Chapter Text
The cabin burns.
And it burns, and burns, and burns.
All through the night, well into the morning. None of the remaining survivors dare move from their spot in the snow and ice, unwilling onlookers of a fiery play they didn’t ask to attend.
It must have been midday by the time the last of the embers have molted from red to charred black. Nat releases a breath that felt as if she’d been holding since she was first awoken from her slumber to the smell of burning wood, burning her eyes, licking at her skin-
She lurches forward towards the disintegrated ash that was once their home.
“C’mon,” she croaks, voice wavering from disuse and the smoke’s damage. “We gotta see if there’s anything we can salvage.”
Tai, Misty, and Mari come to at her words. Nat turns around and makes for the cabin, too scared to see if the others hold her orders to any weight yet. This whole leadership thing was fucking terrifing, and it’s just her goddamn luck that not even a day after Lottie anointed her their queen that it would all go up in flames.
Literally.
She’s kicking rubble in what she thinks might have been the pantry when she hears Van.
“ Jesus, Lottie, c’mon!” she pleads, and Nat pivots to face the source of the commotion.
Van has her hands gripped on Lottie’s shoulders, shaking the other girl frantically. Nat doesn’t have to see her face to know that she’s crying, but she can see that Lottie is wholly and entirely unaffected, eyes glazed over, seeing but very much… not. If Nat didn’t know any better, she’d think that Lottie wasn’t aware that their home had been reduced to shambles at all.
“You’ve gotta be fucking with me,” Nat mutters under her breath, navigating her way through the tumultuous remains of the cabin to where the two girls are standing.
“Lot. Hey, Lot,” Nat says as she approaches, snapping her fingers in front of the brunette’s face.
Nothing.
Fantastic. Just fucking fantastic. Not only is she the newly anointed leader of their fucked-up, boderline-cannibalistic, definitely-not-entirely-mentally-sound group, but the only person that said group generally tended to listen to has suddenly gone catatonic.
Van and Nat exchange a look, and the blonde is taken aback by the sheer amount of fear in the other’s eyes. She knew the redhead had been participating in Lottie’s little prayer circles for a while now, but she’s starting to think she’d underestimated the nature of their friendship.
But honestly, she gets it. For the past… however many months they’d been stuck out here, she and Lottie hadn’t exactly seen eye to eye. But before their lives became actual living hell?
She’d considered Lottie her friend, to be honest.
And while nearly everyone’s pre-crash relationships had gone up in flames right alongside the plane, Nat sometimes felt the teeniest tug on her heartstrings, bringing her back for a moment to a simpler time.
To Lottie, joining her in silence in an empty classroom during their lunch period, mindlessly asking Nat for song recommendations and going on and on about the latest episode of ER.
Lottie, who Nat had stumbled across alone in Jackie’s backyard during the last team slumber party before States, staring up into the sky before asking Nat if she “thought the stars could read their minds”.
Lottie. Sweet, delicate, far-too-caring Lottie. The only member of the team who’d shown up at Nat’s house the day after her dad died. Sure, Nat had slammed the door in her face, but she’d secretly regretted it every day since.
Nat sighs, raking her fingers through her hair.
“Alright. Um… okay, let’s just sit her down here for now,” Nat mutters, brushing the snow coating a log. “D’you mind keeping an eye on her? Just to make sure she doesn’t…” she trails off, but Van knows what she’s thinking.
“F’course. Let me know if you need anything, okay?” Nat flashes her a grateful smile, and returns to the lost cause of a cabin.
***
Their search only lasts another hour. It’s a fruitless one, and they all know it. In the end, they manage to scrounge a couple of cast iron skillets, the slightly-melted remains of their second hunting knife, and a miraculously intact suitcase.
Lottie still hasn’t so much as twitched, and the others are staring at Nat expectantly. She clears her throat, trying to buy herself a few seconds to figure out what the hell she’s supposed to do here. It doesn’t help.
No amount of time could get them out of this shitshow.
“Uh, I guess we should, um… we need a place to sleep tonight. It doesn’t need to be pretty, just needs to keep us from freezing to death.” She winces at her last words, intentionally not looking at Shauna. The others stare back blankly. After an uncomfortable few seconds of silence, Tai speaks up.
“We could use the meat shed, for tonight at least. Not like there’s anything in there anyways.” Nat nods slowly.
“Yeah, that’ll work. How many blankets did we manage to save?” The group haphazardly raises theirs in the air (sans Lottie, still sitting down, unseeing). Between the eleven of them, they have a blanket each, plus a couple extra. Nat lets out a minute sigh of relief.
