Immortality

Chapter Fourteen - Not Born for Death

Chapter 14 - Author's note: okay, so this will be the last chapter before they embark on the case.

Update: artwork on the side (technically for Inamorata, I know, but I wanted to include it in the newest update because I love it) by the talented FallingApples. I just love it - it's very pretty!

Nightingale had found herself counting the days until they were all scheduled to start the mission. Only a certain amount of time could be wasted in training and information gathering and coordinating. At some point, they would have to leave.

Sorcha's mimicry had become so uncannily accurate that from a distance only Robin and Caroline could tell Sorcha and Nightingale apart (even David had been recently fooled by Sorcha's imitations, about which he seemed intensely frustrated), and Amartya had told everyone that the time was right for him to have an audience with the triumvriate for selling the false copy-Nightingale. It had been only a week since the Britannic team had arrived, and now it was nearly time for them all to fly off to London and start the mission.

Nightingale dreaded that day. She went cold with fear at the idea of going back to her bordello days, and felt sick at the prospect of being touched by any hands less loving than Robin's or Colm's. She could hardly bear the thought, moreover, of being separated from her husband and her son. It was not because she was not fiercely independent, but it was because they made her happy.

Her happiness was so hard-won that she hated the idea of relinquishing it.

As she lay in bed, two days before they were scheduled to leave, Nightingale was not able to sleep. She was trying not to think of Robin, whom she loved so much, whom she would so soon leave, or of Colm, whose sweet love would leave a gaping hole in her sanity the moment she was away from him.

Instead, she was thinking of something else. Something far more strange, but far less worrying.

Nightingale wasn't supposed to watch. She wasn't supposed to hear. But saw she did, and she couldn't remove the image from her eyes, nor the sound from her ears. She remembered it as well as when she had seen it, how when she had been at HQ, passing through the corridor, she had seen an open door and the scene within.

It was David and Caroline, together, which in itself was not odd. As former partners, and as teammates, and being the married parents of a child to whom they were devoted, it made sense for them to be together quite often. It was not that - it was how they were standing, and what they were saying.

David and Caroline touched so infrequently in the presence of others. It was professionalism on both their parts, Nightingale knew, for both of them were consummate professionals. They were very well matched in that respect.

They were well matched in many respects. They had the same cold, reserved demeanour, and the same severe self-discipline that was more likely to come across as both frigid anger and steely stoicism than as simply the latter. Both were ruled by their morals and believed in the rule of law above all else.

But that was not the only reason they did not touch in public except for casual touches of hands. On David's part it must have also been an awkwardness he had with his wife. Caroline's was more complex - an understanding that it was not her touch that David desired above all else, as well as the humiliation of David's being in love with someone else. And, as well, Nightingale got the sense that Caroline did not touch David out of pity for him.

Now, however, David and Caroline stood a hair's breadth apart. David pushed back her hair with both hands, stroking his fingers through her hair before cupping her face in both hands. He stared straight into her face, his eyes searching hers, intent and keen.