A Different Fate

The first occurred roughly thirty-three years after his first execution. It was seeing his family, his beautiful wife, wrinkled in old age; his four sons, aging, getting ill, dying. Weak brittle hands slapped him as they thrashed around on a hospital bed begging him for a cure.

“Père s'il te plait, qu'avons-nous fait pour mériter ça?”

He walked away, feet trudging through imaginary snow, stomach twisting at false hunger pains, until he left and rejoined his new family, Andromache, Joseph, and Quynh, at a safehouse just outside of Varna.

The second time occurred the night he reunited with the other immortals. Booker, still Sébastien at the time, knocked on the door gently, waiting for someone to answer.

The last time they spoke, he refused to follow them, ignoring their code of “doing good for humanity”, insisting that he had to return to his wife and children, that they needed him. Joseph and Andromache argued first with him, and then at each other.

“He doesn’t know what he’s talking about! He’s practically a child, Ann!”

“He can make his own decisions. If he does not want to stay, we cannot force him to.”

“No, instead we’ll just let him crawl back to us in a few decades once everyone dies and he is left with no one else. Excellent plan!”

“It does not have to go in that direction, Yusuf.”

“It will always go in that direction. All I am saying is you deal with the heartbreak when it inevitably happens. I have enough to last me a millennia.”

Neither truly won the argument, but a few hours later, as Sébastien headed out the door, Quynh pulled him aside, handing him a small, pocket sized journal.

“I swear, Joseph is never usually so harsh. If you ever need, do not hesitate to find us.” She pauses, looking behind her, as if to see if anyone is there, before turning back around. “I know you have had a rough few months, and everything is still so fresh, but please, take note of your dreams. In the off chance you see a man in the ocean in any, please write it down in here.” She gestures to the notebook still held lightly in his grasp, before heading inside.

Sébastien never gave the notebook or the mysterious ocean man much thought until he fell asleep on the train ride heading home. Quynh was right, being chased, freezing, and reviving only to freeze again made paying attention to everything happening around him challenging. He was barely able to piece together what his dreams of the other immortals meant. Now however, as he had a full meal in his belly and new knowledge of what he had been experiencing, his dreams were able to solely focus on a man, trapped in an iron coffin, drowning at the bottom of the ocean.

The dreams of the man continued almost daily, whether Sébastien slept on his own, with his family close by, or even when he took a nap. Every night, Sébastien dreamt of salt burning his eyes, clouding his vision, of blooding hands pounding against the metal surrounding him, and the eerie quiet that would happen every other minute, before the screaming would start again.

It felt like heartbreak, and fear, and guilt all rolled into one. In the beginning he used to write it all down, only because he promised Quynh, who had been the nicest one to him, relatively speaking. After a few years, he had stopped. Nothing was changing. There were no new findings, no new feelings, just the continued grief and sorrow felt somewhere hundreds of feet below them. It used to be easier, with his family to distract him every day, but now with everyone around him dead or hating him, Sébastien made sure to fall asleep less and less. His own tragedy was hard enough to deal with, let alone this abandoned man’s. The pain began piling up higher and higher, and as it did, it seemed like the man in the coffin got worse and worse, as if he and Sébastien were connected. He could not take it anymore, hence why he was standing outside a new house, running back to the same people who warned him of this fate. He raised a hand to knock again, when the door swung open.

It will always go in that direction.

You deal with the heartbreak when it inevitably happens.

Joseph does not say anything. There is no I told you so, nor is the door getting slammed in his face, so already Sébastien counted that as a win. Instead, Joseph nods, stepping aside to let him in.

Andromache and Quynh are seated at the dining room table, as if expecting him. None of them ask any questions, instead handing him a bottle of vodka—his first of many. They know there will be plenty of time to hash out what had happened with his family. He was honestly grateful that they chose not to bring it up, foregoing backstory or introductions, instead talking about what they had done the past few days. The small talk and five glasses worth of liquor in his system is why he forgets about his companion at the bottom of the sea.

The dream began like the others have, salt burning his skin, water forcing it’s way down his throat. Except, for the first time in years, the man at the bottom of the ocean did not feel heartbroken. Sébastien was surrounded by the feeling of hope, and of love. Between one death and the next, Sébastien felt grateful to be at the bottom of the ocean. Though no words were spoken, one overwhelming thought kept racing through his mind.

Grazie dio, grazie dio sta bene.

His blood turned to ice. He was hanging, choking on empty air all over again. The world as he knew it up-ended on him. Whatever last bit of balance over his own life he had was ripped away in a matter of seconds.

Sébastien woke up sobbing. Andromache, who was sleeping with Quynh across the room, tried to calm him down as her partner was gathering her bearings. Joseph stood in the doorway and watched with an unreadable expression on his face.

No one asked him what was wrong, but he could guess that they knew. That they expected this to happen. He feels a bit foolish then, for not asking immediately about he man underwater, about why Quynh asked him on his way out to keep an eye out for him. He may be foolish, but he wasn’t stupid, which is why it clicks so suddenly for Sébastien as to why Joseph was so adamant that he not return to his family.

I have enough to last me a millennia.

“He thanked God, in my dream.”

The two women next to him silence, just as Joseph tenses. He looks up and meets the other man’s eyes.

“He’s so grateful that you’re okay. That you are not down there with him.”

Grief washes over Joseph and he collapses onto the floor, weeping into his sleeves, crying out “Nico, Nicolò, 'iinaa asif, habibi.”