“Good. Good. And in the morning-” she hesitates, trying to keep her next words as neutral as possible, “Javi had told me about… about a place. Where I would be safe from…” she trails off, shaking her head. A brief flash of white and blue, of her friends lunging at her with axes and knives and their fists, of Javi flailing beneath the ice comes to mind. She shoves it away as quickly as it came.
“Anyways, it’s worth a shot. To find whatever place he survived in for months.” She’s met with nods and murmurs of agreement.
Her ragtag team begins making their way to the once-pathetic shed that they’d managed to convert to a semi-functioning meat storage unit. And then Mari speaks.
“What about Coach?”
Nat freezes, whirling around.
“What about him?”
“He tried to kill us, Nat,” Tai bites out. From the corner of her eye, the blonde can see Misty furiously shaking her head.
“We have no way to know that it was him-”
“For God’s sake, Misty, who else would’ve done it?” snarls Akilah.
“Enough,” Nat whispers, fists clenched at her side.
“Shauna was pretty upset when Lottie named Nat queen.”
“Oh you cannot seriously be accusing me of doing this-”
“ENOUGH!” The word practically roars out of her this time, effectively freezing the warring girls in their place. She locks eyes with Van who sends her a reassuring nod, an unsteady Lottie glued to her side.
“Pointing fingers isn’t gonna miraculously resurrect the cabin,” she breathes in, stilling herself for her next words. “But Mari’s right. Ben’s made it clear he doesn’t want anything to do with us. And if he’s the one who did this…” she trails off, but Shauna immediately picks up where she left off.
“He needs to be punished.”
***
They make it through the night. Huddled together for warmth, with the world’s most pathetic fire burning low in the center of the shed. Nat had been against lighting one initially, worried that the smoke would suffocate them in their sleep, but Tai and Shauna had managed to create a makeshift chimney, allowing it to have an escape.
Nat had slept uneasily, jerking awake every half hour or so to double-check that the team (Lottie) was still breathing.
The taller girl was awake most of the night, too, Nat noticed, though she was sure she was caught in some sort of nightmare regardless. She was relieved when Lottie finally passed out, an hour or so before dawn. The blonde traced the outline of her face with the shadows from her fingers, taking note of the still-healing cuts and bruises marring her face.
In the faint morning light, she’d never looked so young.
They all were, really. Girls, uprooted from their lives and forced to become so, so much more than that.
Or in Lottie’s case, a girl forced to become a God.
Nat sighed as she sat up and rubbed the remaining sleep from her eyes. She quickly laced up her boots and stood, nudging Travis awake with her foot.
“Get up. We need to get moving,” she whispered. Travis groaned, rolling over and opening his eyes.
“ We? Shouldn’t you, y’know… stay back here?”
Nat scoffed, rolling her eyes.
“Why the fuck would I do that? I’m one of the two people in this room capable of using a gun.”
Travis hesitated, clearly debating his next words.
“Nat. You’re in charge here. Don’t you think you should stay where it’s safe?”
“I think,” she hisses out, “that as leader, I can do whatever the fuck I want.”
At that, Travis relents, and they head out in search of a miracle place that very well may not even exist.
***
She hangs her head low when she and Travis return to their makeshift home that night. Hours and hours of searching, only to come up empty. Their only consolation prize is a lone winter hare, caught in one of the snares she’d reset on their way out that morning.
In their absence, Tai, Shauna, and Akilah managed to patch up some of the holes in the structure and cleared out their firepit area so they had somewhere to cook. That, at least, had survived the fire.
Nat shudders as she enters the meat shed, met with the sight of a barely-conscious Lottie laying with her head in Van’s lap, breaths coming out as shallow puffs.
“Any change?” Nat asks. Van shakes her head.
“Got her to take a couple sips of water, but besides that… it’s like she’s just gone, Nat.”
The hunter nods solemnly, blinking hard as she looks at Lottie’s lifeless eyes, staring at some unseeing thing just past Nat’s left shoulder.
If the blonde thinks about it too much, it almost resembles the state her mother was in after her dad shot himself. The blank stares, the barely functioning, not doing enough to keep herself alive, please mom please just get the fuck up we’re out of food and they’re gonna turn our goddamn electricity off if you don’t mail this bill-
“If you want a break, I can sit with her for a while,” Nat says suddenly, doing everything in her power to make her brain shut the fuck up. Van nods, smiling slightly.
“That’d be good, I wanna check in with Tai about. Well. You know. Plus, my legs were seriously starting to fall asleep,” the redhead deadpans, and Nat has to restrain herself from grinning and the tiny glimpse of the old Van that she just saw.
They do a quick dance of sorts to switch spots without jostling Lottie too much, not that the brunette noticed either way. Nat tucked the blanket under her chin and brushed some wayward hairs from her face.
