Love, After the Fall
Navigation Miscellaneous Masterlist
My Wattpad📖
Buy Me a Coffee!☕
Want to be added to my taglist? Just a few clicks away! -> Taglist Form
pairings: Nathaniel Taylor x reader
genre/warnings; Angst, Survival, Mutual Pining, Reunion
Summary: After losing her to the river, Nathaniel Taylor spends eight months grieving the woman he never admitted he loved—until she falls out of the trees and back into his arms.
4816 words
The rain that night did not fall gently over Terra Nova; it came down in punishing sheets that flattened the jungle and turned the earth to slick, sucking mud. Beyond the perimeter fence, the trees bowed under the storm’s weight, their massive leaves shuddering beneath the assault of wind and water. Colonel Nathaniel Taylor moved steadily through the darkness with practiced awareness, rifle braced against his shoulder, boots sinking half an inch into softened ground with each step. Lightning fractured the sky in violent bursts, illuminating the fence line in brief flashes of white that vanished just as quickly, leaving only thunder rolling like distant artillery.
The scream cut through the storm so sharply that it almost felt physical.
Nathaniel turned toward the sound immediately. It wasn’t the cry of an animal or the shriek of wind tearing through branches. It was human, high and ragged and terrified.
Another bolt of lightning ripped open the sky, and in that split second of stark illumination he saw them clearly—two figures crashing through the underbrush toward the fence. The young man was slightly ahead but stumbling, dragging his leg as though it had already betrayed him. The girl was just behind him, one hand gripping his sleeve, her hair plastered to her face by rain, her expression raw with panic. They were running blindly, branches clawing at their clothes and skin as they pushed through the jungle without any sense of direction other than away.
Behind them, something massive displaced the foliage with horrifying ease. The trees did not simply sway—they parted. The ground beneath Nathaniel’s boots vibrated faintly as heavy footfalls shook the earth.
“Move toward me!” he shouted over the storm, stepping forward, rifle raised but calculating. He couldn’t take a clear shot without risking them. “To the left! Follow my voice!”
The brother tried to obey. He shifted direction, but his injured leg buckled, and he nearly dragged his sister down with him. She hauled him upright again with stubborn strength that seemed fueled entirely by fear. Lightning flashed once more, revealing the shadow behind them more clearly this time—a colossal head pushing through leaves, jaws parting as it lunged forward in pursuit.
Nathaniel fired a round into the mud just ahead of the predator’s path, not aiming to wound but to startle and redirect. The shot cracked through the rain, echoing between trees. For half a second, the enormous shape hesitated, turning its attention toward the new threat.
“Now!” Nathaniel barked.
They ran harder.
The root rose out of the mud like a trap laid by the jungle itself—thick, knotted, slick with rainwater. The brother’s foot caught, and he went down hard, the sound of his body hitting the ground swallowed by thunder. His sister immediately tried to pull him back up, but her grip slipped.
Nathaniel reached her first.
He caught her around the waist and dragged her backward just as the jungle erupted with sound and movement. He did not look directly at what happened next. He did not need to. The girl’s scream tore through the rain, raw and disbelieving, and she twisted violently in his arms, fighting him with everything she had.
“Let me go!” she sobbed, clawing at his forearms, trying to lunge forward into certain death. “Please, let me go!”
He hauled her behind the thick trunk of a nearby tree and pinned her there, bracing his body around hers. One arm locked around her waist; the other hand pressed firmly over her mouth to muffle the sound that would only draw the predator back toward them.
“Don’t move,” he murmured close to her ear, his voice low but unyielding. “You cannot move.”
Her entire body shook with violent sobs. She struck his arm repeatedly, nails biting through wet fabric and into skin, but he did not loosen his hold. He felt her grief in the way she struggled, in the way her muscles burned with the impossible desire to undo what had just happened. He kept his eyes trained outward, listening to the heavy breathing, the low rumble of satisfaction, the final stillness that followed.
When the jungle quieted again, it was not the gentle quiet of safety but the suffocating silence that comes after something irreversible.
Her strength drained out of her all at once. If he had not been holding her upright, she would have collapsed into the mud. Slowly, carefully, he removed his hand from her mouth.
