Chapter Eight - Author's note: Let me know if you like this chapter! Also the chapter title is from "To His Coy Mistress", a poem I reference often because I love it. I've included a link on the side to Tom Hiddleston reading it because it is a lovely version and I think it's really important to hear poetry read aloud...

Michael paused for a moment, evidently at least somewhat taken aback by either Nightingale's tone or the ferocious look on her face.

"Yeah," he said, his quiet, high voice at its most shy and sweet. His warm eyes stared imploringly at Nightingale but had absolutely no effect in calming her or placating her. 

"You dosed yourself," she repeated, her tone still low and predatory. And, to clarify his decision, as if he had not understood the magnitude of what it was he had done, she went on. "You made yourself immortal."

"You're one to talk," he replied, and a tiny bit of peevishness in his voice did little to sour the bright excitement that had returned to his face. "You already are!"

"You'll remember I didn't choose that. And in already being this way I understand what it means. How could you-" she said.

But Michael cut her off with a cry of pure supplication. Throwing his head back and clasping his hands before him, he entreated her:

"Nightingale, please! I did this for you."

Nightingale felt the bile rising in her throat. Turning away, she covered her mouth with the back of her hand and tried very hard not to be sick. She shuddered in the effort as her stomach seemed to twist herself in knots, leaving her whole body heaving his spasms.

"What the hell do you mean?" she managed.

"No, not like that. Not like that, Nightingale, not anymore, not for a long time," he said, evidently trying to assure her that it was no misplaced love that had had driven him to this discovery. His assurance soothed her only insofar as it took away her disgust. She still fought against the overwhelming tide of grief and astonishment and sorrow that threatened to swallow her up. "I did so much wrong by anyone the Corporation created. I caused so much misery. I am the sorriest for what I did to you, and that's why I did this."

"Did what, told me that you've now-" she began, but he overrode her.

"Nightingale, listen, listen to me," he begged. "Just listen. I made this drug for you, to atone. You are immortal and I was one of the ones who made you that way.  That is the worst thing you can do to someone, to make them live on when all those they love have died."

"Not the worst thing," murmured Nightingale. She could think of much worse things. But Michael chattered on, either completely fucking oblivious to her misery or under some misapprehension that he had cured that misery.

"And so I fixed it for you. Those you love don't have to die. They can live on with you. Robin - Robin doesn't have to die. You fear that, I know you do," he said, and gave her a knowing look. "So this is my gift to you, to atone for all your suffering. Immortal happiness."

Nightingale wasn't sure that was what Michael had done. She was not entirely sure of anything. A few hours ago she had not thought she would ever have to be an Inamorata again, nor had she thought herself immortal.

So she stood in silence as Michael went on. "Besides, this is only a temporary fix. The original human test subjects got a dose of virus that rendered the modification permanent. The one I dosed myself with becomes degraded over time," he said, and gave her a pleading look. "For me to remain immortal I have to re-dose myself once every year."

That gave Nightingale some pause. "And..."

"I'm not planning on living forever, Gale," he told her. "But I am going to give myself a bit of a taste of what the Corporation has done to you."

"You think that you'll atone by making yourself suffer like all the rest of us?" snarled Nightingale.

"Nightingale-" he began.

"You don't need to fucking atone, Michael. You aren't cruel," she growled, the affection in her voice thoroughly mixed with anger. "Besides, you think it makes any Inamorata feel better about her own immortality to know that somebody else has been afflicted with it?"

Michael lowered his eyes and when he spoke it was with a soft, whining contrition. "I think Magenta might like that, actually."

Against all odds, Nightingale laughed. It was not a happy laugh, however. Its bleak, harsh sound made Michael's face contract with discomfort and with unhappiness before he spoke.

"Nightingale," Michael wheedled. "Gale, I'm-"

Nightingale held up her hand. Was he sorry? Happy for her? Angry at something? Distressed? Worried? She could neither bear to hear nor did she care.

"Please, Michael. Enough. You've told me what it was you've done. What you hoped to accomplish with it," she said. "Please, let me be now."

"But Gale, I haven't even told you about the human trials and that's something I think-" he said.

Nightingale gave a soft wail. "No!" she cried. "Michael, no more!"

He opened his mouth to speak nonetheless but Nightingale ended the call with a sharp command. She was left with a blank screen and more emotions than she could possibly ever understand or describe. She stood alone in the room, the pearly light of a grey day filtering through the windows.

It was too much for one person to bear. It was too much for any ordinary human.

Nightingale was extraordinary, or so everyone told her. She certainly did not feel extraordinary right now. At least not in the good way. She felt extraordinary in her suffering. She did not feel extraordinary in her strength.

She stood alone for some time, perhaps an hour, unable to move.

She stirred only when she heard someone enter the house. Robin arrived home without Colm and it was the first time in Nightingale's life that she was happy to have her son far away. Robin entered the house quietly but Nightingale heard him all the same. She descended the stairs to find him standing by the coat rack, removing his jacket. The moment he saw her he turned and stared her right in the face.

Their eyes met and they stood still as statues for a moment, Nightingale turned to stone three stairs above the bottom of the flight, Robin immobile some ten feet away. She knew from his expression alone that he knew. He knew of her new case, at least. Someone must have told him what had been decided. The look in his eyes was terrible in the pain Nightingale saw there.

