Chapter Text
~ Nicky ~
Two days. It’s been two days of being strapped to this cold, hard table and subjected to having parts of his body repeatedly removed and injected with god only knows what. Two days of watching his beloved being sliced and diced to the amusement of that monster Kozak. She says it’s all for science but she taunts them while she does it, she’s enjoying it.
In fact, she looks beyond delighted right now as she watches the skin she just sliced off of his wrist regrow and stitch itself back together. “How fascinating, the soulmark comes back perfectly with the regrown skin..” she trails off as she starts tapping away on her tablet.
It’s all been horrible, of course it has. No one enjoys torture, and this certainly isn’t his first time, but messing with his soulmark brings a rage to him like no other. It is sacred, not just to him, to most people. Soulmarks are supposed to be revered.
He has walked this earth for over a thousand years and he can remember every single person he has ever met that hasn't been respectful of soulmarks. Even the worst of humanity has always held some sort of reverence for them.
This feels blasphemous.
He looks to his left, over to Joe, he still hasn’t come back to himself yet. His poor husband has just been subjected to Kozak experimenting with stopping his heart in different ways. He looks for the matching soulmark on Joe’s left arm, he can’t quite see it from here so he lifts his head as much as he can until he can just make out the mark. It’s reassuring, even after all these years, it settles something in him to see the matching mark on his soulmate's wrist.
All soulmarks are beautiful - of course they are. Everyone is born with one although it’s hard to decipher what it’ll be for the first few years.
They’re always on the left arm, usually below the elbow and they’re more often than not black but apart from that they’re unique and meaningful.
His and Joe’s symbolises so much more than just being soulmates fated to be with each other. It symbolises fidelity and loyalty, it symbolises rebirth and resilience. He’s always thought it very fitting for two immortal soulmates.
Joe stirs next to him and groans as he comes back to himself. Nicky looks on helplessly, waiting. Finally he opens his eyes and immediately seeks out Nicky.
“Habibi, how long this time? It’s getting boring, no?” His voice is groggy and he huffs a small laugh and closes his eyes briefly. When he opens them again he clocks Nicky's left arm and his eyes widen and snap up to him in an instant. “She cut off your soulmark?” He sounds horrified and disgusted.
He looks murderous.
Nicky looks down his left arm at where the last bit of skin is knitting itself back together. He lets out a relieved breath as he takes in the full soulmark for the umpteenth time. It starts at the lower part of his forearm and wraps diagonally around his wrist in an intricate design of delicate ivy. It really is beautiful and he’s beyond relieved to see it in one piece again.
“Science..” he spits out while looking over at Kozak. She doesn’t even acknowledge him, just keeps tapping away on that god damned tablet.
Joe opens his mouth to say something but is cut off when the door to the bright and sterile lab bursts open and two figures are half dragged, half pushed inside.
Wait, is that Andy?
And Booker?
No, no no no, what are they doing here?
And where is Nile?
He doesn’t dare voice this out loud. She’s so new and if they don’t know she exists he is not about to clue them in. He really hopes she’s as far away from this mess as possible.
He watches on helplessly as they’re both roughly pulled further into the lab. Andy looks resigned and disappointed - no surprise there, this isn’t exactly the best situation they’ve been in. Booker is looking at the floor and mumbling quietly to himself. Nicky can’t fully make out what he’s saying but he catches little snippets “..wasn't s’posed to be like this.. s’posed to happen.. why isn’t she.. wh-what.. have I..”
They’re both manhandled and secured onto matching ‘tables’ - the same ones Joe and Nicky are currently strapped to. Booker seems to snap out of whatever was happening as the last bond goes around his ankle. He jerks to the side and stares at Andy in horror. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because that's the issue right now Booker, why didn’t you tell me what the hell was going on, eh? You sold us out Booker... you sold us out, and for what?”
What is she talking about? Booker sold them out? No, that can’t be-
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this! This was not planned!”
Oh god, oh no, Booker what did you do?
“You selfish piece of shit!” Joe shouts. He’s raising up as much as he can to look over Nicky and Andy as he starts screaming at Booker. He’s switching between languages and calling him every name under the sun.
Nicky is just as confused and angry but this isn’t helping anything.
“Amore mio, that’s enough.”
Joe is fuming, he can see the rage radiating off of him, all wild eyed and frantic, “It bloody well is not en-”
He looks at his husband, his soulmate, the man that has been by his side for millennia. They don’t always need words to communicate and thankfully this is one of those times. Joe looks at him, first in anger, then in disbelief and then in resignation. He huffs out a breath and flops back heavily onto the table.
