Chapter Text
Over the thirty-plus years of his life, Nathan Drake had been called many things. Some he was proud of, others he shrugged off with a joke or a flippant remark, while still others made him squirm at the unflattering truth behind it.
And then there was another category of titles with which he had reached a kind of emotional impasse, acknowledging that they weren't the healthiest ways of being, but nonetheless was who he was. To separate them from himself would be like trying to take the grain out of a piece of wood...
A low wheeze alerted Nate to the presence of a pair of guardians in the tunnel ahead, their breathing ragged and labored- sounding in a way he could only guess was a side effect of the tainted water coming off the Philosopher's stone. He slipped the flame thrower off his back and approached them stealthily, taking advantage of the deep shadow that clung to the underground labyrinth.
...Joining the ranks of that last category of titles were such things as Nate's impulsiveness. People had been warning him about his tendency toward precipitate action for as long as he could remember, and sure, it had gotten him in some binds, but just as often it had also been the start of his achievements. Thus, he had determined to live and let live when it came to that particular flaw...
A blast of flame roared from the dragon head-shaped muzzle of the archaic weapon and overtook the two Atlanteans, throwing them into a panic. In the scuffle, three Greek Fire grenades went rolling across the floor-miraculously intact- and were scooped up by Nate as he dodged past the smoldering soldiers and escaped down the hall. "You really thought this one out, didn'tcha?" he muttered as he ran down the uneven stone. "Locked yourself in a tunnel complex with a bunch of immortal guys who all want to kill you... no real idea where you are or where you're going... left all your friends behind." He stepped around a lava flow and it's half-enclosed resident. "Absolutely brilliant..."
...Another such attribute was his ever-present need to play the hero. Ever since he was little, Nate was keenly aware of the feeling of letting people down: his mother who committed suicide, though he was still too young when it happened to really understand it. His father, when he surrendered him to the state. The nuns at the St. Francis boy's home, who were always telling him he was a troublemaker and on the path to destruction. His older brother, dying- practically in his arms- as they escaped a Panamanian prison. It was that feeling of letting people down that often made him want to try so hard to prove himself.
Eyes scanning the gloom for any signs of enemies, Nate followed the tunnel as it began to slope sharply downward, all the while using the small cords tied around the necks of the grenades to hang the little stoneware spheres from his shoulder holsters. Though nothing could truly kill the immortal guardians of Atlantis, he found that Greek Fire was the most effective deterrent. The incendiary weapon disoriented them and often bought him a good half-minute or so to escape. It was unpleasant, but under the circumstances it would have to do.
...He sinned, he was a sinner. But, like his impulsiveness and hero complex, it was a part of what made him who he was. He helped people because he was a sinner with a heart. It always seemed to be the least he could do- a token gesture towards maintaining some universal balance. He cared about many people, even the ones he let down, and putting his neck on the line for them was a way he could prove that he cared. But at times he wondered if his heroics were to justify his own existence to himself, as much as to anyone else...
"Oh, crap!" Nate exclaimed when, at the bottom of the steep incline, he ran headlong into a mixed battalion of the League of Corinth and Qin dynasty warriors. A frantic and disorderly skirmish ensued where Nate's pistol blazed relentlessly as he fought to extricate himself from the fray and get far enough away to use a grenade. A spear point drove into the wall mere inches from his face, and Nate dropped and rolled as an armored Qin warrior attempted to hack him in half with a sword. Finally breaking free, Nate bolted down the hall while tossing a grenade over his shoulder. The guardians cried out in surprise, and the noise fell further and further behind as Nate ran to put distance between himself and the stunned garrison. Ducking through a door, he slammed his fist into the button to close it behind him and breathed an audible sigh of relief.
"Oh, thank god!" he panted as he walked away.
...Frustratingly, the universe was not rewarding his latest- and almost certainly last- good deed with any feelings of nobility. In fact, when he separated himself from his team and accepted his task as a suicide mission to save the world, he only felt like he was choosing the lesser of two evils. On the one hand, he could escape with his friends and go on to live another day, while letting free an unstoppable army to wreak havoc on the earth. On the other he could save the planet from an evil it would never even know about, while causing anyone who still cared about him both grief and anger over his insistence on being a hero- even if that group of people was only the four who had come to Atlantis with him.
In other words: he could shrug the sky off and go be a normal person for as long as it lasted, or bow to the crushing weight of responsibility and accept his ultimate fate to carry the heavens on his shoulders- no matter what the sacrifice.
"Hey, are those the stairs we came down to get to this hell-hole?" Chloe asked, pointing into the gloom.
Cutter squinted. "Looks that way."
Growling in frustration, Sully clenched his fist so tightly his knuckles turned white. "God-damn it!" he said, his mustache twitching in anger. "We've only gotten further away! There's no way we'll catch up to Nate now!"
