Part 1: From Small Beginnings
Victor Sullivan
What the hell did you get yourself into this time, Sullivan?
The kid may have agreed to tag along with him back to Sully's rental just on the outskirts of Cartagena, but one week in and he was beginning to realize he had his work cut out for him if he ever wanted Nate to start trusting him.
He'd been in this game for a long time now; knew ticks and warning signs of a troubled past. Nathan Drake wasn't an outwardly vulnerable kid, but Sully would have been blind if he missed the flickering shadow of that scared, famished little runaway hidden behind that carefully guarded look about him.
Nate had carved himself a spot in the armchair and would curl into a tight little ball, hunched over his journal, sketching idly with a steady hand, worrying at his bottom lip, and his eyes narrowed with that very same intensive concentration he displayed when rambling on about Drake. For all appearances, he was too absorbed in his work to notice the world around him, yet his attention would snap back into focus with every move Sully made, whether it be for his cigar or shuffling about the cramped space to prepare them something to eat.
Lately, he started to wonder what kind of teenager he found himself sheltering; brave with an unhealthy dose of paranoia, with an incredible mind for historical knowledge despite the feral-ness about him that could only have been developed from years of being on the streets.
That alone was an enigma. If Nate wasn't scarfing down his latest meal or dodging Sully's thinly-veiled queries – sometimes at the same time – he was an unstoppable motor-mouth. His face flushed from his giddy excitement as he flipped through the pages of his sketchbook, occasionally reaching up to tug at the ring resting at his chest, and, boy, he could talk.
Sir Francis Drake, his voyage through the East Indies, and, at the heart of it all, treasure just waiting to be found. He spewed off dates and historical knowledge like it was second nature, and sixteenth century Latin rolled off his tongue with ease. Sully watched him quietly through it all, marveling at the drastic change from the cagey guard Nate put up around himself to steadily shifting into a child lit up with wonder when he spoke of his ancestor.
Those moments were far and few in between. The rest of the time, he was belligerent as all get out, and it was made blatantly obvious any time Sully suggested it might be in their best interest if they left town, before Marlowe found them.
"She's gonna look high and low for you and that ring, kid," Sully uttered not for the first time.
Nate rolled his eyes, pressing the item of interest between his fingers almost protectively while his other hand clasped his journal to his chest. "Then leave. I'm not going anywhere."
No amount of prodding could budge the teen, and Sully found himself incapable of dropping this impossible partnership, even when there were many, many times at night where he lay awake, questioning if he was out of his goddamned mind for taking a kid into his care. It wasn't as though he knew the first thing about raising one, and then it would hit him all over again that, Holy shit, I've got a kid to look after.
That alone was enough to strike fear deep inside him. Was he planning on going that far with whatever this was? The idea of basically becoming someone's guardian made him want to burst out laughing and pour himself a drink, or five. He was sure, if it were up to Nate, he would be just as averse to the idea as Sully was.
The only thought keeping Sully from seriously reconsidering the shit-show he put himself in was the fear that if he left, would Marlowe's cronies find him? Kid wouldn't last long in her clutches.
"Nate," Sully tried again, "we can't stay here. I've got a job offer, and I can't teach you much if we're holed up in this place."
This place being one of his various rentals; Sully never kept his safehouses under the same name, and for once he was glad he was a paranoid asshole himself. Marlowe couldn't track them down here, not through any official means. But, eventually, their luck was going to run out.
Nate sent him a withering glare. "I told you-"
"Yea, yea, I can go whenever I want, but I'm not gonna walk out on you now." Nate had that same disbelieving look, like he'd learned everyone was a selfish crook, and Sully huffed a sigh. "You gotta give me somethin', kid. What's got you so tied down here?"
Nate's stubborn gaze remained glued on the note pages for lengthy pause, then with a little nod to himself he pushed out of the armchair and began packing his bag.
Sully pinched the bridge of his nose. Jesus, are teenagers always like this? "What the hell are you doin', Nate?"
The kid wouldn't look at him as he tucked his journals safely away – because apparently one wasn't enough – and the muttered response he provided did nothing to answer his question, "Packing."
Sully rolled his eyes skyward. "Yea. I can see that. Wanna tell me what for?"
"I'm staying."
An incredulous laugh burst from him, and he instantly regretted it when the kid's body posture locked up, and an injured look flashed across his face. "Why? What the hell do you wanna stay here so bad for, huh?" He gestured vaguely at the room around them. "You gonna go back to living on the street with the clothes on your back?"
Nate scowled up at him, but it seemed to do the trick in breaking down one of his many walls. "I'm not leaving. I-" He paused, probably to figure out how to phrase whatever he was about to say. "I've got business here."
