Immortality

Chapter Fifteen - Calm Before the Storm

Chapter 15 - Author's note: Sorry, sorry, sorry, a thousand times sorry for the abject, appalling lateness of this update. To make up for it, I have tried to make this chapter very long! Thank you so much for your patience and for all your encouragement - all of you are such lovely people!

Nightingale, two days later, and on the morning they were set to embark, was sitting in the team's office at HQ, completely fucking miserable.

This was, of course, because Nightingale had said goodbye to Robin and Colm that morning with her teeth clenched firmly together. When Colm had asked her why she was making that expression - one that made it look like she'd just swallowed a cup of lemon juice, which Colm had once done on a dare from one of his friends - she knelt down to him and told him the truth.

"I'm trying not to cry, love," she said, stroking his face with one of her white-knuckled hands.

At that, Colm had burst into tears and thrown himself around her neck. That had not made it any easier for Nightingale to leave him, but it certainly had helped her not weep. To see weakness helped her be strong. Sorcha, who had arrived in the early hours of the morning, was standing behind them and looking pointedly away. She was dressed in her full Nightingale regalia, sporting a wig and fully made up in an eerie mimicry of Nightingale's own looks.

"No, no, shh," she told him. "It's all right. It's all right. I love you. I love you, little dove."

"I don't want you to go," said Colm. Nightingale could feel how he pushed his face against her neck, hiding himself in the curtain of her long hair. "Please don't go."

"I have to go. Listen, little dove, do you love your Auntie Sparkle?" asked Nightingale. She pried Colm's astonishingly strong grip from around her neck and held him half and arm's length away from her.

He nodded, his face wet with tears. Nightingale could hardly breathe with how much she loved him and how much she did not want to leave him. His eyes, half angry, half sorrowful, refused to hold hers in the way children did when they were upset. He, of course, had not been told what it was she had gone to do, but he could sense his parents' anxiety and distress, and, though not understanding it, felt it just as keenly.

Nightingale waited until he looked up at her, until his eyes - her eyes, that reminder that he was hers - met her own. Then she stroked his face and spoke. "And your Auntie Glitter? And all my sisters?"

He nodded again.

"Well, I love them, too. Nearly as much as I love you," she added, and she chucked him under the chin, both of them smiling in wry, watery humour. "And I have to do this for them."

"Are they in trouble?" he asked, his tears momentarily forgotten. Nightingale was instantly fiercely proud of him for that. His concern for those he loved outweighed his own sadness. "Are they in trouble, Mummy?"

"No, no. Not them. But others like them are. And I can do something to help," she explained. In the corners of her vision, Nightingale could see that Robin was watching her, with one hand at his mouth. He looked as though he was trying very hard not to cry. "And I'll be back soon, I promise. Besides, you'll have your father, and you'll have Agent Brennan. They'll keep you safe, little dove."

Colm threw himself upon her again, mumbling something about how he didn't care about that, didn't care if he was safe, only wanted her with him. Nightingale embraced him tightly, sinking her fingers into his wild black hair. Then, after soothing him with humming and little snippets of endearment, she pried him off her and pushed him to his father. Colm gripped Robin very hard about the legs, hiding his face in Robin's jacket.

She stood and, continuing to ignore Sorcha, stared him straight in the face.

"Je t'aime," she told Robin, because Sorcha did not speak French. "Je t'aime plus que ma vie. Tu es plus proche de moi que ma propre âme. Tu sais ça, non?"