his fingers. Not with his tongue, much as Nicky would prefer it, but with three calloused fingers sneaking inside his lips as if Nicky wouldn’t wake up from the intrusion. He was on his back, Joe pressed closer to him than his own shadow. The slant of moonlight from the window illuminated Joe’s dark eyes as he bent over Nicky. Joe sucked in the corner of his mouth, a tell that he’d never shaken off all these long centuries. ✦ I Found Peace in Your Violence by j_gabrielle, joe/nicky, 1.5k    5 Times Joe and Nicky kill each other + 1 (of many) times they killed someone together ✦ life is very long by kaydeefalls, joe/nicky & andy & nile & booker & quynh & copley, 7.1k    Andromache tells him: “The Greeks used to have seven different words for love. Well. More, probably. But I remember seven.” She shrugs. “There are many ways to love one another, and life is long. We’ve time enough for them all. It’s the only thing that makes it worthwhile.” Nicky and his immortal family, over the centuries. ✦ take a breath by BeStillMySlashyHeart, joe/nicky & andy & nile & booker, 1k    Once they are safe, Nicky and Joe take a moment together. ✦ Between the Hour and the Age by hauntedjaeger (saellys), andy & nile & joe & nicky, 2.5k    “To the Art Institute of Chicago,” Andy echoes, “so that my breasts may be culturally appreciated in perpetuity.” She tips the bottle and lets out three drops. As they fall to the stone floor, Joe and Nicky rap their knuckles on the nearest pieces of metal: the other lantern for Nicky, the oxidized helmet for Joe. One rap for each drop. In another time, they might have struck their swords on shields. ✦ how we live by retts, joe/nicky, ~1k    Life, though, brings pain. Goddamn pain. Bullets that struck his cranium and pelvis – the big bones in the body – are forced out. The rest went through him, carrying organ tissue and muscle with them. Those lost bits have to be regrown. Bones realign and the ribs in his lungs retract so they can breathe again. So Nicky can breathe again. And when he breathes, he thinks, Yusuf. ✦ Paradeisos by Enneara, joe/nicky, 2.9k    Traveling through Greece with Yusuf after fleeing the Holy Land, Nicolò suffers a crisis of faith. ✦ The Language of Love by 1derspark, joe/nicky & andy/quynh & booker & nile, 4.5k    Or five times Nicky hears Joe speak his language and one time Nicky returns the favor. ✦ Le Vite by ScribeofArda, joe/nicky & andy & nile & booker, 8k    Nicky breathes out. “What did I miss?” he asks, staring out at the hills. “Why didn’t I see this coming?” After everything, after finding Nile and losing Booker and Andy’s new mortality, Joe is pissed off. Nicky is just tired. ✦ The god of my idolatry by Petra, andy/nile, NSFW, 3.4k    “You said you were worshipped as a god.” “I was.” Nile steels herself and asks, “Would you like to do it again?” Andy laughs and throws back the contents of her glass. “They don’t teach you pick-up lines in the Marines, do they.” ✦ love is not over by retts, joe/nicky & andy & nile, 1.3k    'Babe, do you know what this reminds me of?’ asked Nicky. Joe licked his lips and tilted his head to the side, gaze intent on the mole on Nicky’s cheek. 'What?’ 'The first time you drew me.’ ✦ Case Analysis by skeeno, joe/nicky & andy & booker & copley, 3.4k    It’s not totally out of the ordinary for the people Copley meets in his line of work to be extraordinary. But he’s intrigued by these four. ✦ compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience by Jack_R, joe/nicky & andy & quynh, 11.9k    ‘You are a shame to your countrymen and the lowest of the low,’ Yusuf said, ‘and your mother copulated with a dog.’ ✦ Everything in moderation (even moderation) by BakedAppleSauce, joe/nicky, NSFW, 6.1k    The novelty has worn off, of course, but it’s not the novelty that keeps anybody coming back, anyway. Novelty never sustains anything. ✦ What the Water Takes by xpityx, andy & nile & quynh, 1k    Here is a secret she will never write down. ✦ Stracciatella by ScribeofArda, joe/nicky & andy & nile, 4.8k    “None of us have any evidence of the ways we have died,” Nicky continues. “But you remember the fall, don’t you? You remember the first time you died, the way your blood spilled out as your throat was slashed. I remember the first time I died, when the love of my life drew his sword across my neck as I drove mine into his chest and we both fell to the sand.”

[in-tua-deep]

SO i watched the old guard and loved it and i have a habit of combining things i love and it’s 1am and i can’t get to sleep until i purge this from my brain i think SO consider this 

Five jumps in time into the apocalypse and - he dies. Of course he dies. Maybe it’s the time jump itself, managing to rip himself apart because he tried too much too soon. Maybe it’s the apocalypse itself that kills him. Regardless, he dies.

And then he wakes up. And he’s fine. And he continues on.

Except - he has weird dreams. He dreams of - of all these people? He dreams that they’re in the apocalypse as well. It’s weird. He would brush it off but, well, he keeps dreaming of them. Again. And again. And again. 

(He likes dreaming of them, honestly. When he doesn’t dream of them he dreams of ash and fire and his siblings dead and decaying and wailing at him for failing them.)