Okay, that was progress. "And what kind of business would that be?" He prompted.
"I'm... waiting for someone." Nate's movements slowed down to a stop, and he tensed in that same way as back in the diner, after Sully saved him from Marlowe's men, ready to bolt at the drop of a hat.
"Kid," Sully sighed, "you've gotta move past the one-liners and tell me what the hell's going on if we're gonna be partners."
He bristled. "I've already got a partner," The kid snapped.
Sully paused. That, he hadn't expected, and suddenly he had the gut instinct he had to tread with caution, so he nodded carefully. "Alright. Okay." Goddamn plot thickens. "How about you introduce us, and we'll talk about it over lunch?" He suggested.
The kid's fingers fiddled with the strap of his bag, anguish engrained in the lines of his features. Sully could tell he was torn up about this, whatever it was, and it took an uncomfortably long time for Nate to find the words. "I can't," He murmured. "He's... he's in jail for four more months."
Sully let out a breath. There had been that nagging little thought that dragging Nate along with him would be complicated; nothing was ever that easy, anyway. He also knew that the kid hadn't been working all on his own; there was no way he travelled all this way without some sort of help – or some kind of blackmail, manipulation...
That begged the question – who the hell was this partner of his? Was continuing on like this worth all the trouble?
Sully shook his head. "And you want to be here when he gets out?"
Nate bobbed his head, shrinking down into a lost little boy in the middle of his living room, and Sully felt his jaded heart soften. "I owe him that," He said so quietly Sully almost couldn't even hear him.
"You wanna tell me who he is?" Sully asked, though he could guess what the answer was going to be. It came in the form of Nate staring down at the carpet, locked up in a tight ball of secrets, and he let out a sigh. Too many questions.
"Okay, then. Here's the deal. We're gettin' out of dodge." He raised his hand when the kid started to protest. "I'll teach you things I know for the next few months. That gives us plenty of time to get some dirt on Marlowe and her astrolabe. When your partner walks free, I'll bring you back here. Sound fair?" I'm your best bet at getting a lead on Katherine. Hell, I'm the best chance you got at stayin' alive.
Nate lifted his eyes off the ground. "Four months," he echoed uncertainly, "and then back to Cartagena?"
"That's the plan."
Nate gave a short nod and dropped his bag on the armchair cushion. "Okay."
Sully hid his relief by lighting his cigar and blowing a long stream of smoke across the room. "Halle-goddamn-lujah." He shot the kid a weary smile, feeling as though he'd just won some monumental battle. "Is it always gonna be this difficult with you?"
Nate gazed back at him searchingly, then smirked. "Probably."
~ ~ ~
They left Cartagena the following morning and Sully didn't bother looking back. This was how he preferred it; always on the move, with enough cash to carry a pack of cigars, have a drink in his hand, and fuel for his seaplane to reach his next destination. For the first time, he could relax, now that he was once again back up in the sky, comforted by the low rumble of the Hog Wild's engine. Something about being hundreds of feet up in the air put him at ease and, hell, it even seemed to do the kid some good. He was practically glued to the window and staring down at the world below them, eyes wide in childish wonderment.
"Where're we going?" Nate spoke up after some time, giving Sully the curtesy of the briefest of glances before he pressed his nose against the glass once again.
Sully smiled a little to himself. "One of my safehouses in Belize."
He refocused his gaze back on the clouds in front of them, losing himself in deep thought. Belize seemed reasonable enough. Going back to the United States was too risky for the time being, considering that he wasn't sure what Nate had in the way of a passport or identification. Sully would probably have to use his various webs of connections to get the kid paperwork to sneak him under the radar. Until then, Sully reasoned their best chances of going forward were to stay on the outskirts of the States.
Sully glanced over at him again. "Ever been on a plane before?" He winced at the obvious stab at conversation, but Nate seemed too oblivious to notice the awkward attempt.
"Nuh uh. Never."
Sully knew he had to be U.S. born, which meant Nate had worked his way from wherever he started, to the Mexican border, and from there all the way to Columbia. It was another goddamned mystery, and with it hovered that shadowed figure in the form of Nate's 'partner.'
He shoved that train of thought aside. He'd be patient.
To Nate, he uttered, "Maybe I'll teach you to pilot, one day. It's a good skill to have."
Nate merely gave a small shrug, and Sully had an inkling he knew what was eating away at the kid. He was worried about getting back to Cartagena, and the more commitments he made, the greater chance he'd have of missing the long-awaited day of his partner's release.
