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“On your right!”
The first thing Nate thinks is, Yeah, right. Because he isn't sure how Sam can see anything in this storm. They're moving so quickly, and rocks are appearing so suddenly, and ocean mist blends so thickly with savage rainfall that Nate can't see a damn thing.
“Watch out, watch out!” Sam is screaming over the waves. Whatever he thinks he sees, he really believes it's there.
Nate glances to the side, and that's when a flaming, 500 foot naval frigate smashes into their fishing boat.
“Oh, shit!”
The fishing boat splinters underneath them and tosses them to the waves, the frigate barreling through like a linebacker through wet tissue paper.
“NATHAN!”
Nate slams against the water’s surface. The frigate's wake drags him down, and he frantically swims against it. But it's really no use. Nathan Drake may be a veteran explorer and a daring adventurer, but even he is subject to the forces of nature. (Or, in this instance, the forces of a giant, bloodthirsty Shoreline boat.)
The surface grows further and further away, and Nate allows himself to be sucked down, with the hopes that maybe, eventually, the boat will pass and the waters will calm.
---
The boat passes. The waters do not calm.
Nathan gasps for breath, coughing as seawater threatens to invade his lungs. He treads water a bit frantically and only semi-effectively.
“Sam?” he calls, but it comes out as a croak. There's no way Sam could hear him in a storm like this. The ocean is roaring, and the rain is torrential. Nate can barely hear himself.
Once he's no longer at risk of dry-drowning, Nathan searches the area. He can’t see much, really, but he’s willing to bet there are more Shoreline boats out there. He could try searching for one, hoping to climb aboard. But at the very least, he would be tossed back into the water. At most, they'd probably just shoot him. So stowing away isn’t an option.
All things considered, Nate is lucky. They’d crashed close to the island. Or… he thinks they crashed close to the island. It's tough to tell in the storm. All he can really do is start swimming and hope to run into something eventually.
The longer Nate paddles, the more he realizes how bone-deep exhausted he is. His muscles strain as he pushes through the water. Every so often, he catches himself slowing down, and he has to kick even harder to keep from sinking. Waves come and go, frequently breaking over his head and sending him spinning underwater. Each time, Nate manages his way back to the surface, but each time, he feels how much harder it is to swim. How much more his lungs burn.
In movies, when the stranded traveler finally sees land, they speed up, so eager and reinvigorated and desperate for reprieve that they get their second wind. But when Nathan finally gets close enough to see the shore, he can barely tread water anymore, much less swim. He’s so, so close, but his arms and legs simply won’t listen.
Look, guys, Nate tries to reason with his limbs. If I don't get out of the water now, I’m going to drown.
We’re cold, his arms argue back.
We’re tired, his legs agree.
You're useless, Nate thinks bitterly. Fine. I’ll do it myself.
But without arms and legs, Nathan is little more than a limbless torso with a head. And for a limbless torso with a head, he does pretty well for himself. But the expectations aren't particularly high for limbless torsos with a head. So in actuality, he doesn't bring himself to shore. He barely stays afloat.
No, the real savior here is the tide. Mother Nature, in all her years of terrorizing Nate, finally cuts him a break. And through the tide alone, Nate washes up on the beach. He lifts his head out of the waterlogged sand and pushes himself up with jelly legs and marmalade arms. The rain continues its barrage, blowing sideways and stinging Nate’s face. But he’s already so soaked that it makes no difference.
“Alright,” Nathan mutters to himself, trying to muster the strength to trudge forward. “I gotta get off this beach.”
The sky is so dark that Nate can’t tell if it’s day or night. And unfortunately, the island is no more visible on land as it was from the water. He’s running blindly into the storm, deafened by rolling thunder and numbed by harsh wind against wet skin. It really should be no surprise that Nate slips almost immediately, falling off a rocky ledge, smacking his shoulder on the way down, and landing on his face.
For a long, dangerous second, Nathan considers staying put. Surely this can wait. His every muscle stings, spasming with fatigue. His shoulder pounds to the beat of his heart. He desperately needs a rest.
But then Nate starts thinking, and he realizes what he forgot.
“Goddamn it,” he growls, pushing himself up and breaking into an uneven jog. “SAM!”
There’s a very good chance that Sam didn’t even make it to shore. Maybe he found a boat. Maybe he was captured. Maybe he’s still in the water.
