Work Text:
For the longest time, Laura Lee had been okay with being known as the “pretty girl” at her church. It seemed harmless enough, in her formerly naive and innocent mind, not giving the fact that most church boys, pimply and braces shielding their teeth, swooned over her whenever she would have her solo in the church choir.
She was pretty.
Laura Lee would never admit it though, always finding it in herself to stay kind and humble. She didn’t like to think of what people thought of her looks, but how she treated others. Afterall, that was how she viewed others.
That didn’t stop others from telling her otherwise though, for she learned from Lizzie that someone’s character didn’t seem to matter, only if their appearance was good looking enough.
“Scott Michaels is so hot,” Lizzie drawled, dramatically fanning herself with her hand.
The rest of the team sent her a confused glance, but continued watching the boys play. Jeff had somehow convinced Jackie to come watch their baseball practice, and despite Jackie not really wanting to, she conceded, only agreeing because he allowed her to bring the rest of the soccer team with her, JV included.
Most girls seemed disinterested in the boys falling over themselves to impress the team, Laura Lee included, but that didn’t stop Lizzie from swooning over one of the least morally correct boys on that team.
Laura Lee raised a confused brow at Lizzie’s comment, lifting her head from Lottie’s shoulder, who sat at her side, while Natalie sat at Laura Lee’s other side, sandwiching her between the two girls.
“Didn’t Tiffany Russell say he tried to put something in her drink at Mark’s party last month?” the blonde asked, fidgeting with the fabric of her sweater as her blue eyes scanned Lizzie’s expression.
Lizzie shrugged. “But he didn’t succeed, so no crime was committed. It doesn’t stop him from being gorgeous,” she chuckled, not catching the disturbed glances from the girls around her.
“Your standards are on the ground, Lizzie,” Natalie chuckled, attempting to take a sip from her flask before Laura Lee grabbed it from her before the liquid entered her mouth, causing Natalie to elicit a lazed “Come on, dude.”
“You should not be talking,” Lizzie retorted, before adding “I bet you suck any dick that-”
“Lizzie, I think you should stop talking,” Lottie interrupted, an unfamiliar scowl on her face that caused Lizzie to shrink into herself.
To say the least, that day had changed how Laura Lee viewed the people who liked her. Was it because they actually liked her, or did they just find her pretty? It added a slight layer of distaste to how Laura Lee viewed herself.
Nowadays, Laura Lee knew this internal dialogue was fruitless. For now, she had much more pressing personal issues to worry about, such as not going more insane than she already is from feeling her body begin to sink into itself from pure starvation. The cabin had just burned down, and they had only recently found their footing by finding and or building shelter with their meager supplies, but food had been mostly and after thought, the main issue being avoiding freezing to death.
Sure, it was getting warmer, but not warm enough for them to fall into slumber without the worry that the temperature would suddenly plunge and they may never wake up. Specifically, Jackie seemed to hold this fear the most, due to her near death experience that resulted in her missing a finger and a few of her toes, giving her a slight limp which made her participating in their “ritual” a bit tricky.
Despite this, Jackie still pushed herself into helping out with chores, despite her injury, and despite Shauna’s worrying. Laura Lee found herself somewhat relating to her, for Lottie had made the entire team treat her like glass after her accident. Of course, that attitude did not last long when people began to see how she had hardened in the months following it, almost completely shedding the naive and innocent girl she used to be.
Jackie shivered as she limped beside her, but she paid no mind, seeing as she knew how Jackie got when others expressed concern that she felt wasn’t needed. Laura Lee sighed at the shivering blonde, walking past her whilst carrying logs to the makeshift campsite where the team resided. Jackie followed her meekly, splinterings and dirt from the logs catching on her shirt.
The wind added a chill, but far less violent than that of just a couple of months ago. While still cold enough to see their own breath, the snow had begun to melt, and Natalie began to catch game again, so she supposed it was a good sign.
When returning, the girls were all busying themselves with whatever chore that had been assigned. Van was stuffing moss into the cracks of one of their makeshift shelters in order to insulate it, Taissa and Akilah were washing clothes, Shauna was butchering the meager squirrels and rabbits Natalie had brought back, and so on.
Lizzie, a JV girl who Laura Lee hadn’t known very well had her back turned to her, stacking logs. Laura Lee set the new logs next to her for her to stack, which elicited a shriek from the girl.
