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Over the course of her life, there has been this unwritten expectation that Natalie is a fighter. Sure, she fights. The man, the power. Fights back the urge to roll her eyes or make gag noises around the ream sometimes, fights a smile even harder on occasion. But a fact a lot of people probably consider untrue is simple: Natalie Scatorccio has never been in a physical fight. Natalie isn't a fighter.
That being said, she knows the sound of a broken knuckle. The leathery slap of skin and squelching splatter of spit and blood has been tattooed with a sewing needle and ballpoint pen ink into her brain. The grunts, the cries. The silence.
It was all so long ago.
She knew the signs. The scuff of a boot, the heaving, rattling sound of a disgruntled breath. The slurred speech. Even the warning signs before then. A missed day of work, a new bottle of whiskey. A broken mug left on the kitchen tiles.
As she grew older, she could avoid them. Van loved the company, Lottie always had the space. Sometimes Shauna needed a friend, sometimes Laura Lee's mom would be kind enough to let her sleep over. If she could wait it out, it'd be fine.
Except suddenly everyone grew older.
Natalie learnt to sew. Less like the ladylike hobby her mother attempted to impose as a child, more so no money was wasted on a hospital trip when it wasn't necessary. So, Natalie always had a first aid kit in her bag, partly because she was clumsy with her smokes and her feet, mostly because her boots took forever to wear in and always rubbed her ankles raw down to the bone. She's as quick with her hands as she is on her feet. Agile, Jackie had said once, like a cat. Catalie S-cat-orccio.
So when Shauna got drunk (which was always quickly) and got messy (which was always inevitable) and would start to pick fights, Natalie would stick close. The time she battered the life out of Randy Walsh for saying something about Jackie, or Jeff, or Jackie and Jeff, or maybe Shauna and Jeff, Natalie walked her home and iced her hands for her and reassured her quiet sobs.
When Van once blocked a goal with her nose, too tired from nights of being the adult and too queasy to open her eyes, and Taissa was off giving a bollocking to the person who kicked the ball (and not to Van for blocking wrong because Taissa's favouritism was blatant even if she thought she was coy), Natalie would hold the tissue to her nose and offer to right it for her if needed.
Natalie was there when Allie's tibia was the wrong side of her skin. Out of her depths completely (or so she thought), she stayed by the crying girl until she was whisked off into the ambulance because she's been a nurse since she was eight and knows good bedside manner is key in times like these. Still, she was off book, out of her depths and utterly lost when it came to exposed bone.
Nothing in comparison to taking over from Akilah and Misty to sew up Van's face. More people needed to keep her still, keep her awake, keep her fucking alive. Natalie took the needle and thread from them after Van's teeth were safely covered by her cheek again, promised Van to be as quick as she could.
They'd been in a similar situation before. Natalie got a phone call before school. Van said she didn't- No, that she couldn't call Tai for this, but she needed help. Natalie recognised the tone, that slight waver in her voice that said 'mom' in the same way Nat's unease in a loud locker room said 'dad'.
Van was pale on her kitchen floor, a broken wine bottle and small pool of blood on the floor. A snore came from the other room.
"I was trying to clean it up-" Van said, then gagged. The cut across her palm isn't any call for alarm, not really. Natalie's had worse cuts from climbing fences. But Van hates blood and hates helplessness even more. Natalie picked her up from her kitchen floor and took her to the bathroom, swearing they'd be in school as soon as they could.
Natalie's first aid runs as deep as she needed it to. Broken hands and broken noses and black eyes. It's the same reason she got such a high grade in art when the colour theory project came around. She knew yellows cancelled out purples, greens cancelled reds. (Plus, art didn't take that much work. She didn't have to spell correctly or add up numbers properly. She could do art high and still get a good grade, maybe a better one.) Never has her first aid needed to be equipped for childbirth.
