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He doesn't know why he's surprised. All things considered, it was a miracle that they got as long as they did, being where they were, who they are. He's standing outside Dimera, and it doesn't feel like all that long ago that he might have been able to see Chloe at her window from here, probably flipping him the finger from seven floors up.

He knows she's not there, and god help him he doesn't know why he is. It's nothing new, he and Chloe have missed each other and left each other and lost each other time and time again and it shouldn't be different this time around, except he's back here in this godforsaken city - alone this time - and it's nearly enough to make a guy lose his fucking mind.

Nearly.

"Pull it together, Drake," he mutters to himself, but he still can't bring himself to walk away just yet. Instead he lowers himself onto a bench across the street that has a good view of the building and pulls his journal out of his pocket. It's the kind of thing she'd make fun of him for if she were here, but she's not, so Nate can do whatever the hell he likes.

His pencil moves quickly across the page, roughly sketching the building, the trees bracketing it, the window on the seventh floor that could belong to anyone now, he supposes. There's an old but familiar rolling guilt deep in his stomach as he draws. Two days he's been back in this place and it's like the memories have come flooding back, like he's suddenly woken back up from the dream he'd been living in with Elena back home. And he had been back home, he knows that - must have been, by the way he'd turned up here again with new memories, different memories - but it's like he doesn't remember leaving. He remembers rolling around in bed with Chloe like it was yesterday, and he doesn't know how he's supposed to reconcile that with the knowledge that he also knows in his heart he was with Elena two days ago, talking about starting a new life.

The pencil strokes have gotten more aggressive without him realising it, darkening the lines of the windowsill until one particularly vicious mark tears a hole in the paper. "Ah, crap."

Candlewood #5D

Drake. Leave a message.

Coop's been something of a sad sack lately. Nate didn't know Philip, never met the guy, and he's never been good at finding the right thing to say to comfort someone. He's just as likely to say something stupid or piss Coop off, so he decides the best course of action is to keep his mouth shut and cheer him up another way. His first thought is a case of beer and maybe something to set on fire, but considering the luck he and Coop normally have, they're just as likely to set each other on fire.

Then it comes to him.

He first hears about the supposed Pandora's Box from Errol, in one of his droning stories that Nate normally tunes out. The guy manages to make even the most outlandish stories sound boring as all hell, but Nate had perked up when he caught the tail end of this one. It took a little bit of digging after that, but now he has enough to be reasonably sure that the whole thing might not be bullshit. There's enough weird magical shit in Darrow that Nate's willing to go along with the idea on the hope that it might even turn out to be a proper pay off.

Supposedly, Pandora's Box is real and in Darrow, and about to be displayed at some fancy Gala event.

It's maybe not the kind of job he's used to going in for, but he knows this is a little more up Coop's alley, and maybe that's just what he needs. Something easy and familiar and that will hopefully end with a lot of money in both of their pockets. Besides, it's hardly his first rodeo.

The first step is to get them access to the event, which is easy enough. Nate calls in a favour, gets them a couple of forged invitations that are almost impossible to discern from the real thing, and then he goes shopping. He buys them each a new suit, fancy enough that they won't look out of place, and when the night rolls around he instructs Coop to wear it and not spill anything on it. He's told Chloe where he'll be, just in case they need an emergency getaway, but he hasn't asked her to come along this time. If all goes according to plan and they make some money out of this, she might be a little pissed off, but he's hoping she doesn't get too mad at him for cutting her out. It's not like she hasn't done her fair share of jobs without him.

Their meeting place is just around the corner from the hall where the event is being held and Nate waits, fiddling with his cufflinks. Some early people are already starting to arrive, but he plans on entering in the midst of the main throng, neither early or late. He just needs his partner in crime.

In retrospect, he probably should have kept his mouth shut. That seems to be the reasoning for just about everything that happens to him, in truth, but he's not about to admit that, especially not aloud. It's been a crappy month. It's been a crappy few months, actually, but who's counting? All he knows is that he's sick and tired of this city and the way it picks and chooses how and when to fuck up his life, and he's maybe a little more reactive than normal because of it.

