Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Natalie Goodman’s very first memory, as it turns out, had shockingly little to do with her at all.

It happened when she was about six years old. Some might say that's a little late for a first memory to form, to which Natalie would reply that there simply hadn't been much in her life that her mind deemed worth holding in long-term storage until then.

It had been a grey, dreary day, despite the fact that it was already summer. She remembers that vividly, because the memory began with her playing in the mud outside. From an early age, she had grown very accustomed to keeping herself entertained when her parents were busy with… whatever it was they were doing when they weren't paying attention to her. She was too naive to understand what it was that they discussed in hurried whispers, or to internalize the name that would come up every so often and set them both visibly on edge. She noticed the air of anxiety and the haphazard trips to the doctor that usually seemed to follow, but she didn't quite get it.

She had a lot of experience in hospital waiting rooms, sitting next to her father but still accompanied only by her own imagination. She learned quickly that it was better not to ask too many questions when her mom had her impromptu appointments, to just be quiet and play games in her head. Sometimes, she would imagine the possible conditions that might require her mother to consult a doctor with such urgency. I know she's sick, and she takes medicine, maybe it's that cancer thing or something. She knew a little bit about that, because one of her friend's moms had gotten it earlier that school year and the kid had missed a lot of school for hospital visits too. She hasn't heard of any other sickness that didn't seem to go away after a week of rest and cough syrup. Her father would reassure her, half-heartedly, that her mom wasn't going anywhere. Natalie wasn't sure if her mom was really there to begin with, and she found it hard to imagine what her going away might even look like.

This particular day, though, her parents weren't at the hospital. Her dad was at work, as he usually was at noon on a weekday, and her mom was watching her play through the kitchen window with a detached look that belied her lack of focus while she dazedly washed dishes. Natalie was crouched in the backyard, drawing shapes in the mud with a big stick she found, in an attempt to keep herself entertained. Eventually, that turned into drawing out a map of the garden in as much detail as she could in that little dirt patch. It was nice, having something to focus on.

That got boring pretty quickly too, though.

Her next idea was to jump between the path of stepping stones laid into the grass and see how many laps around the yard she could take in as little time as possible. She always liked being fast. She was very proud of being one of the fastest girls in her grade, and always winning tag at recess, despite how exasperating her peers found it. She likes feeling the wind in her hair, and that day it was cool and breezy.

She didn't have proper rain boots, though. Or, she did, but they were a little worn out. The bottoms, which were supposed to have a bit of grip to them, had been worn smooth by her extensive usage of them over the better part of the last year. They were purple with white stars on them, and they were Natalie's favorite pair of shoes. Even when it wasn't raining, she would find excuses to wear them everywhere, and her dad would choose his battles. The lower halves are caked in mud all the way up past the ankles, which was still wet due to her endless splashing this afternoon. And the stones that she was so artfully parkouring across were slick from the rain, too.

It was a bad combination. Or at least, a pretty unsafe one.

This didn't occur to Natalie, until she tried to make a particularly ambitious leap and completely lost her footing, slipping on the rain-soaked rock she had attempted to push off of. She felt her feet slide out from under her, saw the tops of the trees come into view where they reached upward and vanished into the sky, and accepted that she was absolutely about to fall and probably split her head open on a rock. Well, life was great, if a little short, but I guess that's it for me, she distinctly remembers thinking. Which was, in hindsight, a little morbid for a first grader.

But just before she could hear the crack of bone against slate, right as she braced for impact, something stopped her. Or someone? She felt a distinct pull forward, and despite not actually falling, it still felt like she had the wind knocked out of her. Maybe she'd overcorrected her balance, because she landed on her knees. Immediately she began searching for the logic. She was alone out there. Who could have possibly caught her?

Her savior answered her question before she asked it out loud, though indirectly.

“Are you okay?”

It was the voice of a kid. Natalie wasn't expecting to have any friends over today, and she knew that the neighbors on both sides of her house were older, and had no kids. They would watch her sometimes, when her mom and dad had to go somewhere without warning.

She looked up, trying in vain to wipe the mud from her shiny black raincoat and gather her bearings. Something about the person she saw staring wide-eyed back at her, whose hand was still braced very lightly, almost timidly, on her elbow, was familiar. She had the strangest sense of deja-vu, and maybe that's why she still remembers the moment so strongly. Either way, she was stunned, completely silent for a couple seconds and didn't say anything at all.

