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Was it just an ordinary part of every adult's life to look back and think, man, my childhood was really fucked up?
Because Sam sure did. Sometimes he looked back and wondered what kept him going all those years while he was taking care of Nathan. He knew his motivation now; to continue their mother's legacy through the Drake name. But before they found her book, what kept him alive?
He wondered that a lot. He wondered about a lot of things. Whether he made the right call, plucking his little brother from his life in the orphanage into a life on the streets. If he listened to Nathan's problems enough, fed him the right stuff, messed him up along the way. There was a lot of thinking along with a lot of worrying. Second thoughts and what-ifs and reminiscing of old mistakes. Stupid stuff like that.
Prison gave you a lot of time to wonder, turns out. You got through the initial orientation and adjustment period to the jumpsuits that were too tight in certain places and the cellmates who were just as buff and angry as any prison show would suggest, and then there was this glaring what now? He assumed prison would have its difficulties, but he never anticipated how boring it would be. The days blurred into weeks and then months and then years, and still time seemed to drag. So he let his thoughts wander and wander some more. After all, he had all the time in the world to do so.
His mattress was so firm he might as well have slept on the stone ground, and guards patrolled hallways lit with flickering lights and that's when Sam would mull over, for the hundredth time, that there was even the daintiest chance Nathan didn't make it out alive. How many guards were there again? Not to mention he had just watched Sam “die.” Maybe he wasn't thinking clearly. Maybe he didn't notice he was hit. Maybe -
Or maybe he did survive the prison breakout, but…fifteen years.
Fifteen years.
How much was fifteen years?
Fifteen years almost covered Sam's life before what happened with Evelyn. His youth, Mom's suicide, Dad being a drunk asshole, stained mattresses and crumbling plaster and microwave meals and shielding his brother with his goddamn body if he had to. Fifteen was how old Nathan was when Sam landed in jail for the first time - the first of many. Fifteen years was a lot.
Fifteen years until he'd see his brother again. Thirteen until Rafe would get him out.
For all he knew Nathan could've died a week after Sam was shot and he'd be blind to it all. And there was nothing he could do about it, because Nathan sure wasn't getting him out of there anytime soon, dead or not. So he lied on his back and watched the ceiling and wondered.
It was all he could do.
Well, that and…
There was one thing that kept him going in those years, more than the what-ifs and second thoughts and worries and wonders.
It was that little white book, that legacy. His mother's legacy, continued by Sam and Nathan.
That was what got him to sleep, what woke him up in the morning. The thing that healed him from battered prison riots and cruel punishments from prison guards, every cut and bruise and broken bone.
He lived and breathed for this legacy. So long as he was alive, he fought every second for the chance to get out and live it.
It was all he had. Nathan was all he had.
The most powerful man in prison was the one who still had one thing left to fight for.
How could he ever forget that night?
Nathan was twelve, and they'd run away. Not just from home this time, but from the orphanage, from what little sense of normality they’d managed to uphold since the beginning. He’d plastered on a cheeky grin, lifting his shoulders high and trying not to shiver against the autumn wind that had already begun to punish him for passing his only jacket to his little brother. He had 20, maybe 30 dollars in his pockets, his motorcycle was running low on gas and even though the thing had happened hours ago, they still hid when they heard police sirens. Nathan was freezing. They were both hungry, they were without money and without hope, and they’d run away.
He watched Nathan closely, keeping an eye out for any change of mood, but his brother seemed the same, exhausted and nervous but otherwise optimistic. He’d always been hard to read, and this was no exception, but his at least semi-high spirit had to count for something. Maybe there was a part of him that hadn't quite registered how dire the circumstances were. Maybe there was a part of Sam that hadn't, either.
They spent their first night in an alley, in an abandoned car that Sam assured him would be warmer than it looked on the outside. It wasn't too bad, to be completely honest, but he knew his brother better than he knew himself and he could practically feel the anxiety and the dread radiating off him. Not for the first time, Sam wished he could take away all of it; the pain, the suffering, the guilt.
He knew he blamed himself for it, what happened to the woman in that house. He’d tried to make out the right words since they escaped - it wasn’t your fault - but speaking was more difficult than normal somehow. And speaking was always very, very hard.