He continues to live in the apocalypse and years pass and - he’s not getting older. He cuts his leg open on some rocks, and it heals way too quickly. All of his injuries are like that, actually. 

(He spends a whole week starving to death over and over again once. It isn’t pretty. He doesn’t even know he’s dying.)

Eventually he comes to a conclusion - his time jump fucked him up. He’s in a permanent... stasis? Sort of? He keeps continuously returning to the state he was when he jumped through time, including his body now? Rejecting injuries? Presumably because he wasn’t injured when he jumped?

It makes sense to Five, shhh.

And then he gets picked up by the commission. and then he doesn’t shoot JFK. and then he goes home.

(He keeps dreaming about His People. They aren’t in the apocalypse when he isn’t, which is nice. They’re probably some weird manifestation of his subconscious, considering his brain keeps casting them as people during the time periods he’s visiting)

Now I know what you’re thinking - Five is dreaming about these glorious weirdos in the apocalypse, obviously they would try to find him because they’re dreaming about him as well, right?

See, the thing is this: Andy doesn’t remember the exact date she first had a dream about The Boy. 

(The Boy definitely deserved the capital letters, because he’s the weirdest enigma that they never solved.)

But she remembers her and Quynh being horrified because - the next immortal was a child? They freaked out about it and tried to write everything down they could remember to help them hunt the kid down.

And they tried - they did! for a whole three days! except after those three days the dreams just - stopped. cold. nothing new.

This was, of course, super super confusing. And maybe they would have written it off as a shared hallucination if it didn’t keep happening.

There’s no pattern to when they dream of the kid. It just happens. Sometimes a few times in a year. Sometimes there’s decades or centuries between dreams. The first time Nicky and Joe dream of him, Andy has to sit them down and explain that no, don’t worry about it. Yes she knows that it’s a child. No, he’s not a new immortal. They’ll stop dreaming about him in a few days, a week tops, it’s fine. No, she doesn’t know What The Fuck That Is About.

By the time Nile joins the team it’s sort of a weird inside joke. There’s longstanding bets about when the boy will pop up in their dreams again. It’s fine. Okay, so it’s weird, but their lives are already so goddamn weird.

(So imagine the old guard fresh in the apocalypse, no human life on earth. they’re dreaming about the boy again, and the only weird thing now is the consistency of it. maybe they’re in europe or something, but most of the planes have been destroyed in whatever-the-fuck took out the population of the whole ass world. it might have taken years to literally find and dig each other out of the rubble. yeah it’s weird the boy is not a frequent dream thing, but it’s not like it’s urgent.)

Anyway, Five jumps into his family’s courtyard and stumbles out, and eats and peanut butter and jelly sandwich, avoids questions about his age by rambling about quantum versions of himself, and goes to Griddy’s where he ends up getting attacked by commission goons and having to walk home barefoot because he had to ditch his shoes

(The Commission couldn’t put a tracker in his arm. His body kept rejecting them somehow, thanks to his... weird temporal nonsense. The Handler kept promising him that they’d find a way to fix him or whatever, but they never did. Assholes.)

Now, the Old Guard squad go to sleep and, thank you, start dreaming of Five in all his somewhat feral glory.

They bolt awake and - “You guys owes me so much money.” Nicky crows victoriously, because he totally won the pot on the next kid dream year, thank you very much.

And any other time that would be the end of it, because they’re used to these fleeting dreams of the boy.

Except Nile exists now. And of course she’s like, we have to find this kid.

Of course the others try to explain to her - except Nile points out a very important fact: it might have taken weeks or months or years to find other immortals back in the day due to travel times and lack of information and all that. But it’s 2019 baby. They have the internet and very fast plane travel. Did you have that when Booker was a baby immortal? no. it took them like, a day to go hunt Nile down though.

“You say you dream about him for a few days or a week or whatever.” Nile points out to the group’s dawning realization, “Well we have the power to get to him in a few days. So we can find him.”

“If we find him then we can never bet on him again though.” Booker points out, and Nicky who is in the process of gloating about his latest win (Nicky has won three times in a row motherfuckers) looks a bit crestfallen. Andy, on the other hand, just looks determined.

“Get off your asses.” Nile says firmly, spinning her laptop around and showing them the one (1) result for a “Griddy’s Diner” that she found that matches whatever the fuck the dream showed her, “We’re going to America.”

“Again?” Nicky complains, “I thought we swore to not go to America again for at least a century.”

(Until Nile’s family definitely dies, they don’t say.)

So they all begrudgingly go to America, during which time Five manages to get called potentially insane by his favorite sister, not get any sleep, bribe his brother to investigate an eye that doesn’t exist, and mourn losing his one lead to who the fuck started the apocalypse.

I don’t think Five or the og squad were expecting to actually meet.

But they’re hunting Five down and looking around and Five is pondering his next move and then just - across the street, their eyes meet.

“YOU.” The OG squad bellows, because Five has been a goddamn mystery for literally thousands of years.

“Me?” Five says, very confused, like someone who has definitely had trauma induced hallucinations and flashbacks whose dream characters decided to show up on the street outside his house for some reason.

And they go over to Five, and Five is like “wow what a weird hallucination to be having, maybe if i ignore it it’ll go away because that’s a healthy mindset to have (:”

and then one of them touches him and just - 

Five lashes out. It’s instinctive. He has a knife and he just - stabs. Automatically. and his dream person winces and steps back and - 

(He stabbed his dream person. Hallucinations don’t touch him they’re not supposed to touch him and they can’t be stabbed what - )

And then the dream person heals before his eyes.

