Chapter Seven - Author's note: Sorry for the extremely long delay! But when you read this chapter I am sure you'll understand why it was so difficult to write! Please let me know what you think of it.

Nightingale did not weep long. She was too used to concealing her tears, too used to curing herself of them, too used to hiding the emotions that naturally swelled inside her breast, restless and roaring. It was never with Robin that she hid her feelings; no, that had been a practice in the bordello that she still used when it was required now.

Now she stood and straightened her body as her soul curled in itself, folded itself end to end until it was as small as a pebble but heavier than her entire world. Her eyes burned with tears she had dried too fast. Her breath came and went slowly, but it was not the serene rise and fall of a contented breast. It was the resigned calm of a miserable heart.

She rose and regarded herself in the mirror. She saw there what she always had; the face of a beautiful woman. She had only begun to like that beauty for the way she saw it in Colm; she had seen the way his eyes were a perfect replica of her own, how he had the curve of her chin, and the oblique, fey slant of her lips.

It astonished her how little it had taken her to hate her own face once more. Her own child had barely made her like her own figure. Now, it had taken but this reminder of the bordello to make her want to claw at her own flesh, to scar her spotless skin and rip her shining hair and put out her shimmering eyes.

Nightingale turned away from the mirror. She went about straightening her back until she stood straight as a rod, tightening her sinews until her posture very nearly hurt her. She took a deep breath and it caught in her throat.

She breathed in again and this time she felt her breast heave with it. Then she blinked once, twice, a third time, ran a hand through her hair, touched her lips, and reached out her hand to open the door.

She was not quivering, as she could have been. Nightingale had perfect control over nearly every inch of her own flesh and not a single part of it would break rank when she truly focused upon it, but her hands were often an exception to this rule.

"Clenched hands means anger or sadness," Robin had once said, and he had taken her shaking fist and gently unfolded her fingers. "White knuckles means you are clinging tight to something you love."

And then he had taken the hand clutching his sleeve and kissed it.

Nightingale found her way back to the team in perfect silence. She entered the room without making a noise, but she still found three pairs of eyes fixed upon her the moment she appeared. Nicholas and Pierce, for the differences between them, wore a remarkably similar expression of concern. It was an emotion that would have touched her had she been able to feel it; now she could feel little other than the heavy emotion that had settled about her heart.

Caroline was no where to be seen and David was staring directly at her. She wanted to either shrink from the gaze or be swallowed up in it. 

She did not approach him, not right away. With a feigned need for her tablet, she picked it up from the table before winding her way slowly about the table. By the time she had reached David she had discarded the tablet and instead opted to stare out the window. She not look directly at him, not with those eyes upon her.

Instead she stared out over the city. David's eyes dropped to his hands and now Nightingale's flickered to his face, taking in the sharp lines of his jaw and his aquiline nose. But the moment she looked at him he looked up and their eyes met.

He said nothing. He watched her with an intent gaze that was so very scorching that even in its concern it was not gentle. His weight shifted and for a moment Nightingale thought he meant to reach for her.

"Touch me and I'll kill you," she snarled, baring her teeth with a snap of her jaw.

"I wouldn't dare," he said, with a sardonic little smile.

There was a short pause. Nightingale could feel Nicholas's and Pierce's eyes still upon her - it had always been a talent of hers, knowing when a man was looking at her - but she paid them no mind.

"Are you all right, Gale?" he asked after a moment.

She did not mock him for his concern, nor did she give the vicious response she wanted. Instead, she lowered her gaze and did not reply at all. Her silence must have betrayed her feelings and David gave a soft sigh.

Then he nudged his hand forward and bumped his fingers lightly against Nightingale's. He did it again and then it was her who let her fingers close about his hand. They stayed like that for a moment, heads bowed, fingers interlocked. David's grasp was warm and his grip loose. His hands were gentle. It very nearly made Nightingale forget how hard his hands could be, how deadly his grip was.

But she could not forget for long. To touch David was to understand what a lethal creature he was. He was all harsh, severe lines and hard strength. He could be careful, kind, and gentle, but that was exceedingly rare and even then it was impossible to forget that what lay beneath the calm, cold surface was something very dangerous and more than capable of killing.

David was not like Nightingale in that way. David was indeed like her, that was true, but they were not copies of one another. Nightingale was not so ruled by rigid morals painted in black and white. Nightingale was not so fiercely proud. Nightingale was not so bitter. Nightingale adored sweetness, softness, gentility. Nightingale valued unconditional affection and spiritual love.

