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[The video opens to a view of hand poking unceremoniously and sporadically at the screen.]

Oh what the hell--this thing on?

[A little shake of the wrist before the user apparently realizes that yes, it is indeed on, and it abruptly stops to reveal one perplexed Victor Sullivan.]

Jesus Christ. [He sighs both out of frustration and a little relief, bringing his arm up a little closer to his face.] All right, look. I've been around a long time, seen a helluva lot of crazy things, but if you had told me I'd be alive long enough to see space, I would have told you you were losing your goddamn mind.

[He pauses, taking the time to reach into his breast pocket and pull out a cigar from a small cigar case. He puts it in between his teeth as he puts the case away again, his free hand rummaging through his pockets in search of something else.]

Don't get me wrong, this is all real flattering, but it doesn't take a goddamn genius to know that something hinky's going on around here. I mean what the hell kind of place is this that they take your shoes after kidnapping you? So, if anyone's got some real information, I think I'm well overdue for a good explanation. Name's Victor Sullivan by the way.

[He fumbles through his pockets a little more frantically before exasperatedly taking his cigar out of his mouth.]

Ah, shit--anyone on this ship got a cigar cutter around here? Or a goddamn knife?

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[Sully can't help but smile. Look at my baby, all grown up and solving his marital problems.]

Yeah, well, pretty sure none of us planned on doing anything in space. Glad to hear it, though. Just try not to do anything stupid this time, huh?

[You know, like running off with your not!dead brother and lying to your wife for weeks.

Oh, speaking of:]

What about Sam? You hear anything from him?

[Nate stops walking instantly, his smile going from serious to shocked. He just stares, looking at Sully like he's looking at a stranger.]

From Sam? Why would you—what's the matter with you, why would you say that?

[That look of shock is mirrored on Sully's face as his eyebrows shoot up and he stares at the MID in disbelief.]

What's the matter with me? You hit your head when you were brought through that thing?

[After a few seconds, he starts moving again, faster this time, with more urgency.]

No, but even if I had, I doubt that'd affect my memories of my dead brother. I'm starting to wonder what it did to you.

[Dead brother? That gives him pause. His tone suggests that he's not being a smart ass and trying to pull his leg, but even if he wasn't so serious, Sam has never been a joking matter between the two of them. If he had a lit cigar, he would definitely be puffing away at it.

Instead, his eyebrows furrow a little as he tentatively asks:]

Kid, what's the last thing you remember before you were brought here?

I was on your plane—you were flying it, Elena and I were in the back. We were on our way home from Yemen.

[And that has to be when Sully is from—they've flown together plenty, sure, but there was a good four years where he didn't have a plane, and why would Sully be concerned about him and Elena getting along if he wasn't thinking of Yemen? But why would he ever talk about Sam that way? Hell, they never talk about Sam at all. Nate's choice.

He's just getting more confused as he thinks himself in circles.]

Why? What do you remember?

[Yemen? That is definitely not what he was expecting to hear. Yemen was years ago. How the hell could Yemen be the last thing he remembers, and how could he not remember Sam?

Maybe this Ingress thing was a bigger dick than he originally thought.]

We were on my plane, I was flying it, but Elena wasn't there and we sure as hell weren't coming back from Yemen...

[It's a good thing he's sitting down right now because his head feels like it's spinning with all the questions he has.]

You close by?

[The hell? Nate opens his mouth to ask more questions, then forces himself not to. This isn't a conversation to have over the goddamn MID.]

Yeah. Just—hang on. I'll be there in a few minutes.

[He'll sprint if he has to. And maybe he does, because it is in fact a fairly short time later that Nate enters the lounge. He looks anxious, but goes in for a hug anyway. Mixed-up memories or not, he's still glad as hell to see Sully.]

Hey, pal.

[Even the short amount of time it takes for Nate to arrive gives him some time to ruminate on all this, but as soon as he hears Nate enter the room, he pushes himself to happily receive the hug.]

Good to see you, kid.

