Mango!

“£1.75, miss.” 

The driver bellows from behind the protective plexiglass of an open top double-decker. Entering the belly of a foreign, burgundy beast only ever seen behind the vivid screens of a sheep documentary, Mary Poppins, Shitty Shitty Gang Bang, or a less-than-stellar modern day Hamlet adaptation, Shay breathes in less oxygen than she does pure, unbridled magic. Perhaps there could be lengthy adjectives she could postulate for the ‘why’: sounds, scents— hell, even tastes she could plagiarize from Paddington and claim are her own. But Pretty Boy Blue is already glaring impatiently, and entirely unelegantly, down at her from the jungle of grab handles, so she’ll keep it brief. 

It’s because it’s like a regular bus… but double. 

Awesome. 

It’s no longer a question: everything is better somewhere else. And Shay knows this now for a fact, because it’s officially the first time she’s been more than fifteen minutes outside the twenty block radius she grew up in. Making it an entire three hours without having a panic attack might as well make her an olympic athlete. She glances over as Nathaniel hurries down the aisle, fists grappling for each standing stanchion with a threatening thump! There’s no point in asking whether he bothers waiting for her. She sighs, and wishes she could’ve made it to four.

“Miss?” 

But Shay’s plucked from the siren call by a thundering baritone.

“Sorry!” 

She squeaks, fishing through her purse, before depositing the coins from her sweating hands with a less-than-graceful rattle. And maybe it’s instinct, fight-or-fawn, or just the washi tape you overcompensatingly plaster over the scrapbook photos you know aren’t pretty, that makes her lips quirk up into a self-knowing:

“You accept tips?” 

It takes the driver a good second and a half to reply, palm suctioning a single cup of headphone off his stud-covered ear.

“What?”

She should’ve regretted it the first time. She does not. 

“I said, um— do you accept tips? Just making conversation.” She says, a twitch of her lip. Changes tactic. A sympathetic smile. “Bet your job sucks ass.” 

“Yeah, sometimes we get ridiculous, little Edwardian princesses like you asking us to take them back to their time machines.” — Without even bothering his eyes off the road. She should be grateful for that much.

She is not.

“Mad they never let you bum a corset?” 

“Wha—?” But the driver actually spares a grin at that, tugging his chub up his neon vest. “You wanna see all this shoved inside a corset?” 

“The hell do you think I just paid you for—?” 

And just as his jaw unhinges for a choking laugh, he’s already wailed against the horn and slammed the brakes hard enough to simulate an earthquake. A California specialty. If her heart wasn’t just volleyed into her throat, she’d almost feel at home. 

HOOOOOOOOONK! 

“INDICATE, YOU WANKER! WHILE I STILL LET YOU KEEP YOUR BLOODY HANDS!” 

“Jesus-Christ.” She grapples for a pole, just in time to not eat shit into the nearest window. “Th-thank you!”

And as Shay shakingly slips past, throat tight, she tries not to ingrain the ‘ridiculous little princess’ part any harder than she needs to. 

Her eyes snap to the nearest passenger: a gray-haired woman, wrinkles drawn in every judgment, a beading up and down, and Shay fights not to flush red as she nudges her slipping bra strap back beneath her collar. A corset and bloomers, in the new millenium, to blend in in the most tourist-riddled town of England. Brilliant. She brushes her fingers at the corners of her eyes for loose mascara as a distant nausea swims at the bottom of her stomach. 

Silly. 

But she doesn’t have time to dwell, because when she turns, she’s immediately met with Mr. Boy Wonder, stiff arms clasped at his sides the size of cinnamon sticks. And he’s staring.

“How… how did you do that?” 

He’s staring at her. His eyes: wide, unblinking, alien. Shay doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about.

“Do what?” 

Nathan says nothing. He quickly looks away.

But whatever brief distraction he provides is knocked clear as her eyes take in the plastic-paneled savannah. Strategy hits harder than an oncoming freight train. Gameplan. Instantaneously, Shay’s gaze dips away from her partner to hit sharp in every inch. Lower landing, upper landing, set of stairs at the back right corner, facing in. Ten rows of two chairs, all decked in cheap navy blue velour and rainbow squiggles that’d better fit inside a roller disco. Finally: something she and the unknown had in common.

“FUH— FUCK OFF!” 

A voice screeches from the back row, and every hair on Shay’s neck stands on end. Shit. Her hand flies for her pocket.

Gameplan gameplan.

The owner’s voice, a frazzle-haired man sporting three overlapping cardigans yells at what appears to be his own reflection in the ninth row, inner seat. The last five rows edge slightly higher than the first four with a three step staircase. If she were to sit in rows five through eight, she’d have her back to him, and wouldn’t have a proper vantage point if he… tried something. But if she were to sit in row ten, that’d be too close, and he might be threatened by mistaken confrontation. She watches with horror as he shouts vaguely and pounds his fist on the glass. Prominent bruise on the knuckles of his left hand. 

Conclusion: it’d be safer to sit in rows one through four. 

