Depression

He meant it when he told Wolf he didn't have any family. His sister was dead to him. Growing up, she was never there when he needed someone to help. His mom was the sole person who he held in high regard, despite acknowledging she was rarely a mother to him. But it was his mom, and she had to battle an addiction.

Flynn remembered nights she would come in his room and scoop him into loving arms. Cradling him, she would cry herself to sleep, unstoppable weeping as she promised she would get better for her baby boy. One day, she swore, she would be a good mom. His father killed her before the drugs could. He was only ten when they died, and he'd already known she was never going to be better. But she couldn't help it. Evelyn, on the other hand...

Since Ilija discovered his sister with the other mercenaries, they'd decided to unite forces and travel together. One team abandoned their job and the other reached the end of theirs. Evelyn hired an entire crew of mercenaries to track him down after a decade of trying by her own means. From what he could make of it, Joe had been working with her to find him all that time. Now she was waiting at a hotel in the town ahead. That was where they went.

The path lay beyond him. He didn't have a choice. Well, he did. Sort of. But these hired people came a long way to seek him out, spent around two years scouring the whole planet. Kind of wondered whether they would have let him refuse going with them if he tried. While the last thing in the world he wanted to do was see his sister, Joe was here. A man who had been like a father to him during his time in a home for kids without parents. Someone who went out of his way to make certain he knew someone cared what happened to him. Joe he'd missed, and he owed him.

He shied away from a gloved hand seeking purchase on his shoulder. The mercenary pulled his hand back. Flynn looked around the hotel lobby. He caught Nate looking at him from the seating area where he waited with Sullivan and Elena. Now he was thinking about it, he wasn't sure why they were here.

Flynn turned to the soldier wanting his attention and listened.

"In there. 105."

Letting out air he didn't realize he'd been holding in, he turned from the designated door. He couldn't do it. Last time he talked to Evelyn he was 27. Ended up taking a whole lot of pills to offset the pain he felt just being himself. Twelve years since the night he tried to forget his life through permanent means, twenty years since he tried to forget and leave behind his childhood. These were people he left behind for a reason.

He didn't give it a second thought and headed rapidly for the exit. If he could get a fix of some of that sap, maybe he'd feel right being around these people. The stuff was powerful. Never felt so good before tasting it. He could never get his hands on any of it again. Rarest of the rare. Squandered. Damn. His fingers grasped the door handle and he was tugged back.

The soldier named Josif was eyeing him accusingly. "Where are you going?"

"Back off."

He caught the blonde reporter standing up from the armchair. "Are you trying to leave?"

"This is too heavy," he said to her, actually beginning to feel that old and familiar, depressive weight settling upon his shoulders. "I've seen this as far as I want to take it. This is end of the road for me."

"Like hell it is!" Nate shouted, jumping to his feet.

He was surprised by the outrage coming his way, out of the mouth of an enemy. Turned around, he made himself give an old friend his attention. The guilt was still there from when he tried to make Nathan go away, permanently.

"You keep acting like you want to die. You know what I think? I think you're trying to take the easy way out, trying to pay for your sins by dying."

Hadn't he heard all this before? Flynn looked away, letting his eyes trail along the patterns on the wallpaper. He didn't want to hear this, but he resolved to hear him out. Reluctantly, in the past, he spent many a moment on self-reflection while being beaten or raped. Nobody could tell him anything he didn't already know.

"You used to be fun and carefree. You were never like this. Three years I didn't hear from you. Now you're angry, and selfish. What the hell happened to you?"

Nate tried to catch his eye. He shifted his own eyes firmly onto his shoes. He tugged his dirty shirt, trailing the hand to wipe at dirty jeans. He really felt like getting out of these clothes. Flynn forced his arms to hang limp by his side.

"We used to be friends. Then you fell off the map for years and came back a traitorous and greedy asshole. That's a lot of thieves, that was never you. I'm no saint, but I've spent my life trying to never fall into that hole, to never cross the line entirely. I love adventure and finding lost treasure, and I know I can take it way too far just to see things with my own eyes. Turning on your friends..."