[He lets the hug linger a little longer than he usually might, before breaking away just far enough to rest his hands on his arms. Now that he's facing him in person, he does look different than when he last saw him--less gray in the temples, less muscle, and less lines on his face. So maybe this time discrepancy thing really wasn't a load of bull.

He smiles, and lets his hands drop as he steps back a little more.]

Hell of a meeting place. Should have known I'd find you in the midst of all this trouble.

[The hug helps, even if he isn't sure yet what it's helping with. Five-ish months is too long when he'd gone all that time unable to be completely sure that the Ingress had left Sully safe behind when it plucked him from the plane, that he hadn't left an unexplained absence of his own behind.]

You have no idea. This is a pretty calm period, believe it or not.

[He does his own up-and-down assessment of his friend, and can't help but smile at Sully's shoeless feet.]

You look ridiculous. Lucky for you, there are places that sell shoes on the colony we're docked above.

[Probably.]

Calm periods for us usually means we're in for a hell of a storm.

[He looks down at his own feet. At least they didn't take his socks. Who knew what was on these floors.]

Kid, I've barely gotten used to the idea that I'm on a goddamn spaceship and now you're talking to me about colonies? [I can't believe this is happening.] They sell things for humans at this place? I don't want to go around in some strange alien footwear here.

[He's right about that. What must it be like to live a life that's calm all the time? Probably pretty boring.]

For humans, for aliens, for aliens built like humans. Hey, it's better than the slave outpost we were at a couple months ago. That place sucked.

But the space part...it could be worse. Parts of it are worse, but if we had to be kidnapped into another dimension, at least we can do some exploring.

Jesus Christ.

[A slaving outpost? Does he even want to know?]

Yeah, well, there better be one hell of a large payout at the end of one of these trips. Last I checked there weren't any long lost ancient civilizations out in space either.

[But then again none of this should be possible at all, so what does he know.]

You actually missed the closest thing to that I've experienced--when we first got here, the ship spent a few weeks docked on what was basically Vacation Planet, and the crew was given unlimited spending credits. Don't ask me how that worked, I don't know, but it did. No real treasure that I've seen, though.

[He's sure Sully will sniff some out, or any kind of big payout, if it exists, though.

He hesitates then, initial greetings done. The searching look he gives his friend should make it clear what he's feeling--desperately wanting to know why Sully talked about Sam, but afraid to say the name, even after all this time.]

So...

Oh, of all the godddamn luck. Fingers crossed that the next planet we land on is nothing but piles of gold and lost treasures.

[He grins, but any attempt at light heartedness disappears when he sees Nate's look. Yeah, he supposes it couldn't be avoided forever. He would be lying if he didn't want to figure it out as well.

He nods in understanding, gestures to the couch he was just sitting on.]

Come on. Let's uh--let's take a seat.

[He doesn't wait for Nate before sitting down himself with a small sigh. This is going to be tough, and he's not sure exactly what the best way to say it is so.....so probably best to start at the beginning.]

Listen kid, I don't know how else to tell you this, but...it's been about three years since we got back from Yemen.

[He sits, but he's on the edge of the seat. He's on edge, period, despite the calming presence of his oldest friend.]

Are you serious?

[Sully doesn't really have to answer that. Nate can tell that he is. He draws a hand down his jaw, trying to calculate the weight of that time.]

Christ. I guess I know how Elena felt now. [Oh right, he should specify.] The Ingress got her even earlier than me—when we found each other here, she didn't know about what happened in Iram, didn't know Marlowe's goons ever even nabbed you.

Last thing she remembered, I'd been drugged in the marketplace and ran off as the hallucinations started. Which also means the last thing she remembered about me was that I'd been a huge jackass to her after we arrived. And then suddenly I'm here wanting to act like her husband again. So, you know. That was fun.

God, that Ingress really is a pain in the ass. What kind of screwed up game are they playing here?

[Pulling them from different times, kidnapping them to space, and on top of that it seems like all the moments they're pulled from result in some form of personal drama between two people. Either the Ingress is a bit masochistic in its own way, or they just have really bad luck.

Knowing them, it's probably the latter.]

