She'd been down in the kitchen for less than two minutes and she could already hear swearing and heated arguing in Spanish starting up again from above.
Although Elena wasn't really all that fluent in the language, she'd been called enough nasty things by angry locals and obnoxious contacts during her days of investigative journalism to know what the words huevón and pendejo meant. Repeated exposure to Sam and Nate had also gone a long way to improving her limited vocabulary of expletives.
She quickly grabbed the various bottles of beers and coolers she'd retrieved from the fridge and jogged towards the stairs. "Can you guys hold off on killing each other until after you get all of Nate's crap out of the attic?" she called as she headed up to the second floor.
"It isn't crap!" Nate shot back, then promptly switched back to Spanish to shout something vile at his brother.
The elder Drake was situated halfway up the pull-down ladder going to the attic, holding a large box with the words Montreal '04 scribbled in black sharpie on the side, and looking like he was about five seconds away from whipping it at his brother's head.
Sam huffed and moved to English mid-sentence when Elena came into view. "—didn't have to put all your crap up in the rafters where you have no proper stairs to—"
"—you think it was easy moving all this valuable stuff up th—"
"—then why the fuck did you put all of it up there, Nathan—"
"—because I can't have it sitting in the—"
"Guys!" She barked, and they both looked up at her. "You've only moved a dozen boxes down here. There's still shelves and shelves of stuff. So maybe argue after, hm? Sully, Chloe and Cutter aren't even here yet."
When they'd announced that they'd be moving out of Louisiana to a more tropical location—partly because their contract for the first season of D&F Fortunes had given them that last financial boost they needed to buy a permanent home in a more temperate location, and partly because they needed more space for paperwork, editing and a lab for cleaning up any artefacts they were going to uncover—Sully and many others had happily volunteered to help them move. Her parents had also given a soft commitment to lend a hand, though she didn't know if they'd show up.
If they did, she really hoped it would be after Nate and Sam cleaned out the attic.
"Why you even keepin' all this stuff, anyway?" Sam asked, dropping the box beside the ladder and earning a dark look from Nate for his carelessness.
"Memories," his brother said defensively. "Momentos from all the places I've been. A lot of it I can't sell since I didn't really collect it legally."
"That's why God invented the black market, Nathan." Sam rubbed his dusty hands on his pants, then gestured to the box. "You know, Victor and I could fence this shit for you, since you like doing everything legit now," Sam offered. He disappeared into the attic without waiting for a response. Sam came back down with another box a moment later, this time rifling through it. "Well, some of it." He held a slender glass tube up to the hallway light to inspect it. There were small blue pebbles inside, and her eyes widened when she recognised what it was. He rattled the pebbles around, squinting up at them. "What is this stuff?"
"Don't—! Don't shake that!" Nate ordered, grabbing it from his brother and holding it away from him like he would a grenade—which she supposed it pretty much was. "It's ah, it's kinda volatile."
"Nate, what the hell…." she muttered. "You seriously brought that shit back from Shambala?"
"It looked really cool," he said under his breath. "Plus, I'm not gonna use it. Just wanted a souvenir, is all."
"What, uh—what is it, again?" Sam asked. He made to swipe it back from Nate, who held it away at arm's length and made a rude hand gesture to his brother.
"It's explosive tree resin," Elena stated. "Plus it does some other... weird stuff." Sometimes she forgot how fantastical and just plain made-up a lot of their stories sounded, even when telling it to someone who had gotten back from a trip to a long-lost abandoned pirate colony filled with treasure and paranoid dead pirate captains not that long ago.
"What—? No, nevermind. I don't wanna know." Sam looked up towards the attic. "Any other explosive, crazy shit up there I shouldn't touch?"
Nate seriously considered Sam's question, then shook his head after a moment of hard thinking. "I don't think so."
Sam muttered something in Spanish under his breath and climbed back up the ladder.
Elena handed Nate a bottle of beer, which he uncapped and drank from gratefully. "So what are you doing, since your brother is bringing down all this stuff?" She nudged a box with her foot. They were splayed haphazardly around the second-floor hallway, probably organised in some odd chaotic system Nate had set up that was beyond her understanding.
"Well I'm trying to see what to toss and what to keep," he replied, looking to a few open boxes. "It's… kind of a lot."
"No kidding," she murmured. He probably should have done this sorting before everyone had offered to help them move—they'd spent the last week doing just that to the rest of the house, but now that she was seeing all of it, it looked like this might be a difficult job, and in more ways than just sifting through everything. The trinkets, squished plants and books all reminded her of the days of cleaning out his pockets when it was her turn to do laundry, or things he'd empty onto his nightstand from his backpack at night. Everywhere she looked, she saw… well, Nate. There wasn't a single thing in those boxes that didn't hold some sort of sentimental value to him.