They had watched that woman die. Evelyn. He never anticipated how seeing death would affect him. He still felt nauseous thinking about her, even though it wasn’t his fault. Not really. Maybe a little. Sorta.
They had found their mother's journal and that's when she appeared, a gun-wielding elderly woman with nothing left to lose. And before Sam could even think about hesitating he had closed the space between his brother and Evelyn's gun, moving in front of Nathan and talking her down with courage he didn’t feel. And eventually she told them all about it, their mother's unfinished work, a golden opportunity sitting in plain sight, and then she crumpled to the ground (that image would be burned into Sam's skull for a long, long time) and they ran from the law without knowing the kind of chain reaction it sparked, a single domino falling onto a lifetime of separate heartbreaks and tragedies. And then they were homeless and alone, their only hope being the white book Nathan held onto with his life.
Sam felt like the worst brother in the world for countless reasons, one being that his occasional checking up on his brother had begun to lessen. Like at the orphanage, Sam had made it a point to ask Nathan how he was doing every now and then, if he was cold or hungry or tired or just needed to talk, until other priorities won his attention and he felt that awareness of his brother slipping away. Often he'd find Nathan shivering against the wind or with his arms pressed against his stomach to quiet the grumbling and think, how did I miss this?
He was never the best with communicating with Nathan, but he tried his very best. Words always seemed to be frozen in his lungs, swollen, trapped in the space between his heart and his mouth. It was undeniably a side-effect of their upbringing, which he tried to ignore. The circumstances didn't really leave enough the time or energy to deal with all of that. Even the words I love you were impossible to say, even if they were true.
In the first week they ate a late dinner in an empty Subway and Nathan was quieter than he had been every other day.
“This place good enough for you?”
Are you eating enough? You have to tell me.
“If you need something, let me know.”
It is my responsibility to take care of you and I'll do anything to not mess that up.
“Don't think about what happened.”
It. Wasn't. Your. Fault.
Nathan responded to Sam's prodding with minimal effort and Sam had to leave it at that.
In the second week Nathan was still quiet, but he seemed hopeful. And that was enough, for now. Because as much as Sam wanted to feel comfortable carrying the weight of their situation on his shoulders, he was still seventeen. His brother's optimism made all the difference.
Some days were worse than others.
It was on the nights when they settled into their temporary resting place, whether that be an abandoned car or a cheap motel or something worse, the nights when Nathan dozed off and a too-anxious-to-sleep Sam was left alone with nothing more than his thoughts, it was those nights when he felt the very most like a failure. He wished he had a book or something. The Complete Encyclopedia On How To Take Care Of Your Brother Whose Innocence Has Been Damaged Enough. Or maybe Parenting For Ethically Questionable Teens. Something with pictures.
But he was trying, right? That was all that mattered, right? He was doing better than his father, not that that was saying much. Would his mother be proud? Was she watching over them? Nathan caught a cold a week in and looked like a skeleton the next, Sam’s jacket hung off him like a blanket draped over his shoulders and the tears in his eyes just barely didn't fall, but he was trying, right? Right?
Eventually he found a semi-stable job, and with it came an apartment, and he could sit and complain all day, but that apartment, for what it was, was a gift from God. A home for Nathan and himself, a source of income, a way to put food on the table, all of it was more than he could've asked for.
They had to set aside Mom's book for awhile, but as soon as they could they started investigating, taking trips to the library where they sat for hours. It was both thrilling and fulfilling, that feeling that they were doing something that would make her proud. And they were doing well. Extremely well.
Until the first of many trips to jail backtracked them yet again. And that was that.
At some point you adjusted to life in prison. Sam was no exception. So the last thing he expected was, thirteen years, 4,000 odd days later, for Rafe fucking Adler to waltz through and bust him out. Just like that.
He went through the standard procedure, but it didn't fully hit him until sunlight hit his face for the first time. Well, not for the first time - the prisoners got time outside - but it felt like a different type of sunlight, somehow. So he was scatterbrained like an idiot until he took his first step outside the prison walls and thought holy shit, I actually made it.