This entire Purge nonsense, Nate has decided, is bullshit. The very fact that it's a thing people capitalise when they write it on flyers or even say it is indicative of how ridiculous it is. Nate's a goddamn thief and even he doesn't know who thought it was a good idea to let a bunch of would-be criminals run around unchecked for an entire night. Some part of him had kind of been hoping it would all fizzle out to nothing, but then he'd heard the first gunshot ring out at hardly past 6:30, the first molotov cocktail thrown through a window across the street from him shortly after.

There'd been a rush of people running and screaming, some barricading themselves inside their houses and others making for the streets with weapons, and somewhere in the midst of the confusion Nate had ended up with his gun pointed at the guy who just yesterday had made him coffee and chatted idly about the weather. He'd been trying to pull a goddamn burlap sack over some poor girl's head like they're in some kind of horror movie, and luckily Nate had enough presence of mind to have his .45 on him. One thing had led to another and Nate's not sure when exactly Jimmy the barista decided that they were enemies, but it was probably something to do with Nate telling him he made a crappy cup of coffee while flicking the safety off.

He hadn't counted on Jimmy having a friend in all this though, and the bat cracking across the back of his head had taken him by surprise. He'd gone down like a goddamn ragdoll, and now he's the guy with the fucking burlap sack over his head, tied to a chair.

"This is honestly next level, even for Darrow." Nobody answers him, which isn't really a surprise. There's a throbbing pain in his head, the sack smells like old compost and breathing is more difficult than it should be, but he's not panicking. He's been abducted before, and he's pretty sure Jimmy isn't as smart or evil as Marlowe or Rameses. He's hoping not anyway, because after everything, this would be a really crappy way to die.

"You definitely just lost yourself a loyal customer," he continues, calling out to the empty silence. His voice reverberates back to him, so he's guessing he's in some kind of basement, or warehouse maybe. He definitely doesn't have his gun anymore, which just tops off his day. He tries to think of whether he told Chloe or Coop or anybody where he was planning to be tonight, but with the entire city in chaos he has no idea where they might be, either. He shifts as best he can, testing the strength of the ties around his wrists and ankles. Plastic digs into his skin but nothing budges, and Nate rolls his eyes inside the sack. Zip-ties, just great.

There's the sound of a door opening, strange creepy music filling the room, and then the strike of a match. He can smell incense, and for a beat he thinks this has to be the weirdest kidnapping ever, but then the sack is blessedly removed from his head and he can see. The only light is from candles and it takes him a moment to blink through the darkness, but eventually he makes out the shapes of a bunch of people standing around him in a circle, heads bowed. His eyes are drawn to the man directly in front of him. He's bigger than Jimmy, probably about Nate's size, but more concerning is the knife he's holding.

"Oh hell no," Nate starts, shaking his head. "Thanks, but I'm not interested in joining your creepy-ass cult. I mean, I didn't read the fine print, but nobody told me that's what happens when you fill up your loyalty card."

It's not that he doesn't trust Coop. Well, not entirely. He tells himself he's keeping it secret for the same reason Coop hadn't wanted to tell him about the sword he stole, or the mysterious box he arrived with. They're friends and Coop's the first guy Nate is gonna call if he wants to grab a beer, but they're also both thieves, and that comes with a certain amount of wariness.

Besides, it's not his score, not really. Nate's been obsessing over this damn compass since the minute Chloe mentioned it to him, researching everything he can and eavesdropping on any conversation that might even be the tiniest bit relevant. If this thing really is his ticket out of here, he wants to know about it. Even so, it's Chloe who brought it to his attention, and if they manage to find it, it'll be because she did the initial legwork. Nate's the guy who follows the clues and solves the puzzles, but he owes this one to her.

Right now though, she's not answering her phone. It's not even a little bit surprising, because Nate's sure she's broken at least three of them in the short time she's been in Darrow, but it is inconvenient. It means she's not around when he gets the lead, and he hasn't got enough time to try and track her down. In this city she could be anywhere. He hesitates for about three seconds before he picks up his phone and calls Coop, tells him to meet him outside Innsmouth Lunatic Asylum and tries really hard not to cringe just saying it.

He's going to regret this. He's totally going to regret this.

