hadriel_logs | I know everything you don't want me to

Entry tags:

I know everything you don't want me to

Who: Elena Fisher

storyseeker and Nathan Drake

nonscriptum
What: Maybe possibly getting their shit together
Where: /waves hands vaguely again
When: Soon after arriving in the new digs
Warnings: Marital do-rama

[Elena had known the war with the Null would have to come to an end, one way or another, but this isn't the sort of peace she'd imagined. A completely different landscape, back in the sun but with too much of it. It's not great, but they're alive, and relatively safe. They can take some time to breathe. And that means she has some decisions to make.

She'd told Lup that she didn't know if she and Nate would make it through this, and she still doesn't. This lie isn't the worst thing he's ever done, but it's because it isn't the worst that it could also be the last straw. This isn't something she can do, over and over, Nate screwing up and Nate being sorry and her forgiving and it all happens again. Doesn't matter that there aren't lawyers here. They lived estranged lives once, they could do it again.

But she doesn't want to. Maybe that makes her a fool, but she's not ready to walk away. Their encounter during the days of fighting had only driven that home, reminded her what a good team they could make, and she wonders if Nate felt that too. If he did, if he regrets his actions for more reasons than just her anger, then...maybe.

She'd made a vow. For better or for worse. Well, this is definitely 'worse', but there it is. She paces through the displaced city, looking out for him automatically before she's even made a conscious choice to seek Nate out. If nothing else, she wants to make sure he's still okay.]

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[I'm a hopeless case, doc.

Lance hadn't really believed him and if Nate believed it himself, he probably wouldn't be out here trying to find her. All the pent-up anxiety from the last handful of days hasn't so much cooled in light of their change in environment, as it has ramped up. Every screaming urge to explore a foreign terrain is swallowed by the guilt that he hasn't said what he needs to say, whatever that is.

They can't go their whole lives like this and Elena wouldn't be the person he knows she is if she let it keep happening. If she put up with it, with him. It isn't a case of cold feet but it hasn't painted him as anything more than a cold fish when it comes to explanations, because the excuses were shoddy, they weren't true. He can't keep trying to protect someone who doesn't really need his protection.

Nate finds her on the outskirts of the city, several yards away from one of those deep, brightly-colored pools of water. The sun compliments her better, sleek gold hair and freckles and his chest tightens like a noose has been looped around his lungs. Sand and minerals crunching underfoot give him away long before he speaks.]

Hey.

[Nate stops short, more self-enforced space for her comfort when he's aching to drag her against him.]

Been looking for you.

[It doesn't take long for him to find her. Or maybe for her to get where she knows she'll be found. Elena doesn't know. All she knows is that this always happens—they always find their way to each other, one way or another.

What happens now that they have is another thing she doesn't know.]

Hey.

[She doesn't try to hide her smile. It's small, and brief, but not fake. Angry and heartbroken and uncertain she may be, but she only got this way because of how she feels about him. Even if the worst came to pass, she would never want him to be harmed.]

Been wondering if you were okay. It was a pretty big trip out of the cave.

You know me.

[He says with the loose confidence of a man too-often engaged in life-threatening situations, the humorous arrogance of someone whose luck may or may not have been foretold by medieval prophets. The acknowledgement of a person familiar with close calls and finally realizing what they might cost him.]

You look good, [Nate volunteers, in reference to the fact that she doesn't seem to have sustained any major injuries, lost any limbs.]

Thought we could, uh, talk. If you want.

[You look good. For a brief moment, she thinks of their reunion on a Yemeni airstrip after months apart. He'd used the same words paired with a cheerfully cocky demeanor to pretend that she was fine and he was fine and it didn't actually matter that he'd walked out on her.

If he were acting the same way now, that would be it. She'd have to leave a man who could keep lying to himself and learn nothing from it. But he's not. There's something in his face and his eyes that might even be sincerity.]

I do. Yeah. [She nods, and gestures to the edge of the pool.] Want to sit?

Yeah.

[Everything feels buried beneath the gritty silt of remorse, a sorriness not necessarily for himself but for what this has done to her - how much it resembles what he has done before. The invitation is enough to give him hope, that he hasn't committed so much as to push her away entirely, but he knows it is a strain enough for her to stand there and listen to him.

Nate follows her gesture and grunts as he settles onto the rocky earth, boots scraping the scalloped edge of a prismatic pool. Elbows braced on his knees he wishes all the answers would emerge from the crystalline depths; make things a lot easier on him.

