sic✯parvis✯magna

The first thing Nathan notices about her is that she’s… a lot.

Like, a lot a lot.

A huff of something halfway between annoyance and amusement slips from his lips when his eyes fall from Sullivan’s on his usual pre-mission tangent towards the stained hotel carpet below, ‘70s yellow that has since become a flea-bitten brown— and he first catches sight of the pants. 

Bright, neon orange, bejeweled cargo pants.

For a stealth mission.

Brilliant. 

⋆⋆⋆

Once upon a time— Nathan Drake was a treasure hunter. Because, of course, that’s usually the way a good story starts.

Not necessarily because it’s true.

But if you were to believe that statement to be true, you might be fortunate enough to almost be correct. 

If you were to believe that Nathan Drake is a treasure hunter, at one point was maybe, possibly, most certainly a treasure hunter, had the ideal disposition, determination, intuition, perception, resilience, athleticism, charisma, uniqueness, nerve, and complexion to be a treasure hunter, you might also be right. 

But Nathan Drake isn’t a treasure hunter anymore.

Nathan Drake is your residential condom-baggier. Nathan Drake asks for cash or credit and tries not to fantasize about hanging himself off the slushie machine tap. Nathan Drake is a worthless, piece of shit loser. Because life decided Nathan Drake doesn’t get to be anything else.

Because if you were to believe Nathan Drake was once worth something, you’d be dead fucking wrong.

Age 23 is an odd age for retirement, Nathan would hum and ha to himself in an empty living room, rain drizzling meek along the glass. T-minus one week post-‘funeral’, in quotes because there was nothing left to bury. And it wasn’t like Sam had any friends to mourn him, anyway. At least not under the technical definition. 

Michigan wasn’t enough of a real state to even fucking rain properly, let alone feel like a home; but fortunately, he now had all the time in the world to bide Shakespeare-ing sarcastic quips to no one. In fact, he hadn’t gotten a chance to do much of anything else— not since Sully kicked him to the curb and set him up with a house in the Upper Peninsula, bellowing back as he rolled his single suitcase of possessions onto the narrow porch and a thick roll of hundreds he had definitely stolen that it was time for Nate to get a normal life. 

And it was the first time since they met— and Victor had so quietly designated himself adoptive father— that he realized Sully might not know him as well as he thought. 

In fact, he might not know him at all. It’s not like there was anyone left to argue otherwise. 

Nathan would spend most of every day outside of it— his enclosure, he would gnashingly refer— scanning textbooks at the library, jotting useless notes on his palm for a job that’d never come, fantasizing about someone else’s past, someone destined with something beautiful to offer, someone better than him, boozing himself to sleep, skipping shifts, getting fired, starting fights, that one time where he tried to pick up smoking before realizing he couldn’t afford it… because he’d just gotten fired. 

Smiles rare, his last laugh a landmark he doesn’t even remember. And he never even once decided to go out and buy a table for his massive, empty, shitty apartment.

He did it all so he would be able to think about anything else but Him.

So he could feel like he was Him.

Because if anyone should’ve lived, it should’ve been—

⋆⋆⋆

“SAM!”

The midnight calm of a 1800 sq ft. two bedroom, two bathroom shatters under a scream— and the house swallows Nathan alive. A roof far too big for just one person to sleep under. A house that thrummed with ghosts, and every single one brought in a carry-on. Nate drowning into a mattress too small for the bedframe Sully bought. And he awakes with a start to his own demons screaming back.

The night is merciless around a twenty-four year old Nathan, feeling half his age and a third his height, the open blinds stabbing moonlight through open wounds like salt as soon as he awakens. It’s a night that’s happened a thousand times before. The lack of furniture makes him feel like he’s lacking territory in his own home, like he’s a stranger in another’s. And all of a sudden, he’s twelve again, in the times when Sam told them they were ‘house-sitting’. It’s just that the owners didn’t know. 

“It’s-all-my-fault-It’s-all-my-fault-It’s-all-my-fault—”

He’s squatting in his own fucking home. He’s a squatter in his own fucking life. 

And he holds himself with his words, with his arms wrapped tight around his shoulders, cooing himself, calming himself where no one else can, where everyone else who possibly could is dead or abandoned him— and he absolves his blame by giving the pain the world was too cruel to give anyone else but him.

“It’sallmyfaultit’sallmyfaultit’sallmyfault—”

His hand cracks hard across his face, and that’s when he first starts to hyperventilate.

Not again.

Nathan swore never again.

Sam would never be this weak.

“Stop fucking crying. Stop fucking crying.”

He murmurs frantically before he even starts, deep voice pitching high, pathetic, feminine, and he hates himself for it. He hates himself for it. And the moonlight stabs through this giant, empty house that Sully cosigned only because he felt sorry for him— and it reminds Nathan that he is a killer. He imagines too vividly what red might look like on the gray hardwood floors turned ghostly white.

What things Sam might say to him if he were still alive.

It’s a frantic rush, a battle against billowing comforters and tsunami-ing sheets, as Nate crawls to his knees on the bed. And he swore he never would again. He swore he never would again. But he does. And he almost laughs— how much Sam would make fun of him for something so pathetic.

‘Ya didn’t actually listen to all the garbage the sisters told you, did ya? I thought I raised ya bettah than that, bud.’

But he gets on his knees. And Nathan starts to pray. 

Nathan doesn’t believe in God, hell no. That’s what he tells himself. 

But he does believe in recompense. He believes in forgiveness. So his lips move in a nothing, nonsensical tangent, frantic, desperate, eyes shut tight against an outpouring of tears, shame tasting like blood in his mouth, tasting like a steel-toed kick in his gut. And he’d let every mercenary who has ever punched him, every bullet that has ever grazed, every woman that has ever thrown a drink in his face, he’d take all of it all over again if it meant not having to feel this way for a fucking second longer.

To be human is to sin, it’s what Sister Katherine always used to say, prattling on as Nathan folded and unfolded the top corner of whatever book he was currently reading in a guilt-ridden fidget. And never for a second, even when he was a child, did Nathan believe it. He loved history. He loved history because he loved people. And he believed in the inherent goodness of them. 

And that’s what makes this so terrible. It wasn’t inherent. Nathan chose this. Somehow Nathan chose to let his brother die. 

“It’s all my fault.”

And the night cracks hard, pain deserved, around him as his hand reels back once again.

⋆⋆⋆

He goes for midnight runs. That’s what he always used to do to get his mind off things.

It makes his chest burn and his throat sting and brings to mind desert dunes, roving sandstorms, cooler things, a cooler person than a little boy having a panic attack at four in the morning. Nathan chokes in winter air under the stiff, looming shadows of streetlamps, and if he had enough strength to believe it, he’d convince himself that it’s the exhaustion, not the anxiety that makes him breathe the way he does now.

Yeah. Yeah, sure, this helps. This definitely helps. The trembling hands must just be an aftershock. 

Mist and a mid-December fog collapse from his lungs as he scrambles for his phone— and finds the name he swore he’d never call again. The running helps. It does. 

It just never helps enough.