The story goes that Nate's not the first person to go looking for the compass. Someone else had beat him to it years ago, gotten so desperate to get out of this city that he'd gone mad with it and died in the asylum before he could find it. It doesn't make any sense because for all that Nate's read about the long history of Darrow, everything prior to the last five years or so is vague and wishy-washy. The grocery clerk who told him the story said it like it had happened fifty years ago or more, but Nate's not even sure the city was here, let alone full of people trying to escape it. Either way, it doesn't matter. It's the only lead he's got, and at the very least he's hoping he can find something to point him to the next one. A journal maybe, some hastily written notes, whatever. It's worked for him in the past.

He could go alone, probably, but it's a freaky goddamn abandoned asylum and Nate would like to keep his limbs. At the very least, Coop can scream for help when Nate inevitably gets eaten by a ghost.

He was probably supposed to give the gun back. Only, Nate has made a living out of not giving things back, so he doesn't. Solo's a nice enough guy and he'd had Nate's back when those damn toys were attacking, but it's not enough to make him feel guilty for pocketing the gun he'd handed him when things got dicey. It's a simple 9mm, and Nate can admit that it feels good in his hand, moulded to him, practically. That's definitely an exaggeration, but it's been a long time since he properly held a gun and he hadn't realised how weird it felt until he had one back in his grip.

Nate's been shit-talking Beth pretty much since the day he arrived about how much of a better shot he is than her, but it occurs to him that he's over a year out of practice. If someone had said to him before Darrow that he'd go an entire year without shooting a single bullet, he might have laughed. It's not that Nate particularly likes guns, but when it was a toss up between dying and shooting the other guy first, he thinks it's a pretty simple equation. It's not his fault people used to shoot at him a lot.

Well, it is, but he's not going to admit it.

The Hatchimals had been kind of fucked up but mostly not that dangerous, even if one of them had tried really hard to decapitate his brother. It's that sentence alone that has Nate deciding that he needs to get back into the saddle, so to speak, and practice. He's a natural shot and he knows he's not that close to retirement but it can't hurt to brush up a little.

He calls Sam, arranges to meet him at the shooting range. Sam has acquired a gun of his own, and Nate's pretty sure it was even legal. He has a damn permit, though Sam and a permit is an oxymoron if Nate ever heard one.

The place isn't overly busy, so Nate finds them a spot and hopes no one asks to see his. In the meantime, he makes short work of the first target while he waits, and if he imagines Marlowe's stupid face in front of it, no one has to know.

Nate's been hit before. Nate's been hit a thousand goddamn times but this time he's pretty sure his entire face is broken. He'd known the guy was tall, he's not a complete moron, but there's a difference between tall and apparently made of fucking stone. He'd been impulsive and stupid and Sully would probably chew his ear off if he were here, but Nate doesn't need a verbal lashing because the physical one has been lesson enough.

His hand is broken. He can't move his fingers and the pain shoots up through his wrist and to his shoulder, throbbing harshly. He's broken bones before but this is somehow made worse by the embarrassment of it all, by the fact that he was put down quickly and without preamble, his ego as bruised as his fucking face. Which, is also broken. Nate's broken his nose before, been punched by enough steroid-loaded goons that it was just about inevitable, but this is worse. His cheekbone is fractured, swollen up around his eye so that he can hardly see out of it. Breathing hurts, talking hurts worse, and Nate's spat enough blood out onto the sidewalk to draw stares.

He needs to get off the street. That's the first point of call. He should probably go to the hospital, but he's nursing a hurt ego and a chip on his shoulder that steers him in the opposite direction instead. He just wants to go home. He wants to go home, cover his face in ice packs and then drink until he passes out, probably. He should text Sam, but his right fucking hand is broken and Nate's always been pretty useless with his left. The thought of trying to type anything legible is a lost cause, so he doesn't bother.

Instead, he picks himself up off the ground, blinks blood out of his eye and starts walking. At least his goddamn legs aren't broken.

Next month, Nathan will have been in this godforsaken city for an entire year. It's a weird fact to wrap his head around, for more than one reason. For one, Nate can't remember the last time he was anywhere for an entire year. But Sam is here now and it doesn't look like either of them are going anywhere anytime soon, and so he decides that maybe it's time to start putting down some roots.