On them.]

...I don't know where to start. [He admits honestly, something scraping at the back of his voice.] I should have told you. Not...after Sam showed up again. Before.

[He knows why he didn't. Nate was more than uncomfortable with the idea of digging up an old grave just to dig up an old grave. All it takes for some wounds to open is picking at a scar.]

After what happened to him, it was easier not to be reminded.

[This isn't exactly what she thinks of as nice weather, but Elena hadn't realized how much she missed actual sunlight until she had it again. It's harsh here, but better than the cave in some ways, and the pools are almost beautiful. Any other day and it would be peaceful, sitting by the edge with her husband.

She can't relax, though. Hasn't been able to for weeks. For all the time she's spent thinking about this—them—she's at just as much of a loss on where to start. The journalist in her could take over, ask probing questions, but she can't be the one to take the lead on this.

When he finally speaks, it feels like the first honest thing she's heard in years.]

I know. You're good at turning away from painful things.

[The accusing words don't match her tone. She's not trying to hurt him. She just knows him.]

Did Sully know?

[Nate takes a deep breath, exhaling slowly and looking up - past his knees, across the pond, lingering at the edge of a searing horizon. His tendency to bail at the first sign of upset is pretty well-established, because it's simpler when people don't know. They have less to judge him for when they don't know.

He can't keep running. This is a marathon, not a sprint, and his endurance just isn't good enough anymore.]

Yeah. He wanted me to tell you.

[You're not giving her enough credit, still ringing in his ears. As per the usual, Sully was right.]

...when Sam died, I thought- y'know, what's the point? He's gone. He-

[Nate pauses, frowning, trying to rework his sentence, trying to find a way to say what he needs to say without it sounding like an excuse. A thoughtful response, nothing spur-of-the-moment, nothing hurtful.]

He was all I had, for a long...a long time.

[Hurt flashes faintly across her face. No surprise, though. She loves Sully, has missed him over the last couple of years—email and the occasional phone call don't cut it with absent family. She's sure that Sully missed her too, and she believes that he urged Nate to come clean.

But push comes to shove and Victor Sullivan will always have Nate's back. He had it with the last mystery of Francis Drake and he'll undoubtedly have it to the end of this quest for pirate gold.

It doesn't help to hear that Sully was on her side. In some ways, it makes things worse, because it means someone talked sense to Nate and he refused to hear it.]

How long was it just the two of you?

[She knows that Nate is an orphan, and that he became one long before he met Sully and found something like a father as well a friend. Everything between the two points has been a hazy no-man's-land that she never tried to cross. It never felt like she needed to.]

Uh.

[When does he begin to quantify it? When is he supposed to start counting? After his father, probably - after they got dropped off like unwanted pets, shoved in a cardboard box on the side of the road. Nate rubs a hand over his face, thinking.]

...I was five, when our dad gave us up to the state. [The asshole is implied.] Stayed in that orphanage until I was twelve - Sam got booted about a year earlier, when he was sixteen. Petty theft, smoking.

[He says by way of explanation, worrying his lip with his teeth. The vast and glaring social differences in the manner by which they were raised has never escaped him, but neither has he volunteered the information so freely. It's one thing to tell somebody that you were on your own as a teenager, of legal age to take jobs, but he realizes that it's another thing entirely to admit that he left the relative safety of adult care before he even finished middle school.]

I didn't get kicked out so much as, um. I ran away. We spent the next...twelve years traveling, mostly in South America. Taking odd jobs, doing our own research. When I was still a kid I would busk while he picked pockets. [Nate huffs a laugh that almost sounds rueful.] Got really familiar with the local jails.

[For a long moment Elena just stares, the heat of the sun and the lingering stress of their problems lost on her as all she can think about is how much she wants to kill Nate's father.

Nate hadn't been at all complimentary of the man on the rare occasion that he talked about his past at all, even vaguely, and that had said a lot about his qualities as a parent when she'd believed him to be dead. To her that he was absent not because of death, but by choice? All she wants to do is go back in time and give him what he deserves. Five years old. Good lord.

Her hands have curled into fists without her event noticing. Elena takes a steadying breath and forces herself to listen. The rest isn't so shocking, even if it makes her chest ache. It fits with what she already knows of him.]

That part doesn't surprise me. [She thinks for a few seconds.] I take it that's where Sam was when you met Sully.