She wasn't the shy type, not really. She liked talking to her classmates well enough, anyway. She liked the attention that having friends at school brought her, although most other kids in her grade thought she was a little bit weird, so a good portion of those friends happened to be teachers. Yet here she was, somehow unable to form words or sentences properly. She was distinctly uneasy, disconcerted by this presence. Although she figured that wasn't quite fair. He had saved her.

Maybe this kid, who had appeared in her backyard just in time to catch her without her even noticing he was there, could make a good friend her own age. The thought of that was undeniably exciting. She was wary, of course she was, her parents had done a good job at drilling the idea of stranger danger into her head. But the more she thought about it, the more benevolent he seemed, and she finally opened her mouth and spoke.

“Yeah. I'm okay. Um.. who are you?” Natalie felt like it was a bit of a foolish question soon after asking it. It sort of implied that she was supposed to know who he was, but didn't, and although that's exactly how she felt, she knew it was irrational. She was also still slightly embarrassed by her utterly failed jump.

“My name is Gabriel.” The boy, who she now knew the name of, didn't seem particularly confused by the question. So maybe she had just over-thought it after all.

Natalie nodded, looking at his face for a few more seconds. He looked a little bit older than her, but also maybe like he could have been in her class, just one of the taller kids with an early birthday. He had messy brown hair that looked like it hadn't seen a brush in ages, and still-slightly-widened eyes. He looked nervous. She didn't think he had any reason to be, but then again, he had kinda technically snuck into her backyard. That could be why. He also looked very familiar.

In the background, her mind was running through as many experiences and faces and names as it could, trying desperately to place where she might know him from.

“You… remind me of someone.” A kid in my class, maybe? Someone I saw at the park one time? Some kid from TV? “How old are you?”

She hoped that would help jog her memory. She was completely grasping at straws, searching for something that might help her out, but she could feel her patience beginning to wear thin with every moment that she went answerless.

Gabriel counted on his fingers in response, the long white sleeves of the shirt he had on under his t-shirt falling over his hands a little bit in the process.

“I'm eight.” He finally said, sounding rather proud of himself for figuring that out, although it wasn't exactly rocket science, nor was it impressive. Natalie felt slightly smug despite herself for knowing how old she is without having to count at all.

“Huh.” Natalie hummed, her eyebrows furrowed as she studied him. “Well… do you wanna be friends?”

She'll never forget, for as long as she lives, the way his face positively lit up when she asked. Like he had been hoping she would, but didn't know how to broach the subject himself.

“Yeah!” His answer was enthusiastic and immediate, like he didn't even have to think about it at all. Then again, deciding to be friends isn't something that most kids have to consider for long before agreeing.

While they were playing, or more specifically, lifting up rocks and trying to see who could find the most bugs underneath them (and then, and Natalie had added this condition to the game later and always won as a result, who could identify the most species) the uneasy sense of dread slowly crept its way back to the pit of her stomach.

She looked up from the caterpillar she was trying to coax onto her palm, looking at the boy across from her in the garden.

“Gabriel?”

“Yeah?”

“Have we met before?”

He hesitated before answering, and not like he was trying to recall something. It looked more like he was debating on whether he should admit to something.

“No, I don't think so. Not that you would remember.”

“I feel like I've heard your name before.”

“Mom talks about me a lot, I think.”

Natalie can't forget, the way it felt like everything in the world just clicked into place when he said that. Of course. She has heard his name. She's never heard it out loud, she's never heard it as anything more than a murmur, like the very idea of him was a great taboo in her house. But she has heard it. She's heard it a lot.

Her big brother.

She had a lot of questions. She had a lot of questions, none of which she could even figure out how to ask. She didn't know what she might do with the answers anyway. It was too far beyond her childlike comprehension of the world.

“I thought… Dad said you were…” She was left speechless. She'd heard her mom mention a brother countless times, and they'd gotten into arguments before when Natalie would insist she didn't have one and never did.

“Don't be such a child, Natalie. Just because you aren't getting along doesn't mean you get to just pretend he doesn't exist,” she would say.

Whenever she went crying to her dad after these disputes, he would explain that her mom was just fragile. That something bad happened a long time before she was born, and that her mom was trying to get better for her. That he was glad she told him, and that he was going to take her back to the doctor and fix everything. Natalie always felt like it was a lie that was told to make her feel better, but she always accepted it, so maybe she was just as bad for not standing up for herself.

Gabriel didn't seem surprised to hear that revelation about their dad.

“He doesn't like me very much.” He replied, the words rolling off his tongue like they weren't the slightest bit distressing. Natalie, on the other hand, was always heartbroken whenever she felt their mother didn't like her very much.

“But you're real? Then why does he say you're… not?”

“I don't know.”

“Are you real? Did I actually hit my head?”