“H-hi, Sam… It’s me.”

Sam would probably make fun of him for the croak of his voice. Would definitely make fun of him for the croak in his voice. So maybe Nathan would say he’s just tired from working out, unlike some people, hiding himself from an instinctual smile. And maybe Sam would laugh. And then maybe Nathan wouldn’t want to die so badly.

“It’s Nathan. I’m sorry I’m calling again. I told you I wouldn’t, but you know I can’t keep promises,” The croak blooms into a laugh. “Ya know, I’m always gonna feel bad I didn’t end up taping those episodes of Miami Vice for you like I said I would. Maybe you wouldn't have had that klepto-stint in Juvie then.”

Another chuckle as he adjusts the slipping phone against his ear. For some reason, it can’t quite stay put.

“A-anyway, I just wanted to call you and say it was really fucked up for you to leave me like that. You’re an asshole and I hope it’s as bad as they say it is. I hope it’s worse, actually. I hope you can fucking hear me.”

His fingers are calloused and sweating and only spurn further tears as he wipes a runner from his cheek. Hate burns in his belly. Fire and rage and betrayal tearing his feeble skin to shreds below the surface. And he knows it’s nothing but anger, anger deserved, that makes him say the words he does.

“You know, maybe it’s better I killed you. You always said you wanted a badass death. D-do you remember that? Because I do. And you stupid fucking idiot, you knew lung cancer wouldn’t’ve done that.”

The next laughter buckles him, screams demonous. Venomous. Psychotic, if any of the neighbors decided to take their trash to the curb at this ridiculous hour. And Nathan almost wishes one of them would. He’d give anything to not be alone right now.

“Jesus, Sam, that would’ve been such a lame way to die.”

And he remarks with forked tongue just how pitiful it would be. How lame he always was. How maybe it’s just the lameness that Sam so sickly passed onto him that’s making him cry now. His final revenge. And he wishes Sam were still alive, so he could kill him with his bare hands for turning him so pathetic.

Because Nathan Drake doesn’t cry. Nathan Drake doesn’t fucking cry.

“Guess I gave you that, at least, right?”

And for some awful, imbecilic reason. Nate waits. Nathan waits like something might still be there on the other side to answer.

But there lives nothing there but silence, nothing but his own heart fluttering weakly in his chest, his hands squeaking wetly against the plastic, and his own breath: delicate as death. Nothing but the same haunting sound he’s heard a hundred times before— and the distinct ring of crunching, clattering tracks on the midnight train to nowhere. Maybe this time he’ll answer, he tells himself. Maybe this time the things he says will be so awful that Sam will wake from the dead just to spit something back—

“We're sorry, you have reached a number that has been disconnected or is no longer in service—"

But not this time. It’s never this time.

The wind sweeps deadly and careless around him. Quiet, which makes it crueler. Rushing whispers in secret at such a foolish wish, or maybe just the universe itself telling Nathan to give it a rest. Stop caring. Stop trying. Just shut up already.

Stop fucking crying.

His breath releases in a ghost of air, and it only dawns on him now how cold it is. The fact that he didn’t even bother to bring a jacket. Fuck, how far from home is he? His head swivels in a nonsensical circle, seeing little else but the copy-paste townhouses on either side of the sparse, yellow street light, palms sweating and calming, logical breath only bringing further panic— because all logic tells him that he’s lost. 

What the hell is he supposed to do now? 

Light suddenly crests like a cracked yolk against the horizon, soaking the black in blue, and panic bleeds through him in a cold sweat. 

Jesus Christ, where the fuck is he? It’s already morning? 

And Nathan realizes… he’s going to be late for work again. 

And that’s when he starts to cry. 

He can’t be late again. He can’t be late again. He's gonna get fired. He can’t. Not for the fifth time in six months.

“Shit, shit, shit, shit—” He scrambles fruitlessly against the too-bright-too-bright screen of his phone, thumbs brutish and too big to find anything: something about a map, something about location tracking, geography, shit he knows, shit he loves, hell, maybe he’ll bring in donuts today, yeah, that’s it, and if he skips the morning shower he might be able to make it to his desk before Mrs. Stanson even walks in the building. Maybe he’ll start doing overtime. Night shifts. It’ll keep him too busy to break down in tears like this anymore.

Mania tears through his blood as his fingers move, fumbling for a moment and almost dropping it when he finally finds the map app icon. He jabs at it, adrenaline and chest heaving and hope has just cannonballed over the horizon by the time he finally realizes—

He doesn't even remember his address.

And Nathan Drake cries.

Nathan Drake fucking cries.

The cusping morning would be so beautiful if he had the strength to pull his hands from his eyes, phone spilling over and probably cracking down against the pavement. But Nate doesn’t care. His shallow breath feels so painful in his lungs, cold air on an open wound, and the ragged sounds and hiccuping rhythm of a full-throttle sob sound so foreign to him that, for a second, he can almost pretend he’s someone else. That this life is happening to anyone else but him.

Nathan’s not the victim. Nathan’s not the one who deserves to cry. 

Didn’t deserve to cry when he was the one who punched that kid over a fucking book. ‘You shouldn’t have been reading during prayer.’ ‘You were the one who started the fight.’ ‘If you keep acting like this, you’re going to end up just like your brother... your mother.’ And he’d smother his screams of injustice into a threadbare pillowcase riddled with moth holes. Not fair. Not fair. 

Nothing is ever fair. Why can’t something, anything in life ever be fucking fair?

But Sister Katherine was right back then. Which means she’s right right now. Nathan was born out of control. Slave to passion and anger and need. Would probably still choose to punch that little dipshit if he got a second chance. And hell, maybe it’s just practice for it when he reels back and punches the nearest streetlamp bare-knuckled. The abrupt attack rings dull, hollow, but the absence of sound is more than made up for by Nathan’s sharp wail of pain. 

And the… familiarity of it almost helps for a moment. For a second, he’s reminded of the thunk of body armor against his fist, monstrous monstera leaves, the bursting reds of exploding gunpowder, cooler things, a cooler person. A person he used to be. Nathan Drake: cool, coy, clever. Badass. A hero. A man.

A killer.

Somewhere in the neighborhood, a dog barks. The morning: still and gray. He’s going to be late for work. 

And he’s not Nathan Drake anymore. 

He’s just Nathan. 

He stoops down to retrieve his phone— he flinches, a spindle of spiderweb cracks jutting from the middle— and takes a deep, long, centering breath. Okay. He’s okay. He’s alive. He’s survived worse before. His sweatpants rustle as he wipes his weeping palms against the outer pockets and re-rightens his clothes. Pats his hair down. Rubs the last streaks of tears from his cheeks. Realizes he probably looks like a bum. Decides he’s going to go into work today, anyway.

And he tells himself: better a man who kills than not a man at all.

Because when Nathan cries, and cries, and cries in the same way he has every day for nearly a year now— tasting salt water and humidity on his tongue like the first morning in Panama when Sam nudged his shoulder, backpack draped casually, carelessly from the crook of his elbow, and told Nate, all mischievous smiles and twinkling evil eyes, that this would be a piece of cake— he doesn’t feel like a man.

