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Natalie and Travis.
Lottie hears about it through the grapevine at first. Mari whispers it to Akilah with raised eyebrows and a grin twisting the corner of her mouth. Lottie pretends not to hear it. They’re stranded in the middle of the Sierra fucking Nevadas right now and the last thing she needs to be is jealous—
It gets a little harder to pretend like it’s not happening when Natalie comes back from the hunt with smudged lipstick (and really, when does she have the time to do her makeup?) and a grin on Travis’s face that makes Lottie feel like pressing a shaky palm to her stomach. It reminds her of before the crash. Before, back when they were just girls and had sleepovers at Lottie’s mansion. Back when Travis was just Coach Martinez’s son, and not someone important. Not someone they even knew by more than just a name. Back when Natalie would find her at the end of the sleepover, eyes shuttered but imploring, hands twisting in her ripped flannel. Back when it was Lottie who smudged her lipstick.
Nat doesn’t look at her when she comes back with Travis. Lottie wonders if it's a guilty conscience. They both know what they refuse to acknowledge. They both know that it’s not cheating, because they were never together to begin with, but it’s a betrayal of some sort.
It’s fine, Lottie thinks, and glances at the cabin. Hears it whispering to her. Calling out to her.
She’s got other things to worry about anyways.
*
“You’re scaring me, Lot,” Natalie says as she presses the bandaid to Lottie’s forehead. The other girls are downstairs, quiet whispers just loud enough that Lottie knows they’re talking about her. Talking about the breakdown. Discussing whether Lottie’s gone full psycho or if there’s something truly wrong with the cabin.
“Oh yeah?” Lottie grumbles, noncommittal. Nat’s fingers are gentle on her forehead. She wants to fall asleep, but she knows better than to be comforted by someone who doesn’t even want her anymore.
“You’ve gotta stop with all this shit,” Natalie implores, her fingers easing up now, skimming over the edges of the bandaid almost affectionately. “It’s not like you. You’re supposed to be the one with your head on straight, you know? Like, sure, Jackie’s the leader, but you’re the fucking backbone.”
Lottie shivers at the praise. She’s always liked being told that she’s doing a good job, but it’s different coming from Nat. She yearns for it from her. Pathetic, maybe, considering Nat will go back to being all over Travis come tomorrow morning, but Lottie can’t help but look up at her from under her lashes. Batting them before she even knows what she’s doing.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers, and Nat traces her face, over her cheekbone, down her jaw. It’s not a path untrodden or unfamiliar, but it’s been just long enough that it feels like that. Lottie leans into her touch, maddened by it. “This whole place is just making me feel… weird. Unbalanced.”
Nat looks at her in silence, eyebrows pulled together in concern.
“I told Tai about it, too,” Lottie admits, catching Nat’s hand against her cheek, holding it there, cupping the back of it. “I told her on the first night that this place made me feel weird. She thought I was being crazy. And I get it, I get that I’m being stupid—”
“Lot, you’re not—”
“No, I am, but I can’t shake it. No matter how much I tell myself that it’s stupid I just— I feel like the woods are trying to tell me something.”
It feels so nice to say out loud that Lottie almost forgets for a moment that she’s upset with Natalie. She forgets that there’s a boy downstairs, waiting for Nat to come back so he can wrap his gangly arms around her neck and pull her into his side, taking a deep breath as he inhales the scent on the top of her head. It feels so nice to say out loud that Lottie almost doesn’t register the way Nat recoils a little bit at her admission.
“Lottie,” she begins, emphatically, frowning, and Lottie lets Nat’s hand drop from her face.
They fall in her lap, but she doesn’t move to catch them again.
“You don’t believe me.”
Nat sighs. “It’s not that— I just— I believe that you believe what you’re saying—”
“So you think I’m crazy?”
Lottie doesn’t say it aggressively, she’s never been aggressive a day in her life, really, but something must strike Nat hard enough that she leaps forward, framing Lottie’s face in her hands again. They’re close enough to kiss. Lottie could do it, if she wanted to. She could close the distance between them, the way she’s done for countless nights before the plane crash. The way she did the night before they left for Nationals—
“Lottie, I think you need to talk to someone.”