“What would you know of the weight of all these years alone? You and Nicky always had each other.. right?” His voice breaks slightly as he says that last part. “And all I had was my.. grief..”
Fucking hell.
Kozak approaches Andy, needle in hand, probably going to take the same ‘samples’ she’d taken from himself and Joe when they first arrived. Her hand drops to her side though as she demands, “Why isn’t she healing?”
What?
He looks to her and she meets his eyes with a sad smile. Nicky gives what he hopes is an understanding smile in return. Booker is mumbling again, “..killed her.. I killed her..”
Merrick is called to the lab and he’s even more volatile than Kozak. He starts spouting bullshit about how he can ‘make anything happen’ and how he’ll ‘keep them alive for as long as it takes’. Nicky tells them that it’s no use, it’s her time, that nothing can truly live forever. Kozak’s having none of it, she’s shouting away in Romanian and he tunes her out.
Once Merrick storms out and she’s calmed down somewhat and taken whatever bloods and biopsies she decides she needs, she moves onto Booker. She starts cutting away his jacket and t-shirt to get to more skin - just like she had with himself and Joe, probably so she can start slicing pieces off of him too.
At least Andy’s mortality has saved her that horror for today.
Once his layers are off she looks down at his left arm that is currently wrapped from wrist to elbow in black fabric.
She’s probably wondering why he’s covered his soulmark. Not many people do, usually only if one of them dies and it becomes too painful to look at but even then a lot of people take comfort in still being able to see it. Andy did, she’d needed to see it. To know that it was there and always would be so she never covered the lisianthus flowers that matched Quynh’s.
Booker, on the other hand, had always had his covered. In the early days it had been with leather bracers but over the years it had changed. Nowadays he has it wrapped up. Always the same, elbow to wrist in tight black cotton.
They’d all assumed it was because of his wife passing. Maybe having to look at it for so long after was just too much for him - he certainly wouldn’t be the only one to do it.
They’d all tried to talk to him about it over the years, especially early on, but he was adamant he didn’t want to discuss it. It was off limits for him. They respected that. She was his wife, the mother of his children and he had loved her with all of his heart and soul.
Kozak rolls her eyes and picks up a smaller pair of scissors. She takes hold of the top part of the material and instantly Booker starts trying to move.
“No, NO, leave it.. leave it on.. you can do whatever you need to do without taking it off..”, He’s shaking his arm as much as he can but it’s strapped down so it’s not helping much at all. “Please, please.. leave it..”
His arm starts bleeding from little cuts caused by the scissors as he frantically jostles about. His breathing picks up rapidly and all the colour drains from his face. Jesus, he sounds like he’s about to have a panic attack. He’s always been protective of it but Nicky’s never seen him like this.
“For fucks sake Booker, what does it matter. You wanted this, no?”
Booker’s head snaps to Joe so quickly he’s surprised he doesn't hear anything break. The panic is still in his voice but so is something else, he can’t quite place it though, “You weren’t supposed to be here! None of you were supposed to be here!”
What?
Booker’s eyes snap back down to his arm as the covering starts coming loose in choppy strips. His breathing becomes incredibly shallow and he looks back over to his left where he can see the rest of them.
“Close your eyes, please..” he chokes on a sob, “..Please, please, please.. don’t look.” he continues in French and that's when Nicky finally hears in his voice what he couldn’t before.
He’s pleading.
Andy looks absolutely bewildered and Joe is muttering, “what the fuck”.
The covering finally falls away and all of a sudden Booker stops moving. Nicky has never seen Booker so still in all the centuries he’s known him. His eyes have gone completely blank, staring off to the side. He looks like he does when he dies, he knows he hasn't though, his chest is still moving. Up and down, up and down, much slower than it was just a minute ago but it's moving.
It’s like he’s not there at all though, like he’s completely removed from himself.
Kozak lets out a quiet gasp as she looks at his arm closer. She’s excitedly muttering to herself in Romanian again. He can’t see anything except Booker’s elbow with Kozak’s lab coat in the way but why does she sound like that? Is there something wrong with Booker’s soulmark? Is that the real reason he’s always kept it covered?
Nicky looks over at Joe to ask him what he thinks when Andy lets out a quiet “Oh my god..” He looks over at her questioningly and her eyes are wide and filling with tears as she stares back at him. “Don’t look-” she starts to say but he’s only human, his eyes drift down of their own accord. He honestly can’t help it.
“Is that real?” Comes Joe’s strangled voice from beside him.
Nicky can’t answer, he can’t move, he can’t take his eyes off of Booker's arm that he can see, for the first time in over two hundred years. The arm that has ivy wrapped around its wrist.