“I don't know. And no. I don't think so.”

The uncertainty of it all is killing Natalie, and she feels a little bit nauseous.

“I'm gonna go inside now.” She announced, standing up on shaky, ineffective rain boot clad legs, small fists clenched at her sides. She tried not to look at his face, lest she notice just how sad he looked.

She decided with fierce determination at that exact moment that she would not mention this incident to either of her parents for as long as she lived. She didn't want to make their lives harder than they already were. She never did, but for the first time in her life, she actually understood just why.

Natalie remembers the rest of the day, too, although not so strongly. It was still the most detailed day she could recall up to that point in her life, but she wasn't sure if anything would ever be able to beat meeting her brother.

She does know this much. She knows that she went inside quietly. She knows that she tracked mud into the house because she was frazzled and forgot to take her boots off, and that her mom asked her to please remember next time, “because this is the tenth time she's asking and she's getting very tired of it.”

She remembers being upset by the reminder, despite the fact that it was relatively gentle, and stomping her way up the stairs to her room, where she stayed until dinner. She remembers that while she laid there and stared at the glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to the ceiling above her bed, she wished despite herself that her brother would come back. Or that she hadn't left him so soon.

Chapter Text

Natalie has the acute awareness that after The Incident, as she came to refer to it, she became far more cognizant of her brother's presence in her home. He's like a weed, she always thought. His roots in her family's dynamic run so much deeper than she had ever known before she met him. Their mom would mention him, and she would actually know what was going on. She would bring him up, and Natalie would pretend valiantly that she didn't know who she was talking about at all. But she had to pretend.

“Hey, who are you talking to?”

“He's not here anymore. I know you know that. Right?”

“Are you absolutely sure you're feeling okay?”

“Do you want me to call dad?”

“It's okay. Just sit down for a minute, I'll get you some water. Try not to think about it.”

These words became her script, repeated ad nauseum over the years like a mantra built on deceit and well-intentioned lies. She does know who she's talking to. She knows he's still here, in one way or another. She knows her mom isn't as crazy as everyone makes her out to be.

Or she is, and Natalie is just as crazy. Or, she's on her way. That thought sends shivers down her spine and she always shakes her head and starts counting as high as she needs to until it goes away, when she has it.

She couldn't actually see him, anyway. It was just that one time. As she got older, she learned how to handle her mom's episodes a little bit better. There were always phases, where things seemed to be improving somewhat. Gabriel wouldn't be around as much. Or if he was, their mom would at the very least not bring him up around Natalie. God only knows how she justified that to herself. Natalie has no idea what her mom envisions her relationship with her brother as, if she can find a consistent sort of logic that allows her not to even say his name in her presence and see nothing peculiar about it.

Natalie doesn't know what she envisions her own relationship with her brother as, either. Maybe she really is losing it after all. She swears she can feel that he's there even though she can't see him, but she doesn't know anymore whether she's feeling his absence, or his presence. She tries to ignore the sarcastically whispered greetings that must just be in her head, and the gut feeling that her mom really is talking to someone whenever she turns and makes remarks to the open air, someone who truly is there in one way or another.

Ever since Natalie Goodman discovered that her brother was still around, it was like she couldn't get him to leave her alone for a single second. Even when he's unacknowledged, he is undeniably, painfully there. It's been almost ten years, and nobody seems to have gotten anywhere. No combination of medications, or therapy, or just ignoring the problem until it goes away, have actually managed to get rid of it.

And she finds that she's rather resentful of this. It. Him. How ridiculous is that? That's what she'd call her relationship with her brother, resentful. She wouldn't hesitate to say that she actually hates him. She has a sibling rivalry with a dead man. No, worse. She has a sibling rivalry with a dead baby. He had no personality at all. He never even had a chance to develop one, and yet her mother acts like he hangs the stars. Her mother. Natalie’s mom, hers. He may have the advantage of being her baby forever, but for fuck’s sake, that could only get him so far. It should only get him so far. And yet. Every holiday. Every Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and birthday is all about him. Every milestone, every achievement. No matter what it is, he's done something better, more impressive. He's strong and smart and talented and everything else that Natalie is sure she'll never be enough of.

What Natalie hates most of all is how much she craves her parents' affection anyway. She shouldn't be so desperate to stay in a place where she isn't wanted, and she tells herself she isn't. She spends hours fantasizing about graduating as a junior, about going to Yale and never ever turning back. Clearly, absence makes the heart grow fonder. Maybe once she was gone her parents would crave her presence, too.