The very idea of it is foreign and weird and kind of gives him the heebie jeebies, but it needs to be done. The last time he had roots anywhere was at the orphanage, which is hardly a good memory. Sam has told him that there's a version of him who did it again, who settled down with Elena and bought a house and fucking retired, so he knows that it's possible. Nate is in no way ready to retire completely, but there's not exactly any lost cities to be discovered in Darrow, so he settles for the next best thing.

First thing, is that he needs a job. He's been living on the city stipend for almost a year with small time lifts on the side, but he's sick of living surprise paycheck to paycheck. Nate doesn't exactly live in the lap of luxury, but it would be nice to be able to afford more than a six pack of beer a week. The idea of going completely straight makes the hair stand up on the back of his neck, though, so he needs a way to play both worlds, and he thinks he might have a vague idea.

For now, it means finding a good place to set up. He's far from being able to afford anything yet, but he's looking anyway, checking out empty shop fronts and places he might be able to set up a base. He has one or two ideas in mind, but there's a cold bite to the air and he's not committed to the idea enough to risk his limbs for it. So, he ducks into a diner and out of the cold, settling himself into a corner booth and ordering a sandwich.

He's not stalking. He's not a stalker, that would be embarrassing and knowing Nate's luck, Officer fucking Cooper would show up from that other Darrow just to arrest him again if he were. But he's not. He just happens to be at Semele's the same night Beth said Curtis would probably working, and he just happens to have placed himself strategically in the middle of the bar so that he can see everything. It's not that he doesn't trust Beth's judgement, far from it, but Nate has been curious ever since she dragged him out for coffee, and he's never been good at letting curiosity lie.

Someone who Nate is pretty sure is Not Curtis comes over to take his drink order and Nate shoos them away. He doesn't want to be too obvious so he figures the easiest method of approach is waiting until Curtis turns up to take his order, at which point he can stealthily initiate a conversation. But as usual, the universe hates him, and so far Curtis is nowhere to be seen.

It he's going to be here a while, Nate figures, he might as well distract himself, so he pulls Drake's journal out of his pocket and starts sketching idly. He's been carrying it around more frequently lately, trying to get back into the habit. His conversation with Lincoln prompted a newfound desire for it again, so he sits in the bar and draws, outlining faces and capturing snippets of conversation in pencil. After a while he's got four new pages of sketches and he's even relented and ordered a beer.

A little longer and he starts to forget why he actually came in here, content to drink and sketch until with another stroke of bad luck, the lead from his pencil snaps. "Ah crap."

It's not like he hasn't thought about him. Nate's pretty sure that he'll think of Sam in one way or another every day for the rest of his life, but the pain is something that's more or less distant now, something he learned how to handle. He doesn't know when it happened but somewhere along the way the ache in his chest dulled and he learned how to think about Sam without wanting to die with him. A lot of that is because of Sully, and Nate doesn't want to think about where he would have ended up if it wasn't for his friend.

That job had gone so impossibly wrong, worse than anything Nate has ever pulled, but it was more than ten years ago and he's moved on. Or he thought he had.

Nate's been researching almost nonstop since he turned up in this city, and he feels like today he's on his way to a breakthrough. If he was back home he'd be back halfway across that desert by now, certain that he was starting to work out exactly where to find the location of the city. He doesn't know what's persuaded him to keep looking even while he's stuck here, but he's been hunting that treasure for twenty years and it's not an easy thing to just let go of.

He's been locked away in a back room of the library surrounded by old books all day and he's parched. He could probably make it home, he thinks, but there's a vending machine on his way and it's all too easy to just stop and get a bottle of water. He's finished half of it in a couple of swallows when suddenly he pauses, the bottle to his lips.

There's no way.

Nate hasn't seen his brother in ten years but there's no mistaking him. There's no way he could possibly be in this city, but Nate is running after him before he even really registers it, the bottle slipping from his fingers to splash across the sidewalk.