Sully left it well enough alone. Besides, deep conversations were best avoided, and that meant Sully came up dry of topics to talk about. He'd heard about Drake's voyage damned near a dozen times and Nate wouldn't give him further insight into either of his journals. He also couldn't pry into Nate's life; he'd been met with nothing but a cold look only a teenager could muster.
He drummed his fingers on the yoke of his plane, grasping for straws. "I ever tell you about the little barmaid in Lima?"
Nate's eyes slid away from the clouds passing by them to shoot him a dubious frown. "What?"
Sully outright grinned. "It wasn't that long after I left the Navy- well, more like I got booted-"
"Wait, you were in the military? How long?"
"I served a couple o' years before I got dishonorably discharged. Anyway, I met this barmaid from Lima..."
~ ~ ~
There wasn't much time for them to settle in at the rental; it was made explicitly clear that if he wanted to be the hired smuggler on this next job offer, Sully needed a plan up and running in the next two days. And he still had to tell the kid the news.
There wasn't much in the way of food in the cupboards, but Sully scrounged up something for them to eat, and the kid promptly dug into his meal with his nose buried in the pages of an old, tattered white journal. Sully had only ever seen glimpses of it, and, with the way Nate carefully kept it turned from him at all times, could easily guess whatever was inside of it was meant for only his eyes.
"Nate," Sully eventually prompted.
"Sullivan," Nate replied in his own surly way. No animosity. No resentment. Just his unique brand of teenaged obstinance.
"I've gotta talk to you." Relenting, Nate folded the book closed and gave him his full attention. "I've got this offer hangin' over my head. It's good money. Now, these things can get pretty hinky if the wrong people get involved. The way I see it, the only way you're ever gonna learn is if we-"
"I can handle it."
Sully chortled at his instantaneous bluff. No... not quite a bluff. Certainty. "Yea, I know, kid, but what you have to understand is that when these things go south, it goes quick. Now, I'm not expecting a gun fight..." He hoped Nate caught onto his drift. The last one didn't go too well.
Nate rolled his eyes. "Gettin' soft on me, old man?"
Sully outright grinned. "Not that old," He admonished. "Anyway. Just stick by me and you'll pick up a thing or two." Sully expected that to be the end of it...
No, actually, how could he be surprised when the kid pressed him for more?
"What's the job?"
"I don't know yet."
"Why?"
"Because they haven't told me."
"Who is it?"
"I'm pretty sure I'm working through a third party."
"Why're we doing it?"
"For the money. What else?"
"That's all you really care about?"
"Jesus, kid, I don't care much for the who's-it's and the what's-it's. Waste of time in my book. I get hired to steal some item of rarity or smuggle it out from under some aristocrat's nose and hand it off to another spoiled millionaire and I get paid for it. Are we clear on that?" By the withering look the kid shot him, Sully realized that those days of ignorant bliss may be coming to a screeching halt.
Nate picked delicately at the page edges, with his eyes set firmly on the journal's surface. Sully could see the question ready to burst from him at the seams, and, quite frankly, he was impressed the boy managed to hold back for as long as he did. "When're we getting the astrolabe?"
Sully sighed. Nate was predictable, if nothing else. "I don't know, kid."
The teenager across from him made a disgruntled face. "Yea, but-"
"She reached out to me, and I never found out much more than what she hired me for. I can't pin her down even if I wanted to, so how's about we put that aside for a while, huh?" Sully sent him a pointed frown. "We still don't know squat about her, unless that book of yours can somehow tell us what goin' on with the decoder." Nate's fingers curled protectively around it, and the petulant glower was a good enough warning that Sully was drifting too close. He brushed off the awkward pause. "'Sides, there's a lot for you to learn before we go poking at the hornet's nest."
Nate buried himself back into his journal, and Sully let loose a drawn-out sigh. Damned kid was going to give him a heart attack, he just knew it. There was this sort of hungry look about him, an obsession he just couldn't put to rest, and he desperately needed a distraction.
"You wanna play a round of poker?"
The wiry teen peered over at him suspiciously. "You think you stand a chance?"
"I am a crook, aren't I?"
"What're we playing for?"
"Hmm... I say loser does dishes."
Planning could wait just a little bit longer.
* * * * *
And here is Chapter 2, I hope you all enjoy the story so far!
Next Saturday I'll upload the third chapter. Technically this one and the next one flow right into each other, since they were originally the same chapter, but then I'd just be tempted to keep uploading.
I love Sully and Nate's dynamic so much, and there's a little part of me that wants to go back and keep writing scenes from the beginning, when they were first figuring out how to work together.
If you enjoyed this chapter, please leave a vote! Knowing that people are enjoying Uncharted Tails really helps with the inspiration to keep going.
~ Sic Parvis Magna