thisavrou_log | I know you were worth it

Entry tags:

I know you were worth it

Who: Nathan Drake (

sketchycharacter) and Elena Fisher (

tearsinajar)
When: Early August
Where: The Safe Space
What: It's time for the talk.
Warnings: Some spoilers for Uncharted 4.

[Knowing this talk was coming—knowing for weeks that it would come when Elena was awake, when she was better, when they were ready to face up to all they haven't faced yet—doesn't make it any easier. When Nate checks the old journal to make sure the Polaroid is still safely tucked in its pages, he doesn't look at the subjects of the photo, and when he slides it into his messenger bag, he feels a sharp pang. This is digging up old memories that he tried to lay to rest a long time ago.

This is worth it. His marriage is worth it. Their fight had been painful for facing him with his worst losses, but also because it had confronted them with the fact that for all their supposed progress since coming back together in Yemen, they hadn't really dealt with anything that had pushed them apart in the first place. It was easier to focus on the now, thinking only of how things could be so right between them, than to take a hard look at how things had gone wrong.

Nate's not looking away anymore. He's not even blinking. (In the figurative sense. Not the literal because, well, come on.) He married Elena for a reason: he wants to spend the rest of his life with her. If they're going to get that far, dealing with the hard things is required. He'll do what it takes to make it work.

Her surgery is done and there are no immediate crises at hand, so now's the time. He'd sent her a text asking her to meet him at a particular time and place, and she'd replied, agreeing, which means there's no wiggling out of it. It occurs to him belatedly that he hadn't actually specified what he wanted to talk about, but she knows, right? She must know.

If she doesn't, well, she's about to find out. She's about to find out about a lot of things.

Nate takes a deep breath and heads out to have a talk with his wife.]

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The Safe Space, has a good ring to it, wouldn't you say? [ She smiles and straightens away from the wall as he comes over. A safe space, that's what they need, all the way up here in space. Ironic. ] I've had to use it once or twice already.

[ Elena tucks her hands in the back pockets of her pants, taking a moment of her own to look him up and down. He looks happier, like he walks with a bit of a lighter step, and yet it hasn't escaped her notice that his shoulders look heavier than before. She guesses it might have to do with what's been left unspoken between them, until now. ]

You wanna go in now..?

Too bad it's a name, not a guarantee. We could use more safe spaces around here.

[The thought that she's needed to come here makes him a little sad, puts a small crease between his eyebrows. But much as he wants to, he doesn't ask for details—he wants to look out for her, protect her physically and emotionally, but getting overprotective after the fact isn't going to help. Not when he's sometimes been the one to hurt her.]

Yeah, let's go. C'mon.

[He puts his hand on the small of her back as they enter, guiding her even though she doesn't need to be guided. It makes him feel steadier. Several of the private rooms are available now, and while he's not that picky about creature comforts, Nate has to admit to himself that it does seem cozy. Comforting, almost. He nods for her to sit down first, wherever she likes.]

So...we do need to talk. It's way past time.

[ She's only had to use one of the rooms for a few things— hiding out in solitude while being upset over whatever was going on between them, for something he did, something she didn't want to talk about (running away from the problem, such a healthy response), and to escape her roommates to try and sleep when things got too loud in her room on Nomo Deck. Insomnia had also played a big factor in pushing her to use a Safe Space room often.

But Nathan doesn't ask for details right away and Elena doesn't feel the need to elaborate.

Once inside she goes to one of the plush chairs, sitting, waiting for him to find himself a seat. Or pace, whichever works better for him.

'It's way past time'.

She knows what this is about, and she takes in a slow breath, nodding. Oh she knows. ]

All right. Let's talk.

[The plush chairs are good. Very comfy-looking, so he drags another one over so it's close to hers. This'll be easier without putting even more space between them.

Once seated, he reaches into his bag to pull out a familiar white journal and rests it between them on his knee. He glances at her first, gauging her reaction, before he speaks.]

