#(also it makes more sense to be rio because imperial capital of brazil at the time)

[qqueenofhades]

Hilary, you’re probably up to your ears in plot bunnies/prompts, but I just wanted to sidle in with: the Old Guard eating ice cream (for the first time!), Joe making Andy ride on the handlebars of one of the first bicycles, and other assorted historical fluffy nonsense

It’s just going on to summer, and the Brazilian air is starting to turn especially hot around the edges; the October sun is thick and soupy, and the team is sweating and breathing hard and a little stiff from everything that just went down. It’s 1834, Emperor Pedro I just died a few days ago, there has been unrest and struggling in the city over the politics of the succession, and the Old Guard has been doing their best to ensure that it doesn’t get any worse. This has, however, involved some adventures, including the unanticipated and dramatic shattering of windows in the Paço de São Cristóvão. Joe grimaces, still picking bits of glass out of his suit lapels, until Nicky takes over and brushes his cravat straight again with somewhat more attention than it really needs, but neither of them care. They exchange a brief smile, pinkies linking, and then Joe turns to the others. “I just broke a damn palace window,” he announces. “With my body. Is there anything we can get to eat?”

The team exchanges looks, rolls stiff shoulders, Andy still shucking the remains of her torn velvet skirt, and decides this sounds like a fine idea. The emperor died across the sea in Lisbon, not Rio de Janeiro, but since the city was briefly used as the Portuguese imperial capital itself during the Napoleonic exile of the royal family in 1808, there are plenty of nerve centers that can be profitably exploited. Booker spits out a piece of wooden splinter that looks like fancy furniture in a previous life, grimaces, and announces, “I could eat.”

The four of them, still dirty, dazed, looking more than slightly disreputable, and only badly concealing a stupendous array of weapons beneath the boys’ pinstriped suits and Andy’s ruffled skirts (the first thing she did was complain about how she was supposed to fight like this, and good luck getting her to put on the lacy bonnet), lurch off along the shady, treed promenade that borders Copacabana beach -- still, at this point, a few centuries off from becoming a tourist mega-destination. A few of the Portuguese and Brazilian gentry stroll along sedately, almost entirely unaware of the upheaval that just took place under their noses, though some of them notice the team long enough to cast judgmental glances. Finally, Nicky shrugs, takes Joe’s hand, and says, “What? Might as well give them something to really feel outraged about.”

“We’re supposed to not attract attention,” Andy reminds him dryly, but without any real condemnation. In a few more steps, they reach an enterprising ice cream vendor selling his confections in cut-glass bowls, enticing the top-hatted gentlemen and parasoled ladies to stop for a cool bite in the heat. The team looks at each other. There’s a long pause. Then Andy sighs, digs in her impractical ribboned pockets, and says, “Fine, I’ll pay.”

They’ve eaten ice cream before -- it’s just starting to be popular and more widespread, though still a delicacy -- but not often, and these spoonfuls taste especially sweet. The vendor tactfully does not ask about the soot on their faces and the splinters in their hair (to be fair, they’ve gotten most of them off), especially when Andy slips him a few extra reals for his trouble. He passes them four glass dishes and four tin spoons, thanks them, and resumes hawking his wares to the next passersby. Exactly what they can all appreciate.

The four of them wander onto the white sand of Copacabana, the crystalline-blue waves crashing on the shore, the shoulders of the green mountains rising up into the sky. (Even through everything that happens to it, part of Rio will always naturally feel like heaven on earth.) They sit down and eat the ice creams with moans and sighs of appreciation, the cool sweetness exactly what they need after the punishing events of the day. Joe and Nicky feed each other spoonfuls (Andy rolls her eyes but otherwise pretends not to notice) and Booker eases off his boots. He’s the newest, he’s only been with them for about twenty years, and they know he wants to get this done and go back to his sons at home. “This is nice,” he says. “This part, at least.”

Joe looks briefly about to make a comment about how they can get ice cream now because he dramatically crashed through a window like a big damn hero earlier, but decides against it. It is nice: the four of them together, the sweat of a mission drying on their brows, the torn clothes, the usual scrapes that have sealed up, the knowledge that they’ve done something worthwhile today, and can have a moment to sit and relax as a result. Andy’s face as she gazes out to sea, however, is not entirely peaceful. Joe and Nicky know that there’s only one thing, one person, she can be thinking about. Knows that Quynh’s iron coffin has not washed this far across the Atlantic, from the cold seas of England to the bountiful bays of Rio, but some part of her cannot help but wonder.

“Hey, boss,” Nicky says in an undertone. “You all right?”

“I’m fine.” Andy looks at him, and smiles almost entirely convincingly. “Finish your ice cream,” she commands. “Before it melts.”

Nicky glances at her again, but does as told, and they lick the spoons clean. The breeze tousles their hair, and the shadows grow longer. They sit there until the sun has vanished behind the shoulders of the mountains, and gaslamps begin to strike on along the promenade. Then they get up, return the dishes to the vendor as he packs his cart away for the night, and hand in hand (or arm in arm) they go on, into the evening, and leave Rio as quietly as they came.