She said nothing. She could not speak for the tears that had clogged her throat and now pricked at her eyes.

"Oh, my love," he said. He blinked, and cocked his head, his dark eyes full of sadness. "What has been done to you?"

She managed a few words with the tears rolling down her cheeks. "Nothing I didn't do to myself."

Robin came bounding forward and caught her in an embrace. Since she stood raised above him he wrapped his arms about her and buried his head in her chest. His posture cried out for Nightingale to cradle him, which she did. His warmth, its physical comfort, seemed to steal by degrees into her soul as she held him.

But it came slowly, and before it did she laid her head down upon his hair and felt it grow wet with her tears. In time, her tears dried. Though it was a long time until she stopped weeping, this was not the enforced calm she had had earlier. This was a measure of peace. Had she loved Robin for nothing else, she would have loved him for his ability to bring her peace alone. 

"Who told you?" she asked him, when the warmth of his presence had spread far enough that she could safely speak without fearing that she would weep.

"David," he said.

Gratitude overwhelmed Nightingale for a moment. David had done her an exceeding kindness that he must have known she would never have accepted. It had been Nightingale's place to tell Robin what her new case would entail, and what it would mean for her marriage. It should have been her responsibility. But David had taken the weight off her shoulders and had told Robin in the bleakest terms what was required of her.

"It should have been me who told you," she said. She meant both the case and the news of her immortality. Robin knew of one and that made her suffering less keen; but the second was altogether more important.

"I worry for you, darling," he said. His voice was muffled by how his head was cushioned against her chest.

"You're not jealous?" she said. It was an idiotic question, and she was stupid to even imagine it. She had not expected he would be. It was not in his nature. Nothing but good seemed to be in his nature.

"Jealous?" he asked, raising his head. As she stared down at him, his gentle eyes, which were wide with his grief, met Nightingale's. She stroked his dark, wild hair as he spoke, and it earned her soft sighs that punctuated his unhappiness. "Angry, yes - jealousy is the furthest thing from my mind. Should you have to fuck anyone else" - and here the profanity punctuated a rare look of disgust that made Robin's sweet mouth curl with sour displeasure - "I will not be jealous. I will be angry that someone has hurt you, and I will be angry that you are hurt. I will be angry that it is required of you. I will be angry with the circumstances that have made this required of you. Angry that someone forced you."

"David didn't force me," Nightingale said.

"I know that. It would be wrong of me to be angry with him. He has wronged you in the past and I can never truly trust him again, but he is and always will be my greatest friend and the one other person I trust with safeguarding your well-being. I can honestly say he loves you nearly as much as I love you," he added, and then a bit of Robin's natural, gentle self-ironizing slipped into his voice.

Nightingale smiled as she replied. "I really don't need looking after."

"That's partly true, yes," he conceded, waving his hand. "Of all the people I have ever met, Nightingale, you are certainly the least in need of looking after. But from time to time every human needs another person to fall back on."

"I have you," she said. Her voice was very small.

"You won't always," he told her. It would have been a cruel comment had he not said it with so much sadness. "'Had we but world enough and time' you would, Nightingale, but I'm afraid we don't. I warned you of this suffering when you chose me. I won't have to suffer that way. I will never lose you."

"Robin..." she said. She opened her mouth to go on, to tell him of Michael's discovery, and then to plead with him to live on forever with her. It was perfect - her idea of heaven. No deity that loved Inamoratas could ever bless Nightingale with anything more wonderful than an eternity with Robin.

"Nightingale, my love, that is a fact of the world. I can't live on with you," he reminded her.

"But if you could, would you want to?" she asked. She had approached the question obliquely and she was desperate for an answer that would set her mind at rest. Her breath caught in her throat in the moment it took Robin to respond. She feared his answer.

"Of course," and the rapidity of his reply made Nightingale's breath come easier. The pace at which he undeniably confirmed his desire did not soothe Nightingale, but it made her feel somewhat more comforted. "Or, I think so, anyway - I would like to spend the rest of your life with you. I would extend my own life beyond its natural course to be with you a little longer - provided I did not live forever. I do not want to live forever. Would you?"

"No," said Nightingale, while at the same time a voice within her said, "But I do not have that choice."

"Then it's not an issue," he said. He smiled and it made Nightingale want to snatch the expression from his face and hold onto it forever. "If I could, Nightingale, I would live as long as you. But I will not. And, selfishly, that comforts me. I will never have to live without you."

"I don't intend to live without you," Nightingale told him, after a moment's pause.

It made him grimace with pain. His mouth tightened and he blinked, a look of intense, excruciating agony clouding his eyes. His torment bit sharply at Nightingale's own heart and she seized his head in her hands very tightly and pressed her forehead to his, desperate to take his pain away.

"No," he said, and he whined with unhappiness. "Nightingale, no, please. For the love of God, do not ever think that you should follow me when I die. You have too much to give, and you are so young and so wonderful that your loss even when I am gone would be too much to-"

Nightingale put her hand over her mouth both to stop the words upsetting them both and to soothe herself with the pleasure of touching the lips she loved so well. "I think you think of me too highly," she told him.

He kissed her palm and took her hand in both of his. He released her from his embrace in doing so, but the warmth his presence inspired in her remained in the way their hands were joined.

"Impossible."