Laura Lee, obviously surprised by the response, somewhat broke her newly created tough facade as she flinched, her blue eye widening.
“ Jeez! You of all people need to learn to not sneak up on people when you look like that!” Lizzie gasps, grabbing the logs from where the blonde had laid them.
Despite attempting to remain unphased at the comment, Laura Lee felt her heart sink. She was attempting to shove down the girl she used to be into the depths of herself, but the former couldn’t help but let her sensitive feelings resurface every once in a while, this time being no exception. She turned away, not offering a rebuttal because there was just simply no reason. There was nothing less to be said.
Before the wilderness, she had been described as beautiful, pure, and other such words by others, but now, she found quite the opposite.
It wasn’t just Lizzie. She found everyone looked at her with an underlying horror. Her new appearance was so far from the “ beauty ” people used to describe her as. Her silk blond hair, now stringy and dirty from lack of care, her soft pink lips, now dark and chapped from the harsh chill, and most notably, her face, which was scarred and mangled from the fire in the plane. Her sky blue eyes, now deplenished to one, with the other being lost in the plane incident, as well as taking the life from the one she had left, leaving it dull.
She also found it wasn’t just her appearance that seemed to fill the rest of the team with dread, but the complete 180° her personality took following the fire in the plane. The disaster of the plane had truly been the catalyst of her questioning her faith. The true downfall of everything Laura Lee stood for. It started small, her prayers turning into begging and pleading for her god to answer, to help her, to help them. After months of that, she began to resent her faith, feeling as though she was being punished for something beyond her understanding. Inevitably, this affected how she interacted with others as well.
Kind and understanding was overtaken by despondent and calculating. Slowly, her faith drifted elsewhere, that being to Lottie herself, who welcomed the blonde with open arms. Before, Laura Lee had seen her a prophet for god, but now, she realized that in fact Lottie was a god herself, and should be treated as such. Her morals were slowly corrupted, no longer held in place by the kindness that she felt she owed to others from god. She began uncompassionate, or at least, that is what she showed on the outside.
She found herself grimacing at the ache in her heart whenever tragedy struck one of her teammates, but now, she felt no obligation to help, instead watching their pain from a distance. She knew her obligation of kindness towards others before wasn’t just to avoid eternal damnation, yet she felt representing the gods' morals in which he gave her nothing in return was futile.
The day she knew god truly abandoned her, truly stopped watching or caring, was that dreadful day in the afterbirth of the first snow, after Travis and Javi’s bodies had been burned and cremated, and Maria was next to cremate. After a few tearful goodbyes and speeches from the JV girls, they left the pier on fire, not noticing how it was under a snowy branch, which once the smoke rose, caused the snow to fall upon the body, hydrating it, and effectively cooking it.
The smell, reminding Laura Lee of the barbecues her church would have after communion on Easter morning, flowers budding around the grill, had made the blonde practically float out of bed, following behind the other girls to find the source of the smell. Still delirious, the never this she remembered was looking down at the still plentiful remains of the corpse, blood on her hands and around her mouth, matching the girls around her, before continuing to eat. She felt herself roughly rip into the flesh, tearing out chunks and shoving them into her mouth animalistically, cooked skin and muscle getting caught under her long nails.
Later that night, she and Van would follow Lottie into the woods and cut their palms open over the log, truly pledging their allegiance to the wilderness, and Laura Lee secretly, pledging her allegiance to Lottie herself.
That night, she truly embraced the monster she had become. Not only was her appearance horrifying and monstrous, her face marred and tainted with burn scars which criss crossed across her face, covering where her eye used to be, only stopping at the halfway point of her face, as well as the scars crawling down her torso, and slithering down her legs, but she now was truly monstrous, a creature capable of nothing but blaspheme and violence.
Not beautiful inside and out anymore, but instead monstrous inside and out.
What a horrifying transformation. How terrible she had become. Not only has she become a liability because of her partial blindness, but now she can’t even bring herself to offer moral support. Truly useless.
However, she doesn’t display her inner thoughts, or at least she tries not to, and especially not to Lizzie. Instead, she stalks off, the thin remains of snow crunching under her feet. She wouldn’t bring up these frivolous thoughts, no, when there are far more pressing matters. The cabin was gone, Gen was barely lucid due to her grief, and the remains of Nicole were destroyed in the fire, leading to them to quite literally start from scratch.
She kept walking, her feet heavy. She let her mind drift elsewhere as he traversed the wilderness.