Despite her best efforts to stay aloof and unconcerned, Natalie knows she's a fraud. She still invites her parents to everything, hoping beyond hope they might show up and maybe even not ruin it if they do. Maybe she'll see them both in the audience one day, smiling at her while she does whatever they came to watch her do. They'll clap a perfectly respectable amount when it's over, and hug her when she comes out to the lobby. They'll give her flowers, and gush about how proud they are and how talented she is. These are childish fantasies, but by god, they're so good to indulge in every now and then. If her brother is allowed to be a perpetual child, she can have a fanciful idea or two of her own.

“Hey, mom?” This is one such time, where Natalie is putting herself out there for no good reason at all. “I have a recital coming up, if you and Dad could… make it?”

Her voice trails off at the end of her sentence, growing small and uncertain as her request sinks in. What was she thinking? Of course, there's gonna be some excuse for why not.

Her mom looks at her, brows furrowed slightly. “I thought you just had one?”

… Right. Doing everything the same and expecting a different result. That's insanity.

“Yeah. Yeah, I did. Last year.” Natalie murmurs, her head pointed downward toward the countertop. Is she disappointed? Ashamed? She just feels icky.

Her mom, while usually a little less than empathetic, realizes Natalie looks absolutely defeated and quickly amends her statement.

“I'll try to make it, honey. What day is it?”

“Don't worry about it, Henry will take me.” Natalie shakes her head and all but storms up the stairs.

“Hold on, hold on!” Diana jogs to the foot of the staircase. And Natalie stops, because she's weak.

“You're sixteen now, right?”

Jesus, she doesn't remember?

“Yeah. For the last four months.”

“Well, you should start thinking about getting your permit, then. Your brother got his license six months ago now. He could take you driving, if you asked. You two should really talk more. I just wish you guys would bond a bit, y'know?”

Natalie is about ready to throw herself down this staircase right here and now. Her mom has been bringing him up unprompted a lot more often lately. She remembers when her brother ‘got his license,’ because that had actually entailed her mom driving to the DMV and waiting in the car doing absolutely nothing for two hours, which led her to completely missing Natalie's volleyball game the same day. She didn't know why she expected anything else anymore. She had quit the team after that. She didn't actually care about volleyball at all, she realized. She just wanted to get good at something, and for her parents to see her do it.

Natalie nods vacantly. “Okay. Okay, sure. I'll talk to him.”

She doesn't care if she's encouraging a delusion, because she wants to escape this conversation as quickly as possible, and she's not sure it's even a delusion in the first place anyway.

“Just… Please don't forget. The recital. It's December eleventh.” She says, as if she really thinks she's fooling anyone, even herself. She's already reminded her mom of this exact concert, multiple times over the last few weeks. She knows there's a lot going on, she knows it better than anybody. But she's still holding on to hope.

It seems to be the one thing, along with her brother's stupid existence, that she can't let go of. No matter how many times she's burnt, how hard she tries to force herself not to listen to that obnoxiously optimistic voice in her head, she fails. She wonders constantly what her breaking point will be, when she'll finally become disillusioned and just give up. Natalie is used to comparisons to her mother, but there are two key similarities to her father that she can't ignore. Her inability to acknowledge her brother, and her abject refusal to give up on Diana.

Even being let down at the recital after weeks of constant casual reminders and well-placed post-its, scanning the crowd and praying that she was somehow mistaken or just not looking hard enough, isn't enough to break her entirely. It shatters Natalie's heart. She feels it poke through her chest and perforate the skin, pouring her anguish onto the stupid keys of her goddamn keyboard as she refuses to play the piece she's been rehearsing for months on end, but it doesn't destroy her trust in her parents. And she resents that too. She cost herself a chance at Yale, and she didn't gain anything from doing so. Not even attention. She just keeps losing more and more. She doesn't know who to blame. Herself, for fucking up the music? Her parents' lack of attendance for distracting her? Her brother, for distracting them? There's nobody to take it out on, no way to make it seem fair, no bad guy to defeat and conquer and say I did it, I made this right.

She lets Henry take her home, silent for almost the entire drive save for the sobs that she fails to stifle. He doesn't try to talk. He knows better. He doesn't try to convince her to take the flowers he bought her. He knows who she wishes they were from. He just drops her off at her front door with an extremely sympathetic look and a tight hug.

As if the night wasn't bad enough already, Natalie decides she just needs to get her mind off of things. Off of everything. She needs to turn her brain off, let the pain out in some way other than music, because that didn't go so well last time. She has one idea.

