"Do you remember when we meet at the place, where the world just rounded off? We played, we fought, but never did we stop. I can't tell you why it ended, or what happened since, but I want you to remember, we're always going to be friends"

The old tape recorder was lying on the bed in front of Will, but he choose not to stop the tape, just keep recording, see what happened next. He didn't have the energy to stop it just yet, too tired of himself and everything really to do more than look at it, but not look at it at the same time. It was a long time since the last time he had taken use of them tape recorder, it had been lying around collecting dust for almost a year, he had checked the last time he had used it, he always stated the date first, and he didn't really know what made him use it today, but he had ended up with it, and now he felt tired. Not physical tired, like he wanted to sleep, more like a place of calm tired of his own mind. Robin had been by his room and informed him he needed to talk to him later, something Will tried to ignore thinking about as it turned out his own thoughts often was way more frightening than the actual conversation.

A soft knock on the door saved him from going down that road anyhow, and when he lifted his head, he saw Nate standing in the door, leaning against the doorframe and looking down at him, looking as if he had all the time in the world, and no care. It wasn't true, Will knew that.

Nate had a lot on his shoulders, some that he knew of, some that he only had heard of, and even some other part that Kew hadn't told him, but Will had read somewhere between the lines. Nate and Max stood to take over Max's parents business, well, Max was taking over the company, but he intended to have Nate as a partner, or maybe advisor, Will wasn't sure. Allan had been part of that plan as well, until Much had made her move. There was nothing wrong with Much, it was just that between her dads business and Max's future business, Allan kind of figured he would end up helping them anyway, and wanted to something else when he was working. And journalism wasn't a bad choice.

Now, Nate on the other had was born to advise and take part in the global company that waited for Max to turn 18. They were originally from Europe, and the legal age there was lower than that in the US for some reason, so Max stood to take over the day he turned 18, and Nate would already have turned 18 a month before, so that was not a problem. All of this was things Will knew, had been told by both or either of them at some point.

What he had heard of was a different story, and most of it was lies. Nate had never been sent out to kill someone, and really, who even started that rumor? The sad thing was that most of them continued down about the same road, talking about how Nate had been trained to kill from birth, and had killed both his stepdad and his real dad, which were to be a king somewhere.

What Will had figured out on his own though, was that even if Nate hadn't been trained to become a killer, he had been trained to become a survivor. There were marks on Nate, both in body and soul, that would never heal, a sadness in his eyes some days that spoke of a past not so far from Will's own, filled with violent and uncertainty. They had never spoken about these thing, Will didn't even know it Nate knew that he knew, but Will had tried so hard to leave it all behind, and he didn't know if he could talk about it yet, even if Nate wanted to talk about it.

"How are you doing? "

It's the things nobody says, that hurts the most.

The tape had kept on going, and when one side was done, it automatically started playing the other side. The voice now reading sounded younger, more broken somehow, and had Will bouncing off the floor, and quickly turn the tape recorder off, already regretting fishing it out of the closet to begin with.

Nate seemed to have stopped for a moment, looking directly at Will with his green eyes, as if trying to figure out yet another problem. If people didn't know better, they might think that Nate was in love with all of his friends, but Will knew that it was just the way Nate was. He was personal on a deeper level than even Robin hadn't begun to access, and it frightened him more than he ever would admit to anyone. It made him want to scream and rage, tell Nate to mind his own business and let him be.

Will got like that sometimes, stuck in his own head thinking about all the wrongs and faults, both his and others, and he could practically feel the rage raise in his throat and suffocate him. He wanted to rage like a spoiled brat for all the things he hadn't had the chance to have as a child, all the things he still was unable to do because of that ( fuck reading, who needed that anyway?) and more than anything else, he wanted to turn around and run. Run from those around him who seemed to care, those who he still could see in the hallways, whisper about where he was raised, run from Robin and Marian and their stupid home with the stupid, comfortable bed and light touches instead of regular beatings. But most of all; he wanted to run from himself. To forget himself and who he was, where he came from and just disappear. It was a long time since he had thought about ending himself, but there were still moment when he wanted to run away from himself, and stop existing for a while, put himself together in a different way, so that everything could be as it should be. (Robin shouldn't have to take care of him, him mother should still be alive, and Will shouldn't have to use drugs to relax.)

"Robin said you're working with Brandt and Hunt on a project this week. How's it going?" Nate was good at pretending, almost better than Will himself.

"Well, just because Hunt call me a whore son, it don't have to mean that I can't work with him, right?" Will more or less snarled, getting lost, once more, in a person he didn't want to be, but was to familiar with to let go. It hit him about two seconds later that he hadn't told that particular story to Nate yet, he hadn't been out of the house except school for the last week, and he almost winced.

He felt Nate sit beside him on the bed, picking up a book, unread like so many others, and started going through it, before asking casually, "Do you wish me to do something about it, or maybe talk about it?"

"I can handle it myself!" And again with the snarling towards his friend.

"I know. Doesn't mean you have to."

And that surprised him more than anything. He was so used doing things on his own, never asking for help, that he hadn't even thought about it. He refused to look at himself as weak, you had to be damn strong to survive some days, and even if Will had promised that he would never be dependent on anyone again, he thought, while Nate, without a word, picked out books from his own backpack and found a clean spot on Will's desk to work on, that Nate might just prove that there was a big difference between being independent, and letting others help you out. And maybe, just maybe, Will could learn to do at least one of those things again.