And he would rather die than not be the man Sam said he could be.

He would rather die than be Nate Morgan again.

⋆⋆⋆

Nathan Drake finally wakes up in hell, and he knows this because there’s some God awful disco track playing the second he enters the building.

Once upon a time, Victor Sullivan picked up the goddamn phone. For the first time in twelve months, only a day after the memory of what happened to their mother started growing a little too sharp around the edges. The legacy he knew. The desire to follow. Rain drizzling meek across the glass.

Yet somehow, miraculously, as if by total and complete magic, as soon as he was on the one-way plane to Egypt, something slight in Nathan settled. Like it felt good to be himself again.

Like it felt good to be Nathan Drake.

“The Usekh collar of Nefertiti would historically be placed inside her sarcophagus with her mummified corpse. We find the tomb, we find the sarcophagus, we find a nice threeway split of a hundred fifty mil’. And I’ll finally have enough to pay my cell phone bill and block yer ass from ever callin’ me again— HA!”

What made the The Desert Flower such an outstanding first stop on his welcome home tour was that it was familiar, in that the horrible shag carpeting under his feet was just as matted, raggedy, and shit-scented as the billowing mustache still perpetually shellacked to Victor Sullivan’s upper lip, oozing bad jokes like gasoline from an old car and tap-dancing a trail of cigar smoke directly under the lobby’s freshly painted ‘No Smoking’ sign. 

“Victor, that doesn’t even make—” Nathan tries. 

“Nathaaan!” The problem is, as expected, the world is already off to the races without him. “There’s someone I wantcha to meet.”

And Nathan Drake tells himself he can learn to be a human being again. So long as it was to anyone but the girl with the neon orange, bejeweled cargo pants rolled up to the ankle, tapping toe to heel to the tune in the lobby’s back corner, sporting what could only be described as a winning celebrity lookalike award for Smurfette. 

“I wantcha to meet our fine n’ dandy mythos expert— HEY, BUTT-UH!”

And Nathan gets about 0.23 seconds to decipher the girl with the bright neon orange bejeweled cargo pants rolled up the ankle, tapping toe to heel to the tune in the lobby’s back corner, something metallic making turns in her bitty, bitty fist, before her head (unfortunately) whips up towards the pair of them, and she catches eye contact like a city bus ‘makes contact’ with a jaywalking pedestrian.

In the 0.237 seconds Nathan Drake gets to decipher the girl with the bright neon orange bejeweled cargo pants, before she ruins his life, Victor’s life, and those goddamn bright neon orange bejeweled cargo pants, rolled up to the ankle, with blood, he catches her eye and—

“This is—”

And what he finds there makes Nathan’s stomach…. curdle. 

“Shay Valentine! Mythos Expert and Master of Disguise!” 

Yet every seething darkness Nathan must've just hallucinated there blooms to fucking pixie dust the moment she opens her mouth. Her clenched fist: a sudden sprint into her pocket. 

“How’s it going, man? Flight okay? Minimal turbulence? Ate a peanut? You must be the blue-eyed bombshell Sully was talking about!” She practically pick-pockets Nathan’s hand from him in an attempt to shake it, a move so certain it rattles his very teeth in his skull. “What a fabulous pleasure!”

“Valentine…? What is that, a porn pseudonym?” Nathan grits venomlessly. 

“Oh! Why?” She smiles back, lilting so gosh-darn earnest, sugary-sweetly that for a moment, Nathan wonders if she’d squeak! like a rubber duckie if he finally gave in and squeezed. Her almond eyes frame to slivers. “Is ‘Drake’?”

“BWAHAHA!” 

“Yeah… Ha.”

Nathan uneasily mirrors Victor’s booming cannonball of a laugh, watching with squints of his own as Victor nearly bowling-strikes her over with a proud smack between the shoulder blades. She probably says something else entirely unfunny and Victor probably says equally unfunny in response and the whole thing is probably awful in this horrible, horrible, too-bright, shit-kicker motel 9,128 miles from home. 

But Nathan will never know it, because he’s too busy inspecting the ticking time bomb Sully brought because his favorite escort— Peggy, the one with no upper teeth— was probably too busy tying the bows on the little coke baggies back in the states. Very pro-small business.

The very first thing he’s struck by is, well… the height. Whatever strain at the back of his neck for attempting eye contact is far too willing to be bridged by rocking tip toes and grisly rimmed eyeliner as she stares back, scrunched into slivers from an impossibly wide smile. He’d mistake her for a coked-out cartoon raccoon if it wasn’t for the boobs. Haphazard freckles dotted across like strawberry seeds and a sea of hair completely at war with itself: blonde, blonde, blonde, and matted and frayed every which way— until it gets bored and decides it can’t afford the root touch-up a half-mile up Route 69. If Nathan unfocused his eyes, he could pretend she’s Short Round with the bowl cut. 

Again, Smurf hands. Smurf feet.

Damn, is the collar of Nefertiti even gonna fit in those things?

“Well, Nathan, I have a feeling you and I are going to be the best of friends… whaddaya think?” 

Again, a smile too wide to be real. Which is exactly how Nathan knows it isn’t. 

And Nathan is too jetlagged, too overwhelmed, too… underwhelmed, still a little tipsy from the cheap whiskey he vengefully charged to Sully’s credit card on the plane ride over to remember anything longer than three syllables. 

That’s why his name was such a knockout. Nath-an Drake. Three syllables. Easy peasy. It meant he’d never forget it. 

But Shay Valentine is not three syllables. Not even close. It’s not even two. 

It’s fucking four.

It’s sick is what it is. So Nathan doesn’t bother repeating it.

“Shay like… Shea Butter?”

And he finds himself a three syllable alternative, instead.

He sneers back as far as his lips will go in place of a proper smile, Victor guffawing satisfactorily from the sidelines. He considers whether he should’ve just stayed in Michigan.

“Shay like Shea Butter!” — Sang-song a-twitter like goddamn Tweety Bird. Like the lesser-known stripper Goddamn Liability.

And so Nathan Drake traps sight of the new girl. Her puckish eyes. Her fake-ass smile. Her fake-ass hair with the little dark roots at the top (in obvious hiding ground for devil horns) and eyelashes caked with so much mascara that he’s surprised her bottom lid doesn’t just collapse and her eyeball falls right out onto the floor— she’s short, so he probably wouldn’t even be able to catch it before it hit the ground— and he knows one thing for certain.

“Well, Shay-like-Shea-Butter, I think anything is possible—“ Making sure to force his grin just as big and blooming and welcoming and sugar-sweet as hers. Just to make sure she knows it’s fake. 

And maybe if he could convince himself as well as she’s convinced Victor, Nathan could tell himself this all was a miracle. The universe caving in and giving him exactly what he’s prayed for for 12 months, 3 days, 23 hours, and 46 minutes. 

"So long as you don’t get us eaten alive first.”