[Unless he omitted his brother's presence from that story, but she doesn't think so. It had been told with too much nostalgic fondness. So it was probably jail, or another complication.]

Did you think I'd be angry that you never told me about him?

[Would she have been? It's hard to say what might have been when they're not yet past what is. She can't really imagine being angry, though. Hurt, yes, even if she understands why he'd try to bury a loss of that magnitude. But not angry.]

[He glances at her briefly, nodding, when she mentions Sully. Smart as a goddamn whip, as their mustachioed mutual friend might say, and it's never been truer than it is now. It's the whole reason they're here outside of his own inability to get and keep his shit together. Then comes the harder question.]

I don't know. I guess I thought you might wonder why I didn't say anything before. That you'd dig deeper.

[Find him wanting.

Nate worries his lip with his teeth, thumb rubbing the coarse denim of his jeans. There's more (when is there not?) and since he's coming completely clean he might as well go the whole nine yards with it. Just saying the words makes it so difficult to focus that he has to force himself to concentrate on the rippling blues in front of them.]

I'm not...who I say I am. My last name isn't even Drake.

[Elena doesn't know exactly how Nate will answer her—if she did, they wouldn't need to have this talk in the first place—but she expects a number of possibilities. She expects to hear him say no, but he was too afraid he might be wrong to risk telling a belated truth. She expects to hear him say yes, because it's such a big omission and anyone would be angry about that.

She does not expect what he actually says.

The seconds stretch out as his words sink in and she turns the thought over in her head. A lot of emotions rush forward all at once, but the one she feels most strongly might be relief, but she's not sure why. She flexes her hands and brings them to rest on her knees.]

I wondered about that, sometimes. Back at the beginning.

[Back when he was just a handsome con-man who made an excellent post-adventure fling. He'd confirmed early on that he could be a liar, and part of her had wondered—how far did the lies go, and how big was the con? By the time she'd found herself falling in love, it had ceased to matter.]

Do you want to tell me what it is now?

[It isn't a test. 'Yes' or 'no' don't correspond to right or wrong. The way he looks right now, Elena's sure he'll tell her if she asks him. But whatever name he was born with isn't going to give her the answers she's looking for. She wants to know what he wants.]

[Nate can almost hear the record scratching as Elena falls completely silent, comprehension crashing over her in waves. Wading chest-deep in the deluge and concerned about the rising water level Nate swallows hard, clenches his jaw, waits for a response.

It was always going to be a long con, something that happened, but wasn't necessarily intentional. When Sam suggested they change their surname to forge a new path they could define by themselves, for themselves, Nate never thought he would be explaining to anyone why he bought into his own lie so completely for so long.

That Elena had her suspicions isn't surprising - back when they first met she had the know-how and resources to dig around for a Nathan Drake. Drake didn't have any heirs, she had pointed out, and Nate had grinned anyway.]

Morgan. Sam and Nathan Morgan. We...

[He takes a deep breath, knowing this feels like a narrative diversion when the only answers she wants are the clear ones.]

The night I left the orphanage...it was because we'd broken into a house a few miles away. We were just- we were trying to find research that our mom had done. Dad sold it after she passed. Quick, in-and-out to get the stuff that belonged to us. Got caught by this little old lady who had worked with our mom, said she was the best historian she'd ever met. Cops came, lady said she'd call them off, then she...she died of a heart attack, right in front of us.

[Nate huffs a laugh, but there isn't any humor in it.]

Couldn't go back to the orphanage after that. So we changed our names.

[If Elena scrounged for details she would have found him, a scrappy, skinny little kid in a Catholic home for boys, photos and documentation until he disappeared off the map and emerged again with a new identity. He was twelve, for Christ's sake. Sam made the loss easier by making it an adventure.]

We lost our mom. Thought I'd lost Sam. After everything, I didn't wanna lose you, too.

[There's so much to digest, and not just in terms of raw information. Even without details, it's so much more than she used to know about her husband's past. It carries so much emotional weight.

The journalist in her wishes it came packaged in a dossier. Something nice and neat she could research and react to in her own time, because how she responds to this matters. Nate might be coming clean because he'd screwed up so badly before, but she's not blind to how hard this is for him.

He doesn't seem like a Morgan, she thinks. It's a nice name, but Drake suits him better.]

I'm sorry...that you had to go through all that. That you did lose him for a while.

