Nate had been somewhat adrift, since the business with Ralph.
Alright, no—more accurately, he’d been off his fucking mind on a bender for the ages, ever since he had been so unfortunate as to find one of his friends, the most beloved person in the whole safehouse, dead in the upstairs bathtub.
He couldn’t remember when was the last time he’d slept for more than a few hours in the back room at the bar or crashed for a nap at Olivia’s; in all honesty, Nate was afraid of dreaming. Dreams were Ralph’s domain and to partake in them would hurt too much to bear.
So Nate had been keeping himself busy and conscious by keeping himself, like—unbelievably fucked up. And so naturally, when Nate found himself peering down into the familiar eyes of one of his old Ilvermorny classmates, he figured he was definitely hallucinating.
He laughed in a deranged kind of way and the sight of Orenda Youngblood swiveled around in Nate’s unsteady vision for a moment. He put his hands on either side of his head, as if that would make any goddamn difference, and then he slurred, “What are youuu doing here, Hallucination-of-Youngblood?” Except that ow, she shoved pretty hard for a figment of his imagination; Nate swayed on his heels and had to steady himself by grabbing onto the pole of a streetlamp. He shook his head, and blinked at Orenda again. “Oh shit, you’re actually here huh…”
Nate groaned and rubbed at his eyes, which were dry and red with dark circles hanging beneath them like shadows on the moon. “Yeah, Harriet is…” he made a vague, convoluted gesture with his hand. “…around. Somewhere. I dunno—we did move to this shitty country, Orenda, remember? Or have my sister and I had some convincing-fucking-doppelgängers at Ilvermorny all these years?”
Orenda studied Nate, his eyes were dark, almost clouded with some unseen force. If she was honest he looked confounded and smelled half drunk. “If you really think your pea-brain can conjure a hallucinations of me then you’re fucking kidding yourself Pinnock.” She kept her voice light, but her brows furrowed still studying Nate, hoping for all the world she could keep him from toppling over when he inevitably ate it.
The Ranger rolled her eyes, watching him sway and bow like a palm tree, his chest rising and falling with breathes so close to ragged she wanted to check his heartbeat. Talk about a loving reunion of friends, though this seemed par for the course for Nate’s character. “Yes ya dipshit, I’m real,” she waved a general direction to the ground, being sure to pinch his elbow fat, “got myself into a spot of trouble so I’m stuck here, fuck.”
Slipping her arm around his Orenda decided the best way to sober up was a quick walk, she didn’t care to see if Nate had turned savage and would eat beans on toast or jellied eels or whatever the fuck else they ate in this scavenger country. “No but I woulda thought you’d come home at some point...” Orenda never kept up with the news, Ilvermorny had gotten dull for a few months when the Pinnock’s had taken off across the water. Not that she’d tell either of them that, no one needed Pinnock’s with bigger heads than they’d already been born with. “Don’t tell me you’re a red-coat now Nate. You might be colonizer blood but that still better than being British, fuck.”
Tugging him along she searched for any kind of street vendor, a hot dog or just coffee, “Do they only sell fucking hot leaf water here?” She peered into another half-lit shop, only to be confronted by pounds, “How in the Christian Hell have you been surviving this shit Nate?” Orenda pointedly looked him over, pausing to bit her lip to find any trappings of tact and humanity she usually lost in the forest and along backroads. “Seriously, what’s going on, you look like death or at least half way into the grave.” Orenda poked his ribs, a little harder this time, an awful thought growing in her brain, “Is Harriet okay?”
