touch me and then turn away

[nonscriptum]

Who: Nathan Drake (nonscriptum) & Elena Fisher (storyseeker)
What: A shameful liar comes clean.
Where: Spire 2, Floor 7
When: 11/23
Warnings: PG/PG-13 for language. Possible references to character death. Will alter warnings as needed.


[Agonizing for days doesn't exactly do wonders for a guy's constitution. It's noticeable, and he knows it - Elena didn't hesitate to point out that he didn't look like he'd slept well, and rightly so. It's a little hard to grab some shuteye when one of the few things that should make him unabashedly thrilled is simultaneously the one thing that could fuck him over in every respect. His elation at Sam's arrival was short-lived with the realization that he had neglected to be forthcoming with the one person who mattered.

He already did this once before.

Once before was enough, and yet he dug his own grave again with eager hands, too desperate to help someone he thought he had lost. Afraid that in dragging himself back into that life he might do the same to her, when they had made a mutual promise to do the opposite.

Nate's thumb loiters helplessly over the SEND button.]

hey honey whenever you get back from setting fires and painting nails with lup can we talk?

Comments

[storyseeker]

[A text from her husband always brightens Elena's day, whether it's during a seemingly designed-to-torture event or what passes for a normal day in Hadriel. This one, though...her smile wavers as three little words sink in. Can we talk?

They talk all the time and they're way past the point where those words are code for "I'm gonna dump you." But it still sets her on edge, a little. She figures he's come up with some new reckless plan to strike back against the Null that she won't like—but if he has, at least he wants to talk about it. That's something.]

Sure. I'll be back in about half an hour.

[It's actually twenty-five minutes, because she finds herself walking faster than normal.]

[nonscriptum]

[He knows it sounds ominous.

There aren't many ways to convey urgency without coming across as concerning, though, and this is one such case where he can admit to himself that committing to a conversation might keep him from backing out. Getting cold feet. Changing the subject. He already set the tone and he can't retract it now.]

Hey.

[When she walks in he can already feel his heart climbing into his throat in the worst possible way, that gut-wrenching anticipation, and she's so damn beautiful - trusting and open - that he wants to take it all back just to prevent that sensation from leaving.

Nate moves to greet her with a one-armed embrace, leaning in to press a kiss to her cheek.]

How was the mayhem?

[storyseeker]

[Her nerves start to settle when she sees him. He hasn't been well-rested lately—who has?—but he doesn't look much different than he did this morning, either. It's unlikely that some catastrophe has occurred and the news just hasn't reached her yet.]

Oh, you know. No buildings actually burned down, so it was pretty dull for hanging out with Lup.

[She gives his waist a squeeze, grateful every time she can see for herself that no double-crossing asshole has decided to cross Nate's name off the Null's hit list.]

Everything okay here?

[She really wants the answer to be 'yes.']

[nonscriptum]

Yeah, I mean, nothing's on fire here, so. A win.

[Nate takes a split-second to savor the contact because in about five minutes he's certain it's going to be withheld for the foreseeable future and he'd deserve every excruciating minute of that physical loneliness.]

...but, uh. I did have something I wanted to talk to you about, though.

[He pulls away after the comforting squeeze. In the moments prior to this it felt as though he might have actually held an organized, bulleted list in his mind, and now it's shot to Hell.]

[storyseeker]

[There it is again, that twist in her stomach. Nate's come a long way in being able to talk things through with her and approach issues as a team, but it'd be preferable if there were't anything to Talk talk about.

But she's Elena Goddamn Fisher and she's never shied away from the tough stuff, so she summons the strength to nod.]

Sure. Is this a sit-down talk?

[nonscriptum]

[Nate sucks in a deep breath and nods in return, slowly. She's caught on quickly and is already bracing herself - not that he expected anything less. Elena is the smartest person he knows.]

...yeah.

[The word is a little hoarse at the edges, forced. He doesn't turn from her quickly, but it isn't too many steps to their living room either way.]

Yeah, it is.

[storyseeker]

[There it is. All right, serious face on.]

Okay. Let's sit.

[The couch that came with the apartment isn't as comfortable as the one they picked out together back in New Orleans, but that's not why Elena perches on the edge of it. She's too figuratively on edge to settle into it.

She waits for Nate to start, because he's the one who actually knows what this is about.]

[nonscriptum]

[Nate sits next to her, hands on his knees, trying to mentally find his way through a whole series of declarative statements that he never thought he would have to make.]

I, uh.

