Sonny never liked the immediate process of settling back into a place, so he lets Nancy do all the unpacking. Not that there's much to do, and she's almost done.

Noticing that her pager from Venice is still out from before they left, Nancy smiles and picks it up. On a whim she turns it on.

Blank screen.

Some uneven footsteps clomp behind her. "What'reyou sill doing withathing anyway? Sophiauhlee pissed."

Turning around, Nancy escorts Zoe to their sofa, where she falls in an indignant heap. "Cannbelieve Justin fucking left me here. Tha'bastard inebriate wazzupposedta drive me home butazzusual forgot his car and aprenly me."

"Well, he probably knew we weren't heartless enough to kick you out," Sonny says, cracking a grin.

"Not quite heartless enough," Nancy mutters, nostalgia giving way to irritation.

"Now, now, we're not heartless at all." Sonny moves to stand next to her. "It's almost like having a kid."

Zoe laughs at this for exactly four seconds before falling asleep. Her quiet snores soon fill the apartment.

Nancy turns to him with a reproving expression. "I told you not to keep filling her drink."

"That was Niobe, not me."

She double takes. "Niobe? If not you wouldn't it have been J—"

"No, it was Niobe."

"Well." Nancy pauses, taking enough time to recollect her prim party disapproval. "At the very least it seems like everybody had a good time."

"Yeah, even you."

Nancy's smile returns. "Congratulations on passing your thesis defense. You definitely earned this celebration."

Sonny laughs. "Yeah, although I'm surprised they still wanted to give it to me after I missed a week of classes."

"The merit of your achievements doesn't change, no matter how much time passes." Her eyes sparkle. "Even the ones that only we and MI6 know about."

Finding her smile infectious, Sonny takes Nancy's hands and swings them gently back and forth. "So we're done with the assignment, I finished Jamila's pamphlet and passed my thesis defense, and you caught up on all your coursework and newspaper assignments. We're just living for us right now."

"Feels nice." Nancy chuckles. "There's been something I've been wanting to talk to you about."

Sonny feels himself brighten. "You're getting that extra shipment of Koko Kringles after all?"

She shakes her head.

His shoulders slump forward. "Who steals chocolate off of people's porches, anyway?" he mutters, turning his head to the side as he muses.

"Are you feeling all right today? Any abdominal trouble?"

"Yeah. I mean, no trouble. Why? What do you want to talk about?"

"Uh… well, that."

"Oh." Sonny stops talking, stops thinking even, momentarily thrown off guard. This is still on her mind after two weeks?

"I just get kind of worried," she continues. "We were both alone for a while after Thanos outran us."

"I overdid it." He waves a hand. "I always do."

"I know that's the type of thing that's hard to know until you've already done it." Nancy looks down and bites her lip, frowning. "And even aside from that things were pretty intense. Do you—I mean, would you—will you—"

Sonny tucks a stray tuft of hair behind her ear. "Yeah?"

"Assignments like this again?" she finally finishes in a rush. "I don't plan on joining any agencies, still want to do things on my own, but sometimes it gets that bad even when the assignment isn't with an organization."

"Are you kidding me?" Sonny laughs, hands rising to her forearms so he can frame her to meet his eyes. "Nancy, I'm with you for keeps."

She relaxes against his palms. "That's not exactly what I was asking, but still on point."

"Well, dealing with dangerous stuff and people is who you are. Even if you wanted your life to quiet down at some point, you'd still be dealing with a lot of the people you pissed off."

Leaning forward so her forehead brushes his chin, Nancy whispers, "I love you."

Sonny thought so, but it's nice hearing it. It lifts him clear into outer space. "I love you too. Whether you're solving cases, writing newspaper stories, sleeping, breathing." He wraps his arms around her back, pulling her to him and resting his head on hers. In some vague recess of his mind, he knows that this is his first experience of such high happiness—the cosmic, luminous happiness that inspires the Earth to perpetual rotation, puts the magic in people's feet to get them out of bed every day—that hasn't happened when he's alone and reconstructing all the stories Grandpa Jin told him.

