#yall shojld prove Rae wrong and totally ignore this

[the73rdpostscript]

The Low of Your Life Will be Art Soon

Un-beta'd and unresearched.

(No. Seriously. I cannot emphasize enough how much I did not research the 1100s for this.)

Nicky sits at the table, staring blankly at the loaf of bread he meant to cut. Its a picturesque thing - a perfect shade of honey-brown with a sheen on top. They did well making it, but then again they've have years to get it right. And there are even more years ahead; more than he can comprehend at the ripe old age of 80.

He is not looking at the floor, keeping his eyes studiously trained on the bread and not the knife. Anyone walking in might think he doesnt know where the knife fell, but he does. It's all he can think about.

Nicky couldnt forget the knife anymore than he can forget the blood on the dirt or the way the little child had looked - pale and still.

Andromache had handled most of the social easing. She had spoken to the mother and offered comfort while Joe and Nicky had done the burying, and Quynh had asked the men of the village about housing.

So now they stay in this home - bartered for them and safe for the next season of labor.

They come and go from this place of safety while the child's body lays in the ground. And Nicky is here at the table, alive and unable to feed himself or his family because he cannot hold a knife.

They're on a self-imposed break from aiding armies. Andromache and Quynh spoke of building their trust and teamwork. But that is easier said than done now that chores have all been taken and evenly spread.

With four people and one home the work is lessened considerably. Before, Nicky could have spent the whole afternoon making enough bread for him and Joe to split, but instead they are already stocked for the next few days and he is here - staring at it instead of preparing it to be eaten. Which makes him both dangerous and useless.

"Nicky. Why is our knife on the floor?" Andys voice interrupts the wave of rising guilt and Nicky swallows.

"I'm punishing it." He tries, affecting humor where he feels none.

"What did it do?" Andy asks holding his gaze with her own and giving no quarter when he tries on a smile.

When he opens his mouth, no response comes out.

"Okay." She says, stepping forward and pulling him up gently by rhe arm.

"Andromache-"

"You're not doing yourself any good sitting here."

Leading him from the house, she shouts something unintelligible at Quynh where the other woman is sparring with Joe. Joe spares Nicky a questioning look, and Nicky tries to shrug but the gesture looks half insane as the yank of Andys hand throws his shoulders up without his permission. As they storm towards the village, Nicky sees Joe still watching him from the yard - clearly trying to talk to Quynh while he watches the two of them storm off.

"Andromache we have to eat soon," Nicky argues, walking along to keep up with her regardless of the protests hes making. He learned long ago that when Andy is moving you follow her and argue on the way.

"There will be food where we're going."

"Joe-"

"Is fine without you," She retorts, and the words shut him up immediately. She is right, after all.

So they march down the road for the mile or so it takes to get to town, where she directs him to a house hes never seen before.

A woman he recognizes answers the door and greets them both, welcoming them inside after Andy explains that they're here to help with the [bread making]

The woman - who kindly reminds Nicolo that her name is Anna - leads them inside and takes over where Andromache started, directing Nicky to sit in the open space on the floor. There, the two women on either side of him make tittering comments to themselves in the local dialect, too fast for him to catch. They show him what they're doing, and Anna occasionally calls out clearer instructions from somewhere else in the room.

It takes a full hour for him to feel comfortable with the motions, and another hour before they finish making enough. His arms feel well worked - the muscles unfamiliar with the small changes in an otherwise familiar pattern of motion.

Around him, the women talk and laugh. Every so often one of them will aks him a question, and they will all laugh or murmur at his awkward attempts to respond clearly. When the subject of his relationship status comes up, he thinks of sleeping beside Yusuf under the stars - traveling side by side. And he thinks of the disgust in Joe's eyes the first time they argued over the fire, the way his lip had curled at Nicky's defensiveness of his people - his fellow murderers.

He says none of this. He says he is still waiting for the right one, and the responding choke he hears from farther into the room alerts him to Andromache's presence. She's been settled into a chair by the window - working on something he cannot see with Anna. The look on her face is at once smug and indifferent - an expression Nicky has many times considered to be not dissimilar to how God might look at him if he could ever reach the afterlife.

The woman to his left - Elsa - pats his arm and finishes saying something about her very single daughter. Nicky feels himself struggling for an appropriate tone to respond with. But before he can try another woman in the group interrupts and he stays silent as the chaos rises and falls again like a wave - his own part in the process lost to the personal gripes of the community.

Its well past dark when they leave. Andy is quiet beside nicky in a way he has learned to interpret as content. It often baffles him, how easily she slips into comfort or ease - even in the midst of horrors or boredom. In some ways she reminds him of priests and Fathers. But then she speaks and he can't see any similarities at all.

"Thank you. For bringing me there."

"You're welcome."

They walk farther towards home before he asks "When did you set that up?"

"We always ask what may need to be done when we bargain."

And that stops him in his tracks.

Andy walks on a little farther, before pausing and turning to look back at him. One of her feet is still turned forward - pointing towards their temporary home.

"I have stopped asking," Nicky observes, feeling numb with the disgust for himself.

For the first few months that Andy and Quynh traveled with them, he asked incessantly about how he could help. It seems that somewhere in the past few weeks, he stopped.

Andy hasnt said anything since he stopped, so he clears his throat. "I've stopped asking how I can be helpful."

With a shrug, Andy says, "I hadn't noticed." And that revelation alone feels like a slap to the face.

He wants to argue - wants to ask how she didn't see his uselessness, his selfishness. But her face is serene in the moonlight, and it occurs to him that nothing he can say right now will matter much to her in the long run. These are only thoughts, only words and observations. Andromache values what she sees - what he does.

He can't say anything now to change his lack of action over the past few weeks. And even if he could it would only assuage his own guilt.

With a sigh, he begins walking again, and as she walks alongside him once more, he swallows the bitter taste in his mouth.