And - God - freedom was a prisoner's dream. Sam probably fantasized about it over the course of every single day. The length of the roads, the endlessness of the seas, the way the air and the grass smelled. The stars at night. The beauty of unimaginable life and growth and fullness. And yet...walking out the gates with Rafe, he didn't know how to feel. How to react. It was almost anticlimactic in a way. His legs were lead and he was dumbfounded at the concept of freedom that was no longer a concept, but a physical presence that was surrounding him like a straightjacket, ever tightening. His body ached with the need to run, to explore whatever could realistically be explored in a prison parking lot, but his heart was somewhere else and instead he walked to Rafe’s car.
Maybe it had something to do with the fact that it was Rafe Adler. Sam had initially been totally fine with the idea of Rafe getting him out. He'd accept practically anyone. But, he thought as he pressed his cheek against the window of the car - he couldn't deny there was a tinge of disappointment that it wasn't his brother there to greet him. That feeling only grew and grew throughout the journey, a bubble of nausea in the pit of his stomach.
Why Rafe? Why not Nathan? Did Nathan not have the resources, or did he forget about Sam that quickly? No, don't be ridiculous, he would never do that. But maybe he'd moved on. Did he even know Sam was alive? Had he been haunted by Sam's supposed death this entire time? Who was taking care of him?
And then the bubble exploded into mounting anger and sorrow and frustration, the bitter unfairness of it all eating away at him. It shouldn't have been Rafe. It should have been Nathan and Nathan only. All of this was about Nathan.
And then Rafe offered to help him find Avery's treasure and as much as he immediately wanted to be turned off of that idea, it just seemed too good. Too ideal. And before he knew it he was jumping from here to there, exploring all over the world, and Sam was anxious to finally manipulate his new freedom.
But still, the straightjacket tightened.
So, Panama was the metal cage and Rafe was the golden one. So much for freedom.
Nathan Drake was a legend.
Rafe had told him his brother was alive. He had no idea where he was or what his life had come to, he had said, but Nathan was alive. Alive and well and more-or-less retired. It was just the blessing he needed.
But Sam didn't expect this in a million years. After leaving Rafe, he started calling up old contacts, saying Hey, it's a long-shot, but do you remember my brother? And they'd say, Are you kidding? How could I forget?
El Dorado. El Dorado. His little brother found El Dorado in Panama, the very place Sam was hidden for so many years. He found Shambhala, the mythical golden city, and the fabled Cintamani Stone. The Tree of Life. Iram of the Pillars, tucked into the crevices of the Rub’ al Khali desert. He fought countless mercenaries, discovered ice temples in the Himalayas, trekked through the catacombs of France. He was a legend. His little brother, who he still saw as a scrawny twelve-year-old in an oversized jean jacket. A legend.
The wind was knocked out of him. Sam tried to make sense of it all, the stories recounted in vivid detail in each dramatic phone call, stories of heroic conquests and gut-shot train escapades and crumbling desert cities and piles of gold. And only one ever present thought remained throughout it all.
He did it all without you.
And obviously, because Sam had been dead.
But...still.
He did it all without you.
And yes, of course, he saw potential in him. He always did. So much potential.
But wow.
New Orleans, huh? Out of all the places in the world, his brother got landed in New Orleans. Well, maybe St. Charles Avenue was worth checking out. Maybe you'd even find a cool coin.
At first it seemed odd, finding him in such an ordinary environment. But it sort of made sense. After years and years of adventure, sometimes you needed a place like that to rest for awhile. Somewhere quiet. Not that Sam could relate, being robbed of his choice to live his life the way the way he wanted to the same moment three stray bullets found their way into his back.
Sam was terrified to face Nathan after so many years. His brother had grown up without him, continued his adventures without him. Judging by the stories, there was no mention of Henry Avery, meaning the offer was most likely still on the table, but Rafe did say Nathan was retired. Would he come back to such a life so easily? Would he make an exception after finding out Sam was miraculously alive?
He tracked down some deep-sea diving company and that's when it halfway hit him, the legitimacy of this whole thing. The similar tingle he always used to get in his treasure hunting days, the moment he realized something he had been working tirelessly towards was just barely out of reach. But it wasn't until he'd knocked on the office door and heard an annoyed “we're not open yet” that he fully realized he was about to see his brother.
