Immortality

Chapter Seventeen - The Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Fortune

Author's note - I am a terrible person. Forgive me for not updating. I don't deserve you guys. As it is, please let me know what you think of this chapter! I live for the feedback.

Amartya turned to Nightingale the moment the hovercraft was in the air.

"Are you all right?" he asked her. She understood why he was concerned - she had not moved in several minutes, and was sitting still as stone in her seat. Her nails were hooked into the seat's arms and she was certain that had she moved, she would have torn out its furnishings.

Nightingale did not reply. She could not. She could not speak. She knew that if she opened her mouth, the only sound that would come out would be a scream of pure horror. She had thought, foolishly, that returning to being an Inamorata would be easier than had she never been one at all. She had been Nightingale, the star of the York Bordello, brave and strong and so bitter.

She felt like a green girl again, young and helpless and afraid. Had she seen this girl in the bordello she would have pitied her. This girl was Rose. She was not Nightingale.

"Nightingale! Nightingale, answer me! Are you-" Amartya began again.

"Don't you fucking order me around," she said. She had found her voice, barely. The sound she made was mostly an animal snarl. She did not turn to him. She spat the words through her teeth. "Don't you dare."

"I'm not ordering you," Amartya returned, very coolly and very calmly. "I am only worried, Gale."

The short form of her name - the one used mostly by her sisters - surprised Nightingale. "Well," she snapped, acerbic and bitter. "That makes sense. There's a very good chance I'll kill Victor Trevor. Or myself. And then the case would really suffer, wouldn't it?"

Amartya flinched back, muttered something that Nightingale didn't hear because she was too busy removing her anklet, and continued flying the hovercraft. With shaking fingers - either quivering with fear, or rage, or perhaps both - Nightingale stowed the anklet on the dashboard of the hovercraft.

She felt marginally calmer after that.

Amartya kept looking over at her, but stopped when she began to tear at her clothes. Unbuckling herself from her seat and ignoring Amartya's warnings that, for fuck's sake, that wasn't safe, she unzipped her dress and shook it off. She tore the delicate tights in her desperation to get them off, and flinched for a moment, expecting a shocking for wasting Bobby's money.

She found a coat in the back of the hovercraft - a man's, obviously, since it was far too big for her - and put it on. She sniffed it, half-expecting to find someone's cologne lingering on the lapels. It smelled, instead, of detergent. That suited her very well. Then she sat back down but refused to strap herself in when Amartya mentioned it.

Amartya didn't say much after that.

The moment they landed Nightingale was up and out of her seat, striding out of the hovercraft. She had left her shoes under her seat and so she padded across the concrete barefoot. It was very cold and a pebble here or there hurt the soles of her feet. Amartya trailed behind her but left her alone. It was the team filing out of the second hovercraft that approached her.

"Nightingale," said Pierce, very quietly, as he drew up next to her. Caroline eyed her but stayed far back, seeking out Amartya instead. They began to speak in low voices, heads bowed together. David remained near the hovercraft, leaning against its side. He was watching her very carefully.

"Pierce," she said. His shy, sweet smile was very nearly comforting. He reminded her very strongly of Michael in that moment, though the resemblance between the glimmer of his eyes and that of Sparkle's was even stronger. The similarity hit Nightingale very hard, as hard as the unexpected but comforting embrace of one of her sisters would have done.