“I probably deserved that.” Booker muses, grimacing at the hole in his new shirt thank you very much.

“You’re not real.” Five says a little too loudly and a little too insistently to sound at all convincing as he takes a step backwards.

“I’m not real? You’re not real!” Nicky butts in, slightly offended, “You’re the one that keeps - keeps vanishing!”

“Oh my god why are you all disasters.” Nile mourns putting her face in her palms as though she can block out her new weird family by sheer force of will.

“Hey, remember when you died?” Andy offers with a shrug which just makes Nile groan louder. “What’s that about? I’m not even shooting him this time.”

“You can’t shoot him, he’s a baby.” Joe gasps, gesturing towards Five’s thirteen-year-old self.

“I’m not a baby!” Five snaps, bristling on autopilot because the rest of his brain function is stuck on a repeat of “what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck”

“Baby boy. Baby.” Nicky backs his husband up, leaning against Joe and smirking.

“Am not!” Five growls, “And give me my knife back!”

“Finder’s keepers.” Booker says nonchalantly, spinning said knife in his fingers, “If you didn’t want me to have it then you shouldn’t have stabbed me with it.”

“It’s my brother’s knife, you can’t have it.” Five argues.

“Booker.” Andy says firmly, making Booker shrink a little like a scolded child, “Give the kid the knife back. How would you feel if I took your gun?”

“You wouldn’t take my gun.” Booker mutters, handing an increasingly confused Five the knife back, “I would simply shoot you.”

“Ooh,” Nicky snickers, “Fight! Fight! Fight!”

“Don’t encourage them.” Joe says, nudging at Nicky. Which would be fine if he hadn’t added in a slightly lower tone that they could all still hear, “Fifty on Andy.”

“That’s a sucker’s bet, my love.” Nicky laughs, pressing a kiss to Joe’s cheek.

There’s a beat of silence.

“No offense, but what the fuck is going on.” Five states rather than asks, clutching his slightly stolen knife (Diego didn’t even notice when he’s snagged it which honestly means he didn’t deserve to keep the weapon) tight to his chest. “Are you guys... with the Commission?”

“What the fuck is the Commission?” Joe does not whisper to Booker, who is supposed to be the research guy but he just shrugs because he’s useless.

Anyway that’s how the whole Old Guard squad winds up in Reginald Hargreeves creepy ass mansion trying to explain to an increasingly erratic immortal child that, yeah, he’s a little bit immortal. No it doesn’t have anything to do with his powers (powers?? powers??????? what the fuck i mean yes their lives are already so goddamn weird but there is a line and Booker draws it at teleportation what the fuck). 

What’s this about an apocalypse?

(When they asked Five for his age, they were not expecting a curt ‘fifty-eight, probably’. Yes they are now aware there is funky time travel involved - which honestly explains so much about the frequently vanishing immortal - but still. 

He looks baby but also he is baby. He’s younger than Booker!! Not even a century! They have two whole babies on the immortal squad !!)

“The world is going to end on April 1st.” Five explains, looking deeply uncomfortable. And afraid. 

(And young. So very terribly young. He’s been thirteen-years-old for a long time. If these people are right - he’s going to remain thirteen until his immortality, what, wears off? Which could be literally thousands of years in the future?

He has family god damnit. He doesn’t want to outlive them. He just - he just wanted to see them again. To save them.)

And honestly why not. Five has already demonstrated teleportation. Time travel does explain his random popping into their lives via dreams. Why not? And let’s be real, they have way much more to lose by not believing him than believing him.

“Alright let’s stop an apocalypse.” Andy says, clapping her hands together.

“You’re going to help?” Five asks in a small voice, because he had sort of resigned himself to going at it alone.

“Give me the number for the eye.” Nile says kindly, “We have someone we could contact about that sort of thing, or at the very least who can keep an eye out for when it is manufactured and let us know.”

(RIP Copley when he realizes he has to deal with anything involving the Umbrella Academy. I am sure they were a very deep thorn in the governments side for a long time tbh)

“Who The Fuck Are All These People In Our Living Room.” Luther asks, Very Loudly, with Allison close behind.

And yeah. No one really knows how the fuck to answer that, let’s be real. What are they supposed to say? Hey, sorry for crashing, we’re here to lowkey kidnap your newly re-found brother because surprise! he’s immortal! Because that would go over so well.

Anyway, so the Old Guard squad are just there like,, trying to teach Five about his newfound immortality (at least he’s got good at the whole “fuck cameras” thing during his stint in the commission, though admittedly there were plenty of mission from pre-camera times. ah, the age before technology.) and also adopt him? because being immortal means family and family means no one gets left behind (or forgotten, hello Quynh)

(okay yeah they tried to put Booker in time out that one time but after a few years they were just sad and everyone was texting him anyway so now it’s just something they bring up at every opportunity. Joe wants the first turn in the bathroom? Booker, you betrayed him. He was a lab rat, Booker. And on and on until Booker throws up his hands and gives in. Yes, fine, you can have the bathroom first.)