But, no— she glances down at a gaggle of teenage boys cluttered together in row three, whispering to each other, dark hoodies thrown over crowns of heads— because one of them is fishing for something in his pocket. Her stomach clenches. If he had a knife, and wanted to ordain a hostage situation, he’d have to move past them to get to the bus driver. She could still sit in row two or four, let him sprint past, and as his back was turned, withdraw her brand new— 

But then her eyes are cutting quick to the booming cough of an elderly man in row two. His arched back and hand cupped around his wife’s waist seem to signal for innocence, but when he catches eye contact, his lids are droopy, mouth formed frowned like a hungry bloodhound’s, grunts in a lovely sort of ‘keep staring, I shank’ hello. 

Looks are deceiving. Shay knows that. Shay invented that. 

She supposes she could overpower him if she was quick enough. Considers the time it would take to unzip her boot, tear her sock off her ankle. Perhaps her burner phone would be dense enough to pack a punch. Like those lock in a socks in penitentiary. At least with the right swing. Her arm twitches slightly, replicates the movement. It’d probably take maybe three seconds, two if she unzipped her right boot as soon as she sat down, just in case—

Shay doesn’t realize she’s been staring until someone coughs beside her ear. Her stomach drops. Her head whips around. Fist to her pocket.

But it’s only Nathaniel, staring back, an uneasy smile paper-mached across his face.

“Why don’t you pick?” At last, she offers. Suppose one silver lining to Sully’s offer was the ability to stop presuming every moment was life or death. Because this time, it should be a little more clear which was which. 

Should. Fist to her pocket. Should be.

Nathan’s brows furrow as he placates her a cautious nod. His eyes: like someone chucked them into a rock tumbler. Almost as if they were… softer or something.

“Yeah… yeah, I can do that.” And without another word, down he goes. Row one, seat one.

Yeah. Guess that makes sense. 

Shay folds herself beside, crossing knee over knee against his own, spread wide as he entwines his arms over his chest and heaves a heavy sigh. If she were better at being a human being, she’d probably feel a little less embarrassed than she does. The smell of plastic and gasoline intertwines with the stench of still water wafting in from the ajar windows, breeze dawdling across her skin as they speed through the city streets. She watches, entranced, shoulders aching for a reason she can’t quite pinpoint. And everything aches. Everything drags. Everything: too big for her bitty shoulders to carry. 

But maybe that doesn’t have to be a bad thing.

She stares down at her feet, vintage boots gleaming cracked at the seams from a rushed paint job, because the half-dead Joann’s employee said acrylic paint would probably be good enough. Turns out, stolen Wite-Out from the check-out was even more good enough. Her nose brandishes across her sleeve as she looks down to Nathan’s pitch black alternative, spit-shine clean like he bought them only yesterday. But as he readjusts his spindly spider legs, half-crushed behind the divider, she notices something beneath, something tacky and burgundy red sticking his feet to the bus floor. Shay squints. 

“Yikes. Somebody kill something or something?” She asks, a trying chuckle, but still the concept of ignoring Nathan’s abruptly tense shoulders is an anomaly. “Don’t… your friends do that kinda thing?”

But he only huffs: “What? No, they don’t do that kind of—” before poutingly slumping his head against the glass, never to speak again. Probably lost in thought about his ugly shoes. She should offer to help pick out more interesting ones tomorrow.

And as Shay looks down, another breeze creeping in from the marine layer—

It’s— 

Legs shift. Sniffs the sour upswell.

It’s— 

Her chest deflates.

It’s wine. Just wine. 

And it’d likely be the most fucked-up thing in the entire world for anyone to admit they could almost be disappointed by it. 

Another huff from Nathan beside, eyebrows furrowed so hard he could hold a pencil between them.

But only almost. Almost disappointed. 

The bus rattles and bucks over street corners and pavement, swims like an eel through some unknown sea, maneuvers sharp turns with less-than-ease and again, it’s familiar: only this time, she actually prefers the sights beyond when they’re not behind a screen. Shay’s mouth gapes open at the sight of a flock of swans flying v-formation over the winding brilliance of the River Avon. Cresting hills table-clothed with picnic blankets and deck chairs, paddleboat instructors halfway through lunch break squeezing in one last cigarette. And greying hairs a-match with the fowl. Proof. Proof of life still lived. Shay watches, longs to see where they’re going, what great adventure nature must get up to without her. But just as the bus swerves around a corner, they’re gone, and he speaks, and her eyes are drawn back to reality. 

“So, Car-deen-yo…” Nathan edgingly offers, and her focus swings back to him. 

“Cardenio.” Shay corrects, a grin jumping the gun at the corner. “Like the Don Quixote character.” 

“I… know Don Quixote,” he murmurs.

“Jesus, you better. Sully promised me I’d finally have someone to discuss fine literature with.”

Nathan snorts. An idle shake of his head. Shay makes damn sure to smile wider. Perhaps still halfway through something short of spite.

“And Love Labor’s Won. Sequel to Love Labor’s Lost.” 

“So… what we working with? You know, in case it’s relevant at all.” 