So she does what she knows best. Provide comfort, provide a source of protection in anyway she can. Let's Shauna near crush her hand because Shauna needs it because Shauna needs to let it out because Natalie carried away the bones of Shauna's best friend and maybe Natalie deserves it-
All Natalie has ever been good at is providing. She was the reason her parents were together, a baby tying them together with guilty strings. She played midfield and went where ever her team needed her. She is the reason to Lottie's bullshit. She is the hunter; she is the provider of food, sustenance, the provider of real survival.
And Natalie is the hunter because she needs to provide her team with food, needs to keep them alive. Needs to give them a reason to want her-
Funny thing is Natalie can't stand blood. Takes her back to her childhood. Scraped knees and blisters. Her first period and not understanding because her mom was asleep and her dad was dad, not until Jackie gave her a tampon in the locker room and told her it was a good thing she wore black all of the time.
God, Natalie's gut wrenches outside of her body every time she thinks about Jackie. Whether it's Natalie holding the knife or holding her intestines she doesn't know. Maybe it's both. Hunter and hunted.
Jackie may have been a bitch but she was always so fucking nice, except when she wasn't. She had good intentions almost all of the time. Except when her mom was in a bad mood so she was in a bad mood, or when she got into a fight with Shauna. When they were little, before Natalie learnt to avoid the fighting in the room next to her, she and Jackie sometimes found each other at the park at the same time. Before soccer (well, Jackie's been kicking a ball since she was in her mother's womb, or so Mrs Taylor jokes at all the team parties she hosts in honour of her daughter's excellence, no one daring to tell her that just because Jackie's captain doesn't make her the best player) and before obliged friendships. They'd tumble off the slide together and jump of the swings at the highest points. When Jackie would scrape her knees, Natalie would place a bandaid over the bloody surface. The first time she did this - the first time Natalie pulled out a selection of different shaped and sized bandaids from the pockets of her dungarees for a crying Jackie with eyes the size of lightbulbs on her little head - Jackie laughed and said that her mom buys her the Sanrio ones.
How strange that the jealousy started so young. How odd that the green monster once attacking this little girl with pink plasters now claws at the chewed bones of the girl gone, desperately wishing to swap places.
Natalie had one job. She had one fucking job. But she couldn't even do that right. Now Jackie's laughing from the depths of her stomach and Natalie never expected a haunting to be so visceral.
How has Shauna lasted so well for so long?
God, Shauna-
How much grief is one supposed to feel for their friends? Natalie is sure she feels thrice the amount regular friends do. That truly dreadful part of her girlhood, or perhaps the greatest gift of it, of being able to feel everything twofold and more.
For someone so dehydrated and starved, she's surprised she's still got tears to give. It's almost like, Natalie thinks horribly, that everyone's tears and sobs makes up for the baby's lack-
She smacks herself on the wrist.
When does this fucking end?
When will it end-
When will Shauna stop-
No one will stop her. No one should stop her. Even though Lottie's body lurches all ragdoll limb like with each hit-
But Shauna needs- Fuck, Lottie was right. Shauna needs this but maybe, just maybe, and don't hold Nat to this or anything, they need Lottie just as much; maybe Lottie can't just bleed out on the fucking floor of this dead guy's cabin because Shauna needed relief maybe-
Maybe Natalie should have just done a better fucking job.
She should have tried harder for the moose, should be out there hunting through the night if it means they'll finally find food. She'll go on her own, won't let Travis distract her. Not that he wants to be around her anyway.
