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Perhaps it's a bad omen to say this, but Natalie feels like dying.
The trek from their crash site to the lake had cost her much more energy than it should’ve, leaving her winded when it came time to trudge out of the lake and climb up the hills once more to investigate whatever new shiny thing her teammates had just found.
Stumbling upon the cabin had felt like a miracle, the euphoria pumping adrenaline into her blood and pushing her legs to kick the door down. It dwindled, though not entirely extinguished, upon finding no trace of human life inside.
Still, it’s shelter. And Natalie is tough, always has been, but she’d rather not sleep outside and resign herself to being a buffet for mosquitoes and god knows what else for another night.
The relief to have a roof over their heads and real, solid walls to keep them safe is so overwhelming that it took Natalie until dinner was over to notice there’s a Lottie-shaped absence by her side.
“Has anyone seen Lottie?” She asks, looking around expecting a tall drink of water dressed in pink to magically appear.
A few feet away, Van is munching on some crispy chips. They’ll run out of snacks soon, hopefully not the maggots have not gotten in all the canned foods like the one Jackie found.
“She’s outside.” Crumbs smeared her lips, Van wipes her mouth with her sleeve and smirks. “Hold your horses, loverboy. Tai already went to grab her.”
Natalie grumbles, rolling her empty bag of chips into a ball before launching it across the room.
It lands a satisfying smack on Van’s nose, her dramatic whining earning amused giggles from the few teammates still loitering about the living room while the rest shuffle about, spreading out sleeping bags and distributing blankets.
“Put a sock in it, Palmer.” Natalie ducks to hide her red cheeks, fiddling with the soccer keychain on her backpack just to have something to do with her hands.
Lottie is still not back yet. She just worries, that's all.
“Hey!” Van huffs, menacingly crawling over on all fours like a freakish, ginger spider.
Natalie, wide-eyed with a betraying curl of her lips, extends her palms in surrender. The giggles around them are an octave higher.
“Whoa, whoa. Let's talk about this.”
“I don't think so, blondie.” Natalie makes a face, displeased at the lack of originality. “You killed my father. Prepare to die!”
You don't even have one, is what Natalie would've said if she wanted to die right then and there in the middle of the Canadian wilderness.
But she doesn’t, in fact none of them does, so Natalie flips over like a fish out of water and starts sprinting.
The cabin roars with shrieks and laughter, Natalie smiling extra wide as her body is flooded with warmth and joy.
Van is hot on her heels as she runs, dodging flailing limbs, rowdy cheers worthy of a high school soccer team, and Laura Lee hollering while using a bible as a makeshift sign.
Everyone knows how this is going to end. Van may be the abominable goalkeeper, but Natalie is a right winger and a good one at that.
On the field, her speed is only rivaled by the midfielders.
But they're not at Nationals.
They're stuck in the middle of god knows the fuck where and there's no midfielder around to tackle Natalie to submission.
Or at least, she assumed there wouldn't be.
“Lottie, go left!”
“On it!”
Not only is there a midfielder. There's fucking two.
“Stop! Stop!” Natalie screeches to a stop, hands raised high in the air.
But Lottie and Tai are merciless when there's a ball at their feet. Which in this case is poor, helpless Natalie.
“Lottie, no!”
“Gotcha!”
Natalie’s back meets the ground in a painful thud, all the while there's a girl the size of a medium-sized cuddle bear pouncing on her torso.
Distantly, Natalie hears the cabin explode into sounds, split equally between victorious elation and teasing disappointment.
The assault of vanilla on her nostrils prevents Natalie from thinking about anything else but Lottie in her arms, Lottie on top of her, Lottie smiling down at her, looking both like an angel and her devil.
“I got you,” She pants, all breathless and beautiful.
Natalie’s pathetic, little gay heart bursts into flames right then and there.
Tai’s voice booms across the living room, authoritarian with a hint, only a hint, of fondness.
“Alright, nerds. Pack it up. Time for bed.”
Groans echo across the cabin, followed by rustling of bodies slipping into sleeping bags.