At first, it seemed like a terrible plan. Drugs, really, Nat? Look at how well that's working for mom. Go ahead, though. It's your funeral. Upon ignoring the irritatingly familiar voice between her ears that simultaneously mocked and encouraged her, she decided that maybe there really was something wrong with her mom. Because being high worked, it worked so well. Especially the first time. She wasn't exactly sure what it worked on, she could never identify the thoughts she was trying so hard to hide from when she was taking something, but that must've meant that it worked.

Things got a lot quieter around the house whenever she did this. The chills, the sarcastic mumbling, the feeling of something just down the hall if she only let her eyes adjust to the darkness. It all went away. Natalie gets the feeling that the reason she loves the “medication” is the very same reason her mom hates it so much. Maybe they're not so similar after all.

After her disastrous recital, Natalie is almost positive that crying herself to sleep simply won't suffice. She takes a Xanax from the stash she's hidden in the back of her closet like some kind of drug-hoarding raccoon and falls “asleep,” although the definition of that is flexible these days. Her not-so-peaceful slumber is interrupted by the obnoxiously loud ringing of a phone call from her dad. She had chosen the loudest ringtone she could get for each of her parents, in case they called with something urgent. Still, she can't help her festering resentment, which has only grown stronger recently. Great, now he remembers I exist? Not three hours ago, when I needed him to show up for me?

She answers despite herself and prays she can pretend to be really, really tired despite the fact that she can't actually feel any of her limbs and her mind is almost uncomfortably hazy. It is sort of just like grogginess, in a way.

“Hello?”

“Natalie, hi, I'm… taking mom to the hospital.”

Natalie sits up and rubs her eyes at the revelation that it absolutely sounds like her dad has been crying. Usually her mom's hospital trips aren't so eventful that he gets choked up. In fact, they're a completely normal part of the routine by now, even when they're unexpected. So this must be really serious.

“Okay…? What happened?” She asks, hesitant.

Dan hesitates too. For way, way too long.

“She… she tried to kill herself.” Oh, okay. Out with it, then. There isn't really a non-blunt way to say that. “Just please don't go downstairs until I get home, okay? Please.”

A thousand questions tear through Natalie's mind, and her eyes are clouded with tears for the second time in a few hours. What did her mom do? Why would she ever? Natalie knows that her first thought is selfish, but she can't help having it, and it makes her stomach turn. Whatever she was ready to die for, is worth more to her than staying here, with me.

She knows better than to make it about herself, but there's this terrible and negative part of her brain that says, why shouldn't you? That's her mother, she's supposed to be here for her. Here, not just in her memory or her soul, but at home and on earth and present. The person who's supposed to love her more than anything else, more than life itself, was ready to never see her again because… Natalie doesn't know what was so important that her mom would actually leave her and her dad here, alone.

No. That's a lie. Natalie knows exactly what's that important.

God damn it, she wasn't deluded into thinking her mom was getting any better like her dad seemed to believe, but to imagine her getting so much worse sends a physical pain and a fresh wave of sobs through Natalie's chest and shoulders. Her life is falling completely apart, and there's nobody here to pick up the pieces. Besides Henry, who is probably asleep because it's the middle of the night. Either way, he couldn't possibly understand what this is like at all. As much as Natalie adores him, she doesn't even want to bother putting this unimaginable burden on him.

Hours of hugging her own knees and pretending it's somebody else's arms she's crying into later, Natalie hears the front door slam shut and she's pretty sure it's a real noise.

She stumbles her way down the stairs, disoriented from the beginnings of a comedown and a dehydration induced headache, ready to… see her dad. That's all she really knows to expect from this interaction.

“Why didn't you take me with you?” As if she really wanted to go. She just wants to follow her mom everywhere apparently, like a little duckling.

She ignores the blood on the floor as best she can, staring at her dad's face instead. Every time he lifts that towel, positively drenched in viscous red liquid, she flinches.

“Natalie! Your mother's in for a new treatment, uh, ECT.”

“Okay… LMNOP, what is that?”

“Electro convulsive therapy, y'know, shock therapy.”

Natalie physically feels her eyes widen and her jaw drop. “Dad, that's bullshit.”

She doesn't heed his warnings for her language. Language? He's gonna tell her to calm down, when he's really about to let some doctor electrocute her mother directly in the brain? Natalie never considered herself the possessive type, but even coming off a drug that's meant to mellow her out, she's almost blindingly angry at the idea of her dad talking her into something so obviously dangerous and borderline barbaric.

“No, that's bullshit, she trusts you!”

“Okay, it's not bullshit, the doctor says it's completely safe. I wouldn't agree to anything that wasn't.”