Chloe cast a worried look at him, then at Cutter. "At least we know where we are now!" she said, keeping her tone as upbeat as possible under the circumstances. "We can find our way back to the shrine if nothing else, and from there we could follow Floki and Garnier's tracks."
"Don't forget, mate, that Nathan also has probably no clue where he is," Charlie offered as Sully continued to seethe. "It's going to take him some time to find those explosives."
Sully huffed. "Some kinda comfort that is- those guardian things could easily kill him before he ever gets there."
Chloe frowned. "Just try and stay positive Sully," she pleaded, her eyes shining as she looked at him. "Please?"
Sully furrowed his brows at her, his gaze grim but steady, then his shoulders slumped again as he heaved a long, slow sigh. "You're right," he muttered. "Let's keep going."
"Hey guys?" Molly, who had been strangely quiet since leaving Nate, asked the question haltingly, and the other three turned to look at her. "Do you hear that... that noise?"
In the silence that followed as the four inclined their ears to the tense hush of the tunnels, the unmistakable sound of clanging metal and raspy breathing could be heard making slow but steady progress in their direction. "It's the guardians," Chloe said. "They're heading for the surface!"
"If they get out, everything Nate's trying to do will be for nothing!" Cutter added.
Sully looked over his shoulder at the stairway leading up into the dark cavern above, and knew beyond that it was only a short distance to the very gates of Atlantis. The creases at the corners of his mouth deepened as his expression contorted into a scowl of determination, and as he slipped his revolver out of its holster Chloe couldn't help but think that he looked like he had aged about ten years in the last hour.
"Looks like this is where we make our last stand, boys and girls," he said as he pulled the hammer back on his gun. "Let's make it a good one."
The slope leveled off and became a short landing before a closed door, and in the darkness Nate could make out the shape of something leaned up against the wall next to it. What I wouldn't give for a flashlight- or even Sully's goddamn lighter, he thought to himself. Sure, he had lit some pedestals with the flamethrower, but not as often as he would have liked to. It felt ridiculous, aiming a raging inferno at a bowl of fuel- akin to using an RPG to go pigeon hunting, or sending in the army to arrest a jaywalker. Also, he still didn't really know how to tell how much fuel the strange weapon had, and he would rather use it to roast guardians than light lamps.
"This feels familiar somehow," he muttered to himself as he neared the sealed entrance. On closer inspection, Nate saw that one of the bronze mirrors had fallen against the wall and was covering the button he needed to access in order to open the door. He hooked his fingers around the edge of the thick bronze disk, braced one foot against the tunnel wall, and grunted as he strained his muscles to move the unwieldy object. The mirror fell against the opposite wall with a deafening crash that resounded through the tunnel, and Nate exhaled through pursed lips. "Those things are heavier than they look," he commented to himself as he pushed the button on the wall. There was a grating noise of stone on stone as the door rolled aside, and Nate stepped through the opening while the sound was still resonating in the tunnel.
Before him rose marble trees, their milk-white limbs aglow in the flickering light of the several pedestals around the room, and beside him a jeweled column rose to touch the ceiling. "It's the shrine room," Nate said as he stepped around to the front of the chamber's extravagant focal point. "I've come full circle!" He looked into the forbidding eyes of the serpent, then at the little quicksilver ball held in its mouth as the crystal water of the spring washed over it, then back at the towering form of Atlas behind him, and he found himself spellbound over it all. There was something fascinating about it, and the latent power held in the room- like the ground he stood on was a place where the natural met the supernatural, and heaven dipped down to touch earth.
Nate shook his head vigorously, shaking off the trance that had fallen over him. "All right, this is good," he muttered to himself, turning back toward the middle of the room. "I found the shrine, and I know which door Floki and the others came through. I can just follow it back, and-"
A low noise echoed through the chamber, and Nate turned to see a door opening across the way. Garnier strutted through- his normally impeccable hair hanging disheveled over his face, a large bloom of drying blood staining the front of his clothes- and the French scientist smiled at Nate, his dark eyes soulless and unfeeling as he casually drew his pistol.
"Garnier," Nate said grimly. He noticed that the Doctor's skin was already turning an ashy gray from the affects of the Philosopher's Stone.
"Ah, Mr. Drake!" he said, his voice low and raspy.
The scientist opened his mouth to say more, but Nate cut him off. "Yeah, yeah, 'two opposing forces, final conflict, waters of life, yada yada." He slipped his gun out of his holster but kept it at his side. "I know the spiel." He felt his pulse quicken, and the blood began to pound in his ears as he and Garnier began circling each other on the outskirts of Hera's garden, in the sunken center of the chamber where the corpses of Floki and his men still littered the floor between them.
Deciding to switch tacks and try reasoning with him, Nate called out, "You've been poisoned, Mathis! That water is the reason the Atlanteans are the way they are."
"Hardly the time to try to develop a relationship on a first-name-basis, Mr. Drake," Garnier slurred. "Besides, do you think I don't know that?"