And Lottie knows that this is a lost cause. That Nat doesn’t know her as well as she thought she did. That kissing in the dark of the night a few times before the plane crash did not mean Nat was suddenly an expert on all things Lottie, but still—
Still.
Lottie had thought. Had hoped, even, that someone here knew her the way Shauna knew Jackie. Or the way Laura Lee knew the scriptures.
“There are no therapists out here, Nat, in case you didn’t notice,” Lottie whispers, the closest thing to aggressive that she’s ever gotten. “Unless Travis suddenly has a degree we don’t know about?”
Nat has the decency to look ashamed, at least. But that also means everything is true. The smudged lipstick and the shy looks, the rumors and the whispers. It’s all real. Lottie’s mind has apparently fabricated so much, but not this. The one thing she wished she was wrong about is apparently the only thing that ties her to sanity.
“Lottie, it’s not—”
“Just go,” Lottie whispers, and draws her knees into her chest, away from Nat, away from the warmth of her body. “Please, Natalie, just go.”
And Nat does.
*
(Nat recoils a little when Travis wraps a burly arm around her as she tucks into the corner of the room, having left Lottie to her lonesome devices upstairs. Her stomach churns. It’s wrong what she’s doing to Lottie. It’s awful. But Lottie’s good and kind and the last thing she needs in all this mess is to be involved with Nat. Travis is different. He’s just as messy, and more than that, Nat doesn’t feel bad when she drags him into her depths. She doesn’t fear losing him as much, either. Sure, she likes him, and she enjoys the time they have together, but it’s not like Lottie.
He doesn’t consume her the way Lottie does. She doesn’t hang on his every word, she doesn’t stare at the side of his face and trace his jawline like fingertips on braille.
I’m sorry, Lottie, I’m so sorry, she chants over and over again, thinking about Lottie’s face, thinking about the pure hurt on it when she brought up Travis.
One day, maybe I can make it up to you. Please stay alive so I can do that.)
*
Laura Lee is not someone Lottie thought about a lot before they ended up here, and she probably never would have given her much thought if they lived out the rest of their lives like they were supposed to.
She certainly wouldn’t have found herself with her hands in Laura Lee’s lap, watching her mumble prayer after prayer by the side of the lake, and realizing just how pretty she is.
It’s not like Lottie hadn’t noticed before — she has a bit of a thing for blonde girls, as it turns out — but it had felt untouchable, before. And while, sure, Lottie has had her fair share of unrequited crushes on girls who were unattainable, Laura Lee was beyond that. Crushing on Laura Lee is like crushing on Jesus himself… or something. It’s not just unattainable, it’s illogical. Not to mention, Lottie’s still a little bit too tied up in all things Natalie Scatorccio to even really notice how Laura Lee’s demeanor shifts after their pseudo-baptism. How she stares at Lottie a little too long and a little too hard whenever Lottie is too busy gazing out into the trees, listening for something no one else can hear.
But she notices now. Now, with nothing to do but listen to the calming drone of Laura Lee reciting prayers, she notices how her front two teeth are a little crooked, and how there are some premature wrinkles in her forehead. She notices the light brown ends of some of her hairs, and how all of it just makes her seem so real. Not at all like crushing on Jesus. And man, she’s pretty. Lottie feels her heart ache with a latent feeling in her chest.
And fuck she can’t do this again. She really can’t. There’s only so much heartbreak she can take in one lifetime.
“Lottie,” Laura Lee calls, in that singsong voice of hers that could captivate an audience of a thousand birds.
“Hm?”
“Where did I lose you?”
Lottie grins sheepishly. It feels foreign on her face. They don’t do a lot of smiling out here these days. Tensions are too high. Jackie and Shauna don’t seem to be talking to each other, Van and Tai are arguing about something, even Nat and Travis don’t seem to be on great terms (though that one tickles Lottie more than the others).
“Sorry, I– I guess I’m not really feeling it today.”
