Chapter Text
2012
That day, eleven year-old Natalie Scatorccio had thought, is it finally the end?
She couldn’t say her still developing brain hadn’t before considered the shiny appeal of giving up. But that day, for the first time, it felt like a warm embrace. A “thanks for nothing I guess.”
Her salvation had bearred the appearance of a taller boy. He was alone, just like her. She knew how hard it was. No one to look after them. No one to teach them the difference between what’s good, what’s bad and what’s grey.
Down there, through the invisible cracks in the street’s walls, hovered ghosts no one dared to glance at. Natalie was born a ghost. She belonged here and always would, with the lost souls and the doomed. It was her world. One day she liked to think, one day she would be the queen of ghosts.
But today was not the day. While the stranger was holding her down to search through her pockets, her chubby pale cheek pressed against the gravel, she had felt it. The familiar rush in her veins, the monster inside, crawling and screaming against her arteries, begging to be let out. Even though it frightened her, it was the closest she had to a protector. It could be merciless and full of rage but she had come to understand it would never hurt her.
The devil was on her side. And that was the issue. Because it made her bad. Since she was able to remember, it had pushed her to hurt people. Sure, it always happened in situations in which she didn’t have the choice – other than let herself die at the ends of her tormentors – but she loathed what she had done. All those times, and particularly that last one.
So as the greasy dark hair boy lashed out on her, Natalie remained static. She preferred having her skin torn to shreds and her ribs broken than letting her monster take control. She could sleep with swollen black eyes and bruises on her neck. But not with the pit of guilt, remorse and suffering that came from the images burnt into her brain.
Those in which her attackers would realize, in a split second, that death had come for them, in the face of a small blue-eyed little girl.
However, no matter how hard she fought to keep the urge to destroy at bay, it always found a way to creep over the surface. If most of the times Natalie would whisper to the monster and beg for it to calm down, sometimes, she was the one to take it by the hand and drown into its heart. Because buried deep down was Something even more terrifying than her monster. Its sharp teeth teared into her pain and drank from it, and its claws drew fear from the world.
Something was all her’s; her desire for vengeance.
Natalie opened her eyes. A few hours must’ve gone by because the sun had set. It would soon be the start of spring – or so she believed, if she wasn’t completely wrong in her counting – and the sky wore a light blue shade. She smiled at the sight. She had always felt a little bit free looking up into the endless space above her. Like if she stood her arm up, the moon would be just a finger away from her own skin, even swimming a bit further to meet her halfway and greet her up there. Natalie pressed her eyelids shut at the childish idea.
She was still laying on the ground, where the boy had left her. Apparently, he had taken her coat because she was very cold. Or was she just dying?
Finally.
Ten years of survival at the hands of pure violence and Natalie Scatorccio’s downfall was going to come from a pathetic stolen aviator jacket. Every single inch of her body screamed in agony but the thought of the warm coat she had found a few months ago in a trash and pressed against her chest on sleepless nights taken away from her was the trigger to a river of sobs.
Life is unfair.
Natalie doesn’t even try to move. She knows well enough that any movement right now would only result in her screaming as the ache spreads everywhere. She’s used to it. Almost like a comforting parent tugging her to sleep and singing her a lullaby. A painful lullaby, which often results in her falling asleep from exhaustion so— good enough.
She remains there, steady as a corpse, apart from her chest rising as she inhales. Her stomach growls in the silent night. She’s starving but the few dried pieces of food she had managed to gather earlier while searching the area are long gone.
Last time she ate something solid was two or three days ago. All she can taste at the moment are her tears. They dance quietly on her face, in sync with the sound of birds singing their evening chant. She feels a profound sense of peace as the fresh air dries the salt water droplets on her cheekbones.
Natalie wonders if she’s dreaming, sprawled down in an abandoned parking lot in the middle of New Jersey. There’s an overall atmosphere of resilience and it’s like her surroundings have accepted their fate. The moon has wished goodnight to the sun, the stars are casting their halo above her as they have for centuries and will for even longer. Her lips painfully stretch at the thought of them being long dead.
Oh, how it must be beautiful to only ever live through the haze of people’s tangible gaze.
Knowing that once you look at it, a star is already long dead, dreadfully waving from billions of years afar. If only she could have just been a star in the endless blue sky, Natalie thinks as her sore body sings her to sleep.
“She stinks.” An accusatory voice painfully makes its way to Natalie's ears and triggers a pounding headache. She’s still zoned out from her beating and as her body wakes up – slowly – the pain returns in full force.
A couple of distant voices roam through her fuzzy and cottoned head, trying to find their way to the logical part of her brain.
After a few seconds of intense focus, which means about 3% of what most people are capable of, Natalie comes to the conclusion that stranger number 1 - who spoke first - and stranger number 2 and 3 are bickering over her questionable hygiene. All the while she tries to get out of her sleeping, almost dying night.
“This is unfair, I'm too unconscious to even defend myself,” she manages to spit out in a hoarse voice. Her throat hurts terribly and she’s pretty sure she won’t be able to deepen her reasoning, even if it’s the only way to stop the strangers from murdering her.
Down here, everyone is an enemy. Natalie learned that early on, before she wound up by herself at seven. Threats had shadows even bigger when they were close to her heart.
The voices fall dead silent at her snarky remark. A tug of anxiety rises up her stomach and sets fire to her insides.
Natalie had never really been afraid of dying. She was used to suffering. But what scared her was the unknown, what was out of her control. And right now, with three strangers by her side not actively looking to kill her, things felt a whole lot unusual. Unusual meant she was in a foreign territory. Bruised and bloody knuckles were easier than this silence.