Later on, Sébastien will hand Joseph the notebook he kept by his side throughout all those years, and he will be told the proper story behind the man in the coffin—NicolòNicoNicolas—and the people who he will now call his family.

Ever since Sèbastien, now Booker, began working with the other immortals, they agreed as a group to start looking for Nicolò again between jobs. With Booker dreaming of him, and fast improving technology, they thought it would be easier, safer, to begin the search again. What seemed like a new start quickly soured, as they still were no closer to freeing the crusader from his prison. Andy and Quynh continued to keep their spirits up, but it seemed that the knowledge of Nicolò’s constant torture weighed heavily on Joe, and subsequentially, Booker as well. They both wallowed and raged at the world more times than not.

This world did not deserve my Nicolò. He was too kind, lighting my way through darkness without ever asking for anything in return. Fate was too cruel to him.

Discovering Nile was a blessing, and the beginning of the end for Booker. She was as fierce as she was curious, demanding answers and sparring with Andy as hard as she could. She also had a kindness to her that Booker had not felt with the others. Sure, they were nice and fun to be around, they were his family

after all, but Nile tried to make sure everyone felt at ease, that she didn’t overstep any boundaries while asking questions about their lives. When she went to sleep that first night, Joe had poured them an extra glass of whisky, shaking his head fondly.

She seems so good. Very balanced. Nicolò will love her

Which is why, when she dreamt of Nicolò later that night, crying about a bright eyed man who prayed to a certain mio caro, Booker called an old CIA operative the group had worked with years prior and asked to meet for lunch. It has been too long. Too many years of waiting and hoping, praying to some imaginary God that a kind, gentle man who has loved to the point of having such blind faith in his family (still after all of these centuries), should finally be released from a prison he was forced into because he was trying to do some good for the world.

The man, James Copley, sat across from Booker, quietly sipping from his mug of coffee, keeping silent far longer than Booker had initially thought he would.

“Mr. Merrick will not give this to you free of charge, he will want something in return, or in at the very least, the true explanation behind this oceanic search party you have planned.”

“Which is why i’m offering you a trade. Mr. Merrick’s resources, in exchange for myself.”

Copley looked startled at the offer, but Booker continued on.

“I showed you proof of what we can do, I cut my hand wide open, only for it to heal within moments. I’m sure a man of Merrick’s rank would love to have a go at figuring immortality out. My life, for the opportunity to free Nicolò. My only ask, is that the others will never know, they deserve to have that peace.”

Copley nodded, putting down his mug.

“And what is being a science experiment do for you, Booker?”

Booker swallows, readjusting the sunglasses propped up on his nose.

“A way out. Living forever is not all it’s cracked up to be.” He sighs, “I’m very tired Mr. Copley. Grief, is exhausting. This is as much for my sake as it is theirs.”

Copley seemed to understand, dipping his head.

“I’ll be in touch, then.”

Booker kept the meeting to himself, passing the next two weeks off as if everything was going as usual. Andy taught Nile how to fight, while Joe brought her shopping for new clothes. Booker continued drinking with Joe, tried to be as friendly and open with Nile as he could before...before it all ends for him.

He had planned it that Merrick’s men would grab Booker as he went grocery shopping one night, completely alone and without a trace left behind. The team would fret and look for him, of course. But it would all be turned around once the Merrick’s team “accidentally” finds Nicolò stranded in the middle of the Atlantic and returns him to Joe. They would be so focused on Nico’s return that they would slow down the search for Booker. They would lose hope as years went on, just as they had initially with Nicolò. It would be a fair trade, one Sèbastien was willing to make to not only give himself a reprieve from the grief and guilt of living forever, but also for Yusuf’s sake.

The man was an older brother to Booker, they sat together for years, reminiscing on events neither could relive, crying to the other about love lost too soon. If anything good can come from this, it would be to give Yusuf his other half back.

Except now, centuries later, Sébastien feels the weight of this immortal life crush him for the third, and potentially final time.

The five of them sit around, watching television, trying to pass the night away, when the door is kicked open. They barely got the chance to stand up before grenades were tossed inside, going off feet away from them. Boots storm in as smoke fills the room and suddenly Booker is tossed to the ground, hands yanked behind him, cuffs getting slapped onto his wrists. Distantly, he hears Andromache screaming, “No! Let us go! Stop!” He can’t hear Quynh. Nile is still laying unconscious, more likely dead, on the floor. Joe may already be outside, he can’t tell at all.

He gets hauled up and shoved out the door. Standing beside a set of open van doors is Copley.

The fear and rage and sheer hopelessness Booker felt in Russia comes flooding back. He just wanted things to stop. He just wanted something good to happen. He couldn’t escape death and defeat. Everything Sèbastien did, from the moment he fled Napoleon to the moment he accepted the call from Copley had been one massive waste of fucking time. Time he already had too much of.

He wasn’t dumb enough to trust a pharmaceutical corporation, but he thought Copley was different. Thought his and Yusuf’s shared grief would be enough.

Toujours si naïf, chérie.

He’s a goddamn idiot.

“I trusted you! You bastard! You gave me your word.”

Copley didn’t respond, instead glancing somewhere behind Booker, most likely where Quynh was getting dragged out. Booker tried turning around, planting his feet firmly on the ground, but something slammed into his head and without warning he was back underwater. Sèbastien expected the feeling of sea salt seeping into bloodied hands. He expected the blurred light peaking through the small openings above his face.

What Booker didn’t expect, was the unfamiliar white hot rage that burned through his veins with each slam of a fist against the iron.