“Call me if anything changes?” Van requests as she heads outdoors, and Nat nods. Left alone in the tiny little shed, she lets out a sigh, unconsciously rubbing her hand up and down Lottie’s back.
“Just you and me now, huh?”
Lottie doesn’t respond.
***
For the next two days, nothing changes.
Nat and Travis head out as the sun rises, and return just before the last light with no good news. The others are growing desperate and skeptical. It makes Nat wary.
Shauna and Tai have managed to fix up the shed to the best of their abilities, but it isn’t enough. They all know it.
And Lottie? She still hasn’t said a word. Hasn’t so much as breathed too deeply.
Until the third night.
For the first time since the cabin went up in flames, Nat was actually managing to get a few hours of solid and uninterrupted sleep. In hindsight, she really should have realized that of course Lottie would choose that exact fucking moment to show some semblence of life.
It starts with a kick to her shin. The unexpected force has Nat sitting up with a gasp, immediately searching for the perpetrator that woke her from her slumber. She simultaneously slumps in relief and tenses in horror as she realizes it’s Lottie.
For the first time in days, the brunette is stirring, and it’s a horrid and painful sight. She twitches in her sleep, limbs jerking in every direction, fighting some unseen battle that Nat cannot save her from. The blonde can make out active teartracks cascading down her hollow cheeks as she lets out a pained moan, and she thinks she can physically feel her heart clenching.
“Lottie. Lot, wake up, please,” she all but begs, shaking the taller girl. The others begin to stir at the commotion, and Nat notices Van at her side, watching the scene unfold in horror.
“Shhh, shhhh Lot, it’s alright,” the redhead coos, taking a softer response than Nat. And apparently that was the way to go, because Lottie wakes up with a pained gasp and a sob half-escaping from her throat. Natalie is pretty sure the brunette hasn’t taken more than ten sips of water since she fell into catatonia, so how she has this many tears to cry is a wonder. She wants to gather the girl in her arms and take her far, far, far away. They all know that isn’t an option.
“You’re alright. You’re safe,” Van attempts to reassure her, but the girl keeps on sobbing with all that she has left.
“What happened, Lottie? What did you see?” Tai whispers, kneeling in closer from her spot next to Van. Lottie shakes her head violently, trying to catch her breath. Mari appears from somewhere with a tin of water in hand. Nat takes it without a second thought and attempts to coax some into the distressed girl’s mouth.
Lottie gulps it down with a fervor. She regains some kind of control over the wails racking her body, though she’s still breathing far too heavy for Nat’s liking.
“Moss,” she gasps out. The girls look at one another, puzzled.
“What do you mean, Lot?” Van prods gently. Lottie simply shakes her head, pushing herself into a sitting position and slightly rocking back and forth.
“Moss. Where Coach is. I-I think I know where he is.” She looks up at Nat, eyes locking. Through the muttered nonsense, and the borderline delusions, the blonde can see the glimpse of something strong and steady and true. And suddenly, it hits her.
“Travis. The weird tree. The one we used to use as a meeting spot.” She sees his eyes widen in realization.
“That’s where we’re supposed to go.”
***
In the end, they go alone. Lottie had put up quite the protest, a stark contrast from the lifeless state she’d been in just hours before. Nat supposes it’s a good sign, but the absolute last thing she needs is the brunette taking up any more of her thoughts while she’s on her way to potentially kill the closest thing she’s ever had to a father figure.
Lottie relents in the end when Van reminds her that she hasn’t moved more than five feet in three days and it’s unlikely her body would be able to withhold on a hike that far. Still, as the sun shines its first rays and Nat and Travis suit up, she can see the apprehension and anxiety in her eyes.
She turns away and refuses to let herself linger on it too much. She’s got a job to do. No time to worry about Lottie Matthews’ feelings.
Nat squints against the sun’s reflection in the freshly-fallen snow, creating a glittering sort of illusion. Beautiful. Deadly.
It’s a couple hour long trek through the foot-deep fresh powder. Travis is uncharacteristically quiet, but she supposes that’s to be expected after the events of this shithold of a week. The blonde doesn’t bother to fill the silence. Small talk has never been her thing, and she’s not about to start now.
When they finally make it to the base of the hill that the tree sits atop, her cheeks are tinged pink and she can hardly feel her toes. She can feel it, though. This is right. This is where they’re supposed to be.
They make their way up slowly, trudging through patches of ice. By the time she reaches the mossy trunk, she’s breathing heavily. From anxiety, or exertion, or the cold-hard feeling of reality sinking into place. She isn’t quite sure, but she uses all the willpower she has left to shut that part of her mind off. Her team needs her. And if there’s one thing about Nat, it’s that she’ll take care of the people that she loves, no matter how messy or complicated things have gotten.