Soon enough, the light chatter starts again.
What the hell.
Natalie thinks she might actually be going crazy. Maybe she’s hallucinating again due to her multiple concussions and broken bones.
That must be the only valid explanation for a group of random strangers to show their face in a trashed-out parking lot, banter about whether or not a little homeless orphan girl is clean, shush each other up and then stand there being weird like a bunch of muppets.
Natalie’s headache grows with a fury. Familiar voices yelling “run”, banging warning bells inside her brain.
After a few seconds of struggling, she’s finally able to open her eyes. Everything becomes all the more confusing.
Just above her and way too close, staring straight into her soul is a gigantic round face, covered in blood and what looks like dirt? The creep’s head is surrounded by brown curls that fall, as Natalie scans his disproportionate body down, until his hooves?
Okay now this is new. What the actual hell.
Deciding she might as well go with it, Natalie cracks her neck and lifts her gaze to the boy standing awkwardly behind Creepy Goat. He’s older than Natalie and at first sight, all of his body parts seem human. He has gentle brown eyes and she thinks if this is their interpretation of a good cop, bad cop, he’s definitely the former.
Good cop shoots her an apologetic grin while fidgeting and giving stressed out glances over Creepy Goat, who’s now just rummaging in his jean jacket’s pockets while analyzing Natalie’s thoroughly as if assessing the damage.
Well, we're going to be here a long time.
“We should head back right now, everyone must be worried. Just give her some nectar for the ride.”
There it is again. The first voice she’d heard, the one who had woken her up to this nonsense, scoffing her smell. It doesn’t belong to the two weirdos Natalie already has in sight. She gathers all of her remaining strength to force herself up on her elbows. Her head spins dangerously but she can finally make out to be who the annoying voice belongs to.
A few steps further on the right, under the morning strides of spring sunshine is a girl. She must be about the same age as Natalie but that’s all they seem to have in common.
Stranger number 1 is a bit taller than her, with dark long curly hair and a tanned skin. A long cape is draped over her shoulders and lands right under her knees. Something that looks like a bow is attached to her side and Natalie guesses she must be dreaming again because why would you use a bow and arrows in this neighborhood.
Fights were won with muscles and knives here. Or in Natalie’s case, with the help of a bloodthirsty devil living in her heart.
The girl’s brows are tightly furrowed and a scowl is plastered on her face. She seems all too bored and annoyed at the situation. Like smelly beat-up orphans are the doom of her existence.
“She’s in terrible shape. Even with the nectar I’m not sure she’d survive the trip. Plus, we still don’t know how much she can take,” whispers Creepy Goat, turning his head backwards to face the annoying girl, as if his mouth is not just a few inches from Natalie’s ear.
Stranger number 1 glances over at Natalie, narrowing her eyes and tilting her head to the side. Natalie is too far and honestly too worn out to get a good look at her face but it almost seems like the girl is mentally writing an analysis report. Or drawing a painting of the blond porcelain skin girl to burn later.
Stranger number 2 and 3 wait for her answer, which is weird because she’s about as old as Natalie, meaning she’s the youngest of them three.
“Give her the normal dose and we’ll see from there. But I’d say we move her right away, she needs special care anyway. The faster we get back to camp, the better it is for everyone, including her, if she wants to stay alive.” The sun-kissed brown hair girl shrugs, like she hands out life or death sentences for a job.
Bold of you to assume.
The word “camp” doesn’t help easing Natalie’s ongoing turmoil, if anything, a taste of bile starts to rise in her throat and her breathing feels more and more ragged.
“I’m right here you know… Just in case”. Natalie grumbles while they keep royally ignoring her. The drowsiness kicks in again and the fast flow of discussion becomes more distant at each passing second.
She can only catch some words here and there over the sound of blood pulsing through her veins and the raging cacophony plugging behind her eyelids.
She closes her eyes in a desperate attempt to regain a grip on reality and calm the pain down but it only aggravates the intensity of her other senses. Her skin burns everywhere as a billion small needles seem to pierce under her sensitive envelope.
Natalie can vaguely hear the three strangers still talking like she’s not ascending towards another dimension right there and then. In a last jolt of her body, her eyes shoot wide open.
In her peripheral vision is handed down a steel cup with forms and letters engraved on it. Creepy Goat brings it to her lips carefully, his hands brushing softly against her hair. Natalie wants to send his chalice or whatever flying. She wishes she had the strength.
She has heard the stories, it’s passed around here like the morning news. People being drugged and disappearing to God knows where. Children being taken away.
Of course, no one from the outside world cares. They’re stories whispered around deserted corners, above piles of outdated food in which battles of bloody teeth and raw skin are ceremonial; amongst them ghosts, the long forgotten and forsaken empty shells of humans. The left behind, those who wake up on the ground and fall asleep underneath. Natalie’s kind.
She’s scared. Because this doesn’t feel like the end. If anything, it feels like a new life.
As the forbidden liquid runs on her chin and slips through her parted lips, a flash of warm light grows from above the parking lot. Unconsciously, Natalie’s eyes turn to the bewildering brown-haired girl as her stance exudes… power.
Natalie is even more surprised when she’s met with a wide, god-like smirk. She manages to strangle out a glorious “Man…” before passing out in front of the three pairs of eyes.
While in a mostly certain coma, Natalie can vaguely distinguish voices and hands through the haze of fogginess. The wind on her face at some point and the smell of… mojito? at some other.
A high-pitched voice excitedly murmurs. “It’s really her? Has her father claimed her?” Then another voice, older, cuts the first one one off. “Not now Jackie,” and Natalie blacks out again.