Laura Lee smiles, tilting her head. Forgiveness runs in her veins, side by side with her blood. Lottie aches to reach out to it. Dip her fingers in it. There’s serenity there, too. There must be. She wonders what it would be like to live a day in Laura Lee’s headspace. To not be her for one day. One fucking day.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
That’s another thing that they do. They’re not just prayer circle friends, or whatever. They don’t just convene when it’s time to hold hands in front of the lake. They talk. Most of the time it’s Lottie talking, explaining her dreams – talking about the absurdity of them, how she sees rivers of blood and decapitated animals and–
Well, that one time that she saw Laura Lee in a cloud of fire–
But she doesn’t tell Laura Lee that. The visions never come true, anyways.
“You’re just–” Lottie swallows thickly, cheeks heating up. She doesn’t have a dream to talk about this time. She’s not distracted by violence or things that seem like shrouded omens. “You look really pretty today.”
“Oh,” Laura Lee breathes, eyebrows shooting up, hands slipping from Lottie’s where they’re joined in the middle back into her own lap.
Fuck, Lottie thinks, the sudden coldness in her palms jarring her. Fuck, fuck–
“Sorry, I–”
“Well, I think you’re pretty everyday, Lottie.”
And this time, the oh that slips into the air is not from Laura Lee.
*
(It’s not like Nat doesn’t notice Lottie and Laura Lee’s new friendship. It’s hard not to. They spend all day together, giggling on the porch, pressing each other’s shoulders together, leaning into each other, sharing words and jokes and whispers in that little space between their bodies. And okay, maybe it’s hypocritical of Nat to feel like this– this burning in her chest– when she’s been parading Travis around for the last two months. But she just never imagined–
She never thought Lottie–
Her Lottie–
Nat curls her finger over the trigger and aims at the rabbit.)
*
Laura Lee kisses her under the wing of the plane.
It’s soft, warm, exactly the way Lottie had imagined kissing Laura Lee would feel– because she has imagined it, no matter how much she tried not to. It came in waves, sandwiched between dreams of Nat, of holding Nat, of kissing Nat. And now she’s doing it actually, with her cheek cradled in Laura Lee’s palm, and her own hand grasping rather desperately at the loose material of Laura Lee’s dress over her hip.
Laura Lee giggles between the kisses, when they come up for air.
“Wow.”
Lottie smiles. “Yeah?”
“I just– that was my first– um,” she ducks her head, blonde hair curtaining Lottie’s view.
Lottie’s chest feels warm and tight. “That was your first kiss?”
Laura Lee nods.
“Oh, and you’re- you’re okay with it being me?”
She rolls her eyes so hard Lottie worries they’ll roll right out of her head, and hey aren’t uber religious people like Laura Lee supposed to refrain from rolling their eyes at people because it’s passing judgment? Lottie opens her mouth to say as much only to be silenced by Laura Lee’s thumb pressing against her bottom lip.
“I’ve had a crush on you for a really long time, Lottie,” she whispers, letting the words fall like ashes in the space between them. “I just… well, I thought you were too wrapped up in Nat to ever think about anyone else— to think about me like that.”
And there it is again. Nat. Always present in Lottie’s life, always pressing down on her even when Lottie tries to run away, even when Nat has her tongue down Travis’s throat and Laura Lee is practically in Lottie’s lap making out with her. Inescapable, the way you can never outrun the earth itself or the ground under your feet.
“Well, she’s with Travis now, so you don’t have to worry about that,” Lottie mumbles, somewhat petty, and doesn’t realize it’s the wrong thing to say until she feels Laura Lee stiffen under her hands.
“Is that what this is?” she asks, crossing her arms over her torso, almost as if shielding herself. “A rebound? Or a consolation prize?”
“No, no, Laura,” Lottie reaches out, palms sliding up thighs, coaxing Laura Lee back in, pulling religion against her hips once more. She’s so stupid. So tactless. She doesn’t think before she says, and that’s why Nat thinks she’s crazy. That’s why Tai side-eyes her these days. That’s why Laura Lee is looking at her with a sudden guardedness that makes Lottie’s skin crawl. “It’s not like that. I like you. I like you. Not because I’m hurt by Nat, or because I want to forget Nat.”