Nate Morgan is all of five and two-twelfths years old. And in a universe full of mystery and intrigue, of love and history, of hate and greed, of men who choose to craft weapons and men who are forced to wield them, of Columbus and da Vinci, of Caesar and salads (the kind with big, fat watermelon chunks in the middle), of the fun fact that every human brain will spend the entirety of its life eating itself, and the fear of long words being as whimsically wonderful a word as hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia, only five things will ever be for certain:

Nate Morgan has never fired a gun before.

Nate Morgan cries when other kids are mean to him.

Nate Morgan has a double-jointed thumb on his right hand.

Nate’s favorite color is yellow.

And—

He has been practicing his entire life for this one exact moment. 

Well, maybe like a week. 

Sam curry-oh-graphed the dance on toots-day.

⋆⋆⋆

Nathan Drake is all of twenty four and two-twelfths years old. He has most definitely fired a gun now. 

The world is smaller. Turns out his fascination with Columbus was a hair overblown. Now, only four things are for certain:

Nathan Drake does not cry when other kids are mean to him anymore.

Nathan Drake has a double-jointed thumb on his right hand.

Nathan’s favorite color is blue.

And—

     4. They have been practicing their whole lives for this one exact moment.

Well, maybe like a month. 

Sam mapped the jail break plans on Wednesday. 

And Nathan, conveniently for them, has most definitely fired a gun before.

⋆⋆⋆

Nate Morgan wasn’t always a crybaby. And Nate’s favorite color most sur-ten-lee wasn’t always yellow. 

⋆⋆⋆

But, then again, Nathan Drake wasn’t always a killer, either. Because at one point, the world-renowned thief, con artist, combat expert, card-counter, legendary killing machine Nathan Drake— the kind of man people far less interesting than him wrote, lived, and died for stories of— wanted nothing more…

Than to be a dancer.

⋆⋆⋆

Sam taught him the word ‘curry-oh-graph’ on Monday, and ‘curry-oh-graph’ is a pretty big word, which means that Nate is officially the smartest kid in the whole entire world now. After Sam, of course. Always after Sam. That was just the way the world was then. Sky was blue. Puppies were soft. And Nate came after Sam.

It was only fair since Nate already got to be first in the alphabet. And when Sam explained it that way, everything made perfect sense. And in those days, to Nate, that was the only thing that mattered: for things to make sense. And for the things that made sense to happen.

On that wed-ness-day in the summer of 1981, Nate didn’t think he’d ever been happier. Because he didn’t think he’d ever be happier. And on that day in the summer of 1981, Nate Morgan was almost maybe right. 

He just didn’t know it yet.

⋆⋆⋆

Nathan Drake wishes he still remembered a time when he didn’t know things yet.

⋆⋆⋆

“Me and Sam—”

“Sam and I, sweetie.” The Woman corrects politely, ankle over ankle in their least broken porch chair, the infamous ‘Sidewalk-Slasher’, a piece of snowy plastic hanging on for dear life at the bottom of leg number three.

“Sam n’ I—” Nate says with a smile. Her and Him nod satisfiedly. “Made this for your birf-day gift. Sam curry-oh-graphed it, but I picked the song first and moved the boombox when we needed to move the boombox.”

“I also recorded the song.” Sam bellows from behind a speaker the size of his head.

“H-he also recorded the song, but I picked the song, and remembered most of the name of the lady who sang the song, and I think that’s just as import-teent.”

“Carry on, then.” The Man next to her, decked head to toe in matching discare and five-o’-clock shadow, waves an offhand palm. 

“Import-eent. Import-aunt.” Nate tries. He fails.

“It’s okay, Nate.”

“Im-pert-tant. Im-purt-tant.” Nate tries. He blubbers between baby teeth.

“Don’t matter, kiddo. Let’s see it.”

Sam nearly trips himself silly on his way to launching a feather boa over the top of Nate’s shoulders. He had begged his little heart out for the blue one with sparkle tinsel in between, and so Sam had given him the blue with the sparkle tinsel in between, even though Nate knew Sam didn’t like purple very much. And the other one was totally purple. And Sam didn’t really like the color purple. And Sam didn’t really like purple one bit. But Sam was just like that, anyway. 

Sam was good like that. 

The Man gives Her a raised eyebrow when Nate plucks out a tail-end feather and tucks it preen-ing-lee behind his ear. She says nothing, all smiles too wide for her boo-tee-full, sun-kissed face.

“Happy birthday, Mom.” Sam grins with more teeth than Nate can possibly count. And without another word, he presses his stubby thumb into the boombox’s play button, and the music begins. The moment Nate, five years and two months old, has waited his entire goddamn life for.

She presses her hand to her chest the second the tender notes of a flute emerge. 

“Oh, I love this song.” 

As Donna Summer croons her opening riff, Nate readies himself into position, right in the middle of a bright yellow ‘X’, chalked three days before and having barely survived a multi-midnight sprinkler head, just like Sam had taught him to. He always found it was easier when he was just told where to start. 

And Nate thought: how lucky he was, luckier than every kid in every neighborhood, in every state, in every dynasty, in every kingdom, in every generation, in every planet, in the entire world, to never have to decide things on his own ever again.

⋆⋆⋆

“What… what do I do?” Nathan heaves with every breath the bleeding mass before them cannot, words barely lilted beneath the bellowing emergency alarm and the ringing tinnitus of someone else’s firearm. “What do we do?”

But today, it’s not Sam who says it: “We stick to the plan.”

“Was this part of the plan?!” Panic fizzles between his lips, legs shellacked in place, eyes too beholden to the horror, the betrayal— he knew if something fucked up, it would all be Rafe’s fault, Rafe who Nathan told him not to trust, Rafe who had far less to lose and a far more million dollars to return home to— to the impulse kill all of them swore would never, ever be necessary again.

But where Rafe breaks every promise made, Sam holds fast. And he does what Nathan needs more than anything. He grabs him by the hand. Squeezes hard.

And he tells him what to do.

“COME ON!”

⋆⋆⋆

“Las’ dance—” Nate mumbles under his breath. A slow sway to his right. A slow sway to his left. A piece of the boa’s tinsel catches in his eyelash when he moves his arm too high, and Sam smacks his shoulder back to focus when he starts to rub his eye. “Las’ chance fer’ love—”

⋆⋆⋆

“Rafe, where we goin’ ‘ere?” Sam asks in Nathan’s stead, lungs too burned with oxygen to even consider speech. Mind too spellbound by the sight of the dead body upon the carpet, a body he had known, considered an ally not even one minute previous. That man was a body.

A body with a name.

⋆⋆⋆

“Yesh, it’s my las’ chance—” 

“Nate-ya-don’t-have-ta-sing-it. She’s-already-singin’-it.” Sam hisses between notes.

“M‘kay.”

But Nate just makes sure to say it quieter this time. 

“For romance—”  A sway left. A pointed toe, just like Sam taught.  

“Tonight—” Another sway right. Another pointed toesy. 

He had wanted to understand the words, even though Sam said it didn’t really matter.

Nate thought it actually kinda mattered, maybe. 

⋆⋆⋆

“Vargas said the boat is right under the lighthouse.” Rafe’s voice laces sickish in its steadiness, eyes beading certain to the horizon before them. With a swift tug, the door to the courtyard swings open, and this time, Rafe looks like he might almost consider waiting for them on the other side.

