Chapter Text
Dawn approaches on the day that Natalie plans to put Coach Scott out of his misery. In one world, she succeeds. Today, she won't.
She doesn't know that yet.
Natalie just knows that she's a girl on a mission. Unfortunately, she's a girl on a mission who's been spotted by the ex boyfriend that she's been avoiding for months. If this were a different time, Natalie would be ecstatic to see Travis by himself. Earlier when she’d left him to Lottie… it had been a mistake. He was a mess, she had to lead them, and Lottie was the only one willing to help. He was drinking her Wilderness Kool-Aid again after they ate Javi, the only way that he could hold onto his meager shreds of sanity.
She would love to talk to him after he seemed more… lucid. Now that the burden of leadership is seeming less and less like something she’s supposed to bear.
Instead of any of that, he demands to know what she’s doing, as though he doesn’t already know.
“C’mon, Trav,” she says, “you don’t believe this shit.” The “anymore” goes unspoken. He bites his lip in confirmation.
She feels a manic grin split her face as she raises a hand to point at him. “I KNEW IT! You don’t!”
His face contorts in anger. “I don’t know, okay!?!” Then he curses under his breath, digging his nails into the meat of his palm.
“I just-” he lets out a huff of air, “if you do this, they’ll kill you.”
Nat laughs. “C’mon? Kill me? Over this shit?”
“We were gonna shoot Coach in the head,” he tells her, “and no one thought he did it. Now? With Shauna on a warpath? You really think she’ll ignore this?”
Nat stares “Really? She’s the one that said we should burn him! She’d be thrilled I finally did him in.”
Travis frowns. “The others won’t.”
Nat rolls her eyes. “Trav-”
“What will they think when you take way their hope? When Shauna says you need to pay?!?”
“They’re my teammates!” Nat protests. They wouldn’t; they couldn’t!
It’s Travis’s turn to laugh at her. “Didn’t stop them the first time.” He pauses. “Or the next.”
He’s right, of course. It didn’t stop the hunt. It didn’t stop the chaos after Shauna attacked Mari. When Misty betrayed her trust, when Taissa put her on the stand, when Lottie sided with Shauna over their own reason and brought enough of the group along with her. Brought Travis with her.
“So what?” Nat demands, “we keep force feeding him? Leave him out there in his own shit til he dies of dysentery?”
“Just… wait.”
She laughs nervously. “Wait for what? A miracle?”
“Yeah.”
She rolls her eyes. “You might have Lottie fooled, but not me. You let her get you high to get away from your guilt. When shit got too much, suddenly Akilah’s It’s favorite.” Her look turns sharp as Shauna’s knife.
“How’s it feel?” Nat demands, “Pushing Lottie’s bullshit on someone else? Putting them in danger?”
Travis’s look turns sour- the warning that he’s about to get mean too. “What else was I supposed to do, huh? You left me to her!” The accusation comes out sharp as a broken bottle. It’s not a lie, either. Nat had left Travis to her, like rehoming a pet. He was just so broken, so grief-stricken. She couldn’t look at him when she had people to save. Lottie offered to help; Travis accepted. What else was she supposed to do? Keeping them alive was on her. She couldn’t play nurse, and if it kept Travis relatively safe and kept Lottie from harassing the others… well. It was efficient. Nat couldn’t have done anything else.
“You know what?” Travis says, “I don’t care. Get us both killed, Natalie. Fucking go for it.” He storms off, not bothering to look back. Nat could go after him, keep talking to him after these months of painful, mutual silence… Or she could go put Ben out of his misery.
While she has an obligation to Ben, he’s already been in the animal pen for months. He’ll still be there tomorrow night. Travis, however, is finally talking to her. He still cares! Looking at him right now doesn’t even feel like she’s killing Javi again.
She’s only human, which means that she hurries after Travis and some kind of absolution. Maybe she can spend a night in his arms before they go back to pretending that the other one doesn’t exist.