I thought of a thousand different things I wanted to say to you while you were in cryo, but once you came out of it, I didn't know where to start. So I figure...start at the beginning.

[He runs his fingers over the monogrammed initials on the journal. Another thing he's done a thousand times before.]

I didn't lie when I said the woman who wrote in this journal was a historian, but there's more to it than that. She died about thirty years ago, but Cassandra Morgan was—is—my mother.

[ Elena's glad he doesn't sit off to the side, that he pulls his chair close so they're almost face to face with little space between them. As soon as he pulls out the white journal, a knit appears between her brows, staring at it, not expecting to see it, and when he speaks that's when she looks up at him.

Starting from the beginning seems like the best idea in this scenario, she still doesn't know what to make of the way he had reacted towards seeing how she had the journal in her possession—

His mother?

Then this hadn't been completely about Drake? Not even a little? Did Drake have anything to do with Nate's mother? There had to be that connection, as small as it was.

Her expression closes off briefly, leaning away as she tries to make sense of this. That polaroid... ]

Nate... [ This has to be hard for him; she doesn't want to talk about this if it's going to put him in a position where he has to relive any grief over his lost mother. ] I didn't know...

[ Remembering his outburst, the desperation and emotion he'd fought to keep in check, how he'd snatched the journal from her— it all makes sense. She'd been so selfish to think it was about Francis Drake, that he only wanted the journal back because of that. Not because of his dead mother.

She felt so ashamed then of how she had reacted, felt like such a heel; she only cared about her own personal loss, wanted to protect herself in some way, that all he wanted was the one thing he had left that connected him to his family. ]

I'm sorry...

[He honestly doesn't know what kind of reaction to expect. Nothing extreme, he thinks, she's almost always able to keep her composure. And she does now, though he thinks he can read something in her face.]

'sokay.

[She didn't know what the journal had meant to him when she received it. Couldn't have known. The way he presents himself to the world, to her most of the time, he started life as a scrappy teenager on the streets. Victor Sullivan isn't his blood, but he's the only kind of father Nate has, and anything he started out with doesn't matter.]

I didn't understand it very well at the time, but when I was four, she ah, she killed herself. Dad dumped me on the state a few months later—that's how I ended up with the nuns. But I wasn't alone.

[He could stop here for a while, accept sympathy and tell her all the good things he remembers about his mom, how amazing she was at what she did, how she taught him to love adventure and learning before he could even read. But if he doesn't keep going now, he's not sure he'll be able to later. Nate pulls the old Polaroid out from between the journal's pages and rests it on the cover.]

This is me.

[His index finger slides to the younger boy with a well-earned black eye, a goofy grin. And then to the older boy beside him, a teenager, more confident in his bearing.]

And this is...Sam. I had a brother.

[Had.]

[ Had. ]

A brother...

[ Sam. Brother. His mother had committed suicide. His father had abandoned him. His brother was no longer around— dead?

Elena stares at the polaroid; she's memorized it, the goofy grin and black eye, the older boy, the both of them caught in a cute, brotherly selfie moment. While having the journal in her possession, she'd spent so long analyzing it. It never came to her that what she held in her possession was a young Nate, had assumed it was just a pair of kids who'd gotten hold of a camera.

She remembers what he'd begged of her back in medbay, the single 'don't'. Don't leave me alone. Don't go where I can't follow. Almost every single important person to him in his entire life had abandoned him, whether by choice, taken by death or had left by other means.

Elena doesn't speak, chest and throat going tight as it hits her. If she had died... ]

[It's a lot to take in all at once, he knows that, but she's handling it okay as far as he can tell. And while it's hard as hell to get the words out—it feels like he's unscrewed the top of a salt shaker and dumped it directly into a wound—it's getting strangely easier as he goes along, like he's on a roll.

It's been so, so long since he even said Sam's name out loud, but now that he has it's almost like a release.]