She did not scream again. She turned into him instead, burying her face against his soaked jacket, and the sound that left her was smaller but somehow more devastating—a broken, hollow sob that seemed pulled from somewhere deep inside her chest. She clutched at him as if he were the only solid thing left in a world that had just fractured beyond repair.
Nathaniel wrapped both arms around her then, less as restraint and more as anchor. He did not offer platitudes. He did not tell her it would be alright. He simply held her while the rain continued to fall and let her grief run through him without resistance.
That was the night he promised himself he would not let anything else take her if he could stop it.
She did not speak for two days.
The infirmary in Terra Nova smelled faintly of antiseptic and damp canvas, the constant humidity making everything feel slightly too close, too warm. Elisabeth Shannon moved gently around her, checking vitals, offering water, cleaning shallow cuts left by branches and stone. The girl complied with everything silently. She stared at the far wall as though it held something only she could see.
Her eyes were open, but they were not present.
Nathaniel stood outside the infirmary more than once during those forty-eight hours. He told himself he was ensuring security. He told himself he was assessing stability after an incident beyond the fence. Both were partially true. Neither was the full reason.
On the third evening, as the light outside dimmed into the muted gold of Terra Nova’s artificial dusk cycle, he stepped inside.
Elisabeth looked up at him but said nothing. She understood the look on his face. She gave a small nod and moved past him quietly, leaving them alone.
The girl’s hands were folded loosely in her lap. They were clean now, the dried mud washed away, but the skin around her nails was raw from where she had clawed at him that night. Her hair had been brushed, though it still fell unevenly around her shoulders as if she hadn’t noticed it at all.
He did not sit immediately. He stood at the foot of the bed, boots planted firmly against the floor, hands clasped behind his back in a posture that had carried him through decades of command. For a moment, he looked more like a colonel addressing a soldier than a man standing before someone who had lost everything.
“He asked me to protect you,” Nathaniel said quietly.
Her gaze shifted. That was the first time her eyes moved with intent since she’d been brought in from the storm.
“He said,” Nathaniel continued, the memory vivid and unwelcome, “take care of her.”
The words had been shouted through rain and chaos, but they had landed with absolute clarity. Nathaniel had nodded once at the boy—there had not been time for anything else. A soldier’s promise exchanged in seconds.
Her throat worked as she swallowed. Her voice, when it came, sounded scraped raw from crying. “You couldn’t save him.”
There was no accusation in her tone. Only exhaustion. Only truth.
“I know,” Nathaniel answered.
He stepped closer then and pulled the metal chair from beside her bed. The legs scraped softly against the floor. He sat, elbows resting on his knees, posture no longer rigid but heavy.
“Your name,” he said, more gently, “is Y/N. And you’re here. You’re alive.”
Her eyes filled, not with fresh tears but with something more restrained, more dangerous. “That doesn’t feel like enough.”
He understood that sentiment more than he wished he did.
“It has to be,” he replied.
Silence settled between them, but it was no longer empty. It was shared.
When her breathing began to tremble again, she did not turn away. She leaned forward instead, almost hesitantly, as though unsure if she was allowed. Nathaniel did not move at first. Then he opened his arms.
She folded into him.
It was not graceful. It was not romantic. It was the desperate collapse of someone who had been holding herself upright by sheer will. Her forehead pressed against his chest; her fingers gripped the fabric of his jacket tightly. He felt her shoulders shake as she cried without restraint.
This time, he did not restrain her.
He held her.
His hand came up to the back of her head, steady and grounding. He stared ahead, jaw tight, absorbing the weight of her grief as though it were a physical burden he could carry for her.
“I gave him my word,” he murmured into her hair. “And I do not break my word.”
In the weeks that followed, she did not return to who she had been before the jungle. That girl had died with her brother. What emerged instead was something quieter and sharper.
She asked Elisabeth to teach her.
Not out of idle curiosity, but with intent.
“How do you stop the bleeding fastest?” she asked one afternoon, her hands steady as she wrapped gauze around a training dummy’s arm.
“Pressure first,” Elisabeth replied, watching her carefully. “Then assess depth.”