Dan's desperate attempts to be reassuring fall hopelessly flat, because he sounds woefully uncertain himself.

“Well, if the doctor says.” Natalie rolls her eyes, which earns her a warning glare from her dad.

“I am trying to help her, Nat.”

“Yeah, that's all you ever do, isn't it? You just try. She never actually gets any better. Is she ever going to?”

Natalie knows she's asked this question before, a thousand times. Will she get better? When? How do you know?

Especially when she was a kid. She wanted to know that her mom would be okay, but nobody ever seemed to. Nobody ever had any answers that made her feel better. Just ‘maybe’s and ‘hopefully’s and ‘who knows’es.

“I told you, I don't know. I can't know. I wish I did, but I don't.” Dan doesn't snap. Not exactly, but he does toss the damp towel down with a rather pitiful-sounding splat and massage the bridge of his nose with a bloodied hand.

“You should go to bed, it's getting late.” He says, and Natalie knows the conversation is over and that's the best answer she's getting.

She goes back upstairs. If her dad wants to shock her mom's brain to oblivion, that's not fine, but she's not going to dwell on how utterly helpless she is to stop it or she'll go insane. Or more insane than she already has, especially lately. She can't take that.

Chapter Text

Natalie used to think three therapy appointments in a week was a lot. Three weeks straight in a hospital is borderline incomprehensible. Not to mention that her dad is taking time off work to be with her. He comes home every couple days with groceries. Usually he'll sleep at the hospital for two nights, be back in the afternoon with food and to make sure Natalie is eating and going to school, and then leave again.

Then again, Natalie can't blame him. She wants to. She tries to. But what her mom is going through is scary. If it were her in that hospital, she would want a familiar face there with her. And she sort of wants to be in her dad's place, too. She wants to check on her mom. She wants to make sure she's okay all the time too. Nobody does that for her, and that's how she knows just how much she would appreciate it if they did. That's why she can't blame her dad for trying to make sure her mom feels that love.

It's not like she minds it, anyway. With her parents out of the house, she hasn't had to bother trying to hide her substance usage. She can come home at any hour of the night, be as loud as she wants, and pass out wherever in the house she sees fit at the time. The couch, the floor, the staircase, the bathroom, the kitchen counter. It doesn't matter, as long as she's up before three in the afternoon every other day and somewhat presentable. She's gotten significantly worse as a result of that newfound freedom, because the drugs make her feel undeniably alive. She misses an insane amount of school, but they have the home phone number, and it's really easy to just delete the messages about her attendance when they come through. There's just something about seeing a puddle of her own mother's blood on the kitchen floor that makes a girl feel a little more prone to risk-taking.

And she's not totally stupid. She takes her own drugs, or she tests them and then takes them. She takes Henry with her everywhere she goes to babysit, although by the time they reach the third club of the night, he's hardly a responsible party. He's spent more nights this week than she can count holding her hair back in bathroom stalls, rubbing her back as she pukes her guts out and somehow wanders her way back home. Sometimes she wakes up in bed, despite being absolutely certain that isn't where she fell asleep. She chalks it up to blacking out and tries not to think too hard about it. She tries not to think too hard about a lot of things, which in fairness, the drugs make a lot easier.

She tries to ignore how dead her eyes look, the dark circles that seem to reach halfway down her cheeks. The fact that her hair is never brushed anymore. She used to put it up, messily, but she hasn't even had the energy to bother with that anymore. She hasn't seen her favorite scrunchy in days. She sleeps in her clothes and goes out in her pajamas, she loses her stuff constantly, she feels scattered and frazzled and frayed and spacey even while sober. That's not such a bad thing either, though. The haze gives way to clarity, and she feels like a brand new person. One that doesn't think too much, because she can't. One that isn't in pain anymore, because every emotion is dulled and her enjoyment of everything is heightened. Of music, of the way things look, the way things feel. It feels like she can never come down, like she'll ride this high forever.

But that isn't how this works, is it? It can't last forever. Her fun habits will catch up to her eventually.

One night, after shooing Henry away and practically slamming the door in his face, Natalie learns that lesson firsthand. She wanted him to leave so badly, because she was starting to feel not-so-good and she didn't want to worry him. She can see the way he looks at her, with barely concealed pity, and she can't stand it. If he saw her at her worst, he might have a coronary.

Of course, the current problem is that Natalie feels like she might have a coronary. She staggers up the stairs, because for some reason, her room is the only place on planet earth she wants to be. She feels a near gravitational pull to her bed, her arms and legs rebelling jerkily against every movement she tries to make with them. This is a great reason not to mix uppers and downers. She's both sluggish and jittery. Numb, and yet she feels like a white-hot live wire at the same exact time. She almost collapsed on her way up the stairs, landing on her knees, her black coat stained with mud from… something. She must've fallen on the way here, somewhere. She isn't sure.

