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theonewhobroughtyou · 8 years ago

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@favoredfcrtune

Victor is damn lucky he catches Chloe when he does.

His call comes late in the afternoon, after she’s been passed out for hours after a too-long flight home. The job in Kagoshima was quick, nothing to get too excited over, in and out within four days and hardly even a scrape to her knuckles. Easy. She loves the job, though, regardless of how short it is, of how little danger there is, of minimal risk and moderate reward, but still it feels good to be back in a warm bed, in a temperature controlled apartment, with locks on the door and eight floors of residents below her to act as a buffer between her flat and anyone potentially trying to reach her. The thrill of the adventure can still, at times, be outweighed by the comforts of home. Of familiarity. Of the quiet hum of the air conditioner soothing her ears after days of near perpetual gunfire when things go bad (and so often do they go bad; it’s almost not enjoyable if they don’t, to a degree).

She can’t sleep on flights, though, never could, and when she finally landed back in Key West after three layovers and too many in-flight movies, her eyes too heavy to even read her notes anymore, she managed to wrangle a taxi ride home, barely making it out of her jeans and onto her bed before sleep won and she slipped into a series of meaningless dreams for a solid eleven hours. It isn't unusual for her to crash so hard after a job, but it's the flight that really took it out of her this time. For the amount of trans-oceanic flights she takes, she thinks she should be used to all of this by now, might know how to relax and shut down on a flight - and yet here she is, pushing her mid-thirties, more than half her life spent in the business, and still unable to to do more on a plane than close her eyes and slow her breathing and try to imagine the thrum of the engine is her air conditioner at home, but to no avail. Frustrating, but it's why she plans a few extra hours on either side of her trips for the red-eyes and long flights.

She hadn't planned anything after this job. Maybe a couple weeks off to let her aches recover, to start working on selling some relics from recent jobs, maybe start poking around for her next one. So when she's woken up by her cell phone vibrating near violently beside her pillow, Victor's name illuminated through the spiderweb of cracks in the screen, she knows it's one of two things: an invite to drinks, or something with Nate. Both of which end up being time consuming, and he's lucky he caught her now.

Her mouth is thick with sleep, and she has to clear her throat a few times before she can clear the hoarseness from her voice, but even then she still sounds tired.

“Victor?” She tries to sound alert, or at least more so than she actually is, pushes herself onto her elbows to clear her head, blinking sleep from her eyes. But it isn't anything she does that has her mind snapping to attention and her heart pounding so hard it might break through her ribcage. It's what he tells her. It's Nate, because of course it is. It’s been a long time since this brand of call has come through to her, but she can’t say she hasn’t been expecting something like it eventually.

She can still remember the last time she'd visited the Drake household, the look on his face when she mentioned where she was headed next - Uruguay, at the time, to look into the credibility of La Luz Mala. The way his eyes widened slightly, brightened, and she could damn near see the wheels turning in his head as he already tried to figure it all out, where he'd start, what clues would fit, historical facts and tidbits they had once spent countless days and nights poring over together - and how those wheels slid to a sharp stop when he forced himself to change the subject. He can't follow that train of thought. He has a wife and a house and a relatively normal job. He's left the life of fortune hunting behind in favor of the normalcy he didn't get growing up. It broke her heart to see the light dim when he moved on to other topics and pushed a smile into place. He's happy, but he's also not, and the lure of adventure is a tempting mistress they've both spent their lives giving in to the siren song of.

He resisted, but she knows how goddamn easy it is to go back.

“You mean...even more stupid than usual?” A pause as she listens, and she forces herself into a sitting position, dragging her hand over her eyes, down her face, back through her hair. She tries to play it off like a minor annoyance, but the truth is, she knows the recklessness that can come with spending time away, and she’s terrified for him. Keeping herself under control is easy, even in the vulnerability of the aftermath of sleep, but she feels the rising panic make her chest ache. Her only audible sign of it is the sigh she gives, heavier than she’d intended and carrying more worry than she could put words to.

“Of course, Victor,” she says, pulling a pen and whatever scrap of paper she has towards her to take down the notes. Coordinates, last known location, where he’s headed, the destination itself - Avery’s treasure? She damn near scoffs into the phone. Son of a bitch went looking for it without her. Another sigh. “Yeah, I’ll go drag both Drake asses home.” The phone balances between her cheek and shoulder, tongue pressing against the flats of her teeth as she scribbles notes to herself. She falls silent for long seconds, rereading everything, ensuring she has it all before speaking again.

“I’ll leave as soon as I can catch a flight out.” Another short pause. “Love you, too, Victor.” She pauses, then lets the phone drop to the bed, hearing the audible beep of the call disconnecting.

And then she lets herself feel everything she tried not to on the call.

