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BREAK THROUGH THE METAL
By ChasetheWindTouchtheSky
“I never thought I’d see a Crusader Priest in a hoodie.”
Nile says it innocently, not thinking anything of it. If anything, she was trying to lighten the tension in the car, the five of them stuck in the back of a van, their hands tied. It annoyed her how easy it was to restrain them once someone got the jump on them. She would assume that immortals would be imbued with super strength, but she feels as mortal as she ever did. Booker was right, as usual. Just because they can’t die, doesn’t mean they can’t hurt.
Except as soon as the words came out of her mouth, she feels like she wants to take them back. Nicky sits across from her, tied to the side of the car as far away from Joe as the captors could get them. It didn’t take a genius to figure out the two of them together were far more dangerous than separate. She’s watched the move together like water, all encompassing and forever together. He stills, his hands in front of his chest, head bowed. In prayer, she doesn’t think so, but if she didn’t know he was over a thousand years old, she would figure he was.
Glancing in the van, she looks for someone to explain what she could’ve said that was so wrong. Nile can’t help it, her eyes go to Joe, who hasn’t looked away from him.
It’s like staring at the sun, watching Joe gaze at Nicky. Blinding, beautiful, painful, and intense. It feels all encompassing and private, as though the moment becomes a physical presence around her. “It is a reminder.” Nicky says softly from his corner of the van. “I think it is important to remember your mistakes.”
“You know how I feel about—” Joe starts.
“Yes, you have mentioned before.” Nicky looks up, his icy eyes attempting something light, but even Nile can tell it’s nothing more than a blanket covering something dark.
“I think I can say the speech by heart.” Booker offers offhandedly, Joe glaring in response. “I’m just saying you two aren’t as private as some people would encourage.”
“You would think that after two hundred years, you’d be used to it by now.” Andy says, her voice only mildly irritated in that way that Nile has come to learn as annoyance with having to get out of chains. She wonders absently if she’ll ever get simply annoyed with capture. Where the fear filters out and it’s merely inconvenient.
“No, I still think we need to start investing in safe houses with insulation and separate rooms.”
“You know that everyone would sleep in the same room regardless.” Andy snorts, getting even a laughless breath out of Nicky. Andy relaxes at that, Nile slightly jealous at how she can read them. The woman is also focused on Nicky, whose hands are wringing together ever-so-slightly. Joe watches the movement.
Finally, Nicky looks up to Nile, his eyes warm. “There are certain things that stay with you, no matter how much you want to forget. You would think over time, they would melt away, like the rain on a window. But… others do not.”
Nile can feel Joe’s frustration to being tied up from across the van, his legs stretched out and nowhere near Nicky. He makes a huff, which Nicky merely snorts at. The two look at each other and she’s certain there’s a conversation happening she’ll never be privy. That is, until Nicky speaks.
“It was the first time I decided it was not God’s will to do what we were sent to do.”
The battlefield is ripe with the stench of death. Nicolo swallows, looking at the lives around him. His shirt is stained with blood of the lives he’s taken, and with a bit of his own. He’s understood that God has given him a gift to reanimate – despite his terrifying first few deaths, Nicolo understood his purpose. He wasn’t meant to die, until his finished God’s vision of the world.
There’s a shout from behind him and Nicolo flinches, reacting in a violent swing that would make the most vicious of warriors flinch. Before he can even register what is happening, a figure falls at his feet, eyes wide and noises coming from his mouth that Nicolo knew would haunt him for the rest of his days.
Nicolo startles.
He’s seen this man before.
Except there’s no way that could be possible.
This man has died in his hands. From his hands. Even though Nicolo didn’t like to admit it, he also had been on the receiving end of the man’s sword.
Except, this time is different.
Nicolo drops his broadsword and places a hand on his cheek as the figure collapses. He has the sort of curls that easily twine around his fingers, and eyes that seem to carry Universes. Universes that makes Nicolo think of the lessons that God has tried to teach him, but he could never find the answer. The man before him, blood staining his teeth and dripping from the corner of his mouth. The man he’s seen many times.
Nicolo utters a quicker prayer, dropping to his knees. This is not like what they have taught him. The man before him is the sun and is light and Nicolo draws closer. “I am sorry.” He finds himself saying in a shaky voice, even though he knows the man won’t understand.
Except.
Something incredible happens. The pulsing of his heartbeat grows stronger under Nicolo’s touch, the faint rhythm making his breath hitch. He looks down at the man’s shirt, still stained with blood, but no longer spreading. Nicolo jerks his hand away, shocked. He knows he shouldn’t be – he’s seen his body heal in the mirrors he found in camp, but… this was supposed to be God’s will.
He was taught to hate the man before him, and yet, here he heals.
“Praise God,” Nicolo mutters because he doesn’t know what else to say.
The man grips Nicolo’s hand, the blood stain in it smearing against he own. He slowly catches his breath and mutters under his breath, a language that Nicolo knows not, but sounds like poetry and music. He wonders if the man ever gets tired of speaking because he isn’t sure he’d ever tire of hearing his voice.