Nathaniel curls a sneer at the edge of his lip, sharp enough to give a paper cut. 

“Sully-made-me-ask-otherwise-I-wouldn’t-give-a—” He tacks on rushedly.

“Otherwise-I-wouldn’t-care-because-it’s-soooo-lame-because-the-greatest-writer-of-all-time-is-soooo-lame-waa-waa-I’m-Nathaniel-Drake-I-take-pisses-so-massive-Noah-himself-is-wondering-if-he-can-use-one-for-his-next-great-flood—” She finishes with a spitting raspberry. 

Nathan looks quietly down at her. Shay looks silently up at him. And he makes sure to give a good, long pause before:

“Are you done now?”

“Like it’d kill you to consider they might be interesting.” — voice a-grit with butter-bitter certainty.

“It might, actually.”

Beneath the frilly lace of vintage bloomers, Shay’s hand curls into her pocket and flips the metal right side up. Thoughtlessly rubs her thumb over the switch. Turns out, the liquor store down the road did have a pink one.

Nathan gives an urging cough.

“But if they were to be relevant—” Jackpot. 

It’s off to the races:

“Look, Shakespeare’s only considered ‘boring’ because his stories aren’t supposed to be silently read like they make you in middle school. It’s written in iambic pentameter— stressed, unstressed, stressed, unstressed— the rhythm of a person’s heartbeat. Of course it’d be boring, that’s literally the entire point: they were specifically written for you to hear a human being speak it and hear how their hearts would—”

One could hear Nathan’s uncaring silence from a mile away. Shay can only sigh. 

“Whatever. Love Labor’s Won is about some celibate richies and The History of Cardenio is the story of a crazy guy living on a mountain." — Finishing flatly. 

But Nathan only shrugs as the bus dips hard over a pothole, and Shay’s knuckles are forced life-or-death to the nearest headrest. She grits her jaw.

Guess these jackasses don’t know how to drive, either. 

“So, what do they have to do with each other? What’s the connection?” 

“Well, one’s a comedy and one’s a tragedy, so—” She begins in reply.

“Nothing.” Nathan says. “Everything.” Shay finishes.

They whip towards each other. The bus dips, harsher this time, and Shay finds her fist tearing into velvet as her body slams forward and rips back again. 

“Don’t these people know how to drive?” 

“Well, there’s something. There’s always something. What else?” 

And how fiercely his eyes pierce, the spitting desperation, drives her flustered. But this time, she actually has something to offer. This time, she promised she’d save her lies for the stage. 

For the most part.

“So, it’s about these two adventurers searching for the owner of this mysterious treasure— See? This is relevant to you, Nathaniel— and discover he’s a madman who’s been hiding waaaay up in the mountains because, once upon a time, he was in love with a girl whose father forbade them to be together. Instead of getting married to some rando, this girl, Luscinda, says she’s going to off herself at the altar. But when Cardenio goes to the wedding in hiding, he sees her accept the other man’s vows, and in horrified pain, heartbreak, and betrayal, he runs away— never to return again.” 

Her hands starburst in theatrically eerie conclusion. The silence that follows: poignant and chic. 

“And the other?” He whines minutely, which Shay will pretend is an improvement. 

“And Love Labour’s Lost is about King Ferdinand and his three best dudes taking a three-year-long oath to swear off all women, deeming them frivolous, distracting—” 

“Uh-huh.” Nathan raises his brow. 

“But, it’s Shakespeare, and they’re terribly human. So, they all immediately fall in love with the first four women they meet and take turns hiding in a bush, watching as each of them goes up to confess their love, judging and ridiculing them for it, only to get up and do it themselves when they think the others aren’t looking.” 

Shay’s hand flies for her mouth for a sudden spring of loose spittle, and out of the corner of her eye, the old man and his wife glare. 

“O-of course, they all say ‘fuck it’ to the oath, just in time for the King of France to die horribly and everyone to call it off in mourning, anyway. And Love Labor’s Won, presumably, is whatever the hell happens after that. Title implies a happy ending for a change, though.” 

“Can’t judge a book by its title.” Nathan replies with a smirk. 

“Cov—” 

“Cover.” He interrupts. “I know that.”

Again, the bus lurches forward, and this time, Shay chokes out a gasp on the relapse. And nothing but silence, pure silence, as the doors slam shut and a man in a long, black trench coat slowly eases into the aisle across from them. They catch eye contact. His gaze: dark and bloodshot. Shay looks away.

“Well… you’re our history expert,” she says. “You see any great connection?”

And Shay watches him. And Nathan watches her. And his face wavers like water of the River Avon. He turns for his namesake, eyes darting back and forth across the blue. Back and forth. Back and forth against the glass. A lone swan flutters and flaps across the sky, scurrying for the end of its family wedge far on the horizon. Shay doesn’t quite see if it makes it. 