“I am going to guess from all of your reactions that you did not know what this was.. “ Kosak looks way too pleased with herself. She’s running her fingers across the mark on Booker’s wrist while he stays eerily still. “..interesting..”
She doesn't hesitate. She takes a scalpel and starts to cut at the skin around it, just like she had with his own. She starts at the top on one side and works her way around his wrist all the way to the bottom where it wraps around. Then she does the same on the other side of the mark.
She then cuts the skin away from his arm and holds up the mark to inspect closer. It’s horrifying, she’s holding a strip of skin about two inches wide and ten inches long inspecting a soulmark she just cut off of someone's body.. Booker's body.
And she’s smiling.
What makes it worse is Booker doesn’t react. Not through any of it. Oh god, he’s going to be sick. Booker, is his soulmate? Their soulmate? How is this possible? How did they not know? Why did he never tell them? He obviously knew. It’s not like Nicky and Joe hide their own marks.
So many questions and yet he can’t make his mouth move. He can’t stop staring at Booker’s wrist where it’s currently missing skin and steadily bleeding onto the floor.
He can hear the individual drips of blood fall and then splash onto the tiled floor below.
Drip.. drip.. drip..
It’s horrifyingly hypnotic. He wants to look away, he wants to tear his eyes away and not be witness to this sickening scene.
It’s Kozak that finally has his eyes wandering away. She’s making her way over to Joe, scalpel in hand and a look of concentration on her face. His soulmark is removed too, exactly the same way his and Booker’s had been. He’s so stunned he barely makes a sound.
She’s smiling to herself as she leaves the lab with three ‘samples’ of skin, all showing the same soulmark. The door closes with a loud thunk and this seems to break Joe out his stupor.
“Booker, what the hell?”
Nothing.
“BOOKER”
Still nothing.
“BOOKER, YOU MOTHER FUCKING ASSHOLE ANSWER ME!”
Booker doesn’t react. It’s like he can’t hear them at all. His chest is still slowly moving up and down, up and down but that's it, he’s not even blinking.
“BOOK-”
“Joe, stop, he’s not going to answer. He’s not with us right now.”
“Nicky-”
“I know, amore mio, I know.”
Joe looks pained. In fact he looks like he’s in more pain now than he did with all of Kozak’s ‘experiments’. Nicky wishes more than ever that he could comfort him properly. He wants to hold him, tell him he loves him, reassure him that everything will be aright but he’s strapped to a fucking table right now.
“Said he wanted a way out, felt there was no other way. Said he couldn’t be alone anymore.” Andy is looking at Booker but she’s clearly speaking to them.
“He said that?”
“Yeah.. said he was hoping that if they could figure out why we can’t die and replicate it, maybe they could figure out how to end it.”
He doesn’t know what to say. He stares up at the ceiling and tries to process all that just happened. He doesn't get time to think though as the door slams open. He whips his head up and watches in horror as Nile limps into the room and shuts the door behind her.
Holy shit, what is she doing here?
She starts frantically releasing them from their bonds just as Kosak makes her way back in. Nile is fast and doesn't hesitate, she raises her right arm, aims, shoots and hits her straight in the temple.
They’re freed from their tables and he and Joe immediately start looking for anything that can be used as a weapon while Nile helps Andy up and presses her gun into her hand.
Booker’s still not moving. Andy has cut his bonds away and is leaning over him calling his name but there’s no response. She unceremoniously slaps a hand across his face “Booker!”
Nothing.
They need to leave. They need to get out of here now!
“We’ll have to come back for him.”
“We can’t leave him here!”
“He was happy enough to be here by the sounds of it.”
“Oh for the love of- no, we don't have time for this. We take them out, all of them. Merrick cannot leave this building alive! Once we’re done, we come and get him and get the fuck out of here.”
There’s a reason Andy’s the boss, it’s not just because she’s the oldest. Nicky looks over at Booker, he can see Joe doing the same. He doesn't know how to feel right now and he’s sure Joe’s the same.
No time for this, save it for later.
They set off through the door and grab what guns they can see. Nile took out a lot of Merricks men on her way in so there’s plenty to choose from. They split into different directions, Joe and Nicky one way, Andy and Nile the other.
It doesn’t take as long as he thought it would. A lot of Merricks men are no match for them at all. Keane’s the only one that puts up a real fight and Joe soon sees to that.
Before he knows it, they’re standing outside the building watching as Nile’s body slowly rights itself atop the half crushed sedan. She gasps a big breath and they all relax simultaneously knowing that she’s ok. More people are starting to show up and they can hear sirens in the distance. Copley is trying to urge them into his car so they can make a run for it but they still need to get Booker.