And the Umbrella Academy usually would leave Five to his own devices but... look. Five might have vanished for seventeen years or whatever but he’s still their brother and they can be surprisingly territorial.

At least some people are getting along like a house on fire.

(“You were a crusader?” Klaus asks with wide eyes, “How does that even work?”

“What, being gay?” Nicky asks, tilting his head, “It’s fine. I have a permit.”

“A permit.”

“Mmhmm. From the Pope and everything.”

“I kind of want to be you when I grow up.”)

I can’t tell if things would go more smoothly or if the fuck ups would be even more epic in proportion. On the bright side, the apocalypse probably wouldn’t happen because Andy and Nile immediately clock Leonard-Harold’s serial killer vibes.

(Leonard realizes they’re onto him and tries to kill them which is a big mistake lmao, bye bye Leonard)

It probably ends up in an all out war against the Commission honestly, and the OG squad and the Umbrella Academy teaming up to destroy it.

(“How is this even going to work?” Allison asks at one point, gesturing at Five and the old guard.

“Shared custody?” Joe suggests brightly before doubling over because Five has pointy elbows and is not afraid to use them.)

Andy and Five probably go feral together at one point and it sure is something to behold. 

“Now that is a kid who understand what a signal is.” Booker admires after a particularly large explosion happens. Nile just nods along because yeah. 

(“How come you guys get to call Five a kid without being stabbed?” Klaus complains.

“He isn’t even a century old. I’m 250 and I was the youngest until Nile popped up.” Booker shrugs.

“We’re in our 950s.” Nicky says, “If little Cinque does not want to be called a kid he should have been born earlier.”

“How old is hot axe woman?” Klaus asks, absolutely enraptured.

They OG squad all exchange a look and just collectively shrug, “Old as balls.”

“Besides,” Booker says dismissively, “What’s he going to do about it? Kill us?”

and that ends that conversation)

(They also don’t discuss how young Five is. How young he was when he died. How that’s going to effect him all his life. How he’s going to be old in years, but he’s always going to be thirteen in the same way that Nile is stuck in her 20s. Sometimes it seems like the immortals are getting younger and younger in age and... it sucks.)

anyway just. Old Guard and Umbrella Academy shenanigans as they stop the apocalypse and try to look after the semi-feral teenager they have been saddled with and figure out what comes next

[oldguardhc]

Old Guard hc #164

Nicky is always saying that he doesn’t need gifts, that Joe is a gift, so for Valentine’s Day, Joe combines two things Nicky loves, himself and chocolate! He has a special mold made and after weeks of learning how to temper chocolate, he makes the gift on February 13th while Nicky is out buying groceries.

Nicky is surprised, to say the least, when Joe presents his gift. His eyes go wide and they travel between Joe and the gift several times as he tries to find the right, well any, words.

“So?” Joe thinks that Nicky likes it. It hasn’t been three minutes of silence, so he’s still hopeful that this is the joyful silence.

“It’s beautiful,” Nicky chokes out and Joe pumps his fist. He knew Nicky would love it! He knew it! “But I can’t-I can’t eat this!”

“Sure you can! It’s milk chocolate.”

“It’s you,” Nicky emphasizes and duh. That is literally the whole point. “I would feel guilty.”

“You eat me ou-ow, okay okay, do you want me to make a cake with it? I can repurpose it!” Nicky snatches the gift of the table and hugs it to his chest. “Or not. I heard freezing chocolate makes it last long. And you know, I still have the mold, so I can make more.”

Nicky’s eyes light up. “More Joe’s?”

“More Joe’s,” he confirms. “As many you want.”

They don’t freeze the gift. Nicky has to close his eyes as he brings the mallet down the first time. His fear is quickly forgotten as he discovers the joy of hammering chocolate into tiny pieces.

Joe remembers what fear is as he watches his husband wack his chocolate head with a manic grin.

—

Of course, Joe doesn’t forget about the others. He makes four more busts, cookies and cream for Booker and Nile, dark chocolate for Quynh and ruby chocolate for Andy. Their faces are considerably less pleased. Well, half of them.

Booker is the grumpiest. “I see your ugly face everyday, why would I want to see it more?”

“My face is a gift,” Joe says, then, “I made the lips extra thick, don’t suck it off too fast.” He runs out of the room before the shoe can hit him in the back.

Nile is weirded out. “This is weird. You know this is weird right? Like really weird. Normal people don’t make chocolate busts of themselves.”

Joe shrugs. “Weird is a social construct.”

Andy and Quynh are ecstatic. “Chocolate!” They both shout. They immediately break off a decent sized piece for each other. After a minute of pornographic sounds, Andy gives him her impressed face and Quynh breaks off another piece. That’s the biggest compliment anyone could ever give him.

—

It doesn’t take long for Joe to regret the gifts. If he thought watching Nicky take a hammer to his chocolate head was disturbing, it has nothing on the others angrily biting into his chocolate face. They make eye contact and Joe wants to look away, but it’s like his neck is magnetically drawn to the horrific scene.

Joe will never forget Nile, sweet sweet Nile, glaring at him as she bites his nose off. There’s a satisfying crack that makes Joe wince and he promises to never put salt in her plants again.