Natalie waits for Lottie to disembark, blushing harder when Lottie extends a hand to pull her up than when she has Lottie on top of her.
She's a romantic. Fucking sue her.
“I was gone for 5 seconds and you decided to start a wilderness scrimmage?”
“Van started it.” Faintly, Van’s objection goes in one ear, then out the other. “Where were you by the way?”
“Oh, just… out. I needed fresh air.” Lottie tackles on a tight-lipped smile as if that'll help her come off as convincing.
Natalie wants to challenge that smile, wants to push until she knows what's bothering Lottie, but it's late and Natalie is tired. They all are.
“Okay,” She says instead, leading and, naturally, Lottie follows. “You wanna sleep next to me? There’s some room.”
“What, you don't wanna share? I’m hurt.”
Abandoning Lottie to her dramatic fake pouting, Natalie stomps over to the empty spot near the door, where her duffel bag still sits, thankfully untouched.
It's hard to be grumpy for long when Lottie skips to keep up with her, long legs doing more than just make her tall and unobtainable, and Natalie is forced to bite down on her lip so no one else can see her grin so hard her dimples pop out.
She’s so fucking smitten over Lottie Matthews, it's genuinely pathetic.
A true testament to how much the day drained them all as well as the warmth of Lottie only a few feet away, Natalie falls asleep the immediate second her head touches her pillow.
She should’ve known that’s where her luck would run out.
“Nat. Nat. Wake up, Nat.”
“5 more minutes,” Natalie grumbles, which turns to groans as the hand on her shoulder not only doesn’t stop but shakes her harder. “Palmer, you better have a good reason for this or I’ll spoon your eyes out with a—“
“There’s a dead body up in the attic.”
Natalie blinks once, twice, three times for good measures. The words and Van’s serious tone slam into her with the force of a truck.
“What?”
Skin even paler than usual, Van helps Natalie sit up.
“Tai found it,” Van shakes her head, frowning. “No. Lottie found it, Tai found her.”
“What?” Natalie springs to her feet like a rocket, Van following suit a little more clumsily.
The former takes a look around, finding most if not all Yellowjackets (and Coach Scott and Travis and Javi) wide awake. Her eyes land on their captain, Jackie, who blinks owlishly at being addressed before visibly collecting herself.
“Go. We’ll be right behind you.”
Natalie doesn't stay long enough for Jackie to finish her sentence, sprinting up the ladder with Van hot on her heels.
It's the first time she sets foot in the attic, and yet Natalie doesn't care about looking at any inch of it. She makes a beeline for the raven shadow sitting curled up in a corner, hearing Van rushing over to her love in the exact same manner.
Natalie lets her eyes roam the girl’s body with a freedom she never quite allowed herself in the before, relieved beyond belief at the lack of any visible injury she can find on Lottie’s person.
The relief doesn't last long, Natalie’s tentative smile drooping as she scans upwards and finds Lottie with the most disturbingly vacant look on her face.
Her eyes, the honey brown Natalie has so often thought about in classes and soccer practices alike, are so dull, like a pile of mud. It's not an unfamiliar sight, but it's still so scary that it makes every hair on the back of Natalie’s neck stand straight up.
“Lottie?” She calls, carefully. Like there's a chance Lottie might spook and run away. When she doesn't, Natalie tries again. “Lottie, can you hear me?”
Footsteps clamber on the ladder behind her, Natalie vaguely picking up Jackie’s shocked gasp and Mari’s (hopefully) dry heaving.
Keeping Lottie in sight, Natalie chances a look over her shoulder to see for herself.
The sickening lurch of her stomach contents at what is most certainly a real human skeleton is more than enough to get Natalie to focus back on Lottie.
“Hey,” She tries again, waving her hand. “Lottie, can you hear me?”
“I think she's in shock.” A voice comes from Natalie’s right, the soft and gentle bell of her cadence alerting Laura Lee’s presence.
Solid warmth approaches her left, marking Natalie as sandwiched between the former and Shauna.
“Why?” Natalie asks the room in general. “What happened, Tai?”