Y/N nodded once. She did not waste motion.
She learned how to suture. How to clean wounds without causing additional trauma. How to steady her breathing while others panicked. She learned how to move through crisis without freezing.
Nathaniel noticed the change long before he admitted it to himself.
He saw her in the clearing sometimes, kneeling beside injured colonists with calm focus, voice low and reassuring. He saw the way children gravitated toward her instinctively. He saw the way she held herself now—no longer drifting, but anchored.
He also saw the way she looked at him when she thought he wasn’t watching.
It was not gratitude.
It was not dependence.
It was something warmer and far more dangerous.
He told himself it was projection. Trauma attachment. The natural inclination to cling to someone who had saved you from immediate death. He had seen it before.
He did not let himself consider that it might be something else.
Ayani’s memory still lived in the quiet spaces of his mind. Her laughter. The way she had once teased him for taking everything too seriously. The way he had failed to save her from the illness that had taken her years ago. Love had not saved Ayani. Love had not changed the outcome.
He could not risk being the reason someone else broke.
And so he kept distance where he could.
But distance did not stop the way his chest tightened when she laughed.
It did not stop the way his eyes tracked her movements during patrol briefings.
It did not stop the way his voice softened imperceptibly when he said her name.
The jungle that afternoon was deceptively calm, thick with heat and alive with the constant hum of insects. The air clung to skin, damp and heavy, and the path they followed was narrow enough that branches scraped the sides of the open jeep as they passed. Jim Shannon drove with both hands firm on the wheel, eyes scanning ahead for ruts or exposed roots. Beside him, Nathaniel Taylor sat forward slightly, rifle angled between his knees. Y/N sat directly behind him, one knee braced against the back of his seat whenever the vehicle jolted.
They were out for a specific medicinal weed that Elisabeth Shannon needed urgently. It should have been simple. Quick. Controlled.
The jungle shifted before the attack came. The birds cut off mid-call. The air tightened.
The roar hit them like a physical blow.
It was close. Close enough that the jeep rattled from the force of it. Nathaniel turned sharply to the right just as something enormous forced its way through the trees parallel to them, foliage exploding outward as it advanced.
“Don’t slow down,” he ordered, already scanning for an escape line.
Jim accelerated. The jeep bounced violently over roots and uneven ground. Behind Nathaniel, Y/N’s hand shot forward and grabbed the back of his seat. He felt her fingers through the thin fabric of his shirt.
The second roar was closer. The ground trembled.
“Left,” Nathaniel called, spotting what looked like clearer terrain through a break in the brush.
Jim jerked the wheel.
The ground ahead disappeared.
It wasn’t a clearing. It was a drop.
The front tires slid over loose soil. For half a second the jeep hung suspended in impossible stillness.
Then gravity took it.
They pitched forward.
Y/N screamed as the world flipped nose-down. Nathaniel’s shoulder slammed against the side frame, his seatbelt biting hard across his chest. The open sides of the jeep offered nothing to brace against but air.
They didn’t crash into the river.
Vines caught the undercarriage mid-fall, snapping tight around the metal frame. The impact jerked them brutally against their restraints. The jeep swung once, violently, then settled into a precarious hang, nose pointed toward the rushing water far below.
The river roared beneath them.
“Nobody move,” Nathaniel said immediately.
He assessed in seconds. His right arm worked. His legs were braced against the angled floor. His left arm, however, was trapped awkwardly between his body and the twisted side frame from the impact. It wasn’t crushed, but it was pinned hard enough that he couldn’t use it without shifting his weight forward.
And if he shifted forward—
The jeep would tilt.
Behind him, fabric tore.
He twisted his head as far as his buckled position allowed.
Y/N’s seatbelt had ripped free from its anchor point. It wasn’t holding her fully. The angle of the jeep was dragging her downward, inch by inch, toward the open side.
There were no doors.
Nothing between her and the drop.
“Nathaniel,” she breathed.
He could not unbuckle. If he released his belt, his weight would pitch forward and the already strained vines would snap. They would all go down together.
“Stay still,” he ordered, though he could see she was already slipping.