Andy punches the bust when she’s upset with him. Her fist goes straight through his nose and out the other side. Occasionally, she goes from the top down. Every time, Joe swears that he won’t make her more, but then he remembers that it’s either his head, or the chocolate’s. He’s really good at tempering chocolate now.

Quynh claws pieces off. She curls her fingers and digs her nails in and Joe doesn’t know what bothers him more, the chocolate under her nails or that it’s his face (sort of) that she’s defiling.

Booker is an asshole and doesn’t even need to be upset. He’ll make strong eye contact while he gnaws on the chocolate until a piece breaks off. Then he’ll smile, teeth covered in a thin layer of cookies and cream and Joe doesn’t have the heart to tell him that he looks like an unhinged hobo.

On the bright side, Joe now knows how they would eat a head if they were zombies. Or cannibals.

[bookersebastien]

some holiday hcs for nile’s first christmas with the guard

it’s nile’s first christmas since becoming immortal and she’s watching the season approach as they travel around the world, watching those who celebrate put up lights and trees and she enjoys the stops they make in a snowy place

she’s missing her family even more, having been a daughter of a man in the military the holidays were probably hard to deal with while he was deployed and then after he died her mom and brother, they all clung to each other. and now she has none of them

they all notice the change in her demeanor and the way she admires the decorations and the families strolling the streets and shopping together and they form a plan

joe and booker are sent to pick a tree, joe uses booker as a height comparison to make sure they get one with a good height and then there is the inevitable struggle of them tying it to the roof of the car because they can’t stop arguing about how to do it and joe suggest multiple times that booker can just hang onto the roof and hold the tree down

booker does not like this idea, but in joe’s defense he’s nearly as big as the tree so he could probably do it - ends with joe driving very slow while booker sighs loudly in the passenger seat

quynh drags nicky to get decorations, she’s spent 500 years in the ocean, doesn’t matter whether she celebrates christmas, she’d absolutely love all the decorations and lights and tells andy, “we need that giant light up snowman andromache please”

also competitive quynh making sure their decorations are better than anyone else’s in the area

no one knows who the fuck lives in that apartment but they know they DO NOT fuck around with christmas decorations

nicky gets lost in the store, admiring all the lights and decorations and he ends up getting a matching pair of the ugliest fucking christmas sweaters you’ve ever seen in your life and one of those stupid hats with the elf ears on it

he doesn’t care much of the holiday for celebrating jesus or whatever, but enjoys the festivities and the chance to wear ridiculous clothing with joe

joe and booker return with the tree, booker grumbling something about a squirrel attack while they put the tree in their small living room

andy is out with nile, keeping her out of the apartment and walking around the city. i like to think they took her somewhere in europe to see the christmas markets and enjoy the snow and get the full idealized christmas experience, she’s from chicago and snow to her is probably an integral part of the season

they buy small little trinkets and sweets, nile just thinks andy is indulging her, i mean when is the last time andy celebrated any holiday so fully

quynh and nicky arrive with way too many decorations that it makes their apartment look even smaller but they don’t care

booker has made eggnog that’s just more booze at this point but no one cares, him and nicky have started a competition to see who can string lights up along the ceiling the fastest (nicky is winning because joe is sneakily undoing bookers)

quynh has the best time putting all kinds of random decorations on the tree, the general baubles but also she got one for everyone. booker gets a little flask ornament, and somehow she managed to find sword ornaments for joe and nicky and an axe for andy, though it doesn’t look the same, and she gets one for nile of deep dish pizza and the sears tower

nile and andy finally come back and nile is in complete shock, standing in the doorway staring at what might be the most insane collection of decorations she’s ever seen. there’s a snowman, the grinch (andy’s favorite holiday movie), so many stars and mini christmas trees, lights are strung up all around the ceiling and the tree is massive, covered in a random assortment of decorations and with quynh’s eye it looks like a winter wonderland

and then she spots the ornaments for her and then she starts crying and everyone moves in for a hug - she still has family to celebrate with they tell her

and then there are presents to open

joe gives nicky a collection of poems and sketches, which booker helped him bind into a little book and nicky gets joe a wonderful and carefully crafted tea blend reminiscent of an old favorite of his he hasn’t had in a 100 years and then brings out the sweaters which joe has a good laugh over before making andy take a picture of them

nicky made sure to get the rest of them sweaters too - him and joes are stupid puns like “oh snap” with a broken gingerbread or “feline festive” with a cat, booker’s has a dog, andy’s has something obscene written on it, quynh’s is patterned while nile gets one that says “i sleigh all day” after he learned what slay meant

nicky gives booker the ugliest fake money you’ve ever seen, a child could’ve done better and nicky tells him that’s his winnings from the last bet - he drew a poor imitation of himself on the bills (booker absolutely loves it)

quynh gets andy a new necklace to layer with the other, a small bow and arrow pendant hanging from it while andy gets her a locket so she can keep a photo of them inside 

quynh gets roller skates from booker and she’s so excited she puts them on immediately and nearly wipes out had andy not caught her, but she’s still smiling and absolutely giddy

booker gives andy an old bottle of whiskey he found in another safehouse, they’ve both already drunk two bottles of vodka and he’s put three bottles of bourbon in the eggnog already but that doesn’t stop them from immediately opening it

joe gives booker a jacket he stole from him and gets the most deadpanned look from him before booker pulls out joe’s gift and he did the same thing with some of joe’s art supplies