"Well, let's get started, then," she said, and sat down on the floor. She set Sam's beer out of the way and uncapped her own cooler, taking a sip and opening up the box closest to her. When she saw the smorgasbord of baubles, folded notes and antique collectables from half a dozen different countries inside, she realised this might take them all day. Maybe two.
The keep pile was, expectedly, much larger than the throw away pile, but at least there was a toss pile.
Sam had finished cleaning out the attic of boxes, and in that time, their help had arrived. When Sully saw the task Nate and Elena had resigned themselves to, he took it upon himself to organise the others into moving the boxes stacked in the living room and kitchen.
Two hours in, Sully, Chloe and Cutter wandered upstairs to take part in some of the nostalgia that all of Nate's souvenirs brought up.
"Ha," Nate exclaimed, pulling out a bomber jacket from the box in front of him. It was fairly unremarkable, other than the fact that it had singe marks all the way up the left sleeve. "Remember this, Sully?"
"That the one you crashed my plane in?" Sully asked, making a reflexive twirling motion with his fingers near his jaw. Guess somebody needs a cigar break.
Nate frowned. "Yes," he replied slowly. "But that's not what I was—"
"Let me rephrase—the first time you crashed my plane." Sully shook his head and took a sip of his own beer. They were powering through the small reserve of alcohol Elena had stored in the fridge—she'd have to go out and buy more soon.
"You told me you wanted to show me how to fly it," Nate said defensively.
"I didn't think you'd destroy it five minutes after we turned the engine on. We weren't even off the ground—"
"You were a crappy co-pilot! You just kept yelling 'don't hit the pylons' instead of—"
"No, I was an excellent one. Not my fault you can't take orders, kid."
Nate opened his mouth to argue further when Elena cut in. "So, are you going to keep it?"
He frowned, looking back to the jacket. "Um. I dunno." He looked over at the throw away pile. "I think we should start a maybe pile."
"You're a pack-rat," Chloe interjected. She nosed around some of his stuff, then stopped at a box labelled journals. "Oh, what have we here?" She opened it with a careful finger and raised a brow at what she found. "Really, Nate?"
"What?"
"There's got to be at least twenty journals in here," she responded, then picked one up. "Bangkok."
Nate had a big grin on his face at her words. "That was wild. You remember that museum, Sully?"
Nate and Sully reminisced about the museum curator they cheated out of a few choice collector items while Elena looked through more of the boxes. She saw one simply labelled Avery shoved behind a few others and pulled it closer, peering inside. This was one she'd never seen before—she realised Nate must have hidden it or buried it deep in the attic, maybe to keep it from her or maybe to combat any possible temptation to revisit a childhood mystery.
Inside was an old jean jacket that looked about two or three sizes too small to fit Nate now, a white leather-bound book with C.M. printed in gold font, a wooden crucifix, and yet another one of Nate's journals. This one had Captain Avery scribbled on a piece of tape stuck to the cover of the book.
She picked it up and thumbed it open. Inside were notes, doodles, and slips of paper taped to the pages—the usual stuff she saw in any of his journals. His handwriting looked messier than she was used to seeing, with bigger, looping letters. Elena mused again how young he must have been when he and his brother started hunting for Avery's treasure—and thought again to how, in all the time she'd known him, he'd never once mentioned Avery or pirate treasure—or Sam.
She realised now that maybe he'd hidden the box to forget.
Elena skimmed through it, watching as his writing got neater, his thoughts more focused, doodles and sketches more elaborate—along with the occasional phone number or half-finished profile of a girl scrawled inside. She realised that she was watching him grow up in the journal, see the years add on with each page she turned. It made her grin, even if she had a strong dislike of Avery and his dumbass quest for gold and power.
One page was covered with his own name—Nathan Drake written over and over in messy lines. Some were printed, but most were in cursive. She recognised his current signature among them, along with dozens of other variants. He must have been testing himself, trying on each version of the name until he found a pattern and font he liked. Nathan Morgan was at the very top, scribbled out in angry pencil, as if he'd been caught in the act of writing it down.
She was about to hold it up and show Nate when she saw that the second half of the journal was completely empty. She thumbed back to the last page with writing on it, and bit her lip.
The first half of the book was jammed with thoughts and theories and information, until the very last entry. All it had were three words on it, written in the middle of the page.
Sam is dead.
"Oh, Nate," she murmured, touching the letters. They were shakier than his usual writing, and there was nothing written in any of the pages after that. He may not have even opened it again after adding that last entry.
"What is it?" he asked, breaking away a from a deep discussion about Thai history with Charlie. She looked up at him and held up the journal for him to see, and the usual amused look on his face fell away.
"Oh," he said, tone much different than it had been a moment ago. He held out a hand and walked over to her, and she let him take it. He thumbed through the last few entries, frowning. "I'd forgotten about this one."