“No-no-no, I mean what’s important.” Yet when he turns back, it’s like a whip. His face: pink, dark brows ruched between like some wave-pummelled seashell. He wasn’t listening to a word she said. “History of Cardenio. presumed publication 1613, first referenced in the 1653 Stationer’s Registry. The source is iffy, to say the least, but—” 

His eyes grow hazy, elsewhere, and it’s as if some wandering ghost lifts his wrists for him to count mindless, unheard numerals with each thick, deft finger. But here, there is no dance. No joy. Only the stubby haphazardry of children’s fingerpaint.

“No, crap, there’s still evidence to suggest the actual publication being 1612, which could completely change—” 

Hazy, elsewhere. Disappearing betwixt the flying fowl. Shay attempts another sympathetic smile.

“You do numbers. I do people,” she says. “It appears we’re at an impasse.” 

And perhaps this would be the great technicolor moment he grins her way and admits defeat. Coaxes her for more cultural context, reveals whether missing molars are the real reason he never fully smiles. Gives her an opening. A chance to actually be a human being with him. 

But instead: 

“You do people?” — A cruel curl at the corner of his mouth.

“What?” Halfway between a victorious smile and grinding teeth down for biting. “Jealous?”

And at that, he actually almost sort of nearly kind of chuckles to himself. Chest lifts. Heart sings. Mission complete. Because this should be the beginning. The technicolor moment. When life tells her she is no longer all alone in the universe. That she might be wrong to have ever even considered it.

But instead, Nathan Drake goes abruptly silent, evens every curl down for frown, leans his head against the adjacent window, and shuts his eyes to the big, beautiful, terrible world around them. Which, unfortunately, happens to include her. The wind whistles through the window gap. His shoes stink of dollar store liquor. And Shay is once again left to fend for herself on unfriendly, thoroughly unremarkable public transit. 

Shay wilts. Perhaps this was the great adventure Victor Sullivan promised her, after all. 

The wheels burp and bump and brittle down the street, lulling like an uneasy ocean. The air has quickly iced with excessive A/C, the commercial hum and drum as the back wall grates churn the wind wispy and sharp. It’s becoming aggressively clear she should’ve brought a jacket. And it’s not because of the cold.

Her sight jerks to the right-most aisle, and that’s when she realizes the man in the black trench coat… is still looking. He’s looking at her. Shay’s throat clenches, anxiety bobbing and sinking like a dead body in a river— the one she always imagines is her own, when men that look like him look at her like that— but she straightens her back high and attempts to ignore. Attempts to imagine she ignores. Imagines. The single skill she possesses beyond a double stitch. The skill she wrangles so she can imagine that he’s not looking at her.

She’s safe, she tells herself. She’s here. 

Because he’s not looking at her. He’s looking at her legs. 

And something that is anything but shame creeps up the back of her neck, curls the dark baby hairs she couldn’t afford to redye yet, and the wind behind her churns— even as the bus knocks to a halt and another half dozen people clamor into the few remaining seats— because, sure enough, when she takes a hard glance to her periphery, he’s still looking at her. Her knuckles: white beneath the lacy folds of her pocket. Stomach: curdling, black, molten, hateful. Her jaw grits.

Worthless motherfucker.

And for one second, and one second alone: Shay asks herself why she really said yes to Victor Sullivan’s proposal. Her fingers cling to the metallic handle, rub in mindless motions against the latch. If she was just looking for excuses. If she was just looking for permiss—

The voices call between her ears. Repeat the words the doctors said would work. 

She’s-safe-She’s-here-She’s-safe-She’s—

A knee bumps against her own, and her hand shamefully springs back into her lap. She’s thinking too much. And the thing that isn’t shame suddenly is shame, even if the man in the black trench coat and the dark, leering, sunken, bloodhound eyes and the both hands hidden deep within his vinyl pockets isn’t really looking at her. Because he isn’t.

He’s looking at her meat. 

The knee beside her own presses. She’s here. She’s safe. She imagines. She pretends.

She lies. 

And now the man is definitely looking at her. She knows because she’s looking back at him. His stubbled mouth spitting a tsk-tsk-tsk-ing sound behind his front teeth. That same sick, beckoning sound that’s stopped her from leaving her house for twenty-four years. Fear creeps up between her shoulder blades with a well-worn scythe, and becomes something entirely else by the time it reaches the back of her head. 

She refuses to be a victim. She refuses to be a victim. Her fist pounces into her pocket and— 

“Hey.” A voice beside Shay rumbles. “Hey.”

The dark, sunken, terrible eyes aren’t on her anymore. 

“Hey.” It repeats louder. “You got a problem?” 

Shay would already be bolting past— Page 74: How to Jump from a Moving Car, Step 1— if it weren’t her very own escort causing a scene on the W20 Stagecoach.

“Excuse me?” The man’s focus is deadly. 

“What? Did I speak fucking Mandarin?” But Nathan’s is lethal. Like he’s been waiting his whole life to tear this stranger limb from limb. “Nǐ tā mā chǒu shá!”

Shay’d be terrified if she wasn’t so impressed. 

And she’d be impressed if she wasn’t so terrified. 