“I don't know.” Tai sounds small and scared, completely unlike the fearsome midfielder they all know and love. A little muffled too, maybe she has something over her face to cover her nose. “I thought I heard someone moving so I climbed up here, and there Lottie was.”
Natalie opens her mouth to ask more questions, when the low voice she’s been dying to hear shatters through the quiet like a gong.
“I told her.”
“Told her what?” Natalie kneels so she can meet Lottie’s eyes.
It's moot, Lottie is staring at something else. Someone else?
“I told her…” Lottie mumbles, too soft to be angry but just loud enough to be heard. “I told her… Something terrible. Something truly terrible…”
Natalie hears Laura Lee swallow harshly, the sound accompanied by Mari muttering an explicit not under her breath.
Jackie, who’s been subtly hyperventilating in the corner, miraculously gathers her wits again.
“Okay, I need to not be in this creepy attic for another second longer than I have to.” She claps, the sound screeching loud and startling everyone present. “Right. Laura Lee, Tai, you two bring Lottie downstairs and get her settled. Shauna, Van and Nat, can you bring the body down?”
Natalie is swiveling around to object as soon as she realizes what her assigned role is supposed to be, guts twisting at the mere idea of having to be away from Lottie.
“But I… Lottie…”
“It’s okay.” Warm hands squeeze her shoulders, Laura Lee giving her a reassuring smile. “I got her.”
It works a lot better than she would like.
“Okay,” Natalie lets Laura Lee take over, trying one more time to make eye contact and sighing when she sees Lottie still practically gone.
She heads over with Shauna to Van instead, the three of them surveying the skeleton with equal amounts of disgust and consideration.
“We need a blanket,” Van says first. “To put the dude in.”
“We should put on gloves to prevent spreadable diseases,” Natalie adds.
“We bury him outside the cabin,” Shauna concludes. “I think I saw a shovel in the storage unit. I’ll go dig and you guys get him down, we good?”
“Cool.”
“Roger that.”
“Who needs men when you have a bunch of masc lesbians around?”
While Shauna huffs in fond exasperation and Van cackles at Mari’s admirable attempt to clear the air, Natalie goes to receive the supplies she asks for, courtesy of Misty who’s been eavesdropping them from halfway up the ladder the entire time, and heads over to the boney elephant in the room.
They work together quickly and quietly, all eager to expunge the bad omens out of their new home and go back to bed.
Thanks to Shauna’s muscles, Van’s surprisingly good grave digging skill, and Natalie’s gentle farewell to a soul that's perhaps been trapped here just like them, the cabin is no longer haunted.
Or so she hopes anyway.
“All sorted out?” Vaguely, she hears Jackie ask.
“Yeah,” Van answers, voice slowly growing further and further away. “As long as no one decides to pull a Wednesday Addams, we’ll be good.”
Natalie drudges back inside with barely-opened eyes, yawning the entire way.
Lottie is already asleep when she lies down, and Natalie, drained from not just exhaustion but the depletion of adrenaline she got from worrying about Lottie, falls back into slumber as easily as she was torn away from it.
Natalie dreams this time around, that she was on a plane going down and her dad was right next to her.
He says she’s got blood on her hands as he turns his head to show half of his face blown off. She can still hear the bullet crunching inside his skull.
He says they're almost there and it's been waiting for them. She closes her eyes, braces for impact, and wishes she’d died on that stupid fucking plane.
Natalie wakes up with terror in her throat.
Her shallow breathing is obnoxiously loud in the dead quiet, her friends and teammates snoozing away without a care a few inches away.
No one immediately wakes up to yell at her or grab her by the hair, and for that Natalie is grateful.
Riding out her anxiety with some heavy breathing, Natalie lets her eyes stray, thinking she might as well do a headcount to occupy her harried mind.
But pink is all she sees, pink and black and that ever so familiar loneliness that Lottie wears like a second skin despite all the money and fortune in the world, and that stomach-churning worry from earlier returns with a vengeance.
“Lottie?” Natalie calls, slowly ridding herself off her blanket.
Lottie doesn't answer.