Almost. 

Sam’s only confirmation is a single, readying nod, and Nathan considers how his life might’ve changed had he not waited the extra 0.002 seconds to nod back.

⋆⋆⋆

“I need you—” Their hands go out to the folding-chair-throned crowd. Still, Her hands: soft, inspired at her chest. His: balled in fists within stubble-laned, criss-cross-apple-sauced arms.

⋆⋆⋆

When Nathan finally braces his feet against the rolling Panamanian sands, he swears they’ve been hurled straight into a tsunami. He practically chokes on his own breath, his own heartbeat, the horrid, banging sound of alarm caused by his own stupid fucking ‘partner’. 

He told Sam. He fucking told him not to trust him.

⋆⋆⋆

“By me—” Nate and Sam point to their left side. 

⋆⋆⋆

“I don’t see the lighthouse.” Nathan gasps when the Caribbean sun blinds too bright for him to even know which way is up. 

“Right now, let’s just get away from the guards!” 

Rafe mutters with a crook of his jaw, the sound of a double dozen boots on concrete already pounding down the stairs behind them, and it’s only Sam’s urging hand that tells him where to throw his body next. 

⋆⋆⋆

“Beside me—” Nate and Sam point to their right side.

“To guide me—” Nate clamps one tiny, clammy palm into Sam’s. Sam ushers him two steps to the left.

Get it? Because he’s guiding him, so—

⋆⋆⋆

So, when Sam’s palm pulls free— a jolt of panic searing awful and electric through his chest— the only thing Nathan tells himself is to keep running toward wherever Sam last told him to.

“Nathan, down this way!” 

Chest heaves, chest heaves, chest rattles, chest chokes, chest breaks. Failing laser precision upon the blue smudge of a uniform racing through the milling hoards of screeching, panicked prisoners. 

⋆⋆⋆

“To hold me—” Sam wraps his little arms around himself with a simple sway. Nate mimics.

Get it? Because—

⋆⋆⋆

He tries to pretend he doesn’t see the dots of red light attempting to scrape up and over his back with every lunge.

⋆⋆⋆

“To scold me—”

Sam waggles a single finger, eyebrows scrunched into his forehead. Nate mirrors.

⋆⋆⋆

“The fire escape.” His brother seems to manifest from nothing. That voice he trusts when all and utter reality slips from beneath him. “Nathan, get me up there!” 

⋆⋆⋆

“'Cause when I'm bad—” Nate’s almost maybe pretty sure he hears Sam sing along out of the corner of his earlobe, opting for a simple finger wave and a fist on his hip in exchange for Sam’s index-wriggling devil horns. “I'm so, so bad—” 

He thinks The Man’s nostrils flare, but it’s hard to tell with music so good.

⋆⋆⋆

Without another word, he curtails his body into position, hands cupped, folded together, like an origami swan a thousand times before… before Sam’s boot is stamping itself between, and his body launches high with a simple flex of Nathan’s arms. 

Yet just as he reaches for the plummeting ladder—

“Let’s go!” Rafe’s shoulder collides, and the sickly rodent of a man has disappeared over the roof before Nathan can even grumble back a measly:

“Yeah… after you.” 

⋆⋆⋆

But none of it matters now.

“So, let’s dance—”

Nothing can stop him now.

“The last dance—”

⋆⋆⋆

Nathan throws his body in after them, every limb, mind, soul of his sucked up into a gnashing wind tunnel, a hundred invisible hands urging, shoving, begging, hungering him off the nearest ledge. 

He can see the lighthouse in the distance. There is hope, he screams. There is hope, he pleads.

⋆⋆⋆

“Let’s dance—”

And now there’s no doubt in his mind that Sam is singing right along with, because there’s no other reason Nate’s cheeks would hurt so much from smiling. Because there never was before.

And to Nate Morgan, that’s just logic.

“The last dance—”

Plain and simple.

⋆⋆⋆

Even as he leaps after Sam and Rafe for the next awning, and his entire world crumbles in after him.

⋆⋆⋆

But still Nate knows he’ll survive, because this—

“Let’s dance, this last dance—”

This was always Nate’s favorite part. 

⋆⋆⋆

“Seriously?” Nathan guffaws when he’s not met alone on the other side of a forming dust cloud. Unfortunately, the crowd of fist-armed guards surrounding provides no such comedic relief. 

One, bald-headed and brutish, swings his bulk up to bat.

“Alright then.” 

But it’s okay, because—

⋆⋆⋆

“TONIGHT—!” 

It hurts when the big note pulls loose from Nate and Sam’s teeny, tiny throats. 

But that’s how Nate knows he’s singing it right.

⋆⋆⋆

Because he wasn’t doing it alone.

“NATHAN!” A baritone voice bellows from above. 

And like a god, the one and only, the irreplaceable, the unbreakable, the football-field-forehead wonder Samuel Drake descends from the heavens—

And knocks this guy’s fucking teeth in. 

⋆⋆⋆

It always hurts at first when you’re doing it right.

And that’s why Nate doesn’t mind it much, the weird feeling in his tummy, when He, broad arms still so cruelly criss-cross-apple-sauced at what Nate’s spent almost six whole (half) days preparing for, glares at his little blue boa with the sparkle tinsel in-between the way he does now. Which doesn’t make sense.

He had fought heart and soul for the little blue boa with the sparkle tinsel in-between.

⋆⋆⋆

“Let’s clean house.” 

Sam brandishes his (wow, excellent) entrance line like a knight’s sword, and brute force commander-in-chief goes stark white. A ghost before Sam’s fist even needs to make him one. 

And now Nathan Drake knows. He knows he’ll live. He knows his fear, his panic, his uncertainty mean shit.

Because no one on the entire planet, in the history of the world, would smile the way Samuel Drake does now unless he knew he was going to live.

And unless he knew he was going to enjoy it. 

⋆⋆⋆

Their dance transforms into a manic skirmish. A test of faith of tennis shoe. Nate thinks he’s doing the right moves. He’s pretty sure. He swears he practiced. But the notes come so rich and tasty and vanilla-y and chocolate-y that he forgets his body altogether.

Luckily, he remembers everything actually im-porp-tant.

The trill of Sam’s laughter means he must be doing the same.

⋆⋆⋆

Sam’s jaw goes crooked, but every grin stays intact when a suckerpunch hits him squarely in the stubble-smacked face. So Nathan makes quick, ravenous correction, a twin of white teeth upon his face as he kicks this dickhead even more squarely in the crotch.

The trill of Sam’s wheezing laughter means he must be doing the same.

⋆⋆⋆

Again, The Man’s nostrils flare. Which only makes Nate want to dance harder.

⋆⋆⋆

But his brother’s joint jeering is cut short with a lassoed elbow around his neck, clawing fingers fruitless against sun-and-stick-poke-tattoo-scraped skin. Nathan already knows there’s no point in playing Superman.