“But you are hurt by her, and you do want to forget her.”
“I— yes,” Lottie admits, somewhat ashamed. “But that has nothing to do with me liking you. I promise.”
Laura Lee unwinds her arms from around herself carefully before propping them on Lottie’s shoulders. “Don’t break my heart, Lottie. God doesn’t take kindly to that.”
It’s a joke as much as it is permission for Lottie to lean in again and capture Laura Lee’s mouth in a silent apology.
Sorry, she says, with her chapped lips and stuttered breaths. I’m sorry.
And Laura Lee accepts.
*
Nothing perfect lasts forever. Lottie should have known this. It’s slowly becoming the mantra of their lives out in the wilderness.
Laura Lee gets it into her head, once Van comes back bloody and practically in pieces, that she can fly the plane to safety. She stays hunched over a manual in the back of the cabin most of the days when she’s not sweeping every inch of the cabin to make it presentable, or when she’s not absentmindedly boiling pots of water for people to take warm baths in. Lottie begins to see less and less of her, which means she has time for other things– like getting into cold wars with Nat.
“Where’s your friend Laura Lee?” she asks, all but biting, as they sit by the fire together, ripping off pieces of squirrel meat from their wood skewers. Game was beginning to dwindle as the nights were getting cooler and the jackets were slowly starting to come out of their luggages. A few squirrels were the best that Natalie and Travis could gather, and Lottie can tell she’s already on edge about it; they’ve already run out of packaged food supplies, there’s nothing they can do if the animals start to migrate away, too.
“Why?” Lottie shoots back, picking at a Nat-shaped scab over her arteries. “What does it matter to you?”
“Well we should all be transparent, right?” Nat bullshits so obviously that Lottie can’t even take her seriously. “I mean, we’re stuck out here in the wilderness together which means any shifts in dynamic could literally be life or death—”
Lottie snorts derisively. “Yeah, right. And are you telling us everything about what’s happening with Travis?”
Everyone’s felt it in the last few days, that weird silence that coats the room with filmy thickness when Travis and Natalie are in spitting distance of each other. The way Travis seems to let Natalie go on hunts alone these days. Lottie remembers the way it had made her chest spasm with hope, as awful as that sounds, because maybe, just maybe, that meant Nat would come back to her again.
No such thing really happens, of course. If anything, Nat gets better at avoiding the rest of the group, spending most of her day out in the forest hunting.
“Travis and I are… none of your business,” Nat pushes back, though there’s little fight in her voice. She looks ashamed, more than anything.
“Exactly. So, don’t ask about me and Laura Lee, either.”
Natalie shoots her a look full of an emotion that Lottie is a little too winded by to comment on. “Jeez, Matthews. Protective much? What is she, your girlfriend?”
“So what if she is?”
Nat pauses, glancing unsurely at Lottie. “...Is she?”
Lottie deflates. Here’s a war she’s not winning, here’s a battle she’s losing, here’s a girl she’s giving her whole heart to, even though she shouldn’t. Even though Laura Lee is good and kind and kisses like summer. Even though Lottie should want more for herself than this. But it’s Nat. It’s the girl she opened her arms to before she even knew she could move her arms like that. It’s the girl whose breath she had mapped with her own lips once. Who doesn’t kiss like summer– but like something thawing from winter. Like the drip of it coming down your throat.
“No,” Lottie whispers, the secret of the universe slipping past her lips. “You know she’s not.”
The second sentence is quieter than the first, but Nat hears it all the same.
“I don’t know why you’re doing this to me,” Lottie continues, not being able to find it in herself to stop now that she’s started. She can’t remember the last time Nat had even stuck around long enough for them to talk. Like, really talk. “Travis— do you like him?”
Nat swallows thickly. “I don’t know.”
Pins and needles. Lottie’s head is starting to hurt. The visions are creeping up on her again, like hot flashes, pressing against her spine, up her neck, to the base of her skull.