Natalie crawls over, as quiet as a spider. “It's okay. He’s gone.” She nudges Lottie gently with her shoulder. “Remember? We buried him.”
Eyes stubbornly fixed on the ceiling, Lottie’s voice is as soft as velvet.
“Bad things happened here.”
Finally, Lottie turns her head. Natalie feels a chill running down her spine upon meeting her eyes, no longer vacant but troubled.
She doesn't say anything, just looks at Natalie with those big, brown eyes. Eventually she tires, or perhaps grows bored, and goes to lie back down to presumably go back to sleep.
Natalie stops her with a hand at her nape. Wordlessly, she tugs, pulling Lottie out of her bed and into her own. Strangely, Lottie follows without a peep, head touched down on Natalie’s pillow.
Carefully, Natalie asks. "How did you know he was up there?"
Lottie blinks up at her. "What?"
Natalie lies down, effectively sharing a pillow with Lottie. Who looks up at her from under her eyelashes, lips parted like she’s having trouble breathing too,
"You said you told Tai that something awful happened. You were already up there with him. Why, Lottie?"
Those beautiful eyes duck, hiding behind the bangs falling into her face.
For once, Natalie doesn't hold herself back from tucking the hair over Lottie’s ear, as gentle as a feather and as careful as a lover.
Lottie’s head tilts, meeting Natalie’s hand with her cheek. Lottie is soft and precious in her hold, and Natalie almost feels like crying, not knowing why she's being blessed with such a display of vulnerability.
“When I was 10, my family was almost in a car accident.”
It’s stupid, Lottie is clearly alive and well, but Natalie can’t help but let her eyes roam panickedly across her body.
The warm skin on her palm vibrates, indicative of Lottie laughing, and Natalie sinks into her pillow, trying desperately to hide her blushing.
“Go on,” Natalie orders, her sternness not at all reflected in her voice.
“Bossy,” Lottie teases and scootches closer. Natalie can almost hallucinate the smell of Lottie’s old strawberry-flavored toothpaste. “But yeah. It was a whole thing. My parents were too busy arguing to check the roads. I was sitting in the back with my teddy when all of a sudden, I felt this immense feeling of horror.”
Natalie twists her hand, searches for Lottie’s, and they’re holding hands. She pretends like she didn’t see Lottie’s pupils dilating, murmuring encouragement.
Lottie’s palm is warm, so is her breath on Natalie’s face. Sometimes, Natalie thinks they are all going to freeze to death, but that thought hardly makes sense now, when she’s so warm it feels like she can power the sun.
Lottie continues, “All I could see was blood. Blood everywhere, on my face and my clothes. On my father’s broken neck and my mother’s open mouth. So I screamed. I screamed my little head off. As soon as my parents turned around to yell at me, a semi-truck ran the red light and barreled into the car in front of us.”
The epiphany hits her like that semi-truck. “You saved them.”
“I… saved something.” Lottie lets out a laugh that’s bitter and almost angry. Angry in a way that feels like Natalie. “My mother thought I could see the future.”
The dots connect like a puzzle. “You… knew.”
“I had a feeling,” Lottie corrects, squeezing Natalie’s hand tight like she’s afraid she’d take it away. “From before we set foot in this cabin, I had a bad feeling. That something terrible happened here. I can’t explain it, like no one could explain what I did in the car. Nat, I don’t… I don’t know what’s happening to me.”
The tears come first, then the quivering lips and the tiniest sob that pierces Natalie’s heart like the barbecue meat she’s been missing so much.
Natalie lets her instinct take over, a soft coo leaving her mouth that will never see the light of day or anyone else who isn't Lottie Matthews as she gently scoops Lottie up in her arms.
Lottie’s head is of a comfortable weight when it lies on her chest, filling Natalie inside with a distinctive warmth that she only ever remembers associating with the time when her parents still loved her.
“We’ll figure it out,” Natalie promises, fingers gently scratching the back of Lottie’s head. Her hair is like cotton candy and she smells so fucking good like this, needy and desperate for Natalie. “I promise. I’ll protect you.”
Natalie won’t know it yet, but for the next nineteen months, that promise will be her purpose.