His gaze lifted to the spot where he put a bullet through Nate's side. Given some time since pulling the trigger, he couldn't quite believe he had done it. There was a time when Nathan Drake was the only person who could make him feel truly happy and calm, and he tried to kill him.

Sinking. That's how he felt. He despised feeling helpless and hateful. When did this become his reality?

"You're not done. Running to somewhere else you can be reckless and probably get yourself killed? Not when actual family came looking for you. How can you walk away from that? If I had family left-"

Despondency flashed into anger. "But you don't! And neither do I."

He turned and reached for the door handle only to find Josif barring his way.

"I am paid to bring you to your sister. I will drag you if I must."

Furious he couldn't get out of the same room as these people staring, judging, he flipped around to give Nate a piece of his mind. He would tell him exactly what he thought.

"Sometimes there are no happy endings. Thieves don't die happy, you idiot," he growled. "But if they're good enough, at least they'll be able to die rich."

Unaffected by his fury, Nate was ready with what he wanted to say.

"It was you who brought me onto the museum job, and then turned on me. Maybe you were using me, maybe you got pissed about Chloe and me and got your revenge. Maybe. But you were genuinely happy to see me that day you came and found me. The Harry Flynn I first met and grew to know is not this guy standing in front of me."

"You must not have known me at all," Flynn bitterly claimed.

Right when it looked like Drake was going to call him on his bullshit, Joe did it for him. Flynn hadn't even heard the door to 105 open and close. Joe was standing there, his sister beside him. She had very straight hair cut just above the shoulders of the business suit she wore. A business suit. Out here. Clear blue eyes stared unflinchingly in his direction. The years must have been kind to her. She looked good.

"Harry," began Joe, who wore a tight smile. "You were always an angry kid, pushing people away to hide whenever you were hurt or scared. You became exceedingly skilled at hiding yourself with lies, but you also continued to be one of the bravest kids I ever met."

Flynn fell silent, face falling into a sullen but reluctantly cooperating expression. This man made him feel like a boy again. A dumb teenager who ran away from the boarding house all the time, convinced he could do better on his own. Someone who pretended to never be listening, but always heard.

"I suspected you'd run off for good one day because of that very bravery. And you did, soon as you aged out. Been blaming myself for letting you go since the day you were gone. I should have done more to make you realize you were never alone."

Joe was a smart man, former military, who had it together extremely well. Growing up, he admired a man who accepted everything about his own self, good and bad. Now Nate was staring at him with a look of sympathy and desperation. What for?

He did remember the day Drake brought up. The day he tracked him down at the bar to share the museum job he needed help to pull off. He recalled how thrilled Nathan had been to see him, and how surprised Flynn was to receive such a warm welcome. For three years he forced himself to avoid Drake without a word passed between them. Sullivan warned him to stay away and he'd vowed to do as asked, knowing the older man was correct. Flynn brought trouble. Even though it made him mad that Sullivan was the same type, bringing trouble wherever he went, it kind of made his desire for him to keep away from Nate all the more logical. Nate didn't need two friends dragging him into dangerous situations.

With Joe and Evelyn in the same room, he knew he couldn't leave. So instead he tried to explain away why he'd become the man he was today. Someone had to understand him in and out, good and bad. He needed that more than anything he'd ever needed in his life.

"This can't be for nothing!" he proclaimed, secreting away his feelings revolving around being trapped.

Startled, Nate met his determined gaze. "What?"

"Pretty much my whole life's been stealing shit. It's all I've ever known," he confessed. "You steal, you fuck, you get fucked over, you run, you steal, you maybe get to live in the calm for a while, and then you do it over again. That's the life."

"What are you saying?" Drake asked in confusion.

"If I don't concentrate on the job, on the money..." Flynn trailed off for a moment, catching himself to where he was. "Then the dull ache comes back. The ache that I'm alone, unloved, and with nothing. I need the thrill of the mission, the nerves when there's trouble or danger, or the joy of a successful job done. Without it, I'm left alone with that terrible ache. I need this, okay?"

"Okay, Flynn. Okay."

Nate replied to his confession like he was understanding. Flynn could tell he wasn't.