“You should really work on your flirtin’.” Sam chokes between half-won breaths, a smirk deliciously sour upon his tongue. “We high-class ladies prefer to take things a little slow-uh.”

And with what he already knows must be fifteen more quips in the making, Sam bends over double and sends the grunting chicken over his shoulder and stumbling backwards into the nearest shithole.

Nathan instinctively cheers when he’s too far to fistbump.

⋆⋆⋆

Nate in-stink-tiv-lee reaches for Sam’s outstretched hands when he’s too far to prop-er-lee touch, his stubby fingers already spread in most starry starbursts for the long note. Nate always loved those big starry starbursts for the little long note. Twin giggles race and flutter forth, like a swarm of butterflies when they finally catch palms to swing their bodies in sync. Sam leans back— hard— and Nate squeals in painful delight when it forces them both spinning faster.

Something about Ken— Kinny—-

Kenny en-er-gee. Kin-nee-nee en-er-gee—

The Man leans over to Her and whispers something. A something that makes Her look pointy and mean at him back.

⋆⋆⋆

The next numbskull steps up, attempts for a roundhouse, but the whirling sand drives his stupid body into a stumble, and every ounce of perfectly practiced teamwork comes roaring to the surface. A niche dance bred into their bones. Or perhaps just their easily-bruised knuckles.

Sam and Nathan rush forward in sync: a sprint that turns into a lunge, a lunge that morphs into a grapple, a grapple that ignites into the guard’s body slamming back-first into the ground. It all happens so fast, Nathan doesn’t even have a line prepared by the time Sam is already firing out a ringing:

“Looks like our favorite war-dicks needed a little solitary confinement, huh?”

“Uh-huh.” Nathan nods, breathlessly, stupidly replies.

Great line. Great fucking line.

⋆⋆⋆

Nate’s pretty sure he sees The Man say a word that starts with an F.

A word that makes him have to open his mouth all the way to say it.

⋆⋆⋆

And he sparkles. Sam goddamn sparkles when he says it. 

“Rafe! Great to see ya!” But Nathan’s not too sure he isn’t imagining the way Rafe’s gaze seethes when Sam manages to latch eyelines upon the rooftop-ed horizon. “Kick that ladder down for us!”

The kick on steel is most certainly reluctant. Still, Sam and Nathan jump on in a heartbeat, even when Rafe’s form has disappeared by the time they touch the first rung. They meet the roof. And there, in the distance, the lighthouse. 

There is hope, he screams. There is hope, he pleads.

“He’s going to leave without us, isn’t he?” Yet you’d never think it, the way Nathan grumbles and gasps between sprints.

Fortunately, Sam is even quicker on the rebound, a grin so evident upon his lip that Nathan doesn’t even need to twist his head to see it racing beside him.

“Not if we’re quicker.” 

Now, Nathan knows they’ll live to see tomorrow. Because nobody but the most alive people Nathan’s ever known smile the way Samuel Drake smiles now. 

⋆⋆⋆

Now, it’ll take Nathan nearly a decade and a half to realize it’s the first time he sees it, but far from the last—

The first time he saw the look of someone ready to kill a man.

Because nobody but the most deadly people Nathan’s seen on TV, the evil TV times when he axe-dent-lee sneaks glances on his way to the toilet, glare at someone the way She glares at Him now.

But maybe She was just pass-ee-nate about how good him and Sammy’s dancing is.

Nate most ser-taint-lee was.

⋆⋆⋆

Nathan Drake knows. He knows everything. 

He knows Nathan and Samuel will live to see tomorrow.

Samuel and Nathan will live to see tomorrow.

⋆⋆⋆

Because they’re good.

Sam and Nate are good. 

It’s what She must be saying out of the corner of her pink, pretty, pursed mouth back to Him. The Sidewalk-Slasher is steered, rattles with a single hopping sandal. But her eyes never stray from them, because she wants to watch every move.

Gosh, Nate wants Her to watch every move. 

He made them for Her.

⋆⋆⋆

“They’re everywhere.” Nathan’s jaw croaks, aches, unhinges and begs, ears filled with more whizzing bullets than words. 

The fire in every pinched muscle has long gone blue, where pain becomes so painful that it twists back onto the other side as numbness. Still, Nathan runs. There’s no other option now.

But maybe there was never another option before.

“We’ll be fine, just keep goin’!” Sam yells just out of periphery. 

If only someone would tell Nathan’s legs that. 

He doesn’t realize he’s slowing down until Sam’s palm collides with his back, a desperate shove, an uncharacteristic rattle of his voice. A bright yellow “X” chalked on the pavement. Nate only knows because Sam is the one who always told him where to go next.

“Nathan… GO!”

⋆⋆⋆

But still her face, haloed by billowing clouds of brunette, is the most boo-tee-full shade of pink as she replies with something Nate can’t quite hear. She’s singing the lyrics, she’s saying what an eggs-see-lent box step that was, she’s telling him some hundred-aire relative died and now they can finally afford to put Nate in those YMCA dance classes he begged them for, practically sprung his eyes a leak for. 

The ones with two zeros on the price tag when He kept saying they were only worth one.

Nate thought maybe they could be worth more than one.

Nate wanted to matter more than one.

⋆⋆⋆

The lighthouse. The lighthouse. The lighthouse. 

So close Nathan can taste the burning sulfur on his tongue. Can taste the stench of sea. Of salt, of a hundred million buzzing lightbulbs, of collapsing brick, of wet sand beneath blistered toesies. Nathan Drake can taste blood in his mouth. He can taste the taste of freedom. 

“On me! Get to the wall!” Rafe bellows a few feet ahead, pointing where roof meets air, where nothing meets nothing, and where untouched foliage signals home free on the other side. “NOW!”

And the pain in his lungs, in his legs, in his ears, in his heart is so good. The pain means he’s doing it right. The pain means he’s earned it. The pain means he’s paid his dues. The pain means he’s going to live. 

“Sam?!” Nathan’s voice quivers.

“Just keep goin’!” Sam responds, some distant wind. “I’m right behind ya!” 

⋆⋆⋆

And the dance itself blooms into a living creature so boo-tee-full, so eck-squick-sick, so every word in every language that Nate doesn’t know yet but can’t wait to learn, and will be able to make so many new friends when he does, make his wildest dreams come try and maybe even one day be as in-telly-jent as Her, that there’s no doubt in his mind that the reason Her and His faces are so red from screaming now is because they know that Nate Morgan was born to be a dancer. 

He throws himself back to back with his brother, an itty bitty fist makeshifting for a proper microphone, and for the first time in his entire almost six years of life, Sam is the one who follows him. Another itty bitty fist when Mommy’s vitamins are too expensive to afford the plastic ones at the department store that echo when you talk into them.

His face hurts from smiling. His body hurts from smiling. Everything hurts from smiling. 

He loves her music. He loves her hair. He loves the pavement. He loves his brother. He loves that Sam finally trusted him enough to carry the boombox. He loves that there’s new words he doesn’t know yet. Nate loves to dance.

Nate loves to live.