Natalie can't watch-
She needs to. She needs to watch, needs to listen for every crunch, every grunt. Needs to hear a shoe scuff away, a grumble as a bedroom door slams shut, as snores fill the trailer-
She runs her hands through her hair. Eyes pinned open with thumbtacks. Nothing feels linear. She's in front of Shauna clobbering Lottie like a juggernaut, watching chunks of Lottie fly off with Shauna's fists. Then she's sixteen with Shauna's bloody hands in a bowl of water and a bag of unopened frozen peas, telling her she doesn't need to feel bad. Then she's barely nine wishing for Sanrio bandaids and a mom who'll buy them for her not a mom she has to buy plasters for. She's sitting on top of Van to keep her still, she's on a plane fending off against a moose that isn't there, she's falling headfirst into a frozen lake after the real moose, she's seventeen and showering under the cold stream with unpaid bills on the coffee table, she's on a crashing plane next to the remaining half of her dad's face, she's in front of her dad's bloody corpse on the ground, she's in Van's kitchen, she's helping Allie onto the stretcher, she's-
By morning, Lottie still hasn't woken up. She's stirred every now and then. Natalie doesn't want to leave her, won't leave her. They need food but Nat-
Nat needs Lottie.
Whatever is going on in her brain, Natalie can't decipher it right now. The constant back and forth between hating Lottie and loving her. All she knows is someone finally needs to be on Lottie's life's side.
Blind faith in a strange land is no use. Just lead them to the edge of a cliff or gnashing teeth.
Taissa's hope and Travis' belief is one thing. Mari's faith and Van's devotion is going to get everyone killed.
Lottie is a girl, she's just a fucking girl who just endured the worst fight Natalie's ever been witness to and somehow fucking survived it and she did it for the team.
Whether Lottie actually believes in this wilderness crap or whether she's conditioned herself into believing it for the others isn't something Nat's figured out yet. But it doesn't matter. Not when she sounds like a popped tyre when she breathes, not when Natalie wouldn't even know if she's awake or not because her eyes are so swollen only the tips of her eyelashes are visible.
Point is, everything Lottie has endured has been for the good of the team and no one seems to recognise this except for Natalie. She almost froze to death for the sake of a competition for food because the team believed she'd find it. She faced a bear head on for food. She sits out in the freezing cold naming five things you can hear and four things you can see and so on like Natalie didn't sit in the school counsellors chair for half an hour every other day after her dad "shot himself" and Nat struggled to walk through the hallways during lesson changes when everyone was slamming lockers. Lottie cuts herself for the sake of the fucking wilderness and the spirits and the safety of the hunters. She stepped in front of Shauna at her most volatile and took hit after hit after hit because Shauna needed it and the team need Shauna.
Lottie is just like Natalie.
Natalie strokes a piece of Lottie's hair behind her ear. There's blood in her hair, still. She's cleaned all the blood off her face and neck but cleaning it out of her hair is something else. She has a strand behind her right ear shorter than the rest. Part of her is grateful for the wheeze in her breath because at least she can hear that Lottie's alive.
She's probably concussed. Natalie let a probably concussed girl fall asleep. God, she's even bad at this job-
What else was she supposed to do? Leave her in the hands of Misty 'apply pressure to the exposed bone' Quigley? Fuck no. Any one of her fucking acolytes would start praying for her recovery, ask the price and start blood letting until the planets realligned and all was right. No one out here is in the right frame of mind, but who was the first person to allow them all to return to such archaic beliefs? Who thought that was a good idea?
Lottie groans. She's incoherent each time, but she's done this throughout the night. Natalie's stayed awake the whole time. She's losing her sanity but if she closes her eyes she'll lose Lottie like how one slip lost the moose like how-
No. She can't start to spiral again.
Everyone else is out. Gone. Except Coach but he's a fat lot of good right now all one legged and lucid. What a fucking coward he turned out to be, huh? Nat can't help but resent his abandonment during Shauna's stillbirth. He's the adult. He's stuck with them in this whole fucking mess. How dare he force them all to become spirits of their girlhoods alone?
Lottie groans again. It sounds like a name. Lottie already mumbles in her sleep every now and then. She talks to Laura Lee in her sleep. She sounds like a girl in her sleep. Natalie takes the cloth filled with snow, someone's old t-shirt, maybe, and holds it to Lottie's left temple. That's where it's worst.