"What are you thinking about?" Nancy asks.

It's weird how every time she asks that, he forgets. Thoughts die like people, but you'd think some stick around longer than others. So Sonny glides onto the next topic like he always does, saying simply, "So I've been wondering something, too."

"What's that?"

"Why is Thanos Thanos' first name and Thanatos Thanatos' last name? They sound similar until you realize the patterns of their names aren't all that similar."

"Hmmm. You'd have to ask Zoe."

Snort. Sputter. "Ask me what?"

Nancy rolls her eyes. At least she sounds slightly more sober this time around. "Nothing."

"How quickly 'something' turns to 'nothing.' Cousin Crazy returns."

"Maybe crazy isn't the right word for her," Nancy retorts.

"Psssh." Zoe scoots up on the couch so she can look her challenger in the eye. (Sonny, in an unusually helpful mood, releases Nancy from his embrace and goes to put away some things in the kitchen.) "Being diplomatic is such a waste of time, Nancy. You're not going to hurt her feelings from three thousand miles away."

"The only times diplomacy is wasted is in life-threatening situations or on people who won't change otherwise."

"Okay, well, when aren't our lives being threatened? Me a spy, you a detective? And as for people who won't change otherwise, yeah, maybe being blunt isn't a great way to coax an aspiring suicide off the top of a building, but other than that most people are still going to do what you say whether you're being honest or nice. So why say 'Please?' Just to save a little bristling on their part? Believe me, it's a total waste of time."

"I guess we'll have to agree to disagree."

"Sorry, what was that? I couldn't hear you over the sound of my own yawn." This statement turns out to be oddly prophetic, as Zoe falls right back to sleep after it.

Nancy smiles in spite of herself.

Sonny sees it.

The clock forgets to sound its seconds as the moment drags on. He and Nancy become the reigning rulers of that corner of time, in this corner of space. Every bit as long-lived as the Annunaki.

The spell is broken by a yawn, though, which soon becomes two.

Nancy starts to yawn again.

Sonny raises a hand and shakes his head. "Only one yawn per person." He breaks into a grin. "Should we turn in?"

"And sleep forever? Sounds like a plan."

So they walk, hand loosely in hand, to the block of space in their studio apartment they've sectioned off from the rest of the sprawling room, their corner of their corner.

Eyeing the setting sun, Justin attempts to quicken his pace and get to the end of the block before WALK turns into DON'T WALK. There are spirals in his calves though, mostly having to do with exhaustion although he had a little to drink at Sonny's party, and he has trouble walking in a straight line right now as a result.

It's not that he has bad night vision; on the contrary, he's learned to love the grainy picture sight takes on in darkness, greater resembling a mosaic than daylight, learned to embrace the inability to see anything but the outline of his hands, like he's a coloring book waiting to be colored in.

It's entirely that he doesn't want this night to end like every other one does for him, alone and largely sightless.

And after he finishes walking Niobe to her flat, he'll be fortunate if there's enough daylight to escort him home.

Head down and hands hooked in his pockets, he sneaks a glance at her. She's eyeing a meander on the building next to them.

Justin should probably talk to her, out of courtesy if nothing else. "So why do you have an apartment here?" he asks. "Zoe didn't think you lived in Seattle."

"I don't." Niobe turns her head to look at him. "It's a friend's."

"Ah." Justin pauses, thinking of new conversation topics. "Do you think that you should have given Zoe so much to drink back there?"

"Only enough to render her immobile." Niobe shrugs casually, although a smirk pushes up her mouth. "Otherwise I knew she'd never leave us alone. When she drinks she gets clingy."

"That is… true." Justin blinks. "Shockingly perceptive. I must confess I never noticed it before. Most of the time she hates the sight of other people, but not when…" he trails off, pondering first her insight and then its implications, and they fall into a comfortable silence for a while.