He was aware he was ranting. Speaking in a way even he didn't fully understand. But once everything came spilling out, he couldn't stop it. He spent so much of his time hiding, that revealing a single, deep truth opened the floodgates.

"It can't be for nothing. This life, I need to find the things that make me feel good while I'm alive. It's all I've got."

"But you don't have to leave to do it. You have family right here."

"What do you care, mate? You hate me."

"I don't like you," Nate admitted. "But I don't hate you. I mean, I'm ticked you shot me, but I also know why you did it. We both thought we were protecting Chloe. We both did what we thought we had to do."

"I was wrong," Flynn made himself choke out, before he became a coward and refused to acknowledge the terrible thing he'd done to someone he used to care about.

Evelyn spoke for the first time. "That's what I'm here for, Harry."

He didn't want to look at her or speak to her. She wasn't family, even if she was trying to pretend to be. She gave up her right to call herself that a long time ago.

When he didn't pay her any attention, eyes reverting back to his shoes, she explained what she meant.

"I became a psychiatrist, Har," she told him. "Growing up in our house, knowing I couldn't do anything, I devoted to helping people. I specialize in victims of abuse. I would like for us to talk."

"Are you trying to tell me you came all the way out here, searched the world and hired a team of mercenaries, to put me in therapy?"

"When you called that night, sounding messed up, it woke me up, Har. It was like a light came on in front of me and I could see what I'd done. I forgot about my baby brother. I left him alone in that house so many times. You could have died. If you hadn't grown up far too quickly and learned how to keep yourself alive, you wouldn't be standing here today. I am so, so sorry for abandoning you. I was so worried about protecting myself and getting to someplace better, I became a horrible sister in the meantime."

"Glad you found your catharsis, sis," he said, utilizing the term with much sarcasm. "But it looks like your intelligence could use some work if you decided to leave your lucrative and legitimate career behind to end up in this shithole. Where the hell are we anyway?"

"You know what catharsis means, Flynn?"

"Shut up, Drake."

Evelyn cleared her throat sternly, crossing her arms over her chest. "I found you to make sure I don't fail as your sister ever again. Searching for you all these years, picking up your trail and learning of things that happened to you... Things that happened because you were alone with no one to care. You need help, before you self-destruct."

"I'm not doing a therapy session with you, Evelyn. You can't fix me with talking."

His sibling got straight to the core of him then. "How much do you actually tell the truth these days, Harry? From experience with a lot of patients who come to me out of helplessness, desperation, exasperation, and so on, a single session of just talking, getting it all out there and admitted aloud, can make a huge difference. It's like a weight lifted off their shoulders and they're seeing more clearly. It will help you. I know it."

He shook his head. "Not doing it. I don't trust you, and I hate you."

The look on his sister's face made him wish he could take back the last part. She appeared on the verge of tears.

"If you can't forgive me, then at least let me do right by you for once in my life."

"Talk to me instead, Harry," Elena suggested out of nowhere. "An interview, off the record. After everything you've done, you owe us. Do it and you can do whatever you want after, even if it means leaving on your own. Okay?"

"Please, Harry," pleaded Nate. "Family doesn't always make you feel good, but they're there for you, especially when it's not easy. She's trying."

Flynn muttered a quick goodbye while he opened the front door of the hotel, Josif keeping out of his way. He didn't even want to begin to imagine the kind of questions which might come up.

"She's not the only one," Nate added. "I know you don't want to give up."

He breathed in, then out, and let the heavy door fall shut. Glancing Nathan's way, he put up a hand toward him as he started rapidly walking to the foreboding door of 105.

"Not a word, Drake. Keep your damn mouth shut."

"Promise!" the man agreed, far too cheerful.

He passed his sister and Joe without looking at either one of them, but reached a hand out to poke the aforementioned man in the shoulder.

"Stay with me?"

"You know it," Joe replied.

Resigned, Flynn took a few short breaths before going into the room. They were right. He didn't want to leave. But he didn't know how to stay. He hoped with everything left in him, this would be enough for them. Forget them. He hoped this would be enough for himself.