Nate looked at him pleadingly. "Get to the surface now and go find a hospital! They might still be able to reverse the effects!" Despite the sincerity of his plea, Nate's every nerve was taut and ready to react should the Doctor decide to attack.
Garnier smiled ironically. "Reverse the effects of eternal life?" He chuckled mirthlessly. "Why would I ever want to do that?"
"Reverse the poison that will make you into a deformed, drooling beast of a person," Nate retorted, ducking as he passed under a low-hanging branch laden with golden fruit. "Is that really what you want to become for the rest of eternity?"
Mathis sneered at him. "You want me to leave so you can take the Stone for yourself!"
Nate scoffed in disbelief. "I don't care about the treasure, Garnier!" he said, slashing an arm through the air for emphasis. "What I care about is those guardians who are currently making their way to the surface, and are going to destroy the earth if they make it out of here. We need to seal this place up for good, man!" He locked eyes with him again, and continued, "I promise- I won't take anything if you just let me go! Get whatever you want from here and get out, I'll destroy Atlantis and keep the power here from taking over the world!"
"Why would I trust a common thief?" Garnier asked, his face becoming enraged. "I'll never let you destroy this place, this sacred stone, this city of wonders!" he growled. "They all belong to me!"
The Frenchman lifted his gun and fired at Nate, who leaped behind a tree for cover. The bullet clipped the stone, breaking a chunk off the edge as it ricocheted with a ping toward the edge of the chamber. Pressing his back to the cool marble, Nate sighed. "That's what I was afraid of." He peeked around the edge of the carved trunk as Garnier sent several more shots his way, and he frowned as he considered his options.
"I can't kill him even if I tried... but I've gotta at least get that gun away from him!" he said, his mind racing to formulate a plan. Uttering a growl of resignation, he unhooked one of the Greek Fire grenades from his holsters. "Here goes nothin'!" he said as he jumped out from behind his cover, ducking bullets as he hurled the clay orb at his opponent.
Gunfire drummed out a harsh, staccato rhythm- the relentless beat of a few treasure hunters' resistance to the advancing guardians of Atlantis, and the accompanying muzzle flash was stark in the dim confines of the tunnel. Cutter squinted bloodshot eyes against the grim light as he ducked back and fished in his jacket pocket for a fresh clip after ejecting the spent one on the ground. "I'm not sure," he said as he jammed it in and pulled the slide, "how much longer we can keep this up."
"You mean," Chloe called through mostly-gritted teeth, eyes fixed down the barrel of her .45 Defender, "how much longer our ammo will last-" she fired her last shot and pulled back, "or our lives?"
"Exactly."
Sully blasted a guardian in the face as it tried to rush them. The immortal creature was thrown back by the force of the shot at close range and bowled over several others behind it in the process, creating a temporary but effective roadblock. "It's gettin' pretty hot down here!" Sully roared as he took aim again.
Taking advantage of the momentary lull in the attack the Atlantean pile-up had afforded, Cutter risked a glance over his shoulder. "We've got to get to the top of the stairs! It'll funnel them together even tighter and also give us the advantage of being above."
He looked back just in time to see a Greek Fire grenade sail towards them and then shatter in mid-air, dispersing it's flaming contents while it was still a ways off. Chloe smirked, her gun still poised for the shot that had saved them all from burning alive, then she replied, "I reckon that's a good idea, Charles."
As Sully finished reloading and began firing again, he glanced to the side and then did a double-take. "Don't suppose anyone's seen Molly any time recently?" he growled, his face contorting into a scowl as he glared down the sights of his revolver.
Cutter and Chloe looked over as well and saw that the British girl had indeed disappeared without a trace at some point during combat, with no sign except the vacant tunnel they had come from to indicate what direction she might have gone. "Jesus Christ, could this get any frickin' worse?" Chloe spat.
"Don't tempt fate!" Sully advised, only a little sarcastically.
Cutter swore under his breath as he squeezed off another few shots at the guardians. "She must have gone after Nate!" he called. Having emptied his gun again, he shouted to his comrades, "Take position at the top of the stairs! You two should be able to hold them off from there- just aim for their fire grenades as much as you can. I'm going after the other two!"
Sully shot him an exasperated look. "Are you out of your mind, Cutter?"
"I'm not letting another person die here today!" he called, already running down the empty tunnel.
"Charlie?" Chloe shouted at him, torn between keeping her eyes on the enemy and watching Cutter's retreating back as he ran down the hall away from them. "Charlie, wait!"
"Back in a jiffy, luv!" was all he said in reply, calling over his shoulder without looking back.
"Christ alive, how many selfless martyrs did we pack on this trip?" Sully asked in frustration, his teeth gritted against the kick of his revolver. Grabbing Chloe by the arm, he retreated up the stairwell with her reluctantly in tow to take their post at the final frontier of Atlantis.