That was taken the night we left the orphanage for good, actually. Well, he was already gone, this visit just turned into me never going back, either. I was twelve and he was seventeen.

[A ghost of a smile appears on his face at the memory. Hard times had followed, harder than he'd expected when he'd asked Sam to take him along to wherever he was going. But it had been worth it to be together. He doesn't regret those times at all.]

We looked after each other, but we got into trouble too, and he was in jail when I met Sully. One of the longer stretches.

[His smile fades away. This is the hardest part. His fingers dig into the plush of the chair as he forces himself to continue.]

When I was about twenty-two, we were in prison together, in Panama. On purpose, if you can believe it—there was this old, half-crumbled tower in the old part of the prison, and Sam thought we could find something in it to trace Henry Avery's missing treasure from from the Gunsway heist—doesn't matter now.

[There was nothing, in the end. Sam had died for nothing.]

Things went wrong and we had to escape in a hurry, us and this rich dickhead who was financing the search and bribing the guards. We almost made it—got to the edge of the prison and there was one more jump to make, I had him.

[Give me your other arm!]

They shot him to death in front of me.

[ 'You obviously haven't been in a Panamanian jail.' Elena remembers it like it was only yesterday; being handed the gun, the pirates, Sir Francis Drake's coffin. Everything after it including going to his motel room and not coming out of it until the following morning.

She'd assumed when she'd heard that, when she'd asked what was worse than having pirates board their boat, she'd assumed that he'd been in there for general thievery. Not on purpose. Who the hell went into a hellish prison on purpose? Clearly Nathan Drake.

Thinking back on the mention of his age, the stark contrast of their lives at that point was startling. Elena had never known this part of his past. She had always thought he'd found Sully while he'd been on the streets, been taken in at a young age. That part was true. But while he was twenty-two and in and out of prison, she was but a freshman in college in the middle of her courses and working towards a degree in journalism, working a typical waitress job on the side.

They'd had completely opposite upbringings. It had to be by fluke that they'd come together as they had in the beginning, all those years back.

Funny how fate worked.

Everything he was telling her, most of it was of what she'd read in his mother's journal, particularly Henry Avery, the heist. ]

Nate—

[ Here was where she felt like he'd thrown a punch to her gut, wind knocked from her. Neither of them were strangers to death. They'd done their fair share of killing as well. She stares at him, stunned. Her eyes drop to the picture, taking in the two boys, gaze lingering on Sam.

Softly, ]

I'm so sorry.

[ Dammit, apologizing, that feels like all she can do while she lets him tell his story. It now all comes together, why he'd reacted the way he had. Elena doesn't blame him for having kept this tucked away, for not wanting to share it with her. This past was too painful to have to relive.

A hand reaches out then for his, brushing his knee first. ]

Stop, you don't have to say anything else.

[He's sitting still, no nervous tics, controlling himself because it's the only way to get through this story. But when he feels her hand reaching out, he's quick to grasp it tightly, almost painfully so.]

I do. It's all right.

[There's no need to share every detail, sure, but after getting this out, he's not going to push it back into the dark, with the only difference being that now she knows there's all this stuff he's keeping quiet about. It's all or nothing, there's no halfway, he thinks.]

I was never trying to keep this a secret from you, I just don't talk about Sam with anyone. After he died, I stopped working with anyone we'd teamed with before. Sully's the only one who knows I ever had a brother.

[There's some guilt in that, because if anyone should know about his family, his wife should, but the difference is that Sully had been there. He'd seen it firsthand.]

They didn't have the same kind of relationship—actually, they didn't get along that well. Sam was already an adult, he didn't need a mentor and a friend like I did. Sully never mentions him now because he was following my lead. I just...I just couldn't.

[ Elena can't be mad about not knowing, about Sully being the only one who'd known. She isn't. Sully had been around way longer than her, it also wouldn't be his place to reveal this knowledge when it was Nate's.