“And me? Do you like me?”
Nat bites down on her bottom lip so hard, Lottie wonders if she’ll break the skin.
“Lottie… you know how I feel about you.”
Her head is pounding now. But Lottie supposes this is enough. For one night, this will do.
She gets up and dusts off her thighs.
“I don’t, Nat, I really don’t.”
And then she’s gone.
*
(Nat doesn’t mention to Lottie that her and Travis haven’t been talking for a while. She doesn’t mention that when she’s sleeping tucked against his side, sometimes she wakes up with a start, wishing she was pressing her face into Lottie’s warm collarbone instead.
It’s a mercy, she thinks, as she watches Lottie get up and walk away, clutching her temples. She’s already dealing with enough as it is.)
*
“Laura,” Lottie all but whimpers against her shoulder— letting herself be weak for the first time since they landed— as Laura Lee clutches her back just as tight. The puttering of the plane engine surrounds them, and god, Lottie has a bad feeling about this. The feeling sits in her stomach, heavy and ominous, and she wants to tell Laura Lee no, don’t do it. Please, don’t leave me.
But there’s determination in Laura Lee’s eyes— the kind that Lottie knows can’t be swayed. The kind that either ends in victory or defeat, but never bows out.
“I’ll be back, Lottie,” Laura Lee says, not even a waver in her voice, and Lottie wonders how she didn’t see it before. How she didn’t realize that Laura Lee was actually the bravest of all of them. “I’ll get us out of here, trust me.”
And so Lottie does. She trusts her.
*
(Nat grabs Lottie before she falls to her knees and Laura Lee becomes nothing but a smattering of plane parts in the sky, falling into the lake one by one. She hadn’t even made it farther than the goddamn lake. It’s such a fucking joke.
“No, no,” Lottie whispers, not even looking at Nat, staring straight into the horizon where Laura Lee once was. “She said she was going to come back. She said—”
“I’m sorry, Lottie,” Nat whispers into her hair as they sink into the wet sand. Her own tears are drying on her face, but Lottie’s have just begun. She doesn’t even feel jealous, she doesn’t wish Lottie would just look at her for a second. Nat feels the loss of Laura Lee— of the one person who had real hope — just as deeply as Lottie does. “I’m so sorry, baby.”)
*
Nat doesn’t leave Lottie’s side that night, and no one bothers them, either. Not even Travis.
They stay cocooned in the corner of the room, with Lottie tucked in Nat’s arms, head against her sternum, as the world keeps moving forward.
As Laura Lee sinks somewhere to the bottom of the lake, Lottie thinks bitterly, and grips Nat’s shirt tighter in her fist. If there’s even that much of her left.
Natalie kisses her head softly.
It’s just enough to help Lottie fall asleep.
*
(Nat would never admit this out loud, for fear of being perceived as having feelings, but she’s glad when Lottie begins to return to her normal self after a while. When she smiles at a joke that Van cracks, or when she lets out a soft oh let me help when Jackie almost stumbles into the fire while carrying a pail of water.
I missed you, Natalie wants to say, when she catches Lottie’s eyes over Shauna’s head as they’re both distributing the dried rabbit meat onto dirty plates.
She never says it, but she doesn’t think she has to.
Lottie lets their thighs brush together when she gives Nat her plate, and that’s language enough.)
*
The lakeside is still a favorite spot for Lottie, despite the fact that now it has memories and bodies and is probably tainted beyond repair. It used to be so nice, back before Laura Lee and her stupid expedition. It used to be so serene. And it still is, but now Lottie can only admire it from afar. She’s too scared to step towards it, too scared to step in and possibly feel something brush past her leg— too quick for her to dive in and grab it. She’s too scared that it’ll be Laura Lee again, and again she’ll be too slow to grab her. To keep her from drifting away.
So she lies back in the sand, splaying her arms out on either side and stares up at the sky. She listens to her heartbeat, because apparently that’s the only part of her body that is yet to betray her, and she waits. She waits for the air to get cool, she waits for the sun to dip below the horizon, she waits—
“Lot? What the hell are you doing?”