Fifteen years.
He felt a pang of fear for a moment, like he missed out on planning a speech. He didn't bring notecards. He wasn't prepared for this.
The door opened and…
It took a brief moment for Sam to recognize him - fifteen years past and in prison, no less, didn't do a lot to help a person's memory - but wow, he looked the same. Minus the greying in his hair and the crow's feet wrinkles cornering his eyes, it was as if no time had passed at all.
But God, so much had.
Nathan's eyes widened in shock and Sam cracked out a few stupid jokes before his brother rushed towards him and threw his arms around him. Time slowed down and Sam's eyes started to prickle.
“Oh my god, Sam.”
Sam hugged him back just as tight.
“The engagement ring...I'm married!”
And just like that, all of Sam's plans went down the drain.
He had spent hours catching up with his brother, and even after hearing his entire life story already, he much preferred hearing it from Nathan's perspective. It somehow felt both strange and normal at once, catching up like they were old friends. As the deep blue sky turned pink and morning dew and choruses of birds signaled the start of a new day, Sam tried to prepare his preposition in his head, that he knew Nathan was retired but what he wanted more than anything was to find Avery's treasure with him. And then he dropped a bomb on him that instantly reversed everything.
He heard countless stories about his brother, but not one of them contained a wife. He didn't plan for this in the slightest, for him to have a family.
There was no way Nathan would leave a life like this behind. Domesticity. There was no way he would drop everything to help Sam fulfill a goal they made twenty-five years ago.
He had mastered the craft of internalizing his feelings rather than showing them on his face, but Sam shivered against a wind that wasn't there as the full force of his reality closed in on him, that the legacy he had thought about every single day for nearly half his life, the legacy that kept him alive not just in prison, but every faltering moment before that, was no longer possible. His brother and this legacy were the only two things that have ever mattered to him, and he felt them both slipping through his fingers.
And then in a split second Sam spun up a lie (he was always great at that), some story about a debt involving Hector Alcázar (the first damned name he thought of, nevermind that it made no sense). He probably spoke like an idiot, the details only filling themselves in as he spoke, and yet Nathan believed it. He believed every word.
Nathan believed him and Sam didn't know how he felt about that.
Sam swore he was the older brother, but that was apparently not the case anymore.
Nathan had looked older when he first saw him - obviously - but he clearly aged in more ways than one. He was taking fewer risks, making less stupid jokes. His immaturity and childishness seemed to have evaporated entirely. He just seemed like a married guy. A guy with something to lose.
They got through Italy, including a reasonably easy reunion with Victor. Even though he wouldn't admit it, he could see that his previous feud with the man was childish. As a teenager and young adult, he used to hate the way Victor raised Nathan, the way he put a gun in his hands at fifteen and essentially made him into a child thief. And yeah, maybe Sam would've taught him that stuff anyway, but he would've done it on his own terms. He hated the way his parenting skills were challenged. But now, looking back on it, Sam realized that Victor took care of him. Whenever Sam was in jail, Victor took his brother in, fed him and gave him clean clothes and food and shelter. He led him in a good enough direction. And when Sam died…
Victor watched over him, and Sam's gratitude for that was unconditional. Eternal.
And all of this was exchanged through a nod of his head.
After Italy, Sam and Nathan went through Scotland, and the lost time began to make itself obvious. Sam would suggest a rather unsafe route over piles of rocks or between mountains and Nathan would shake his head and say “let's find another way.” Sam would think over solutions to problems or theories and Nathan would pull a journal out (Sam had never bothered with one of those) and pick one out in an instant. Sometimes Sam would lag behind or get his details mixed up or find himself actually trying to catch his breath. He had blisters on his palms instead of calluses.
He wanted to feel exhilarated to be hunting down Avery's treasure, but instead he just felt awkward, like it could be found easily without him in the picture. And though he couldn't express his happiness to be with Nathan again, he couldn't deny how seeing him as a grown adult made him feel. It made him feel older and younger at the same time. Maybe he hadn't fully articulated just how much time he had lost.