Shauna's right hook is impressive, Nat'll give her that. She'd spent the better half of the night stewing in the corner with her hands in a bucket of snow, then disappeared out of sight. The energy between the team has shifted unintelligibly. New divisions, new alliances and old ones broken. Natalie included. Natalie at Lottie's side not Mari or Van or Tai.
Suddenly, Lottie sputters. She stopped coughing up blood in the night, thankfully. She coughs now, weak and painfully. Natalie sits upright.
"Lottie?" She says. Hopeful. "Hey, Lottie- Shit, you're okay-"
In place of a response, Lottie grunts and manages to lift her hand. Across her scored palm there are four waxing moons red and scabbed, and Nat kind of wants to kiss all of them better. Instead of acting insane, though, Natalie takes her hands in her own without hesitation. Never hesitates when it comes to Lottie.
"Hey, it's me, it's Nat-" She says, just in case. Their palms press together, Natalie's course and calloused one against the gentler one with a rotating blade scar raised across the centre. Her grip is strong. That's good.
Lottie grumbles. Natalie hums to herself. She smiles at the girl on the floor, revelling for a second in the fact that she's alive before it all drops off the edge. Her smile falls to a frown.
"That was really stupid what you did. You know that, right?" Natalie says, a croak in her voice she might hide if she could look Lottie in the eye. "You- Shauna nearly-"
"Is-" Lottie utters miraculously. "Is she better?"
"Is she- Lottie-" She says. "She beat you within an inch of your life and you want to know if she's better?"
She was terrifying, Natalie remembers with a shudder. Shauna is capable of more than people expect, Natalie thinks. Everyone whispers about Misty but no one batted an eye when Shauna didn't hesitate to bleed and gut the deer. She's just a regular, fairly miserable, in love with her best friend girl from fucking Wiskayok. Why the fuck is she the fearless butcher? Nat knows about the rumours after her dad died, she knows what people think she did. Maybe that's why no one was shocked she became the hunter. But Shauna? Something is deeply wrong with Shauna, something predating the crash. (What Natalie also sometimes thinks about is how many of the girls is that applicable to? And what she doesn't think about is how admirable that is, sometimes. She likes girls a little fucked up, after all.)
Lottie hums. Natalie scoffs and says, "You're insane, you know that? You're fucking not right in the head. Why would you risk your life like that again? And for what? The Wilderness?"
Lottie shakes her head. "We need her," she says as cryptically as ever.
"What about the people who need you?"
Lottie doesn't respond.
"What do you think these girls are going to do when you end up killing yourself in name of the team? You're not a martyr; you're, somehow, the leader in all this shit. You can't die," Natalie says. "They need you. Van, Taissa. Travis. Mari and Akilah. Javi, for fuck's sake. They need you. I-" Her voice shakes. "I need you, Lottie."
Lottie makes a noise that sounds like a laugh, carries that same cheek and mischief of her name-calling after almost freezing to death.
Natalie scoffs. "You know what I mean. Not like that. I don't care about your make-believe prophethood or whatever. I just- You're my friend, Lottie. You were my friend before all this. I don't wanna see you hurt or worse because the others think you're a god."
"They don't," Lottie challenges with a mouth of cotton. Her lip is split horribly. It'll probably scar, probably be nice to kiss. "They just need a reason-"
"You're killing yourself." She hears Lottie sigh. "I won't lose another friend because I couldn't-"
"Okay," Lottie says simply, like this is all simple like anything out here could possibly not be complex. Then she sighs and squeezes Natalie's hand. "Can you hold me? Please?"
So Natalie sighs. Dropping Lottie's hand, she shifts until she's behind her and pulls her head into her lap. Natalie cradles Lottie's mottled and bloody face. A reminder that nothing about her isn't mortal. Natalie strokes her hair, remembers she needs to clean the blood out of it. She still needs the swelling to go down more before she can even think about whether her eyebrows need stitching up. So much to do...
Then Lottie hums. "She got me good, didn't she?"
And after all, Natalie can't help but laugh. "Yeah. She got you good."