Chapter Text
“You know, that picture is going to give us a lot of grief one day,” Nate said as he stepped away from the doorway and approached his wife, Elena. She couldn’t keep the laughter from bubbling through her, “Oh really? I wonder why.” Running her thumb pad gently over the image, Elena could almost smell the sea’s heavy scent from the picture’s ink. She loved this picture. It was one from their earliest glory days; she sat on top of some of the illegal splendors of El Dorado while Sully smoked a cigar to her right and a younger version of her cowboy husband balanced a shotgun on his shoulder to her left. The trio’s grins in the picture were contagious, and Elena couldn’t stop herself from mirroring their expressions in the present.
“Look at us,” she said with a creeping sense of nostalgia, “And look at you! You’re wearing that god-awful belt buckle—“
“Hey, I loved that thing. I lost it in a gunfight over in Nepal fighting against Lazarević’s goons.” Nate grabbed the picture for a closer look and couldn’t escape his wife’s scrutiny as he walked across the floor of his attic-slash-office. It wouldn’t have been the first time she’s caught his unguarded longing for the days where the pursuit for long lost treasure was his livelihood. She couldn’t remember the last time he talked about his adventures and misadventures with Victor “Goddamn” Sullivan, but she figured it was one of his weird and faulty defense mechanisms. She knew he was lucky enough now whenever Jameson sent him on a dive to recover one thing or another, but she still couldn’t help but feel bad. Although they aimed for normal after their wedding, she never thought it would be so damn hard to be good at it.
“Are you listening?”
“Hmm?” she answered sheepishly.
“And you say I’m a bad listener,” he teased as he rummaged through a box labeled ‘Sir Francis.’ When he found what he was looking for, he turned around and smiled triumphantly. In his hand he held Sir Francis Drake’s bullet-riddled journal. He waved it at her. “This baby’s bullet-proof, you know. It saved Sully’s life that one time in the Amazon—“
“After you ditched me and headed off to find El Dorado by yourself, right?”
Nate scoffed, “Yeah, because you were a reporter then! Besides, it all worked out, right?”
Elena rolled her eyes, “Sure, if you count me tracking you down and punching you in the face—“
“But, did you die?” Nate countered with a smile. His wife’s exasperated expression signaled his temporary victory as he took one long look at the image. Sure enough he, his wife, and Sully were smiling back at him with manic happiness as their younger selves leaned against their stolen riches. It was too easy to remember why a life of adventure enveloped him for so long. But before his mind could wander to the constant ‘what ifs’ of his life, he slid the picture between the pages of Sir Francis Drake’s old journal.
This whole attic-turned-office space was filled with memories of success, failures, and everything in between. He kept it all up here when he worked. There were days where he could even fool himself into pretending that he never stopped. It probably didn't help that he kept a toy gun at reach for his occasional trigger-happy urges, but it was all a work in progress.
After all, his days of adventure were over.
One look at his wife, and he remembered the dishes waiting for him in the kitchen sink. It may not be much in the way of adventure, but it was their normal.
He promised.