Her body slid another inch.
Without releasing his seatbelt, without shifting his torso forward, he twisted as far as he could and shot his right arm backward.
He caught her wrist just as her hips cleared the seat.
The force of her weight hit his shoulder like a wrenching tear. His seatbelt dug painfully into his chest as it took the counterweight. His trapped left arm remained useless, pressed tight and immobile.
He could not move further.
He could only hold.
She dangled outside the open frame of the jeep, boots scraping uselessly against metal before finding only air.
Her fingers locked around his forearm, nails biting into his skin.
“Look at me,” he said.
She did.
Her hair fell downward with gravity, brushing against his arm. Dirt streaked her cheek. Her breathing was fast but controlled. Her eyes were not wild.
They were steady.
“I’ve got you,” he told her.
The vines groaned overhead, fibers stretching under strain. He could hear them pulling, feel the subtle shift of weight with every small movement.
“Nathaniel,” she said softly.
“Don’t,” he warned.
“I need you to listen.”
His arm was already trembling. Not from weakness, but from physics. He had no leverage. No second hand. No ability to pull her fully back up without unbuckling.
And he could not unbuckle.
“I love you,” she said.
The river below thundered against rocks. The jeep creaked above them.
“This isn’t the time,” he said tightly.
“It is for me.” Her grip tightened. “I’ve loved you since that night in the rain. Since you held me when everything was gone. Since you promised my brother.”
His chest felt like it was splitting open.
He wanted to haul her back up. He wanted to say it. He wanted to rewrite every second between them.
But fear rooted deep in his ribs. Ayani’s face flashed in his mind, the memory of losing her still sharp even years later. Loving someone meant risking that hollow again.
“I can’t,” he said quietly.
Her expression softened. Not anger. Not even surprise.
“I know,” she whispered.
A vine snapped.
The sound cracked through the air like a gunshot.
The jeep lurched forward another few inches. His body jerked against the seatbelt. His trapped arm shifted painfully. His grip faltered for half a second.
It was enough.
Her wrist slipped in his grasp.
He lunged as far as the belt would allow, fingers catching only air as she dropped.
“Nathaniel—”
Her name tore out of him as she fell.
She hit the river hard, vanishing beneath churning water almost instantly. The current seized her body and pulled her downstream in seconds.
The jeep steadied slightly now that it bore less weight.
His right arm remained extended long after she was gone.
His fingers were still curled.
The space where her hand had been felt impossibly empty.
And he understood, in that terrible suspended moment, that he had just lost her twice.
Eight months passed, and in Terra Nova eight months was long enough for grief to settle into something that no longer shocked anyone when it entered a room. They stopped searching the river weeks after her fall. They marked the bend downstream where debris tended to gather and found nothing that belonged to her. The current there was unforgiving; if it did not drown you, it carried you far beyond anything familiar. Eventually the camp began speaking of her in the past tense.
Nathaniel never did.
Outwardly, he resumed command with the same precision he always had. Patrol rotations remained tight. Supply inventories were exact. Strategic briefings ran on time. But at night, when the jungle quieted and the perimeter lights cast long metallic shadows across the clearing, her voice replayed in his head with relentless clarity.
I love you.
He remembered the steadiness of her eyes more than the words. The acceptance when he said he couldn’t. The way she hadn’t looked angry—only certain.
He had spent years convincing himself that keeping distance was protection. After Ayani, he had believed love was something that weakened judgment, that opened vulnerabilities the jungle would inevitably exploit. But in the months without Y/N, he realized something that unsettled him deeply: he had not been protecting her. He had been protecting himself.
And it had cost him her.
He saw her everywhere. In the infirmary where she used to stand beside Elisabeth Shannon, hands steady and voice calm. In the clearing where children once followed her. In the way the rain sounded against metal roofs. He would wake some nights convinced he had felt her fingers around his forearm again, only to find empty air.
Eight months later, when he finally admitted to himself that he loved her, it did not feel romantic. It felt devastating. Because love meant something living, and she was not that.