She cracks one eye open and finds Nat hovering above her, hands on her hips, mouth pulled into a confused smile.
“Tanning, obviously.”
Nat snorts, and when Lottie closes her eyes, she can hear the shuffling of the sand, and can feel the pressure of Natalie’s presence becoming heavier next to her ear. She can feel the material of Natalie’s jeans against her fingertips, and barely holds back a smile.
“Do you think we would’ve done it?” Natalie asks, reaching over to play with Lottie’s fingers. “If we’d actually made it to nationals, do you think we would’ve won it? Or maybe— there’s some alternate universe right now where we did win. Where we’re back home right now, our trophy in the trophy case at school, for everyone to fucking see that we did that.”
Lottie’s mouth twitches despite herself. She likes this about Nat, like that Nat can dare to dream. It’s so similar to Laura Lee and Lottie wonders if maybe this is her type. Girls with hope.
“Yeah,” Lottie nods, even though the chances are low that they would have. Their left flank needed better defending and without Allie they were down a member and it’s pretty likely that Nat would have missed a hundred percent of the shots she tried to make, but still. Maybe they would have won anyways. “I think we would have.”
Natalie smiles up at the sky.
The silence plagues them, and Lottie’s mind begins to wander again. This time, however, it goes to the past instead of creating some wishy-washy future full of blood and gore.
It goes back to Natalie’s soft mouth and exploring hands. To her insistent gaze, finding Lottie at every party they go to. To how she’d held Lottie’s hand before they rushed onto the field to play States. How she’d squeezed and smiled and how even though Lottie was fairly sure she’d been making out with Kevyn Tan before that, it had all been as close to perfect as you could get it.
“I kissed Laura Lee,” she admits, quietly. It doesn’t make the leaves rustle, it doesn’t make the earth shift beneath them. It’s a truth that once was, but is no more, because Laura Lee is no more.
Natalie swallows, the noise clicking in her throat. “I know. Or– well, I’d figured as much.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Nat says, and Lottie finds a palm sliding into her own, reaching over, communing God between their fingers, pressing the small bits of happiness they can find in this grand scheme of fucked up. “I mean, it kinda serves me right. After what I did with Travis.”
Lottie doesn’t flinch at the mention of his name anymore, which is a development that happened so gradually she hadn’t even noticed it.
“I didn’t do it to spite you, Nat,” Lottie says, turning her head to the side now, so she can look at Nat. Trace her jaw with her eyes, and remember what it was like to capture Nat’s mouth with her own.
“I know.”
“And I know you didn’t kiss Travis to spite me, either.”
“Yeah,” Nat turns to look at her, too. “We really fucked this up, huh?”
Lottie shrugs. “I probably would’ve agreed with you a few months ago. But out here– I don’t know. I think there’s a chance to un-fuck it up, if we want to. Start all over again. Pretend the past doesn’t exist.”
Nat reaches out, brushes her thumb against Lottie’s bottom lip. “But I don’t wanna do that. The past makes us… us, you know?”
Lottie gulps. “Then we don’t have to.”
“Okay,” Nat nods. “I’m going to kiss you now.”
And Lottie lets her.
*
(Lottie’s mouth — stale, and in need of a brush or two — still tastes like home. Natalie climbs into her lap, because she’s always found the height Lottie has on her pretty hot, and fists her hands in Lottie’s hair. For the first time since they crashed, she feels peace. She’d looked for it before, in Travis, in the cabin, even in the other girls, because she’d been so scared of actually finding it. Of finding something to love in a place so volatile.
But she’s just a girl, at the end of the day. A girl with cravings, a girl with blood thrumming under her skin. And Lottie is real and solid, and even when she’s talking crazy, people look to her as somewhat of a leader. It’s everything Natalie has ever wanted in her life. Someone to guide her, someone to take care of her. Someone to call home.
“Did you mean it?” Nat asks between kisses, holding Lottie close with her palms against either side of Lottie’s neck. “A few days ago, when you said you didn’t know how I feel about you, did you mean it?”