The man is staring at Nathan now, but no… no, he’s not. The knee pressed against her own shakes like the stutters he spouted on the night they met. Like the way his eyebrows furrowed and his mouth puckered, the type of man who thought saying nothing meant he communicated nothing. And the man’s eyes aren’t soft necessarily against Nathan’s blazing, simply… relaxed. Unbothered. And Nathan’s pointer finger jammed his way is trembling, even though his bicep and forearm look braced hard enough to burst. The bloodshot stranger: borderline catatonic. 

Because he’s not looking at Nathan… he’s looking through him. 

“Stop— Fucking— Looking at me—”   

Until the man’s eyes widen. Lips part for a gasp. And something between them changes. Almost like—

Almost like he recognizes him.

“Actually, we do got a problem.”

And in one terrible instant, every direction to turn contains the barrel of a double-pump shotgun.

“DUCK!”

Nathan yells just in time for Shay to follow, the headrest she had latched onto just moments before disappeared from existence in a click! and a booming flash of fire. Smoke plumes ghastly from between the scarred fists flashed behind the man’s trench coat’s ripples. Because, to Shay’s shattered heart and splattered chagrin, the audience always loves a reveal. 

“Nathan… Drake?” The salt-and-peppered man speaks in snarling Russian accent, but his delivery is all tender surprise. “Нихуя себе, you’re still alive?” 

Dustmites thrive better than any human in the blast’s wreckage, the smell of melting plastic singing her nostrils and making her consider the very real possibility that her right eyebrow was just burned off. Her fingers are shaking too hard to check. 

“For the pleasant moment. What’s it to ya?” Nathan snorts back… a smirk laced upon his lip.

 But, no, that can’t be right. 

“Vell, a fair bit, as a matter of fact.” The man reloads with a sudden skirmish, and in slow motion, Shay sees his thumb flicker, his grip re-straighten, Nathan’s lips form the word ‘run’— and they both only manage to miss the blast with a millisecond’s dive into row two. “Aren’t you supposed to be in hell vith—”

“Aren’t you supposed to be elbow deep in your mom? Oh wait, no, that was me last—”

Ka-chunk! BANG!

They leap just in the nick of time, the sear of heat making the hairs at the back of Shay’s neck bristle, a gasp popping from the panting of her parted lips. These would all be things Shay Valentine would hear, words that would rip a smile across her lips in every way a thousand action films could communicate. Every story book, every play, every fantasy from the pages of endless numbered lists on grizzly versus black bear attacks: they would make her ready. The only world she ever imagined she might actually be ready for. 

“UPSTAIRS! HURRY!”

“Okay-okay-okay-okay-okay—” 

But then, Shay’s less-than-humble heel buckles on the sprint for the stairs’ landing, and her stomach plummets when Nathan knocks them down for cover, palm splayed in a starburst at her back. She had imagined the blood, the bruises, the running red and blooming purple like the ones she feels when her chest, cheek, the point where her arms become shoulder hit steel. The wind is knocked out of her, breath beating in and with and against and for the dirt she coughs out when the next blast lands and her body hits ground once more when she tries to stand up. 

She had laid her hands on herself like the way the movies, like Victor Sullivan had said this world would. She had practiced what it would be like to hurt. She had imagined it’d make her ready. She thought they’d make her ready. 

“The vorld doesn’t need dirty scum like you.” 

BANG! BANG! BANG!

They did not. 

But her growing panic attack, air that chokes, punishes, when it enters, is muffled by the ricocheting of a dozen misfired bullets. 

“Hey, asshole! Might wanna fix your aim!” Nathan waves from behind a smoking headrest, before adding: “Ask your mom, I’d be more than happy to teach—” 

Another bullet argues. Nathaniel politely retaliates with a shove and flip into row three.

Ka-chunk! BANG!

And Nathan is smiling as he telescopes back to standing, chest heaving, middle finger ascended, but Shay feels, hears, senses, is nothing but the warning rings of tetanus in both ears. Her body is not her own. It is a vessel only to be moved farther from the maws. Every hoodied teen, the bloodhound man, even his trembling silver-eyed wife, all lone but the crazy man in the back, who claps and cheers as if on a theme park ride— armed with a dozen guns Shay doesn’t know the name of. 

But does the name of the thing that kills you matter more than what it does?

“We gotta—” Nathan’s lips move, but the remaining words don’t reach, and the zing! of a handgun’s bullet nearly nips her earring, and her fucking jugular vein, off altogether. Row four. They’re running out of time. “Butter!” 

But she can’t. She can’t move, she can’t move, she can’t move. If she could reach it, if her hand would fucking listen, twitch, live, her pocket knife— fuck, it’s nothing— no, it’s something— before it’s obliterated into the edge of a bloody stump. Her face: a hole in a head.

“COME ON, SHAY!” 

But there are no ifs when his fingers grab hers and tear them up the stairs, just as a shotgun blasts the backside of the bus into a gaping black hole. And Shay tries not to think too hard about the painful, blood-curdling screams as the crazy man and a half dozen henchmen are sucked out onto the moving pavement. 

But she does. Of course, she does. 

“You can run, but you can’t hide, sweet’ums!” Grannie trillingly adds.