[Jesus, where does he start? The beginning? It might come across as more of an excuse, but he needs her to understand why.]

I have a brother. [Nate lets it rest for a moment before he continues.] An older brother. His name is Sam.

He's here, in Hadriel.

[storyseeker]

[At first there's no real reaction. Elena blinks, because the words are in English and she understands them but they have no relevance to her life and anything she knows of Nate's.

He'd been an orphan, a runaway, a dropout who'd set out on his own far too young before he'd been lucky enough to be taken under Victor Sullivan's somewhat dubious wing. But based on what he'd told her after Yemen, when they'd had a number of heart-to-hearts as they fumbled their way back to each other, he'd never been a brother.]

What?

[nonscriptum]

I thought he'd died.

[The words come out hastier, in a rush, because he can already see shock bordering on growing horror make its way across her face, and he doesn't want to lose her in the deluge before things have even cleared.]

He- about fifteen years ago. We were working a job at a Panamanian prison. Things went south really fast, we were trying to escape and I had his hand, I was- I was pulling him up when they shot him, and he fell.

[At least three stories, through sheets of corrugated metal and scaffolding and God knows what else with several new holes in his side, bleeding out. Coughing on his own blood. What Nate doesn't say is that he was seconds from being shot to death too, bullets pocking the concrete around him while Rafe Adler screamed in his ear through the haze.

Either come with me, or join him.

Those were the only options, weren't they?]

I should've saved him.

[storyseeker]

[It almost makes sense, because that's the sort of crazy shit that happens to Nathan Drake. A job in prison--so not another stint there that he'd earned? Even crazier, even more him.

But it doesn't make sense, because Nathan Drake had put his wedding ring back on, been honest with her about who he was and what drove him and he'd have told her. He would have told her.]

You wouldn't...that's not how it works, Nate. If they had the guns.

[It's reflexive, the attempt at reassurance, because if she knows him at all, she knows how he blames himself for bad things happening to the people he loves. It makes her sound a lot more put together than she is because she's still stuck on brother.]

Then he just...showed up here?

[nonscriptum]

[Some things weren't worth sharing, because he never thought they would surface again - and certainly not in the way they had. Sam all but appearing like a thief in the early morning, knocking everything related to scheduling, work, and home out of order again.

Knocking everything that made Nate who he thought he was. How he defined himself.]

Showed up here the other day, yeah. [It isn't an easy pill to swallow, and he knows it never would have been even without things being what they are.] But...

[Nate can't keep making excuses.]

He, uh. Showed up back home, in New Orleans. Said he needed my help.

[storyseeker]

[And just like that, everything clicks.]

Oh my god.

[Her voice is choked, like she's just heard horrible news instead of been told that he'd been asked to help a long-lost loved one. Because in one sense, she has.]

That's it. That's what you were lying to me about.

[nonscriptum]

[It's Nate's turn to look confused. He thought that using Sam as a preface would better justify the job he took to save his brother. To protect her. It never occurred to him that that sort of assumption is unfair, if not impossible to accept. Then it hits him.

Malaysia. The flooding. Elena flying out to the job site to visit, where he wasn't even stationed. A future version of himself stalling for time. A lie he hadn't even committed yet.

That lie.]

I-

[Something locks up in his throat. He wasn't prepared for this part: not the sudden pain on her face, something torn between anguish and recognition. The excuse fumbles its way through him before he can vet it.]

He was in trouble, he- he needed me-

[storyseeker]

[Elena's jaw would drop if she didn't think it would result in her throwing up. Nate clearly didn't expect her to say that, but already he's trying to justify it.]

You know what, stop. Just stop.

[She stands up then, not to go anywhere—she's just too agitated to stay in one place.]

I knew were lying about something, okay? I knew it when I hung up the phone at home and I knew it when I woke up in the arena.

[nonscriptum]

[He isn't trying to make excuses with no basis in reality - Sam was dead, then he was alive. Sam was the only blood-tie to his old world. Sam did everything for Nate for so long that Nate can't physically imagine what it would be like to tell him no, sorry, I don't think I'll help you out with this tremendous debt you've incurred to a fucking psycho.

But sharing that won't make this any better, and it doesn't seem like Elena wants to hear it anyway.

Incapable of remaining where he is Nate stands with her.]

Elena, he's family.

[storyseeker]

[She makes a small noise when he says that, like he literally punched her in the stomach instead of figuratively in the heart.]

And I'm what, just your wife? Someone who wouldn't understand?

[Little sparkles are already starting to appear at the corner of her vision, but no. She won't let herself cry.]