Her hand squeezes. ]

If I'd known... [ Her gaze lowers to the journal on his lap, brows knitting. Yep, feeling like a total ass right about now. ] This whole time, it wasn't about Drake...

[ He just didn't want her to know. About Sam. About his dead mother. About the skeletons tucked away deep in his closet. ]

Not this time, no.

[It would be a lie to say it never has been. Sir Francis Drake has played a very real role in the breakdown of their marriage, but when it comes to the journal, its contents could have focused on just about anyone.]

My mom used to keep journals like this all the time, about all sorts of things, but this was the only one we got back after my dad sold them. [Lord, what a night that had been.] And this is the only picture of Sam that I have.

I never look at either of them, but I've never been able to throw them away, either—back home, they're in storage somewhere.

Your journals follow the same structure as hers, I've noticed. The notes and clips taped inside. The drawings...

[ He inherited quite the skill. His drawings had come as a surprise at first but that was his way of creating memories, the same way she captured moments through photography. ]

If she had more, have you ever considered looking for them?

[ They had enough artifacts they could sell to make up for whatever costs would come with buying them back. Then he could have more of his mother than just one measly, sad journal. The journal that had started it all.

Boy is she glad she'd never gone through all of his boxes to throw things out. After he'd left, weeks after, Elena had grown sick of seeing his items cluttering rooms. It depressed her, she couldn't stand having him around without him physically there. She'd stashed most of it on the top shelf in the closet, far out of reach and far out of sight. She'd been tempted to put it all out on the curb, leave a note that said 'FREE'. Or throw it all out or ship it to Key West where she knew he was staying with Sully.

To think this book had been there the entire time, hidden away. ]

Rather than commit yourself to finding more of Francis Drake, why didn't you look for your mother's belongings?

[ It wasn't accusing. It was something, in her mind, that should've taken precedence. ]

[He'd been aware that the habit of journaling was something they had in common, but he'd never stopped to compare the details of how his record-keeping compared with his mother's. The thought makes him smile. It's nice to think that he followed in these specific footsteps.]

I wouldn't know where to start. The woman who bought them was kind of a collector—turns out mom actually used to work for her, before she got sick. [To use a euphemism.] But she died pretty soon after we got this one back, and all her things are probably scattered to the winds by now. I don't even know if anyone else would have thought the journals were important enough to sell.

[It's theoretically possible. He could trace the journals, track their path, find out where they might be now and who has them and offer more money than their contents are worth for the value of what they mean to him.

But there have always been other avenues to pursue. Another exciting discovery, another enticing mystery. He likes to think that his mother would have understood the lure of adventure.]

Plus I was twelve. Sam would have gotten arrested for sure if anyone caught us, and sniffing after family things would be the fastest way to make that happen.

It always felt more like we were honoring her in doing what she did than in gathering her things, anyway. Building on her ideas, making discoveries of our own. Aside from the occasionally going to jail part, it felt like a pretty good life.

[ Her thumb strokes along the side of his hand. ]

She would've been proud of you, Nate. For everything you've done up to this point.

[ She was referring to the discoveries he'd made in his time, discoveries that were making his name kind of a legend. Slowly but surely. And while Elena didn't know the woman, she feels like his mother would've been proud of everything else like any other mother would be: finding a partner, getting married, settling down, trying to make the most of life. Minus the estrangement, of course. ]

We won't talk about your father. He sounds like a bit of shitlord to begin with, and he'd lost his right after giving you up.

[ It couldn't have been that hard to tend to two boys. Abandoning them, to Elena, it sounded like the man didn't want the responsibility. It couldn't have been pinned on heartbreak and grief over losing his wife to some illness, or could it have been pinned on the fact that the two boys reminded the man of his late wife that it was just too much?

They'll never know.

But hey, shitlord. ]

[The frank (and entirely accurate) comment about his father actually makes him laugh, which is not something he ever expected to happen in this conversation. But of course, Elena is always surprising him. Always making things better somehow, even when it's how he'd think she would.]