Natalie felt as though she was a fairly observant person. From a young age, she was able to pick up on the smallest of things, whether it was the way Van picked at her cuticles whenever something bothered her, the way her mom bounced her knee whenever she was craving alcohol, the way her father went silent and clenched his fists before he went into a rage, and other small things.
She carried this trait with her throughout life, and found it extremely useful. Today was no different.
Lottie had come back to greet her as she handed off her findings (a few measly rabbits) to Shauna to butcher, when she heard a screech. She flinched violently, her head whipping in the direction of which the sound came from. She expected to have to break up a fight or kill something, but found her heart sinking when she saw what it truly was.
Everyone knew and had seen Laura Lee’s, for lack of a better word, fucked up face. It was hardly startling anymore. Seeing it in the middle of the night where Laura Lee had been reduced to a silent husk of her former self? Sure, that could be a bit scary, but not enough to screech. But, sure enough, Lizzie still found a way to state how terrifying she though Laura Lee was, and in Natalie’s opinion, it was getting really fucking annoying.
She frowned as Laura Lee flinched away. A gentle crack in a defensive facade. Natalie noticed this, because of course she does.
“ Jeez! You of all people need to learn to not sneak up on people when you look like that!”
Natalie saw red, but she didn’t say anything, she just simply watched. She looked to her side, seeing Lottie who stared at her as well, not as good at hiding her sympathetic expression.
In the unofficial ranks that had fallen into place over the past grueling months, Laura Lee was relatively high up, mostly for being a Senior, as well as now being extremely intimidating, especially to some of the younger girls, most notably the Sophomores. It was almost like those girls had forgotten the girl she had been mere months ago, and now only remembered the remains of who the girl used to be, deteriorated and broken.
Suffice to say, this new cold exterior Laura Lee put on had made those who barely knew her before (such as the JV girls) to not show much compassion towards her, instead fear.
Watching it made Natalie sick to her stomach. She watched as Laura Lee jerkily nodded, walking off into the woods stiffly.
“We should follow her,” Lottie said abruptly, causing Natalie to turn her head.
She raised a brow.
“The fuck do you mean? Don’t you think she’d want to be alone?” she asked her, stuffing her hands into her pockets.
Lottie immediately shook her head.
“She never liked being alone when she was upset,” Lottie replied, a somber expression.
Natalie sighed, her brows furrowing. She knew it was true, but that only meant before the crash. Whenever Laura Lee got upset, she found herself being able to express it in front of those she trusted, most notably, Lottie and Natalie, as well as some of the other girls on the team. Natalie remembered one time, Laura Lee had gotten upset about something (something that she didn’t know because Laura Lee never told her) to do with Church because the moment her communion ended, she invited Lottie and her over. When they saw her puffy eyes, they naturally comforted her, even if they didn’t know what had upset her.
“Keyword being ‘never liked’ as in a past tense. I’m gonna be honest with you, nowadays, I don’t know what she might want,” Natalie sighs, gesturing wildly.
Lottie raises a confused brow at her awkward wording, but sighs once again.
“She’s still the same girl. She’s trying to pretend to be cold and intimidating so people don’t see how hurt she is,” Lottie states matter-of-factly, causing Natalie to roll her eyes.
“Oh, did she tell you that?” Natalie argued weakly.
She knew it was true, but that didn’t make it any less upsetting to see a girl once so full of life such a shell of her former self, even going so far as to take on a new personality to mask the pain she was in.
“You know I’m right,” Lottie told her, not bothering to retort.
Natalie sighs. “Yeah, I know.”
“Despite her wanting people with her, I don’t think she’ll ask, at least not now,” Lottie sighed, walking to leave the camp, Natalie following swiftly behind.
“Really? She always used to ask us to help when she was feeling shitty,” Natalie shrugs, attempting to keep up with Lottie.
Curse Lottie and her long legs.
“That was before she was traumatized, Natalie,” Lottie said bluntly.
“Right. I almost forgot she became emotionally constipated because of the crash. We all have,” Natalie sighs, the vulgar wording resulting in an eyebrow raise from Lottie.
“Sure. However, recently I’ve found that embracing the wilderness can truly be therapeutic for some, like Shauna for-”
“Lottie?”
“Yeah?”
“I just wanna find Laura Lee, I don’t wanna hear about the wilderness crap right now.”