She rolls onto her back, and right before she can pass out on the stairs for the second night in a row, she feels a nudge on her shoulder. It jolts her awake, and almost gives her a heart attack in the process.

“Whatthefuck—”

Her confusion is extremely short lived, when she looks up at who's sitting on the step next to her.

She recognizes him. She would recognize him half blind and a mile away. The too-long sleeves, the messy brown hair that looks like it hadn't seen a brush in ages. The wide-eyed stare.

“You should go upstairs.” He says, extremely and utterly unhelpfully.

Natalie is too stunned, or maybe too high, to say anything. She has a lot to say. And none of it comes out. It's easy to hate someone. It's hard to tell someone you hate them, to their face. Even if they aren't real.

“Am I dying?” Or dead, she thinks.

“No, I don't think so. But get up anyway.”

Natalie, for all her stupid principles, listens. She pushes herself up by her elbows, standing up on shaky, ineffective combat boots and ripped tights clad legs. She leans heavily on the railing, leaning over the edge as she tries to hold onto balance, and she's vaguely aware of her brother following carefully behind her, mirroring her every step. As if he could catch her, were she to fall.

By some divine miracle, she collapses onto her bed in one piece. But apparently her brother is not satisfied with this resolution.

“Natalie. Sit up.” He urges, and if he has to grab her arm and pull her himself, so be it. He's done it once before.

She grumbles begrudgingly in response, unwilling, or perhaps incapable, of listening to his advice.

“Nooo. I'm fine.” She insists, despite being anything but.

He shakes her shoulders. He practically slaps her in the face, but he's not strong enough to force her to do anything.

“You actually have to stay awake, I'm not kidding.” He insists, and he would probably know these things, wouldn't he? He has a bad, bad, bad feeling about this.

“No I don't.”

“Natalie, please.” He's to the point of begging, now, trying to think of ways to keep her up. “Why don't we talk? About anything. I don't know. About school. About Henry. About what you did tonight, or last night, or the night before. About mom, anything.”

Natalie murmurs in response, far from coherent, and he realizes he may have lied to her on the stairs.

He hooks his arms under her armpits and practically drags her out of bed, which earns several halfhearted groans of protest from the wild blonde-haired girl in his arms, and tries not to focus on how heavy she is or how hard it is to haul her down the hall to the bathroom.

“You have to throw up.” He announces, as if that alone will convince his sister to reverse her overdose.

It's not a surprise that it doesn't, really. But her body does have some self preservation instincts, and the sight of the toilet seems to evoke the necessary response. Natalie vomits into it, and her brother holds her hair back while she does.

He watches for several seconds, trying to think of something to say.

“You look like mom.” And in terms of situations like this he's been responsible for, he really doesn't have the best track record lately.

Natalie seems to know that, too.

“That's your fault.” She glares at him, over the edge of the toilet bowl, in between bouts of dry heaving.

“Yeah, I know.”

“I hate you.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Can you say anything else?”

“Sorry.”

“Whatever.”

But he is sorry. For everything. And he doesn't know how to describe that, he doesn't have the words to communicate how he feels about what his presence has done to his family. He doesn't want to be here at all, not if it's going to cause this amount of pain, but he also doesn't want to go. He doesn't want to be forgotten, he wants to stay with his mom. Not only his mom, but his sister and dad, too, despite their lack of acknowledgement. He loves them anyway, and he isn't ready to let go. He's had eighteen years, but they've been years of being the center of attention, for better or worse. It's hard to willingly give that up. He doesn't want to. He isn't ready.

He can feel that he maybe doesn't have a choice. The ECT is working. There's a reason it was so hard to drag Natalie to the bathroom despite her probably weighing a hundred pounds soaking wet with rain boots on. There's a reason he just can't seem to remember his own name.

He's terrified. But for once, it isn't all about him. His sister looks like a mess, and it's all because of him. He didn't want to do what he did to their mom, didn't mean it. He doesn't want to imagine what his existence might put their dad through, if this is what it's led to so far.

“I'm so sorry. Do you…” He wasn't sure how he planned to finish that sentence, but it's okay, because Natalie interrupts him anyway.

“I don't even wanna talk to you.” She slurs out, hugging the toilet like it just told her she won a million dollars.

“I’m sorry for everything, I really, really didn't mean—”

“I don't care! You are ruining my life! Can you just… just go away?”