"Sam!" he yells, but Sam doesn't stop, breaking into a run himself. Nate follows, racing him around a corner, before he comes skidding to a halt. A little way down the street he can see him, his brother backed up against a wall, but three guards are closing in. Nate blinks, and he recognises the faces, the uniforms, even years later. The scene in front of him is different to the way he remembers it, but he knows how it will end anyway. One of the guards shouts something in Spanish and Nate flinches as Sam puts his hands up behind his head.

"Sam!" he calls again, and this time his brother turns to look at him. Nate meets his eyes for a second and then the shot rings out, and suddenly Nate is in his twenties again, watching his brother die. Sam coughs up blood and staggers once, twice, and Nate lunges forward. The guards have vanished again and that doesn't make any sense but he doesn't care, running forward and skidding painfully to his knees on the pavement.

"Nathan," Sam says, and this time there's no rooftop, no fall. Last time he'd run because his brother was dead and Rafe convinced Nate not to die with him, but this time there's no one to drag him back, no way to turn away from his brother bleeding out on the ground in front of him.

"Shit, Sam, don't." His hands are moving, trying to staunch the blood, but he already knows there's no point. He doesn't know how it's possible but somehow his brother has turned up in this goddamn city only to die on him all over again.

When he swallows, it feels like some kind of monster is tearing at his throat, shredding his insides apart. His tongue is thick and useless in his mouth, begging for water that hasn’t come in days. Or he thinks it’s been days. Surely. The plane had crashed and he’d gone rummaging through the wreckage without finding much of anything useful, which just about sums his life up to a T, Nate thinks. Now he’s been wandering the desert since, his feet dragging along the sand even when he thinks he’s seconds away from dying.
He can’t die. Not yet. Sully is waiting for him to come to the rescue, or he damn well better be. Sully, whom he blames every mess he’s been in since he was fifteen on. Sully, the only person in the world who ever gave a damn enough to look out for him.

He has to keep going. Giving in isn’t an option, dying isn’t an option, so the only thing left to him is to keep dragging his sorry ass through the desert.

He thinks it’s been days, but at this point it could have been weeks and Nate couldn’t tell. He can’t tell left from right anymore, can’t tell the dunes apart, can’t see his own footprints in the moving sand. It’s how he ends up back at the well, time and time again, and he thinks he’s going to scream with the injustice of it, only that would hurt his throat more. His eyes have been messing with him since the second or third (who knows anymore?) day, and he’s stopped trusting them. The mirages are cruel, palm trees and ponds and fucking hula girls, probably, Nate doesn’t know anymore. The worst ones are of Sully, the times that he thinks he’s found him against all the odds.

“Get up kid,” he says gruffly, and Nate cracks an eye open from where he’s lying in the sand and tries to tell himself it’s not real.

“We haven’t got time for this, Nate.” More insistent now. Still not real.

“Swear to god, I’ll kick your goddamn ass myself if you don’t move.”

Nate forces himself to sit, to look up. That’s his Sully, the words ringing in his ears as familiar as they have been almost every day of his life for the last twenty years. Sully. He stretches out a hand, reaching for the one offered to him, and his own hand falls through Sully’s like smoke as he disappears. Hell.

Another night and day pass, alternating between obliterating heat and freezing cold, and when Nate comes across that goddamn well again he falls to his knees. He’s been circling forever, he’s never going to get anywhere, he’s going to die in the middle of the desert and Sully will be so disappointed, Elena will cry for him (he hopes) and Marlowe will destroy the world.

The well crumbles underneath his hands and he looks up. He’s not in the desert. He could cry out of sheer relief but he’s Nathan Drake and he will not cry. For a moment he thinks it’s another mirage, all encompassing this time but not real regardless, but the ground feels real beneath his knees. There’s a piece of gravel digging into his skin which he’s pretty sure wouldn’t happen if this was a perfect dream.
Slowly, he gets to his feet, painfully aware of every ache and protest in his body but refusing to give in to it. Around him is a city, very different to the one he left last he’d seen civilisation, but a generic city all the same. A city which, he’s hopeful, has water somewhere.

His first steps are a little awkward, stumbling and embarrassing, but at least there’s no more sliding sand beneath his feet.

“Alright, Drake,” he mutters to himself, brushing a hand through his hair and feeling sand go everywhere. Lovely. “You can do this. Baby steps. First thing: have you lost your goddamn mind?”