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From: (Anonymous)

A/N: Quỳnh speaking to Andy in Scythian was inspired by Goldheartedsky’s thoughts about Andy teaching the rest of the Guard dead languages. Also, I do not speak Vietnamese; I took my cues from the Aliette de Bodard’s books I’ve read, so I am open to corrections.

“I want to be a body for you. I want to chase you, find you, I want to be eluded and teased and adored; I want to be defeated and victorious—I want you to cut me, sharpen me. I want to drink tea beside you in ten years or a thousand.”

--Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone’s This is How You Lose the Time War

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And it's done! Thank you so so much to everyone who commented. I will be doing some edits before I post this to ao3, so watch out for that! If anyone has title, summary, or tag suggestions lemme know...

While she is underwater, memory, dream, and fantasy are hard to tease apart. But the world turns nonetheless, and the dreams became easier to identify – the world becomes something she could never have dreamed of even while high on the questionable mushrooms Yusuf had once foraged.

When the hinges of her coffin finally rust away, and she eventually makes her way back to land, she pours out all she remembers into countless journals. Even with a whole world before her, she knows she cannot go back to the others, not with all their memories of her, until she knows for herself who she is.

So she rides a cruise ship into Paris, because Booker is the safest of the bunch. He knows and expects nothing of her. Much like her, he is rebuilding his sense of self. And neither of them feel so alone when they are together.

He teases her for reading so many fantastical books – but really, where else is she to see herself? Who better to understand what is to be both yourself and a past beloved ghost than Yeine Darr? What better way to understand the way she loves Andromache – Andy, she reminds herself – than chasing the woman you love through time itself, and bending the world until it relents at last, and the two of you are together?

Closing This Is How You Lose the Time War, she searches her pile of books for what to read next. Meanwhile, Booker is watching Tokyo Drift. Opening The Kingdom of Gods, she smiles to herself. The time is almost right. All the pieces are almost ready for her grand entrance.

The idea begins when Quỳnh meets Nile.

She sneaks up on Nile, but it is Quỳnh who is surprised when Nile says passably in Quỳnh’s first language, “Hey Big Sis.”

“Who taught you the language?” Quỳnh asks, truly pleased to hear it.

In English, Nile says, “I asked Joe and Nicky, once I dreamed you were back.”

“My Lil Sis is so polite to make me feel at home,” she notes.

“That’s Andy. Joe said they all kept up with it so you would always have a piece of home, no matter how long it took for you to come back.”

Quỳnh’s heart – gone rather soft and prune-y after soaking in salt water all those years – feels as thundering and swift as it had in her youth. She didn’t know this – she’d thought it a way to hold conversations without Booker understanding.

So Quỳnh replies in an equally old language, “And this one? Did she teach this to you too?”

“No, I don’t know that one.”

And Quỳnh has her idea.

But first: While she and Booker will have centuries together, she and Andy do not, and she does not want Booker to feel abandoned while she focuses on Andy. Given Nile’s questions when they went shopping together, she doesn’t think Nile’ll mind some nudging along.

“He’s kinda hot in a sad white boy way,” Nile mused. “Is he like that when you live with him?”

“Eh, he’s definitely sad sometimes, but he’s working on himself.” Quỳnh snapped another shrimp head off and sucked on it. “I keep trying to get him to unwind by having some sweaty sex, but he turned me down.”

Nile snorted. “He probably heard about the wild sex you and Andy used to have and got worried he couldn’t keep up.”

“It was sweet too, sometimes. Can’t always be athletic; you need recovery time,” Quỳnh replied sagely.

Nile nodded. “Do you think he’d treat me kindly though, even if I ask him to be nasty sometimes?”

Quỳnh was glad to see vetting one’s bedmates hasn’t gone out of style. “People can be different in sex than in other parts of their lives. But I don’t think you can go wrong in being honest and clear about what you want.”

Nile sighed, poking at her crab. “You’re right. Guess this is a conversation for me and him.”

Licking her fingers, Quỳnh quipped, “You can always ask Andy how best to handle him, from what I gather.”

“Oh?” And Nile seemed very interested in that. Quỳnh didn’t blame her, Andy was very dashing.

“Mm,” Quỳnh replied.