and then everyone turns to nile, andy’s got a gleam in her eyes as she hands over the long, delicately wrapped package and nile’s eyes widen as she peels the wrapping paper off

it’s her very own sword, andy got it made for her. it’s long and slimmer than something like nicky’s sword, and light enough she can use it one-handed if needed, it’s got her initials carved into the hilt and it fits comfortably at her side

the rest of the night is spent watching classic christmas films and more booze, games are brought out and they sing carols while tipsy, booker and nicky are once again competing and this time it’s to see who can fit the most candy canes in their mouth (no one wins this one when they both spit them out over everyone after laughing at each other), andy and quynh are dancing in the kitchen, joe and booker are enjoying the cookies and joe is taking pictures of everyone while watching nicky begin to give nile pointers about her sword

it’s their first christmas like this ever and i think they’d keep the traditions around for a while

[canonskyrissian]

the old guard au???

so I watched the old guard and my brain, being extremely predictable, went all "you could make a skyrissian au out of this" so off to planning it went

it hasn't really left the planning station and I'm still doing some changes but the team at the start is leia, han, luke, lando, and rey. finn would be in nile's role but I also keep changing his backstory because it's something I wanna do right (finn deserves it). he'd be a soldier though, but I'm debating where he should be from (would prefer he was not american)

I went about the backstories something like leia is maybe greek, han was a pirate in the caribbean in the 1630's, and rey fought in the finnish civil war in 1918 in the red army

lando and luke gave me a big headache for the longest time because I was all "isn't it enough that they're gay, immortal, and in love for a thousand years?" until I looked into roman history and then galaxy brained when I read about the marcomannic wars in the second century AD so I decided they first died in them in 180 AD and then it was like "so they're gay, immortal, and in love for almost two thousand years" lmao

I also figured ahsoka would take quynh's role, and that skeevy sheevy had something to do with getting rid of her (skeevy sheevy would be the final boss while hux would be merrick and kyle would be keane)

and I still don't know who would take copley's role. I'm kinda inclining on bodhi but I'm not sure yet

ask me about my wips

[tobebbanburg]

I posted 1,171 times in 2021

205 posts created (18%)

966 posts reblogged (82%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 4.7 posts.

I added 517 tags in 2021

#art - 241 posts

#lmmbingo - 54 posts

#the old guard - 47 posts

#richard - 37 posts

#ask - 25 posts

#nicolo di genova - 25 posts

#tog fanfic - 25 posts

#luca marinelli - 23 posts

#joe x nicky - 21 posts

#yusuf al kaysani - 19 posts

Longest Tag: 132 characters

#meanwhile also picture andy in a vinyard somewhere with quynh getting shitfaced off bad fruit wine and reading the latest periodical

My Top Posts in 2021

#5

Still thinking about Nicky and Joe letting the old man side come through even though they look 30 and can’t get the image of them shuffling off to bed together dressed like this out of my mind:

157 notes • Posted 2021-11-27 20:15:27 GMT

#4

A ficlet based off a post I made earlier about Joe and Nicky swapping sun/moon imagery with each other. I could imagine canon Joe with rings or necklaces with the moon incorporated into them, or AU Joe with moonstone earrings or moon phase tattoos, but I wasn’t sure what would fit Nicky. And so I wrote this:

“What’s your favourite colour?” Claudia asks, her voice pulling Nicky out of the light doze he’d fallen into as their train speeds through the countryside.

“Hmm? Oh, I don’t really have a favourite colour,” he says, offering the child a rueful smile.

“Everyone has a favourite colour,” she tells him firmly. Nicky laughs.

“How about... blue.”

Claudia grins. “Blue is a very nice colour. Probably my second favourite.”

“What’s your first favourite?”

“Red,” Claudia says decisively. “Like strawberries.”

She pulls down the little tray table from the seat in front of her and solemnly lays out a series of brightly coloured threads, selecting a light and a navy blue from her hoard.

The bracelet making kit had come from Andy, who’d been waiting for them at the train station and had clearly spent too much time in the newsagents.

“It’s a long journey, and kids get bored,” she’d said, giving Claudia a grin as she handed the kit over. Nicky decided not to mention the colouring book and ziplock bag of Lego he already had in his backpack- Andy seemed pleased with herself, and Claudia was delighted with her gift.

“I’m going to make Mama one when I see her again,” Claudia chatters as she starts to tie knots in the thread. “Her favourite colour is purple. She has a lot of bracelets already, but I think she’ll like mine.”

“I’m sure she’ll love it,” Nicky replies, silently relieved that Joe had messaged not half an hour earlier to say that he’d already taken Claudia’s mother to the safe house. Claudia seems blissfully unaware of the danger she and her family are in, and Nicky would like to keep it that way.

Claudia hums as she twists the threads together, and Nicky is almost on the verge of drifting off again when she asks: “What charm do you want?”

Nicky opens his eyes to find that she’s upended the small box of brightly coloured plastic charms onto the table. There are hearts, and rainbows, and animals, and...

“Could I have this one, please?” Nicky asks, pointing to the charm he’d like.

Claudia nods, and threads it onto the bracelet, tying it into place.

“Here we go,” she says triumphantly, holding out the finished bracelet. “Gimme your hand.”