Despite feeling like he deserves that, his sister's words sting a bit. He withdraws his hand, curling it against his chest like her skin burnt him.

“No. I can't.”

Natalie looks up at that, her brows furrowed quizzically.

“Why are you here?”

“I don't know.”

“God, do you know anything?”

“... Not really.”

Natalie didn't know what she expected him to say, but that answer was kinda funny anyway. She chuckles and shakes her head, and hates herself for being amused by something her lifelong tormentor has said. She's starting to realize, though, that maybe he didn't have a choice either.

“What's it like?” She asks, out of the blue. “Y'know, being…”

“I don't know what to compare it to.”

Natalie nods. She, again, doesn't know what she expected.

She lifts her head from the toilet bowl entirely, her face having regained some color since she expelled some of the drugs from her system. If she has a chance to talk to her brother, she might as well take it.

She alarms herself with her next question.

“Can’t I just… go with you?” Her voice sounds small. Too childlike, too innocent. As if she doesn't understand the implications of her question, when in fact, she very much does.

Gabriel immediately and violently shakes his head.

“Absolutely not.” He's learned his lesson, from what happened with Mom the other week.

Natalie didn't think he would disagree so quickly. She pauses for a minute.

“Nothing about this is fair.”

“I know, I'm sorry.”

“Can you stop apologizing?”

“Okay, sorry. Wait, no—”

“Fuck’s sake.”

Natalie, unfortunately, gets along with her brother surprisingly well. He doesn't feel like a complete stranger, like she'd expected. She hasn't seen him in a decade, but it doesn't feel that way.

There's a brief and comfortable silence, before he interrupts it.

“Why did you do this?” He gestures vaguely at the room around them, and at the absolute state Natalie is in. “Why do you do this?”

Natalie is silent for several more long seconds as she ponders that question. She knew she went too hard tonight. At multiple points, she had realized she should pace herself and decided not to. She was being reckless and she damn well knew it, but it wasn't a conscious decision. She wasn't trying to kill herself. But she wasn't afraid of the possibility. Hence her question a couple minutes ago, about leaving this fucked up place with her brother to go be a ghost or… Something. She hasn't worked out the details.

“I guess I just thought, if I could go with you, or if we could switch places, everything would be better.” Natalie mumbles, although she doesn't even know how she expected to make that latter idea happen. She's just fantasizing. She wipes a bit of snot from her nose with the back of her hand and shakes her head.

“Mom and dad would probably miss you.” He points out.

“Oh, only probably? That was kinda the whole point. I guess I've been thinking, maybe if I were gone, they'd miss me too. Like how they miss you.” She doesn't know why she's admitting this. She's just word-vomiting. “I mean, mom practically doesn't miss you. She doesn't have to, because you're still here.”

“I wish I wasn't. Here, I mean.”

“Why not?”

“Look at you! Look at mom! She's in the hospital, getting the memories zapped out of her brain, because of me. Look at your life. I know it isn't fair.” He's quiet for several more incredulous seconds. “But I don't want to go, either.” He admits in a much smaller voice.

Natalie studies him. Really studies him.

“I know what you mean.”

He's a bit relieved to hear that. He sits with his arms around his knees, his cheek resting against them, while Natalie stays knelt in front of the toilet just in case.

“I wish we could've talked more.” He muses. He's not sure why he's still here, but he wants to make the most of the time he has with his sister.

“Me too. I've spent my whole life hating you, for something you aren't doing on purpose.” Natalie pauses. For crying out loud, all the kid did was die. “The worst part is that I think I maybe still do, even though I know better.”

He understands, god he understands doing and thinking and feeling things that he knows better than to do.

“I know. I don't really expect anything else.”

“You could've been a cool brother. If you had gotten the chance to be.” Natalie can at least admit that much out loud.

“I wish I could have. I wish we could've kept being friends, after that one time.”

The most painful thing, that both kids are oh so acutely aware of at this moment, is that they probably would have gotten along if things were different.

Now that they've both acknowledged that, and Natalie is a little bit less messed up, her brother knows he's short on time. “Can you stand? Can you walk?”

“Yeah. I think so.”

He gives her his arm anyway and helps her stagger and stumble her way down the hallway and into her bedroom.

She gets into her bed and under her covers, significantly more comfortable here now that she's not dangerously intoxicated.

Her brother leans against the doorframe, lingering there for a few seconds. He doesn't want to think about what could have possibly been, but neither of them can seem to help it.

“Goodnight, Nat.” He all but whispers into the dark of her room.

“Night, Gabe.” She replies, a few seconds later, to an empty hallway.