Eight months passed, and in Terra Nova eight months was long enough for grief to settle into something that no longer shocked anyone when it entered a room. They stopped searching the river weeks after her fall. They marked the bend downstream where debris tended to gather and found nothing that belonged to her. The current there was unforgiving; if it did not drown you, it carried you far beyond anything familiar. Eventually the camp began speaking of her in the past tense.
Nathaniel never did.
Outwardly, he resumed command with the same precision he always had. Patrol rotations remained tight. Supply inventories were exact. Strategic briefings ran on time. But at night, when the jungle quieted and the perimeter lights cast long metallic shadows across the clearing, her voice replayed in his head with relentless clarity.
I love you.
He remembered the steadiness of her eyes more than the words. The acceptance when he said he couldn’t. The way she hadn’t looked angry—only certain.
He had spent years convincing himself that keeping distance was protection. After Ayani, he had believed love was something that weakened judgment, that opened vulnerabilities the jungle would inevitably exploit. But in the months without Y/N, he realized something that unsettled him deeply: he had not been protecting her. He had been protecting himself.
And it had cost him her.
He saw her everywhere. In the infirmary where she used to stand beside Elisabeth Shannon, hands steady and voice calm. In the clearing where children once followed her. In the way the rain sounded against metal roofs. He would wake some nights convinced he had felt her fingers around his forearm again, only to find empty air.
Eight months later, when he finally admitted to himself that he loved her, it did not feel romantic. It felt devastating. Because love meant something living, and she was gone.
The abandoned jeep had been reported several miles beyond the fence line, left during an earlier evacuation when mechanical failure forced them to retreat on foot. Retrieving it meant parts, fuel reserves, options. Nathaniel volunteered without hesitation.
He rode in silence beside Jim Shannon, posture straight, expression unreadable. Elisabeth sat in the back, reviewing notes on supply counts, though she studied him more than the paper in her hands.
They found the jeep half-swallowed by vegetation in a narrow clearing. Vines crept up its frame; mud caked its tires.
“Jim, with me,” Elisabeth said once they parked. “Let’s check the fuel line and see what’s salvageable.”
Nathaniel gave a short nod. “I’ll take the perimeter.”
He preferred distance.
He moved away from the clearing, boots quiet against leaf litter. The jungle air was thick, humming with insect life. Sunlight filtered through the canopy in fractured beams, illuminating drifting dust and pollen. He walked farther than necessary, scanning methodically, rifle held loose but ready.
After several minutes, he exhaled slowly. A rare, heavy sigh escaped him before he could stop it.
He turned toward a slightly higher ridge to get a better vantage point.
That was when the branches above him rustled.
It wasn’t wind.
He barely had time to register the shift in weight overhead before something solid collided with him from above. The impact drove him backward. Instinct took over; he twisted his torso mid-fall so that when he hit the ground it was on his back rather than his spine, air leaving his lungs in a sharp grunt.
A knee planted firmly against his abdomen, pinning him.
A hand shot upward.
A blade caught the light.
It wasn’t factory-made. It was improvised—metal sharpened crudely, handle wrapped in fabric. It trembled slightly as it hovered above his chest.
Nathaniel’s hand snapped up on reflex, gripping the attacker’s wrist before the knife could descend.
“Easy—”
The word died in his throat.
The face above him was streaked with dirt and sweat. Her hair was longer, tangled, pulled back roughly with a strip of cloth. There were faint healing cuts along her jaw and a darker smear of dried blood near her temple. A utility belt hung low around her hips—attached to it a dead flashlight, a hooked piece of metal, a small sidearm, and bits of scavenged supplies. Her clothes were worn thin and patched in places with mismatched fabric.
Her eyes were the same.
They widened first in shock.
Then disbelief.
Nathaniel’s grip on her wrist loosened automatically.
“Y/N,” he breathed.
The knife wavered.
She stared down at him like she was seeing a ghost.
“Nathaniel?” Her voice was rougher, as though unused or hardened by months of survival.
For a suspended second neither of them moved.
Then her fingers opened.
The makeshift knife fell from her hand and landed harmlessly beside them in the leaves.
She remained straddling his waist, hands braced on his chest now, as if confirming he was solid.
“You’re alive,” he said, the words coming out hoarse.