It has to be done.
She and Travis begin feeling around the rough bark, searching for some fairytale secret entrance. Nat pauses as her hands brush over something smooth, thin, and familiar. Something carved, hand-made. The symbol.
“We’re definitely in the right place,” she whispers to Travis, gesturing to it. He blinks hard, drifting off somewhere unknown for a moment, before nodding and continuing the search. He pulls back what look like fern leaves (why the fuck was there a fern growing in the middle of the frozen Canadian wilderness?) and there it is.
They lock eyes and simultaneously take a deep breath before descending down into the unknown (although Nat has a feeling that she knows exactly how this is going to end up).
She steadies herself against the wall of what appears to be a cave, blinking rapidly in an attempt to adjust her eyes to the darkness. She feels Travis stumble down behind her, and blindly reaches for something steady to hold on to. Coming up empty, she takes a deep breath and trudges forward.
Nat tries to be light on her feet, not wanting to alert the likely inhabitant of this place, and flinches as something crunches beneath her feet. She doesn’t have to look down to know. She’d recognize that sound anywhere.
Allie’s shin the day before they left for Nationals, Coach’s leg as Misty brought the axe down, Lottie’s nose shattering as Shauna battered her face with fists-
There’s a flickering sort of light coming from around the bend. She looks back to Travis, for peace of mind that she’s not hallucinating more than anything (any day now, she thinks, is when she’ll really start to lose it, start to see things that aren’t true). But his eyes widen in recognition, so as quietly as she can, positions the rifle in front of her and switches the safety off.
As she rounds the corner and takes in the sight in front of her, time has never moved so slow. There he is, crouched down in front of her, by the world’s most meager-looking fire. Nat doesn’t need to interrogate him, ask for an alibi for where he was three nights ago. The scorch marks on his sweater and burn marks licking his crutches are answer enough.
“Natalie,” he whispers, practically begging. She shuts her eyes, tight.
“Don’t. Don’t even start,” she hisses.
“I didn’t have a choice, Natalie, you know that. You have to.”
“You could’ve just left us! Gone off on your own instead of trying to murder us in our sleep like a goddamn coward. How could you?”
“How could I? ” Coach exclaims, bracing himself on his crutches as he meets her at eye level. “You chose them, Nat. You went with them, you’re their leader. I couldn’t just leave you all there. Because on the off chance help comes…” he trails off, looking regretful.
“What?” Nat challenges. This is easy, familiar. Picking a fight. She wishes it didn’t come so naturally, but here they were.
“Well, I’m not so sure you all deserve to go back to your lives. To fool society into thinking you’re all just poor, innocent little girls. I know the truth, Nat. You’re all monsters. ”
Nat can feel Travis flinch back at his words, but she’s in too deep to let those words affect her (yet. That’s a problem for another day.)
“Yeah? Well, maybe we are. But we’re also alive. We did what we needed to do to survive. And that-” she pauses, allowing herself a moment, to feel it all. To feel what she’s about to do. “If that makes us monsters, then I’m okay with being one.”
The shot rings out. Coach drops to the ground. Nat gags, emptying her stomach at the metaphorical blood, crimson as it coats her hands.
***
She doesn’t remember the trek back to the camp. Vaguely, Nat wonders if this is what Lottie felt like for the past few days. Here, but not. Trapped, unable to do anything, just hoping and praying that it’s all some sort of twisted and fucked up dream.
For once in his life, Travis doesn’t give her any shit about not helping to carry their kill back. He lets her lead the way, trance-like, and pretends he doesn’t see the tears pouring their way down her face.
Nobody says a word to them as they make it back to the shed at the brink of dusk. Nobody says anything to anybody, actually, and Nat thinks she is grateful. It feels right, like a moment of silence for someone they all used to consider a friend, a mentor, a confidant.
She stumbles into their temporary home, practically collapsing onto the thin blanket she’s claimed as her bed. She stares, and stares, and stares. As the sun sets, as the moon’s gentle light illuminates the shadows hiding. At some point, somebody brings her dinner, and practically force-feeds it to her. She tries not to think too much about what exactly it is that she’s eating.
And then suddenly, instead of staring at a wall, she’s staring at Lottie Matthews’ face. Her big, brown, doe-like eyes stare into Nat’s grey ones, and she’s relieved to find them absent of pity and sympathy. It’s more like softness, she thinks.
“Don’t blame yourself, Natalie. It was always going to happen, one way or another.”
She doesn’t let herself dwell on that statement as she falls into a deep and miraculously dreamless sleep.