I didn't say anything because being here was strange enough as it was, and I wanted to believe I was wrong, that...

So what did he need your help with?

[nonscriptum]

That's not-

[He regrets the words just as soon as they leave him, as soon as he sees how struck she looks. Much like a woolly mammoth with one leg trapped in a tar pit, his struggling - his attempts at better explaining himself - only makes it worse.

Nate swallows another another excuse like a handful of razors, ducking his head to get her the time and space to say what she needs to say. She's hurt and it's his fault for not saying something sooner, but what would the point be here?]

They slapped a few bandages on him and threw him back in a cell. He was in that prison for fifteen years. [And it's my fault. He gives it a moment to sink in.] The only reason he got free is because this drug lord busted him out. Wanted him to pay him back with a- with this pirate haul from the 1690s.

[storyseeker]

[She doesn't ask the question for nothing. Elena wants to know what he was doing, what was so important that he had to go do it by himself, without telling her anything about it.

The abbreviated answer she gets is—believable, in that unbelievable Nathan Drake way. With anyone else, she'd call bullshit, but she saw El Dorado. She walked into Shambhala. Lost pirate treasure is practically mundane in comparison.]

Of course he did. But that doesn't explain why you kept it a secret and lied to me for weeks.

[It hits her all at once, like a heavy blow struck minutes ago whose pain is only reaching her now, and her voice gets small, almost afraid.]

There never was a Malaysia job, was there?

[nonscriptum]

I...

[Nate falters.

There is a Malaysia job, of course, in that Jameson offered him the work and Nate refused in an effort to keep from breaking his promise. Their promise. It wasn't legally sanctioned, they didn't have the papers in order, and he was trying not to take that kind of questionable employment opportunity again. Trying to be someone she deserved.

But Sam's persuasion won him over, he didn't think it would take that long, he didn't expect to extend himself so far until the time was already vastly outstretching his ability to explain it. It wasn't just Alcázar, the Butcher of Panama: it was Rafe Adler, it was a mercenary army and their dynamite-happy leader. It was no longer as safe a venture as he had been led to believe.]

I had to protect you.

[storyseeker]

[The whiplash-inducing shifts between heartbreak and anger are getting exhausting. But when anger takes the lead, it gives her renewed energy. She stalks halfway across the room and whips around, glaring at him, not even feeling the tears that have escaped the corners of her eyes to streak down her face.]

That is bullshit and you know it. Tell me, what were you going to do if you pulled it off and I'd never caught on? Were you planning on coming clean after you found the treasure and paid off the drug lord, or nor at all?

[nonscriptum]

[Nate almost starts a sentence at least twice before admitting to himself that he doesn't have the answer, and nothing he says will suffice. He didn't think that far ahead and both of them know it, more than obvious when it's written into every line of his face. Nate has no idea, and therefore has no excuse.

It's killing him that he can see the shiny tracks streaking down her cheeks. He takes a step toward her.]

Elena...

[storyseeker]

[She doesn't really expect more, but it hurts all the same, like an entire shaker of salt dumped directly into the wound. Is worse if Nate doesn't have one, or just doesn't want to say? She holds up a hand to stop him.]

That's enough of an answer.

[She turns, takes a few steps, and stops.]

I thought we were past this.

[nonscriptum]

[He thought they were, too.

But Nate also thought he was fine when they were in New Orleans, when his attention would drift somewhere else and he couldn't drag himself from flashes of steaming jungles, the thrill of discovery, until someone pulled him. Old world glories whispering in the dark and gathering dust on the shelves in their attic. His unintentional home away from home, weighted with memory. Curating a life away from her, even if she was a deep, intrinsic part of it.

The urgency of Sam's rescue has faded here and he has no excuse to claim protection under the circumstances, stopping short when she lifts a hand. Nate never felt as though there was a wall between them, even with his own reticence, until now.

He lets her build it, hands falling to his sides, helpless.]

I'm sorry.

[storyseeker]

[She doesn't turn to look at him. If she does, she might go back to the beginning of a circular argument and ask how he could do this, why he ever thought it might be okay. Demand answers that he can't give and bring them to a final, real break. Elena can't bear to face that, so she remains still as he speaks two simple words,

She's heard them before.]

I know.

[The apartment is small and right now it feels stifling, but in her head she can hear the echo of another time, another place, another apology. He'd come back from the sea looking just as exhausted and defeated as she feels right now.

Elena wishes that she could feel the same spark of hope for them that she did then.

Without another word, she opens the door and leaves.]