⋆⋆⋆

But it’s nothing short of suicide: the way Nathan catapults his bruised body off the roof and into the nothingness beyond— before both hands latch hard to the nearest pipe and leverage himself back onto the opposite ledge. Home fucking free. But Nathan Drake isn’t a coward. He doesn’t forsake the way Rafe does. 

“SAM!” He bellows back as loud as his haggard lungs will allow, Sam’s face twisting towards him from the other side. “C’mon! I’ll pull you up!” 

And it’s just the adrenaline that makes Sam’s face look so small, so soft, so wet, so crumpled, eyebrows knitted into the middle of his glossy forehead, face whipping back and forth between him and the sea of bullets behind. 

And “S” comes before “N” in the alphabet. So Samuel comes after Nathan. 

And Sam jumps. And Sam is jumping. And Sam is falling.

Sam is falling hard.

And Nathan is catching, saving, him where it actually fucking matters.

“I-gotcha-I-gotcha—” Thus he proves in rapid spurts, arm burning with the weight as Sam launches his slick palm into Nathan’s grasp. One hand in another. Sweat and grime and dumb fucking luck, the dumb fucking luck they had always had, the dumb fucking luck they had earned because everything else always went to shit, all that he was, all that Sam gave him, meeting sweat and grime and—

Something else entirely.

⋆⋆⋆

The final note positively rips out of Nate’s itty bitty, teeny tiny, soul-engulfed chest, everything bad, everything evil in the world dead and gone under dang good music, the kind his mommy gifted him through the dying midnight radio, and bright blue sparkle tinsel. Because Sam said he’d have finally enough allowance saved up for a proper yellow one on Monday.

And he can’t see anything but goodness. He won’t ever again. 

His eyes are squeezed too tight to see anything else.

⋆⋆⋆

BANG!

It’s bright and pretty like tinsel, actually. A rhythmic rattle like the drums in a good song, too. Familiar. 

The spray of bullets is. 

⋆⋆⋆

BANG!

And Nate didn’t mean to kick the boombox when he jumped like that. He really didn’t.

It was just this little cartwheel into a high kick he had been practicing. His favorite move. That’s all. He had worked so hard on it. It was the best part of the song.

He thought She would understand.

⋆⋆⋆

Sam is smiling when he coughs up blood. Which Nathan doesn’t understand.

⋆⋆⋆

He doesn’t understand.

The look in The Man’s eyes is searing. Steaming and stinky like burnt coffee. Like the volume of their voices when She can’t get up in the morning so He didn’t get his brekkie in time for work. And so He gets mad. And so He turns into someone else.

But this time, the look is on Nate. It’s at Nate, all for Nate, only for Nate. It’s at Nate for kicking the boombox. Because it’s skipping a little now. Just a little, he swears. But the Man never liked it when the music skipped. Liked it even less than Sam liked the color purple.

Nate’s stomach feels rumbly.

It was just a little— Just a little— He swears— He didn’t mean to—

Sam rushes in so fast, The Man is barely sitting up from his chair before his focus on Nate shifts for something else entirely. 

⋆⋆⋆

“Sam?” Nathan asks when he doesn’t understand. “Sam?”

He doesn’t understand. 

The Panamanian sun spotlights them in a halo of light, and Sam silently pleads with little green flakes in his big, brown eyes. Guess Nathan never really looked in his brother’s eyes long enough to notice them before.

He wishes he had noticed them before.

⋆⋆⋆

And Nate bemoans in horror when Sam abruptly picks the giant boombox up over his head and smashes it hard to the crumbling cement below. 

It doesn’t make any sense.

SMASH! SMASH! SMASH! 

It doesn’t make any sense. 

A million little shards of plastic and glass scatter in a blinding ray over the pavement. And Sam’s little eyebrows are pinched in the middle of his forehead. They’re pinched so hard that Nate is afraid the skin between his eyes is going to tear until it snaps in half, and his face is going to bleed out all over their chalk.

He imagines the blood.

⋆⋆⋆

“SAM!” 

Nathan cries when Sam’s body drops instantaneously, taking every force of will he has to hold fast to the five fingers God left. He gasps, shoulder screams in fruitless force when he’s not strong enough to hold him to the ledge. His brother: no help but a stone, an anvil, a taxidermied elephant, a hundred million useless comparisons that could only ever be used to describe a dead weight. He doesn’t understand. 

He doesn’t understand. He was going to live. They were going to live.

Sam told him they were going to live.

“Hold on! Please-hold-on-Sam! Give-me-your-other-arm—!” Nathan cries and wails and bellows down below. He can’t see, there’s too many tears. He was useless when he sprung a leak. The Man always said it was useless when he sprung a— “Come-on-reach!”

But there is only sweat and grime to meet his own now. Any luck was only His to carry.

“No— SAM—!”

The better brother. 

And so, the better brother slips from his fingers—

And the body bangs hard into unfathomable darkness below. 

A body with a name.

⋆⋆⋆

SLAP!

Dad’s hand collides with Sam’s cheek, and Nate’s stomach binds in knots, just like the cat’s cradles at daycare he’s always too stupid, stupid, stupid to ever do right. 

“SAMMY! C’mon, man! That was expensive!”

And it doesn’t make sense. None of it makes any sense at all.

Why would a person hit someone who already knew what they did was wrong? Sam was smarter than that. Sam was the smartest person in the whole world. Dad knew that. Dad invented that. 

Why would you hit something so small like that?

“Sorry.” Sammy says stiffly, a big, nasty, red splotch of skin staring back.

Nate doesn’t understand.

“Who knows how long it’s gonna take for your mother and I to be able to spring for a new one, bud.” He replies, voice quiet, husky and heavy with diss-uh-point-mint, fingers reaching up to pinch the thick bridge of his nose. “That wasn’t very fair to your brother, was it?”

Sammy looks down at his little untied tenny shoes.

“I said, ‘That wasn’t very fair to Nathan now, was it?’”

Nate feels like he’s gonna frew-up. Nate didn’t say that. 

Sammy swallows. For a moment, he says nothing. 

“...No.” 

“That’s right.” He nods satisfiedly, a bittersweet pucker at the corner of his mouth. A forlorn sigh as he kicks a loose chunk of speaker into the pile. Exchanges a thinky sort of look with Her. “Guess we’re gonna need to take that out of your allowance for a while, bud. That sounds fair, right?”

The yellow boa. 

But— But— But— Sam had been saving—

Sammy swallows harder this time. For a moment, he says nothing at all. 

“...Okay.”

And Sam is the biggest, tallest, most bright, most alive creature Nate has known in five. whole. years. of ex–ee-stance. He is. He is. Until the very second Dad’s words decide He’s bigger than him, and Sammy deserves to be smaller. And none of it makes sense. 

Only things that make sense are supposed to happen.

Nate’s hand slowly wobbles up to his own cheek, a careful caress where Sam got hit. He tries to imagine feeling it. Like maybe that’ll take some of the pain away

He imagines super duper hard. 

“Let’s get this cleaned up, yeah? Go grab the broom from the garage.” Dad’s voice: too soft for how red Sam’s face is. Or maybe his face is just too small to hold all the color He had to give. “Samuel? Now.”