Nightingale had never killed, and that was the most important difference. Nightingale despised violence in all its forms. So much did she hate brutality that even the thought of hurting those who had abused her had lost its vicious, vengeful appeal.

David could kill, and David did kill. He was in his true element then. He was swift, decisive, elegant, deadly when he fought. It would have been beautiful to watch had it not been so frightening. Nightingale had always known that David was incapable of violence toward her, no matter how much he seemed to use it toward Robin or Nicholas or Pierce. She was not afraid of him when the fire came into his eyes and he snarled with bitter fury; she was afraid of him when then graceful killer made his appearance, the one to whom bloodshed seemed an effortless, natural act.

So Nightingale drew back and out of David's grasp. She turned aside and moved to leave but his voice stayed her and made her turn once more to him.

"Nightingale," he said. It was just her name he said, nothing else. This was not the killer she had seen in the bordello that night. This was not the bitter David of smothered anger and strangled disappointment. This was his attempt at gentility, and it was only ever directed at her in this way. David's outright affection was reserved for Steel and for Robin; this half-guilty, half-awkward sweetness that could hardly be classed as love was something only Nightingale received.

Again, she blinked once, twice, a third time before he went on.

"You don't have to do it. No one will force you."

"Yes, someone will," she said. Her words were quiet.

David flinched back and his teeth snapped together in a growl. "If you think you'll fucking guilt me by acting like I'm lying about forcing you into-"

"I'll force myself. You won't," replied Nightingale. "I will make myself do it. No one else can or will."

David nodded, a sharp jerk of his chin. He said nothing. His eyes were lowered.

"I should go home. Tell Robin." Nightingale's tone was flat. She did not fear Robin's jealousy at the news. She feared his pain in his concern for her suffering.

"Go if you want," replied David. More than a twinge of bitterness had seeped into his tone.

"Do you want me to go?" she asked him. She didn't entirely know why she asked it. Perhaps she feared Robin, perhaps she was tired of Michael's persistent questioning, perhaps she had no strength to paint a smile on her face for Colm's benefit.

Much worse, of course, was the idea that she wanted to stay with David.

"I don't need you here," he snapped. And then, he miraculously softened the blow: "I don't need any of you here."

"That's not what I asked," she said. Her tone was gentle.

"Pierce! Nick! Clear off if you want to," called David.

They rose at once, and both seemed to hesitate, wanting to comfort Nightingale but knowing that to approach David at such a moment meant at the very least losing a few fingers. In the end, both smiled sadly at her and shuffled out. Caroline was still no where to be seen.

"You," he said, addressing her. "You can stay."

Nightingale took it as a compliment.

They both sat down at the table and were silent for a long time. Nightingale's mind wandered to her home, to Robin, to Colm. She truly did love her son, and thought of him often, but it was Robin who had given her a desire to live when she had had no hope. He was the only being who had ever made her very heart seize with vicious joy at the very thought of him, the only one to every truly love her. Nightingale had raised herself from subjugation and from slavery, but Robin had given her something to live for. He was the only person she had ever - 

But no, that was not true. He was not the only person, not the only one to love her, nor the only one to give her hope. The other such person sat across from her.

"Nightingale, do you remember what I told you when I first met you?" asked David.

"Of course," said Nightingale. She remembered all of it. She did not think she would ever forget a single moment in the bordello. Good or bad, it would remain in her memory until the day she died.

"You have a choice." His tone was flat but his gaze was bright as he met her eyes.

"But one of the choices is the wrong thing to do," she replied.

"That's what freedom is," he said, his voice not far from patronizing.

"Don't treat me like I'm stupid, David." Nightingale's hard-won patience had worn thin with her newfound sadness and anger. She could not help but snap at him.

"I meant to treat you as you are, which is glorious," he said, and the words fell from him easily and with so much simple praise that it sounded effortless. But the moment he had said it his jaw shut with an ominous sound and he clenched his teeth, as if he could snap the words back from the air and consume them before she could hear what he had said.

Nightingale was very quiet. She watched David carefully, from the grinding of his jaw to the twitch of his temple as stared resolutely at his hands. It suddenly occurred to her how much he looked like that man she had met in the bordello. It could have been but yesterday that they had first laid eyes upon each other. David had not changed a bit.

"I should go," she said, and stood.

David nodded without looking at her.

"Come with me," she entreated. Her voice was soft. "Robin would like to see you."

"No." His reply was short and harsh.

Nightingale sighed. "If you say so." She did not have the energy to feud with David. She felt listless, drained, and numb save for the sorrow and the anger that still clung to her heart, making her chest tight with unhappiness.