Nicky obligingly holds out his hand and lets her ties the bracelet around his wrist, thanking her as she sits back to already start work on another. He smiles, watching her grab the purple threads, and touches the yellow smiling sun charm on his bracelet as he closes his eyes once again. He’ll be with Joe again soon.

159 notes • Posted 2021-04-22 20:13:08 GMT

#3

Today in niche content no one asked for: The Old Guard as crimes and misdemeanours of my family over the years

Andy: Forged Lebanese driving license that turned into an underserved British license

Nile: Smuggled a shot of vodka into a football game by disguising it in a tampon wrapper

Joe: Scaled the walls of the British embassy in Egypt in order to steal their flag and humiliate them

Nicky: Accidentally stole a hymn book from Church because he got distracted and forgot he was holding it

Booker: Started a Victorian dating agency that scammed people by promising to find them a perfect match but in actuality just took their money and ran

Quynh: Diamond theft

203 notes • Posted 2021-04-27 17:38:37 GMT

#2

@kiaya mentioned that between Marwan’s pecs and Luca’s thighs they make a top+bottom pair, and so pyjama sharing happened:

Andy, Nile was pretty sure, predated shopping lists. Which went some way to explaining why the scrap of paper she handed to Nile a) wasn’t even a list and b) made no sense at all.

“Okayyyy...” Nile mused as she turned the paper round, making sure she hadn’t missed anything. “Well first of all, you don’t just ‘buy an internet’.”

Andy made a dismissive noise and handed Nile another 500 Euro note as if that solved the issue. Nile didn’t have the energy to argue the point, and instead moved on to her next question:

“I’m not sure I can get Pirozhki here either, this village only has one store and it’s pretty tiny. And French.”

“Just do your best,” Andy said warmly.

“And,” Nile continued, hitting her stride, “you’ve written ‘2 pyjamas’ when there are, in fact, four of us.”

“Yes, but I don’t wear pyjamas,” Andy pointed out.

“That still doesn’t add up.”

“Oh you don’t either? Make it just the one set then.”

Nile took a long, slow breath. Maybe either Nicky or Joe already had a pair, or like Andy didn’t subscribe to the notion of night clothes. Either way, asking questions about the ‘list’ only seemed to confuse things further, so she grabbed her jacket and headed out into the cold.

*****

Joe was only wearing pyjama trousers. Nile felt a little bad.

“I’m sorry, did the top not fit?” she asked. “Sometimes people try things on and put them back in the wrong places, I should’ve checked the label instead of trusting the hanger.”

“No, no, it fits perfectly,” Joe reassured her with a smile. “Thank you, Nile.”

Maybe Joe just didn’t like wearing tops in bed. Nile had an ex like that- he always complained about overheating and never wore any sort of tshirt to sleep. She settled back onto the sofa and thought no more of it, working her way through a bowl of what she thought was granola but may well have been bird feed. Her French was a little rusty and the store had been laid out in a similar fashion to Andy’s list: anything and everything spread out in a jumble.

“Good morning, Nile,” Nicky greeted her as he ambled into the kitchen.

“Mornin’,” Nile replied, then froze for a second as everything finally clicked into place: Nicky was wearing the pyjama top. Ah. That made sense.

“What makes sense?” Joe asked, handing Nicky a cup of coffee.

Damn, Nile hadn’t realised she was thinking aloud.

“I just thought it was weird, initially, Andy telling me just to buy one pair of pyjamas for the two of you.” Nile swallowed her bird feed. “But this makes sense. It’s kind of cute, really.”

“Mmm,” Joe agreed absently, his eyes firmly fixed on where Nicky’s top rode up as he reached up for the bowls on the top shelf. He was wearing boxers underneath, thank goodness, but the way Joe’s eyes glazed over it was like Nicky was wearing nothing at all.

“Told you the top fitted perfectly.”

448 notes • Posted 2021-02-08 16:28:20 GMT

#1

Bingo prompt 5: pasta. Make of this what you will.

804 notes • Posted 2021-06-06 11:05:03 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

[cinebration]

Written in DNA (Booker x Reader) [Part 3]

Booker wakes up in an unusual position.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Epilogue

Tagged: @lucy-sky​, @city-of-weird​

Warnings: none

Gif Source: dcnnatroya

Booker woke slowly, painfully. His head pulsed with each heartbeat. His tongue felt dry and gummy in his mouth, yearning for liquid relief.

His eyes peeled open.

The ground was moving beneath him. He stared down at it, struggling to orient himself. How could he see it do that when he was stationary?

Touch was the last of his sense to reawaken. He felt an arm wrapped around one of his thighs, his right wrist held in a hand. Something hard pushed into his chest, not quite uncomfortable.

He was being carried.

Booker tensed involuntarily.

“Awake now?” you asked.

He lifted his head and glanced aside to see your face in close profile.

You stopped walking abruptly and slung him off your shoulders with the ease of someone slipping off a backpack. He stumbled as his feet hit the ground, hung onto you for dear life.

It felt like grabbing hold of a pole. You didn’t so much as move as he unintentionally yanked on your arm to right himself.

“Are you a robot?” he heard himself ask.

You laughed. “No.”

The early morning sunlight chose to lance through the swaying tree tops, assaulting Booker’s eyes. He squeezed them shut, wishing he would wake from this strange dream.