He really was. Who does that, right? The least he could have done is toss us into the foster system instead of letting us end up in a Catholic orphanage. We had to deal with nuns.

[It's a joke, a way of downplaying something that's serious, making something funny out of entirely unfunny circumstances. It might actually be better that they ended up where they did—at least they'd been together, until Sam made one too many mistakes in the sisters' eyes, and hey, he got some language skills out of it.]

If I met him today, I don't even know that I would recognize him, but I don't care. I've got Sully now.

[Best friend and family, rolled up in one.]

I used to get in fights with the other boys a lot, as you can see. [His finger traces over the black eye in the Polaroid.] When they'd talk shit about my family, or try to take my books. The sisters thought I was taking the same path straight to Hell that Sam had gone down. Probably weren't too wrong. I kept sneaking out anyway when he'd come to visit and one time...I just never went back.

Edited 2016-08-02 17:06 (UTC)

Nuns can't be bad, Nate. They're holy, remember.

[ His laughter brings out a smile. She squeezes his hand. He has a point about his father, what kind of parent does that? It saddens her to think that some parents think of their children as pets they can toss to the side of the road when they get to be too much responsibility. It's sickening, disheartening. And it brings about the stray thought of how Nathan might be should they ever have children of their own, how he would never be like his father. He wouldn't abandon them.

A Catholic orphanage, that was the last place she ever imagined Nate being. Even as a kid. ]

All this time... You've been holding all of that inside. I don't blame you, really, I don't. I can't.

You lost so much over the course of your life.

[ You almost lost me. But she doesn't say it out loud. Elena just looks down at her hand holding his, thumb brushing over the new ring she'd bought to replace his lost one. ]

That day you...came by and saw the journal, the day we fought. I really had no idea. I just saw 'Drake'. I saw his name and I... I got so scared, Nate.

It's stupid, thinking a dead man could come into our lives, like a curse, wreck what happiness we'd found, finally after everything. But it was more than that.

[ Her hand began to draw away, loosening to slip out from under his. Humiliation was what she felt, she felt stupid. Latching on to the one thing that had caused them so much grief, had caused her grief, only to find out it was but a small piece to a much bigger picture that he was letting her see only now.

All this time he'd been hurting for his own reasons, haunted by something that had been with him since day one. God, her insecurities and feelings felt insignificant and small compared to his.

It was a lot to take in, she knew she would be thinking about it a lot from now on. Being more conscious of what she said, hopefully not letting her own emotions get the best of her when she now knew he'd been hurting worse than her with the loss of his entire family, being faced with them and their memory all over again. ]

[Holy. Right. They certainly had a divine ability to intimidate the shit out of a child, for sure, at least until he grew up enough to get into even more trouble instead of being cowed into reasonably good behavior.

He goes quiet when she talks about what he's lost. She's not wrong, but he doesn't tend to think about it in that way. It's just not in his nature to look back and focus on what's gone instead of looking to the future and the next thing it holds. But that's less innate optimism than it is hiding, running away from the things that hurt and hiding from the things that frighten him.

There's a reason he's been the one to walk away from most of his relationships before Elena. There's a reason he was the one to walk out after they got married.]

That's the thing. It's not so stupid. It happened once before, didn't it?

[He sighs and leans forward, shoulders stooped by the weight of his thoughts.]

And it's not like I was any better. I saw it, recognized it, and thought...I don't know, that you were looking into my past, trying to learn more about me without telling me? When you couldn't possibly have known what it meant to me, and even if you did, you'd have every right to!

[Both of them jumping to the worst conclusions possible. It wasn't just bad faith, it was no faith.]

You know...I didn't go on a bender because I saw my dead brother's picture and it upset me.

[ Her hands clasp in her lap, thumb rubbing over the other. She only nods, eyes downcast; it had happened before, it was kind of why he walked the first time, among other reasons. His secrets, her pushing to understand, her calling him out on his shit, their miscommunication.