“Take Andy and Nile, we’ll meet you round back in ten.”
Copley nods and helps Nile get Andy into the back of the car. Joe and Nicky make their way back inside. They’re quiet as they try to remember the way back to the lab. There’s so many things Nicky wants to say but he doesn’t know how to voice them. Joe grabs his hand and squeezes. They’re in this together. Just like always.
It’s darker than it was before, most of the lights aren’t working and the ones that are just flicker in and out. It creates an eerie scene as they make their way through the rubble and the mess that was created barely an hour ago. Doors are hanging from their hinges, countless windows are smashed and there's a truly concerning number of dead bodies littering the ground.
Finally after running up what feels like fifty flights of stairs they’re on the right floor. They can see the entrance to the lab at the end of the hall. They might have to carry him if he’s still out of it and he doesn't want to keep the others waiting. They pick up speed and race through the door as one.
“Book-”
Joe cuts himself off as they both take in the room.
The now dishevelled and empty room.
~ Joe ~
He’s staring at Copley’s boards full of pictures and ‘articles’ throughout the years. He can’t decide whether to be impressed that he managed to gather this much information on them or incredibly creeped out that he did.
Andy wants him to work for them now. Covering up any traces they may leave behind and vetting potential contracts. It’s what Booker does, has done for years. He’s good at it too. Well.. Until whatever this latest mess was.
“Boss, how can we possibly trust that he’ll not sell us out like Booker did.” Nicky sounds furious still but Joe can tell that he’s more agitated than anything right now. Not being able to find Booker in Merrick’s building and having to leave has set them both on edge.
Copley looks at them all with his brows furrowed, “Booker.. didn’t sell you out..” he says quietly, sounding confused.
“I beg to fucking differ. I spent two days strapped to a table while watching my husband get tortured. I sure as hell didn’t put us there!” Joe spits out.
“He didn’t tell you..” he states as he lets out a long breath.
“Tell us what? Spit it out Copley.” Andy’s no nonsense tone of voice seems to work.
“I assumed he had told you when he ended up in the lab with you..” he looks down like he’s contemplating what to say next, “..None of you were ever supposed to have been taken. Booker’s.. eh.. ‘deal’ had specifically excluded all of you. I.. er..” he clears his throat and stumbles over whatever it is he wants to say next, “..uh.. well.. I guess you could say I strong armed him..” more clearing of his throat. He looks up at Andy as he continues, “..into meeting with Merrick. He had wanted you all, especially you, Andy.. and Booker, well, he refused outright. Pulled a gun on him there and then..” he goes quiet then.
“Should have just shot the bastard..” Joe mumbles.
Andy gives Copley a look, “Go on..”
“They were only ever supposed to collect samples from you in South Sudan. The aim was to have you down long enough to catch it on film and collect a sample from each of you. We all know what happened there..”
Joe can feel the anger coming off of Nicky right now. He’s practically vibrating with it. He puts his hand on his lower back, just places it there hoping it offers some sort of reassurance.
“After.. that.. Booker agreed to go to Merricks to be tested. Only him, that was non-negotiable. Merrick got greedy and when they went in to get him in Goussainville, they got you guys instead.”
It’s silent for a moment while they all try to process what's just been said. Joe doesn’t even know where to start.
“Why leave him though? If he agreed to go already, why leave him?“
“They were hoping he’d lead Andy to them..” he shakes his head here and pinches the bridge of his nose, “..which he did, but not for what you think. His plan was to get Andy there to get you guys out, shoot her so you all thought he’d betrayed you and then when he surrendered himself after you were all out the way.. you’d leave him there. That went to shit when Andy didn’t heal.”
He looks up at them and lets out a deep sigh, “He trusted the wrong person.”
“No shit. He trusted the wrong people, and you were one of them.” Copley winces at the accusation but he doesn't dispute it.
Joe can’t help but agree with Nicky. He doesn’t know what eventually led Booker to feel like this was his only option but he gets the feeling that he was manipulated into some of it.
He’s also starting to worry that he might have actually been the cause of some of it too. He was their soulmate, he knew he was their soulmate and yet he had said nothing for over two hundred years. Why? He thinks back to what Booker had said earlier at the lab.
What would you know of the weight of all these years alone? You and Nicky always had each other, right?
Then he thinks back to what Andy had said after they saw his mark.
He wanted a way out. Felt there was no other way. Said he couldn’t be alone anymore.
Oh shit, are they partly to blame for this? His stomach is churning, the back of neck is prickling and his heart is beating faster than it was a minute ago. Nicky notices -of course he does- and he looks at him with a questioning expression.
“Is this our fault?”