Or maybe it was still early on in their hunt, and after things had settled he would start to feel more comfortable in this life. The treasure would feel like an accomplishment instead of an overwhelming need. After they found something worth finding, it would all become clearer.
He had to hope.
Avery's treasure always seemed to be just out of reach.
He was chasing it with every stubborn bone in his body but dear old Henry Avery was three steps ahead of them at every turn.
They found themselves in Madagascar, which led to a not-so-pleasant meeting of his sister-in-law, Elena. He assumed Nathan's wife would dislike him. In fact, he expected her to be every kind of uptight. But he didn't expect such a confrontational introduction. Though she definitely hated him, she didn't seem to possess any of the assumed qualities. Instead, he saw so much of Nathan in her. She was more sad than angry and that was somehow worse, like someone up above was deliberately piecing together the perfect scene to show Sam how he was destroying this family. The whole thing was so unbelievable it was almost funny, the irony of Nathan's wife finding them with so much ease in the exact place he was finally starting to think everything was gonna be okay.
He was chasing Avery's treasure, and he was chasing his lost time. Fifteen years of it, thirteen depending on what you considered lost time. Sam considered it any time he wasn't making his own choices, living his own life, any time he followed a path that was neither meaningful nor satisfying.
And yet he was also running. Not from Alcazár. But what?
Maybe his old mistakes that, even after all that thinking he did in his prison days, he still hadn't come to peace with. Maybe it was a combination of every bit of dread and anxiety that filled his head and heart every waking moment, convincing him that he had to find this one thing to make his life matter or it all would've been a waste.
And he would feel complete, right? He had to feel complete.
He was too close. He had to do this. He had to find meaning.
Or it all would have been for nothing.
“Getting treasures by a lying tongue is the fleeting fantasy of those who seek death.”
Proverbs 21:6.
He used to think he escaped from the orphanage, but no. The catholic school teachings always caught up to him, the endless hours of being beaten down with the same lectures and bible studies. Somehow Sister Catherine was still drilling guilt into his brain from beyond the grave.
He was standing next to his brother and Rafe was pointing a gun at them. They were on some cliff on the island they fought so hard to find and Sam's head drummed with pain from the force of Rafe punching him. It didn’t matter. Rafe was telling Nathan everything and it didn't matter, because he couldn't do a thing but stand and watch it unfold.
An unrecognizable amount of Shoreline soldiers faced them. More would be arriving any minute. With them, the finality of disaster. Rafe alternating between swinging his pistol towards him and his brother was a sealing of their fate. The distant rush of the river below them was suddenly very prominent as a silence that was far too loud formed an invisible cage around him. The air in his lungs turned to water.
He failed.
It was one of those moments when he wondered what the nuns would think if they saw them now. That Samuel, the problem child, the delinquent teenager who ran away as soon as he was old enough to, sinned his way to age 42 before getting shot on some remote island off the coast of Madagascar. Some plan God had for him.
“Nate.” Not Nathan. “Listen to me. Avery's treasure was ours, it was always ours -”
“No,” Nathan cut him off with a painful shove, “I left my life for you.”
And it all made sense, the crushing weight of his betrayal, and all at once Sam wished he could take it all back. Turn back the clock to when he first knocked on that office door. No, when he got out of prison in the first place, the start of a dirty alliance with Rafe that he should’ve known to regret instantly instead of when it was too late. He would turn back to that fateful day in Panama when he wasn’t quick enough to make it over the final hurdle and some anonymous prison guard decided to make it his last day on Earth. He would get down on his knees at this very moment and pray to the god he so often mocked if he thought it would help.
Instead he just stood with his heart falling deeper and deeper, Rafe laughing behind them and causing his blood to boil. None of it was fair. He hated himself and he hated Rafe and he hated every choice he had ever made that led him to this moment.
The treasure had never seemed so far off. The legacy, his dream, everything he had lived for, nothing. He failed and everything was worthless and it was all for nothing.
But...Nathan was still by his side.
He quietly stood by as he listened to his brother bargaining, defending Sam's life, and he couldn't tell if the weight of his guilt was lifting or worsening but he felt something. He didn’t deserve to be bargained for. He knew that.
“Face it Rafe, you need us.”