God did they ever have terrible communication skills. The biggest flaw of their marriage, being unable to communicate properly, hers especially.

Elena doesn't speak. Their foundation is so broken up it's a wonder, to her, that they're still standing. Not as strongly as they should be but they are. ]

Then why?

[ That seemed the more plausible reason to her. Get slammed with old mementos, drink self to sleep to ward off the grief and pain, suffer the worst hangover known to mankind the following morning. Rinse and repeat. ]

I went to drink myself into oblivion because of what it meant for us. You and me.

[The realization that the road to recovery was a lot longer than they'd been willing to admit, much of it an uphill climb. And almost all of it because of him.]

Don't get me wrong, it hurt like hell to see the journal and the picture out of nowhere. But the grief isn't new; I've dealt with it for a long time.

[It's not that he's necessarily found peace with either of his big losses; he's not sure that's really possible. But he was a small boy when his mother died, and he's lived much longer without her than with her. It's not nearly so easy to face Sam's death, but even then it's been more than ten years, and the pain isn't quite so sharp. He doesn't think about it every day.]

But what does it say about us, that this happens and we both go to pieces? I think the worst of you, you think the worst of me. At least you had the real excuse of not knowing what it is you had.

Sure, in space there's no way I could go running off to solve another Francis Drake mystery, assuming one even exists—and it doesn't, as far as I know—but why should you have believed that I wouldn't want to? You didn't trust me, but that's because I never gave you reason to!

[His voice is growing more agitated, his face pinched with distress. How could they have not seen it coming? It was inevitable. If it hadn't been the journal that set them off, it would have been something else. He was a blind idiot when he walked out on their marriage, and in some ways that hasn't changed, even after Yemen.]

We've both been acting like everything's been fixed since we've been here, but it's not. We were kidding ourselves—we never talked about our problems, and this is the result.

[ This room no longer felt like a safe space to be in. These rooms felt more like they were designed to run away from harsh realities, to use them to take a step back, to hide and not face the problems awaiting them. Elena shifts uncomfortably in her chair, nails digging in against her palm.

Everything he's saying, he's right. They were doing exactly that— they'd been running. It was easier to pretend none of the problems they had back home existed up here. ]

What was there to talk about? Anytime I tried to get you to talk back home, you kept pushing me away. You would get more and more angry each time I pushed. I only wanted to understand, Nate.

I wanted to understand why you were shutting me out. Why you were coming home late. Why you were always late for dinner. Why you... Why you slept on the far end of the bed. Why it felt like...like you weren't even there in the rare occasion of sex.

I'd lost you; I hated myself for thinking I wasn't good enough or I wasn't doing enough of something. I even thought, when things were really low between us, that there was someone else. I hated you for pushing me into that corner and for making me feel so alone for so long.

[ That wasn't what marriage was supposed to be about.

Her heels dig into the ground as she hugs her arms against herself, and she gives a small push, the chair scraping back. Distance. Even a tiny amount. This isn't something she wants to to talk about because it puts her in a vulnerable position, strips down all the walls she'd put back up when it all fell to shit, but they need to, and it's going to get ugly. ]

But if I had an "excuse", what was yours? I've been trying for months— months— to figure it out.

I think you owe me at least that much.

[It feels perversely good to hear her start to unload on him, open up to reveal everything she'd felt when he was, essentially, already gone, before he actually walked away. Nate hates that he did this to her, hates that he ever hurt her and placed the blame anywhere but on his shoulders, but he's glad that it's out now. Otherwise it was just going to fester.]

I do.

[He looks her straight in the eye, holds her gaze for a long moment so she knows he's not shying away, he's going to deal with the painful things for once in his life instead of running again.]

When we found each other here, that time we talked on the beach, I couldn't find the words to explain. I'm still not sure I can, but it's about time I tried.

