Chapter Text
Elena isn’t bothered when Nate ignores her (incredibly sound and reasonable) advice and insists on going after Chloe. He has history with her. He’s convinced that she’s not the evil backstabber that she (very obviously) is. And Nathan is Nathan. He doesn’t make the logical choice often.
But even if she’s not bothered in the moment, that doesn’t mean the decision doesn’t wear on her. The longer she thinks about it, the more bothersome it is. In the time Elena has known him, Nate has always tried to be the hero. But risking his life - seriously, genuinely risking his life, because Lazerević is perhaps the most dangerous person he’s faced before - for someone who (statistically speaking) has no desire to be saved?
It turns Elena’s stomach sour.
But Nate - heart of gold Nate - insists on it, and Elena feels like helping him is actually the best way to keep him safe. If he tries to save her on his own, the chances of him dying are even higher.
So Elena goes along with it. She steals a Jeep and saves Nathan before Lazerević’s men can bust his face open. She drives that Jeep like the wind so Nate can catch up with the train Chloe’s on. He jumps, grabs onto the train, and that’s that. Elena’s job is done.
But something is nagging at her. (It’s Nate. It’s always Nate.) Maybe it’s worry. Maybe she’s just tired. Paranoia, perhaps. But she needs to know that Nate makes it out alive. If something happens to him…
Elena doesn’t know why, exactly, but the thought makes her lightheaded.
So rather than turn the Jeep around and drive to the airport or a hotel or somewhere, now that her cameraman is dead, Elena continues to follow the train tracks. She’s not nearly as fast as the train itself - she caught up with it once, but there’s no way the Jeep’s engine could handle it again - so eventually, the caboose disappears into a tunnel, and she never sees it again.
Elena keeps moving. It takes her up and into the mountains, at which point she pulls her coat and hat on (cars with no roofs are really not conducive to cold weather). She figures at some point, the Jeep will give up on the ice and snow, and she has to hope she finds Nate first. Eventually, she assures herself, the train will stop or Nate will jump off and need transport to wherever this hunt takes them next.
But that’s not what happens.
Instead, Elena finds the train sideways in the snow, with each car having slid a different distance down the mountain than the others. Fire burns from some of the wreckage, so it must be recent, but the flames have burnt through most of the cars, so it’s not that recent. The tracks in the snow look like some train cars fell off the cliff, and Elena can only hope Nate wasn’t on those.
Elena reaches a point in the wreckage where the Jeep is too large to fit through. She pulls on her gloves, grabs her backpack, and climbs through a cargo car, revolver at the ready. She doesn’t know how many of Lazerević’s men survived, and she can’t just assume they didn’t.
Fortunately for her (or perhaps unfortunately), the whole wreckage site is devoid of life. Everyone is either dead or disappeared along with some tire tracks. There is one set of footprints in the snow that draws her attention, however.
Climbing out of the wreckage and up the mountain, the footprints are close together and, in some cases, way too big to be a human foot, suggesting that the person was shuffling, rather than actually picking up their feet. The trail of red that accompanies the prints make it clear that this was the case. Elena can’t be sure if she wants these to be Nathan’s footprints or not. If they are, he’s alive, but he’s also seriously wounded and wandering through the mountains of Nepal with no coat and some pretty significant blood loss.
It’s impressive, actually, the story the footprints tell. How one person survived a train wreck and, injured, exhausted, and trapped in the Himalayas, they continued on, dragging themself up the mountain seeking refuge.
And then, the story gets a lot less impressive and a lot more tragic.
The footprints turn into a human-sized indent in the snow, accompanied by a dark red stain. The tracks look like the person dragged themself a few more feet before collapsing. But there’s a new set of footprints next to it, slightly smaller, that comes from the opposite direction. Then the footprints backtrack the way they came, and maybe Elena is reading into things, but the footprints look deeper on the way back than they were marking their arrival. As if this new person was carrying the injured person back the way they came.
It’s possible that this isn’t Nate. It could be one of Lazerević’s men. Or Chloe. Or, worst of all, Lazerević. But there’s also a chance that it was Nathan, and Elena can’t take that risk.
---
Elena arrives at the village as the sun peers over the horizon. The footprints ended with the snow half a mile ago, but once she spotted the stone homes, she figured it was the only logical place to take an injured person.
The village is peaceful, a breath of fresh air in stark contrast with the literal trainwreck. Children chase each other around, giggling. Cows and yaks wander about in the more sparsely populated areas, while chickens do all they can to get in the way, strutting past the villagers like they own the place. Strings of colorful pennants hang between buildings, and people in bright clothing just seem to… exist. They chop wood, chase after their kids, prepare food over fires. A man walks into the village carrying a pack loaded down with supplies. A pair of neighbors engage in a friendly discussion. It’s all so… calm.