Lottie’s arms wrap around her back, strong and reassuring. Nat almost preens under it. She tilts her jaw up to keep their mouths close together, eyes trained on Nat’s mouth.
“Does it matter?”
And no, Nat supposes it doesn’t, really. Not when Lottie’s hands are warm on her lower back and she can feel the hours that they spent toiling away on soccer fields in the ripple of Lottie’s thighs bracketed by her legs.
“But you know now, right?” Nat pushes, because that, at least, is still important. That matters.
Lottie hums, chasing her mouth. “I do.”
And that’s enough for now.)
*
The wilderness doesn’t give for free. Lottie learned this the hard way. She learned this after watching Jackie get swallowed up by the snow and then by her own teammates. She learned this after sitting on the porch and watching the gray clouds roll in, heavy and ominous, knowing that they’ll be snowed in unless Lottie does something. Maybe slash her palm and offer some blood. Maybe pick a teammate to crack open their ribs and offer their heart—
The wilderness doesn’t give for free. And it also doesn’t let Lottie choose who it will ask for in exchange.
So even though Natalie rolls her eyes and grumbles matthews, this is fucking bonkers, Lottie still makes that herbal concoction mixed with her blood before she sends Travis and Nat out in the morning, hunting for something, anything. Because Nat is lovely, with her red lips and inviting mouth, like an open wound, the wilderness must see in her what Lottie sees in her, too. The wilderness must want the way Lottie wants her. Because the wilderness and Lottie are one and the same, now. Each a vessel for the other. And Nat is too good, too kind, to be caught in the exchange of that.
“Lottie, I appreciate the concern,” Nat says one morning, leaning against the doorway serenely as Travis takes a leak outside and Lottie stirs the leaves and blood together in the cup. “But this isn’t really— I mean, no offense, but it’s kinda gross to drink your literal blood every morning. And I hate to burst your bubble but it’s not exactly doing… anything. We still haven’t found any bears or deers or even a fucking squirrel.”
Lottie cuts her a look that makes Natalie wring her wrists.
“But you’re coming back aren’t you? That’s the most we can ask for. The rest is up to the wilderness."
Nat rolls her eyes. “Right. The wilderness.”
“Don’t do that,” Lottie frowns, pausing her mixing to really look at Nat. “Don’t make me sound crazy for wanting to protect you.”
Natalie softens. She steps in closer, fingers reaching for Lottie’s cheek, brushing them back and forth against skin that has long since become dry and cracked. “Oh, baby, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean— I appreciate what you’re doing, okay? I just don’t want you to stress too hard over it. I’ll always come back in one piece,” Nat’s smile grows lopsided and boyish. It warms Lottie’s fingertips. She lowers her voice and leans in. They were already close enough, but from this distance, Lottie can see every white flake of drying and dead skin peeling off of Nat’s lips. She can see the red flush of her cheeks and the split ends of her hair. She’s still so fucking beautiful. “Besides, I’ve got a girl to come home to now, don’t I?”
Lottie flushes, and this is a feat to achieve because between all the sacrifices and the blood and the violence, Lottie’s been finding it harder and harder to remember what it’s like to just be a seventeen year old girl (or is it eighteen, now? Her birthday is in September, they must have crossed that. She must be-).
“Yeah,” Lottie nods, and closes the distance between them, ghosting a kiss on Natalie’s lips, savoring it. A goodbye kiss. A kiss of good luck. If she can believe in the supernatural abilities of a water-blood-leaf soup, then why not the abilities of her own mouth, sealing Natalie to her forever? “Yeah, you do.”
And so the wilderness might be hungry, and transactional, and it might take more than it gives, and it might ask Lottie to bleed herself dry in a tree stump before anybody can relieve their hunger, but it will never have Natalie.
Come back safe, says the drip-drip-dripping of Lottie’s blood as it pours down Natalie’s throat.
I will, says Nat’s smile as she shuffles out the door behind Travis.
And she will, because the wilderness will not take what is rightfully Lottie’s. Not this time.