"See? Now wasn't that fun?" Niobe pipes up, wrapping her arms around herself and sidling closer to him in the cool Seattle night air.

"Not particularly," says Justin, although he's undoubtedly smiling.

"Yes, when Zoe got up on that wobbly table and serenaded us with the 'Fuck you, fuck you very much' song."

"Entirely juvenile behavior. I was surprised at her." A laugh bubbles to his lips nonetheless, although it's more the effect of Niobe's accent on English expletives. It gives them a charming, classy, whimsical air. "At least Dagny was able to come for a few minutes. That was a nice surprise. It seemed to make her happy."

"Yes. They're inspiring."

"How so?"

"They're practically never around one another, but it's so apparent they're in love."

"Mmm," Justin muses.

"I could never do that."

"How do you prefer to love?"

"I don't know," Niobe replies delicately.

They've reached his flat. Justin stops by habit. When Niobe stops, too, he laughs self-consciously. "Where I live," he says.

"You didn't say we'd be passing it." She frowns.

"It's not terribly important. Sounds like your place isn't too far from here."

"I can go by myself. Or…" she trails off, coloring and looking at the bricks making up his building.

It all stops here except the solitude, which will pick up right where it left off. Justin almost looks around for the dead end sign as the wind picks up, a burst of breeze pushing Niobe's long loose hair to her lustrous cheeks in closer proximity to her eyelashes.

It does all end here, he knows. She isn't saying anything. He's at the edge of a plateau with a decline big enough to injure him repeatedly and painfully but never kill him. He has his assortment of beers and brandies to subtract some of the pain, if they don't shatter from the fall.

He turns back to Niobe, knowing he should suggest they continue on to her home. But the words get caught on the way up when he finally gets a good look at her in low light, her dark hair almost invisible except where it contrasts her skin, her eyes fixed on him.

Her.

Heaven knows there's more going on in the world, even more going on in the street, probably, but she's still looking.

"You want to come up?" he asks instead, then cringes and prepares for the slap.

Niobe is nodding, though. And smiling a bit. Her eyes dart down to her knees and back up at him as the corners of her lips quiver in the smile.

He doesn't remember opening this door, climbing the stairs. Only the door to his actual flat. The place where he's reconciled himself to living myriad lifetimes alone. His hand shakes on the key in the lock. "I'm working on a few mosaics that would surely benefit from your opinion—"

Niobe closes the door with her elbow and pulls him against her lips.

And they turn to things they thought they wanted but actually needed in the isolated world.

So, how do you guys think Zoe sings karaoke? I mean, I did have a feeling she'd get around to Lily Allen's "Fuck You," but would she sing it badly or relatively well? I picture her singing it rather like Liam sang "I Just Can't Wait To Be King!" in The Royals. Terrible but terribly funny. Any theories on Zoe's vocal proclivities?

In other news, Sonny and Nancy go meta. I included a little joke here. So, of course it didn't occur to me until after I posted this entire story that Thanos is Thanos' first name and Thanatos is Thanatos' last name, so… the parallel isn't quite as potent as I pictured. So when Nancy says "Ask Zoe," it's less Zoe Wolfe and more "Ask Zoe, the author of this fanfic, why she's SO NEGLECTFUL SHE DIDN'T NOTICE THAT AND ADDRESS IT EARLIER." xD

After this I'm done with the meta/self-inserts; I promise.

I also admit that I did feel slight guilt about making Justin so… well, so much of a lush that he's officially luscious. So I offer my honest experience here: when riding the bus with some of Mom's orchestra friends after a party, pretty much all of them had been drinking… but the Brits were the rowdiest of all. Even graced us with a rendition of "God Save Our Noble Queen." Laughed my lungs dry, and now I feel less guilt about Justin being "luscious." xD

To all my lovely readers, thanks so much for your support and feedback! I love you all so much.