Elena approaches the neighbors and quickly realizes that they aren’t speaking Nepali. Sounds like Tibetan, but there’s a unique dialect to it. One Elena can only do her best to work around.
“Tashi Delek,” Elena greets. She introduces herself and explains that she’s looking for an injured friend.
The women share a look. Then one points up the path at a small house. “Kar thu Phep,” she explains.
“Thuk-je-che, Acha La,” Elena says quickly, already moving towards the house. “Thuk-je-che!”
Elena isn’t sure that it’s Nate. She really isn’t. But she knocks on the door all the same, and a young girl with dark hair swings the door open.
“Gong-da-” Elena begins, but the little girl interrupts her.
“Phar gyu!” she screams before slamming the door shut.
Oh. Elena hadn’t expected… She’s not entitled to speak to people, no, but she was hoping that they at least wouldn’t shout at her to go away. She’s not really sure what to do next-
“Pema!” a scolding voice calls from behind the door. There’s more talking, too muffled and fast for Elena to understand. Then the door opens again.
“Gong-da,” a man with long dark hair and the exhausted smile of a parent on their last nerve apologizes. “Bu mo-”
Elena shakes her head and assures the man that she’s not offended. She is, however, looking for an injured friend and was told he was here.
Something clicks in the man’s eyes. His smile softens, and he gestures for Elena to come in. Then he leads her to a bed in the corner of the room, and relief washes down on Elena in torrents.
“Oh, thank god. I thought he…” Elena grabs Nate’s shoulder, making note of the dark red staining his shirt and the slight blue tinge to the tips of his fingers. “Oh god. What happened to you?”
Elena remembers the man and his daughter are still here, and she coughs, smiling apologetically. She asks the man what happened, and he launches into an explanation about how he found Nathan collapsed on the ground with a gunshot wound a few miles away. He brought Nate back and bandaged his wounds. He apologizes for not getting to him before the frostbite set in, but he seems optimistic that he’ll recover completely.
“Thuk-je-che, Jolak,” Elena replies gratefully.
“Ngé ming la Tenzin yin,” the man says gently. “Khyé rang gi ming la ga ré yin?”
“Ngé ming la Elena yin,” Elena replies. “Kho’i ming la Nate yin.”
“Nate,” Tenzin repeats, considering Nate carefully. Then he says something only slightly rude. (Elena doesn’t know the exact translation, but her best guess would be, “Nate is a mess.”)
Elena thanks Tenzin again for rescuing Nate. (She really doesn’t know what would have happened if he didn’t.)
Tenzin just smiles, offers Elena a moment alone, and brings Pema outside with him.
“You are going to be the death of me,” Elena sighs, sitting on the edge of the bed and stroking Nate’s hair softly. “I’d say I told you so about Chloe, but…” She looks at Nathan. He’s so pathetic, passed out there and shivering. Taking pity on him, she grabs a blanket from a basket on the floor and drapes it over him. “It’d be pretty cruel of me to rub it in your face right now. You were… just trying to do the right thing.”
Nate’s lips twitch, and he cracks an eye open, looking very upset that he’s conscious at all.
Elena, however, is anything but. “Oh, thank god,” she says again, squeezing his shoulder. “Are you okay?”
Nathan looks more than out-of-it, but he spots Elena, and that’s enough to elicit a warm smile from him. “‘lena,” he breathes. “Y’made it.”
“I did,” she agrees. “I think you might be immortal or something. You’re lucky Tenzin found you.”
“Couldn’... Couldn’ save Chloe…”
And something about that - the way he said it, the fact that he’s barely alive and that’s what he’s concerned about - makes Elena’s heart crack. She smiles sadly. “You did your best,” she assures him. “You did all you could.”
“Yeah.” Nate stares out at the ceiling. Then his gaze drifts back to Elena, and his eyes go wide. “‘lena?? Y’re here?”
“Yep. Still here. Haven’t left since the last time you asked. Thirty seconds ago.”
“Glad y’re here,” Nathan mumbles, doing his best to snuggle against Elena despite the fact that there’s a bullet in his gut and moving is a generally awful idea. “Love you.”
The blood goes cold in Elena’s veins. She looks down at Nate, but he’s staring at her with purpose.
“Nate, you don’t really… I mean, you’re delirious. You think I’m someone else.”
And Nathan smiles. “Love you, ‘lena,” he repeats, eyes drifting shut.
For a very long four minutes, Elena sits there in silence, trying to determine if he really meant it. And of course he didn’t, because he’s barely alive. He’s not with it. He doesn’t know what he’s saying.
But Elena still hears that phrase in her head, even after Nate recovers. She doesn’t tell him. She doesn’t ask. But she can’t banish the sound. It haunts her in her sleep, crops up when she spends too much time with Nate:
“Love you, ‘lena.”
She’s not sure if he meant it. And despite the evidence, she holds onto hope that he did.