Maybe he’s dead.
Nate doesn’t hold onto that thought for long. He can’t. It would only make it that much harder to find Sam. (Because Sam is alive, dammit. He’s too stubborn to drown, and bullets obviously don’t have the same effect on him as they do everyone else.)
Wiping the rain from his eyes, Nathan finds a craggy outcrop in his way. The conditions are terrible for climbing, but the conditions are also terrible for running and swimming and trying to outgun a fleet of Shoreline ships, so what does Nathan care? He finds handholds and footholds and starts his ascent.
The climbing isn’t as bad as Nate expected. It’s slippery as hell, but the rocks are relatively short. It takes very little time to make it over the precipice. The view is dismal - just white waves and foreboding rocks sticking out of the water like giant daggers - but it gives him a glimpse of something else. Light, glinting off something to his left. So Nate carefully jumps down to the saturated shoreline. It jars his every joint and bone, but he can’t worry about it. He approaches the light, now clearly his supply box.
Or it was his supply box. Because there’s not a single supply inside. It’s just a useless box.
“For god’s s-” Nathan groans. “Of course. Everything’s gone.”
So Nate just moves right ahead. He really can’t stop right now.
“Maybe that’s a good sign,” he muses. “Maybe Sam took it.”
Maybe he’s looking for excuses to believe Sam is okay. Or maybe it’s true and Sam did take it. Who’s to say?
Nathan runs under a felled tree and climbs further up the cliff. “On the bright side, I can’t lose anything else… except my life.” And then something strikes him. “Talking to myself… That’s the first sign of crazy, isn’t it?”
And the second sign of crazy is asking yourself questions that you already know the answer to.
He pulls himself up yet another ledge, but his muscles are shaking worse than ever. The strength it takes to just walk, much less climb, is starting to get to him. His movements slow, limp worsening.
“Alright,” he tells himself. “I’m alright.”
And then Nathan steps off a cliff.
“Ugh!” he grunts, standing immediately. If he lays down now, he’ll never get back up. “Just push through,” he pants, moving forward. “Just push- augh!”
The ground beneath his feet crumbles, large chunks of rock splashing in the ocean below. Nate scrabbles for a solid surface, just barely grabbing hold in time. Once more, he pulls himself up and keeps moving.
“To hell with this place,” Nathan groans, carefully shuffling past the new gap in the ledge and climbing the next cliff face in his path. It’s getting worse. His head is spinning, and just reaching for handholds has him grunting like he’s playing in the finals at the Wimbledon. (Yeah, he watches tennis. What of it?)
But he reaches the top eventually, groaning and whining the whole way.
“Gotta keep going. Gotta keep going.”
The next climb is situated under a waterfall. Nate doesn’t consider this, because every climb has been wet. What’s a little running water going to do?
Kill you, Nate. It will probably kill you.
So he grabs hold, inching his way along a narrow ledge. He’s doing okay, considering, until the grip under his fingers is loosened by soggy moss. He slips, screams, and catches a lower ledge.
“Hah,” he wheezes. “That was… That was close.”
Slowly, painfully, he reaches up for a safer handhold. The muscles in his back are screaming. His injured shoulder shrieks.
And he slips again.
“No, no, no-!”
But Nathan has Drake luck. He grabs a piece of rock jutting out from the cliff face, slicing his hands in the process, but preventing certain doom. The waterfall is still dumping buckets on him, weakening his grip. He pulls himself upwards, barely managing to reach the next handhold. But he does reach it, and progress is progress.
And then the rock crumbles, his fingers slip, and he finds himself falling. There’s no catching himself this time. No close calls. He’s going to die.
Nate slams into solid rock, curls in on himself, and falls limp. Moving forward is no longer a question or a choice. It’s an impossibility. And though Nate loves himself a good challenge, he’s not going to beat this one.
---
Sam doesn’t like rain. That’s not particularly unique about him, but it is worth noting. So on a remote island, washed up and pummeled with a monsoon?
Not his scene.
“Nathan!” He keeps screaming, even though Nathan has yet to yell back. He’s worse than a lost dog, because at least lost dogs come when their name is called. Nathan just wanders.
And yet, Sam keeps shouting.
It’s been hours now. The dark clouds have thinned out, revealing light gray underneath. The sun is flirting with the horizon, but Sam imagines it might be another hour or so before they’re making out. The rain has tapered off, at least for the time being, reduced to a gentle mist. The ground is sodden, Sam’s boots sinking with every step, and plants drip with the remnants of the storm.