She turned and left David sitting there, silent, dejected, and alone. She could feel his eyes on her back and wondered if he was wordlessly supplicating her to stay.

She, too, was alone in her hovercraft, left to be tormented by her thoughts. The city held so little appeal for her as she flew. It seemed dark and grey even in the light of day. 

Robin was not at home when she got there. Neither was Colm. She was greeted instead by a holograph of her husband telling her that he had gone to have lunch with an old friend and had taken Colm with him. She was alone there, too. She walked into her home to find it dark and uninhabited, and illuminated only by the milky light that had become so much dimmer since the bright, orange dawn.

She played the message four times consecutively, each time loving the image of her husband more and more. It calmed her to see it. Even projected in monochromes of blue, even shimmering with aura, a recorded replication of Robin conjured up memories of the man himself.

She reached up and touched the blue lips moving as the hollow, bell-like reproduction of his voice echoed in her ears. Nightingale was surprised when her hand met the empty air and not Robin's warm skin.

Giving a sigh, she turned away from it. And it was then she heard a soft ringing sound. She realized it was a video call coming through upstairs and, assuming it would be from Robin, she went bounding smoothly up the stairs to answer it.

It was not Robin. This was no blue holograph; Michael's image appeared on the screen, twice lifesize. It meant his brown eyes were larger even than their impossibly huge reality, and his broad smile gargantuan. 

"I finally got hold of you," he said. He was seated in an office, presumably his own at work.

"You did," she said with a tired little smile. She did not sit. She remained standing, wondering whether she would be more likely to faint if she allowed her body the relaxation of sinking to the floor.

"I have something important to tell you. Rose wanted to be here, too, but she's out," he said, and flashed one of his bright, white smiles to Nightingale.

Nightingale, in any other circumstance, would have thought fondly of Rose, who was currently completing her doctorate in medical genetics at the university where Michael did his research. She was far too perturbed even for Rose, however.

"So people have been telling me," said Nightingale.

"I've made an interesting discovery, to put it mildly," he said, and now his smile was one that was half-mad in its excitement. Nightingale had a nagging sensation that she ought to be equally concerned, but she ignored it.

"Did you?" she asked.

He nodded vigorously, apparently unaffected by her lack of enthusiasm. "You know those cells you let me have?" he asked.

Nightingale nodded back at him, remembering his plea for a few of her cells for tissue culture and subsequent experiments, and how happy she had been to let him swab her cheek and take them for his research.

"They've let me make quite the observation," he said.

"And why my cells particularly?" asked Nightingale. Her tone sounded bored at best and pained at worst, but Michael, who seemed to be nearly hysterical with excitement, didn't seem to notice.

"That's because not all Inamoratas were engineered like you, Nightingale. You know from experience that labs like Starkwood didn't have the same quality - they didn't actually have webbed feet, Bobby was exaggerating - but they were prone to sickness, they could fall pregnant, they were beautiful but not so beautiful as you," said Michael. She could see how excited he looked, his dark eyes bright with verve, sparkling as he bounced in his chair. "Most importantly, they age. They were born to adulthood and continue to age - you don't."

"Because Bobby was nothing if not a successful fucking businessman," snapped Nightingale, the memory lashing at the newly-opened wound done by her new case. "He was planning on having us for fifty, sixty years. He didn't want to have to replace well-trained Inamoratas."

"Exactly - so he paid the highest price for the highest-quality Inamoratas. Corporation Inamoratas," said Michael. "The ones that never age, never succumb to disease, don't naturally fall pregnant."

Nightingale suddenly felt ill at ease. A sense of forbidding descended over her. It was all well and good that Michael was cheerful, but for some reason she wasn't sure she wanted to know why he was so ecstatic. She had the urge to back away, out of the room, or cover her ears.

"You don't look like you age because you don't actually age," said Michael. "In trying to unlock the secret of permanent youthful beauty, the Corporation unlocked permanent youth."

"You mean-" said Nightingale. Her breath caught in her throat. She did not want to ask, but Michael told her anyway.

"Immortality."

"You mean I won't ever naturally die? Not ever?" Nightingale's voice was very quiet but very deadly. Predatory, even, like David's when he became the elegant, ruthless killer.

"As far as I know, not ever."

She looked up at the screen, seeing Michael's grin practically ripping his face in half. He was elated, overjoyed at this discovery. As her eyes flickered over to where a little figure usually sat, perched neatly by the window. Nightingale looked back at Michael and snarled, her voice full of visceral desperation and panic, breathless and tortured:

"Colm-"

"Will live as long as you," Michael assured her.