Fingers tremble only slightly as she books the flight, paying extra to land in a small, out of the way airport that’s closer to the island Nate’s headed to, and good god, what has he gotten himself into? She knows Sam’s at fault here, no one else it could be, but that’s a strange recent history of prison visits and delivering rare books on pirating to him behind the corrupt backs of bribed guards (and learning about him was something else entirely, a series of six-degrees-of-separation connections that led her to him, and fucking hell, Nate, a brother?). She’d thought Sam was just bored, but apparently he’d been serious about the lost treasure. She should’ve been more suspicious of the calls he made to her in the middle of the night, his attempt at casual still sounding panicked, but she’s had a little too much on her own plate to worry much about his.

And now it involves Nate. (And Avery’s lost treasure, christ. She’ll find time to be more annoyed about that later.)

It takes less than hour for her to pack a spare change of clothes and basic toiletries into a travel bag and get to the airport. Waiting for the flight only adds to the stress itching her skin, and it’s sheer willpower that keeps her from pacing in the terminal until it’s time to board. She sits instead in a chair at the end of a row of chairs, fingers pulling at a loose thread in the hem of her shirt while she holds a compilation of what notes she has about Avery in her other hand. Brushing up on her knowledge of the man barely holds her attention, her eyes steadfastly focused on the pages though her mind is far from rapt, focused instead on Nate and what the hell he’s doing. It’s been a good while since she’s seen him, and she’ll be damned if the next time she sees him is dead, not unless it’s both of them dead together. (A stupid promise made five beers deep in the middle of the night when humidity wasn’t the only thing keeping them warm. A stupid promise, but a promise anyway, right?)

At this point, it’s become routine to suppress her feelings, move on and not acknowledge them anymore. Years of pretend and fake smiles until it was too much to bear and avoidance became her best ally, and even that gave way to caving in and seeing the entire crew again. They’re her friends, dammit, and she can’t lay claim to many of those. So she pushes it aside. A semblance of ‘moving on’ she’s never quite reached. And it’s things like this that bring it all back to the surface. Chloe doesn’t get these calls when it’s a simple fix, or when Nate is in just a spot of trouble. She gets these calls when it’s gotten bad, and even if getting bad is fun, there’s a line that even she doesn’t want crossed, and she can’t help but feel that this is one of those lines Nate’s leapt across with both feet.

Her hand abandons the loose thread and instead her thumbnail fits between her teeth, brows pulled in, eyes not even comprehending the words on the page, and fucking hell, is the plane leaving yet?

It takes too long, too long, before the flight starts boarding, and she should’ve taken Victor up on his offer to fly her there, but she’s here now and waiting in line is frustrating, and she has to remind herself not to clench her teeth and to take deep breaths to stay calm. She has a several-hour-long flight ahead of her, and she’s really only thankful that she slept as much as she did beforehand. Not that she’d take any rest after she lands, not with everything that’s waiting at the other end of this all, but at least she won’t be dealing with tired eyes and the irritation that sets in when she’s awake for too long. Small mercies.

She finds some sort of solace in steady breathing and the knowledge that she’s on her way, she’ll be there to help him soon. He’ll be with her, where she can know he’s safe. It’s a small comfort, but it allows her mind to settle as she finally gets to her seat and waits for the plane to take off.

If nothing else, on landing, she’s learned more about Henry Avery and his connections than she knew going into all of this. Her resources were limited on the plane, but she’d packed her phone with anything she could download on the taxi ride to the airport, and even the unreliable sources had some entertainment value, even if they were incredibly inaccurate. Part of her would eventually find it suitable to be annoyed that he’d figured so much out already, that the connections were made without her, but that can wait. A storm is brewing and the little plane she switched to is barely fighting against the growing winds. He gets her as close as possible, but the landing isn’t as soft as she’d like, and somehow she thinks it’s drier in the ocean she landed in than in the rain insisting these islands join Atlantis.

“Dammit, Nate,” she sputters as she pulls herself ashore, barely, the water pulling at her boots and jackets as if reluctant to let go of her. The travel bag secured around her is waterproof, but she’s sure everything inside will be drenched when she checks. Of all places, of all times, the storm hits now.

“You better be alive.” He has to be. He’s survived a hell of a lot of shit until now, there’s no chance a mountain and a storm could take him from her. (From them, she corrects herself.) It’s a promise she repeats to herself as she starts the trek through wet grass and mud until she has to start climbing. The rocks are slick, and he’s definitely alive. Her hand slips a few times and she has to take it slowly, carefully, and he has to be alive.

The path isn’t easy to see, but she knows his style well enough to feel confident in the path she’s taking. They make sense, even when the ledges are small. Nathan Drake may not always take the easiest routes, but he takes the ones that make sense, and she can see the handholds he would take as if he were pointing them out to her himself. It’s a slow process and the storm refuses to let up. In fact, she’s positive it’s gotten worse, though how to tell through sheets of rain so thick she can barely see her outstretched hand, she isn’t sure. It doesn’t show signs of letting up, though, and it drives her to move just a touch faster. Careful. But faster.