Sam came over and peered inside the box, grabbing the book with C.M. on it. "You still got mom's stuff," he murmured, opening the diary. His eyes took on a sad, quiet look, his expression a mirror of Nate's.
"Yeah," Nate said distractedly, flipping through the rest of his journal. "Yeah, it's all still in there."
"Haha," Sam huffed, and held up an old Polaroid photograph. "Nathan, look at this."
It was a picture of two kids—one in his teens, and a younger one behind him, wearing a samurai helmet. Elena could easily pick out Nate's features in the boy's face, still soft and subtle and smooth.
"Oh my god," Chloe murmured, looking at the photo in Sam's hands. "Nate, you were so cute as a kid."
"Hilarious," he muttered, then stood beside his brother. There was a small, sad smile on his lips. "I remember that. It's the night we ran away from Saint Francis."
"And I remember that journal. You had all your Avery stuff in there." He flipped through a few pages while the journal still rested in his brother's grip, idly looking through Nate's notes. "Oh," he murmured, stopping at the last page. "Shit."
There was a moment of silence, the two brothers lost in what she knew was probably memories of an awful night. She snuck a glance at Sully and was surprised at how melancholy he looked. Chloe and Charlie, for their part, simply looked confused—of course Nate hadn't told them about the long, complicated history he had with his brother. They'd only just found out about Sam's existence a few weeks ago. Hell, she still didn't know a lot either.
Sam and Nate fell back into Spanish again—this time in a much more agreeable volume. Their heads were bowed together as they paged through the journal, murmuring to one another. Elena looked away, suddenly feeling like she was intruding by watching them.
She stretched and groaned instead, trying to shake off the solemn mood, and Cutter offered her a hand up. "Thanks," she said, standing up and wiggling her toes in her socks, which were prickling from a lack of blood flow. "You guys hungry?"
"Starvin,'" Charlie said, clutching at his stomach. "I can ring for pizza."
"They won't understand you, love," Chloe cut in, then turned to Elena and gave her a long-suffering look. "It took him twenty minutes to order Chinese last time I let him call."
"Like yanks can understand you any better, love," Charlie interjected. "Mate barely spoke English, anyway."
"I'll order," Sully said, ever the diplomat, patting Cutter on the shoulder. He counted heads with a quick finger and then frowned. "I guess… six pizzas will do it?"
"Order eight, just to be safe," Elena said as he pulled out his phone and looked up the local number. "Last time, Nate and Sam ate four larges between the two of them." God knew how. Nate's bottomless stomach had been more understandable when near-death experiences were more or less a daily occurrence for him, but his appetite hadn't dwindled since switching to a more stable career. Plus, they'd need any kind of leftovers they could get—in the unlikely event that Nate and Sam didn't inhale it all—until they set the kitchen back up.
Sully nodded and headed down the stairs, phone already at his ear, rhyming off an address to the pizza guy.
"Any more beer?" Chloe asked hopefully, frowning at her empty bottle.
"Afraid not," Elena replied. "I'll have to go out and get some more."
"Shame you can't order it too," Charlie said wistfully. "Guess I'll settle for coke for now. Let's go raid what's left of their fridge." He motioned for Chloe, who slipped her hand in his, and they both began to follow Sully down the stairs. Chloe tapped Sully on the shoulder on the way down, whispering pizza toppings into the ear not occupied with a phone.
Elena looked back at her husband and brother-in-law. They were looking between the white journal and Nate's, their fingers dancing over the old pages with a kind of quiet reverence. Nate didn't talk about either of his parents very much, but she knew he'd loved his mother a great deal, even in the small time he'd known her.
"Nate," she near-whispered, not wanting to speak too loudly. He looked up, eyes full of memories. She smiled and held out a hand to him. "Come on. Sully's ordering pizza."
He blinked away the distance in his eyes, and then closed the journal with a hard snap. "With pineapple?" he asked, tossing the journal into the box and grabbing a tight hold of her hand. She tugged him towards the stairs and Sam followed after them.
"Victor knows your disgusting order," Sam assured him, closing the white book with surprising gentleness and setting it back on top of the old jean jacket next to the journal.
The moment of quiet was immediately dispelled with Sam's comment, and Elena smiled to herself as they got into another argument about acceptable pizza toppings. She kept a hold of Nate's hand—even with them arguing about the merits of sweet-and-savory flavour combinations, she could see he was still rattled from looking through boxes that held mementos from most of his life, trying to decide what memories to toss away and which to keep. For all their light banter, Nate looked exhausted. She squeezed his fingers.
And Nate kept a hold of her hand, because it anchored him to the present—with Elena, with family, with home.
And so he didn't punch his brother.
Oubliette comes from the french verb oublier, which means "to forget". Oubliettes can be physical prison cells (which is the more popular use of the word), or mental spaces where people shove memories or ideas they wish to forget.