“You’re not dead,” she replied at the same time.
They both gave a small, almost disbelieving exhale that might have been a laugh if either of them knew how to process it.
She slid down from his stomach to sit back on his thighs and helped him push up into a seated position. Her hands were calloused now. Stronger. When he reached for her, he did not hesitate.
He pulled her into him.
The force of it knocked the breath from both of them.
She folded into his chest just as tightly, fingers gripping the back of his shirt as though afraid he might disappear if she didn’t hold on hard enough. He buried his face in her hair and inhaled—earth, sweat, smoke, survival. Underneath it all, still her.
“I thought you were gone,” he murmured against her temple.
“I tried to get back,” she said quietly. “The river carried me miles downstream. I was injured. I couldn’t find the path back right away.”
His hands moved to her shoulders, pulling her back just enough to see her face. There were faint scars he didn’t recognize. A thin line along her collarbone. A small healed puncture near her arm.
“You’ve been alone,” he said.
She gave a faint shrug. “Not anymore.”
Emotion surged through him so fast it almost felt like pain.
His hand came up to her cheek, thumb brushing dirt away slowly. He looked at her as if committing every detail to memory again. She watched him with something equally intense.
He didn’t think.
He leaned in.
The kiss was not tentative. It wasn’t rushed either. It was desperate in a quieter way, mouths pressing together like confirmation that the other existed. Her fingers slid into his hair; his hands tightened at her waist, pulling her closer until there was no space left between them.
It deepened naturally. Months of grief and regret poured into it. She shifted slightly in his lap, one hand braced against his shoulder for balance. His thumb traced the line of her jaw before sliding to the back of her neck.
They broke apart only when distant voices echoed through the trees.
“Colonel?” Jim’s voice carried faintly.
They separated reluctantly but remained close, foreheads nearly touching.
“I told you I loved you,” she said softly.
His jaw tightened, but this time it wasn’t from restraint.
“I know,” he replied.
He helped her to her feet just as Jim and Elisabeth emerged into the clearing. The shock on their faces mirrored his own from moments earlier. Elisabeth crossed the distance first, hands coming up to cup Y/N’s face before pulling her into a tight embrace.
That night Terra Nova celebrated.
Music drifted across the clearing. Laughter replaced whispers of loss. People approached her in waves, touching her shoulders, hugging her, speaking her name with relief.
Nathaniel stood back for most of it, watching.
Alive.
She was alive.
At some point, he noticed she was no longer in the crowd.
He slipped away quietly.
He found her near the edge of the perimeter, seated on a low supply crate, arms wrapped around herself. The celebration sounds were distant there, softened by trees and metal fencing.
She looked up when he approached but didn’t stand.
“Too much?” he asked gently.
She nodded once. “It doesn’t feel real yet.”
He moved closer, stopping just in front of her. For a moment he simply looked at her, as if reassuring himself she wasn’t about to vanish again.
“I was wrong,” he said.
She studied his face carefully. “About what?”
“About loving you.”
The words were steady.
“I told myself I couldn’t,” he continued. “I told myself it was safer not to. I was afraid of losing you the way I lost Ayani.” He exhaled slowly. “But I lost you anyway. And I realized the only thing worse than losing you… was never telling you.”
Her arms loosened slightly.
“Nathaniel—”
“I love you,” he said.
No hesitation. No excuse. No retreat.
Her breath caught.
“You waited eight months,” she whispered, but there was no accusation in it.
“I’ll wait a lifetime if I have to,” he replied quietly. “Just don’t leave again.”
She stood then, closing the small space between them. Her hands slid up his chest, over his shoulders, fingers curling into the fabric at his collar.
“I’m not going anywhere,” she said.
She kissed him first this time.
It was slower than before. Intentional. His hands settled at her waist, steady and certain. The jungle hummed around them, distant laughter drifting through the night air, but none of it mattered.
When they finally pulled back, their foreheads rested together.
For the first time since the river, he felt something inside him settle.
She wasn’t a memory.
She wasn’t a ghost.
She was here.
And this time, he did not hold back.
Taglist -> @barnes70stark @adrienneleclerc @groovy-lady