Rafe tilted his head to the side, weighing his options, before lowering his gun.
“You're right.”
A pause.
“You're half-right. I just need Sam.”
And before Sam could even think about hesitating he closed the space between his brother and Rafe's gun, running in front of Nathan and feeling the hot bullet rip through his shoulder with a surge of agony. It in no way made up for his mistakes but it was all he could do.
And he hoped it counted for something.
Sam awoke to dense smoke coating his lungs and a movie-esque sword fight playing out mere feet from him.
It took him a moment to come to, but when he did he took a deep breath, instantly feeling paralyzing pain shooting through his lungs. A grand wooden pillar from the ship pinned him to the floor, and he sucked in small, short breaths to try and dull some of the numbness in his head. He blinked through the haze and sweat in his eyes and saw Nathan frozen on the ground with Rafe towering over him, and he frantically searched for anything, anything, finding a third sword a few feet away that he managed to grab. He threw it over to his brother who used it to finish what they started all those years ago.
Sam wanted to laugh (and maybe he would've if his body wasn't being crushed). The irony. The golden coins littering the place, all of them just barely out of arm's reach. The piles of treasure coating every surface of what would inevitably be his place of demise. His downfall. It was funny, wasn't it? His past was finally catching up to him, and this was how he was gonna go. In the very place he fought so hard to be.
Fifteen years.
How much was fifteen years?
A surge of nausea rose in his throat at the sight of Rafe, or what was left of him. Somehow nothing about the gold and the riches seemed remotely appealing anymore. He didn’t know why it took him so long to see it.
Nathan rushed over to him. Sam couldn't find the words to tell him it was over. That everything had ended already.
“Hey, c'mon. Let's get you out of here.”
Nathan lifted the pillar. It didn't budge.
“I'm trying. It's too heavy.”
“Try again.”
Nathan lifted. It didn't budge.
“It's no use.”
“Try again!”
Nathan lifted the pillar and Sam reached out to him, trying to find a way to tell him that it was over, it was over, it was over.
“Listen to me, listen to me. All I ever wanted to do was find this treasure with you.”
You are the most important thing to me.
“Hey, hey, we did it. We did it, little brother, okay?”
This legacy was what made my life worth living.
“You gotta go. You gotta go.”
I'm not letting you die.
Nathan looked back and forth, searching for some way to delay the inevitable, but Sam breathed through the fog in his chest and tried to find peace in this place, his tomb.
They found Avery's treasure. It killed him, sure, but maybe that was alright. He found his brother again, fifteen years and still he found his brother again. And Nathan was going to get out of it alive. That was all that mattered.
He had Elena and he had Victor and he had a whole lifetime without Sam, a life to live without him messing it up along the way. A life without threats of death and hungry nights spent in alleyway cars and everything cold and dark and bleak. A life without Sam. A better life.
Sam always thought the heartless men on the streets were gonna be what killed him. Then it was the older kids in the detention centers, then the big guys in city jails. Then starvation or sickness or maybe the smoking. Death was at the end of every street, around every corner, he just kept making detours along the way.
His mother's legacy was his ray of hope. His salvation. It never would’ve crossed his mind that it would've been his end.
But it was okay. Because he got this far, and he saved his brother, and Nathan had probably salvaged something that would grant him and his wife financial stability. That was all he ever wanted, right? A normal life. The planet would keep turning and the sun would keep shining and everything would be okay despite the fact that it wasn’t.
But then Nathan, with his recklessness, his ridiculousness (and Sam knew in that moment that his little brother was the same, he hadn't truly grown up at all and he should've seen it from the start), grabbed a cannon out of nowhere and after a blaring explosion, water rose up and the brothers lifted the pillar off with ease. And this second chance filled Sam with something that felt like hope, or peace, and maybe Nathan wasn't ruined by Sam's mentoring after all. And maybe this wasn't meant to be his end, and fight was flooding his bones in a way that told him this isn't over. And maybe it would all make sense, become clearer later down the road.
He had to hope.
But nothing mattered except the fact that Nathan was safe, and Sam was, too.
They found a blessing worth finding.
“You are one crazy son of a bitch.”
I love you.
“Takes one to know one.”
I love you, too.