Lottie nods, sighing. She had long ago accepted Natalie’s distaste for the wilderness, but recently Natalie had somewhat come around, at least in the regard of not being outright opposed to it, sometimes even participating in the more minor rituals, as well as not stopping the others during the hunt, which despite Lottie’s initial dislike for it, had grown to realize it might be what the wilderness craved. Natalie still was far more skeptical than some of her more devout followers, like Van and Laura Lee, but she wasn’t outright yelling at her whenever she brought it up like she used to do.
It wasn’t long before they found Laura Lee, who was just simply sitting on a log near the lake, her back turned to them.
Natalie sent Lottie a look. A silent conversation between the two. Lottie tentatively stepped forward, playing with the edge of her skirt as she sat beside the scarred blonde, Natalie seating herself on the other side.
Laura Lee barely acknowledged them, her blue eye dull and empty as she stared off into space, studying the lake, in which the ice had mostly dissipated, only existing in a few thin sheets near the center.
“You know that Lizzie is just an ass, right? She’s just being dramatic, trying to get a reaction from you,” Natalie says suddenly, turning to look at Laura Lee.
“She’s not being dramatic,” Laura Lee said bluntly, her voice hoarse from lack of use.
“She is. Notice how nobody else screams like that when they see you?” Natalie asks, putting a tentative hand on her shoulder.
“They don’t scream anymore. They trained themselves not to, but I can tell that they are just horrified at the sight of me,” Laura Lee sighs, clenching her hands into fists.
“Nothing about you is horrifying,” Lottie finally says. “You are beautiful.”
Natalie nods in agreement, yet Laura Lee remains unconvinced.
“You only say that because you loved me before I became this ,” Laura Lee spits, gesturing to herself, her veiny hands unclenching her fists.
“We never cared about what you looked like. While you always have been beautiful, you have also always been kind and compa-” Lottie attempted, but was cut off by Laura Lee.
“I really don’t think you should stoop to the personality matters stuff when I’ve literally eaten someone,” Laura Lee sighs, her voice wavering.
“We’re no bet-” Natalie begins, but is also cut off by the blonde.
“You both know that’s not the point. I’m-” Laura Lee paused, struggling to find the word, before continuing. “I’m a monster. Not just because I look hideous, in which I will simply ignore your attempts to deny, but I’m not a good person either, or at least not anymore. I don’t wanna hear the ‘ none of us are good anymore’ stuff, because frankly, that isn’t the point. I used to wonder why my god would turn his back on me, but now I realize why he did. In all definitions of the word, I’m a monster, and you can’t deny it, so Lizzie has every right to react the way she did,” Laura Lee admits, her voice wavering.
Lottie and Natalie are put into a stunned silence.
Natalie came to the realization that truly, no matter what she says, she won’t sway what Laura Lee thinks. That doesn’t stop her heart aching in this now very rare moment of Laura Lee showcasing any emotion, much less admitting her inner turmoil that had been following her for wilderness knows how long.
Without another word, Lottie envelopes Laura Lee in a tight hug, pressing the scarred girl’s face into her chest. The sight reminded Natalie of many things. A leader reassuring her follower. A queen comforting her knight. A god rewarding her disciple. Lottie sends Natalie a glance, and the former bleach blonde, now almost brunette, joins the hug, holding Laura Lee close. Despite the slight chill from the early spring air, Natalie feels nothing but warmth.
She knew she probably would not see another vulnerable moment from the blonde for a long time. Like after the incident involving the plane, Laura Lee would close herself off yet again, letting none of them break through to see the truly destroyed core of her, in which she hid behind walls upon walls of ice.
By the end of the hug, the emotion in Laura Lee’s eyes had dissipated. The trio would then walk back to camp, a comfortable silence following, only interrupted by the swaying of the branches of the trees overhead, and the simple conversations of the birds perched on said trees.
Nothing was resolved that day. Laura Lee still led life with the still unchallenged notion that in her mind, inside and out, she was a monster. She would only find purpose in serving Lottie, and Natalie could do nothing but simply watch as what used to be Laura Lee continuously fleeted her grasp.
Lottie had realized that day, Laura Lee was no longer the girl she had met at JV tryouts, smiling at her as they chatted about the rain.
Despite the lack of resolution in all that turmoil, they stayed silent. No words were left to be said. No more words needed to be spoken. So, their tongues lay restless within their mouth, not finding the courage to truly speak.