The breath crushes out of her lungs as Nathan tears them up the open air second level to safety. Shay’s body is brittle, but her head: spinning. What qualifies as the Stratford skyline punches her square in the jaw with the rushing gasp of fresh afternoon air turned ice. Fear claims her body like all her skin has been peeled clean off, Nathan’s hand yanking her behind a pair of steel-gated seats.

“Who—?! They—!” Shay barely manages to choke out past the hyperventilation. She can’t make out his face with how fast her vision blurs.

“Numbskulls who betrayed us on an old mission in Chile. What? Not even a hug for an old friend?” Nathan sneers from behind a gunpowdered and gobsmacked cheek. “Guess, uh, they’re giving us quite the ‘chilly’ shoulder, huh?” 

The sound Shay makes in return is more sob than laugh. 

“Don’t worry, all his henchmen are chatroom volunteers. Got these morons thinking Craigslist was his personal website.” She just about jumps out of her own tendons when another grin tears across his teeth, and he twists to bellow behind. “CHEAP BASTARD!”

Another double dozen ricocheting bullets answer against the velvet. 

“You got something to hit somebody with?” Nathan asks, fingers flying for his pockets.

“No,” Shay lies.

“Crap.” But his fingers retreat just as fast. Whatever he has, it’s not enough. “Okay, stay behind me. Everything will be fine if we just—”

SMACK! — Til’ Nathan goes flying down the aisle, fist to the face before he can finish. 

“SHIT!” Shay shrieks, because Mr. Seven-Foot-Tall-And-Fathered-By-a-Rhino is already standing before her, black hole of a gun barrel tailored onto her quivering body. The feeling pressed sharp like a needle against her heart is striking, unrelenting, impervious fear. That was the obvious. That was the destined. What is less obvious, is the flash, the flicker of something else. 

Her hand finally fumbles for her pocket.

“Any last vords?” He grits.

It’s the flash of the glint of a hot pink, fifteen quid pocket knife she’s been waiting to defend her life since the beginning of time. And the flash of the glint as it immediately slips from her fingers and ricochets twenty feet into the seats beyond. 

“NO!” 

BANG!

She dodges death only because she dives just in time: fumbling like a coward on the floor, bruises smashing hard into her elbows. Trembling hands: slick with sweat and only squeezing the knife flying further down the roof when she finally manages her grip around the metal. She tries not to sense the smell of smoke, the burst of firing heat centimeters above her scalp. 

Some distant high-pitched cry and the thump of fist on skin. They aren’t hers. 

“Hey, asshole! Watch where you— SHIT!” Nathan’s voice yelps from her periphery before another thump! collides with the distinct sound of cheekbone. And Shay might sneer if that sound only signified karma for a snotty bastard ‘too good’ for iambic pentameter.

“Awww, little bunny rabbit’s got no claws.” 

But this is not a movie. His gun is no prop. There’s no crescendoing music. The cruelty in his voice: unfeigned. Honest. Earnest. That sound only means she's alone.

“Vhat? Ze great Victor Sullivan doesn’t even arm his little groupies no more? Man, he veally doesn’t care to keep zem alive anymore, does he?” 

And he’s laughing. The worthless son-of-bitch is laughing at her. Because someone standing on the brink of death, between an unjust bullet and the crushing pavement, is funny. Shay, the trembling prey, the rodent in the brush: left to crawl down the aisle til’ there is nowhere left to crawl. And because it’s her, because that’s the creature she was born, she can’t even manage to do that right. 

“It’s no fun vithout a little fight… Guess ze good ol’ days really are over.” 

Behind her, the click of a reload, the stampede of another half-dozen mercenaries following suit. Ahead, the Stratford bus, charging for the intersection. Her life: flashed in sparse, nothing threads before her eyes. She’s ready. She’s ready. She prepared. She studied. She waited. She hoped. She prayed. She was finally granted her wish. She’s ready.

She was ready.

The camera zooms. The strings build. 

⋆⋆⋆

Page 17: How to Escape a Charging Bull

Step 1: Access the situation.

So, you decided to pursue the most dangerous sport known to mankind. Congratulations. Maybe a badass like you already knows the signs to watch for an increasingly aggressive bull include, but are not limited to— growling, stomping, glaring, tail-raising, head-tossing, wall punching, headset-throwing, and standing sideways to appear as large and imposing as possible. But don’t let these behaviors deter you. Maybe it’s just playing hard to get.

As always, remember: better afraid than dead. 

Step 2: Back away.

Unfortunately for you, bulls don’t play hard to get. In fact, they’re easily frightened when believed to be under attack. Which, they are, as you decided to pursue the most dangerous sport known to mankind. Congratulations. You can minimize this reaction by appearing as small as possible as soon as the bull approaches. It’s highly recommended you face it and walk away in a diagonal line. DO NOT make eye contact. DO NOT offer it the hookah. Even these actions will be seen as a threat.

Step 3: If the bull attacks, leap as far as possible.