How long has he been here? Has he been wandering through the storm at the same time as she has? How much of a head start has he had? Is Sam impatiently trying to make him go faster, or are they taking it slow together? Concern buries itself in her mind, and she presses on. Mud and rain and battered knuckles and bruised knees, and it’d be like old times if Nate was here with her and they eventually took refuge from the storm in one of these small caves, bandaging up wounds as best they could while resting weary limbs.

He’d better be alive, dammit.

She loses sense of time as she moves determinedly forward, one hand in front of the other, boots securely in place before shifting weight. Her arms and stomach ache, legs are exhausted, and it’s been a while since she’s gone long enough to wear her down like this. Nothing could have prepared her for this, and for long moments, she clings to her handholds, fingers numb and bruised, legs shaking, and she clenches her teeth to keep herself strong. She’s so tired, though. Surely Nate would’ve called things to a halt soon, right? Had she missed him? The wall ahead looks broken, and she’s eyeing for a path across - and she sees him. Below. Unconscious and on his back, and that’s a hell of a ways to fall. The panic she’d manage to suppress earlier rises in her chest again, heart hammering and hands trembling, and she lowers herself as carefully as she can to where he is.

“I swear to god, Nate, if you’re dead…” She leaves the threat open-ended, fights back the stinging in her eyes, and has to drop the last six feet down to get to him, the bend in her knees making the fall easier, but there’s no waste of time in rushing to his side. One hand above his mouth, the other pressing two fingers against his neck and pausing, waiting, feeling for any sign of life-

And there, a slow heartbeat, strong beneath her fingertips. He’s alive, he’s alright, and she lets out a laugh, leaning her forehead against his chest as relief sweeps through her. “Bloody hell, you asshole,” she breathes, taking only a few moments to gather herself. He’s alive, but he’s also freezing and in direct path of the rain. He isn’t a light man, years of muscle compounded on that frame of his, but she hooks her arms beneath his, lifts, and drags him into a dry section of the cave, beneath an overhang. No way to make a fire, but that’s why she wore the bigger jacket over her own. It’s wet, but he’ll warm it up. She drapes it over him and sits close, pulling her arms into her own jacket and tucking the sleeves into the pockets to keep cold air from getting in, and she settles in for however long it takes for him to wake up.

“Remember that time in Colombia?” she asks softly, her voice barely carrying over the rain. Not that he can hear her anyway, but that isn’t the point. Maybe the point is to keep herself calm while he rests, to keep the concern from working its way deeper in case he doesn’t wake up. “It didn’t rain this much, but it sure could give this place a run for its money.” A pause and a sigh, and she tucks her mouth and nose into the neck of the jacket.

They’d taken refuge in a cave there, too. Ground level, entry hidden by plants, rain so thick they probably wouldn’t have needed the plants to keep them out of sight of the small group of mercs hunting them. It’d been dark tucked in the back corner of the little cave, the sky almost as dark outside. They’d sat side by side, legs and arms touching, heads leaned against each other. The sound of her breathing a steady rhythm to the quiet story he told her. The warm press of his lips to her temple, to the the curve of her cheekbone, to the smile that so easily crossed her face when she was with him. It’d been different then, the feel of his hand in the curve of her waist familiar and comfortable, and did it still feel the same now?

Stupid, Chloe, she thinks with a deep sigh. She tucks her face a little deeper into her jacket, but keeps her eyes on him. “Don’t die on me,” she demands of him, determines she’ll be pissed if he does.

The rain eventually stops its attempt at flooding the entire island, and she puts her arms back through her sleeves and stands, stretching the stiffness from her legs and walking around a bit. The sky is starting to clear up, still not visible, but also not deep grey, either, and she squints slightly as she looks up at the sky through the hole Nate fell into. Where the hell is Sam? In her worry for Nate, she forgot that Sam was supposed to be with hi.? Had he left him behind? Chloe barely knows the man, isn’t sure what kind of person he is. Would be abandon his brother in the middle of a storm in search of Avery’s gold? Chloe could have her moments of abrasiveness, but to be that cruel? If that’s the case, Sam had better hope Chloe doesn’t catch up with him, or there’ll be a different sort of hell to pay.

She’s starting to muse over how serious she is on that threat, when she hears movement behind her. Turning, she watches as Nate slowly pushes himself up, grunting through the aches from the fall, waiting for his eyes to land on her. Gives him a friendly smirk when they finally do. “Morning, love,” she says as she moves the six steps it takes to get to him, and now that she knows he’s alive, that he wasn’t injured so badly he wouldn’t make it out of this cave, she can’t help but to let her mild bit of annoyance at what he was even doing here in the first place seep in.

“You know, if you wanted to get yourself killed while looking for Henry Avery’s lost treasure, you could have at least called me beforehand.”

#(3300+ words look what you've done to me)#(I haven't written anything this long in AGES)#(you're the actual best thanks for enabling me <3)#favoredfcrtune

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