I'm guessing that was the main reason for all of the rough spots you mentioned earlier, then. It sounds like you two managed to move through it okay though.

More or less, yeah. Leaving Yemen, I knew we'd have to work through some things, but at least we were on the same page then. This was trickier.

[The 'less' moments had been his own screw-ups, but even those he could partly blame on the Ingress and the things it spat out. Like his mother's journal, and the picture of Sam...]

You...you asked about...

Edited (typoooo) 2016-10-26 18:50 (UTC)

[He nods, both in sympathy for Nate's first statement and in acknowledgement of the second. He takes a breath and shifts a little in his seat.]

Yeah, about that...

[Give him a moment--he has to figure out the best way to say it. It was shocking enough to hear that Sam was alive on his end, he can only imagine what it was like when Nate first found out. His mind races to try and find the best option that will leave the least amount of impact on him, but no matter what he comes up with, he knows Nate's reaction is going to be the same.

Screw it, there's no delicate way to put this. Sully scoots a little closer as he looks at him.]

Nate, Sam's alive.

Edited (typos) 2016-10-28 06:36 (UTC)

[He's half-anticipating the answer, part of him having worked out the only possibly meaning behind Sully's earlier reference while still being unable to ponder the significance of it, but that doesn't stop him from sagging forward a little, like a puppet with half its strings suddenly cut.]

That—he can't be. I saw him get shot, saw him fall.

[The internal bleeding had been instant, blood coming out his mouth as well as the wounds. Sam took multiple rounds when even one would have been bad. And if that weren't enough, the fall alone could potentially have killed him.]

I made calls. I didn't just assume—I wouldn't have left him there!

[He puts a hand up briefly, not in an attempt to interrupt him, but just as a small gesture to try and mediate the situation a little. But as soon as it's up, it's back down, and he sighs.]

I know, I know. Believe me, I thought the same damned thing when I first heard but--all the same. [He's alive.] Apparently he's been locked up in that prison all this time.

[And here's the other fun part of the story:]

He was only able to get out because he had some help from the one and only Hector Alcazar. You heard of him?

Uh—the drug lord?

[It's an effort just to gather his thoughts enough to identify the name. He's too overwhelmed by the idea. Sam, alive. Sam, not dead but waiting for a rescue that would never come, because he never knew. "Devastated" doesn't cover how that idea makes him feel.

But still. Sam is alive.]

Edited (matching you typo for typo) 2016-10-28 15:11 (UTC)

That's the guy. He was Sam's cellmate for the past year. Broke them both out of prison.

[He pauses, leaning his elbows on his knees. God he wishes he could have a cigar right now. There' so much to this that's complicated to tell. Part of him is still trying to grasp it even though he's been living it himself.]

Nate, Sam's on borrowed time. He's been telling Alcazar all about Avery's treasure, and now he wants Sam to get him half of it in three months. We've been chasing after it ever since.

Wait wait wait, slow down—

[Except that it's not that Sully's going fast. He's probably distilling his story to its basic evidence, because when is anything not complicated in their lives? But Nate's the one in slow motion, still not fully past that first moment of revelation.]

You're saying that not only is my brother alive, but he's going after the treasure we gave up on over a decade ago? Or what? There are no more leads on Avery—what happens if Sam can't find it?

[He realizes a split second later that the question is probably unnecessary, and it shows on his face. A man known as "the butcher of Panama" is unlikely to shrug off disappointment.]

[Sully doesn't slow down--he stops talking, letting Nate process and express whatever he needs to. It's strange even saying all this out loud, knowing that Nate's already experienced all of this back home, and yet at the same time he's sitting here, he's also three years in the past.

As realization hits Nate at his last question, Sully merely shakes his head a little, shrugs, and smiles apologetically.]

Sorry, kid.

[For having to be the one to say all this, for not being able to really do anything about it, for his not even knowing about it.]

Good news is, Sam was able to find a lead on a second Saint Dismas cross. Put it simply, It's been one hell of a trip so far but we were well on the trail of Avery's treasure before I was brought here.

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