Nightingale could breathe once more. The thought of Colm dying before her was an agonizing one. No parent was meant to bury their child. But now another worry clogged her throat and made her hiss with pain.

"Why the fuck are you so happy? Don't you know what this means? Robin-" began Nightingale, thinking now instead of a few decades without Robin, vast stretches of centuries instead, or of taking her own life and leaving Colm.

"Listen, Nightingale listen!" cried Michael, still ecstatic. "I took your cells and isolated the specific modification that causes your youth, and then I cloned it into Drosophila melanogaster, which is-"

"A fruit fly," hissed Nightingale, the conditioned knowledge taking her by surprise.

"Exactly. They're meant to live about thirty days, Gale, and when I put your mutation in they-" Michael was so overcome with excitement that he paused for a moment to compose himself. "They're still alive now."

"How long's it been?"

"Five years exactly. They've lived over sixty times - nearly sixty-one times - longer than they're meant to," said Michael. "And they're healthy. No organ failure, no aging, nothing. Held in a state of perfect health."

Nightingale did the arithmetic in her head and then imagined living for four, five, six thousand years. It was a horrific prospect. Her mind reeled. Deserts of vast eternity stretched before her and she felt the sudden urge to vomit in horror, in fear, in pain.

"From what I can see, it's heritable in a simple enough way - it's simple Mendelian genetics; it's dominant. So Colm will live as long as you, but-" said Michael.

"I understand Mendelian genetics!" hissed Nightingale. "Robin-"

"Listen, Gale, listen to me! Those that I modified lived longer than they should have, and passed it along to all their homozygous or heterozygous dominant offspring. But more important that that, I made it into a drug, an aerosol drug," said Michael. "I cloned the gene into the protein capsid of a virus, and then infected flies - then mice, then rats, then apes - with the virus."

And now he jumped up off his seat, and quivering with excitement, went on.

"Those that were treated regularly with the drug lived just as long and were just as healthy as those with the genetic modification," said Michael. Now he paused to let it sink in.

Nightingale's eyes rose very slowly to his as her mind made sense of what he had said. "You mean-"

"I can make anyone immortal!"

There was a long pause. Nightingale could feel herself quivering. Every fear she had had about her own longevity, Robin's advanced age, it was both heightened and diminished. She imagined him freezing in time like her, held like a photograph, perfect and unaging, for a thousand years. No more silver would worm its way into his black mane, no more wrinkles climb over the corners of his eyes.

Eternal youth for the three of them, for their little family. And for her sisters. And for Glitter's and Sparkle's little girl to be. Nightingale sat down.

"I...are you sure it will have the same effect as my own mutation?" she asked after a moment.

"Not quite - yours holds you in permanent adulthood, at about twenty-one years of age. This drug, when used, will do the same thing, but it has the tendency to shave a few years off your age. Reverse the aging process, it seems," said Michael. He was smiling, grinning from ear to ear.

A younger Robin, just as she knew when she had met him twelve years ago.

"As you also remember, Inamoratas have, as a side-effect, advanced healing properties. You can still bleed and become injured, but you heal faster. The drug does the same, but a bit more vigourously. Look here," he said.

He vanished for a moment and when he reappeared, he was holding a scalpel. Before Nightingale could cry out, Michael plunged it into his arm. He held up the wound. It should have bled more, it should have been gushing red. It wasn't. It bled, of course, but it seemed to have clotted.

"That'll be just a line in a week," he marvelled.

Nightingale remembered how quickly she used to heal from scrapes and bruises. How Rose's injuries had never been a serious point of concern for anything longer than a day or so. She was contemplating the drug's regenerative capabilities, trying to use that to keep the memories of her own wounds at bay - the broken ribs from the economic analyst who hadn't liked the way she'd sucked his cock, the journalist who'd kicked her in the face when she'd looked him in the eye once too often, the countless bruises from clients who wanted to make her an animal to soothe their guilt, or wanted to use her as a rag-doll to abuse out their own anger - but a realization smashed its way through the tumult of her mind.

"Michael," she said. Her voice was soft. Low. Dangerous, like David's when he was ready to fight. Her mind reeled from this new discovery, from what it meant to her, to Robin, to Colm, to Michael, from the necessity of becoming a whore once more, from the slavery of her sisters half a world away, but her voice was soft. It was not a sweet softness. It was one of steely, deadly calm.

"Yeah?" he said. He was bouncing, utterly overcome with joy.

"You dosed yourself, didn't you?"