“Nathan!”
Sam must have walked halfway across the island by now. He’s taking the long way - running the perimeter of the island - in the hopes that Nathan is still on the beach. But at this rate, the likelihood of Nathan staying on the shore is getting slimmer and slimmer. More than once, Sam wonders if he should just give up and move inland. He could find a high cliff and signal for Nathan. That could definitely work. And it’s tempting, because once Sam reached the top, he could sit down and wait for Nathan to come to him.
But if Nathan was injured in the crash, he may not have left the beach at all. And the risk that Nathan is hurt and in need of assistance is greater than the relief that Sam would feel knowing that he doesn’t have to keep walking.
“Nathan!”
Sam is tired. He’s so, so tired, from his skin to his spleen to his skull. The crash roughed him up a bit, and dragging his ass to shore was no picnic either. And now, going on hour six (seven?) of searching, Sam is worn to the bone.
But that doesn’t stop him. When he spots the cove - when he spots his brother, collapsed on the ground - Sam breaks into a sprint.
“Nathan!” He slides to his knees, shaking Nathan’s shoulders. “Wake up!”
Nathan’s eyes snap open, looking at Sam like Sam just stole his Gameboy. (And Sam would know. He stole Nathan’s Gameboy back in ‘81. Legend has it, Nathan is still looking for it.) “Sam?”
“Yeah, dumbass. Don’t recognize your own brother?”
“Shut up,” Nathan groans, pushing himself up. He blinks a couple times, rolling his shoulders and wincing. “Where are we?”
Sam tries to bury his worry with wit and sarcasm. “Uh, did you smash your brain in?” And Sam tries to subtly check Nathan’s head for any sign of that. “Remember? The crash? Shoreline? Libertalia?”
This seems to strike a chord. “Ah. Yeah. Right. That place.” He sighs but makes no move to stand up. “I was looking for you, and then I… fell.”
“Fell?” Sam looks up, but the cove is mostly covered. “Fell from where?”
Nathan points up at a hole in the natural ceiling. “Cliff. Up through there.”
“Jesus, Nathan.” Sam curses. “You're lucky you're not dead.”
“Oh, yeah, lucky me,” Nathan groans. “Death would’ve been the kinder mercy.”
“Any chance you found Libertalia before you swan dived off a cliff?”
Nathan’s unamused expression tells Sam everything he needs to know.
“Okay, fine. No Libertalia. Yet. Are you…? Can you walk?”
“I think so?” It’s a question, not a statement.
“Well, let’s try, huh?” Sam tries to keep upbeat, because Nathan kind of looks like shit. The odds of him being out of commission are decent.
“Yeah, okay.”
Sam takes hold of Nathan’s left arm, but even touching it makes Nathan yelp. He drops the arm like it’s broken glass that is also on fire and covered in acid.
“What? Is it broken?”
Nathan grabs his shoulder, cringing in pain. “Uh, I don’t… I don’t think so.”
“Well then what? Broken ribs? Did you get stabbed or something?”
Nathan shakes his head, carefully pulling his shirt collar down past his shoulder. The drenched henley is happy to accommodate. “Oh. Um. Yikes.”
And “oh, um, yikes” is right. Because Nathan’s left shoulder is lower than the right, an unnatural bump under his skin.
“You idiot. You dislocated it.”
“Damn, sorry. I’ll get your permission next time,” Nathan spits.
Sam doesn't have the energy to argue. He just sighs and yanks Nathan’s shoulder back into place.
“Shit!” Nathan screams. He grabs his shoulder protectively and mutters more curses under his breath. “Warn a guy,” he hisses.
“I needed you relaxed. You always tense up when you dislocate something.”
“Dude, that was one time.”
“And you tensed up, and I couldn't get your arm back in, so who's fault is that?”
Nathan sighs. Mutters a few choice swear words.
“Gonna live?” Sam watches his brother carefully. He’s still pale.
But Nathan nods. “It’ll hurt like hell for a while, but I’ll make it. Help me up.”
So Sam grabs Nathan’s right arm and pulls him up. Nathan brushes the sand from his clothes and uses his belt to sling his arm. “C’mon,” Nathan says, heading inland. “Time to find a lost pirate civilization.”