[ Under any other circumstance Nate wouldn't say something so unabashedly maudlin, the kind of shit you see on daytime t.v. soap operas on Latin American cable. He had discussed something similar with Fenris, once, in vague terms: realizing that what you worked for and had was gone, and you were starting over from scratch. Realizing that your mistakes cost you everything. Loss is not a stranger to Nate, who has known it intimately since he was four years old.

This is something he isn't sure he can come back from.

Eye contact is a flighty thing, skipping from the quiet scrutiny of the man next to him, to the bottles lining the back wall of the bar, to the polished concrete floor and a weird stain that catches his attention. Looking down into his glass he can still hear the rush of the water beating the ragged cliffs of Panama, the wailing of the prison alarm. It took nearly a decade for those nightmares to stop. ]

You know, I thought he was dead? For fifteen years, he was dead. And that was on me. We had a job that went sideways and he got shot and I saw him fall five stories, and I left him. [ Your brother is dead. Either come with me, or join him. ] So he shows up out of the blue, asks for my help. Weaves a story I didn't even think to check.

[ It would have been easy, but Nate took it at face value. Why wouldn't he? ]

I owed him.