/

Nate crept to the closed door and pressed his ear against the wood. Seconds earlier, Flynn, Elena, Joe, and Evelyn went in the room together. The discussion occurring inside was meant to be a private affair, but he planned to hear any part of it possible. Flynn used to be his friend. Learning he had a sister and a guy like Sully that looked out for him as a kid, revived his past fascination concerning the British man.

Muffled voices could be heard from the other side. He couldn't quite make out what was said. It sounded like Flynn was being argumentative, tone seeming harsh and affronted toward somebody else in the room. He flattened his entire body against the door and then slide along to press into the wall beside the door, hoping it would somehow be more hollow. Nothing said in there was coming out clear.

"Ah, come on..." he murmured, straining to listen harder.

Beside him, Sully sidled up and joined him at the wall. Glancing about for a moment, he mimicked Nathan's posture and tried to listen to what he could from inside the room as well.

"Can you hear anything?" Sully asked after a moment.

"Not really. You?"

"Nah."

A throat cleared itself from a couple feet away. Sheepishly, he and Sullivan pulled back from the wall and turned around to face who was trying to get their attention. While Ilija, Josif, and a couple other mercenaries lingered in the lobby, they were paying them no mind. Two female mercenaries, however, stood facing them with hands on their hips.

"Minding our own business, gentlemen?" asked the woman sporting a boyish haircut.

While he noticed now that she was attractive in her own right, the soldier next to her was unmistakably gorgeous. The hot one from the road. Ilija had a hot sister. He imagined she must be one hell of a character and fighter to never take any comments from the men with which she consorted. When his gaze inevitably started to track downward, he forced it to remain eye level out of respect.

"Still hanging around, ladies?"

"It's Isidora," the short-haired woman mentioned. "She is Mila."

Nate nodded. "Right."

"Might be in your interest to know," Isidora began, before he interrupted her.

"That we should wait outside? Fine, fine. We're going."

She cocked an eyebrow at him. "Make assumptions often, Mr. Drake?"

Mila slowly brought a hand up and pointed with two fingers to the door next to 105. "We bought out the hotel. Inside the rooms, the walls are very thin."

Nathan blinked at her. "Very..."

"Thin. You can hear everything."

After that revelation, four people ventured into the next room for some eager eavesdropping duty. The pair of mercenaries seemed to be equally interested in hearing what was going to come out in the "interview" Elena was to conduct. Sure enough, Elena's voice could be heard as if she were mere yards away, no wall between them.

"And we can work together to get out of this part of the world after. Come clean about your past, about yourself, and finally get past it."

"What do you know?" Flynn's voice was heard, curt and assured.

"I know enough, Harry," the voice belonging to his sister informed. "I want you to have friends, even if you think you don't need them. Because you do. We all need friends or people we can go to with our troubles."

"Just give it a try, Harry," Joe said, words carrying through the wall to their ears. "An hour tops and you're out of here."

"Not like I have much choice," the professional thief complained. "More people making me do-"

"You self-sabotage," accused Joe. "The only way you won't blow it intentionally so these people you've found will leave you or so you can leave, is if they know the real you. If they understand you, I have faith you won't be alone."

A heavy sigh from Flynn. "What do you think Elena's going to find out that could possibly change her view of me? I pointed a gun at her. Had orders to kill her."

"I'm a doctor specializing in abuse cases. I've worked with hundreds of men and women, even children, who face abuse in their daily lives or lived it in their youth," Evelyn shared. "You look at Mr. Drake like you did our parents as you got older and were learning how abnormal it was to be living the way we did. Sometimes going so hungry we ate toothpaste for the flavor of something. The majority of the time you look at that man like he's used you, like he doesn't care."

"Evelyn..don't."

But she went on. "And I strongly suspect you've been abused, physically or sexually. It's highly likely to be both. I don't know precisely when, or where, or by whom, not with any factual proven certainty. But for all your bravado and smiles, I can see your pain. It's a deep pain. Many of my patients bore the same look in their eyes. Please, use this opportunity and give honest answers to Elena's questions. You are my brother, and I'm afraid you're nearing the point where irreparable bad will happen if something doesn't change."

"So much time apart, for a lecture. Congratulations. You fail as both family and friend. Still glad you came all this way?"