The horned, angry animal launching itself 35 miles an hour at you is not going for a hug. React accordingly. Jump perpendicular to its oncoming path, and make sure to jump as hard as your (probably) skinny little legs can! Change direction of your movement immediately, as bulls struggle to turn as quickly as humans. Make sure to run in a zig-zag to better your chance of survival on the way to a safe location, like the hospital, or the DMV, or a second hospital. 

Step 4: Pray.

Remember: if you do everything correctly, you just might live.

⋆⋆⋆

The bus veers left and Shay Valentine pounces for the skittering flash of pink just as the mercenary comes charging towards her. He’s charging. He’s charging. He’s on her. She’s done for. And the wail of a car horn happily masks the sound as he trips and tumbles over the edge of the roof, and into the sea of pavement below. 

Oh shit.

Oh, shit, shit, shit. 

It’s instinct that drives her gasping to follow. Her hands cling to the railing as if she’ll be inspired right along with him, but it’s only her eyes, pounding heart that follow. White, white, white— striking lines down the street’s center like a zipper she’s waiting to be opened and all the red to spill out. But it’s white and gray, white and gray, and gray and white, and an indifferent wind whistles in her ear when her senses lean that much harder for an answer, because he didn’t fill it with screams on the way out. 

Shay swallows around the lump in her throat. Her chest: full. Full. Full. Full. Her fingers: shaking, white around her finally-captured knife. Full. Of something. Something terrible. Shaking. It’s not relief. 

Or maybe he’s still okay down there. Or something. 

“Fucker.” 

Shay Valentine’s eyes frame to slivers in a harrowing cowboy close-up as she curdles and spits off the edge of the deck. Her powerless body shakes before it stills. And she imagines her next trembling breath is deep and slow before she deposits, dipping the bloodless metal back down into the folds of her shorts. No strings, no sound, only the heartless whistle of zooming ten miles per hour. If he were nicer, maybe she wouldn’t’ve needed to do that. 

Shay flips the metal right side up.

“Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to bully other— OW!” 

But her attention is yanked by the spirited pluck and pound of fist meeting face, and her head fastly follows. 

“Don’t you have any variety, worthless boy?!” Another armed goon bellows. 

“You’re right. Must’ve fallen asleep reading the ‘M’ section in my exquisitely alphabetized joke book again. I am an expert.”

Nathaniel. 

Shay instinctively ducks behind the nearest seat when his body swings forward, and his knuckles come jutting in a harsh diagonal across the sucker’s jaw. They go flying. And now, now, when the goon’s chin comes cascading down in a graceful arc to rival a ballerina’s, a lone, broken tooth flying out in place of bullets, Shay sees red the way she imagined.

The first man goes down. And Nathan—

Nathan is smiling. 

Her stomach tightens when his grinning lines don’t fade as a second mercenary, one of the hoodied teens, steps up to bat. The back of her neck: wet with sweat, slithering. The sound of a rattlesnake’s shake. She learns he has dimples— perfect, non-missing teeth— when his mouth gets all wide like that, wide like the barrel of the kid’s gun when he backhands it only a quarter of an inch from Nathan’s temple. Bright like the glare of afternoon sun in her eye when the steel twists and reflects just right, a flash of technicolor, and Nathan’s fingers come grappling around his wrist just in time to knock it hard against the side of the enemy’s neck. 

They go out like a light, bison body crumpling to a thump!, folded in half like a piece of paper. The villain falls, and Nathan Drake is still there, standing tall and toothy in the spotlight. Dimples where he smiles. His fist doesn’t shake.

Easy. 

“C’mon, gramps. Hey, batter, batter, swing.” 

Somehow Nathan senses a third mercenary, the elderly gent, before his bloodhound eyes even cusp over the stairwell. Dark and sunken, not unlike the handgun he tugs from its hiding spot inside his waistband. In slow motion. Nathan’s back turned. Her heart in her throat. 

But she does not move from hiding. 

“Arthritis caught up to your vocal chords? Or just too shy to talk to the cutest boy in school?” Nathan smiles, quips to the looming mass behind, brow cocking like the trigger he can’t see. Shay’s teeth grind inside her jaw.

She should warn him. 

“Doo, doo, doo…” Nathan playfully hums the trill of a baseball’s first inning start. Bloodhound rounds the bend. Still, she does not scream to warn him. Which means she does not save him.

But unlike her, he doesn’t need to be saved.

“NATHAN!” 

His torso slams forward just as the plug unclogs and she shouts, the wail of a traffic horn paralleling and perfectly clouding the wail of Henchman #3 screaming in ferocious agony. Nathan ducks. He spins— and Shay doesn’t see the in-between before the imprint of a boot shines right back from the middle of the pig’s forehead. 

“WOO!” — Nate yelps proudly.

And all the while, in pathetic hiding, Shay feels sick to the pit of her stomach. Because he sparkles when he does it. The bastard fucking sparkles.

“I’ll give ya another chance.” He smiles wide and his arms extend, chest playing bullseye. “Seniors’ discount.” Like it’s fucking easy.