So, when Booker starts bingeing BDSM romances, Quỳnh makes some purchases to troll him with. He’s half way through Truly Helpless when Quỳnh’s package arrives. She waits until he’s settled in for his nightly reading to unbox the wide leather collar and leash, soft and supple.

Holding them up, she asks, “What do you think, Book?”

He glances over, and then turns back to his book. “No thanks, Quỳnh.”

“...but if it was Nile?”

Booker flushes. Thankfully he’s saved by the doorbell ringing. He answers it with gun in hand; old habits, like the two of them, don’t die. He brings the takeout inside, and settles into the living room couch. While Quỳnh had tossed a lot of his grungy furniture when she moved in, she had to admit the ugly couch was incredibly comfortable.

While Booker eats and reads, Quỳnh pens a note to Nile to accompany the leash and collar she’ll forward to her. She’ll include a different book from the series Booker’s reading. Your own private book club, maybe? she writes.

In English, Aunties meddle don’t they? She likes meddling, and Auntie Quỳnh has a nice sound to it.

Next, she gets an old lady of a calico cat who snores. Cats remain the same, and Sauce is mellow, happy to be picked up, and sits on her designated pillow in the sun or near the heating vent. It takes a few weeks worth of treats, but eventually she can be persuaded to give up her throne for Quỳnh’s lap. Quỳnh happily strokes the purring beast, and knows her plan is almost ready.

She asks Nile if she could invite Booker out for a couple of days, along with Joe and Nicky’s contact information. She hasn’t spoken directly to them at all; she thought it would be too cruel if she was in regular contact with everyone except Andy. She knew they wouldn’t mind; they knew the value of patience, and more importantly, they believed in her.

She sends Nicky and Joe a text message. Hello my slow rising loaves of bread, an old joke because of how long it took them to realize they were both in love with each other, I look forward to seeing both of you very, very soon. Yusuf you owe me some hair time, so you better grow it out, and Nicolò you must tell me if beekeeping is still a hobby of yours. I must see Andromache first, though. And while I imagine she’ll throw herself into my arms and bed, I want to make sure she has your support in case it does not go well. Can we coordinate a good time for all of us?

Our swords are yours ⚔, Nicky writes back.

And our arms in case either of you need comfort, Joe says. I miss your hugs.

Lastly, a little bit of deception is required.

“What did you want me to say again?” Booker mutters, thumbs carefully typing.

“‘Have you read the latest Baru Cormorant book? I want to talk to someone about Tain Hu!’”

“She wrote back!” Booker yells a few minutes later. Quỳnh hurries over to lean over his shoulder.

I’m still on book 2. that’s like…. 1000 more pages to go 💀 And then the phone dings again. But I guess for you I can power through. Who needs sleep, hahahaha?

“Has she ever died from sleep exhaustion?” Book asks in all seriousness.

“Is that even a thing?” Quỳnh replies.

They set a date for their next in person book club. Quỳnh says she only needs two days, but Booker rolls his eyes. “I’ll be gone for two weeks. Just make sure you do the laundry before I get back!”

And now the time is here, and she is hiding in the shadows like a tiger in the trees. She has it all staged just so: the apartment is dark, except for the moody lamp a few feet from her. She’d had Booker help her figure out how far away it’d be for best effect. Sitting in a roomy red armchair, she pets a happily purring Sauce.

She hears the key in the door. Sauce’s ears prick up, and Quỳnh takes a deep breath.

“Booker, where are you?” Andy yells.

And in a language Andy has not heard in years, Quỳnh says, “Here. I am here, imuira.”

“...Quỳnh?”

“Hello, Andromache,” Quỳnh says in Scythian, the first language Andy had taught her. Andy fumbles for the light switch and stares at her, gutted. “Are you going to stand so far away, or will you come closer?” Quỳnh asks.

Andromache’s face flickers through emotions so quickly. Quỳnh wishes she had the skill Joe does with art. She comes to a stop right in front of Quỳnh. Her hands tentatively reach for Quỳnh’s face, the ends of her hair, and then she slides to her knees.

“Fuck, of course you’ve been here.” Andy lays her head against Quỳnh’s knee. Sauce peaks at Andy, sniffing at her. Andy braces herself. “You’re not mad at me? I broke our promise.”