You were still there when he opened them again.

In natural lighting, you seemed…normal. Ordinary. There was something deep in your eyes that he couldn’t quite see in the light, but you stood with a casualness that belied what he had experienced so far.

“Look, you basically went to a lot of trouble to break me out,” you said. “So I figure, I can go with you to see whomever your boss is, that way you don’t get in trouble.”

Booker frowned. “Why?”

“Because I owe you for opening the door. Plus, it’s been my first time out here in…ten years, I think. And I don’t have any friends, so.”

“So…”

“So right now, you’re my touchstone to the world. TV only taught me so much about what the world’s like right now, and we both know it gives a biased view of things.”

The meaning of your words sunk in as Booker watched you start off in the same direction you had been traveling when he had woken. Ten years away from the world?

Ten years trapped in that room?

In his two-hundred years on the planet, nothing had been as crazy as this.

He debated running off in another direction, but something told him you would hunt him down with all the skill of an apex predator. Why he thought this, he wasn’t sure, but you hadn’t killed him. Yet.

He still had to deliver you to Quynh…

Booker trudged after you.

~~

You had been following the road via the woods the whole night. When you finally stepped onto the asphalt road just outside of a mid-sized town, you had traveled fifty miles with Booker on your back for eight hours over uneven terrain.

Booker did the math as he trailed behind you. Fifty miles over eight hours meant you had averaged six miles an hour—or a mile every ten minutes.

He weighed about 180lbs.

It shouldn’t have been possible. Then again, very little he had experienced with you seemed possible.

Probable, he corrected himself. It wasn’t probable, but the…things had happened. He couldn’t ignore that.

You headed straight for the nearest diner. It hung just on the outskirts of the town, catering to overnight truckers. By the time Booker reached the door, you were already inside, ordering right at the counter.

“I ordered for you,” you said as he stepped up beside you. “Mind if we sit in a booth? I need to rest my back.”

Booker shrugged and followed you to the booth in a corner. You sat with your back to the wall, your position giving you a full sweep of the establishment.

Training, Booker noted, slipping into the bench seat opposite you.

A waitress strode over and poured out a mug of steaming coffee for Booker.

“Leave the pot,” you said, smiling.

The woman arched an eyebrow but set the pot down on the cracked tabletop. “Food’ll be right up.”

“Thank you.”

Booker watched you scan first the room, then the parking lot through the window. Your gaze settled on him after you were satisfied.

There was something unsettling about your stare. It wasn’t like you were looking through him. It seemed more like you were processing him like a computer crunching data.

He itched beneath that stare.

“How old are you?”

The question caught him off guard. “Two hundred years old, give or take.”

“How many times have you died?”

Something writhed within him. “Too many.”

The waitress returned, a tray laden with plates balanced on her hand. She set the dishes out on the table with practiced swiftness: waffles, pancakes, eggs, sausage, bacon, hash browns, toast. The whole shebang.

You smothered the waffles in butter and maple syrup. The first forkful went in your mouth. Your eyes fluttered closed, your back slumped against the seat. The ecstasy on your face almost brought a smile to Booker’s face despite his confusion and mistrust.

“I haven’t had these in forever,” you said. There were almost tears in your voice.

Booker forked some eggs and toast onto a plate. He ate slowly as you devoured your meal. Somehow you seemed to relish each bite despite the pace at which you ate.

If he didn’t know any better, he would’ve thought you were starving.

At last, on the second plate of food, you slowed. You finished another plate before you pushed the empty platters aside. Leaning back against the seat, you resettled your attention back on Booker.

“Are there others like you?”

His chest constricted. “Yes,” he answered, glancing away. “Are there others like you?”

A pause. Then: “I don’t know. I imagine so. I’m not exactly a top-quality specimen.”

“What does that mean?”

The waitress sauntered over. “Can I get you anything else?”

“No, thank you,” you said. “Just the bill.”

The woman set the bill down with a flourish. You looked pointedly at Booker.

“What?” he asked.

“I don’t have money.”

“Of course you don’t.” He pulled out his wallet and counted out the necessary cash.

You reached over and pulled a ten-dollar bill out of the billfold before he could close it. “For the waitress,” you explained. “I have to use the bathroom. You gonna run out on me?”

Booker met your intense gaze. “No.”

You made a sound in your throat but got up and headed toward the restrooms anyway. Booker followed a moment later, realizing he needed to piss.

The restroom was thankfully empty. Booker stepped up to the urinal and tried to relax. His body still ached. How long had it been doing that? Maybe since before he had been exiled from the group. The thought poisoned his thoughts and soured the food in his stomach.

Shaking himself, he zipped up, flushed, and went to the sink. The cool water felt restorative over his hands. He splashed it onto his face, risked a glance in the mirror. His broken gaze reflected back to him, fractured by grief and shame and self-loathing.

He looked away.

The door to the bathroom opened. He glanced up to se you in the doorway.

“What?”

“We should get moving,” you said.

“You can wait a minute.”

“I’m a multi-million-dollar project. Waiting isn’t an option. They’ll come for me.”

Booker read the warning in your eyes and the tension in your voice. He turned off the faucet and snatched up some paper towels to dry his hands and face.

The government would want you back. And they’d love to get his hands on him, too.

He wasn’t going to stick around for that.