Avalon

•62•

Shaking Off The Dust

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Watch me as I'm getting up

See me shaking off the dust

'Cause I'm starting again

Cover up the scars of love

I dry my tears, I've cried enough

And I know as it ends

That I wouldn't undo (Undo)

Anything we've been through

He startled very suddenly out of some weird trance and blinked. Or it felt like blinking.

What he saw was something he never expected to actually see but also didn't realize seeing at the same time.

He was looking at the little boy from camp who was glued to Rain and River.

It gave the familiarity of something he'd seen before but never paid enough attention. Which was part of why sometimes he missed out on a lot of things.

The girls were a bit younger with Serenity coming in his age and Noel and Samara being same age. He was still trying to guess about Marena.

Then the scene changed to the older visual of the boy. Now he saw the resemblance he missed at camp. The boy was in his teens now or preteens. Standing at the large pool table and nailing all his shots. He's so damn good- Nate decided. He was good too but for some reason he never got the game to the level Noel could outdrink everyone at any bar and win that game at the same time as the opposing party simply dropped.

The boy was cashing in and deep inside Nate felt very proud of him.

Then he was taken back to flashes of something that made little sense as he saw places he was kind of like sneaking in with the camera angles being changed and obviously why he knew it's him was that one fully geared agent moved the angle at the young man's face as he was getting in the gear and then it was placed on his chest attached to some strap. And that led to a scene where he was visibly becoming Shadow and moving quickly around the building or whatever it was and placing some chips into their systems. Immediately it gave spy vibes. Section-31 came to mind as one of the most known Starfleet secret part they denied ever hearing of.

He watched a bit more before the reel moved on to the scene of scaling a building wall and he was still having the camera but it now was attached differently showing his face partly. It was covered but Nate could tell in the couple reflections it was Neal just very young. A boy still really.

And then it jumped to some different locations where he caught rushed glimpses of things and more buildings and 'shadowing' by conference rooms and ventilation shafts.

Whatever this was it wasn't meant to be seen at full but maybe it was just him unconsciously speeding through the records.

Then he got caught on one much later, most likely when he was teen, where he was being interrogated. The angle was specifically on him and not the guy opposite. The voice of the man interrogating seemed familiar though. Nate couldn't put it anywhere but he was certain he'd heard that voice before somewhere.

The interrogation was ruthless and scary but Neal, who now looked actually exactly like Nate, held his ground nonchalantly. It sparked a note of a feeling he usually reserved for Noel when he learned of the guy's successes.