“I’m not mad at you,” Quỳnh agrees. Andy gives her a look. “Well, not anymore. Especially not after Booker mentioned he shot you.” She reaches for Andy’s close cropped hair, pets it. That’s where Sauce draws the line; no longer first in Quỳnh’s attention, she makes for her preferred pillow.

“What’s her name?” Andy asks.

“Sauce.”

“...did you do it so you could make jokes with her name?”

“You still know me Andy,” Quỳnh laughs. “I look forward to confusing everyone at the dinner table when I ask where’s sauce.” She gestures to the coffee table, stacked with three variations of baklava and a pot of black tea. “Let’s eat while we talk.”

They move to the ugly couch. Once they’ve finish their first squares, Quỳnh admits, “I was mad. Mad enough I could’ve raised the temperature of the sea to boiling. But you are not the only one who’s learned about living. If you’d kept searching for me, you wouldn’t have lived.”

“I did a piss poor job of it.”

“It would’ve been shit poor then.” Andy snorts. “And then I saw you were mortal, and death makes thing clearer doesn’t it? I don’t have the time anymore to rage against you, kill you until my rage cools, and it’s no longer my blade I slip inside of you but my fingers. I had it all planned, how many deaths, literal and sexual you would give me in atonement.”

“I could still give you all of that still.”

“But I want your life, Andromache, what is left of it, I want to spend with you. Let’s ride these fancy all-terrain cars as well as horses, upload such pornography of us they will remember us with sighs of pleasure, and when you are gone, Andy – when you are gone, I will have memories enough to light the way for the rest of my own eternity.”

“Quỳnh,” Andy whispers.

Quỳnh cups her face. “Love of mine, let us spend the rest of our time together as gods wish, as mortals would: in love, side-by-side, together until the end.”

“You and me.” Andy leans up and presses their foreheads together.

“And Booker, and Joe, and Nicky, and Nile.”

“Yes, they’ll want to see you too.”

“We can reignite our sex rivalry with Nicky and Joe.”

Andy laughs. “They’ve had a few centuries to have gotten better than us.”

“We better brush up then.”

“God, I’ve missed you, Quỳnh.”

Quỳnh takes her hands, brings them to her lips, and kisses the back of them. “I missed you too Andy.” Quỳnh doesn’t have a nickname for this age yet, and she hopes Andy will be the one to give it to her. She’s in no hurry though; she likes being herself, just Quỳnh, again. “Won’t you stay? We have the apartment to ourselves for the next week at least.”

“You sexiled Book?”

Quỳnh is relieved Andy’s on the same page as her. “He and Nile are having their own book club.”

Andy raises an eyebrow. “You’re matchmaking.”

Quỳnh shrugs. “It worked well with Nicky and Joe, didn’t it?”

“That was my idea!” It’s an old argument of theirs, which of them argued for letting them work things out on their own, and which tried nudging them along.

“I’ve got a lot of life left,” Andy says slowly, still getting used to thinking of it that way. “It’s just got a set expiration date now.”

“I’ve got a lot of life to see,” Quỳnh replies. “I have a whole list of things I want to do in this world now, and I want to do and see as much as I can with you with the time we have left.”

The corner of Andy’s mouth kicks up. “Let’s start here then.” She sits herself in Quỳnh’s lap. Quỳnh presses her forehead into Andy’s spine, breathing.

They finish the tea and baklava first – it’s important to be well-fed and -hydrated. They feed one another until Andy sinks back to her knees for other reasons, softly bringing Quỳnh to orgasm. There are tears, and a lot of feelings, and they adjourn to the bedroom to nap it off.

When they wake, the sex is wild and ecstatic, their bodies raw and honest. In one another’s arms they are satisfied, and they laugh. It is so different from the last time; they are captive to no one but pleasure. Every kiss, every touch, each breath, is a reforging of commitments, and a promise the two of them are just beginning.

It is exactly the homecoming Quỳnh wanted.

“We began again.”

--N.K. Jemisin’s “Not The End”

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A/N: And it's done! Thank you so so much to everyone who commented. I will be doing some edits before it goes up on ao3. Please let me know if you have any title, summary, and tag suggestions. (Also let me know how the book references worked for you...)