[She's reeling just from hearing the abbreviated, secondhand story. She can't imagine what it must have been like to live it. And it sheds new light on a lot of things, important things. But...]

I understand why you never told me about him, when you thought he was gone forever. [She takes a shaky breath.] But when I was angry with you, it wasn't about that, not really. He came back and you lied about it, and not just once. Over and over. To protect me from whatever it was he wanted you to do.

[That still hurts, that he could really believe she needed it or just convince himself of it as an excuse. She twists her wedding ring, feeling its slight weight as a separate thing rather than the part of her hand that it's been for years.]

I almost took this off.

[He should have told her everything the last time.

But Sam - the story, the reason - is still an excuse, in its own way. He should have shared the fact that he was unhappy with the immense dearth of adventure, of thrilling treasure hunts, of near-death experiences. How could he tell her that without assuming that the worst might happen? That she would think she wasn't what he needed, or be upset that he might imply it by explaining the kinds of things he wanted to get back to?

Nate tried for so long to assimilate into the kind of life he thought they were supposed to have. That it wasn't enough felt like a personal failing. How could he put that on her?

He glances over at her while she speaks, watching the furrow of her brow and listening to the tightness in the back of her throat. When Elena's fingers begin to crawl toward her ring something in his chest aches - they went through this before, already, please not again - and he wants to take her hand. It would be a gross overstep; he listens quietly, instead. Regretful.]

I was scared. [He admits, staring at the dull luster of her wedding band. He rubs the pad of his thumb against his own.] I want to fix this.

[It isn't fair for him to ask her how. She isn't responsible for what he pulled.]

[She sees him touch his ring as she touches hers and remembers when they put them on each other's hands. She wants to get closer to how they were that day again, somehow.]

I want that too. It's why I kept it on.

[Like when she was in Yemen. She still loved him, and still believed that what went wrong between them could be fixed. But now, as then, the 'how' is elusive.]

I love you, Nate. That hasn't changed. But I can't go through my life wondering if you're keeping something from me.

[He's her best friend. The love of her life. A long time ago, she'd trusted him with her heart. But she needs to be able to trust him with everything.]

We're supposed to be a team, even when it's hard. We work through things together.

[For a long time he wondered if his hands were even capable of the gentleness and gentility required for things like this. Nathan Drake is not a subtle man, and he feared that holding something too tightly would end in its loss. Better to hover in the spaces defined by vagueries and not-knowing, a world of blurred lines because definition was frightening.]

I was wrong. To keep it from you, I- [He never meant to hurt her, but that's just the problem, isn't it? Road to Hell, best intentions, and all that crap.] ...We're a team.

[He says, not defeated, but in acknowledgement. His gaze flickers back to the furrow between her eyebrows, the faint freckles on her cheeks. She's right, of course. Nate rests his hand in the space between them, palm up, an offering.]

I need to act like it.

Yeah.

[He's saying the right things now, and part of her wants to hold on tightly to that and ignore everything else. Another part of her is afraid that this isn't a change, it's just part of the cycle, and eventually he'll have another reason to push her away that he'll later regret.

It's almost ironic—the smart thing might be to do what he did and walk away from the scary uncertainties, because there's no way to know for sure whether he'll hurt her again. She can't guarantee their future from here. It's a leap of faith, and she has to ask herself—is he worth the risk of taking that jump?

Elena reaches out and takes his hand, gently lacing her fingers through his.]

Do you want me to come home?

[Nate isn't trying to "say the right thing" so much as he is trying his damnedest to be candid no matter how difficult it is to do so. It isn't that lies and deferment come easier; it's that he spent his formative years building a world of falsehoods and finally reached a point where that strategy wasn't tenable anymore.

It's a substantial relief when she takes his hand, that foreign tightness in his throat again as he looks at her, nodding. Nate squeezes her fingers.]

I really missed you.

[The slightly choked-up cast to his voice must be contagious, or maybe she was already there herself. She squeezes his hand back.]

I missed you too, cowboy.

[Moving carefully, without letting go, she gets to her feet, tugging his hand to join her.]

Let's go back together.

[He won't point it out. It would be pretty classless to do so and Nate is trying his best not to defer to light jokes to maintain some semblance of humor. The situation is a little too serious for it, no matter how much he'd like to slip back into the ease of an older rapport.

Getting to his feet, Nate rubs the pad of his thumb against her knuckles, careful not to pull too hard to show how desperate he is.]

You got it.

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