#tend

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.”

A - Ships that you currently like a lot. (They don’t have to be OTPs because not everyone has OTPs.) Friendships, pairings, threesomes, etc. are allowed.

That's harder to answer than I initially thought, because I realised that there are not really that many romantic ships I know of to begin with ... so unless I'd say Nate X OC, which would be heavily dependent on the OC, I'd go with Chloe and Nadine.

I was thrilled to see Chloe in action in LL, thinking I'd get some idea of how she might be with Nathan. Instead, I was served a super fun relationship between her and Nadine, and I think that they would work great both as a romantic as well as platonic pairing. They had a great development, especially Nadine, coming from U4. The first time she said "Chloe" instead of "Frazer", I squealed.

Finished it today, and honestly this ending felt so much more wholesome than U4's. Look at the girls being girls, after saving the world.

C - A ship you have never liked and probably never will.

That's easy, and I bet you already know what comes: Natelena.

Even though it might be a stretch to say I never liked them. I did like them at the beginning, but then it sort of went down as soon as I learned more about their characters. It was fun while it lasted, but there are so many problematic things about their relationship... right now, I imagine them becoming friends at the most. The sort that once tried to be more, but found out that it didn't really work. I'm all for bickering and teasing in fictional relationships, but they dont really do anything else, other than perhaps fight. Besides, I watched a view of their interactions in the earlier games, and the way Elena reacts to Chloe in U2? Not cool. I dont like how snappy she is. Gives me bad jealousy vibes. Chloe was a lot cooler.

I think that loose friends might work, everything beyond that just feels sort of toxic and forced.

So yeah. Should there be more Natelena in a possible U5, NaughtyDog will have a hard time to make me feel that. Nate should be going back to Chloe (I like Chloe. Did I mention that? Also, short side note, Chloe seems to be great with that girl in LL. She'd be a great mum. Just saying)

Only problem is that after LL, Nathan would come back to Chloe only to find Nadine in her sheets lol. And perhaps, on a good day, Sam padding out of the bathroom only in his boxershorts. Poor Nathan.

S - Show us an example of your personal headcanon (prompts optional but encouraged)

One headcanon I have developed regards the time shortly after Sam "died" in Panama. I think that Nathan had the worst time of his life after that (watching the only family you have die right in front of you, and being forced to leave him behind), and has tried to cope with that via his sketchbook.

I think that he has drawn Sam a lot, trying not to forget his face, maybe trying to "summon" the feeling that he's still there, that there's still hope. There will be a few "failed" attempts at the start, where you can still see the smudges when tears had hit the paper or the stain of a pencil that broke after he pressed it to hard on the paper, but eventually, he could draw Sam's face without a second thought, like others doodle a flower.

I don't want to say too much about it, because I'm actively writing a fic that is partly exactly about that, and I dont want to spoiler you (or anyone else), so that'll have to do for now. Nathan is an artist, and it helps him to bring some order into his thoughts.

Z - Just ramble about something fan-related, go go go! (Prompts optional but encouraged.)

Not meaning to turn this into a hyper-emotional answer on the homestretch, but I'm super glad I found this fandom and the little persistent community. So many great fics on Ao3 are abandoned or the author seems to be absent, and there's little activity here, but seeing especially @lilsnatch and @n4tethegre4t show up after I post something about Uncharted makes me feel like there's somebody home. I still remember @nathandrakeisabottom 's answer to my very first post in this fandom, and, knowing that there's somebody who is still writing fics about Nate, like TEND, gives me hope that this fandom is not bleeding out completely. I'm finding myself encouraged to dive deeper into the characters because I want to find out why other fans love them (like with Sam) or why they dislike a pairing and so on.

So yeah, rambling along to say thank you for the warm welcome you gave me, and for encouraging me to go from "hm, that man hot" into deep character analysis - and for always being along for my rambles <3