“Nicolo, what are you doing?”
He startles at his name, Nicolo standing up to see a few other priests standing before him. Like carbon prints of each other, thoughts and opinions copied until he isn’t sure if they kept their humanity any longer.
For the first time, he sees.
He sees like he hasn’t before.
In that moment, Nicolo reaches truth.
He swung his sword in a violent motion, thinking anything different as a threat. Except, the man desperately trying to get to his feet behind him, was not threatening. He held on Nicolo’s hand as if he was trying to teach him something. Something he knew Nicolo needed to learn.
Instead, Nicolo killed him.
He was not a human, not a priest, he was a feral animal unleashed unto the world under the guise of destiny. Perhaps…
Perhaps destiny had answers humans couldn’t understand.
“What are you waiting for?” They ask.
The world is quiet to him. Even though he hears the screaming around him, the fight and the lives lost, Nicolo hears nothing but the wind. He listens for God, for destiny, for whoever to tell him that he was wrong.
The man behind him says something, the words washing over him. He may not understand the words, but he understands the feeling.
Destiny.
“I was waiting for a sign from God.” Nicolo finds himself says. He takes his sword in front of him, spreading his legs in the attack stance he was taught too many years ago. “And this is not what God wants.”
The confusion on their faces is only for a second. They twist in something inhuman, in something that he was taught to fear. But, Nicolo was not afraid.
Before they can reach him, Nicolo lets out a gasp. Looking down at his chest, he sees a curved sword impaled through his chest. “My god,” Nicolo mutters.
“They will torture you.” The man whispers in his ear in a broken Italian. Desperate. “They will call you… demon. You can’t let them. We need… time.”
Nicolo feels his breath on his neck, a shiver running down his spine. “I will find you.” He mutters, his words catching as he sees black spots curling around his eyes. “I-I—”
“I am counting on it.” The man says. “And I you… Nicolo.”
Nicolo lets out a choke of a laugh. “Not fair, you know me.”
The man takes the blade out of his chest in a quick movement. Nicolo falls to his knees as he does so. He has fallen to his knees so many times. Except, this time, he feels free. Even as he can feel his body fight against the wound, the skin stitching back together like the chainmail wrapped around his head, he’s never felt more alive.
The man stands over him, a bright smile on his face, his own wounds nothing more than a ripped shirt. He blocks the sun, but then again, maybe he is the sun. “Yusuf.” He states, placing his hand over his chest. “Until we find each other.”
“Until…” Nicky chokes on the blood pooling in his mouth. “Until we find…”
He can’t say anything further. Instead, he’s lost in the sun and the world and the Universe. There’s nothing in the world that’s made him feel like this. He staring at a man he was taught to hate and he feels… infinite. He feels as if he’s watching the sun rise after a cold night, the frost on the leaves dripping onto the ground. He feels like he’s heard a psalm for the first time, understand God in a way he’s never thought.
His mind goes blank.
The chainmail falls off his head, his body covered in metal. The chains were off. Nicolo was free.
“I spent my life in metal.” Nicky says. “I need to remember what I learned.”
“Plus, watching a man walk around in chainmail isn’t exactly discreet.” Booker offers. “But I’m in full agreement that you should do that.”
“Fuck off, Booker.” Andy snorts under her breath, but she’s still searching between Joe and Nicky.
“But, why?” Nile asks, unable to stop herself. “Why would you want to remember all of that?”
Nicky sucks in a breath, his eyes meeting Joe’s. It’s soft and powerful and unyielding. He doesn’t even tear away to answer Nile, his attention forever Joe’s. “To remember that you can try to do what you think is right, but you can be wrong. That mistakes you make can be transformed into something beautiful. By… someone beautiful.”
The moment is fraught, tense, and intimate.
“My god, I need alcohol if you two are going to be like that.”
Joe and Nicky snap out of whatever gaze they’ve lost each other in, both laughing at themselves. “Book’s right,” Andy says, relaxing ever-so-slightly when Nicky smiles, the haunt behind his eyes fading slightly. “Let’s use that energy to figure out how get out.”
“Oh, you haven’t?” Joe asked, bringing his hands up. Nile’s startled to see that there’s no zip ties on them, his wrists not even pink with the pressure anymore. “I just couldn’t wait.”
He crosses the back of the car with a couple strides, placing his hand on the back of Nicky’s neck and pulling him close. The car rattles and bumps, Nile staring that the two, very aware of the handcuffs on her wrist.
“Yeah,” Booker sighs, rolling his eyes at her. “That’s the most pressing thing at the moment.”
There’s no heat in it and she finds herself joining him in her fond exasperation.
It lasts another ten seconds before Andy seems fed up with the whole scenario and kicks the two of them. Another thirty until they’re all free.
A final sixty for the five of them to job out of the car, the bindings nothing more than a memory.
And the memories fade, as insignificant memories do.
Nile hangs back with Booker and Andy, Joe and Nicky in a world the three will never be invited. As the moon shimmers against their shoulders, she thinks she may be alright with that.