It was never anything you did or didn't do. It was all me, who I was trying to be. Who I thought I had to be. [He lets out a heavy sigh.] You know...it'd be real easy to blame it on the things that happened to me in the past. Formative experiences and all. But that's bullshit.

[He picks up the journal again, gives it a glance, and sets it aside.]

Nathan Morgan was just a kid nobody wanted. Nathan Drake at least had someone to look up to, but even that changed over time. I started out inspired by my mother, but over the years I began trying to live up to Francis Drake's legacy instead, doing what I thought made me worthy of the name. Even when things got heavy, like when I tried to back out of going after El Dorado, at least it was me who'd made it that far on my own. No one else did. I was his heir.

Then I fell in love with you and all that didn't matter so much. And when I started to let go, I realized I had no idea who I was supposed to be without it. I panicked.

[ She remembers the beach talk, she remembers telling him that he could tell her when he was ready. When he figured things out for himself, at his own pace. This didn't feel like it was his own pace, it felt as though the recent events of almost losing her had pushed him to buckle in; time wasn't on their side, not in such an unstable and unpredictable world as this one. ]

You panicked because you were having an identity crisis. You were born as Nathan Morgan but why be that kid when you could be someone greater.

[ Slowly her arms unfold and her hands rest on her lap. She chews the inside of her cheek for a moment as she mulls it over, everything he was saying. ]

Your mother was still someone you could look up to, Nate. Both of these figures in your life, they were ghosts of something greater. What stopped you from living up to your mother's legacy besides Drake?

You still carry the birth name 'Morgan'; she's a historian, she could be well known.

[It's a relief when saying these things doesn't appear to make matters worse, hurt her more, because god knows it hurts to say. Mainly because looking back, it's so clear that he's been a fool the whole time.]

See, you say it like that and it sounds so logical. But it wasn't about logic.

[He gives her a faint, passing smile.]

She wasn't, though. People didn't take her seriously. Joke's on them—she was right about Drake faking his death, wasn't she?

[And the world will never know. One more reason to be sorry Elena's camera had been lost, even if they came away with something more important.]

I think maybe I wanted to feel like part of something, too, like I had this great destiny. And it was easier to compare myself to this famous explorer who I could learn so much about than a woman who died when I was four.

An identity crisis...sounds about right. Because I hadn't thought about Marlowe or Drake's astrolabe for years, and then it was like—okay, here's this last mystery of his, this is something I can solve. Like it would prove something when no one but me needed proof.

That's because I am all about the logical side of things. One of us has to be.

[ She'd given a sniff and a mutter; he hadn't insulted her, not by a long shot, it was just her way of thinking a lot of the time. It wasn't something she had to remind him about either. ]

Nate, although your mother died when you were young, that doesn't mean there isn't anything left to learn about her. Your mother's life wasn't meaningless, those people are idiots to not see her value. She'd made her accomplishments throughout it, and her biggest one was you. Her legacy still lives on.

In this day and age, it's so easy to track down family. I'm not saying we could track down your father but I am saying we could try your mother's mother, or maybe she had siblings. Friends or acquaintances.

[ They could hit up a library when they get back, see if she's mentioned anywhere. Cassandra Morgan, that was a name that would stay with her. The woman was like a whole other mystery unsolved, a life cut short. She was also part of the reason for why Nate was who he was, in some small measure. Her journal had helped shape him.

After a quiet moment on her end, Elena shakes her head, everything still gradually sinking in, slumping in the chair. An old habit that will never die out, she goes to touch her left ring finger, to twist the metal band around. But it's not there, she'd given it to him for safekeeping when her arm had been glass and she hadn't wanted to lose it.

Her hands go still over her lap instead. ]

I sit here and I think about it— really think about it— and I just... I can't believe this is the reason you walked out. You left everything behind, you left me behind, to find that end. And for what?

[ Loss, grief, estrangement? Breaking her trust? ]

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