But when Sam obeys, he holds his hands over his face too high for Nate to be able to tell. 

And so, Nate imagines. Nate imagines. Nate imagines so hard he thinks his head’s going to ex-plobe. 

⋆⋆⋆

“We gotta move!” Yet Rafe’s desperate attempts at safety, a rousing shake of his shoulder, yield no alternative reality.

“No-no-he’s-still-down-there.’ Nathan imagines, Nathan pretends, Nathan screeches and grovels and begs and plays like they used to do when they were kids. When God still allowed them the mercy to be stupid.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

“C’mon, the boat’s just beyond the wall.” Nothing but noise past the gunfire, useless drivel beyond the screams.

“I can’t— I-can’t-leave-him-behind.” It’s not an excuse, he promises. 

He promises. He swears.

It’s just the honest truth. 

But a pointless mystery: whether the colors melting and merging and molting before his eyes are tears, snot, spit, or blood. Like there’s no use for any sense other than touch, the rest of his body: useless without another half. His teeth chatter from the cold. Everything hurts. 

He peers down into the dark. 

He peers down super duper hard.

He begs the darkness for movement. Life was supposed to be kind enough to let him fight for it first. Sam always fought for it first. It couldn’t be his Sam if he didn’t get to fight for it first.

And Nathan Drake hasn’t prayed in twelve whole years. 

But today he prays to God to just let him see the body.

⋆⋆⋆

Un-fort-tinny-lee, Nate was only ever good at imagining things that were real.

Smack.

The first slap is a quaint, curry-us sort of thing. A bad puppy on his tush for chewing the morning slippers. His cheek is warm from the dance, but his fingers oddly ice cold. Little nubs and peels of skin from scratching scabs or picking gravel from the playground against the soft brush of blush. But no other thinks cross his head. He looks down at the pads of his fing-ees. Sees no red like Sam’s when he retreats.

But, no—

No, that’s not right, though. When you do it right, it’s supposed to hurt.

So, this time Nate reels his hand back a little. Just a little.

So Mommy won’t think he went bad and stole her makeup.

Smack. 

This time, Nate gasps a little. The cold makes him jump, but the sting itself is what makes him whimper. He catches his own eye in the mistaken crossfire, and Nate squeaks in sudden pain, a groan oozing out the tail end. A single tear leaking from the soon-swollen corner. He didn’t notice the think-less chews during class made his nails all stubby and sharp like that.

But most luckily for him, when Nate pulls back, he sees exactly what he wanted. 

Red.

A single, crescent-shaped slice of blood from a lone hangnail off his double-jointed thumb. No more than the width of a fingernail. A little pet of a thing. Alive and buzzing in a smear off his thumbprint, twenty— no, thirty— times brighter than Sam’s red. 

Which makes sense.

SMACK. — Again, just because Nate did it in the wrong place the first time.

Dad made them for him.

⋆⋆⋆

It shouldn’t have been him.

It was for anyone else but him. 

His brother was alive. His brother deserved to be alive. His brother was born to be alive.

Oh God, the body, the body, please, just let him see—

“Nate, your brother is dead.” But the only God Nathan knows is the one he met at the orphanage. The one that punishes, not because he wants, not because he needs. “Either come with me, or join him.” 

The one who kills just because He can.

The body, the body, he hasn’t seen the body yet, he’s still down there, he could still be down there, Sam might still be—

“We just—” Nate tries.

“Have it your way.” But his tries don’t matter. They never did.

His voice, his voice, just one last word, one last sentence, he never got to say—

⋆⋆⋆

“Mom?”

But her dark brown eyes swim so very far, far away from him, like lonely turtles at the beach. The baby one on the sand, crawling desperately for the water, before it got caught and swooped up by a seagull. Her face, twisted toward some distant shore. He sees her. But she doesn’t seem to see him.

“Mommy?”

He wishes so badly she’d see him now.

“Mommy, I’m so—”

“Fathers can be a little funny sometimes, huh?”

Yet, when at last She does, her eyes are soft, and her voice is gentle, textured, and crisp. Little patters of fallen rain. She poises one leg folded over another, over folds and folds of yellow sundress, one sandaled foot, hopping madly as it attempts to steer the wave-ward Sidewalk-Slasher straight again. But her face… calm as an ocean breeze. Freckles to be mistaken for sea glass along her shore.

Nate noticed that they liked to ask questions a lot. Sam said it was just a thing smart people did. It mostly just made Nate feel dumber.

“Funny.” He echoes softly. 

She nods. He mimics. 

Repeats the lyrics so he’s sure he understands them. 

“That was very nice, Nate.” But her teeth seem to sort of hug each other when she says it. Her cheeks: now since softened to a tender shade of pink. “You looked like you were having a lot of fun.”

“Birfday.” He says simply, because He slapped the ‘happy’ off onto the cement somewhere.

“Birthday.” She corrects with a warm, wide grin. 

But she is so boo-tee-full, and she has these little wrinkles at the corners of her mouth because she smiles so much, rep-ee-teet-shin like the sharp carves that turn into the shape of a goat on ancient mess-oh-potato-um pottery, that he doesn’t really mind needing core-eck-shin. She is pottery, that’s what she is. Only she holds life instead of water.

So he replies with a matching grin, so he can one day make his lines big enough to hold all the life she has. He doesn’t quite. But he tries. God, does he try. His feet ring and writhe and buzz beneath countless velcro straps, his teeth: a mess of stinging squares from how hard he fights to bare them, and his cheek—

Matters little. Because just as Her hand reaches out to touch—

“Nathan, what did you—?” 

Nate is rushing past, great leaps across the dancefloor, their joint battlefield, to Sammy, who marches gloomily from the castle dungeon, a swinging broadsword in his hand.

At least, that’s what he looks like to Nate. And so it must be so.

“Tank you.” Nate wetly garbles against Sam’s crumpled t-shirt as soon as he’s pulled him into a prop-er-lee lung-crushing hug, the bristles of the garage broom licking at his ankles. 

“Why?” Sam asks.

But Nate knows Sam is too smart to need the answer.

⋆⋆⋆

It should’ve taken him, instead.

And Nathan wonders, ever so briefly, that if he said the words aloud, begged the whizzing bullets, asked for the only thing he wanted, could ever want again, that the universe would make it come true. And Sam would be here instead of him, doing anything but sobbing like a weak, pathetic, scared little crybaby over a fallen hula hoop. 

But that doesn’t make sense. And only the things that make sense are allowed to happen. 

Sam never cried the way Nate did. 

Maybe that’s precisely why Nathan Drake only drags a sleeve across his weeping eye once, rattles out a single, ragged sniffle, before he finally stops trying altogether— and follows Rafe right off the cliffs of Panama.

⋆⋆⋆

Someone smarter, someone older, someone more alive than Nate could ever be on his own would know why Samuel Morgan hugs him back in place of an answer.

⋆⋆⋆

And Nathan Drake was finally old enough, smart enough, and— fuck God— alive enough to know the only answer, the only future people like them could ever afford: was to leave the only man he’s ever loved for dead.