Gramps rattles his head in shock, but Nathan still gives him proper time to fumble for a reload. The force so powerful, it’s as if his brain’s been completely reset. He frantically jams sweaty, hotdog fingers into his pocket for another round of bullets, nervous breath heaving his cheeks puffy and crimson. Nathan just smiles sweetly, glancing at his watch. Shay grits her teeth. And a breathy laugh, the single click! of the chamber is all it takes for him to spring. 

It’s the first time that Shay’s ever noticed how perfectly the color of bloodshot veins match the magenta-red of a forehead bruise. Nathan’s rebuking shove sends the gun barrel right between the henchman’s eyes before they cross… and he collapses head-long into the floor. 

And she was wrong. The strings never stopped. They played. 

They played for someone like him.

The dust settles, and when Shay twists her gaze against the daggering sunlight towards him, he stands tall amongst the miraging horizon. Fist unshaking. A single tumbleweed. A swift guitar strum. His lip curled into a strong, certain smile. 

See? Easy. 

“I—” She begins, inching from behind the seatrest. “I thought you were supposed to be the sharpshooter!” 

And Nathan spins whiningly ‘round to meet her, arms a-flung: “I WAS!”

But the second the bus hiccups over a speed bump is the same second reality smacks past the cold spring wind. Returned the stab of panic. The spotlights falter and Nathan Drake’s face snaps back for the Stratford street signs. 

“Bridgefoot! Crap, that’s our cue!” He calls, quickly beckoning towards the half-torched stairway. The spell is broken, and Shay doesn’t stick around to congratulate vernacular. 

It’s as if the groaning floor stabs back with every step she slams down, hands missing and smacking the rail in a million little razorblades while Nathan’s swerves curt and clear into the nearest ‘stop’ button. Her muscles scream and ache against the wind tunnel caused by the bus’s bullet-blasted back end. Sweating hands keep missing the rails by the time Nathan has already reached the floor. And her sweating hands keep missing the rails. And her sweating, swatting, impossibly worthless hands keep missing the fucking railing because that’s not where this world decided they fit. 

“Guess this is why they make you stretch in ballet class, huh?” — She tries a line half-heartedly past the wind.

“What?” — He asks more-than-screamingly back.

“I said— um, I said I guess this is why they make you stretch in—”

But from the last remnants of row one, seat one, just when the scaredy cat and the mother-loving sharp non-shooter think they’re out the woods, Hoodied Teen Three (Co-Star, Recurring) swings up a gun barrel, goes for the trigger, and—

“DEATH BECOMES HIM, NATHAN DRAKE!”

“AAAH!” “AAAH!” 

And a taser. The same one she saw at the Superdrug in Heathrow airport. Fifteen quid a pop. 

SMACK. 

— Hits the dead center of his frontal lobe, and his legs buckle and body clatters beneath him. Shay laments his final words. 

Pretty sure it’s ‘Death Becomes Her’. Poor bastard. 

“Last call for Bridgefoot!” 

But luckily no one dies from getting hit with a taser… right? 

“Let’s motor!” — Nathan shouts behind by the time he’s already jumping towards the curb, the squeal and rush of traffic meeting head-on with the curl of her hand as she instinctively grabs the taser off the warmth-warped floor.  

And right before Shay can follow:

“Thank you, driver! Hope you have a great rest of your—“ 

“BUTTER, STEP ON IT!” 

“Yeah-yeah-alright-alright—“

She gets one last glimpse— the sight of the bus driver swiveling back, stubby fingers snapping a headphone off his ear, the split second before his jaw falls onto the now non-existent floor (“My bloody BU—!”)— before the doors strike shut and they disappear into the day.  

Her very first battle. She did it. She survived. She should imagine a cowboy’s whistle. A single tumbleweed. But the only sound: the burning ring of tinnitus in her ear. A locust crawled in cries into her brain, burrowing somewhere safer. Survival. 

Emptiness. 

The smell of sting of goose shit. 

“Do you think they’re… dead?” Because whatever cool quip she’s supposed to say next, it doesn’t come. 

“What, the Craigslist Cadets?” But it does from him. Nathaniel replies from beyond her periphery, words muddled, muted past the reverberating rings. She slaps her hands over her ears with a painful moan. “Nah, broken tibia at the maximum. That’s what pressure points are for. You’d be surprised how much armor they’re able to pack under all those ugly shirts.” 

He looks down to her quintupple-laced corseted milkmaid blouse with a bemused smirk. 

“No offense.”

“What?” Are his ears just stronger from a lifetime of danger? Or is she really just that—?

“I said ‘no offense’, but—” 

“Oh, don’t worry. I’m packing plenty.” She responds stiffly. 

“Heh.” 

And shockingly, Shay doesn’t hate him for the way the laugh comes so easy. The single satisfied huff versus her choking gasps of hyperventilation. Her shock-shorn frown versus his quirking smirk, honest-to-god slashed sideways like a goddamn Saturday morning cartoon character. How he so effortlessly sparkles with a gun to his head. How could she possibly hate him for that? 

Because, well… she doesn’t.